Technically, Marlene knew what she was meant to do when she was injured on a mission. Technically, she should have apparated to Dorcas Meadowes’s apartment as soon as she was safe, and had the recently trained healer help her. Technically, Marlene did not give a fuck.
Which was how she found herself on the floor of her apartment on a Tuesday evening, bleeding all over the bathroom tiles while she tried and failed to cast a Brackium Emendo charm on her broken arm. She knew she should have gone to Dorcas with injuries this extensive- she’d seen that stupid git Lockhart vanish the bones in his wrist trying to perform the charm she was using- but she really, really did not want to ask Dorcas for help.
Try as she might, Marlene never managed to compare to Dorcas. They had never explicitly been enemies, but Marlene had always felt a kind of one sided rivalry with her. Lily had been the smart one, Mary the most popular, and Dorcas was by far the coolest and most competent of all of them. Dorcas was gorgeous, and had the talent of conversing easily with nearly everyone at Hogwarts, always managing to make the perfectly timed joke that sent a group into fits of laughter. Her grades had never once dropped below an exceeds expectations- a fact Marlene knew because she left her marked papers strewn throughout their dorm, in what Marlene read as a rather boastful gesture. And now she had completed healer training at St. Mungos, and was working with the order. She was an ‘invaluable asset’ according to Moody. What a load of bollocks. Nobody had ever called her an invaluable asset. An arsehole, yes, but not an asset.
“Fuck!” Marlene exclaimed, dropping her wand and clutching her left arm across her chest. She wasn’t sure what she had done, but the broken arm felt substantially worse than it had before she touched it. Her head began to feel light, and her breathing grew shallow, like she couldn’t draw enough air into her lungs. A wave of nausea crashed over her, and she propped her head over the toilet seat in case she had to release the contents of her stomach on short notice.
She had felt like this once before, after she had been knocked from her broom by a bludger during a Quidditch game and fallen what must have been at least thirty feet. She had struck her head on the ground and bled all over the pitch, and Madame Pomfrey had had to administer a blood replenishing charm before she felt normal again. Fucking Slytherins and their dodgy bludgers.
“Blood replenishing charm…” she murmured to herself woozily as she recalled the memory. That was exactly what she needed, she must have been losing blood. But alas, her memory of the charm was practically non-existent and she thought she might be more likely to drain all the blood from her body and die than save herself. Marlene quickly ran the calculations in her mind and decided that avoiding Dorcas was probably not worth bleeding to death over. Merlin, it would be even worse if she found Marlene unconscious over her toilet seat and brought her back from the brink of death, no one in the order would ever shut up about that.
Marlene found she didn’t have the strength or focus to apparate in her state, and it probably would have been more likely to result in a serious splinching than a successful trip. The Floo Network was generally considered less secure, but she figured Moody could berate her about that later, maybe when her arm didn’t feel like it was about to fall off. Marlene stepped gingerly into the emerald green flames, letting them lick at her legs for a brief moment before she threw the Floo powder at her feet and gave the address of Dorcas’s apartment. She felt herself being sucked towards her destination, and watched other indistinguishable fireplaces flash past as she moved. She would be lucky if she didn’t vomit before she got there.
All of a sudden the sensation of being sucked backwards eased and she felt a small pop in her ear drums, signalling her arrival. Marlene barely had time to register whether she had made it successfully to Dorcas's apartment or not, because she promptly fell right out of the fireplace and landed on a brick hearth. At that point she could have ended up at Voldemort’s private residence and she probably would have remained curled up on the floor. Merlin, she must have lost a lot of blood.
“Marlene! Are you alright?” Marlene thought Dorcas sounded genuinely panicked as she rolled the blonde girl off the hearth and onto her side to check for injuries. To be fair, Dorcas also sounded like she was underwater in Marlene’s current state, so she had no idea how accurate the assessment was. She tried to respond with something that sounded vaguely like ‘blood’ so that Dorcas would know to replenish her supply, but it came out rather garbled.
“Sanguis Restituo,” Dorcas murmured, placing two fingers under the pulse point in Marlene’s neck. She hadn’t realised how cold she had felt until the blood began to flow through her body again, warming the tips of her fingers and toes. Marlene slowly sat up, slumping against the back of the settee Dorcas had placed her in front of, head still spinning.
