A Confusing Blend
Marlene had ended up going to the hospital wing; Mary had suddenly pointed out that she was bleeding a concerning amount, so they reported to Madam Pomfrey to bandage up Marlene’s wound.
She’d pestered the two girls to tell her who’d done this. They both refused to say anything, especially Mary. She taught Marlene that snitches get stitches, specifically from prejudiced, bulky boys who had built up anger buried deep down.
Madam Pomfrey carefully bandaged up Marlene, her hands so slow and gentle, as though Marlene was the most fragile glass and she feared shattering her. Afterwards, Marlene headed back to the Gryffindor common room with Mary, and they rested for the remainder of the day.
Mary was dancing around the common room, bobbing her head to The Beatles Abbey Road, which was an album that Lily had on a cassette tape. She had her very own cassette player, a going away present Lily received from her parents as she made her departure to Hogwarts. Marlene hadn’t known what it was at first, but once she saw the muggle tool in action, her fascination only increased. Now, she immensely enjoyed listening to the cassettes Lily owned. Abbey Road was a favorite of Lily’s.
While the two girls weren’t shocked that Marlene hadn’t known what a cassette tape was, it had spiralled Marlene into a tornado of endless thoughts.
She was stuck in this weird middle between muggle and witch. She had grown up knowing Quidditch inside out. It was perhaps the only thing she’d ever known, really, and it was such a large factor in her life that she’d never known life without it.
But she hadn’t had as much practice around magic as the other students had. She wasn’t tutored in the principles of magic like the Purebloods, and instead her mum taught her the basics of muggle math and literature. Magic was also forbidden from being used in the McKinnons house, but Marlene wasn’t sure why this was. Her stepdad was Pureblood, after all, so they wouldn’t have to keep their abilities a secret from him. But magic was sort of a taboo in her house.
Marlene wondered if it was truly why her mother reasoned, because she wanted her kids to grow up with real human skills and not just the unreliable dependency of magic, or because of their father. He had abandoned the family while Marlene was still very young, and the sole reason was because he’d found out his wife was magic.
She knew her mother still grieved Marlene’s father- maybe just as much as she did- and formed their way of living around their father’s absence. Marlene’s mum now chose a different surname, Jacobs, after she was officially married to Robert. Danny and Marlene had chosen to keep their name as McKinnon. Marlene wasn’t sure if she would ever be ready to give up that name.
When Marlene just arrived at Hogwarts, she’d barely known any spells previously. She never witnessed spells in person. Yes, she’d heard about the magic of Hogwarts; the delightful food, welcoming professors, mind blowing charms, and the humongous castle that Danny had taken forever to master his way around.
She would also drop Danny off at Platform 9 ¾ every year, and she would attend every Quidditch game. That was her only dose of magic she could latch onto. Her family didn’t even go to Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade, and they never met other magical families, so Marlene had grown up in such a lonely manner. She never truly felt connected to magic until Hogwarts, especially when she observed the difficulty Mary and Emmeline had with their attempts to fit in with the other students.
Yet, it was still different for Marlene. Not only did Marlene grow up around a lack of magic, but she’d also grown up around a lack of muggle life. The closest she got was shopping at muggle stores for clothes and watching the telly, but she had never listened to the music Mary and Lily fancied.
It had never bothered Marlene before, this weird border that crossed between the two parts of her ancestry. She never minded this odd, unusual blend of muggle and magic life. However, when she arrived at Hogwarts, this seemed to change.
From what Marlene could tell, no one else had this issue of separating their worlds from one another. Mary, Lily, and Emmeline would live their magic lives to the fullest while at Hogwarts, and then when they returned home for holiday, they’d resort back to their muggle ways.
Them, or people like Sirius Black or James Potter, they were Pureblood through and through. They were greatly admired for that. They grew up studying magic and every single possible thing about it- it was all they’d ever known.
Everyone knew Mary, Lily, and Emmeline were muggle-borns. It wasn’t a secret, but it wasn’t something any of the girls were ashamed of. They were considered witches by most, but everyone knew of their muggle blood.
