Arriving at Hogwarts
Marlene wasn’t sure whether she should wake her mother; she was curled around a bottle of wine, or a bottle that used to hold wine, and she looked so tiny. Light pooled in every crease on her face, highlighting every dip and line carved into her skin. Her little feet were braced against the edge of their fading armchair, toenails painted bright pink. It had been like this for days now- since the letter. Marlene didn’t know if it was her fault for being chosen, or if this was something her mother would have to work through.
Leant against the living room door was her trunk. Dad had helped Marls to carve her initials into the dark wood last night, and the memory of his hand on hers, guiding the penknife against the wood, was sharp in her mind. M. E. M.
“Bye, Mum,” Marlene murmured. She placed a gentle kiss on her head and turned to the door. They’d been through it a hundred times (two buses and a train, then onto the platform), but as Marlene stepped onto the doorstep, trunk in one hand and ticket in the other, she couldn’t help feeling overwhelmed.
-
People, everywhere. That was her first thought as the muggle world disappeared behind her, and she emerged onto the magical platform. Suddenly self-conscious in her blue muggle jeans and cherry-red blouse, she pressed herself against a wall and tried to take in her surroundings. The crimson train was belching great clouds of grey steam, making everything a little hazy. Hundreds of robed wizards and witches wove their way around the platform, bidding their goodbyes and greeting friends.
“Oi,” a boy yelled out of one of the train windows, flicking dark hair from his face. “Get on the train, will you, Peter? Plenty of time for tears later. Chop chop!”
He was wearing large round glasses, a few sizes too big for his face. They suited him in a boyish, eager sort of way. Marlene instantly liked him. His friend- Peter, she supposed- punched him playfully on the arm through the window, standing on his tiptoes to reach.
“Oh,” came a voice just left of Marls’ ear. She turned, wide-eyed, to see a red-haired girl grinning right at her. “Are you muggleborn too? I was starting to worry nobody else would be.”
“Um,” Marlene said helplessly. “Actually. I’m half and half. Mum’s a witch, Dad’s a muggle. Just didn’t fancy wearing robes on the bus journey here.”
“Oh, of course! I’m Lily, by the way. Lily Evans.”
Lily was accompanied by a sour-looking girl, who looked rather sorry to see her leave. She kept tugging at her sister’s sleeve, shooting her panicked looks. Their parents bustled around Lily, fixing her hair, smothering her in kisses. Marlene felt that she shouldn’t watch, but she also very much wanted to introduce herself to Lily. “I’m Marlene,” she told her quickly.
“Brilliant! Want to find a carriage together on the train? Where are we supposed to put these suitcases, by the way?”
Marlene nodded, and then shook her head. “Yes, and- I don’t know. Sorry.” She desperately wanted to make some joke to lighten the mood, but Lily was with her family, and she didn’t really want to interrupt their displays of affection.
After what felt like ages of deliberation, Marlene growing steadily more anxious to just get on the train before there were no carriages left, they finally boarded the steam engine. The little sister burst into tears the moment Lily let her go, which was irritating. Marlene hoped she hadn’t been like that when Danny left. Mind you, she wasn’t even sure she’d been brought along. She’d have been three, so it’s not like she’d have remembered anyway.
“This one?” Lily said finally. The carriage was empty besides a girl with frizzy dark hair, who seemed to be waving to someone out of the window. Marlene nodded.
“Oh, hi,” the girl said cheerfully as the two of them joined her, sitting opposite. “Isn’t it awful, having to say goodbye to family?”
Her smile never wavered, even as she said this. Lily nodded, and then: “Did you come with anyone, Molly?”
Marlene bristled, a bit. “It’s Marlene-”
“Oh, Marlene, sorry-”
“And nah. My parents are both working. Said goodbye last night.” This was a lie, but it would have been weird to tell them the truth. She drew her legs up to her chest and rested her chin on her knees.
Lily gave her a sympathetic smile, which was annoying. At least she was being nice. “Shame they couldn’t come.”
“Do you two know each other?” the other girl asked. She was wearing blue flared jeans and a tight yellow-and-red striped top, and looked at least three years older than them.
“No, we just met,” Lily said eagerly. “We’re first years.”
“Me too!”
Marlene was surprised but pleased. She seemed friendly enough, and all three of them were in muggle clothes, which made her feel a lot better. The new girl was a lot less energetic than Lily was; it was a relief.
“I’m Mary,” she told them, sticking out her chin. “And you are… Marlene and..?”
“Lily,” Lily supplied. Mary grinned across at them both. “Muggleborn too?”
“What’s that?”
“A muggleborn?”
Mary frowned. “Yeah.”
