AN: Hi, it's been a long time. I'm sorry you all had to wait over a month for a mediocre update. Honestly, I'm kind of disappointed with this chapter: it's shorter than i would really like, and it was forced, at least on my end. It's been rough, guys. I finished up with work (i nannied four kids multiple days a week) and went to my college orientation, sorted out move-in stuff, figured out all the final details for my loans, dealt with some bank account drama, and generally worried about college looming in the very near distance. It's Thursday right now and I leave Monday, and I still have to buy a couple things for my room, one of which i'm only getting bcuz my roommate wants more appliances than I think we need, which i'm stressing out about a bit. but at least i can sell it later right lmao
Anyway, i feel like this is a pretty mediocre chapter, but i tried my best. pls just go with it. I'm sorry I couldn't deliver something bigger, especially since I'm not sure how much time/energy I'll have for writing when classes start in a week and a half. But hey, the plot is moving and my character is developing, and that's the goal, isn't it?
Thanks for reading and putting up with my slow updates. Drop me a review if you'd like to stroke my ego or if you have genuine feedback about how you think i'm handling the story so far. Enjoy!
By the time Annie found her on the train, Marina had sunk deep into her own thoughts. Her mind was a swirl of regret and "if only"s and questions. Why had she been so honest? If she had just pretended that everything was fine and that she loved her brother then everything would still be okay. But then, how was that any better, really? If she hadn't said anything, then all her feelings could have just gotten worse—or they could just go away over time after she got more used to her brother. Was this something that would ruin her relationship with her parents? She didn't want to end up like Annie, knowing how painful her friend's situation was. Yet, Marina couldn't think of how to approach a resolution. She didn't feel any differently about Charles Michel, so what would the point be?
"Mina?"
Annie's soft voice startled Marina out of her head, and she turned from staring blankly out at the platform to look up at her friend in the compartment doorway. It was sort of interesting, Marina thought, that their roles were here reversed. She offered a smile as the blonde stepped in the compartment and charmed her trunk up to the overhead compartment. With a gentle look, Annie sat down and looped her arm through Marina's. She expected Annie to ask what happened, what was going on, if she was okay; that's what Marina would do and was what she had done in the past. But Annie didn't say anything. She just let Marina bask in her sunny presence, which, she found, was all she needed to start feeling a little better. Maia agreed, purring and stepping over to Annie's lap for scratches behind her ears.
"How'd your holiday with Lark go?" Marina asked once the lump in her throat dissolved.
"It was really great," Annie answered. "Her family is…well, it was quite a change for me, but I liked it."
Marina snorted. "If they're anything like Lark—"
"Oh, they are! But they were very welcoming, and they made sure I was included the whole time."
"Good." Marina took a deep breath. "I had a sort of a fight with my mum and dad about Charles Michel."
Annie hummed. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah. I just…I don't get why I'm supposed to love him right away. I only met him once and I don't know anything about him, so why do I have to love him just because he's my brother? I don't know. I talked about it with Quincy sort of." Marina sighed. "He wasn't very helpful."
Annie hugged Marina's arm in a gesture of comfort. "I think you can choose to love sometimes. People think a lot that you love people just because you do, or that you grow to love someone, but I think those people don't have the whole picture. My parents—my parents chose to stop loving me, and I chose to make friends at school that I love. Maybe you just have to choose to love your brother, and if you try your best to love him, then you'll start loving him. You weren't there when he was born or anything, so it'll take more work to love him."
Marina nodded. That made sense; hadn't she figured already that you can choose who you think of as family? This was like a deeper step of that same thought. And, if she really thought about it, hadn't she decided to humor Quincy when he always wanted to play with her, back when they were younger? Now he was one of her favorite people, but she did have to make the choice to let him become one of her favorite people.
"Okay," she said. "Thank you. That helps."
It was at this point that Quincy and Gideon found the girls in the compartment and made a loud entrance. Maia hopped off of Annie to rub against Gideon's legs as they babbled about…well, something. Marina had no idea what the context of their conversation could possibly be, and they were talking too quickly to catch any hints. Eventually they came to some sort of conclusion and the four friends spent the rest of the train ride swapping Easter holiday stories—or Annie and Gideon did, anyway.
Returning to the castle was like a breath of fresh air, like all of the smog of Marina's parents and baby brother were far behind her. Was this how Annie felt every time she came back to school after being with her family? Marina bit her lip, glancing at her blonde, bright-eyed friend. She promised herself that from now on, she wouldn't get so distracted that she forgot about Annie's troubles. When they were seated in the Great Hall for dinner, while they waited on the arrival of Lark and Artemis, Marina pulled Annie in for a quick hug. With it, she tried to communicate her support and loyalty and dedication to help however she could. She hoped Annie understood.
