mckinnonaf

[mckinnonaf]

You only really fall apart in front of the people you know can piece you back together.

Sarah Dessen, Saint Anything (via thequotejournals)

[mckinnonaf]

chxrchmouse:

Awkwardly, Rosemary took a spot beside Marlene and brought her knees to her chest. She wasn’t even sure how to approach this subject, because it felt like one that was probably touchy. Hey– I’ve heard you used to be friends with the most prejudice, maniacal people in the school– how does one successfully keep a friendship with them? No. No that wouldn’t do. Instead she gave Marlene a long look and sighed. “Can I– can I ask you somethin’? I wouldn’t if I had anyone else to ask–”

Marlene had still been slightly distracted by the updated diagram of a manticore found in the south of Wales—an altogether highly unusual location to find one, so she rather suspected poaching or personal breeding, which was concerning and infuriating—but something about Rosemary’s tone and the way she was looking at her managed to get Marlene to shake her thoughts, or at least, set them aside for a moment. “Yeah, sure,” she said, a touch of concern in her tone, her expression automatically softening as she looked at her. “What’s up?”

[mckinnonaf]

To Marlene McKinnon, from Stella Darling with a sunflower attached.

@mckinnonaf

[mckinnonaf]

A floral arrangement to Marlene McKinnon, with random scrolls of parchment tied to stems of flowers. 

1. Let me start by saying I’m sorry if I’m being obnoxious. I’m going to be better. I’m going to make this right, and you want to know why? Because you’re the only thing that’s ever made sense to me. I’m only fully mewhen I’m with you. I’m lost. Let me explain. 

2. You’ve brought me to my knees quite literally more times in my life than I could count. I’m fucking floored by you Marlene and you know it. There’s no forgetting you or getting past you, I see you in everything around me. You’re the brier thicket I can’t squeeze through. (Remember, I think we were eight? You told me you had done it dozens of times and I was considerably closer to your size at the time so I believed you. I tried to follow you through and the thorns shredded my robes. I was grounded for a week and missed you so bad I made house elves deliver you notes.) You’re the wild laughter lodged in the back of my throat threatening to escape in the most wildly inappropriate times. You’re everything there ever was or will be. Nothing compares to you. 

3. You’re the only thing that’s made me think it could be worth the risk. I hate it, too. I hate that I can’t breathe without thinking of you. I can’t laugh without wondering if you’re out there laughing at the same time as me. I can’t listen to stories people tell me without wondering if you would think it’s just as fucking stupid as I do. I know you would. I can’t be me without you, Marlene. I spent six years after you left wandering blindly trying to find myself. Trying to find the answers to the game you and Sirius beat. I’m trying. I wasn’t thinking for myself and my best interest. I was thinking of what would keep Rabbit away from him. Of what would help my friends because god damn, if I couldn’t save myself could I not save them? I can’t—

4. There’s a look on your face you get when I catch you off guard. It’s something innocent and pure and shocked and raw. That’s why I kissed you first, all those years ago. Most of my outrageous tactics you’d learned to anticipate. I needed something to floor you the way you floor me. I spent six years telling myself if you wanted me you’d have crossed that border to speak to me. I knew you couldn’t have been afraid to. We loved you. You know a sorting wouldn’t have changed that, so why didn’t you come to me? I was too much of a coward, I can say that. I was too afraid to present myself to you, and see you turn me down because you’d befriended people who played the hero’s of the story. Because we both know what role snakes play in every great tale. I thought if the day came you saw me as the villain that any chance at redemption would be lost and fuck I know that isn’t true. I fucked up and I’m going to make it right. I just need to explain it to you… 

5. I’ve never wrote a letter to a girl before. I mean, not like these. Not that could fall into the hands of anyone with peaked interest. I’m risking everything  I’m handing you the power to fucking crush me if you think I deserve it. If you need to punish me then I’m giving you that power. All I’ve ever known are power struggles but never with you. So here it is. The power to ruin my reputation. I don’t care. The only thing I care about is you and knowing you’re okay. I need to know you’re okay.

6. I made this myself, by the way. This arrangement. It was really difficult to find aesthetically pleasing plants this time of year. I raided the greenhouses and the forbidden forest. I spent an embarrassing amount of time on it. A second year saw me trying to tie it all together. It was a mess but I’m pretty proud of how it turned out. I thought you’d like it…. please talk to me. I’m praying to gods I don’t believe in. I need to know you’re okay. I need to know what you need. If you need me to walk away forever, you have to tell me that. Because until then I won’t stop working for this. I told you we could make it work. I’m working for this. I’m doing the best I can and I know I needed to tell you sooner but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to lose you when I just got you back. The thought of breaking your heart made me want to curse myself. It made me hate myself and I do… I hate myself for my irreparably devastating choices. I chose the wrong path because it looked easier and it looked less turbulent and I was terrified of my father and… I was terrified. I never wanted that I never KNEW… please let me explain to you Marlene. Please. 

[mckinnonaf]

franklbtm:

   He opened the letter once again and read it thoroughly, utterly disgusted of the pure lack of understanding his mother didn’t have. Alice’s father had died, hundreds of casualties together with him, and his mother was giving him shit about “how obsessed he was with that girl”. The funny thing was, she didn’t mind while they were friends ‒ while they were hanging out non stop ever since they had first met. Yet now, when he was trying to merely help her as much as he could, and was engaged in something romantic with Alice, he was obsessed? Frank was sitting on the top of the teacher’s box, the Quidditch Pitch silently understanding him. It was an enclosed area, no one visited here unless it was match time, so it was the perfect hideout for him. Himself and Marlene had found it a few years back, when they began fighting for the Quidditch cup together, Chaser to Chaser, not only cousin to cousin.

   The light parchment was thrown in the corner, threatening to fly away, the night stars being a witness of how angry he was at the moment. Frank allowed his head to rest on the floor, his legs relaxed and eyes pinned to the top of the endless sky, just begging to be alone while once again thinking what did he do wrong. Was she bitter, that her little boy was finally getting out of her grasp? Those were his final months after all, and for the few days after the tragedy he visited Augusta only for the end of the winter break. Because he was trying to help, you see, because that’s what he always did.

   Longbottom sighed, rubbing his eyes in with his fingers, trying not to scream of why sometimes he couldn’t just escape everything and stop caring so much. Ever since Matthew’s death, his cousin, everything seemed to spiral down to madness… and it didn’t seem to stop, both for him and his cousin, Marlene, this incredible human being who seemed to fight demons and hold her front, yet had a heart very much like his own. Frank wanted to help her too, but he didn’t know how, he wasn’t sure if what he did was enough. So he just laid down, and found serenity in the stars, trying to forget.

@mckinnonaf

    Frankly—and forgive the pun—Marlene had been having an appalling time as of late. There weren’t even words to accurately describe the situation she’d found herself in. It was overwhelming, but when had life not been recently? She felt like she hadn’t caught her breath since August. It was something she dearly needed, to feel like she could exist outside of everything going on, especially because the last place she’d sought solace had turned into a barren waste ground, live grenades and acid under the dirt.

    And so she found herself on the Pitch, seeking the spot she and Frank had found a few years back and had shared between them since. She hadn’t explicitly intended to go there, but she couldn’t say that she was surprised that there was where she had ended up. It was a place to be alone with the world, high ground with the sky above and wind whipping through your hair at day, cool air drifting through and stars watching over you at night.