“It’s when neither of your parents have magical abilities, but you do.” Lily rattled off the definition as if she were reading it from a dictionary. Mary nodded to this. “My friend Sev from home is half-blood, so he’s told me a lot about it.”
Marlene looked up at this. “Where’s he, then?”
“I didn’t see him at the station.” Lily turned pink. “He’ll find us, at some point.”
The three of them chatted for a bit, until the train began to pull away from the station. Marlene found out that Lily had already read all of the set books, had forgotten to bring any spare socks, and hated the colour of her wand, and that Mary lived in muggle London in a flat with her mum, where she spent most of the time avoiding other kids and reading magazines, and had brought muggle pens with her since she hated quills. Marlene herself didn’t say much, other than to tell them how excited she was for quidditch and flying practice. This was met with confusion from Mary, and incredulousness from Lily.
“You actually want to fly? It sounds terrifying.”
“What’s quidditch?”
“Can first-years even join the team, anyway?”
“Flying how exactly?”
This was something Marlene knew plenty about, so she answered their countless questions, laughing kindly at Lily’s nerves and Mary’s confusion. She couldn’t imagine being thrown straight into a world of magic without some kind of briefing, and really felt for the pair- though it seemed that Lily knew rather a lot anyway, from her books.
By the time the trolley witch came around, they’d lapsed into comfortable silence. Mary had been staring out of the window at the beautiful countryside, but quickly jolted out of her daydreaming at the sight of food. “Oh! I haven’t got any money.”
“I have,” Lily said proudly. Marlene looked at her in surprise, and watched, amused, as Lily asked for three pumpkin pasties, and several types of sweets. She didn’t know the names, and pointed to them instead. Marlene tried not to laugh. “Mum and Dad took me to the wizarding bank to get muggle money changed into galleons, see.”
Generously, she let the others share the food, giving them a whole pasty each and their fair share of the food. Mary caught Marlene’s eye as Lily started rambling again, and almost choked on her pasty, which set Marlene almost hysterical with laughter.
“Hey, what’s so funny?” Lily looked a bit put out.
“Oh, just Mary choked on her pasty, is all.”
They chatted excitedly for the rest of the journey, working their way through chocolate and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans and even some Fizzing Whizzbees- Marlene omitted the levitation element of the sweets when describing them to Mary, and the look on her face had her in stitches, though Lily seemed to want to tell her off. Sev never turned up.
Marlene tried so hard throughout the journey to not think about her mum at all that she wound up thinking about her far more than she ought to. Her small frame, white against the maroon fabric of the armchair. Pink toenails. Gold hair greasy and limp. It was a sorry image, and Marlene just prayed that her departure would help her mother in some way, twisting her hands in her lap, outwardly laughing, and chatting with as much innocent cheer as the others.
When the gentle green fields and forests of England ended and the dark, rolling mountains of Scotland began, a commotion started on the train as hundreds of trunks were lifted down from the luggage shelves. It was such a great clattering that Lily awoke from her sleep (apparently all of that talking had worn her out) and Mary swore, loudly.
“Time to get changed,” Marlene said brightly, and patted Lily’s head, giving Mary a quick grin across the carriage as they struggled to reach their trunks.
“Bloody hell,” Mary groaned. “I got it up there! Why can’t I get it back bloody down again?”
“Language,” Lily murmured, still waking up.
Marlene finally managed to get her trunk down, narrowly missing her head as it tumbled down, landing with a cushioned thud on the bench seat. Mary was still struggling, so Marlene crossed over to her and offered her a knee to stand on, the smaller girl giggling as she nearly toppled over under the weight of the suitcase.
-
Her first thought was that there were candles floating mid-air. Which was probably an odd thing to be surprised by, since the ceiling looked as though it wasn’t there at all, and one of the teachers appeared to be a cat, but they really were incredible.
“That has to be a fire hazard,” Lily whispered at her side. Marlene caught Mary’s eye.
Just as Marlene had decided things probably couldn’t get weirder than the horseless carriages and sky-ceiling, the cat-teacher transformed into a stern-looking, middle-aged woman in round glasses. Lily tensed, and Mary took a startled step backwards. This teacher sat behind the long, dark table at the far end of the hall, surveying them from behind her glasses. She wasn’t in the headteacher’s chair, but gave off an air of authority, nonetheless.
After a long and boring introduction (Marlene was bloody starving, and just wanted to get on with the feast, for goodness’ sake), the first years were led up to the front of the hall, still dripping wet from their venture across the lake, where an old, dirty hat sat on a stool. Marlene probably wouldn’t be surprised if the hat turned into a teacher, and so when it started singing, she hardly batted an eye; Mary, however, seemed to still be in a state of shock, and let out a little yelp every time something odd happened.
