Helloooo! Major apologies for not really being around and for the sporadic plotting messages, I got hit by a random stomach bug and I’m typing this from the only position that is currently comfortable enough to exist in right now. I wanted to throw some stuff out about Marlene, so y’all can get to know her. Here is her Pinterest board, and here is her dossier, and down below is some more information! I sincerely hope you like her.
Gryffindor 1978. Seeker (‘73-‘78), Wizards Chess (‘73), Duelling Club (‘74-‘78). Graduated (mostly) with O grades and despite a less than stellar detention record.
Younger sister to Jamie and Gavin and elder sister to Mia. She was taught piano at a young age, though Mia had more musical talent than Marlene ever did, and Gavin used to pretend he knew how to play the bagpipes, when he did not. Gavin and Jamie were a Gryffindor and Ravenclaw respectively, and Mia was sorted into Hufflepuff. (She’s always been fiercely protective of Mia - she once punched someone who called her a duffer.)
Parents are Clothilde (Hilde) and Fingal, Hilde being a former Auror (having retired after giving birth to Gavin) and Fingal remaining a high profile Auror until April 1980. Hilde often referred to Marlene as her ‘wilder’ child, though Jamie and Gavin were both plenty wild and often roped Marlene in on their games. Fingal was very proud of his children - he considered them the best of him, and he was open about it, to a fault.
She’s very proud of her family. She always has been. Being sorted into Gryffindor only bolstered it - she’s proud to take after her father, to be like him in so many ways that infuriated her mother almost to no end (and also endeared her to the same extent, too). It was there that she met her other family - the only family that she now has left. She didn’t like them all, not at first, but she loves them, deeply, down to her bones.
She came out when she was 15. She’d been caught behind the greenhouses with her hand down Florence’s blouse when they’d been caught by Sprout - which ended with her nearly knocking all of them out with the potted Mandrake she was holding and, also, two weeks detention for skipping class. She wasn’t scared, really, to tell her friends - she was more apprehensive about what her brothers would say.
She once made the girls - Mary, Lily and Dorcas - promise that they’d be friends forever. It’s gotten a little harder to keep that promise over the years, but she loves them - and the boys (men, now) - more fiercely than she loves anyone else in her life, even if it’s all so much more complicated now than it had been when they were at Hogwarts, when they were just children, not people forced to grow up too fast, to fight a war.
She applied in 1979 to be a Hit Wizard under then Head Archwilt, having been a bartender for a few months - when she was accepted, she, of course, got blackout drunk and woke up in Hogs Head. (She has since developed somewhat of a rapport with Aberforth.) (He would not entirely agree, but begrudgingly allows her to stick around on her days off. She enjoys the time with his goats.)
She’s sure part of her acceptance had to do with her father’s close friendship with the head of the DMLE and Auror department, as well as her oldest brother’s reputation. She doesn’t dwell on it as much as she used to. She’s built her own reputation as a formidable Hit Wizard, handling several raids of several high profile purists homes and being responsible for the capture of a handful of suspected Death Eaters.
She lives alone. She had a flatmate - and possibly a girlfriend - for a good chunk of the war but it was too much risk, and she fled in early 1981. She moved back to Scotland, though a different island than her family’s home, for a short period. After they died, she moved back to London - where she has lived ever since, as some form of penance. She won’t allow herself to go home. She’s the lone McKinnon left. That’s her penance.
She’s been seen in St. Mungo’s far more often than she will ever admit to. There’s a reason Hit Wizard’s have allocated beds, you know. And Marlene, for all her duelling ability, has never struck anyone who knows her as someone with great restraint, or with any particular notion of not being self sacrificing. She spent a good chunk of the last month of the war in St. Mungo’s following a mission gone awry (aka, she went off plan.)
She lost her entire family when they were attacked in their home on her eldest niece’s fifth birthday. Marlene was too late to save any of them - she was too late to do anything at all except from bury them. They were all tortured and murdered for information regarding her involvement in the Order of the Phoenix. They never gave in. She’s never recovered from that loss. She doesn’t think she ever will. Her failure cost her them.
