#rod010

The last few weeks had been a mess. There was the Prophet shoving death and suspicion down people’s throats, names emblazoned in dark capitals across the front page. Marlene didn’t quite understand why—it was abundantly clear to her, after all, that no repercussions were going to truly occur for Cygnus Black. Not from the justice system, anyway. Perhaps she was jaded, or perhaps she just remembered that world too well—remembered the way wealth and pride were contained in a Black family signet ring, cool steel in the jaw of Cygnus Black. So, no, Marlene did not truly believe that the justice system would hold him accountable—though she did believe him guilty, without question, and if not of that specific crime, of many an other—but part of her wished the Ministry would prove her wrong, just once. Still, it was more than likely that the Prophet was throwing his name out to imply that they were doing something, even if he got away with it in the end.

There was also Alice, a firebrand for justice to her core and one of the fiercest people Marlene knew, but Marlene knew how the weight of loss could crush you, and she didn’t want Alice to go through that alone. She just had to try not to get sucked back into the feeling, because she was trying, she was doing better, she was, and she couldn’t help Alice if she was drowning in it herself—and she wasn’t always good at it, and sometimes she got lost in it, because it was still hard, still raw. Marlene wasn’t sure it would ever not be. But she was trying, and between that and trying to be there for Alice in the way she needed and the Prophet in her fucking face and Cygnus fucking Black and everything else that was going on—her mind flashed to Lucius for a moment—it had been a messy few weeks.

It wasn’t messy just for her, though. For Alice, of course, the Blacks, the Malfoys, everyone mourning—the whole fucking castle, really, except possibly the Ravenclaw Quidditch team, most of whom seemed to be trucking on. Someone she imagined was definitely affected, though, was Rod. Her heart lurched at the thought of his name, though that was a reaction she was going to ignore right now, because she didn’t quite know how to process it. Still, Rodolphus Lestrange was now in the position of being betrothed to a woman whose father’s name was being splashed through newspapers as a terrible criminal, and best friend to the fiancée of said man’s youngest child. Beyond that, tensions in the castle had been running high since the attacks, because where Cygnus Black was, certain other patriarchs were usually to be found nearby—and to most of the school, it was a fairly educated guess at which other families might have been involved or, at the very least, in support of the incidents of New Years Eve.

This had all made for a difficult environment in general, and especially for seeking out one such Rodolphus Lestrange, but Marlene was undeterred. Originally, when the news had broke, she’d needed to find her friends and ascertain both their safety and that of their families—apart from Alice, for whom she just searched for reassurance that someone had taken her home—and after, she’d elected to give Rod some space to figure out what was happening and sort though everything, and then everything else had gotten in the way. No longer, though.

Turning the corner, she paused, breath shuddering to a halt inside of her chest. There he was. Swallowing slightly to get some air back into her lungs, she stepped forward so that she was near him, hand reaching out to touch his arm, hoping that it would keep her voice from startling him as it interrupted his thoughts. “Hey,” she said, twisting her spare hand into her pocket. “I heard about Cygnus.” Obviously. The Prophet wouldn’t shut up about it, which meant the school wouldn’t. Her lips twisted into a sharp thing masquerading as something better, a bitter half-smile, one that wasn’t happy but something resigned, like, nobody’s surprised that everyone’s heard. “Kind of hard not to, I guess.” She placed her other hand in her pocket too, looking up at him. “I wanted to see how you were doing,” Marlene said, the words soft and concerned but also verging on ironic, because she didn’t even think she expected him to know how he was doing. Nobody these days seemed to, after all, especially not someone in a situation of flux like his.