Chapter 12: Between Worlds
Author's Note: Yay, Biden won! So excited to have a president who is not Trump, and not actively trying to take away my and other people's rights 24/7. Anyway, it's been a stressful week, so I hope you enjoy the chapter!
The first of September at the beginning of Mary's fourth year at Hogwarts was bright and cold, King's Cross crowded with commuters. Paul Macdonald, Mary's stepfather, had driven her the long distance from their home in Cornwall all the way to London the previous day, and they had stayed in the Leaky Cauldron overnight before he brought her to King's Cross station in the morning.
Mary was happy to be going back to Hogwarts, and to see all of her friends, but she would miss her little world in Cornwall. In Cornwall, Mary was nothing but a girl, and she had Muggle friends who she did simple, fun things with, which had nothing to do with magic, and everything to do with being a teenager. She would miss the simplicity of her identity in the Muggle world.
In the wizarding world, Mary was sometimes exhausted by the politics of it all. She had never thought, when she discovered that she was a witch, that her life in the wizarding world would be so complicated. From the moment that she had arrived at Hogwarts, she was made aware of her blood status on an almost daily basis. These instances ranged from pureblood elitists sneering at her in the corridors and in classes, to people giving her back-handed compliments about being good at subjects "for a Muggle-born."
Still, Mary endured it. She wished, however, that she had more people to talk to about it. The only other Muggle-born that she was friends with was Lily, and she was reluctant to broach the topic with Lily, given her friendship with Snape. Of course, all of her friends would defend Mary if a pureblooded student decided to have a go at her, but, not being Muggle-borns themselves, they didn't truly understand.
Mary tried to push these thoughts out of her mind as she approached the barrier dividing the Muggle world from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, however. Paul looked over at her, giving her a small, nervous smile as he met her eyes.
"I always hate this part," he admitted, laughing slightly. Mary smiled back.
"It's okay, dad," she replied, offering him her hand. "We can go together." Paul smiled gratefully and took her small hand in his larger one, and, looking around furtively first, they walked towards the apparently solid barrier, passing through it onto Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.
Mary blinked rapidly as she took in the sight of the platform, bustling with activity, in front of her. Quickly, she steered them away from the barrier so that if anyone came through behind them, they would not get hit, then stopped for a moment just to take in the sight of all the students coming back for another year at Hogwarts. A wide smile broke across her face, and she turned to beam at her step-father, who smiled back enthusiastically.
"Shall we get your trunk onto the train, then?" He asked, putting an affectionate hand on her shoulder. She nodded vigorously, smiling widely up at him, and together they pushed her trolley through the crowd to a door of the train. Once they had lifted her heavy trunk into the luggage compartment, they stood back from the train, and Mary looked around to the milling crowd.
"Looking for your friends?" Paul asked.
"Yeah, I was just thinking that if I saw one of them I'd—" Mary began, then broke off, catching sight of a head of sleek, dark brown hair. "Tia!" She exclaimed, running towards the other girl.
Hestia Jones turned around, looking for the person who had called her name curiously, then caught sight of Mary bounding towards her. Her face broke into a wide smile, her cheeks rosy as always and her eyes dancing with their usual mirth. She spread her arms wide, and Mary ran into them, the two girls clinging to one another, laughing in delight.
Hestia had grown an inch or two over the summer, while Mary stayed as short as ever, so their hug was slightly more awkward than usual. Mary barely cleared five feet tall, and her doctor at home told her that she would likely not grow much more, a fact which she was rather put out about. All the other girls in her dormitory were taller than her, though her Ravenclaw friend, Miranda, was about her same height.
Indeed, when Hestia and Mary broke apart, Hestia grinned down at her, remarking jokingly, "Did you get shorter?"
"You got taller," Mary said, frowning and crossing her arms. Hestia laughed, running a careless hand through her silky hair.
"If you think I've gotten tall, just wait until you see Marley," she said, looking around for their friend. "I spotted her a few minutes ago, or at least I think it was her. I thought us girls were supposed to get tall steadily over time, but I swear she shot up another couple of inches over the summer."
