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Five days.
He’d been talking to Tonks in the drawing room when it happened. They’d been sat on the sofa, Tonks traced her finger over her mother’s burn mark and grinned. Sirius understood why, his mother had thought it was a punishment…like they wanted to be a part of her pure-blood mania. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Marlene.
She was sitting in the arm chair, laughing along with Tonks, her long legs folded underneath her. So solid looking that she had to be there. Sirius snapped his head right round to see her properly but she was gone.
“Sirius? What’s wrong?” Tonks asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
No, not a ghost. He knew what ghosts looked like and that wasn’t it. She hadn’t been transparent.
“Nothing.” Sirius said, his heart pounding against his ribs. He needed a drink.
Four days.
He had told himself that he’d been hallucinating. He’d hardly been sane when he’d arrived back at this house, and the place had been chipping away at the fraction of sanity that he’d had left. He welcomed it. If it meant he could see her again, then he welcomed insanity.
He did see her again. As he was leaving his mother’s bedroom, he saw her turning the corner at the top of the stairs. He bolted after her, tripping up them as he ran. She pushed open the door to his bedroom but when he burst through the doorway she was gone. He kicked the leg of the bed in frustration and swore loudly at the pain in his toe.
Three days.
Marlene was sat on the window seat in his bedroom, as she had done on that sunny morning so many years ago, looking down at the square below. He didn’t dare breathe, he didn’t dare think.
Except…rage began to bubble in the pit of his stomach. A horrible, cruel, irrational anger.
“Get out.” He hissed, unable to stop himself. Marlene turned her beautiful face, her eyes sad, hurt. “You left.” His mouth seemed to have completely divorced itself from his brain now. He knew it wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t chosen to leave him, she had been murdered; ripped, viciously, from the world — from their future. “Send Lily or James next time. I’ve got a few things to say to them too….I don’t understand why you’re here!” He blinked, and she had gone. Leaving him with nothing but a sick, gnawing shame.
Two days.
Sirius drained his glass of Firewiskey in one and sat down on the drawing room sofa. “Come on, Marley.” He whispered. He was going to see her again, he could feel it in his soul. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, sure enough, she was sat beside him. Slowly, ever so slowly, he turned his head to look at her properly.
She didn’t disappear. She was smiling at him. As young and beautiful as he remembered her.
“Marlene.” He breathed. He didn’t deserve for her to be here, not after yesterday. She didn’t say anything. “I’m sorry.” What ever this was, whatever she was, he knew that she couldn’t speak. “I miss you, so much.” He choked. His throat was unbearably tight. “I’m so sorry, I should have been there, I should have stopped it.” He wanted to reach out and touch her but he was sure that she would disappear. His eyes flicked down to her stomach but it was too painful, his heart was shattering all over again. He wrenched his gaze back up to hers. “My whole world ended in nineteen-eighty-one.” He whispered, hot tears rolling down his cheeks. “I can’t breathe anymore.”
He watched her for a while, he’d spend the rest of his miserable life sat here looking at Marlene McKinnon. “What are you? The Ghost of Christmas Past…it’s June, Marls.” He grinned. “Yeah, I’ve been reading, a lot, you’ll be pleased to hear. Remus has been bringing me books. It’s not like I can do anything else. I re-read Wuthering Heights; I still don't see what you saw in it, I still think they’re terrible people…but some of it hit me a lot harder than it did when I was fifteen. I’d have gladly buried myself with you…but our friends wouldn’t let me.”
There was so much he wanted to say, so much that he wanted to confess to her...like how all but a handful of people believed him to be a villain. She would hate that if she was alive; hate that his name had been ruined, that people didn't believe him. Marley would be writing furious letters to the Prophet defending his honour. Her belief that he was a good man had been stronger than anything that he had ever known. "I didn't do what they think I did, surely you must know that I couldn't...for one thing I'm apparently a," he tried to remember the wording of the article, "singing sensation...who was on a date with a woman called Doris Purkiss at the time." He smirked. Forget not being able to sing, like he'd been going on dates after Marlene had...
He reached up to touch her face, he couldn’t help himself. But as he did, Remus called his name from the landing. Marlene vanished. Sirius let out a scream of anguish and threw his glass across the room, it shattered against the doorframe, missing Remus’s head by a fraction.
One day.
It was the kitchen this time.
He’d been just about to pour himself a drink, when there she was, standing at the other end of the long table. He recognised the dress she was wearing now…it had been the one she’d worn to James and Lily’s wedding. Is that what Remus had chosen to bury her in? The casket was closed by the time he’d sobered up enough to get to the funeral. He’d have to ask next time he saw him.
