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She took a long drag from her cigarette, the green-and-gold holder balanced between slender fingers tipped with dark blue polish.
Smoke curled from her lips and vanished into the candlelit chandelier overhead.
She sat poised, upright, across Doge’s dining table—now a makeshift strategy hub buried under layers of parchment, curling maps, and ink-smudged correspondences. Candlelight flickered off half-drained bottles of Firewhisky and the occasional brass compass that hadn’t pointed true in months. Around her, the Order shouted over one another, voices rising in urgency, wands stabbing at scraps of intel.
But Marlene McKinnon remained still, unmoved. She watched the scene unfold with cool, unblinking detachment, the only movement the occasional lift of her hand to bring the cigarette holder back to her red-painted lips.
Sirius found her composure oddly captivating amidst the theatrics. She looked less like a participant and more like a predator waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Patient. Coiled. Letting them wear themselves out with shouting and speculation, waiting for the moment to strike. Not with volume, but precision. A single sentence that would land sharper than a spell.
“I’m telling you, Ed!” Frank insisted, his voice cracking with frustration as he jabbed at the map. “There’s no way they’re hiding out in Tiddlecombe. The entire magical population was wiped out in the 1910s during the Dragon Pox epidemic!”
“And I’m telling you that’s exactly why they’re there!” Edgar Bones snapped back, slamming his hand on the table so hard the inkpots rattled. “There’s always some long-lost family property tucked away. They’ll think they’re being clever—making a statement about reclaiming wizarding land from Muggles.”
Marlene leaned back slightly, her chair creaking just enough to catch Sirius’s ear. Her cheeks drew inward, the cigarette glowing faintly as she took a slow, deliberate drag. Smoke coiled like ribbon from her nose as she exhaled.
She hadn’t said a single word in the ninety minutes since the meeting began. But Sirius recognized the telltale signs—he’d seen her do this before. The lean. The inhale. The pause.
She was about to speak.
And when she did, every voice in the room would fall silent. Not out of fear, though that wasn’t entirely absent, but out of something harder to earn: respect. Anticipation.
That was the kind of power Sirius dreamed of. The kind that didn’t need theatrics or shouting to command attention. The kind that made everyone else sound like amateurs by comparison.
He leaned forward, smirking just slightly, already savoring the silence she was about to summon like a spell.
Marlene tapped a single ash onto the map between Frank and Edgar, right where their wands hovered over Tiddlecombe.
“If they’re hiding in Tiddlecombe, it’s not because they’re making a statement,” she said, eyes still fixed on the smoke curling from her cigarette. “It’s because they don’t expect us to look there. No one wants to believe anything useful could come from a graveyard. it’s not about symbolism. It’s about rot. Abandonment. Places so forgotten even the Ministry doesn’t bother charting the wards anymore.”
Marlene finally looked up, eyes cold and sharp. “They’re not reclaiming anything. They’re squatting in the ruins, like rats in an old house.”
Silence followed. Frank lowered his wand. Edgar shifted uncomfortably in his seat as she shuffled the papers in his hands.
Sirius exhaled, almost laughing.
There it was.
The room hadn’t just quieted. It had recalibrated.
Marlene McKinnon had spoken, and the conversation was now hers. It was always so satisfying to witness. Almost enough to make up for the fact that James no longer attended these meetings.
Almost.
Sirius pushed back from the table and slipped out to the kitchen, the clamor of the room fading behind him. He poured himself another glass of whiskey with a little more force than necessary, the amber liquid sloshing against the sides.
Things had changed quickly—too quickly. Remus was away more often than not, sent on some vague, Northern assignment that he refused to talk about. Regulus had disappeared, declared dead, and his mother hadn’t even bothered to send Sirius a notice of the funeral—assuming there’d been one at all. And James—brilliant, loyal James—had found out he was going to be a father and made the painfully reasonable choice to pull back from active duty. He was keeping Lily safe. Keeping the baby safe. Of course, he was.
And Sirius?
He was still here. Still in the thick of it.
The last one standing—or that’s how it felt, most nights.
He took a slow sip, the fire of it blooming in his chest, and stared through the darkened window. Outside, a path of tiny lights glimmered among the stones, leading from the grand old house down to a lake he could no longer see.
