"Oh, there you are, dears. Marlene, once you show Lily up to your room, I need you to-" Ellie McKinnon stopped in her tracks when she saw Marlene, covered in soot, and squished between Lewis and Lily as they stepped out of the fireplace. "Marlene, why are you covered in soot, get outside right now! I won't have you tracking soot all through my freshly cleaned house!"
Marlene hung her head a bit, muttering "It's Lewis's fault" under her breath as she slipped off her shoes and walked through the closest door into the back garden.
"Lily, dear, it's so nice to see you again. Lewis, will you show Lily up to Marlene's room?"
"'Course, mum," Lewis smirked at the disgruntled shouts of Marlene coming from outside, "C'mon, Evans." Throughout their journey up and up sets of stairs, Lewis pointed out who's room was whose. Daniel and Michael, the eldest, had the two rooms on the first landing; Bryce, the fourth sibling, had the only bedroom on the second landing, which also held two bathrooms; he and Amberly, the only other girl and the third eldest, had neighboring rooms on the third landing.
"And this is Marley's room. It's a bit small with the extra bed, but there's a little balcony Dad added on after she started at Hogwarts and wouldn't pipe down about Astronomy." Indeed, the glass doors to the balcony were open, and a breeze blew through the room, blowing up the sheer white curtains covering the opening. "The stars are beautiful out here at night. I'm sure she'll keep you up babbling on about them."
Lily was still catching her breath from the steep set of stairs that had led to Marlene's room. "No wonder Marlene's so fit."
"She runs up and down those stairs like a maniac in the mornings to wake us all up. Just you wait." Lewis set her trunk on the floor next to the second bed, waving to Lily. "Marlene should be up in just a few. Make yourself comfortable, and just shout if you need anything."
As Lewis left, Lily wandered around her best friend's room. Pictures of her family and her friends were plastered on every wall. There was a mountain of letters on the desk that was shoved into a corner. She recognized the scrawl, but couldn't place it until she saw the name at the bottom. Sirius Black. It seemed that there were a few from James as well—the two were annoying close—but the vast majority seemed to be from Sirius.
She didn't want to read them, but as she sunk onto the bed covered in a duvet with delicately painted flowers rather than the one promoting what Lily knew to be the Holyhead Harpies, she couldn't help but be curious.
I'll have to ask when she comes back.
"Sorry 'bout that, Mum needed help in the kitchen." Marlene bounced onto the bed, at the space beside Lily's feet. "Want to pop out to Diagon Alley with me? Mum wanted me to grab some cleaning supplies; apparently, we ran through most of our stores when she had us scrub this house from top to bottom yesterday."
Lily sat up, making a face. "If I go back down those stairs, I'm not coming back up until it's time for bed." Marlene let out a laugh.
"Fair enough. We can walk out to the lake, then, unless you'd rather stay in the den and wait for Bryce to come back from work."
There was a hand reaching out to slap her, and Marlene was laughing and running down the stairs before Lily could move off the bed. Carefully, Lily shut the door to Marlene's room and made her way down the stairs.
When she reached the bottom, Mrs. McKinnon was handing Marlene a list and a small red pouch, that Marlene quickly shoved into her jacket pocket, and for the first time, Lily noticed that Marlene had on a completely different outfit than the one she'd worn to pick her up.
A few minutes later, both Marlene and Lily had successfully traveled to Diagon Alley through the Floo. They were inside the shop before Lily forced herself to ask, "That was quite the mountain of letters on your desk for having only been out of school a few weeks."
"Oh, yeah," Marlene avoided really answering the question while picking a few more items off the shelves and placing them into the basket on her arm.
Lily bit her lip. "Marlene?"
"Yeah?"
"A lot of those letters were from Sirius."
Marlene's blonde curls spun as she did to face her friend, "You read my letters?"
"No," Lily replied without a second thought, then added, "just the senders. Promise."
Letting out a sigh, Marlene shook her head and went back to getting what else she needed off the list. Lily knew better than to push for a straight answer right now. Things were like that with Marlene. She got upset when people pushed up against boundaries she didn't want to be moved, but she would never lash out at someone. She'd been lashed out against when she was younger and wouldn't leave her brother, Michael, alone right before he went to Hogwarts for the first time.
She didn't want to be like that, so she wasn't. She simply took some time out of the situation and then came back to it. Plenty of people took her as cold or rude, but, to Marlene, that was far better than angry.
Following Marlene at a distance, Lily waited for her to get out of her own head. And by the time that she had paid for her things and was walking out of the store, she had.
"Sirius is thinking of running away," they walked up to Florean Fortescue's to grab some ice cream. "What do you want? Mum's buying," Marlene held up her coin bag.
