Previously in the Darklyverse: After graduating, the Gryffindors found their relationships with each other beginning to splinter, and the Order conducted a number of raids on lower-level Death Eaters but failed to make any headway on discovering Voldemort and the Death Eaters' overarching plans. Alice tried to grow closer to Mary, recognizing that they both were lonely. Marlene moved in with Doc, her biological father, who posed as her uncle throughout her life to protect her reputation; her mum gave her her stepfather's surname and passed her off as his daughter instead.

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October 13th, 1978: Marlene McKinnon

For the hundredth time, Marlene wishes against wishes that her best friend didn't have to live with her ex-boyfriend. When Lily is home, Sirius usually is, too, and they usually go together to visit with James and Remus, so Marlene is left with not a lot of options for places to see Lily. When they do meet up, it's usually at restaurants or shops, out on walks, or else at Marlene and Doc's place.

Today, they're at the flat, where Marlene makes them both white tea and they sit there at the kitchen table burning their tongues on it. "Have you talked to Mary recently?" Lily asks, and then blows vigorously on her teacup.

"No," says Marlene guardedly, "not since we all did that lunch thing last month. Why?"

"I'm just wondering how she's doing, that's all. I think she's seen Alice a couple of times this week, and I wasn't sure if that was Mary getting back out there or Alice."

"Mary and Alice? That's… not something I would have guessed."

"Me, either," says Lily, "but I guess it makes sense. I think they might both get lonely a lot."

Immediately, Marlene has to tamp down the defensive anger that rises in her chest. She knows Lily isn't making an accusation, but it certainly feels like one, even though that probably says more about Marlene than it does about Lily.

Of course, that's not the real reason Marlene is offended, is it? In actuality, it's just hard for her to listen to Lily talk about lonely people finding each other when Marlene is… well, it's not like she's seen much of any of her friends since graduating, has she? She's only seen Mary, who was once her best friend, a couple of times, and even when she did things were strained and tense, like neither of them felt right being there. Marlene and Alice haven't been close in a long time, and neither have she and Emmeline. No matter what uneasy understanding she and Sirius and Remus seem to have come to, she's still avoiding them, and that means she doesn't get to see a lot of James, either, or even Lily. All that leaves is Peter, and for whatever reason, he and Marlene just haven't synced up much since they left the castle.

It's all fine and dandy if Mary and Alice find solace in each other, but where's Marlene's savior, huh? Who's going to scoop her off the ground and tell her that Veronica Smethley is not better than her? Who's going to tell her that she's doing good work as a Hit Wizard, that it's not just some poor substitute for becoming an Auror? Who's going to tell her that what happened with Sirius and Remus isn't her fault?

That may be true, but what happened with Mary is her fault. And the more time Marlene spends with Lily, the more she knows it.

Of course, she doesn't say any of this to Lily. What she says instead is, "Speaking of lonely people, I've got to start spending more time with Pete. I think he and Em are alone together too much."

"Hard to believe that two years ago they weren't very close to each other, isn't it?" says Lily, smiling.

"So weird. It's like they became best friends overnight."

That's not totally fair: it probably looks from the outside like Marlene and Lily became best friends overnight, and notwithstanding the complications with Mary, that's probably pretty accurate. Marlene is the last person who should be throwing stones, but she's a judgmental arsehole, and she always does.

"You could sign up for orb duty next week. I think they've got the orb at their flat again," Lily suggests.

"Yeah, I could do that. Come with me?"

And Lily smiles at her and says, "Always."

Doc gets home then, and he ruffles Lily's hair affectionately before sweeping Marlene into a hug. Neil was a great stepdad—even posed as her biological father to the outside world, never treating her differently than he treated all Marlene's siblings—but after feeling like she didn't really fit for all her childhood, it's so rewarding to see Doc around the house and at the Order, where he always showers her in casual affection and cares about what she has to say. It makes her wish she'd had a normal family growing up, that her mom and her dad had been married and both raised her together—that she hadn't learned from the age of three that her family structure wasn't what it seemed and she needed to hide who she was from the world to survive in it.

But then, of course, she wouldn't have her stepdad or any of her siblings, and she wouldn't want to give them up, either. There's no winning in this one, it seems.

Lily's staying the night, so Doc makes up the couch for her and heats up some hot chocolate for the three of them to drink after dinner (pot roast and biscuits). "The Aurors are scrambling," Doc says, setting his cup carefully on the coffee table. "There's too many of them and not enough of us, and we're spending all our time tracking low- and mid-level Death Eaters and don't have any capacity left over to look into You-Know-Who or his innermost circle."

"So they're in the same boat as the Order, basically," says Marlene darkly. Doc snickers, but it's hollow. "I'm glad we're interrupting Death Eaters before at least some of the murders they're committing, but it's got to be lower-level operatives doing that, right?"