    She couldn’t even say she was surprised to find Frank there when she reached him. He was knit into the fabric of this refuge, and so it made perfect sense to her to find him there, even if she didn’t explicitly know why. A light thing in the corner of her eye caught her attention as it moved slightly, and she noticed a piece of parchment. “Letter from home?” she asked softly, getting down to sit next to where he was lying down, cross-legged and hand reaching to softly stroke his hair.

under the stars | f&marlene

[mckinnonaf]

hold on hope / peter

There had been a Valentine. A Valentine. Marlene almost snorted. The term was too small to encompass what she’d received. But, yes, there had been a Valentine. Before that, a letter left upon her belongings by the Pitch. Before that—well, before that had been tears and confession and screaming, pain and desperation and raw betrayal, gaping wounds and everything shattering.

The thing was, Marlene was certain, in some deep, coldly furious part of herself that she was right. That she was justified. That this intense devastation and betrayal wasn’t an overreaction—that they’d fundamentally done wrong. That Rod had done wrong. But because she was so sore—so messy, so pained, so unable to trust herself, she found part of herself doubting it. Part of her was a lick away from buying into the idea that it was somehow her fault, and the rest of her was railing against it. She needed to talk it through to process, but she was just so terrified that someone would tell her that it was somehow her fault.

She’d been armed with two-thirds of a bottle of firewhiskey shoved beneath her cardigan ( maroon, as befitted a Gryffindor, because fuck if she was going to wear her robes after dinner ) when she’d found her answer, her safe space: Peter. They’d gone up to the Astronomy Tower—she still didn’t know what she’d said to pull him there, only known a garbling of words, a kind of desperate need to get out of Gryffindor and to high ground where she wasn’t surrounded by all of these eyes, a please Pete can we, but nothing specific. All she could quite pin down was a rush coming from her mouth and them going to the Astronomy Tower, where they now were.

Marlene was sitting on the balcony part of the Astronomy Tower, legs pulled tight to her chest, staring out at the grounds. She took a gulp from the bottle then winced as it burned through her throat. “Everything’s a mess, Pete,” she said hoarsely, still looking out at the grounds, before turning her head to look at him. “And I don’t know what to do.” Her voice was helpless, desperate. She hated that. But she hated the feeling of being that more, so she plowed through. “I’m so—” she started, before breaking off. Scared it’s my fault, but she couldn’t bear to say that. “I don’t know how to say what’s wrong,” she said helplessly. “i don’t want to drag you in—but I just don’t know what to do by myself.”

@pettigreww

[mckinnonaf]

rodolphusle-strange:

He wasn’t going to go to Hogsmeade. Rodolphus decided the day before he wouldn’t be going but when he woke something nagged at him that something would happen if he did and whether that happening would be good or whether it’d be bad he wasn’t sure. He felt like he had been functioning as half a person. After Marlene was sorted into Gryffindor he found ways to fill the empty parts of his soul but now that she left again she took them all with her. He felt empty again. Like every coping mechanism he developed in the past was ripped from him once again. He needed a distraction.

Hogsmeade looked bleak. The last time he’d been there he’d faced his father. What if he showed up again? The panic felt overwhelming to the point he had to sulk away from his butterbeer and company. It was like he was on auto-pilot. He wasn’t  paying attention to his surroundings in the slightest, he was just blindly wandering hoping that his feet would pull him away from prying eyes. The attention that had been on him since Cygnus Black was arrested had been unbearable. Everything was unbearable. Rodolphus couldn’t breathe without seeing Matthew in Marlenes eyes. He couldn’t focus without smelling death. It was like every basic human function took him back to the trauma of Matthew and the sorrow of having to tell Marlene he witnessed it. 

“OOF–” he exclaimed loudly, his body knocking into something in an alleyway. Shock and horror filled his face as he saw Marlene stumbling back a step. MARLENE MARLENE MARLENE– his brain screamed, quite alarmed at the situation. Did she want to see him? Was this her way of seeking him out? No. This was blind luck. “Oh my god I swear I didn’t see you, I didn’t–” he paused, reaching out for a moment to steady her before letting them fall by his sides. “Please. I am so fucking sorry Marlene I’ve been living in hell for the past year and I– please. I’m sorry.” He repeated, his voice falling into a broken plea before he could regain composure. “I’ve spent the past five and a half months wishing it were me that died instead if I could have jumped in front–” Rodolphus had to cut himself off. Desperation washed over every feature and he knew, he knew that he couldn’t talk about what happened with her until she was ready. He didn’t get to tell his side of the story to her until she was ready to hear it. 

“I deserved to die instead. I know that but I know you don’t hate me. You can’t say it, but if you could, if you could honestly tell me you hate me, that you never want to see me again– if you can honestly say that I’ll stay away from you. I’ll leave you alone. I’ll let you move on but nothing with ever compare to you.”

@mckinnonaf

Marlene was in Hogsmeade for the express purpose of getting out of the castle. She wasn’t feeling particularly celebratory, but she really liked Hestia and Xeno and had come with the intention of fully committing herself to celebrating them. Maybe she could distract herself on the way. She’d popped by quickly, finding both of them to deposit upon them well wishes, gifts and affection, but had found herself back outside after a quick butterbeer. She told herself she’d go back, she was just taking a breather, that she could do it—but truthfully, she was doubting it, just a little.

Tucking her hands into her coat pockets, Marlene hunched up her shoulders and turned left, going around near the back of the establishment. She was wandering around, lost in her own thoughts, stomping somewhat grumpily, if slowly, when she turned down an alleyway, colliding right with another person. Every sense was on hyper alert, her skin pricking, her whole body knowing exactly who she’d crashed into before her mind caught up. Even as she stumbled backwards slightly, everything in her was lurching. Rod.

He was speaking and it was desperate. It was desperate and she was desperate. I SWEAR I DIDN’T SEE YOU and his hands were moving to try steady her and she didn’t consciously do it, didn’t intend to, but she couldn’t help but flinch away, even as his arms were dropping back to their sides. That maybe hurt most of all. He would never hurt her physically, Marlene knew to her bones, but he’d hurt her in all the worst ways emotionally, and her body didn’t have any way to protect her heart except for retreat. Her instinct had once been to run into his arms for refuge and solace—she’d done it a few weeks ago, even—and now her body was flinching away from him because the latest hurt to wrack her soul had been from him.

Please I am so fucking sorry I’ve been living in hell—Marlene couldn’t handle it, could barely resist the urge to squeeze her eyes shut and hold her hands over her ears. At least you’ve been alive to do that spun through her head, making her feel sick inside, but not as much as she did when his words crashed into her: I deserved to die instead i deserved to die instead I deserved to dis instead because Marlene didn’t think anyone deserved to die, still couldn’t quite make herself believe it, but she knew that Matthew definitely did not deserve to die, and that Elena hadn’t either, and that Rod had gone there with the express purpose of one of them dying, and she didn’t know what to do with that. She didn’t want to say anything to him. Everything was messy and confusing and everything he was saying was hitting her so hard that she couldn’t breathe, why couldn’t she breathe? Didn’t he know how unfair it was to say these things to her? Rationally, Marlene knew he couldn’t have intended to collide with her like this. He looked just as taken aback and distraught as she felt. That didn’t make it any easier, though, and honestly, she didn’t feel like being fair. Nothing about this was fair—why did she have to be?

