A/N: I've been trying to write this story for so long now, and while maybe I still didn't get it right, I finally got it out. How long, you ask? Go look at my '08 one-shot state of mind.

"And there was Dirk Cresswell in the year after [Lily Evans], too- now Head of the Goblin Liaison Office, of course- another Muggle-born, a very gifted student..." -Horace Slughorn

"Dirk Cresswell is ten times the wizard you are." - Arthur Weasley to Albert Runcorn

"Hard to know what to believe these days." -Dirk Cresswell

Dirk Cresswell was heading off to play Muggle music in a goblin bar when he found Marlene McKinnon cursing at the gate to his building's car park.

"Can I help you?" he asked. He made a point of adjusting the guitar strapped over his shoulder.

Marlene's wand disappeared somewhere into her robes at the sound of his voice, even though Dirk couldn't spot any pockets on her. She was in robes, but they fell above her knees and fit so snugly a Muggle might mistake her outfit for a knit black dress.

"Waiting on a friend, 's all," she said. "No worries."

It was the second time she'd ever spoken to him. She'd bumped into him in a Hogwarts hallway once in his fifth year, though he'd been the one to apologize.

"Unlocking Charms won't work on that," Dirk said, nodding at the gate.

She startled at that and gave him a newly appraising look.

Dirk sighed. "And you haven't the slightest clue who I am, do you." He felt a little miffed. He'd been well-liked—he'd even been Head Boy, though that had been after Marlene's class graduated. And she was the one who looked different. Her hair hadn't been that golden brown back in school; she'd had it darker or lighter or something.

"No, but no worries, I'll be able to get your name out of the obits," Marlene said, "since when you spot some pure-blood breaking into a building known for renting out to Muggle-born types, you're the duffer who doesn't draw his wand before asking if he can help."

Dirk wasn't sure if he resented being called a duffer or cast as a 'Muggle-born type' more. "Sorry, Miss McKinnon, for not fearing your great pure-blooded, er, fearsomeness."

"Oh, so long as someone's not from the bad House, has a nice name—" She threw up her hands dramatically, and Dirk ventured to interrupt—

"It is rather nice, with the alliteration—"

"I mean, McKinnon might as well be a flag shouting, 'Scots-Irish-liberal-Ravenclaw-tendencies, blood traitors ahoy' but that doesn't guarantee I'm safe—"

"A Ravenclaw family?" Dirk said. "I was in Ravenclaw. You certainly weren't… Which might explain why what I saw was less breaking-in, more poking at the gate with an expensive stick. Incidentally, do you want me to open that for you?"

Marlene narrowed her eyes at him briefly, before shrugging. "Since you're offering."

He dug his Moke-skin wallet out of his back pocket and rummaged around in it till he came up with the gate key.

She stepped aside to give plenty of room for him and the guitar on his back. As usual it took a minute to get the key to turn in the latch's old and enchantment-heavy lock.

When it finally clicked, Dirk looked over with a bit of a smile and found her wand directly under his chin.

"If you were wrong about me," Marlene said, "if I was under the Imperius, say, you'd be dead, and you'd have endangered everyone in the mess of flats back there, as well."

Dirk ignored the prickling tap of the wand under his chin. "But I wasn't wrong," he said. "And besides, it's only two rugby players, a lady who breeds Crups, and Sirius Black living in this part of Cavall House. None of them likely targets, especially for one witch, alone."

"You'd be surprised what one witch could do with two rugby players," Marlene said. But she did pull her wand back from his chin. "Well. Try not to open doors for any Death Eaters." She finally eyed the guitar on his back. "Don't serenade them, either."

"Goblins, actually," he said, automatically, "I only serenade goblins. Currently." Dirk winced, because that sounded idiotic instead of interesting. But Marlene McKinnon had already rounded the gate and wasn't listening at all.

Dirk Cresswell had been out of Hogwarts all of two weeks, living in Cavall House all of one, and playing on a magically-modified electric guitar at The Wizard's Head every summer since he was fifteen. Dirk was London born and bred, so after he learned of the wizarding world, he popped through the Leaky Cauldron and soaked up whatever he could learn all through school vacations. He was still a boy when he found the sole pub on Bellepe Walk, the dusky jeweler's lane that broke off from Diagon and ran behind Gringotts. He listened intently and picked up Gobbledegook with the same ease he'd taken to Latin and Greek in primary school and to Pig Latin on the playground. And then one day, after realizing the goblin band was attempting to cover The Beatles' "Revolution," he left and came back with his guitar.

In past summers, Dirk had been the only human in the Wizard's Head, but the summer of '79 was an exception. First Davey Gudgeon and his slapdash band had barged in to listen, managing to offend every goblin in the place while only trying to invite Dirk to sit in on their next gig. Tall, dark-cloaked figures had been making conversations in corners with some of the more agitated goblins. The Wizarding Hit Patrol was making almost nightly sweeps, and one big-eared Welsh guy sat casually at the bar every night with his wand resting on his knee. And Jean Stebbins from Hufflepuff kept coming back with a handful of giggling girls, Dirk guessed more for the Hit Wizards passing through than for his music.

