Previously in the Darklyverse: Marlene increasingly isolated herself with only Lily for company as she fought with Sirius, Remus, and Mary.

xx

April 8th, 1978: Lily Evans

"You don't really think I'm smothering you, do you?"

It takes Lily a moment to place where Marlene is coming from—Mary's accusation last month during the fit she threw in the boys' dormitory. "Smothering me? No, I don't. What brought this on?"

"I don't know. Obviously, I've been thinking too much," sighs Marlene. "I'm just worried that—I don't want to be holding you back, and I know being around me all the time means you don't get to spend more time with anybody else, or Jay, and I…"

"Hey. I'm a big girl; I can make my own decisions about who to spend my time with," says Lily. "You haven't forced me into anything. But I, uh—I do think that it might help you feel better if you started hanging out with other people more."

"So I am smothering you."

"That's not what I said. I'm fine. I just think you might benefit from spreading it around a little."

"Why? Why can't I just have you, if you're okay with it?"

"I was best friends with Severus Snape for eight years, remember? And for the last five of them, whenever he wasn't with me, I could be surrounded by people in the common room or even in the dormitory with the four of you and feel totally alone. It gets lonely, and I don't want you to be lonely, that's all."

"I'm not lonely."

"Really? Because all you talk about is how angry you are with Sirius and with Mary, and it makes me think that you've been missing them a lot."

"I don't—that's not—of course I'm angry! You'd be angry, too! That doesn't mean I miss them."

"Well, I for one don't understand why you can't just apologize and move on."

"I'm not apologizing to anyone! You didn't apologize to Snape for getting angry when he called you a Mudblood, did you?"

"Severus was a bigot who I made excuses for for a very long time. Sirius and Mary—and Remus, for that matter—truly love you and want the best for you."

"Yeah, well, they have a funny way of showing it."

Lily shrugs and stands up. "Do what you want. It's your life. But at least try talking to—Alice or James or Peter or—anyone, really. I told James I would meet him to study for History, but I'll catch you at dinner, okay?"

Marlene rolls her eyes but nods. "Yeah, go on. We can't all have perfect love lives like yours."

"My love life isn't perfect," Lily says, but it's not the first time she's heard that sentiment, and she doesn't fight too hard against it. There are worse reputations to have. Hell, Lily had a worse reputation when she was best friends with Severus than what she gets called for dating James.

She and James end up going outside to study, since they can't talk freely in the common room and can't talk much at all in the library. They sprawl out in the grass, James lying on his stomach with his notes sprawled out in front of him, Lily sitting cross-legged up against a tree trunk. Lily's notes are much more thorough than James's are, so she ends up basically talking him through her notes while he jots down some of the things she says.

They've just finished up the section on the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 when James drops his quill, rolls onto his back, and stretches his arms. "Break time?" he says, pumping a fist in the air when Lily laughs and nods.

He sits up, scoots closer to her, and kisses her. She kisses back for a long, lazy moment and then sighs. "Why can't all days be like this?"

"Yes, please. I feel like I haven't seen much of you lately."

Lily flashes back to Marlene and wonders if she should have told her that, yes, she is smothering Lily a little. "I mean, Marlene's not doing great. I keep hoping she'll work through it, but it's been months, and she's still every bit as angry as she was with everyone in January."

"I can try talking to her, if you want, although if she won't listen to you, I don't know why she would listen to me."

"It's a worth a shot. Are you sure you're up for it?"

"Are you kidding? I have mad conflict resolution skills. It'll be great."

Lily grins. "Well, thank you, at any rate. I hope you can get through to her somewhat."

"We've been friends since we were eleven, you know? Hopefully she'll know that—uh—that I have her best interests at heart."

Lily sighs and plucks absently at the grass below. "Sometimes I forget how much time I missed out on with all of you by hiding behind Severus all the time. I can't believe I could have had you lot for five years longer than I did."

He shrugs. "We were cliquey and arrogant. You probably wouldn't have liked any of us much back then, even if it weren't for Snape."

"Cheers," she says, grinning.

If James does talk to Marlene, it doesn't have any effect—at least, that's what Lily thinks until she comes up to the dormitory a few days later to find Marlene sobbing into her pillow. "Hey," she says. "Hey. What's going on?"

"I'm going to lose everyone. I'm going to lose all of them, and it's entirely my own fault."

"You're talking about Remus and Sirius and—?"

"And Mary, yeah. It's not that I'm not mad. I'm still mad. That's why this is so hard—because I don't think even if they apologize every day that I can fix this—fix the way I feel about them. What do I do with that? It's not like I can just tell myself I'm being irrational and they've done nothing wrong. They have done something wrong, and I can't just forget that. But it's so lonely, being on this side of all that anger. Lily, I'm so lonely."

