/𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐒\ [𝒔. 𝒃𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒌]

𝟐.𝟡.𝟣

~

"you do not have to be good. you do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." ~ Mary Oliver

~march 1973~

"Okay... you ready?" Mary asked, her eyes lit up with excitement at what she, Remus, and Artemis were about to do.

Artemis squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. She, on the other hand, didn't look excited at all. Instead, there was a determined steeliness to her expression that was almost off-putting. "She'll never see it coming."

"I like that we're doing this exactly a month from April Fool's day," observed Remus.

"Shut up, Remus," said Artemis. "You know your part of the plan, right?"

Remus nodded. "I'm spreading around word that Marlene has a rare form of scrofungulus that makes her delirious," he reiterated his part of the plan back to Artemis. "And I'm going to mainly tell the older students so the word trickles down."

"That's right," said Artemis. She wished she could do that part of the plan because she knew she was good at being persuasive, but she could count on one hand the number of people who were willing to speak to her just then. Even Peter had given in to Marlene since she threatened to spread around a rumor that he didn't really belong in Gryffindor. Artemis was getting sick of the reign of terror her former-friend held in Gryffindor tower. "Mary?"

Mary gave Artemis a sweet smile and held up a dark green bottle. "I'll be slipping vomit-colored hair-dye into all of her usual hair products."

"Fantastic," Artemis said, her tone business-like. Remus and Mary were looking at her with a sort of almost-reverence, but she was scanning the common room, making sure their plan was flawless. "I'll keep watch and make a few... adjustments... to some of Marlene's things while I'm at it." Remus nodded curtly and Mary held out a fist to do the secret handshake she, Artemis, and Remus had devised. When it was over, Artemis scanned the common room one last time. "Alright, and.... break."

The three of them scattered, Remus striding confidently out into the common room and Artemis and Mary both heading for the girl's dormitory. When they got there, Artemis did a quick check to make sure they were alone and Mary scurried into the bathroom to start mixing the hair products. While she was alone in the dormitory, Artemis locked the door and headed over to Marlene's bed. The first thing she went for was the pack of breath mints by her bed. Marlene loved breath mints. She picked up the little box and drew her wand. "Silencio minima a dolens," she said slowly, reciting the hex to make a person painfully lose their voice. "Silencio minima a dolens." She hoped it worked and she didn't doubt her own work much. She was top of her class in Charms and Defense Against the Dark Arts. Then, for good measure, Artemis grabbed Marlene's favorite blouse hanging from the bedpost and muttered, "Reducio minima." The blouse shrunk at least two sizes in Artemis's hands and she make a satisfied humming noise. Revenge had been made. She was ready for the war.

~

That evening, Artemis sat in the Gryffindor common room after dinner with one of her favorite art history textbooks she'd stolen from her dad's stack. It was all about London museums and the best works in them. She was just getting to the part about the Italian Renaissance when there was a crash and Marlene stormed down from the girl's dormitory stairs. Artemis looked up serenely, but had to fight to keep a straight face when she saw that Marlene's usually lovely blonde curls were a disgusting shade of yellowing green and that her face was contorted in rage. Artemis caught Remus's eye over the coffee table and he winked.

"Artemis!" Marlene rasped, her voice already slipping. "You- you-" She couldn't even get the words out.

Artemis bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing and calmly set her book to the side. "I what?" she asked, sounding pleasantly curious.

"You- you-"

"Sorry, I can't understand you, Marls. Care for a cough drop?" She produced a little bag of throat lozenges from her pocket and held one out to Marlene. Remus snorted and had to bury his nose deep in his book to hide his laughter.

Marlene was having none of it. The entire common room was watching closely as the two girls, whose reputations had both been torn to shreds, faced off. "This'll be good," Sirius muttered to James from a few tables away. Both boys set their quills down to tune into whatever would happen next.

"You ruined everything!" Marlene finally screamed in a voice that cracked so badly it made the people around her flinch. "Everything, Artemis!"

At this, Artemis stood up and glared at Marlene. "Oh, I ruined everything?" she shot back. "You literally ruined my entire life! I mean- you made all of my friends hate me and- and- none of what you said was true and you know that, and now you think I ruined everything for pulling a meaningless prank? You literally ripped apart everything that made me happy!" Her voice broke and her hand instinctively wrapped around her stomach to dig her nails into her side. She blinked hard.

