A Marauder's Guide to Falling Apart

Chapter Ten

Waking up the next morning proved difficult for Marlene. Just because she had been out attempting to fight off wards of evil did not give her a pliable excuse from missing her first official day of actual training. She could hear Emmeline cluttering pans in the kitchen when she opened her eyes. When she made her first movement – moving to pull the covers off of herself – she winced at the excruciating reminder of the previous night's activities and what it had done to her body.

Walking to the bathroom was also incredibly difficult. The injured knee was swollen and throbbed each time she put pressure on it. It was almost as if something had been shifted out of place. Though, she wouldn't have had a hard time believing if it had.

Surveying the damage in the mirror was equally as grim. The blood that had covered the entire left portion of her face and neck was caked to her skin, entrapping wads of her sticky blonde hair to her neck and forehead. The gash from where the blood had originated from wasn't quite as severe as she originally imagined it to be but it was a noticeable crevice in the space along her cheekbone.

The dark circles under her eyes indicated that she hadn't acquired adequate levels of sleep and only emphasized her distressed physical state. Her lip was slightly engorged larger than normal and a yellow, galleon sized bruise encircled her jaw.

The rest of her body told a similar story. When she stripped her pajamas and attempted to clean herself up in the shower it wasn't hard to discover how badly she had been injured. There were several scratches all over her body but the majority of them covered her hands and knees; most likely from the numerous times she had fallen against the asphalt. There was an unattractive small boulder size purple and blue bruise making its way from her upper thigh to her breast line. The darkest and most abundant amount of bruises seemed to bolster her midsection. When she twisted her body she could hear the unmistakable sound of bones shifting and the agonizing pain that consumed her following the movement. Definitely not broken like she had once thought, but not quite unscathed either.

Even though her scar had felt as if it had pulled apart from her body it was favorably untouched apart from the bruises that covered over it. Her knee was indeed swollen to at least two times the size of normal and was also oddly discolored. She couldn't bear to look at it for longer than necessary.

No wonder her friends had reacted the way they had. Marlene looked as if she had quite literally been run down by a train. She had woken too late and had lost the opportunity for a hot shower so she had to work quickly in the luke warm stream to scrub away the evidence. But even soap and water couldn't undo most of the visible damage and Emmeline eyed her wearily from behind her steaming mug as she entered the kitchen.

"What in Merlin's name happened to you?" she exclaimed as Marlene limped towards her.

"Never mind that," Marlene said briskly. "Can you help me fix up some of the superficial stuff so I don't get asked questions at the Hospital?"

"What's wrong with your leg?" her eyes were trained down at Marlene's battered knee. She pulled her wand out of her pocket and hopped off the chair to approach her.

Marlene bent over, letting out an unwilling cry in the process, and rolled up the hem of her pant leg for Emmeline to get a better look.

"Seriously," she exclaimed, her eyes wide and glossy. "What were you doing last night? I heard you get in after four in the morning. I hope your boyfriend wasn't –"

"Sirius didn't do this," Marlene laughed bitterly as if the thought of Sirius harming her was more ludicrous than a flying troll. The motion only caused the pain in her ribcage to begin throbbing and she had to stop. "I'd rather not talk about it." In truth, she wasn't able to share with Emmeline. As much as she'd like to fill in her friend on her misgivings it was strictly against Order code to discuss activities that transpired within.