"God, what the hell did James say to you?" asks Lily, mostly to herself.

Marlene gives a shaky laugh. "It doesn't matter what he said. I just want to go back to before any of this happened, when we were all happy. We were happy, weren't we? Sirius and I were doing so well, and I don't understand how that… how this happened. Everything spun so far out of control so fast. And everyone keeps saying I need to forgive them, but no one seems to be able to tell me how," says Marlene.

"Maybe don't start there, then. Maybe you—work on yourself first and then try to go back into the relationship afterwards."

"But what do I work on? I didn't cheat. I didn't say Mary couldn't have other friends."

"Yeah, but you did decide at some point that what they did was unforgivable. Maybe you need to work on not holding people to being perfect."

"I don't expect people to be perfect. If I did that, Sirius and I never would have stayed together for so long."

"Honest question: did you forgive him for the way he treated you up until sixth year? Or did you just push it down and pretend it wasn't there? Or did it leak out in other ways?"

"I don't think it came out in other ways, no," says Marlene, but then she adds, "I thought I had moved past it, but maybe I did bury it. I mean, the second something came up with Lupe, I immediately dragged up all the old baggage with Sirius because it felt like it was happening all over again."

"That's where you can start, then," says Lily. "I know it hurts that Remus and Sirius started something, but Sirius didn't do it the way he did things in fourth year. He was ready to reject Remus for you. You'll just get yourself into trouble if you assume that you can't trust people to have good intentions."

Marlene has stopped crying, at least, and she's wiping her blotchy pink face with a handkerchief and biting her lip. "How am I supposed to get space from them to work on things when we're all in the same house and year together?"

"If you stick it out another two and a half months, we'll all graduate, and then you never have to see them again unless you want to."

"But we'll still be in the Order together."

"The Order is a big organization, and they don't have meetings every day, and I'm sure you can work on tasks that Sirius and Remus have nothing to do with. And Mary isn't even in the Order anymore."

Marlene just shrugs helplessly and blows her nose. "Come on," says Lily. "You say you're lonely? Let's go find some people to keep you company."

"But you just said I should be taking space from—"

"I said it makes sense to avoid the people you're mad at. I didn't say anything of the sort about Alice or Em or James or Peter or Eddie or Benjy or—"

"Okay, okay, point taken," Marlene says, smiling weakly. "Em is probably with Mary, and Jay and Pett are probably with Remus and Sirius, but we could track down Alice."

"Let's do that, then," says Lily, smiling back.

They hang out with Alice most of the rest of the day, and Lily gets Marlene set up with Peter the day after that. She's planning on finding James to get some alone time with him, but on second thought, she leaves James with Sirius and Remus, and she instead tracks down Mary and Emmeline.

They're busy studying, because what else is new? They're not in the library, though, or the common room—Lily finds them outside, sprawled in the grass practicing nonverbal incantations with their tongues between their lips and their faces turning purple with effort. "Flitwick keeps saying it's supposed to get easier over time, but I swear, it never has for almost two years of trying," says Lily.

She waves; Em and Mary wave back, dropping their wands for the moment. "I can't wait until we don't have to do any more homework," Mary exclaims. "God, we're almost done. Let us just get through our N.E.W.T.s in two months so that we can be done with all of this forever."

"To hear McGonagall tell it, we're never going to be, like, fully acclaimed witches unless we master this stuff," says Mary with a deep frown. "Adult wizards in our presence will laugh and scowl and point fingers at us for saying verbal incantations. Duelers will randomly show up on our doorsteps to anticipate our every movement—"

"Yeah, well, I think McGonagall can afford to chill a little," says Emmeline. "We have the rest of our lives to practice. How are you, Lily?"

"Oh, I'm fine."

"How's Marlene?"

"She's… okay," says Lily with a furtive glance at Mary.

But Mary looks unaffected, picking at the grass with a blank expression. "You can talk about her in front of me, you know," she says. "I'm not going to crack up at the mention of her name or anything."

"Well… she's doing her best," says Lily, still with a little hesitation. "I think she's really angry, but she's lonely, too. She's trying to work it out, but it's hard. She misses you a lot, Mary."

"I mean, I'm not going to pretend I don't miss her, too," says Mary, "but she has a very funny way of showing her affection."

"I'm not here to defend her. I just thought you'd want to know that—well, she doesn't hate you or anything. She actually cares about you quite a bit."

"I'll believe that when it's her saying it," Mary retorts.

Lily doesn't want to get in the middle of it, but it seems to her like love must not be enough for people to stay together, because if it were, Sirius and Marlene wouldn't have broken up, and neither would Marlene and Mary, and she'd still be on good terms with Remus, too. For everyone's sakes, she wishes that it really were that simple, but she doesn't think it's going to play out that way.

She doesn't think it's going to be that painless—not at all.