Hi all, so I am back to this wonderful fandom with a new story! I am taking a delve into a fandom, an era and a couple that has always fascinated me and it's the James/Lily era.

This is the second part of the story that started in the Beginning of the End and these are the moments in the first Wizarding War and the build up to Harry.

This story will be twenty chapters long and some events/events that do take place might be missed.

Also spelling/grammar...not my best thing. Again keep that in mind when you read...please.

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.

Please Read and Review.

And on a side note, I like so many other Fanfiction Authors no longer receive notifications via email about reviews/PMs etc. So if you do send any it might be a while, if ever before I get back to you. Please keep that in mind for it is not intentional-If anyone has a fix please let me know

I do not receive PMs anymore, if you have a question stick it in a review and I will answer it in the chapter notes.

And yeah, this one wounded me, this one physically wounded me. God knows what the next one is going to do. RIP Marlene.

The End Of The Beginning

Chapter 7-The Good Death

Dumbledore wants to take a group photo. Marlene goes back to her family. The Death Eaters attack. And nothing, nothing is ever the same.

"Explain to me again why Dumbledore wants to do this damn thing?"

"Because he's Dumbledore"

"James you keep saying that but I swear it is not an answer."

"Wormtail…just…shut up okay?"

"Doesn't mean he's any less right James"

"Damn McKinnon you too?"

"Hey after this I go home, two weeks with my family trying to justify joining Dumbledore's suicide march. You figure it out James."

"A photo does seem a bit counterproductive" Remus said running a hand though his hair…not that it did any good at this point living rough with werewolves did not afford you the luxury of going to a good barber after all.

"I mean" he said as they slipped in next to Alice and Frank. "He already did one just after we joined. "What does he want another one for, compare who he's lost?"

"I don't know" James said poking out his tongue in response. "But is not ours to question the Headmaster"

Sirius caught Lily's eye and they rolled their eyes together at that.

It was only a picture, they'd taken one after all and it had done little to conceal their identities, this one was mostly the students that Dumbledore had recruited out of Hogwarts and looking at them Marlene realised with a terrible sense of irony that she and Lily, Peter, Remus, James and Sirius were at eighteen/nineteen the oldest of the bunch, everyone else was still a babyface. Some of them had never even seen a Death Eater. Merlin only knew how long they would last.

What that said about this brave new world Dumbledore kept talking about she really couldn't think.

But there was a photo to take and so she plastered on a smile her arm around her boyfriend and then she kissed him on the way to the pub so she could apparate to her home. She waved goodbye to Lily and promised to ask her mother about wedding stuff and Remus grinned at her, James did too and Peter couldn't look at her for reasons she didn't understand but he was Peter so who cared.

They didn't realise it. She didn't realise it. It would be the last time that they saw each other alive.

War was a funny thing. Even when you expected death it cropped up when you least expected it. Maybe war wasn't funny. But Death sure as hell was.

"I told you Mum, it's a nice group of friends in a nice area of London"

"There is no area of London that is nice Marlene. I remember when Montagu went down, he came back with a full sleeve of tattoos and an eyebrow ring!"

"That was the muggle part Mum, not the wizarding one"

Montagu who had his face stuffed full of a French fancy (that Marlene had bought for her traitorous brother because he loved muggle food) winked at her and Marlene resisted the urge to flip him the finger in response. It never did well to take that kind of attitude with Montagu because he mostly ignored it and if truth be told only the very brave or the very stupid flipped the finger or swore in a room where Maria McKinnon was sitting there.

She leaned back on her chair and took in the sight of them all, her mother and father, her two older brothers, her little sister, her cousins, all six of them, her Aunt and her two Uncles. They were a big family, all of them naming their child with the letter M. They were big, they were loud, they were unapologetically themselves from her father who was arguably the oldest to her little cousin Matthew who was only three toddling around after his older cousins desperate to be included. And perhaps the most important thing of all, they were a pure blood line that could stretch back their family tree from generations to generations and they had always stood on the side of good. Even now while Marlene was the only one active in the Order (or so she had thought) she knew her family would stand behind Dumbledore until the end of time. They were like the Weasley's and as unapologetic as their blood traitor cousins of their status within the Wizarding Community. They had been like this for years. Nothing that Voldemort did would change that.

Perhaps it was arrogance that led them to the conclusion that they were unable to be killed, perhaps it was a lack of foresight that led them to congregate in one place or perhaps it was just simply the fact that Marlene McKinnon had never considered that anyone would betray her let alone Peter Pettigrew.

All in all it was a recipe for disaster. A recipe for tragedy and when it hit it was without warning and quite breath-taking in it's tragedy.

It was Mia, sweet little ten year old Mia excited to go to Hogwarts next year who pointed out the men on broomsticks and Marlene had just enough time for her instincts to tell her to her feet and get her wand out when the first wave of fire and spells hit and she grabbed her little cousin and dragged her back to the kitchen as the living room where she had been sitting not less than ten seconds ago with her mother and her father and her brother exploded killing them all and three other children instantly.

