Chapter 3: Mary Potter's Big Mistake
Monday, 2 August – Friday, 6 August 1993
Urquhart Mansion
The week following Mary's birthday passed in utter restlessness. The normal household routine resumed, but it was suddenly stifling, restrictive.
It didn't help matters at all that Aunt Minnie had delivered Mary's Hogwarts letter on Mary's birthday, but Mary had forgotten it in all the excitement. When she finally read it, she found that she still couldn't have a snake as a familiar, there were expanded dress-code requirements for third-years, and one of her textbooks was called 'The Monster Book of Monsters' (there were several others, but they all looked boring). All of these things which might, on any other day, have been somewhat interesting (or just irritating in the case of the No Snake Policy), paled in comparison to the implications of the last piece of parchment in the envelope.
It was a permission form to visit Hogsmeade on certain weekends throughout the year, a rite of passage for all third-year students.
It wasn't signed.
Professor McGonagall had obviously opened the letter to add the post-script disallowing snakes. She had to have seen it. She must have known that Mary would have to bring it to her to have it signed. Why hadn't she just signed it?
She couldn't possibly be thinking of refusing, could she?
It seemed she could. Mary hadn't opened the letter until after Aunt Minnie had left on Sunday evening. It took her until Tuesday to decide to owl and ask what the meaning of this was. (She actually just asked to have the form signed, hoping that it had been overlooked, or the Professor had somehow forgotten it, or just wanted Mary to ask like everyone else.)
Wednesday morning, the Professor came to have a discussion about the matter, face to face.
It didn't go well.
Apparently the Professor was refusing to sign because she felt it would be unsafe for Mary to leave the castle when Sirius Black was on the loose.
She didn't want to say why she thought Mary should be a target more than anyone else, but she did eventually (after nearly an hour of undignified begging and whining on Mary's part) admit that the Aurors had told her, as Mary's guardian, that Black was muttering in his sleep in the days before he escaped, about Hogwarts – someone being at Hogwarts – so they thought he might be headed for the school and therefore Mary.
Mary lost her temper entirely when she realized that the Professor hadn't planned to tell her any of this at all, and had been thinking she could keep Mary locked up in the castle all year with no explanation. It wasn't that she really disagreed with the judgement call, even – just the part where she was treated like a child who couldn't handle the truth of her own precarious security situation.
Professor McGonagall had left after another hour of flaming row, after promising to tell Mary anything that may be relevant to her safety or the Black situation, provided Mary followed all reasonable security protocols to the bloody letter. (Like you told Emma Granger about the basilisk? Mary had shouted when the Professor first offered this compromise, setting off a whole other round of arguments.) The permission form, long-since burned to ashes to make a point, was never signed.
This did not improve Mary's general outlook on life one whit. Now she was not only trapped in the Mansion, having to force herself through the daily routine, but she was to be restricted at Hogwarts as well, forced to miss out on one of the basic parts of being a third-year – Hogsmeade Weekends – all thanks to fucking Sirius Black. Every new thing she learned about the man and the situation he had caused made her want to do even more incredibly destructive things, which made stumbling her way through piano lessons and formal logic, pretending nothing was wrong, an ever-larger pain in the arse.
She did manage to get some things accomplished, like asking Catherine how she was expected to get all her things to Hogwarts with only a single trunk (Undetectable Extension Charms, though the simple solution was to leave most of her things at Hogwarts in the future), and reading the section of the Iliad that the older girl had left bookmarked on her bed. It was the part where Achilles decided to fight and make a name for himself, rather than stay home and live safely, which Mary thought meant Catherine had decided to stay and live dangerously, at least for the moment, but she really wasn't sure, and didn't want to ask and admit she couldn't figure out the former Slytherin's cryptic message.
Still, by Friday, not a week after the ritual, Mary was ready to tear her hair out in frustration. That was probably why she did what she later came to consider the first truly stupid thing she had done in a very long time – probably the stupidest thing since agreeing to the Veritaserum Plot.
On Friday morning, instead of going to her regularly-scheduled dancing lesson, she sneaked out after breakfast to go flying.
Friday, 6 August – Saturday, 7 August 1993
At the edge of Lakes District National Park, just outside of Penrith, England
Really, when she thought about it, it wasn't one big mistake. It was more like a series of little mistakes, where she made the worst choice possible at every turn.
