March 4th, 1977: Marlene McKinnon

(sixth year)

It surprises Marlene that McGonagall doesn't seek them out right away for the lockout. No, it's not until midway through that afternoon when "It's A Small World" starts blasting at full volume throughout the castle that the shit really hits the fan.

She's in Divination when it happens and keeps her smile to herself—Mary really delivered. Professor Shafiq breaks off her talk on heptomology with a little utterance, cocking her head toward the ceiling and then slowly laying eyes on the round table where he, Peter, and Emmeline are seated. "I don't reckon this interruption would have anything to do with the common room incident this morning, would it?" she says stiffly, but her words are barely audible over the music.

"What's that, Professor? Afraid you're going to have to speak up," snickers Veronica Smethley from the back of the classroom.

Shafiq glowers at her, then shakes her head and returns to the standing chalkboard where she was lecturing. "As I was saying," she says, raising her voice this time, "those of you who've taken Arithmancy will recall—"

But they'll have to wait before they can recall it, for when Shafiq raises the chalk to the board to add to her notes, it wriggles violently from her grasp, raps her on the wrist for good measure (she clutches the wrist to herself, her jaw dropping), and flings itself at the board, promptly beginning to scribble down lyrics in time to the music. It's a world of hopes and a world of fears, there's so much that we share that it's time we're aware it's a…

"Dear lord! I—erm—if you could pull out your textbooks, then, and turn to page 984 so you can follow along. Pettigrew, Vance, McKinnon, come see me after class."

They all swap looks. "But Professor, we didn't—"

"Oh, just do it, McKinnon. So you should remember…"

She's losing their attention, though, and Marlene can feel Carol Davies's eyes on them from behind as a familiar ringing fills her ears—Greta Catchlove and Veronica Smethley must have cast Muffliato to gossip. Hardly fifteen minutes pass before she hears a pounding at the door over the music, shortly followed by the arrival of not Professor McGonagall but Dorcas Meadowes.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, Professor Shafiq, but I need to see Marlene McKinnon, Emmeline Vance, and Peter Pettigrew," she says breathlessly. She looks haggard, her blonde hair frizzy and flying out in all directions. Behind her, James waves brightly at the class; then Sirius punches him lightly in the shoulder and gives Marlene and Peter a wide-eyed look. Behind them, the rest of the Gryffindor sixth years are standing in a huddle.

"Go right ahead, Miss Meadowes," Shafiq tells her, and with that, Peter and Marlene scramble to their feet.

"Bring your things," says Meadowes, and they do so, now starting to feel a bit nervous.

They meet her in the corridor, and she wordlessly leads them into the nearest empty classroom, latching the door behind them as they enter and perching herself on top of the professor's desk, ankles crossed. "You're the ones doing it, aren't you?" she asks. She's speaking normally, but it's still hard to hear her over the bellow of the chorus.

"I keep telling McGonagall, we don't have anything—"

"Relax, Potter, I'm not planning on ratting you out to her. I want in."

"You—what?" says Mary.

"I think it's brilliant," says Meadows, smiling. "Organizing students to action and giving blood politics an immediacy in their everyday interactions? I've been doing what I can from the Head Girl post, but inter-house prefect rounds and more double classes for the first years only does so much. I love it."

"But you're—you're a pureblood," Sirius stammers.

"So are you, and the Meadoweses aren't even one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight like the Blacks are—even if my grandparents have been clamoring to be added since the thirties when the genealogy came out."

"And a Slytherin!"

"Isn't the whole point of this charade that your house doesn't have to dictate your loyalties? I'd have expected better from you, Black."

Sirius is shaking his head in disbelief, fists clenched tight. Marlene breathes a little easier. "So say we are the ones doing it," Alice says, and all eyes flicker to her. "Why approach us now about it? Why not when it first started?"

"I wanted to be sure it wasn't just some ruse of yours, that you were actually looking to take action," says Meadowes. "And I don't think you lot would be taking this risky of measures to get your point across if you didn't want to go somewhere with it. I take it McGonagall doesn't want to let you fight?"

"She seems supportive of the—perpetrators—so far, but from the sounds of it, she and Dumbledore don't want it going farther than awareness with the students," Peter hedges.

"Well, I do. Awareness is an important first step, but sitting in a circle bitching about politics only gets you so far. The murders aren't going to wait until after we graduate, so neither should we. And you can drop the pretenses, all right? I need the secrecy as much as you do—I can't have Dumbledore knowing I'm involved with an underground movement to mobilize, or Kingsley either, for that matter. Maybe he could be persuaded someday, but I don't see him changing his mind as long as he's on the Auror track. I know it's you nine; you don't have to dance around that."

