[Formatting note: Several lines in the first scene should have strikethrough lines, but there is really no way to do that with the formatting on this site. The corresponding chapter on AO3 is properly formatted, if it bothers you. Same username.]
Friday, 4 March 1994
Mary Potter's Dormitory
Dear Madam Urquhart
No. Too informal.
To the most esteemed Madam Urquhart
Too formal. Maybe start with someone less… intimidating?
Dear Aunt Minnie
Too… no. Just no.
Mary frowned as she crossed out the latest salutation. It had been nearly a week since she and ten of her closest friends (and the Twins, and Draco) had braved Gryffindor's Tempering Chamber, and she still could not shake the memories and images and feelings it had presented her with in the first half of the… test, or whatever it was supposed to be.
When she had returned to her room immediately afterward, she had expected that it would be the monotonous horror of life without magic and the apathy that had led to her to suicide, or Tom Riddle insisting that she was, in fact, just like him, that would haunt her nightmares, but instead it had been the pain and trouble she had given others over the past few years, intentional or not.
And it hadn't stopped.
She didn't know if it was something about the Chamber, or something about her, but she couldn't stop thinking of the worry she had caused Remus, Snape, and Aunt Minnie over the course of the year with her altogether too-frequent visits to the Hospital Wing; the way she had scared Draco and Hagrid and Chelsea Miller and Colin Creevey by speaking Parsel around them; the Grangers' horror at the dangers she had dragged Hermione into; and the fear and helplessness of Cadmus Thorpe and the victims of the Veritaserum Conspiracy. Even the embarrassment she had caused Draco, Ron Weasley, and Aunt Petunia over the years had made an appearance.
If anything, the whole adventure with the Chamber had been worse than useless, because she hadn't been able to concentrate well enough to even produce the non-corporeal Patronus. She didn't even think it was the boggart-dementor forcing her to remember the all-too-real suffering she had caused – it was simply her own guilt eating away at her, now that she was aware of it all.
She had to do something – all attempts at casting the Patronus aside, she didn't think she could live with the horrible gnawing feeling that manifested in the pit of her stomach every time she saw one of the people she had wronged in passing (which happened relatively often, as three of them were professors), or closed her eyes and remembered telling the Room that she would apologize and take responsibility for her actions.
She couldn't apologize to Thorpe or everyone they had dosed with Veritaserum – not without getting other people in trouble, too – and she wouldn't apologize for embarrassing the likes of Weasley or any of the Dursleys – she firmly believed that they had deserved everything they got (or in Weasley's case, that he had earned it since, with the way he had spent years trying to pick fights with her and Lilian because of his petty feud with Draco and the fact that they shared a house with him) – but she had hoped that she could at least get some forgiveness for the things she could admit to having done and felt truly bad about.
(She hoped that getting forgiveness would make her feel less awful about… everything.)
She had decided to start with the incident she felt was most thoroughly actually her fault: the Big Mistake from over the summer. It was turning out to be much more difficult than she had expected to even get started, though.
Aunt Minnie is still too intimidating. I need to figure out what I want to say, first, and then I'll make a nicer copy for her and Madam Urquhart, she decided firmly.
Dear Catherine,
It has recently been brought to my attention
Too formal.
I'm sorry I
Too abrupt.
I only just realized
Still too abrupt.
I know it has been months, but
Maybe more of a lead-in?
How are you? I have been well, for the most part, though several days ago, I had a rather awful(no)startling(no)miserable(no) unusual experience. Have you heard of a room at Hogwarts called the Tempering Chamber, or perhaps the Room of Doom? Its major function seems to be to force you to face the worst(no)least-Gryffindor(no, it was better before, blast it!) worst sides of your personality, and your worst fears.
I didn't realize before
(no)
One of the things the Chamber does is makes you experience the wrongs you have done to others. For example, I am now very aware of how my actions in accidentally(no) unintentionally(no – too… I have to take responsibility – that's the whole point!)
(Bugger this for a lark.)
For example, I am now very aware of how my actions in leaving the Manor wards last summer made you worry about me and my safety.
I am very sorry.
I did not think about what I was doing at the time, and I clearly haven't given it much thought since, because I didn't realize until the Chamber (forcefully) pointed it out exactly how much trouble and distress I caused you. So I am sorry for that as well – the not even properly apologizing until now part.
It was not my intention to worry you or scare you. I will do my best to not act so thoughtlessly in the future, and remember that my actions and choices effect other people whom I care about, including you. I sincerely regret not doing so over the summer.
So in conclusion, I am sorry that I scared you and worried you, even though it was not intentional – please believe I would never intentionally worry you. You are one of my favorite adults(no)very important to me (no) not just my tutor and most trusted advisor on all things Magical Britain: I see you as an older cousin as much as Aunt Minnie is an aunt, and I truly hope you will forgive my rash and thoughtless actions and the distress I caused you over the summer.
Your contrite student,
Mary Elizabeth
Mary sighed, re-reading the letter. Apologizing was… much more difficult, really, than she thought it had any right to be.
Still, this would serve, she thought, for Catherine (once she made a clean copy, without all the cross-outs) and something like the last paragraph might do for the Professor as well, but she had a sneaking suspicion that there was a proper way to do this, and Madam Urquhart would be more offended if she missed the mark than by the lack of an apology in the first place.
She should probably go find an etiquette book on the subject before she wrote to the older witches, she decided.
Yes, that seemed like an excellent way to put it off a bit longer, while still feeling like she was making some sort of progress on the bloody things.
Saturday, 12 March 1994
Old Dueling Arena
Neville
Goblin-forged, enchanted blades bounced off each other with a resounding clang.
Neville disengaged, circling his older, taller, heavier opponent warily. He had never spoken to the sixth-year Hufflepuff before, but he had shown up to the extended practice session with a rapier, willing to go a few rounds, and Neville had jumped at the chance. It had been ages since he had done any proper fencing, and to be honest, he could use the respite from constantly thinking about – things he wasn't thinking about, because he had to duck and parry and there! An opening!
He was panting hard when they finally called it quits, and covered with welts from coming into contact with the spelled edges of Jones' sword – third blood was too dangerous for practice against a stranger, but the beauty of magic was that proper swords could be spelled to transfer a jinx or hex on contact rather than to rend flesh, tracking 'wounds' without causing potentially permanent damage.
He had lost, obviously, though that wasn't really surprising. The older boy was in much better shape, as well as having a longer reach and probably more experience. He still bowed afterward, as though Neville had been a worthy opponent, and offered to practice with him again the following weekend.
Neville probably would take him up on that. They had only been going for half an hour or so, and his arms and legs were trembling from the exertion. His fencing master was going to kill him come summer.
Worse than that terrifying prospect, though, now that his attention was no longer consumed by the fight, his thoughts were already straying back to his time in the Room of Doom. As he had gathered from talking to Ginny about it, it had started off showing them their worst qualities. She had seen herself being too craven to tell anyone about the book that had been influencing her to open the Chamber the year before when she briefly got free of it, among other things.
