Your Laugh Like Flowers

The more Marlene drank, the more she danced. It was just the way things worked, like only having roasts on a Sunday, or singing Christmas songs in December. By eleven o clock, it was clear that everyone who was supposed to be there had arrived, and then some: the room was hot and packed in places, the music had been amplified by a few more decibels, and Marlene and Remus were on a table, dancing and singing to ‘More Than a Feeling’ like their lives depended on hitting the notes. 

Mary, Lily and Peter were losing their minds laughing at the two of them, acting out the song in dreadful dramatics between giggles. James and Sirius, Marlene noted when the song finished, were with the Slytherins. 

Having Slytherins at a Gryffindor party was rare, it had to be said. Seeing Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws hanging about was common enough at the bigger celebrations, but generally the rivalry between the other two houses was so well-established that they tended to avoid such shows of collaboration. Today, however, Regulus, Dorcas, and the other two whose names Marlene had yet to secure (as well as Pandora, who Marlene almost counted as Slytherin as well), were lounging around the best area of the common room (the fireplace) and as a result, were being shot some occasional, resentful looks from the other attendees. 

This didn’t deter James and Sirius, of course it didn’t, although the habitual segregation was clear from the way the Slytherins remained bunched together. 

True to her word, Marlene had avoided them, or more specifically Dorcas, all night, but as she and Remus clambered messily down from the table, she didn’t see the point in it. It was her common room! Who was Dorcas to say where Marlene could and couldn’t go? Marlene had the right to annoy Dorcas as much as she pleased, thank you very much, and if that meant staying in her close vicinity, that would do just fine. Whatever made her madder. 

“Mary, come chat to the Slytherins with me.” She took a hold of Mary’s arm, slinging it over her shoulders. “Your new best friend has been dying to see you all night.”

Mary gasped as though she’d forgotten their presence. “I told you you’d come round, my Marling!” 

“Who the fuck is Marling?” Marlene spluttered, as both of them began giggling. 

“I meant to say, ‘my darling Marlene’,” Mary managed as they cracked up, both of them a bit too drunk to care how ridiculous it was. She held Marlene’s shoulders and tried to appear serious, declaring, “I christen you my darling Marling, from hereby forth and forever.” 

“I’m renewed!” Marlene cried, as they cracked up. A minute later, when the giggling subsided, Marlene remembered her task. “Mary, the Slytherins, the Slytherins are here.”  

She gasped for the second time and immediately surged to the fireplace, stumbling a little from the way their arms were all linked and tangled up.

“Where is she? Where’s Dorcas?” Mary was demanding. She spotted her and put her hands on her hips. “Did I or did I not invite all of you lot to the party, as well as Sirius?”

“Indeed you did,” Pandora confirmed, breezily. 

“And is this or is this not a party?” 

“Indeed it is,” answered Pandora again. 

Marlene wondered where Mary could be going with this. She found Dorcas’s gaze, though, and mimicked Mary’s pose, as though to back her up despite her somewhat confusing manner of questioning. Dorcas narrowed her eyes, looked away, and had a drink. 

“Yes, pretty-Ravenclaw-who’s-name-I-don’t-know,” Mary inclined her head to Pandora, gratefully, “indeed it is. Hang on, what is your name?” 

Before Pandora could answer, Marlene cleared her throat loudly and nudged Mary with her elbow to get her back on track. 

“Never mind!” Mary declared. “As I was saying, parties are not made for sitting around a fireplace with the people you already know!” 

“Yeah!” James chimed in helpfully from where he stood with Sirius. 

“Thank you, James. No!” Mary raised a righteous finger. “Parties are made for dancing, and meeting new people, and having a bit of fun! So, please get off your sorry arses, and… do all of that!” Mary ended her speech with a bow. James clapped. 

One of the non-Regulus Slytherin boys got up, righting his dark hair. “I like you,” he said, addressing Mary. He took her hand, and she spun him around. “Rosier, don’t you like her?” 

Rosier contemplated this, and to Marlene’s surprise, conceded. 

“Oh, definitely.” He got up, too. “Please, take me to where you keep the alcohol.” Mary whooped and led them both away, leaving Pandora, Regulus and Dorcas with James, Sirius and Marlene. 

Pandora was already turning to Regulus. “Just one dance, Reg, please! It’ll be fun. You, Potter, will you put on Heart? They’re my favourite.”

