101 Ways to ditch the Date | SIRIUS BLACK

No. 49

Marlene was up early the next morning, for reasons she couldn't quite explain. Rather than sit alone downstairs in the Great Hall, she instead chose to mill around in the Gryffindor Common room and read a random book off of the shelf. She loved old books not just for their plots but also because they often contained a hilarious amount of typos and it was incredibly satisfying to spot them, a little intellectual challenge to start off the day. Her early start also had another unexpected side effect, catching Ora sneaking out of the boys' dorms.

Without looking up at the girl, Marlene coolly said, "Morning Ora."

Clearly, Ora hadn't noticed her sitting there as she almost jumped out of her skin before nervously laughing, tucking a few strands of loose hair behind her ears in an attempt to appear less dishevelled, "Oh, hey Marlene, didn't see you there."

For effect, Marlene pushed her glasses down a little onto the bridge of her nose, "What brings you here? The comfy beds?"

"Aha, no," Ora replied, running her hands through the back of her hair, "Just seeing Sirius..."

"Ah yes, your new beau," Marlene said, still refusing to look away from her book, "Good night?"

"... Yep," Ora said, clearly dying to get away, "Well, I have to go and meet Em for breakfast, so we can go to Arithmancy together."

"Will she be there already?" Marlene asked and Ora shrugged.

"Yep, she often is," As she spoke, Marlene noticed Ora walking away from her, creeping slowly as if this would stop the observant Marlene from noticing, "She's an early riser especially if I'm not there to hold her up getting ready."

With this, Ora clearly thought she was done but Marlene had no intent on letting her go, she still needed to see if her theory was correct: whether Ora would be better to antagonise over Louise. Louise was the obvious one, having dated Sirius, she would clearly hold a grudge but perhaps if she could get Ora riled up, this would make the girl more sympathetic to Louise's plight. It would certainly be convenient if she could rile Ora up instead as trecking down to the Hufflepuff common room to stage a chance encounter with Louise sounded like an awful lot of work.

"Stop!"

Ora whipped around, "Why?..."

"I want to go and eat with my friend too," Marlene replied simply, "Let me just put my book away and we can head off."

Marlene stood by her earlier decision that Ora was selfish, from the way she spoke about Emmeline, it was clear that she would rather have Emmeline all to herself but was vaguely attempting to suppress it. She'd seen it happen before, the two girls clearly shared a deeply close bond and whilst Ora was more than happy to have friends of her own, she didn't hold Emmeline to the same standard, wanting her best friend to be alone. That was her judgement anyway and from her personal experience, she was right a lot of the time.

The animosity between the pair was still very much present as they spotted Emmeline sitting by herself at the Ravenclaw table. Ora turned towards Marlene, a slightly strained smile on her face, "She's at the Ravenclaw table..."

"So? The houses are outdated anyway," Marlene replied striding ahead, "We should all mingle as one, except for the Slytherins who are probably better off on their own."

"I suppose so," Ora agreed, "Some of them are nice though, like Dexter and I presume, Regulus is decent too if he's anything like his brother."

"So a massive twat?" Marlene cut in, watching with interest as Ora's nostrils briefly flared before calming again just as they sat down opposite Emmeline, "I was kidding, Sirius is ... alright."

"Mmm hmm," Ora replied, clearly a little unconvinced, looking down at her plate.

Emmeline looked between the two, not sure whether to be happy that they were together or slightly concerned, "So ... why did you two come together?"