Monday, 1 November 1993
Hogwarts
Mary woke at what felt like an obnoxiously early hour, as the House Tables were levitated back to their usual places, and the level of light and chatter around her increased suddenly. Luna, to absolutely no-one's surprise, was a morning person, and greeted all of her friends far too cheerfully, while Ginny growled at the blonde Ravenclaw inarticulately. Hermione cast a time charm and sat bolt-upright with a panicked-sounding squeak, and the first thing Mary heard from Aerin was a gasping laugh and, "Oh, Merlin, Hermione – your hair." Lilian didn't make any move to get up at all, burrowing her face into Mary's back and mumbling what she thought was, "Make it go away."
She had just opened her eyes to stare at the rapidly-lightening sky above her when it was obscured by a smirking Zabini. "Potter, Moon," he drawled, "I know what they say about girls who play Quidditch, but really, show some discretion."
Mary, who in fact did not know what 'they' said about girls who played Quidditch, just glared at him as he wandered over to their table, still dressed in last night's robes, obviously amused. Honestly, he was one to talk about discretion when he had been obnoxiously physically affectionate ever since school started this year. She prodded Lilian hard in the shoulder, anyway. They had been in the Hall for hours, and she really needed the loo.
When she returned, she found that morning classes had been cancelled – which was just as well, since they were all running at least an hour behind their usual schedule. Most of Slytherin was trying not to meet anyone else's eyes, as they were all horribly unkempt, while a few select individuals (including Blaise, who had doffed his wrinkled robes and now simply looked attractively tousled, in his proper wizarding pantaloons and a muggle tee-shirt) seemed to be reveling in everyone else's discomfort. Hermione, hair somehow piled on top of her head in a way that looked almost intentional, along with a yawning Aerin and bright-eyed Luna, had absconded to their own table, and Lilian appeared to be trying to go back to sleep with her head dangerously close to the sausages.
Mary was not really hungry. The idea of food was actually slightly sickening, on what had to have been less than four hours' sleep. She jammed an apple in her pocket for later and was picking at a piece of toast when Blake MacDougal appeared behind her, with far more energy than she thought decent.
"Wotcher, Blitzen!"
Mary groaned at the nickname. She didn't think that anyone on the team (except maybe Lilian) knew that it was a reindeer name, but it still irritated her. "How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?"
"The more you complain, the more we like it," the second-year grinned. "Oi, Moon, wake up! Flint says we're meeting in the commons at half eight."
"What time is it now?" Lilian grumbled.
"Half seven."
"Ugh, fine." The older Slytherin grabbed a muffin and stomped down the table, doubtless intending to shower and dress before the meeting.
Blake smirked as he watched her go. "Have you seen Score or the Sadist?"
Mary snorted a little, as she did every time Blake mentioned Sadie Rosier. She probably shouldn't, but it was true – the fourth-year Keeper was incredibly hard on both of her reserves in training – far crueler than Flint, which was saying a lot. "I haven't seen Malfoy, but Sadie is down there." She pointed away from the high table.
"Thanks, Blitz!" Blake chirped, and bounced away again. Mary just shook her head. After a few minutes, she gave up her toast as a bad job and followed him, smirking to herself as she overheard Sadie telling him off for interrupting her breakfast conversation.
}{-}{-}{-}{-}{
Pansy and Tracy got to the showers before Mary, so she was slightly late for what turned out to be an impromptu strategy meeting. Fortunately, she didn't seem to have missed much.
"Is it true you saw the Grim last night?" Vinnie asked as she took a seat in the rough circle as unobtrusively as possible. Flint spotted her anyway.
"There's a Grim on campus?" Lilian sounded surprised. "Those are really rare."
"Don't they mean you're going to die?" Higgs asked excitedly.
"Don't be stupid Mini-Higgs," the Black Dog expert scoffed.
"No, it's true!" Snark claimed, looking at his Captain and his fellow beater with concern. "My uncle saw one once, and he died two weeks later!"
"And they say old Bilius Weasley saw one before he died, too," Malfoy drawled.
Sadie chuckled. "Wasn't he the one Auntie Dru 'allegedly' offed for pulling flowers out of his arse at that memorial celebration in '86?"
"Well, yes," Draco admitted, "but the point is, the Grim foretold it."
"Who is Auntie Dru?" Mary whispered to Lilian.
"Druella Diane Black nee Rosier – Draco's maternal grandmother, and mine and Sadie's third cousin twice removed," the older girl answered quietly, before saying more loudly, "The Grim doesn't foretell death, Draco, they're just drawn to places where the Veil is thin, so like, where lots of people have died."
"And the Forbidden Forest?" Blake asked, leaning forward on the edge of his seat.
"More like the Senior Woods, and a half-completed ritual to part the Veil for Samhain," Bole pointed out condescendingly.
Vinnie glared at the lot of them before he turned back to Warbler. "So did you see it or not?"
"We definitely saw something…" the beater hedged, throwing desperate looks at Flint.
Stewart Podmore arrived at that moment with Greg hot on his heels, and the Captain took the opportunity to change the subject. "Now that we're all here," he said, glowering at the late arrivals, "I have a proposition.
"As you are all aware, Farley, Carpenter, and Madden did a weather-working yesterday to ensure good conditions for the Revel. They assured me later that there is no chance that this storm system will clear up before Saturday's match. It was all they could do to punch a hole in it for the night and dry out the Clearing.
"So: that means it's going to be cold, wet, and probably raining come Saturday. With that in mind, I want to go over the playbook again, this time with the input of the reserves as well as the returning starting line. Collision rates are higher in the rain, so there's a chance we'll have to sub players. We're looking for anything that takes advantage of poor visibility, including those that the reserves are confident in their ability to pull off. We'll focus on that particular subset of the book for the rest of the week…"
Mary was certain that everybody felt like groaning, but only Podmore was stupid enough to do so aloud. He was swiftly told off, and warned that it was that sort of attitude that would have his place switched with Blake as first-reserve. Threatened with that degree of public humiliation, he quickly stifled his complaints. An hour later, they had more or less agreed on a core of ten plays (with about thirty variations) to drill relentlessly over their last few practices. After that, they discussed what Warbler sarcastically referred to as 'survival tactics' because Flint was concerned that the Weasleys and Wood would be upping the ante on their usual inter-house harassment, and he wanted all of his fliers un-hexed and well-rested for Saturday. Finally, at a quarter of eleven, the Captain dismissed them with apparent reluctance, and an order for Mary to remain behind.