“Anything at all!” James announced, rushing to the record player and disappearing through the crowd of bodies. “Sirius, help me distract Remus,” he yelled back at him. Sirius obliged happily, yelling something back about doing anything to see his little brother dance. 

“Regulus Arcturus Black, give me one !”

Up close, Regulus didn’t look much like Sirius. From a distance, Marlene supposed you could compare their same high cheekbones, the delicate jaw, the dark hair. But really, they were utterly opposite. Regulus’s eyes seemed to appear colder in some way, or sharper, but his entire face softened when he took in Pandora’s stubborn persistence. 

“One dance,” he relented. “And you owe me a whole day’s worth of corugles.” 

“Done.”

He let himself get dragged to his feet just as ‘Barracuda’ started playing. Marlene watched them go as the lyrics came in, ‘So this ain’t the end, I saw you again today,’ the pacey tempo following suit. She almost didn’t notice Dorcas disappearing from right under her nose. 

She was slipping away like a bloody barracuda herself, and Marlene made to follow her quickly. 

“You don’t get away that easily, Meadowes,” Marlene said, catching her up. Dorcas continued walking. 

“What did I say about staying out of my way?” 

Marlene snorted. “What are you going to do, hex me?” 

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Dorcas supplied, before reaching for an opened bottle of Firewhisky hidden beneath the drinks table. How she knew it was there, Marlene had no idea. 

“What? When!” Marlene exclaimed, affronted. 

“Don’t be dense, McKinnon. Quidditch pitch? Ring any bells?”

“Oh, yeah.” Marlene recalled their race, nodding. “Yeah, but it didn’t even work.” 

Dorcas’s eyes flashed. “Of course it worked. You got concussed, didn’t you?” 

“Concussed? No, I won our race.”

Dorcas rolled her eyes. “Fucking hell, I really should have picked a better rival,” she muttered to herself, starting to walk away with the Firewhisky.

Marlene caught on. Her mouth dropped open, and she rushed for Dorcas, the room swinging by a fraction as she did so. She righted herself. 

“You cheated in the match?” Marlene burst out, belated fury singing through her veins Her reactions had been slowed somewhat. 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Dorcas answered loudly, as people turned to look. Then, she grabbed Marlene’s arm and dragged her roughly to the staircase that led to the girls’ dorms, where the noise of the party was dimmed, and their conversation was sheltered. “Shut your mouth, or I really will hex you.” 

“I’m sorry, you expect me to sit on this like a bloody duck? You mean to say you concussed me intentionally?” Marlene fumed, the buzz of the Firewhisky intensifying the situation.

“Not intentionally. I was aiming for your arm, but bludgers are tricky. And it was only a warm-up match, calm down.”

Marlene was almost stunned into absolute silence. Almost. “Why the fuck did you do that? That’s breaking a thousand game rules, you could have been kicked off the team! You could have knocked me off my broom! You could have - ”

“Well, I didn’t, did I? Besides, those rules are stupid. They shouldn’t exist.”

“God , you’re the most arrogant person I’ve ever met,” Marlene spluttered, too stunned to say much else. “If it was only a warm-up, why the fuck did you even do it?” 

Dorcas shrugged. “Morale. I wanted you to lose.” 

Anger surged through Marlene, finally clearing the fog in her mind the alcohol had left. She grabbed Dorcas and shoved her shoulders against the wall, thinking only of the sickening pain in her skull when the bludger hit, of James’s distraughtness over losing. It was his first match leading the team. He’d worked so hard, they all had. 

“Morale? You think morale gave you the right?” She had never despised Dorcas more.

“For fuck’s sake, McKinnon, don’t be dramatic. Like I’d ever sabotage an actual game.”

“Like I’d even believe you when you say that!”

Dorcas's jaw clenched, and in one quick motion, she’d reversed their positions, forcing Marlene’s shoulders against the hard stone of the stairwell, forearm across her collarbones. Marlene’s blood surged a whole new shade of red. 

“Look, I’m sorry you ended up concussed. I wasn’t aiming for your head, it was bigger than I imagined.” Only Dorcas could still insult you whilst apologising. “For Merlin’s sake, then, it wasn’t for bloody morale.” 

Marlene shoved Dorcas off savagely. “If you don’t explain what the hell you mean by that, I’m calling a rematch.” She wasn’t sure if she meant it. All she knew was that she was simply furious. 

