A/N: Firstly, my name has been changed from Ebony Nightinggale to Raivana for the incredibly important and valid reason of 'I felt like it'.

Secondly, depression, graduation year, and fanfiction writing do not make a good combination. Hence, why it's been more than a year since my last update, and during that time I've felt a lot like scrapping my whole fanfiction account on more than one occasion.

Thirdly, the next chapter was originally supposed to be part of this one which was originally supposed to be part of the previous chapter. That would have been a looooong chapter.

Fourthly, I looked back at my original outline again (I really need to stop doing that. Have I mentioned that I hate outlines with the passion of a thousand exploding TARDISes?) and realized that within said outline Marion's name was actually 'Marian'. Dear god he'd murder me. Also, Mandy was a werewolf. I have no idea why I thought that was a good idea. Spoiler alert: Mandy's not a werewolf. Now the outline only contains prospective chapter and story titles.

Fifthly, another reason this might have taken so long is that my brain has been overly stuck on my characters' older selves which makes it kind of hard to focus on their eleven-year-old selves. This however did result in a rather hilarious GoF era scene where Mandy is essentially attempting to give Marion "The Talk". I was giggling while that was playing out in my head. The family looked at me funny.

Sixthly, thank you to all my readers and reviewers,

Rai

PS: Seventhly, I know the owl scene should have taken place in the last chapter but I forgot about it and by the time I remembered it would have made the breakfast scene overly long. So, let's ignore that little plot-hole, shall we?

PPS: Eighthly, (which is amazingly actually a word) WARNING: There are swear words up to and including the f-bomb in Marion's bits.

Chapter Five: A Spark of Darkness

Marion looked like hell. There really was no other way to put it. Clothes disheveled and glasses askew, he looked like somebody had thrown him down a flight of stairs. Considering the way one of the other Ravenclaw boys was glaring at him, a tumble down the stairs might have been more welcome. Mandy had no doubt that if Marion were to return that glare, something would break or burn. Luckily for all flammable and breakable objects in the vicinity, Marion seemed intent on glaring at his shoes. It probably wasn't so good for the poor shoes though, or their owner's mood. His footsteps were oddly soft considering how tense the rest of his body was. He dropped on the bench across from Mandy, at the Gryffindor table, even though Eve wasn't there yet, and buried his head in his arms.

Mandy pushed a goblet of orange juice and a plate of pancakes at Marion in hopes that it would appease him before something broke. He lifted his head and downed the orange juice without a second thought. "Thanks, Mandy Addams," he mumbled before grabbing a knife and impaling his pancakes. Or he would have, if he hadn't slumped sideways and ended up stabbing the table instead. Luckily, it remained intact.

"Gees, Mar. Did you sleep at all last night?"

"No." After successfully ripping off a chunk of pancake and shoving it in his mouth, Marion grabbed the butter dish and dumped half of it on his plate.

"You didn't…er… light anybody's bed on fire, did you?"

"No. Though," he looked away and tugged roughly on a chunk of his hair. "I may have shredded Richard Morry's bed sheets… and his pajamas… and his hair might have got a little singed, just a little."

"Mar—"

"I know!" Marion snarled. "Control your temper, Marion. Don't let it get to you. Don't take it personally. Just ignore them. They only keep it up because you react. A little childish teasing never hurt anybody." Mandy grabbed his wrist to stop his tangent, and his attempt to gouge a hole in the table with his knife. She ignored his dark glare and gently pried the knife out of his hand, passing him a clean, undamaged one and a fork. Marion scowled. Mandy put her finger to his lips before he could start on another tangent.

"Can I finish my sentence now?"

Marion leaned away from her hand. "Fine."

"Are you okay?"

Marion blinked. "Huh?"

Mandy repeated herself as if speaking to someone who didn't know English very well. "Are. You. Okay?"

"Well… I, uh…" Marion shut his mouth and ducked his head, focusing intently on carving an ornate spider web out of his pancakes. As such, he didn't notice when Eve sat down right next to him.