She shouldn't have skived off of dance lessons to go flying. That was the first mistake. But she really, really needed to blow off steam, and she had been strongly discouraged from doing any kind of dangerous flying when William might see her, and the only time she could guarantee that he wouldn't be watching (especially now that she knew he had been keeping track of her well enough to know where her hiding spot was, up on the roof) was when he was in lessons. She was also supposed to be in lessons at those times, but she didn't think she would be able to concentrate, anyway. So she went flying.
She definitely shouldn't have left the wards. In all fairness, she hadn't meant to. She hardly noticed the tingle of magic as she crossed them. Still, when she had noticed that she was much further from the Mansion than she ever had been before, she should have gone back. But she was confident that she would be able to find her way back when she needed to. After all, it was a bloody big house! It should be easy enough to see if she went up high enough, or to use that nifty little Point Me charm. So she went on.
She shouldn't have reacted to the bad weather blowing in from the East (all nasty clouds and buffeting winds) with barred teeth and a wicked grin, but it had been ages since she'd done any challenging flying, and the weather matched her mood, so she did. She really shouldn't have continued her game of pelting headlong through the trees in a mad sort of slalom race as the weather continued to get worse.
On the other hand, she definitely should have turned back when she heard thunder in the distance, and it started to rain, first lightly, then not-so-lightly. But this was fun, daring, taking-your-life-into-your-hands flying, and she loved it, so she didn't.
She should have considered, at some point during the morning, that she was well outside the bounds of where she ought to be, that no one knew where she was, and that she was doing dangerous, obviously magical stunts out in the open, where anyone could see (provided they were in the forest, looking up, during a thunderstorm).
She should probably have considered these things before lighting struck not a hundred meters away (There's no anti-lightning wards on the bloody forest, Potter! she mentally reprimanded herself after the fact) startling her, and causing her to miss ducking under a particularly viciously-windblown limb, which definitely hadn't been there a moment before. (Serves you right for not paying attention!)
When she woke up, powers only knew how many hours later, to see a small boy poking her with her own wand, she certainly wished she had.
"Where did you get that?" she croaked, trying not to move the ribs she knew were bruised, if not broken.
The boy pointed away through the trees. "'Dere."
"Who are you? Where are your parents?"
"Tent. An' I Mikey. I'm three!" He held up four fingers.
"Right, Mikey, give me my wand back."
"No. 'S'mine." He hugged the wand close.
"No it's not," Mary sat up gingerly, and almost threw up from the pain when she tried to move her right arm. It was clearly broken. Again.
The boy spotted the limb, bent at an exceedingly strange angle, and ran off shrieking for his mum. He did, at least, drop the wand.
Mary crawled to it and clumsily summoned her broom with her left hand, mounting it gingerly and levitating herself straight up. She had to get back to the Urquharts, which meant she had to find the Urquharts. She looked out over the unbroken stretch of trees to the west (she had come mostly east, hadn't she?) and tried the locator charm. Her wand spun aimlessly in her hand.
It was with a sense of trepidation she had rarely felt since entering the wizarding world that she realized she was much further from home than she thought.
She was beginning to feel dizzy from pain (or maybe she had hit her head harder than she thought), and so she let herself sink back into the trees, headed for the ground in a much more controlled manner than the previous time.
"Mikey, are you sure there was a girl here?" a female voice asked loudly, not too far away.
Mary moved a bit further into the trees and landed, silently thanking Merlin, or whatever Power looked after thirteen-year-old idiots, that her broom was a top-of-the-line model, with half a dozen enchantments on it that she hardly ever used. A single command word (Minimus) shrank it down so that it was barely as long as her wand, and a second (Occultus) activated a somebody-else's-problem field, which was the second-best class of Unobtrusive Charms. It might, really, have been better in this case, than notice-me-not, because the field was large enough that it would cover her wand, too. She tucked both of them in the waistband of her shorts, thanking the same Power again that she had worn muggle clothing today, under her robes.
Removing the robes themselves was a trick and a half, especially since she was trying not to move her broken arm, but she managed it eventually, abandoning the garment in the bushes to throw herself on the mercy of Mikey's parents.