She felt like she was choking in this moment, or drowning in it. She felt frozen. Stuck. The word flashed through her mind, and it rattled her to her core. She actually shook slightly, feeling a violent tremor go through her at the word. He’d used it that night. It was seared into her very soul. I KNOW YOU DON’T HATE ME I KNOW YOU DON’T HATE ME I KNOW YOU DON’T HATE ME—

And suddenly she was so fucking angry, because how could he know that? How dare he know that? Did she not deserve to hate him? Did she not have the right? And if it was hard to do so, to commit fully to hate, then that was a sin on her shoulders but that was for her to handle and her alone. Didn’t he owe her to at least let her pretend to hate him until she could do it fully? After everything he’d done? I’ll let you move on but nothing will ever compare to you and she just desperately wanted to move on, to hate him, for him to let her go so she didn’t feel like she was breaking in half every time she had to see him—his words rattled her, were something towards derailing her, but she refused to let them, instead holding onto her anger, because after everything, didn’t he owe it to her to let her pretend to hate him, at least until she fully could? Part of her didn’t think she ever could, but that was her burden to bear.

“Fine,” she spat out finally, acidic and cold and trying to hide how much it was breaking. On anyone else, it might have worked, but she knew deep in her bones that he could hear the pain and her raw desperate yearning for her words to be true beneath the acid, and it made her even more furious. “I hate you,” she said impulsively, throwing it at him sharply like a knife, as if the edge of her words could disguise the fact that it wasn’t true. Because it wasn’t. She didn’t hate him. She couldn’t, not fully, and it made her want to shake herself and scream because WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME. It made her hate herself with a far more passionate fervour than she could muster up for him or any of them, and she didn’t know what to do with that. “I hate you and I don’t—” her voice hitched, because she could feel something raw and sad and hurt rising beneath the anger, even as she tried to suppress it, “—I don’t want to see you ever again.”

[mckinnonaf]

kiss your knuckles before you punch me in the face | lucius

date: for anyone trying to keep up, this is set the day after say something (rodmarls confrontation thread) and this is an sos (blackinnon thread immediately after rodmarls), which sets it around the first few days of february.

There were no words for how much Marlene felt like her world was ending, again.

Sirius had helped. Sirius had reminded her how to breathe. Sirius had kept her from breaking into something utterly irreparable last night—but holding her together wasn’t the same as fixing her. She was suspended in the act of falling apart, and she didn’t know whether she was going to make it back or not. She didn’t know anything. She was numb—a mess of emotions that were too big to know how to feel, the image of Rod cracking on the floor in endless replay, the feeling of her heart stuttering then breaking then shutting down constantly thrumming through her. There was too much for her, and she didn’t know what to do. She was frozen.

Or so she thought.

Marlene didn’t know where she was. She didn’t even know who she had been with beforehand, if she’d even been with anybody, or where. All she knew was that there was a languid tone hitting her ears, so close to her, cutting through the unintelligible noises of everyone else, and it was achingly familiar. It reminded her of a night sprinkled with alcohol and the stars of the last night of the year, of nostalgia and memories and an uncharacteristically bittersweet, fond smile from a boy she had known once, had laughed with once, had loved once. (She thought it was a past tense—she needed it to be a past tense, or else how could she live with herself?) It reminded her of being seven years old and rolling her eyes in a garden not fancy enough for his tastes—of being nine and critiquing flying fields with him. It reminded her of how he was the very best friend of a boy whose name she couldn’t even bear to think—of how he’d have been with him, how he’d have been there. She knew it in her bones. Marlene wanted to throw up. Marlene wanted to scream. Marlene wanted to punch him. There was nausea and betrayal and devastation heady enough to choke on, but overwhelming it all was this steady fury, mounting higher, sharpened and more acidic for the sting of betrayal that accompanied it.

She didn’t think. She just moved. She didn’t think there was anyone around—or at least, nobody important. There were younger students scattered around, she thought, and there were whispers in her ears as people moved out of her way when she turned to face him, storm that she was. She didn’t care. Let them talk.

Marlene didn’t know what she was going to say, but she thought she’d have something. There was so much rage and pain in her, she thought some of it would spill into words, even if she couldn’t actualise them right at that moment. But that wasn’t what happened.

All she could see was his face, smug and supercilious and too fucking familiar and, most importantly, not looking at her, not exactly, not yet. And before she knew it, Marlene’s hand was clenching into a fist — she was swinging back — barrelling forward — and with an almighty CRACK, the sound of skin and bone on skin and bone, of furious knuckle against aristocratic bone structure, Marlene’s fist connected with Lucius’ face in a ferocious and altogether unexpected punch. Even as he staggered, she found herself shoving at him once more, gripped with a fury she could not contain. Part of her was incredibly satisfied with the idea that he was going to have a horrendous bruise, and probably a broken nose and fucked up cheek, but most of her was shaking—rattled by what she’d done, but rattled by what he’d done too.

She was closing her stinging fist again, pulling back slightly to punch again, but now her words were working, now that she was sickened and desperate and raw and on the verge of breaking down something fierce. “How could you?” she demanded, her voice more a cry than a question. “You—you were there,” she hissed, almost daring him to deny it, except he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t—at least, she didn’t think to her. She thought she would be all the more furious if he tried, but she wasn’t worth lying to. She knew the only thing beating out the nausea was the adrenaline—knew that Lucius was probably the only one she could actually bear to approach, because something about it felt less like betrayal than Rod and Amycus, because he hadn’t been lying to her face for six months—but it still felt like betrayal because they had been friends, because Lucius had known Matthew, because Lucius had known the kid he was and still... she couldn’t think about that, so she focused on her anger. Anger, because it didn’t matter that they hadn’t meant to get Matty, because they’d meant to go to someone’s house and kill them anyway and that made her so furious, she wanted to throw up—but anger as well, because they had gone there, and even if they hadn’t meant to, her brother was dead. 

@luciusmalfov

[mckinnonaf]

rj-moony:

The vehemence with which Marlene responded to his question shouldn’t have surprised Remus. He had been friends with Marlene for years, and they’d discussed magical creatures before. Even debated, but passionate as those conversations may have been they held no real repercussions. It didn’t matter what dragon they decided would be easiest to hide on the Hogwarts grounds or what creature would win in a fight. The classification system was not another game for them to fight over; it was Remus’ life. He didn’t have it in him to fight with anyone about the system, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

He knew Marlene wouldn’t call him a monster. None of his friends would, but he would. He knew werewolves in a way he hoped they never would. He knew what it was like to have an animal tear at your skin and be scared to death that you were going to die only to awake to a fate worse than death. He knew the urge to tear through human flesh because he had to fight it every full moon. It disgusted him every time he woke up, but he could never forget the eagerness with which he would have killed if given the chance. Remus had seen and felt the things werewolves could do. He hated being told he wasn’t human, but that was only because he believed it. Being a monster was terrible, but he didn’t for doubt it was what he was.

When Marlene silenced herself he had a brief moment of hope. Hope he had to go and ruin with stupid questions. When she said werewolves his heart sank. He was glad he’d had the foresight to put his sugar quill back in his mouth otherwise he may have let a nervous habit show. He resisted the urge to crush the candy in his mouth and pulled it out slowly uttering a soft, “Hmm,” as he attempted to sort through the mess of thoughts in his mind. “That’s an odd parallel,” he nodded after what he worried was a moment too long of silence. He wasn’t sure if Marlene wanted to say more or give her permission to keep talking. He stuck the sugar quill back in his mouth, and glanced at his friend as though to say let it out when all he really wanted was to get the hell out of there.