What he did see was his own reflection—ghostly, suspended in the glass.
For all the shouting, the war-room maps, the smoke curling under chandelier light, Sirius Black had never felt more alone.
A clink of glass and low muttering behind him broke the quiet. Sirius turned his head. Peter stood a few feet away, peering mournfully into the mouth of an empty bottle, holding it upside down like it had personally failed him.
"You drank the last bottle again?" Peter asked, voice half-accusing, half-defeated.
Sirius shrugged, not bothering to look guilty. "Sorry, Wormtail."
Peter let the bottle clink down onto the table with a sigh. "For such a massive house, you’d think Doge would keep a better stock.”
Sirius snorted, raising his glass. "Only you would be bored by secret war plans."
Peter made a face. "What’s so secret about them? It’s the same conversation every time. 'We need more allies. We need better intelligence. We need to stop getting people killed.' It’s all talk. Just like before."
There was a pause. Sirius swirled his drink, his expression unreadable.
"Better talk than silence," he said finally. "At least it means someone’s still alive to argue."
Peter didn’t respond. He just stared at the empty bottle as if willing it to refill itself. His jaw clenched, shoulders hunched, eyes sunk deep in the flickering shadows. For a moment, he looked much older than he was—or maybe just worn thin.
Sirius glanced at him sideways, then exhaled and clapped Peter on the back—not hard, but not gently either.
“Come on, Pete,” he said, mustering the edge of a grin. “Let’s get back to the table. We’ve got a war to lose and all that.”
Peter let out a breath, something between a laugh and a sigh. He stood too, slower than Sirius, brushing off his sleeves as if the conversation had left dust on them.
“You always say that,” he muttered.
Sirius raised a brow. “Yeah. And we haven’t lost it yet, have we?”
Sirius liked to arrive early to meetings so he could slip into Doge’s extensive home library, a space crammed with leather-bound legal studies and crumbling history tomes. Occasionally, he’d exchange a few words with Doge or find Frank reading quietly in a corner.
But tonight, he was surprised to open the dark red wood door and see Dumbledore and James deep in conversation.
From his position in the doorway—unseen, distant—Sirius caught a glimpse of his best friend in a different kind of light.
James was still young, of course, but his face was lined in ways Sirius didn’t remember—as if the war had been sketching age into him with an impatient hand. Threads of silver glinted in his dark hair, catching the firelight from the wall sconces. His shoulders, once broad with effortless confidence, were hunched now—bent under burdens Sirius had never seen him carry.
Dumbledore patted James’s knee gently, almost like a grandfather might, and James let out a shaky sigh.
A moment later, the clock on the mantel chimed, its soft toll breaking the quiet.
“Ah,” Dumbledore said, rising slowly. “It seems our time is up.” He gave James a kind smile. “Please reach out anytime, James. I am always here—for you and for Lily.”
He turned toward the door, robes whispering across the floor.
“And Mr. Black,” he added, pausing as his eyes met Sirius’s in the doorway. “I shall see you in the meeting shortly, I presume?” His tone was mild, amused. “Borrowing one of Doge’s books again, are we? If he hasn’t shown you his first edition scrolls from the original Wizengamot sessions, do ask. They’re worth a look—I think you’ll find them rather interesting.”
With a final nod, Dumbledore swept out, the door clicking softly shut behind him.
Sirius didn’t speak until the room had settled back into quiet.
“You didn’t tell me you’d be here.” He tried not to make it sound like an accusation. It wasn’t, not really. Just the truth.
“Yeah, well,” James said, rubbing the back of his neck. “It was a bit spur-of-the-moment. I knew Dumbledore would be here because of the meeting.”
Sirius crossed the room and sank into the chair Dumbledore had vacated.
“Lily, okay?”
“Yeah, Lily’s fine. I just had a question, that’s all.” James hesitated. “You’re coming over Sunday, yeah?”
“Of course,” Sirius said.
“Yeah, good. We’ll talk then.”
“You staying for the meeting? You’re already here.”
“Nah,” James said, standing. “Best if I go home. We’ll talk Sunday.”
Sirius nodded, but didn’t move. James gave him a small, tired smile before heading toward the door.