Lily asks, "What can we do now, though? As long as nobody wants us fighting, we don't exactly have access to the information we'd need to—"

"We can get access. I mean, I know how to get you access, and you probably would, too, if you thought hard enough about it," says Meadowes. Sirius raises his eyebrows. "Oh, come on; you're a pureblood, aren't you, so I'm sure you know how to get underground. I have a few contacts who trust my surname."

"So what are you saying, exactly?" says Remus slowly.

She smirks and hops off the desk, seizing hold of a piece of chalk and raising it to the board, despite its protests. "How do you feel about counter-terrorism?"

xx

The Ravenclaw common room is only sparsely occupied, most students probably still lazing around upstairs in their pajamas and drawing their curtains against the sun and its irony, so she's careful to lower her voice so it won't carry in the stillness. Flitwick expects to sort the common room passwords out by tonight, as he announced at breakfast, but Marlene is considering asking Alice to reset them herself after curfew if he hasn't gotten it resolved by then. Cramming every sixth year girl in the school into Dana Madley's dormitory to sleep is getting exhausting, and the inter-house unity message is starting to wear off, now that the whole castle has been waking in the mornings with sore backs and crusty eyes. "Have you heard anything else from Dorcas Meadowes?"

Shaking his head, Sirius answers, "No, not since Friday. She waved hello this morning on her way down to breakfast, but she hasn't come to talk properly at all. Probably giving it a few days to sink in."

"And how's it sinking?"

For once, the rigidity fades from his brow when he looks at her, not the other way around. "Heavy," he says. "It's—a lot, Marlene, what she's suggesting. And how well do we even know this girl? Can we trust her? She's a bloody Meadowes—"

"You're a Black," she reminds him, and he gapes for a moment.

"Yeah, well, she hasn't exactly been burned off her family tree, has she? Just because she says she wants to use her connections against them doesn't mean she's playing them and not us."

"All right, so how could she use this against us if we agree?"

A horrible brightness comes into his eyes, upturn upon his lips, and he lists off, "Framing us for crimes she plans and erasing any evidence that ties her to them. Giving false information so that we're accidentally injuring our side instead of hers. Setting us up to get us unwittingly killed—"

"Right," says Marlene, not wanting to realize that a witch her age could be capable of murder, remembering Regulus Black. "Right. So we still keep ourselves out of it so she thinks it's just you four—give her as little information as possible—and—what else? Talk to Fabian?"

"And get another person close to her involved? Really, given the circumstances, you think that's a good idea? How do you know he won't just turn around and report back to her—"

"We don't. We can't, but we're going to have to give a little to find anything out about her, aren't we?"

"Yeah. Yeah, okay, maybe, but we shouldn't move too fast with this."

Marlene concedes, "Of course. What exactly was she suggesting again?"

"Tracking down meetings of Death Eaters or their minions and attacking them, basically. She sounded about ready to terrorize any gathering of purebloods she could find, and much as I wish it was that simple…"

"Not all pureblood families are necessarily Dark sympathizers," she supplies, thinking of the Potters, of her mum and Neil and her siblings.

xx

After the common room incident, the trouble is that they can't think of a way to top what they've already managed to pull off—at least, until Mary suggests that they go legit. "I was thinking we might want to do something more personal than just more pranks, you know? Something less—less theatrical and more serious. If we keep hiding behind secrecy and anonymity, we're sending other people the message that they shouldn't be talking about these things in public, when really, we ought to be talking about the war and pureblood supremacy in public as much as we can."

They're up in the girls' dormitory, just Alice and Marlene and Mary, while Lily's out with James and Emmeline is who knows where—with Peter, probably. "So what are you suggesting?" says Alice curiously. "That we—because we can't just go up to the High Table and make speeches in the Great Hall about this."

Shrugging, Mary replies, "I was thinking we might want to found a student org—you know, we could advertise it on the bulletins in the common rooms and meet… somewhere. Get permission to use an empty classroom or something. But we could start each meeting with a news overview and then, you know, have discussion topics or something, encourage people to share their experiences. It might really open people's eyes to what Muggle-borns go through every day, and it'd be all above board."