He had seen himself bowing before his Grandmother's scathing tongue and begging for even the slightest hint of approval from Uncle Algie – approval which he was starting to suspect would never come. He had seen himself not standing up against Malfoy's bullying, when he knew – knew – that the pointy little bastard would back off if he could defend himself with a witty retort, without stuttering, or hex him without flubbing the wand movements. If he could get the blond twerp on the other end of a sword, Neville was willing to bet he'd never bother him again. And he'd seen himself just… going along with Ron, letting him take the lead in their friendship, being a follower, when all his life, he'd been told that he needed to be a leader – apparently there was a prophecy, or something.
He'd felt his Gran's genuine disappointment that he didn't measure up to his father or his Gramps (who had died before he was born) every time he could have worked harder to improve his Transfiguration or Potions or flying or even swordsmanship over summers, but chose to spend time on Herbology or reading history and literature. He'd felt her misgivings from the one and only occasion on which he had invited Ron over to the house, and her worries as she watched him lurk at the very edges of social gatherings over the years, uncomfortable surrounded by people he didn't know.
The feelings and memories he had been forced to witness made it clear that Neville reminded his Gran of his mother, though she had never said so aloud. He knew she had hated his mother, up until his parents had lost their minds to the Lestranges. According to Uncle Algie, his Perfect Nephew had eloped with the girl he knew would never get his mother's approval. It was during the war, and he was her Mentor in the Aurors. Uncle Algie made it sound like she was pregnant, but from the few things Gran had said, he thought there was more to it than that, and the dates didn't line up, anyway. He'd found a very formal (and therefore vague) letter of explanation from Sirius Black a few years back that seemed to imply Lily Potter – Evans, then – was involved somehow, and that it was mostly Black's fault that Neville's parents had ended up Bonded (well before the date of their actual marriage), without giving away any of the circumstances. Neville's best guess was that an Auror mission had gone wrong – Black used to be an Auror, too – and Lily Potter, who had been a healer, had tried to fix it, but hadn't been able to, or maybe had even done the Bonding to save one of their lives. There were healing spells like that. They were almost all illegal, but if it had saved them, he wasn't complaining.
He knew his mother had to have been just as brave as his father, since she had been an auror, too, and that they had to have loved each other very much, if they were Bonded to save each other's lives. She was strong and fierce, too, trying to protect him from 'Bellatrix Lestrange' at Christmas as she had. She had been a Hufflepuff, not a Gryffindor, but even if it did disappoint his Gran, Neville was secretly just as pleased to realize he was like her as he would be to be like his father.
So all of that had been unpleasant, but… not a surprise. He knew that he wasn't really bold or brave like most Gryffindors. The Hat put him there because, in its words, "There is a spark of potential in you, and it would be a shame to waste it. Hufflepuff would support you, but it would also allow you to fade into the background, as you are so clearly inclined to do. Gryffindor, on the other hand… Well, they do say that expectations can be the making of a wizard. So if you're sure, I suppose it had better be GRYFFINDOR!"
It hadn't hurt that he had argued for the House of the Lions – maybe the bravest thing he had ever done, to that point in his life. The Hat had been considering Hufflepuff, or even Slytherin, and he had wanted so badly to live up to the image he had of his father – not the shrunken wizard in the hospital bed, but the strong and noble Gryffindor from his Gran's stories…
But still, he was not unaware of his own personality. He knew that his first instinct in a new situation was to follow someone else's lead – he simply didn't know enough about most of the world to feel confident taking the lead himself. And he knew exactly how his family felt about him – it wasn't at all as though they kept their opinions to themselves. He wanted to please them – he couldn't let down the House, after all – but he didn't think it was so wrong to be quietly brave and protective like his mother, rather than bold and brash like his father and most every other Gryffindor he knew. So he had gotten through that part of the Tempering alright.
But then it had moved on to his fears, and those were… those were worse. Much worse.
It had started out like his boggart, with Snape sneering down at him, just waiting for him to mess up and hurt himself or others badly, permanently. He never did anything to help, but just waited to make Neville feel worse afterward, and tried to turn the whole class against him, setting them essays about what he did wrong – but just as his cauldron exploded (as it did more often than not, even with Mary keeping an eye on him, now), his fellow Gryffindors screaming and dying horribly from the evil concoction therein, the scene had changed.
He had been rejected by Ginny and Luna, then by Mary, Lilian and Hermione – so similar to the way Ron and the rest of the House had treated him in the wake of his cock-up with the passwords – the disdain he had always half-suspected they held for him (finally) shining through as they told him to fuck off and never speak to them again.
He had been disowned – Uncle Algie argued before Gran and the Representatives of the Client Houses that he was unsuited to lead the House of Longbottom, and all of them unanimously agreed that he was unworthy of representing them, taking away his position as Heir and allowing Uncle Algie to exile him from the Family – Neville Apsidus – cut off. Some of them had looked on him with pity as they did it, but they had all consented, and so he was chucked out, just as he would have been had he been a squib.
He had lain on his deathbed, a hundred and fifty years old, attended by a single house elf, with no wife or children by his side, knowing that the House of Longbottom (older than any other British House except Black and Bones) was dying with him, that he had let down all those who had come before him by not carrying on the line.
And then… He had been tortured, like his parents – or at least how he imagined his parents had been tortured: a Death Eater, robed and masked, held him under a spell of unimaginable pain, twisting and shaking and screaming until he could no longer do anything but blink and drool, mad cackling echoing in his ears as he watched himself consigned to a bed beside his parents, trapped in his own head and unable to communicate, unable to fully comprehend the world around him anymore.
His mind shut down at the horror of that experience, his only thought rejection of it. If he could have done, he would have run, screaming. It seemed to drag on, slower and slower, until finally it felt like he just passed out – as though he was stunned, or something, but instead of blackness, he opened his eyes to see a sketch-portrait of Godric Gryffindor frowning and shaking its head at him, and then he opened his eyes again to find himself collapsed on the floor of the round chamber with all of the others (though only Luna and a very troubled-looking Hermione were conscious), watching by the poor light of the portraits as they twitched and mumbled, dreaming their own nightmares.
He had failed.
He was no stranger to failure in the general sense, but this… it seemed more important than failing a Potions lab or a Transfiguration essay. More like being disowned than being rejected by his fellow Gryffindors. As though he had been tested as a person and found wanting.
And he didn't know what to do about it.
He could hardly even think of the last scene – that final fear (or maybe there would have been others, if he had gotten past that one, but the last one he had managed to face, anyway) – without his hands shaking and breaking out in a cold sweat.
Like he was now.
Fuck!
He looked around nervously, to see whether anyone had noticed, and…
"Neville? Are you alright?"
"Gah!" he jumped, head whipping around to see a very concerned Hermione hovering over him. When had she got there? "What – no – I'm fine!"
The Ravenclaw gave him a terribly skeptical look, curls escaping from her braid to form a frizzy halo around her exertion-flushed face. "What are you thinking about?" she asked, plopping herself down beside him. "Because you look awfully pale and, well… upset."
"I-it's really none of your business," he said, as firmly as he could, which wasn't very. But he wasn't about to talk about it, and especially not here, where anyone might hear. He had more pride than that, even if it wasn't much.
She looked offended. "I know that! It's just, well… you looked like you could use someone to talk to, that's all."
He shook his head, and tried desperately to change the subject. "Why aren't you cheering Mary and Lilian?"
