Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. If you go here, congratulations! That means you have magical powers beyond your wildest dreams! You know, if your wildest dream includes having a stick that can turn cups into animals or using a household appliance to float a few daring feet off the ground. You get to come to this fabulous castle in Scotland – no internal heating, no electric lighting, not even a consistent floor plan – in order to hone radical skills in such exciting fields as Arithmancy (wizard maths), Herbology (wizard gardening), and Divination (wizard bullshitting). Ah, but there's a catch. If you've grown up around magic all your life – that is, if you have wizarding parents – you get the luxury of remaining in your comfort zone lifestyle-wise and socially. If not, well – let's just say that people in the first group tend not to take kindly to someone who spontaneously develops magical gifts, even though they have no control over them and maybe not even a desire to have them.
"Watch it, Mudblood!" a pale green-clad boy barks at me in the corridor as he bumps into me leaving Transfiguration. My books nearly fall out of my arms, but I catch them clumsily. I look up, a snide remark ready on my lips, but he's already turned the corner and won't have a chance of hearing me. I just scowl and turn the opposite direction.
Yes, Mudblood. The most highbrow of all insults. Instead of going after a mistake you've made or a flaw in your character, bullies always go for some integral part of your being that you're helpless to change. My "blood status" is unpure because no one with any trace of magic has appeared in my family line for as far back as research goes. You'd think that would make me a novelty, right? A gifted honoree in a house of (comparatively) unremarkable people, blessed with abilities that my parents and sister can only dream of.
That's what I used to think in the early years of attending Hogwarts. Before the taunts and sidelong looks really had the sticking power to affect me. But year after year, they built up and up, the pile teetering over my unsuspecting head. In my fifth year at Hogwarts, I had a great boyfriend – Andrew MacDonald, Ravenclaw – a spectacular best friend – his sister, Mary, one of my beloved roommates – and a fantastic Head of House – Minerva McGonagall, Transfiguration professor and famed Gryffindor. And one by one, they were taken from me.
Andrew broke up with me in the middle of sixth year, right before Christmas. There was no warning and I still haven't gotten an explanation. I thought that it would be easy enough to track him down for a word at some point; after all, the castle is only so big. But eventually I had to accept that his avoidance of me must have been aided by some sort of magical help. It was absolutely unparalleled. I tried to reach out to him through Mary, but she was too distracted or too loyal to her brother to help me much.
Just after the Easter holidays, Professor McGonagall called me to her office for a consultation. (I was taking some extra lessons from her, regarding spells too advanced to be considered entirely necessary in class.) In the middle of the hour, Professor Slughorn's head appeared in her fireplace via Floo Powder, ruddy and anguished. He stammered out a few sentences, stopping short when he saw me standing there behind Professor McGonagall, but it was too late. I had heard enough. I stumbled out of the room and darted to the Entrance Hall, out the doors, and all the way down to the Quidditch pitch. At the edge of the stands, near the far goal hoops, lay the prone body of Mary MacDonald, my best friend. Blood seeped into the ground, oozing from a wound in her head. I couldn't even look at her long enough to process any information. I began running back the way I'd come, but was stopped short by an impact with someone else standing there. I fell; they remained standing. When I looked up at my obstacle, I saw that I'd run into Andrew. Scrambling to my feet, I tried to get anything out of him - answers, details – but he was totally unresponsive. I had to leave him standing there, stunned by everything, when Professor McGonagall reached the scene. She insisted that I be escorted back to the castle, which ended up being an easy task when I simply fainted to the ground. When I woke up in the Hospital Wing the next morning, I found out what was transpiring in the aftermath.
Professor McGonagall had uncovered the following facts: a group of Slytherins had been seen lurking about the Quidditch pitch earlier that evening – but not just any group of Slytherins. They were the Death Eater wannabes who not only tormented people around the school regularly (myself included) but had already used Dark magic on Mary once before, years earlier. They were dangerous, capable, and had motive. The problem was, all of them had alibis up in the castle at the time of the murder. But they weren't the only people at the Quidditch pitch. James Potter, Mary's boyfriend, had been practicing on his broom around that time with his friends, though an exact time couldn't be ascertained. And then there was the person who had discovered her body – Andrew. Professor Flitwick had come on the scene soon after, and had called Professor Slughorn, who in turn contacted Professor McGonagall.
Within the week, Professor McGonagall unexpectedly arrived in the Gryffindor common room to make an announcement – she would no longer be our Head of House. She didn't say whether it was her own choice or someone else's, but she didn't need to. Her eyes shouted that she was being demoted. And I knew more. My close relationship with Professor Slughorn had yielded the information that the governing board of Hogwarts had caught wind of Professor McGonagall's accusations against those students – many of whom were their children – and were not pleased. The new Head of Gryffindor House would be Professor Binns, the single most complacent and invariable Hogwarts professor there was. And then the next day, Professor Slughorn's office was found to be empty. He had packed himself off in the night with no sign of where he'd gone.
I had had enough. I went straight to the Transfiguration classroom.
"Miss Evans?" she inquired as I stormed up the aisle between the desks, never having been rearranged in all my years here and probably all of hers. The floor beneath the table and bench legs was probably worn smooth. If nothing ever changed in this castle, we'd all slide right out, with no friction to stabilize us.
