catharsis |kəˈθärsis| (noun) the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.

That Sunday evening, Sirius Black closed the blinds in his bedroom for the first time.

Her nearly broke them, honestly, with the steely grip that his hand had become in the wake of his argument with James. Jaw set sternly into a line, shoulders with a slight shake, he pulled down on the string that controlled them and watched as his view of the McKinnon yard became nothing more than slanted, white plastic.

It was for the best.

He laid in his bed after a tense dinner, letting the room get dark around him as he laid awake but did not bother to move. Even though it was hard to see, he began to count ceiling tiles. Or, at least, he pretended to. Really, he was rehashing James's words, bouncing around in his head on an endless loop.

"They're not watching the McKinnons. They're watching Marlene."

"She's not you. She's not your brother either. She's not Regulus. You can't crash into her life. Sticking your neck out for her won't change the fact that you left him behind."

"They're saying she might be marked within the week."

"Where does she go all the time?"

"Why is she always hurt?"

"You don't even know her."

"They're watching her."

"You can't believe anything that she's said to you."

"You don't know her."

And he didn't know her. Not really. But why did it feel so much like he did?

Sirius rolled over onto his stomach and buried his face deep in his pillow, exhaling through his teeth and trying to stall the tidal wave of thoughts from racking through his brain. He was too tired to process the voices in his head, and he wasn't sure he wanted to hear them anyway.

He wasn't sure at what point he fell asleep, but then suddenly it was morning and James was barreling through his unlocked bedroom door and crash-landing onto the bed beside him with a yelp.

"Get up!" James sing-songed, punching at Sirius's arms and torso through the covers, sounding in way too good of a mood for the early hour that it must have been. Apparently all of then tension from the night before had gone out the window along with the closing of the blinds. "I have the day off today. We're going to hang out, right and proper."

"Go 'way, Prongs," Sirius replied, his voice a haggard groan weighed down with sleep and annoyance, eyes struggling to open against the salty weight of his eyelids. "One more hour. Don't feel like flying."

"For once, my friend, I'm not talking about flying," said James, and it was this that really caught Sirius's attention.

"Alright," he groaned, unearthing himself from the tangled mess of sheet and blankets, trying to disentangle from the mess he'd weaved into during the night and peeking up at his friend through squinted vision. "You have my ear. What's this magnificent plan of yours."

"Are you familiar with the term 'catharsis'?" was James's next question, propping his chin up on the heel of his hand, looking his best friend in the eye with a look he knew only too well by this point: mischief was brewing.

"No," Sirius answered carefully, slowly, trying to piece together the plan before it was dumped into his lap as they usually were. "Not as would apply to this situation anyway."

"Well then I believe it's time for a practical lesson," James declared with a lofty voice, sitting up abruptly and bounding to the floor in one swift motion, going from zero to sixty in front of his eyes. "Follow me. There's a bat somewhere in this room, isn't there?"

And that was how Sirius Black found himself, no more than a quarter of an hour later, striding into the rarely-used vacation home of his parents and cousins, treading across and crunching pathway of broken glass from the window James had shattered inward without so much as a moment of hesitation.

"I have a bad feeling about this mate," Sirius said slowly, eyes wide as he looked around the high-ceilinged foyer, crunching across broken glass as he stepped into the shadowed hallway that lead to the rest of the house. It was abandoned, for now at least, but he still spoke in hushed tones as if anyone could come home in the next few moments or as if they were walking through the halls of a sacred worshipping place.

It had been years since he'd been inside; he could barely latch onto a sight he recognized.

"Sometimes anticipation feels like that," James countered with a shrug, a miniature smile of awe stretched across his face as he too observed the halls. "They really stuck tight with the snake motif, didn't they?"

"Oh, shut up. This is nothing." Sirius scoffed, shaking a few shards of glass off his shoe, clenching the wooden beater's bat in his hand until his knuckles were pulled tight and white across his bone. "You should see Grimmauld Place. Place is a serpentine nightmare."

"You don't have an elf lurking around here somewhere do you?" James asked as the two of them moved, almost comically back-to-back, wands held in one hand and beaters bats in the other, into the parlor.