The Slytherins had begun attending the weekend practice sessions only a few weeks prior, and were currently in a doubles match on the other side of the arena, flinging hexes at Ron and Ernie.
Hermione shrugged. "I was on my way out. Homework. Want to walk up with me?"
Neville sighed. He wasn't in the right frame of mind to continue dueling, and it would be churlish to refuse when he didn't have a reason to stay. "Alright. Lead on."
He trailed her out of the arena (most improperly, but then, the nice thing about Hermione was that she neither knew nor cared about Society and its rules). She did slow down once they reached the corridor, though, so that they could indeed walk together.
After several minutes' somewhat-awkward silence, she asked abruptly, "Neville, do you think I'm… abrasive? Or… I dunno. Rude?"
He hesitated. What kind of question was that?! "I – erm… you are very, um… outspoken… at times. Why – ah – why do you ask?"
She frowned at her shoes. "It was… it was one of the things that the Chamber showed me – you know, the Tempering Room. I – well… I didn't really believe it. I didn't – I've talked about it with Lizzie and Lili, and they said you had to accept your flaws, or rather, acknowledge them and at least see why you should think about changing them, to move on and well… I couldn't."
"What were they?" he asked, too curious to think about his own rudeness in asking.
She blushed, but she did answer. "Being well… tactless. And always thinking I'm in the right. And um… not really taking others' thoughts and feelings into account. Being… I suppose if you want to say a bit ruthless when I'm after information… Selfish. Ah. Amoral. A bit. Possibly."
She was so red, he couldn't help but smile slightly. Still, he was compelled to say, "It's okay. I didn't make it all the way through, either. Couldn't face my fears…"
"Is that what you were thinking about earlier?"
He nodded reluctantly. "Guess I'm not cut out to be a Gryffindor, really."
She stopped dead in the hallway and turned to glare at him. "Don't be daft – of course you're meant for Gryffindor!"
"I got stuck on the, well… it made me go mad, like my parents. I just couldn't… couldn't face that."
"Well that sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to be afraid of!" she snapped indignantly. "It doesn't mean you're not – not brave or noble or whatever, to be afraid of being cursed out of your mind!" He winced, and she seemed to realize what she had just said. "Ah! Sorry – I mean – just… sorry. Maybe I am a tactless, thoughtless, social incompetent. I didn't mean… um."
He shook his head slowly. "Just um… stop digging?"
"What?"
"Is that not a muggle phrase? When you're in a hole, stop digging? Dean says it all the time…"
"Oh – yes. Yes, it is. Okay. Um. My, um… my condolences, about your parents, though, really."
"Thank you."
The awkward silence settled in again, except this time they weren't even moving. It lasted only a few seconds before she said, "Maybe I am a nosey know-it-all, and you're right that it's none of my business, but you probably really should talk to someone, even if it's not me. I mean, it's probably better if it's not me, given that, well, I'm not a psychologist, and we've just established I'm an insensitive twit – but I think it sounds like the Chamber put you through some pretty traumatic events, and… it might do you good to talk about them."
He started walking toward Ravenclaw Tower again without answering, simply because he didn't know what to say.
"Neville, I'm serious," she added, following him. "It can't be good for you to have been, what, put under the cruciatus? Even if it was only in your head? Not to mention whatever else… not that you have to tell me. Just… someone."
"Like whom?" he asked finally. "It's not like I can talk to my Gran about it, or… I dunno? Professor McGonagall? She's way too busy, and anyway…"
"Awfully intimidating, I know. Madam Pomfrey?"
He shook his head. Every time he had been to the Hospital Wing – and with Potions, he was willing to bet it was more than any other student in their year – she had seemed more and more exasperated with having to see him. Not that she didn't do her job, he just… had the impression that she didn't like him much.
"Snape?"
At that he stopped dead in his tracks. "Why in the nine hells would I want to talk to Snape about anything? He hates me! He's part of the bloody problem! Didn't you hear about my boggart?" Everyone had heard about his boggart. Snape had not been pleased, especially about the dress.
She gave him a terribly condescending look. "My first boggart was Professor McGonagall telling me I was being expelled. Failure. I don't believe that Snape himself is the thing you fear most. If he is, then you're ridiculous to be worrying about whether you can face your fears, seeing as you do go to class with him every week."
He flushed. "Incompetence. It's the way he makes me feel like a hopeless idiot all the bloody time. But that still doesn't mean I'd – Besides it's not like he'd listen!"
"Of course he would!" She hooked her arm through his, and turned them 'round, headed for the dungeons. "He does for the Snakes."
"Hermione! Granger! What are you doing? I'm not a Snake!"
"But you are a student – and the Tempering Chamber was his idea in the first place. He'll help, you'll see. Come on."
He dragged his feet, but he went.
It was several staircases before he managed to come up with another solid point of contention. "It's not even his office hours! Hermione!"
"It's fine. He practically lives in his office."
"But he won't be inclined to help if we interrupt whatever he's doing. Look, the door's closed, we should just – I'll come back la–" He cut himself off with a slight yelp as she walked straight up to the Potions Master's door and knocked twice. "Hermione! You can't do that!"
She ignored him, and the door opened by magic a half-second later. "Come in," the horribly familiar voice ordered.
"Hermione! This is like suicide!"
"Oh, stop being so overly dramatic," she answered, dragging him into the room.
"What is it, Miss Granger?" the professor drawled, without even looking up from the papers he was marking.
"Good afternoon, sir. Neville needs to talk to someone about what he saw in the Tempering Chamber."
At that, Snape finally looked up, assessing the situation before him with one cold sweep of his dark, merciless eyes. Thankfully they settled on Hermione, rather than him. "Does he indeed? And why are you here?"
The Ravenclaw finally let go of Neville's arm, so that she could cross her own and glare at the professor. "We both know you're the closest this school has to a proper councilor. And you were the one who told us to go there in the first place."
"No," he corrected her with what Neville thought might be a genuine expression of amusement. "I suggested that Mary Elizabeth go there in search of a memory to shape her Patronus. I said nothing of either of you. Had you asked beforehand, I would have told you that it was a waste of time for the pair of you, because you would not be able to accept your flaws, and Longbottom his fears." Neville felt his face fall into a questioning expression, even as Hermione stiffened beside him. "Ah, correct on both counts, I see. Be glad you were able to choose to leave – if you remain too long, it will draw you under again and continue to attempt to force you through the process, regardless of the degree of mental trauma induced along the way. I can tell you from experience that it becomes highly unpleasant after the third iteration. I ask you again Miss Granger: Why have you dragged an obviously unwilling Longbottom into my office? Or had you not realized that he would clearly prefer to be at the bottom of the Black Lake, rather than here?"
The Ravenclaw turned to him, and he gave her a rather sheepish nod. Not the Black Lake, maybe, but honestly, just about anywhere else in the castle would be better. She rolled her eyes at him.
"Because, sir, if I'd let him put it off, he wouldn't have done anything about it. And it's clearly bothering him!"
"I daresay you are aware that Mr. Longbottom's troubled thoughts are none of your concern? Need I call you a meddling, self-righteous busy-body, or has the suspiciously silent potions-disaster on legs already managed to inform you of your new promotion over insufferable know-it-all?"
