November 14th, 1976: Mary Macdonald
So this is what limbo is like. Not the faraway thing her parents tried to sell her at Sunday school—her dad decided her witching soul was damned anyway when he allowed her to go to Hogwarts—but why is she bothering with their hoity-toity ideas? No, she's in limbo like paralysis, a record skipping, time stopping and a moment freezing over.
This is the part before it gets old, Mary thinks, the little time she has to entertain pity instead of irritation. There's no getting around it: people will tire of her eventually. They'll call her a basket case, mutter a hex or turn a blind eye at the… would it be arrogant to call her lifestyle an absurdity, to say it's really that nonconformist? Either way, she's running out of time to be the victim. The game's going to end, Reg is going to win, and everyone will forget all about Mary Macdonald and her poor, broken heart.
This is the safety of healing, the comfort of transition—only she's not going anywhere, she's just here, like limbo, falling in amber and fossilizing every time she sees her latest ex (and Mary's had a lot of exes but none that meant this much). She has two options, while there's still time: move on or get him back.
She can't move on, and he won't take her back, but she'll settle for a compromise (a pretense or a lie). Anything's better than freezing in this time.
There's an X through November 13th on the calendar that she keeps in her handbag, and not the kind that signifies her period. Six weeks she gave herself to recover from him, and those six weeks ended last night. Mary may have hung around the kitchens until midnight trying to work up the courage to catch him outside his common room and tell him goodbye, but when the clock struck twelve, she knew enough to sneak back into the common room and cast her lingering insecurities off onto the unsuspecting Peter Pettigrew. She and Reg are over now. What other choice does she have?
Surveying herself in the mirror, she almost doesn't recognize her ivory skin tone, the pitch-black color of her hair. Mary feels half diminished, half refreshed: Reg has reduced her, sure, but she's back down to her roots now (all puns aside). She's never really liked the way she looks before, always thinking her nose too pinched and her chin too short and her complexion too pale to suit her, but then, she's got different priorities now. Mary's no longer interested in being dark like Marlene or blonde like Alice, and she doesn't need any more of Lily's Glamour Charms to help her come into her own. She's just Mary, and if that bothers people—well, people didn't respect her much when she was trying to please them (herself) to begin with. The world isn't going to end; her hair can't fire any Killing Curses for want of Sleekeazy's, that's You-Know-Who's job.
If she still wants to catch up on the latest rumors every once in a while, that's fine, too.
So Mary doesn't bother to contain her excitement when she realizes why Emmeline is receiving the Spanish Inquisition from the other girls on Sunday morning. "Hold on a minute," she says dramatically, ripping open the hangings of her four-poster. "Like, am I hearing this right? Em made out with Pete last night? Em? And Pete? Who has a girlfriend?"
"He said Siobhan isn't his girlfriend," mutters Emmeline, not making eye contact.
"She's as good as," says Alice, a little gentle and a lot scandalized. "Really, Em, what were you thinking? Stealing someone else's boyfriend is no way to start a relationship—"
"I don't want a relationship; it was just a bit of kissing," Emmeline says steadily.
Alice shakes her head and tuts, "Then that's almost as bad, isn't it, risking breaking up Peter and Siobhan over a bit of kissing! I thought you were more sensible than that."
Marlene breaks in, "Don't kid yourself, Alice, we all know you and Lily are the sensible ones." Mary glances quickly at Lily; she's blushing a little, rolling her eyes. "Em's just the least, you know… rash. I mean, god, have you ever had a boyfriend before?"
"No," says Emmeline, pulling on her robes.
"Kissed a boy?" Marlene persists.
There's an ever-so-subtle pause, then: "Yes."
No one knows quite what to say to this, but Mary, thankfully, is still enough of a gossip to fill the conversational void. "Who?"
Try though Mary and Marlene might, they can't get her to say another word on the subject. Alice keeps Emmeline talking, though, interrupting, "All right, then—damage control. The whole of Gryffindor must know about this by now; how in god's name were you planning to explain yourself and spare Siobhan what little heartache you can?"
"I, er, wasn't?" says Emmeline, very hesitantly. "Peter can take care of himself."
Alice looks fairly indignant at that, but Lily says calmly, "It's not all Emmeline's mess to clean up, Alice. It's not like she came onto him intending to steal him away no matter what he wanted; the whole thing looked pretty voluntary on Peter's part from my angle. If he were really all that faithful to Siobhan, he wouldn't have, er…"
"Snogged the daylights out of Em in front of the whole house," Marlene fills in without a trace of modesty. "He's the one who'll have to explain himself to her."
