lapis lazuli
( and 'beauty' is bramblebush of tangled constellations that flutter from firefly pages )

through chaos as it swirls
it's just us against the world

—Us Against the World, Coldplay

|the setting|

There is a secret on the Hogwarts train, but it is not that unknown, for we all know this—that all endings are also beginnings, and child, you are never alone.

|the girl|

She is a fraction, a moiety missing its whole, this shredded, half-hearted butterfly torn out from plates of pages, all thorned edges tearing at mismatched parchment. And even her fractions are fractions, this knotted conglomerate of grinning wolf barbed wire, all bent out of shape and simplified to nothingness. Even then she is falling apart, no longer sticky Spell-o-Tape all peeling off, and in this moment that stretches beyond galaxies, she is crumbling into holocaust clouds of flaked-off skin.

And Marlene does not know how much longer she can stand before the fall.

|act ii|

Her name is Marlene McKinnon, and in both first and last names the word 'love' is present, in the sloppy curve of the a and down by the ceaseless valleys of the ns, encircled once more by the wheel of o, the circle, the loop with no end. Anon. This is what she scribbles on her textbooks, four letters, simplicity held together by the unknown. Herselfishness disappears from 'Marlene McKinnon' and the only thing left, keeling over and breathing its last in the kicked-up dirt, is the I as it stands, straight and tall and proud, a split stem of a wallflower being circled, circled (circle you circle you) by mocking strokes of elaborate flicks of nib and soft bent spine of the letters.

The smooth nib of her feathered quill (constant companion, it is her lungs at which she expels her breathing, this endless need for life) stops in mid-pirouetting leap over the petal-soft, worn old parchment, pointed ballet feet accentuated by the crisp texture of syllables dangling like flashbulb Christmas lights on its artfully flexed toe. Marlene's eyes, strangely chatoyant in the curtain of starlight unrolling down the spindle from heaven, lose themselves in the jumble of vowels and consonants. In her mind the words murmur a heartbeat as they dance on stilted legs, rearranging themselves into her world.

And it is simple, her small, dog-eared world with its lopsided, wire edges and folded-back corners. There is her, I but truly she is an L, slanted slightly in her languorous handwriting, an image of Marlene leaning against margins to hide from the world, feet flat as a sheet of parchment, parallel with her heart and the world, so she never falls.

If she is L than Sirius Black must be a g, put in lowercase for she sees the drowning from vocal cords down to the roots he drags to steady himself to this world. The brief circle on top for his heart, love enveloping everything he cherishes (there's James and Peter and Remus), but then it reaches the start line, and spirals downwards, this out-of-control feeling, downwards like a spring (and it will rebound), love of others (Regulus and Bellatrix and his mother) dotted, lost in-between.

Her g squiggles down the yellow paper, amidst her other literary doodles, lost, the Sirius Black of her world, a single letter malleable by others to form words, and adding on to it, Marlene writes gale (unpredictability, uncontrollability) and zing and gone. Her eyelids slide in sleepiness, as she feels the serenity of the g coiling its tail-curl around her fingers, this feeling of tugging to the world, and the soft sphere stretching up like a calico cat to snuggle against her ear, listen. Listen to the world.

Marlene's fingers trail a path of inked kisses down the margin, her imaginary equator, the gravity that stretches up and hugs her tight.

She is aphelion, and the distance between her and the warmth that holds to every soul in this world is a thousand inked words away, an unreachable dream. And she feels her heart freeze, slowly, as it creeps away from her into winter, the only thin layer of rags that wrap around it being the bleakness and emotionless blanket of knowledge. And it blusters in winter, the thin ice of shame crackling under her (Slytherin! Slytherin! It's shameful!), the lengthy icicles of expectations threading through her veins, and the haze of distant clouds her eyes and numbs her voice and freezes into a thin tightrope of icicles, for the frozen thread of being alive is the only thing that ties her to this world.

"You're still awake?" His voice is quiet; she imagines it as a webbed paw print of emerald ink stenciled onto lined paper, turning paths at perpendiculars. Marlene's fingers glide across the rows of coded dreams, the black of ink and the off-white of blank spaces in between like a spine of piano keys under her hands. Ready to unleash its mellifluous sonnet of literature.

"So are you," she murmurs, half-enclosed in the soft wings of a dream, feathers scrawled into her parchment. The brief exchange lapses into a companionable silence, with the hum-drum of midnight blowing across her cold hands, before she mentions his quietness at arriving.

"It has to do with where you go every night." Her voice slips several octaves, creeping into a pianissimo dynamic, breath of wind on cheek. It is not a question. The young wizard stretches in his chair and does not reply.

She looks at her parchment, and sees the answer etched in the serpentine curl of the S, the sound of it harsh and biting on her tongue (and once she could only speak the tongue of love-lost elegies), the reversed smile of the n, the misplaced, straight stroke in a, like a tear leaking from red eyes hiding behind anger (Marlene knows but she does not say), the p an image of some ingenious spell that projects outwards from a second-hand wand, and the e that prods hard at vengeance.

