December 24th, 1976: Marlene McKinnon

(sixth year)

It's Christmas Eve, and that's probably why Marlene caves.

He tells her to meet him in one of the parlors at eleven o'clock that night, or maybe she tells him—does it matter? He shows up, and she shows up, and it's eleven o'clock, and they're standing there, and then he kisses her.

Flashback. It's half past nine, and they're exchanging gifts in the Potters' kitchen—Alice's idea, because kitchens are homey and they're all in dire need of a dose of sentimentality this holiday season. They would have waited until tomorrow for this, but Mary cites some Muggle tradition or other of opening one present each the night before Christmas, and now, here they are.

Marlene's walking out and hooking in the earrings Mary got her when she feels a small parcel drop into her robe pocket. She glances to her right: Sirius. For a split second, everything stops. Back in her room, once Mary's asleep, she pulls it out and unwraps it to find there a note and a heart-shaped charm—sterling silver, but hey, the boy's been thrown out of his home with no money; it's not like she could have expected more.

Flash back forward to eleven o'clock, kissing in the parlor. She doesn't push away but doesn't reciprocate, either, and Sirius pulls back and brushes hair away from her face, one arm encircling her waist. "I think we should have a real go at it," he whispers, foreheads touching.

"What?" she mumbles, staying there with him but looking away.

"Being together," he says with a genuine smile. "You and me. No more secrecy, no more sex—unless you want to keep that part. Whatever you want, Marlene."

Her head spins. "And why the hell should I trust you this time?" Marlene demands.

He doesn't answer for a long while. "Because I think I love you, and because I don't want to live this way anymore—like we're always in a crisis. I reckon it's up to you to decide whether that's enough. Just think it over," he tells her, and then he's gone and it's down to just Marlene.

She thinks for days about how she really ought to walk away—how the resentment festering under the surface of her mind can't spell anything good for a real relationship with Sirius, even if he's offering it. But then she thinks about what it would be like to leave him—and, knowing she can't leave, what it would be like to spend the rest of her life stuck in the same moment she's been trapped in since fourth year. Sirius is right about one thing: they shouldn't have to live in a constant crisis anymore. She doesn't know how much longer she can do it. It's more than that: she doesn't want to keep doing it.

So she says yes when they get back to Hogwarts, and she spends the night in his dormitory—not sleeping together, just lying in bed and spooning—and she finds out how it feels for Sirius to stay.

It feels good. She feels like she can breathe in a way she hasn't since fourth year. And maybe that means she shouldn't be with him, with this person who's kept her from breathing for so long, but…

xx

In February, Gryffindor loses at Quidditch to Hufflepuff, leaving Hufflepuff narrowly in the lead for the Quidditch Cup—but Marlene doesn't think that's why Sirius is in such a mood. When she catches up to him on the pitch, he's speaking low and urgent to James, saying, "You think I give a shit about a Quidditch match with everything that's going on? You heard what Lily said, France's refusal to intervene in the war is a huge step backwards for us—more and more people are disappearing, hardly a week passes anymore without someone getting a letter from the Ministry at breakfast—what the hell do we think we're doing, running around cavorting with a werewolf and pulling pranks and worrying ourselves sick over Quidditch when… when…"

"Lower your voice; you're going to expose Remus," says James urgently. The pitch is almost deserted by now, but he's clearly worried that the few lingering stragglers in the stands will overhear him. "I don't like it any more than you do, but what more are we supposed to do? We can't exactly mobilize the student body to act."

"He's right," says Marlene gently. "Dumbledore won't let anybody join the opposition until they're out of Hogwarts, I'm lucky he even told me about its existence, and it's not like we can run some kind of underground resistance on our own. We've got no resources, no information to go on, nothing, as long as we're in school."

Growling, Sirius responds, "You two and Lily are always talking about how the war's not going to end until our generation intervenes; do you honestly believe that that's going to happen if we don't at least try to take action now? The sooner the better—"

"Our generation," says James softly. "You're right, you're exactly—"

"What?"

"Nothing. Listen, I'll—I have to talk to Lily. Do you know where she'd be right now, by any chance?" he asks, eyes alight.

