Summer, 1971
1st September 1971
Marlene McKinnon sighed and stared up at the creaking eaves of the Leaky Cauldron. Whoever was in the room on the floor above seemed to be stomping around a lot, as clouds of dust shifted from the ceiling and fell onto the floor, creating a film on top of everything in the room.
She turned to her side and watched the rising and falling of her brother’s chest beneath the thick quilt, partly wondering how he could bear anything at all touching him in the heat, but mostly wondering how on Earth she was going to live up to his name at Hogwarts.
Danny McKinnon was a Quidditch player: beater for the Chudley Cannons. School had seemed easy for him—and Marlene was not the only person that thought this: he had sailed through O.W.L.s, his N.E.W.T.s, made it as a reserve beater for the Chudley Cannons and a year after that, he was their beater. And a bit after that, she was sure he had become a wizarding household name.
But Marlene didn’t have to worry about that for a little while yet; she had already shown vast magical ability, even when she was a small child. For instance, the time she had picked a rose in the park and wanted to bring it home. Her mother insisted that she didn’t (“How will you look after it?” she had asked a crying Marlene several times), and in time, after Marlene’s tearful begging, allowed it. The rose, as roses usually do, soon wilted in its glass jar. Disappointed, Marlene picked up the perishing rose to get rid of it, and just like that, the rose had come back to life. Its magenta petals were even more vivacious than when she’d first spotted it in the grass, and the pollen had become gold and rich.
A year later, she was at a muggle friend’s birthday party. The music was blaring and tumultuous and Marlene felt herself becoming irritated; she could not hear what her friends were saying and she couldn’t even think clearly. Someone turned up the record player even louder, and covering her ears with her hands, Rubber Soul came to an abrupt stop. Everyone was so shocked that they all stopped what they were doing immediately, and couldn’t figure out why the record player wasn’t working. Marlene didn’t know it was her at the time, but when her mother picked her up in the afternoon, and a frantic little Marlene explained what had happened, her mother told her it was probably her magic. Besides, what else could have stopped John Lennon’s cheerful voice at the mere thought of it?
Or the time she was particularly fond of telling her older family members about, when she was arguing with Danny whilst he was back from Hogwarts for Christmas. In a fit of rage, Danny turned on his heel and left the room, slamming the door behind him. Only—the door did not slam. In fact, it did not close at all. Marlene did not want him to leave, and thus, the door stayed wide open, even when Danny tried to force it closed; the hinges seemed not to be there at all. After that, it was very difficult for either sibling to be cross with the other, and Danny ran to their parents to tell them the good news.
It wasn’t as though she was going to make a bad witch, but she couldn’t bury the idea that perhaps she wasn’t as good as her brother was, or her parents were. Besides, she had flicked through a few of her textbooks and didn’t understand a single thing inside them—even the diagrams looked complicated. The only mildly digestible one was Hogwarts: a History, and even that felt advanced. The textbooks, however, were stacked in a neat pile and now resided in her brand new trunk which bore the letters M.M., ready for just a few hours’ time.
The guest staying upstairs slammed their door, making the room shake slightly, followed by a loud stomping down the stairs. Eventually, their footsteps echoed down the street. All was silent. The small hours of the morning were beginning to become just visible through the cracks of the curtains; amber rays shone into the room in slivers, and in just a little while, the whole of London would be awake. Marlene propped herself up on her elbow and scrabbled for her watch which lay on her bedside-table. The ticking thing had been enchanted by Danny himself to give off a pleasant pinkish glow in the hours between sundown and sunrise, but now that the sun was rising, and the room was still dark, she couldn’t see it at all.
She exhaled loudly and slumped onto her back again. In doing this slight movement, the whole bed moved and scraped along the coarse wooden floor. Danny shifted in his bed, murmuring slightly, and gritting her teeth, Marlene went rigid as she paused to see if she had woken him up. But the boy who was celebrated by everyone (except for perhaps the teams that lost to him) simply blinked a few times and went back to sleep, and now that the light was becoming more vivid still, Marlene could see a thin trail of spit trickling down his cheek. She snickered, imagining what all the girls that pined after him would think if they saw him in this state, and for a moment, everything was how it was supposed to be.