Hermione blushed badly, but she still managed to respond with a stubborn pout. "Not in so many words, sir. And it is my concern, because Neville is my friend and I'm worried about him."
At that, Snape, surprisingly, relented. He sighed, leaning back in his chair and throwing his quill on the desk. He looked from Hermione to Neville, and said, "I can't help you."
It was the first thing he had said directly to Neville since the two students had entered the office. Irritating as it probably ought to be to be talked about as though he wasn't there, honestly the less Neville had to do with Snape, the better. He released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding in a sigh of relief. "Um… okay… Thank you, sir – ah… we'll just be go-"
"You would if he was a Slytherin!" Hermione protested, cutting off his retreat.
"But he's not a Slytherin," Snape quickly rebutted her. "The Slytherins trust me. Longbottom here is just waiting for the opportune moment to flee. I am quite certain that it will do him no good at all to have his most hated professor prying into his deepest insecurities and fears."
"Well what do you suggest he do, then? Because not doing anything won't do anything!"
"'Not doing anything won't do anything'? You've reached new extremes of eloquence, Miss Granger. Still, Longbottom," he hesitated, clearly thinking, then continued: "I suppose, if you actually do wish to talk to someone about what you saw in the Chamber and are not simply humoring Miss Granger… you could do worse than Lupin. Sprout is also an option, though she doesn't have quite the same… range of life experiences. Satisfied?" he added sarcastically, directing the last word toward the Ravenclaw, whom Neville noted was now beaming.
"Yes, sir. Thank you. Oh! And if you've not gotten to my essay yet, I found another reference: Belby's 1971 monograph on the uses of knotgrass?"
Snape glared at her. "Get out. It's not office hours, your essay is already graded, and the Belby article is only tangentially related, anyway! I swear by the Morrigan, I am going to start knocking points off you for gratuitous citations!"
"Yes, but –"
"No 'but's, just go," he snapped.
Neville decided (in the professor's words) that this was the opportune moment to flee, and went.
Unfortunately he did not go quickly enough, for Hermione caught him up immediately, and he found himself being dragged through the castle again, this time toward the Defense Professor's office. He didn't even have the excuse that it wasn't Professor Lupin's office hour (because it just so happened that it was), and so he found himself shuffling awkwardly and staring at his feet as Hermione explained his problem for the second time in an hour.
In contrast to Snape, Lupin looked appalled by the situation.
"He actually told students to explore the Room of Doom?" he asked incredulously.
"Well, not us. But Elizabeth, and Ginny, Blaise, and Theo. Word got around, and we all decided to check it out," Hermione explained.
"I can't believe him – after his own experience with that room, you'd think he'd, well… never mind. Neville, of course I'd be willing to talk it over with you, if you'd like."
"Great!" Hermione exclaimed. "I'll leave you two to it, then." She disappeared with a grin and a little wave.
Neville sighed. "You… really don't have to. I – I'm fine. Really."
The professor rubbed at his eyes for a moment before running his hands through his sandy, greying hair. "Well," he said, after a moment, "I can't force you to talk if you don't want to. I do realize that Hermione can be a bit… forceful."
Neville nodded. "She… means well," he defended her weakly.
Lupin smiled sympathetically. "Be that as it may, if you just got dragged in here, I understand. But I understand, too, what it's like to… to be afraid. To think you don't belong in Gryffindor Tower. I mean, it's just a guess, but I have heard the rumors going around, and if that's part of it… Anyway, if you do want to talk, I'm more than happy to listen, and offer any advice that might come to mind."
"You… you were a Gryffindor?" Neville asked, taking a seat hesitantly. "I would've guessed… Ravenclaw, maybe."
Lupin gave him a rueful grin. "I came in with a… medical condition. The Hat thought it was brave that I wanted to make something out of my life, even though I would have to overcome more challenges than most. I gather quite a few muggleborns were sorted there for a similar reason."
"It told me Gryffindor expectations would help me reach my full potential or something like that. I – I'm not… not bold or – or fearless, or strong, or… I never really fit in, even before the whole Sirius Black thing," Neville admitted. It felt good to say it out loud. Terrifying, but… it was a relief, he decided.
The Defense Professor scoffed. "I once heard a very wise man boil the Houses of Hogwarts down into a single word each: dedication, perseverance, curiosity, and fortitude. Gryffindor is fortitude: willingness to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty, and intimidation; the ability to act in a way you believe to be right, even when the whole world seems to be against you. You don't have to be brave or fearless or strong to be a Gryffindor. You just have to do your best to live up to your ideals."
"The – the Chamber said I failed, though. Ginny said it was built by Gryffindor himself, and –"
"Godric Gryffindor was a hard man," Lupin cut him off, shaking his head sharply, as though to deny any doubt. "And he lived in a harsher age. He spent most of his life before Hogwarts at war, and he had a very specific idea of what made a man good. If students were sorted according to his ideals, rather than the underlying principle, there would not be a single Gryffindor in the school today. The nature of the Room of Doom is to shape his students to his image, but there is a reason its use was discontinued in the 1800s – it is impossible to satisfy, and its methods are brutal. If you make what it considers sufficient 'progress' in conforming to its template of how a person ought to be, it shows you a happy memory, lets you go, but if you go back, it will find something else about you to… critique. Smaller flaws, lesser fears, but no one is perfect, and the Room tries to push children to a very specific idea of perfection." He looked… haunted, Neville thought.
"H-How do you know so much about it?" he asked, after a moment.
The professor frowned. "I… looked into it. My friends and I, we found it, when we were at school. None of us made it through, by the way. Not even once, and we did all have a go. Not that we knew what it was – we thought it was some kind of nightmare torture chamber, and didn't give any thought at all to why that sort of thing would be in a school in the first place." He shook his head slowly, somehow appearing even older than usual. "We weren't very good Gryffindors," he admitted. "And not just in failing to live up to the ideal. We… we were pranksters. And we were, occasionally – often – cruel. Mostly to Severus – sorry – Professor Snape. I'd hoped we could put all that behind us, but, well… apparently not."
And suddenly Neville was very confused. "Sorry, what? Did I, erm… miss something?"
Lupin startled, embarrassed, as though he had forgotten, momentarily, that he was speaking to a student. "No – sorry. It's just… ancient history. Don't worry about it. The point is, the Room is… it's unforgiving. It's a relic of a bygone age, and it lacks… perspective. It is as harsh in correcting a subject for, oh… unintentionally embarrassing someone you owe your respect as it is for… carelessly and selfishly putting the lives of others at risk. It forces you to face your fears head-on, and that's not always the best way to learn to deal with them, regardless of how you came by them and how legitimate they are, or even how likely."
"What… what if the things you're afraid of are… what if they're things that could actually happen? How, um… how would you deal with that?"
The Defense Professor sighed. "I suppose it depends on the fear. If we're talking about, for example, your boggart – you said in your essay that you thought Professor Snape was a symbol of your… incompetence?"
Neville felt himself hunch slightly, but nodded, looking down. "He always… he makes me nervous! I can never do anything right when he's watching! And he's so mean about it! He never tries to teach us, just calls me an insufferable moron or something and sends me to Madam Pomfrey. I'm afraid I'm going to kill someone one of these days! And being afraid only makes me make more mistakes!"