"You called Lily Evans a Mudblood today," she remarks idly, her inked out ribbon folding and curling into a calligraphic script of L, and it stands for loved. (Marlene idly wonders, like a spoilt child, if she is loved.)

She feels him stiffen beside her, the S unraveling and straightening, ramrod straight that is, no less for him, the hiss at the end punctuated by the slide of his cloak against the back of the chair.

"So?" And he is trying to be brave, but she knows, because the only reason when Severus Snape, the paragon of Slytherin, would talk to her, blood traitor, is when he is shattered and needs someone more shattered than him to feel superior.

(Ironic, then, that she is the same.)

"Mudblood," she murmurs, and it sounds awkward in her mouth, the M too sharp and jagged, a wand bent in strange angles, completely snapped out of shape, the u like an ant's mandible, eager and hungry as it salivates for prey, the d harsh and sloppy against her cheeks, the b crushing her tongue. The l is a sword with its handler's eyes bug-eyed and lusting for destruction in the os, and this time the ellipse of the d hooks around her waist and shackles her to ideals.

M reversed is W for war.

And in the candlelight reflected in the moonlight, her future burns, angular, crisp, sharp, strong A crumbling into millimeters of dreams.

|act xii|

Alphabets whizz back and forth in the air, imaginary dreams they could never hold, only even caught by a moth's flame. And Marlene sees hers, a single moth wavering in a visceral, vague reverie, borne from the candlelight of the green glow.

The cloaked figures stare at her from all angles, the glow of their wands disguised under malevolence. And Marlene meets their gaze fiercely and proudly, even if she is the one sprawled out on the cold stone floor, blood splattered all over skin and hair and clothes, the sound of bones breaking a dissonance in her troubled mind.

Because, for once, she is proud, and not afraid, of the white-blonde of her hair, of the light sprinkling of pale freckles across her nose, the burning light in her blue eyes. She is a McKinnon, and bloody proud of it, dammit.

A Death Eater stands up, the clown mask placed upon his face in advocate of this masquerade. "McKinnon, now, if you tell us the locations of Mary—" And she is broken, but no, shattered wineglasses have sharpened edges.

"I'll sell them out when hell freezes over," she spits out, voice oozing in contempt, and the words rearrange themselves to form blood traitor blood traitor BLOOD TRAITOR, but she knows.

The angered roaring surges up.

"Blood traitor," she murmurs, and it is like so long ago, back in that room where her ideals were shaped, as a child's mouth moves to mimic a war.

"You call us blood traitors, but the truth is your blood's the most soiled of all," she whispers, and the raucous uproar is stopped as the words suspend themselves in the air, hanging by a thin thread, the tips of the letters sharp and straight as swords gleaming with swords, the message stronger than any other curse.

As the truth is.

"Do you know who I am?" she says in that tone that she has heard Bellatrix Lestrange proclaim her blood status to mangled Muggle-borns. "I am Marlene McKinnon. And my blood is purer than any of yours." Her eyes sweep across the room, until she has found the man she is looking for, a boy whose squared shoulders and scrawny frame betray him as barely seventeen. "Look it up. My whole goddamned family tree, if that's what you pathetic little children are obsessing about, all pure-blood. Completely. How many of you can say that?"

It moves like silk on her tongue, pure-blood, petals of an onion that only brings tears (and heartache), the layers unfurling to grasp the peeler's wrist, and at the centre there is nothing but an empty maw that eats everything in sight. And it means nothing, this pointless chopping up of onions, the stabbing at vegetables with blunted forks.

Movement ripples across the crowd, and whispers crumble the surface tension of withered thoughts poured into a chilled glass. A figure bathed in lies and faked ideology stands over her, wand at the ready.

The wand is at the base of her throat. Marlene sees the unfolding of the Big Bang in it, as galaxies spin out of control and nebulae tumble upwards for a ceaseless future, and constellations untangle themselves into literature and fantasized mythologies. She sees different kinds of magic, ones caught between intertwined hands, exchanged laughter, ones found in the dust caught by the sunlight.

"And you called her a Mudblood," she whispers (because it has always been a lie). And in the split second, she snatches the wand from the trembling hand and Disapparates, letting the comforting darkness slide over her thoughts.

Because this is no longer their battle together (if she was ever caught in the disillusionment of the us).

This is his. This is Severus' fight against the world and the one thing keeping him rooted to it—himself.

|act viii|

Andromeda Black—two singular words, bound by an obligation of respect, as is the owner. Marlene carves the name into the air, before she lets it fall.

The A is a weaponry, an angular bow emptied of poison arrows, that merely shifts against the air, turning its bottle nose to the very ground it impales itself upon, an Epicurean's crossed grave. The n is a twisted right hook, pinning a scarecrow to ceaseless ladders constructed from bones. d stomps out a trail of once-innocent baby's footprints, printing nostalgia on skin, in a winding path of broken gravel and childhood ideals. r bows its head to its inescapable fate, personified in the form of an irony, submission drawn out of the bent neck. os curl around each other, trailing a linked literary chain across bodies. The meda cannot quite be placed. And the Black permeates the taste of air in lungs, a festering swarm of flies that feed on rotten ideals.