"Hey, Eve. Is Marion okay?"

Marion jerked upright, nearly making Eve spill the milk jug. "Shouldn't you ask him?"

"I did. He started sulking."

"I am not sulking!"

"Brooding, then."

"I'm fine."

"No, you're pissed off and taking it out on your pancakes again. If you mutilate them any more you'll be eating them with a spoon."

Eve looked back and forth between them, wondering just how long this argument had been going on. Marion had nothing left to say. He glared down at his massacred pancakes like they were the cause of all his problems. Without looking up, Marion dumped his plate of pancake crumbs on Mandy's plate and grabbed himself some intact ones. He layered them like a cake, slathering butter on top of one before stacking the next on top of it.

Mandy just laughed and mixed the crumbs into her scrambled eggs. "Do you have to wreck a plate pancakes before you eat one every morning? Sheesh." Marion glared at her plate, annoyed that his attempt to annoy her didn't work. "And you still didn't answer my question."

"I told you I'm fine." Marion hissed.

"And I don't believe you; therefore, it's not an answer."

"You can't say something isn't an answer just because you don't like it."

"I certainly can say it. I just did."

Marion's face started turning a blotchy shade of red. It contrasted badly with the purple-green bruise forming along the side of his jaw. The blade of his knife twisted through his fingers. "Point taken."

Eve took the twisted knife from his hand and gave him another. "Let's try to keep the remainder of the tableware intact, shall we?"

Marion eyed the knife warily. "No promises."

"Mandy's right by the way. You look like hell."

He cradled his orange juice goblet in both hands and glared at its contents. "I got into a fight with Richard Morry."

"Was that before or after the sheet shredding incident?" Mandy asked.

"That was during the fight."

Before Mandy could get any closer to figuring out what exactly happened, a massive cacophony of noise echoed around the hall. Owls, tons of them flew around the hall dropping parcels and letters to students. Mandy looked on with delighted awe, right until feathers started landing in her food and drink. Eve seemed to take in all in stride but Marion covered his head and tried to make himself as tiny as possible. A red envelope landed on his pancakes. "Uh, Mar, I think you've got mail."

"Dear god! You were serious!" Eve gaped at the envelope while Marion lifted his head slowly, all color gone from his face. Even the bruise had turned white.

"Is it supposed to do that?" Mandy poked at the now smoking letter with the end of her fork.

"Yes," Marion said, his knuckles even whiter than rest of him where they gripped his upper arms. "It's about to explode and start shouting at me." And Marion really didn't like shouting. No wonder he looked so miserable. "Howler circumvention ideas anyone?"

"Well…" Eve bit down on her lip. She didn't look like she had any more ideas than Marion did.

Mandy glared at the smoldering envelope that caused her friends so much distress. She did the first thing that popped into her head. She grabbed the scrambled eggs' serving bowl and up turned on top of the offending piece of parchment. Eve and Marion both jerked in shock and nearly knocked each other off the bench. Before they could question her, an incomprehensible voice boomed from under the bowl with enough force that it nearly lifted the bowl off the table. Eve's hands shot forward and helped Mandy hold it down. Marion froze, his eyes fixed on the shouting bowl, not moving a millimeter even after the booming had been replaced by silence and the smell of burnt eggs. Eve slumped back into her seat with a shaky laugh while Marion still sat frozen.

Mandy peeked under the bowl and scrunched up her nose at the smell it released. She dropped it back down and looked up to a table full of staring Gryffindors. "Anybody like their eggs crispy?" She asked with the kind of innocence that could only be used by the guilty and immediately regretted it when it broke the rest of the table out of their shock and into rather rowdy laughter. It really couldn't be helping Marion's mood at all.

This was proven when Marion stood abruptly and nearly sprinted from the room. Eve jumped to her feet the moment after Marion. She scooped up his abandoned bag, her own, a goblet, and the pitcher of orange juice before following on his heels. Mandy was only steps behind with a plate of pancakes.

