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Harry wouldn’t stop crying.
It was two in the morning and they were out of coffee and Dumbledore was still trying to convince them to send Harry back to the Dursleys and Remus wasn’t responding to any of their letters and Harry wouldn’t stop crying.
Dorcas would be able to handle it, Marlene thought as she desperately bounced the screaming toddler in her arms. Dorcas or Remus or James or Lily or Si-
Marlene let out a wretched sob.
She placed Harry down in his cot carefully, as if he were made of porcelain and if she was too rough the lightning bolt scar on his forehead would spread like cracked glass displaying exactly how inadequate Marlene was. Slamming the door behind her wasn’t enough to block out Harry’s cries as she choked on her tears.
Merlin, how pathetic was she? Bawling like a baby when there was an actual baby who needed her.
Marlene had never wanted to be a mother. It just had never been something that she saw in her future - in a personal choice way, not a divination way; Merlin knows she had been hopeless in that class. And she’d been happy with that decision, content to be the cool Aunt Marlene to Harry and any kids that followed. Auntie Marlene, who would stop by with pockets full of Honeydukes sweets to whisk them away on a day out full of adventures and conspiratorial whispers of “don’t tell your parents.”
But when James and Lily had died, when little baby Harry was all that was left of some of her dearest friends. When Peter was dead and Sirius was a traitor and Remus had been wallowing in his misery…
Well… there had never really been any other option, had there?
Marlene and Dorcas. Her Dorcas, the amazing, beautiful, perfect love of her life. They had been inseparable for years, fitting together like jigsaw pieces. So it shouldn’t be hard now, right? They should be able to weather this, just like they’d survived everything else.
And yet…
Dorcas flourished, quickly becoming Harry’s favourite person. She seemed to take to motherhood as easily as a hippogriff to flight, while Marlene drowned. Harry’s shrieks grated against her ears, his sticky, grasping fingers made her shudder. Marlene loved him, truly, she did. But some days, it was all she could do not to fly away as fast as she could from the two people she loved most in the world.
Marlene sighed, wiping away her tears. This was yet another thing she had to be strong for, that she couldn’t back out of. She had no time to despair or complain or mourn. Her job was to support and to protect, just as it always had been.
She walked back to the child that wasn’t hers, to fail to be the mother she had never asked to be but that Harry would always deserve.