September 1st: Mary Macdonald

Waving goodbye to her mother, Mary steps onto the Hogwarts Express with every intention of spending the train ride with Veronica Smethley and the Hufflepuffs. Mary hasn't seen any of them since the end of last term; it should be good to catch up with some of her oldest friends, and anyway, she's tired of the way the Gryffindors suddenly hush their conversations when Mary walks into a room, like she's too fragile to handle hearing about how the war effort is going just because she backed out of it.

Mary isn't fragile, thanks. Mary just saw the damage that she and her friends inflicted on the lives of others when they tried to get involved—saw what happened to Elisabeth, to Millie—and didn't want any part in causing further destruction, even supervised by Dumbledore and his group of rebels (whom the Gryffindors are now referring to collectively with themselves and the others as the Order of the Phoenix). Just because she doesn't want to selfishly throw herself into an effort that's going to get others killed doesn't mean that she isn't still concerned about the Death Eaters' rise to power or interested in hearing about what Dumbledore is doing to stop them.

Frankly, she's sick of the way the Gryffindors keep looking at her—like she's going to snap at the slightest mention of the war, and even more than that, like she's still the same gossipy busybody she was a year ago. Yes, she's still interested in the social dramas playing out around her—yes, she told a few people when Lily and James got together, which honestly was going to become public knowledge soon anyway—but Mary knows now that there are things in life more important than gossip, like loyalty, like trying to make a meaningful difference in a world ruled by fear. That she's learned so much about life this past year and none of the other Gryffindors can see it—well, it makes her mad. Really mad.

But not mad enough to give you the courage to tell them off for it, says a small, quiet voice in the back of Mary's head, and she knows it's true: she's had every opportunity to speak up against the way the other Gryffindors have been treating her, and she hasn't done so. Maybe Mary's just too tired of it all to gear herself up for a big confrontation. Maybe part of her thinks that they're right about her—that she really can't handle anything more meaningful than gossip.

She waves hello to Marlene and Emmeline, who are saving a compartment for the other Gryffindors, and hauls her two enormous luggage bags behind her in search of Ver and the others. Finally, near the back of the train, she hears a familiar voice—Davy Gudgeon's. "She should be here with us," he says in his nasally voice. "Finishing her seventh year with us. Graduating. It's not right."

Mary stops short, realizing that he's talking about Elisabeth, and she backs up a pace and presses herself to the wall of the compartment beside theirs, where she won't be seen. "Benjy won't talk about her at all," says a huskier voice that Mary identifies as Amos Diggory's. "He was there with her, fought with her, knows exactly what happened, and he's just bottling up all that grief like he can shove it down and not deal with the fact that he lost his girlfriend and it's his own damn fault. His and Meadowes's and the Gryffindors'."

"Mary won't talk about it, either," pipes up Ver, sounding entirely too self-satisfied for Mary's liking. "She owled a bit but dodged all my attempts to hang out this summer, like she's ashamed of herself or something, and she should be. Liz is dead because of them. That LeProut girl is dead because of them. And she and Benjy are both just pretending like it didn't happen, like Liz never existed, never got murdered—"

People are jostling Mary, squeezing past her in both directions down the corridor, but she's frozen against the wall, riveted in a horrified sort of way. I need to get out of here, she thinks in a panic, and she swings her bags around and sets off in the direction she came from.

She doesn't want to sit with the other Gryffindor seventh years, doesn't want to be the odd one out again—be the reason that nobody in the room talks about the war or the deaths or anything real—but where else is she going to go? Mary doubles back and finds Em and Marlene's compartment again, where they've been joined by Peter and Sirius. "Thought you were catching up with the Hufflepuffs today," says Marlene.

"Yeah, well," says Mary, and something in her voice must tell Marlene to drop it, because she does. "Just us today?"

"Prongs and Lily are up front with the prefects," says Peter. "They should be back with Moony and Alice after all of them are done patrolling."

Mary settles back against the compartment window and lets the conversation flood over her. She feels like the odd one out here, between Sirius and Marlene being together and Peter and Emmeline still being close even though they're no longer dating or whatever it was that they used to be doing, but at least they're not telling each other that Elisabeth and Millie's deaths are Mary's faults and that she ought to be ashamed of herself for them—even if it's true, even if she knows it's true. If Mary is responsible, then they all are—for their naivety, for believing they could actually lay siege to Death Eaters without facing any consequences for their actions—and at least with them she's not singled out.

When they exit the compartment after a long day on the train, she feels like everyone is staring at them, like a hush falls over the night and everyone stops talking just to watch them with judgment in their eyes whenever they pass. Mary remembers how one year ago today she probably made Lily feel the exact same way with her gossiping, and she feels like she's going to be sick.

"Whoa. That's new," says Sirius, pointing to the horseless carriages.