Sirius was sure, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he could hear the song they always danced to. He got to his feet. He was going to dance with her now, he just had to believe hard enough in his own madness.
Crossing the room, he tried to remember the feel of her skin underneath his, the way her hand felt when she placed it in his grasp.
When he took her in his arms, she didn’t disappear. He could almost feel her hand in his. He could almost feel the silk of her dress beneath his fingers. The room blurred with unshed tears as they moved.
“Sirius, what are you doing?”
Marlene vanished.
Sirius grabbed hold of the kitchen table, sure his knees might buckle.
“Nothing.” He muttered.
“You were dancing with yourself…” Remus said, his eyes falling on the bottle on the table. Sirius was sober, not that Moony would believe him.
“What did you bury Marlene in?” He asked. Remus looked taken aback by the question.
“The dress she wore to Lily and James’s wedding…Sirius?”
“Yeah.” He said, stopping at the kitchen door.
“Why did you never tell me that you were going to be a father?” Remus asked. The question gutted him. It wasn’t the question itself that was the problem, of course, it was just that he’d not been expecting it.
“Because Marlene died.” He shrugged, trying to pretend that it wasn’t killing him. Trying to pretend that he hadn’t also died that night. He closed the door on Remus and climbed the stairs. He wanted to be alone.
The last day.
Sirius heard an agonised squawk from upstairs. He ran, skidding around each corner on his way up. He pushed open the bedroom door. Buckbeak was holding himself awkwardly, the feathers of one of his wings covered in blood. What on earth had he done to himself?
Sirius bowed low, and waited impatiently. Buckbeak bowed back and he hurried forwards. Sirius ran his hands along the wing, when he reached the gash the hippogriff snapped warningly at the side of his face. “I’m sorry.” He whispered.
It took him a long time to clean and dress the wound, Buckbeak was a very uncooperative patient. “All done.” He whispered, stroking his hand over his beak. He saw Marlene in the mirror behind the hippogriff and flew backwards into the chest of draws. Buckbeak flapped his wings in shock, rearing up on to his hind legs. Sirius darted forwards to try and calm him with shaking hands. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He breathed. His heart was pounding. That had not been Marlene as he had been seeing her for the last few days.
Sirius crossed to the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. Gritting his teeth he looked up into the mirror. There she was, stood behind him in the reflection. Marlene’s skin was grey, sallow, decaying. Her eyes were glassy, dead. Her once beautiful blonde hair was patchy and limp. The dress hung, tattered and frayed, off one shoulder. Her cracked lips parted and she let out a rattling gasp. She was trying to speak but no words came out. She tried again.
“Harry.” She eventually uttered, her voice nothing more than a faint, hoarse whisper. Sirius blinked, and she was gone.
Remus had tried to stop him going to the Department of Mysteries, tried to talk him out of it. But he must have known that he’d been fighting a losing battle; he had offered his arm for them to apparate. Sirius hadn’t trusted himself to do so since before Azkaban, he wasn’t sure he could even remember how anymore. As they hurtled through the corridors Sirius could see Marlene, hovering at the edge of his peripheral vision. Watching him. He didn’t have time to think about that now though. Harry had gone to the Department of Mysteries, he’d walked right into a trap. He couldn’t bear the thought of coming across his body…the way he had Lily’s, James’s, Marlene’s. He couldn’t lose Harry too.
He had one job in the world and he had failed at it over and over.
Harry was in danger again.
Sirius burst through a door and there Harry was, face to face with Lucius Malfoy. At least he was still alive.
It was chaos.
He watched as Dolohov loomed over Harry and Sirius ran, ramming into him. Dolohov mercifully turned on him instead. Frankly, Marlene would’ve been very impressed with his duelling, especially given how out of practice he was.
Sirius grabbed the back of Harry’s neck and forced his head down, out of the way of a spell. This was too dangerous. “I want you to get out—” Sirius saw, through the green light that narrowly missed his face, that Marlene was still watching him.
Harry.
Tonks tumbled down the steps as Bellatrix charged in their direction, cackling. “Harry, take the prophecy, grab Neville and run!”
Sirius dived to meet Bellatrix, hoping desperately that Tonks was okay. He shot spell after spell at her, pouring every vengeful thought he had at this woman who had caused so much pain and still had the nerve to call him cousin.
He ducked her stunning spell and laughed. Taunting her. The next jet of light made contact. He stepped backwards.
Now he understood.