Detention
6th September 1971
Marlene woke to the sound of the shower running in the girls' shared bathroom, she stretched dramatically and yawned loudly. Lily was sitting on her neatly made bed on the other side of the room, her ginger hair tied up with a black hair tie and she had a Gryffindor scarf over her shoulders. A book was laid out open on her lap in front of her.
“Good morning Lily,” Marlene said, another yawn creeping through her words. “Oh finally you're awake, we have about twenty minutes to be in the great hall or we’re going to miss breakfast,” Lily said. With that Marlene quickly threw the covers off of her bed.
She quickly gathered her uniform and a towel as Mary came out of the bathroom looking effortlessly put together, “Gooodddddd morninggg Marlene,” she said glowing; Marlene grumbled at her, closing the bathroom door.
The inside of the bathroom was steamed out. The window was fogged, and the walls had condensed. She quickly showered and then messily dressed. After she brushed her teeth she made her hair while dragging herself out of the bathroom into the dorm room where Lily and Mary sat waiting for her. Lily had packed her bag for her. Quills and books seemed to be spilling out the sides. She took the bag.
“Thanks, Lils,” she said with a thankful look on her face. “You’re welcome,” Lily said while rolling her eyes, but Marlene could see the smile creeping on her lips. “Now we really do need to be leaving now, there probably isn’t much left for breakfast,”
The three girls left the common room and took the thousand steps down to the great hall. Breakfast was still laid out on the tables, but many students had left already. A few Ravenclaws sat reading, Hufflepuffs were joking and laughing together, and a few older Slytherins were chatting together.
“Come on, let's sit down before all the food disappears,” Mary said, pulling them towards the Gryffindor table. The girls sat down, each of them taking something for their breakfast. Marlene took a large spoonful of porridge and added it to the bowl in front of her then she topped it off with two spoonfuls of sugar. Lily had a slice of toast with honey drizzled on the top and Mary had a couple orange slices.
“Lily,” Mary called, “Hmm,” she responded after she finished her last bite of toast. “What class do we have first,” Lily took out her timetable and studied it for a moment, her face lit up, “Transfiguration! That's with Professor McGonagall,” She excitedly said, with that, she bounded ahead of them quickly leading the way to the classroom.
On the walk there she was telling Mary and Marlene the few things she knew about Transfiguration, and explaining how excited she was that they were going to have Professor McGonagall as their teacher.
They arrived at the class just before the bell, “Oh see Lily, we are going to be fine Professor McGonagall isn’t even here yet,” Marlene said, patting her friend on the arm and sitting at one of the desks next to Mary. As she spoke a little grey tabby cat padded into class but as the cat reached the front of the room it turned into a witch. If Marlene had blinked she would have almost missed the transformation.
Professor McGonagall now stood at the front of the class with an emerald green cloak. “Good Morning class,” she said. “Before we will do any form of magic in this class you will be learning about the basics of Transfiguration. Take out your book ‘First Year Transfiguration: Everything You Need To Know’ and open it to the first page,”
The students followed her order and McGonagall went over the first chapter of the book explaining important parts of Transfiguration and how it was an important skill that a witch or wizard could have. The rest of the lesson passed like this until the end, “The homework for tonight I expect you to have read chapters 2 and 3 and discussed it with another student from this class,”
When she finished speaking the bell went and they collected their things and headed off to the next class. “I think we have potions next,” Mary informed unsurely, “Yeah we do, with the Slytherins,” Lily added excitedly, “Sev is going to be with us,” Marlene screwed up her nose a little but didn’t say anything.
The dungeons were cold, damp and smelled off. “Ergh I hate this place, no wonder the Slytherins always seem to be in a bad mood,” Mary said whilst putting on a funny face, Marlene giggled but Lily wasn’t very impressed, but kept quiet.
Once they got into the dungeons it didn’t take them long to get into the potions classes. Their teacher stood outside greeting everyone as they went inside.
“Hello, I’m Professor Slughorn, I’ll be your teacher for Potions this year,” He said shaking Lily’s hand and smiling at the other two, “Go inside and find a seat class should start momentarily,”
The three of them shuffled inside and took a seat around a table of four, soon after they sat down Severus, Lily’s friend came in and sat with them.