"Chocolate and raspberry," Lily responded with a smile, grabbing a table outside for the two of them while Marlene went inside to get the ice cream.
When she returned, a cup in each hand, the pair sat silently for a while, dipping into their ice cream. "He's been going absolutely mad in that place," Marlene added, "that house is horrible and toxic, and frankly, I'm surprised he's stayed there as long as he has. James is worried about him, which is why I'm sure you noticed a fair few letters from him as well." Marlene flashed Lily a look, a small smirk playing on her lips when she saw Lily's discomfort.
"But that's it, Lils. We're just trying to make sure he's safe and sane." Marlene dipped into her ice cream and looked up at Lily. "How've you been dealing with Petunia? She's been insufferable, I'm sure."
The two chatted until they were finished with their ice cream, then they sat around a bit more before finally deciding to leave and go back home.
Immediately after stepping through the fireplace, Marlene was greeted with a motherly shout from the kitchen. "Marlene! You've got a letter from James! Some sort of quidditch emergency."
Grumbling, Marlene shook her head and went into the kitchen. "There's no such thing as a Quidditch emergency in the summer. This boy will be the end of me, I swear." And, indeed, there was an open faced, short letter from James on the kitchen table.
Marlene, quidditch emergency over at the Potter residence. Please come over as soon as possible if you would like your dear friend to retain his sanity.
x James
"Well, that's annoyingly vague. Lily, do you mind if I pop over to James's for a few? I should definitely be back before dinner, but I feel bad leaving you here alone."
"Oh, it's fine. James is always a bit dramatic anyway. It's probably nothing."
"Are you sure?"
Marlene felt horrible. It'd only been a few hours since she'd arrived, and Marlene felt like she was abandoning Lily. Lily nodded, pushing her friend back towards the fireplace. "Besides, I'd love to help your mum with dinner."
"I'll be back soon, promise."
There's a thing about promises; they only go two ways: you either break them or you keep them. Marlene's normally very adamant about keeping her promises, no matter the cost to her own sanity, but sometimes there are extenuating circumstances.
First of all, James wouldn't stop talking about strategies with her for hours.
Second of all, James was having a minor panic attack because somehow he'd managed to forget that their keepers had both graduated at the end of the year, and they'd have to run try-outs for a new keeper, without having anyone with a lick of experience. He wouldn't stop talking, and absolutely nothing Marlene was saying would calm him down.
"Marls, what are we even going to do? What if everyone that tries out is absolute rubbish? What if there's not a single good keeper in all of Gryffindor? We can't lose the cup two years in a row. I won't have that be my legacy as Captain."
"Merlin, James, I'll help you run try outs. Sirius will help you run try outs. Take a breath, okay?"
He did. It was already getting late, and Marlene had likely already missed dinner with her family if the orchestra in her stomach was anything to go by. She'd finally managed to calm him down enough to suggest leaving. The pair were headed downstairs when there was a weak knock at the front door.
Both of their wands were drawn in a second. "Stay back," James whispered as they reached the bottom of the stairs, "I'll get the door, but stay back, Marlene." It was the fierceness of his voice that made Marlene not question him. She slid to the other side of the door, near the staircase, with her wand raised and ready.
"Oh, mate. What happened?"
"James, who is it?" A second later, the door opened up wider and a drenched Sirius was standing in the front parlor. "Oh, shit." The words were barely a whisper as they left her lips, but they were well deserved. There was a cut across his left cheek, dried blood covering the wound, another cut through his right eyebrow and up his forehead and into his hair. There were dark circles under his eyes and a bruise forming on his jawline. He had a black jacket on, and she wasn't sure she wanted to see it come off.
They herded him up to the room that had become his over the years of spending a weekend or two every summer over at the Potter's. James and Marlene managed to convince him into a shower without much effort. They kept the door open because Marlene was worried he might try to drown himself in the shower.
James was, somehow, quite calm about the entire thing. "He's here now, Marlene, that's all that matters."
"How on earth is that all that matters, James?" She was having a hard time keeping her voice at a whisper. She wanted to—she didn't even really know. She wanted to curse Walburga Black to America and back and then slam her into a wall for good measure. Who had touched him? Who had hurt him? Had it been his father? She'd gladly do the same thing to him or whoever had sent him battered and bruised out of their house. "Who knows what those people did to him. Merlin."
She sank onto the bed next to James, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "You should head back. I can take it from here."