"Great, that's all I need," Mary said, though she was grinning. "More short jokes from Marley."
"Where are your parents?" Hestia asked, looking behind her. "Mine just left."
"My step-dad brought me," Mary said. "He's back there, if you want to meet him, I thought I could introduce you two."
"That would be amazing!" Hestia said, bouncing excitedly, her dark eyes twinkling. "I've heard so many great things about Paul, I'd love to meet him."
Mary smiled, and led Hestia back towards Paul, who was waiting patiently, his hands stuck in the pockets of his blue jeans, watching the two girls from afar. Paul, too, towered over Mary and her mother, Elizabeth, who was also short. Mary wondered if Clem would be taller than her when she was older. At present, she not yet three years old, and not even three feet tall, so there would be a while to go before than would happen, luckily.
"Dad, this is my friend Hestia," Mary said, nodding to Hestia, who beamed up at Paul. "Hestia, this is my step-dad, Paul."
"It's so nice to meet you," Hestia gushed, sticking out her hand to shake Paul's, who responded in kind, smiling warmly down at her.
"You too," he said in his deep, reassuring voice. "Mary's told me so much about you. I'm glad she's found friends like you at school."
"Have you seen any of the others around?" Mary asked Hestia. Hestia looked around, too, and both girls searched the crowd for a minute, but it was only when a figure came flying out of the barrier into Platform Nine and Three-Quarters did their search prove fruitful.
Emmeline Vance, looking harried, was followed closely by a tall, blonde-haired man and dark-haired woman, who must be her parents. Mary and Hestia immediately called out to her, waving her over, and she turned to them, the anxious look on her face fading into a smile as she registered who they were.
"Em!" Hestia exclaimed as she ran towards them, and Emmeline smiled, her long hair streaming behind her, catching them both in a hug at the same time. Mary was a little bit squashed into both of their chests, but she didn't complain, laughing slightly as Em released them. Emmeline had not grown much over the summer, luckily, as she had already been the tallest in their dormitory at the end of the previous year, though from Hestia's report, Marlene might overtake her this year. Still, her appearance had changed slightly, as her hair had lightened slightly with the summer sun, and become much less frizzy than it had been the previous year, her waves smooth and pronounced.
"I missed you both so much!" Emmeline exclaimed, smiling at them both.
"We missed you," Hestia exclaimed, almost bouncing with her excitement.
"Do you want to meet my dad?" Mary asked, nodding over to Paul, who was still standing there, looking around in a bemused way.
"Paul's here?" Emmeline asked, her eyes widening in surprise and her smile widening. "I'd love to meet him. You can meet my parents, too." She gestured behind her, beckoning her parents forward.
"Hello, girls," the dark haired witch said, smiling down at them. "You must be Mary and Hestia, I recognize you from Emmeline's pictures."
"This is my mum, Esther," Emmeline said, nodding to her, smiling. "And my dad, Charlie."
"It's so nice to meet you both," Hestia said, shaking both of their hands, Mary following suit, nodding and smiling in greeting. Emmeline's father looked quite a bit older than her mother, and both looked very friendly. Mary could see Emmeline in Esther's brown eyes and the shape of her face, but there was something about Charlie's steady smile that was familiar, as well, the expression on his face reminding her of the one Emmeline had given her many times. He and his daughter shared the same air of calm that Mary had always loved about her friend, which seemed to seep from her and reach out to everyone in the vicinity when it was needed the most.
"This is my dad, Paul," Mary said, as he walked up behind them. He smiled at Emmeline's parents, sticking out a friendly hand. They smiled back, too, accepting his gesture. "Dad, this is Emmeline, and her parents, Charlie and Esther Vance."
"No Noah?" Hestia asked Emmeline, referring to her younger brother. Emmeline laughed and shook her head, but her mother answered for her.
"Noah's a bit much to look after, especially in this chaos," she said, smiling. "I'd worry about him getting lost."
"My older brother, Benjamin, is looking after him," Emmeline explained.
"We can get your trunk onto the train, dear," Esther said to Emmeline, putting a hand on her shoulder briefly. "You catch up with your friends while we do that, and we'll come back to say goodbye."
