Previously in the Darklyverse: Last year, Hufflepuff was in the lead for the Quidditch Cup when their Captain, Elisabeth Clearwater, was killed by Death Eaters and the last two games of the season were cancelled. Despite getting engaged to Reginald Cattermole, Mary admitted her true feelings for Marlene to her. James called Marlene out on being too proud to maintain her friendships. NE.W.T.s approached.
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May 20th, 1978: Marlene McKinnon
So Mary is in love with her. In love with her. Marlene has to admit, she didn't see that one coming. How long has Mary been feeling this way toward Marlene—how long has she been keeping this secret? It doesn't gross Marlene out like Mary probably thinks it must, but it's making her reevaluate her and Mary's entire relationship, replay every interaction she and Mary have ever had. Was Mary in love with her this time? Did Mary want more than friendship from her that time? Marlene doesn't know—she probably never will.
"What's up with you and Mary? You've been looking at her like she's some kind of wounded bird ever since yesterday," says Lily, interrupting Marlene from her scattered thoughts.
Marlene puts a hand on her wand and says, "Muffliato."
"That bad, huh?" Lily says.
They're in the stands of the Quidditch stadium, where James and the rest of the Gryffindor team are up against Charlotte Fawcett and the Ravenclaws. Gryffindor needs to score sixteen goals, and Ravenclaw needs eighteen, before catching the Snitch if they want to beat Hufflepuff and win the Cup, so they've all prepared themselves to be here for a long while before the game can end. Lily has brought homework again, but with what Marlene's about to tell her, she doesn't think Lily is going to get very deep into it.
"I don't want word getting out about what happened. Mary doesn't need that on top of everything else."
"God, what—?"
"She—uh. She told me that—um."
"What?"
Marlene doesn't know why it's so hard to get the words out all of a sudden. It's not like she has any reservations about telling Lily what's going on. Finally, she whispers, "She fancies me."
"What did you say?"
"I said she fancies me!"
"But that… how…?"
"I know. Apparently she has for a long time. I had no idea."
Lily shakes her head. "Why is this year the year that all of our mates turn out to be gay? First Sirius and Remus, now Mary…"
"Sirius isn't gay just because he dated one bloke," says Marlene, more offended than she should be.
"Wait a minute—Cattermole! How is Mary engaged to him if she's in love with—you?"
"I mean, it's not like she ever thought I would be a viable possibility. Even if I didn't still have feelings for Sirius, I've never given anyone any kind of indication that I could be attracted to women. She said she just—settled for being my best mate, or trying to be, because she thought that was within reach."
"No wonder she was jealous of us," Lily says. "I always felt a little bad that she seemed to feel like I was in her way, but…"
"I don't know whether I'm supposed to feel guilty or not. You know? It's not like I deliberately chose not to love her back in that way, but—I still think it must really suck for her to feel this way about me and me not return it. I feel awful about Sirius all the time, but at least I had my chance to be with him, and I have those memories and the knowledge that it was real, or I think it was real, anyway."
"I feel sorry for her, but she probably wouldn't want us feeling sorry for her. If it were me, I would feel patronized by that."
"Don't tell her that I told you," says Marlene urgently. "She'll probably just get even more upset knowing that you know."
"Are you sure you should have told me?" Lily asks. "Not that I don't want to know, but…"
"I probably shouldn't have, but what am I going to do, not tell anyone? I can't just keep this thing all to myself with no one to talk to about it."
Marlene's brother Mike has started listing off names of the players as both teams come out onto the field, and Lily says, "You should take off the Muffliato. People are going to get irritated if they can't hear the commentary."
The match, as predicted, takes forever to wrap. The Seekers seem like they're basically ignoring the Snitch, while Chasers punt around the Quaffle for slow and hard-earned goals. Gryffindor, predictably, is beating Ravenclaw, who have been the worst in the league for the last several years—but it still takes nearly two hours for Gryffindor to surpass the sixteen goals they need to beat Hufflepuff if they want to win the Cup.
Ravenclaw only has forty points so far—enough that they'll have a win over Gryffindor if Dirk Cresswell catches the Snitch, but not so much that they'll beat Hufflepuff if he does. Gryffindor scores another goal, and another, and another. Another. Enough that they've got more than a hundred and fifty-point lead over Ravenclaw. Until—
"And Dirk Cresswell catches the Snitch, but they're still lagging twenty points behind Gryffindor, who win the match! And if my math is right—Hufflepuff wins the Quidditch Cup!"
"He must have known they were never going to catch up," says Marlene as she and Lily keep clapping halfheartedly. "Ravenclaw is allied with Hufflepuff before Gryffindor—at least this way they could ensure a win for their mates."
"I don't think they were just doing it out of alliance," says Lily. "I think they were doing it for Elisabeth."
That's fair, Marlene reflects. Everyone knows that Hufflepuff would have won the championship last year if Elisabeth and Millie hadn't died and suspended the last two games of the year. Elisabeth had been Hufflepuff's team Captain, and it should have been her victory before anyone else's last year, had she lived to see it.
They bump into Mary on the walk back to the castle; Marlene awkwardly says hello, and Mary nods at her before scurrying off to be anyplace other than where Marlene is. It hits her for not the first time that there's a very real chance she's going to lose Mary's friendship after graduation. So much has happened—Mary's probably been through so much pain—and without the excuse of shared classes and meals and dorms to bring them together, how is Marlene supposed to stay in Mary's life when Mary is reeling with rejection? Marlene can't just Apparate into Mary's house uninvited, bent on taking up her time.
