"Where is she?" Sirius Black stormed angrily through the double doors of the hospital wing, letting them fly against their opposing walls, the clattering noise echoing up and down the high-ceilinged room.
"Mr. Black, you can't just-" the matron tried to admonish him, but there was no reaching him with logic today. Not now. His eyes were livid and scanning the room, jaw twitching angrily.
"WHERE IS SHE?" He shouted this time, so loudly that his voice cracked; no regard for the rules, for others. Not today.
"Sirius," a tiny voice squeaked out, so unlike her, so broken. It came from the corner of the room where she was sitting up in bed with dark shadows under her eyes and a steady stream of blood running a river from her forehead.
It was the first time in his life that Marlene McKinnon had not smiled when Sirius had entered a room.
He was at her side in two seconds flat, ignoring the ever-more-feeble protests of the matron. Sirius took her face in his hands, tried to ignore the way she flinched automatically when he pressed a rough kiss to her forehead. She wasn't ready to be touched, not even by him.
"What the hell did they do to you?" He asked her quietly, taking a seat next to her on the bed, never tearing his grey eyes away from hers- usually warm and dancing with laughter, now flat and expressionless.
She just shook her head in response to his question, arms still shaking at her sides, dropping her gaze to the sheets below. An anger unlike anything he'd ever experienced before surged up inside him, rocking against his rib cage like a tidal wave of acid.
"I don't want you to see me like this," Marlene said, barely above a whisper, after a long minute.
"I'm not leaving you," Sirius snapped, before she had even finished speaking. He couldn't. Not now. He'd come as soon as Lily had found him, had told him why Marlene had missed their dinner date.
She'd been intercepted on the way- someone's idea of a fucking joke: because of her house, because of who she was on her way to meet.
"Okay," she said finally, voice breaking off, wavering on tears. He'd never seen her cry, not once in the six years he'd known her. It was like being tortured himself.
How anyone could have thought this was a harmless prank was beyond him. It was beyond him, of all people, when he saw the way she was pale and shaking and so, so sad.
"Who was it?" Sirius demanded, but gentler now, keeping his voice soft and gruff so that we wouldn't startle her. Again, she just shook her head. "You need to tell me, Marls. I can handle it, I can take care-"
"I don't want you to," she interrupted, chewing nervously on her already-swollen lip. "This whole thing got started because you lot can't stand each other. It's only going to get worse-"
"Worse!?" Sirius roared, immediately regretting it when he saw how the volume made her flinch, pull away from him. As an apology, he wrapped both of her shaking hands between his, looking her in the eye with a somber look. "I can't imagine something worse."
"Mulciber and Travers." Marlene said quietly. He had known, before she said it, that that was who it would be. But actually hearing out loud ignited the fire within him. Madmen.
"You need to tell me what curses they used," Sirius insisted again, watching as she shifted uncomfortably and swallowed hard. "So I can shoot them back at their sorry skulls."
"I don't know," she said weakly, and he shot her a look of blatant disbelief. "I really don't, Sirius...I think they were made up."
"What do you mean?" He pressed anxiously.
"Made up, like...I don't know. What was that one that was big fifth year? Levicorpus? New ones I couldn't defend myself against.They were all like that, like the ones Snape used to-"
"Snape," Sirius interrupted, nostrils flaring with the effort it was taking him to not leave the hall to throttle that friendless, greasy boy. "I swear I'm going to-"
"Snape never raised his wand against me..." Marlene tried to protest, but she trailed off. He saw it in her eyes, though she tried to hide it. She was sure they were his spells. Disconcertingly sure, as a matter of fact.
"He was there, wasn't he?" said Sirius, using every ounce of self control he has to not shout. It had been so long, years almost, since rage had consumed him like this.
Marlene said nothing.
"HE WAS THERE, WASN'T HE?" Sirius bellowed, scooting away from her across the bed. He already knew the answer, but Marlene weakly nodded her head.
"But he never did anything-" her protests were lost on him. "
What'd he do just stand there and watch? Gloat? What, Marlene?"
"He said to give you a message," was all Marlene was able to force out through a thick throat. "That he would find out what you and your friends were up to? At any cost? Something like that. I told him I didn't know anything and to stop being so obsessive, and, well...you can see where I'm at."
"Fine," Sirius growled after she's finished, slowly rising to his feet.
"Fine?" Marlene asked dubiously, pressing her hand uncertainty to the cut on her forehead.
"Fine," Sirius repeated, a stony expression taking over his face as he began to walk away. "Nobody fucks with you, Mar. If he wants to know what's going on so badly, I'll just go fucking tell him how he can find out."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Marlene called after him, but it was no use.
Sirius was striding out of the hall, fists clenched tightly, mind abuzz with secrets about violent trees and haunted houses.
If he wanted information this badly, Sirius would be more than happy to hand it to him.