"She skipped the match to get to the Ministry on time for her internship—don't you belong there, too, now that the game's over?" But James clearly doesn't care—he's already sprinting off in the direction of the broomshed and, presumably after that, the castle toward Lily.

"Don't take it personally," Marlene advises, reaching up to peck Sirius on the lips. He allows it, softening a little. "You know how he gets about Lily."

"I reckon we'll all go mad in the end if we can't find some way to fight back between now and graduation," Sirius says darkly. "I just hope he's onto something, whatever it is. If my brother was old enough at fifteen to join the outskirts of his precious Dark Lord's regime, then we must be within reason at our age to want to work for the Light. I don't care that Dumbledore won't let us into his little secret society or that the wizarding world thinks we're still children."

They enter the castle, both lost in thought. Breaking the silence, Marlene says after a minute, "You know Valentine's Day is on Monday, right?"

"Shit. That," curses Sirius, much to Marlene's amusement. "I didn't realize it would be that important to you."

"God, Sirius, it's not like I'm going to Avada Kedavra you if you don't plan something elaborate," she chuckles. "I just figured, after everything that's happened…"

She doesn't need to explain. "Tell you what," he says. "I've got Muggle Studies at half past two, but after I get out, we can snog for a bit in my dormitory and then sneak down to the kitchens for a late dinner and to talk, all right? The house-elves can probably set us up a candlelit table or something."

"Snogging. Romantic," snickers Marlene, but she ultimately concedes, "That does sound nice, though. Sirius Black, using his words instead of his tongue to woo a girl for once. Can you imagine?"

"Shut it before I change my mind," he teases, bumping shoulders with her playfully.

She pushes back, laughing loudly, and they chase each other up one, two, three stories before the nearest staircase to the fourth floor starts to move. "Bugger," says Marlene to herself, and they set off down the corridor in search of the nearest immobile flight of stairs. "Hey, as long as half our class is at the Ministry for internships for the rest of the day, what do you think we should find Em and Lupe and—oh!"

Tripping spectacularly, she tumbles forward and breaks her fall with the heel of her left hand. "God, Marlene!" says Sirius, reaching down to lend her a hand up. She's not lying flat on the ground, though; she can see nothing but floor beneath her, but it's almost as if something invisible is resting beneath her feet, propping them up. Whatever is there smells horrid, too, like bread and feet and spoiled milk rolled into one.

Wincing a bit, she struggles into a sitting position, rooting through her robe pocket for her wand. "Look at those splinters… Tergeo. Episkey," she says, healing her hand instantly. "That'll probably be sore for a few days… god."

"Any idea what it was that tripped you? For a second there, it looked like…"

"Like something invisible were lying right there?" she finishes the thought for him, indicating the spot where she'd fallen. Sirius nods. "I thought so, too. It reeks, whatever it is… reckon it might be under a Disillusionment Charm?"

He feels around on the floor until his hand appears to hit something solid, then whacks it with his wand while muttering the countercharm. To Marlene's shock, the spell reveals the motionless, facedown figure of a girl whom she assumes has been Stunned until Sirius rolls her over, revealing her wide-open eyes.

"Somebody put a Full Body-Bind on her, too," says Sirius. Marlene wonders whether the awful stench is due to spellwork, too, or whether it's her natural scent—glancing at Sirius, she can tell he's thinking the same thing.

"Finite," Marlene says shakily to reverse the curse. For a moment, the girl just blinks rapidly up at Sirius, hardly stirring; then she looks wildly around her and scrambles to her feet.

"I'm so sorry," is the first thing she says, addressing Marlene. "Was it you who tripped over me? Are you all right?"

Not having expected this reaction, Marlene just gapes for a moment before answering, "I'm fine, thanks. You don't have to—I mean, you have nothing to apologize for. Who did—how did this happen to you?"

"Oh, I don't know; it could have been anyone," the girl replies, sounding so unconcerned that it worries Marlene. She can't seem to shake the feeling that she knows this girl from somewhere—at the very least, she thinks she recognizes the girl's voice. "This sort of thing seems to happen quite a lot. You get used to it."

