The Pureblood Princess | Sirius Black

|100| Make Me, Foxy

Sitting in the grassy clearing of the forbidden forest, surrounded by tall looming trees that creaked in the summer wind, Marlene stared without blinking at the letter in her shaking hands, reading it for what must've been the thousandth time since it arrived during her Muggle Studies class earlier that day.

She knew quite some time had passed since she'd run out of the castle. The sun was gone, slipped behind the mountains ages ago and replaced with a star strewn sky and silvery moon, meanwhile, the searing summer air had steadily cooled as her stomach growled louder and louder.

At some level, Marlene McKinnon knew she should go back in before her friends started to really worry, that she should eat something, revise for her exams, get a good nights rest before classes began bright and early the next morning... but she couldn't bring herself to do it.

All she could do was sit on the patchy grass, paralyzed by the words in that damn letter.

She found it peculiar how a few squiggles on a piece of parchment could change not only ones entire mood, but entire mental outlook on life. It had only been a couple of weeks ago that she'd been glaring at Madge and Regulus on their 'not-date', listening to Finley Bell's outrageous saga of embarrassing moments throughout the quidditch season that year, and laughing so hard her side hurt at James's stupid prank on the other idiot boys.

Now, it felt as if all those things were just a dream— that the foreboding, all encompassing feeling of hopelessness was her new normal. That she'd never be happy again.

She looked down at the tearstained, crumpled piece of parchment and swallowed the lump in her throat. Her mother had written to tell her (before the article came out in the next day's news paper) that another rescue mission had taken place for her father... only this time, the auror's actually found something.

Her father's hand.

Just his hand.

The tears fell down freely and she clutched the letter to her chest, rocking back and forth, sobbing in the dark under the stars her father loved so much.

She didn't care that she wasn't supposed to be there. She didn't care that an acromatula could come creeping in to make her a midnight snack. She didn't care that she might miss classes the next morning or that if someone caught her she'd end up scrubbing pots in detention well into her fifth year.

She knew she should care, she just didn't.

All she cared about was the fact that her father was probably alone and hurting... and she couldn't do a damn thing about it.

It wasn't fair. None of this was fair. Why him? Why her father? Why did that monster take such sick pleasure in torturing her family like this? It was like it was all a game to him... Voldemort was like a cat playing with its prey... Dangling hope of finding her father alive, just to rip it away at the last minute... over and over again... Why not just kill him and be done with it all—

She cried harder for even thinking such a thing.

But eventually the tears ran out... and her pain and heart ache was replaced with only numbness.

"Marlene!" a voice called in relief from somewhere near the clearings edge after some time had passed.

Normally, that voice would make her stomach flutter with pleasant anticipation, but at the moment... she felt nothing. It was as if her emotions had be shut off.

"Marlene... Mythical Magpies, how long have you been out here?" the voice asked.

"Muggle Studies," she replied, her own voice hollow and hoarse from crying and screaming at forest animals (she felt a little guilty for scaring off a poor misguided thestral that crossed her path around twilight).