Lilian watched from her sofa with evident curiosity as he pointedly cast secrecy spells around them, despite the fact that there were only about three others in the commons. Mary recognized muffliato, but not the glowing blue-green bubble of obscurent labiorum.
"What's that?" she asked without thinking.
"Prevents lip-reading. This is strictly a deniable assignment," Flint answered shortly.
"Denying what, exactly?"
"I'm calling in that favor you owe me, Potter."
Mary was starting to feel distinctly nervous. "What do you want me to do?"
Flint took a deep breath. "As you know, Hufflepuff is our main competition this year." Mary did know this. Flint had gone on about it at great length over the past month or so. "They have a great line-up, and Diggory's a much better Captain than Tufts was. Most of the team, though, is not used to training in all weather. They only just started flying wet practices this year. So the way I see it, we have an opportunity here. Flying in the kind of weather we're expecting, we can take them easily. If we wait until January, well… who knows? All we need to do is get Gryffindor to request to switch their place in the line-up with Hufflepuff."
All of that made sense, but Mary still didn't understand what that had to do with a favor on her part. "So what do you want me to do?" she repeated.
"You and your friends did something to get punished on a massive scale. 'Potions tutoring' is always code for detentions. And you apparently did it without getting caught by anyone but Snape." Seeing the look on her face, he quickly added, "I don't care about that – I'm sure I'm better off not knowing the details. But don't even bother denying you have resources, and a history of breaking the rules." She gave him her best 'admitting nothing' look, and he smirked unpleasantly. "What I want from you is that you find a way to take the Gryffindor Seeker out of commission for the day of the match. I don't care how you do it, as long as you're not caught. Wood didn't take on a reserve seeker, the bloody idiot, and he won't have time now to tap someone – he'll have to ask for a lineup change or forfeit, and that's not likely – this is his last chance to win the Cup."
Mary realized her mouth was hanging open stupidly and closed it. She was very tempted to point out that the Gryffindor beaters were also stuck in detention every Saturday, but she held her tongue, mostly because she didn't know if Snape could or would enforce their attendance at his apparently-unofficial detentions. Probably not, actually, since he would then have to explain what they had done to Professor McGonagall. Instead she asked, "How am I supposed to do that?"
"I don't care, Potter! Figure it out."
"But, Flint…" This sounded uncomfortably close to cheating to her, and not in an 'accidental' cobbing kind of way (which figured in at least half of the plays they would be practicing for Saturday), but in a way that could get them all kicked off the team forever.
"No buts, Potter. You owe me."
She did. She wouldn't have made it through the first week of term without him. She caved. "Fine. But can I at least have help?"
Flint ticked off two points on his fingers: "Get Thorpe benched by any means necessary. Don't get caught. Everything else is up to you. I don't want to know about it, I don't want to hear about it. Just make it happen. Clear?"
"Crystal," she responded automatically, slightly shaken by the fervor in his eyes. She had known for ages that the first rule of Slytherin Quidditch was to win, but she hadn't thought that even Flint would go this far. He was clearly every bit as mad as his Gryffindor counterpart.
"Good. And don't be late again." He dropped the spells and stalked off toward the boys' dorms.
Lilian smirked at Mary's expression. "What was that about?"
Tuesday, 2 November 1993
Hogwarts
It did not take long for Mary to fill Lilian in on the details of Flint's mission, nor for the girls to decide that they had to do it – or at least try. Mary was uncomfortably aware that her acceptance within Slytherin was based around her status as the Heir, her somewhat deserved reputation for lashing out violently when she lost her temper (as when she had dealt with Malfoy in first year, or the boys bullying Dave), and her popularity as Slytherin's Seeker. If she refused Flint and the Quidditch team turned against her, there would be no salvaging her reputation, and she could easily go back to being a target within the House.
It also had not taken long to decide that they should not involve anyone from outside Slytherin. Since Morgana, Perry, and Adrian had made it clear they wanted nothing more to do with the underclassmen's 'mad schemes,' they decided they would have to ask Dave, Alex, and Nora if they needed more help. Mary, however was rather reluctant to call on her patron privilege, especially if it was to involve them in anything that could be dangerous, so they decided to hold off on that until they had a plan.
Coming up with a plan was taking considerably longer, largely in part because they could not think of anything short of actually killing Thorpe that would exempt him from playing in Wood's eyes.
"What if we hide under the cloak and send a bone-breaker at his leg?" Lilian suggested as they made their way to lunch.
Mary shook her head. "Do you even know that curse? Besides, Pomfrey would have him back on the pitch in an hour, and even if she didn't, Wood would probably make him fly anyway." Mary still hadn't forgotten that the mad Gryffindor Captain had refused to allow an equipment substitution when she was being attacked by that rogue bludger in her first match. "And Maia still has the cloak."
"Kidnap him?"
"The professors would be bound to find him."
"We could dump him in the Chamber of Secrets."
Mary shuddered. No. Just no. "I'm not going back down there if I can help it."
"Oi! Potter!" a fourth-year girl called as they approached the table.
"Turner?"
"We just got out of Transfiguration. Professor McGonagall wants to see you ASAP."
"Oh. Did she say why?"
"No, just that you should come to her office, because she has marking to do over lunch."
"Wait – the Head of Gryffindor wants to talk to the Slytherin Seeker right before the first match?" Chess butted in. "Sounds suspicious to me."
"Seriously? She is also my guardian, Chess."
"What do you care, anyway?" Snark asked sharply. "You quit the team, in case you don't remember."