Marlene observes through the mirror—this telepsychola theatric. Watches the torturous words wind their way into her mind, the unreachable labyrinth in the sky. In the dark, the Black princess looks strangely vulnerable, as though a soft-edged consonant could set fire to her, soft edges curling flames.

But as the silvery bracelet of fiery wisp sputters out from the wand tip and loops around her wrist like a shackle, Marlene locks her gaze with Andromeda's grey eyes that pierce the deception (and we all know lying to yourself is the highest form of deception), and all that is reflected is the plastic planetarium, with dissolving pillars of nebulae shooting up clouded burns, helium and gas spinning, unraveling a knotted ball of intangible ribbons; and Denebola shimmering with its wavering luminosity, as are their loyalties.

"Do you swear," and the you rearranges itself into an I, her voice distant in a strange elision, outside any point of orbit, frigid and cold as war in December in comparison to the monotone of the varied murmurs falling as acid rain, "to serve our Dark Lord, to purge this world of Mudbloods and filthy Muggles and blood-traitors."

There is no upwards inflection; no indication of the statement being a question—for it is not. It is merely a formality; they all know the ball has long been set rolling.

"Yes," Marlene concedes, the Y of her bent elbow prominent with every Dark curse she casts, the e stretching out in an infinite, ceaseless path of digits, ricocheting to the heavens like a reversed meteor, transcending logic and limits and spinning out of reach like her life, the s twists and knots itself around her limbs like a cyst, dark puppet strings extending from her own body that is roughly jerked around by unseen hands.

"Then let us initiate the ritual." A cloaked figure rises from his throne of bones and throats bloodied from screams. His voice is high and cold and wields authority, fear.

And her innocence is burned on papyrus skin, burned by the falling of a screaming star.

|act iv|

On the day of her graduation, Marlene sprits perfume on her skin, but it does not cover up the smell of blood and tar. Her skin crawls as though a thousand red ants are diving in and out of her pores. She hums as she buttons up her uniform, neat and tidy, pretending, because no, Dumbledore, please let me stay, but she cannot, she has to move forward. She has to, in a world about to be ridden with the falling marble columns of war, by the noxious fume of rotting bodies and futures.

But when her fingertips skim the precious luster of the polished mirror back from home, so long ago, she wants to shatter it, pull the once upon a time, laughing girl from back then, who believed in the healing power of chocolate and her parents' hugs, who believed that nothing would hurt her.

And just for today, in bitter commemoration of the death of blissful naïveté, she embrocates cherry pink lip-gloss that shines in the light on her white, unsmiling lips, and brushes her eyelashes with the dramatic flair of blue mascara. For good measure, she swirls chunks of milk chocolate buttons around in her mouth with the Firewhisky.

(Because she is an adult now.)

They sit on their chairs, some with ankles crossed, skirts folded demurely, or perhaps pants neat and pressed creaseless, each face a visage of pure ice (the pure-bloods), or grinning and laughing and chattering excitedly, a million flicking of forked tongues against the clicking of metal teeth, opinions sheathed by a callous laugh or a carefully upturned finger in an obscene gesture (the Muggle-borns) or blatant outrage directed at those clothed in green and silver while slouching lazily, pretending they know the real world (blood-traitors and half-bloods). The partition is clear to anyone less than a keen observer, only half-heartedly shielded by the rumour mill of rumours, and the excuses of 'isn't it normal?' uncurled by simultaneous hungry tongues and who said you do not understand politics at age eleven?

Unhurried thoughts float through her mind as her casual glimpses reveal the coming of war. She hardly hears the professor calling her name, but stands up and makes her way to the electrocuted podium anyway, dragging her feet until she is next to Gideon Prewett, who looks at her strangely.

"Now we have the Head Boy and Head Girl deliver their speeches," the headmaster proclaims airily, to which the crowd claps and cheers (for Prewett, she remembers, because she is a Slytherin blood-traitor), all the while having their eyeballs sink their teeth into to her, the blonde of her hair, the green and silver of her straightened tie, the cleaned wand she has in her front pocket, all immaculateness and perfection never enough.

Prewett goes first, and Marlene vaguely registers the words 'fostering good relationships between Houses', 'prevention of a useless war' blah blah blah. She wonders what possessed Dumbledore to give her the position of Head Girl in the first place, because after all she is Slytherin no matter how many Os she gets on that letters. But then she realises that it is because she is Slytherin and Prewett is a Gryffindor and in the end all they are doing is contributing to the war anyway, so what the hell?

Prewett finishes his (stupid, useless, hypocritical) speech and the eyes are wide and bulging out of Marlene's face in a weird disfiguration and suddenly Marlene loses her voice, forgets her (stupid, useless, hypocritical) speech.

And it does not matter.

She touches her wand to her throat with a mutter of Sonorous, and she meets all the eyes. Her palms are flat on the polished table, and she sees them all for what they will be, fighters, Death Eaters, hidden adults, forgotten dead corpses. She clears her throat and her mind.

Her posture is straight, just like her mother taught her. Her gaze is intent and purposeful and accusing and pleading all at once.

"What can I say to stop this segregation?"

