Chapter 7
October 30th
Dorcas couldn’t say no to Pandora. She knew Pandora was going to leave her alone once she found Lily at the party and that’s exactly what happened.
When they arrived, Lily rushed to them as if she was waiting for them. She was only waiting for Pandora though, Dorcas thinks as Lily drags her away.
Not even a minute into it and she’s already left alone. What is she supposed to do? She could just leave, Pandora would be fine without her.
As she turns to leave however, a voice makes her turn back around. “You made it!” Remus says approaching her. She silently sighs when she realises she’s stuck here now.
“Unfortunately.” She answers.
“Want a drink?” He asks, holding out a cup to Dorcas.
“Yes please.” She says taking the drink without asking what it is and downs it in one go. Turns out it’s firewhiskey. “Got any more?”
“Damn Meadowes, didn’t know you drank like that.” He says as he leads her to the table where everyone could pour their own drinks.
“I’m surrounded by Gryffindors, I need this.” Dorcas says. She usually doesn’t drink much, she’s more into smoking than drinking. Alcohol makes her do stupid stuff and she’ll forget it. Pot just makes her feel light though she’s still very conscious of what she’s doing.
She wants to forget this night no matter what will happen. An evening in the Gryffindor common room is definitely something she won’t want to remember. So into the firewhiskey she goes as she refills her cup.
“Where’s Pandora?” He asks.
“Lily dragged her off somewhere the moment we arrived.” Dorcas says though she didn’t mean to sound so annoyed by it even if she is.
She wants this for Pandora but why did she have to come along if Pandora left her side after 10 seconds of being here.
Remus sighs as an Abba song starts playing. “Mary!” He yells knowing the culprit without even seeing who’s controlling the record player. Remus walks away from Dorcas, she follows him. Because what else is she supposed to do?
“I tried to stop her.” Marlene says, holding her hands up, when Remus approaches her and Mary near the record player. “What are you doing here?” She says next when she notices Dorcas besides Remus.
“Trust me, McKinnon, I’d rather be anywhere but here.” She replies and brings the cup to her mouth again, almost finishing it.
“Then leave.” Marlene shrugs her shoulders as if it’s the easiest thing to do. Yet Pandora got her here, Remus got her to stay. She could still leave and pretend she was never there in the first place but now she didn’t want to give that satisfaction to McKinnon.
“I invited her.” Remus says. “Now let me change this record.” He pushes himself through to get to the record player and takes the needle of the record with an immediate reaction from the crowd.
“Come on, Remus. You’re the only one not on board with Abba.” Mary argues with the boy as he picks out a different album out of the collection, deciding on a David Bowie record.
“But everyone loves Bowie.” He says as he carefully places the needle on the record choosing his song and ‘Drive-in Saturday’ starts playing. Mary doesn’t seem to find a good argument for that. Everyone gets over Remus changing the record as everyone dances to the Bowie record instead.
“I’ll be back.” Mary says pointing her finger at Remus as if she’s threatening him and walks towards the dancing crowd. McKinnon follows her but not without giving Dorcas another glare.
She watches her go into the dancing crowd and starts dancing with Mary. Dorcas doesn’t particularly like dancing but at this moment she can’t help but wish she was dancing with Marlene. There’s not enough alcohol at this party to get her through this, she thinks as she snaps herself out of the thought and turns to Remus who seemed to have noticed she was staring at McKinnon, he doesn’t say anything about it which she is grateful for.
“Show me your records.” Dorcas says to lesser the possibility of Remus asking her about Marlene.
“It’s a shared collection.” Remus says as he proudly shows an entire shelf of records.
She looks through them when her eyes land on her favourite album. Mystery to me by Fleetwood Mac. She flips it over to look at the songs written down on the back though she knows the order of every song from the top of her head.
Every Christmas, her mum got her one new record and they would listen to it together all of Christmas day. It was one of her favourite traditions with her mum. When they listened to this album for the first time, they immediately fell in love with it and it played in their apartment the whole Christmas break.