"Well, I'm certainly not going to try to justify his teaching methods," Lupin rolled his eyes. "I was shocked to find out that he had become a professor. But I do know that the reason he's kept around despite his personality is that no one has ever died or been permanently maimed in his lessons, which is a standard no other Potions Instructor at any European school can claim, especially over ten years. I doubt you will be the one who slips past his guard and manages to break his record. But we were talking about fears…"
Neville nodded reluctantly. "I'm afraid I'll – I'll mess up so badly that I hurt someone, or that… that my House will decide I'm not a fit Heir, or that the House of Longbottom will end with me, or that everyone will realize that I'm just… worthless. Like he's always saying. Snape. And they'll turn on me, like Gryffindor, and, and –" He sniffled, and swiped at the tears he hadn't noticed, running down his face.
"Neville… you're – you're not incompetent. You're doing well above average in my class…" Lupin tried to comfort him.
He shook his head, and took a deep breath to calm himself. "That doesn't mean I'm not afraid, though. But… but that's not the one that got me. I… I got through that one. I… It was… you know what happened to my mum and dad? The Lestranges?"
Lupin blanched. "The Lestranges?" he repeated. "I – yeah. I know."
Neville nodded. "It – I was afraid of – of something like – like that happening to me. Of… of losing my mind, of…"
The Defense Professor looked decidedly as though he was in over his head, but he squared his shoulders and conjured a handkerchief and said, "Tell me about it – about them. I knew your mum in school, you know. Not well, but we were in the same year…"
Sunday, 20 March 1994 (Ostara)
Great Hall
"It's the Day of Turning Lightward. Springtime." Luna had insisted at breakfast. "You all should come and pay your respects, for the sake of balance. I know you celebrated Mabon!"
No one had wanted to argue, especially so early in the morning, and it seemed that Mary wasn't the only one who couldn't stand to disappoint the second-year Ravenclaw, because Lilian, Dave and Alex, Hermione, Aerin and Lara, Ginny, and Neville had all turned up at the Gorse Courtyard to supplement the very surprised handful of students and professors who had assembled over lunch for the Light ritual. Mary gathered that they hadn't been expected, but the celebrants gladly made room in the circle for them, surrounding the tree for which the courtyard was named.
Professor Flitwick, of all people, led the ceremony, playing what Hermione later identified as a fife, the notes calling magic into the air around them to start the ritual, and help them find the words to sing along. What language they were singing in, Mary had no idea, but, rather like the Moons' chanting at Yule, it seemed to speak directly to a part of her she hadn't really known existed, evoking thoughts of life and rebirth and the vital energy of spring, welling forth from herself and the others and the tree and the earth to overflow the boundary of the circle and the courtyard and fill every corner of the castle with a sense of excitement and joy, briefly chasing away the aura of the Dementors.
It was… nice.
There was no other benefit: no sudden revelation of knowledge or mysterious appearance of Powers possessing anyone or disturbing visions in foreign mindscapes, but there was a sense of growth and doing things that just… made her happy to have been a part of it and energized her throughout the day. And by the time the song had concluded, the gorse was in full bloom, which was kind of amazing to watch, like a video played in fast-forward.
She could still feel the echoes of the ceremony hours later, buoying her mood and making the day seem just a little bit brighter, which was part of the reason it was so surprising to her when Hermione and Ginny managed to get into an argument after the Dueling Club broke up – and a rather serious one at that.
She didn't know what started the fight. She had been talking to Lilian about whether it would be worth it to try dual casting – using two wands at once – and how it would affect their performance to try using each other's wands to get the hang of it, before investing in a second, properly-matched back-up wand.
Before they got so far as actually swapping wands, however, they were interrupted by a furious red-head shouting about Hermione's bloody mothering, and how she could hardly stand to talk to her anymore.
"I hate you, Hermione! Just leave me alone!" Ginny shouted, storming off and leaving a rather stunned hall in her wake.
Hermione, for once shocked beyond words, stared after her in blatant confusion, nearly-concealed hurt evident in the tension around her mouth and eyes.
"I… I think I'll go to the library for a bit," she said absently, obviously trying to excuse herself, but the Slytherins weren't having it.
Mary didn't know about Lilian, but she for one was determined to find out what had just happened. "I'll come with you," she volunteered. Lilian nodded. Hermione paid them no attention at all, striding from the hall as though in a daze.
The library had mostly cleared out by the time they arrived – it was only half an hour or so until curfew, and there were no other students to be seen. Madam Pince glared at them when they entered, and reminded them sharply of the time, but didn't actually stop the trio from taking up their usual table in the far corner of the open study area. She continued to re-shelve books with a baleful harrumph.
It was Lilian who broke the expectant silence that settled between them, clearly mindful of the fact that they were going to be kicked out in twenty minutes or less. "Want to tell us what all that was about, Jeanie?" she asked in what Mary recognized as a deliberately neutral tone.
Hermione startled, as though she had been concentrating so hard on her thoughts that she hadn't realized she wasn't alone. "No, I… I don't know. I was just trying to help her with her shield charms…"
"And?" Mary prompted her friend when she trailed off.
Hermione shrugged. "And… she just… lit into me, about how she didn't need my help, and why didn't I just leave her alone? And I said I was just trying to help, and that made her even angrier. She… she said I didn't know how to help her, and I said, no, it's just the last wave, she was doing it too quickly, and she said I knew that wasn't what she was talking about. I said I didn't, and she said I was lying to make her feel better or something, and I should just stop trying and leave her alone. I said I had no idea what she was talking about. I tried to stay calm – all the books say you should stay calm, when you're dealing with someone who's been through trauma, you know – but I was so confused. And that's when she started yelling that she hated me, and how I should stop acting like her bloody mother – and I – I haven't been. I just – I don't know what's going on! Why is she so angry at me? I've only ever tried to help her!"
Mary didn't think she had ever heard Hermione sound so lost. Lilian started to make a comment to the effect that Ginny was just an emotional person, and it wasn't Hermione's fault, but the youngest of the trio interrupted her. She wasn't sure that Ginny would want her to tell the Ravenclaw about their conversation on Hogsmeade Day, but she was sure that Hermione would at least try not to make things worse for the traumatized Gryffindor if she understood what she was doing wrong. "You've been treating her like a victim," she pointed out, in her most straightforward tone.
"But she is a victim!" Hermione responded immediately. "I mean – I know – I have her memories! The things Riddle did…"
Mary shook her head. "She was a victim. Now she's a survivor. She's mad at you because you keep treating her like she's broken and needs to be taken care of, when all she wants is space to put herself back together."
"But that's what I've been trying to do!" the older girl protested, in a tone of utmost frustration. "All the books say –"
The Slytherin cut her off ruthlessly. "Have you listened to what Ginny has to say? Because I can guarantee you she doesn't want your… your pity or your concern or for you to treat her like she can't take care of herself or needs to be protected from anything that might upset her."
"Oh, like you're such an expert!" Hermione scoffed, with a glare for doubting the expertise of written advice.
Lilian, however, had been watching Mary incisively, and cut in before Mary could respond with a single word: "Dursleys."
Hermione blanched, and Mary glared. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means, Liz, that I'm not sure whether we're talking about Ginny, here, or you," Lilian answered with a challenging quirk of an eyebrow.