There was something niggling in the back of Marlene’s head, something that reminded her of the guilty feeling she’d felt when werewolves had come up—something that she normally wouldn’t feel guilty for, something she didn’t have any explicit reason to feel guilty for with Remus, but something that hollowed in her stomach nonetheless. It felt like getting too close to something that she’d never allowed herself to say, never even really, properly, allowed herself to even think—but that was silly. Wasn’t it? She wasn’t sure if she was ready to chase that thought down to the point where she could put words to the feeling in her gut, or maybe she wasn’t sure if Remus was ready, because she had an uncomfortable tendency to need to say something out loud when it was an explicit truth burning inside of her. She pushed that down, away, ignoring the voice that said change the subject, McKinnon, because doing that would be acknowledging something she wasn’t sure she was allowed to, even if only to herself. It was a complicated, messy thing, being inside of Marlene McKinnon’s head, and this was no exception.

“Right?” Marlene exclaimed, maybe too loud, something to compensate for the maybe too long silence from Remus beforehand. Marlene was very good at avoidance mechanisms, but sometimes she chose strange ways to do so. Such as clinging to the topic at hand, despite the fairly obvious fact that it was also incredibly relevant to what she wasn’t explicitly thinking about in her own head. Truths, sometimes, could swallow up the space in between, the hollow between two people, housed in trust, even if it was never said out loud.

And because of these thoughts that she wasn’t trying to think but was unable to suppress entirely, Marlene did not want to explain what Caroline Flint had said, but anger derived from injustice and the impulsive storm of unstoppable recklessness gaining momentum that was Marlene McKinnon led her to that point anyway. “Something about how just because a werewolf looks like ‘us’,” she grumbled, air quotes around the us, “doesn’t mean they’re the same, just like how a Muggle can look like a wizard even if they don’t have any magic—which is complete bullshit, which I told her,” she added fiercely. “The stuff she was saying was completely out of line,” she said firmly, her brows knitting together in her annoyance. “The entire concept of dividing living things into Beasts and Beings—and Spirit, actually—is ridiculous, as if we have the right to determine what anything or whom anyone is, but the idea that someone can be a person—a Being—when in one form but is something that the world considers less in another—which is also really fucking shitty, I would personally consider a dragon to be of higher value to society and better company than Snape, the colossal twat... but anyway, the concept that someone could be a Being in one form but are inherently of different worth because of another form is just—it’s barbaric, you can’t divide a person like that, it’s—ugh,” Marlene reeled off finally, breathing heavily, having barely taken any breaths during the entire rant. “Also, Beasts having a classification based on their danger to humans? Humans endanger humans. We’re the monsters.” Marlene set her face into a frustrated expression, still stoked by the fires of injustice and frustration and fury... until she took a breath. Then, the fires did not go out, but they were tempered by a sense of supreme guilt—one that would not make sense to most, but did to the most inner parts of Marlene, the parts that knew and loved magical creatures and defense and her friends more than anything, the part that had put together pieces that she hadn’t let herself consciously acknowledge. That part was humming with something terrible and loud and guilty, and so she retrieved another sugar quill and stuck it in her mouth, lest she say anything else, and pushed several more towards Remus.

of wolves and opinions / remus.

[mckinnonaf]

A country that is run by politicians

[mckinnonaf]

this is an sos / sirius

She was seventeen and the world was coming to an end, again.

Hysterical sobs were cracking out of her as she ran blindly through the castle. Tears were making it hard to see, hard to run, hard to breathe—or maybe that was just the staccato of her heart, thumping so loud that it filled up her throat, cracking so intensely that it rattled through her chest.

She didn’t know where she was running, not really, not consciously, not until she was stumbling on the stairs to the Seventh floor, one destination in her head. A face, really, but a face that had been part of her world for so long that he felt like home. She hadn’t realised where she was going but as soon as she did, well—where else could she have gone? Sirius was the only one who would understand how monumental a betrayal it was, how utterly heart-wrenching; he was the first one she’d gone to when she’d reconnected with Rod—and she wanted to throw up, just thinking about that, STOP FUCKING THINKING ABOUT THAT—because she had been a confused mess of a girl and if anyone was going to understand that, it’d have been Sirius. And if anyone was going to understand why her heart was palpitating so aggressively, it was him, because he’d been part of that world, he knew those people, had loved those people, had a brother—

Marlene’s heart stilled and she paused for a second on the stairs, having recovered from her stumble, before surging forward again, gasping as tears rolled down her face and frantic thoughts raced through her mind. REGULUS IS STILL THERE. And thinking of Regulus had images of Matty flashing through her mind—Matty, six and laughing with Regulus; Matty, eleven and beaming under a Sorting Hat; Matty, sixteen and celebrating his birthday with Elena; Matty, sixteen and never going to get any older and lying there cold and drained and grey and still and fucking dead on a bier and her whole world was spiralling again.

She thought James and Lily were on patrols, or something, and maybe Remus was tutoring again—maybe Dorcas and Peter were playing Gobstones, with Mary lying at Dorcas’ feet. She didn’t know. She couldn’t even bring herself to care if any of them saw her sprinting through the common room, a stumbling mess of tears and hyperventilation, if anyone saw. Her world was breaking, for the second time, and she was fucking sick of trying to hold it all in.

Marlene sprinted into the boys’ dorm, almost tripping on the carpet because of how hard she was gasping, how hot the tears streaming down her face were. It didn’t matter though, because there was Sirius, and she lurched towards him, trying to let out all the words she needed to say—but in her desperate grief and the turmoil of her spiralling mind and heart, they all tripped up over themselves on the way out. 

“Si—Sirius,” she stuttered, gasping his name out like a refuge, like a solace, like it was a lifeline and she was drowning—which, she supposed, was fairly accurate. “They—students—he fucking,” and she couldn’t help it, but a wave of fresh tears suddenly overcame her, voice cracking, because suddenly she was thinking of Rod saying those awful things, looking at her like he couldn’t live with himself, in a way she didn’t know what to do with, in a way she didn’t know how to handle, because she didn’t know if she could ever trust anything about him now, which wasn’t something she’d ever doubted before but her world was spinning and the very foundations of all she knew and was were crumbling beneath her feet. “It was them,” she choked out, but her words were too fast, much too fast, and blurring with the tears and shuddering gasps from her chest and she couldn’t breathe. “They—I can’t—he didn’t—he let me—he didn’t tell—oh my god oh my god oh my—”

@pcdfootisms

[mckinnonaf]

healerobin:

Marlene,

Please just call me Alex. In my professional opinion you should get your arse to the hospital wing.

— the real professional, Alex.

Alex,

I’ve got to let you know, “Alex” does not exactly have all the rumbly stoic gravitas of a Real Professional. Hope your skills make up for it—like sneak attack professionalism! Come not expecting much, get more than you bargained for. 

Also, professional opinion is not all that helpful in this thoroughly HYPOTHETICAL situation. Consider, for instance, said hypothetical injured party harbours a perfectly legitimate aversion to Hospital Wings, and also the knee is still Doing The Thing which makes trekking to the Place Of No Return quite difficult. Does your professional opinion hypothetically change?

— Marlene the most professional ever

[mckinnonaf]

ohdeerevans:

“… Do I get to pick the monologue, is it any quieter than the song…?”

“It is a delight of my own composing,” Marlene informed Lily, grinning cheekily, “though I can throw in another of your choice, of course.” Marlene pulled a face. “The purpose is not to aim for quiet, Evans. And nope,” she said cheerily. “They both have different elements of it, but each has an aspect of magnificence and volume!”