“That’s Marlene’s.” Remus says. Of course her favourite album happens to belong to Marlene. It’s always Marlene. Getting her mind off of her is proven to be impossible here.
Dorcas sighs and places the record back where it was before and she gives up on looking through the rest. The ones she likes will probably be Marlene’s as well.
“What is this between the two of you?” He asks when he notices Dorcas' immediate annoyance from the mention of the girl's name.
“What do you mean? She hates me, I hate her.” Dorcas says as if it’s really as simple as that. She wishes it was. “Thought that was pretty clear.”
“That’s it?” He asks, clearly not believing her. She looks away from Remus and her eyes instantly land on Marlene again as if she knew exactly where to find her though she has moved places from where she was standing last not too long ago.
“Definitely.” She says and finishes her drink again in one swallow. She watches Marlene dance, her blonde hair with the pink ends bouncing up and down with her. She seems happy and carefree dancing with her best friends.
It makes Dorcas think about how the girl acts around their salamander. She treats him with more care than Dorcas thought she was capable of. She would protect Newt with her life if she had to. It’s still a horrible name for a salamander but Dorcas has started to like that about McKinnon as well. No matter how ridiculous she could make things, she didn’t care what others thought of it, Dorcas couldn’t help but admire that even if it’s just about a stupid name.
She can’t help but imagine what it would be like to dance with Marlene. Both of them, close to each other. Dorcas’ hand brushing through McKinnon’s hair. Staring into her beautiful ocean blue eyes. Marlene smiling at her as if she never hated Dorcas in the first place.
She snaps out of it when she feels Remus shaking her by the arm. “What are you doing?” He asks as if he’s accusing her of something. Dorcas just looks at him confused until she slowly realises what she has done.
She looks around her when she notices everyone, including herself, covered in snow. Everyone was still dancing to the music though confused where the snow came from all of a sudden. How does Remus know she did this?
“I, I didn’t mean..” She stutters, confused how he knew. “Why do you think I did this?” She asks instead.
“That’s not important.” He says, stressed all of a sudden. “Why’d you do this?”
“I didn’t mean to.” Dorcas decides there’s no use in denying it since Remus was so confident that it was Dorcas.
“It’s Marlene, isn’t it?” He asks which makes her head shoot up to look at him in shock. It’s as if he was reading her mind.
“What’s McKinnon have to do with this?” She asks.
“You were staring at her and you made it start snowing.” He points out. Dorcas wonders if Remus is actually reading her mind. “It stopped when I snapped you out of it.”
“I need another drink.” Dorcas says leaving Remus and walking over to the table with drinks, refilling her cup with firewhiskey again. She couldn’t keep talking about McKinnon, she needed to forget about the girl before she did something worse than make it snow.
She debates whether she should go back to Remus because going back would probably mean more questions about why she did what she did. She searches around the dancing crowd to find Pandora.
She finds her in a corner talking to Lily. They seemed to be pressed close to each other. At least Pandora was having a good time at the party, she didn’t even seem to notice that she and Lily are covered in snow, she’s too lost in Lily’s eyes.
Pandora doesn’t seem to have any intention of leaving the party any time soon. Dorcas takes her chances and goes back to Remus.
“Got any place to smoke this spliff?” She says taking one out of her pocket and showing it to Remus. He grins and gestures to her to follow him towards the staircases to the dorms.
“Moony.” Someone yells from behind them, Remus turns around so Dorcas does too. “Come dance.” Potter says walking closer to them.
“Later.” Remus answers.
“Didn’t know you’d be here, Meadowes.” He says but in a nicer way than Marlene did earlier.
“I invited her, just going to the dorm for a bit.” Remus says.
“Merlin Moony, no smoking in the dorm.” James says disgusted as if he knew immediately what they were going to do. Dorcas is grateful that he didn’t assume something else was going to happen between them.
“I’ll get rid of the smell.” Dorcas says. She wants more than anything to just sit in silence smoking a spliff with Remus as if it’s just a normal night in the Astronomy Tower but instead in a Gryffindor dorm.