"Thanks, mum, dad," Emmeline said, smiling and then turning back to Hestia, Mary, and Paul. "Do you have a long trip back, Mr. Macdonald?" She asked Paul, politely. Paul smiled at her.
"Please, call me Paul, Emmeline. It's quite a drive, though, yeah," he said. "But nothing I haven't done before. It'll be duller than the drive over, though, without my Mare with me."
Mary smiled at him regretfully. "Hope you won't get too bored, dad."
"Oh, don't you worry about me," he said, smiling down at her. "I've got my tapes, and the radio. I can always listen to infomercials if I get too bored. Just you wait, you'll get a letter from your mum complaining to you about me humming jingles all day long in a couple of days."
Mary laughed. "I look forward to it."
"Are both of your parents magical?" Paul asked Hestia and Emmeline.
"My mum is, but my dad isn't," Emmeline explained.
"My parents both are, but they're both Muggle-borns, like Mary," Hestia said brightly. "They met at Hogwarts."
"That's interesting," Paul said. "I say, I sometimes can't believe Mary is really a witch, and she learnt all of this stuff. Your wizarding world is constantly confusing me, I say to Mary all the time, it must be tough to learn a whole new culture so quickly, but she seems to manage so easily."
"My dad fancies himself a sociologist," Mary said, smiling affectionately at him. Paul shook his head and grinned down at her.
"What's a sociologist?" Hestia asked curiously, but before Mary, Emmeline, or Paul could answer, the Vances were back to say goodbye, and the first whistle sounded on the platform, warning that the train would be departing in five minutes.
Hestia headed onto the train to find them a compartment while Mary and Emmeline stayed on the platform to say goodbye to their respective parents. Mary smiled, turning to Paul, and he smiled rather sadly back down at her. She leaned up to wrap her arms around him, and he hugged her back, lifting her off her feet slightly. They clung onto each other for a while like that, and then Paul finally set her down, and they stood back.
"You'll take care of yourself?" Paul asked.
Mary nodded, smiling. "I will, and I'll send you lots of updates on everything. You'll write to me, too? Send me pictures of Clem?"
"Of course we will," he responded, smiling. "We always do. I'll miss you, Mare bear."
"I'll miss you, too, dad," Mary said, giving him a last hug, before climbing onto the train, waving to him briefly out of the window, and turning her back on him to find Hestia. Emmeline got on the train a moment later, and they both set out in search of their friend through the packed corridors. It didn't take long, as Hestia had not actually found them a compartment, but was standing chatting in the corridor with an older Hufflepuff girl, Alice Fortescue.
"Hey, Alice," Mary said, smiling. Alice had tutored her briefly in Ancient Runes the previous year, and was one of the nicest people she had ever met. "Good summer?"
"It was great!" Alice exclaimed beaming. "It's so nice to see you again, Mary!"
"It's really nice to see you, too," Mary replied, grinning back.
"You got prefect!" Emmeline exclaimed, pointing to the girl's silver badge gleaming on her robes. Alice smiled brightly.
"Yes, I was so surprised, but pleased of course," she said, running a hand over her badge humbly. Mary smiled. It made sense that Alice would be surprised, as she was so down-to-earth, but she couldn't think of anyone who deserved the position more than the fifth year Hufflepuff girl. "It will be a lot of work, though. The patrols and all that."
"True," Mary said. "I bet you'll manage, though."
"I'll have to," Alice said, smiling brightly. "Well, I should go find the prefect's carriage. See you later!"
"See you, Alice!" The three Gryffindor girls said, waving goodbye as she headed down the corridor.
"Have you heard anything about who the new Gryffindor prefects are?" Emmeline asked Hestia, as they walked in the opposite direction, looking for an empty compartment.
"I think someone said Frank Longbottom and Gracie Peakes," Hestia said. "They should be good. Frank's nice, and Gracie's a bit quiet, but she seems fine, too."
"Is that Sirius?" Emmeline asked suddenly, pointing ahead of them down the corridor. They all looked to the boy, who was just entering a compartment, and Mary shook her head after a moment of studying him.
