1950

Dorcas stepped onto the Hogwarts Express. A long summer of road trips to Cornwall and melting ice cream left her with warm skin and being able to sing ABBA’s ‘SOS’ by heart. Dorcas’s long, black braids were tied in a loose bun on the crown of her head, and a couple of new golden earrings hung from her ears. She wore her treasured (but incredibly worn) white converse and maroon sweater her mother had gifted her the summer after first year, after Dorcas had explained all of her adventures at Hogwarts and how she was sorted into Gryffindor. Dorcas was muggleborn, and her mother never tired of her stories about the Wizarding World. As she heaved her bags up behind her, Lily Evans appeared in front of her.

“Dorcas! You’re here!” Lily’s green eyes crinkled around the edges as she beamed. “Come, we already have a carriage.” Lily took one of her suitcases and started down the busy train’s corridors, darting between giggling second years and scared first-years. Eventually, Dorcas followed Lily into a carriage towards the end of the train and shoved her bags above the seats.

“Cas!” Mary squealed and pulled Dorcas into a hug. Her wild, curly hair tickled Dorcas’s nose, the smell of coconut and flowers surrounding her.

“Meadowes!” Marlene grinned, reaching to pull her down onto the seat next to the golden-haired girl. Dorcas smiled in reply, nudging her with her shoulder.

“Can’t believe I’m the last one here,” she joked. “Last year, I sat alone for a full hour!” Mary groaned in protest, not one to put up with Dorcas’s whiny sense of humour. Marlene threw her legs across Dorcas’s lap and crossed her ankles.

“New kicks?” she asked.

“Nah, stole them from Danny. Don’t tell him though, he’ll make Mum send a howler.” Marlene twisted her feet around, showcasing her brother’s old Doc Martens. Dorcas huffed a laugh. Lily told the group about how her sister, Petunia, had a new boyfriend, Vernon, and how Lily thought he may have been the most disgusting person she’d ever met, ‘Worse than Snivellus?’ Marlene joked, picking up Sirius and James’s nickname for the greasy-haired boy. Lily grimaced, then gave a small nod as she cracked a smile. The girls continued to share their stories about their summers. Marlene had been practicing with James for their upcoming quidditch games, and told them about how James’s mum, Effie, made the most amazing scones for the afternoon. Mary had been visiting her cousins in Jamaica, and showed them her new jewellery and her polaroid photos of the bright green water surrounding the white beaches. Lily had stayed home, but picked up a summer job at the local bookstore in her town, and how Remus visited her most days.

“So, Dorcas, how did summer treat you?” Mary began, when James and Sirius bounded into the small room. Marlene groaned. Lily huffed. Mary raised an unamused eyebrow.

“Oi, Evans!” James beamed. “How’s your summer been? Remus to- “Lily cut him off.

“It was quite lovely, thank you Potter. Now, where would I find Remus, actually?” James blinked. Sirius snorted. James opened his mouth, then closed it again. Lily raised her eyebrow expectedly. Mary was the one who spoke instead.

“Well, clearly Potter doesn’t know, so maybe he and Black could find Remus and send him over,” Mary stared pointedly at the smirking boy, and Sirius’s cheeks turned slightly red. Dorcas wondered what that was about. Mary made a swatting motion with her hands, and shooed the boys out of the glass doors, rolling her eyes as she turned around to give Lily a look.