The silence is incomparable to the resounding of her sophisticated Mary Jane heels clicking on the floorboards of the Great Hall, lingering like her footsteps down this floor. She is Marlene McKinnon and she knows no direction and just wants to run away from the monster that lumbers over its own feet in the darkness of the night, but she fights her war like nobody else.

|act v|

"I would like you to join the Order," Dumbledore says, over a cup of tea, in a tone that suggests they may have been discussing the weather, and not Marlene's probability of dying (she calculates, and concludes, approximately seventy-two point zero nine percent of a chance).

"Why?" she inquires, genuinely baffled by the conundrum presented. "I am a Slytherin. Or is this because of my blood status, my family?"

There is silence for a while, broken only by the measured clink caused by the contact of the porcelain saucer and teacup (the collision of reality and expectations and invisible truth), before those blue eyes, unfathomable in their depth and knowing, meet hers.

"It is our choices, Miss Marlene McKinnon, that define us. Not expectations, families, House or blood status, but our choices."

She drinks the tea, and thinks about what she wants. She thinks about the Slytherins who isolate her, whose whispers of filthy blood-traitor peel away at her retina, until her vision is skewed; about the Gryffindors who lob Dungbombs at her until her clothes are soiled and stink (and later in her dorm the Slytherins sneer that she deserves it), about the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws who simply avoid her, as if rejection is a disease.

But then she thinks about her little brother's toothless grin as he holds up a seashell for her, the warmth of her older sister's hand in hers in the darkness, the way her father's tie hang crooked like his glasses, and the safety of her mother's embrace every summer. She thinks about the spotless uniform lying on her bunk bed with tips to use Scourgify more effectively scrawled onto the piece of parchment next to it. She thinks about the first time she rode a broom and threw the Quaffle into the hoop. She thinks of the musty smell of ancient books on spells and literature in the library, those countless nights spent flicking through pages.

She meets Dumbledore's expectant gaze.

"Yes," she says, and it is the proudest she has ever felt. The Y nudges her lips into a smile, the e is an infinite path of choices scattered along its ceaseless line of digits, and the s curls about her small shoulders like the weight of the world. And Marlene is not a hero, and this hopeless world filled with a hate that can never be burned does not deserve one, but there are things and people and a future and memories she wants to protect in this world.

The truth is, heroes are heroes only because they save a world against them.

|act iii|

She is seventeen and quite lost when she sees Lily Potter crying in the corner, sniffing quite conspicuously.

"G-go away." The words are muffled by obvious tears and outright sadness that stirs Marlene's internalized melancholy weighed upon hollow and deadened feelings.

And every teardrop is a waterfall.

Marlene gazes out the window. It is raining, and the gentle scent of petrichor touches the air like falling glimmers of hope. Diamonds are falling from the sky, only they are soft and made of people's hearts. They root themselves to the ground, seedlings of tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, not quite ready to grow.

If she were Lily's friend she would scream at her to be his friend again, because both of them are only children, and the world is such a cruel place. But she is not; it is not her place to judge Lily.

Instead, her fingers intertwine with the younger girl's. And as the rain falls outside, soft like an angel's chorus, she can feel the pulse of two hearts between their hands.

|act vi|

Her back slams into the brick wall of the alleyway, her body jerking and spasming jarringly from the shocking impact. Pain sears through her willowy frame, red colouring her clouded vision for a while. It takes her a while to recover her bearings, and when she has, a wand is thrust at the hollow of her throat, the tip digging into her flesh painfully.

"Why, hello, Theodore," she says, her tone forcefully calm from quintessential practice and handy experience. She remembers him, this Hufflepuff boy who grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet when she was tripped by a couple of seniors as a first-year on the train for the first time. The memory of the T, stretching out, an inked cruxification of blood, the melody of careless laughter as his mouth shaped around an o, the n on his lips, the right way up this time, and the sharp k settling on the defiant crease of his eyebrows in the face of taunts and discrimination, still haunts her, accompanying the self-depreciating whispers of this is someone you can never be. (And the s is lost somewhere, lost somewhere, gone in this war-torn world. Rather, she does not want to think of the S in Slytherin.)

"Why, hello, McKinnon," he says, quite calmly, unhurriedly. The McKinnon rolls off his tongue like a coming wave, thick with a coat of disgust and revulsion.

"I never thought you'd be part of the gang, Tonks," she comments idly, struggling for time, because Merlin, where was her wand, he took it didn't he and dammit, listen to me.

"Better safe than sorry," he responds, a little too dangerously.

"So you're rounding up us pure-bloods like the others, then?" she asks him so casually it has to be deliberate, as she inches her fingers slowly to the invisible pocket sewed onto the side of her coat, fingers frantically searching, grasping at fabric. The irony scrapes at her, from the inside of her cheek, its fingernails sharp from the I knew him and this is what we have done.

"That's right," he replies softly, the sharp point of his wand sliding up and down Marlene's very much exposed throat threateningly. Her heart clangs like a fire bell, as she tries not to think of how a simple Reducto could blow her head off.

"You're no better than us, then," she hisses irately, words cutting across the air, each letter carved out harshly in a school girl's blunt penknife. It is so scary, this us and them, not one common letter.