Marlene's lips parted slightly as she started to shoot an insult back, but then something shifted when she saw how torn up Artemis was over this. She shouldn't have done what she'd done, she knew that now. Tears brewed in her own eyes and she stepped towards Artemis. "I'm sorry," she said, and she meant it. "I wanted to hurt you because- because you always get everything you want-"

"Bullshit!" Artemis shouted, her foot stomping into the ground. It was the first time anyone had heard her swear. Remus raised his eyebrows, impressed. "That's bullshit and you know it! You can't just tell people those things about me and then apologize and expect everything to be fine! It's not fine!"

"But I'm really sorry!"

"I don't care!"

"Everything I did was wrong, but-"

"Yeah, it was wrong!" Artemis said furiously. "I can't forgive you- ever. So stop trying!"

The entirety of the Gryffindor common room was watching the girls attentively, tension building up throughout the room. "You know what a really good soundtrack to this would be?" Sirius broke the silence. James looked over at him and Sirius gave him a crooked grin. "Bitch, by the Rolling Stones."

"Shut up, Sirius," Artemis snapped, and then turned and stormed out of the common room, leaving everyone in uncomfortable silence.

~

It had been two months since they lost the baby, but things weren't getting any easier for Andromeda and Ted. They'd both lost far too much weight and their once bright and cheery apartment was strewn with clutter neither of them had the energy to pick up. The cold, dreary late-winter weather made everything feel so much worse. The world felt darker for Andromeda and Ted, who were barely old enough to be parents in the first place and far too young to lose a baby the way they did.

One night, Ted came home from work late. He slumped up the stairs slowly, taking his time, and then fumbled to find his keys in the pockets of his robes. When he unlocked the door and stepped through, the first thing he noticed was how dark the apartment was. He and Andromeda usually kept the place pretty dark, but he had to light his wand to find his way through the mess to the couch. He flicked a lamp on and squinted in the sudden half-brightness. "Andy?" he called, scanning the room. "Hey- And-?" His heart started beating faster for no reason. There'd been some stirrings lately in the village about dark wizards getting up to some trouble and he was feeling a bit on edge in general. He crept slowly down the hallway to his and Andromeda's bedroom. The lights were out and the bed was empty. His heart was hammering now. He went back out to the hallway, and then he saw a strip of light under the door of the nursery. He sighed.

When he pushed the door open, his heart sank. Andromeda was fast asleep on the floor, her hands under her head and her short brown hair sprawled out across the carpet. She would look peaceful if it weren't for the troubled frown that now never left her lips and the discoloring of her face. She looked ill, but it was no different from how she and Ted had both looked for months now.

"Hey, Andy..." Ted said softly, trying to ignore the bright yellow walls and the unused baby furniture and the hand-painted prints around the trim that he and his wife had worked so hard on. He knelt down next to Andromeda and gently swept her hair out of her eyes. "Not this again, love."

"Hm?" she stirred and her eyes fluttered open. "Oh. Shit, I'm sorry."

Ted set a hand on her back and helped her sit up. "Let's just go to bed."

"What're we gonna do with this room?" Andromeda asked sleepily, not making a move to stand up.

There was a beat of silence and then Ted shook his head wearily. "I dunno. Leave it?"

"We can't. It... it hurts too much."

"Then we'll change it." Ted took Andromeda's hand and at last she got to her feet and leaned into his side, taking one last long look around the nursery. "-Make it into an... office or something."

Andromeda raked her fingers through her unwashed hair and let Ted guide her back to their bedroom. She climbed into bed and turned over on her side. "This shouldn't be so hard," she said at last, her voice frail and withered. She was too tired to cry. Too tired to do anything but just lay there and let Ted pull the covers over her.

"I really don't want to talk about this tonight," Ted said after a long silence. He was exhausted. He couldn't think about it anymore. He couldn't let the weight of what had happened crush him right now. "Just go to sleep, Andy. I'll come to bed in a minute."

~

Marlene hadn't laid eyes on Artemis since their blowout in the common room. Apparently Art had come back to the dormitory after Marlene had fallen asleep and gone back out early in the morning to avoid any sort of confrontation. That's what Lily had told her, anyway. Marlene felt awful. She couldn't get the look on Artemis's face out of her head, the way she'd gotten so close to crying- and it didn't help that Marlene couldn't seem to get the vomit-color out of her hair. Nobody in Gryffindor would speak to her, either. Apparently, they all seemed to think she had some sort of rare disease and nobody wanted to get close enough to contract it. Marlene was finally getting a taste of how Artemis had felt for the last month. She hated it.

"It's Saturday," Lily said, coming out of the bathroom with a toothbrush sticking halfway out of her mouth. "Let's do something."

"Can't," Marlene said lazily, staring up at the ceiling with vacant eyes.

