Previously in the Darklyverse: Marlene and Remus's fragile truce broke when Remus and Sirius started dating. Emmeline continued her stay in St. Mungo's and reconciled with Sirius, with whom her friendship had been rocky ever since fourth year. The Hogwarts Order brainstormed how to attract Slytherins, potentially including Marlene's sister Meredith, to War Stories while knowing that Dumbledore is deliberately keeping them away from other Order missions.
Revised version uploaded 29 January 2022.
xx
January 16th, 1978: Marlene McKinnon
Marlene is going to snap if she has to hear one more time from anyone about Sirius and Remus going out together. To be fair, it's not like people are just randomly coming up to her in the common room or the Great Hall and asking if she turned Sirius gay. She can hear people whispering about her as she passes through the corridors, though they're not all flagging her down and confronting her, at least. But Greta Catchlove and Davy Gudgeon wouldn't freaking drop it in Herbology the other day, and neither would Dirk Cresswell the last time he tagged along with Alice in the library, and even her own sister Maggie, who claims not to care about anybody's teen drama, has been giving her a hard time.
It's like nobody cares that Marlene lost her boyfriend and one of her best friends when Remus and Sirius started dating, like they don't realize that maybe, just maybe, she doesn't want to talk about it. Of course, Marlene is talking about it plenty to Lily and Mary, who have both been sympathetic listeners, but it's one thing to talk to your best friends about what you're going through and quite another to have people you barely know coming up to you and expecting you to share details with them.
It doesn't help that Sirius and Remus are always together and always displaying affection, so that it's constantly on Marlene's mind. At the very least, she hasn't seen them kiss on the mouth yet, but they're still always touching and making her blood boil with regret and jealousy. How could Sirius so easily jump from dating Marlene to dating someone else? How could he do this with Remus?
Sometimes she wants to kill Sirius, and other times she wants to pull him aside and beg him to leave Remus and get back with her, but she's much to proud to do that, not when she already went to him one time and his answer was that he and Remus had already gotten together. It's like her dignity is at war with her—well. It's like she can't function anymore without being with Sirius, enough so that she's almost willing to throw away her pride and just do whatever she needs to do to get Sirius back.
But she knows it's too late for that. He was willing to try to work things out with her, and then she broke up with him because of his feelings for Remus, and if his reaction is to start seeing Remus instead, then the only person to blame is Marlene.
Why did she have to break up with him in the first place? Why couldn't she have accepted his apology and found a way to move forward?
She already knows the answer, of course: she felt angry and betrayed and hurt, and she couldn't stand the sight of him. She just hadn't expected him to turn around and get a new boyfriend (honest to god, a boyfriend) not two months later, and she hadn't expected herself to still need him so much.
It's gotten so bad that she's started retreating to the dormitory alone for hours at a time between and after classes—anything to get away from the visual of Remus and Sirius together without her. She can't focus in class or on her homework. She can't sleep. She can't even eat much because every time she sees them together in the Great Hall she loses her appetite. And the other Gryffindor seventh years are probably just fine with Marlene not hanging around them, with her attitude and her cynicism and her inability to take her attention off of Sirius, even when he's not there.
It kind of comes to a head that night after dinner; Marlene's up in the dormitory when Alice pokes her head in and says, "Time for War Stories. You coming?"
She groans. "What's the point? It's not like we're doing anything that matters. It's an echo chamber in there, and Dumbledore sidelined us a long time ago."
Alice purses her lips, looks over her shoulder for a fleeting second, and then edges all the way into the room and closes the door behind her. "I know it's hard," she says in a pacifying sort of voice, "but what we're doing down there does matter. If we want to win the war—"
"If we want to win the war, we should be fighting in the war, not—not sitting around whining about privilege to people who already agree with us."
"But we've had some good discussions," Alice counters. "We've talked about the etymology of blood purity—whether Crouch's crackdowns have been ethical—the lies people tell about their blood status to avoid persecution." At this last remark, Marlene finds herself unable to hold Alice's gaze; she looks down at the bedspread, where she's picking at a loose thread. "Not all of that has been things that everyone already understood. Not all of it has been things that I already understood."
After a pause, Marlene looks back up. Alice's face is open and weary. "He's punishing us for what we did last year. You know he is. I feel like I'm just—trapped in this castle with my head and my guilt and my bloody ex-boyfriend, and if I have to stomach another second of it—"
"I know it feels that way now, but—"
"It doesn't just feel that way; it is that way! Tell me, what's going to magically change after we collect our diplomas that means we'll suddenly be mature enough to fight in a way we aren't already?"
"It doesn't matter," says Alice patiently. "There's no way Dumbledore in good conscience can throw students onto the front lines, not when we all still have parents expecting him to be responsible for us."