“How do you do that?” He asks, confused, and clearly drunk.
“Magic.” Dorcas says. “Do we go to the same school?” She asks sarcastically acting like James is the dumbest person ever for asking such a stupid question.
“My apologies, I don’t know a spell to remove smells.” James says, throwing up his hands. Of course he doesn’t, he probably only knows spells to create horrible smells. “Have you seen Pete around?” He asks, turning to Remus.
“Saw him with that Hufflepuff girl earlier, haven’t seen him since then.” Remus says. Dorcas wishes they could finish this conversation so that they could just go up and away from all this obnoxious noise from partying Gryffindors.
The two boys keep chatting with each other though Dorcas zones them out as she lets her eyes skim through the crowd again landing on McKinnon once again who’s standing at the table full of drinks. She has her eyes glued on Dorcas. They stare into each other’s eyes for a split second before Dorcas forces herself out of Marlene’s trance.
She grabs hold of Remus’ sweater sleeve and drags him up the stairs interrupting his conversation with James, but she doesn’t care. She needed to get out of there, away from McKinnon.
She lets Remus pass her on the stairs since she has no idea where to go. He leads her to his dorm room and when they enter and the door closes behind them, it feels like a huge weight is lifted off Dorcas’ shoulders.
“What’s wrong with you?” Remus asks, concerned. He sits down on one of the three beds in the room which Dorcas assumes is his own. “Are you allergic to Gryffindors?” He says as a joke but Dorcas doesn’t laugh. She might as well be, she thinks. Though one Gryffindor in particular had her acting like this.
“Maybe I am.” She sighs and sits down on the bed opposite of Remus’. She looks around the room and realises there should be a fourth bed here. Sirius’ bed seems to be missing. The more Dorcas finds out about how far the three other boys have grown apart from Sirius, the more she wonders what he told Snape to get to this situation. He wasn’t at the party either, Dorcas has noticed.
“Shouldn’t there be a fourth bed here?” Dorcas asks which makes Remus look down at his hands with guilt.
“Sirius moved dorm rooms, since everything that happened.” He says as if it’s his fault. It’s Sirius’ fault, Remus didn’t do anything wrong as far as Dorcas knew. Does Remus feel bad for the boy? It is his own fault.
If none of Sirius’ friends wanted to be around him, why did she often see Sirius hanging out with Marlene and Mary? She didn’t see him hanging out with anyone else in their friend group anymore besides those two. Did McKinnon and McDonalds forgive Sirius?
“What’s going on with you and Marlene?” He asks, changing the subject.
He usually doesn’t make a big deal about Dorcas being in a bad mood or anything Marlene related. They both understood Marlene is friends with Remus and Dorcas couldn’t stand the girl so Remus let Dorcas complain about the girl but he didn’t participate in the conversation when she did to not speak ill of his friends which Dorcas respects about him.
She takes the spliff out of her pocket, she’ll need it before she starts spilling her darkest secret to Remus. She never thought she’d be telling this to anyone other than Pandora. She lights it with her fingers and let’s the smoke go to her lungs making it burn a little in her throat.
“I fancy McKinnon.” She mumbles trying to get it over with but Remus didn’t understand as he looks at Dorcas like he’s trying to decipher what she said. She sighs and repeats herself without mumbling this time.
He looks at her shocked as if he wasn’t expecting this but there was something in his expression that made Dorcas think that he already guessed that.
“So you made it snow because you like Marlene?” Remus asks as if something wasn’t adding up. “I thought you hated her?”
“I do, for precisely this reason.” She says, sounding incredibly petty.
“Ever thought Marlene reciprocates those feelings?” He asks. Was he implying McKinnon likes her too? Has she talked to Remus about her?
“She doesn’t.” She decides aloud though she keeps thinking about how maybe she could. “I hope she doesn’t.”
“I don’t understand you.” Remus says taking the spliff away from her and takes a drag from it.
“Don’t tell her.” She says though she knows Remus wasn’t planning on doing so. Dorcas is pretty sure he would keep any secret that was entrusted with him. If Marlene did tell Remus she likes her, he certainly wouldn’t betray his friend and tell Dorcas.
