September 23rd: Lily Evans
It's like Lily is surrounded by people who are concealing their suffering from the rest of the world. For one, James is throwing himself into War Stories but can't seem to distract himself from the reality that he's probably going to lose both of his parents to spattergroit. She's pretty sure that both Sirius and Marlene are going through something taking time away from each other, but neither of them will admit it, at least not to Lily. Remus looks sad every time Sirius walks in the room. Meanwhile, Mary has to realize that she's being shut out from her friends by virtue of quitting the Order, and from what Peter tells Lily, Emmeline isn't having an easy time of anything, either.
She sort of wishes that everybody would just admit their pain to each other so that they could at least get some support from each other, but on the other hand, Lily knows that some struggles don't get better by voicing them aloud during every conversation you have. Take what happened in May—what they did to Liz and Millie. None of the Gryffindors talk about them anymore, because what's the point? They all still have that same weight on their chests day in and day out, and anyway, they probably deserve to focus on guilt for their part in what happened to them.
But Millie and Elisabeth hang like a cloud over every conversation Lily has, just there below the surface, reminding her that her and her friends' stupidity has a body count no matter how hard she tries to live out her life like a normal person. She doesn't know how Benjy can stand to stay in the Order, even now that it's under Dumbledore's leadership. She doesn't know how Benjy can stand to look any of the Gryffindor seventh years in the eye.
Increasingly, Lily feels like she has nothing to say to people day in and day out as they go about their daily lives. What even is there to talk about? They can't change the past. The only really noteworthy things going on in their lives are War Stories and the Order, but there's only so much that anyone can say about them before conversation runs dry. In some ways, she thinks it's a good thing that they have N.E.W.T.s coming up next year, because there's plenty of homework for Lily to bury herself in to avoid filling the silences.
She's in Potions on Friday morning, trying to reverse the damage Marlene has just done to their batch of Veritaserum, when Slughorn saunters over to invite her to the first Slub Club party of the year. Lily doesn't mind Slughorn that much—she's not fond of his "talented witch for a Muggle-born" comments, but he's harmless and is always trying to help her out—but he wishes he wouldn't do this in class in front of other people whom he's not inviting: namely, in this case, Marlene.
"Want to be my plus-one?" Lily asks her the moment Slughorn is out of earshot.
"I thought you'd be going with James," says Marlene, raising an eyebrow.
"Nah, I expect he and Sirius are taking Peter and Remus again. I'll see James there," says Lily. "What do you think? Want to go and get stuffed on appetizers with me?"
Marlene takes a moment to consider and then shakes her head. "Too many Slytherins for my tastes," she says. "But you should ask Emmeline—I know Peter's been worried about her—or maybe Mary, she's probably been feeling sort of left out lately."
"Have you talked to Mary much lately? I know you two were always close."
"Not a whole lot," Marlene admits. "Maybe you should take Emmeline so that Mary and I can have a girls' night in the dorm. Alice will be gone at the party, too, right?"
After class, Lily tells Marlene she'll meet up with her for lunch, and then she starts stowing away her textbook so she can head to the library, hoping she'll be able to track Emmeline down there. Her head is still off with Emmeline and Mary, so she almost misses it when Sirius walks up to Remus and Alice's table and says carefully, "You want to go to the Slug Club thing with me, Moony? Like old times?"
It's when Remus doesn't answer right away that something clicks in Lily's brain: Sirius and Remus seem to be back on okay terms the last couple weeks, but she wonders how strong their relationship really is underneath right now. James starts to say, "You can come with me if you'd rather—"
But Remus cuts him off, scrambling to answer, "No, no, it's fine, I can go with Padfoot. Old times, right?"
xx
Although she's narrowing her eyes a bit suspiciously when Lily asks her to the party, Emmeline nods hesitantly and agrees, "All right, yeah, I can do that. Uh, thanks for asking."
"Awesome," says Lily with a smile. They're in the common room, off sitting in armchairs in the corner with the other girls, while Peter is playing guitar (very badly) for the boys at the other end of the room. "It starts at seven, so we can go up to the dormitory to get changed after dinner and then head straight over."
"Get changed?"
"Oh—people usually wear dress robes to these things," says Lily quickly. "Do you have a pair upstairs at all?"
"I don't," Em admits.
Marlene smirks and says, "That's okay. Just sneak out and go to Gladrags this weekend. I can take you, if that offends Lily's Head Girl sensibilities too much."