Lily sighed and went back to the sink to rinse her mouth out. "Is it because of your hair?"

"Mhmmm."

Lily rolled her eyes and then rejoined Marlene in the dormitory, sitting down on the mattress next to her. "You care too much about the way you look," she said bluntly. "If you cared half as much about how your actions affected other people, you might be speaking to Art right now."

"I don't need you to mother me now, Lily."

Lily ignored her. "I think you should stop moping around and do something productive. It's stupid to just wallow around when honestly you had it coming- oh, Marls."

Marlene had sat up in bed and her hair fell around her shoulders in grossly discolored curls. Her eyes were filled with tears and her chest hitched as she struggled to take a breath in between sobs. "Will you- s-stop it?" she said shakily. "Just... stop it."

"Stop what?" Lily asked unsympathetically. "Telling you the situation the way it is? I'm sorry- I don't feel bad for you, Marlene."

Marlene sniffled and wiped at her eyes. "Look... I know I act like I don't care sometimes-"

"No, Marlene, you act like you care all the time," Lily snapped. "You might be the most emotional person I know, but you need to get yourself straightened out because now it's messing with other people's feelings. And you can't just expect Art to forgive you because you apologized. What you did was really terrible."

"What she did was really terrible!"

"She only did it because nothing else was getting through to you and you're so vain that the only way to get through to you is to mess with your appearance!"

Marlene looked hopeless. "So what do I do?' she asked miserably. "How do I fix it?"

"Look, some things you just have to... figure out on your own," Lily said heatedly. She stood up and started towards the door. "I thought you said you didn't want me to mother you right now."

~

Dorcas and Alice hadn't spoken in four months. It was getting increasingly difficult for Dorcas to avoid her ex-best friend when they shared practically everything in the school. It didn't help that she was just now starting to realize that Alice might be- and she hated to admit it- her only real friend. Dorcas had always had trouble talking to other people. She never prioritized making new friends over the things that practically felt more important, but now she was starting to regret that. Without Alice around, things got really lonely sometimes.

On one Saturday in particular, Dorcas was shuffling along through the halls, trying to keep her head down to avoid being noticed, but she didn't realize when her Herbology notes slipped out of her grasp and fluttered to the ground. A boy in a green tie behind her bent down and picked it up, then showed it to his friend. "Oi- you! Girl!"

Dorcas spun around.

"What's this?" the boy asked, waving the paper around in Dorcas's face. "What's that?"

Dorcas made a grasp for the paper. "It's- my notes-"

"Oh yeah? What's that right there?"

The boy pointed to some writing in the margins of Dorcas's paper. Her eyes scanned the words Dear Alice... It was a letter she'd been meaning to write to Alice explaining everything. "Give that back," Dorcas said in a commanding voice. "It's none of your business."

"Who's Alice?" the boy taunted, catching his friend's eye and grinning. "She your girlfriend?"

Dorcas's blood ran cold. What had Alice been telling people? "No-no! She's my- just give it back- it's not yours!"

"That seems pretty suspicious to me," the original boy's friend said slyly. "You sick, perverted-"

"You shut up!" A blur of dark hair streaked past the boys and Alice skidded to a stop next to Dorcas, shielding her with one arm, her other pointing her wand in the boys' faces. "Don't say that to my friend!" The boys looked too surprise to react much at all. Alice's expression was angry enough to light a house on fire. "Don't you dare say those things to my best friend! She may be a lesbian- but that's okay! And I'm going to defend her honor from- from- from imbeciles like you until the day I die! So leave her alone or I'll hex you so badly you won't know what hit you!"

The boys and Dorcas all stood still in shock. Alice didn't care. She was breathing heavily, rage and protective love for Dorcas filled her.

"Now get away! Stercus Expurgio!"

Alice watched in delight as her hex worked and both of the boys faces grew stark white and they turned and ran away, hands covering their bottoms. Dorcas opened her mouth in shock, then closed it, then opened it again. "I... did you just make them shit themselves?" she asked in half-horror, half-awe.

"First thing that came to mind," Alice muttered, stowing her wand back in her robes. "I've been trying to be more assertive lately. I cried on Frank last week."

In that moment, Dorcas's heart filled with more love than she'd ever felt in her life for Alice. She threw her arms around her. "That was the weirdest thing I've ever seen you do, Al. I love-" She stopped herself then, not wanting to mess this up.

Alice hugged Dorcas back as tightly as she possibly could. "I love you, Dorc. Let's never not speak again."