"Like Godric you can. Your mum and dad don't get back until tomorrow evening, and neither of you knows how to cook in the slightest. How do you imagine you're going to eat?" James mumbled something about Marlene maybe cooking for them, and she shook her head at the boy. "Honestly, how do they imagine you'd survive alone without me. I'm gonna floo mum real quick and let her know, yeah?"
"Yeah," James sighed, running a hand through his messy hair. "We'll still be here, I'm sure."
With a last glance towards the open bathroom door, shower still going, Marlene stood and walked down the hall towards Fleamont Potter's study. It was a large room, with one entire wall covered in shelves that were filled to all four corners with books. Across from that wall was the fireplace. Marlene rounded the wizard chess set and got to her knees, tossing a pinch of powder in with a shout, before stuffing her head into the fire.
"Marlene, we thought you'd be home before now," her father popped up from the sofa and knelt down by the fire. "I'm afraid your mother's already gone to bed."
"'S alright, Dad. Is Lily still up?"
"Yeah, she's just in the kitchen. You all okay over there?"
Marlene only now realized what must be going on through her parents' minds. "Oh, Merlin, ya. Sorry, I forgot to get back to you earlier. Ya know James and his Quidditch." Patrick laughed a bit, and Marlene was glad to see his shoulders relax. "Um, Dad. Sirius's come over in a right state. You alright if I stay the night until the Potters get back?"
"'Course, kid. You want to talk to Lily?" Patrick called Lily over, and Marlene told Lily pretty much the same thing, aware that it was neither her story to tell and that her father was still within earshot. Lily was fine with it, the girl was practically an angel, and bid her goodbye and goodnight. Marlene left without so much as a tease about Bryce and was running back to Sirius and James as soon as the connection was terminated.
Marlene had ended up falling asleep atop the covers of Sirius's bed; she'd drifted off after watching to make sure he'd fallen asleep. James had gone to sleep in his own bed, but when Marlene awoke, he was sitting with his back against the wall, staring at the bed.
There were bags under his eyes, and his dark hair was unruly.
Sitting up, Marlene turned to look at Sirius, who she'd never fittingly been able to describe as delicate until now, and how his arms were tucked one under his head and one over the sheets.
An uneasy silence rested over the three for most of the day. Neither of them really knew what to say to Sirius, Sirius wasn't talking, and James and Marlene felt odd having a conversation around Sirius without including him. It was past noon when Marlene'd finally had enough silence.
"C'mon," she grabbed Sirius's shoulder, lifting him to his feet and herding him toward the back garden, "outside."
Outside, she headed toward the small shed, grabbed two brooms and a quaffle and tossed one of the brooms at Sirius, who caught the handle easily with his right hand.
Being in the air hadn't been an instant happiness cure, but after a while, Marlene was able to make Sirius smile. First by dropping the quaffle and having to dive forty feet to get it with a string of colorful curses. Then by looping him and snatching the ball from his hands that ended in both of them laughing when Marlene had done a half-dance on her broom with the quaffle still in hand.
It was nice to see him smile again, Marlene thought as she watched him land easily beside her. He always looked so old and stern when he wasn't happy that seeing him smile after an entire day of sorrow was like de-aging him five years.
They'd ended the game after about an hour and a half, about an hour after they stopped keeping score and just starting fooling around with the quaffle and fun moves on the brooms.
Marlene pulled Sirius into a short hug, clapping him on the back and releasing him, falling to the ground beside her broom. His broom clacked next to hers, and then he sunk to the grass beside her. Still sitting upright, he was leaning forward onto bent knees.
For a while, they both just stared at each other. Sirius had been letting his hair grow out again; it was a little past his shoulders, but still clean and well-kept. His face was still battered, but the cuts were cleaned and the bruises would fade with time.
"Will you cut my hair, Mar?"
Marlene raised herself onto her elbows and lifted an eyebrow incredulously. "You want me to cut your hair?" Sirius shrugged, smirked, and fell back onto the grass. "You sure about that?"
"It's hair, it grows. What's the harm?"
"Slow down there, Faulkner, you're losing me." A light punch landed on her arm, and she feigned foul. Marlene was glad to see him laughing again. His entire face lit up when he smiled because he had a mouth that would grin from ear to ear and straight white teeth that gleamed annoyingly. When silence fell between them, Marlene said, "Promise me you'll never go back there."
"I promise."
Marlene nudged his shoulder with hers and stood up, offering her hand out to Sirius. "C'mon. If you want me to cut your hair, I need to do it now." He took her hand, and she helped to lift him off the ground. "I need to get back."
This took a while to get up, but I got caught up in planning a bunch of logistical, background stuff that I needed to get sorted first. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this, and I hope to see you soon for another chapter! If you liked it, make sure to let me know! I always love hearing from you guys.
x Star