"What? We're talking about Ginny! She literally told me that she feels like Hermione keeps shoving her back into a victim-box, when all she wants is to move on!"
Lilian eyed her skeptically, but didn't interrupt when Hermione asked, in a rather offended tone, when that particular conversation had occurred.
"While you were off touring Hogsmeade with the twins." Mary still wasn't happy about that particular friendship. "She also said that you think you know everything about her, but you really don't have any idea what she was like before she met Riddle, and that's the person she wants to be, not the person whose memories you share."
"Well, what am I supposed to do, then?" the older girl snapped, clearly angry. "Just pretend nothing happened? Do you want to see the letters she sent me over the summer? Because I can tell you that she was not alright. Riddle left the kind of damage you don't just get over in six months or less. I mean, look at you! The Dursleys didn't ever get inside your head like Riddle did to her, and you're still getting over them, and it's been years!"
"What?!"
"Pince!" Lilian hissed.
Mary looked around quickly and moderated her volume before repeating herself in a very angry whisper. "What the fuck, Maia?! Didn't I just say this isn't about me? And besides, I'm not saying she's over it, just that letting her pretend she is might be better now than – than forcing her to think of herself as a victim! And even if the Dursleys didn't fuck with my head as badly as Riddle, you obviously think they did something, and you've never treated me the way you treat Ginny!"
"You never tried to kill yourself!" Hermione hissed furiously, then went pink as Lilian gasped slightly and she obviously realized that that secret hadn't really been hers to tell.
"How would you know?" Mary asked coldly. "There are a lot of things about me that I've never told you." She hadn't, of course, but that wasn't the point.
Hermione rocked back in shock, as though Mary had slapped her.
Lilian was staring at her again. "Liz, are you okay?" she asked gently.
"Morrigan, it's like the bloody Suggestivity Solution all over again! Yes, I'm fine! And you know what? I don't care if you don't believe me! This isn't about me! If you start acting like I'm a victim, I swear to all the gods and Powers, I will never speak to you again. The only reason the Dursleys matter at all is I understand why Ginny maybe wouldn't want you to make her whole life about this one thing that, yes, okay, it happened and it was awful, but it's now in the past and she survived and she's trying to move on, even if she's not all the way over it yet!"
Both of her friends looked slightly abashed at her outburst, mumbling apologies, though Mary was certain that the look they exchanged signified a silent agreement to humor her, rather than any genuine reconsideration of her mental state. She scowled at them, unable to think of anything she could possibly say that wouldn't make her sound as though she didst protest her victimhood too much. Then Lilian, thankfully, changed the subject back to Ginny.
"You know, it really isn't your business," she told Hermione. "I know you helped her out a lot over the summer, but… she's right, when she said you're not her mother. You can't do her healing for her. And if she doesn't want you hovering over her, well… Maybe it's time to back off a little."
The Ravenclaw, quite suddenly, looked shaken.
"What?" Mary asked.
"I just realized I haven't been acting like Ginny's mother," Hermione admitted. "I've been acting like mine, butting in where I'm not wanted and not taking her feelings into account."
"Maia…" Mary said hesitantly, before deciding that she really, really didn't want to discuss Hermione's issues with her mother tonight. For one thing, they hardly had time, and for another, she rather thought that Hermione was stubbornly in the wrong when it came to whether Emma had a right to be involved in her life.
"What?"
"Nothing. Just… there are worse people to be."
Hermione looked as though she rather doubted this statement. "If you say so…"
Lilian snorted with half-suppressed laughter as Madam Pince approached to shoo the three of them out of the Library. "Sure there are, Jeanie. You could be my mother, for instance, or actually like Mrs. Weasley – she sounds like a bloody shrew."
At that, Hermione did crack a slight smile – more of a grimace, really. "Thanks, Lilian," she said sarcastically. "You always know exactly what to say."
"You're going to back off, though, right?" the brassy Slytherin confirmed gently.
The older girl nodded, taking her leave of them at the doors to make her way back up to her tower. "I will. Thanks, guys."
"Any time," Lilian winked, as Mary nodded stiffly, hoping that this would, truly, make things better for Ginny. They chorused good-nights before heading in opposite directions.
Once she and Lilian were well out of earshot from Hermione, however, Mary spoke again. "She could be like your mum, huh? When are you going to tell Aerin why she hates you so much?"
Lilian groaned. "I will, I swear! I just have to find the right time, okay?!"
Mary gave her fellow Slytherin a raised eyebrow and her mildest, most disbelieving "Okay." Turn-about was, after all, fair play.
"Oh, shut up! I was worried about you!"
"You shut up," the younger girl replied, sticking her tongue out at her friend.
"You, um… didn't actually try to kill yourself, did you, when you were living with the Dursleys?" Lilian asked, her tone uncharacteristically uncertain.
"No," Mary admitted, somewhat sheepishly. "I was just trying to make a point. There are things you don't know about me, and you don't get to tell me how I feel. If Maia starts treating me like Ginny instead of the other way around, I'm totally blaming you!"
"She won't." The older Slytherin's confidence was back with the assurance that she hadn't gone almost three years without realizing that her best friend had had that bad of a childhood. "She hasn't got that much tact," she added with a grin.
Mary snorted, hoping that Lilian's joke wasn't a sign that she was going to completely ignore Mary's point. She didn't want to harp on the point, though. "Too true."
"So do you want to try dual casting next weekend?"
"Ugh, fine. You do know the left-handed wand movements are different than the right, sometimes, right?"
"What? Seriously? Why?"
"I dunno. They just are. Guess you have all week to practice, though," the younger girl added lightly with an evil smirk. She, at least, had mastered the most basic spells left-handed over the summer – the only good thing to come out of having broken her arm, she thought.
Thursday, 31 March 1994
Hogwarts Grounds
The Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch match was looming, only two days away, and Mary was feeling decidedly nervous, because although she had more or less mastered the Firebolt since returning to Hogwarts, she still hadn't quite mastered the Patronus.
It had been ten weeks, and she had practiced it obsessively – she was so close she could almost taste it. Two weeks before, she had managed to maintain her incorporeal shield again, as well as she had done before she went into the Chamber. She had apologized to the Urquharts and Aunt Minnie, to Remus and Snape, and even to the Grangers – all of whom had forgiven her, with various degrees of surprise – but there was still one memory in particular that was eating at her, and she hadn't quite been able to bring herself to deal with it. Part of her reluctance stemmed from the fact that she still didn't know what she should have done instead, given the information and resources she had had then, but more from the fact that she couldn't face telling that particular person she was sorry: Draco Malfoy.
But unlike with Thorpe and the victims of the Veritaserum Conspiracy, she couldn't quite convince herself that swearing to herself (and Lilian) that she would never do anything like that again was good enough. (Probably because she could apologize to Draco without actually seriously endangering herself and her friends.) And the fact remained, with that last memory preying on her conscience, even the memory she had found in the Chamber, of belonging and connection and magic wasn't enough to push her over the edge into a fully corporeal guardian construct.
It just… hurt her pride, she supposed, to think of admitting to the blond ponce that she had been in the wrong. She knew it was true; siccing snakes on him to force him to accept her as a Slytherin had been efficient, but also clumsy and, as with her duel with Bletchley, had escalated their conflict to a level of violence she hadn't really wanted to employ, and wouldn't have been able to maintain if he had called her bluff.