“Hi Sev, how are you?” Lily said happily. Severus did not look entirely pleased to be sitting with Mary or Marlene, “Oh I’m fine, why are we sitting with them?” he said, directing this towards the other girls. “Trust me you weren’t our first choice either,” she snided. He rolled his eyes and looked away.
The class began shortly after that. “Good Afternoon class, I am Professor Slughorn.” He said, introducing himself to the class, “And of course, I am your Potions Professor this year, as am I also the head of Slytherin house.” In the last part of the sentence, he smiled proudly at some of the Slytherin students. Marlene rolled her eyes.
“Alright let's see, hmm yes,” he scanned the classroom looking at all the students, he stopped on Sirius Black, looking down at his red and gold tie. “Oooh, is that a Black, in Gryffindor? Now that's something you don’t see every day,” he chuckled to himself as if he had just said the funniest thing in the world. Sirius stiffened at this.
He continued scanning the students in his room. “And a Meadowes, yes I expect big things from you this year. Your father had a real knack for potions,” He winked at her, and Dorcas rolled her eyes. Marlene was just as annoyed by this, something about that girl really rubbed her the wrong way.
Professor Slughorn carried on with his lesson. He explained the basic ingredients that they would be using, and a goat stone is a good antidote to most posions. Marlene noticed that a few students were not writing notes down, like Sirius and James. Who were both laughing and making jokes instead of listening. She supposed that they both already knew most of the things that Slughorn was saying. She knew most of the things that he was saying.
Severus spent most of the lecture whispering and correcting everything that Slughorn was saying, “Honestly Lily, I think they should just let me teach this class, I don’t know if I could possibly handle having this old fool teaching us wrong all year.” Lily awkwardly nodded, scribbling out the things Slughorn said replacing them with whatever Severus had corrected.
“Gosh, why don’t you just shut up Severus. Hearing your voice is giving me a headache,” Marlene whisper-shouted across the table. “Mind your own business McKinnon, I wasn’t talking to you.” Severus snapped back.
Lily looked at her pleading with her eyes to Marlene not to do or say anything back. So Marlene didn’t say anything, she did, however, stick her tongue out at Severus “Immature,” he muttered under his breath. She smirked.
The lesson went on for another thirty minutes and they were all sent out of the class with no homework for the night, fortunately. The day carried on like this as the Gryffindors rotated around a few of their classes. They had Charms and a brief lesson on Defence Against the Dark Arts. Both of the classes gave them homework. In Defence Against the Dark Arts, they were to write a 6-inch parchment of the assigned reading by their lesson on Friday. For Charms, there was just an assigned reading. They only had one chapter about the Light Charm Lumos.
In the common room late that afternoon the three girls sprawled out in a circle on the floor of their dorm room. Lily furiously scrawled notes in the margins of her Transfiguration book. “I’m so sick of doing homework,” Marlene said, groaning. “Don’t worry I’m sure it’ll get better, the introductions to classes are always boring,” Lily reassured, not bothering to look up from her book. Mary was nodding along to what the other two were saying, not fully listening, she had only just focused on studying.
They carried on studying in silence for a little while until “Done!” Mary announced, she was measuring her parchment out, “I did it! 6 whole inches!” She clapped her hands together happily, “Good Job, Mary!” Lily said who had finished her essay a little bit ago. Marlene was just adding the finishing touches to hers.
“What about the Transfiguration work do we need to discuss?” She said, “I’m not entirely sure, I think it's just the different types of Transfiguration,” Lily said. “I wrote some notes about it here already,” She turned her book around in front of her so it now faced the other two. “Look, there is Transformation, which basically manipulates the shape or structure of an object or person. Then, of course, Human Transformation which includes werewolves, animagus’, and metamorphmagus’.” Lily started.
Before she was able to continue, someone's head poked through the doorway. “Good evening girls,” it was Professor McGonagall. Lily quickly jumped up from where she lay on the floor, straightening her uniform that she hadn’t yet gotten out of. “Hello Professor McGonagall, what brings you to our dorm at this time,” she said nervously, fidgeting with the hem of her skirt. “I saw that the three of you had managed to earn yourselves a detention and it hasn’t even been a week,” Lily stared guilty at the floor, Marlene stood up next to her friend noticing how upset she was.
