Marlene

12- Striving To Become Animagi

"You lot are insane!" Marlene looked from James, to Sirius, to Peter. They had just confessed their plan to become Animagi so that they could spend full moons with Remus. "There's no way that Remus will ever agree to this!"

"That's why we haven't told him yet," said James, with an eye roll, "and you'd better keep it quiet McKinnon."

"Why on earth would I do that?" Marlene demanded.

"Because you could do it too," suggested Sirius, "become an anamagi I mean."

Marlene shook her head. Not believing her ears, "you're mental."

Peter seemed to be doubting their decisions, he quickly looked to James and Sirius for reassurance. They both nodded at him, their grins not faltering.

"I'm telling Remus right now," said Marlene, "I'm putting a stop to this-"

Both James and Sirius grabbed her to stop her standing up and leaving and set her back down in her armchair.

"What we really wanted was your help," said James, "because well, you're really good at Transfiguration-"

"Was that a compliment I just heard from you?" Marlene raised her eyebrows.

"Don't get used to it," growled James.

"Anyway," Sirius continued, "you're good at Transfiguration, so you could help us work out how to do it. You don't have to become one yourself, just help us out a bit."

Marlene looked at Sirius, who was giving her a pleading puppy dog expression, "fine! I'll help you out!"

"Excellent!"

********

"Really Lily, he's horrible, I don't see why you're still friends with him," Marlene complained about Snape again, "he's completely vile!"

"Don't say that Marls," Lily snapped at her best friend. The only time that Lily would ever use that tone was when defending Snape. Other than that, the two girls agreed on virtually everything.

"But he is Lily, you can't really think that he's a good person! I saw him practicing hexes on first years last week! Him and Avery and Mulciber, they're all Death Eaters in the making," Marlene continued.

"You keep saying that!" Huffed Lily, "but you're just as bad as they are, you won't give Severus a chance."

"A boy who's hexing innocent first years, doesn't deserve a chance," Marlene said stubbornly.

********

Throughout the rest of Marlene's second year, she helped Sirius, James and Peter develop their plan to become anamagi. It was tricky to find the information without being to obvious about it, and most of the books that they needed were found in the restricted section, but with the help of James' invisibility cloak they had managed to build up quite a good idea of the vague outline of the process, but it would need a lot more work before the three boys were ready to undergo the transformation.

As the end of the year neared, Marlene received increasingly excited letters from her younger sister Erica, who would be starting Hogwarts in September. The younger girl wanted to know everything about the castle, right down to how many steps there were on each staircase.

Marlene wrote back with as much information as she could, but it was quite hard to please Erica, as she kept asking more and more questions. Eventually Marlene had to tell her that she would be able to see for herself when she joined the school. Erica agreed, but reluctantly.

Lily however, didn't agree to what Marlene was telling her. She outright refused to see how awful Severus was, no matter how many times Marlene bought it to her attention.

The girls parted ways, at the end of the school year, not entirely on speaking terms as they had a large argument on the Hogwarts Express.

Marlene refused to believe that Lily was right about Severus, because everything that she had ever seen from him pointed towards him being a bad person.

At first, Marlene had tried to give Snape a chance. But she had seen him involved in one too many activities that she didn't approve of, such as hexing first years, or bullying Muggleborns. So overall she agreed with James and Sirius' attitudes towards the boy. Perhaps not their methods, as they tended to pick on the boy, but they definitely had a better grasp on his personality than Lily did. And this irritated Marlene to no ends.