Genesis
Sunday, August 29th 1971.
"Thank you." Marlene says with a smile as she steps foot out of her Church for the last time for months. She leaves her small village outside Exeter in three days.
"I hope to see you back after your return from boarding school!" The Church assisstant calls after her.
All Marlene can do is smile back politely. "Of course!"
Marlene has never really loved Church, but it's basically all she knows at this point in her life. She is eleven years old, and she has a big secret.The secret, of course, is that she is a witch. And that the "boarding school" she is set to attend next week is actually a school for people like her. Magic people.
Marlene turns around and gives one last look to her Church. It's all so familiar to her. How the ivy curves around the windows, and how the sun reflects spectacularly against the stained glass. She knows she'll probably miss it. She's spent at least two days of every week in this building for as long as she could walk, whether it's for volunteering or Sunday school or special services. But alas, Marlene tells herself, she's allowed to bring her Bible to Hogwarts, so she won't feel so lonely. And she'll meet the girls she'll be sharing a dorm with for the next several years. Hogwarts is a mixed school, so she supposes she'll have to get used to there being a lot of boys around. Her primary school had been spilt up into a girls half and a boys half, and they never mixed unless it was in Church. Marlene was always known as a very friendly girl to everyone, and she hoped this would follow her to Hogwarts.
A blue hydrangea hit Marlene's leg as she walked past it and fell off the bush. She picked it up without a thought and followed her mother and father back down the country lane to their cottage.
As she took off her shoes and took her long brown hair down from her plaits, she found one of her new thick textbooks and placed the hydrangea between two pages. She placed this textbook at the bottom of the pile building up in her trunk, ready to leave on the first of September.
-
Tuesday, August 31st 1971.
"Have you definitely got everything Marlene?" Her mother asked.
"Yes- I'm pretty sure I have."
"Okay then. Please write home whenever you get the chance!" Marlene's mother drew her into a hug as her father put her coat into their family car.
"I will! I promise! Love you, mum."
Because of the 4 hour drive from their village to the big city of London, Marlene and her father were making the trip the evening before, so that there would be no risk of Marlene missing the train. Normally it was her mother that accompanied Marlene everywhere, but as Marlene had inherited her magical side from her father, both parents agreed it would be more suitable for her father to accompany her (and also because her mother hated long journeys. With a passion.).
As Marlene jumped into the front of the car and her father started the ignition, she found herself suddenly full of nerves. This is actually happening. She's actually going to Hogwarts and leaving everything she knows behind. Everything except herself. She waves goodbye to her mother as she pulls out of her cottage lane for the last time before Christmas.
"Can we go over everything one more time? Please?" Marlene anxiously asks her dad after a while.
"You know it all already Marlene, I've told you."
"Alright, alright. Sorry."
"Fine. What do you want to know then?" Her dad said with a small smile. He could never resist answering questions about his old life. He still owned a wand and could perfrom magic, but lived quite a muggle life. He had ever since he met Marlene's mother. It wasn't as if she disproved- she was just stuck in the mindset that it was "unholy" to perfrom magic. She had never expressed this opinion openly in front of Marlene, but Marlene had heard several shouting matches coming from her parents room about "indoctrination" and how only God could perfrom proper "magic". Her mother had shrieked in joy when the invitation to Hogwarts had came, so Marlene was in two states of mind about her mother's opinion of magic. Did she only hate it because it threatened what she had been taught? Or because she was scared of it? Marlene had decided that she didn't mind what her mother thought. She loved her mother, and she knew her mother loved her too, although the word 'love' never came out of her mouth. Love is reserved for the Lord, she had told seven year old Marlene when she asked why her mother never told her 'I love you' like the parent's in her novels did.
"Can you go over the houses again please? I know you were in Hupple... Hufflepuff right? But what about the others?"
Marlene sat back as her dad rattled off information about each of the famous Hogwarts houses. Hufflepuff. Yellow and black. For the kinder students. Near the kitchens, which had to be a positive. Ravenclaw. Blue and bronze. Creatives. Slytherin. Green. In the dungeons. Marlene knew one thing, and this was that she definitely did not want to be in slytherin. And finally, Gryffindor. Red and gold. For the courageous. Marlene's favpurite colour may have been red, but she didn't think she was very courageous. In any regard. She was kind when she helped out at the church, and she was creative with her hobby of flower-arranging, and she could be cunning, she supposed, if she needed to be. But courageous? That was one thing Marlene McKinnon was not. She could hardly bare to look at wilting flowers incase there would be spiders in them. Hufflepuff would suit her fine.
-
Wednesday, September 1st 1971.
There it was. The Hogwarts Express.
Marlene pulled her trunk behind her as she walked arm in arm with her father along the platform.
"This is where I leave you, then," Her dad sighed. "Don't forget your prayers. Or letters home."
"I won't dad, I promise! I'll look at them every night like I always have."
"Okay. Goodbye, Marlene. See you at Christmas dear."
"See you at Christmas. Love you."
As her dad walked back through the platform gate, Marlene took one last look before heading onto the train. It was five minutes until departure, so most of the carriages were nearly full.
"Excuse me, can I sit in here?" Marlene asks to a pair of students who she thinks might be first years. There's only two people in this carriage, and Marlene thinks it's the best she'll find.
"Of course! Come on in!" The girl, a redhead calls. "Are you in first year too?"
"Yeah! I'm Marlene!"
"Oh great! I'm Lily, and this is Severus. There's another girl here too but she just went to the bathroom. Oh! There she is!"
Marlene turns around as the figure behind her says "Hey!"
Marlene nearly falls into the carriage seat as Lily introduces them.
"Marlene, Dorcas. Dorcas, Marlene."
The girl didn't look like anyone Marlene had ever seen before. She had dark skin and little golden hoops in her hair. Heavenly. Marlene felt frozen and she didn't know why. Dorcas only grinned.
"Sev and I are actually neighbours but the three of us know each other from primary school. Do you know anyone else here?" Lily asked Marlene with a smile.
"Uh- No. I don't know anyone else. My primary was pretty small."