It wasn't until she was in the Voitheia family's car, on her way to the nearest hospital, that the true extent of her situation sank in. She had no way to contact the Urquharts or Professor McGonagall, or anyone in the magical world. She was on her way to a muggle hospital, and she didn't even know if the Dursleys were still living in Little Whinging. Her cover story – that she had been on a camping trip with a school group, fell out of a tree, and got lost wandering around trying to find help in the storm – was shoddy at best.
Mr. and Mrs. Voitheia, thankfully, didn't question it, seeing as she was soaked to the skin, covered in mud, missing one trainer, and had an obviously broken arm (she was pretty sure she had at least one cracked rib, too, and maybe a concussion, but they didn't know that). They clearly decided they had more important things to worry about, like getting her some medical attention, and maybe some food and water, the poor dear.
Penrith General Hospital
The Voitheias dropped Mary off at the hospital. Mrs. Voitheia offered to stay, but Mary could read the relief in Mr. Voitheia's eyes clearly enough when she thanked them profusely and said that no, she was sure there was nothing else they could do for her.
There were x-rays, and then in a flurry of activity, a nurse set her arm (which hurt, a lot) and plastered it into a cast; wrapped her ribs; and gave her an IV with something for 'mild dehydration' and a couple of pain pills. It turned out that she did not have a concussion, so she was allowed to sleep for several hours before another, less kindly nurse, turned up with paperwork, and all kinds of questions Mary couldn't answer. It was hard to say whether Mary or the nurse was more frustrated by the fiftieth time Mary said "I don't know."
Eventually – around six o'clock, they had let her use the telephone. She tried the Dursleys' old number first, and was told they had moved months ago. The only other number she knew was the Grangers'. They had returned from France the day before (yet another thing to be thankful for), and Emma must have heard the strain in her voice as she tried to explain her cover story and what had actually happened with the nurse eyeing her suspiciously. After five minutes, Emma had demanded to speak to the nurse directly. Mary didn't know what she said, but whatever it was worked miracles, because the pushy, paperwork-toting woman left without another word.
Before she rang off, Emma promised that she was on her way, but that it might be a while. Penrith was, according to her atlas, quite a drive from the Grangers' house. Waiting for her, all alone and unable to contact anyone, was perhaps the longest six hours of Mary's life. She had nothing to do and couldn't sleep, so she just sat, worrying about what the Urquharts and Professor McGonagall were going to say, and whether Emma would be very angry with her for making the woman drive halfway across the country so late in the evening. She spent a long time trying to justify her choices, and an even longer time silently cursing Sirius Black. This was all his fault. If he hadn't broken out of prison, she wouldn't have been nearly so antsy, and would be safely back at the Urquhart Mansion with Catherine.
Emma and Hermione showed up six hours later, both of them very worried (and Hermione looking like she might have fallen asleep in the car). Emma corroborated Mary's cover story, saying that she lived with her aunt and uncle, but they had just moved recently, and obviously after such a traumatic experience, Mary was having trouble remembering the new address and telephone number. Emma was a friend of Mary's late mother, though, no, unfortunately she was not close to the Dursleys, and didn't have their new number either. She would, however, be happy to take the girl until they could work out exactly where the Dursleys had got off to.
The paperwork nurse, whose shift never seemed to end, didn't seem to believe them, and wouldn't let Emma take Mary, since she was not her legal guardian (and besides, someone needed to take responsibility for the paperwork!). Emma sent her away while she and the girls brainstormed ways to get in touch with the Dursleys. Mary had eventually remembered that Aunt Marge lived in Bath, so Emma suggested (forcefully) that the pushy nurse make herself useful by tracking down a Bath regional telephone directory. There was only one M. Dursley listed.
Emma called her at once, heedless of the time, and then again when she hung up immediately, demanding Vernon's new number in her posh-est, most American tones. "Ah'm afraid it's a rather urgent issue, Miss Dursley… Yes, in fact Ah am aware of the time. It is no more convenient on mah end, Ah assure you… No… No… That's right, he is, and it is, as Ah say, rather urgent that Ah get in touch with him immediately… Emergency, yes… Of course this is about serious business. Ah hardly think Ah would be callin' on a respectable lady such as yourself as such a terribly unreasonable hour as this if it were anything less serious, Miss… Well, no, Ah couldn't possibly… Well… Yes, you could put it that way. You've a way with words, Miss Dursley… Very well… Very well… Yes, Ah'll hold… Thank you ever so, Miss Dursley, you've been a tremendous help."