"No, it's his younger brother, Regulus, I think," she said. They looked quite similar from behind, but Regulus was shorter than Sirius. "They do look very alike, though, it's eerie."
"There's Sirius!" Hestia exclaimed, pointing into a compartment to their left. She was right; inside the compartment sat James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew. "Let's say hi!" Hestia said, smiling and pushing the door open. As the door slid open, all three girls standing in the doorway, the boys started, looking up guiltily. Mary narrowed her eyes at them.
"Hello, boys," Emmeline said, a laugh in her voice. "Why do you all look like we walked in on you doing something illegal?"
Mary looked to Remus, who she knew the best, and found that his skin was flushed with embarrassment, his blue eyes standing out bright against his red face. His hands fumbled at the catch of his bag, clearly trying to shove something out of sight, but he wasn't fast enough. Mary gasped, striding over and grabbing it in her hands.
"Remus, is this pot?" She asked, laughing slightly and staring at him in surprise. Remus flushed ever darker red. The rest of the boys were all blushing, too, but none as much as Remus.
"No, of course n—" he said, trying to grab it back. Mary brought the bag to her nose, inhaling, and laughed, handing it back to him.
"It is," she interrupted, crossing her arms and grinning at him in amusement. "I know what pot smells like, Remus."
"Pot as in….?" Hestia asked from the door, her eyebrows raised, a look of confusion and surprise on her face.
"Cannabis, marijuana, weed," Emmeline said, her eyebrows also raised in surprised, but a look of casual amusement on her face as she crossed her arms, too, staring around the compartment at the boys.
"How do you know what pot smells like, then?" Remus asked defensively, snatching it from her and stowing in in his bag again. Now it was Mary's turn to blush slightly.
"My Muggle friends introduced it to me over the summer," she admitted. "I didn't know wizards smoked it."
"Not a lot of them do, I don't think," Sirius said, smirking slightly over at Remus, who was still blushing. "So, good summer, Mary?" She got the impression Sirius was trying to change the subject to shield Remus from further embarrassment.
Mary smiled at him. "Yeah, it was good. Yours?" Then she winced internally, wondering if that was an insensitive question to ask. After all, they had all seen his boggart the previous year…
Sirius just grinned back, however, lounging in his seat carelessly. "Not bad, not bad," he said carelessly. "Spent the last three weeks with Jamie, here."
"That sounds nice," Mary said politely, smiling at James, too, who grinned back at her.
"Hey, there you all are!" Another voice from the doorway said, and Mary turned to find Marlene, who had appeared suddenly between where Hestia and Emmeline, with Dorcas a little bit behind her. Hestia had been correct, Marlene had grown a lot over the summer, now surpassing Emmeline by a good two inches. A wide, familiar smile split her fair, freckled face as she gazed at Mary.
"Have you gotten shorter, Mac?" She asked lightheartedly, a grin in her voice. Mary rolled her eyes, and made her way over to Marlene, hugging her.
"Everyone can shove the comments about my height," she said, her voice slightly muffled by her hug. "Just because you all got taller over the summer and I didn't…"
"Only teasing," Marlene said, pulling back and smiling down at her. "Anyway, what are you all doing, hovering? Sit down, why don't you!"
They all hastened to do so. It was a tight fit, but they managed it. In the commotion of them all greeting one another and trying to see where everyone would be sitting, the topic of Remus' marijuana was forgotten, or at least abandoned. Mary didn't bring it up, at least, because she wanted to spare Remus any embarrassment that further questions might bring, though she was burning with curiosity about where he had gotten it. She had never pegged Remus as a stoner type.
Soon enough, after they all caught up on their summers, Emmeline brought up Quidditch. "Do either of you know who got Captain?" She asked James and Marlene.
"Florey did," Marlene said, grinning excitedly. "She wrote me over the summer to tell me when we all got our Hogwarts letters!"
"Really? Wow," Emmeline said, smiling in a slightly surprised manner. "I mean, she's an amazing Quidditch player, but I was kind of expecting Chris, since he's less of a troublemaker."