"I'm still a Slytherin, troll-brain. And as a prefect it's my duty to 'look out for any potential foul play that could disrupt our attempt on the House Cup, especially in this, Oliver Wood's final year – he's desperate, and desperate men do crazy things,'" (That had the ring of a Flint quote if ever Mary had heard one.) "…like ask their Head of House to find some trumped up excuse to give the Slytherin Seeker detention all Saturday."
"Merlin and Morgan! The whole house has gone insane!" the Seeker protested. The Professor was a Quidditch fiend – that was well known to all the houses – but she was also the straightest-laced person Mary had ever met, including Aunt Petunia. There was no way she would condone that sort of cheating.
Lilian just sniggered. "Did Flint put you up to this?"
Chess nodded, rolling his eyes. "It's still a bit suspicious though."
"No, it's not," Mary insisted, grabbing a sandwich to eat on the way. "Lils, I'll see you in class, yeah?"
}{-}{-}{-}{-}{
Ten minutes later, she was forced to eat her un-verbalized objections. She stood gaping before her guardian for a long minute before she finally managed to say, "Did Wood put you up to this?"
"Wood? What on Earth are you talking about? The match is a genuine safety concern – and practices…"
"What do you think Black's going to do? Take a running leap at me from the stands?!"
"Brooms can be cursed, Mary, as I believe you well know."
"Yes, but –"
"But me no buts, missy!"
"You seriously think that Sirius Black could sneak into the stands and curse my broom, without anyone noticing? With the whole school watching?"
"Easily. He admitted to confunding the Slytherin Seeker in his fourth year. The boy was in hospital for three days with a cracked cervical vertebra after flying headlong into a goal post. And that was his own brother, whom he was not trying to kill!"
"He doesn't even have a wand!"
"Do you know how easy it is to steal a wand in a crowd of students?"
"I reckon it's pretty difficult, actually, when everybody knows what you look like, and would be running the other way," Mary insisted stubbornly.
There was a dry chuckle from the doorway. "She does have a point, Minerva."
"Professor Snape! She wants me to not fly the match! You have to tell her it's safe!" Mary insisted, then added belatedly, "Um. Sir."
"I do certainly think that we professors could manage to apprehend the criminal if he dares show his face so publically," he said reasonably.
"Severus! You cannot be suggesting we use Mary Potter as bait for Sirius Black!"
"I don't think he's after me at all," Mary pouted. "He went up to Gryffindor tower, not to Slytherin."
The adults ignored her. "Of course not, Minerva. I have not offered you a lemon drop today, have I? The fact remains, however, that the safest place for Miss Potter is neither locked up in the castle, which Black has only just proved he is capable of infiltrating, while everyone else is away, nor anonymously in the stands, but with every eye in the school upon her. Black might be dementor-addled enough to make an attempt to reach her under such conditions, but he surely could not hope to succeed."
"And what about practices? Out on the pitch with no adult supervision, a bloody sitting duck for anything he might attempt!" Professor McGonagall hissed.
Snape just raised an eyebrow at the Professor. "I have every confidence in my Slytherins' abilities to protect each other against a lone madman. The seventh-years in particular are very protective of Miss Potter. And of age."
"You truly think Flint and Warrington will be sufficient deterrence? He killed thirteen people with one curse, Severus!"
"He killed twelve muggles and one wizard who barely scraped a NEWT in Defense by blowing up a street. Not exactly subtle. Beside which fact, two on one was the upper limit of his dueling abilities, and that was before spending a decade rotting in Azkaban. If it will assuage your concerns, I am certain that several other NEWT students could be convinced to guard the Slytherin practices."
"Mary's safety is our responsibility, Severus! Not the other students'!"
"That is the sort of paternalistic hand-holding that results in graduates too weak to defend themselves in the outside world! She's thirteen. You can't keep her under your paw forever."
"So you would throw all your children to the wolves at thirteen?"
"To the wolves? Never!" The Professor looked slightly taken aback by the vehemence of Snape's response. "But I would acknowledge that they are no longer children. In two years, they reach the age of consent. In four, their majority! Is it not better to observe the age of recognition, and prepare them for the challenges of adulthood than to throw them into the deep end, as so many of my generation were? In case you have forgotten, sixteen of my year died within two months of graduation, Minerva! Sixteen."
"I know that, Severus! I lived through those years as well! But we are not at war, now," Professor McGonagall objected, equally heatedly. "There is a difference between preparing students to make adult decisions, and telling them it is their responsibility to protect their fellow students."
The Head of Slytherin gave a magnificent sneer. "And you call yourself a Gryffindor!"
"You know what I meant!" the Professor blustered. "You can't make them think it's all on them! They're children! Even the bravest child is no match for -"
"No match for what, Minerva?" Snape interrupted seamlessly, his tone once again coldly controlled. "Possession? A basilisk? The Dark Lord's wraith? A troll? A manticore? A dragon? The acromantula colony in the Forest? Students have faced all of those in the past two years! Or perhaps the more mundane dangers that lurk within these halls – Bullies? Kidnapping? Predatory teachers? You may recall that there are students yet to graduate who were assaulted by Maccabee in '87. We may not be at war, but that is no excuse to wrap our students in cotton wool or teach them to do anything other than look out for themselves."
"Perhaps we have not done as well as we could have, but that is no reason to do anything less now than we can to keep Black away from Mary!"
"We are teachers, Minerva, not bodyguards or baby-sitters. What would you have us do? Let her lurk in the corners of our classrooms all day whilst we go about our business? Escort her to classes and otherwise keep her behind the wards of the Slytherin Common Room at all times? Or better yet, we could all barricade ourselves in the Chamber of Secrets until the incompetents employed by the ministry succeed in re-capturing their precious escapee."
"You swore you would protect her!"
"I did not swear to mollycoddle her, nor any other student! As the girl's Head of House –"
"I am her guardian, Severus!" the Professor interrupted. "I know what Black is capable of! It's not safe!"
"Do not speak to me of the things of which Black is capable, Professor McGonagall," Snape bit out. "As I was saying, as the Head of Slytherin, I take Miss Potter's safety as seriously as any of my other students. There is no evidence that Black is seeking out Miss Potter at all. As she quite rightly mentioned, Black did not attack the dungeons. Perhaps it is your own students for whom you ought to be concerned."
