The world was burning.
Marlene saw it happening before her eyes. She battled against the flames closing in on her friends. Her family. Her.
Seventeen-year-olds were not meant to fight a war. Seventeen-year-olds were supposed to go out with their friends and get drunk on bad firewhiskey. They were supposed to stumble into cheap apartments at one in the morning only to exit after mere hours to be slightly late to their minimum wage, entry-level jobs. And yet, here she was, fresh out of school and already covered with battle scars.
And all she wanted to do was escape. To find a quiet place by herself to lie down and rest, away from the noise and the crowds. But how could she, when her friends were getting married and her siblings were growing up? How could she, when people were dying and children were disappearing and everything was burning?
So she wiped the soot off her face, coughed up the smoke still in her lungs, and kept going. She fought and she laughed and she screamed and she cried and she smiled and her heart swelled and broke with each beautiful, painful day. Days bled into weeks and weeks bled into months, and then suddenly she was twenty and how could she be this young but feel so old?
The letter came on a Thursday. It had rained all morning, and a slight chill still hung in the air as she slid the window pane up to allow the owl entrance. She opened the envelope with shaking hands, swallowing hard as she slid the paper out. Owls rarely brought good news these days, and she felt her heart pound against her ribcage in fear as she scanned the letter.
Marlene-
It’s Maxx
Come as fast as you can
-Mel
The paper hadn’t even hit the floor before she was gone, disappearing into thin air with a turn of her head, only to reappear in a completely new location. The room must have been beautiful at one time, but now it held only dust and the feeling of having seen too much. But she didn’t take notice of any of it, just ran through the dark halls of her childhood home as her mind spun and her stomach dropped. She felt the fire surround her, making her eyes burn and her feet move faster and faster. Squeezing her eyes shut, she continued her sprint through the house, poking her head in doorways and willing the flames to disappear because no no no he can’t and not him not him not him.
Suddenly a door banged open and a frail girl with a tear-streaked face emerged. They locked eyes, identical red rims and blue irises (Maxx’s eyes, too), and she knew.
Can your world change in four seconds? Sixteen-year-old her would have said no, would have shook her head, her eyes still so full of light and hope. Twenty-year-old her knew better. It only took her four seconds to walk through that doorway. Four seconds for her to pass her sister, who stood frozen as if she were in a dream. Four seconds for her to go from slightly cracked to completely broken.
Because as soon as she saw the boy she loved so dearly laying on the bed, bloody and bruised and too still and so completely gone, the fight left her with a sob just like the light had so long ago. She dropped to her knees, staring at the boy who had said his first word just for her, who had called her “Mahley” because he couldn’t pronounce r’s, who had stolen her sweets and hugged her fiercely every time she said goodbye, and the fire finally swallowed her whole.
---
The world was burning.
It had been two weeks since that Thursday. Fourteen days filled with alternating numbness and despair, anger and tears.
Within those two weeks, eight more people were missing. Ten were dead. Seven more shops were destroyed. Four of them were Muggle owned. She’d been there for one of the attacks, on a mission from the Order (a mission just like Maxx’s mission). She’d escaped with just a few scratches and a broken leg.
Sirius was still at St. Mungo’s.
The two Muggles were dead.
Despite everything she and those she loved had given to fight it, the evil was still there. It was still hurting and killing and she wanted to scream in frustration because he couldn’t have died trying to stop it only to have others suffer the same fate.
He couldn’t even have a proper funeral. The city was too crowded, too full of the people causing harm to their world. So they arranged a Portkey to a faraway beach where they had once gone on yearly holidays. They only invited immediate family and a few friends. Mrs. McKinnon told everyone to wear white, since Maxx had only brought love and light to their lives. Mr. McKinnon said he would have wanted them to remember the good instead of dwelling on the bad.
Marlene thought that was bullshit.
It rained again throughout the whole service, but she didn’t notice. She hadn’t noticed when it rained the day before, or the day before that, or any day since that awful Thursday two weeks ago. She stood completely still in between Melody and Mayra, numb all the way from her mind to her toes. Mayra clutched her hand and Melody rested her head on her shoulder as they stood there, listening silently as the vibrant, strong boy they knew and loved was summed up in a few short sentences, watching as he disappeared and was replaced by kind words and tears.