"Probably somewhere. They use the house maybe once, twice a year. Slimy git would just be skulking around in the attic somewhere."

"This is the most boring break-in we've ever pulled off," groaned James with an eye roll that Sirius didn't need to see to picture, holding his arms out dramatically to the sides and spinning to get a better view of the ornate room.

"Then why are we bloody here?" hissed Sirius in exasperation, narrowing his eyes at his friend and moving to inspect a shelf of expensive-looking trinkets in the corner.

"I told you I wanted to make you feel better, didn't I?" James asked, eyebrow raised as he crossed the room to stand beside him.

"You did...and I'm failing to see how this is helping at all. And your fucking vocabulary lesson. What was it this time?"

"Catharsis," James said, his face lighting up with a wicked grin, his cheeks lifting his round glasses up higher on his nose with the sudden force of it. And then, with no prelude, he lifted his beater's bat and took a violent swing at the shelf of trinkets, bringing it down in a crash that filled the dead house with the sounds of shattering glass and metal clanging to the fall. "Case in point. Catharsis."

Sirius hesitated for only a fraction of a second, eyebrows nearly disappeared beyond his hairline from the shock that had just been delivered. But then, slowly and surely, a grin spread its way across his face as well and he too found his bat connecting with the surface of a gold-rimmed mirror sitting atop the highest shelf.

The entire downstairs took only two hours.

It was the most satisfied he could remember being in his entire life.

"No, it's one egg...S-Sirius, no, just one egg- Sirius!" Mary was crying out in frustration, her nose and forehead smeared with white flour, but the grin that sat on her face shone brighter than ever. "Only one egg needed to go into that."

And Sirius just froze, the shell of the already-broken egg sitting clenched in his hand like a stolen sweet, looking at her as if he were about to apologize for a moment before he finally burst out laughing, a long and loud bark of a noise that only made her own smile widen.

Mary's dark curls were pulled up into a knot at the top of her head and she was wearing one of Sirius's old t-shirts that reached down to her knees, covering up her shorts and picking up more stains the longer the two of them spent in the kitchen. She was a mess, really, and so was he. But none of that mattered.

None of it mattered because Mary Macdonald sang while she baked. She let Sirius crack the eggs like a little boy because it was the most fun part for him. She didn't complain even though he was the one that'd smeared flour onto her face and she kissed him even though he protested. He kissed her back even though it meant getting covered in the stuff as well.

Mary sang while she baked and danced while she waited for the oven timer. She refused to use magic, even to frost the cupcakes. She even ran around and around the counter, Sirius in tow and chasing her, squeaking with feigned fright even though she knew that he would use his much longer legs to catch her and lift her up into the air no matter how hard she beat her fists against his back, laughing until tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.

"You know," Sirius said, laughter still graced into his tone after the two of them had calmed down and he'd lifted her up onto the edge of the counter, forehead very nearly pressed against hers. "You are exactly who I should be with."

"Damn right," Mary answered, in that cheeky manner he so often forgot that she had about her when her guard was down. "And you know I love you, right?"

"I do know that," was his answer, sealed with a kiss.

It was the first really, truly, wonderful day they'd had in a long time.

It would also be the last really, truly, wonderful day they had for a long time after.

"I'm telling you, I just...it might be a fever or something. I'm not sure," Sirius rambled casually, rubbing at the back of his neck as he followed James downstairs to the kitchen. Saturday had come, far too fast, the afternoon rearing its head before he was prepared. He didn't know what it was, the twitch of anxiety that was rolling through his stomach. However, he did know who it had to do with.

He couldn't sit there, across from her at the dinner table. He couldn't come off a week of peace and light with his friends, with Mary just to sit there across from her and see those brown eyes twinkling triumphantly, the smirk pulled across her face as she pulled him in. Pushed everybody else out. Spun whatever web she was so busy weaving.

He refused.

