Previously in the Darklyverse: Mary accepted a position as campaign manager for Lily's Minister of Magic run. Marlene moved in with her father, while most of the world believed he was her uncle. Veronica Smethley, not Marlene, became Mary's maid of honor.

xx

March 19th, 1979: Marlene McKinnon

"I just don't see why she has to go everywhere you go," Marlene is saying. She's holding her forkful of steak close to her mouth but hasn't taken a bite in about three full minutes. "I know she's your campaign manager, but that doesn't mean she has to suddenly be glued to your side every moment of the day."

"She's not 'glued to my side,'" says Lily. "She's not here with me tonight, is she? Anyway, I guess a part of me was also hoping that you'd, you know, make up and be friends again if you saw more of each other. My friendship with you doesn't have to be in competition with your friendship with her."

"Yeah, but it is. Mary has made it a competition ever since I took you in the summer before our sixth year, and she made her choice to bow out of the race."

"And I'm telling you you should go and get her back. She's your best friend, Marlene."

"You're my best friend, Lily."

"Well, she used to be, and she can be again if you just stop being so mad at each other and realize how similar you both are. You like the same things. You like the same people."

Marlene rolls her eyes. "We do not like the same people. I would never marry Reginald Cattermole, and I definitely wouldn't be mates with Gilderoy Lockhart."

"More importantly," Lily says, talking over her now to get her point across, "you have loyalties to each other. She knows who Doc is to you, and she's never blabbed about that, not with anyone, and you know how hard that must have been for Mary, but she did it without complaint for you. She knew about your—whatever messed up thing you did with Sirius for two years before you started dating properly—and she never judged you for it, or for getting kicked out of your Auror internship, just like you never judged her for dating half of Hufflepuff House or living up to the 'dumb blonde' stereotype. Just because there's been some petty drama around who's best friends with who doesn't mean that none of that counts for anything anymore."

"It stopped mattering when she decided that the petty drama meant more to her."

"Yeah, and she probably thinks the same thing about you. Talk to her, Lene."

Marlene starts to say, "I—"

But there's a sudden crack that brings with it the appearance of James, his hair untidy and his glasses askew. "Hey, Marlene. Hi, Lily."

"Come and sit," says Lily, pulling out the chair next to her. "Marlene and I were just talking about how she's going to get back in touch with Mary, isn't that right, Lena?"

They're sitting in Marlene and Doc's kitchen, and it's a little after nine o'clock in the evening. Lily has just gotten back from campaigning after a long day at St. Mungo's, and she looks like she's about to fall asleep right there in her seat, but she gives James a smile that looks tired but genuine as he takes his seat next to her.

You'd think Marlene wouldn't have seen much of Lily in the past few months that she's been running for Minister of Magic, but they've made it work, catching late dinners like this one and squeezing afternoon walks into Lily's busy weekends. When Marlene suggested to Lily that she run for Minister, she didn't dare believe that Lily would actually follow her advice, but here they are months later: Lily's in the trenches, and the unofficial opinion polls conducted by the Daily Prophet are putting Lily—in last place, yes, but not nearly by the margin that everyone was expecting, and they still have months to catch up before the race is over.

Unfortunately, though, Lily has developed a habit of inviting Mary to most of Lily's social things after they get done campaigning together in the evenings, and this is one of the first times Marlene has been able to get Lily alone this calendar year. Well, alone plus James, but Marlene hardly minds seeing James around occasionally; it's Mary who's the constant problem.

"Mary obviously misses you, Marlene," says James as he sits down and pecks Lily on the cheek. "Every time I see you two together, she keeps making wounded bird faces at you the whole time."

"I'm just saying," Lily says, "I think you'll both be a lot happier if you just make up."

"We can't 'just make up.' There's a lot of hurt there that has to be addressed. I don't even know if it can be addressed. Do you have some reason to believe—I mean, have you talked to Mary about this or something?"

"That's not a fair question. If I say I'm not going to answer, you're just going to use that as evidence that my answer is 'yes.'"

"Is your answer 'yes?'"

"Talk to Mary," says Lily, crossing her arms.

All Marlene wants is some goddamn space, but Lily brings Mary along to meet up the next night and the night after that. Finally, on Friday, Lily checks her watch in the middle of dinner at Marlene's place and says, "Shoot. I'm up for orb duty tonight, and I'm running late. Go ahead and finish without me, okay?"

"Lily—" says Marlene.

But Lily pushes aside her plate and waves her hand and is gone with a resounding crack, leaving Marlene and Mary to look at each other uncomfortably over their dinners. "One guess says she did that on purpose," Marlene grumbles.

To her surprise, Mary laughs. "She's been doing it to you, too, huh? I never thought she would be the one to push me back to you, but…"

"So she's been doing it to you, too?"

"All the time," says Mary. "Listen, I…"

Mary is looking at her with the same dopey face she's had since they met at eleven years old in the Gryffindor dormitory, and suddenly, Marlene just doesn't have it in her to stay angry any longer. "I'm sorry I handled things the way I did," she says earnestly. "I shouldn't have just replaced you like that."

"I'm sorry I named Veronica Smethley as my maid of honor. It always should have been you."

"Yeah, well, we've gone through a lot the last couple years. It hurt when you did that, but I get it. What were you doing to do, pick me? We were barely on speaking terms."