"Was it a Slytherin?" says Marlene, unconvinced. "I swear to god, if it some little bugger giving you shit about being Muggle-born—"

"Oh, no, no, no, nothing like that," she assures them, smiling weakly. "I'm a half-blood, anyway."

"Then why—?" But Marlene cuts herself short: the girl doesn't need dirty blood to be an easy target for bullying. In addition to the stench, she's a good thirty kilos overweight, her baggy robes doing little to conceal the pockets of fat that weigh down her torso, and her face somewhat resembles a rat's, even obscured by acne and framed by a greasy, blonde bob cut. If they were a few years younger, Marlene realizes with a sickening jolt, the girl would probably be the butt of Sirius and James's pranks.

She must be mistaken; they can't have met before, Marlene decides, because surely she'd have remembered how she looks in excruciating detail. But there's something about her voice that… unless… "You're the Quidditch commentator, aren't you?" says Marlene, cutting the uncomfortable silence short.

Blushing a bit, she nods. "I'm surprised you made the connection," she admits. "Most people don't; apparently my voice sounds a lot different when it's magnified, and people are paying more attention to the game than to me, so they usually don't recognize me by sight. I'm sorry, I'm rambling—" Sirius tries to tell her it's all right, but she talks over his attempt at an interruption to introduce herself. "At any rate, I'm Mildred, Mildred LeProut, but you can call me Millie. And are you two Sirius Black and Marlene McKinnon?"

"How did you—?"

"I commentate your games," she says, looking at Sirius, "and besides, you have quite the reputation around here, between all those pranks you've done and being the first Black in Gryffindor in generations. And I heard that the two of you were together for good, so I just assumed…"

Marlene's a bit unnerved that Millie follows school gossip closely enough to identify them both without ever having properly met, but she tries not to show it. "Well, we should probably be getting back to Gryffindor Tower," she says awkwardly, "unless you're in—?"

It takes Millie a second to catch on. "Oh! No, I'm in Ravenclaw, actually, a Ravenclaw fourth year," she says.

"You're quite good, you know," says Sirius abruptly. "At commentating the games, I mean. All our mates think so."

"Oh!" says Millie. "Er, thank you. If that's all, I'll get going, then… it was nice meeting both of you," she adds, smiling bashfully as she buries her hands in her robe pockets and brushes past them.

It doesn't take her long to forget all about the stench and the shame that embody Millie LeProut. As she and Sirius reach the Gryffindor common room and begin to take the stairs up to the boys' dormitory, Marlene hears Remus call out from an armchair by the hearth, "You might want to think twice before taking Marlene up to the dorm with you, Sirius. Emmeline's up there waiting for you."

Sirius doubles back down the staircase, Marlene right behind him. "Did she say what she wanted to talk to me about?" he asks. Remus shakes his head, but there's a clenching sensation in Marlene's stomach telling her that they already know the answer. Peter mentioned this last trimester, she recalls, more than once: something about how the rest of them ought to talk to Em about whatever it was he'd figured out about her. Before now, they'd all long accepted that they probably would never understand what prompted Emmeline to give up on her friends, but she should have expected for months now that Peter's interference was bound to drag up the past again.

They're not up there together for long, however, and Emmeline is visibly in tears when she emerges back down the stairs ten minutes later. "Hey, everything okay?" Marlene tries to ask, glancing from Em to Remus and back again, but Em just mutters, "It's fine," and goes right up the stairs to the girls' dormitory instead.

Emmeline doesn't give any explanation after that, and neither does Sirius when Marlene presses him. She lets it go. She's got what she wants from him, hasn't she?

They're supposed to meet in the boys' dormitory that night for James's meeting, but first, Marlene takes a brief detour up to the Owlery to write to Doc. She didn't get to see him over Christmas like they'd planned: she'd been planning to skip out on James's invite to come to the Potters' manor, but Doc encouraged her to go. They've been writing each other every week, though, ever since Doc resurfaced safely.