The three girls watched as the number of first years slowly dropped, and people were sorted into houses. Marlene quite liked the look of Gryffindor- scarlet and gold would be great colours for quidditch robes, and she thought Daniel might have been Gryffindor, once- and when Lily was sorted there she clapped along eagerly, hoping she would be too. Out of the two ‘M’s, Mary was called up first. The hat hardly deliberated before screaming, “Gryffindor,” and she grinned under the hat, flouncing over to the table with confidence.
“Marlene McKinnon.”
It was an odd feeling, walking up to the stool with the whole school watching. She settled herself down a bit too abruptly, and the hat was placed on her head. It stank of old things, and dust; thankfully, before she had a chance to start holding her breath, even: “GRYFFINDOR!”
“Oi, McKinnon,” Mary called. “Over here.”
She joined her two new friends gratefully, grinning ear to ear, and before long it was time for the feast. Marlene could hardly focus on the food, too busy shoving it into her mouth. She made awkward eye contact with the boy sitting across from her, who was doing exactly the same. Eyes hidden behind a mess of brown curls and sunk deep into his skin, he looked like he’d hardly eaten in weeks. His slim figure hardly helped. He glared at her.
Lily kept glancing over to the Slytherin table, where a first-year with raven-black hair and pale, ghostly skin was staring at the three of them, a dark look on his face. “He looks like a ray of sunshine,” Marlene said, nudging Lily in the ribs. The redhead looked put out.
“Oh, he’ll come around eventually,” she said. “Probably upset I’m not in the Slytherin, like him.”
Mary bit into a huge roast potato. “Is that Sev, then?”
“Yep.”
“He seems… nice.”
“He is, when you get to know him,” Lily said. “Gets into these moods, sometimes. I don’t… anyway, do you think we’ll all be in the same dormitory?”
“There’s only… five Gryffindor girls this year,” Mary said, visibly counting. “So I should expect so. They wouldn’t have dormitories of less than five- Christ, that’d be less than my bedroom at home!”
Marlene sighed and finally leant back from her food to join the conversation. It was embarrassing, how many helpings she’d had. “Lots of siblings, then?”
“Seven,” Mary said brightly.
“I’d never survive; only got one, myself. He’s off playing quidditch most of the time anyway.” She didn’t like to tell people that her brother played for a proper team. If they were going to work it out by themselves, then fine, but she wasn’t about to help them. However, judging the situation with the two muggleborns and their disappointing disinterest in all things quidditch, it was fine to drop this into the conversation.
“Did someone say quidditch?”
It was the dark-haired boy from the train. His back was straight and elegant but he still somehow had an easy, relaxed air about him: well-bred. “Yeah,” Marlene said. She looked him up and down.
“I’m James, by the way. James Potter. Looking to try for the team, then?”
“Oh, shut up. I’m a first year, that’s not even allowed,” she shot back, grinning.
He nudged his friend. “We’re not going to let that stop us, are we, Black?”
Black nodded, somewhat less enthusiastically. He was staring down at his plate, which was empty and untouched, occasionally breaking this death-stare to glance over at the Slytherin table, a stormy look on his face.
Deciding not to question it, Marlene continued this light banter with James, Lily occasionally interrupting to tell them how dangerous it all seemed, until they were sent up to bed. By this point, everyone had eaten as much as they could handle, the food warm in their bellies, and it was all most of them could do to stumble up the countless staircases to the Gryffindor common room, where they were greeted by a grumpy old woman inside a painting. Marlene probably wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out she’d been hallucinating. Her mother had never much embraced her magical side.
Mary sat herself down on her four poster bed immediately, claiming the one furthest from the door. There were four beds, in total. Before Lily could claim the one beside Mary, she took it, sinking gratefully onto the mattress and smiling at the ceiling. Everything was soft, in this room. Gold-framed mirrors and scarlet bedcovers- and luxurious, thick curtains around every one of the beds. They each had a little beside table, and Mary had already started unpacking a few little bits onto hers before Marlene had finished looking around the room. Lip gloss. A thick stack of magazines. A clock.
“Feels weird, without my family around,” Mary said finally. Her fingers rested on a small gold locket at her throat. It was quite pretty.
Marlene didn’t really know what to say to that. She changed quickly into her pyjamas, thinking about how silent and empty her house was when her father wasn’t in it, and how Hogwarts was going to be entirely different. The three of them were joined a few moments later by two other girls, but Marlene was too tired to take a proper look, and drifted off to sleep without saying ‘hello’, her head filled with thoughts of steaming potatoes and Mary, grinning, and gold mirrors and moving staircases.