Previously in the Darklyverse: Marlene and Sirius apologized to one another and agreed to try to eventually be friends. Mary admitted to Marlene that Mary is in love with her. Marlene moved in with her father, Doc, after graduation.

xx

September 7th, 1978: Marlene McKinnon

Marlene never really expected to get this close to her birth father. Sure, she saw him on birthdays and things growing up, and she and Lily moved in with him just for the summer before their sixth year, but she'd thought that was just a once-off, that Doc wouldn't ever want to keep her around long-term. But then she saw him on her eighteenth birthday, and he asked how she was liking being back at home, and when she said it was a little strained there, Doc, well, offered to take her in.

It's not that things are terrible with Mum and Neil and the kids. She doesn't mind the noise, and she likes being around her siblings, particularly since she was always bad about spending time with them when they were at Hogwarts together. But she never really forgave Mum for turning Marlene and Lily away when Lily's parents had just died and she needed Marlene's help. Marlene doesn't even really understand why Mum wouldn't take Lily back when she'd been just fine with Lily staying there for the first half of the summer—something about Lily needing more support than the McKinnons were equipped to give her, as if Lily was suddenly some huge liability. It went just fine, Marlene living with Lily and Doc the rest of that summer, didn't it? Just because Lily was grieving didn't mean that she was needy, and even if she had been needy, well, it would have been deserved, wouldn't it?

So Marlene sort of jumped at the chance to spend more time with her biological father, whom she'd always loved, of course, and with whom she'd always regretted not being able to see more often. She's a lot less jealous of all of her friends living with each other now that she can say that she's taken up permanent residence with her father for the first time ever. Doc is funny and sweet and always wants what's best for Marlene, even when sometimes Auror work takes him away from her at unpredictable times.

For her part, Marlene has started training to become a Hit Wizard for the Magical Law Enforcement Squad contained within the Ministry's Department of Magical Law Enforcement. It's not Auror work, like Marlene had wanted until her sixth year at Hogwarts when her internship there didn't pan out, but it's just as dangerous—maybe even more so, since Hit Wizards are on the front lines making arrests rather than investigating crimes behind the scenes. Plus, the training is really improving her dueling skills, which she's been taking back to the Order and training her friends on after the fact.

The one time this gets awkward is when Marlene is called to the scene of a Death Eater attack where the Order has already appeared. She makes a point of departing the scene just as the Order is sending Patronuses to summon the Ministry, so that she's not already there if she ends up getting called in to help, but it's a little strange to take off her Order mask and change her robes in time to Apparate right back to the same site, hoping that the apprehended Death Eaters won't recognize her.

To avoid having a member of the Order stay behind at each raid to fill the Ministry in on the details and give a statement, they've opted to send an anonymous report with a Patronus summoning the Ministry to the scene and popping away as soon as help arrives to take care of the victims. They don't expect any Hit Wizards to give up the identities of Order members to Death Eaters, but then, you can't really be sure that no Hit Wizard is a spy for You-Know-Who, and anyway, they could all go to Azkaban or worse if they get caught as vigilantes.

Between training for the Department during the day, going on Order raids, and making Ministry arrests as they pop up, Marlene's not getting a lot of sleep these days. She's started taking long naps in the evenings, after dinner but before there's any real risk of the orb going off, and while they're helping her feel more like a human being, the flip side is that she's got very little time anymore to see her friends. Most of her social life consists of waiting around with others watching the orb to go off, and then actually going to see what's the matter if it does go off, which is resulting in more and more frustration as the Death Eaters are getting better at anticipating the Order's attacks and coordinating accordingly. They haven't actually apprehended anybody in at least a week, to Marlene's knowledge, despite nightly attacks. It's like they know when the Order is coming—after the first instance of an Unforgivable Curse—and are getting more creative with ways to torture their victims in lieu of them, only casting Unforgivables when the victims are at bay and they're in a position to attack anybody who shows up.

At least the research efforts are making progress on the Sectumsepra initiatives the Order has been taking. Maybe that, at least, will keep the Death Eaters on their toes, at least for a little while longer.

