To Be Without Fault

by Alicia78

Summary: In the McKinnon’s summer home in Messina, Italy, Charles McKinnon, his daughter, Marlene, Marlene’s friend, Lily, are there to stay for the summer. Charles’s good friends, Thomas and Katherine Potter, their son, James, their niece, Melanie, and James’s friend, Sirius, come to stay as well. Lily knows James as a self-centred jerk who didn’t date girls—he shagged them. James believes Lily to be an anal prick who believed she was too good to associate with any of the boys who attended Hogwarts. In an odd twist of things Sirius develops a fancy for Marlene. However, will Melanie’s determination to get back together prevent Sirius and Marlene from being able to date without Melanie interfering? Based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.

Rating: PG-13 for language and some sex-related discussions

Disclaimer: I own neither the characters and thematic elements taken from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, nor do I own any plot aspects taken from William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.

Chapter Three: The Break-Up

The next morning, Lily and Marlene woke up with initiative to clean their room. After all, they had been in Italy two weeks already—they were past the “just moved in” stage. Furthermore, Mr. McKinnon had informed them last night that James and Sirius’s room was cleaner than their’s, and they couldn’t live with that. As Lily was hanging up the last of her dress robes with her wand, the two girls heard a knock at their door.

“Hey, can I come in?” came a voice as Melanie’s face crept through the small opening in the door.

“Yeah, sure,” Marlene replied indifferently.

“Great! So, what’s up?” Melanie asked merrily, coming over to Lily’s bed, much to Lily’s demise, and sitting cross-legged on it.

“Oh, nothing much,” Lily replied impassively, pushing her now empty trunk under her bed rather aggressively. “What are the boys up to?” she asked, wondering why she couldn’t go bother them. After all, Sirius and she were dating.

“Not sure,” Melanie said, looking around the room. “I get the feeling they don’t want me around—Sirius especially.”

“You two finished then?” Marlene asked, her eyes tearing away from the socks she was magically folding with her wand.

“You didn’t know that?” Melanie asked, genuinely surprised, “I thought the entire bloody school had heard about that…”

Lily shot Marlene a pressing look, causing Marlene’s bronzed cheeks to have a bit of a pink tinge to them. Melanie looked between the two girls suspiciously.

“You fancy Sirius, Marlene?” Melanie asked inquisitively.

Marlene hesitated.

“It’s okay if you do,” Melanie assured her. “We’re finished—neither of us fancies the other anymore.”

“A little bit,” Marlene confessed. “I don’t really know him that well though.”

“Oh…well that explains it,” Melanie nodded knowingly. “I didn’t know him that well when we started going out either. But I knew he was James’s best friend, so I assumed he was alright. Then he cheated on me and I told him we were finished. A few months later he caught me snogging Andrew Cole. You know Gryffindor’s old Quidditch Captain? Well, anyways, he claimed that we were still going out and then proclaimed to the entire school that we were through because I cheated on him.”

“Seriously?” Marlene asked, “He always seemed so sweet though.”

“I know, right?” Melanie confirmed, “He always seemed so much more sincere—but let me assure you, he’s much worse. Anyways, I better be going. I promised my Aunt Katherine that I’d take a walk with her this morning, and it’s almost eleven. I’ll talk to lot later.”

Marlene unenthusiastically watched Melanie’s retreating figure as it left the room—her mood having dropped sufficiently

That sucks

Don’t think too much of it. Or, at least, try to look at it from a different light.

What do you mean by that? What other lights are there to look at it from? He fucking cheated on her and then told the entire bloody school that it was her fault.

“And you believe that?” Lily asked, her eyebrows raised.

“What else can I believe? It’s the only account I’ve heard—and, let’s face it, I really don’t know Sirius that well. He probably is the complete prat Melanie described as.”

“Or, you could take into account that Melanie was obviously very hurt by the way Sirius broke up with her in front of the entire school when he caught her cheating on him. So she decided to spread a rumour around that he had cheated on her first,” Lily explained.

“What reason would Melanie have to lie to us though?” Marlene asked.

“My goodness girl! Where does your brain go during the summer?” Lily asked, exasperatedly. “She obviously wants to get back together with Sirius. So she’s jealous that you fancy him and she also sees you as a threat, so she’s trying to make you despise him.”

“How could she expect to get back together after one of them, not matter which one of them it was, cheated. Isn’t cheating kind of like a final point in a relationship? No going back after that?”

“Don’t expect me to decipher the inner-workings of that twisted girl any further!” Lily replied, “I’m telling you one thing, if she still makes head girl after that being caught shagging Andrew Cole in the broom shed, she better not make Head Girl.”

“Don’t worry, Lils,” Marlene encouraged, “you have that position in the bag. You’d be perfect for it—everyone knows it.”

Lily smiled. “Thanks,” she replied sincerely.

“Hey, it’s almost noon though, do you want to go grab some lunch?” Marlene suggested. “There’s a great sandwich place by the pier.”

“Yeah, that sounds great,” Lily agreed.

.*.*.*.

A/N: I’m sorry, but this is literally all I have time to write tonight. I’ll try to put more up tomorrow night, but can’t promise anything. However, I promise that the next chapter will be much, much, much longer. Please review, I love your reviews—and thank you to all my wonderful reviewers! Also, look out for another “Dangerous Liaisons” chapter to be up later tonight. (I already have those pre-written!)