mxrlenemckn:
Now that was a million galleon idea, much better than the self-driving broom idea she had had with Sirius the night before. Maybe she’d visit people more often if she were greeted with a shot of nice firewhiskey. “If you paten that you better be thanking me in the footnotes,” she chuckled. “my stress-fueled drinking may have just inspired greatness. Hit me up with the prototype, yeah? Although, maybe not. That might get more people come to see me.” She paused, reaching out for Dorcas’s hand, squeezing it carefully. “You can come anytime though, whiskey or not.” It was an uncharacteristic show of affection, especially from 1979 Marlene, but she needed to know if Dorcas remembered, despite her inability to just ask. That last night together still weighed heavily on her. The awkward silence, the way Dorcas’s expression changed from contentment to pity. The realization that she may have fucked up one of the best things in her life by simply acknowledging its existence. Nothing in the world could convince her that she had been wrong. There was something between them. The only mistake she made was expecting Dorcas to be anyone but the person she knew that she was.
“We could use cups. We could also just drink straight from the bottle. It’s been that sot of a day.” She didn’t wait for an answer on the pizza, twisting the nob to preheat the oven. She was hungry enough that she could easily eat the entire thing on her own if Dorcas didn’t have an appetite. Unwrapping the clingy plastic from the frozen pizza, she just tossed it onto the rack, not having the patience for the oven to fully preheat.
She grabbed the bottle, downing a sizable amount before sliding it back toward Dorcas. It would be easy. Do you remember? Simple. Three words. Do you remember how I ruined everything?
A laugh nearly slipped out at Dorcas’s question. She had no idea how frustrated Marlene was when she considered that fact. She had worked hard, for three years, and was days away from graduating and become a fully qualified Auror when she had been killed. And now, here she was, at the start of it all with only a few days of training under her belt. It was frustrating to be hindered by training wheels when she knew she could be so much more of an asset. She was ready, but the rest of the world didn’t know that. “Yes,” she confirmed. ”Which is part of the reason why I’m drinking straight from the bottle.” The other half was to drown out the memories of her death, of the deaths of her family. That was the memory that felt like yesterday, not her Hogwarts graduation, not spending time, young and naïve, with her friends. She remembered the screams of her little sister. The horrifying silence that came just after. She remembered the red on the knife just before it… she shook her head, wanting to think about nearly anything else. “What about you?”
Do you remember?
*
Dorcas grinned, “Deal. That’s true, maybe it needs to be invisible to anyone that hasn’t been invited over, then stupid wankers won’t stop by and steal doormat whiskey from people they don’t even know”, she joked. It felt nice to joke. Natural, even, though internally she felt like one giant fucking question mark. “We’re clearly onto something. Maybe I can even stop waiting tables and become an inventor.” That was nowhere near what she would have ever wanted to do with her life, but hey, clearly her life wasn’t meant to last long. May as well have some fun while she was back at it. Winking at Marlene, she smiled, “Thanks, babe.” Dorcas didn’t feel the need to tell Marlene that she was also welcome any time - she figured that it was more than implied. Were they being more friendly than they ever had been in 1979? It was difficult to say, all together too difficult to sort through the memories and put them in chronological order. Damn, she almost needed to make herself some sort of timeline so that she could keep things straight.
Even if Marlene did remember, Dorcas was dead set against revealing anything first.
“That was my thought”, she laughed as she set the glasses down onto the counter, feeling too tired to even attempt to use magic. Laughing even longer when Marlene didn’t wait for her to even start to pour before taking a swig out of the bottle, Dorcas lifted the glasses up in both of her hands as though to say ‘what about these?’ and then left them on the counter. Whatever, it wasn’t like sharing drinks was out of the ordinary for two people who had hooked up. Even though technically they hadn’t hooked up yet.
Staring at Marlene out of the corner of her eye, wanting to look at her for as long as she could but not wanting to be too obvious about it, Dorcas took a long gulp of her own, letting out a quiet, “Ah”, as the alcohol burned her windpipe on the way down.
“That bad, huh? I’m sure it’ll get better. Don’t tell me, you’re in training with a massive twat who thinks that they know everything?” Whatever had happened that was so bad Dorcas couldn’t anticipate, which felt foreign in and of itself. Usually, she could anticipate what Marlene was thinking and how her day had gone by the look on her face alone. It felt strange to have her friend standing right in front of her, but feeling like there was a massive distance between them. Waving her hand in the air as though to signify that it wasn’t anything special, she shrugged, “Just another day pouring pints. Nothing to write home about.” She’d have liked to work for the Department of Mysteries, one day. But her dream career had felt really insignificant in the face of a war. She realized that she was hogging the bottle, and offered it back to Marlene.
So far, so good. She wasn’t giving any information up. At least, not first.