"Anyone would have expected James and Lily's child –" the Head of Gryffindor blustered, but she had gone pale at Snape's use of her title, and had not fully recovered her previous steam.
"Don't be absurd! After the past two years, more people, including the Prophet, refer to her as the Heir of Slytherin than the Girl Who Lived. There is absolutely no chance that Black is unaware of Miss Potter's house affiliation."
The Professor finally faltered. "Then… you truly think he could be after anyone?"
Snape rolled his eyes. "After twelve years of dementor exposure, I would be unsurprised if he is suffering under some delusion, lost in newly-available memories of what he doubtless recalls as better days gone by. In any case, I do not believe Miss Potter to be in any more or less danger than any of her peers. Nor do I believe that she will be in any greater danger on the Pitch than in the Castle."
Mary's Head of House raised a sardonic brow at her guardian as he waited for her to process their argument. She held her breath in anticipation.
"Fine!" Professor McGonagall snapped at long last. "But I want at least four seventh-years at all practices!"
Snape sighed dramatically. "If that is what it takes, Minerva, then so be it."
"It is!" she insisted.
"Quite. Miss Potter?"
"Yes?" Mary startled. It had been several minutes since either of the professors had acknowledged her directly. From the slight flush on the Professor's face, she might have completely forgotten she was there, though Snape's small smirk suggested that he hadn't.
"Inform Captain Flint of the necessary accommodations, and ask him to call upon me at my office directly before dinner."
"Yes, sir," she looked hesitantly between the two professors. "Um… Can I go, then?"
Professor McGonagall sighed. "I suppose. I shall expect you on Sunday for our usual meeting."
"Yes, professor."
Snape nodded his dismissal. As she fled the still-tense office, she heard him say, "Now, before we wasted nearly ten minutes of my precious time discussing that asinine ex-member of your illustrious house, I had intended to speak to you regarding my previous petition for additional core faculty…"
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Mary reached the Great Hall just in time to relay Snape's message to Flint and accompany Lilian to the library.
"What did McGonagall want?" she asked, as soon as they had cleared the crowd of classroom-bound students.
Mary flushed slightly. "She wanted to stop me from playing on Saturday." She paused, waiting for Lilian to get her rant about Chess being right out of the way, then continued: "I really don't think she was thinking of Quidditch, though. She was worried Black might attack and curse my broom at practice or something."
"But you convinced her to let you play, right? I saw you talking to Flint – you haven't been banned, have you?"
"No, I haven't. Snape showed up and convinced her that I wasn't in any more danger than anyone else. He seems to think Black's not after me. But I don't know if he was just saying that for McGonagall's sake. Anyway, that's not the important thing."
"What is, then?" Lilian asked, surprised, no doubt, by her placing anything in importance over Black.
"McGonagall reminded me, and I just realized, when I said about cursing my broom – remember in first year, when Quirrellmort put me in hospital during flying practice?"
"Well, yeah, now that you mention it, but what about it?"
"Pomfrey told me that she'd have to keep me a full day and night for observation, regardless of whether I was actually hurt, due to magical exhaustion."
"So what?"
"So, we just need to find a way to make Thorpe magically exhausted, and she'll do our job for us!"
"Brilliant! But that's the tricky part, isn't it?" Lilian rolled her eyes.
Mary copied that gesture. "We still have until Friday to figure it out. We don't need her to actually keep him through the match, really – any threat that she might, and Wood's bound to go begging to change the line-up."
"All right, all right. Good plan. No one crosses Pomfrey," Lilian grinned. "The rest is just details."
Friday, 5 November 1993
Hogwarts
The Friday before the Quidditch match got off to a great start: someone apparently decided to start celebrating Bonfire Night early by planting a load of Filibuster's Fireworks in three tureens of porridge at the Slytherin table. The Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs hadn't been pleased, getting caught in the blast of exploding breakfast, but Slytherin was furious. Not only were they covered in sticky oats, but there had been shrapnel. Two upperclassmen had to go to the hospital wing with 'minor abrasions.' The red-headed menaces were lucky it was upperclassmen. If it had been firsties or second-years, there would have been an all-out war in the Great Hall.
~^v^~
Friday 5 November: Breakfast
Lilian caught Mary's look of wide-eyed panic and gave the smallest shake of her head. They had put the fireworks in the upperclassmen's tureens specifically because they would be most irritated by the inconvenience – but they were also the best able to defend themselves from the steaming-hot mess. Only two had suffered from the unexpected flying shards of porcelain, while the rest of them were stopped by quick shield charms. They had chosen well, albeit for the wrong reasons. And it was far too late to turn back now.
~v^v~
Everyone was certain of the culprits, even if there was no evidence and they vehemently denied it: no one else had their reputation for borderline dangerous pranks, and of course they would deny it, since something had gone wrong. Slytherin was convinced that this was doubtless a part of the escalation Flint had been warning them all about for weeks. Gryffindor was equally convinced that their beaters were simply denying all involvement to save themselves a detention the day of the match, which did not stop them from loudly and publically congratulating the Weasleys on a prank well played. Tensions were high as members of three houses made their way to their dorms to change, and one went off, laughing and chattering, to their first lesson of the day.
~^v^~
Wednesday 3 November: Evening
"You're thinking about this all wrong," Lilian said. "The best way to not get caught is to make it look like it's all someone else's fault."
"So we, what, ask someone to do it who's not on the Quidditch team? It can't be Dave and Alex – everyone knows they're mine."
"Nah – think bigger. We make it look like an accident – and one that the Gryffindors caused in the first place."
~v^v~
The discontent quickly escalated to minor hexes and jinxes. By lunch, two Gryffindors had been sent to the hospital wing as well, evening the score, but Fred and George had managed to convince nearly half of their house that they hadn't started this latest flare-up of the feud. Four different fights broke out in the corridors between afternoon classes.
~^v^~
Wednesday 3 November: Evening
"How the hell are we supposed to do that?"
"Well, we've got his schedule, we know where he needs to be, and when he's going to be there, we just need someone to 'accidentally' push him over the edge."