“Feeling better?” Dorcas seemed reluctant to remove her fingers from the side of Marlene’s neck, and she hated how fragile the healer made her feel, like she might fall apart at any moment. She hated it almost as much as the involuntary shiver that skittered across her skin at the contact.
“Yeah, much better. Could you look at my arm as well?” It was a struggle to admit to Dorcas that she needed help, but since the blood replenishing charm had returned the feeling to Marlene’s body, the arm had really started to throb.
“Did you try to heal this yourself?” Dorcas watched Marlene wince as she extended her arm out. She began to gently probe her arm from the elbow down to her hand.
“I think I might have made it worse.”
“You can say that again, some of the bones in your wrist are missing.” Dorcas stood up and walked to the kitchen, pulling open the door of a sage green cupboard and removing two bottles. She measured a small amount of liquid from the first bottle into a little jug, and poured a slightly more generous amount of what looked to be firewhiskey into a glass, before making her way back to Marlene.
“This is for the bone,” Dorcas passed her the small jug, and Marlene threw back the contents without thinking too hard about it. “And this is because Skele-gro is awful,” she handed Marlene the second glass. The burn of firewhiskey managed to counteract the potion just enough that Marlene couldn’t taste it on her tongue any more, and for once she was grateful for Dorcas’s uncanny ability to know exactly what to do.
“The arm will start hurting while the bone regrows, but it should be done in a couple of hours. You only managed to vanish a couple of your carpal bones.” Dorcas cast a more successful Brackium Emendo on her arm, and Marlene’s eyes began to fall closed as the pain ebbed.
“Thanks Dorcas,” she murmured, sleep lacing her voice. The other girl stayed quiet, and eventually stood up to wash the glasses Marlene had drunk from. The arm did begin to burn again, but it was manageable after the events of that night.
“I’m going to get some sleep, will you be alright out here on the settee, or would you prefer the bed?” Dorcas asked, wrapping her arms around herself. Merlin, she even managed to look gorgeous in flannel pyjamas, it was unfair really.
“I don’t want to impose, I’ll just go back to my place,” Marlene collected her long legs underneath her and stood up. She didn’t need to spend another second in Dorcas’s perfectly decorated apartment, appreciating her perfect healing job, staring at her perfect face. As she walked back towards the hearth, Marlene couldn’t help but let her mind wander, imagining how many girls Dorcas might have had over to her apartment before her. It was a stupid thought, and one she cut off before it could go any further. She wasn’t jealous of Dorcas or how many girls she shagged while she had time off from the order. And she certainly wasn’t jealous of the girls in question.
That was just another thing Dorcas had beaten her to. Marlene had spent months formulating the perfect coming out speech to deliver to her group and worrying over how they might receive it. The nights she had spent lying awake wondering if she would ever have the courage to just say it were countless by seventh year, but Dorcas had managed to drop the fact that she was gay off handedly in a game of spin the bottle. Then Sirius and Remus had started snogging at parties, and suddenly being the fourth person to come out wasn’t all that interesting. Lily had tried to set them up on double dates with the boys a couple of times before realising that Dorcas and Marlene just didn’t get along. It would have been convenient, but the probability of three couples from one group surviving after graduation was low anyway.
“You’re not leaving,” Dorcas told her bluntly, pulling Marlene away from her train of thought.
“The fact that I’m standing in front of your fireplace about to use the Floo Network would suggest otherwise.”
“Why do you have to be so difficult Marlene? Just lie down and you’ll be free to go in the morning.”
“I’m not being difficult,” Marlene scoffed, “I just want to go home.”
“Why are you always so desperate to run off?” Dorcas’s voice was accusing, and Marlene wondered if the tension between them wasn’t entirely one-sided.
“Why are you so desperate to make me your charity case? You fixed me, I thanked you, I’m leaving.”
“A charity case? I’m doing you a favour Marlene. I thought we were friends.”
“Yeah and your favourite part of a favour is when you get to tell everyone about it, isn’t it? Can’t do that if I take off.”
