Growing up, Marlene wondered if the other girls knew something she didn’t. Something she just wasn’t doing right. Something she desperately wanted to know.
At first she chalked it up to spending most of her childhood with James and Peter. They would squirm when they talked about the witches on chocolate frog cards or that one girl working at the village library who gave them sweets if they were quiet.
Marlene would squirm right along with them. It made sense to didn’t it? Those were just squirmy things.
Apparently not at Hogwarts. For all the things about her friends she found positively wonderful there was one she could not understand—why Mary and Alice would giggle and nudge each other when guys approached them in the common room.
Why all of a sudden Lily would flush slightly when James spoke to her. Why Emmeline had a poster of a shirtless Quidditch player in her dorm and why everyone wanted to see it.
It wasn’t like Marlene was stupid. She knew her friends found these boys fit, Marlene could see it too, she had eyes. Then why wasn’t she all squirmy too?
Once she explained as much, Lily gave her a weirdly knowing look, she said it was okay to be different. But, Marlene wasn’t different… right?
By the time fourth year rolled around Marlene had all but accepted the contrary. The moment she found herself pressed up behind the Broom Sheds with Hufflepuff chaser Charity Burbage, she decided ‘different’ really wasn’t so bad.
Now came the ordeal of explaining this to her friends.
She figured the most reasonable way was to rip off the band-aid in one go, so on her birthday, just drunk enough to have the nerve, she announced brashly to no one in particular, “I don’t fancy blokes, any of them… Quite partial to tits though”.
For a moment there was silence. And every doubt she ever had came rushing back into her blood like an opened floodgate before:
“And a unicorn shits in the woods”,
They all laughed and punched her shoulders and rolled their eyes, and Marlene was confused.
“What, you mean to tell me you all knew?”, she spluttered as everyone resumed chatting and drinking like nothing was amiss.
“Me and Wormy’ve known you since we were literal babies, mate”, James chuckled, “Course’ we know you’re into birds—remember that muggle girl from the shops? You used to turn beet red if she even looked at you!”.
Immediately a round of hoots rung out, “Ooooh who’s that, Marls?”, Mary slung an arm around her and waggled her brows.
Then, as if it was free game, everyone began teasing her about, ‘Lucy from Charms’ or ‘that Ravenclaw prefect last year’ or ‘Dorcas Meadowes?!’
She whacked Sirius with a roll of parchment for that one. But she found she couldn’t be too bothered by it at the moment. Because for the first time she could remember, she didn’t feel all too different at all.