"But we're of age. It should be our choice."
She bites her lip. "It's not that simple. You're not the only one who's frustrated, but—"
"Tell them I'm not coming," Marlene snaps. "Tell Lily and Mary I'll talk to them later."
"Marlene—"
"Just go. I can't do this right now."
The second Alice leaves her alone in the dormitory, Marlene regrets this: now she's going to be stuck alone with her thoughts for the next hour, as if she needs to be doing any more of that than she already has been lately. She rolls onto her side and braces herself for another long evening of hating herself, Sirius, everyone and everything.
xx
The next evening, when she tracks her sister Meredith down at the Slytherin table at the end of dinner and asks her to come for a walk, she immediately flares up with anger when the first thing out of Meredith's mouth is, "Is it really true that Sirius Black dumped you for a boy?"
"Get over here, you little bitch," Marlene hisses, grabbing Meredith by the elbow and hauling her away from her dinner.
"I wasn't done talking yet!" Meredith squeals.
"Yeah, you are," says Marlene. They fall into step together walking out of the Great Hall. "Lead the way. I'll follow you to your common room. And Sirius didn't dump me; I dumped him, and whoever he dates after me isn't my concern. God, am I ever going to hear the end of it?"
"I'm just asking," says Meredith, and then she adds, "Is it really true that you lost Gryffindor four hundred house points?"
"Clearly you're spending too much time with the rest of Slytherin house," mutters Marlene. "What else do they say about me, huh?"
"David Parkinson called you a blood traitor for being best friends with Mary Macdonald and Lily Evans, but I told him to shut his fat mouth about all three of you. He's a third year."
"Bold of you to take on a third year boy," says Marlene, smiling. "Did he retaliate?"
"He tried," says Meredith proudly, "but I put him in a Full Body-Bind before he could do anything."
Marlene grins wider. "I love it. Hey, thanks for defending my honor."
"Nobody screws with my family," says Meredith, and she sounds so tiny saying it with her squeaky little kid voice that Marlene has to hold in a laugh.
"Actually, that's sort of what I wanted to talk to you about. What's it like in Slytherin when it comes to how they treat Muggle-borns and how they talk about Muggles? With the younger students, I mean?"
"It's… well. I'm glad I'm a pureblood, because I don't think it would go over very well if I were anything but," Meredith admits. "Everybody knows that people lie about their blood status so they don't get bullied, but on the other hand, that means that if there are people lying about being purebloods, then there are more people than you think who are sympathetic to Muggles. Some people suck, but some of the others are okay. My couple of friends I always hang with are cool."
"Can you do me a favor, then?"
"What is it?"
"Come to War Stories this month. Bring your friends."
She feels like a fraud suggesting it after skipping last night's meeting, but she did promise Dorcas she would try and recruit her Slytherin baby sister. Meredith looks skeptical, rubbing her face where her nose meets her tear ducts. "I don't know if that's such a good idea. We can only stand up for ourselves to a point against the bigots."
"You don't have to spread it around that you're going," Marlene bargains. "Just come and bring a few people with you in the door. We don't need to get supremacists on board—we're just trying to reach the people who might actually be amenable to what we're doing."
Meredith doesn't answer a moment, and Marlene is bracing herself for a "no," but then Meredith responds, "Let me talk to Helen and Mark and Deb, but I can't guarantee that any of them will go for it."
"Yes! That's all I need. Thank you so much, Mer; every little bit really helps."
Meredith shrugs it off. "It's nice talking to you," she says, changing the subject. "We should do stuff together more often."
"I know. We should. Look, I'm sorry I haven't—been around for you very much this year. Now that you're at Hogwarts, I should have been making a point of hanging out with you—and the others, for that matter—but I've been so sucked up in my own drama that I've just…"
"Hey. I haven't exactly been reaching out, either," Meredith points out.
"Let's do better from now on, okay?"
"Okay." There's a brief pause while they continue walking, and then she adds, "One more question."
"Hit me."
"Were you really involved in whatever happened that got those two girls killed last year? Because you didn't say anything about being there whenever it came up this summer, but everyone keeps asking me if I know anything because you're my sister, like that means I'm supposed to know something more."
Marlene groans. "Mer, I am happy to answer any questions you have about how I'm doing, but can you lay off the questions about gossip you heard in the corridors?"
Meredith grins sheepishly. "Sorry."
When she drops Meredith off at the Slytherin common room, she makes a detour in one of the ladies' restrooms, because she's so sad she can hardly stand it and she needs some time not to have to fake being okay to anybody else. She stands under the shower head and lets the water wash away every piece of regret brewing inside of her, every bit of rage and remorse and mourning that she knows will come right back as soon as she turns off the stream.