A witch from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures had come by, too. Whispers of the department she worked for went around the bar immediately, giving Dirk some serious hope regarding his promised job offer at the Ministry, which had failed to come through. When she'd come and bought him a drink in between sets, he'd asked if she knew anything about the Goblin Liasion department, and how long job paperwork usually took.

"They're not hiring Muggle-borns at the moment," the witch said bitterly, and before he could react, she added, "Don't take that the wrong way, Mr. Cresswell. I am Muggle-born, and it's a real trick not to get fired these days. It's not even about prejudice so much as fear. We make people nervous. We're the lightning rods in this storm."

Dirk wondered if he could get the job all right if he invented a few wizarding great-uncles and Squib relations. Who was to say he didn't have them?

"I could have some work for you, though," she said, and she slid a black business card, completely blank, across the bar to him. A gold bird flared on it briefly, and the card crumbled into ash.

Dirk jumped up from his bar stool, leaving his drink. "Excuse me," he said. "Miss, er—"

"Meadowes," she provided.

"I'll be wanted back on stage in a moment," Dirk said.

"It's a war, you know," she said. "Top student in your year and Muggle-born? You're in the draft, boy."

"Have you heard of conscientious objection?" he said and fled for his guitar.

Miss Meadowes did not come back. She was not, either, the first message of that sort Dirk had gotten; his letters of inquiry about the job had been getting very hinting replies from one Edgar Bones, and Gryffindor's golden girl Lily Evans, who he'd known from Slug Club, had sent him a surprise invite to her wedding. Feeling awkward, he'd declined.

Dirk was half-expecting Dumbledore himself to wander in and order a pint of grog with a wink. Or, as random as things were getting, for the latest interim Minister to decide the Wizard's Head was an excellent place to party. A centaur had even come in on Tuesday; anything could happen.

He was still unprepared, later the same night he saw her, for Marlene McKinnon to come ducking through the low threshold into the bar. One of the Prewett brothers, behind her, in full Hit Patrol uniform, banged his head on the way in.

Dirk messed up the slide between the D and C# as she squinted through the musty fog of the pub at him.

His error went on noticed by the rest of the band. The dwarf on drums kept on thumping as enthusiastically as ever; their fifer went on fifing; the lead singer kept on screeching.

"No fu-ture, no fu-ture, no future for youuuuuuuuu!" Nagurd shrilled. He hopped up and down, strumming his lute with such vigor that the wooden keg he was standing on teetered dangerously.

Marlene and Prewett went right for the big-eared Welsh wizard who sat alone at one of the shin-height tables. Prewett's hands were protectively on his head; Dirk couldn't tell if he was still reeling from the knock he'd taken or trying to shield his ears.

Prewett went up to the bar and waited an obscenely long time for the goblins to serve a Hit Wizard drinks. By the time he got them, the second set was over. Dirk maneuvered his own way to the bar, near enough to hear their conversation.

"Did the bartender tell you this'll put hair on our chests?" Marlene said, as Prewett slammed down pint glasses sloshing over their sludge of puce green. "Because I'd take him at his word, Gid."

"It's grog," the Welsh wizard said.

"No stout, no whiskey, no ciders," Prewett said darkly. "Just grog."

There was also elf-made wine, if the bartender liked the person ordering, and Dirk thought about volunteering this information. Before he decided, he heard the clinking of glasses behind him, a toast of "To grog, then!" and when he glanced back, all the glasses were nearly empty, even Marlene's.

Dirk chatted calmly to a trio of warlocks, with pointy smiles and short torsos that made him sure they had goblin blood. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, Jean Stebbins making her way up to the bar. He also saw a lady goblin snap her fingers and send a stool sliding in her path to trip her. Before he could warn her, she was tumbling—Dirk went for his wand, to stop her fall, but Prewett was closer and caught her the old-fashioned way.

Dirk, amused, turned back to the warlocks at the bar.

"Well, that's him useless for the night," Marlene said at Dirk's elbow, a moment later. She signaled to the bartender for another, Galleons twinkling in her palm. "It had to be a redhead. He always acts the maggot around redheads."

"Er," Dirk said. "Isn't he rather reddish himself?"

"Oh, you know us pureblooded types. With the inbreeding," she said, so solemnly he was a little alarmed. She laughed. "Your face, man! It was only a tease, Dirk. It is Dirk, isn't it?"

Her second grog arrived, and she quickly paid.

"You're rather friendlier than earlier," Dirk said warily.

"I like music," she said. "I'd never heard a goblin sing before. Can't say I care to again. But you, specifically, are good. And I say that having seen a fair share of pub bands in my time."

"Ah, your time," Dirk said, ducking his head. "You're only a year older than me."

"One school year, two years really," she said, picking up her drink to head back to her table. "I'll be twenty in August."

Dirk would be eighteen in August. But he was not about to say that. "Ages older, really."

She did not laugh. "Eons," she said and moved to rejoin the older Welsh wizard. Prewett had long since abandoned the table to chat up Jean and her friends, though, to be fair, Dirk noticed him sizing up the crowd around the just-graduated girls and positioning himself protectively.

"Do you take requests?" Marlene asked over her shoulder.

Dirk shrugged apologetically. "We really only do Muggle music."