"But why did you kiss him in the first place, Em?" asks Mary eagerly. "Maybe it doesn't matter to Siobhan, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter."
"We had a row," says Emmeline, like it's the most natural thing in the world. They gape at her, and she goes on, "He called me out on some things… it was sweet of him to notice. I had to—well, I had to thank him somehow, didn't I? Show him that he, erm, got to me. And maybe, er, that wasn't the smartest way to, but… I was lonely… we'd won the game, everyone was so happy. It felt a bit like it would all work out, like I could do something bold without worrying about the consequences for once."
Em's reasoning is bizarre, and she looks mortified to be saying all this, but Mary can certainly relate. She did relate last October at Hogsmeade—trying to salvage just one kiss, one minute with the bloke that matters… "And is that what it meant to Peter?" she says.
"I don't know; we didn't really get a chance to, er, talk last night," says Emmeline with chagrin.
Sighing, Alice says, "Then you'd better get downstairs and figure this all out with him." Before someone gets hurt, she seems to imply.
Still blushing, Emmeline nods. Sheepish, Mary realizes, that's the word for Emmeline's behavior. It's still not friendly, but it's personable, at least, a step closer from the coldness of the past year or two.
Whatever Peter said to her must be working.
By lunchtime, it seems everyone has heard about the celebratory party—Meghan McCormack sneaking out of the Hospital Wing to attend and Peter snogging Em. Veronica Smethley knows all about it when Mary catches her in the Entrance Hall after eating, at least, and Mary knows she'll make sure word gets around by the end of the day.
"It's just unbelievable, you know?" says Ver, thirsty for details. "I mean, I just didn't think Vance would do something that slutty. She's so holier-than-thou all the time. And Pettigrew's not even good-looking! I'll bet he couldn't believe his luck, having two girls be interested in him at once…"
"Em's not a slut, and Peter isn't ugly," Mary says stiffly.
"Whatever. You know, I never liked either of them," Ver maintains, gesturing accusingly. "I mean, Christ, Mare, you are the only one who's tolerable out of all the Gryffindors. Honestly, it is a damn shame that you got Sorted in with that lot. I don't know how you put up with them, what with the way they parade around acting like they're so much better than the rest of us with their drama and their wealth and their popularity—and it's like, no one even likes them except each other. They're so caught up in their superiority that they don't—"
"—You know what, Ver, would it kill you to lay off of my mates every now and then?" interrupts Mary tersely. "I don't expect you to like them or anything for me, but, like, it's my house, too."
Ver rolls her eyes. "You don't have to defend their behavior just because you share a dorm with them," she says.
"I shouldn't have to defend them! They don't always like your house, but that doesn't mean they go around badmouthing you to me all the time, and I wouldn't let them if they did, so pay them the same courtesy," Mary says, exasperated.
"I don't know, Mare, I just don't see what you see in any of them," mutters Ver, "and it's about time you realized that you deserve better mates than that."
Mary says, "They're not as bad as you say they are, you know. Like, how can you judge them when you don't even know them?"
Ver snorts derisively. "I don't have to 'get to know them' to see what they're like."
You're such an effing hypocrite, Mary thinks—but she holds her tongue and says it a bit more nicely. "First impressions don't mean as much as you act like they do, Ver. Look at Lene—you're down on her all the time about her and Gilderoy when she doesn't even like him that way, but I never heard her say a word against Greta when she was going out with Sirius, and you should know by now that Lene and Sirius had a thing going."
"It's McKinnon's own damn fault that she couldn't see that Black was using her. Anyway, she knows that Gilly and I are meant for each other, but if she really weren't egging him on, you wouldn't see him still talking to her. It's been a month, Mare! Gilly isn't that daft!"
"You'd be surprised. Wasn't it his fault that Davy almost lost an eye to the Whomping Willow?" Mary says. "It's not that I don't like Gilderoy, but you can't blame Lene if he's interested in her. That's on him."
Ver still isn't satisfied. "Lord, Reg dumping you must have really put you through the wringer if you're acting this anti-Hufflepuff because of it," she says dismissively.
"Shut it about me and Reg. Let me know when you're ready to stop acting like such a bitch to everyone, yeah?" says Mary, thoroughly fed up with Ver at this point. Ver protests, but she leaves her behind, slinging her bag up her shoulder and mounting the staircase in pursuit of her common room.