"I think Sam might have put a good word in for Florey," Marlene said. "I mean, she was kind of his protégé, even though she caused him a lot of trouble, too. I think she'll be a good leader."
"Maybe she'll set practice for a bit later in the morning," Emmeline said, hopefully. James and Marlene laughed.
Mary smiled, then turned to Dorcas. She didn't have much interest in Quidditch talk. "Looking forward to the year?" She asked her friend. Dorcas smiled.
"Yeah, I suppose I am," she said. "The summer was good, but I missed having classes. I'll probably be eating my words once we get into the second week, though."
Mary laughed. "I know what you mean. It will be nice, though, to catch up with everyone. Have you seen Lily?"
"No, not yet," Dorcas replied. "I wrote to her a bit over the summer, though, sounds like she had a good one. Her family went to Scotland for a bit, she told me. Sounded interesting."
"Maybe I'll hear about it later," Mary said, though she doubted it. She continued to chat with Dorcas as the train sped into the countryside, the day passing pleasantly in the noisy, crowded compartment as they moved towards Hogwarts. Mary had missed this, the feeling of magic all around her, the air almost crackling with it as she sat with her friends. Yes, this was the thing she had missed most about Hogwarts, and the reason she was looking forward to going back, despite the challenges.
...
The first few weeks of term passed without event. Dorcas had been right in saying that the novelty of being back at school would wear off quickly, and Mary felt it, as though she was enjoying her classes, she tired quickly of all the work they had been given.
She settled back into her usual routine, however. She went to classes, mealtimes, and then spent hours completing her homework in the library after class before retiring to the common room or dormitory. In the library she was usually accompanied, as ever, by Lily and Remus, her two classmates who preferred its quiet atmosphere the most. Others sometimes joined the trio, but Emmeline preferred to study in the dormitory, and Dorcas out in the grounds, or in odd abandoned places in the castle, while the rest often studied in the common room.
When she was not studying, Mary spent her time with her friends, or exploring the grounds on her own. She enjoyed exploring, walking around the lake at dusk, at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, or around the Quidditch pitch. They seemed endless, and while some part of her yearned to go into the Forbidden Forest and explore further, perhaps finding some of the magical creatures that lived in there, she resisted the urge. While the prospect fascinated her, it also scared her a bit, and she may be brave, but she was not reckless. I'm not Marlene, Mary thought with a smile.
In truth, Mary sometimes explored the grounds alone to escape the people around her. She had always been an introvert, but even more recently she had felt the need to escape from other people her age. Since the previous year, a startling change had come over her classmates, one which still confused Mary. Seemingly out of the blue, they had all begun to talk non-stop about all things romantic.
Now, it seemed like every other conversation she had with her roommates was about boys. Even Miranda, who Mary had sometimes sought refuge with the previous year to avoid this sort of talk, had not been able to resist telling Mary about her crushes this year. "I know you're not the biggest fan of this sort of talk," Miranda had said to Mary one day, smiling at her. "That's why I tried not to bring it up much last year. But you must like someone by now, mustn't you? It's perfectly normal for people our age!"
Mary sighed, her hand tracing over the bark of a tree on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Miranda was right, of course, it was perfectly normal for people their age. So why did it bother Mary so much when others talked about it? She couldn't help but feel a sense of wrongness in herself, of shame. Why hadn't she had a crush on someone by then?
It was true that Mary could sort of tell when someone was attractive or not, based on comparing them to people on the cover of Witch Weekly or Muggle magazines, or listening to the other girls in her dormitory talk, but someone's objective attractiveness, or lack thereof, never made Mary feel anything. When she was drawn to people, it was because they were nice, interesting, funny, or smart, not because they were attractive, and then she only wanted to be their friend.
The previous year, she had admitted her feelings to Dorcas on the topic, and Dorcas had seemed to relate, but the other girl had never spoken to her about it since. She didn't talk about boys, either, though, so sometimes Mary sought refuge with her. Still, she thought as she trekked up back to the castle, she didn't want to devalue her friends' interest in romance. It was important to them, so it was important to her for them to be happy. But really, did they have to talk about it so much?