Only a few beats after the hug ended, Marina felt someone sit down on her other side, and she turned, expecting it to be one of her other roommates, or even Quincy. Instead, it was Evan. He smiled one of his perfect smiles at her.
"Can I sit here?" he asked.
"Yeah," Marina answered, smiling back, "of course."
She bumped arms with him seven times and brushed hands twice during dinner, and all the while Lark shot her significant looks, after she and Artemis turned up anyway. After dinner, in the Ravenclaw girls' dorm, Lark and Annie told Marina and Artemis all about their Easter together, regaling them with tales of the shenanigans the Maxwell siblings got up to. They even had Artemis laughing, and she wasn't someone who laughed very often.
Unpacking from the holiday, Marina found the little copy of The Humble Journey in her trunk, her place halfway into the book marked with a scrap of parchment. She bit her lip; she had forgotten to ask her papa about his animagus transformation while she was home. Was it too early to write home? Maybe she should try to reconcile with her parents sooner rather than later, anyway…even if she still felt the same way. Later, Marina decided. She could think about all of this later. The important thing was that she had classes tomorrow, work to turn in, a friend to care for, and a personal project to continue researching.
The first week back from Easter was rather uneventful. Classes were a blur, especially now that her professors were starting to cram their lessons in to have time for reviewing before end-of-year exams. Professor Traduce gave them a list of new words in runes to start memorizing, there was an essay on the causes of the goblin war to write for Binns, and Flitwick wanted a practice log with their most recent new spell, just to name a few items Marina needed to do. Yet, by the end of that week, she found herself engrossed in a new section of The Humble Journey and couldn't bring herself to dedicate undivided attention to any of her assignments. It got bad enough that Annie noticed her lack of focus and literally removed the leather-bound book from Marina's hands and replaced it with a quill and roll of parchment.
Needless to say, in the second week after Easter holiday, Marina devoted more time and focus to her assigned studies. She also wrote out a letter to her mum and papa, explaining that she was sorry for being insensitive and promised to give Charles Michel a fair chance over summer. At the end of the letter, Marina also threw in a quick question about animagi, purportedly for a Transfig essay—she didn't have to devote all of her time and focus to school! Anyway, the reply came quickly, bringing with it a metaphorical olive branch and some helpful supplementation to Marina's personal research.
Then, as the April weather finally lost the March bitterness and turned wet as ever, Marina decided to skip a Tuesday Divination class. It happened like this:
Tuesday mornings were fraught with the stress of two hours in Slughorn's classroom. That particular Tuesday, Marina was so wrapped up in her thoughts, trying to fit her father's information in with the experimental narrative of the book she was getting close to finishing, that just as her potion was about to finish brewing to near-perfection, she stirred it one too many times in the wrong direction, over-agitated the gently simmering ingredients, and exploded the whole thing right in her face. Thankfully, her cauldron made it through the ordeal, as the explosion was purely liquid and not fiery, but Marina found herself left with gunk-soaked hair and a tingling face, not to mention a completely ruined uniform. Slughorn himself only looked over when his star students of the current class were drawn to the commotion.
"Oh, my goodness, Miss Saint-Laurence!" the portly man cried. "What happened?"
Marina sighed. "Exploded my potion, sir."
"And so near the end of the class, too," Slughorn tutted. "Well, go on, clean yourself up. I expect you'll come after classes finish for the day to have another go, or I'll have to mark this down as a failed project."
"Yes sir. Thanks, professor," Marina said, getting up to pack up her potions textbook and take her cauldron to the cabinets in the back of the room. Annie mouthed "I'm sorry!" just before she walked out the door, and beyond her, she could see Evan watching her with concern.
She took the stairs at a run, dashing up to Ravenclaw Tower and hoping she wouldn't run into anyone in the hall. As much as she hated to admit that she could be embarrassed, that was supremely embarrassing, especially the second of eye contact with Evan. Now he probably thought she was terrible with potions. It was one of her best classes, too! There was nothing too difficult about Potions class, really, not to Marina, and yet she had to go and loose herself in her own head and screw up in such a dramatic way. It served her right, didn't it?