Her irritation with Ver carries through the week, enough that she brings it up to Peter the next day. "What do you think of Veronica Smethley?" she asks him midway through first period, when everyone else is in Charms. They're the only two Gryffindors who dropped the class this year, and it's become their tradition to spend Monday mornings playing wizard's chess in the common room. Though Mary's always been terrible at mind games, she's been slowly improving with Peter's help, and she's four points ahead of him in today's match.
A moment passes as Peter concentrates on the board, his small eyes narrow with intent. "Knight to d5," he says finally and glances up at her. "Smethley?" he then repeats, blinking. "The Hufflepuff you're always hanging around? She's… er…"
Of course he'd never say anything outright cruel about one of Mary's friends, she realizes with satisfaction: she was right about her mates in yesterday's argument. "Like, what do you really think of her? More and more lately, I've been getting the feeling she's an arse."
"Erm," he stammers, "if you're going to put it that way… I can't say I've ever liked her very much. She doesn't seem like the kind of person I'd trust with things."
"I think you might be right about her," Mary sighs. "She's always so ready to trash everyone else for their flaws. Not that it's the worst thing in the world to want to know things, but, like, is it really okay to be the one spreading the rumors? Rook to f5."
"Pawn to g4. Yeah, I know," empathizes Peter. "People aren't always who you think they are," he adds at an afterthought, resting his cheek in his hand.
She looks up at him again, biting her lip. "I know. Look at Em—talk about radical changes. Have you talked to her since Saturday?"
"I've barely seen her," Peter admits, coloring. "I keep putting it off until I have to in Transfiguration tomorrow. I just… I don't even know what that was. How can I talk to Em about it when Siobhan still believes that I've been cheating on her all along? We didn't ever say it was exclusive, exactly, but pointing that out isn't going to help, and it'll only make things worse if she sees me with Em and gets the wrong idea…"
Surveying the chessboard, Mary mulls this over. "Er… rook to g5. Pete, is Siobhan important enough to you that you want her to be your girlfriend?"
"What do you mean?" asks Peter, baffled, as he raises his eyes from the board.
"You keep saying that she wasn't your girlfriend when it happened, so you think she should forgive you. But do you want to make it official, or are you just stringing her along? Because if you don't want a commitment, she shouldn't have to take you back," says Mary.
Peter slouches a bit in his seat, looking utterly overwhelmed. "Good point," he says finally. "I just don't know… I wouldn't ever string her along, but I don't…"
"If it's taking you, like, this long to make up your mind, that probably means that she doesn't mean enough to you," she says gently. She hates advising him to be alone—look how she's doing without a boyfriend at her side—but knowing how Marlene and Sirius's relationship has affected Marlene…
He knocks his king over in resignation and straightens up. "You're probably right," he says meekly. "I just wish everything were less confusing with Em. She's hard to figure out."
"Em's a pretty private person," Mary agrees, starting to clean up the chess pieces. "I have half a mind to think there's something huge she's covering up… I wish there weren't, like, so many secrets with her, you know?"
"I wish there weren't so many secrets with all of us," Peter echoes darkly.
xx
"Could you work with Pol today?" asks Carol Davies as Mary enters the Arithmancy classroom, poised to toss her bag at her usual seat.
She blinks, hitches the strap of her bag back over her shoulder. "With Pol? Really?"
"Just the once. Please—I promised Charlotte Fawcett I'd work with Frank instead today. Someone's got to talk some sense into him over this Dana Madley nonsense."
Mary's intense hatred of Pol Patil is not a very well kept secret. They get along all right for Greta Catchlove's sake, but everyone knows that he's too smug for her and she's too dumb for him. Still, it's not Mary's place to complain about talking to Pol for her—he did ditch Carol for Greta. "Pol. Okay, yeah, I guess so."
So she relocates, much to Pol's confusion. "I thought you worked with Davies this hour," he says. Implied 'get the hell away from me' free of charge, Mary thinks bitterly.
"She's staging an intervention for Longbottom," says Mary shortly, pulling out her copy of Numerology and Gramatica. When Pol quirks a skeptical eyebrow, she adds, "Dana Madley? Don't, like, try and tell me you haven't heard about that."
"It's not like the man needs a bloody intervention, Mary. It's his life, let him do what he wants with it," counters Pol as he digs around in his bag.
"Says Greta Catchlove's boyfriend," Mary mutters.
He straightens up and glares hard. "And you've spent the last month pining over Reginald Cattermole, of all people. What's the difference?"
"Yeah, well, that's over now," she says firmly—it's not a lie if it'll be true soon. "You may get better marks than Reg, but you look pretty pathetic in comparison, leaving Carol for Greta last summer. Come on."