"Agreed," Dorcas said warmly, her throat getting tight with relieved tears. "-but... for future reference, you don't have to defend my honor-"

"I'm going to defend your honor."

"Okay."

~

It was Saturday night and Artemis knew she couldn't avoid the other girls for much longer. She wanted to get a shower and go to bed at a reasonable time. At ten o'clock, she made her way through the common room and up the stairs to her dormitory, hoping Marlene would have the decency to already be asleep. She had no such luck. When she opened the dormitory door, Marlene was sitting up on Mary's bed, looking miserable. Beside her, Mary was drawing in a sketchbook. They seemed to have just finished up a discussion that made Marlene less than happy. "Oh, funny you should show up now," Marlene spat when she laid eyes on Artemis. "Mary was just telling me she has no idea how to get this god-awful color out of my hair."

"Huh," Artemis said ironically, "see, I was just trying to figure out how to convince the entire school that I'm not crazy, but that's not quite as easy as just getting some bleach."

"Bleach," Mary muttered under her breath, like the solution had just hit her.

Marlene scoffed. "Well, everyone thinks I have some disease so they won't go around me in the first place!"

"Everyone hates me, Marlene!" Artemis cried, her voice cracking.

"Everyone hates me too!" said Marlene, sounding miserable.

Artemis crossed the room and fell back on her bed, covering her face with her arms. "This is horrible," she muttered into the fabric of her sweater.

Marlene let out a long sigh. "You know, you're not that bad, Art," she said at last.

Artemis slowly drew her hands away from her face and sat up. "What did you just say to me?"

"You... don't deserve to have everyone hating you. You really don't. I-" Marlene seemed to be struggling to get the words out. "I'm sorry."

There was a moment of silence. "I think... I don't think you deserve to have everyone hate you either," Artemis said slowly. "-Which doesn't excuse anything you did and I think you still deserve to have me hate you, but- but I don't. I'm just sick of all of this happening."

"Me too," said Marlene. "And, honestly, I think it's dumb that everyone else just went with it."

"Honestly!" Artemis cried. "Like, does nobody around here have the slightest bit of a backbone? They'll just believe anything you say about anyone and it's a bit disturbing to be honest."

Marlene stood up and raked her fingers through her hair. "Exactly! Like, why would anyone believe you're crazy? You're the furthest thing from crazy... most of the time."

"And why would they believe you have scrofungulus? Do they know what scrofungulus is? All we had to say was 'oh, she has green hair which means she's sick,' and they just believed it!" Artemis was getting heated now, but not at Marlene. "Sorry about your hair, by the way. I'll help you get it back to normal."

Marlene shrugged. "It's sort of growing on me."

"No, it's not," Mary chimed in.

Marlene and Artemis both smiled. "No, it's not," Marlene agreed. "But thanks, Art. I'll help you get your reputation back."

"Gonna be a bit hard when everyone hates you too," said Artemis.

"Well, none of them know what they're talking about," said Marlene.

Artemis nodded. "Bloody idiots, all of them."

"Exactly!" Marlene stepped forward so she was right in front of Artemis. "Art, I don't think we should fight anymore."

"I don't think so either," Artemis agreed thoughtfully.

"Oh!" Mary sprang up from the bed and hurried to join the other two girls. She took their hands in hers and closed her eyes. Artemis and Marlene raised their eyebrows at each other.

Then, the door opened and Lily let herself in, looking worn. When she saw the scene, she wrinkled her brow in confusion. "What's happening here?"

"Friendship pact," Mary explained like it was obvious. "Here, come join us. Marlene and Art are friends again."

Lily rolled her eyes. "I'd like to go on the record saying you're all insane, but whatever." She joined the other girls and took Artemis and Marlene's free hands. "Get on with it, I want a shower."

Mary took a deep breath. "Do we all solemnly swear to be best friends forever and ever? No matter what happens and what tries to tear us apart in the future? Friends- no, not friends- sisters forever and ever?" There was a moment of silence, and then another one. Nobody moved or said anything for almost a full minute.

Then, Artemis giggled. "Mary, you never said what we're supposed to say."

"Oh, right." Mary blushed. "You're supposed to say 'I solemnly swear.' And say it grandly, please."

Mary peaked through her eyes to watch as her three roommates all chorused, "I solemnly swear," in the most grandiose tones they could manage before collapsing into fits of giggles. "Was that good enough for you, Mar?" Lily asked with a wan smile as Marlene and Artemis sat back on Marlene's bed, still laughing. Mary nodded and smiled. "Good. Now, I'm getting my shower. Don't kill each other while I'm gone."