It took three shampoos to fully get her curls clean again, but she supposed it was better than getting them singed off. By the time she was dried and dressed, Marina knew Potions would have ended, and now she was eating into her travel time by sitting on her bed and staring at that traitorous restricted book waiting so innocently in her bag to be picked back up. But, well, it was only Divination next, wasn't it? And she hadn't finished her homework for it anyway. And she'd only have to sit through the retelling of her failure to Gideon and Quincy, which could really happen without her presence. And it wasn't like the old bag would even notice her missing—the Divination professor was half-blind, after all. So really, what was one missed class? One missed elective. An elective she didn't even enjoy. An elective she would probably drop for next year, anyway.
That's how Marina sat up in the dormitory until lunch, reading her book and taking notes, connecting the deep analysis of the transformation with her papa's experience. It was an incredibly relaxing hour, so much so that Marina did it again on Friday, during her other Divination class of the week. Of course Annie disapproved, but Quincy congratulated her on having the guts to skip out on that joke of a class, and the extra time Marina devoted to studying the transfiguration helped her out in McGonagall's class as well. She managed a fully successful practical exercise in Transfig by the end of April, earning her a cool smile from the stern woman.
The last weekend of April, exactly one week from the first May Quidditch match—which Marina only knew because Quincy and Gideon had been raving about it since they got back from Easter, practically—Annie and Lark convinced Marina that she should come out for the Hogsmeade trip. If it were up to her, she wouldn't go, wrapped up as she was with finishing the book and her notes on the animagus transfiguration. Still, Annie pushed her glasses up her nose and descended upon Marina's trunk and dresser drawers to find her an outfit that was appropriately cozy and cute for the outing. With input from Lark, Annie came up with a purple knit sweater that brought out the green in her eyes and brown pants that went well with the cool tones of her hair and skin. The sweater was large enough to pull over her hands and create "sweater paws," as Lark called them. With a little prodding, the boisterous girl also got Annie to let her hair out of the usual pigtails, and after some brushing it fell in a soft, pretty way around her shoulders and framed her face. Marina was sure her friend would floor poor Quincey; Annie looked so pretty with her hair loose.
It wasn't long after they arrived in the little town that the heavens opened up and dumped buckets and buckets all over Scotland. Annie grabbed Marina's hand to run with her after Gideon and Quincy, dashing into the Three Broomsticks. It looked like the rest of the student body had the exact same idea, considering how crowded the pub was quickly becoming. The four friends had just begun the hopefully-not-futile search for a table when Marina heard someone call her name—a someone she thought she would probably recognize anywhere, with how much she paid attention to his existence.
Yes, Evan White himself was half-standing from his seat at a booth way in the back corner of the restaurant, waving her over. Marina took a deep breath and smiled over in his direction, then gestured to her three friends, nonverbally asking if there's room for them, too. Evan nodded and amped up the urgency of his waving, beckoning her over, a call Marina was all too happy to respond to.
"Come on, Evan's got a booth," Marina said, shouting a bit to be heard over the crowd noise.
Annie grinned and Quincy laughed. "Oo, Evan White, eh?" Gideon teased as they all shouldered their way back to the designated booth.
Marina swatted at the tall ginger playfully. "Oh, shut it," she snapped without any real bite. Of course her Gryffindor friends knew—well, these Gryffindor friends. She thought of her other Gryffindor boys; thank Merlin she didn't tell those four about her crush or there'd be serious cause for concern, with the mischief they were able to get up to.
Unfortunately, it seemed Marina had been so distracted by Evan's beautiful face that she had made a sever miscalculation: he was friends with Alfred Smith. So, alright, maybe Marina got to squeeze right up close to Evan, but at what cost? Merlin's pants, were her friends kind and patient people.
Anyway, third year ended on a sweet note for Marina. Hufflepuff won the House Cup for a lovely change, and Marina managed decent final grades in all her classes—even another E in Transfiguration! She even scraped by with an A in Divination, which just proved even more that the class wasn't worth anyone's salt. Marina fully made up every single answer to every single essay question on that exam, and wholly botched the practical fortune readings. Over the summer she would write to Flitwick about dropping the class when it was time to confirm her classes for fourth year.
The best part, though, was that Marina was confident that she had gleaned everything she could ever want to know about animagi from The Humble Journey of a Seeker for the Art of Animagical Transfiguration of the Self, transcribed, translated, and transposed by Brutus the Younger. Merlin bless Brutus the Younger, whoever he was, and Merlin bless the original author of the journal, she thought as she slipped into the library to return it just a couple days before the last day of the term. If she could, she'd get started with a mandrake leaf in her mouth right away, but she was also pretty certain that her parents would notice, especially her mum, and that would simply be a mess. Marina would just have to wait until she returned to school in September.