"I might just hit the hay early tonight, go back to bed and-"

"You're really going to leave me alone with them at dinner?" James cut in, his voice more of a whine than a plea; he'd already given in to what Sirius wanted. He always did, when it really counted. "If I have to spend one more fucking week looking at their smug faces-"

"You'd better not be talking about me," Mrs. Potter's voice was more strained than Sirius had heard it in weeks, though it was clear she was trying to keep up the facade of breeziness. She was bustling around the kitchen in that way that she did, pots and pans clanking together merrily as different smells bubbled through the room. "James, table. Please. Three settings."

"Three?" her son asked, the surprise and hope completely undisguised in his voice as he made his way over to the cabinet. "Only three this week?"

"Only three," Mrs. Potter confirmed, but the tension in her voice did not ease up. "The McKinnons...will not be joining us this week. Something has...come up."

"What do you mean, 'come up'?" The merriness in James's voice dropped in an instant.

"Boys...just sit down. We can get this out of the way before we eat," was the only reply they got in return, Mrs. Potter wringing her hands together as the three of them hesitantly sank in around the table. She fiddled with the corner of the placemat for a moment before she finally spoke.

"What's wrong?" It was Sirius, this time, who broke the silence, his voice cracking tentatively through the silence. He'd learned her mannerisms by now, too.

"This weekend is the first of the three Salazar balls," she started, lifting her eyes to meet those of the boys, clearly navigating her words carefully.

"Are those the ones that raise the money for the Dragonpox victims abroad," James cut in, voice a groan yet again. "Because if you except me to sit through that without any warning-"

"That's not what the Salazar balls are," Sirius was the one to cut in again, voice tight as he looked into Mrs. Potter's eyes, his own now sharing the same tense look. "There's...there's three of them. Increasing in formality. The third one culminating in...in the...you know."

"In the declaration of allegiances," Mrs. Potter supplied, voice small, laced with a sigh.

"I still don't under-" James got no further before Sirius was interjecting again, his own voice unnaturally loud as he tried to keep a lid on his nerves.

"All of the Pureblood wizards and witches who are coming of age," he said, very slowly. "Declare their allegiances, their loyalties. It's when the marriages are announced. Which families will be connecting with one another. Which ones will be..."

"Following Him," James sighed, the answers finally clicking into place, running a hand through his hair miserably. "Right. I've got it. So the first one is tonight and they're eager to run about and show off?"

"That's not exactly what I was getting at," said Mrs. Potter, her mouth pressed into a thin line. "The McKinnons will be attending, yes. But it seems that they're unavailable to have dinner with us beforehand this evening because they're having...well, they're having houseguests of their own."

"The McKinnons are having houseguests?" James scoffed, his eyebrow raised in a dubious manner as he cast a look to the back door as if that would suddenly provide him with answers. "Why should they? Every family who'll be attending that bloody ball will already have a house of their own here."

"Yes, so it would seem." Mrs. Potter agreed with him, eyes dropping low again, returning to fiddling with the corner of the placemat. Here, it seemed, was the root of her stress, finally coming to bloom. "However, one of the houses in the neighborhood this week was discovered to have some...damage done to it. The entire downstairs vandalized. The occupants found it...unlivable. It seems they chose to turn to the McKinnon family for lodging."

She knew what the boys had done. She'd known it, Sirius was sure, the moment they'd returned home, bats in hand and glass in their hair, laughing with the first real freedom of the summer. She didn't care that they'd done it. She cared what it could mean.

"So it seems as if my family will be paying a visit next door," Sirius said, his voice foreign to him and sounding very, very far away as the gears in his mind churned, trying to frantically put together a response.

"Yes," said Mrs. Potter, speaking carefully as her tone relaxed back into the softer, more maternal tone that she'd used on him when he first turned up at the start of summer. "Just for the weekend. Just for this ball-"

"And the next ball," he replied stoutly, barely aware of the supportive hand James had clapped onto his shoulder. "And the third."

"I don't anticipate any problems as long as we, er...stay inside, really, and of course we'll have to skip the ball. I know you're both devastated to have to miss out on it."

"Oh, I'm crushed," James said, a tentative laugh breaking the tension in that way only he ever could, especially when it came to Sirius. "I was so ready to strut 'round in my tuxedo and find myself a respectable wife."