"Remind me again what my taste in women has to do with Frank Longbottom," says Pol.
As she's starting to attract attention, she lowers her voice and softens her gaze. "Only that there's a pretty strong parallel there, don't you think? He picked Dana, you picked Greta—"
"What's it to you? It's not like Frank was seeing anybody else before Dana came along. Anyway, Greta's your mate—you're one to talk about my tastes—and anyway, it's just Hogwarts, it's not like it matters who I snog for the next year and a half."
"You know what, Pol, it does matter," says Mary hotly. "You may be an arse, but there are people here who care about you, don't ask me why, and even if you don't give a rat's arse about them, you ought to at least respect that and not, like—not toy with their feelings."
To her increasing fury, he's losing interest and starting to doodle along the edge of his parchment. "Like you have any business giving out relationship advice," he snorts. "Why are you even telling me all this, anyway? If you hate me so much, why should my opinions matter to you?"
"You're infuriating," she groans. "Shove off and go work with Lupe or something."
"Damn, Mary," says Pol, packing up his things, "and here I was hoping you cared about more than just feelings and boyfriends."
She throws back at him, "So sorry that I'm not enough of an intellect for your fancy. Tell Greta hullo for me next time you two have a substantial conversation, will you?"
As he smirks and walks toward Remus and Alice's table, two rather frustrating things occur to Mary: first, that he seems to have enjoyed all this; second, that she can't answer his question—she has no idea why she confided anything in him at all.
Mary wishes she could talk to Marlene about him, that she could talk to Marlene about anything anymore, but she doubts it. Marlene's with Lily these days, their recent row aside. And to whom else can she turn? She loves Alice, but god, she's a little too hoity-toity for relationship advice. Em may be warming up to the girls again, but who's to say that she won't revert the minute Mary approaches her?
Before she knows what she's doing, she's heading straight from class to the Hufflepuff common room entrance. She misses Reg; she really, really…
"Were you waiting for someone?" Mary turns, startled; a third or fourth year girl is approaching, looking a little snappish. "You're a Gryffindor, right?"
"Yeah, I was looking for Re—er, for Gilderoy," she improvises—he's the first (well, second) Hufflepuff she thinks of. "Gilderoy Lockhart. He's a sixth year. Do you know him?"
The girl snorts under her breath. "Who doesn't, with his mouth?" she says, mostly to herself. "Just give me a minute. Muffliato," she adds, and Mary can't hear the password over the ringing in her ears as the girl slips into her common room.
She slumps against the opposite wall, closing her eyes and letting the tinny sound fill her up. God, she's got to get a grip on herself. It's hardly been two days since she cut herself off; Mary can't go running back to Reg now, not this soon.
When the ringing subsides, she looks up—Gilderoy's taken off the hex and is coming out of his common room. She sees a flash of bright yellow before the still life painting seals itself again over the entrance. "If it isn't my darling Mary Macdonald!" he cries as she opens her eyes, seizing her hands and engulfing her in an emphatic hug. "It's been too long since our last chat! Tell me, what lucky stroke of fate was it that brought you to our little nook of the basement today?"
"Just stopping by," says Mary evasively, but she changes her mind—she could use someone to talk to, anyway, and Gilderoy has done nothing to deserve dishonesty. "Well… I was going to see Reg, but then, like, I figured that wouldn't be a very good idea."
As Gilderoy pulls back, still gripping her shoulders, his face takes on a look of concern; he purses his lips and shakes his head, tutting. "I know," he tells her with a sigh. "I was so sorry to hear of your falling out with Reginald last October. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the pangs of despised love?" He pauses for a moment, staring morosely at her, then gives her shoulders a forceful little shake and adds, "From Shakespeare's Hamlet—an abridged quote, at least. Marlene will certainly be impressed, don't you think?"
"Gilderoy, I'm sorry, but I just… don't think Marlene sees you that way," says Mary as gently as she can, maybe a little hesitantly.
She should have known that he wouldn't be that easy to dissuade. "I've been working my way through the great soliloquies in all the Shakespearean classics," Gilderoy informs her, retracting a hand from her shoulder to gesture purposefully to his right. "A little Christmas surprise for the light of my life."
Mary bites her lip—she'd hate to crush his vision of love, but then, it's better in the long run that he know the truth. That, and Marlene may kill her if she doesn't try to talk him out of it when given the opportunity. "To be honest, like, I don't even think Marlene has ever heard of Shakespeare. She's a pureblood, remember? They have things like—like 'God Rest Ye Merry Hippogriffs' and 'Moontrimmer,' not Muggle poetry."