The fire crackled in the hearth as Sirius sat alone, staring at the spot where his best friend had just been.
“Dumbledore makes me so mad sometimes,” Marlene muttered, her breath puffing in visible clouds as she and Sirius walked away from Doge’s estate. Snow crunched beneath their boots, and both had their cloaks drawn tight against the cold.
“He’s thinking politically. Strategically,” Sirius said, half-defending Dumbledore.
Marlene scoffed. “No, he’s thinking too conservatively. We get rid of the Death Eaters and You-Know-Who—then what? Dumbledore’s so focused on protecting the Ministry as some ‘respectable institution’ that we’ll just rebuild the same system that allowed this violence to take root in the first place.”
“I thought it was the other side that wanted to overthrow the government,” Sirius said, raising an eyebrow.
Marlene stopped and turned to face him. He could feel her breath—warm and sweet—ghost across his cheek.
“I’m talking about reform, Black. This is a chance to be better than we were before. Why are we so determined to cling to the same outdated, dishonest structures?”
Sirius stepped a little closer, his voice dropping. “Would you like me to take you home?”
She narrowed her eyes. “You offering to Apparate the old lady home?”
A flush of heat rose in Sirius’s neck, and he swallowed quickly. “Of course not. I just didn’t want our conversation to end. And frankly, my arse is freezing off standing out here in the snow.”
A smile tugged at Marlene’s lips. “Good save, Black.”
Her house wasn’t as grand as Doge’s lakeside manor, nor as stiff and oppressive as Grimmauld Place, but it was familiar all the same. It was decorated like a proper pure-blood home—clearly a family with tradition and taste. Gold leaf trimmed the wallpaper, portraits lined the hallways, and gas lamps flickered in antique sconces. Scrolls and magical oddities rested on every surface.
But it didn’t feel old in the way Sirius was used to. It wasn’t weighed down with dust and doom or the scent of family obligation. Instead, the whole place felt pleasant and contemporary. Pale blues and soft greens washed over the walls, cream-colored carpets muffled their footsteps, and instead of lurking shadows or the whisper of ghosts, there were pixies giggling in glass jars and puffskeins snoring gently in baskets by the hearth.
“Would you like a drink to help warm you up?” Marlene asked as she hung up her cloak on a gold hook shaped as an eagle.
Sirius flashed Marlene a smile as his hand reached for the clasp of his cloak, “I am never one to turn down a lady’s invitation.”
Her hand grazed his as he reached for the bottle of wine. The touch was brief, accidental, but it sparked something familiar—a jolt that traveled from his fingertips to somewhere just below his ribs. A reminder of last week, when she’d leaned in through the rain and kissed his cheek, unprompted after a meeting. That same tingling sensation raced down his spine now.
He looked up. Their eyes met.
Hers were the color of the ocean—not the crashing kind he’d known as a boy on summer holidays, but the still, quiet kind, endless and steady. The kind you could lose yourself in if you weren’t careful. There was no storm in them tonight. Only a calm, steady invitation to dive in and stay awhile.
“My daughter keeps telling me I should move in with her,” she said, her voice soft but not uncertain. “She worries, now that Hamish is gone.”
Sirius gripped the bottle, and her hand slipped away as he poured them each a glass. He handed hers over with a flicker of a smile.
“Well,” he said, “your daughter clearly doesn’t know you very well if she thinks you can’t take care of yourself.”
A silence stretched, not uncomfortable, just full.
“But it is quiet here now,” she murmured, fingers tracing the rim of her glass. “The war has made us all lonely creatures, hasn’t it?”
Sirius took a sip of his wine. French. He recognized the label—his mother used to hoard it like treasure in Grimmauld Place’s cellar. Expensive, sharp, and mature. Like Marlene.
“Difficult to meet people,” he said, “when you’re part of a secret organization that officially doesn’t exist.”
She gave a low laugh, quiet and genuine. “But we met each other, didn’t we, Sirius?”
He turned to her fully now, surprised by the way his name sounded in her mouth—soft, deliberate.
“You usually call me Black.”
“Not tonight,” she said.
"Only tonight?" He asked quietly
"For tonight."
