Disclaimer: I don't have anything in common with JK Rowling except for a fascination of magic. Nor do I own Troye Sivan's new Happy Little Pill and Taylor Swift's new Shake It Off, both of which are exceptionally good.

So far: Marlene, Lily and Dorcas are hanging out with Mary more often than they used to.

Chapter 12

Or

Of Friends Who Need to Eat

It was getting harder to sleep with Dorcas staying up later and later each night. Her little light never really went off nowadays, and it was driving everyone crazy. Tally was the first to complain, of course. Nobody really cared about Tally anymore – Mary, the only one who had ever really given mind to her, became temporarily deaf whenever Tally spoke and was spoken about during the past few weeks, which was better than struggling with tears, at least. But she had a point, and eventually even ever-patient Marlene had taken a turn at suggesting to Dorcas to go to sleep earlier tonight. Nothing seemed to work, however; Dorcas hadn't gone to be before two A.M. in weeks.

It was true that Dorcas was taking considerably more classes than any other girl in the dorm, except Lily who took only one class less than her, and that it was their first N.E.W.T. year, and it was true that their workload was ridiculous and that Dorcas had always worked harder than any of them, except perhaps, again, for Lily. But that should not have led to this behavior; it was bad enough when she quit the Quidditch team last year for the sole purpose of studying, but this was becoming an obsessive shtick, and everyone – yes, even Tally – was becoming worried about her all-nighters, her forgetfulness, and her unwillingness to go downstairs for meals. She barely spoke anymore, writing essays triple the intended length and surviving on meals brought up to her by Mary, mostly, who had shown an unexpected empathic, helpful side. Marlene was dating James, even though their first date had been a disaster, and Lily was busying herself with her own classes, though she wasn't acting as worryingly as Dorcas was, so they were both extremely thankful for the introduction of Mary into their lives; at last there was someone who always remembered to bring up dinner, and insisted that Dorcas come down to breakfast. But even when Dorcas deigned herself worthy to be in their presence, she barely uttered a word, instead keeping her eyes glued to her food and her mouth shut.

Frankly, everyone was getting sick of it.

"Dorcas not coming down this time, too?" sighed Lily, looking up at Mary who joined them for breakfast at last. "I wish I knew why she refuses to speak to us…"

"Even in class," said Marlene, but everything on this topic had already been said. After this short exchange of words, they remained silent. The hall was buzzing around them, apparently unaware of the awkwardness in the air, the stuffiness in knowing that something was wrong with Dorcas Meadowes, something she refused to talk about with anyone…

"I just wish she would talk to me," said Lily suddenly, completing a line of conversation which only existed in her head. "I mean, every time I talk to her she basically says she's too busy for me. I can't seem to get across to her at all."

"To who?" asked Sirius as he sat down next to Lily and started picking on the food on her plate.

"Dorcas – get away from my plate, Black, you have no rights to it!" Lily protested, trying to push him away and failing. "There is plenty of food, you don't need to – "

"What's wrong with Meadowes?" he asked, now chewing on Lily's piece of toast. "True, last time I saw her was like, a week ago, but she seemed fine at the time." He continued to ignore Lily's protests as he grabbed a fork and tried to reach her eggs, trying, and failing, to suppress a grin. "Is she alright?"

"She's fine," said Mary, rather disdainfully, as Lily had resorted to hitting Sirius rather childishly, and Sirius was still eating Lily's food. "She's just… really busy with homework and stuff."

"Doesn't Lily take the same classes as Dorcas? I don't see her skipping every breakfast for a week," Sirius said, taking a break from trying to evade Lily in order to wave at an approaching James, but consequently was pushed off the chair and onto the ground behind the two, causing Lily to grin triumphantly as Marlene burst into giggles. James couldn't help smiling as well as he helped him up, but ended up sitting between Lily and Sirius, presumably to avoid any more squabbling.

"Maybe I should, if you'll keep stealing my food," Lily muttered.

James smiled at Marlene. "Morning, Marlene, everyone. Actually, Evans takes one class less than Dorcas," said James knowingly. "Why are you discussing Meadowes' schedule?" He started to load food onto his plate, formerly Sirius' plate. No one questioned how he knew Lily's schedule.

"Because she hasn't come down to breakfast, or any other meal actually, for almost a week and a half now, and we thought it would stop by now," said Mary, taking a bite of a very green apple.

"Of course it hasn't stopped by now, all we've done is encourage her behavior!" cried Lily. "We've got to do something about this."

Mary blinked blankly at Lily, then said, "When have we encouraged her behavior?" in a tone so incredulous, that Lily was actually doubting her own words.

"Well – uh – we haven't said anything to her, and we keep feeding her! I she was hungry, she'd – "

"She'd starve, and you know it," said Mary pointedly. "I've been bringing her food and dragging her down here, and believe me, she knows we don't like it. She just doesn't care, or she's too busy to care."

"Or she's avoiding you guys," suggested Sirius quietly, then jumped suddenly and yelled "Ow!"

"Marlene," said James hastily, "I'll walk you to Transfiguration?"

Marlene nodded and they took off. Lily's gaze inexplicably lingered on them, before she flushed and said, "I should make my way to class too. See you guys there."

Sirius nodded and Mary humph'ed. The two ate in silence, not speaking to each other, before Sirius stood, excused himself, and practically ran out the hall. Mary then gathered some food and walked away herself.

"Okay, Dorcas, enough," said Lily as she stood in the doorway, essentially blocking Dorcas from leaving the classroom. It was the end of Defense, and luckily, Professor McMillian and the rest of the class had cleared the room quickly, while Dorcas had not. Lily wasn't the only one to stay behind; Marlene did too. Mary stayed, mostly for moral support – she felt that if Dorcas didn't want to talk about something, the best thing to do was let her come to them with the problem in her own time. Lily and Marlene, to put it lightly, disagreed.