"Who? And how?"
"I think we need to start a war."
~v^v~
When the last class of the day let out, a handful of fourth-year Gryffindors, heading directly to dinner from Astronomy, and third-year Slytherins returning from the library found themselves waiting impatiently for the third-floor shifting stair to return to its landing.
"Hey, you," a young voice called from behind them. "Yeah, you, the Gryffindor git with the stupid hair!"
A Gryffindor whose hair had been cursed with polka-dots earlier in the day whirled around and sent a stinging hex without looking. Alex was grinning at him, and holding out an un-threatening quill, as though to return it. He was still holding the quill when his face started swelling and he burst into very convincing screams of pain. Dave was hovering over him, wand out, but he couldn't manage quite a strong enough finite to help his friend.
~^v^~
Thursday 4 November: Evening
"Hey," Mary said, falling into her favorite armchair beside Blaise. "Do you lot have plans for the last free tomorrow?"
"Just homework," the boy answered. "Why?"
"What would it take to get you to help me with my Arithmancy?"
"Charms!" Theo said immediately. "I still can't get the bloody dancing teacup spell to work!"
"Great. I'll meet you in the library, then?"
"Sounds good," the boys answered in tandem.
~v^v~
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was Blaise who attacked the Gryffindor contingent first, as Mary ran to relieve the hex on the first-year's face. The Gryffindors retaliated against Blaise, but he clearly already had some dueling training, dodging two of their spells and shielding against the others while Theo leapt to his defense.
"You fucking arseholes!" Mary shouted at the Gryffindors. "You just cursed an unarmed first-year!"
The Gryffindors turned as one, distracted. Right on cue, Lilian, hiding in a nook on the other side of the stairwell, behind a suit of armor under the Impressionist Camouflage Charm, cast a Summoning Charm on Thorpe's robes, effectively giving them a sharp tug.
He screamed as he fell, and didn't stop after the sickening thud that signaled his impact with the floor at the bottom of the stairwell.
Oh, good, Mary thought. We didn't kill him.
~^v^~
Tuesday 2 November: Evening
"So how do you magically exhaust someone?" Lilian asked, as they settled in to plan in earnest.
"Well, I figure I fell from about forty feet, and that completely knocked me out."
"Hmmm… well, I suppose we could shove him off a staircase."
"That might be slightly too direct…"
~v^v~
"Cad!" one of the Gryffindor girls shrieked, nearly throwing herself off the open edge of the landing as well.
"Jessie!" Polka Dots snapped, grabbing her arm as the stairs finally completed their slow crawl back up from the ground floor. "Cad! Hang on, mate! We're coming!"
The Gryffindors took off running, with a few final threats thrown over their shoulders at the Slytherins, who followed at a more sedate pace. By the time they reached the ground floor, a circle of curious observers completely concealed Thorpe, and Prefect Weasley was bustling through the crowd, insisting that the boy be taken to the hospital wing. Wood was shouting hysterically about how this was all Slytherin's fault.
Flint sidled up beside Mary, Blaise and Theo, smirking at the commotion. He nodded at Mary as he wandered away again, which she took to be the closest thing to a public acknowledgement she was likely to get. That was fine with her: she stayed and watched as Weasley levitated his House's seeker back up the stairs toward the Hospital Wing, feeling more than a bit ill at the sight of the pain she had caused.
She made a mental note never to owe Flint another favor.
~^v^~
Friday 5 November: Morning, very early
"Are you sure about this?" Mary asked Lilian, as they prepared to set their plan in motion. "I mean, with your brother…"
The older girl shrugged, eyes momentarily shadowed. "Connor… he was unlucky. The way he landed, the rock, and the accidental magic… no. It's different. Thorpe's fourteen, and a seeker. He has to have taken worse falls in practice. He'll be fine. I'll be fine. The whole plan will be fine. Don't worry about it. Come on, we need to hurry if we don't want to be spotted."
She turned on her heel and left the common room. Mary worried anyway.
~v^v~
"I hear Thorpe's going to be in hospital all weekend," Blaise said, joining the girls in the common room after dinner. "Chesterfield says he overheard McGonagall talking to Sprout about switching the match tomorrow."
"Is he all right?" Mary asked, wide-eyed. She felt Lilian hold her breath beside her.
"Shattered his left ankle and cracked his pelvis," Theo noted. "Nothing skelegrow can't fix."
Mary winced, but Lilian gave a sigh of relief beside her.
"The Gryffindors didn't tell anyone we were fighting," Theo added.
"I'd be surprised if they did," Mary said tartly. "Seeing as they started it, hexing a firstie unprovoked."
Blaise smirked and leaned in, whispering: "Next time you want our help with something, ask."
"No idea what you're talking about, Blaise," Lilian said with a tiny nod.
Blaise winked. "We'll call it even, this time, then."
"See you around," Theo added. "Thanks for the help with the Charms homework."
When they left, Mary turned, very seriously, to her best friend and cast muffliato. "We're never doing anything like this again. Ever."
Lilian nodded fervently. "When I watched him fall, all I could think was, oh, gods, I'm so sorry."
"He'll be fine. But never again."
Lilian squeezed her hand tightly before taking a few deep breaths and fixing a mask of indifference in place. "I just hope it was worth it."
Just before curfew, Flint called the Quidditch team together for one final meeting, where he gave them a positively diabolical grin and passed around a note from their Head of House:
Capt. Flint,
Due to the unfortunate accident suffered by their seeker earlier today, Prof. McGonagall has petitioned to switch places in the official line-up with Hufflepuff. In the interests of fair play, I have acceded to her request. I trust this does not unduly impact your strategy for the morning's match.
Prof. Snape
Saturday, 6 November 1993
Quidditch Pitch
Mary peered out of the Slytherin locker room miserably, ten minutes before the match was due to start. The weather was likewise miserable. They were in the midst of yet another lightning storm, this one so strong that she had woken to peals of thunder audible even in the second dungeon-level. Mary couldn't help but wonder if they would have been better off finding some way for them to get out of this match, rather than Gryffindor, but it was far too late now.