"It makes you wonder what the real plan is—what he's up to. Everybody says he's after immortal life, but what's he going to do with it if he achieves it?"

"I'm almost glad that my parents died before the Death Eaters could get to them," Lily admits. "I wouldn't have wanted them to die that way."

Marlene squeezes her hand. "It's okay to not want them to have suffered, Lil. I know Doc and I aren't a replacement for your family, but, well—we're here."

"Absolutely," says Doc. "You're welcome here anytime, you know that."

Lily goes to sleep soon after that, so Marlene and Doc retire to the kitchen, sitting adjacent to each other at the little square table. Marlene's chair creaks every time she fidgets. "Do you think it's going to be like this for the rest of our lives?" she asks seriously, watching Doc through sleep-blurry eyes.

"Honestly?" Doc answers. "I don't know. I hope not. I hope it's over in your lifetime, at least, even if not mine."

That, of course, is assuming that Marlene will outlive Doc, which in their lives of Magical Law Enforcement and Order business isn't a given. "You say that like we're both going to live to be two hundred," says Marlene, "instead of, you know, dying in a year. Or less."

"You're right. We can't know that. But… I don't know if I can keep going if I don't tell myself that we're all going to make it out of this." He scrubs a hand down his face, his stubble bristling against the heel of his hand. "You know, the day I found out your mother was pregnant with you was the happiest day of my life. She sent me an owl saying that she was pregnant, that the timing made it impossible for your stepdad to be the father, and that it had to be me. Healers have tests they can run, you know, to check paternity, but she said I was the only possibility, and I believed her. And I was so excited, Marbles."

"You were?"

"Of course I was. You were born about a month later, and she didn't want me at St. Mungo's with her, you know, to help cover it up that Neil wasn't your father, but I got to meet you a few days later and hold you, and I knew I would have to do everything in my power to stay in your life in a meaningful way, even though I wouldn't get to live with you. I never thought I'd be so lucky as to be a dad. I never thought it would happen if I wasn't married, and my relationships… usually weren't that stable."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Haven't I ever talked to you about what happened between me and your mum?"

Marlene shrugs. "Just little things. Not anything about why you broke up or—bad stuff."

"Well, we were together for about three months," says Doc, tilting his chair back onto two legs for a moment. "She and Neil were engaged before they broke up—"

"Right," says Marlene—she knows this part.

"—And a few months after she broke up with him, she basically dumped me when Neil asked her to get back together with him. I was her rebound in the middle of their relationship, I think, and I… didn't handle that very well. We had met at work, which was the worst part—this was back before I was an Auror; we were both working for the Daily Prophet, her as a writer and me as an assistant. It was like I was going through hell and I had to see her and cater to her every day. She was treating me like some stranger she barely knew—I guess that was her way of coping, I don't know—but it felt like she had just erased me from her life with no trouble at all, and it made me feel totally alone. I ended up quitting that job just to get away from her. When I applied for the Auror job, I was unemployed. I didn't think I had a shot in hell at getting it, but they took me on, for some reason—my N.E.W.T.s had gone well, so that helped—and I was moving through training when Sheila had you."

"That's kind of like…" Marlene hesitates then; is this really something she's comfortable telling Doc? But he nods at her, totally intent on her every word, and she's tired of keeping everything about her relationship with Sirius a secret. "The same kind of thing happened with Sirius. We broke up, and he only waited, like, a month before he started dating Remus. I didn't handle that very well, either."

"Yeah, you must get that from me," says Doc, and Marlene feels a rush of—validation, maybe? In any case, it feels good to not feel like the only person on the planet who can't let go of their ex. "Women tell me that I'm too insecure, and then they expect me to become more secure when they always break up with me over it, like that's going to make it easier for me to trust other people. It's an awful, vicious merry-go-round."

"What's a merry-go-round?"

"Oh, right, you wouldn't know. Purebloods," says Doc, scowling playfully.

"I'm half-blood, thank you very much. You should know."

"Yeah, but you were raised pureblood. You don't know the little things about the world that come with having a Muggle or a Muggle-born for a parent."

It's a bit of a sore spot for her: she's sick of lying to virtually everyone in her life about her parentage, sick of feeling like she's going to get caught and humiliated for having taken advantage of pureblood privilege all her life that she shouldn't ever have had. She can't relate to other half-bloods' upbringings, but her own childhood was a lie, and she doesn't know how to fix that.

"I wish I did," says Marlene. "I wish I got to have you on more than birthdays and Christmases."

Doc softens and pulls Marlene into a hug. She holds on tight, like she's scared somebody's going to rip him away from her, and for all she knows—in this war—maybe somebody is.

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A/N: Daily updates for the next while because I'm impatient, I have over 70 chapters stockpiled waiting to be posted, and I'm a little paranoid I'm going to die of COVID before I have a chance to publish them all. (To be clear, I do not have COVID at the moment-I just worry about these things.)