Chapter Text
1.
The first time was in third year. He stood among his housemates and watched her stand as tall as she could possibly stand in the dimly lit corridor, shoulders squared and glaring down the much taller sixth year who stared right back with a cocky smirk painted across her face. The paintings lining the walls murmured their disapproval but none made any move to alert a teacher (because the paintings of Hogwarts loved a good duel just as much as the students did, they were just less apt to admit to it).
At the spoken command, the two girls raised their wands in unison and Marlene’s fifth year prefect brother spouted off the rules before he counted down from ten and jumped out of the crossfire.
Before the older girl could finish shouting out a babbling curse Marlene’s sharp voice rang through the corridor.
“Stupefy!”
The sixth year blinked for a moment in surprise but a moment was enough for Marlene and suddenly the little girl burst forward with the energy of a coiled spring. One by one, every spell and hex she’d learned to that point spilled forth from her wand each with a practiced flick and he cheers rose among the gathered students as the little third year clearly gained the upper hand against her opponent—until she fell to a dead stop less than an arms length away.
She watched the older girl pick herself up off the dusty floor and rub her tailbone where she’d fallen—her grip on her wand tightened. “Well don’t hold back on me now,” she barked.
Her senior merely smiled that wicked, condescending smile in response and in the time it took her eyes to narrow, Marlene’s wand was knocked from her hand in a wordless command and her feet flew back, seemingly of their own accord. The girl’s knees cracked to the ground at her original spot and with a few more casted commands, she fell over in a mess of laughter, twitching as the tickling charm wracked her body.
Heels clicked against the stone in the silent hall.
The sixth year approached slowly, watching the effects of her victory with that unwavering smirk and she towered over the younger girl and used her toe to flip her onto her side and look down at her face.
“You’ll never beat me, Marls.”
Marlene groaned through her laughter as her opponent crouched down to say something quieter to her, something the onlookers weren’t privy to but that made Marlene’s face screw furiously. With shaking limbs, the little girl lashed forward and yanked the other girl’s wand out of her hand and whipped her arm to point at the window behind them.
“Finestra!” The glass shattered around them with a deafening sound and both girls turned their faces from the blast. As the air stilled, no one dared to take a breath.
The older girl wiped a single long finger across her cheek, pulling it back to inspect the pooling red that stained her skin, and she leveled Marlene with a single look. “We had two rules, Marlene. We don’t draw blood and we don’t break anything.”
She whipped her hand out and snatched her wand back. An orange light flashed from the tip of her wand as she rose to her feet and Marlene’s legs stilled against the stone with an audible groan. By the crook of her arm, the older girl pulled her jelly-like body up against her side. The crowd murmured in disappointment at the abrupt end of the duel and a path cleared among the students towards the infirmary.
The strangest thing of all, however, was the stupid grin on Marlene’s face.
“I knocked you down,” She sang, her useless feet dragging against the ground. “I get your room.”
The older girl rolled her eyes. “Yes, you nitwit, you'll get my room. But what’s really important is that you learned your lesson about mouthing off to me in front of everyone.”
Marlene just scoffed. “You’re not mum. You can’t tell me what to do.”
“I knocked you on your arse in front of all your classmates and you’re still arguing with me? You really don’t learn, do you?”
Marlene shook her head exuberantly. “I don’t care if you won—I still knocked down the best duelist in Hogwarts.” Her eyes glinted as the two sisters passed by the group Sirius stood among and he couldn’t help but smile as he heard her parting words—“And it was easy.”
2.
Fifth year, one evening after curfew in the early autumn, he and James were out running about as they often did at night—and especially now, Sirius ran harder than he ever had before, as though he could escape his reality, his family, his past if only he got far enough away.
As he came near the lake, he heard a small sob and found Marlene with her arms wrapped tightly around her legs on the bank.
He approached her timidly (because even though he was a smaller dog at the time, he knew it could be frightening for a strange animal to come out of the darkness with no warning). She looked up and wiped away a tear and welcomed the dog to her arms, sobbing into his shaggy fur as she told the story of her worries and her broken heart, how her eldest sister had been struck fighting dark wizards—an auror like their father was—and while that was nothing new, this time they weren’t sure if she was going to make it. She sobbed as she recalled all the ways her mind convinced her there was something she could have done even though she was only fourteen and definitely lacking the skill set to fight dark wizards on her sister’s behalf, despite how much she yearned to do so. Sirius’s chest knotted and his heart broke for her, wishing he could hold her with his own two arms and wishing even more that that might be what she needed in that moment (but he knew full well that wasn’t the case; the only thing that could mend her heart now would be an owl from St. Mungo’s bearing the words she needed to hear the most).
With the dog cradled in her lap, they remained like that for the greater part of an hour before she pulled a napkin with the rest of a roll from dinner out of her pocket and offered it to the mutt as she made her way back to the castle before the night frost set in.
3.
When he left Grimmauld Place, he didn’t say anything to anyone. James knew, of course, but only after a week of pushing and prying to get the story out of him after Sirius had shown up on his doorstep. The others found out thereafter, though none of them would expressly address the event out of respect for their friend. But even though they kept their silence, word still spread as word was apt to do.
In what felt like no time at all and by the fourth day back, whispers of his name could be heard any time he passed by. A few brave souls approached him to ask about it but Sirius brushed them off with variants of, “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” or “they didn’t suit my style.” Lily was one of the two that he spoke to sincerely on the subject and only after she cornered him in one of the secret passages out of the castle during her nightly rounds.
Marlene on the other hand hadn’t asked a question and she didn’t say a word. She didn’t look at him in pity like some of the teachers did and she didn’t glare at him from across the room like most of the Slytherin table had come to do (sometimes including Regulus, though he did note that more often than not when he met his brother’s eyes, the prevailing colour was hurt and confusion.) No, Marlene didn’t say a word about his family and she didn’t make a joke out of it.
She hugged him. It wasn’t long and it wasn’t short but when they parted, they did so without a word and all he could do was glare at her as she left and wonder when she’d use that moment against him in the time to come.
(She never did. They never spoke of it again.)
4.
Fifth year when he had no friends left, she was still there.
Still Marlene.
She still teased him the same and picked fights with him as always and mocked his pranks the way she did only days before when he had friends to be stupid with him. He’d still run into her, just like any other time, in the tower stairwells beside a window she’d pried open with a cigarette behind her ear and a lit one between her lips—she’d pass the spare to him wordlessly and pull a metal lighter from her pocket before he could ask. She didn’t act differently towards him like Lily did (and he appreciated Lily, of course, but the constancy was a breath of fresh air when he felt like he couldn’t breathe) and when she found him crying alone in the library she denied both that she had any idea what he was talking about—“I never saw you crying”—and that she ever saw him in the library at all—“couldn’t have been you. Do you even know where the library is?”
5.
Sixth year after he joined the team because she said she fancied quidditch players, she kissed him square on the mouth when they won their first match of the year. On the field in front of everyone, she just grabbed him by the face and kissed him before running over to their seeker and scooping the fifth year off her feet in celebration with a strength that both frightened and impressed him.