"Potter!" Flint shouted, his foghorn voice nearly lost in the pounding of the rain on the tiled roof. "Stop looking at the pretty lights and get your arse over here so I can charm your lenses!"
That was the only good thing about this being an actual match day: she was never allowed to practice with water-repelling charms on her glasses, for the sake of 'conditioning,' but Flint would take any advantage on a game day. When Mary's glasses, along with everybody's robes, had the best Impervius Charms the seventh-years could manage, Flint called them together for the traditional pre-match 'pep-talk': "Listen up, you fucking wankers! We are the best this school has to offer! You know it! I know it! Now let's go out there and make sure everybody else knows it, too!"
He had a few words of advice for each of them as they filed out onto the pitch, but it was nothing they hadn't heard before in practice. Mary tuned him out in favor of her own pre-match ritual – Malfoy shouting luck to her over the sound of the crowd cheering their entrance, just so she could shout "Skill, not luck," back at him.
They shared a smirk as they mounted up, already cold and wet, as rain seeped through their hair, but not nearly as bad off as the Hufflepuffs – clearly they hadn't thought to charm their own robes against the rain. Diggory smiled at Flint as the captains shook hands. From where she was standing, Mary couldn't see Flint's response, but it hardly mattered. With a shrill and distant-sounding whistle, they were off.
The winds were obnoxious, swirling around within the filled stands at ring-height instead of gusting straight through, like they did when there were no spectators present, and blowing Mary continually off course. The rain managed to find its way down the back of her robes within five minutes, and her fingers were quickly transfiguring themselves into ice on her broom handle. It was obvious that she could barely keep on-target in the plays, and equally clear that Hufflepuff had put some thought into how to deal with Slytherin's integrated-seeker style.
To put it simply: the fact that no one could see more than a few feet in front of themselves meant that the Hufflepuffs were free to cobb and blatch and blurt her into conveniently-placed knees and beaters' bats to their hearts' content, and Madam Hooch was none the wiser. Slytherin was, of course, doing the same to the Hufflepuff chasers – they had probably done it first, since their first set of plays had been strong-arm tactics (and for all Hufflepuffs could be real nightmares if crossed, they were hardly the sort to start off cheating). But the Badger chasers were focusing on her, as the seeker (and, she thought, the smallest, lightest person on the pitch), while Diggory, who was their seeker as well as their captain, circled the action, looking for the snitch.
It was a dirty way to play, but she knew it was a page right out of their own book. Warbler and Flint often warned the younger players how brutal the sport could be, and they had roughed each other up badly in practice scrimmages, but this was the first time she personally hadn't been able to see that sort of thing coming and escape. After what felt like ages being shoved around out of nowhere, Flint finally spotted her getting a particularly fierce elbow to the face (followed by a very insincere-sounding "Sorry!" from the yellow-robed arsewipe who threw it) and called a time-out.
"You okay, Potter?" he asked, as she tried to work a bit of feeling back into her fingertips, and wipe her bloody nose at the same time.
"Doo ayh look oh-kay?" she responded nasally, to the amusement of the others.
Flint snorted. "Right, change of pace: We're going untouchable. Alternate between the Three-Headed Wyvern, Eel-Weed, and Kitsune plays. Start with the Wisp, and we'll switch plays whenever the three of us are within hand-signal distance. Malfoy, Bole, look to me for signals. Beaters, keep a heavy presence on Diggory – I want him too busy to call plays. Potter, feel free to harry him as well, but only if you think you can avoid the friendly fire."
Mary nodded her assent along with everyone else. The Wisp was named for the will-o-the-wisp, and referred to a play where she would initially seem to have a fairly integral part in the chasers' play, blocking the opposing chaser who was meant to be sitting on Malfoy, to make it look like either Bole or Flint was about to pass to him. Instead, they would pass to each other, when the other opposing chasers moved in to intercept. After that, she would be excused from the chaser action to actually look for the snitch like a traditional seeker. She wasn't sure how much good that would do in this rain, but it certainly beat getting beaten up on her broom.
"Good. It's half-past eleven. We're three goals up. Let's keep that lead, and bring it home. Break!"
The Slytherins kicked off again, Mary wondering how it was possible that they had only been in the air for half an hour.
It was growing darker, as the rain somehow grew heavier still. Lightning was striking closer and closer to the pitch. Mary was almost certain that the gasps and screams she heard below her were due to the storm, not the death-defying stunts of the Slytherin chasers' Kitsune flips and passes. She hoped they were sticking to the Wyvern and Eel plays most of the time – the Nine-Tailed Fox had been designed by Envy Seran, which meant it was dangerously gymnastic in the best of conditions. It was named for the fact that each of the chasers had to move fast enough to seem like they were in three places at once. Their quick turns, back-passes and flips were very, very difficult to follow and block, but equally difficult to pull off, especially in low-visibility.
Flying the traditional seeker's role was boring, and seemed absolutely useless, given the fact that she still couldn't see more than a few meters in any given direction. She did spend some time trailing after Diggory, and nearly caught him in a Wronsky Feint, but he clearly realized that there was no way she could have seen the snitch so far away in this weather, and stopped halfway through his dive. After that, he seemed more than happy to ignore her, in favor of trying to get close enough to his team to direct them. The Slytherin beaters were doing a very good job, though. Eventually Madam Hooch called a time out on his behalf, as two brownish-yellow figures collided and fell to earth.
By that time, the Water-Repelling Charms were starting to wear off, Mary's robes growing heavy and weighing her down (in addition to being practically frozen from zipping around in the rain, which she was almost used to by now). That meant, as best she could figure, they had to have been in the air for at least four hours.
They huddled together under an engorgio'd umbrella with the reserves, who had somehow acquired towels and hot water bottles. There was no sign of Lilian, who must have gone in for detention already. Mary wrung the water from her braid, and amused herself by poking the mostly-dry, and slightly warmer Blake in the neck with her icy fingers.
"Fucking hell, Blitz!" he screeched.
Higgs laughed. "Here, hold this." He passed over a bottle, which practically burned in the seeker's cold hands.