[mckinnonaf]

rodolphusle-strange:

Say it. A voice growled in the back of his head, something malicious and burning. Say it. Yet everything was moving in a blur of slow motion. Marlene knew. Rodolphus looked at her and could feel it in her his bones that she already knew, even if she didn’t. It could have been the paranoia festering away at him, but in his mind, in that moment, he knew she knew. There would be no covering this up, not anymore. He couldn’t blame this on a lack of sleep and stress, Marlene would know if she didn’t already. No, he had to face this. He had to say it. I was there. Before he could formulate a response, her hand was curling around his quivering arm and he pulled it away and began to shake his head. “P-please, god no– you can’t touch me–” because her hands felt like holy water burning away at his sins. It twisted at his stomach and reminded him that he did not deserve this.

He felt as if he were going to lose consciousness, and part of him hoped he would so that he could avoid this. “I’m stuck.” he cracked, repeating the words she’d just reaffirmed to him. It felt as if his lungs were being deprived of oxygen, as if he couldn’t muster the strength to inhale and replenish them. “I–” inhale, “–I’m stuck Marlene it was me or Rabbit. It was me or Rabbit every time and–” Rodolphus broke himself off, losing himself in his words as he tried to grasp reality. Maybe this was just a disgusting nightmare, maybe managing the scrape by on the very bare minimum of sleep to function had caught up to him and he fell asleep in class, maybe— the thought vanished as another gust of wind blew through him. 

Marlene had been gone for six years, and Sirius, although only truly cutting ties with his family recently had gotten out as well. And Rodolphus had always silently resented the fact, because a part of his was happy that they got out. That they found their freedom and beat the game. But the larger part of him, the part he was more embarrassed to admit, was still childishly confused as to why neither came back to tell them how they did it. Rationality told him, they got sorted into a better future. One with a fresh start where they weren’t surrounded with people who come from power unknown and control over the lives of others. He couldn’t accept that though, that something as petty as a sorting hat rewrote their destinies. What if Rodolphus had allowed himself to be put into Hufflepuff, though? How could that have helped him when his heart and soul laid in the chests of the people adorned in green and silver? None of this made sense to him.

“I wanted to wait– to tell you once I knew it would be safe once for you t-” he broke off, turning his chin upwards to stare at the ceiling as he felt his right knee begin to visibly shake. Don’t you do this don’t you dare– Rodolphus Lestrange was born to control his emotions. He didn’t do this and certainly not in open areas, for anyone to witness. No, his pain was to be internalized and dealt with later, when he was alone, when he had a wand in his hand and someone to challenge, anytime but ones like these. “I didn’t know I didn’t–” he had to break himself off again, to suck more air into his lungs and attempt to regain his composure. 

“He’ll fucking kill me, Marlene, I’m stuck.” The words came out in an agonizing groan, one that caused him to pull at his hair, to dig his palms into his eyes and try to rid himself of any emotion building but he’d lost all rationality seven hours ago when he was convinced professor Slughorn knew, and was waiting to sell the story to the highest bidder. Rodolphus wasn’t sure if Marlene would take that as his father would kill him or the more threatening choice, the one she wouldn’t be able to say, the dark lord. Both seemed equally threatening to Rodolphus these days. “Oh my god–” his voice was shaking, and he brought his eyes back to Marlene. Bloodshot and desperate and broken.

“I d-didn’t want– I didn’t want him m-making– Rabbit go, I didn’t know–” again his words cracked off at the edges, and he swallowed hard. Razor sharp guilt flashed through him and his lips began to tremble. “Marlene I didn’t know– I didn’t ask– I didn’t think–” but none of that mattered now, because this was the moment Rodolphus knew Marlene would never forget. He felt his chest heaving, and knew it was his body beginning to hyperventilate. His body demanded the oxygen he hadn’t been able to give it. Everything felt numb, his hands which he kept trying to tell his brain to move, his face which was frozen in fear. He was stuck. 

“I tried– I tried so hard to save him and I can’t live with myself.” Even whispering the words, silent and broken and told through gasping breathes, Rodolphus felt disgusting for saming them. For trying to tell her that he tried to save Matty because he FAILED. He couldn’t save Matty, and perhaps if he did then the fact he wasn’t there wouldn’t have been as defining to his soul because Elena would have lived as well. Rodolphus didn’t want to be a murderer, and although to this point he wasn’t, Matthews blood has never left him. It was everywhere. When he was trying to take a shower, it would appear again swirling down the drain. While he was trying to sleep he could smell it in the air. While he was sitting in class, he felt it sticking to him. There was no escaping this. 

“I can’t live with myself and Elena– she knows Marlene she knows I told her– I told her she can tell– you can tell an auror, I can’t live with myself– and there was never a right time to tell you because I’ve spent six years pining to have you back in my life and– Marlene please you know me–”

Everything was twisting around her, dark and shaking and incomprehensible, because Marlene didn’t get it, didn’t get why Rod looked like this, but something in her—something in the back of her mind was shaking its head, almost sadly, almost like you do, you just don’t know it yet. Before she could summon the courage to chase that thought to its conclusion, Rod was pulling away from her and it felt like a dagger lurching into her heart. She couldn’t remember that ever happening before. Not in seventeen years. It, more than anything else, shook her to her core. It was one thing to not know if she could help, and another thing entirely to feel him pulling himself from her touch, to feel the absence of him so explicitly and starkly. You can’t touch me. Her blood ran cold. Because her hands were too fit for breaking, or because he was terrified of what could happen to them? Rodolphus Lestrange was a forever story for Marlene McKinnon—what could make him look at her like she was the ending?

i’m stuck i’m stuck i’m stuck i’m stuck I’M STUCK and Marlene wanted to scream because yes, yes he was, but hadn’t that been the problem all year? Was it something suddenly insurmountable, something that he was filled to the brim with? Because she could understand that, she could hold him as he shook if that was the case because that burned within her, this sadness and fury at what he should have been allowed to be—but. But. It haunted her. But what if that wasn’t it? But what if something had changed? What, exactly, had him like this? Because she would sit down on the ground and cry with him, holding him, shaking with him, if it was just a straw that broke. But what if it was something more? Why was he looking at her like that? Like she was—she didn’t know. Salvation, maybe, or a goddess to cry for absolution from, someone to whom he owed repentance. They were opposite ends of the scale, but somehow it felt like he was casting her as both. She began to tremble. Pedestals were not made for girls like her, with spirits too wild to catch and fingers shaking too hard to hold her heart together. A goddess was something holy, whose rage quelled seas and churned fires, something to worship—and Marlene was just a whirlwind streaking recklessly through the world, desperately trying to contain her own fallout and never quite being enough.

He was talking about Rabastan. He was talking about Rabastan and she wanted to scream, or cry, or shake him, because she didn’t understand. He was talking about Rabastan and she closed her eyes, almost a prayer, because something in her was shaking with foreboding. It was me or Rabbit every time— and didn’t Marlene know, with a certainty thrumming through every inch of herself, the lengths Rodolphus Lestrange would go to in order to protect his brother? It wasn’t an answer, but it was the beginnings of one, and Marlene felt her heart swallow dread. How far would he go—how far had he gone?