"All the better to enlighten her!" Gilderoy cries delightedly. "Or perhaps she would believe it if I told her I had written them myself?"
Mary bursts out laughing, but at the hurt expression on his face, she sobers up enough to tell him, "Come on, Gilderoy, that's unethical, you can't. Anyway, you'd know the truth, and that sort of, like… I dunno, negates it, don't you think? If she even believed you, I mean."
"I suppose so," says Gilderoy, his face falling. "Dear god, what could Sirius Black possibly have that I don't? Can she honestly not see that we're made for each other?" Histrionically, he falls to the floor and buries his face in his hands.
With a half incredulous, half sympathetic sigh, Mary crouches down beside him and squeezes his hand. "They have a complicated relationship. They've been on and off for years; Marlene's not just going to forget about him and fall for you the minute you show interest," she explains patiently.
"Do you suppose she would be jealous if I took up with Veronica?" he asks with a hint of hopefulness, peeking at her through his fingers. "Never have I seen the likes of that girl's loyalty! I reckon she would agree to it if I asked her."
"I don't think that's a very good idea," says Mary, for both Gilderoy's sake and Ver's. "I know you have your heart set on it, but if Marlene isn't interested, she's not interested."
Gilderoy doesn't reply for a minute, thinking this over. "Ah, well, it was worth a good shot," he says finally. "Besides, you know what they say: absence makes the heart grow fonder. She'll come around soon enough."
"If that's the way you want to look at it," Mary mumbles, smiling a bit.
"But look at me, prattling on about my own woes, and such insignificant ones in comparison!" declares Gilderoy. Mary laughs again at this—he has a funny way of showing sensitivity. "What about Reginald could possibly render you so upset?"
She leans back, resting her head against the wall. "I dunno. He was always such a nice bloke, and… it's not even him, really, it's just… I get lonely, you know?"
"I… well, yes, of course," admits Gilderoy sheepishly, looking a little embarrassed by this.
They sit together for a while, both mulling over their respective situations. Mary's the first to break the silence, saying, "My parents were always really religious. They're Catholics, you know, so they hate anything to do with witchcraft."
"Oh?" Gilderoy says, looking at her with a mixture of interest and concern.
"Well, not so much Mum anymore, now that she knows that her daughter's a witch, but Dad didn't want me to go. They tried to get me to repent for being a witch at Confession on Sundays, but the letter said it was top-secret, and I never trusted the priest there, and…" She trails off for a moment, reflecting. "They're divorced now—Dad couldn't accept it in the end. And then I came to Hogwarts, just when I'd gotten done breaking up my family over it, and I'm not even… god, look at my marks, I'm not even a talented witch, and everyone hates me."
"Don't be so dramatic, Mary, I'm sure that no one hates you!" says Gilderoy genially.
She shoots him a glare. "Don't be so optimistic; everyone hates you, too."
"On the contrary, I'd have to say that everyone adores me," he says, half proud and half indignant.
"Marlene doesn't adore you," says Mary.
This gets to him, at least, and his grin falters a bit. "I don't hate you," he says quietly, and Mary feels a rush of guilt and affection for him. "And anyway, what about those Gryffindors that Veronica speaks so poorly of? I'm sure they can't be that unbearable. There's Marlene, of course—and Alice Abbott, I've always been fond of her. Emmeline Vance… eh, not so much, but I'm sure that she likes you."
"I wouldn't be so sure of that," says Mary, but she can't stop herself from smiling at him. "Like, for what it's worth, I don't hate you, either."
He smiles back, then pats her hand and stands. "Well, now that we've cleared up our allegiances for the day, I must be going," he decides, helping her up. "Things to do, soliloquies to learn!"
"You're not one to give up easily, are you?" asks Mary, shaking her head. "So this is the part where you hex me and I can't hear the password, right?"
Gilderoy stammers for a moment, finally managing, "Yes, I'm terribly sorry about the way she treated you back there. House rivalries, you know. But Dorcas Meadowes will have them all shaped up in no time, don't you worry! Just don't attempt to break in anytime soon, or I might have a situation on my hands with the younger years," he says with a wink. "Puffskein," he adds commandingly in the direction of the painting, and it swings forth to admit him.
She almost misses it, but Mary catches a glimpse of Reg before the painting blocks her view—looking taken aback, his mouth in a small "O," and staring straight at her.
Turning on her heel, she leaves before she can do anything dangerous.