When she finally rang off, she made a face at the phone as though it were covered in vomit. "Hideous woman! I think she thought I was trying to get ahold of Vernon for something about work. Why they'd be calling him at four in the morning, I haven't the foggiest. She did give us the number, though."
Mary couldn't help but smirk, imagining Marge, surrounded by her dogs and empty brandy bottles in bed, thinking that Vernon was so important to his stupid drill company that he had to take calls from America at all hours of the night.
The next phone call went rather more quickly, as Emma simply explained that if one of the Dursleys wasn't here to sign the bloody forms and get Mary released from this hospital within the next six hours, Emma would be setting the police onto them for child abandonment and fraud, since she knew the girl hadn't lived with the Dursleys for at least two years, and she was certain they were still accepting support payments on her behalf.
Emma let the girls sleep, while she went to wait in the lobby with a very strong cup of very sweet tea. Mary could hear her chatting with one of the nurses outside the door as she drifted off, Hermione clutching her good hand as though she was going to run away. The older girl had been unusually subdued since she arrived, hardly speaking outside of her greeting ("We have to stop meeting like this, Liz,") and a weak joke about signing her cast. She asked what happened, but all Mary would say in public was that it was a flying accident. They likewise couldn't really talk about what Mary had done over the past month, and Hermione didn't seem to be inclined to talk about her visit with her French family, which rather put a damper on their conversation.
They were wakened just before seven by Emma and the paperwork nurse (seriously, did she never get to go home?) leading both Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon into the room. Uncle Vernon set to the paperwork with the will of a man who lived to complain about bureaucratic nonsense under the watchful eye of the nurse. Aunt Petunia stared at Mary and Hermione as though they were something nasty on the bottom of her shoe. Emma watched Aunt Petunia with narrowed eyes, ready to deflect the conversation should she say one thing out of line.
Eventually, Mary couldn't stand the awkward silence. This was, after all, exactly what she had been trying to get away from, all those hours ago. "Hello, Aunt Petunia."
"Don't speak!" Aunt Petunia hissed. Emma opened her mouth to interrupt, but Aunt Petunia winked at her, and she held her tongue, confounded. "I don't know what you were thinking, running away from your chaperones like that, and I don't want to know. You will have plenty of time to explain exactly what you thought you were doing in the car on the way home! How could you have been so stupid as to misplace the new number? If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times, you can't rely on your memory in an emergency! The school called us hours ago – we've been worried sick, and we had no way to contact you, either! I said this whole trip was a bad idea from the start!" She went on like this for nearly fifteen minutes before she snapped, "Vernon, aren't you almost done yet?"
"Nearly, Pet," Vernon said, turning a page and copying a number off of a card from his wallet.
"I-I'm s-sorry, Aunt Petunia," Mary stuttered, torn between laughter and horror. She'd had no idea Aunt Petunia could act. Granted, it was probably all just to cover the Dursleys' arses in front of the nurse, who looked less and less suspicious of the situation as Aunt Petunia's rant wore on, but it was still a bloody good impression of a worried parent.
"I said don't speak! You haven't the right, after the night you've given us. Imagine what Dudley would have said, if we'd had to tell him you'd gone missing, or worse, turned up dead in a bloody ditch somewhere, or with a broken neck, falling out of some bloody tree!"
In point of fact, Dudley would probably have been highly amused by either of those messages.
"I don't even know why you were in a sodding tree to begin with! It's hardly the sort of behavior I raised you to. Your mother would have been so disappointed to see her thirteen-year-old daughter falling out of trees! And I cannot even imagine what your father would have said. Maybe if they were still around you'd listen once in a while, instead of spending all your time off in your own little world, and then running off and bloody well getting yourself hurt!"
"Done, Pet," Vernon announced, finally putting an end to the tirade.
"Right, then, get up, girl. Hurry up and change. If we hurry, we can get home before your cousin wakes up and burns down the house!"
Mary scrambled out of bed without a word, dragging Hermione with her to help with her cast.
Half a minute later there was a knock on the bathroom door. "Quickly, I said!"
The girls scurried out to the parking lot ahead of the adults and made a beeline for the Grangers' car. They watched through the back window as Emma and the Dursleys exchanged a few more words, and then went their separate ways.
"I can't believe you grew up with her," Hermione said, finally. "She's worse than Grandmère!"
"You have no idea," Mary responded. "I can't believe she went along with it."