It wasn't until James confronted her that it really sunk in how much Marlene still has left to lose if she doesn't learn how to forgive people for their transgressions. "Do you want all the people who love you to stop because you pushed them too hard?" he'd said. "Because we're looking at a huge rift here that's only going to get bigger the more you keep punishing everyone around you. I don't know about Mary, but Sirius isn't going to spend months, let alone years, of his life groveling to you and getting nothing in return. If you really want to make things right, you're going to have to not be so proud all the time."
Mary might be a lost cause, but Marlene's not ready to accept that. Instead, she focuses her attentions on the one person left that she maybe can do something about: Sirius.
They have Charms together on Mondays, so she heads back to the common room walking in step with Lily behind him, and then she calls his name once they've gone through the portrait hole. He turns around, looking surprised. "Can I talk to you?" she asks.
He nods, and she pulls him aside, casting another quick Muffliato—they could have just gone up to Sirius's dormitory, but Marlene doesn't feel particularly keen on getting that intimate. Still, she's here to make amends, so she gulps and gets going. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry about everything," she says, and then she can't seem to find any more words.
When she doesn't say anything more for a few moments, Sirius answers, "I'm sorry, too," and then they just stand there staring at each other for a bit. Looking at him, so human and fallible and vulnerable, it's hard for her to hate him. She wishes she could say that all this anger has made it easier to separate herself from what she wants from him, but it hasn't. She still wants to be with him—spend the rest of her life with him—and to have him at her side through everything life puts her through. But that's not going to happen, and she's going to lose him entirely if she doesn't, right now, come up with the right words to say.
But then Sirius says, "I know we can't yet, but I'd like it if we could be friends someday. You still matter to me, Marlene."
"I don't know if we're—well—I don't know if I'm ever going to get past… everything," Marlene admits, but not harshly.
"I know. But if you do—you come track me down, okay? We'll be in the Order together; I'm sure we'll see each other around. You'll know where to find me. And, for what it's worth?" Marlene nods at him. "I forgive you."
Her initial reaction, of course, is to flare up with anger at the idea that Marlene has done anything that needed forgiving when it was Sirius who used her and threw her away and cheated on her and—and—she stops and takes a breath and calms herself down. Sirius was wrong to do all those things, but he was doing his best, and she—she could be cruel and proud and unforgiving, that's all true. She wishes she could say truthfully that she forgives him, too, but she can't, so she settles for saying, "When I'm ready, I'll come find you."
"That sounds good," says Sirius, and he smiles.
The next week passes in a blur of studying and practicing magic, most of it nonverbal. With N.E.W.T.s coming up starting on the fifth of June, Marlene feels like the days are slipping through her fingers like a stream of water. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday…
Finally, on the last day of May, Marlene slams down her Transfiguration textbook and declares, "I can't do this any longer. I need a brain break. Anyone for a game of wizard's chess?"
"I think you're on your own, mate," James says, shrugging. "We're running out of time to learn all this."
"Fine, then. I'm going for a walk," says Marlene, packing her things. James, Lily, and Peter wave her goodbye as she bounds out of the common room and toward the castle doors.
She's near the Entrance Hall when she rounds a corner and spots Benjy Fenwick heading in the opposite direction. "Hey, Benjy. Benjy!" she calls, quickening her pace until she reaches him.
"Oh, hey, Marlene," he says, smiling at her. "How's it going?"
"Oh, just N.E.W.T.s next week—but you know how that goes already."
"It's a monster," acknowledges Benjy. "I was just going for a walk to clear my head, but I'm going to get back to studying pretty soon here."
"Yep, same," says Marlene. She doesn't know what possesses her to do it—maybe how sad Benjy's eyes look underneath his smile—but she adds, "Hey, um—I just wanted to say I'm sorry about Elisabeth. I don't know if I ever properly apologized before, and, uh—I'm just really sorry for my part in it."
Benjy's smile dissolves. "Oh, Marlene, that isn't your fault. I don't even blame Dorcas, and it was her information we were acting on. Elisabeth and I knew what we were getting ourselves into—we knew the risks."
"Still. I don't think any of us really expected our actions to result in anybody's deaths, even if we knew messing with Death Eaters would be dangerous. For the whole past year, everybody keeps talking about Elisabeth—and Millie, for that matter—passing away, but nobody's actually talking to any of the people who lost her, and, I don't know. You deserve to know that she is remembered, you know?"
Benjy nods. "She would have been so excited about the end of the school year," he says. "I mean, she wouldn't be excited about cramming for the N.E.W.T.s, but for graduation and doing more with the Order and careers in the real world—she would have loved this part, where everything is new and undefined."
"She should have been here with us for this," says Marlene quietly. "And I just want you to know that I'm really sorry she's not."
Benjy smiles again, this time without showing his teeth. "We'll avenge her," he says. "We'll do the work. A couple more weeks, and we're out of here and can make a difference for real."
"I hope so," says Marlene. "I feel like I'm going to crack up if I go much longer watching the death toll rise without doing anything to stop it."
"Liz felt the same way," says Benjy. "It's why she went to the ambush that night."
Is Marlene really ready to go out there into the war knowing she could easily end up the same way Elisabeth went? She hopes she is. She doesn't know if she'd be able to stand watching her friends die for this cause knowing that she was sitting on the sidelines instead of protecting them.
She wonders if that's what it's like for Mary—quitting the Order and standing by while all her best friends set themselves up to die—and Marlene hopes it isn't. Whatever their differences, Marlene doesn't wish on anybody that kind of hopelessness.