A Marauder's Guide to Falling Forever

Chapter Sixteen

Marlene brought her fist down on Sirius's door probably more firmly than she had intended. She could hear the echoing sounds of hurried footsteps from inside and she was grateful that he was home. She wasn't certain what she was going to do if he hadn't been, because she could hardly contain her excitement over the opportunity she had been presented with.

Lily would have been a second alternative, but it was Sirius that she wanted to talk to. Needed to talk to.

The door flew open and his face was stony, on guard. She noticed immediately that his hand held his wand slightly raised. But his face immediately relaxed when he realized that it was Marlene standing at the entrance and not some other form of threat.

"Hi," Marlene gushed, then pushed her way into the apartment without waiting for an invitation.

"Uh, hi?" Sirius's tone was laced with confusion. "What are you doing here? I mean, not that I'm not happy to see you..."

"I was at the Leaky Cauldron because Patrick decided to ask the hospital to take me back into the program, and that made me super angry so I was yelling at him and then he kissed me and Rose gave him a piece of her mind so then I was upset and trying to leave but I ran into Peter and he told me that – "

"Wait. WHAT? Patrick kissed you?!" Sirius interrupted her, his voice loudly projecting over her and drowning her out.

"You're missing the point," Marlene ignored him, continuing to ramble on. "So then Rose, that's Patrick's sister if you didn't know, offered me a job at the Ministry because she heard that I wasn't going back to the program and Peter told me that how boring it is, because apparently works there. Did you know that? I never bothered to ask what he did for work. But anyways, there's a lot of opportunity and I figured out that – "

"No. I'm more interested in the Patrick part." Sirius sounded angry now, Marlene wasn't paying enough attention to him but if she had she would have noticed the way his fists had clenched together as though he were holding back from swinging them into the stone wall.

"Sirius! Pay attention!" she chided him. "So if I take the job then I can maybe get access into the Department of Mysteries. I can get my task for the Order done! Isn't that perfect? I can't believe how perfectly this is working out. Oh and Peter said that you're being moody. What's up with that?"

"You can't just barge in here at ten o'clock at night and throw that sort of information at me. How the hell am I supposed to concentrate on anything else you said?" A primitive sort of growl escaped his lips, a vivid indication that he was he frustrated.

Marlene sighed, "Well obviously I didn't initiate or reciprocate so it's not a big deal – "

"Of course it's a big deal! That piece of shit has been waiting in the shadows all this time waiting to ambush and take advantage of you. I knew something like this was bound to happen."

"Did you also miss the part where I said I didn't reciprocate it?" Marlene tried to steer him out of the murky edges of his anger. She hadn't come there to start another fight about Patrick, but she had needed him to know.

"No. I caught that part."

"Okay. So it's done. Patrick and I are no longer friends and you don't need to worry about that, okay? You were right all along and I was being naïve and unwilling to accept that you saw something and I didn't. Now I want you to focus on the rest of what I said to you." Marlene stepped forward to grab Sirius's wrists. They were iron firm from tension. "Merlin, Sirius. Relax your hands will you?"

Sirius let out another aggravated sort of noise and ripped his hands from Marlene's hold. Then he moved his hands to his head to rub his temples, eyes clenched together in rising anguish. Marlene had purposefully been subtle when she threw the bomb in there, hoping that he'd have a less adverse reaction to the news of Patrick's advances. Clearly she was wrong.