"I don't suppose any of you thought to sneak in a wand, eh?" Sadie groused, trying to shake the mud from her landing off her boots. "I could do with a proper warming charm or six."
"And risk disqualification?" her younger reserve asked. "Flint would kill us. I'll go in for you, though, if you like."
"Not a chance, pipsqueak."
Blake pouted, though all the others seemed more than happy to stay under their shelter unless they were actually needed.
"Anything we need to discuss?" Flint asked, splashing down last as the Hufflepuffs circled on the other side of the field.
"I can't manage another Kitsune," Draco admitted. He looked even colder than Mary felt, and utterly exhausted. He peeled off his gloves and laid a blue-fingered hand on her water bottle with a wince. Higgs smirked and tossed him a towel.
"Oi, Greg, re-wrap my grip?" Snark ordered, passing his bat to the reserve beater and furiously massaging his right hand with his left, as though he had lost the feeling in it. Greg did as he was told without arguing, leaving Vinnie to hold the umbrella upright.
Flint nodded, ruddy-faced and seemingly invulnerable to the weather. "What time is it?"
"Quarter of four," Podmore answered.
"We're eleven goals up," the captain announced for the non-chasers, who were too far from the action to really keep track, especially when they couldn't hear the commentary. "We'll switch to more defensive strategies: Golem, Old Man Oak, maybe throw a Kraken in if it looks like a safe bet. Blitz, catch the goddamn snitch so we can call it a day," he ordered, before turning to examine Greg's work.
"Easy for him to say," Mary muttered to her fellow third-years as soon as his back was safely turned.
Vinnie clapped her on the shoulder with his free hand, but Draco nodded with false sympathy. "I'd say better you than me, but seeing as I'm stuck out there as well… catch the goddamn snitch Potter."
"Can't hack it, Malfoy?" Higgs asked with a challenging grin, which was parried by a request for Warbler to break one of Draco's arms for him.
"I really think we ought to let Mini here have a go of it," the youngest starting chaser insisted. "I will simply have to suffer the indignity of Madam Pomfrey's attentions under this nice, warm, dry umbrella. It will be difficult, but I shall endure." He held out an arm, dramatically looking away from it. "Go on, do it, I'm ready."
"Shut the fuck up and get back on your broom, Malfoy," Flint ordered him. "That goes for the rest of you as well – Hufflepuff's back in the air."
Warbler and Bole stomped back out into the mud immediately, while the younger contingent of starting players shared a groan, following more reluctantly. There was a new, mostly-dry Hufflepuff chaser, now, along with a rather angry-looking, mud-covered one. Mary made a mental note to ask what had happened to her later, when they were all back in the commons.
Back in flight, and feeling even colder for the respite, Mary decided to start flying spirals instead of tailing and harassing Diggory. There was no guarantee that either she or the Hufflepuff would catch the snitch any time soon, but the chances that one of them would spot it increased dramatically when they weren't in the same spot, and she was confident she could beat him in a race if he saw it first, even with the bloody turbulence, unless it showed up right in front of him. With a hundred-and-ten-point lead, that was a risk she was willing to take: they could make up forty points over the course of their other matches if he got it first.
The lightning was striking fast and furious, now, one clap of thunder hardly ending before the next rolled in. She dodged Diggory, a bludger, and the Hufflepuff beater streaking after it, turned sharply at the end of the pitch, and then froze, nearly throwing herself off her broom, as she saw the silhouette of an enormous, shaggy black dog clearly against the sky, motionless in the empty, topmost row of seats.
Was that the Grim? What on Earth was it doing in the stands?
But she blinked, and it was gone, and then there was the briefest of breaks in the rain, and another flash of lightning behind her, and a glint of gold – Where? – There! – Off to her right! She flattened herself on her broom, willing every ounce of speed out of it, eyes fixed on the target as it led her upward, and toward the center of the pitch. If she lost the snitch now, there was no telling when it would re-appear.
She hardly noticed the increasing chill, writing it off as a side-effect of her increased speed, or the eerie silence settling in, as the wind whipped past her ears. Then, suddenly, she realized that there was a feeling like ice inside her chest, as well as all around her, and someone was screaming, a woman's voice, inside her head, just like on the train:
"Not Mary, not Mary, please not Mary!"
"Stand aside, you silly girl… stand aside now…"
"Not Mary, please no, take me, kill me instead!"
The world faded away around Mary, dissolving into swirling white mist.
"Not Mary! Please… have mercy… have mercy…"
There was a high, shrill laugh, and Mary was falling through white mist, and then she knew no more.
}{-}{-}{-}{-}{
"No, that's what I said – that's what 'she called it' means!" Lilian? Mary thought muzzily.
"But Quidditch matches don't get, like suspended, or whatever! It goes until one of them catches the snitch!" That sounded like… Dave? No, that didn't make sense. Vinnie? Huh. She had never noticed how similar they sounded before.
"Well, so far as I know, a pitch has never been swarmed by a hundred dementors in the middle of a game before," a more reasonable girl pointed out. Hermione. "Plus it is only a Hogwarts match. It's not exactly the World Cup."
"Yeah, shut up, Crabbe. We'll all be better off for the break, anyway, start fresh tomorrow, yeah?" Another girl, even more belligerent in her normal speaking tone than Lilian. Sadie.
"Just think of it as a really long time out," Hermione said.
Mary pried her eyes open with difficulty, recognizing the distinctive white ceiling and linen sheets of the Hospital Wing. "Wh'appened?"
"Oi, Crabbe – go run and tell Flint she's come round!" Sadie ordered the boy, then added, "You took a header from mid-stands." The stands started at the fifteen-meter mark, and went up to fifty meters. 'Mid-stands' was over a hundred feet. Mary suddenly felt very lucky to be alive.
"Totally distracted Diggory falling off like that – he lost the snitch, and Hooch suspended the game on account of Dementors. We have a rematch tomorrow," Lilian added.