Sirius was smiling, albeit weakly, but his knees were knocking together as he got to his feet.

"I, er...bed, I think. I should...if we're staying out of sight anyway, I mean," Sirius mumbled, pushing a hand through his hair and looking around the room, his vision skewed slightly, the colors too bright.

"Of course," Mrs. Potter agreed, but he barely heard her as he stumbled up the stairs to his bedroom.

The room was too small. Had it been this small before? Was it shrinking in on him? His chest felt tight, and as he lay on his bed looking up at the ceiling, he found his hand itching to lift itself up toward the blinds. If he could just get one look, one good look at them, maybe they wouldn't seem like such a looming threat. Maybe he would be able to see them as real people again, not the ominous presence that now hung in the air around him, in the dust on the shelves, the too-loud beating of his heart in his ears.

He wanted to open the blinds.

And why shouldn't he? This had nothing to do with Marlene. He didn't give a damn what the McKinnon girl was up to, where her long legs were carrying her, what constellation the freckles on her face would remind him of that day.

This was something else. This was his family...or they were, at least, at one point in his life. Just one look. One good look and he could shut them again. He wouldn't go back. He'd already promised himself: he wasn't going back. Not this time.

He could not open the blinds.

Sirius just laid there as the room got pink around him, the sunset outside beginning to seep in through the cracks around the window's edge that meant he'd been there for hours now. The sounds of people, two maybe three, greeted his ears from the neighboring yard. He hated how when Marlene's laugh met his eardrums he knew that it belonged to her. How could it not? It was everything she was: clear and regal and too-loud and wild. Maybe the only genuine sound he'd ever heard out of her, if James was right about what she was, what she was aiming to be.

He refused to open the blinds.

And then the second voice hit him, like a speeding train to the stomach, like a bullet firing off in the middle of a silent forest. It was a shout, a playful one at that, that answered Marlene's laugh. A boy's voice, not yet a man's. Gruff around the edges but honest in its intentions. Still a boy's voice. He didn't need to close his eyes to let the picture form in his mind.

Regulus was in the yard of the McKinnon's home.

Sirius was at the window before he could form another coherent thought, his hand shaking as it closed around the cord that controlled the blinds and pulling on it, pulling so hard that it almost broke. The white slits flew out of the way, made a path for his vision to be clear. For a moment he thought he could have been wrong, could have been hallucinating it.

But no. Regulus was there.

Sirius found them almost immediately, the two figures standing in the center of the yard. Marlene, a mess of long limbs in a tshirt and shorts had her hair pinned painstakingly and elegantly into an updo that framed her face. Regulus was already dressed for the ball, his hair recently cut, his tie loose and untied around his neck. Green. Of course it was green.

They were fighting in motions but laughing together as well; it took him a long time to realize that they were pretending, only pretending. Practicing. Regulus was deft in his motions, his hand cutting a clean path as he aimed a punch at Marlene's shoulder, ribs, stomach. Every time, he stopped before he actually hit the target. Marlene's body moved in the same rhythm as his did, turning where he instructed, aiming strong with her bony elbows. Every failed block earned an expression of defiant frustration. Every success brought that wild, untamed smile back across her face.

Regulus was teaching Marlene how to fight.

Everyone had to learn from somewhere, after all.

Regulus had learned from Sirius.

The onlooker inhaled sharply, crooked nose almost pressed against the pane of glass itself as he watched. This wasn't their first lesson. It couldn't be, with the way they were so in-synch with one another, the way she was so trusting of him to aim his fists at her and stop before it was too late. The bruises, Sirius could see, had completely healed from around her eyes, and this was where Regulus was aiming two times out of three. This was the area she was guarding the heaviest.

Regulus was teaching her how to defend herself, how to make sure it never happened again.

Like an echo from the past, Sirius's own voice flooded his mind.

You need to learn this, Reg, he had said, not so long ago. Remembering brought pangs to chest, to his head. You need to learn how to defend yourself. I'm not always going to be here to do it for you.