“Sorry Professor, it was my fault. I wanted to um… explore the castle a bit after lights out, and um, Filch caught us,” Marlene said, “I didn’t want to go alone so I forced Mary and Lily to go with me, they shouldn’t have to get in trouble,” She knew that Lily was upset about their detention, although she never said anything and if she was going to try and get one of her friends out of it she would get Mary out too. Marlene didn’t mind going to detention alone, how bad could it be?
McGonagall eyed the three of them, Mary now standing as well. “I see, well even though you say this Miss Mckinnon, your friends did choose to follow you on their own accord, so the three of you will be going to detention altogether.”
Marlene looked a little defeated but nodded, “Alright Professor, well we best be on our way or else we’re going to be late,” McGonagall nodded as the three girls passed her and followed them into the common room and out through the portrait door.
“Do either of you know how to get Filch’s office?” Mary asked Lily, shaking her head, “I don’t, but I still have my maps in my robe's pocket so I can check,” Marlene snorted, but looked over her shoulder as they slowed to a walk through a corridor. Filch’s office wasn’t far from where they were now on the second floor. So the trio carried on running to Filch's office.
“Thank you Marls,” Lily said smiling, “For trying to get us out of detention,” “Yeah!” Mary added, “Although we would never let you go alone,” Mary said, with a proud smile plastered on her face.
As they entered the room they were hit with an awful sour smell. On the wall hung chains and other torturous-looking devices. There wasn’t much else in the room but shelves and boxes filled with miscellaneous magical items that the caretaker had collected over the years. In the middle of the room was a desk with a singular almost dead plant. Filch was sitting behind the desk with Miss. Norris on his lap.
“You are late,” he said. “By two minutes,” Mary said, Filch grumbled in response, picking his cat up off his knee and putting her on the ground. He stood and shuffled around the desk, picking up an oil lantern off of one of the shelves and lit it with a match. Marlene wondered why he didn’t just use magic. As soon as she knew loads of spells she would use them all the time and if she could do something with magic then she would.
“Come on then, follow me. You have trophies to clean,” He chuckled. Mary suppressed a groan, and Lily followed closely behind Filch. She nearly stood on Miss Norris’ tail, which made Marlene giggle Filch waved the lantern and grumbled something about ‘stupid first years’ and ‘bloody Gryffindor’s”.
When they got to the trophy room Filch gave them a bucket of water and a sponge each and said “I want all of these trophies cleaned in the next two hours or I’ll be giving you all another night of detention,” without another word he turned on his heel and hobbled down the hall.
“Alright well, I think the best way to do this is to start at different parts of the room,” Lily said, Mary nodded in agreement. “I’ll start at the back wall,” Mary said, dipping her sponge in the soapy water. Marlene did the same thing and started on the left wall. Scrubbing away at a trophy with a name that looked to have nearly faded off, long forgotten from the world.
About five minutes into the detention Marlene growled, “It feels like we’ve been here hours and I’ve only cleaned two trophies at most.” She slumped to the ground, “Lily you look like you’ve cleaned a thousand,” Lily laughed, “Hardly! I have only cleaned three. Besides I think Mary’s cleaned the most out of us,” Mary giggled, putting another trophy down and picking up the next. “I’m ahead because I haven’t spent the whole time talking,” She joked. Marlene picked up another cup and began polishing, the girls falling back into a comfortable silence.
They carried on like this for another hour when they were all about halfway through the walls. “We really are going to be here all night,” Marlene said under her breath but carried on as she was before.
It wasn’t long after that until Filch came back to tell them that their detention was over. He looked over their hard work but had nothing to grumble about except that he now had to take them back to the common room.
Filch led them up the final flight of stairs and outside of the common room, “Turkey Delights,” Mary said sleepily to the Fat Lady, who had been woken up by them. The lady in the portrait scowled and muttered something about first years always being up at ungodly hours.
Marlene stumbled into their dorm room, changed into a set of pyjamas and cuddled herself down into bed, too tired to even say goodnight to her friends.