A Marauder's Guide to Falling in Love

Chapter Ten

Christmas morning couldn't have come soon enough for Marlene. She was joined soon enough by the rest of the family.

Though Uncle Tom wasn't blood related, he was definitely part of the family. He never married and liked to surprise the kids with elaborate gifts from all his travels. He was a funny man, much unlike his best friend, Dave, and was constantly cracking jokes and performing cheesy muggle magic tricks. Afterall, when there were muggles around, there was most certainly no real magic allowed in the McKinnon household.

Then there was her dad's side of the family: Aunt Betty and Uncle Ned along with their four children Stephen, Darlene, Deborah and Robert all of which were under the age of ten. Uncle Ned was also a wizard but had married a muggle. It was unknown yet whether or not their children possessed any magical abilities but it was often hard to hide their promising signs from the unknowing Uncle Bernie and his children.

Grandma Elsie and Grandpa Andrew McKinnon, Dave's parents, were kind and loving grandparents and considering that Marlene had never known her mother's parents, they were everything Marlene could ask a grandparent to be.

The McKinnon household was crowded, to say the least. There were kids running around, Uncle Tom attempting to pull quarters from behind the ear every time someone turned a corner, Marjorie complaining loudly every chance she had about how crowded and noisy the house was, Uncle Bernie boasting proudly and trying to upstage everyone else's children, her mom – trying desperately to keep the house neat and organized amidst the chaos, and the two bathrooms were just not enough to keep the population satisfied.

Marlene lost the sanctuary of the downstairs bathroom; her hiding place had become a high traffic route for those family members that found the upstairs toilet occupied. She instead had to resort to spending her day in the company of Marjorie, who had deemed it necessary to avoid the younger children.

"Monsters," she had scoffed loudly enough for many of the adults in the room to hear. Marlene hung her head down shamefully as though trying to appear like she didn't know the girl sitting beside her. "I am so glad that I will never have children."

The two girls headed upstairs at the insistence of Molly after Marjorie had rudely tried to trip four year old Stephen into landing in the punch bowl. Luckily he had swerved just in the nick of time and went running into Uncle Ned's arms on the opposite side of the room to more closely examine the large unyielding array of ribbon he had begun pulling from his sleeve. Molly hadn't missed the gesture and quickly suggested that the girls might find some activity of more interest to them up in Marlene's bedroom.

Marlene had given her mother a dirty glance as she knew very well how little Marlene wanted to spend her day hanging around Marjorie but Molly had busied herself once more with trimming the final decorations on the large pine tree that had been brought in the evening prior.

"I can't wait until next year," Marjorie said dully after she had entered the room and thrown herself onto the bed. "Lucky that I will be finishing a year early. I am moving out after school and then I won't have to come on these silly family excursions any longer. It's a shame that you still have a few years left to go."

She didn't look pitiful to this fact at all and in fact Marlene rather enjoyed spending her holidays surrounded by family – most of them anyways.

"I don't mind," Marlene made the mistake of opening her mouth. Marjorie raised one thick eyebrow in skepticism before laughing boisterously and throwing her head back so that her thick neck jiggled slightly from the movement.

"Oh come now," she managed to choke out, ignoring the daunting expression that Marlene was issuing. "You can't be serious?"

"Why is that so funny?" Marlene had never spoken out to her older cousin before but she felt her patience growing thin. Her breathing became a little deeper and more uneven than it had been when she was down stairs and surrounded by the numerous other family members that did not seek to agitate her.