She barely registers the incantation before her back collides once again with hardness, and with her broken eyes it takes her a while to register the new, warped angles of the world.

"It isn't too late," she chokes out quickly, rolling over to avoid a jet of blue light that leaves the ground charred. "You can still turn back, repent," she gasps, as a hex hits her and she feels the frighteningly real stimulation of boiling hot oil splashing against her body.

"This is what you deserve," he bites out, and no, this just cannot be the boy from just—what, three, four? she can't remember—a few years ago, not the boy who laughed off derogatory remarks, who helped her up on the train, who was insanely upfront about his insanely obvious crushes. How could he have changed in just a span of a few years…?

"Why?" The words claw their way up her throat, so familiar to her long-deaf ears. "I never did anything to you," she manages, frantically trying to scramble up, only why were her legs not working?

The sole (soul) of his scuffed, worn sneakers connect with her cheek in a sharp, painful blow that sends her reeling and gasping for breath. She feels the extent of his anger, and this time his lips are drawn into the Black shape, as he struggles to get the words out, darkly and with such grief alien to her for so long.

"They killed her. My sister, dammit—she hasn't even graduated."

One second of weakness, and in the blink of an eye, Theodore Tonks is the one on the concrete ground paved with memories built on top of each other, Marlene's spare wand directed at his face, and his clutched tightly in her hands along with the one he snatched from her when she was barely lucid.

"Do you really think," she enunciates clearly, dragging out every syllable harshly, "That spreading the flames of hatred burn down the starter? Do you really think that? Do you really think that degrading yourself to the same level of a Death Eater disillusioned by faked ideals makes you great, a hero?" And here she pauses, to look at his still face, to bend down, her long curtain of hair swinging, catching the setting sun so the light dances through the strands, until her face is barely centimeters from him, and she whispers, finally, what she has wanted to say for so long.

"Because you're wrong."

He does not move, as she stands up, back and limbs throbbing and aching, and throws his wand down next to him. Her eyes travel to the horizon, watching the acrylic unfold in pink and gold and crimson streaks across the expanse of blue sky, looking hard into the setting sun.

She looks him in the eye, something she has forgotten to do since she was a child. "There are better ways to stop this war, so don't you run away from them, senior!"

And then he finally smirks that smirk she has missed from aimless days of childhood. They are comrades, straggling hopelessly through this concrete world, but they'll have laughs along the way and get pissed drunk while they are at it.

|act i|

She is eleven, and the world flies away from her grasp, slipping between her fingers to join the dreams and wishes. She runs, frantically struggling to dodge the jinxes fired her way as the Gryffindors chase her like a pack of hungry wolves, laughing raucously and betting who gets her first. A Trip Jinx finally sends her caterwauling through the air, stumbling before the fall, until fingers clasp around her wrists and pull her to her feet and behind the knight who has come to rescue her.

She catches a glimpse of the yellow and black tie and the gleaming prefect badge pinned onto his chest, before the older boy commands the crowd of rowdy boys to stop.

"Don't you feel ashamed," he scolds them coldly, "of harassing a wandless first-year? And while there are three of you and one of her?"

The answer is rapt and immediate, a pure knee-jerk reaction. The words leap out, accusing and burning. "But, Ted, she's a Slytherin! They all turn out bad, anyway!"

The Hufflepuff sighs, "I shouldn't have expected more from Gryffindors. They're all so thick anyway." He stares purposefully at them.

The three boys turn beet red and their heads droop dejectedly, shamefully. The prefect says, "I won't give you detention, but I'll have to take House points. And don't do it again."

"Is there anything you want to say to the young lady over here?"

The second-years stop in their nodding, disbelief spreading across their faces. Tension crackles in the air, and Marlene starts to back away, her fight-or-flight instinct that was ingrained into her need for survival only a few weeks ago already taking action.

"I'm sorry," one of them blurts out. "We're all sorry," he continues in an embarrassed, rushed murmur. The two boys nod fervently, before they attempt to swagger off, bickering among themselves in strained mutters.

"Hey, did any of the jinxes get you?" The boy asks, his eyebrows knitting in concern as he turns around to examine her properly. Marlene is still for a moment, before she registers the quiet and—

"Hey! Wha—why are you crying?"

Silence is like a white light, she reflects later, flaring on in blinding brightness. Marlene weeps, uselessly rubbing her tears away. Ted sighs, his mouth curving into a wry smile.

"You're that relieved, aren't you?" He murmurs into her hair, as he ruffles it up affectionately, her pathetic mewling incessant (because, after all, she is eleven and the world is beyond age ratings).

He bends down, so they're at eye level, and he smiles in a protective, brotherly kind of way. "If you're ever scared again, just come running and I'll send all the bad guys away, kid. I'm here."

And they've never forgotten this promise.

|act vii|

"Moody, tell me you're joking," Marlene finally splutters, her eyes widening in shocked horror. The pacing, heavily scarred wizard looks at her. "Look, McKinnon, I'm not forcing you to do this, it's just… just a suggestion that I'd like you to consider."

They are at a dead end; it is the only possible reason Alastor would even come up with a barely half-formed plan with a high chance of failure, no matter how paranoid he is.