They found him in an empty classroom not far away, but far enough that the noise from the Great Hall was nothing but a dull hum. Marion had collapsed at a desk and slumped over with his head buried in his arms. Eve hooked his bag over the chair and set the orange juice in front of him.

It took him five minutes of his friends' silence and deep breathing before Marion lifted his head. He took the goblet of orange and drank it down in slow sips without looking up from the desk. "I'm fine." He mumbled into his drink. "I'm fine." It was even less convincing the second time.

"Uh huh, sure. Keep telling yourself that." Mandy set the pancakes in front of him. He pushed it away.

"I'm not hungry."

"You've had, what, three bites of breakfast?" Mandy stabbed a chunk of pancake and held the fork toward Marion. "C'mon now. Open the tunnel for the choo choo." Marion's head jerked up and he stared at Mandy like she had, well, just used baby talk to try to get him to eat. She dropped the fork. "Yeah, that never worked on my sister either."

"How did you think of that anyway?"

"Huh? I was just being silly and trying to make you eat something."

"Not that," Marion rolled his eyes. He must be feeling better. "The thing with the bowl."

"Oh," Mandy rubbed the back of her head. "Well… I didn't really think. I just did."

"Of course," Marion muttered. After a moment of silence, he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Even quieter he added, "Thanks Mandy Addams."

Mandy beamed. "You're much welcome, Mar!" Marion scowled at her but it only made her grin wider. She picked the fork back up and tried to pass it to him. "Choo choo?" Marion smacked her hand away with a nasty snarl.

Yup, he was definitely feeling better.

Eve, however, had never felt so useless in her entire life.

Marion thought he rather liked Potions. It was amazing how much one class could improve one's mood.

The class started quite well. Professor Snape hadn't mispronounced his name and Jacquelyn Taylor had nearly had a nervous breakdown when she had been unable to answer the questions the professor belted at her. Then again, unless you'd completely memorized 1000 Magical Herbs and Fungi, it was unlikely that anyone could have answered them. Marion had, of course, read the whole book over the summer, it's not like had anything else to do, but apparently memorizing things was more difficult for other people. He couldn't fathom why. It was also exceedingly easier to focus when he actually had something to focus on, not just a jumbled up bunch of too fast spoken words that never seemed to be in quite the right order.

Regardless, before doing anything, Marion rewrote all the instructions anyway and ran through each step mentally and made perfectly sure he knew what each one meant. He might have done it again if Professor Snape hadn't snapped at him for procrastinating, making the rest of the class giggle. The one downside of the class so far. Why would you giggle because someone got yelled at? It was stupid.

Isabella Howard was rushing. It was obvious to anyone who didn't have complete tunnel vision that she wanted to finish first and prove how much better she was than everyone else. She had been bragging about her potion skills since she got off the train after all. It would be such a shame if she couldn't live up to it. Isabella Howard was incredibly lucky that, at that moment anyway, Marion didn't have complete tunnel vision. He snatched her porcupine quills off the table before she had a chance to grab them and do something stupid.

"Hey! Give those back you little thief!"

"No."

"What?" Her screech not only grated at Marion's nerves but drew the attention of the rest of the class.

"I said no. Quite clearly I believe." Had sizzling caldrons always been so damn loud?

"Perhaps you could elaborate, Mr. Andrews?" When had Professor Snape gotten so damn close? The man was looming over their lab table like one of the gargoyles of Notre Dame.

"I'm in the blast zone." Marion scowled at Isabella Howard instead of the professor. "If you put these quills in before taking your caldron off the fire it would have blown up and I'm sitting close enough that it could have hit me too. Not to mention, at this stage, this potion is more likely to cause boils rather than cure them, which would be rather unpleasant. Though, I suppose you'd have had it worse since you were rather stupidly leaning over your caldron and it would have blown up in your face, gotten in your eyes, and possibly in your mouth and down your throat. If you wish to continue as you were and drink a bunch of boil pus, be my guest, but kindly take your stupidity somewhere you won't inflict it on me as well." He dropped the quills back on the table and turned back to his own potion. He quickly took his caldron off the fire. It'd heated up faster than he thought it should.