Not here to do it for me? Regulus had answered, almost laughing at the thought of it as he broke his concentration and took a hit to the stomach. Sirius hadn't been as careful at stopping in time. You're not...going anywhere, are you? I'll learn it, I will. But you aren't going anywhere, Sirius. I need you here.

Of course I'm not going anywhere, Sirius had answered, smirk crossing his face as if the idea was ridiculous.

Not even two weeks later, he was gone.

A voice from the McKinnon back door rang through the yard and snapped at the two of them to quit messing around and finish looking presentable. It wasn't his mother's voice. It wasn't Colleen's either. Mrs. McKinnon, maybe, or some other houseguest. It could have been one of the elves, for all he knew. Sirius had stopped listening ages ago.

Sirius was still watching the yard long after his brother and Marlene had disappeared. He was still watching when the sun went down. He wasn't sure when he fell asleep, but when he woke up the next morning to the sounds of someone banging on the front door, his first thought was that he should tell Marlene to keep her elbows tucked in tighter.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," Sirius called out sleepily, his tone laced with grogginess. Either the person knocking at the door had not heard him or did not care. The sand behind his eyes told Sirius that the sun could have barely risen. The knocking continued: quick, panicked, and loud though nobody else in the house seemed to be rising to answer it.

Sirius swung the front door open, and the feeling he was met with was not unlike being kicked in the stomach.

It was Colleen standing there, directly in front of him, and the uncharacteristic dark bags under her eyes told him plainly that she had not slept a wink. Gavin, behind her.

Regulus, behind them, staring at Sirius with a confused, furious expression as if he'd just seen a ghost. It was on him that Sirius's eyes were fixed as well, the two brothers gaping at each other without words. As if there could be words.

"Is Marlene here?" Colleen asked, cutting across the would-be reunion in her high, breathy way.

"It's...six thirty in the...I'm sorry, what?" Sirius was not usually so inarticulate in the morning, but given the circumstances he thought he deserved a break. "No. No, I'm sorry. Marlene isn't...why would she be here?"

The look in Colleen's eyes was almost of betrayal, as if Sirius should know very well why should would.

"We haven't seen her since the ball," Gavin spoke up, placing a hand on Colleen's shoulder and drawing her backwards gently, pulling her away from the spokesman's post. Regulus continued to gape behind them. The redhead stepped up to the top of the porch steps, eyes just as clouded, just as concerned. "There was a row. She was...causing trouble, as usual. Tightly wound. A spell backfired, words were said, er...if she turns up just-"

"I'll send her on home, yeah," Sirius agreed faintly, still craning his neck over the shoulders of the bigger boy, still straining to see his brother beyond the siblings who were concerned rather than betrayed. He did not realize that Gavin was leaning in until he already had, his voice a whisper, rumbling low and quick.

"We'll take care of the boy's memory," Gavin was saying, though Sirius did not decipher it until they had gone. "We thought it pertinent to not tell your family that you weren't...abroad, as they've been saying. I supposed that I...owed you a return kindness."

And then the McKinnons were gone, Regulus in tow, leaning Sirius to close the door behind him and use it as support as he sank to the floor and struggled to not give in to the rage and confusion and hurt that was bubbling over inside of him.

He knew where Marlene would be. He didn't know how, or why he knew. But he did all the same. It was poetic, perhaps, that when he'd needed her he'd strolled into her backyard uninvited.

She must have needed him, then. Because he found her waiting patiently in his.

Marlene was sitting on the back step when he arrived at it, her huddled form visible through the clear glass door that was the back exit to the Potter home. She seemed paler than usual, if that was possible, her hair falling from it's updo, her emerald dress in tatters around her.

Sirius slid the door open cautiously, as if he were approaching a wounded animal. In a way, really, he was. He sat behind her and swallowed hard, looking straight ahead instead of at her. He didn't want to see the makeup smudged down her cheeks. He didn't want to care enough to ask what had happened.

"I jumped the fence," she said quietly, voice sticking in her throat.

"Yes," Sirius answered quietly, still looking straight ahead. The treehouse in the far back of the yard stared back at him. "Yes, I can see that."