Sirius was a man of details—a man of plans, long-term strategy, independent thinking, and self-reliance. He liked to understand things, to follow the thread from beginning to end. But even with all that, he couldn’t quite trace the steps that carried him from sipping wine in Marlene’s parlor—sitting in opposite chairs, the soft hum of a wireless in the background, their conversation drifting from Ministry candidates to old school days—to the moment her laughter softened, and her eyes lingered a second too long on his.
There was a shift, subtle but seismic. A pause between sentences that turned into silence, her legs folding beneath her on the couch, his glass forgotten on the table. He remembered the brush of her fingers when she reached to refill his drink, the heat that bloomed low in his stomach, the way her perfume—too much like his mother’s, yet nothing like her—twisted something sharp and aching inside him.
Then suddenly, they were standing. Or maybe one of them stood first and the other followed—he couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the kiss. The way it crashed into him, unannounced and unapologetic. It wasn’t a question. It was an answer to something he hadn’t realized he’d been asking for weeks—maybe longer.
Her back hit the wall with a soft thud, and he followed her there, hands sliding into her hair like he’d been meaning to do it forever. Her fingers gripped the collar of his robe, pulled him closer, and the room seemed to tilt, the world narrowing to the press of their bodies and the way their mouths moved like they were trying to make up for lost time.
Every step toward the bedroom was unsteady, breathless, urgent—like they’d reached the edge of something neither could name and decided to fall anyway.
What followed was a blur of tangled sheets and gasped breaths, the hush between them broken only by the rhythm of movement, the sound of skin against skin, and the quiet, undeniable relief of being wanted—of not being alone, not tonight. Not in this war-torn world where too many good things vanished before morning.
Marlene was as commanding in the bedroom as she was in Order meetings—confident, assured, unapologetic. There was no hesitation in her touch, no uncertainty in her voice. She moved with purpose, stripped with intent, and Sirius found himself respecting her all over again—not just for her strength, but for the clarity with which she claimed her own desire.
“Here,” she said, guiding his hand between her thighs. “Start slow.”
He listened. Obeyed like a diligent student following strict instructions. And his hard work and follow-through were rewarded by his instructor with the sound of her pleasure—clear, certain, unmistakable. When he hesitated, just for a second, her fingers curled in his hair and she whispered, “Don’t stop, Sirius. Just like that.”
Every breath, every shift of her body, every command that slipped past her lips grounded him more deeply in the moment. “Harder,” she murmured, and he obliged, the sound she made in response unraveling something tight in his chest. He was becoming free and undone.
Lately, he’d been plagued by doubt—too many thoughts, too many plans that felt more like desperate guesses. He questioned whether he was doing enough, whether his strategies to protect the people he loved would ever be enough. The war made everything hazy, uncertain. It frayed the edges of him.
But here, in the dark, with Marlene’s voice guiding him, there was no second-guessing. No spinning thoughts. Just action and affirmation. She told him what she needed—“Touch me there, yes, don’t stop,”—and he did it. Again and again. And each gasp, each low moan that fell from her lips felt like proof. Proof that he was capable of getting something right. That he could give, satisfy, hold someone’s want in his hands and meet it without fear.
“Use your mouth,” she said next, breathless but firm. “I want to feel your tongue.”
And when he did, she arched with a sharp cry, threading her fingers through his hair and tugging. “Yes, yes, fuck, Sirius—don’t you dare stop now.”
Her words, her body, her need—they were all he could hear, all he could feel. For the first time in too long, he wasn’t trying to fix the world. He wasn’t planning, protecting, pretending he wasn’t failing.
He was present. He was needed. He was enough.
The burn of the cigarette afterward, once he was back in his flat, tasted like her—smoky, bitter, familiar. Like her breath on his mouth, still clinging to him.
When Sirius first got the flat at seventeen, he didn’t mind being alone. In fact, he reveled in it. He loved the independence, the freedom to do whatever he pleased in a space that was entirely his. No nagging, no screaming, no punishments from his mother. Back then, the place had almost felt too small—barely enough room to fit all his friends, nowhere to store his motorcycle properly. But it was warm. It was his. And for a while, it was enough.