Marlene's honestly a little surprised when Em comes back with everyone to the boys' dormitory that night for the meeting James convenes, but she does. She sits huddled against the headboard of Peter's bed, shoulders hunched and knees drawn to her chest and fingers tracing patterns like protective wards onto the comforter, and she doesn't dare make eye contact with anyone, but she comes and she listens and she nods along as James lays out the plan.

"We've got to get the student body to mobilize," he says swiftly, as though they have no other choice, and they don't have another choice, do they? "If Dumbledore and his inner circle are our only link to the war effort and they're not talking, the only thing we can do right now to fight is to make some noise using the platform we've got in this school. We can't exactly go to battle with the Death Eaters without some kind of higher organization sending us on missions or giving us direction, but the one thing we can do while we're in school that no one else can, not even Dumbledore, is get in touch with other students, find out who's likely to fight for and against You-Know-Who—and try to convert whoever is neutral, or even some of his supporters, to our side. People are shaped by their peers, aren't they? Being surrounded by other teenage witches and wizards gives us a double advantage; we can try and change some of the younger kids' mindsets about blood purity and recruit the older ones to get off their arses and do something about it once they're out of school."

"So where do we start? We can't exactly just walk up to people and demand to know their loyalties and start giving speeches. Nobody trusts anybody when it comes to things like this," Mary says, frowning. She chopped off most of her hair last month, and now oily black clumps of it are sticking up every which way.

"No, it'll have to be more subtle than that," muses Remus. "I imagine we could start up some kind of prank campaign—only instead of Transfiguring all the professors into nifflers at the Sorting and setting off fireworks displays in the Great Hall, we'll keep the tone more serious and give people an indication that we're not just messing around this time. We can leave messages of some sort in places—like propaganda, almost—and see how much of a response we get. Keep it light for the appeal and to garner some interest, but not so light that we're not taken seriously."

"Feel out the reaction from different people and use that as a basis to identify who we can talk to directly and whether we're making much of a difference changing the younger kids' mindsets about everything," says Alice. "I like that."

Marlene points out, "You realize that by identifying ourselves as the culprits, we'll be putting ourselves in the line of fire of anybody who has it in for You-Know-Who's opponents." Her eyes flicker momentarily to Sirius: even Regulus may very well leak the boys' names to the Death Eaters as potential threats.

There's an instant of dead silence, then Sirius says, "So we don't name ourselves. We can go by a moniker and keep ourselves anonymous."

"We can work out the details of the pranks, if we're calling them that, later," decides Peter. "We should come up with a name—something to call whatever group we're able to assemble."

"The Order of the Kneazle," jokes James as Moonshine leaps into his lap—Lily and Emmeline brought their pets over from the girls' dormitory last night as part of an early spring-cleaning effort.

"No," says Mary slowly, "the Order of the Phoenix. We could incorporate phoenix imagery into the pranks, hype it up for the attention—but 'Order' still sounds pretty heavy, and phoenixes symbolize rebirth and eternity. We could use some of that in our message, reassurance that anybody who's lost a loved one thanks to this war hasn't had to see them die for nothing—that no matter how many times we're told we're too young, we'll jump back in with another way to contribute. Besides, Dumbledore's got Fawkes—maybe he'll take it as a message to him that we want in."

Lily and Alice both are beaming by the time Mary is through with brainstorming. Marlene gives her an approving squeeze of the shoulders, and with both confusion and fondness, Sirius asks, "When did you get so clever, Mare?" Bashfully, she gives a faint smile and continues to scratch behind Aquarius's ears.

"All right, so we'll get started on the prank design over the next few days and try to get this up and running within a couple of weeks," James declares. "And in the meantime, we can keep an ear open to comments about the war from the people we see, try to scope out exactly what we're dealing with. Everyone good with that?"

xx

It begins inconspicuously enough. In her periphery, Marlene watches Professor McGonagall look left, then right, then left again with a frown. She shrugs to Professor Sprout and reaches for her goblet, then ducks fully with that frown deepening as a buzzing noise begins, louder and louder until it's catching the attention of the full student body. They glance amongst themselves in confusion for a few moments until McGonagall's involuntary dance catches somebody's attention and then they're openly pointing with one another, questioning, Marlene and the Gryffindors playing right along among them.