After a pause, Lily mutters, "I heard nothing." Everyone laughs except for Alice, who purses her lips but says nothing.
Lily ends up going along with them anyway, so she, Marlene, and Emmeline meet up in the Great Hall at the end of breakfast and then head for the mirror-and-passage on the fourth floor. Marlene keeps up a steady stream of chatter as they cross the halls and then make their way down the passageway toward Hogsmeade. Lily is grateful for it, because if it were left to her, they'd be walking the whole way in awkward silence. Emmeline doesn't say much, but Lily squeezes her hand and smile at her, hoping that that, at least, will make her feel welcome.
But she suspects it's not enough. When they hit up Gladrags, the smile playing at Em's lips is small and wry as Marlene and Lily comment on each pair of robes she tries on, and while the tailor is busy fixing the hemlines with pins, Emmeline snatches up a discarded Daily Prophet left behind by another customer and flips from page to page.
"Anything worth mentioning?" Lily eventually asks, just wanting to say something to bring Em back to them.
"More deaths," she says, like that's normal or something, which Lily supposes (after a moment's thought) it probably is, if she's being honest with herself. "Two families, both with children. Plus an Auror has gone missing."
"Anyone we know?" Marlene asks absently.
"Probably not," says Em. "The families were all Muggles, and the Auror is a Muggle-born guy. Caradoc Dearborn?"
Shit. Lily looks hastily at Marlene, who is turning pale, her mouth hanging open. "Doc?" Marlene croaks. Her voice sounds like it hasn't been used in years.
"Wait, you…?"
"Doc is Marlene's uncle. The one she said hello to at the Order meeting this month?" explains Lily.
Doc isn't Marlene's uncle, of course—Doc is Marlene's father. Not that Emmeline knows this.
Emmeline puts down the Prophet and turns to watch as Marlene mumbles, "I—I've got to get out of here," and positively runs out of the shop.
Lily exchanges a look with Em, who is full of pins, half-hemmed, and hasn't paid for her robes yet. "You go after her," says Emmeline.
"Yeah? Are you sure?"
"I know they way back from here," Em says, "and she needs you more than I do."
"Uh… right. Okay," says Lily haltingly. "Thanks, Em."
Lily runs out of the shop and hurtles toward Madam Puddifoot's, where concealed in the men's bathroom is a brick that opens up, Leaky Cauldron-style, into the passageway that leads back to Hogwarts the way they came. She doesn't see Marlene in the body of the café, so she ducks into the back hallway, looks around fervently, and quickly slips through the door to the restroom.
Marlene's still in there, tucking away her wand as the bricks along the back wall pop out and rearrange into a doorway. The depths beyond it are filled with mossy stones all the way around. She spins around to look at Lily, dropping her shoulders when she sees who it is. Her cheeks are wet.
"Oh…" says Lily, unsure of what else she could possibly tell Marlene to comfort her, but once again, Lily finds that Marlene is perfectly able to fill the silence all on her own.
"How dare he!"
"Doc?" says Lily, raising her eyebrows.
"Dumbledore!" Marlene thunders. "Either Doc went missing on Auror duties, in which case Dumbledore would have noticed Doc not showing up for Order business, or he went missing as a direct result of his work for the Order. Either way, Dumbledore must have known he had disappeared! He knew! And he didn't even bother to tell me? He let me find out from a newspaper, Lily! A goddamn newspaper left behind on the ground that my mate picked up at random!"
A wizard who looks like he's maybe in his thirties pushes open the bathroom door and then stands there in the doorway staring at them. "Go on, then!" Marlene shrieks. "Carry on like everything's normal! What does it matter that one Mudblood has gone missing?"
"Come on, Marlene," says Lily firmly. She steps up to Marlene, clasps a hand on Marlene's brown forearm, and steers her into the opening in the wall and along the mossy passageway.
Marlene keeps up a steady stream of expletives the whole long walk back down the passage and back to the opening inside the castle. "God damn him… should have known I'd be the last to know… I just cannot believe Dumbledore…"
"You're not going to chase Dumbledore down over this, are you?" says Lily cautiously. She doesn't want to minimize Marlene's anger or make out like she doesn't deserve to feel it, but at the same time, she thinks Marlene might just wind herself up even more if she confronts the headmaster and inevitably doesn't get a satisfactory answer from him.
"And let him get away with it? What do you think? What would you do?"
"I just don't think that anything Dumbledore says or does is going to do anything to make you feel less… you know, afraid. Or sad."
