Marlene McKinnon doesn't believe in happily ever after. (The happily, sure, but not the ever, and after what, she'd like to know.)

Happily doesn't take much, really. Not for her.

She hears the word easy a lot, and fun too. The way the words are meant isn't always fun but she is easy, she doesn't take things hard. She doesn't know if she can. Marlene likes a laugh and a bloke and Sirius Black has got a motorbike and can show a girl a good time without trying.

He calls James Potter Prongs. She has no idea why, but Marlene doesn't ask or expect to know. Potter and Lily are Black's real life like her family's hers. Sirius would take spells of green or red or any shade for his friend's girl before the thought that he could maybe make time to save McKinnon too ever strayed his way. And she'd put her own wand to Black's throat if it meant keeping anyone from so much as breaking her kid sister's pinky toe or aiming a wand at her brother or breathing the wrong way at her Ma.

She loves them down to her bratty cousin Sean and so help her she'll save them all.

Black gets that, what comes first, and Gideon does too. On a good day she might be Gideon's girl but for him it'll be Fabian first, forever.

(Somedays Marlene wonders what it's like to be first for someone, before she brushes the thought out of her hair.)

She understands, because she can't see out from under the McKinnon roof that keeps even uncles and nieces close to a someday when family's for every other Wednesday or once-a-month firecalls or owling when she's lonely. So she's alright.

(Always is.)

She's not sure she always gets Gideon. Brothers are one thing but twins are another and being with him is such a trick since it's sort of like being with Fabian too. It mucks her up, loving one Prewett more than the other. You need an awful steady keel for a balancing act like that and if there's one thing Marlene's sure she's not, it's steady. She likes mixing men as much as mixing drinks. And Gideon doesn't think like she does, that you have to try out a bunch even if you think you've already found your favorite. Just to be sure. Gideon's the sort of bloke who'll stick to the same comfortable drink, but he's always looking to see what everyone else is having, too. And sooner or later he'll spot something that looks better. If it isn't all that, he might switch back, but it's not the same. He's really only waiting around for a drink that'll live up to his expectations.

Marlene never really expects much. (It's the only way not to be disappointed.) She thinks it's funny how much is expected about her, especially when it comes to disappointing.

Gideon and the lads get her stout but it's firewhiskey with Sirius Black. He's a firewhiskey sort of fellow, all burning and bad for you, beautiful when he catches the light just right and sure to make you forget your own name if you fall into him.

(At nineteen, firewhiskey's her favorite.)

And still, Sirius gets family. She could almost love him just for that, mucked up as his blood relations are. He asks nothing of her and doesn't pay a lot of mind to whatever she's offering. He's all poured into fights and flying bikes and holding the line.

Marlene tries not to ask too much. She understands.

(She does.)

Sirius' flat is sadly spartan but still a mess, strewn with photos he hasn't pinned up, school books sticky with dust, even some scattered owl droppings though he's never managed to keep a pet for long. She guesses he goes to James' a lot, not the other way around, and supposes bachelor flats hold less and less attractions for non-bachelors. Maybe that's why she's been stumbling into him more and more.

His sheets are clean and his pillows are flat, scratchy without cases. Next time she brings him a pillow case, thin and cuddly from years of use. She stole it from the laundry her mother had only just spell-cleaned, though it's lost all its warmth by the time she remembers it.

Sirius looks at the pillow case like it's a Lethifold, laying some claim of suffocating death, until she laughs and makes it a gift, something to keep, something his, not hers.

(Gifts, he likes. Gifts are easy.)

She knows he'll have forgotten it was ever hers before he's slept on it thrice. Marlene can grin at that. It's Sirius. She's known he's a short-term bloke since back in sixth year, but he keeps manifesting in her hazy tomorrows.

(She knows it's silly, especially in these Dark Mark days when tomorrows are murkier than ever.)

Gideon ought to get a motorbike. She'll tell him when he swings 'round.

(He always does.)

Gideon says she'll never be more than a footnote to Sirius Black. He's wrong, that's reaching too far. The footnotes can be skipped over but they can't be taken out, because they matter to the meaning, to the background. Remove them and it's incomplete, but Black's complete without her. She's not so much as a thread in the tapestry of his life. She doesn't even know where her tangle would cross into it. If his life was simple enough to call a book, she'd be in it as a line in brackets.

She doesn't resent it, and maybe that's why Black keeps coming back. She likes brackets. They can be lifted out but the story's better with them, to her way of thinking.

And all she's ever wanted to do is make things better. Because sure as hell the world is roughshod enough, and Marlene's seen what happens when someone doesn't care about making the world a little softer, when someone forgets all the happy corners of the world and never thinks about making it a little easier on anyone else, only himself.

(Her father made their world so much harder when he checked out of it.)

Everyone in her year was so surprised when she went for St. Mungo's. Like a lot of things, she didn't advertise it, but she wanted Healing. It's work and it's tough and everyone knew Marlene McKinnon only likes easy and fun and happy, but she takes what's hard (mending engorged thumbs or half-slit throats and watching another family the Order couldn't save admitted, running about so full of thrill and angry fire she forgets she could have died in that last duel) and finds the little moments that stave off destruction.

So she dares the best-looking boy she knows into taking her home, and steals her little sister's robes to wear, challenges Hagrid to an ale-chugging contest knowing she'll only last three minutes, musses Gideon's hair and does things he'll disapprove of just so he'll get mad, goes on broomstick rides with her brother and makes her auntie hot chocolate, and she barrels on and doesn't think too long about whys or what-comes-after.

(Marlene shoves unhappiness under the rug. She trips on it sometimes, but it hasn't kept her down yet. She just paints on a touch more cover-up to conceal blotchiness and bruises as well as her freckles and steps out without a seeming worry in the world.)

It's laughter that she falls in love with and as long as she can, she'll laugh along.

(And if they're laughing at her, she never needs to know.)

a/n: please review! (a bit of a messy little fic, something of a counterpart to Stray Thought and Fools- i wrote Marlene from others' eyes but never really plunged into her own head, really. hope you enjoyed it anyways, and i'd love to hear any thoughts you have on it!)