Emma, falling into the driver's seat, smiled back at the girls tightly. "Neither can I, quite frankly. I was half-expecting them not to show up at all."
"Thank you for coming to get me," Mary said at once, relief warring with contrition in her tone.
Emma waved her thanks away. "What was I supposed to do? Leave you here? Anyway," she added with a sigh, "we'd best be off. It's a long way to Maidstone."
Saturday, 7 August 1993
Granger Home, East Farleigh, Kent
Between a frightful accident just outside of London, and frequent but necessary stops for coffee, Emma and the girls did not make it back to the Grangers' home until well into the afternoon. They passed the car ride (and stayed awake) by talking about what everyone had got up to over the past month. It started, of course, with a fairly intense discussion of exactly why Mary had seen fit to run away from the Urquharts (though she maintained that wasn't exactly what had happened), and eventually ranged to include tea parties, new lessons, and the forbidden Hogsmeade Weekends, as well as all the drama surrounding the escape of Sirius Black.
In return, Hermione told Mary about France, and her relatives (including the frightful Grandmère), and Emma told her about the networking she and Dan had been doing. Mary was entirely certain that she would need to be told everything again when she was more awake, and said so, just as they were pulling into the drive. Emma just laughed and promised that she could go to sleep as soon as she sent an owl to the Urquharts telling them that she was safe at the Grangers'.
She did so (after convincing Hermione to write the note, because she most definitely was not left-handed), and finally collapsed into sleep.
She woke, completely disoriented, not two hours later, to Professor McGonagall's rather loud, shrill brogue, occasionally interrupted by Dan's low, serious voice. She made her way to the living room, where she lurked out of the way, watching the rather harried-looking orthodontist facing down the incredibly irate witch. They were too focused on each other to notice her standing in the doorway.
"Keep your voice down, Minerva!" he admonished her, for what was certainly not the first time. "As I've said, my wife is trying to sleep. Beth is safe, and yes, she's here, but I honestly haven't the foggiest idea what happened. She called us from Penrith General last night, but I've barely been home an hour, and all the girls are asleep!"
"Well wake them up, then!"
"I most certainly will not. Beth has had a traumatic ordeal, and Emma was up all night taking care of her – something which I was given to understand is your responsibility!"
"She is my responsibility, and as such, I have every right to see her!"
"If you were so bloody worried about her, why didn't you try to find her when she was laid up in hospital? She was there at least twelve bloody hours! Registered under her own name, even!" Mary was slightly taken aback by Dan's tone. She had never heard him raise his voice before, even when during the Dobby showed up in the living room, or when she and Hermione had told the Grangers all the trouble they had gotten into over the course of the last school year. As if his yelling wasn't shocking enough, he was angry on her behalf.
"We did try to find her, you stubborn… muggle! She has anti-tracking charms on her, obviously!"
"And you never thought to enquire with the muggle authorities, is that it?" Dan asked scathingly. Mary suddenly realized that this argument was about much more than her safety. "I know you think you're better than us because you've got magic and we don't, but we do a damn good job of taking care of ourselves without it, and your asinine insistence that magic is the be-all, end-all of problem solving limits your ability to –"
"Limits?" Professor McGonagall interrupted, the air around her shimmering like a heat wave as she lost her temper. "Limits?! Magic let my people live like kings while yours were grubbing in the dirt like common swine!"
"Well, I hate to break it to you," Dan said with the cool superiority of one who has just won an argument with the moral high ground intact, "but we've caught up, and then some. Welcome to the 20th century. Now get out. Your prejudice is not welcome in my home."
Mary didn't think that the Professor could have looked any more shocked if Dan had physically slapped her. Some of her bluster vanished with the word prejudice, but she didn't go.
"Regardless of whether I am welcome, it is my responsibility to see that Mary is safe and well," she said stiffly.
"As far as I'm concerned, you forfeited that right when you drove her to run away, and then failed to even enquire at the nearest hospital to your so-called safe house as to whether she had turned up there. We are, as you may have noticed, in the muggle world at the moment, and as I understand it, you are her guardian only in Magical Britain. So you have no more right to her than we do. We will not keep you from her if she wants to see you, but I will not have you storming in here and disrupting her rest, along with the rest of my family. Now, as I've said, you should go."