Professor Snape snapped at the rest of the class to get back to work. Everybody's heads jerked back to their own caldrons, several quickly pulling theirs off their fires as they over-boiled and glaring at Marion for distracting them.

Marion smiled.

Lunch ended up at the end of the Ravenclaw table. Eve and Mandy weren't quite sure how they came to this decision. Considering the looks the other first-years were giving Marion, the girls weren't entirely sure it was a very wise choice. Marion, however, didn't look bothered by this. He looked oddly content. It was a little creepy, especially paired with the happy humming and the French onion dip he was eating from the container with a spoon.

"So…" Mandy poked at her salad. "Potions good then?"

"Exemplary," Marion's creepy grin turned toward her. "Isabella Howard tried to blow herself up."

Eve studied the gaggle of unhappy looking girls wondering which one was Isabella Howard while Mandy studied Marion. "Uh… You didn't blow up her cauldron, did you?"

Marion's face fell. "No, I said she did. Tried to. I stopped her."

"So… why're they all mad at you?" Marion just shrugged at Eve's question and went back to humming at his dip. Eve and Mandy shared a look and a shrug. A strange silence followed. Marion didn't notice. The girls certainly did.

Mandy decided she had to do something about that. "So… what classes do you guys have this afternoon?"

"Transfiguration then Defense," Eve replied after realizing that Marion wasn't going to answer.

Marion did answer, "Same in reverse."

"Great!" Mandy exclaimed, "I had Defense this morning and Trans yesterday. We'll all be able to compare notes!" Marion muttered something that sounded a lot like "Oh, joy" but it was covered up when Mandy continued, "Speaking of notes, which of you writes backwards?"

"Eve," Marion answered before Eve could. "What?" He asked as the girls gaped at him. "Mandy wouldn't have asked if it was her and it sure as hell wasn't me."

Eve rolled her eyes and Mandy giggled. "Why'd you do that?"

"Because I'm a lefty," Eve waved her fork at them, "and I've yet to find an instant drying ink that actually does what it says on the tin."

"Hmm." Eve could tell that Marion was already thinking of ways to make a proper instant drying ink while Mandy did the same in a curious babble. Eve just smiled, wondering how two people could be so alike and so different at the same time.

The next period was uneventful, other than the fact that it started with a desk turning into a hog and ended with a slightly pointy, slightly silvery matchstick that Eve was very proud of.

Defense against the Dark Arts however, was not off to a very good start. Eve currently sat cross-legged on the desk with her sketchbook in her lap. She had already read through the first two chapters of the book and taken notes on them so she really didn't have anything else to do at the moment unless she wanted to work on homework, which she really didn't. It was an hour into what was supposed to be their Defense lesson and the professor had yet to show up. There were only three people left in the room. Though Eve might not have been paying enough attention during the opening feast to even know what the man, if it even was a man, looked like, she was quite certain that he was not in the room. It was only Eve, Natasha Duke, who was working on a history essay, and, surprisingly, Gaius, who was sulking. Eve really wanted to kick something.

The door burst open and a grumpy looking middle-aged man strode to the front of the room. "Get down from there, girl. Ten points from Slytherin," he shooed Eve off the desk and turned and glared at the three students. "Ten points from each of your missing cohorts as well. I suppose they didn't feel the need to learn how to defend against themselves. Guess that means you lot aren't very bright then." Duke opened her mouth to protest but the professor cut her off. "No talking out of turn. Ten points from Slytherin."

"But I didn't even—"

"And now you are. Ten more points from Slytherin." Duke's jaw snapped shut and the professor scowled across the room at them, fixing Eve with a particularly dirty look. "Well there's hardly any point in teaching you lot." With that he swept out of the room, leaving three stunned eleven-year-olds behind him.

Gaius's chair toppled over as he jumped to his feet. "What the hell was that?"

"I think," Duke dumped her things into her bag, "we just lost a hundred points in less than a minute."