They were silent again for a long set of moments that spanned their own eternity. It was Sirius who finally broke the quiet, losing their game of chicken.

"I know I said that you needed to stop protecting everybody," he said, pushing a hand through his hair as he allowed his pride to slip away momentarily. "But if you have room for one more-"

"He's okay," Marlene answered, leaving it at that.

"Don't lie to me."

"He will be okay," she said, voice stronger this time, but quieter. "Better?"

Sirius did not acknowledge the amendment, but a bond of understanding had been drawn between them for time being. For the first time, possibly, since summer had began, the two of them were standing on common ground.

"How is he?" Sirius finally plucked up the courage to ask.

"Angry," she sighed back after a pause, a search for words. "Confused. Hurt. Stressed out. Uptight."

"I didn't ask how you were," he replied, a feeble attempt at a joke.

"The phrase you're looking for is 'thank you'," she reminded him, a stab at her sarcastic tone ringing almost true when it met his ears.

Silence prevailed again, but this time it was content, like two old friends sitting quietly over a cup of tea even though they would never be anything of the sort.

"It was a shield charm that backfired," Marlene offered up, presenting him words the way a normal companion would have passed over a plate of biscuits politely. "I was just trying to do a fucking...shield charm."

"Your magic hasn't worked right all summer," he answered, and it wasn't a question. "Not since you got home, yeah?"

"Yeah," was all he got in return for his efforts.

"You know what they say about toxic environments," said Sirius, finally turning to look at her face, framed by makeup long since wiped away and chocolate-colored curls that settled, disheveled, near her cheekbones.

"You know what they say about know-it-alls," Marlene hit his comment back at him, but Sirius found himself smiling in spite of her intention, a wry smirk pulling itself across his tired face.

"You're internalizing," he said, voice smug even though he was quoting Remus.

"Excuse me?"

"That's fancy terminology for 'you've got a stick up your ass'," Sirius snapped, although it wasn't cruel. "S'not going to work right until you remove it."

"Remove the stick?" her voice was a scoff, but she was interested. He could tell. He knew what he sounded like when his attention was captured and he was hearing it echoed back to him now, in a voice too high, too clear, too guarded.

"In a matter of speaking. I could help you, you know." Sirius wasn't sure why he was offering up his help. Not doing so never occurred as an option to him.

"I'll figure it out on my own," said Marlene, tucking her ruined hair behind her ear and allowing her eyes to meet his. Their gazes blended together in an expression of solidarity, and even though she'd refused his help out loud she did not resist when he got to his feet and extended a hand to her.

"The phrase you're looking for is 'thank you'."

"I hate the beach," Marlene sighed as the two of them finally edged up along the little-used strip of water that made up the west border of the village, kicking their shoes off wordlessly and trudging through the course sand that was really just a rumbling of stones and broken shells. Regardless of her supposed dislike for the place -which was evidently shared, as it was a running joke among the residents that it was no real place for sunbathing or anything of the like- Marlene walked ahead of Sirius and out toward the water, her torn ballgown trailing behind her like a battered flag of green silk, dragging a path through the sand as if she were blazing a trail through a forest.

Sirius followed her dutifully, his own shoes held limply at his sides as the two of them searched aimlessly for words to share or a place to stand. He hadn't had a plan in mind; not really. This location was the destination, not a threshold, and it was with a lost expression that he stared at her as she plopped down onto the sand, no regard for the sharpness of the shells, her dress ballooning out around her as she sank down. He hadn't intended to sit beside her, but that was where he went- sinking down onto the sand as well as both of them stared determinedly ahead at the water.

"It's amazing, isn't it?" Marlene asked after a long moment of puzzling silence, her brown eyes still fixated, mesmerized really, on the pink horizon. "You could go forever and ever out there. Just keep going and going, and never reach anything. Must be a nice release."

"You'd probably hit America or something," Sirius snorted in return, and it was only when she did not answer that he realized she hadn't meant across the water so much as pulled down below it. "You should scream."

"Why?" she asked, turning finally to him with a puzzled sort of smile half-pulled across her lips. "Didn't bring me out here to kill me, did you?"