And then you can see it, and it's just a bit of paper, just a harmless bit of paper flapping around McGonagall's head, and she's pulling out her wand but it's too quick to hit, and it's getting so loud, and it's refolding itself from a neat little square into—is that supposed to be a paper airplane? Is that someone's idea of cleverness? But Professors Sprout and Flitwick and Sinistra are clapping their hands over their ears and McGonagall's lip is thinning and it's gusting such great winds down from the High Table, Dumbledore's beard positively windswept and robes aflutter all the way to the opposite ends of the house tables, and finally McGonagall's wand aligns with it just right—

But it's not ripping itself up or freezing midair or falling gracefully into her lap or even into her breakfast, the buzzing is giving way to a deafening echo of a four-string orchestral chord and it's rocketing high above the tables where all can see and bursting into a streaming banner, rippling in its own wind, proclaiming in such heavy, heavy black, "FACT: In December 1976, France set a European precedent by denying aid to Britain in the war against the Death Eaters."

And now it's the students themselves who are deafening, whether stricken by the proclamation itself or the radical shift to the foreboding or the impending nowness of it or the insult to their pureblood privilege, and the banner swells like a balloon and lets them erupt, lets them revel in it, takes its sweet time and then at once, like it's been waiting all along to make its comeback, drowns out them all with an earsplitting bang, and in instants the banner tears itself to pieces that set themselves aflame, scarlet sparks arising out of the glow in the unmistakable shape of a phoenix, wings raised and stretching high above its head, hovering, cindering, and at last reduced to smoke.

It's hard, so hard, to seek out a reaction as if she's as surprised as the rest of the school. "Remus, that's spectacular," whispers Lily, "how'd you manage it again?"

"Enchanted Howler—took the basic principles and adapted them to fit—adapted them a lot. Peter's idea, actually; he put more into it than I did."

They can't congratulate him here, now, but everyone's gaze flickers fleetingly to Peter. And then Mary says, "Glad I won't be with you lot for Transfiguration in half an hour," and suddenly, Marlene wants nothing more than to survive the next two hours.

She glances to the High Table to glimpse McGonagall's reaction—torn, now, but between what Marlene isn't sure. Lily is starting to enter full panic, emitting a low stream of muttered worries. "Lily, breathe," says James, but she shrugs him off, rubbing her temples.

Marlene can't entirely read McGonagall when they reach her classroom, but judging by the thin, thin line her eyebrows make, whatever they've got in store can't be all good. "Some stunt that was at breakfast," she says as Remus pulls shut the door behind them.

"Wasn't it?" James says, flicking a bit of lint off his robes and then looking up to smile cheerily at McGonagall.

"One of you and Black's stunts, I imagine?"

"Not at all."

Clearly, she was expecting this. "Given your proclivity for school-wide pranks and considering that Miss Evans is presumably the only student at Hogwarts who's aware of the situation with France—"

"Professor, I assure you that Sirius and I have been, ah—otherwise engaged over the past few days and wouldn't have had the time to dream up the display from this morning, let alone execute it," says James with a smirk.

"He's telling the truth, Professor. We didn't know what was going to happen until this morning," says Alice, timidly at first but her voice growing stronger. "And—whoever was responsible could have found out about France somewhere else—they quoted it as fact; they'll have to back that up with sources, haven't they? And I remember there was a line in the back of the Prophet about it once, they could have caught onto that and done further reason. There's no reason why Lily had to have been involved."

McGonagall's nostrils have stopped flaring, at least, and she says, "Whoever was involved ought to realize that Dumbledore has made it explicitly clear that students are too young to participate in the war, let alone join up with some sort of—of renegade student organization and that this will not be taken lightly."

"I'm sure they will, Professor," says James calmly.

"They ought to realize as well the danger of voicing such strong political statements openly and that it is in their best interests to protect their anonymity from the rest of the student body."

"As they clearly do, Professor."

"And that so long as their actions remain informational only and do not disrupt their fellow students' safety and education—they have my full support."

