Previously in the Darklyverse: After returning from her travels with Dumbledore, Emmeline tracked down and confronted Peter, who stole her wand and Disapparated. Mary lied to Reg about her whereabouts when she took time off from work to work with the basilisk she bred. The curse-identification orb stopped catching uses of the Imperius Curse, and Alice and Remus volunteered Mary to lead a team to repair it.

xx

May 5th, 1982: Mary Cattermole

The last person Mary is expecting to show up on her doorstep at five o'clock that morning is Emmeline, but here she is, looking and smelling like she hasn't taken a shower in two months, and truthfully, she probably hasn't. "Hey," Em says, hedging a smile that doesn't look genuine.

"Back already? I thought you were flying out to see Pettigrew last night. I thought—"

"I did already, actually. Can you Side-Along-Apparate me to Ollivander's when they open? Peter stole my wand. I'm lucky I flew out to see him on James's broomstick, so that I had a way to get back."

"He stole your wand?"

"He's been living under a bridge, begging for money to feed himself. He's—"

"A monster," says Mary firmly. "You can't lose sight of that, Em. He's not the person you loved anymore—he hasn't been in a very long time."

Emmeline looks like she's about to start arguing the point, so Mary steps backward and gestures inside. "Come on in. Why did you come here, anyway? Al and Lupe have been waiting weeks to live with you again."

"I said Sirius could have my bedroom there, didn't I? I didn't want to… I just didn't want that. I know Cattermole doesn't really know me, but I didn't want to go stay at Lily and James's house, either. I, uh—I don't really like small children."

Mary snorts. "That's fine. Reg can deal. Do you want to grab a few hours of sleep on the sofa? You've been up all night—you've got to be exhausted."

"That sounds good. Thanks."

The sofa is already made up with blankets and a pillow because that's where Mary was sleeping tonight before Emmeline knocked on the door. If Em puts two and two together, though, she doesn't mention it, just tips James's broomstick against the wall and settles into the sofa to sleep. Bracing for impact, Mary bids her goodnight and ever so slowly approaches the bedroom.

Reg is snoring when she steps inside, but just as soon as she lowers herself into bed, he wakes up with a jolt. "Mare? I thought you weren't…"

"I wasn't," she says. "Emmeline stopped by. She needed a place to crash for the night."

"But it's got to be…"

"Five in the morning, yeah."

"And you're not going to tell me what she's been up to that's got her looking for somewhere to sleep at five A.M.?"

"Reg…"

"Just like you're not telling me why you took three weeks off work to do whatever it is you were doing with her and Lupin and Abbott."

He doesn't know that Emmeline has really been traveling with Dumbledore all this time, but she's not about to correct him. But she has to give him something if she doesn't want to end up like Alice. "It, um… Em's just having a hard time. It has to do with Pettigrew."

"Pettigrew?" He sits up fully at that and looks her straight in the eye as best as he can in the dark. "I thought you said he quit his job to—travel the world, or whatever, like Gilderoy."

Right—that's what she told him. Only the Order knows the truth—reporting Peter to the Auror Office would have meant exposing the existence of the Order—and anyway, lying to Reg spared Mary from having to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions about how, exactly, she found out that Peter was a Death Eater spy. But the lies she tells Reg are piling up now, and Mary doesn't know if her marriage can withstand them now that they're starting to unravel.

Does she even want her marriage to survive this war? She loves him, yes, but it's not like she's in love with him. But then—then Mary thinks about Marlene.

Marlene spent her whole adult life regretting the way she and Sirius ended things. She loved him and hated him and mooned over him right up until she died—minutes after trying to patch things up with him, even, when he didn't really reciprocate—and she never forgave him for moving on with Remus. And Mary doesn't want to live her life like that. The way things went down between Mary and Marlene—not just Marlene dying, but the fighting, the way Marlene replaced Mary with Lily—it'll probably hurt for the rest of Mary's life. She's okay with that. She's accepted that. But Marlene isn't here to love her, and even if she were, she wouldn't want to be with Mary the way Mary's always desperately wanted to be with her.

Reg, on the other hand, is right here in their marriage bed, asking her for answers. He's a bloke, but that's not his fault. And he loves her. She can keep shutting him out and railing against reality, or she can—move on.

"Pettigrew isn't traveling," says Mary carefully. "He… joined the Death Eaters."

"He—he what?"

"I don't think he's working with them anymore. He's been on the run ever since he told Sirius. But—before he disappeared, he told them a lot. We think it's partly his fault Marlene is dead."

"What do you mean, 'he told them a lot?' What would Pettigrew have to tell You-Know-Who? Why target McKinnon when she was a pureblood? I know the papers said she was killed because she was a Hit Wizard, but why would they go after her and her family instead of an Auror or—"

"Because was a vigilante," Mary sighs. "We're all vigilantes. I got out for a few years, but—but I went back in last October."

They sit there in silence, Reg staring at her, Mary staring back. After an eternity, he mutters, "And you didn't tell me. You didn't think to ask me how I might feel about my wife putting herself in mortal danger."