"Oh, yes. Marlene McKinnon, prepare to meet your doom," he quipped in a deadpan, rolling his eyes. "No. I mean it. You should scream."

"I have a headache," was her only refusal, and he could tell, even without looking at her, that her curiosity had been piqued. "How is that supposed to help me?"

"Removing the stick, remember?" Sirius shot back almost immediately, a ghost of their previous banter coming over him like a fond memory. "Your problem -despite the fact that you think it's being aware of your own genius, which I still call bullshit on- is that you're wound up so tightly that it's a wonder you can even walk in a straight line."

"Oh, so that's my problem?" Marlene laughed back, shaking her head. But none of that mattered. He could hear the gears in her head turning, practically, sitting so close beside her.

The first attempt at a scream would have been laughable had it not been so pathetic.

Marlene, caught up in self-consciousness now that there was no audience to choose her personality for her, opened her mouth with a rare air of meekness and let out a half-hearted yelp, her voice cracking after the long night she'd had. She turned to Sirius for approval, but he didn't bother acting the judge for the moment. Frustrated, he heard her suck in breath and try again.

The second one was really a thing of magnificence.

It was as if the whole of Marlene had cracked open, all of the stress and frustrations pouring out of her as she opened her mouth and finally let loose for once. Her voice echoed and bounced down the beach, scaring a nearby flock of birds who had been calmly minding their own business and causing them to jump into flight as if their lives depended on it. She shouted until her voice cracked hoarse again, and then let out an entirely new shout that Sirius couldn't help but join in on.

And so there the two of them sat, Sirius in pajamas and Marlene in a ruined gown, like a pair of forgotten things that had been left strewn across the sand, screaming until their lungs refused to hold any air for fear that they would try it again.

Finishing on a high note, Marlene threw her arms up into the air and rolled backwards so that she was laying down in the mess of pebbles and shells and dirt, a huge smile looking frighteningly genuine on her face, laughter coming out of her silently as her shoulders shook.

Sirius laid down beside her and they let the silence reign again for what seemed like a small eternity.

"Okay," she said quietly, breaking the silence with a sigh that still had tones of her laughter ringing through it. "You made your point. That was not entirely unhelpful."

"The phrase you're looking for is 'thank you'," Sirius echoed for the second time that day, turning his head to look at her and finding that she had already done the same. They shared a long look that seemed to say everything they couldn't or wouldn't. It was Marlene, again, that broke the silence with a uncomfortable clearing of her throat.

"Don't...just don't kiss me or anything," she said, narrowing her eyes and giving him a warning look that was entirely unnecessary before sitting up again, making a feeble attempt to shake the sand out of her hair.

"Wasn't going to," Sirius muttered, sitting up with a groan of effort, unable to explain why he felt so wholly put-out by the rejection for an action he hadn't even planned on carrying out.

"You should never kiss a sad person," Marlene pressed on, talking more to herself than to him now. "It just romanticizes the bullshit."

"M'not sure which one of us you're referring to," Sirius said, just so he would have something to say, and it was as Marlene was getting to her feet that she finally answered him.

"That's the whole point, isn't it? That's why we're here."

Sirius opened his mouth to ask her exactly what she was getting at, but Marlene was already turning away from him, charging toward the ocean like a child on a mission.

Her dress was ridiculous for the occasion, floating up around her and darkening in color as it took on water. She'd charged in up to her knees by the time Sirius reached her, both of them grinning madly. It wasn't clear who splashed who first, but before long the two of them were running madly through the shallows together, kicking up water just to inconvenience the other, shouting again and again and feeling the stress of the week slowly but surely lifting away.

It was curiously childlike, the way they got along so well without really knowing each other at all. But it didn't matter for the moment -finally didn't matter about the politics or the expectations or the duties- because for the moment they were finally just two teenagers acting as they wanted to and splashing immaturely through the waves before anyone else around them could be bothered to wake up and see it.