Mary follows his line of vision only to see that the carriages aren't horseless, not anymore: they're being pulled by these birdlike and reptilian creatures with thin skins hanging off of their bones and dark, beady eyes. "I know what this is," says Mary—not excitedly, exactly, because it's not a good thing that they can see the thestrals, but it's rare that Mary is the one who knows the answers when it comes to magic. "They're thestrals. They're only visible to—to people who have seen and understood death."

"Well, shit," mutters Marlene.

The carriage ride is a long run; everyone's eyes keep darting up to the thestral carrying the cart. When they finally get to the castle, Mary holds her head high like she's not affected by any of this all the way into the Great Hall.

Scanning the High Table, Mary counts off the professors she recognizes, looking for the one she doesn't, and finds it in a thin middle-aged woman with greying hair. Her baggy, dark blue robes look like they're swallowing her alive as she listens raptly to whatever Professor McGonagall is saying, resting her chin in her hand and drumming her fingers against one sunken cheek. "Anybody recognize the new Defense professor? She's sitting between McGonagall and Sprout."

Mary is met with a chorus of nos, except from Lily, who at first doesn't answer and then says, "I… wait a minute, I think I saw her last year once, she's—"

But whatever Lily is going to say gets cut off by Dumbledore rising to his feet and raising his arms until the chatter in the Hall falls silent and all eyes are peeled to the front of the room. "Welcome all to another year at Hogwarts! Let us begin by bringing in our first years, whom I'm sure are anxious to be Sorted…"

The surprise comes when Marlene's youngest sibling, Meredith, gets Sorted into Slytherin. Marlene claps just as hard as the Slytherin table, just as hard as all the rest of her siblings, but she looks shocked. "I never would have guessed!"

According to Lily during the feast, the new professor is Rosalind Antigone Bungs, one of the rather higher-ups whom Lily recognized from her internship at the Ministry's Department of International Magical Cooperation. "I wonder what she's doing teaching Defense?" Remus wonders aloud. "International Magical Cooperation isn't exactly a department known for its use of defensive magic."

Mary feels like Bungs is staring at the nine of them, and simultaneously like Dumbledore and the rest of the professors are avoiding looking at them. She's sure all of them know by now that the nine seventh year Gryffindors were all among those interrogated by the Ministry of Magic about Millie and Elisabeth's deaths at the end of last term, and she doesn't really care to relive the judgment that passed across the Aurors' eyes that day. They all made it out of what happened without any kind of criminal record, but Mary wonders how much of her life she's going to spend trying to exceed the expectations of those who would (rightly) assume that she's a naive child fooling around in matters that don't concern her.

Up in the dormitory, Mary feels painfully awkward being around the other girls. Even though she's just spent the whole summer spending time with them and the boys at Sirius and Lily's flat, there's still been an invisible divide between her and them—everyone else who stayed in the Order—and it feels even more pronounced now that they're all back at school, knowing that Dumbledore will probably contact them soon about joining up with his fighters.

September 1 fell on a Thursday this year, which means they all have to wait a full week before their first Defense lesson with Bungs. In the meantime, Mary spends most of her time hanging with Em and Peter and wondering if Reg thinks less of her now just like everybody else does. The Gryffindors seem to Mary to be splintering—her tagging along with Peter and Em; James, Lily, Marlene, and Sirius doing everything as a foursome, like their lives have become one big double date; and Alice and Remus together avoiding Lily and Sirius, respectively, in Mary's opinion. She knows what Alice's deal with Lily is but can only guess at what's causing the rift between Remus and Sirius. The only thing she can think of is what Remus admitted to her after she got drunk at The Basilisk and kissed that veela woman, that sometimes he thinks he might have romantic feelings for Sirius, but Mary can't imagine what's changed between then and now to make Remus want to avoid Sirius like this: Sirius is with Marlene; it's not like anything could have happened between the two of them.

Could it?

For her part, Mary has told no one but Remus about her feelings for Marlene, which have unfortunately not flagged over the summer. They so totally haven't flagged that she's desperate to renew her relationship with Reg, as if to prove to herself and everybody else that she likes blokes (look, here's one now). But Reg seems to be avoiding Mary as much as the rest of the school outside her narrow Gryffindor-seventh world is, and she's stuck constantly catching her eyes lingering on Marlene and pulling them away alongside her courage.

By the time she manages to track Reg down, it's already Wednesday night, and Mary is burnt out from a long morning in the greenhouse and hours upon hours studying in the afternoon. She's just leaving the Great Hall after dinner when she literally, physically bumps into him, saying "oh!" and then telling Peter and Emmeline that she'll catch up with them later tonight.

They size each other up for a long moment, Reg twisting his lips and looking torn as anything, and then he says, "I've really missed you all summer. All year, more like."

And there comes the familiar twist of Mary's heart, a little bit of love mixed with a little bit of guilt, because she really does like this boy, thinks she could spend forever sharing I-love-yous and how-was-your-days at the end of the evening with him, but that's all she wants from him, and she's leading him to believe she wants so much more. "I miss you, too," she says. "Can we start over?"

"Yes," says Reg, "yes," and it's exactly what she's been asking for and exactly not what she wants.