She can hardly believe she actually went to Sirius after leaving him and all but begged him to take her back. What kind of self-respecting woman would do that? But Marlene feels like she's drowning without being near Sirius every day. No—Marlene is near Sirius every day, but it's like she's seeing him through a glass and can't touch what's on the other side. She can't get her fill just by proximity to him—what she needs is more than he's willing to give her anymore.
Truthfully, her disastrous reaction to not being together with Sirius anymore is probably a sign that she shouldn't have been with him in the first place—not if she needed him so badly that she would fall this far when she lost him. But knowing that being separated is for the best doesn't make it the slightest bit easier.
She makes a beeline for the dormitory when she gets up to Gryffindor Tower, so she's absolutely shocked when she opens the door to find—Emmeline. She's bent over her trunk rummaging for something, and when she hears the door close, she whirls around to face Marlene. She looks anxious. Marlene only Flooed her once or twice when she was at St. Mungo's, and Em looks so much worse now than she did the week or two ago when Marlene last saw her. They let her out like this? is her first thought, and she immediately feels horrible for thinking it.
"Em? Em!" she exclaims, and Emmeline looks so lost standing there in the middle of the floor that Marlene flings aside her bag full of dirty clothes and goes to wrap her in a hug, if only to wipe that distraught look that mirrors how Marlene feels off of Emmeline's face. "I can't believe you're here—I had no idea you were getting out today—"
"Neither did I, until today," says Em. "My sister works at the Ministry, and she pulled some strings to get me released. Remind me to never try and fail to kill myself ever again. Lord, that place was awful."
"Never try to kill yourself again, period," Marlene says, releasing Emmeline. "What was it really like in there? Do you want to talk about it?"
"Not yet," says Em, shaking her head. "One of these days I'll talk about it, but I just want to enjoy being out and seeing everybody. And not just Peter, you know? All of you were around for me while I was in there, and I want to make it right with everyone."
"That's great, Em. Seriously, I'm glad you're out and you're feeling—up to putting yourself back out there, and… I know I'm not much for company these days, but it's not your fault, I swear."
"Because of Sirius?" Em asks, and Marlene nods. "Listen, about him, I wanted to just—apologize. I sort of… nothing happened, but I sort of wanted at one point last year to pick up where we left off in fourth year, and he turned me down because he was with you, but I shouldn't have even—and I want you to know it's not like that anymore. I don't want that from him, and even if he's not with you anymore, I don't want you to think when I spend time with him that I'm… I know you're really sad about losing him, and I wouldn't throw that in your face like that."
Marlene wants to interrupt, but she lets Emmeline ramble on because she hasn't really got any idea what to say. When was Em ever involved in that way with Sirius, and since when did she try to make a move on Sirius last year? Her whole body feels like it's flushing hot. "You had a thing for Sirius?"
"I—yeah. We almost got together in fourth year, but then his cousin killed my parents and, well, you know how that ended."
"His—his cousin killed your parents?"
"Yeah, I mean, that's why I cut him off and he got together with you. He didn't tell you any of this? I mean, I know he didn't know my parents are dead until last year, but I thought you'd have been the first person he told when he found out."
Marlene's damn head won't stop spinning. For some reason, one of Sirius's cousins murdered Emmeline's parents. Em and Sirius almost got together. And from the sounds of it, Emmeline abandoning their relationship was the primary reason that Sirius started sleeping with Marlene in the first place.
She thought it was bad when she found out that Remus kissed him, but this—is so much worse. Sirius didn't just hide what happened for months like he did with Remus—he hid what happened with Em for years, and he wasn't even the one to finally tell Marlene what happened. Not only that—Marlene's also found out that the only reason Sirius first approached her was as a rebound from Em.
She feels a sudden wave of nausea and a strong urge to find Sirius and—do what? It's not like she can break up with him again. But Marlene can't just stand here stewing in the knowledge of everything Sirius did to her and not—find some kind of outlet. She can't talk to Em about it; Emmeline is the whole problem. Well, that's not fair to Em: Sirius is the ones whose actions are hurting Marlene, not Em. But Emmeline is certainly too close to the problem for Marlene to feel comfortable confiding in her.
She doesn't want to be up here with Emmeline any longer, but she doesn't want to go down to the common room and have to look at the sappy faces Sirius makes at Remus for another damn minute. She needs someone, and she needs them now.
"Can you send Lily up here, please?" she says as steadily as she can manage to Emmeline.
"Marlene—"
"Just find Lily downstairs and tell her to come up here," says Marlene again.
Emmeline nods and closes her trunk with her foot and walks away, out of the dormitory and down the stairs, and Marlene buries her head in her hands.