A Marauder's Guide to Falling Forever

Chapter Thirteen

Tom was evasive over the following weeks. For someone who had been so rattled by her disappearance, he was sure doing a good job keeping his distance from her now. Marlene didn't bother stopping back at the Ministry again, but she did routinely drop by the house every few days to see if he was home and willing to talk. But of course he never was.

A month after her arrival home, Marlene decided that it was time to give up on Cassandra. It was clear that she wouldn't be answering her door, if she was even still residing at the house. This was something that Marlene began to doubt with each passing day she paid visit to the old house on the hill.

It took her longer than she expected to resettle into her old life. Everything now felt just as fake as the plastic fern Emmeline had shoved into the corner of their living quarters. Marlene eyed the plant wearily; it was an offsetting shade of lavender, and looked remotely nothing like a real plant would. Why Emmeline fancied it, Marlene could only guess.

She had grown accustomed to solitude during her six month sabbatical, so it felt unnerving to constantly be under the watch of so many pairs of eyes. Of course nobody would admit that they were keeping tabs on her, but Marlene was clever enough to deduce that Remus and Peter hadn't spent much time hanging out with Emmeline during her absence, and that their sudden appearance at varying times throughout the day was likely a request on Sirius' part.

Sirius had been very respectful keeping his distance after the first two days, and Marlene wasn't entirely sure how she felt about it. She had grown so used to being without him that she imagined that it should be easy. But of course with Sirius, nothing was ever easy. In the short amount of time that they had spent with one another, she felt the ache of his absence strong like it had when they first broke up.

"Incoming owl!" Emmeline's cheerful voice broke her train of thought.

Marlene looked up just in time to see the large brown messenger swoop in from the open window to drop a large manila envelope in her lap. Her body twitched with surprise at the sudden intrusion. "Oh!" she exclaimed, startled.

"Looks pretty formal," Emmeline said as she examined the envelope over Marlene's shoulder. "It's from St. Mungos."

"How do you know that?" Marlene was still staring at the center of the envelope where fancy scripture spelled out her name in emerald colored ink.

"Look at the crest in the corner," she said, her finger reaching over to point at the far left edge. "And then the stamp on the back."

Marlene opened it up with reservation. She wasn't expecting anything from the hospital.

"Dear Miss McKinnon." She began to read aloud and then stopped as her eyes continued to skim the page. It didn't matter that she had stopped talking, Emmeline was reading over her shoulder anyways. A sharp intake of her friend's breath bounced into her left ear, causing her to shiver. 

"You didn't tell me that you were coming back to the program!" Emmeline accused, sounding awfully resentful. While their relationship had suffered very few strains in comparison to her other relationships, Emmeline would still find ways to display her antipathy for being shut out.

"I'm not," Marlene huffed. "I don't know why Mathalda thinks that I – " her voice trailed off and the gears in her head began to shift. "Patrick."

"What about Patrick?" Emmeline asked, her tone still dismissive.

Somehow Mathalda was under the impression that Marlene had wanted to come back to the Healer program. She had written explaining to Marlene that it wasn't a usual circumstance to consider such request, but considering the actions of her prior preceptor that they were willing to discuss conditions of her re-admittance.

The only person she had a conversation within the last few months about St. Mungo's was Patrick. Who, as she began to recall, had offered to talk to the hospital about her returning to the program. And she distinctly remembered that she had clearly told him she wasn't interested. Apparently that didn't stop him from prying his way into her business.

Marlene crumpled the paper into a ball and scowled. She tossed the letter onto the floor with a grunt of indignation, and directed her angry glare to Emmeline. "Patrick offered to talk to them. I told him that I wasn't interested."

"He's not very good at taking hints, is he?" Emmeline said, raising her brows.

Marlene sighed, "No. He's not."

"I'm heading into work now," Emmeline informed her. "I could stop by his unit first and give him a piece of my mind for you?"

As much as she would like to see Emmeline's wrath brought out at the subject of her irritation, she needed to handle it on her own. "No," Marlene said. She picked herself up from the couch and moved towards the doorway to grab her coat. "I'm going to do it myself."

But Patrick wasn't working when she arrived at his unit, nor was he scheduled to work at any point for the next few days.

Her old co-worker, Martha, was working when she arrived. Despite the unfavorable circumstances surrounding her departure from the program, Martha was kind and receptive of her arrival at the unit. "He's going to be at the Leaky Cauldron tonight though," Martha told her. "A bunch of people from work are going."

Marlene sighed, defeated. She really would have preferred to do it now while her blood was still pumping ferociously through her heart. Waiting until the evening would likely tune the emotions down, and perhaps she wouldn't confront him at all.

No. Marlene needed to confront him. She was the new Marlene, and the new Marlene dealt with her issues without running away and sweeping her feelings under the rug. She would go to the Leaky Cauldron later.

"Well then I guess I'll see you tonight!" Marlene forced a smile and then departed. 

Even if Marlene did chicken out, she knew that Emmeline wouldn't. One way or another, Patrick was going to hear about this.