The goblins had a strange affinity for it.

"I have family in Kintyre," she said. "I like that one about the Mull there."

"Oh." So she knew at least one Muggle song. "I know it, but the rest of the band won't."

"Another time," she said.

He looked for her every night after that. She did not come back, just Gideon Prewett, in tow with Jean Stebbins and looking a bit sheepish. How old was Prewett, anyway? Dirk wondered, surprisingly irritated.

He ran into Sirius Black coming into the apartment building one morning, as he was walking out for another day of sitting in the Ministry waiting lobby, in his best suit, hoping for news of his promised job. Black smelled of petrol and perfume and something else grungy Dirk couldn't name, but Dirk tried to strike up a conversation in spite, or maybe because, of that.

"I saw Marlene McKinnon looking for you here a week or so ago," Dirk said.

"So?" said Sirius Black. "Who're you?"

"Dirk Cresswell?" Dirk said.

Sirius blinked amusedly. "That sure about it, are you?"

"Er," Dirk said. "Yes." He was going to try to ask if Marlene was Black's girlfriend but decided against it on the likelihood of being mocked. "How was the Potter wedding? Friday, wasn't it? I was sort of invited to it, twice—that is, I was actually invited, and the band asked me to sit in, but—"

"But what?" Black said.

Dirk didn't know, really, just that he didn't know Lily all that well and felt like the invitation came with Phoenix-tied strings, and then it seemed idiotic to show up with the band once he'd turned down the actual wedding. Especially since what with paying rent, he couldn't really afford a gift right now. "I had a thing," Dirk said.

Black eyed him for a moment. "Good wedding," he said. "Excellent cake. Real corker of a best-man speech."

"Weren't you the—" Dirk started, and then stopped himself. "Oh. Right."

Black clapped him on the back. "You missed out, Dick," he said sleepily and strolled on by.

Not two nights after that flopped conversation, Marlene McKinnon showed back up at The Wizard's Head, near the very end of the night. It had been a dead night, no Hit Patrol in, no Jean Stebbins and her friends, just goblins. Sometimes, Dirk liked it that way.

"Hi," he said. "Is it raining out?"

"What?" she said, distracted, looking around like she expected boggarts to jump out of the bar's cobwebbed corners. Her eyeliner and mascara were running, and it looked like she wore a lot of both; her hair hung limp and soggy enough that it looked like a limp brown in the bar light. Dirk was vaguely able to picture much-younger Marlene at Hogwarts, since he'd noticed her even then, and thought that had been her original color, once, a sort of dishwater brown. "Raining. Yeah. Grand weather. So," she said, her eyes flashing over him briefly, before snapping to the corners again. The entrance and the exits, he realized. "Dirk. Remember how I said I was going to be reading about you in the obituaries?"

"That was hard to forget," he admitted, a little uneasily.

"The date in the paper is going to be tonight," she said, "unless you do exactly what I say."

"Erm… Is this a threat?"

"This is a rescue," Marlene said on a sigh and grabbed Dirk's arm. To her obvious annoyance, he shook her off before she could pull him to the doorway.

He ran to grab his guitar, Marlene on his heels, and this time when she grabbed his arm he didn't shake her off. He did, however, drag his feet on the way to the back exit.

"Are the goblins here in danger?"

"Have the goblins here been sitting every day in the lobby of a department run by the mother of a known Death Eater?"

"Mrs. Selwyn has a son who's a Death Eater?" Dirk said. "But Mrs. Selwyn's so—"

"Do not say the word 'nice'," Marlene warned, "or you will sound so naïve—"

"I was going to say 'genteel,'" Dirk muttered, while Marlene inched the back door open. Wand out. It occurred to him he should have his own wand out; he fumbled for that.

Unfortunately, she noticed. "Didn't you get an 'O' on your Defense OWL? I hope you shoot better than you draw."

Sure enough, it was raining, hard; he busied himself putting an Impervius charm on his guitar so the rain wouldn't ruin it. "I'm a proponent of nonviolence, actually," he said.

"What?" Marlene said, shrilly.

That was when the men in masks came out.

Marlene swore, he was pretty sure she was throwing in words from Irish Gaelic, or maybe that was a Gaelic spell, because somewhere in the midst of her cursing, her wand spat out blue light that seemed to trip up the first few Death Eaters. There were at least six of them.

"Back in the bar, they've blocked the alley off," Marlene said.

"Wait," Dirk said. He was having an existential crisis of sorts.

"What?!"

"If I open that door I start the first wizard-goblin hostilities since the Grindewald—"

Marlene, who was apparently not having an existential crisis, blew the door back open and pulled Dirk back into the bar by means of his guitar.

He cast his shields at the same time she did, without having to be told, and if he said so himself, he cast a damn near perfect shield; even though the door was now in so many smithereens, the threshold would be secure until the Death Eaters could crack the joined shield spells.

"How thick can you get," Marlene said in his ear. In the small square of the main pub, Raghurl was still plucking his lyre, but other than that, it was mostly quiet, lots of grog-sipping and the clinking of gold in the darkest corner. "Goblins and Death Eaters have been in talks for years, why do you think Dumbledore—"

Dirk, sighing, let out a gurgle that meant something like "Help I'm being strangled" in goblin, and when his bandmates lifted their heads from their glasses, he pointed at the door and hiss-grunt-burped, "No, not by the woman. Enemies at the gate/door!"