Dorcas’s eyes burned tempestuously, as she contemplated this. She gave in, finally. 

“Fine. It was for Regulus. Heard of him?” 

Marlene glared until Dorcas continued. 

“Not that it’s any of your business, but he really needed to win that match. Believe whatever you want, but I did it for him.” 

“He’s a great player. Why not let him win it himself?” 

“I wasn’t risking it. He needs Quidditch. If he lost that game, his parents…” Dorcas paused. “It’s not for me to say.” She folded her arms. “Just know that Quidditch would’ve been over for him. He would’ve been bloody miserable. The match didn’t count for a thing in the Quidditch Cup, but it did count for him.” 

Dorcas held her ground as Marlene remained glaring at her, even as she ran all this through her head, realising that if Dorcas was telling the truth this time, it made a kind of sense. Marlene didn’t want it to make sense. She wanted to blame Dorcas for their loss and hate her even more for it. She wanted to shove her up against the wall again, let the outrage run its course. She wanted more Firewhisky. 

Marlene narrowed her eyes. “Why make the bludger hit me of all people?” Perhaps it was mostly out of curiosity at this point, but she wanted all the answers she could get. 

“You and Sirius were playing too well together, it had to be one of you. Why do you think I picked you?”

“Why tell me now?” 

Dorcas huffed. “For fuck’s sake, McKinnon, does it matter?”

Marlene waited, unrelenting. 

“You said my hex didn’t work,” Dorcas finally forced out. “It annoyed me.”

“Oh, so it was a case of small man syndrome.” Marlene almost laughed. “You couldn’t have me think for one moment you were incompetent.”

“And I’m not, so I guess we’re finished here.” 

They were both caught at an impasse, neither willing to relent, neither willing to be the first to lose the war of wills. In the silence and stillness and darkness, the alcohol caught up to Marlene, and she blinked as the walls of the stairwell started to blunder around slightly. 

She shook it away and pointed an accusatory finger at Dorcas, forcing her glare back to her. “Do it again and you’re fucking done,” Marlene stated at last in a tone so final she even believed herself. It came out better than she would’ve thought. 

Dorcas rolled her eyes and unscrewed the cap of her bottle. “Consider me terrified.”

“Give me your Firewhisky or I’ll tell everyone you cheated.” It was worth a try. 

“No.”

“Fine. Half.”

“Fine.”

‘So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?’ Freddie Mercury’s voice streamed from the record player, most of the Gryffindors yelling along with him. 

“So you think you can love me and leave me to die?” Mary and the dark-haired Slytherin boy were singing in unison, vocal cords straining and cracking, both of them jumping around and attracting stares from the other dancers.

Back in the throng of the party, Dorcas shoved the remaining Firewhisky in Marlene’s hands. 

“The rest is yours.”

“How kind. Hey,” Marlene called as Dorcas began to walk away towards the boy called Rosier. She turned around, arms folded. 

“What could you possibly want now?”

“Easy. What was your Potions result? You weren’t in the lesson, don’t you want to know who won?” 

Dorcas let out a long-suffering sigh, which Marlene thought was rather hypocritical, since it was her bloody idea in the first place. 

“I already know who won.” 

Marlene’s initial response was to be surprised, then she frowned at the realisation that Dorcas knew what she did not. Then she realised why Dorcas must not have wanted Marlene to ask her about it; there could only be one reason. Before Dorcas could continue, Marlene began to grin. 

“What is that absurd smile for?” Dorcas gritted out. 

“Oh, come on, don’t prolong it for yourself.” Marlene couldn’t help it; this was the feeling she’d been aching for ever since she’d lost their first competition. She’d done it, she’d done the bloody impossible. She hoped Dorcas was absolutely outraged. She hoped she’d been simmering in self-made irritation all day. “How much did I win by? Surely you know the specifics.”

Dorcas glared so murderously that Marlene’s grin almost turned into an elated laugh. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. It was by two bloody percent, McKinnon. This proves absolutely nothing.” 

She physically restrained herself from doing a little jump of glee, which she might really have done with a bit more Firewhisky.

“Sure thing, Meadowes. Whatever you want.” Marlene nodded, biting back her beam. “How the hell did you find out, anyway? You weren’t in the lesson.”