They originally plan to reserve a classroom to hold their first meeting in, but as word buzzes around the castle about the group—War Stories, as they're calling it—and they hear more and more about people interested in coming, they end up talking to Professor McGonagall about using the Great Hall. It's not jam-packed when Marlene and Sirius walk in, but it's maybe at twenty-percent capacity, which is still pretty impressive and big enough that it's hard to hear much of anything over the chatter.

Marlene tugs on Sirius's hand and leads him over to the Gryffindor table, where they grab seats next to Remus and James. They've been sitting there for maybe five minutes, Marlene holding Sirius's hand under the table, when she hears Mary yell from the end of the table, "Oi!" and then give a searing whistle.

Talk from all sides dies down at once. "Thanks everyone for coming to our first meeting," says Mary, a little quieter now that she has everyone's attention. She stands up, as do Lily and Peter—they'd all agreed it made the most sense for the Muggle-borns to run the meeting. "I'm Mary Macdonald, and this is Lily Evans and Peter Pettigrew. For those of you who don't know us, we're all sixth years from Gryffindor."

Lily nods, tucking her hair behind her ear. "We know everyone here has been affected by the recent anonymous pranks around the castle—" a few people snigger, obviously thinking (correctly) that they're the ones behind the pranks in the first place, but Lily ignores this "—and we wanted to take advantage of that momentum to get people talking about blood status and how we've all been affected by the war. We want everybody to come over here to the Gryffindor table: there's no need for us to stand divided today. Is there room?—can we fit everyone?"

Slowly, the students sitting at the other tables make their way over to the Gryffindor table and grab seats.

"Great," says Peter, leaning on the table. "Now, we want everyone to stand up right where they're sitting. Great. So we made this list today," continues Peter, pulling out a sheaf of parchment and waving it for a second. "We have here a list of statements that may or may not apply to you. The first time we read out a statement that has never been true of you and your life, we want you to sit down. Are we ready? Yeah? All right. First statement is, I have never lied about my blood status to others."

Lily is the first to sit down, followed hesitantly by about a third of the people at the table. After a moment's panic, Marlene decides to stay standing, hating herself, hating Mum and Neil and Doc and everyone who ever forced her into this lie.

Mary continues, "I have never been called an insult based on my blood purity." A few more people sit. "I have never worried about being denied a job, position, or role important to me because of my blood purity," adds Lily. More follow.

"I have never been asked to speak on behalf of everyone of my blood status. I have never heard people of my blood purity spoken about as a voting bloc in Ministry elections. I have never had to ask for more information about a past wizarding event that someone brings up in conversation. I have never been told that I am smart or good or worthy 'for someone of my blood status.'"

They keep going for something like twenty more items, and by the end of it, a good half of the room has sat down—has been sitting down since at least the second or third statement. "So the purpose of this exercise," says Mary, "has been to highlight for those of us who are pureblood or half-blood some of the challenges that we don't have to face because of our blood status. Lily was going to kick off a discussion about the exercise—everyone can sit down, by the way—"

On the whole, Lily, Peter, and Mary do a great job mediating the discussion, then facilitating the opportunity for people of all blood statuses to share their experiences. Through the whole meeting, though, Marlene's distracted by what a lying liar she feels like. Here she is, trying to act like a role model for the rest of the students when she can't even be honest that she's a half-blood—that her "father" isn't really her father. For her to insult Doc like this after he took her in last summer, after she thought she'd come so close to losing him altogether in September…

It all goes smoothly until they come up on the topic of Minister of Magic Harold Minchum's recent order to station even more dementors at Azkaban. "How does that even work logistically?" snickers Pol Patil, a Ravenclaw in Marlene's year whom she's always considered to be a bit of an arsehole. "I'm not saying the dementors would refuse to breed more of themselves if the Ministry asked them to, but how have we gone all this time without them replicating exponentially to begin with? Azkaban's got to be perfect breeding grounds for the things."

"It begs the question," says Elisabeth Clearwater, a Hufflepuff, "whether the Ministry has ever had as much control over the dementors as they make out like they do. They're Dark creatures. Are we really supposed to believe the Ministry could overpower them if they acted out of line?"

"Can we just talk for a second about the fact that the Ministry has dementors running Azkaban at all?" says somebody Marlene recognizes as a member of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team. "I can understand it for Death Eaters, but anybody with a prison sentence for any crime has to be trapped with those things for months or even years. You're supposed to not be able to feel anything happy the whole time you're around them, are you? Does anybody really deserve to be stripped of their ability to feel happy just because of something like—like tax evasion or theft or Muggle-baiting?"