"But –"
"Maybe I didn't make myself clear," Dan said irritably, "this is your final warning: If you don't get out of my house, I will disinvite you. I've been assured that the effects of being forcibly removed by the wards are decidedly unpleasant. So you should go."
Minerva went very stiff, visibly restraining herself from hexing this muggle man who dared threaten to use magic against her, but she finally turned and moved for the front door without another word.
"No, wait!" Mary heard herself say. Both adults turned to face her. Dan looked irritated that she had interrupted him, and the Professor looked torn between rage and embarrassment. Mary swallowed hard. She knew better than to interrupt adults, but she suspected that if the Professor walked out now, Mary would never get to visit the Grangers again after she went back to Hogwarts. "I'm already up. We can talk."
"Are you sure? You don't have to if you don't want to," Dan assured her... protectively? Maybe he wasn't so irritated, then.
"No, it's okay. I wasn't… running away. Not really. It was just a misunderstanding and then I… got lost. Kind of. It was my fault, anyway. Aunt Minnie didn't do anything."
"If you're sure, sweetheart." He shot a look at the Professor. "Do you want me to stay?"
Mary shook her head. At least an illusion of privacy would probably be a good idea.
"All right, I'll be in the bedroom. Yell if you need me." He squeezed Mary's shoulder in a way she was sure was meant to be reassuring as he left the room.
"Okay."
Mary and the Professor took their seats awkwardly on the sofa. For someone who was ostensibly so worried about her ward, the older witch's first question ("How long were you listening?") didn't really show it.
Mary raised a Slytherin eyebrow at her. "I'm fine, thanks for asking. Long enough to hear I've got anti-tracking charms on me," she added, rather tactfully, in her opinion.
The Professor's chin went up anyway, and she tried to defend herself. "It's not that – I don't condone – I fought for the light, you know," she finally said. "It's wrong to kill muggles, and treat them like animals. But… I was raised to believe that magic – having magic – does make us different, and better, than muggles. I'm not… proud… of that belief. Not after, well, you know. But living the way we do, it's… hard, sometimes, to realize that they aren't just what you read about in history texts anymore."
Mary snorted slightly at that. She had offered the woman a way out, but if she didn't want to take it, Mary wasn't going to make it easy for her to forgive herself the momentary lapse in political correctness. "That's not really an excuse, and you know it," she answered harshly. "You're the main contact between muggleborns, their families, and the magical world, for God's sake," she went on, using the muggle explicative intentionally. "If anyone should be able to appreciate that muggles aren't exactly living in the Dark Ages anymore, it should be you."
The Professor didn't seem to have anything to say to that, and after a long moment, when it was clear no response would be forthcoming, Mary decided that a guilty and speechless Aunt Minnie was an Aunt Minnie who was more likely to forgive Mary for her own mistakes.
"I'm sorry I ran away," she offered, trying very hard to sound as sorry as she was while she was waiting in that hospital bed for Emma to arrive. "I didn't mean to. It was kind of an accident."
Unfortunately the change of subject seemed to bolster the older woman's confidence. "What in Merlin's name were you thinking?"
"I, erm, wasn't?" Mary tried her best to explain herself and what had happened, as the Professor's lips grew thinner and thinner – normally a sign of anger.
Finally, at the end of the story, she heaved out a large breath and responded: "Shall I tell you what happened at the Urquharts', then?" She continued without awaiting a reply. "They realized you were gone almost at once, of course, but Catherine rightly assumed you had just gone flying and would return in your own time.
"Morgana felt you cross the ward line and had an elf notify Stephen and Conrad at once to go look for you. As you are now aware, you have an extensive series of anti-tracking charms on your person. Professor Snape suggested that it would be incredibly easy for your enemies to find you outside of the school, you see. They flew a search pattern for several hours, but there was no sign of you and they were grounded by that same storm you so joyfully flew into.
"Several hours later, we had two owls from Mafalda 'I live to nag' Hopkirk in the Improper Use of Magic Office, over your summoning and location charms. At least I can tell her you used them in an effort to avoid a more serious breach of the Statute. She'll probably still apply a fine, though, the harpy, especially since the anti-tracking charms interfered with the trace, so they couldn't say exactly where you were either, just that you weren't behind proper wards.