Marlene was as he had never seen her before; after a half hour or so, she pulled out her wand and sent up a flurry of sparks into the air for no reason. The smile -the real, genuine, Marlene McKinnon smile that he'd stolen from her that one day in the yard- remained on her face as he watched her finally let go of her obligations and her carefully crafted persona and just be for an hour.

The day would have been perfect, had it ended there. It would have been an odd and misplaced happy memory; one of those that couldn't possibly be real looking back from years ahead. But it would have been perfect.

Had they not headed home.

Sirius and Marlene, still caught up in the childlike wonder that came along with pretending the rest of the world didn't exist, ran all the way back to their neighboring houses. Their barefoot feet pounded against the pavement in a race that hadn't been declared but was evident to both of them as they galloped across the uneven sidewalks and past the pristine lawns, still laughing sarcastic comments back and forth as if it were an entirely new language.

Marlene was going to win; she was faster than he gave her credit for, what with all of those nightly runs that he'd forgotten to ask about. Marlene was going to win the race, but then the two of them reached the top of the hill that overlooked their summer homes, and suddenly Sirius was shooting past her.

He almost tripped in his haste to turn around and see what had stopped her. Marlene was standing there frozen on the pavement, jaw just barely dropped open, seeming to be petrified in time. The look on her face was one of pure horror.

It took Sirius a minute to see it. He noticed it first in the reflection of her eyes, but he would have realized even if he hadn't- the look on her face could only have been reserved for this one moment. He turned slowly on the spot as well, eyes going up to where hers were, taking in the same, time-stopping sight.

The Dark Mark was hovering, smoking and proud, over the McKinnon house.

A group of hooded figures were filing out of her front door, the hulking form of Gavin suspended between them, kicking uselessly, as they marched out onto the street. They were taking him.

Marlene had moved before Sirius's mind could catch up. Suddenly, it became evident what all of her late night runs had been for. They were practice. Not to run away, not to leave, not to take her as far from her home as possible- but to get back to it.

She was running as fast as her legs could carry her, over the pavement, nearly tripping with every step but staying upright out of pure determination and adrenaline, or so it would seem.

Marlene was screaming again, and this time it wasn't nearly as beautiful of a sound. It was ripped from her chest, a guttural animal wailing, a plea without words.

Sirius barely caught her in time.

He expected her to fall into him with a sob as he finally managed to run up behind her and throw his arms forcefully around her torso, but of course nothing with her could be that simple. She was like an animal trapped; no amount of his pulling could cease her struggling to get back to her home, her legs kicking so forcefully that he was lifting her off the ground by the end of it, her brother's name being ripped from her throat again and again.

It was a spectacle at the beginning, but Sirius realized that he was glad for Marlene's screaming. It was the only way he knew for sure that she wouldn't overhear the other screams, coming from the McKinnon front steps. Mrs. McKinnon had collapsed against the doorframe, calling after the masked men with a desperate sort of pleading cry. It was hard to tell which was more horrible: the primitive sound of a mother being ripped away from her child, or the words she was saying.

They echoed in the back of Sirius's mind for years after that: "Not Gavin. Not Gavin. Take her instead. She'll be home soon. We'll find her. Not Gavin. Take her instead. Take her instead. Take her instead."

Marlene continued to thrash and kick and shake in Sirius's arms, and it was only then that he realized the whole street had poured outside to watch, standing shocked or timid or smug or horrorstruck on their front walks, huddling their loved ones close to them.

Mrs. Potter saw the two of them before anyone else. Mrs. McKinnon was a close second, turning to her youngest daughter with a look of furious pleading, of desperation, but it was too late.

The masked men had already gone, Gavin gone with them. Sirius had already wrestled and dragged Marlene, who fought him every step of the way, up the Potter's front path and inside the front door, which was held open by a Mrs. Potter who was too horrified and confused to be unwelcoming.

Marlene's screams died out after Sirius had dragged her inside the front foyer and let her fall to the floor in a heap of green silk and shaking shoulders, slamming the front door behind them as if that would truly separate her from the horror she had just witnessed.

He had no choice but to stand there, breathing heavily and leaning against the wall for support, as he watched Marlene McKinnon -for the first time in her life- refuse to stand and finally break apart.