Sirius had almost forgotten her, and they had to bring her back.

He thinks this venomously as he cries out in his cell in Azkaban. Bellatrix is laughing at him, but he doesn't care. He has eyes only for those dementors and the memories they bring back. They pick the ones they know will make him suffer, and they pick correctly. He hates them for it.

Sirius sees Marlene now, not as she is—dead, and rotting in her tomb at Ottery St. Catchpole Cemetery—but as she was.

He sees her at fifteen, reckless and lively, and the most beautiful girl he has ever seen, with loosely curled hair the colour of apple cider and eyes that are a billion different colours. This he cannot fathom. He has seen many a person who has nice eyes—his cousin Andromeda, for starters, and Prongs's Lily-flower—but he has never known anyone to have eyes that are multiple colours. But Sirius looks at Marlene's as she's giggling and climbing the branches of the Whomping Willow (stupid girl, he thinks, she never could stay away from trouble for long), and he sees green and blue and brown and bloody hell, even purple . He must be hallucinating, but he's not, because Marlene exists, she's right there in front of him, pale and freckled and imperfect but divine.

Sirius sees her at seventeen, and the light in her eyes has faded, but it's still there. She's choking on her tears as they graduate, going back to the Hogwarts Express on the same little boats that brought them to Hogwarts for the first time. She trails her right hand in the water of the Black Lake, and he grabs her other one like it's something precious that's slipping away from him.

"McKinnon," Sirius says slowly, "are you scared?" He doesn't have to ask what of?, because she knows. He's asking if she's scared of the future, of Hogwarts, their safe sanctuary, finally being removed, of the impending war and the Death Eaters and the unknown. Marlene waits a while before replying.

"No." Her voice is cold and impassive, and she is not at all the trouble-making, cynical girl she used to be. But then she speaks again, and her utterance is small, so soft Sirius can barely hear it, and incredibly childlike. "What if we die?"

"We won't," he tells her firmly, and that's that.

He doesn't see her again until she joins the Order of the Phoenix two years later. They're twenty. Marlene's hair is shorter now, cut to a convenient length just below her chin. She wears bright red lipstick and black leather jackets, and Sirius thinks she's grown up. But he sees her awkwardly standing among all the Aurors and Curse Breakers, and he knows it's all a pretense. Nobody else sees this, not even Lily, who was Marlene's best friend. The conversation around them is 'wow, Mars, you look so different' and 'looking good, McKinnon.'

Sirius doesn't talk to her, not really, until Gideon and Fabian's funeral. The little Ministry man is droning on about the heroes the Prewett brothers were, and Molly Weasley wails for her siblings as her fire-haired children gather around her.

He's sitting at the back with Marlene, and she's stifling her giggles.

"What are you doing?" he hisses.

"It's hilarious," Marlene tells him. "Gideon was hilarious. And that little twit is giving him the most boring send-off in the cosmos."

Sirius sits there marveling at her for a long moment. "Y'know what we should do, McKinnon?"

"Yeah?"

"Let's get out of here. I have a motorcycle," he says proudly. "We'll get a few butterbeers in the memory of the Prewetts."

Marlene snorts. "No." Sirius nods awkwardly. "Make it firewhiskey," she adds, and they sneak out of the ceremony before they can see Gideon and Fabian's cold, blue forms being lifted into the ground.

She doesn't clutch his waist as they fly; she throws her arms in the air and screams for joy, and he scolds her that she'll fall off if she keeps doing that. But Marlene doesn't stop. She yells out: "Long live Gideon and Fabian!", and whispers softly in Sirius's ear, "And long live Sirius Black and Marlene McKinnon."

He laughs as they touch down next to the Hog's Head, and knows that they'll survive this god-awful war, him and Marlene. He can't imagine it if they don't.

They drink for hours until they're well hammered. They're singing the song that's playing over the magical wireless in the pub at the top of their lungs. They are alive.

"Hey little train, wait for me...I once was blind, but now I see...Have you left a seat for me? Is that such a stretch of imagination?'"

Marlene holds the last note on the word 'imagination,' and Sirius laughs.

"You're excellent, McKinnon," he tells her. They pass out not long after, and they're found by a livid Lily, husband, newborn child and all, two hours later. Neither of them can explain: they're laughing too hard.

Almost a year passes, and they're sitting on the patio of Benjy Fenwick's house, which is Order Headquarters even after Benjy's gone.

"Oi, Black, guess what?" Marlene says absently. She's grown out her hair again so that it reaches her elbows. Sirius hasn't said anything about it, but he thinks he likes it better that way.