"Catherine, of course, was frantic. She tried sending the elves to find you, but even they can't get a trace on you outside of the house, and the men were speculating on whether Black had caught you somehow, which only made it worse. And then, a full day after Mafalda's letters, we finally get an owl saying that you're fine, and at the Grangers', in Miss Granger's handwriting, which suggested you weren't fine at all!"
"I am fine! I just broke my arm!" Mary said defensively. "And cracked a rib. Um, you couldn't fix it, could you?"
"I'm no mediwitch," the Professor said, "but I'm sure we can go to St. Mungo's tomorrow and have it sorted out." She looked pleased that Mary preferred magical healing to muggle medicine (though honestly, who wouldn't?).
Before Mary could agree to that plan, Emma's voice called out from the doorway where Mary herself had previously been lurking. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea, Minerva."
The witch bristled at once. "Even you must admit that our healers are far superior to your doctors!" she snapped.
"With certain things, yes," Emma said calmly, raising an eyebrow at the older woman. "I'm not debating that." She moved to join them, taking an armchair from which she could see them both. "I simply think that Mary Beth has become spoilt by her experiences with magical healing. How many times has she been in your Hospital Wing in the past two years?" she asked, probably rhetorically, but Mary actually tried to think… it had to be at least half a dozen times. "I simply suggest," Emma continued smoothly, "That it would behoove her to heal at a normal rate, as a reminder that she is, indeed, as mortal as the rest of us, and would do well to exercise a bit more caution and even, on occasion, think before she acts."
Mary did not like the look on Professor McGonagall's face at all as she considered this. She wouldn't agree. She couldn't – without her right arm, Mary wouldn't be able to fly or cast spells properly for at least six weeks. Plus she wouldn't be able to keep in touch with anyone if she couldn't write, and it kind of hurt to breathe.
"For the summer," the Professor finally said. "She needs to be able to use her wand properly when term starts, so she'll have to be healed when she goes back to school."
"I believe that should be acceptable."
"But…" Mary could hardly believe it. Hadn't she just been saying that magical healing was better? "No. Please... Emma, Aunt Minnie, I won't be able to write, or do magic or anything, and my ribs really hurt."
"You should have thought of that before you decided to risk life and limb flying under the tree line during a thunderstorm. You're lucky you didn't get hit by lightning instead of a tree branch," Emma said sharply. There was no room for argument in her tone. "And if your ribs hurt so badly, you may fetch yourself an aspirin. Second shelf in the vanity," she added, pointing down the hallway toward the bathroom.
Seeing no hope for rescue in the Professor's face, either, Mary went, stomping off with a huff. She couldn't even say it wasn't a fair punishment, but she was far from pleased.
Adding insult to injury – literally – the aspirin was child-proof, which meant she needed both hands to open it. No amount of trying to crush it against her leg and twisting or biting at the cap would do it (and she did try, for nearly five minutes). She simply couldn't manage with the cast. Bloody stupid Emma. And stupid Minnie, too – how could she agree to this? she ranted inside her head as she stalked back to the living room, even more irritated at the prospect of having to ask one of her tormentors to open the stupid bottle for her.
By the time she reached the doorway, however, the conversation had moved on, and she was momentarily distracted from her ire and her aching ribs, because somehow, it had gotten all turned around, and Emma was giving the Professor parenting advice.
"Well, I imagine it's rather different, being Head of House for all of them, as opposed to being in charge of just the one. After all, the only rules out here are the ones you make, and there's no points to take away."
"It is, rather. I hadn't expected it to be, but, well… maybe there's a reason I never had children of my own." The Professor sighed, sounding suddenly old.
Emma made a bit of an hmm noise, and then, "Honestly, I think you've done as well as anyone could. From what I've seen, and, again, what the girls have said, you've kept a fairly professional relationship at most times – oh, don't look at me like that, it's a good thing. You are still her professor, and as I've been saying, she wouldn't have taken it well if you came out of nowhere acting like her mother. And it's not as though she's not fond of you. She would never whine at you or try to talk back if she didn't trust you, you know. But she's still trying to figure out the roles you and I, and probably Catherine and this Snape character I've heard so much about play in her life, and what our relationships ought to be like. You can't just say you're a terrible guardian because of one misunderstanding."
"Your husband seemed to think I could."
"Dan only knew what I knew when we left to fetch Mary – that she was in hospital with a broken arm. I'm afraid he took the fact that she was no longer at her safe house to mean that she must have had a reason to run away, when, as you and I now know, it was more that she got lost in the woods."