“You wanted to tell me what, Rod?” she asked, voice shaking, choking on his name. She didn’t know when it had started, but she was shaking. Everything inside of her was at war. Things were starting to fall into place but the conclusion—it was too awful to think about. Everything in her heart screamed for it to not be true but the voice in her mind said look closer, the feeling in her gut more panicked. Marlene McKinnon had always lived on instinct and impulse, but never before had her instincts screamed at her BE ON GUARD, PROTECT YOURSELF at the same time that her heart was bleeding for her person before her. Rod wouldn’t hurt her, she knew in her bones, at least never physically—but her heart was much more delicate than her body, and she knew in a sudden, sickening lurch, that it was her heart that her instincts were screaming to protect. Didn’t they know she was in too deep? That she’d never had walls when it came to him? “You didn’t know what?” she demanded, except it wasn’t commanding, not like it was meant to be—it was a desperate plea, her heart begging him to say she was wrong, the rest of her tensed to hear whatever it was, because she needed the truth, even if she did not want it.

There was no real ambiguity left, Marlene knew, but she still needed him to say it. He had to say it. Because until he did, she could still be wrong. Until he did, she could hold in the hurricane threatening to burst out from her chest and lay waste to the world, or maybe just the two of them. Still, his words made her knees buckle. He’ll fucking kill me. Everything in her ran cold, even the parts that were sick with suspicion of what he was guilty of. He, as in his father, or he, as in someone worse? Her gut said the latter, and it nearly shattered her. Romulus Lestrange was a man she despised, a man she did not trust, a man whom she would believe many vile things of, but murder of his heir was not one of them, or at least, was less likely to her than the alternative. Romulus Lestrange, she thought bitterly, was more likely to threaten and torture and trick than to let go a prize such as his heir. The alternative, on the other hand... Marlene knew the whispers and murmurs, heard names linked to it of people whom she remembered disappearing into shadowy rooms with closed doors, knew what the Prophet published but understood that there would be so much more it didn’t... and more than most people in this castle, Marlene McKinnon was aware of the cost a brush with him or his followers could mean. Voldemort. The name caused her breath to hitch and her fists to clench—not because she was scared of the name, not really, but because to think it in this context was an irreversible thing. Headlines were flashing before her eyes. Matthew McKinnon—suspected involvement—Belfort—DEATH EATERS—

He was staring at her and his eyes were bloodshot and her knees were buckling. He’d told her she was doing great, at New Years, and—DON’T THINK ABOUT THAT, she screamed at herself. The memories tasted like ash on her tongue. Everything he was saying was a step short of the uncompromising, irreversible truth, but always a step closer. They were inching towards the climax, or maybe catastrophe—either way, Marlene’s whole world was shaking, one screw away from collapsing around her ears completely. He’d said she was doing great—didn’t he realise she’d built herself on him again, just like she had as a kid? Didn’t he realise that he’d helped hold her together—that with every word, more of her foundation was crumbling? She had to know, she had to—she just wasn’t sure there’d be anything left of her once she did. Maybe Marlene McKinnon was not built for permanence, but something to fall in a strike of wildfire, or blown away to the sea.

He looked scared, but Marlene was numb. Or—no, not truly, not in that she couldn’t feel anything, but that she felt too fucking much and it was crashing over her and overwhelming her and she couldn’t tell what she was feeling anymore because she was goddamn drowning in it. I TRIED I TRIED SO HARD TO SAVE HIM AND I CAN’T LIVE WITH MYSELF and suddenly she was gasping, because those words were mere millimetres off the inescapable, unsurvivable conclusion she had drawn. She felt like her world was spinning, and everything was swimming in front of her. “What?” she asked, something broken and disbelieving and full of raw pain in the whimper. She couldn’t breathe.

And then he said Elena’s name, and something inside of Marlene broke. There was no way to deny what he was saying, no way to convince her instincts they had it wrong, but she still needed him to say it. He had to say it. He owed her that. He owed Matthew that. She could feel herself hitting the floor, her knees finally buckling under the weight of everything with no foundation left to hold her up. As soon as she hit the ground, she was scrambling backwards, anything to put space between them, as if the air dividing them would make his presence on her skin and under it any less pervasive, any less real. “An Auror?” she shouted, and she could feel something hot and stinging in her eyes, though it wasn’t until she felt the warmth on her cheeks that she realised she was crying. She resisted the urge to wipe them away—let them stand, she thought, something savage and something heartbroken inside of her. Let them stay for Matthew. “An Auror, when the entire fucking Ministry—” she broke off, choking on her own sob. She couldn’t believe he’d talked to Elena. Elena. The whole time, this whole time, Elena had been losing her mind and self over her broken heart, crying and blaming herself, while Marlene was building herself on his—on his what? His murderer? The boy who watched him die? Marlene didn’t even know. He hadn’t said, not really, and everything in her was cracking too hard, everything roaring in her ears too loud.

“You have to say it,” she threw at him, literally gasping on air, tears streaming from her eyes, her words not a battlecry like she’d always hoped she could be for Matthew, but something desperate, something pleading. “You have to say it,” she repeated, even to her own ears sounding more devastated than furious. She was a hurricane of emotion and it was tearing her apart at the seams. His words were rattling through her brain and she didn’t know which to pick out, which to approach—because the six years was true, the six years was a yearning she had felt, but that wasn’t an excuse, that wasn’t a reason to let her build herself on him, knowing what he’d done—whatever he’d done. She couldn’t let herself believe he would actually hurt Matthew; she thought her heart might stop beating if so. Marlene please you know me you know me you know me YOU KNOW ME—she squeezed her eyes shut, as if that could stop the barrage of his words running in circles in her head. “Do I?” she asked in a whisper, opening her eyes and staring at him, her words stained with horror and shock and a level of heartbreak she had never known. It felt like she was reliving Matthew’s death all over again, but so much fucking worse, because she had TRUSTED Rod, she had BELIEVED IN HIM, she had BUILT HERSELF ON HIM and let herself find refuge in his soul... and he had known, the entire fucking time, while she was tearing herself apart over her little brother, whilst the Prophet was ripping into her brain with headlines screaming John Belfort’s name—he had held this inside him this whole time and had let her trust in him anyway. Let her feel—NO, she screamed savagely. That was not a thought she could finish. Not now, when she thought she might throw up.

say something / rod

[mckinnonaf]

rodolphusle-strange:

        There had been moments like this in his life before. Moments where he felt whatever softness left in his heart freeze over, infiltrating the crevices and cracking the foundation. Why was it that he always compared his heart to a wild terrain? One too feral for anyone less than extraordinary to survive. This foundation had been mapped previously by the only girl feral enough to get past every brier bush and devils snare that encompassed what was hidden underneath. Marlene. Here she stood pressed softly against him, telling him she needed him. His fingers still played in hers, intertwining as if he were trying to sew them together. His eyes were weighed down with something that screamed love and guilt simultaneously. 

        “Lets stay here all night.” purred Rodolphus in agreement, walking her back to the bed before collapsing onto it and pulling her down with him. Flirting with the idea of it, Rodolphus knew it would be a bad idea. If she were to make any advances he wasn’t sure how strong his resolve would be. Masked by drugs and alcohol his common sense felt deluded enough however to make a different suggestion. “No, let’s do one better. Let’s leave. Let’s go– not return to school. I know I’ve said this before but–” his voice was a whisper, something delicate and honest as he stared at her, her hair fanning out like a halo around her. He’d always known she was something holy. 

        “Let’s leave Marlene. I want out. I want a different life.” This tone of wander and hope was one that had laid dormant inside of Rodolphus for long enough that he forgot it existed in the first place. Come on Marlene– just a little further through the forest. We don’t have to be back yet, my next lesson isn’t for— well it doesn’t matter. We’ll tell them we got lost. We should get lost. He’d used to plead with her, toying with the idea of the reckless abandon. The only thing that had centered him back to reality then had been the vision of his brother in his place or Amycus coming unhinged. Lucius he had never worried about in the same way. Lucius and Rodolphus always had that unspoken knowledge that the other could survive and maintain their public image. 