“Madame Pomfrey had me cornered in the stupid hospital wing. I managed to sneak out and look through Slughorn’s office at midnight, which I will never be doing again. I almost got caught by Filch and his ridiculous excuse for a cat twice.” Dorcas’s tone dripped with acid, letting Marlene know just how much she was enjoying this conversation. Before Marlene could ask what she’d been doing in the hospital wing, she was stalking away, still looking thoroughly nettled. “I meant it when I said to avoid me for the rest of the night.”

Marlene spun around on the spot, jubilant. She’d bloody beat Dorcas! By a whole two percent! The sting in Dorcas’s words was welcome for once, because it only showed Marlene she’d actually got to her this time. She uncapped the bottle in her hands, drank, and went to find Mary to celebrate, feeling light as air. 

Marlene only remembered fractures of the rest of the night, as the music got louder and the majority of the people got significantly drunker, all quite happy to do so. 

There was Mary dancing a duet with the dark-haired Slytherin who Marlene learned was called Crouch, the same one who played on the Slytherin Quidditch team. There was Pandora pulling Regulus in for more dances - Marlene remembered joining them at one point as ‘Stairway to Heaven’ came on, and could just about recall their conversation between jumps and spins:

“Weren’t you the one who dropped all those books in the corridor?”

“Oh, sure! Wanted to see who Dorcas was rambling on about.”

“Rambling?” Marlene had laughed at this. 

“You won’t believe how competitive she gets.”

“Oh, I’d believe whatever you say!” 

“What if I told you she knows, like, five languages?”

“What the fuck!” Marlene had yelled in answer over the music, both giggling like mad. “And you’re Sirius’s brother, little Regulus! Oh, I meant, you’re Sirius’s little brother, Regulus!” she corrected herself. 

“And you’re the one who Dorcas loves to despise,” Regulus had answered, spinning Pandora around. “A pleasure.”

And then there was Sash, standing in the corner with a group of seventh year Ravenclaws she used to tell Marlene she couldn’t stand. Marlene hadn’t spent long looking over at them. The highlight might have been Sirius and Remus, pissed off their tits and performing ‘Moonage Daydream’, half to the crowd, half to each other, or watching James trying to make conversation with Regulus, who was so clearly uninterested Marlene and Mary spent a while trying to work out the ratio of James’s words to Regulus’s. It was about fifty to one. 

By the end of the night, Marlene’s feet were aching, and she was in the bathroom, blinking repeatedly in a futile attempt to stop the room from spinning. Sash hadn’t come back to the dorm at all. Marlene found she couldn’t even bring herself to feel angry about it. 

She picked her head up out of her hands, laughing lightly just because the whole damn thing was so ridiculous. In her current state, it seemed so obvious: Sash was, and had always been, a complete and utter prick. That was all there was to it. Here and now, she was content to leave it at that.

She stood up and looked in the mirror, decided she loved the way her eyeliner had smudged a bit and rubbed it around even more. She wanted to stay in these clothes forever: she wanted to stay this young forever. She wanted to keep on making mistakes because the high that came from overcoming them was better than any bottle of Firewhisky. 

Walking back to her bed, she murmured her good nights to Mary and Lily, and promptly fell fast asleep. 

—————

The party also marked the start to the Autumn half-term, which fell later than usual this year in the first week of November. The temperature had really dropped now; the days where the sunshine made its weak appearance in the late afternoons became rarer, until they faded almost completely. 

Marlene was in the shower of the changing rooms, singing to Stevie Nicks and washing off the sweat that had come from her practice. She’d been filling up her days off with Quidditch, studying, sleeping, and hijacking Sirius’s record player in the evenings to play Fleetwood Mac as they all lounged in front of the fireplace. 

Marlene heard someone pottering about in the room, and cringed, halting her humming. She hoped no one had heard her somewhat terrible attempt at keeping in tune.

“Marlene?” A voice called, and she sighed with relief. It was only Lily. 

“I’m here!” she answered, knocking off the water supply and wrapping herself in a towel. “You alright? Don’t tell me you’ve decided to win Potter over once and for all and become a Quidditch pro.”

“Two of my heart's very deepest desires,” Lily agreed, taking a seat as Marlene started getting dressed. She let out a monumental sigh as she did so. “I’m sorry, I’m just so incredibly bored.”

Marlene snorted. “So you decided to trek all the way to the Quidditch pitch?” 