"That's what I thought. I'm telling Professor Snape," he grabbed his bag and stormed out the door with Duke behind him. Eve followed them out in a daze, not noticing the abandoned drawing pencil that lay in pieces beneath the desk.

It had taken less than two chapters of the book for Marion to decide he didn't like Transfiguration. It took less than ten minutes of class for him to decide he fucking hated it. It made no sense. How could you turn a thing into something completely, fundamentally different? And no 'magic' was not an acceptable answer. The magic still had to be doing something to the object, rearranging it in some way. That was all well and good for changing something's shape, but wood into medal? Or something living?

He jabbed at his wand at the fucking match again. Giving up, Marion dropped the wand on the desk and leaned back in his chair with a snarl. There was either something very wrong with the subject or very wrong with him. He'd like to think it was the former, but the latter was far more likely. There was always something wrong with him. Everyone said so.

There had to be something he was missing. Something simple. Nobody else was having the same problem. Marion tapped his fingers on the desk and reread his notes, again, as if something would have changed from the last time and everything would suddenly make some goddamn fucking sense.

Focus had become a nearly impossible task. Even the written words in front of him were blurring into an unordered mess. Like trying to look through heat fueled haze. Marion focused on the match as if by glaring at the fucking thing he could will something to happen.

His desk burst into flames.

The shrieks that echoed around the room told that his was not the only one. All the matches in the room seemed to have caught fire, including the professor's box of them, and maybe the ones that were now mostly needles, too.

Well, that was certainly something.

Marion completely missed whatever spell the professor used to douse the flames. He was too stunned to even notice the flames were gone until water dripped off his desk onto his lap and Professor McGonagall shouted, "Who is responsible for this?" over the voices of panicking students.

"It was Andrews, Professor!" Marion's head jerked up from staring at the dripping water to find a suddenly silent classroom and Philip Davis on his feet pointing at him. "He's been lighting stuff on fire since our first night!"

"Yeah!" Richard Morry agreed loudly enough to make Marion wince through his baffled stupor. "He set Phil's bed on fire the other night and wrecked mine this morning!" Several more students echoed this sentiment, blaming him for their over-boiled potions caldrons that morning. Isabella Howard's voice rose over the others, accusing him of stealing her supplies.

That was it, Marion knew, as Professor McGonagall turned to him. He was guilty. That was it. He was guilty. Of course he was. He was always guilty. It was his fault. Always his fault. Why should change just because his location did?

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, boy!"

"Well, Mr. Andrews, do you have anything to say for yourself?"

Marion shook his head silently, eyes focused somewhere about the height of the professor's elbows. It wouldn't matter what he said anyway.

"I do believe I made it quite clear that such antics will not be tolerated in my classroom," the professor said. She pointed to the door. "Twenty points from Ravenclaw. Now you will remove yourself from my classroom and expect detention at Mister Filch's earliest convenience."

Marion stood stiffly and left the room, his bag clutched tightly to his chest. He didn't know the door slammed open in front of him, meeting the wall with a crash that knocked the hinges loose.

He didn't know how long he wandered the halls until he found himself curled into a tight ball and wedged in an alcove behind a suit of armor. He didn't know how long he sat there, empty of thought, (as he had so many times before huddled under the bed in his room after his father had thrown him there, the man's voice still booming from the other side of the locked door) before a Gryffindor prefect found him and marched him back to Ravenclaw Tower. He didn't know that he missed dinner and lost Ravenclaw another ten points for being out after curfew.

He didn't know his wand wad missing until Professor Flitwick gave it back to him, along with his Transfiguration book and a disapproving look before shooing him up to the dormitory.

He didn't know how long he sat there in the dark, turning the wand over and over in his hands thinking about hazel trees, and phoenixes, and things that lay hidden under old cabinets in backrooms, forgotten twice over because no one even noticed they were gone.

Next, Chapter Six: A Red Haired Girl

In which the girls have potions. Snape gets nostalgic, then angry, then nostalgic again, and Mandy and Marion might actually have a meaningful conversation.