"I'm not sad," spits Marlene. "Or scared." But Lily thinks that Marlene might not realize how wrong she is.
She knows Marlene needs to not be alone right now, so she accompanies her to the gargoyle statue on the third floor. In front of the gargoyle, Marlene pauses. "You don't happen to know the password to get in right now, do you?" she asks. Only a little of the fire has faded from her voice.
"No," says Lily, shrugging a little. They stand there watching the gargoyle for a long minute, and then Marlene kicks it at its base, hard enough that she seizes one foot in pain and hops up and down on the other one, cursing.
They end up sitting down next to the statue; Marlene has fallen quiet, and no longer swearing up and down at Dumbledore, she looks sickly and afraid. They wait for ten, twenty, thirty minutes, sitting there in silence together, and Lily has half a mind to pull out her textbooks and start doing homework, but holds back, not wanting to do anything that Marlene might interpret as Lily not being wholly on her side.
Lily wonders whether Doc went missing acting in his capacity as an Auror or as a member of the Order. She wonders whether it makes a difference.
Finally, the gargoyle leaps lightly to the side, pushing Lily and Marlene out of its way, and Lily looks up to see Dumbledore standing on the bottom step looking surprised. "Miss McKinnon, Miss Evans," he says in a high pitch. "How can I help you?"
"Doc is missing. What do you think I want?" Marlene demands.
"Ah," says Dumbledore. It looks like it only sets Marlene off more to see that Dumbledore knows exactly why she's so pissed off. "Perhaps you should come into my office for a few moments."
"Yeah, perhaps we should," says Marlene sullenly.
Lily isn't sure whether she's supposed to join her or not, but Marlene gives her a quizzical look when she gets to her feet, so Lily gets up, too. They ascend the circular staircase in silence. Once in the headmaster's office, Dumbledore waves his wand so that two squashy armchairs appear in front of his desk, but Marlene doesn't sit down, instead folding her arms over the back of one of the chairs and leaning forward onto it.
"You knew," says Marlene when Dumbledore doesn't speak again. It's not a question.
"I did," Dumbledore agrees. "To be entirely honest, I didn't realize you two were close enough that you would need to be immediately informed. I noticed you talking at the last Order meeting, but I assumed your relation was a distant one. Clearly, I was wrong."
Lily and Marlene exchange a look. Surely Dumbledore knows that Doc is Marlene's father… doesn't he?
Then again, how would he know? The only people who know are Marlene's immediate family—Doc, her mother, her stepfather, and her siblings. Lily would have thought that Dumbledore would have found out by nature of being in the Order with Doc, but if Doc kept it under wraps even from Dumbledore, how could he?
Marlene calls him her uncle in public to explain their visits, but even that relation doesn't hold up under scrutiny by adults who know their parents' generation better than their classmates do. Doc is single, which means that he didn't marry into either side of Marlene's family. Doc and Marlene's stepfather, Neil, don't share a last name, so most people wouldn't think that they could be brothers. And Doc is white as a sheet, while Marlene's mum is of black and Indian descent, so they wouldn't be siblings, either.
And then Marlene gives Lily a shock when she says with her head high, "Doc and I aren't distant cousins. Doc is my father."
To Dumbledore's credit, he doesn't look surprised. "I see," he says quietly, and then there's a big pause again. "I will keep your secret, of course," he adds finally. "And I will ensure that you are one of the first to know when we recover him safely."
"So he was captured on Order business?"
Dumbledore nods. "I'm afraid I can't share the details of the mission he was on with you—"
"Why not? Huh? We're in the Order, too. We gave it its name—we're mobilizing dozens of students to pro-Muggle activism—"
"And I commend the job you're all doing," says Dumbledore patiently, "but you must understand that there are limitations on what I can and can't share with you. You may be a part of the Order—an integral part of it, might I add—but you are still, first and foremost, a minor and a student at this school, and it is my responsibility as your headmaster to protect you from the aspects of the Order that could threaten your safety."
Marlene scowls. "So what you're saying," she presses, "is that you only teamed up your group of fighters with ours so that you could control how much or little we get involved in the war."
"To be fair," Lily says before she can help herself, "look what happened when we took things into our own hands."
Marlene shoots her a glare—a withering, betrayed glare—and spins on her heel and makes to leave the room. Lily and Dumbledore watch her for a long second, then look awkwardly at each other, and Lily inclines her head and tags after Marlene out of the room.