Now, sitting alone in his bed, the flat felt too big. Too quiet. Haunted by echoes. By the memory of where his friends used to stand—where James would crash on the couch after a night out, how they'd climb out the window and scramble onto the roof to sit and marvel at the lights of London, laughing like they had all the time in the world.
No one visited anymore.
The cigarette burned down to the filter. Sirius lit another with a shaky hand, took a long drag, and closed his eyes—pretending he was still in Marlene’s arms, hoping that it hadn’t been a fleeting, desperate dream to fill the unbearable loneliness of a flat too big and quiet.
Everything changed when Harry was born.
Beautiful, smiling, extraordinary Harry. Sirius never knew he could feel a need to protect something so much, a call to duty he couldn’t imagine, until Harry was born.
But the war didn’t pause for babies, not even ones as miraculous as him. It only grew more dangerous.
Dumbledore’s warnings became more dire. He didn’t just advise James and Lily to be careful—he insisted on it. The Potters had to vanish, go deep into hiding. It wasn’t safe anymore, not for them, not for Harry. The stakes were too high. The price of being wrong was too final.
And so Sirius saw less and less of them.
At first, he still dropped by, still held Harry, still teased James for his inability to swaddle properly. But the visits grew shorter. More anxious. Then fewer and farther between. There were no more late-night chats in James’s kitchen, no more impromptu dinner visits. Just coded messages, the occasional owl, and silence.
Order members were disappearing—murdered in alleys, ambushed on patrols. Whispers of a spy circulated like poison. And Dumbledore’s warnings grew sharper, more urgent: the Potters had to stay hidden, stay protected. Which meant that what little Sirius had once seen of James and his family was reduced even further, until their visits were rare, distant, careful.
But there was still Marlene.
They never planned it. But Sirius always knew—instinctively—when it would happen. He knew by the way her fingers brushed his just a little too long during Order meetings, the way her gaze held his for half a second more than necessary, the way she lingered in the doorway as others Disapparated, as if waiting for him to follow.
He knew when the night was too heavy—when the mission had gone sideways, when the screaming wouldn’t stop ringing in their ears, when the names of the dead were too fresh on their tongues. On those nights, he would Apparate to her doorstep without sending word, and she would open the door without surprise.
No questions. No explanations. Never exchanged many words except for the repeated broken promise that whatever it was, they were doing it was for tonight - one night - only.
They’d share a bottle of wine, sit too close on the long high-back sofa, knees touching despite many inches on either side of the furniture for them to spread out and become comfortable. Talk politics in low voices, argue about history until it turned into laughter. Trade music recommendations they never wrote down. Marlene always played something on vinyl—something sultry and slow that reminded him of holiday parties his parents would host when he was a child.
They never talked about family. Never about grief. Those were lines they didn’t cross.
But they always crossed the others.
It never took long before they were tangled together, pressed against walls or collapsing into her bed with bruised lips and roaming hands, clawing at each other like they were trying to burn the war out of their bodies. Urgent, hungry, unrelenting.
Sirius relished the way Marlene took control—confident and unashamed, pulling him where she wanted him, telling him exactly how to touch her. “Lower,” she’d murmur against his ear, or, “Harder, don’t stop— right there. ” Her voice was roughened with need, sharp with certainty. There was no space for doubt between them.
He obeyed, eagerly. Not because he needed to prove anything, but because giving her what she wanted made him feel useful —made him feel real.
She called him “Black” in the real world, around the others. But in bed, when she was gasping his name between curses, when her fingernails raked down his back and her thighs tightened around him, she said Sirius. Over and over again.
And for a little while, in the heat of her skin and the echo of her breathless voice, he stopped thinking about what they were fighting for. He didn’t think about the friends he couldn’t see, the godson he missed, the deaths stacking up around them.
There was only Marlene. Her mouth, her voice, her body— here.
And him, still alive, beneath her.
“You ever been in love, Sirius?” Marlene asked, lighting a cigarette at the end of the green-and-gold holder she favored.
Sirius scoffed, shifting to lean against the headboard. “I think I’m a bit too young for love. I’ve got plenty of time—once the war’s over.”
“Your friend found time for love.”
“Well, James has always been better at balancing things. I’m best at single-mindedly committing myself to one task at a time.”