“What are you talking about?” The genuine note of hurt in Dorcas’s voice sent a pang of guilt through Marlene.
“Oh come on. The perfect assignments you used to leave around our dorm, the way you were always introducing us to all your new friends at school. You love showing off to people, Dorcas, just admit it.”
“I wasn’t showing off to people.”
“Then who were you showing off to?” Marlene asked, convinced she had backed Dorcas into a corner. Just admit it, she thought, just admit how obsessed you are with making sure everybody knows you’re perfect.
Dorcas watched her for a long moment, pain flashing across her dark eyes. “No-one,” her mouth stretched into a mocking smile, “No-one worthwhile anyway.” Marlene felt as though there was a private joke hidden in Dorcas’s words- a joke she couldn’t understand but might well have been the punchline of.
“I’ll sleep on the settee,” Marlene mumbled. She wasn’t sure if she was welcome anymore, but Dorcas, ever the professional, gave her a curt nod and told her it would be best for the arm if she did, and to wake her up if there were any problems.
Marlene watched Dorcas pull her bedroom door closed with a soft thud, sighing as she lay down amid the piles of cushions her hostess must have set out for her. There had been a time, not long after Dorcas had first come out, that Marlene had hoped something might happen between them. She had thought briefly that maybe her jealousy towards the girl might be more akin to admiration, and spent several nights lying awake thinking about how Dorcas’s lips might feel pressed against hers. The blooming hope that maybe Dorcas felt something similar was what had pushed her to finally tell her friends that she was a lesbian at a post-Quidditch game party, a night that was burned into her mind for all the wrong reasons.
-
It had been a crisp night in April, and Gryffindor had just pulled off a spectacular win against Ravenclaw to secure themselves a place in the final match of the season. James was always spewing nonsense about a Quidditch player’s body being their instrument, but Marlene had been four firewhiskeys deep despite his insistence the team stay sober. Most of the younger students had retreated to their dorms, and like any slightly drunk group of teenagers, Marlene’s friends had been sitting on the floor playing truth or dare.
“Marlene, truth or dare?” Peter Pettigrew asked her from across the circle. That had surprised her a little, Pete refrained from addressing her directly so often she was almost certain he was terrified of her. It wasn’t without reason, Marlene knew she lost her temper easily.
“Truth,” she responded. She hadn’t fancied running off across the castle on some dare that night; she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to hide from Filch quick enough if she was impaired by firewhiskey.
“Tell everyone a secret,” he instructed, after thinking it over for a moment.
“A secret?”
“Yeah, something you’ve never told anyone before.”
Marlene had known at once what she had wanted to tell them, and was filled with a burning desire to just get the thing off her chest. But suddenly her throat was closing up, and there wasn’t enough air to fill her lungs. She had tried to look nonchalant, like she was pondering Pete’s request, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to speak the words. She had been working her way up to proclaiming some lame secret, like that she thought she deserved to be Quidditch captain more than Potter, but suddenly Dorcas had stepped into the circle and interrupted.
“What’s going on over here?” She had asked, slipping into the spot Lily had just created between herself and Marlene.
“Marlene was just about to tell us her deepest, darkest secret,” Mary informed her.
“Well Marls, what is it?” Dorcas had asked, slipping her hand into the blonde girl’s and squeezing it, a gesture that had an extraordinary ability to ground her in the middle of her panic. Dorcas had always been like that; able to tether Marlene back down to something solid when she was lost in a haze of panic or anger. Her emotions had the tendency to overwhelm her, but just catching Dorcas’s reassuring grin in the stands could stop Marlene from whacking a bludger directly into another player's head when she was angry.
The pressure of Dorcas’s hand in hers had stilled Marlene’s racing mind so greatly that the words rolled off her tongue without another thought, “well, I suppose I haven’t told any of you that I’m a lesbian yet, so there’s that.”
She was pretty sure Sirius had said something along the lines of ‘I knew it’ and been whacked across the back of the head by Lily and James at the same time, but she had been preoccupied with scanning Dorcas’s face for a reaction. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, maybe for the other girl to drag her up to their dorm and snog her senseless, but all Dorcas had offered was a tight smile before excusing herself. The game had moved on quickly- when half the group was queer it wasn’t a particularly exciting announcement- and she had excused herself after a few more truths had been offered and dares handed out.