“And have you come after my head? No thank you.” He says and laughs, Dorcas lets a laugh escape her mouth as well.
“Fine choice.” She says.
Marlene Mckinnon
Marlene doesn’t know what Dorcas Meadowes is doing at a Gryffindor party. Remus invited her but why? She has noticed him spending time with Meadowes and Pandora but never did she think Remus would bring the person she hates more than anyone to the Gryffindor common room. Even less let her go up to the dorms.
Since seeing Meadowes here she has decided to drink like her life depends on it. She is dancing with Mary and drinking pretending to have the best time but really her mind can only wonder what Remus and Dorcas are doing in the dorm.
Certainly Remus doesn’t fancy Dorcas and especially not the other way around. Though they hate each other, they also know each other. Marlene knows Meadowes would throw herself off the Astronomy tower if she fancies a Gryffindor.
No, that couldn’t be it.
As her mind keeps wondering of all the possibilities as to why Meadowes dragged Remus so urgently up the stairs to the dorms, James gets up on top of a table as ‘My Eyes Adoraed You’ by Frankie Valli songs starts playing and it grabs the attention of everyone there.
James sings along to the lyrics with his eyes glued on Lily. Marlene can’t remember how many times she has seen this exact scenario play out, or how many times she has told James to quit doing it, or how many times she and Mary have had to comfort Lily because of this.
Marlene loves James. She grew up with him, along with Peter so naturally they’re best friends but this thing James has for Lily, Marlene will not stand for it.
Lily has rejected James countless times but now especially James should know not to do this with Pandora right next to Lily.
She has been talking about Pandora to all of her friends, including James. She hasn’t said that she fancies Pandora but it’s obvious to anyone who talks to Lily for more than ten minutes.
Marlene and Mary watch as Lily gets visibly angry at James who still continues to sing the song as if there’s nothing wrong. By now Lily can deal with his proposals and she doesn’t let it bother her as much anymore but she does get angry. Furious, really.
Pandora, on the other hand, looks like she is about to cry. Marlene saw Pandora and Lily together earlier, they were close. Really close, like they both had kissing the other on their minds. They looked happy, like nothing could ruin that moment for them. Until James came rushing to serenade Lily and Pandora really did not seem to be taking it well.
Lily has her hand out at James telling him to stop what he’s doing but that seems to be an invitation to James to take hold of her hand and drag her on the table so they’re standing next to each other as James continues on singing.
“We should help her.” Mary says to Marlene who’s still standing next to her watching the whole thing go down as well.
As she is about to agree, she turns her head to Mary but her eyes glance at the stairs that lead to the dorms and she sees that Dorcas has come back from upstairs.
Once her eyes are locked on the girl she can’t seem to look away. Meadowes seemed to be scanning the room, confused about everything going down in here.
Marlene feels someone rushing past her and then Dorcas’ eyes land on Marlene though they don’t stay there long as she starts walking fast towards the portrait hole.
Something inside of her feels like she should get more attention from Meadowes than a simple glance so she cuts in front of the girl on her way to leave the party.
“What were you doing with Remus?” Marlene asks, slurring over her words. She’s even more drunk than she thought she was.
“Nothing that concerns you, McKinnon.” She says and tries to move past the taller girl but Marlene won’t let her. “What do you want?” Meadowes sighs.
“I want you to stop stealing my friends.” She says, as that is the first thing she could think of to create an argument with Meadowes.
“I’m not stealing your friends.” Meadowes answers annoyed.
“You are. Remus hangs out with you and Pandora more than he does with any of us. Now you’re taking Lily as well.” Marlene says. Technically Pandora is spending her time with Lily and Dorcas is just there because she’s friends with her but Marlene can’t find a reason to dislike Pandora so it’s easier to blame the girl she has hated for years.
“I’m not taking anyone, they can hang out with whoever they like.” Dorcas says. Logically, Marlene agrees with her but emotionally she’d rather blame Meadowes anyways.