It wasn’t fair. Nothing about this was fair.
Maxx had just finished school. He had his whole life ahead of him. He was supposed to move abroad and work in international relations as he'd always wanted, getting to talk to new people and learn about new places everyday. He was supposed to meet someone more practical, someone to remind him to get to sleep on nights when he got too invested in reading about the origin of some foreign language. Someone who laughed at his jokes and pushed him to follow through on those plans he dreamed up. He was supposed to get away from the war and raise the family he'd hoped for. He was supposed to be more.
It should have been her, lying there.
She was his older sister. She was supposed to protect him. To be there. To shield him from harm. And she failed. She’d failed him and her mum and her dad and Melody and Mayra. She’d failed Dorcas, who was undercover somewhere far away (taking a piece of Marlene's heart with her). She’d failed James and Lily, who were deep in hiding (Merlin knows where). She’d failed Sirius, still recovering in the hospital (while she stood unharmed). She’d failed Remus, all alone in his cheap apartment (on a full moon). She’d failed Mary, who’d disappeared weeks ago and could very well be dead (after she’d promised her everything would be okay). She’d failed Peter and Alice and Frank and Moody and Dumbledore and all she could do was stand here and watch as part of her heart was ripped out and buried under the cold earth, buried with broken promises and white lies, buried with her last shred of innocence and her new sense of bitterness.
The gathering at the house was filled with sympathetic glances and stale biscuits, and she could only handle one “So sorry for your loss, dear” before she was gone, sneaking into the room she’d stayed in as a child and shutting the door tightly behind her. The yellow quilt and flowered curtains sang out to her, looking exactly as they had so long ago, bringing whispers of summer and freedom and peace into the room. She gazed in the mirror hanging above the small bed, starting a little as haunted eyes stared back at her.
Who was that?
The flaxen hair and pale blue eyes were the same, yes. But this skin was more drawn and paler than her own, this face was thinner and older than her own, and the expression displayed in the glass was certainly not one she recognized on herself. The face in the mirror sported a cut on her temple, still red and raw, as if it were only days old. Slowly, she reached up, and let a quiet “shit” escape as pain shot through her head and her fingers came back to her side dotted with dried blood.
Shaking her (?) head, she turned away from the mirror, running her hand across the chestnut dresser and watching as a thin layer of dust flew into the air and floated around her. The drawers were empty save for one crumpled-up swimsuit, which she pulled out with a sad smile, fingering the stretched-out fabric with familiarity.
Her brother’s voice echoed through the room, telling her to hurry up and get in the water or he’d replace her shampoo with a hair removal potion.
“Now, Mahley! Now!”
“Now,” she whispered, abandoning the swimsuit and following the voice through the halls.
“It’s getting cold! Come on, Mahley.”
His words got louder, ringing in her ears as she slipped through the sliding door and out onto the beach, the wind greeting her like a slap to the face.
“Alright, Mahley?”
The voice faded, lost in the crashing of the waves, but she followed it still, running across the sand and towards the stormy sea.
As the sand turned to rock, she slowed her pace, stepping daintily across the boulders lining the shore. She looked almost ethereal, fair skin and white dress standing out against the dark stone as she went. A sense of calm washed over her, the same grounding feeling this place always seemed to hold, as if nothing could be wrong just as long as the tide came and went each day.
The salt water roared to greet her, and she felt it, felt it splash across her toes and felt the gentle mist spray her face. It was cold and unpleasant and left her feet tingling but she didn’t care because she felt it.
The feelings and emotions and life that she’d been repressing for so long surged to the surface, her head spinning dizzily as she stood, arms outstretched, facing the immensity before her.
The breeze blew her hair back from her face, twirled her dress around her thighs, and caused her eyes to water but it was there and it was real and that was good enough. Here, on that very shore, Voldemort was the last thing on her mind. The fire and the screams that had chased her for so long faded into the distance, allowing her to exist in a world of peace, even if it was just for a moment. The quiet sounded louder than the noise ever had, settling around her in a heavy fog, blocking out the shouts that had haunted her dreams.