"I'm sure they would appreciate that very much, Professor."

Marlene can hardly believe their luck. Smiling thinly and giving James the slightest nod, McGonagall turns to the blackboard and instructs, "Very well, then, if you could all turn to page 487…"

The facts continue throughout the week. On Wednesday, they set off a round of fireworks at dinner; Thursday is subtler, featuring embroidery spiraling across the body of every student's wizard's hat. Meanwhile, on Friday, everyone's neckties and robes have been Transfigured from house colors to a uniform purple and white. Younger students eye each other in the corridors, wary without allegiances to dictate who gets a smile and who gets a spitball. Older ones think it's probably either the boys or Fabian Prewett's group (or both) behind it all, but they all staunchly deny it; James and Sirius even make a show of envying and seeking out whoever came up with the idea.

"You're sure you don't know whether it's them, though?" Millie asks Marlene when they bump into each other in the corridor later that day. The fourth year tracked her down in the corridors on the way out of the Great Hall from breakfast, very wide-eyed and very much about to make Marlene late to Charms.

"I can ask Sirius, but I really haven't seen anything fishy."

"Because it doesn't quite seem like they're the ones doing it—it's more serious, you know? It's flashy like they always are, but it's not—like—they're not pelting purists with Dungbombs or writing insults on classroom chalkboards or anything—but the magic they're using, it's clever, it's as clever as they are. It could be them, couldn't it?"

"It's not like I'd know if it was. You picked the wrong Gryffindor to ask about it, sorry."

"Yeah, but you're in their year, right? Let me know if you do find anything out, will you? It'd be cool to maybe get involved with whatever they're trying to do, you know, meet new people and stuff."

"Sure I will. See you around, Millie."

Five minutes later, she slips into the classroom just as the bell's ringing and nods to Flitwick, who raises his eyebrows and smiles while she's taking her seat beside Emmeline. "Where were you?" she hisses, but Marlene shakes her head for the moment as she scrounges up parchment and a quill from her bag.

It's not until Flitwick's gotten through the theory of Aguamenti and gives them time to practice that she answers the question. "I got held up by Millie—she's the Quidditch commentator. She was asking whether we're behind the pranks again. She seemed interested."

"Think we could get her on our side?"

"Maybe. Aguamenti." They're supposed to be filling drinking glasses with water, but the most she can get out of her wand is a momentary trickle. Emmeline's is puffing clouds of vapor that fog up Marlene's glasses. "I'm just glad people are talking about it. It's not like I can go to anybody directly about it, but my little siblings keep saying that it's all the younger kids are talking about. Not changing any minds yet, but it's only been a couple weeks, what do you expect? Hopefully we'll make a little progress next week, yeah?"

She's talking about their next prank, the biggest one they will have pulled off yet: hoodwinking all the common room entrances so that everybody has to convene together in the Great Hall in their off hours. They give everybody a few days' rest first, then set the plan in motion next Thursday at midnight. By Friday morning, once the Great Hall empties after breakfast, it's not long before students start trickling back into the hall, sleepy but abuzz with impatience. Marlene watches Dorcas Meadowes move straight toward Dumbledore, who's chatting intently with Hagrid. "So it worked, then," she says as they sit down.

"Yeah, and Peeves is taking the opportunity to drop water balloons on everybody's feet in the meantime, since they can't go back to change their socks," says Peter. Mary clicks her waterlogged heels for emphasis.

"Right."

Dorcas calls the hall to attention, announcing with fatigue, "All right, so as you all obviously have figured out by now, it seems we've got a situation where all the passwords to the common rooms have been changed, locking everybody out of their houses. We're going to get on taking care of this as fast as possible, but in the meantime, you're all welcome to stay here in the Great Hall or anywhere within bounds in place of your common rooms. Do we know for sure that all four houses are locked out? Gryffindor?"

There's grumbled assent from a number of Gryffindors, Mary playing along among them as particularly disgruntled. "Right—Hufflepuff? Ravenclaw? … Ravenclaw?"