“Mary’s off with that Barty Crouch again, and the boys are all planning some ridiculously evasive prank that they won’t tell me a thing about. I’ve finished all my work and I’m pretty sure I’ve read almost every book in the entire library, unfortunately, so yes, I made the trek. I’m still not sure how I feel about it; I hate to be the one to tell you this, but it really does reek in here, Marls. It’s actually quite awful.” 

“Open your nostrils, embrace it. Let that stench in.”

“I haven’t breathed in two minutes.” Lily blew out her cheeks and pretended to roll her eyes back into her head, collapsing on to the bench. “We should do something, us two. Remember when we accidentally broke that Muggle Studies artefact and blamed it on Pike from Slytherin?”

“Fifth year,” Marlene agreed fondly. “I wanted to hide the evidence, but you said Pike deserved the detentions after getting away with hexing that third-year. And people think you’re the good one.”

“Haven't the foggiest what you’re on about.” Lily winked. 

“Are you suggesting we break another eighteenth century vase? I think Professor Rupert locked them all away after that.” Marlene grabbed her broom and kit and they stepped out into the early-morning fog.

Lily pondered this. “Perhaps not another vase. But I think I have a better idea.” 

Marlene grinned. 

Four hours later, their work was done. Marlene stepped back to admire it, nodding her head in pride. Lily gave the cauldron a final stir and breathed it in, biting back a smile. They high-fived each other.

“We’re probably going to get detention for this,” Lily stated, sounding rather less bothered by this than the first-year version of her might have been. 

“Yeah, but it’ll be worth it.” Marlene couldn’t wait any longer. “Who’s going to test it?”

“It was mostly my idea. I should probably be the one to suffer the after-effects if we’ve brewed this wrong.”

“You’ve never brewed a potion wrong in your life, Evans.”

“Touch wood immediately.” 

Marlene obliged, tapping the wood of the bench before them. Best not to risk it. They were in the last Potions classroom of the corridor, hoping they wouldn’t be interrupted, although they’d checked with the boys that Slughorn was still in Hogsmeade before beginning. How they knew, Marlene didn’t think she’d ever find out, but she’d learned to trust them when it came to the teachers’ whereabouts. She supposed they had their ways. 

“Okay, I’m going in.” Lily picked up a ladle and carefully let the smallest three drops of the thin, deep orange liquid fall into her mouth, starting a prayer, “Jesus, if you’re real…” She swallowed it, eyes scrunched. Nothing happened. 

“Say something,” Marlene whispered, anticipation fizzing down her spine. 

"Ça fait trop peur,” Lily said, hesitantly. Their mouths dropped open in shock. 

“Bloody hell, it worked!” Marlene exclaimed at the same time as Lily gasped, “Putain, on est des génies!” 

Marlene and Lily both laughed in pure glee at the same time. 

“I have no idea what the hell you’re saying!”

“On est des génies,” Lily repeated, then she clapped her hand over her mouth. “J'arrête pas.” 

“Oh Merlin, this is amazing. French is my new favourite language. Carry on talking until it wears off.”

“J’ai toujours voulu être bilingue, mais j'espérais un peu que ça me rendrait norvégien. Je sais pas pourquoi. Ça me semble cool.”

Marlene started laughing, they both did, comprehending the fact that Lily was really speaking a whole different language. Fluently. She rambled on about Merlin-knows-what for a good few minutes, eyes bright, Marlene grinning in wonder. 

“We have to do this again. It’s better than the fireworks,” she declared, leaning forward to rest her elbows on the bench. She wished Dorcas could see her now, fully functional potion under her belt, and felt the sudden urge to find her and drag her here, just to make her witness what they’d accomplished. 

“Je suis totalement d’accord. Mais pourquoi ai-je soudainement faim? Je pourrais eat a horse.” Lily gasped, as she switched back to English without a pause, the potion wearing off. “Oh my god. Am I dreaming or did that actually work?” 

They cackled like maniacs, jumping up and down as if they were still over-excited first-years, revelling in the freedom of magic for the first time. 

“We did that!” They both flopped onto the bench, staring into the huge cauldron that was filled to the brim with their creation.  “Now we need to distribute it, and cause mass chaos.”

“Oh, no. What if we’re turning into the boys?” 

Marlene gawked. “How could you say such a terrible thing? They’ve got nothing on us.” She paused to think as Lily made a noise of agreement. “I reckon we do it before they pull off whatever they’re planning. Steal their thunder for once.”