As Mary re-entered the Gryffindor common room fifteen minutes later, she joined Hestia, Emmeline, and Dorcas in the corner.
"It's downright annoying," Emmeline was saying, though a slight, amused smile played across her face.
"What is?" Mary asked, sitting down and setting her back down beside her. Emmeline smiled at her.
"Marlene has a crush on Chris," she said, referring to one of the sixth year chasers from the Gryffindor Quidditch team. "She thinks she's being sly about it, but it's obvious to James and I, and probably the rest of the team. Marley being Marley, she's not shy around him or anything like you'd expect, she's even more obnoxious, trying to impress him or whatever."
"Oh," Mary said, sighing internally. "That does sound annoying."
Dorcas was not looking at the rest of them, but bent over her book. Hestia looked at her. "Has she said anything to you, Dee?"
"Hmm?" Dorcas hummed, looking up slightly, but Mary could tell she had been listening.
"About her crush on Christopher," Hestia elaborated. Dorcas shrugged.
"She hasn't flat out told me she has a crush on him," she said. "But like you said, it is a bit obvious."
"Thank you," Emmeline said, rolling her eyes slightly. "I swear, it's not like he's ever going to date her. He's a sixth year, for Merlin's sake."
Dorcas made a small, noncommittal noise in her throat, turning back to her book. "At least it gets her off the topic of Florence for five minutes," she said casually, though Mary thought she saw a flash of pain in her friend's downturned eyes, which she couldn't explain. "I get enough Florence talk from both Marley and James combined, ever since first year."
"Well, James has always had a crush on her," Hestia said, laughing. "It's obvious."
"Marlene?" Mary asked, confused.
"No, of course not!" Hestia exclaimed. "Florence!"
"Oh," Mary said. She glanced at Dorcas again, whose eyes were glued back on her Arithmancy book. Looking back up at Emmeline, she changed the subject. "Want a game of chess?"
...
As the days shortened, and they moved into November, their workload increased even more, and Mary was glad for any burst of light in the midst of the never-ending piles of essays she had to complete. More often than not, these bright spots came in the form of letters from home, especially those which contained polaroid pictures of her little sister, Clementine, grinning toothily at the camera, sometimes accompanied by Paul or her mother. She treasured these photographs and reminders of home, used them as bookmarks for her textbooks and stuck them in her bag that she hauled from lesson to lesson.
Over the course of the past two months, Mary could see another, darker change happening amongst the students. Reports had come out in the papers recently of a new dark wizard at large who was proclaiming himself against Muggles and Muggle-born wizards. The wizard, who called himself Lord Voldemort, was stirring up the wizarding world in a way that Mary had never seen before in her few short years at Hogwarts.
Students whispered in the hallways, falling silent when teachers walked by. There was a sense of barely contained excitement about the castle. If she had asked anyone, Mary was sure that they would deny it, but some of her classmates seemed fascinated with the intrigue of what was happening in the wizarding world, looking on in awe like it was some kind of film being acted out before their eyes.
Of course, none of her roommates acted this way, and Mary was somewhat surprised by, but respected the way that both James Potter and Sirius Black showed nothing but disgust in regards to the whole topic, snapping at anyone who brought up the events with any tone close to interest. Remus, of course, took it all very seriously, but this did not surprise Mary in the least. In fact, she had had several conversations with him about the topic, as they studied in the library together.
"Lily stays away more now than she used to," Mary had pointed out one day, looking up from her books.
"Yeah, I suppose she hasn't joined us much in the last few weeks," Remus replied, looking up at her across the table. They were seated in an abandoned corner of the library, far away from Madam Pince's chair, so that she could not yell at them for talking.
"I think it's about Snape," Mary said in a low voice, peering across at Remus, trying to gauge his reaction. "She thinks if she spends more time with him, he'll spend less time with his Slytherin friends, and he'll listen to them less, especially with everything that's going on."
Remus looked up to meet her eyes. "Do you think that will work?" He asked, quietly. Mary liked this about Remus: he always seemed calm and steady, even, or perhaps especially, when a difficult subject or situation arose. Mary shrugged at him, meeting his eyes candidly.