"What?"

"It's my birthday today. Twenty-one. Big number, eh?"

"Birthday?" He chokes. "I haven't gotten you a present."

"Wouldn't have expected you to, I didn't tell you," she giggles, pushing a stray curl out of her kaleidoscope eyes. "I forgot it, myself. I just looked at a calendar today, and I say, really loud: 'Fuck, Marlene! It's May 2nd!'"

Sirius laughs out loud. "You forgot your own birthday. Nice going, McKinnon."

They don't even know how it happens, but suddenly they're kissing. Marlene's younger sister, Mirabelle, has told her that you're supposed to see fireworks when you have your first great snog.

Marlene doesn't see fireworks. Her eyes are closed.

Sirius kisses her a lot more after that. They never make it official. They aren't James and Lily: there's no coronation of their relationship involving speeches and banners. They simply fall into their comfortable bond. There's no cheese, because Marlene wouldn't have stood for that.

Dorcas Meadowes's funeral is a week later. Sirius and Marlene sit at the back, and he secretly wonders (even though it's very, very bad, Black) if she's going to drag him off to the Hog's Head again, but she's weeping for her friend and he thinks it's not a good time.

But then she's leading him towards the flying motorcycle after the body's been buried.

"Why?" Sirius asks. His heart is full of sorrow for Dorcas, but it's also full of love (as soppy as it is) for the skinny, freckled girl holding his hand.

"I want a drink," Marlene pouts.

They go back to the Hog's Head. There's a different song playing on the wireless, but they sing the same one they sung when they ditched the Prewett brothers' funeral.

"We're happy, Ma, we're having fun...It's beyond my wildest expectations," Marlene shouts over Celestina Warbeck's love songs.

"McKinnon?" Sirius asks on their way back to headquarters.

"Mm?"

"Think we'll ever get married? Like Prongs and Lily?"

"Yes," she says finally. "But it won't be for a while. We have to get out of this mess first."

"So you, Marlene McKinnon—blimey, I can't believe this—I'm going to hold you to it, y'know, no crossed fingers or any of that shite—you're going to be my wife once the war's done?"

"Don't say that," Marlene replies, wrinkling her nose.

"Say what?"

"Wife. It makes me sound so small and insignificant." She wraps her arms around her body as Sirius slings his arm around her shoulders.

"But you are small and insignificant, love," he breathes in her ear, chortling softly.

"Piss off, Black." But Marlene's laughing now, and Sirius thinks it's the best sound in the world.

The memories are put on fast forward: it's a warm night in July, and he's waiting on the patio at headquarters where they had their first kiss. Marlene's supposed to meet him soon. She checks on her family every night, just to make sure they're safe. Sirius thinks it's cool how caring she is.

He's got a ring in his pocket, but he hasn't told anyone. Not Remus, not Peter, not Prongs or Lily or Emmeline. It's a simple silver band, because Marlene likes silver, with a tiny emerald, because that's her birthstone. It's not an engagement ring. No, Sirius doesn't think it's an engagement ring. More like a promise, to swear that they'll really get married, maybe even the day the war's over. Maybe even that soon. Merlin knows he wouldn't mind.

Marlene doesn't show up for half an hour, and Sirius's getting worried. He tells Emmeline—shy, sweet Em, who hasn't said a word since Benjy's death—that he's going to check to see where Marlene's off to. He's not even sure Emmeline heard him until she nods mutely.

Sirius is too late, and it kills him. He finds Marlene in the living room with her parents and her sisters, Mirabelle and Megara. The eyes he once wondered at are glossed over. The pale, freckled cheeks are cold and blue.

"Damn it," he whispers, shaking her as if it'll help. "Shite...McKinnon...wake up, please wake up..."

But she's gone.

Finally, Sirius manages to pull out of the memories. He's weeping and shouting and he's one sorry mess, really. Marlene's song is playing in his head.

I was held in chains, but now I'm free...I'm hanging in there, don't you see? In this process of elimination...

"Leave me," he whimpers as the dementors glide down the corridors of Azkaban, taunting him with the losses he has suffered. "Leave me..."

It's not the fact that he knew he was innocent that helps him escape, as he tells his godson, Harry, much later when he explains everything. It was a memory that sustained him: the memory of a fifteen-year-old girl climbing the Whomping Willow on a breezy September day, a girl whose hair would be the colour of apple cider forever.

He loved Marlene McKinnon, and his last thought before he jumps into the icy waters surrounding the prison is that he never told her.