"Bloody stupid chit," the Professor grumbled with a surprising amount of venom. "She ought to have known she wouldn't be able to find the house again. She should never have left the wards, but when she did, she should have turned back at once!"
"Did anyone ever tell her that? You can't just give them rules without reasons, you know."
Professor McGonagall laughed humorlessly. "I suppose they didn't. She's never had a reason to leave the wards overland, so far as I know."
"If nothing else, I think that's the lesson you need to take from this," Emma offered. "It's not that you're failing, here, it's just that you and she are both a little out of your depth. No matter how good she's gotten at blending into your world, she still doesn't have the background that you or Catherine would take for granted, like knowing that there's, what was it? Some kind of wards or enchantments, to disguise the house against aerial attack?" Damn it! Mary thought irritably. I should have known that!
"Yes, glamours and Notice Me Not Charms woven into the wards." Professor McGonagall explained, and then groaned in frustration. "Is it wrong of me to wish that Mary could be as well-behaved as Hermione?"
Mary nearly snorted at this, thinking of all the trouble Hermione had gotten into over the course of the previous term. Snape must not have talked to the Professor about the Veritaserum thing. In any case, Emma answered smoothly. "Beth's a good girl. I'm sure if you make it clear why she needs to follow the rules, she will be more than happy to do so. Anyway, there was one other thing I thought I should discuss with you, while I have you here."
"Oh, what's that?"
"The issue of Beth's mundane guardianship. Petunia Dursley was… not pleased, when she realized that she still bore some responsibility for the girl out here in the UK. I don't know how she missed it, given that she's still getting government support, but it might be for the best if you looked into transferring custody to, well… just about anyone else, frankly."
This was rather a shock to Mary. She hadn't given much thought to the Dursleys since she had left them. Until she had gotten stuck at the hospital, she hadn't even considered that they were still her muggle guardians. Getting away from them permanently in the muggle world as well would be a great relief, she thought, for both the Dursleys and herself. She simply hadn't the foggiest idea how to go about it.
"I'll add it to the queue," the Professor said with a resigned air. "It might have to wait until school is back in session. My schedule's full up through September. I'm getting further behind as we speak."
Emma changed the subject again. "Is the shopping trip still on for this coming Saturday?"
Professor McGonagall must have nodded, because she said, "It's going to be a nightmare. Last year was a madhouse, and there's even more families this year. Twenty muggleborn students – it's more than we've had in almost twenty years."
"Well, Dan and I will be there to help with questions and currency, and I like to think we've been to the Alley enough times now to help chaperone."
"I did have my reservations at first, but yes, I think that will be very helpful. Several of the other professors will be attending as well."
"All right, how's this: we'll keep Beth here for the week, give her a chance to unwind and sort through her issues with Black and the like, and we'll all meet you at the Leaky on Saturday?" Mary's heart rose at the thought of having an unscheduled week with Hermione. That would go a long way to making up for three weeks of dealing with her stupid broken arm.
"You know she's worried about Black – you must know he's still on the loose."
"If you couldn't find her yesterday, I don't see how Black could. She's not any less safe here this week than she was a month ago."
"Catherine will worry. She wasn't at all reassured by that note."
"I'll write her a proper letter now we've got the full story and invite her for tea tomorrow."
"Mary will get behind in her studies," the Professor objected, but she sounded like she was close to relenting.
"Will one week really make a difference? Besides, you teach children. Are you really telling me that you think it would be productive for her to keep working when she's so stressed that she's willing to risk her life just to get out of the house? She's thirteen, not thirty, Minerva. She needs a vacation."
"Fine! All right. You win. Meet outside the Leakey Cauldron at nine. I'm sure you won't be able to miss us."
"Excellent! I'll fetch Beth to say goodbye."
At that, Mary ran for her room so that she wouldn't be caught eavesdropping. Mere seconds after she rolled into bed, damning her ribs, Emma knocked, and then opened the door to lean on its frame.
"You're not nearly as sneaky as you think you are," she said with a grin. "Are you going to come out and say farewell?"
Mary groaned. "What gave me away?"
"The running footsteps were a bit of a hint."
The girl made a face at herself. "Yeah, I'll come. Can you open these?" she added, holding out the child-proofed bottle she was still carrying.
Emma took it without a word, ushering Mary toward the living room and their guest.