Dorcas’ eyes keep glancing at the portrait hole as if she’s in a hurry to leave though, Marlene is not yet satisfied with their conversation so she doesn’t move aside to let her pass and leave.
As Marlene keeps staring at Dorcas, her hand subconsciously goes up to cup Meadowes’ face. She feels a tingle in her hand when it touches the girl’s face. Dorcas turns her head again to look at Marlene with confusion.
Marlene is met with two beautiful brown eyes looking into hers. She doesn’t know how drunk she actually is but Dorcas’ eyes are glowing and Marlene is breathless like she is in a trance.
“What are you doing?” She asks her and slaps her hand away from her.
“Your eyes are beautiful.” She says still looking into those magical brown glowing eyes.
“What?” The shorter girl asks.
“You’re so beautiful.” She says again and her hand goes up to Dorcas’ face once more and she strokes her cheek with her thumb. For a second, she feels Meadowes lean into the touch but her hand is quickly pushed away from her again.
Marlene is pushed aside and she watches Meadowes leave through the portrait hole. She downs her drink that she was still holding in her other hand and forgets all about Meadowes and she goes back to Mary to enjoy the rest of the party.
Dorcas Meadowes
When Dorcas leaves the common room she meets Lily at the end of the hall looking around frantically.
She saw Pandora run out when she came down from the dorms with Remus, she was planning to follow her until she was abruptly stopped by McKinnon.
She can’t focus on what Marlene had said to her. ‘You’re so beautiful’ She thinks back briefly but she can’t think about that now, she needs to be there for Pandora, whatever it is that happened.
“Evans.” Dorcas calls after the girl who was looking around her as if she doesn’t know where to go. “What happened? Where’s Pandora?” She asks sounding threatening though she doesn’t really mean to. Alright maybe a little, if Lily did something to cause Pandora to run off crying.
“James was being an idiot as usual and Pandora ran away.” Lily says angrily. “I don’t know where she went.”
Potter has made it clear he fancies Lily since their first year at Hogwarts. Multiple times a year, whether it was valentine’s day or just a normal Friday, he would act like a complete idiot to ask out Evans. It often happened in the Great Hall for the entire school to witness.
All it ever did, Dorcas has noticed, was make Evans embarrassed and upset. If James really liked Lily, he should know by now that this is not the way to do it.
This would explain why Pandora ran off, she is jealous.
Dorcas has a few ideas where Pandora might have run off to but since it has to do with Lily, only one place seems to be the most logical place for her to go to.
Dorcas starts walking without saying another word to Lily, she follows her though. She allows it since she can most likely fix this better than Dorcas can.
They arrive at Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. Dorcas enters first and she sees Pandora sitting against a wall crying. Lily follows in after Dorcas and immediately runs towards Pandora’s side. She sits down next to her and places an arm over Pandora’s shoulder.
“What are you doing here?” Pandora sniffles.
“You ran off.” Lily says as if that was the only thing to it.
“But James, he-.” Pandora starts but Lily doesn’t let her finish.
“Is an idiot.” She finishes her sentence for her.
Dorcas figures that Lily has it handled. She was calming Pandora down already, something Dorcas was never really good at. She leaves the bathroom and waits outside for the 2 girls to finish talking.
She stands against the wall outside the bathroom and her mind can’t help but think back on what McKinnon said to her before she left. She called her beautiful. Marlene McKinnon called her beautiful.
Dorcas definitely hasn’t drunk enough to forget this in the morning. No amount of alcohol would make her forget that. By the looks of McKinnon, the girl won’t remember a thing. At least she doesn’t have to worry about Marlene bringing it up again.
She thinks back on her conversation with Remus. He suggested she could feel the same about Dorcas and soon after that McKinnon called her beautiful and stroked her hand over Dorcas’ cheek.
She closes her eyes and brings her hand to the cheek Marlene touched. Her hand was so soft. Now that she was standing here alone, thinking back on it, she wishes she didn’t push the girl away from her but instead stayed in that moment a little longer.
Marlene McKinnon thinks she is beautiful.