#!marlene

10/10

Send “$” for an ACCIDENTAL text.

Send “♀” for a HEARTBREAKING text. 

☯: First impression of your muse

Alice was a prefect, and Marlene was... loud. Very, very loud; so loud, in fact, that even two corridors over, she could hear the younger Gryffindor laughing and blustering about Quidditch as if the louder she got, the more right her point would be. It had been a slow day, a slow patrol; Alice found no harm in deviating from her patrol route to see what all the ruckus was about. And she immediately recognized the head of blonde curls as the one that had taken the Sorting Hat a horribly short amount of time to place in Gryffindor. She was rambling on about a Quidditch team Alice had never heard of, and the amount of enthusiasm that was coming from such a small body was quite entertaining in itself.

Upon seeing a prefect peeking her head around the corner, Marlene- whose name Alice would learn later on- immediately quieted, and her friends, one redhead, and another blonde, did the same, looking up at Alice with the expectation of punishment, surely. 

⚰: my muse’s reaction to watching yours die from afar

The Order was hardly as strong as it once was; Alice could only attribute it to the loss of so many of their numbers, and to the wear and tear of the past few years. None of them were indestructible, as much as she might have liked to believe it. All of them wanted to believe it- all that were left, anyway. And those that were left... were few and far between, as far as emotional presence went. They were all drifting, finding their own obsessions and vengeances within the scattered remains of their once great organization. 

Perhaps that was why their tightly wound system of fighting and protection had fallen to the wayside. 

Spells flew haphazardly left and right, seemingly with no real aim in sight. Flashes of light blinded Alice as she fought through the thicket of masked bodies to where her allies fought, across the wide field in the Highlands. It was appropriate, perhaps, that they would end up here again, after such little time. Alice was convinced she would never come back here again. And yet.... 

She could see Lily, Mary, James; keeping an eye on them kept her sane. Alastor, Dorcas; they were there as well, fighting near each other. But Alice couldn’t see Marlene. Through the smoke created by spellfire, she could not make out that familiar head of blonde hair that she now needed so desperately to see. She had never been concerned for Marlene until now, simply because she’d never needed to. 

But then, just as soon as panic began to rise like bile in her throat, she spotted her. Marlene was alone- surrounded- and looked frighteningly small amongst the mass of raven cloaks. With a ringing in her ears, Alice could hardly make out the sound of her own voice screaming Marlene’s name, but she could feel the sound tearing at her throat. 

Not again, not again; Alice couldn’t let this happen again. She couldn’t lose someone just because she was careless- because, for whatever reason, Marlene’s isolation was her fault, by some cosmic twist of circumstance. She couldn’t fail again, not when she’d already failed the one person that mattered the most. She tried to press forward, to throw the advancing figures out of her way, but they pulled her back, almost as if they knew that she was trying to reach Marlene. She screamed again, begging Marlene to forego her pride and run, but it was no use. 

She fell before Alice could scream a third time. 

Alice had never thought that she would be on the opposite side of a wand from a friend. A former friend, more like. She’d never thought that she might find pleasure in the pain of someone she’d once have given her life for, without question. In fact, she had been sure for the longest time that she didn’t want to hurt anybody the way that she and her friends had been hurt. She would not stoop to the level of the Death Eaters, she’d figured, for no one truly deserved to be hurt like that. 

But it occurred to her, as Marlene sat before her, eyes gleaming without a hint of what she could call apology, that some people did deserve it. People who lied to those they loved, or claimed to love; people who were selfish, and devious, and who acted without regard for the absolute destruction of those around them. Alice had all but lost her mind in the months previous; since October, she’d been convinced that her life was over, that it was meaningless unless she died to make right the wrong done to her husband. 

But it had all been for naught; the months she’d spent slowly losing her grip on sanity had been for no gain whatsoever, and now she had nothing left but loathing and a pit in her stomach that would never be filled. 

She’d been watching Marlene for a while, now- saying nothing and getting nothing in return. Alice had set her wand aside a while ago; she didn’t want to give Marlene the satisfaction of keeping her distance. For the first time, she wanted to feel bones break, blood spill, regret earned. Frank was nowhere nearby to stop it, and even if he was, she wouldn’t listen to a word he said. 

“So what was it, then?” she deadpanned, “Did you, what, wanna fuck him? Did you wanna fuck my husband? Is that it?” Alice took another step closer to where Marlene sat, limbs rendered useless by a well placed spell. Her fists clenched and unclenched at her sides; she itched to make contact, but she had to wait. 

Marlene shook her head, but as she opened her mouth to speak, Alice cut her off again. 

“Or has your ego really blown so big that you thought you could get away with keeping him from me? All of this- from me? Maybe it was both” another step closer, and she was hulking over Marlene now, suddenly quite thankful that she couldn’t retaliate, though she was almost positive that Marlene wouldn’t fight back. Not now. Not after what she’d done. “Maybe you were going to watch me die- slowly, over time- and then you were gonna fuck him. Really nice plan, Mar, glad that’s worked out.” 

And without hesitation, she pulled her arm back and brought the back of her hand across Marlene’s cheek. She was toppled from the chair sprawling across the stone floor in her paralytic daze. With a kick, Alice stepped over the felled chair and flipped Marlene onto her back. She didn’t have the finesse of the Death Eaters, or the brutal carelessness of Marlene’s fighters, but she didn’t have anything to lose. The screw had gone loose long ago, and quite frankly there was no hope of putting it back in place. 

Alice settled over Marlene, kneeling with one knee on either side of her hips. She sighed, furrowing her brows, “How did you plan to keep this up, huh? What were you going to say at my funeral? She was fucking crazy, that Alice,” with a hand on either side of her face, she drove her knee into Marlene’s stomach, her face mere inches from her captive’s, “Good riddance. May Alice Longbottom rest in pieces.” She straightened, then, the anger tinting her vision red and blurring all else she had planned to say, all else she had planned to do. She wanted to hear Marlene scream through the paralysis, to hear her sorrow truly emerge, though there was likely none to elicit. 

But she was fucking crazy. And she had nothing to lose. 

So her vision went black, and with all the anger and insanity she had pent up over the months previous, she pounded her small fists into Marlene’s face and neck, flinching only once when her nose cracked beneath her fingers. Once her blood had thoroughly covered her fingers, she grabbed her face again, cheeks trapped between shaking fingers. “I hate you!” she screamed, the tip of her nose brushing against Marlene’s, “I hate you!” She thrust Marlene’s head back against the ground, then stood, expressionless, as if she hadn’t just beaten the anger from her limbs. 

Alice returned to her wand, wiping the blood onto her trousers before picking it up. And with a flick over her shoulder, she released Marlene from her binds. not caring it turn around as the sounds of her muffled groans filled the small room.

“Get out of here,” Alice deadpanned, wiping the remainder of Marlene’s blood onto the hem of her blouse, “I never want to see you again.”