"I want to know who killed Mary," I demanded. "I want to help."
Professor McGonagall didn't know what to say. "Why, Miss Evans, I'm afraid – "
"I know you're still looking into it," I declared. "Professor Slughorn told me everything. No matter what the board does to you or your job, you want the truth as much as I do." Professor McGonagall's eyes had turned steely.
"Miss Evans, I am not denying that that is true," she returned. "But you must understand the whole situation. The Ministry has convicted Walburga Black of the murder of Mary MacDonald."
Sirius Black's mother? I was already shaking my head firmly. "That's not what happened," I insisted. "What possible reason would Walburga Black have for killing a girl she probably doesn't even know?"
"The Ministry thinks that this is one of the rare cases where they apprehend the culprit in a shining display of social clarity," Professor McGonagall explained, rounding her desk and gesturing for me to sit on a bench. "Merlin knows they don't like to acknowledge the blood purity frenzy running rampant through our society, but for once, they seem to be rather focusing on it." She looked at me from behind lowered spectacles. "But Mary MacDonald, as you well know, is a – "
"Half-blood," I finished. "If blood purity has gone this far, then lots of people are in serious trouble."
"Indeed," Professor McGonagall agreed. "In this instance, however, I believe my own instinct on what transpired – that this was a personal killing, perpetrated by someone close to the victim, physically or emotionally."
"Why?" I believed her, but I had to know her reasoning.
"The poor girl was absolutely bludgeoned, Miss Evans," she pointed out. "Do you think that method likely of someone whose entire life philosophy rests on the superiority of inherited magic?"
Of course. It clicked into place. Walburga Black had taken the fall for someone else. I just had to find out who.
"Professor," I addressed my mentor, "where can we start?"
When word got around that I was on Professor McGonagall's side, the periodic jeers that I heard in the halls swelled to a near-constant flow. I began to eat my meals in the kitchens with the house-elves instead of braving the Great Hall. I was a Gryffindor, but nearly my entire house looked on me with disdain. James Potter and his friends had been implicated by Professor McGonagall, and they held quite a bit of sway in the social dynamics of Hogwarts.
One night near final exams, I had spent too much time in the library and was rushing back to Gryffindor Tower to get some sleep, when out of the shadows I heard my name. I jumped about a mile into the air. James Potter stepped into the light of a flickering torch and my heart slowed down, but only marginally. His black skin had melted in with the darkness seamlessly.
"So, you think I killed Mary?" he confronted me without prelude.
"What? I never – " James had been one of my friends before all of this began. Before Andrew broke up with me, he, Mary, James, and myself had been quite the group. I wasn't quite as close with James as I was with the other two, but then, he had his group of friends outside our foursome, like I had mine. Our history with each other wasn't exactly spotless, either. For years, he had flirted with me and hinted at feelings that I did not return, but when this behavior continued somewhat even after he settled in with Mary, I concluded that that was just how he acted in life, not just toward me. All things considered, I did not believe that he had killed Mary.
But I couldn't rule him out.
"Mary's my girlfriend, Lily!" James spat at me. "She's Andrew's sister! Your best friend! How can you seriously stand by McGonagall while she pins us as potential murderers?"
I had nothing to say. Nothing he'd want to hear, anyway.
"Goodbye, James," I mumbled, leaving him in the dull torchlight of the library corridor.
At the end of term, Ravenclaw won the Quidditch match against Gryffindor, taking the Quidditch Cup. Even though our house had lost, most everyone was going to the party in Ravenclaw Tower in relatively good spirits. I did not receive an invitation.
That was the last straw. I waited until midway through the night, when most of Gryffindor House would already be there, not sitting around to stare accusingly at me for trying to join in celebration with the people I used to call my friends. At that point I made my appearance.
I got sidelong looks, that was for certain. But dulled as they were by food, drinks, and merriment, and somewhat blocked by the thickened skin I was starting to develop, they didn't bother me as much. I found myself in the crowd holding a firewhiskey, and I downed it. Stupid of me. I had no idea where it had come from or what could be in it. And there was definitely something in it. Because the next morning, I woke up in a blue-quilted bed, somewhere up in Ravenclaw Tower, my clothing disheveled and my underwear nowhere to be found.
I prayed it was early enough for no one to be awake, then tiptoed down the stairs. I almost made it back to Gryffindor Tower without incident. In the corridor, I ran into Professor Binns, floating to his classroom like clockwork even though it was a Sunday. Emotionally wounded, embarrassed, and scared, I called out to him, but he didn't even respond.
I know I said earlier that I had had the final straw, but this truly was the one that broke the proverbial Erumpent's back. I stormed the rest of the way to the tower, locked myself in the bathroom, and, using my wand, sheared off my long hair. Choppy and jagged, I frightened my parents when I went home for the summer, though my high (as usual) exam marks put them more at ease. Petunia was out of the house most of the time, planning the last touches of her autumn wedding, dated such that I would have no chance of being able to attend.
It's now my seventh and final year at Hogwarts. The year has just begun, but I know that something will manage to liven it up before long. After all, this is a school of witchcraft.
Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble, what burst Mary's happy bubble?