There's an outbreak of muttering. A couple seats down from Mary, her boyfriend, Reginald Cattermole, pipes up, "That's completely fair—but I think we need to take it a step further. How many of us are okay with even Death Eaters having to live with dementors?"

Surprised, Marlene shifts in her seat to face him. "You're not? But—they're Death Eaters. If anybody deserves to never be happy again—"

"There's no such thing as evil people," Cattermole insists. "I'm not saying they shouldn't be locked away where they can't hurt anybody anymore—but Azkaban should be about protecting innocent people from others who can't be trusted, not about punishment. Even if it were about punishment, isn't it enough to take away somebody's freedom? Is it really our place to make them—"

"You're mental," says Sirius, shaking his head vehemently. "Look, I'm with Mitchell. I don't think anybody ought to be forced to be close to dementors for a misdemeanor, but Death Eaters—how can you say they're not evil? How many people do you know personally who've had loved ones tortured and killed for sport by them? Everybody here knows someone. How can you look us all in the face and say—?"

"Cattermole's right," says Emmeline.

Muttering had broken out, but it dies down as everybody looks at Em. Sirius's eyes are popping. "Em, you—? How can you say—?"

"I'm not saying the Death Eaters don't sicken me," she whispers. "They do. They deserve horrible things, and I, of all people… but nobody should be alone in their head with their guilt and sadness and regret. Nobody should live with their worst fears and memories constantly on a loop. Do you hear me? Nobody."

Emmeline, who by this time is visibly shaking, doesn't speak again for the rest of the meeting. Marlene makes a mental note to ask her about this outburst later, but by the time the meeting lets out, she's forgotten all about it.

At first.

In fairness to Emmeline, her plan probably would have worked if Marlene's sister Maggie hadn't had a head cold keeping her awake and stepped into the communal showers at two in the morning to try to clear up some of her congestion. Marlene doesn't know any of this until after the fact, of course. From her perspective, everything seems normal until the next morning, when Em doesn't show for breakfast or classes. Marlene and Mary skive off classes in the afternoon to look for her—Marlene asks Lily first, but Lily is aghast at the idea of cutting—and it's not until then that they discover that Emmeline's ripped open the veins in her arms and is clinging to life in a bed in the Hospital Wing.

Marlene feels like an awful, wretched, sickening person for not having noticed that somebody who's supposed to be one of her best friends in the world was apparently suicidal—but it's Peter and Sirius who have the biggest reactions. Peter, of course, makes sense: he's been the closest person to Emmeline since November, when they snogged the living daylights out of each other in front of the entirety of Gryffindor House. (Marlene still doesn't quite know what the deal is—they keep claiming they're not dating, but they've been almost inseparable ever since.)

Sirius, on the other hand—he and Emmeline were close for a long time, but that hasn't been true for a couple of years. He won't say much about it when Marlene approaches him—in fact, she can hardly tear him away from Em's bedside, where he and Peter basically take up permanent residence. "She said goodbye to me," Sirius croaks when Marlene finally does get him alone in the Hospital Wing, where she brings him dinner. "She told me she still cares about me and wants me to be happy and is grateful that I was the first best friend she ever had, and like an idiot, I didn't recognize it for what it was. I thought she was turning a corner—that I might finally be getting my friend back—and then…"

"For what it's worth," mumbles Marlene, "I feel like an idiot, too. All this time, I thought she just—not that she hated us, she wouldn't have kept hanging around us if she hated us, but I thought she'd stopped caring. It didn't once occur to me that she may have been acting so closed off because she was depressed."

It's pure chance that they all happen to be in the Hospital Wing when Em finally does wake up. It's a Saturday morning; Peter and Sirius skipped breakfast to come down here, and Marlene and the others arrive to join them just minutes before Emmeline opens her eyes. Peter, who is sitting at the foot of his bed by her feet, is the first to notice her legs rustling, and he's on her in a flash. "Emmeline Vance, you piece of shit. You complete trash. How dare you! How dare you make me think you're feeling better and then go and—go and—"

"I wasn't trying to hurt you," she croaks, and Peter scoffs. Everybody has stopped their side conversations and has come over to hover by Emmeline's head. "I couldn't tell you what I was planning on doing because then you would have stopped me."

"Of course I would have! And I should have! I should have known—how could you put that guilt on me for being with you the whole time and not realizing—!"

"I couldn't see the point of going on anymore. Everything got so painful or discouraging or—even boring. I thought it was going to go on like that for the rest of my life," says Em weakly.