“Sounds evil, I’m in.” She paused. “As Head Girl, you never heard that.”

Lunch was only an hour away, which meant they had to act fast. Lily and Marlene were familiar with the house-elves, but both agreed it would never work without a particular someone’s help, even if they were reluctant to admit it. 

“Please, Pete, they’ll never find out you had anything to do with it.” 

“I don’t know…”

“I promise I won’t give you and Sara detentions for the rest of the term, even if I find you in a broom cupboard at midnight,” Lily said, very seriously. 

“Betray them and join the dark side.” Marlene urged him, grinning encouragingly at Lily’s side. 

Peter hesitated still, looking from Lily to Marlene and back again. He dithered, but finally sighed and relented. 

“Fine. Consider me a traitor. But you owe me a favour too, Marlene.” 

“Yes!” Lily exclaimed. 

“You’re my favourite traitor, Pete. Anything you want.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled. 

An hour later, they were sitting in the Great Hall, along with the rest of the school, barely sitting still. They were doing a pretty bad job of avoiding eye contact as they watched the students start to drink the thin orange liquid that looked remarkably like innocent pumpkin juice. They’d levitated the massive cauldron all the way to the empty Great Hall, and painstakingly ensured some went into each and every waiting goblet. It would look odd that they were already full, but it would have to do; they were running out of time. 

Peter had gone to the kitchen to distract the house elves from preparing and sending up the feast. The plan was to make the students wait at least ten minutes for the food to arrive, and in doing so, notice their conveniently full goblets, and happen to take a sub-conscious drink whilst they sat expectantly. 

The idea was ridiculously cobbled together and hasty, but what was more ridiculous was this: it was working. The chatter of the students was as immense as usual, and Marlene and Lily watched them all start to drink from their goblets simply because they were there. Marlene saw some people encouraging their friends to try some, clearly confused as to why the pumpkin juice didn’t taste like pumpkin juice. 

Five minutes later, the room was in chaos. No one even took notice as the food appeared on its usual platters. Everyone in the room was either laughing hysterically at their friends or talking a million miles an hour, the confusion on their faces as apparent as if they’d walked out of a comic-book.

Marlene and Lily were delighted, clinging to each other and pointing out the best cases. Mary sounded Scandinavian, Peter appeared to be panicking in Portuguese, and James and Sirius had both somehow managed to end up speaking the same language, which Marlene thought was unfair but probably something she should have expected. 

It was exactly what she’d hoped for: mass chaos. She looked around to the Slytherin table, hoping to see Dorcas as bewildered as everyone else, but to her horror, she appeared completely at ease. Marlene guessed she’d gotten away with not drinking any of the potion, because she appeared to be conversing easily with each of her friends. In a rush of infuriation, she remembered Pandora saying something about Dorcas’s skill with languages at the party, and she swore under her breath in outrage.

As she watched, Dorcas stopped talking to Crouch and turned in Marlene’s direction, an eyebrow quirked. She couldn’t possibly know it had partly been Marlene’s doing, could she? Marlene stuck two fingers up, and before she could see her reaction, Remus had appeared in front of her.

“What on earth did you do?” he asked as he sat down next to her, late to the fray. “Why is everyone suddenly multilingual?”

“What makes you think I had anything to do with it!” Marlene responded indignantly. 

“Because you just answered in English, and you don’t look as though this whole situation is extremely surprising. Don’t think I don’t see you too, Lily.” 

Simultaneously, they both pasted on shocked expressions. 

“Oh, wow. Please never go into acting.” He reached for a sausage. 

“Remus, I’ll pay you five galleons if you try the potion,” Marlene implored, dropping all pretence. 

“Please, do it for us!” 

He eyed it up, raising his eyebrows at them. “What exactly is it?”

Lily shrugged. “We sort of made it up. Well, we adapted it from one in the textbook, anyway. Now whatever language you speak is completely random, and it lasts longer.” 

“You might actually be crazier than James and Sirius.” 

“Oh, shush. We all know you’re the real evil mastermind.”

“Just try it!” Lily entreated. 

He looked between them, and sighed. “Fine. If it keeps me from having to make small talk, I suppose I’m in.” He took a sip, and when he spoke again, his words had a lilt to them that transformed him into a native Italian speaker. He laughed in surprise, as Marlene and Lily began to splutter. 