           The idea felt safer of telling Marlene if he had indeed, managed to get out. Out of the twisted web he’d become ensnared in with the dark lord. The only way to get out would be to run, to leave and hope you couldn’t be traced. Rodolphus felt his stomach tighten and moved closer against Marlene on the bed. He rolled onto his side and took the joint from her, balancing it between his lips and taking the occasional gentle drag from it. It was too hard to resist not dragging his fingers along her jaw line, so he gave in. “I’m terrified that every moment I have with you will be the last. You’ve rattled me to my core, McKin and yes–” A pause, as he inhaled quickly and lowered his hand. “I may be drunk, but you are still fucking ethereal and my god I’m so afraid to see you walk away. If you wanted, if you really wanted—” because Rodolphus knew her loyalty went deeper than he’d have preferred in this moment for her friends. “– I would leave with you. I want out. I want you.”

        It was almost funny, she reflected, how time sometimes seemed to stand still when he was looking at her, but it was still never enough time to decipher all his looks. She could spend decades unravelling him and never get bored—but that wasn’t her future. Even if they weren’t engaged yet, only betrothed—no. She didn’t want to think about that. Not when he was looking at her like that. Not when he felt like the only real thing in the entire world. Truth be told, he’d always been the thing she knew best—the most important part of the foundation of Marlene McKinnon. Perhaps it wasn’t that she couldn’t decipher his expression—perhaps it was that it shook her to her bones, that she wasn’t ready to try and unravel what his eyes held.

        As he pulled her to the bed, she felt a swooping feeling in her stomach, but she didn’t think it was from the falling—at least, not any physical falling. Sometimes, the feeling of being with Rod was a falling too big to be contained, something overwhelming and breathtaking. Lying down on a bed with him, his words—let’s stay here all night—rocketing through her head, she thought about it: why hadn’t they? She knew the rumours about him, and how this situation would normally end with either of them, except, for some reason, not with each other. Situations like this ended with laughter and wry grins, normally, or sex and something like adrenaline racing through her. This was something new entirely. This was vulnerability, this was emotion, this was something she couldn’t even begin to quantify, not with her heart pounding in her chest. Whatever this was, it wasn’t just friendship, or anything remotely like it—but she didn’t feel the immediate need to ramp it up, to turn it into something fun. Whatever it was, it was enough as it was. Being there with him was something shaking through her, filling her up in ways a simple presence had never before. it was new and frightening and exhilarating and addictive all at once, heart in her throat, yet breath easy in her lungs.

        Let’s go. He’d said it before, he was right, but for a moment, lying back and looking up at him, she lost herself in his eyes, gold of his iris turning into the gold of sand whipping through dunes, pyramids and gold and ancient worlds to explore. They’d talked about it when they were younger, reenacting their favourite historical scenes, imagining going to the places they learned about—places Rod had always been sure his father would take him, but this would be different, this would be together. It was always meant to be together. Marlene had always loved running wild, wanting to explore the world, answering to no-one, but she’d also always been there to bring them back home. Maybe home could be a person—maybe it didn’t have to be a back— There was something so earnest about the thought in her head that she almost couldn’t bear it. Her heart jackhammered from it. How many times had she learned not to make a home in a person, and how many times had she done it anyway? This was more like rediscovering an old hiding place, her first hidden grove, her first solace, but it didn’t change how much it struck her: lying here with him felt like coming home.

        I want a different life. “What do you want?” she asked, eyes trained on his hand before glancing up at him, hand reaching for his hair. “Tell me. I want to hear what kind of life you’d want,” she said softly. Partially as a distraction, but mostly because she wanted to soak him up. She wanted a different life in a lot of ways, but more than anything, her life didn’t feel like hers anymore. It didn’t feel real. Snatches of it did, but she wanted to feel real again, more frequently. Seeing as she did here, in this space with Rod, she thought maybe she could anchor herself in his dreams—or at least lose herself in a way that didn’t feel like losing a war. ( That would come later, after all. )

        Rodolphus was shifting, and she was hyper-aware of it. She watched him take her joint and lift it to his lips, and even though he was the one taking a drag, she felt like she was the one getting hooked. When he dragged his fingers along her skin, she leaned into his touch. She couldn’t help it, but she couldn’t honestly say she wanted to. His touch felt like the only easy thing in the world right now, even as it had her pulse quickening. Her breath hitched, heart pounding at his words. They were so much. She agreed, though she couldn’t figure out why—why either would walk away, why he would think she could. Perhaps it was Bellatrix hanging over their heads, through no fault of her own but the machinations of parents with designs on their children’s futures. All she knew was that in this moment, she couldn’t even fathom walking away.

        His hand was dropping from her face, so she quickly reached out to capture it in her own, pressing an impulsive kiss to his knuckles, before breathing them in. “Me too,” she admitted, honest and vulnerable and something fierce letting itself be soft, all at once. “And I just—I can’t imagine not having this,” she said, leaning forward slightly, just to be closer to him. I can’t imagine not having you, because you couldn’t own a person, Marlene was adamant, but something in this felt like belonging. “I don’t know if I’m more drunk on alcohol or you,” she murmured, before realising she’d said it out loud. Her cheeks flushed slightly, but she thought it was more from the night than embarrassment, exactly. Somehow, Rod was past the point of her inability to process her emotions being enough of a barricade to sharing them—she supposed it was because she’d never learned how to put walls up with him. 

        “Why would I...” she began in a breath, before deciding not to go there. She didn’t want to hear him say Bellatrix, not right now. “I’m right here,” she said instead, looking at him intently and reaching to cup one of his cheeks. “I’m here and I’m not leaving tonight,” and it somehow became urgent in her mouth, because part of her never wanted to leave this moment. “Do you ever wish a night could last forever?” she asked, propping an arm up to rest on and reaching for the joint. I want out. I want you. She took a long drag, as if she could somehow inhale the spirit of this night into her lungs and keep it there forever, for as long as she could draw breath. “I don’t know what I want,” she admitted after a long exhale, looking at him helplessly. Everything felt like so much. But he said she didn’t have to be great right now, and maybe it was okay to not be. She was so scared of not being enough most of the time, but maybe he would still think she was anyway. She hoped he would, because she desperately wanted someone to, but she wouldn’t blame him if not. She held herself accountable for the same thing, after all. “Not really. I just know that I want you, and I don’t want this to end.” Tonight, but also in general. If she could live in their fantasies forever, well, who knew—maybe it would feel more real than her life. “Please don’t let this end,” she breathed, a plea more to the universe than Rod. She knew she couldn’t have forever—knew he had a different person in his future, as unfair as it was, as much as it made her want to scream because he deserved a choice—but God, she wanted to hold onto it for as long as possible. 

[mckinnonaf]

“Now that’s a bare-faced lie—and from the Head Wix, no less!” Marlene said, raising an eyebrow and grinning. “The nerve. Now, which’d you prefer: singing or a dramatic monologue?”

“Before you say anything - no, it is not my birthday.”

[mckinnonaf]

rodolphusle-strange:

The sickening realization that Rodolphus Lestrange’s resolve had broken kept him awake for the past week and a half. He felt manic. Everything began to look different, as if he were riding a bad high he couldn’t pull himself from. He’d been riddled with paranoia ever since new years, and even back at Hogwarts he created conspiracies in his mind about the professors writing to his father. That the castle walls were watching him, waiting to catch him slip up and report it back home. He had grown painfully aware of his condition, he knew that Lucius and Amycus saw the difference in him. They’d both heard the screams and the pleas he made in his sleep. They saw the lack of sleep and how it was affecting him clear as day. The thing Rodolphus hadn’t known was that the lack of sleep wouldn’t keep the night terrors at bay, it just made them leak into  his daily life. 

