Marlene's mother gave her a red ribbon on her first day of Hogwarts. It was meant to make her look tidy and presentable, which of course didn't work, and by the end of the sorting ceremony it was already tangled in the curls of her half-undone plait. But she treasured it anyway, both as a reminder of home and of how excited she had been to be given it, the pride on her mother's face. She'd worn it every day of first year.
As she grew older, the ribbon began to feel more like a reminder of her mother's expectations of her, her constant chastising that Marlene wasn't ladylike enough, that she ought to dress more femininely. Eventually she stopped wearing it entirely.
By sixth year Marlene had already chopped off her long blonde hair to a spiky chin-length, and everyone knew she wouldn't be caught dead in a skirt. So when she found the ribbon again, the weight it carried disappeared, replaced with memories of her wide-eyed, eleven-year-old self. She started to find creative ways to wear it again - as a headband, a choker, a makeshift belt for her muggle jeans. She would even plait it into Lily's hair for her, or let Mary use it to tie her endless curls up.
On her and Dorcas' second date, she had nervously presented the slightly frayed old thing to her girlfriend, along with a honeyduke's chocolate bar incase it all went balls-up and she hated it. "I don't have much use for it anymore," Marlene quickly explained (turned out ribbons did not make for great belts), "And you look good in anything." Dorcas had smiled that gorgeous, heart-stopping smile of hers and wrapped her great long arms around Marlene's torso. "Thank you." She'd whispered in Marlene's ear, making her knees go weak. "Wait, this isn't just a ploy to get me wearing Gryffindor colours, is it?" Maybe it was just nerves, but they'd both laughed for far too long at that.
After Marlene's death, Dorcas never took the ribbon off. It held her practical plait in place for two weeks, keeping her hair out of her face as she'd taken down more deatheaters than the entire order had in two years of war. The masks helped. No real faces to see humanity in, just bodies that dropped limply under her wand. She dreamed about seeing Marlene's grin, her warm brown eyes, her twin dimples reflected back at her in their faces.
When Lily Evans was sent to identify Dorcas Meadowes' body, she hadn't even needed to see her face. That blood-soaked, dirty old ribbon had been enough to break something in her that she managed to keep intact since Marlene's death. She'd cried that night, for herself, for her grief, for her vulnerable baby boy that she couldn't protect. But mainly she cried for the girl with the gap-toothed smile that had sat next to her on the first train ride to Hogwarts, for the sharp-witted girl that had always readily debated her in potions, for their love and the life together they'd lost.