There was suddenly a lot of finger-snapping and knuckle-cracking in the room. Goblin shields went down over the front door.

Raghurl put down his lute and took down a very battered old goblin-wrought helmet decorating the wall behind him. He put it on.

There was a lot of décor coming down from the walls, though Marlene's eyes were on the helm when she asked, "What's that do?"

With a small explosion, Marlene and Dirk's shields went down in the back.

"Oh, it's just indestructible," Dirk said wearily, as Raghurl charged headfirst at the group of very dangerous wizards walking through the door, knocking them down like so many bowling pins. The green light one of them shot off in response bounced off the helmet and shot wildly around the room before killing the one bit of color in the place, a vase of fresh flowers in the window. That could have gone so differently, Dirk thought frantically. "I don't suppose you paid a lot of attention in History of Magic? Goblin rebellions? Hodrod the Horny-Handed? Fjordic the Frantic? Morgul the Morbidly Violent?"

"Mostly I copied off Evans when she wasn't looking," Marlene said faintly, moving her wand from side-to-side in preparation for assault from any angle. One of the goblins had rolled under the Death Eaters' very long robes and seemed to be biting ankles, or other low bits. "I don't get it—Dearborn's seen payoffs go down left and right in here, goblins are supposed to be thisclose to taking Voldemort's—"

While obviously goblins wouldn't ultimately benefit if Voldemort won, like the giants, he was offering them tempting immediate benefits, and even wiser goblins among them thought they could use the wizarding strife to capitalize on their own gain. Bellepe Walk had seen more than one barricade of rebellion on it over the years; it could easily see one again.

"Luckily, these particular goblins think I do a killer riff on 'Sunday Girl'," Dirk said. "And if they take You-Know-Who's side, we're all dead."

"'Sunday Girl' doesn't have a guitar riff," Marlene said automatically.

"You know Blondie?" Dirk said, startled.

A goblin got punted across the room; Dirk managed to catch him with a classic old Wingardium Leviosa before he hit the wall. Bar stools were rattling and bottles flying as goblins began to deploy their own magic in earnest, though most of their energy was focused on deflecting the bursts of wand light signifying wizard magic. Goblins might not be able to cast to equivalent power or diversity, but they could make spells bend and bounce, and, if the goblin was skilled enough, backfire in all kinds of ways that gave Dirk nightmares.

"Some purebloods do listen to Muggle music, you know," Marlene said. She sent the drum set flying into the tallest Death Eater, who batted them aside. Not even with his wand hand. And then he cast some sort of purple spell at Raghurl's chest, carefully avoiding the helm, and Raghurl toppled over, bleeding.

"Goblin blood falling on goblin property under the shadow of Gringotts," Dirk said in quiet, but very clear, panic.

"Old magic?" Marlene said. Dirk could only nod, even though she wasn't looking at him, but didn't wait for an answer. The entire structure of the bar shook. "Old magic means we run."

"Running is good," Dirk said faintly, putting on hand on his guitar and letting Marlene take his other. She used some sort of unlocking charm he thought he'd seen members of the Hit Patrol pull and got the front door open, and then she was pulling him through the rain.

"We're out of the wards enough to Apparate," he shouted.

"Grand, you do that," she said back between breaths, far more quietly, and seemed to expect a side-along Apparition any second.

"I don't have my license yet!" Dirk said, frantically; he'd been too busy doing his independent study in Gobbledegook to take the Apparition class and always just assumed he'd get around to it. "You do it!"

"I'm shit at Apparition," she said back. "We're better off running."

Since tall, black-robed death was on their heels in the very not-figurative sense, he took her word for it. It hit him, almost like a shock this time, that she was after all only that one school year older than him.

She dragged him through a narrow wall-gap out of Bellepe Walk and into a winding chunk of Diagon Alley, out through a lesser-known exit out from the photo booth of a Muggle bar. They pushed through the press of Muggle bodies, Dirk's guitar banging into several faces, and out into the neighborhood.

"Is my place safe?" he asked, as it became clear she was dragging him in that direction.

"Sirius Black lives there," she said. "Do you know how many Death Eaters want him really, really dead?"

"I don't know if that means yes or no!" Dirk shouted back. His hair was flopping into his face; he'd let his fringe get too long and, wet, it was seriously obstructing his vision.

The little Death Eater on the corner came at them from out of nowhere, wand glowing green as if in preparation.

Marlene said, "Inflecto Telum," and arrows shot from her wand.

The Death Eater did not deflect them. The arrows went through the neck, right under the mask. And she—it was suddenly very clear she was a she—dropped.

Dirk nearly, but did not actually, drop his guitar. "Jesus," he said. "Jesus. I've never even heard of that spell."

Marlene was staring. She seemed to be trying to let go of his hand for some reason. "Quidditch Through the Ages," she said. "I'm—I've read Quidditch Through the Ages, a lot. The Appleby Arrows—" She shook off the thought and shook off Dirk's hand, crouching and peeling off the Death Eater's mask.

