Never Cursed

𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔶𝔢 𝔬𝔣 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔯𝔪

Marlene McKinnon

Circe Hall

The murder of Gates had stirred quite some shit – especially for Gomez and Morticia. Everyone at Nevermore was aware that Gomez had been the one to deal the fatal blow to Garrett. Marlene didn't know how to sit with this only fact. Gomez was a murderer and her friend – she had enough violence to deal with at home with the rising of the Pureblood Supremacists as she needed. And Remus's behaviour doesn't help, she thought, frowning at her friend sitting before the hearth.

"Rem?"

He had been strangely silent ever since he had seen Gates's body lying in the mud. It had been impossible for the Marauders to worm answers out of him. He had declined all their questions. He had eluded the subject as much as he could, to eventually justify his absence and his arrival on the crime scene at the same time as Gomez by saying he had met him on his way back from the bathroom. He had drunk a lot that night indeed, but Marlene sensed there was far more than that.

"Remus?"

Remus shifted in the armchair, his eyes fixed on the book he had taken from the shelves of Circe Hall. Marlene studied him in silence, noticing he wasn't reading, his eyes lost in the flames roaring in front of him.

"Oi! Earth to Remus!"

Classes had been cancelled for the time being, until the police deemed the investigation had to be classified, if not for the danger that was the Gates family since they had been told their heir had been killed by outcasts. Rendell was doing his best to dab the damages, but the harm had been done.

"It's already the second time this year the police have been called to Nevermore," Marlene remarked (more to herself than to Remus), her voice tinged with concern. As a 'new' student at Nevermore, she couldn't help but feel unsettled by the news. "Two deaths in one year... That's very unusual." At this rate, the school's cemetery is going to be full by the end of May, she thought grimly.

As for now, they couldn't do anything but wait for Gomez to come out of his forty-eight hours custody, for the police to stop asking questions. He should arrive any minute by now, Marlene supposed, glancing at the door of her dorm.

"What?" Remus finally raised his eyes to Sirius, exasperation glimmering in his amber eyes.

"What happened?"

"Gates's dead."

"Yeah, I figured," Sirius sniggered despite the gravity of the situation. "What happened to you? One moment you were with me on the dancefloor, the next you had disappeared into thin air, to reappear when Gates's body was found."

"Are you implying I killed him?"

"Moony, I would never," Sirius answered, his tone more serious. "I just want to know what happened to you." A pause. "It matters to me."

Remus sighed, dragging his hand in his ruffled hair. "I guess I feel guilty because Peter warned me on Christmas day someone would die. He saw it in his cards, but we didn't listen to him. You didn't let him talk, James, back in the maze."

Marlene reckoned Remus was changing the subject, once again. But what had happened in the maze needed to be sorted out. So she shifted in her seat to peer at James who seemed frozen by Remus's words.

"I don't blame you, Prongs. We're all at faults here. But I feel like we could have done something different," Remus stared at Peter. "If not for Gates, then for you, Pete."