"Cut her some slack," murmurs Lily. "How Em feels is the problem here, not how anything she did or tried to do affects anybody else."

"You could have told somebody," Peter goes on. "I mean, I knew you were struggling, but you could have told me—anyone—how bad they were getting."

"And what would you have done? Told Madam Pomfrey? Gotten me locked up in one of those mental wards in St. Mungo's?"

Everybody else exchanges significant looks, which just makes Emmeline feel even more frustrated. "What?"

It's Remus who answers, looking haggard. "Madam Pomfrey says that's where you're going," he mutters, "now that you've woken up. She's taking you over there as soon as she gives you a clean bill of health."

"Great," mutters Em. "Just great."

Nobody points out that Em brought this on herself with her own actions, even though Marlene, at least, is thinking it. Instead, she just reaches down to squeeze Emmeline's shoulder and sighs.

Em seems a little overwhelmed by having everyone there with her, so they take it in turns. Peter stays with her for a few hours first, then Sirius, then Lily—and then it's Marlene's turn on Sunday evening. It's late, but Em insists that she doesn't want to sleep, claiming she's been having nightmares ever since—doing what she did. "Well," says Marlene, "if you don't want to try and sleep, we may as well find a game or something to play to pass the time."

Emmeline shrugs in the dark. "Yeah, okay. Something like what?"

Marlene raises her eyebrows. "Have you ever played Truth or Dare?"

Em looks like she can't believe her life right now. "Everyone knows how to play Truth or Dare, Marlene," she says, sounding cross.

"Great, then I don't have to explain the rules."

"It's not like I can even do any dares in here. I'm stuck in the Hospital Wing. What can we even dare each other to do in here? Transfigure Madam Pomfrey's belongings?"

"Okay, then we'll play a game of truth, no dare. You can go first, if you want."

She's rolling her eyes, but Emmeline seems willing enough to play along. "Okay, fine. Um… how many people have you kissed before?"

"That's easy," shrugs Marlene. "Just one—just Sirius. Okay, so my turn next…"

She planning to start with a few easy questions before dipping into any territory that might make Em uncomfortable, but if somebody did that to Marlene, she'd probably be frustrated with them for lulling her into a false sense of security. "If you had died this week," she asks finally, "what would you regret the most?"

Emmelie's smile slips off her face like tree sap. "If I had died this week, I wouldn't have any regrets because I'd be dead."

"Okay, then, before you slit your wrists, what was your biggest regret in that moment?"

Emmeline glares at her. "Pass."

"No, I mean it. I really want to know. I want to understand what you're going through so that I can help you."

"My biggest regret would have been disappointing my sister and disappointing Peter. The two of them tried the hardest to help me, and if I had died, I would have been letting them down."

"Then why try anyway?"

"That's two questions," Emmeline repeats.

"Em, please."

Em pushes herself up into a sitting position. "Just because I appreciate that they tried doesn't mean that it was working. I didn't want to suffer anymore. I still don't. Is that so hard to understand? Because if anybody had any empathy for that, you wouldn't be playing bullshit games trying to get me to talk about it. I tried to kill myself. I wish it had worked. It is what it is."

"Emmeline—"

"You're not going to give me the dignity of getting away from you and being alone, are you?"

Marlene chews on her lip. She doesn't want Em to be alone in the Hospital Wing before she has to go to St. Mungo's. None of them does. "Madam Pomfrey says it'll be time soon. I can go and get everybody else so we can all say goodbye, if you want."

"Yeah. That sounds best."

It doesn't take long for Marlene to round up the rest of the Gryffindors, and it's not long after they all traipse back downstairs that Madam Pomfrey gives Emmeline a final check-up, then a moment to say her goodbyes. For a moment, nobody says anything, and then Peter wraps her in a huge hug and whispers, "We'll see you again soon, all right? This isn't goodbye for good."

"We'll figure out how to visit," Lily promises. "Does the psych floor have a visitation policy? We'll sort it out."

"We'll write every day," says James.

"We all love you, Em. Don't forget that, okay?" says Marlene.

And then Emmeline and Sirius are looking at each other. Marlene can't at all read their expressions or figure out what silent dialogue is going on between them, but Sirius says, "I won't forget you," and Em gives him what looks like a real smile.

Madam Pomfrey hold up a broken quill. "We'll travel by Portkey," he says. "I'll be with you as far into the admissions process as I can."

Em is still shaking when she touches the quill, her fingers brushing against Madam Pomfrey's, and then they are gone.