"Marlene, we should go," Dirk said, looking down the alley behind them.

"I'm in Healer training," Marlene said, vaguely. "Did you know that?"

Dirk hadn't. "I'm not in Healer training, but I can tell from here she's—oh my God," he blurted, as he saw the girl's face, recognizing her from Slytherin. "She's from my year."

Marlene got up, shaking her head. "I don't know her," she said, troubled, and Dirk grabbed her hand this time, pulling her in the direction towards Cavall House; it was still another quarter mile away.

"Pollyanna Travers," he said, not even sure if he should be telling that. "That's who she was."

Marlene's face, her makeup still comically ruined, hardened suddenly. "Oh absolute fuck," she said. "Travers?"

Marlene rang Sirius Black's bell some fifteen times, even though his motorbike wasn't around, before coming up with Dirk to his place.

"I'm not hooked up to the Floo yet," he apologized.

"Great," Marlene said, following him up the stairs. "Excellent. Have you got a broomstick?"

"No, and—don't you live in Ireland? The Leaky Cauldron's the nearest Floo—"

"Tonight? Back out without backup? Proper backup," she added, when he opened his mouth to offer. "Have you at least got a sofa?"

"I have a very nice sofa," Dirk said.

"But is it genteel?" Marlene asked.

"More genteel than Mrs. Selwyn," Dirk promised, unlocking his door and holding it open for Marlene. "…Was her son one of the—"

"Probably," Marlene said. "Yaxley, for sure. He was the big tall one trying to do the Dolohov special—the nasty purple spell. Something Russian. Or Serbian, or Siberian, I'm not good with languages to begin with and I've only heard it once before. Lucky for your little buddy, Yaxley was mispronouncing it. That wasn't really the A-Team, though. And on that note, you have a telly!"

"The antenna's broken," Dirk said, abashed, and then felt silly, because Marlene had very much just killed someone, who was trying to kill them, and now they were talking about television. And more than that, Marlene looked really disappointed by the lack of television.

"So I guess you like Muggle things?" Dirk said.

"I didn't take Muggle Studies or anything, if that's what you mean," Marlene said. "I live by Muggle folks. I've been out with Muggle boys. We're not so different."

"I tell the goblins that about wizards," Dirk said ruefully. "They like Muggles more. Look, what can I get you? A towel? Several towels? Blankets? A pillow? Tea?"

"All of that, and whiskey," Marlene said, and at his face, said, "Please tell me you have whiskey."

Dirk went and pulled out glasses and his incredibly cheap whiskey, offering it like holy wine. Marlene poured a half glassful, threw it back and took a deep breath, and said, "Shower?"

Dirk pointed and promised towels. As he rushed to grab a pile, it occurred to him to ask, "Marlene? Where was your backup?"

"The Potters are on a week-long honeymoon in France," she says. "All we could spare. We're a little short good help at the moment."

"And I take it I wasn't a huge priority," Dirk said, handing over the towels.

Marlene paused as she took the towels, and he could hear her every breath. "That was our mistake," she said calmly and then shut the bathroom door.

When the water stopped a long, long time later, long enough that he was getting worried, he'd had a glass of whiskey himself and was strumming his guitar to ease his nerves. "My desire, is always to be here," he sang softly, when he looked up to see Marlene watching him.

"I do like that song," she said.

"You're in a towel," Dirk said, unhelpfully. "Sorry! Your robes must be wet—do you want clothes? Of course you want clothes. I can get—" He was a little slow in standing up; she'd already waved him off and had wandered into his bedroom. For his clothes.

"Keep playing," she said, and he did, though without singing this time, and he tried not to react when she came in wearing his sweats.

"You're not bad at singing, either, kid," Marlene said. Only the barest traces of her eyeliner remained. She had more freckles than he'd realized, more roundness left in her cheeks than he'd been able to tell with her face on. She had a strong jaw, gorgeous lips. She was pouring another glass of whiskey.

"I'm really not any more of a kid than you are," Dirk said. "I get it if you think I'm a coward, but how am I supposed to talk about pacifism to goblins and join a vigilante squad at the same time? I've been throwing in mentions of Gandhi, Marlene, and Dr. King, do you even know who they are? I put 'Imagine' in our set-list, admittedly a weird goblin version but—"

"I know who Lennon is too," Marlene said, tucking her knees up on the sofa and cupping her whiskey like it was a warm mug. "For someone so concerned with not being a hypocrite, you've got a decent dose of prejudice yourself."

Dirk felt struck. "I don't mean it like that," he hastened to say. "But most—usually they don't—"

"Sirius Black's favorite thing in the world is his motorbike, if you haven't noticed, and he spends a lot of time with his record player. And Muggle women. Edgar Bones has his kids in a Muggle elementary school, before Hogwarts. James Potter got everybody in the Order T-shirts with an iron-on phoenix from a Muggle shop—"

"I have seen Black strolling all about this place in a T-shirt with a big golden bird on it. Unfortunately, sometimes just the T-shirt."

From Marlene's expression at that, Dirk supposed they defined unfortunately differently.

"You're not his girlfriend, are you?"