Sirius Black and James Potter were known for being as magic as they could be. Every single person in the school- no matter their year, no matter their occupation- would look at the two boys and know they were privileged Purebloods. It wasn’t an insult, though, and the boys evidently took pride in this, no matter how much they might deny it.
For Marlene, however, it was different. At home, it made sense; she was a witch and a muggle. She lived both ways. But to her muggle-born friends, she was knowledgeable, someone they assumed knew just as much about magic as any Pureblood in the school. She didn’t understand what they were saying when they spoke of muggle activities or music. To them, she was a witch, someone who belonged here; they didn’t care if her father was a muggle, it didn’t matter to them.
The Purebloods looked at her in the complete opposite way. Instead of an informed witch, she was an ignorant muggle. A lot of things in class were more challenging for her, and it embarrassed her because she knew that everyone knew that she struggled even though she was Half-blood.
It’s not that anyone made fun of her, because at the end of the day, her marks were still exceptionally high, and she passed all her classes. But they all knew, and they all blamed it on the fact her dad was a muggle. She didn’t understand some of the wizard slang the students used, or who some of the singers were when they spoke about them.
She didn’t understand the Ministry of Magic stuff, because even her mum and stepdad worked in muggle jobs. Her mum was a waitress at a local muggle cafe and her stepdad was a construction worker. They never got involved in the magic government, because they’d never needed to.
Marlene just didn’t know which world she belonged in; muggle or magic. It seemed everyone had different perceptions of where Marlene supposedly affiliated to. How come it couldn’t be that easy for Marlene?
“What’s the matter?” Mary asked suddenly, halting the music as she clicked the pause button on the player. Marlene was jolted from her thoughts and peered up at her friend, who held a face of concern. “You’ve been lost in your mind for nearly fifteen minutes, Carry That Weight is almost over. What’s going on?”
Marlene was shit at keeping secrets from Mary, so she spilled everything. Mary sat there and listened intently, nodding solemnly. Marlene repeated every thought that had occurred in her brain, every conflict that troubled her. Mary didn’t complain once, and instead, when Marlene finally finished, she had reached out and gripped her pale hand tightly.
“I can’t tell you where you belong, because that’s for you to figure out, and honestly, I don’t know,” Mary said truthfully, staring at Marlene with such a deep emotion that Marlene felt herself incapable of looking away. She couldn’t name this look. “But I can tell you that to me, you’ll always just be Marlene McKinnon. Not someone torn between two different versions of themselves.”
“Just Marlene McKinnon sounds pretty lame.” Marlene admitted, and there was a tone of humor in her words, but Mary shook her head seriously.
“You aren’t just Marlene McKinnon, you’re the Marlene McKinnon,” Mary started. Marlene gulped at the way Mary was staring at her. “You’re the Marlene that’s excellent at Quidditch and when anyone watches you their jaws literally drop! You’re the Marlene McKinnon that’s so nice to everyone no matter what they do. You are the one who gave a chance on me and Emmeline, and who tries to not make ideas of someone before getting to really know them. If you had done that to me, we might not have been friends. But you’re so good, and you didn’t, and you gave me a chance, and now, you’re the Marlene McKinnon who is my best, most amazing and true friend in the entire world and back.”
Marlene was blushing at the speech. Mary made her sound like the Americans in movies that she watched on the telly. She reached out and pulled Mary in for a tight hug that might’ve lasted moments, minutes, or hours, but it was over quicker than Marlene would’ve wanted.
Mary was grinning, and she winked at Marlene before the Gryffindor common room entrance suddenly burst open. The four Gryffindor boys stormed in and rushed up to their dorm, not sparing a glance at the two girls on the couch. Lily then followed behind, and immediately spotted her roommates.
“Oh, hello,” Lily greeted, confused. “Where were you two at lessons? You skipped nearly half of- oh my, Marlene! What has happened to your face?!”