She didn't realise it then but they had been the lucky ones.

"Go!" she shouted to Mia who scarpered off into the darkness. Marlene didn't know if he was even able to escape but if there was a chance that she could then she was going to make sure that the girl took it. She turned around a blast blew her backwards and she twisted to see Travers come at her. She blasted him backwards with a reducto curse but he rebounded back just as once and she ducked and weaved as the screams of her family wretched apart the air. A well timed body bind curse hit him below the knees and he fell and Marlene thought of Sirius with all her might and that warm little apartment and her own little golden retriever Patronus exploded out of her and she knew that if it was possible for him of for anyone in the Order to see it then he would and he would crawl through hell to be by her side.

If not…then she had at least loved someone.

Merlin that was defeatist.

She ducked another blow from one of the Evans brothers and she staggered to the ground as the white hot lash of a curse whipped her around the ankles. She fell into the rubble banging her head on the brick and she saw with wide eyes and a scream that was long and impenetrable and never ending little Matthew watch wide eyed as a jet of green light hit him and he was blasted backwards his whole small little body illuminated by evil green light she sobbed unable to keep her cries muffled.

This was not a fight that she could win, this was annihilation, assassination, eradication. This was the end of the beginning, the nightmare and she thought as she pushed herself to her knees determined to crawl to her feet if she had too, determined to fight to the end—if this was what Mary had felt like, if this had been what Mary McDonald, her dear, dear friend Mary, her dear, dead friend Mary had felt like at the end when she too had, had her hair yanked back and had looked into a Death Eater's eye and had a wand pointed at her face. Marlene gripped her own tighter and she swung it around pointing it at Rothwell and blasting him backwards with a curse to the crotch that she was pretty sure had him celibate for the rest of his life.

She staggered upwards and ducked into the trees as another curse hit her and her knee exploded in pain. Actually, her knee had exploded full stop. The screams of her family had ended now and she didn't know if that was a good thing or if that was a bad thing. She didn't…no…she couldn't think. She couldn't think, she couldn't get her brain to work and she stuffed her fingernails into the dirt as she was dragged backwards and then flipped on her back and she stared up into Voldemort's face, Lord Voldemort the most terrifying wizard that had ever walked the Earth and Marlene tried to look away but that only made her look at Mia, sweet little Mia who had been killed it seemed along with the rest of them who just ten minutes ago had been talking about how excited she was to go to Hogwarts and whose bright blue eyes had been extinguished now and would never be bright with excitement again.

She didn't have time to think about it. She didn't have time to think. Only know as she stared up at her own death, at her own destruction did she realise that she had not had enough time.

Not enough of anything. She was eighteen, she was a baby, she was…she was a child still. She had gone into this war without a second thought and even when people had been dying around them, even when she had witnessed older and more experienced witches and wizards fall to this man's hands she had never even thought about what was going to happen fi she died. She had been marked for death, she was a McKinnon and she and her entire family had been marked for death and none of them had known it until now. Until they had come and when they had come they came with a beauty and a sense of pageantry.

How was it that just two weeks ago she had been drinking champagne with her best friend and her boyfriend and her best friend's fiancé and his friends and they had been looking up wedding designs and flower arrangements and small venues and all those silly little things and yet she had blinked, turned around and suddenly she was staring down a wand.

The slit that was the mouth widened and Marlene knew what was said about this wizard, knew that he was supposed to be the greatest at mind reading or whatever the hell it was and she knew that he was reading her, cracking open her brain but what did the shooting pain in her head matter now when he was going to kill her?

Another flicker of amusement, of true amusement as if he had caught there undercurrent of that thought and it had made him smile if such a thing could be possible and the girl on her knees with the blonde hair and the blue eyes stared up at the white face and didn't look away. It was her last act of defiance.

Maybe it had been her only act of defiance.

The wand pulled back and she closed her eyes because she had done enough and Marlene found that she was not scared. Odd really, she was not scared of dying.

Maybe Dumbledore was right when he had said at Fabien and Gideon's funeral that death was just the next great adventure waiting for them all.

Her last thought was of Sirius, of his dark hair and his smile and his grey eyes and the hope that he would find someone who loved him the same way that she had loved him and that he had loved her, that he would be happy and that she would see him again in a long, long time in a place where this…wizard did not dare to hope but follow….where her family were.

The mouth moved and there was a flash of green light that illuminated Marlene McKinnon and her back arched because of it and her hair turned a sickly greenish colour because of it and she fell crumpling against the little bricks that had once been her family's home her wand still in her hand. Voldemort kicked it to the side and then with a wave of his hand he and his followers left. The message had been sent, to the Order, to the Ministry, to the world. Submit, or die. And nobody was safe in the meantime.

But that didn't bother Marlene McKinnon. She was dead before she hit the floor.

And there you are, I hope you enjoy.

Next Chapter-James has to keep his head above water in the aftermath. Because the woman he loves and his best friend are both on the floor and he doesn't know how to get them up because his own heart too is breaking.