"I haven't gone on many raids," she whispers. "I went on a few at first, but it was too hard to hide. I've been focusing on soft stuff—spy stuff. Recruiting more people to the cause, you know, and trying to troubleshoot the spells we use to track Unforgivable Curse activity, not that I'm any good at—"

"Mary, how am I supposed to trust you now?"

They've reached an impasse. Her hands are all clammy, and her heart is thumping in her ribcage when she says, "I'll leave. I'll get Em up and take her to Lily and James's house."

"No. If she needs somewhere to sleep for the night, she can sleep here," says Reg, and Mary remembers with a jolt just how much she loves him. "I just… I'll go. I can't even look at you."

"Reg—"

"What?"

His face is lined, and Mary doesn't know how she wound up here. "I'm sorry."

"I don't care if you're sorry. I care whether you're alive."

Within a minute of him walking out of the room, Mary can hear him and Em exchange a few remarks before the front door opens and shuts. Another minute passes, and the bedroom door reopens. For a second, Mary thinks it's Reg—wants it to be Reg—but it's just Emmeline. "Hey," says Mary, yawning.

"Hey. I'm sorry if I—I mean, if it's my fault that he—"

"Not your fault. You didn't make me move out for three weeks to secretly raise a basilisk, did you?"

"No, I guess not," says Em.

"Just—get in."

"What?"

"I'm not going to molest you, come on. Just get into bed. I'm tired of sleeping alone."

Emmeline hesitates in the doorway for a moment, then edges her way into the bedroom and curls up on the far edge of the bed. Minutes pass without either of them speaking, but Emmeline doesn't fall asleep—after seven years of sleeping in the same dormitory, Mary can tell the difference in Em's breathing when she's awake or asleep.

She hasn't been to work in weeks, but she still feels totally exhausted—just as badly as she used to feel after taming dragons for the Ministry or putting in a fourteen-hour day campaigning for Lily. Every time she closes her eyes, she sees the gouges in Hatcher's own yellow eyes—hears his screams. She wasn't there in the room with him when he died, but she sure as hell could hear it.

Her dead arm is jutting out at a strange angle, but she can't feel any strain in it—can't feel anything at all. Mary wonders how long it's going to be before she gets used to that.

"I can't stay here," says Emmeline finally. "If Malfoy finds out—"

"Yes, you can," says Mary firmly. "We'll put you under a Fidelius Charm. I'll be Secret-Keeper. I don't know if Reg is coming back—" she swallows hard "—but even if he does, he won't turn you away. Besides—in the meantime, I could use a roommate."

Em doesn't answer, but she scoots backward along the bed and presses her back against Mary's chest. They're not really close enough friends for this not to be weird, but, well—if they're going to be one of each other's best friends like they always say they are, they may as well start acting like it. Mary slings her good arm over Emmeline's waist and shuts her eyes.

A couple short hours later, she Side-Along-Apparates Emmeline to Ollivander's and then goes to work for the first time in weeks, making up some bullshit excuse to her coworkers about taking time off to care for her dying aunt. Mary doesn't have a dying aunt, but her whole family are Muggles, so it's not like anybody at the Prophet would know the difference. She bumps into Andromeda Tonks during lunch, and when Andromeda tells her she was sorry to hear about Hatcher, Mary thinks she's going to crack up right that second. She thanks her, excuses herself, and spends the rest of her break locked in the bathroom, staring at the wall.

She's got a busy evening lined up, and she heads to James's house straight after work to collaborate with him and Sirius and Sturgis on the curse-identification spell. Not only have they not gotten very far with fixing whatever has been blocking the orb from logging usages of Imperio, but it's also no longer catching Crucio or Avada Kedavra, either. Mary doesn't know what the hell she's doing, trying to help these wizards who don't even know what the problem is despite having plenty more experience than she does at spelling, and she feels like an idiot for even being here. But Remus and Alice insisted that Mary be looped into the project, so she keeps at it fruitlessly, night after night.

These last couple of weeks, with the orb malfunctioning, none of them have really been able to go on raids like they used to. Mary's just counting the days before the Death Eaters show up in one of their homes and start killing off her best friends when there's no one to come give them backup.

Reg doesn't come home that night. It's just as well: she's got Em to take care of now, apparently, and whatever Emmeline says, Mary thinks she's an absolute wreck from everything that's happened these last couple months—getting cursed, running off with Dumbledore, and whatever the hell happened between her and Peter that morning. Mary writes to Lily, gets her to agree to brew the potion that goes along with the Fidelius Charm, and spends the few hours she has at home before bedtime listening to Emmeline play some terrible guitar in the living room. She's obviously only been teaching herself it so that she can feel close to Peter, but Mary doesn't dare point that out to her.

And as usual, she misses Marlene. It's not like Marlene would know what to do about any of this—none of them do, and she'd be no exception—but at least Marlene being here, even with the way their relationship deteriorated, would patch up a little piece of the hole in Mary's chest.

She's supposed to be moving on, she reminds herself. The woman she loves is never coming back, and she has a friend in need and a husband to bring back home.

But when she writes to Reg, he doesn't return—doesn't even answer.