And despite the students' uniformly purple ties, it dawns on them all that Ravenclaw's the only house missing from the hall. Up front, McGonagall's thinned lips widen out again as she cocks an eyebrow. Despite herself, Marlene glances sidelong at Remus, who says in an undertone, "Alice wasn't able to lock it out—she tried locking it onto one riddle that couldn't be answered, but she couldn't get it to work in time, the door found a way around the paradoxes."

"Yeah? We can work with that, maybe," Marlene replies as Dorcas falls back, briefly conferring with Dumbledore again before striding through the double doors and into the corridor. "We could get everyone to convene in their common room, maybe?"

"Make them help each other out and work with the Ravenclaws to crack the riddles and have somewhere to go, yeah," says Remus. "Em, you've got friends in Ravenclaw—do you want to head over and see if they'll let people in?"

"You two go," says Mary. "I'm going to go check in with Ver and feel out how people are reacting."

So Marlene and Emmeline set off for the Ravenclaw common room. Em raps on the door with her knuckles once, twice, three times. As they slouch against the wall, she adds, "Everyone thinks it's us, don't they?"

Marlene shrugs. "I think they did at first, at least the others in our year—Mary says all the Hufflepuffs have been asking her about it—but I think it's starting to make them wonder about it that there's the phoenix emblem on all of them, that's new, and that we haven't come forward, they'd think we would have by now. Plus that Dumbledore's practically been encouraging it." The headmaster made a point of wearing his pointed hat around the castle all day and applauded last night's dinnertime display.

It's Dana Madley who's the next to enter the corridor, to Marlene's irritation. She watches Madley's pumps click purposefully toward her, then halt as Emmeline clears her throat; the right one crosses behind the left and snaps to a defensive point on its toes. "Elegant," Emmeline quips.

"What?"

"Nothing. Sorry. Look—"

"Are you two looking for Maggie? Because I can check for her for you, but I'm pretty sure all the fourth years have class—"

"It's not that," says Marlene. Madley purses her lips, shifts her weight back. "It's—well, all the other houses got locked out of our common rooms somehow."

"They got what?"

"Yeah, the passwords aren't working, everyone's in the Great Hall for now and Peeves is having a right old party taking advantage of it. Ravenclaws can still get in here, though, apparently, so we were just thinking—"

"That you'd break into our common room into the meantime until it's straightened out, yeah?" says Madley. "Cracking the riddles together matters to our house. It helps first years bond with the rest of the house, it—"

"So it's wrong for other houses to bond together, too, if you let them in?" points out Marlene.

"That's just like you Gryffindors, always assuming it's your place to do whatever in god's name you—"

"Sure, all right, think what they want you to think," says Emmeline.

"Excuse me?"

Em rolls her eyes. "The house stereotyping. Do what you want, but when You-Know-Who takes over because you were too busy holding grudges to resist—"

"Do you two even hear yourself talk?" Madley interrupts; Emmeline rolls her eyes, drawing her knees closer to her chest. "If this is even headed toward a full takeover, which you don't know—"

"Which we do know," mutters Marlene.

"—Then part of picking a side is knowing who your allies are, and I'm sorry, but Gryffindors can't be trusted to be our allies. You think you can step all over everyone until you need them—"

"We don't step on anybody," says Emmeline. "I don't even usually associate with the rest of my house—"

"Right, so that explains why you're always off snogging Peter Pettigrew and mooning over Sirius Black and braiding Lily Evans's hair—"

"I haven't been mates with Sirius in years; get your facts right," says Emmeline coolly.

"Of course, ever since you threw a hissy fit and decided you were above all the gossipmongers you live with. Don't you know you're no different from them, Vance? Alice Abbott thinks she's better than me, you think you're better than Alice Abbott, but either way, you're both arrogant arses who belittle anyone who's not prudish enough or—or clever enough, or haughty enough—"

Marlene interjects, "So I take it that means you're not letting us into the common room?"

Madley strides forward, the hem of her robes twirling out and brushing Marlene's ankles. "Of course I'm letting you in. The Hufflepuffs are decent, at least, and I'm not going to try and keep the whole castle away just because of you," she says, pounding the brass knocker on the common room door. "Riddle?"