“Indeed,” Marlene said, smiling.
“How many times have you been in love?”
“Just the once.”
“Your husband was a lucky man.”
“Didn’t say it was Hamish, did I?” she replied, but the speed of her retort betrayed her—and then she laughed, soft and self-deprecating, before exhaling a curl of smoke. “Hamish was a very good man. I was very lucky. He always treated me well.”
“And is that love?” Sirius asked. “Being treated well by a good man?”
Marlene paused, eyes on the cigarette burning slowly in her fingers. “More or less.”
Sirius broke a rule one day—he talked about family.
Well, technically, it was Marlene who started it. She’d wandered into the study where he was curled up in one of her old leather chairs beside the chessboard, legs slung over the arm, flipping through a magazine.
“A broom catalogue?” she asked, arching an eyebrow as she leaned in the doorway. “You boys and your brooms. How many flying sticks does one man possibly need?”
He smirked but didn’t look up. “It’s not for me. It’s for Harry. His first birthday’s next week.”
And before he could stop himself, the words kept coming—tumbling out unfiltered. He told her how bright Harry was, how he never stopped moving, always reaching for everything he wasn’t supposed to touch. How he laughed at the stupidest things—how that laugh could break through even the worst day. Everyone said he looked exactly like James, but Sirius swore he had Lily’s stubborn little spark, that same unshakable will in a much smaller body.
And then—suddenly, inexplicably—he was crying.
He hadn’t meant to. The emotion had crept up quietly, then cracked him open all at once. His voice faltered mid-sentence, and the tears came faster than he could stop them.
Marlene crossed the room without hesitation. Her long, slender hands settled gently on his shoulders, grounding him with the kind of touch that didn’t demand anything, only offered presence. She lowered herself onto the armrest beside him and pressed her palm to his forehead, her thumb brushing slowly, soothingly, across his temple.
“It’s all right,” she murmured, her voice low and steady. It was the kind of comfort he hadn’t known in years. The kind Euphemia Potter gave him when he’d shown up at Godric’s Hollow after running away, shaken and raw and pretending he wasn’t.
They didn’t sleep together that night.
Instead, he held her close, tucked in behind her, his arm slung around her waist, his face buried in the curve of her neck. He lay awake counting the silver strands threaded through her hair, marveling at the quiet strength of the woman beside him.
Then she began to hum.
Just a trace of melody in the dark. But he recognized it. A lullaby from his childhood, half-forgotten and half-remembered, carrying with it the scent of old wood, and warm fires, and someone who once loved him.
He didn’t say anything. Just closed his eyes and let the sound wrap around him like a blanket, like a memory of home.
He’d already heard about the attack on the McKinnons by the time Lily’s letter arrived.
Marlene had her whole family over that night, celebrating her daughter’s birthday. Balloons. Cake. Paper crowns. It was meant to be a happy evening—just her and the people she loved, whom she hadn’t seen nearly enough of lately.
Of course, Sirius hadn’t been there. That would’ve broken the rules.
Instead, he’d been at a pub with a few Aurors, laughing too loudly over pints, trying to forget how thin the air had gotten lately. He’d left with Moody when the first reports came in—sightings of the Dark Mark curling above the trees.
They Apparated straight into ruin.
The house was barely standing, sagging under smoke and flame. The roof had collapsed in parts, and the garden was scorched down to its roots. Sirius stepped over the splintered remains of the front door and into what used to be the living room. Ash drifted through the air like snow.
The chessboard from the study lay overturned in the rubble. A solitary queen rested on her side, dusted in soot.
The velvet curtains hung in blackened tatters from the rods.
And Marlene—Marlene was in the center of the room. Unmoving. Burned. Broken.
Her adult children were found later, hidden in the narrow crawl space behind the piano. A hiding spot only a few people knew about.
So someone had known.
A spy. Someone close. Someone trusted by the Order. Someone who knew exactly where she would put them when the worst came.
And Sirius, standing in the middle of it all, could only stare at what remained of the woman he once knew.
He picked up the queen before he left.
When he got home, he placed it on the table beside his chair in the living room. Then he poured a glass of whiskey he didn’t drink and set it beside the chess piece.
A quiet offering.