And then, one day, Marlene accidentally finds herself on duty with Sirius and Remus. When she agreed to go to Gideon's flat for the night, she hadn't realized who else was going to be on duty with her, and when she sees Remus and Sirius sitting together at the kitchen table talking to Gideon, she has half a mind to turn right back around and Disapparate out of there. But this is the Order, and she did make a commitment to Dorcas (who's handling the orb schedule), and so she steels herself for it and strides into the kitchen with her jaw set.

"Oh, hey, Marlene," says Gideon carelessly. Sirius and Remus both look a little startled, and she wonders whether they knew Marlene was coming, either.

"Hey," she says, and she grabs the fourth seat at the table, but as she's doing so, Sirius says abruptly, "Well, I should probably be getting to bed. Gid, where's the best place I can crash?"

"I've got a spare bedroom; let me show you," says Gideon, getting up as well. Sirius follows him out of the room, leaving Marlene and Remus awkwardly looking at each other, Remus laughing nervously.

"That bad, huh?" says Marlene.

"What, do you want to talk to him?"

She doesn't—so why does it hurt so much that Sirius would avoid her? It's not like she hasn't been doing the exact same thing to him and Remus. Still, they didn't end things at Hogwarts on bad terms, exactly, and—well, it would be nice to have a conversation with him that doesn't end in shouting.

"I'm going to bed, too," she mutters.

"And sharing a room with—?"

"I'll sleep on the couch."

This, of course, does not go over particularly well, since Gideon soon returns from the spare bedroom and he and Remus keep talking late into the night. Marlene rustles around under the blanket she's pulled over herself, half listening to Remus and Gideon's conversation, biding her time until finally, Gideon tells Remus that he's going to sleep, too.

Once Gideon has left for his bedroom, Marlene throws aside the blanket and gets up: no use in pretending now. "You can sleep, if you want," she says. "I can't, anyway, so I may as well stay up with it."

"I thought you were out by now."

"Too loud."

"Sorry."

"It's fine," says Marlene. "I'm not really tired, anyway."

"Do you want me to go try and sleep, too?"

"I…" She does—wants it as badly as if she would die if he stayed here with her—but at the same time, she looks into the face of this boy who has been her friend since eleven years old, who stole the one person Marlene needed…

But that's not entirely fair, is it? Marlene shouldn't have needed Sirius as much as she did, even if he was her boyfriend. Isn't that the whole point of this breakup? That, and the thing with Remus, who keeps looking at her like a wounded bird, all slouched and sorry and exposed.

"I only want to be his friend someday because it still seems attainable, not because I don't want more. I do want more. Sometimes it feels like I'm always going to want more."

Remus nods. "I don't think you're going to be ninety years old and pining over the same person. Not that what you're doing right now is, uh—"

"It's fine. That's fair," says Marlene, and it takes all of her effort not to let that sound sarcastic.

"But where does that leave you and me?"

She tries not to let herself overthink it. All she's been doing is overthinking it, and it's making her sick. "Don't talk to me about him," she says, and he nods again. "But—it would be nice to, you know, stop pretending each other doesn't exist."

"Is it too much if I just—give you a hug?"

She doesn't let herself think about that one much, either. "I—yeah, I suppose that's fine," she says, and the next thing Marlene knows, Remus is standing up and reeling her in tighter than anybody has held her in a long, long time.

"I'm really sorry about everything, you know. I'm sorry things went down the way they did. I'm sorry for my role in it."

"I'm sorry, too," she says. She's not—she thinks she owes Sirius an apology, and she's given it to him already, but not really Remus—but she thinks he might need to hear it right now all the same, so she goes ahead and says it.

They stay up together late into the night, not really talking very much, but sitting in companionable silence while Marlene reads her novel and Remus spreads playing cards all over the kitchen table in giant games of weird solitaire variants. Around two in the morning, she hears somebody stumble into the bathroom, and then Sirius comes out into the living room, scratching his eyes. "Oh, I didn't realize you were still up, Marlene," he whispers, mindful of Gideon sleeping next door.