So of course seeing Marlene was out of the picture. He’d spent as much time as possible inside the dungeons, just to reduce the chance of seeing her in this state. Marlene knew every tick that made up Rodolphus, and it’d been a miracle he’s lasted this long with the weight of a dead brother baring down on him. He was suffocating in it. There had never been a right time to tell her. Certainly not after the funeral. Not when he’d just gotten her back. Not when he’d just gotten her back. He was a selfish boy that wanted to hold onto the only thing that gave him hope. He wanted to get his ducks in a row before he dropped that bomb on her, he wanted to plan it out and perfect every plan of action. But there was no way to go about this, he quickly realized that as the days passed by. He wanted to be able to get out– he wanted to get out. Then he would tell her. But there was no out. He’d made his choices, he’d signed his soul to a devil and he knew once Marlene knew she’d be gone and this pipe dream he was chasing would implode on itself. The shrapnel would remain embedded in him long after she was gone.  

Because Rodolphus Lestrange was in love and he absolutely despised it. 

He’d been walking through one of the courtyards when it happened. The harsh Scotland wind whipped through him, punishing him with the crippling fear that this is what Azkaban must feel like. He imagine Cygnus there, trying to maintain his pride as he wondered whether his soul was too black for even the dementors. What must that feel like? Would he ever find out? Rodolphus couldn’t move, he was frozen in place, fighting to make his feet obey him and carry him back to the common room. If I can just get back to the common room– he told himself, I’ll sleep. I swear I’ll sleep. Because this was spiraling, and he knew this. He didn’t lose control. This wasn’t in his nature. 

As if it were by tragic chance, Rodolphus felt fingers curl around the back of his arm and he whipped around. Marlene. It felt as if the ground were rumbling, threatening to crack open and pull him under. If he’d been more clear of mind, he would have known this was just his knees trembling beneath him. The lips that spoke his name like hallelujah cracked into something hard and he tried to remember what it was she was saying to him. Cygnus. That’s right. His meant to be father in law that may not actually become his father in law. Would any of that matter if Rodolphus lost Marlene? The boy that had once been so sure of everything was reeling to make sense of anything. “I’m stuck.” He whispered in a voice so quiet, so low he wasn’t sure if she’d even heard him. In Marlene’s eyes he saw Matthews reflection clear as day, as if he were standing right next to Rodolphus. His jaw hung ajar for a moment, and a choking noise escaped his lips as he tore his eyes from hers. 

“I’m stuck and I can’t– I can’t get out.” 

Rodolphus was six years old whenever he first tried to lie to Marlene. You shoved that house elf into the fountain. Did not. Did too! No I didn’t! Then why are you being so fidgety? That was the first time she learned what it look like for him to lie to her. She’d stood beside him while he executed perfectly crafted lies to others, but there was never any chance when it came to her. “I fucked up. I fucked up. I don’t know what to do I need to know what to do Marlene– please. Please. I didn’t know what to do I–” his eyes began to burn, something he had grown unfamiliar with as time passed by and his throat tightened in a way that made him feel like he was going to be sick. 

Marlene McKinnon was many things, and not all of them good. Reactive—impulsive—emotional—reckless—compassionate—volatile—and, sometimes, unthinking, amongst other things. One thing she was not, however, was unintelligent, even if people didn’t always realise that. It was due to this that, even as Marlene’s heart was lurching for how utterly wrecked Rod looked—even as she was stifling a cry at the sight of his pain—there was a voice in the back of her head whispering wait, McKinnon, there’s a reason—

Yet just as it was inevitable for that voice to whisper in the back of her mind, she would also not be Marlene McKinnon if she listened to a voice of reason when emotion was on the table, and all she knew was that Rodolphus looked like he’d been through hell, and she wanted to make it better. There was concern thrumming through every inch of her body as she looked at him. I’m stuck. Marlene’s expression twisted into something concerned and compassionate, lurching forward in an attempt to get closer, to try and soak up some of the pain straight from his bones, the choking noise he’d made ringing in her ears—when suddenly, she stopped, not quite knowing why. Her head was spinning, and the voice at the back of her head was louder now, or maybe sharper. nothing had changed—he was still hurting and she was still yearning to help him—but everything had, at the same time.

Marlene McKinnon did not scare easily—very rarely, in fact—but he was scaring her in that moment. I fucked up. Her blood ran cold, but she didn’t know why. It was a dim sensation anyway, something she was only vaguely aware of, most of her too busy trying to wrap her head around the situation that she didn’t have enough of the pieces for. Marlene wasn’t scared of him, no, but he was alarming her, and the voice in the back of her head sayingwait got louder, more insistent, harder to ignore. But then the raggedy breath of his choking noise flashed through her head again, and she surged forward, because he looked so distressed and her first instinct was to try calm him down, to try and help him breathe.

Her arm was on his before she knew it, lighter than usual because for once, she didn’t know if she could help—but then he was saying her name like he was begging, like he was pleading, and the sound of it filled her with the utmost dread because what did he do? What could he possibly have done that would require him to say her name with such desperation, as if she was the only one who could alleviate it, and provide him solace? What kind of forgiveness could he ever be begging her for? He’d saved her from herself, holding her together as she nearly shook apart entirely, trying to tide out the end of the world.

She needed him to calm down. She was scared of what he would say. She needed to know what he did. She needed to not know. Half of her was screaming—or maybe all of her, but half with apprehension, and half with the burning need to know. She didn’t want to know but she needed to. After all, what could she possibly want to listen to that had Rodolphus Lestrange looking like a disaster before her? But wasn’t that exactly why she had to know? The dread was mounting somewhere deep inside of herself, trying to imagine what it could possibly be, but being unable to fathom what could have him looking like that. Most of her was confused and concerned and trying to figure out what was going on. And somewhere in the back of her mind, a small voice held its breath, as if it could hold her together if it never let it go.

“You’re stuck,” Marlene repeated, a touch desperately, as if those words could tell her all she needed, as if they could explain this, whatever it was, as if they could be enough to have him acting like this. “Rod, I don’t—” she began, looking at him with desperation in her eyes. “I don’t understand,” she said helplessly. “What did you do?”

And there it was. The crux of it all, she supposed. Somehow the little voice holding its breath in the back of her head was louder than ever, and her heartbeat was pounding through her ears, all anticipation and chaos and confusion. Things were racing through her head now, potential things it could be—flashes of Rod from the funeral—John Belfort’s name through the Prophet—Cygnus Black—Rod’s fight with Mary—crying into Amycus’ chest—Lucius at New Years—Rod cornering her in detention—him pulling her out of the Great Hall—telling Sirius—Rod holding her at New Years Eve—dancing with him in the garden—him kissing her by the Greenhouses—falling asleep on his chest at the park… all of it swirled through her mind, all too much, thoughts racing too fast to catch them, let alone wrap into something. They were flimsy things, things that felt disjointed, messy—things she wasn’t even sure were important, even sure how they could be important. She felt like she was missing pieces, or like it was too big for her. She couldn’t fathom what it could be. He was scaring her so much—it sounded like the world was ending, but that had already happened for her, hadn’t it? What could he possibly have done?

say something / rod