A pointless drabble. Mary Macdonald always fascinated me and I've done several different takes on her, though this one is different than most of them. Enjoy!
Mary Macdonald has just regained feeling in her limbs, and yet she still feels numb. A stony numbness eats at her with rapid gnaws and nibbles like termites on wood. She's sleepy, bored, and really quite hungry, but none of the emotions everyone (including herself) expects sit inside her. She feels no resentment, remorse, or really anything about what put her in the Hospital Wing in the first place. Madame Pomfrey keeps asking if she's okay—emotionally, and that's not even her job—and Mary keeps shrugging in response because she's said she was okay so many times the word lost any sort of meaning, but maybe that's because nobody believes her.
Mary knows she's not really okay, though. Just numb. Everything she feels is quieted and numbed and is probably building up somewhere in a deep pit she has never discovered. No little muggleborn girl who has pissed off the wrong (older, bigger, stronger, purer, darker) people can really be okay, at least not for long. They make sure of it. "Don't mess with the big boys, Macdonald," Mary remembers Tantalus Mulciber spitting in her face—that's all she remembers, honestly. She supposes it was meant to be an important lesson. Sadly, Mary tends to skip class, so sometimes she doesn't get to learn all of her lessons.
Mary hasn't been to any lessons in almost a week, actually. She's traded pumpkin juice for Skele-grow and textbooks for condolence cards. She wishes she could play a drinking game with herself counting how many times any given person wrote, "I know you probably don't care, but…" Clearly, all of those childhood lessons about how things are not always as they seem and how looks can be deceiving were worth dog shit to twentieth century teenagers. Clearly, none of them know well enough how difficult Mary finds it to deliver any of her emotions (when she felt any, anyway). Clearly, Mary is worth dog shit to every twentieth-century teenager she knows. Sure, they all write cute cards and looking concerned during their visits, handing her chocolates and flowers to quiet their consciences. But Mary hates chocolate and is allergic to almost every flower the most scholarly florist could name and she doesn't know why nobody knows that but she also doesn't know why anybody would.
Mulciber should have offed her, she reckons. She also reckons that Benjy Fenwick shouldn't have dragged her to the Hospital Wing. He has a nice jawline, very neat handwriting, and a talent with making up compliments. He's also full of shit and Mary would have rather stopped living than credit her life to an asshat like him. Not long before waking up after being cursed, Mary heard through a hazy subconscious that Benjy only saved her to be the Hufflepuff hero and get into Amelia Bones's pants (Amelia only dates Gryffindors and by saving someone's life, Benjy thinks he's close enough. He is.) She realizes her life is worth a shag—and not even with her—and then upon further contemplation, that her life isn't actually worth anything. That's why it's so easy to get rid of her, and maybe that's why she doesn't feel anything after almost dying at the hand of dark magic—because her feelings aren't worth jack shit.
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