"What are you talking about?" asked Dorcas. Her voice sounded cracked and unused, even like she hadn't been drinking enough water. "Why aren't you letting me through?"

"You're hiding something from us, Dorcas," Lily said, playing with her hair in a way she only did when she was dealing with something serious. "Marlene and I – and Mary too – are just worried about you. You're barely eating, all you're doing is studying…"

"Lily, we have Ancient Runes after this, we can't miss it – I can't miss it," Dorcas insisted, her voice breaking even more. It seemed as though she was barely holding together. Marlene took a hesitant step towards her, tapped her shoulder, and asked tentatively, "Dorcas – are you alright?"

Dorcas broke down crying, leaning on Marlene's shoulder as sobs ran through her. She was shaking. Lily couldn't remember ever seeing Dorcas crying so hard; she'd seen her ranting, mad – she'd seen her full of glee – but she'd never seen her cry, not really. Not like this. Lily and Mary both ran towards her to pull her into a deep hug, each hoping somehow to cure all ills in her life with a simple embrace.

"What's going on, Dorcas?" Marlene asked, her voice sincere and kind, as always. Perhaps that's what broke Dorcas, Lily thought. Marlene's kindness.

"I – I got a letter from my parents," she said slowly, slowly calming down. Dorcas took time to open, sometimes, and Lily had accepted that before approaching this conversation. They sat down, all of them – apparently, there wasn't another Defense class now, which was lucky indeed – and waited patiently for Dorcas to continue. She took a deep breath, and started speaking freely, in a way she probably hasn't expressed herself for a long time. "You guys know that I'm a pure-blood. We're not part of the families listed in – well, we're a relatively new line. And my parents… they want to be – be accepted." She said this as if she wanted to throw up from the mere thought. "They wrote me – they told me to stay away from you guys. And I couldn't – I couldn't face you guys – "

"You guys?" Marlene said, stony faced.

"Lily and you," Dorcas said, tears running down her cheeks once again. "I need to stay away from you guys. They threatened to pull me out of Hogwarts, and I couldn't do that – I couldn't not be here."

"Of course, we get it – " Lily began, but was interrupted by Dorcas once again.

"No, you don't understand," she said. But then she didn't say anything, and Lily and Marlene understood at once.

"You don't – " said Lily, but she was once again interrupted.

Marlene was not nearly as delicate as she seemed, as it turned out. She shouted for a while, yelled, screamed, and then took Lily's hand and dragged her out of the classroom, murmuring to herself about bigots and fucking purebloods. It seemed Marlene, despite being a pureblood herself, was more insulted on Mary and Lily's behalf than Mary and Lily were.

Lily and Marlene didn't speak to Dorcas after that. Mary didn't know what to do, having just formed a relationship with them, but eventually joined them. Dorcas was left alone, and to be frank, she deserved it. But Christmas was coming along, and that's a time of forgiveness. Right?

A/N: I'm sorry! I'm so sorry that it's been forever and all I'm posting is this shitty little thing, I know how short it is, but on the bright side, new plotlines! I think that I've planted the seeds for most of the new plotlines already and they should work beautifully.

A few notes. Roni, my friend, remember her? She's gone over the fic again, and mentioned a few things that I'd like to address:

A. Remus wasn't afraid of a relationship because he was just mailing her. tHEY WERE NON-PLATONIC PEN-PALS. WHAT DAMAGE COULD HE HAVE DONE. Not to mention he's pretty starved for attention (more on that, maybe, later. No assurances yet).

B. Dorcas, Mary and Marlene aren't OCs, and they're actually pretty much straight forwardly exactly like Donna, Mary and Marlene from The Life and Times (which has greatly influenced the fandom as a whole and this fanfiction and me in particular), but without Adam and Donna's family (though again, Dorcas' family greatly features into her life, as we've seen in this mini-chapter). The only OCs are the two boys Dan and Cameron (the existence of which we will hopefully start addressing soon) and Tally, and since we know there are multiple McKinnons, Cameron is only half-made up.

C. Lily is not boring. Okay? She's just emotionally cut-off right now. Keep in mind she just lost her best friend recently, and her life hasn't been the easiest, and she's encountering racism literally everywhere. She's going through a lot of things very fast and she doesn't really know how to cope with it.

Kickerbraut - pETER IS AN IMPORTANT CHARACTER (so is Regulus. We'll get to that). As for the sudden changes in pace, that's just my style of writing. I'm working on it. But it is, in the end, the way that I write: I write in short bursts of brilliance, five minute scenes, and after ten (or two) of those I make a chapter and add a beginning, an end, a conclusion, whatever I need in order to make it a chapter. It doesn't really work like that when I actually sit down and write, but it is how my brain constructs all of this. Thank you, anyway, for reading my fic, and I do hope you enjoy the rest of it.

School starts, for me, on September first, but since it's a boarding school (I KNOW), I'm leaving a day early to get there and unpack. The promised one-shot WILL be up on the 31st, but nothing else will be published, probably, anytime soon. You're still welcome to send me whatever you want, and I'll happily write it; you'll just have to wait until after September first, when I will once again have this huge procrastination problem going on and simply type a million words.

Favorite, review, follow, share, and GOOD LUCK AT SCHOOL. I know some of you probably feel stressed and shit, but I would totally love to talk to you if you wanted to! Just message me here or (preferably) on either of my tumblrs, and I'll get back to you ASAP.

JustGail

p.s. first line of chapter 13:

There were two new signs on the message board on Thursday morning.