She took a deep breath, sucking in the salty air with all her might and then releasing it slowly as her eyes fluttered shut. Here, everything was still. The only thing disrupting the placidity was her; her movements and her presence. And maybe it was the simple fact that here, she was finally the one making the noise, but it hit her like a bucket of cold water to the face.
She was still here. Still breathing. She was alive.
And then suddenly she was seven years old again and racing her brother along the rocks. She was ten, dancing and splashing in the shallow water beside her sisters. She was sixteen, laughing with her friends outside the pub, drunk and on top of the world. She was Marlene McKinnon again, twenty years old now, breathing in the intoxicating ocean air and feeling the weight of her world slip off of her shoulders.
She dipped her toes in, enjoying the rush that jolted through her when skin met freezing water. It was a rush she hadn’t felt since her first taste of firewhiskey, the kind of heart-racing mind-buzzing feeling that filled you up inside and warmed you from head to toe. The sensation overwhelmed her senses, and rational thought drifted out of her mind and away from the shore. She ran through the waves, her white dress soaked, her skin tinged pink from the cold. Tears mixed in with ocean water and left salty tracks down her face, which graced a smile wider than any she’d had in years. With every step, the fire in the air faded and sizzled out, the hatred and the pain slipping away, and so she kept going. She swam and she ran and she dove into the water as time seemed to still and the only thing left was her.
She was free.
Finally, she could be free.
It was Mayra who found her, hours later, when most of the guests were gone and the food was cold. She’d later tell Marlene that she thought she was dead, curled up asleep on the shore, her skin cold to the touch, her dress soaked through, her eyes closed and her lips parted. It was Mayra’s sobs that finally broke through to her, made her crack her eyes open and reach her arms out to her. They held each other and cried and when Melody arrived, looking for them, she cried too and they all sat on the beach that had meant so much to them and mourned what they’d lost and what they still had to lose. The sun set, painting the sky with oranges and yellows (Maxx’s favorite colors, a Hufflepuff through and through), and then the stars dotted the sky and lulled the sisters to sleep, only to be awoken by rays of red and pink light and the world felt as if it had finally let out a breath it had been holding for days, months, maybe even years. Sirius was as discharged from St. Mungo’s days later, and the two of them were sent out into the country for a mission. But even in that dark and dreary tent, hiding from the flames outside, Marlene felt as if she was still on that beach. She kept watch and thought about the salty air, sent messages to headquarters and imagined running through the waves, poured Sirius a drink and felt Mayra’s arms around her shoulders.
She imaged she was still by the water when she returned from the mission to the news that Mary had not yet been found, clung to the waves when Dorcas came back and the two shared a hidden moment, exchanged words and touches that they didn’t know would be their last. She wished desperately to be there when Sirius exploded, pointing fingers and trying to pin down a traitor (but it couldn’t be Remus, it just couldn’t), ached to grab her sisters and run when Melody begged to be allowed to join the Order only to be shot down, longed to feel the breeze again when she almost lost a leg to a Death Eater whose face she knew but name she’d forgotten.
The flicker of hope that had fueled them in the beginning was getting smaller and smaller with each missing persons report, each failed recon mission, and each stint in St. Mungo's. There was now more to die for than to live for, Marlene privately thought, and so she simply continued to go through the motions, surviving in the day-to-day but living on that beach filled with magic.
She was there wading through the water, chasing the sunset when her mother and father insisted they all come over for what would have been Maxx’s birthday dinner, feeling the ocean air on her face when she told Peter she’d have to leave patrols a little early that night, listening to Maxx call out her name when the explosion occurred and the pieces started to fall into place.
Marlene had always hated rats.
She was killed in the dusty old house where she’d been raised, but the most important parts of her died on a beach in her sister’s arms, searching for an answer, a way to douse the flames.
They buried the McKinnon family with Maxx on the shore. The funeral was rushed, a tragedy summed up in a few sentences to a measly crowd, a fraction of the people who loved the McKinnons, and who they loved in return. But what else could they do? The world was still burning. Marlene McKinnon’s battle was over, yes, but the fight had just begun. And so they kept on going, pushing through the fire, the evil.
And Marlene?
Marlene was free.