A Marauder's Guide to Falling Apart

Chapter Twenty Two

"Marlene!" Lily sounded surprised when she opened her front door to find Marlene standing outside of it.

Marlene couldn't blame her; she had just shown up to the Potters unannounced when she hadn't been by in a very long time. Despite the fact that Marlene had only seen Lily the previous evening, they hadn't had much time to talk. And selfishly, Marlene wasn't at the Potters to see Lily.

"Hi," Marlene smiled. "Is James home?"

"James?" Lily was obviously confused. "Yes. He's upstairs. I think he just got out of the shower."

She moved aside to let Marlene into the house and closed the door from where the cold air was blowing in. Lily disappeared upstairs and Marlene hung around in the entrance hall awkwardly. If their friendship had remained normal she supposed that she could have felt more comfortable taking off her coat and wandering into the living room without invitation. But she felt intrusive and out of place, so instead she waited patiently for Lily and James to return.

"What are you doing in your coat?" Lily gave her a funny look and Marlene flushed with slight embarrassment. Of course Lily was still her family; she shouldn't let a few months of strained contact disrupt what they had with one another.

"This is a nice surprise," James was still rubbing a towel through his damp, messy hair. "Lily said that you wanted to see me?"

"Yes," Marlene muttered. She was beginning to have serious second thoughts about what she intended to do. But she swallowed her doubt and took a deep breath; summoning courage she wasn't sure existed and said what she wanted to say.

"I need to ask you about Patrick."

Lily wandered into the kitchen claiming to make tea, but Marlene suspected that she meant for them to have some privacy. James looked shocked and said nothing for a minute, leaving Marlene to momentarily regret her decision.

"What about him?" he finally asked. He didn't have the same tone in his voice that Sirius did when the topic of Patrick came up, but it wasn't difficult for Marlene to detect his unhappiness about the conversation topic.

"I need to know why you hate him," Marlene said with more certainty than she felt. "I need to know why Sirius hates him."

"Maybe you should ask Sirius – "

"No," Marlene cut him off. "No. I think I'd like you to tell me. You and I both know how that conversation is going to go, and I think it will save us both a tremendous headache if we just have this conversation now and leave him out of it."

James scratched his head with the towel again and looked at Marlene with contemplation. Eventually he gave in and sighed. Moving towards the couch in the living room, he dropped into a seat and indicated for Marlene to do the same.

"Patrick was a Slytherin."

"So?" Marlene didn't get why that was reason alone to despise someone. True, every Slytherin she knew had turned out to be nothing but rotten, but Patrick didn't seem that way at all.

"You didn't let me finish," James sounded annoyed. "Patrick was a Slytherin. While in school he hung around a really bad crowd of friends. Sirius's cousin Narcissa Black, for example. Although she goes by Malfoy now."

"Oh," Marlene felt her heart sink a little. "But he doesn't anymore."

"You don't know that for certain. How well do you even know the guy?" James raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Anyways, if association to known death eaters isn't enough for you then I will tell you the exact moment when Sirius and I decided that Patrick Lennox was bad news."