A Marauder's Guide to Falling in Love

Chapter One

It all started on a typical bright and sunny day; it was one of those warm summer afternoons that the sun gleamed brightly in the sky with an array of puffy white clouds hugging the horizon.

The neighborhood was anything but quiet; there were children playing street hockey on the far end of the avenue and two neighborhood busy bodies chatting over the fence. They paid no notice to their young children playing with toys out on the front lawn.

It was on such a day that Marlene McKinnon had decided to keep herself indoors and was oblivious to the beautiful day outside her bedroom window.

It was during this sunny August afternoon that she had decided to pack her school trunk for school and amongst sorting her belongings for another year at boarding school, looked at the tired eyes of the girl in the mirror and wondered where the summer had gone.

She ran her right hand through her long and matted dirty blonde hair before her fingers got caught in a knot halfway through. She winced and yanked her hand away, then quickly tied her hair back.

Disregarding her hair, she instead contemplated her reflection. The girl staring back at her looked almost defeated; she had tired circles rimming her brown eyes and a large array of freckles splashed across the bridge of her nose.

Marlene always considered herself to be nothing more than plain. Sure, she wasn't all that hard on the eyes but she would never consider herself to be drop dead gorgeous either. Apart from her long and thick black eyelashes she had never really been appreciative of her genetic features.

Her skin was far too pale and was a constant reminder for her why she could never truly appreciate summer days like this one. Her face had a splash of freckles but was otherwise flawless and her hair was nothing more than a nuisance for her and more often than not, Marlene would resort to tying it back so as not to deal with it.

She got bored of picking herself apart and finally managed to tear her eyes away. Instead, she focused on the mess surrounding her bedroom.

Among the heaps of clothes scattered around the room she also had textbooks, cauldrons, and an assortment of other school belongings that had yet to find their way into her trunk.

You see, Marlene was not just an ordinary girl who was currently hiding indoors to escape the suns unforgiving rays. At the tender age of eleven, Marlene had received her acceptance letter to one of the most prestigious schools for magic: Hogwarts, to be more precise. She was currently on summer vacation awaiting the beginning to her sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

It had definitely not been a shock when the large brown barn owl had flown in through their kitchen window and dropped an eloquently handwritten letter embellished with the Hogwarts crest in her lap. Her parents were both of wizarding decent and had been anticipating the letter for quite some time.

It was a sharp tapping noise that broke her momentary contemplation.

Marlene inhaled a deep breath as she looked over to her bedroom window and instantly recognized the brown owl that belonged to her best friend Lily Evans. She hurried over to the window and quickly lifted it to allow the bird entry. He flew in gracefully, circled the bedroom twice before dropping a pink envelope on the dresser. With a satisfied hoot he settled on the back edge of her desk chair and waited patiently for a treat.

Marlene quickly ripped open the letter and laughed quietly as Lily accounted for what appeared to be one of Lily's 'worst summers' ever. In fact, Marlene had been a little envious that Lily would be spending her summer in France but it seemed that her relaxing Paris getaway had been anything but.