She had walked towards the table in the center of the room, which hosted the large bottle of firewhiskey and Lily’s record player, pouring herself another shot. She hadn’t been sure what she was planning to say to Dorcas when she found her, maybe she would have admitted she liked her, or asked why Dorcas hadn’t reacted at all to her coming out. But in the end whatever hastily made plan she had been about to follow through on didn’t matter, because Dorcas was in the corner of the room, kissing another girl. White hot anger and jealousy had washed over Marlene at the sight, and her crush on the girl had died in an instant, replaced by the same bitterness that had fueled her relationship to Dorcas for years. It was better that way.
-
Marlene managed to fall into a fitful sleep for the next few hours, until the burning of her arm became too great again and she awoke. Her dreams had been full of Dorcas, a side effect of her smell on Marlene’s pillows, she assumed. It was so easy to slip back into those feelings she had harboured in seventh year when she could pretend her face was pressed against the crook of Dorcas’s neck while she slept. But there was a war, and Dorcas had made it clear she didn’t like her like that, and Marlene just needed to stop thinking about it.
She padded into the kitchen, pulling open a cupboard and removing a glass. The room was painted a light green colour, a project Lily, Mary, and herself had helped with when Dorcas first moved in after graduation. It had been a boiling hot day in July, and the girls had stripped down practically to their underwear by late afternoon, covered in splotches of paint and laughing until they were breathless. Marlene filled the glass with water, leaning her hip against the kitchen bench while she drank.
A sharp stab of pain ignited in her arm, and the glass smashed to the floor as she gasped. She crouched to the ground, tucking the injured arm against her chest and grinding her teeth together.
“Marlene! What happened?” Dorcas ran into the room a second later. Marlene wished she hadn’t broken the fucking glass, she hated being weak in front of other people, particularly Dorcas.
“Everything's fine Cas, just go back to sleep,” Marlene’s voice was practically a whimper as her arm continued to burn.
“Stop being stubborn,” Dorcas slung an arm under Marlene’s and lifted her up against her, slowly walking her to the bedroom. Marlene flopped gratefully onto the bed when they reached it, and a moment later Dorcas was forcing a potion bottle into her mouth and telling her to drink. The pain cleared after a few minutes as the potion worked its way through her body, and her breathing stopped coming out in rapid pants, lengthening into a healthier rhythm.
“Thanks Dorcas,” she mumbled, propping herself up against the pillows. Marlene closed her eyes, drowsy with pain and disorientated by the interruptions to her sleep schedule.
“You called me Cas,” Dorcas told her, voice so low it was almost a whisper.
“What?”
“Before, in the kitchen. You called me Cas.”
“Everyone calls you Cas, it's your nickname.”
“Everyone but you, Marlene. We’ve never gotten along like the others.”
“We get along fine.”
“See, there it is. You always have to fight me on everything,” she paused, “before, when I told you I don’t show off for other people, I was telling the truth.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t show off, Dorcas.”
“I do, but not just for anyone. I used to show off all the time for you.”
Marlene’s eyes flew open at that. “So you admit it? You tried to make me feel bad about myself while we were at Hogwarts? Well I’m sure you’ll be happy to know it worked,” she pointed an accusing finger at Dorcas. “You knew how shit it made me feel when you left your papers all over the room, and you did it anyway.”
“It wasn’t like that Marlene!” Dorcas sounded distressed, her dark eyes wide.
“Then what was it like? You’ve always been better than me, I can live with that, but you just had to throw it in my face. Lily and Mary might have been smarter and more popular than me, but at least they never tried to make me feel like shit.” Marlene’s mind grew foggy with anger, and she knew she needed to leave before the filter on her words slipped any further and she said something she would come to regret. “I think I’ll head home, thanks for the healing charms,” she bit out, standing to leave.
Dorcas followed her to the living room, gripping Marlene’s good arm desperately and pulling her towards her. “I wasn’t doing that because I wanted to make you feel bad about yourself, Marlene. I wanted to impress you.”