—
Like usual, Marina piled in a compartment with Quincy, Gideon, Annie, and Maia. Everything started out well, but Annie had been nearly silent from the end of the feast onward. Marina kept an eye on her friend, but the blonde stared out the window for the first hour of the trip, then she didn't order anything from the trolley, and finally as they grew closer to London, she dissolved into full worry. Of course Marina had seen an upset Annie before, but this was a first for the boys.
"What's the matter?" Quincy asked, eyebrows pinched in concern as Annie dropped her head to Marina's shoulder.
Rubbing her back, Marina gave Quincy and Gideon a sad look. "It's—well, it's not my story to tell—"
"Go ahead," Annie said, voice muffled by Marina's shoulder. She made a quick motion to swipe at her face, and Marina could feel her shaking.
Marina sighed. "It's her family," she said. "Things have been tense what with her parents not being very accepting of magic. It's not pretty when she's home for holidays, and over Easter they left for a holiday on a cruise ship without her, so she went to Lark Maxwell's house," Marina explained.
Expression gentle, Gideon got up to come sit on Annie's other side, setting a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Just let us know what we can do," he said softly. "We're your friends, and we promise we'll help with whatever you need from us. Right, Quin?"
Quincy nodded furiously. "Yeah, of course."
Annie took a deep breath and turned from Marina to squeeze Gideon in a hug. "Thank you," she said, and got up to cross the compartment and give Quincy a hug just as hearty. "Really," she said, "I appreciate it. I think—I think it'll be fine, really, it's just hard."
Gideon's response, to assure Annie that they'd be there to do whatever she needed to help her through her struggles, immediately sparked the gears to life in her head. Of course she always wrote to Annie, especially since the muggleborn wasn't allowed to own an owl of her own, but wouldn't it be a good idea to have a plan of action in place, just in the event that Annie did need them to do something? In the past, Marina had left her offers of help at being a shoulder and an ear and giving words of encouragement, assuming Annie would tell her if she wanted Marina to really do anything, but here was Gideon offering to do anything right away. It was one thing to be too pushy and overstep boundaries, which was now always something Marina tried to be careful of, but offering active help didn't seem to overstep anything or be pushy. Maybe Marina could take it a step further.
"Actually," she said, sitting up in her seat, "Gideon brings up a good point. What if you do need us to do something, like really do something?" Marina frowned, trying to arrange her words in her head. "I'm always here to help, of course, but what if there's an emergency or, I don't know, you reach a breaking point or something?"
"You mean like a contingency plan?" Quincy clarified.
Gideon nodded. "Yeah, I mean you can always complain to us or whatever, but I did mean it when I said we'll do what we can to help, too, and if it means we have to break you out of your bloody house, then by Merlin we'll come break you out."
Well, it was nice to know Marina's idea was really just Gideon's idea all along. Still, it would be nice to have a set contingency plan. So she said so. Annie grinned and agreed, and they spent almost the rest of the train ride talking about Diagon Alley outings and prison-like break-outs. Gideon felt pretty sure that he could volunteer his sister Molly's house as a sanctuary, if needed, especially since Marina still wasn't confident in her parents' willingness to host Annie for any extended amount of time. They all agreed to keep up a frequent stream of letters to her house so she'd have plenty of chances to ask for the implementation of any of their plans, as well as actually getting to talk to her. Maia helped Marina write down everything by batting at the quill, and Quincy came up with codenames for everything in case, for whatever reason, their correspondence was intercepted.
Annie breathed much easier for the rest of the train ride, or at least for what little was left of the train ride. They managed to get in two rounds of Exploding Snap before the Express pulled into the station, and as Quincy and Gideon wrangled all their luggage as they insisted they do, Marina wrapped an arm around Annie's shoulders.
"Remember you can sound the alarm to us at any time," she reminded her friend, who nodded and smiled in reply.
Greeting her parents on the platform was the final step in reconciliation for Marina, and she let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding when her mum welcomed her home with open arms (her papa was holding Charles Michel, but he probably would have also wrapped her in a hug if he could have). They took the car home, and Marina considered her brother in his muggle carseat as she tried to keep Maia's tail away from his grabby hands. He certainly had grown some, and from the way he was looking around and staring at her with wide-open eyes, he certainly seemed to be a more interesting person than he was at Easter. Marina silently promised to give him another honest chance; maybe she really would start to love him as the summer went on.