"Ha," Marlene said. But she didn't laugh. "No, I'm not."

"But are you and him…"

"Are we what?" Marlene said, but Dirk never asked.

Her hair, drying, looked its dark-wheat color again. "What color is your hair?" Dirk said instead.

"Caramel," she said, in a self-deprecating tone. "The spellbox called it caramel."

This was a chance to show off his stellar compliment vocabulary. "It's—really nice."

"You've stopped playing," Marlene pointed out. He'd forgotten he was still holding the guitar.

"If you really need someone for the Order," he said, "I'd do it. If you said I'd really make a difference, I would. At least somebody out there thinks Muggle-born's are good for something."

"They're jealous, is what it is," Marlene said baldly. "All the same talent, but mastery over both worlds. They can't stand it. They're afraid. People like me and the Prewetts and Potter, we admit it, we try to learn a little, but there's too much. There's so much more we'll never know, not like you or Lily who grew up with it. It's a bigger world, the Muggle world, and ours might be a grand one, but it's a small one. Look at the number of wizarding bands, off the Muggle ones. All the Muggle plays, all the made-up stories—there's so much more of them. Sure thing, we've got magic, but for Muggles, seems like all the magic goes into something else. They've got to make up more stuff. So they've got more music. And look at you, you've got both. And all right, I don't really know what a Gandhi is, but you can talk about it to goblins. Imagine that, Cresswell."

"I love you," he blurted. It was the whiskey and near-death experience talking, but also, he sort of kind of really did, at least just then.

She laughed in shock, not the ideal response, and muttered something that sounded like 'Merlin's balls.' That was a bit of a discouraging response to a declaration of love.

Taking another tactic, he dropped his guitar to the floor, looped his hand behind her neck, and kissed her.

She blew out a slow breath, as deliberate as a cigarette puff, but she kissed him back, hard, harder than he'd ever been kissed back before, her teeth scraping against his tongue.

He had condoms in his guitar case, which Marlene seemed to think hilarious, or tragic, he couldn't really tell, but she was muttering something about being a damn fool for pretty boys as she let him pull her down on top of him. He never quite made the words out, since she went back to kissing him, one hand on his smooth jaw and one hand on his trousers. His hands were deft and quick, and he was smart; he put his hands where she told him and followed instruction quickly. In the end it lasted only a couple minutes, but he didn't think he'd completely embarrassed himself, and she hadn't cried out or anything dramatic, but her breath kept hitching in what he thought was a good way and she made these little "mmms" that made him feel like a king. Under the smell of the soap and shampoo she'd used, she still smelled the rain and sort of like cinnamon, probably a charmed perfume. He found himself drifting off to that scent. "You're beautiful," he said dozily, his head dropping down on the couch.

He wasn't sure how long it was before he woke up. There was a blanket over him, and on top of his folded sweats, a note.

You're not really the Order kind, kid. Sorry.

"You're not that much older than me," he said to the ceiling, furious—and also concerned, since he really sort of loved her and there were Death Eaters out there and apparently she couldn't Apparate for shit. He cast a tracking charm and watched as her footprints appeared in glowing blue on the floor, first her barefeet and then in boots out the door.

He only followed them as far as the little car park. The footsteps went right past Sirius Black's motorbike, which was back in its spot, and then all the way to Sirius Black's door. Where she'd gone in the first place, he remembered.

The footsteps did not come back out

To use the Floo, Dirk thought. She'd definitely gone there to use the Floo.

He really didn't like the voice in his head reminding him of all the whispers that went around, at Hogwarts and especially since, of Marlene McKinnon being sort of easy. He squashed the voice, hating it.

But it was still there.

He didn't see Marlene McKinnon again for weeks. He sent two OWLs and heard nothing back, meanwhile trying to figure out if it was safe to leave his house. Eventually, the goblins decided for him; Nagurd showed up at his door, telling him in Gobbledegook to grab his guitar and get on with it, and even when Dirk went somewhere alone, and thought someone was following, when he turned, he only spotted a goblin shadow.

One morning in July he was leaving for his present job, bartending the morning shift at Wizard's Head and providing a host of Gringotts goblins with their tea, coffee, or breakfast grog of choice. Marlene came out the gate, from the direction of Sirius Black's door, at the same time. Her hair was a mess, her eyeliner looked slept in, and she was yawning and lifting her shoulders to her ears, looking rather cat-like. Dirk froze in place; when she caught his eye, she didn't flinch, she sort of smiled, gave a little wave, and kept walking. Off to St. Mungo's, he assumed.

He hated her. She was the worst person in the world, and he hated her, and if he hadn't already paid his rent for the whole summer with his graduation money, he'd have moved out. He started seeing her there every once in a while. Not often. Other mornings Sirius Black's motorbike would roar up, and Black would get off it, and Cresswell would have no idea if he was coming from Order duties or a Muggle girl's house or even somewhere with Marlene. But, occasionally, once even twice the same week, Marlene would stroll out of Black's apartment, and sometimes she'd say hi to him, so casually he wondered once or twice if he'd dreamed the whole thing up.

He thought about moving home, so he wouldn't have to see her, but really, he was starting to almost not even mind seeing her that much.

