im talking to the moon

then moody pairs them up and dorcas listens because alastor would never pair her up with someone who is incompetent but still is reluctant because this girl just got out of hogwarts and her only credentials are 'i was a beater for gryffindor' and 'i know a little bit of healing', and so she's tough on her at first but marlene seems to like it? she smiles at her brightly when dorcas tells her she needs to listen and actually listens to her when dorcas tells her the war has toughened her up, warns her that it will toughen up each of her friends.

they go on stakeouts and she tells her about her own hogwarts years, and smiles at her sheepishly when she admits she never really liked quidditch and actually enjoyed having the school to her own for a couple of hours while everyone cheered on. she tells her about her parents and her community and how much it hurt to leave home, but she had had to, because her parents wanted to marry her off and she couldn't think of a worse fate than becoming a pureblood housewife trapped in a community that wouldn't accept her for who she was.

marlene listens with widened eyes, and she talks too. she tells dorcas about her mother, her business selling weight loss potions, hair growth potions, blemish removing potions. tells her she was never allowed to wear anything that wasn't a dress while living at home, how her mum wouldn't allow her ever getting on a broom. how hogwarts was her safe haven, where she could dye her hair, and chop it all off, and have sirius draw tattoos on her with a permanent marker she nicked off a muggle store, playing quidditch and being better than the men on her team, even without prior training.

and dorcas kisses her, and it's like the world has turned on its head, but somehow, it's never made more sense. because this feels right in a way nothing else did. and marlene looks at her with wide, glossy, green eyes, and dorcas never even had a chance to pretend she wasn't in love.

and they kiss again and they talk, and they kiss and they talk, and they never really put a name to it. they never stop to question where the relationship is going, if it even is a relationship, and their friends all know, but they're in a war and they have no real time to talk.

and they whisper i love you under dorcas' sheets, and they heal each others battle wounds, fixing everything with a kiss. they stay up all night talking abut everything and nothing at all. dorcas softens, and as predicted, marlene hardens.

but dorcas never speaks of the horrocruxes, she never tells marlene about her plans, even when they move in together. she never admits it's a suicide mission, that voldemort already has her pin-pointed. she just leaves notes for marlene on the fridge,

'be right back',

'i love you, i'll be home for dinner,'

and her last one,

'marlene,

i hope you'll forgive me for this one day. i hope what i'm doing will change the fate of the war, i'm hoping it'll save you.

these years we've been together have been the best of my life, and i hope you'll remember me fondly when you look back.

i love you.'

he is cared for and he knows his parents would do anything to see him happy. but still he feels out of place. he's an outcast in his own family, not because they're bad people, but because they never understood him.

remus who has bad self-esteem, not because his parents belittled him, but because they never saw him in the way he wanted to be seen. remus who goes home every summer and helps his mum with her plants, and reads the paper just to have something to talk about with his dad, but would very much rather be at the potter's, hanging out with his friends, being seen.

he of course feels so bad for it. because, really, he has nothing to complain about. and if he really thinks about it--though he doesn't like to dwelve into it too much--, if he can't feel like he's a part of his own family, even though they're very nice and good people, maybe it means there's something fundamentally wrong with him.

so. after the war, he buys ever single beatles record ever. he doesn't actually know which songs james liked, but he guesses that probably the ones he likes, he would too. he is able to connect with his dad as a person, having something so mundane to hold onto.

one day, he is home alone, so he puts on a record. double fantasy by john lennon and yoko ono. and everything's fine, until.

he hears the opening chords to beautiful boy and his body has a reaction. he starts sobbing inexplicably. so he replays it, over and over again until he falls asleep.

he dreams of james, bent over a crib, singing softly to a baby while the song plays in the background. he feels james kissing his temple, he feels it in his hands, the way the soft hair in the nape of james' neck felt beneath his baby hands. he visualizes soft, brown eyes and a dimple on a left cheek, just like his own. a house where there was laughter and music, a home, if only for a year.