"Yep, I'm still here," she says uncomfortably. "I can try and go to bed if you—"

"No! I mean, no, not unless you're tired."

"I'm pretty wired. I napped all evening," she admits, not totally sure where this is going, definitely not sure that she wants to know where it's going.

"Well, I should probably get some sleep," says Remus pointedly. He gets up and pecks Sirius on the lips—Marlene looks at her hands, which she's twiddling in her lap—and then says, "Night, guys," and heads to the spare bedroom that Sirius was occupying up until five minutes ago.

And then she and Sirius are alone together for the first time in—how long? Probably since May or June or whenever it was leading up to graduation when they apologized to each other and said they hoped they could be friends someday. It doesn't feel like someday is here yet, but maybe it's getting closer. Maybe.

"I'm sorry I just bailed on you like that earlier," Sirius hedges. "I figured you wouldn't want to be around me."

"I don't," she says, surprising herself, "but it's probably good to get the practice, anyway. We're going to be standing up in Lily and James's wedding together—co-hosting their shower—we need to be functional."

"Functional. Yes. Right. So is this the part where we start hashing out what we need to hash out that's between us, or—?"

But they've said everything they need to say to each other already, haven't they? Marlene doesn't much see the point in continuing to belabor it. "Just tell me about how you're doing. Not—I don't need to hear about Remus, but just—anything small. Anything safe."

One corner of Sirius's mouth turns up. "Well, Emmeline got me a job at Scrivenshaft's, so I've been—"

"Maybe don't tell me anything about you and Em, either," says Marlene, coughing.

Sirius looks like he's about to laugh, but he doesn't, mercifully. "Well, living with Lily is still going well. I think she's enjoying Healer training. It's not what she wanted to do with her life, but you knew that."

She did know—Lily has always wanted to go into the Ministry Department of International Magical Cooperation, even had that fancy internship in it back in sixth year—and she nods. "At least Healing is on the map for her, even if it wouldn't be her first choice. I think she's nervous about getting attacked, what with the Death Eaters knowing who she is, but so far so good."

"It feels like they're toying with us," says Sirius darkly. "Any Slytherin could have guessed in school that the nine of us were involved with whatever did Liz and Millie in, and instead of picking us off one by one, it's like they're—almost inviting us to come try and stop them, so they can almost kill us all and leave us to live in fear of the next time they almost get us. Given that we have gotten some of them captured already, you'd think they'd… I don't know. Try harder."

"They probably see their lower-level operatives as expendable," says Marlene. "But beyond that? Maybe they are just playing with us, I don't know. That's what they get off on, isn't it? Being the ones who have the power."

She's suddenly hit with an overpowering urge to be sitting here telling Mary this instead of Sirius—Mary whom Marlene abandoned, Mary who named Veronica Smethley her maid of honor. Alice may be writing to Mary weekly, but Marlene is sure that Mary hasn't got a clue of anything that's gone down in the Order these last few months—nobody's going to tell it to her if not Marlene, and Marlene knows she hasn't let anything slip the couple of times she's met up with Mary.

She hasn't seen her since before Alice told Marlene about the maid of honor business, and loathe as she is to admit it, she's not sure she wants to. Mary loves her—is actually, honestly, properly in love with her—and Marlene has nothing to give Mary back for that, couldn't even be a good enough best friend not to replace Mary the second someone else came along. Facing Mary means owning up to Marlene's role in the deterioration of their friendship, and she doesn't know if she's a big enough person to do that.

Still, it's not like Marlene has forgotten all about Mary, like she never valued her presence in Marlene's life or doesn't want to have it anymore, and Marlene wishes she could tell Mary how close everyone in the Order is cutting it. But she's gone, now, it seems, and Sirius is (somehow, miraculously) still here, even if not in the capacity that Marlene wants him to be, so she holds in her regret and tries to let him back in.

It's four in the morning before she goes back down to sleep, and she thinks maybe, maybe, they've made progress.