1000
1000
{we build our own heaven of a thousand little joys. one-thousand word vignettes on heaven and happy moments for the first order of the phoenix}
She’s one two three four fingers old and Martin is her world. It’s magic, how her legs seem to lengthen; she can always catch him, even when he says he’d run like it was the devil on his heels and not his little sister, her thin braids slithering across her thin shoulders. Marlene is fair certain that Martin is magic. He carries her piggyback to their grandparents’ cottage when the sun sets behind the Cairngorms. It’s summer and she’s forgotten that he has to go back to school soon. She’s forgotten and it doesn’t matter at all, she doesn’t worry.
There aren’t parents here, no arguments to drift through walls at night, no Mam who yanks the comb when she brushes Marlene’s hair, no Da to criticize Martin until his shoulder stoop and his eyes get sad and heavy. There’s just Martin and Granny (who has the gentlest hair-braiding hands ever and kisses them goodnight) and Granda (who leaves them sweets in their coats and calls Marlene his darling little redbird and doesn’t need any proof to know that Martin’s the finest lad to ever draw breath) and the Highlands to run through while the sun lasts.
Granda reads her stories…muggle ones, since that’s what he is. His stories are about rings and witches (evil ones, not ones like her) and talking trees and lions and worlds behind wardrobes. She remembers those because they’re her favorites.
One summer, she has to visit him in the muggle hospital in Glasgow, which smells funny and is scary white and green. Her mam says he’s going somewhere, and she asks him about it when she’s sitting next to him.
He laughs and says he’s going through the wardrobe. She crawls into bed next to him while the grownups get coffee and, grateful that he still smells like pipe smoke and peppermint in this sharp, nasty-smelling place, falls asleep.
Someone carries her off while she sleeps; when she wakes up she’s at home in Stirling and Da says Granda is gone. And Marlene completely understands why everyone’s crying. She cries too, she wants to go with him.
(Years later, even when she understands, when she knows better, there’s still some part of her that believes Granda got through the wardrobe.)
Maisie Hill chooses her over James Fitzpatrick in a pick-up football match, even though Maisie fancies James and he’s a much better player than Marlene, and it’s only because they’re best friends.
“Let’s be brave-not reckless, Miss McKinnon-in GRYFFINDOR!” the hat calls out, and Marlene can’t ever quite forget the roar of applause from the table awash in red and gold, the one-armed hug from the fifth-year girl who scoots over to clear some room for her.
She hugs Martin when he graduates from the Auror Academy, and Gideon bustles in and the three arrange themselves for a photograph. Marlene links her gangly, thirteen-year-old arms through theirs, and grins because the world is uncomplicated and the day is beautiful and Gideon thought her dress robes were pretty.
She loves him right then. Loves him with all the earnest intensity of a girl who’s never had her trust broken, and he loves her too. And it might not last (it doesn’t) and it might be foolish (she wakes up alone), but that night, when she shows up at his flat and he lets her in and they leave their mourning for Martin at the door to be picked up later, it seems perfect.
(Marlene can never quite decide if she regrets losing her virginity like that. Maybe she would’ve liked dinner and roses and a relationship, an awkward smitten boy and not a sad, serious man, but something stalls her from ever tagging the memory with ‘regrettable.’ It was love right then and though she’ll spit venomous words at Gideon later, she’ll never say ‘I regret.’)
Marlene tries heroin once and loves it. She feels like someone new, someone free and (ironically) clean. There’s no sorrow or pain or worry for a little while.
Marlene tries heroin once and never does it again. She considers it her one perfect high and leaves it at that.
Sirius wakes her up one morning. “What are you doing today?” She has nothing to do and he has cancelled plans and it’s a beautiful day and his motorbike is parked outside her flat.
They get high in Sefton Park and while away the sunny, warm spring day doing nothing. He pulls her into his shoulder and she doesn’t complain. She has his bruises on her neck and he carries her piggyback to the takeaway for dinner, pushes her on the swing and curls up with her in the grass when the sun gets low, gives her his leather jacket against the evening chill and pulls her arms around his waist when he gives her a ride home on his motorbike.
It’s one perfect day, better than all the nights out and all the sex, and she feels like she belongs to someone for a little while and it doesn’t matter if she’s fucked up because he sure as hell is too.
When he drops her off and kisses her goodbye (and leaves the jacket, he says he’ll be by later, maybe tomorrow night) she hopes (for the first time in a long while) for something. She hopes for another day like this one.
Marlene finds a muggle brochure for some South Pacific island in a Liverpool gutter and swears to herself she’s picking up and moving there when the war’s over. It’s the first time she’s ever thought when the war’s over like it's something she's going to see. She sticks the paper to her bathroom mirror.