“You got the best one by far!” Lily exclaimed, cracking up. 

“For fuck’s sake, you really are the Casanova of the Gryffindor tower.” Marlene shook her head affectionately, as Sirius and James caught wind of Remus’s arrival and said something in what sounded like Turkish. 

“Non capisco niente di quello che dici.” Remus shrugged. Sirius’s mouth hung open as James pretended to swoon. Marlene shook with laughter as Sirius cleared his throat. Remus kept a remarkable poker face. 

“I hope this lasts for a week,” Lily mused, sighing happily. 

Unfortunately, the effects did wear off by the evening at most, but Lily and Marlene had spent the whole day following groups of people around as they tried to communicate, or attempted to find other people who spoke the same language. She’d even discreetly followed Dorcas and her friends back to the Slytherin common room just to see if Dorcas was actually some kind of language genius, which she couldn’t help but doubt, just out of pure hope it wouldn’t be true. She was naturally irked to hear Dorcas chatting easily with Rosier in Spanish, even more so when she switched with little effort into Filipino. Just how many languages did she speak?

It was greatly entertaining, especially watching the teachers running around trying to reverse the effects with little success. Marlene was sure Dumbledore or Slughorn could have stopped it, but they’d passed them conversing in the corridor, Slughorn looking excitable and Dumbledore intrigued. 

Marlene had wondered what they could be talking about, but her curiosity was settled in the first Potions lesson back after half-term. 

She sat down just as Slughorn walked in, his step exerting an extra spring than usual. She pointedly did not look in Dorcas’s direction. Perhaps it was childish, but she was a bit bitter that the potion had failed to bemuse her. 

“Yes, yes, hello all.” Slughorn took his spot at the front of the classroom as the chatter drew to a halt. “After an interesting turn of events during the holiday, I have an announcement.” 

This got everyone’s attention. Marlene and Lily shared a glance across the room; Lily’s eyes widened in apprehension. So far, the teachers hadn’t approached anyone, not even their usual suspects (James and Sirius), as the pranksters behind the half-term fiasco. Marlene was convinced this would be where they got found out. She braced herself for the inevitable detentions.

“Professor Dumbledore and I were most impressed by the potion,” Slughorn continued. Marlene’s mouth fell open. Lily looked equally baffled. “And so, we have decided to launch a new initiative this half term. The potion that was administered, somewhat masterfully, might I add,” (at this, Marlene was truly flabbergasted), “was an adaptation from the textbook’s Werming potion, which some of you may be familiar with. The Headmaster and I would like to stretch our NEWTs class, and ask you all to do the same, in a year-wide competition.” 

He paused for dramatic effect, waiting for the muttering to subside before continuing, “You will be paired in order to do this, and whoever we judge to have created the most masterful, and perhaps most creative potion, amongst the use of a range of techniques, will win points for their house as well as guaranteed membership to the Slug Club. Oh, and two extra trips to Hogsmeade in January.”

At this, the muttering broke into full chatters, some groans of annoyance at the extra workload, some excitable gossiping. Some people turned to their textbooks right away, flicking through to find a good potion to base their own on. Marlene turned in her seat to face Lily, mouthing, What on earth? Lily shrugged in response, a grin spreading from ear to ear. What had they started? 

This was what happened when Lily did something that might get her in trouble, Marlene thought to herself incredulously: the universe simply wouldn’t allow it. 

“Settle down, please.” Slughorn waved his arms about, calming the class. “I don’t want to hear protests. This will be an excellent project to test you all before the real exam season starts, along with the introduction of some healthy competition. And don’t think you’ll be choosing your own partners, I shall be pairing you according to register order.” 

Marlene mentally flicked through the register, trying to work out who she’d be having to work with for the next month and a half as Slughorn began reading out the partners, beginning from the top. Lal, Linnet, McKinnon… Her train of thought screeched to a halt. Next in line was Meadowes. 

She prayed it would go the other way, that she could get paired with sweet and easy-going Clara Linnet, but she looked up just in time to hear Slughorn drone on, “Anika Lal with Clara Linnet… Marlene McKinnon with Dorcas Meadowes…” 

Marlene’s blood froze in her veins. This had to be some kind of cruel prank. It had to be. Only one thought ran through her mind as she met Dorcas’s furious gaze across the room: Oh, bloody hell.