The first week of August, he came back from Wizard's Head feeling a little wild. He'd almost gotten in a fight with Gideon Prewett, who dared walk into the place when he'd completely dropped nice Jean Stebbins a while ago, and who was always rumored to have who-knew-what on with Marlene besides. Prewett was of course Hit Patrol so that was a generally bad idea, but Dirk had been all bold and stuff and made Prewett's eyebrows jump into his hairline with his words, so he'd at least gotten his attention.

He came back just in time to catch Marlene McKinnon struggling to get Sirius' motorbike through the gate, and Sirius flat out on the ground beside it.

Dirk opened the gate for her. Marlene didn't even look surprised, and she was too preoccupied with the bike and Sirius to say thank you.

"What curse is that?" he asked.

Marlene slammed her foot against the kickstand. "That's firewhiskey."

"I've seen him go by drunk plenty of nights and he never looks like that."

"He didn't find out his brother was dead any of those nights."

"Regulus is dead?" Dirk said, feeling a stab of shock. Regulus Black had been in his year. They'd had their first flying lessons, Potions class, Astrononmy, Arithmancy, together. They'd never really talked, much, but he'd always been there in the background. That made three kids dead from his graduating class, another Hufflepuff Muggle-born missing, and two couples already eloped.

"For a couple days," she said. She levitated Sirius, at least part of the way; she slung one of his motionless arms over her shoulder.

"Where's Potter and all his close friends?" Dirk said. It was hard to tell in the dark, but she looked a little hurt at that.

"I've got it," she snapped.

"You could have just told me the truth, that you are his girlfriend," Dirk said. "Or that you want to be."

"You really are such a kid, Dirk," Marlene said, shaking her head so hard that the levitating Sirius shakes with her. "Thanks for getting the gate. And I'm sorry. But you really, really are."

"I suppose I'd be terribly more adult, if I'd joined up with your Order in the first place," Dirk said, sounding sullen even to himself.

"Yeah," was all Marlene said, and she walked off with Sirius Black and his motorbike keys, jingling in the dark.

Dirk was still upset the next morning, behind the bar. Gideon Prewett came in for a coffee, either to remind the goblin bar of the Hit Patrol's presence or just to mess with Dirk after the near-fight last night. Prewett certainly wasn't trying to recruit him; whatever Marlene had told the Order, all their efforts had stopped cold.

There was a bit of an awkward run-in as Jean Stebbins, too, walked in and exchanged mild pleasantries with Prewett before he escaped. She'd gotten a job as a receptionist at Gringotts and been in a couple mornings for a tea and a chat. She apparently liked the atmosphere at the Wizard's Head, since Dirk brewed the tea and could attest it wasn't that good.

"Shame things didn't work out with Gideon," Jean said, sighing into her tea.

"What's so great about him?" Dirk said. "Is it the combating-evil thing, or the ruggedly handsome thing, or the cheeky-twinkle-in-the-eyes thing, or the motorcycle thing?"

"I don't think Gideon owns a motorcycle," Jean said. "And yes, all of that. …But mostly the make-the-guitar-player-jealous thing."

"Me?" Dirk said, caught very off guard.

"Well, I don't mean Nagurd," Jean said. He was strangely elated she'd bothered to learn a goblin's name. "What did you think I kept coming here for, anyway? Not that I don't like the music," she added hastily.

He reached out and touched her hand across the bar. She jumped in surprise but then grabbed his back. She was actually very pretty, Jean, with her auburn curls and sweet face. Marlene, in contrast, was attractive in a way he wouldn't call pretty—but there was no point to thoughts in that direction. This was something new and different and thoughts of other girls did not belong here.

"Can I get you a proper breakfast?" he asked. "Something other than grog."

"They have that?" Jean asked, eyes suddenly shining at him.

Dirk called out in Gobbledegook for a plate of eggs, hash, and toast ordered up from the underground kitchen, magically fast, and got, from an alcove behind the bar, a quick answer back.

"I've heard them call you that before," Jean said. "That hiss-grunt." She tried to mimic it, grinning at her own bad attempt. "Is that your name? In the goblin tongue?"

It was not his name, but what they always called him. Dirk repeated the word for her and poured her tea. "It means friend."

In the end, it was Dirk Cresswell who read about Marlene McKinnon in the Prophet obituaries. The story came out the week of his eighteenth birthday. He noted, in the paper, her birthday, too, came at the very end of August. She was still a few days from twenty.

Jean saw him carrying around the paper all that day. "So sad," she said, and he could hear behind the upset in her voice, 'Poor Gideon'.

He thought about going to the service, with or without Jean. But he felt too awkward.

The day they buried the McKinnons, Dirk put his guitar over his shoulder and headed off to Bellepe Walk. At the gate to his building, he came across Sirius Black, who reeked of a bar—the smell of stale beer emanating from his skin and his clothes and a cloud of heavy perfume lingering. The remains of a white T-shirt with a gold design clung to his chest, so ripped it looked torn up by an animal. He had one hand in his tangled dark hair and he was stumbling.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon. Sirius stumbled right into Dirk.

"Shouldn't you be somewhere?" Dirk asked coldly.