"I can try to work on not being so jealous all the time. You're allowed to have other friends, and you're allowed to… uh… it's okay not to love me back."

"But Mare, I do love you," Marlene stresses. "Maybe not like that, but I really do."

"Even after all the bullshit fighting?" asks Mary.

"Even after that. Of course I do."

They kind of sit there awkwardly staring at each other until there's a crack in the living room. For a moment, Marlene thinks Lily's come back for something, but then she realizes it's just Doc. "Sorry to interrupt," he says, but Marlene waves him in.

"No, no, you have to stay. Lily left for orb duty, but Mare and I were just finishing up dinner, and we have a lot of leftovers that have your name on them."

"Well, when you put it that way," says Doc genially. "Mary, how's the campaign going?"

"Oh, it's going. We're still losing, but we're slowly closing the gap in the polls. Lily is considering taking a leave of absence from St. Mungo's to focus more on campaigning, but nothing's set in stone yet."

He narrows his eyes. "That Lucius Malfoy is a right tosser. I've encountered him a little in the Ministry—we're in different departments, but we intersect sometimes—and his morals are only as deep as his pockets. Rumor has it he's planning on buying his way onto the Hogwarts Board of Governors so he has one more avenue to push his bullshit agendas."

"Wow. Tell us how you really feel," says Marlene, grinning.

Doc bustles around the countertops heaping piles of mashed potatoes and pulled pork onto his plate, and he's just sitting down in the seat Lily vacated when Mary asks, "How's work? The Aurors have got to be working overtime with everything that's going on."

"It's a real shit-show," he says, slathering barbecue sauce on his bun. "We're scrambling around trying to cover up everything that's going on from the Muggles, but with how liberally the Imperius Curse is being used, we don't have any kind of game plan for identifying who's under the Imperius Curse and who we should actually be targeting. Before we realized they were all under Imperius, we were locating potential Death Eaters by checking for purebloods who had gone missing, but in retrospect, of course that was the Death Eaters pulling their victims out of their lives to do their bidding."

"Have you got any idea what Voldemort's end goal is?" asks Marlene.

"Not the foggiest. There are a few theories floating around, but honestly, your guess is as good as ours. It's like he and the Death Eaters are all biding their time, toying with us, until—what? We don't know. Nobody knows."

Mary stays for another half hour before departing for Helene's Manor to lend some help to the unImperiusing effort. Marlene almost goes with her, but she stays behind: she doesn't always see a lot of Doc these days, between both of them being on call for work at odd hours, and she could use some dad time.

"So you two made up, huh?" he asks as they kick back in the living room. It's chilly for March, and Marlene wraps herself in blankets and hopes it'll make her gooseflesh go down.

"Something like that. It's not all fixed yet, but I think we both want the same thing."

"Which is?"

"To stop fighting. To—be in each other's lives."

"That's good. Times like this, we have to hold each other up as much as we can. We never know how much time we have left with the people we love, not anymore."

Marlene exhales slowly. "Do you think I'm being ridiculous, not trying harder to get right with Sirius and Remus? We're not actively fighting anymore, but we're not exactly friends, either. I still avoid seeing them unless I have to. Lupe used to be one of my best friends, and I used to love Sirius so much, and now it's like we hardly interact."

"You 'used to' love Sirius?"

"Maybe then. Maybe now. I don't know, it's all muddied up in here."

Doc takes a moment to think about it. "I don't think you can or should force yourself to let them back into your life if you're not ready. But I don't think it's a good idea to hold onto anger and grudges if you can understand where they're coming from, either."

Marlene drops her eyes for a moment. "I know they weren't trying to hurt me. Probably nothing else would have ever happened between them if I hadn't freaked out on Sirius and broken up with him."

"You know…"

"What?"

"I used to really resent your mother for deciding to raise you as if you were your stepfather's daughter. Ever since the day I met you—no, ever since I found out your mother was even pregnant with you—I wanted to spend as much time with you as possible. But to pass as your uncle—distant cousin, whatever—it wouldn't make sense for me to have even joint custody of you. In the beginning, I only got to see you about once every two weeks, and as you know, that just got less and less as time went on. I wanted more, and I held it against Sheila that she wouldn't give me that. I understand why she did what she did, but it took me a long time to accept it."

"But you did accept it eventually?"

"I did. You probably had a much better life by virtue of being raised as Neil's daughter, and if I really love you, I should want that for you, even if it means I didn't get to keep you. I forgave Sheila eventually, and that—that helped. It's not that I owed it to her, but I felt better being able to coordinate my visits with her without flaring up every time I had to speak to her or hear you speak about her. Because of you, she was always going to be in my life, and I had to find a way to make that work."

"Sirius and Rem don't have to stay in my life, though," says Marlene. "I mean, we're in the Order together, and we have mutual friends, but…"

"I think you just have to ask yourself—is it worth it to you to hold onto all the reasons why you're angry? Will it help you the most to arrange your life so that they aren't a part of it, or will it be better for you to let them back in? Either way, you've got to make your peace."

Making her peace—that isn't Marlene's strong suit. Marlene holds grudges, and she doesn't let go of them for a very long time. But maybe Doc is onto something, talking about figuring out what it's worth to her to hold onto people or let them go. Maybe it's time to let Sirius and Remus go.

Or maybe it's not. She thinks about a life without either one of them, and she feels a chill that no amount of blankets can cure.