Chapter Text
And she was lying in the grass
And she could hear the highway breathing
And she could see a nearby factory
She's making sure she is not dreaming
-From 'And She Was' by 'Talking Heads'
The cottage was not found on any map, unseen it lay far from any road in a small forest near the coast. There it stood crooked and weather-worn, its windows shuttered, its chimney coughing pale smoke towards the evening sky. Sheep sometimes wander close but never stayed long, even wild things, mundane and magical alike, knew to keep their distance.
Inside, the hearth glowed with dying embers. Dust swirled in the air like ash under a charm that had long since faded. The whole cottage faintly smelled of dried herbs, parchment, and something older still, something like longing.
Here Marlene McKinnon sat alone at the kitchen table, a cigarette loosely balanced between her fingers and a letter she swore to never open before her.
Age was not as kind to her as it was to the few others that managed to survive somehow. There were faint lines around here eyes and a stiffness in her left knee from a nasty splinching accident near Newcastle, but the world had aged far more than she had. Or perhaps it only seemed that way because she had stopped moving with it. War can have that effect on people, a lesson she learned early, it had the awful tendency to freeze things- choices, faces, the last sound someone made before they vanished, a soft kiss between two people none of them knowing it would be the last one they share…
She took a drag and exhaled slowly. The smoke curled around her like a horde of small ghosts.
On the table, right beside the letter, laid a small red diary. Its edges were worn smooth, and its spine was cracked from years of use. Once, in another lifetime, it had belonged to someone who never cared much for frills. Someone who wrote in straight lines, even when the world didn’t seem too other any.
Marlene gently stroked the cover, then picked up a pen and carefully opened it on a blank page.
This story may not have a happy ending, but it does have her.
She paused for a moment, listening to the wind scrape across the shutters. The world outside remained unchanged: charming British weather- a grey sky, low clouds, hints of rain, creating the kind of silence that weighed on once chest.
She dipped the pen again.
Her name was Dorcas Meadowes, and you won’t find her in any of the textbooks, not really at least. There are no statues of her in the Ministry, there is no plaque in Diagon Alley with her name on it, there is no portrait of her in Hogwarts. After all, she was far from being one of Dumbledors favourites in the end- she wasn’t one of the charming ones with their hopefully twinkling eyes, like Lily nor was she one of those with the tragic smiles, like Sirius. She was sharp, witty, quiet and made of flint.
She also had the kindest heart I’ve ever known.
We were nineteen when the war began in earnest. And younger still, when it first found us.
Marlene set down the pen. Her cigarette had burned down, leaving only the filter and few crumbles of ash on the tip. She tapped it into the saucer with the same care she once displayed when disabling wards or when pressing the tip of her wand against Death Eater’s necks before whispering the final spells that they would ever hear.
She glanced out the window.
Night had fallen almost suddenly, as often was the case in this part of the country, one moment light, the next only memory.
I don’t write this to change anything. I don’t write this to redeem, or romanticise, or even confess anything that happened. I write this, I tell this tale, so the memories remain.
Because she deserves that much, at least.
Marlene closed the diary, her hand lingering on the cover.
Outside the wind howled for a brief moment- high and clear, as if it was the call of an animal, but in an instance, it was gone.