That stopped Marlene in her tracks. “Impress me?”
“Yes, and I understand that you never liked me back, but I just wished you would notice me.”
“Pardon?” Marlene asked, half afraid the potion was making her hallucinate.
“It was stupid, I know. But I was just so in love with you, and you never seemed to look twice at me. I thought maybe if I left those papers out or introduced you to my other friends you might start seeing something in me. That I was smart, or popular, or something.”
“You were in love with me?” Dorcas nodded. “But in seventh year, when I came out, you went and kissed that other girl,” Marlene couldn’t help but feel she was being tricked. Dorcas Meadowes was not in love with her. Dorcas, who had occupied at least half of her brain since fourth year, couldn’t think Marlene had never noticed her.
“It hurt, Marlene. I could deal with you not liking me back when I thought you were straight, but knowing you liked girls and you still weren’t interested, it was too much. Anyway, it didn’t work, it’s never that easy to move on.”
“You liked me the whole time?” She asked, and Dorcas nodded in affirmation. “That night, at the party, I only came out because I thought there might have been something between us.”
“You did?” Now it was Marlene’s turn to nod. “We’re both pretty daft then, aren’t we?”
“I guess we are. I really had no idea, Dorcas.” Marlene cupped a hand under Dorcas’s chin, touching her thumb to the corner of the other girl’s shy smile.
“Are we good then?” Dorcas asked her, tilting her face further into the taller girl’s hand.
“I think we’re more than good.” She paused for a moment, unsure how to proceed. Marlene had been a hook-ups with strangers at bars type of girl for the past year, and asking Dorcas out on a real date was unfamiliar territory. “Would you like to grab coffee at one of the muggle cafes sometime? Or we could go to Diagon Alley- or Hogsmeade for old times sake. Or-”
“Any of that sounds fantastic Marlene, I’d love to,” Dorcas grinned, cutting her off.
“Really? I’ll owl you tomorrow and we can work out a day,” Marlene reached for the floo powder.
“Seriously Marls? You’re still trying to leave?” Dorcas snatched the satchel of powder from her.
“You want me to stay?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to get you to do for the past four hours, isn’t it?”
“Sorry- of course I’ll stay. Should I take the settee?”
“I think we’re beyond that, aren’t we?” Dorcas grabbed her hand, leading her back through the sitting room and into her bedroom.
“You want to do this already?” Marlene paused in the doorway, gazing down at Dorcas. She wasn’t opposed, but given that she’d thought Dorcas hated her an hour ago she thought they might have been moving a bit fast.
“Merlin Marlene! You nearly bled to death tonight, we’re just sleeping,” Dorcas laughed, pulling her onto the bed. Marlene slipped under the covers, lying on her side to face Dorcas. A crack in the curtains let in the yellow light of a street lamp outside, a thin sliver of it falling across Dorcas’s face and highlighting her cheek bones. Marlene reached across the small gap between them, stroking down the side of the other girl’s face.
She gripped Dorcas’s chin lightly, gently tilting it upwards and towards her, before leaning down and pressing her lips to hers. The kiss was feather light at first, both of them unsure and tentative, before Dorcas slipped her hand behind Marlene’s head and ran her fingers through the girl’s golden hair, using her grip as leverage to deepen the connection. Marlene propped herself above Dorcas on her elbows, beginning to kiss down her neck, until she put too much pressure on her sore wrist, hissing and pulling back in pain.
“Are you alright?” Dorcas sounded alarmed, sitting upright and taking Marlene’s wrist in her hands.
“Yeah, I just got a tiny bit eager,” Marlene told her, looking down sheepishly.
“You’re an awful patient Marls,” Marlene pouted dramatically at that, until Dorcas leaned down and brushed her lips gently against her forehead. “But you’re a much better kisser.” Dorcas pulled the blonde girl against her, letting her bury her head into her chest. Marlene’s breathing began to slow, and Dorcas was certain she was asleep until she heard her mumble something under her breath.
“G’night Cas.”
Dorcas’s face stretched into a grin, and she leaned down to press one last kiss to the top of Marlene’s head. “Good night Marls.”