"Merlin… is there no other way…?"

"To get reliable information? No, I'm afraid."

"They know my blood status, Moody, there is no way too—"

"First, tell me whether you want to do this." His eyes are searching her face. Marlene hesitates only for a heartbeat not enough for the world.

"Yes."

He stares at her. "You have to be sure. This isn't just some Order mission, McKinnon. The rest of the lot are going to have to think you're a—like them. Or information can be leaked out easily. And you have to understand the risk—"

She waits for him to finish, and watches the frenzy at which his hands exaggeratedly gesticulate. It strikes her as strange, how she never thought of Alastor being capable of such strong emotions. He always was the stoic, serious, jaded one, emotions carefully concealed by a chosen mask.

(So much like Marlene herself, really. Because some things never change, and this is a war they are fighting, a wrong place for human emotions.)

She watches him pace anxiously as he rants. The As are strong and bold and rocket upwards, drawn to stars above. She sees the l straight as his spine, and his honour. The s could have made him Slytherin. She does not want to think of how the t is reversed like an x on his head. His eyes are telescopic os that see and know everything but deny this.

"I'll do it, Moody. Or who's to tell you that the Death Eaters will be attacking the Changs tonight?"

Alastor stops, and slowly he turns. "McKi—"

"Confundo!" Her wand is out long before he has set her eyes on her, and the spell manifested into the form of a projectile hits him before he can utter another word. She is not an Order member for nothing.

"You will forget that I told you this. If anyone asks, you will tell them that you obtained the information from an undisclosed, but very reliable source." Her voice quivers and breaks here, as she struggles to get out the next sentence. It comes out as a strangled whisper, and she has to choke back her desperate sobs.

"And the one who attacked you was the Death Eater, Marlene McKinnon."

As the dazed expression so unlike Moody washes over his face, Marlene whispers, "You underestimate me, Moody. You aren't the only one that wants to win this war."

And she grabs her cloak and leaves with a swish of her wand, because this is her role in this war, the one nobody else can do.

And it is her fate, because she wants—needs—to protect all these people, all the good left in the world.

|act ix|

Solace creeps along the floors, then skitter up her spine and curl around her, a security blanket she has missed for so long. The whitewashed walls and domed ceilings sing of peace and prayer, the stained glass windows speak of the Bible and its teachings. The quiet is strange, otherworldly, as though the church is a separate dimension on its own.

Marlene stumbles almost drunkenly through the church, coughing in an instinctive attempt to dislodge the phlegm clogging up her throat, her head pounding as fast and loud as her fluttering heart, her fingers clutching her bloodied right arm tightly, trying to staunch the bleeding, vision slipping away from her, scattered among the slow sands of time.

She is helium, a noble gas, but it is a lonely existence, to float above everybody else—who is she to be allied amongst Death Eaters, and to be with any other is a danger she isn't willing to impose on them. The world has polymorphed into a labyrinth of peeling wallpapered, withering hands that lust for her destruction, and the paper butterflies cut out from jabberwockied literature. If she were to nudge her quill under her ohsobreakable skin and unstitch herself open lengthwise, an empty catskin bag where conundrums stream out in an endless trickle from the hollows of fragile bones, there are only floating bits of fluff and dead things, lookingless looking-glass embedded into secrets clutched in a lily's hand.

Just thinking about it brings a dull ache to her ribcage, but maybe it's because she has broken about twenty brittle bird bones there.

Her whole body aches, but her eye-crumbs especially, the image of Ted's face, that shocked look of betrayal and then anger, right before he wields the curse that hurts her, burns her eyes and eats away at her heart. And still it lingers, pounds in her blood as acidic poison.

Baby footsteps wind their way across the cool floor, the click-click-clicking lingering before they are lost in this depthless waiting. Marlene collapses onto a wooden pew, lucidity fast receding like low tide on cold nights with the red ink that escapes her literary shell. Dreams swirl up in a maelstrom in front of her eyes—Ted's smile from across the room on a cold wintry night, a cup of hot chocolate brewed by the warmth in Molly's hand, Moody's gruff voice as they laid out their plans, safety and security in the midst of war, little big things lost in the hurricane of war.

Maybe she is dying. She wonders what Moody will say if she dies, she hopes he does not tell the rest, because then Ted will feel guilty and that idiot will do something stupid and—

"Who's there?" A voice in the darkness, an innocent light. It pierces through her soul, in all its jaded, world-wearied, scratchy wariness, gravel and strangely comforting.

"Nobody but me," Marlene manages to gasp out (and how true it is, how true), feeling wet stickiness trickle bubble up and trickle down the corner of her mouth. What exactly is this curse—

"I mean no—" she stops abruptly, cut off by a bout of hacking coughs, and more of this sickly syrup streams down her cursed hands, before stuttering her way through the next sentence, "I mean no harm. I just need to… sit a while please." But she is barely coherent, and it is pretty amazing to have been able to get out so many words, she thinks.

The sound of footsteps, soft scrapes against a polished floor, and the ballad-like swish of fabric. Far away, a reversed clock chimes a bell's lullaby. Marlene falls into soft dreams, their warm wings a prayer that envelope her like her mother's arms.