Things started out well enough, and they didn't get worse, that was for sure. Charles Michel was less obnoxious overnight, thankfully, and he seemed sturdier—he was bigger and heavier and no longer looked like he would break if Marina touched him. There still wasn't much he could really do besides hold his head up and reach unsteadily for the toys placed in front of him. Marina sat and paid attention as her mum explained things about infant development and showed her how to change a diaper, but it was all very…mundane.
"Maybe you're just too much of a Ravenclaw," Quincy suggested as they walked away from the ice cream truck with slow, careful steps towards their curb.
Marina frowned and stabbed at her butter pecan ice cream in its cup with her plastic spoon. "What's that got to do with anything?" she asked.
Quincy shrugged and licked at his raspberry-chip cone—a more mature flavor choice than bright blue cotton candy, certainly. "I just think you're thinking about it too hard, you know? It's family and love and whatever. You don't really have to think about it, right, because you just love someone."
"Annie said you can make the choice to love people or not," Marina countered as they sat down.
With a sigh, Quincy bumped Marina's arm with his elbow. "See, you're thinking about it. Maybe Annie's right, and it's a choice thing. That doesn't mean you need to weigh the pros and cons that go into that choice. It's like—like when you read a book? Or something?"
Marina shot her friend a look with a quirked eyebrow. That was a terrible example he had just come up with.
"No, really—it's like reading a book. You have this reading assignment, and you know you have to do the reading, but you still make the choice to pick up the book. And then you have to choose to pay attention to what you're reading, and you can even go so far as to choose to try and be interested in what you're reading. And, yeah, you had to read it anyway, but you're the one who decided to read it and try to enjoy it. And you don't really spend a lot of time deliberating whether you should or not because—"
Marina snorted. "Right, like you don't honestly calculate which sections of the reading you can get away with skipping," she quipped.
"Oh, work with me, Mina!" Quincy paused to catch a drip before it fell from the bottom of his cone. "All I'm saying is that maybe you're making it more complicated than it needs to be."
Chewing on a cold, soggy pecan, Marina sighed through her nose. He was probably right.
"If it helps, maybe try to just, I don't know, learn. You love learning new stuff," he continued. "If he's not interesting by himself, just try to learn about babies, I guess. Might come in handy later, you know? I've heard babysitting is a pretty good way to make money over summer."
So she would try to learn, fine. And that had already sort of been happening just about every time her mum was doing something with Charles Michel in Marina's presence. After talking with Quincy, though, Marina decided to make a real effort to pay attention and listen to her mum when she explained baby things. It was a bit interesting, learning about what her baby brother could actually see or digest. She even found herself charmed by his big, curious eyes as his head bobbed around during tummy time.
It made her mum happy, that was for sure. Once Bobbie stepped out of the family room to answer an owl, and she smiled softly and clasped her hands against her sternum when she returned to see Marina playing with Charles Michel. Still, Marina was pretty sure she wouldn't ever choose to spend her time with a baby on her own. Because she had chosen to make a real, genuine effort, she did stop avoiding Charles, but Marina couldn't imagine enjoying babysitting. She didn't even want to consider having her own children; she didn't like babies nearly enough to make one.
By the end of July, Marina thought she was a lot closer to loving her baby brother than she had been at the beginning of the summer, but she couldn't tell if she did love him or not. Maybe that wasn't important, knowing for sure. Over time, he had grown on her, and she figured he would continue to grow on her. So that was solved, Marina thought.
Just in time, too, because a day after coming to that conclusion, Quincy showed up at her back door, out of breath from running, a letter clenched in his fist. It was from Annie. She was done. She wanted out. Marina nodded and went upstairs to her bedroom to go over the various plans with Quincy, plotting their sweet friend's escape. There was an owl to send to Gideon, and an owl to send to Annie, and then Gideon would send an owl to Annie, and that's how they would get her out. Marina would forever be thankful for Gideon's extensive knowledge of the wizarding world, far beyond what she would ever know, she felt. If all went according to plan, Annie would take the Knight Bus to Molly's house—Gideon's older sister—and spend the remainder of the summer there with her and her family. Gideon had promised that Annie would love his nephew Billy when they were making the plans on the Express.
Annie sent a letter by Molly Weasley's owl (Molly had married a man named Arthur Weasley, who apparently worked in the Ministry doing something with bewitched Muggle items) to let Marina and Quincy know that she arrived safely and left a note for her parents as discussed to avoid any real panic in the wake of her escape. She noted that the toddler Billy and his baby brother, both as ginger as Gideon and Molly and Arthur, apparently, were delights, and Marina could hear the sunny smile behind her words.