Sirius blinked at him some more, his eyes bright and light as mist. "Oh, it's you, Dick," he said, and tossed his head back, laughing outrageously. "Of course it is. I know worms with more spine than you, boy."

"Boy? You're only a year older than me, Black," Dirk said, pained, not even bothering to correct him on the name.

Black, without further ado, pointed his wand at Dirk's feet. Dirk had his wand out—he always had it ready, now—but the curse never came.

"Nah," Black said. "You're not worth it."

"Neither are you," Dirk said back, as Black staggered away, but the other man only laughed, and laughed, and kept laughing as Dirk walked faster and faster away.

Marlene was standing half-asleep against Sirius' door when he walked up to it, but she still had her wand out and ready at the sound of his footsteps. She hadn't heard the motorbike, but then he had been working on some sort of silent feature.

"You waiting on me, McKinnon?" Sirius asked. His dark hair, cut short for the wedding, looked windswept, but fell back into place even as he spoke. "Weren't you on duty tonight?"

"Duty," she repeated, with a nod that turned it into something of an answer, even as she let it roll around the tongue and realize what she was in for. What she could have swayed the boy a few floors above her into joining, into maybe dying for while still young and pretty and topped to the rim with potential. "I slept with Cresswell," she said, almost offhandedly, her hand over her eyes.

Sirius glanced at still-drying clothes. "Just now?"

"'Fraid so."

"…That's some dedicated approach to recruiting you've got there."

"He's not going to be joining the Order," said Marlene.

There was a brief silence, mercifully cut by a Muggle taxi gliding past at speed. "No how are you that bad," said Sirius, finally. Startled, her head jerked up to meet his unreadable blue-grey eyes, before something clicked and she broke into raucous laughter, doubling over and putting her hand below her breasts as if to hold it back.

Sirius seemed to think she was stumbling or needed steadying, since his hands were on her shoulders, both suddenly and with an uncertainty that made her really lose her balance. She knocked him entirely back against his door, and her forehead was briefly pressed against his nose and the top of his chin. She pulled back, slightly, his hands on her upper arms, less uncertainly. "I'm not that bad," she said, lowly, half-talking to herself. She wondered what she was doing because man was she ever playing into her less-than-stellar reputation, and it hadn't been an hour since it was a different boy, of another height and with other eyes, was the one touching her. And whatever people thought, she'd never ever felt like a slag before.

She'd always thought she knew better than to get herself into the Sirius blackhole, seen girls drown in him, unnoticed by him, in school and since.

It was strange how much older Sirius seemed than unbroken, unblemished Dirk. Maybe because Sirius had been wounded, not only in little ways like the bleeding shoulder she'd come here to patch up for him after that bad skirmish in Leeds, but in growing up with such a warped, blood-driven family, even in how tightly he clung to his self-built one. He felt more like her.

"You want to use my Floo?" Sirius said.

"I live with my whole family," she said. "I don't want to go home."

"Prewett's?" Sirius said.

"I don't know, he thinks we're all heroes, you know."

"Yeah," Sirius said. "So does James."

"I killed somebody tonight."

"Anyone I know?" he said, a little too nonchalantly.

"Travers' little sister."

She expected Sirius to swear. He didn't. He tilted his head back, up at the car park ceiling, and when he tilted it back down she thought he was still holding the same breath.

"Come on inside, Marlene," he said and unlocked his door, enchanted with every kind of protection there was, to only work with the one key.

He nodded her inside. He could have grabbed her hand—a guy like Dirk would have grabbed her hand—but not Sirius.

The trouble was she liked that about him. Gideon told her, the night she first saw Dirk Cresswell play at the Wizard's Head, you're a little in love with freedom, and Sirius Black is practically its high priest. She'd told him he was wrong, about one part, anyways- but she never said which part.

"I think I could have killed two people tonight, really. But it's one thing to sign up for a thing, because it's right and important and being part of it's—" She stopped herself before she said 'special'. "I don't want anyone to die for me, Sirius. Not him, not Gideon, not you—not that you'd try—"

"Marlene," said Sirius, cutting her off almost sharply. "You weren't dragging him into anything. Cresswell's talented and Muggle-born and there's a war on. It's fight or fall. Like Dorcas says, it's a bloody draft."

It wasn't much more than a one-room flat, kitchenette and a bed. It smelled like an ashtray and doubtless didn't look much better, but he hadn't bothered to turn the lights on. He didn't have any damn pillowcases, Marlene noticed, as she dropped down on Sirius' bed.

"Well, Dirk Cresswell's been deferred," she said, and Sirius seemed poised to say something else. In fact, his mouth was still making word shapes when she pulled him down against her.

He made an oomph noise, sounding actually sore, and she remembered that he, too, had been on duty tonight, was bruised, tired, trying to buy a few days of guilt-free freedom for Lily and James. No attacks, no deaths to come home to.

"You know, McKinnon," Sirius said into her hair, letting her and all her fear and regret and guilt curl up against him, her fingers clutching his Muggle-style jacket, her boots actually knocking against his since neither one had kicked them off. "You're not half bad."

She lifted her head up a little. "Where's that record player of yours?" she asked. "Let's put it on."