When she wakes, all is aglow with the magic of morning. Her arm is bandaged, even though the sterile white is starkly contrasted by several prominent patches of red that seep through it, and it hurts less to move. She sits up, soaking in the early morning light, something intangible and precious untouched by the grittiness and dirt of war.

A young girl, no older than her, clothed in religious habit, the black and white veil framing her porcelain face, approaches her, tentatively, and haloed by the soft light, she looks like an angel.

"I've tended to your wounds," she murmurs, quiet. Marlene's fingertips graze the tightly-wound dressing. "Thank you," she says the unfamiliar words softly, quietly, evenly.

The sister sidles into the seat next to Marlene, on the pew, and asks, "Are you… alright?" And maybe she was asking in terms of war wounds and battles, but hearing her, simple enquiry in true concern, makes Marlene's voice crack, like dried mud, and it seems broken and bitter, as she chokes out, "No." And it is not a lie.

It shatters the disillusionment of winter, the N sharp enough to break ice and pierce the catskin and cold visage, the o soft enough to melt the snow and lies. And staring at the disheveled, rumpled folds and creases in her cloak makes Marlene want to run away somewhere (this, this is why she was not in Gryffindor).

But then there is warmth, an atom from heaven cupped in pixie hands. She feels long fingers, callused as a pianists', yet soft in their welcoming, tangling themselves into her web of deceit, slipping into her cold hands. She has realised since a long time ago, that her hands are freezing cold.

"I'll be here," the stranger, comforter, the scent of spring, not-yet best friend, trustworthy partner, innocent ally, angel whispers, and those three words drag across Marlene's collarbone, curl downwards in a ribbon's spiral, wrapping around her heart in their warmth.

Marlene does not cry.

|act x|

There is a boy (a man now, perhaps, but really, they are all still children) sprawled out on the floor, his face obscured, mousy brown hair all tangled and mussed, a puddle of red pooling around his prone form, oozing, oozing, oozing. As though corpses could bleed.

"Merlin… Ted…!" Andromeda cannot even disguise it, and the wand grows slack in her hands before clattering to the floor like Marlene's heart, and in that split second, for once she acts on her heart and not logic.

(She's never regretted it, never.)

"Stupefy!" The jet of light rockets outwards from her wand tip, seizing control of Rosier's consciousness, before an Obliviate takes his memories. He slumps to the ground, in a pile of crumpled robes. Quickly, a deft Ennervate is cast on Ted, only it fails, and Marlene resorts to a Lightening Charm instead, magicked onto his still body. She ignores Andromeda's incomplete Marlene, what? and pulls him to his feet easily, and her hand closes around Andromeda's shoulder, and for once there is no what if and how and marvels at the improbability, only the pull towards the feeling that has kept her alive for so long.

Her words comes out all jumbled, in a rush of enunciations and urgency, but comprehensible. "Andromeda. Listen to me—there is a secret organization fighting the Death Eaters. I don't know if you've heard of it, but they will help you and Ted. Apparate to the home of the Longbottoms. It's the first house at Jude Street, you know that Muggle suburban? Yeah. They'll help you, definitely. And… don't tell anyone about tonight."

Andromeda's eyes hold hers. And in that infinite moment, she knows the meaning of us, the point of the safety found in the comforting curve of the letters. For the A in her name stands tall in unconventional posture, the n found in the closed lid of her eyes as she makes her decisions, the d sloppy and not-quite-right, but falling into place with the whole word anyway, the r as the tilt of neck of a curious, good-willed child, the o as the love that surrounds, and there is, forever, the short call of 'Meda!' sang with laughter, as a hand reaches for hers, the precious gift from a mousy-haired, green-eyed boy who loves.

Their fingertips brush as Andromeda turns, and she says, sincerely, those words that rest as a cat curled up in the pit of Marlene.

"Be strong. You're not alone."

And it is truer than any lie they could have said.

|act xi|

She starts to get afraid of looking into mirrors, scared of what she will see. Monster, beast. Lost girl. Rotten, evil princess. Fragmented fairy tales. Demented Dementor. Torment and lies. Damnation and redemption. Fear garden. Maybe she will turn into stardust and atoms and sleep in glass jars of planetariums. Perhaps only then she can only feel the heat of the sun on her palm, instead of walking the night to uselessly chase after an echoing moon that reflects all her torment, all her pain.

For her mother is dead, now, killed carelessly by the hands of her very same 'allies' who thought it a favour. (But her last words were a prayer of repentance and forgiveness; she loved you till her last breath.)

Ted lies in some obscure room in St. Mungo's now, barely breathing from Macnair's curse, struggling feebly, grasping at the loose strands of life leaving him. (But Andromeda will be there, holding his hand like she once held yours, and he'll live.)

The church has been burned down, consumed in a raging inferno of spells borne from ignorance and the lust for destruction. (But true comfort and genuine love need not be found in white walls and singing hymns, for it hides in cracks in the road and gaps between fingers.)

Moody probably hates her now, detests her with the same disgust he holds for the likes of Tom Marvolo Riddle. (But once you were sure he loved you, was proud of you.)