The seeker struggled to sit up and put on her glasses. Her wand was there too. Someone must have brought it from the locker room for her. "Oh. Okay. Um…"
"You won't be playing," Sadie informed her, her tone brooking no argument. "First off, you broke your arm, three ribs, fractured four vertebral spines, and cracked your skull on landing, even with sinking about a foot into the mud. Pomfrey's keeping you here at least until Monday. Secondly, your broom drifted off into the forest, and there's no way anyone's going to be able to track it down in this weather. It's probably gone for good."
"Well… damn it!" Mary had really liked that broom! And she'd only had it for a year! "But hey, Lils, that means you're taking Draco's spot, and he's seeker, right?"
Lilian shrugged morosely. "I guess. Didn't want it this way, though."
"It's just gone nine," Hermione said quickly, changing the subject. "Pomfrey said we should feed you and make you take another sleeping draught. It's lucky the ground was so soft. Your magic didn't kick in to save you, what with the dementors."
Lilian passed her a tray with sandwiches, a large chocolate bar, and a pitcher of water, which Mary, suddenly parched, drank greedily.
"Yeah," Sadie added. "Like I told these two – Dumbledore tried to stop you falling, but even arresto momentum can only do so much. Then he shot off a Patronus and chased the dementors away, mostly, though honestly, from where I was sitting, it looked like he was lucky not to have chased them into the stands. Thank the stars, a bunch of upperclassmen had the common sense to guard the stairs."
Hermione interrupted to say, "Eat the chocolate – they gave it out at dinner to help with the dementor exposure."
Mary did so, reveling in the sensation of warmth spreading throughout her body. It almost chased away the aches that seemed to have settled into every single one of her muscles and joints. Sadie continued as though there had been no interruption at all. "Then he conjured a stretcher for you and brought you in here, and Hooch suspended the game pending, you know, making certain that it's not going to be overrun by Dementors again. The team's been sending people in shifts to make sure someone was here when you woke up, but they all send their best wishes, and say to get well soon."
"Thanks, Sadie," the seeker said.
"No problem. Anyway, I'll see you later, yeah?" she left without waiting for a response.
Mary sighed at the still-worried looks on both her friends' faces. "So how was detention?"
Lilian snorted. "We can't tell you anything about it. Snape was planning on having you sit yours tomorrow, but I don't know if he can, since you'll be here. Maybe he'll give you lines, or something, to make it up?"
Hermione nodded. "That's what I'd expect. Finish your sandwich, before Madam Pomfrey comes back."
"Where is she, anyway? Usually she's here as soon as I wake up."
"Ah, well… Professor Snape and the rest of us didn't find out until about half an hour ago that anything was wrong, after… you know," Lilian admitted. "So he came up with me and Hermione, and got into… well, more than a bit of a row with Professor Lupin – he was here already, you see, and Madam Pomfrey more or less dragged them out to tell them off like they were still students themselves."
"She told us to make sure you ate something, and then knock you back out. She wanted you to get at least another twelve hours of sleep," Hermione fussed.
"Did they say anything interesting?" Mary asked. "There's something going on with them, and I can't figure out what."
The Ravenclaw huffed. "Well you know how Snape –" "Professor Snape," the Slytherins chorused automatically. "Yes, him. You know how he is. He said a lot of things that were very cryptic and gave away absolutely nothing."
"No offence, Maia, but you don't exactly speak fluent Slytherin."
Lilian chuckled as the older girl pouted. "No, it's true. I couldn't make heads or tails of it either. Just that they were enemies back in their school days, and I think you already knew that."
"And Professor Lupin's sick, I think," Hermione said. "Remember how Snape –" "Professor Snape." "Will you stop that? I'll start calling him Professor Phobetor, I swear I will!"
"Fine, fine, whatever," the less-injured Slytherin agreed. "What were you saying?"
"What – oh! Snape kept referring to Professor Lupin's 'condition,' as though he were ill, though admittedly that's not exactly new information, either."
"No," Mary sighed, her head beginning to pound. "It's not. Snape has to brew a potion for him. I'm not sure why."
"You just came over all peaky," Lilian noted.
"Headache."
"Oh, here!" Hermione handed over a potions vial from the bedside table. "Take this, and go back to sleep. We should go back and tell everyone you're okay, anyway."
Mary knocked back the potion and mumbled something unintelligible before it overwhelmed her. The last thing that registered was Lilian patting her hand and saying 'sleep well.'
}{-}{-}{-}{-}{
The next morning, Madam Pomfrey was back, though she had little in the way of further intelligence on the Snape-Lupin situation to offer. Lilian stopped by before the rematch commenced, as did Professor McGonagall. Mary wished the former luck with her first official match, and feigned exhaustion when the latter began to twitter about how she had known that she oughtn't to have let Mary play. It wasn't as though Black had been there.
Snape arrived shortly after lunch to offer her what seemed on the surface to be a rather absurdly easy choice: re-live the most traumatizing of her detentions (presumably through the use of some dark mind magic, since Mary was certain there was no way he could effectively re-create their first detention with only her) or sit there quietly, doing absolutely nothing, for eight hours, then be obliviated at the end of it. Since she was confined to her bed and resigned to being bored all afternoon anyway, the latter choice seemed easy enough to make, though Snape raised an eyebrow suggesting he was surprised by her decision.
It was only later, when Snape appeared to tell her that she had served her make-up detention, and had voluntarily had her memory of it erased, that she recalled how unsettling it was to have a massive blank spot in her memories. She had no idea what she had been made to do, though it couldn't have been anything too strenuous, given that she was still in the hospital wing. She had no idea why she had chosen to let him obliviate her. The last thing, in fact, that she remembered, was Madam Pomfrey taking her lunch tray away. It was unpleasantly reminiscent of the outcome of the Chamber of Secrets debacle, and she found it very difficult to get to sleep that night, knowing that she had yet again allowed someone she wasn't sure she fully trusted to meddle with her memories. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, she kept telling herself, but it didn't really help.
Neither the knowledge that Lilian had scored her first official goal and Draco had caught the snitch for a 100-360 Slytherin win, nor the fact that she would be cleared to leave the Hospital Wing come morning were especially reassuring, either, though she was happy to hear both.