In short, it had been overkill, and she knew it.
But it was Draco Malfoy.
Even though they were generally on good terms these days (on the Quidditch pitch, at least), he would probably hold this one moment of honest repentance against her forever, or else demand some terribly (equally) embarrassing forfeit before he granted her forgiveness. A proper apology demanded not only an acknowledgment that one's actions were wrong, but an offer of redress, and while everyone else she had spoken to had dismissed her offer, or simply made her promise not to do it again, she could only imagine what Draco might think to ask for. Given what she had done to him, he would be well within his rights to demand a public apology in the Slytherin Common room, or worse, the Great Hall.
Still, for the initial apology, she could at least approach him privately.
She had put it off until the last possible moment – their Thursday afternoon free, her last chance to talk to him before the night's Patronus lesson – but she was convinced that it had to be done, so she was now headed for the niffler kennels the new Care of Magical Creatures professor had erected between the lake and the non-forbidden wooded area on the opposite side of the grounds from Hagrid's hut. According to Hermione and the Marauders' Map, he would be there alone (without Crabbe, Goyle, Pansy, or Lilian) until their history lesson. (It was a little bit scary how much information Hermione could gather with the tools at her disposal this year).
The tenuous air of resolve she had been cultivating all day dissolved almost immediately when she entered the kennel. Draco had let all of the nifflers – at least twenty of them – out of their cages, and was sitting on the floor sans robes, playing with them. He flicked marbles and coins across the room one at a time, and the whole pack surged after each shiny object. They fought desperately for the prize, then returned to swarm over the grinning, slightly-disheveled blond in search of his horde once it had disappeared into one of their pouches. Mary wasn't sure, but it might have been the most relaxed she had ever seen the boy. Normally he would be freaking out to have a hair out of place, not to mention the fact that his tie was askew and his once-pressed shirt badly wrinkled. The small creatures stood to attention like gophers when she opened the door. It wasn't until she crossed the warded threshold that she realized she had made a terrible mistake: her glasses glinted in the low light.
The nifflers leapt forward, as though governed by a single mind.
She shrieked as they scampered over her, snatching at her lenses, and Draco laughed, the bloody prat. "Potter? What are you doing here?"
She glared at his blurred form, too near to make out the details. "I could ask you the same thing, you know!"
"I like nifflers," he admitted, his face growing pink. "I used to have one when I was little, but a leprechaun got him, and Mother said she would be damned if I could have another because he kept getting into her jewelry box and making off with the best pieces to line his nest. But you're not even in Creatures, so…" he trailed off inquisitively.
"I was looking for you," she shrugged. "Look, can you help me get my glasses back? I can't really see you, and that makes this even more awkward."
The boy sighed dramatically. "I suppose. But only if you tell me what's awkward."
"Help me get my glasses back, first."
He probably made a face at her, because he didn't respond save to begin levitating nifflers back to their individual cages. If he did, she couldn't tell. Once all of the dark, fuzzy blobs were safely tucked away, he instructed her to tickle the blighted things. Their convulsions forced their collected loot from the pouches on their bellies. He was far more efficient about it than she was, though that could have been because he had far more experience with the creatures. She had tortured three into giving up a handful of marbles and knuts when he exclaimed, "Got them!" from somewhere in the middle of the bank of cages. "Bit scratched, though. Reparo! Here."
"Thanks," she said stiffly, putting them on to reveal a very curious Malfoy mere feet away.
"So what's awkward?" he asked casually. For some reason, the juxtaposition of words and tone reminded her of Blaise.
"I… I wanted to apologize," she said quickly, inspecting a niffler, rather than looking at his pointy face. It was black-furred and sleek, about the size of a small cat, with a long body, short little legs, and a whiskered snout which twitched at her through the bars of its cage.
"What for?" Draco asked warily, retrieving the loot from another niffler.
"For, um… back in first year. With the snake. I… I shouldn't have threatened you like that. I'm sorry. If… if it helps, it was just a bluff. I wouldn't have let him bite you. If there is anything I may do to right the imbalance between us, I beg you, speak." The last sentence, taken directly from an etiquette book on the subject, was rather more rushed than was entirely appropriate, and when she risked looking up, he was smirking at her, but strangely, as though his heart wasn't really in it.
"This is about that blasted Chamber, isn't it?"
She nodded, shame-faced, shifting uncomfortably in place. This was the moment of truth: he could dismiss her offer, with something along the lines of 'there can be no discord requiring redress between friends'; he could ask for something reasonable (but embarrassing), like a public apology; or he could demand something entirely unreasonable that she would never give him, which would be the end of even their limited, Quidditch-based camaraderie. She thought that the second option was the most likely. They weren't good enough friends for him to completely dismiss a threat of bodily harm, even if it was more than two years ago, and Flint would kill them if they couldn't get along well enough to play Quidditch together.
Draco let her stew for almost two minutes before he finally answered. "It's… well, honestly, it's not okay, what you did. You really can't just go around setting snakes on people!" He sighed and made a face, as though he really didn't want to say what he said next: "But I can't in good faith demand a forfeit, because I kind of understand why you did, and… I know I didn't leave you much of a choice. I… It, the Chamber, it made me see a lot of things that I didn't realize before. About myself, and the way I've acted, well… basically my whole life. I… probably owe you an apology as well. For starting those pranks, among other things." He straightened his hair and cuffs compulsively, looking anywhere but at her. "I was a prat, and I'm sorry. I didn't mean for things to go as far as they did. I mean, I hated you, but I didn't want you dead, and Sterling was bragging about how she nearly killed you on the stairs… So yes. I'm sorry, too. Ah. I'm willing to call it even if you are."
Mary felt herself sag in relief. "Yes. Definitely. Right. Um. Shall we just… move on, then?"
The boy rolled his eyes. "Haven't we? I mean, we're not friends, but we get on alright, or I thought we did."
"Well, we get on alright for Quidditch," the seeker admitted. "Off the pitch, you're still a bit of a prat."
Draco glowered. "Hey! I haven't done anything to you in ages!"
"Mocking Neville for losing the passwords to Gryffindor Tower?" she reminded him. "Calling Dave a mudblood where you think I can't hear? Implying that Hermione's parents aren't even sentient? Helping Pansy torture Tracey?"
"Oh, come on. Why should any of that matter to you? You don't even like Davis!"
"I didn't say you'd been a prat to me, just that you still are one in general," Mary glared at him. "And I do care how you treat my friends, and even though I don't like Tracey, the shite you guys give her about being a halfblood is really not funny. I don't like bullies, and that's what it is, bullying, pure and simple."
"It's not bullying, it's just teasing! And we wouldn't do it half as much if she wasn't so utterly desperate," Draco muttered. "I mean, we don't give you shite about your parentage, because you don't act like it matters. There's nothing more pathetic than an impure blood-purist."
"That! That right there! You go after her because she's already pathetic – an easy target. And I'm pretty sure she doesn't think you're just teasing, either. Same for Neville – Lilian and I can tell the difference between you being mean for fun and being really meaning it, but I'm pretty sure it's all the same to him."