“Will he ever get the message?” Marlene wondered out loud. Although Marlene and James had grown up together, and almost saw each other as siblings, Marlene was just as sick of James’s crush on Lily as the rest of them. It only took Dorcas a week to realise that James and Marlene were purely platonic, as the wild-haired boy almost immediately started asking poor Lily out daily. Dorcas thought that Lily genuinely did not like James, but they rarely discuss it. James is a banned topic inside their dorm.

~~~

Rolling green hills sped by the large window, and Lily offered to find the trolley witch and fetch them some lollies. As the train ride went on, Dorcas fished her copy of Lord of the Rings out of her backpack and continued reading. One of the chocolate frogs Lily had brought back escaped its container and leapt around the small compartment, and Marlene flung her arm out to catch it and took a victorious bite. Dorcas snorted, but her eyes widened when Marlene draped herself across Dorcas’s lap and body. Although this was a common occurrence, and Marlene had always been overly affectionate towards their little group, especially her, Dorcas’s breath caught. Why did this feel different?

Dragging her eyes back to her book, Dorcas pointedly ignored Marlene twirling a stray blonde hair around a long, thin finger, the nail painted a bold red. Her other hand began tapping Dorcas’s thigh, ruining any of Dorcas’s attempts to focus on the page in front of her.

Fortunately, Remus appeared in the doorway; Lily jumped up in greeting, and Dorcas waved with a grin.

“Lupin!” Marlene exclaimed, although she didn’t move from her previous position. Remus wearily nodded her way, running a hand through his messed curls and placing his books on the floor before sliding into the booth beside Mary.

“So, Remus,” Lily began. Remus let out a groan and let his head fall onto the fold-out table in front of him.

“Please, Lily, it was awful! He was sitting there, and he was smirking, and then he started staring- “Remus cried. Lily muffled a laugh. Mary shot Marlene a knowing look. Dorcas just stared.

“I’m sorry. Who is it we are currently talking about? Remus John Lupin, don’t tell me you have a crush that I don’t know about!” Remus looked at her guiltily. Dorcas glared back. She noticed his shoes, matching Marlene’s, and his scuffed jeans that flared a bit at the bottom, and the Gryffindor quidditch sweater that had a small hole in the left shoulder. And- Remus Lupin does not play Quidditch.

There are a couple of options here: James who plays quidditch like his life depends on it, but the jumper would clearly be a friendly gesture and he was too enamoured with Lily to even look in anyone else’s direction, let alone a boy’s, and especially not Remus’s. The second option is Peter, who doesn’t play quidditch but never fails to show up to James’s frequent practices and owns more Gryffindor merchandise than the whole house combined, but Peter is quiet and humble and Dorcas is certain that Remus doesn’t look at him that way. The third option is Sirius. And, oh, when Dorcas thinks about it, this makes sense. Much like Marlene, Sirius is a sucker for affection and has never heard of this thing called boundaries (which is probably why their brief relationship last year didn’t last longer than 2 weeks). He was constantly fiddling with his friends’ hands, ruffling their hair, draping an arm around their shoulders. But Sirius has always seemed a little different around Remus. Dorcas has caught him tangling his feet with the lanky boy’s ankles under the table multiple times, and oh god don’t get her started with the pet names. Remus more often than not sports a red flush to his face when Sirius is around, and this makes a lot of sense now.

“Ah. Black,” Dorcas spat out disappointedly. Mary let out a laugh. Marlene groaned in agreement. Remus smiled at her bashfully, and buried his face in his scarred hands.

“I know, Meadowes, it’s tragic!” Lily giggled, clearly having had this conversation with Lupin before.

Remus tilted his body to the side and lay his head on Lily’s lap, and she immediately started carding her hands through his unruly hair. Remus, although the mastermind behind the group of boys she’d grown to tolerate, was different. He was sarcastic; he enjoyed reading, and he was almost always nursing a milky cup of tea when she sat with him in the common room. Over the last two years, Dorcas has learned that Remus Lupin really, really likes chocolate, almost always smells like the forest, and has more scars across his covered body than Dorcas could even imagine. He likes to make up new stories about how he got them every time someone asks, and she still can’t imagine a likely answer.

But, most of all, Dorcas likes Remus because he reminds her of herself. On most nights, you can find the pair studying, or reading, or just sitting in silence in each other’s company, tucked away in one of the hidden corners of the library where Marlene and Sirius can’t bother them. Well, they say that, but who can really ignore Marlene or Sirius?

Speak of the devil, Marlene pulled herself up from Dorcas’s lap, and instead of sitting up, buried her face in Dorcas’s soft jumper. Dorcas felt something in her chest flutter as Marlene let out a soft yawn and linked her hands around her arm. Carefully manoeuvring her other hand as not wake the sleepy girl on her shoulder. One hand pinned her book to her right leg, while the other flipped through the curling pages. She looked up to see Mary raising an eyebrow. She raised one back. Mary just smiled.

~~~

The sun faded into a soft pink as the train drew closer to Hogwarts. Remus had left a while ago, to ‘make sure my idiot friends haven’t choked on a fizzing whiz-bee and died’, and Mary carefully braided Lily’s ginger hair while she softly hummed to some Fleetwood Mac song that she liked. Marlene was still asleep, and her warm breath puffed onto Dorcas’s neck, sending goosebumps shivering down her spine as her fingers continued to unconsciously curl further into her sweater.

Sometimes Marlene felt like something more than a friend. Something white-hot and burning in her chest; a steady flame that grew brighter when Marlene touched her. Silent embraces, long after they’d blown out the last candles in the draft dorm, and neither of them could stay away long enough to creep into the other’s bed. They’d never talked about it, never said a word, and somehow these points in their friendship changed everything and nothing at all. It was them, Dorcas and Marlene, the sea and the earth, the sun and the moon, two girls that fell into step walking away from the Gryffindor table after the sorting ceremony in first year. Lily and Mary are Dorcas’s best friends, and they’re Marlene’s too, but there’s something different between them.

Times like this are when the flame grows brightest. Mary and Lily are in their own little word, whispering with their heads bowed together, no doubt discussing one of Mary’s countless boyfriends. The compartment is quiet, the steady hum of the train’s engine filling the silence. Dorcas is wearily drifting off, and Marlene isn’t letting go anytime soon, and oh god how she’s missed this. Bitter jealousy prods at the back of her throat as her thoughts wonder to how Marlene spent the summer with James and Sirius playing quidditch and lounging in the sun, and she had to go so long without this. It wasn’t fair.

Dorcas sighed and buried her nose in Marlene’s soft, blonde hair, inhaling the smell of strawberries and salt. And, is that hazelnut? She must have gotten a new shampoo. Before she knew it, she had drifted off into dreams of quidditch and laughter and strawberry fields and the ocean- and Lily was shaking her while Marlene rubbed her eyes next to her. They had arrived at Hogwarts.