Molly's warmth will never flow to her freezing hands ever again. (But there is sunlight and its afterglow, and isn't there some in the pocket in your heart?)

(Perhaps she has lied, afraid of looking into mirrors and seeing loneliness reflected.)

Because she loves them all, little love-beads broken by the war into plastic powder, and the powder mixes with the grit and dirt and tears but never dissolves. No matter how the war ends, she will always hold them dearly, caressing the luster of each memory. She'll always love them, and she'll always be 'here'.

Even the moon has its own beauty in all its luscious, chatoyant quality, and a piece of mercurial silver falls into her hands.

|act xiii|

Fairy tale ends were never for someone like her, a witch whose tripartite life is the fall, the clawing up, the pride-and-grace.

This is the call for repentance; she hears it in the wail of dying embers before they fizzle out into scintilla and empty eyes, in the ominous caw of fairy tale blackened crows, in the endless mourning of the cloak-ghosts, in the eternal damnation that eats into the ropes bounding her to the chair.

Angry snarls and demands for blood to be spilled hiss across the room. Of course, they have taken her wand. They want to break her, Crucio her until she is but a suppurating wound, a cast-off catskin, torture and torment before a slow death.

But she is Marlene McKinnon, a name she is proud of, with love written in between the letters for both words, the M crisp and imperfect, somewhat chunky, but its angles bend at nice angles, fitting like a mould into the juncture of elbows as it is drawn into a warm hug, the a squeezing around her hand, comforting weight and phonetic sound, she likes the way the r is a captured image of a 'lonely', hands outstretched for the fallen, and with that, the l picks itself off the ground, dusts off the dirt and nudges her spine straight, because maybe she was once all-gone too, if she loops her es together they look like infinity, and maybe this is the us, the infinite us, and this time it does not matter that there is an against the world that follows, because there is an us that she finds, the u in her name as a wrong shaped n. You and us. It has always been there.

And she is who she chooses to be, and she has never looked back, and she will not, not today and not now, never. She is Marlene McKinnon, the double agent, the Order member, the friendless freak who studied hard back in Hogwarts and can totally out-duel you, the blood-traitor, the wronged human, the girl who should be beyond labels. And she is proud of that fact, so she will sit a little straighter on her pedestal, the Rose-red Queen ready to unleash her epigram of the world, lying for life, flying in dreams, and years' worth of pent-up words.

"McKinnon," someone hisses, "the traitor. Do you have anything to say before you are punished?"

Marlene smiles, as Dumbledore, the mentor she has not thought of in years, comes to mind. She thinks now, she understands the essence of the words he spoke to her a lifetime ago.

She is Marlene McKinnon, and she shall die on her own terms, die fighting with pride, and she will take down as many Death Eaters as she can with her, dammit.

She shall die a witch, Slytherin, a McKinnon, an Order member, and as herself.

Her bound hands twist this way and that, until she has found the moving pocket sewn onto her robes some years ago (after Ted's assault, naturally, and she is just a bit thankful). Iron bites at her skin, and she thinks of her father, who loves—loved, she corrects herself with a wince—Muggle contractions. Which makes her think of Arthur Weasley, and it steels her resolve. Her hand shakes, weighed by the magnitude of her dangerous decision, but—

She loves them. She always will.

So she closes her eyes, and her fingers pull the metal ring, freeing herself from being anchored to the world. Somewhere, in a place far away, she hears the low hum of an explosion, and there is an unbelievable amount of burning hot pain that grips her, sears through her whole body, but then it is gone and the doves take her away.

She is helium, but there are other gases here, carbon dioxide and oxygen and nitrogen, and when was she ever alone? She isn't floating, but flying.

She is aphelion, but it is a beautiful thing, and even heat from the sun drums against her once in a while, and out of the darkness, she has gotten a cold, noble jewel of pain. And at least she is scattered amongst those stars and the dreams and pieces of the moon she watches, the moon filling up the black hole of her heart.

She is a lapis lazuli, a gemstone prized, intensity stemming from passion, a beautiful, proud jewel only formed by the painful recrystallisation after change, because this world has shaped her, but there will also be people who see the jewel's raw beauty, even if it is chiselled to nothingness, and they are what colour her in different shades of blue.

She is Marlene McKinnon, and it was never just her against the world.

|the end is a beginning|

…and the train runs on time.

A/N: Written for Round 2 of the Fanfiction's Next Top Writer competition, with the prompt us against the world. Anything you recognise, including various lines like tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, do not belong to me. Um, Marlene here is a bit older than the Marauders, because I've always envisioned her as older... no idea why.

EDIT: Some clarifications - herselfishness is a play on the words herself and selfishness. That's why 'herself' repeats a lot throughout, I guess, I kind of wanted to have a paradox, something like that... And Marlene joined the DEs before Moody told her to do so to rely information to the Order. I guess I wasn't that obvious, but I didn't want to be too obvious. Er, let's just say subtlety has never been my strong suit. Haha. I can't do much though, I have no idea how... Guh. The non-chronological order was meant to contribute to the jarring effect of war (something like that). I wanted to drop pieces of Marlene bit by bit, instead of making everything clear at once...

Review? Thank you.