"No, not really," she said. "I've never thought he was a very nice person, but he's gotten worse over the years. All the Slytherins have, really, and he says those slurs and sneers just as much as the rest of them."
"Yes, he does," Remus said, a look of disgust going across his face. Mary thought this was rather unusual, to see Remus express open dislike for someone else. She studied him thoughtfully.
"Snape isn't very nice to you either, is he?" She asked, raising her eyebrows. "I mean, I already know he's awful to me."
Remus met her eyes, his blue ones searching her brown ones for a second, then sighed. "No, he isn't very nice to me, not at all."
"Is it because you hang around Sirius and James, and he hates them, d'you think?"
"I think that's part of it," Remus said, glancing down at his parchment for a second, breaking their eye contact. "It's complicated, I guess. Snape hates James and Sirius, of course, partially because he's jealous of them. They come from prominent pureblood families, and are some of the best in the class without trying too hard. With me, well, we're both half-bloods. I think he resents that despite that fact, I'm well-liked, when he's not. That's at least a part of it."
Mary nodded. She paused for a moment, looking down at her parchment again, then looked back at Remus. She could tell Remus, she thought. She trusted him. "I hate him," she said, quietly. "Snape, I mean. But not just him, all of them. They're awful to me."
Remus nodded, meeting her eyes again. "I know," he said. "Me too."
"Have you noticed that they've been getting worse, recently?" Mary asked. "Ever since Voldemort has been in the paper, they keep whispering to each other and they're even more vicious than ever."
"I've noticed, yes," Remus said, frowning slightly, in a way that Mary now knew to mean that he was thinking hard. "A lot of people around here seem different, lately, too."
"They treat it like it's a spectacle," Mary said, disgustedly. "It's people lives."
Remus sighed, his shoulders slumping slightly. "People our age aren't always the most sensitive, are they?" He asked, quirking an eyebrow in tired amusement, meeting her eyes. She let out a slight snort of laughter. She wasn't quite sure why she was laughing, but it was rather ridiculous, and, after a moment, Remus began to laugh a bit as well. They tried to muffle the sound, so as not to attract Madam Pince, who would skin them alive.
"It's not funny, really," Remus said after a moment, after they stopped. "It's fucking atrocious, isn't it? But it's a bit ridiculous, too."
"It is," Mary said, grinning slightly at his swearing. He had been doing it more and more lately, and she found it rather freeing to hear him swear, and it reminded her of some of her friends back home. It seemed out of place to the Remus she had thought she had known before, but then again, she had not really known him as well as she had this year. Perhaps this was just Remus, she thought, and the real Remus smoked pot, and swore, and she had just never discovered it before Lily had left them alone for longer. "It is fucking atrocious," she said, mimicking him slightly, and he grinned at her.
The two looked at each other for another moment before Mary blushed slightly, and turned back to her essay. Remus returned to his own, as well, a slight smile playing across his face. As Mary glanced up to look at him once or twice while they were both working, she noticed something for the first time:
It was an usual feeling, a warmth in her stomach which she couldn't quite place. In that moment, she realized that she thought Remus was rather good-looking. He had a nice smile, and his blue eyes were also rather beautiful.
It was strange, she thought, that this realization should hit her now. She had never, not in her memory at least, thought of anyone else in that way before, something which had made her feel isolated from her friends all this and the previous year.
But in that moment, looking at Remus, she thought she might understand it for the first time. Over the course of the last few months, she had grown closer to Remus, with Lily being gone so much more, they had been studying together a great deal. She had talked to him more than she had before, and now she really thought that she had begun to know him, even with his rather private nature.
What she had discovered, in the past few months, was that she liked Remus. He was a good person, funny, sarcastic, and likeable. She had already known that he was intelligent, of course. Her wariness towards him because of his association with the boisterous and troublemaking boys in his dormitory, had melted away slowly over time, and now she thought of him as a friend, perhaps even a close friend.
The warm feeling in her stomach grew, and she smiled slightly, trying to banish the warmth from her cheeks, and turning back to her essay. She would figure out what it all meant later, she thought.