50 Song Challenge- Harry Potter

6. Folding Chair- Regina Spektor

Come and open up your folding chair next to me

My feet are buried in the sand and there’s a breeze

There’s a shadow, you can’t see my eyes

And the sea is just a wetter version of the skies

Her mother tells her life begins at 21. They are sitting at the kitchen table, just the two of them. It is two months shy of Marlene McKinnon’s twenty-first birthday, and she feels so very old. She feels that she might as well make herself a cup of tea, get out the knitting and curl up on the sofa and wait to die. Of course, these days one doesn’t say things like that. Marlene remembers as soon as the words have entered her mind, remembers that this is a war, and in a war you can’t talk about death as though it will actually happen.

But when Marlene walks outside in her oversized red jumper and black overcoat, she realizes it is not actually that cold. She steps back into the house and sheds her stifling layers of winter clothing, and pulls on a little black dress and red platform heels.

She coats her lips in scarlet gloss and paints her lashes jet-black. She twists her dark hair into a messy bun, and feels much more like the old, twenty year old Marlene. She leaps down the stairs, her feet in their clunky platform shoes clacking against the polished wood floor. Her mother scolds her, and she hears her father yell something indistinctly from his office.

 But they come with her to the Order meeting, and her brother Warrick too. She is exceptionally proud to sit beside them at Alastor Moody’s worn dining table. A pregnant Lily sits opposite her, holding hands with James above the table. Dorcas sits next to Lily, gazing rather indiscreetly at Fabian Prewett, who has his arm around Hestia Jones. Remus Lupin and Sirius Black are sprawled side by side, Alice Longbottom is furiously scribbling Moody’s orders onto a piece of parchment, Frank Longbottom’s jaw is set determinedly as he gapes at his wife in awe, and countless other faces that Marlene never knew existed before she joined the Order fill miss-matched chairs.

 Gideon Prewett sits between his younger brother and McGonagall. He watches her as she voices an idea, nodding intently. Marlene knows that he understands what he’s in for, what they’re in for. But he doesn’t care. He will fight, fight for his brother and sister and countless little nephews. As McGonagall stops talking, he turns and winks at her, his friendly brown eyes gleaming. She knows he will fight for her too. She doesn’t blush or giggle, because she is not timid, girly Mary McDonald.

 She is strong, confident Marlene McKinnon, so she winks back. And in that moment, she thinks that perhaps she is not anywhere near as old as she thought. She draws such pleasure from a simple wink, from a just a glimpse of red hair and freckles.

After the meeting adjourns, she meets Gideon by Moody’s back steps. He is so much taller than her, but he holds her to his lanky body and they kiss under Moody’s muggle surveillance cameras. Marlene forgets that she is nearly twenty one. She forgets that she is a soldier in a war they may never win. She forgets the shadows under her eyes.

      Let’s get a silver bullet trailer

And have a baby boy

I’ll safety pin his clothes all cool and you’ll graffiti up his toys

Gideon takes her to his house. It is cozy and sprawling, with lovely views of thevillageofOttery St. Catchpole. They sit at a table in a kitchen full of sticky finger prints and drawings of lumpy potato-people. Gideon’s heavily pregnant older sister Molly sets a cup of Bergamot tea in front of her, and Marlene sips it from a chipped mug.

She spends the afternoon trying to prevent the two year old twins from climbing the apple tree out in the sunshine. She sits four year old Percy on her lap and hums to him softly, despite the fact that she sounds like a dying house-elf when she tries to sing. She versus the eldest two in a game of two-aside Quidditch- she and Bill versus Gideon and Charlie. She tries to hide a smile when Arthur attempts, to no avail, to get Percy to finish his chicken (he says the skin is too tough) and helps Molly tuck them all into bed. When she comes back downstairs, she finds Gideon sitting on the threadbare sofa, grinning fondly at the moving pictures on the walls.