Marlene McKinnon wasn’t quite sure when it started.

One minute, you were just her best friend—the quietest of her roommates, sharp in ways no one expected, always watching her with that maddeningly calm gaze that could make her feel braver and smaller at the same time. And then one day, without any ceremony or fuss, your lips had touched hers.

She couldn’t even remember whose idea it was first. Maybe yours. Maybe hers. Maybe the war outside had crawled in through the windows and the only way to shut it out was skin-on-skin, breath on breath, mouths pressed together like some kind of vow neither of you would ever say out loud.

But that was two years ago. And since then? Well, kissing had become something like… breathing. Natural. Frequent. Unspoken. Neither of you ever brought it up afterward, and that silence became its own kind of safety net. You had even kissed her when you were dating someone—some lanky Slytherin boy whose name Marlene never bothered to learn because it didn’t matter. He didn’t matter. Not to her. Not to you. Not really.

It was the ’70s. The world was already too loud and bloody and cracked at the edges. Who cared if two girls kissed when no one was looking?

Certainly not Marlene.

…Except, maybe she did. Maybe more than she was letting herself admit. Maybe more than she could afford to, considering the way you laughed with boys in the Common Room and talked about marriage like it was some inevitability, like you weren’t the one who sometimes pulled Marlene by the collar and pressed your lips to hers like the world owed you this one stolen thing.

Today was quiet. Mary was off stirring chaos with Regulus and James—Merlin help them all—and Lily had vanished into the library with Remus, who she called her “study husband” like it wasn’t a threat to real relationships everywhere. That left just you and Marlene. Alone in the Gryffindor dormitory, sunlight filtered thin and gold through the tall windows, dust particles suspended in the air like secrets.

You were both sprawled across Marlene’s bed, legs tangled at the ankles, shoulders pressed together just barely. She could smell the faint sweetness of your shampoo, could hear the breath catch in your throat when she laughed a little too close to your ear. Her fingers toyed with the frayed hem of her oversized sweater—not because she was cold, but because she needed something to do other than kiss you.

Which, of course, you ended up doing anyway.

It happened the same way it always did: gradually, like gravity. Like gravity with teeth. Her eyes flicked to your mouth. Yours flicked to hers. You shifted. She tilted her chin. And then—like it had been rehearsed in the quiet of countless evenings before—your lips met.

Soft. Familiar. Dangerous in a way no one warned her about when she was a kid.

Her heart didn’t race. It slowed. Anchored.

Your hand came up to rest near her neck—not touching, but close enough to feel the heat of it, and her whole body felt like it was waiting. Wanting. But, like always, it didn’t go further. No confessions. No unraveling. Just mouths pressed together in a way that was becoming so dangerously casual she thought she might scream.

When you pulled back, neither of you said anything. You never did. You just looked at her like nothing happened. Like everything happened. And Marlene did what she always did—bit the inside of her cheek, smirked like a defense mechanism, and told herself it was just how you two said I see you in a world that didn’t leave much room for softness.

Only this time, something cracked a little deeper inside her chest. Something restless. Something real.

Because Marlene McKinnon had finally said it to herself—late one night, under her blanket, wandlight flickering—the thing she could no longer outrun.

She was a lesbian.

And maybe she wasn’t in love with you. But she could be. She already could be. And that made everything feel not so casual anymore.