The boy flinched. "I know. The Chamber… It showed me."
"Well, there you go, then." She waited a beat before she added, "Are you going to apologize to Neville, too?"
Draco shrugged, obviously uncomfortable. "Maybe. I've… I've been talking to Snape, a bit, since, well… since the Chamber. I… might. I've not talked to him – Longbottom – at all, since then. It… seemed the best course, really." He turned back to the nifflers, continuing to retrieve the trinkets they had gathered.
After a long moment of being determinedly ignored, Mary sniffed and rolled her eyes (an expression of superior disdain she had perfected in imitation of Daphne). "Well, you should."
"Should what, Potter?"
"Apologize to Neville, you prat! And for whatever else the Chamber showed you. It helps, you know," she added, as a haunted look flashed across his face.
Mary didn't often spend much time looking at the features of boys she didn't particularly like, but that expression gave her pause. On closer inspection, the normally-refined and pampered pureblood seemed not only disheveled, but worn, as though he hadn't been sleeping or eating as well as usual.
"You don't know anything about it, Potter!" he snapped.
She wasn't entirely surprised to be told to mind her own business – they weren't even friends, after all – but she flinched at his sudden vehemence. "Like hell I don't!" she glared back, irritated by his utter blindness to the fact that she – all of them, who had gone into the bloody Tempering Chamber – had gone through the exact same thing. "Nightmares? Guilt? Not being able to look yourself in the eye in the bloody mirror? You didn't think I apologized to you because I care what you think of me, do you?"
Draco just blinked at her, as though he had never seen her before in his life, and then, inexplicably, started laughing.
"What the fuck is so funny?" she demanded, which only made him laugh harder. She crossed her arms and glared at him, tapping a toe impatiently while he collected himself.
At long last, his laughter ceased, leaving a strangely hollow expression behind. "No, Potter," he said, almost too calmly. "No. I never thought you cared what I thought of you. But you don't understand. What did the stupid room show you? Siccing a snake on me? What else? Telling off the firsties for picking on your precious Rhees? Getting into that fight with Bletchley? Being out after curfew?" he suggested mockingly. "Having too many fucking tea parties with the professors? You don't do anything! If you weren't the Heir, I'd say you were missorted! You probably hardly had anything worth pointing out!"
Mary bit her tongue hard to resist saying something defensive. There was a certain mystique in being thought ruthless and slightly dangerous within Slytherin House, and she liked to think she was as much as the next Snake, but there was far more value in keeping one's nose clean outside of it. Draco didn't need to know about the Conspiracy, Cadmus Thorpe, or even the far-less-illegal boggart-summoning attempt which had precipitated the whole Tempering Room ordeal, even if it did mean he saw her as a goody-two-shoes most of the time. Besides, he was right, kind of: she might be ruthless and thoughtless sometimes, and she certainly didn't think of herself as a good person, but compared to Draco, she was positively Hufflepuff.
"You didn't spend two whole years damn-near breaking the truce in defense of a father who really was a Death Eater!" the boy concluded angrily.
"Wait… what?" The boy flushed, clearly feeling that he had over-shared. He didn't answer. "No, seriously… What?" Mary repeated, slightly baffled. "What has your father got to do with it?"
"He was a bloody Death Eater, alright? Happy, are you, now that I've admitted it?" he pouted, avoiding her eye in favor of petting a niffler.
"Um… no?" Mary was seriously considering the possibility that they were having two completely different conversations at the moment. "Why would I be? I mean, didn't everyone already know that he was?"
"No! No, they didn't!" Draco snapped defensively, before admitting, almost too quietly to hear: "I didn't." He cleared his throat before explaining himself. "I… he always said that we should be proud of our heritage and our blood and our magic, but… he didn't talk about the war. I – I knew that he'd been accused, of course. Mum told me that. But she also told me the charges were dropped. He has the mark, but I always thought it wasn't his fault. That he was under the Imperius." His voice cracked, and his housemate pretended not to notice as he bit his lower lip to keep it from trembling. "I was such an idiot."
Mary wasn't sure exactly what to say to that. She wanted to say, 'yes, you really were – still are, sometimes, in fact,' but she was pretty sure that wasn't a good response. "Is that what the Room showed you?" she finally asked, ending the too-long, awkward silence which developed as she cast about for something relatively neutral to say.
"No, that's what Mabon showed me, and Snape confirmed. My father recruited him long before he was supposedly imperiused." The bitterness in the boy's tone was unmistakable, and it only grew worse as he continued: "The fucking Room made me re-live all the times I went around acting like the truce didn't apply to me because I thought – gods and powers, it sounds so stupid now – but I thought it didn't. Oh, I knew that people thought of me as a Death Eater's son, but I thought because he wasn't, really, they had to respect what I'd been taught as a kid – about how purebloods are the best and mu-muggleborns," he corrected himself, "don't belong and they're ruining our society – and it wasn't like I was really breaking the truce saying it because my father wasn't really a Death Eater. I even thought that acting like the Truce didn't apply was kind of a way to prove that it didn't – that Father really wasn't a Death Eater, because if he was, I wouldn't dare go around calling Granger and Finch-Fletchley mudbloods, would I? Except it turns out it was all a huge fucking lie, and I've spent the last two and a half years making an arse of myself because I'm the only one who didn't know that, and that thrice-fucking-cursed Gryffindor torture chamber won't let me forget it!"
He paced angrily while Mary, once again, considered what to say. Perhaps, she thought, this had not been a very good idea. What was it with people up and breaking down on her, lately, anyway? First Ginny, then Hermione, and now Draco? She would have expected him at least to tell Pansy or Lilian or, well… just about anyone what was bothering him before he told her. But she couldn't exactly back out now.
"Well, maybe you're right," she said after a long moment. "Nothing it showed me was… quite that bad. But apologizing has helped. You should think about it."
He sneered magnificently at her. "Oh, yes, I'll just go tell everyone how sorry I am to have offended their political correctness over the past two years, and then everything will be just peachy keen." Mary did a double-take at the sarcastic muggle expression, which Draco ignored. "Just one little problem: I'm not sorry! I feel bad about putting myself and my family and friends in danger by ignoring the Truce, and I know I shouldn't have been so rude about it, but I have every right to express my opinion on mu-muggleborns, especially since I know I'm right!"
Mary sneered at him. "Oh, yeah, muggleborns are just inherently inferior and have no place in our world, that's why Hermione is the best in our year, and Dave got sorted into Slytherin, and Miss Clearwater is the bloody Head Girl!"
Malfoy flushed. "Granger is not the best, she's just the swottiest! And Clearwater is the Head Girl because Dumbledore is Progressive and biased!"
"And Dave?" Mary glared at the blond, who scowled right back.
"The Hat's gone as senile as Dumbledore, obviously. And besides," he continued (before Mary could say 'Obviously it has, because it put you in Slytherin, too!'), "I never said there's no place for muggleborns, it's just not at the top. They're not our equals. They make perfectly fine shop clerks, and, and… tutors, and such, but they shouldn't be making laws and pretending they're just as good as real wizards!"
Mary was momentarily speechless. "You are such a classist bastard! Why shouldn't muggleborns make laws? I have a seat on the bloody Wizengamot, and I was raised by muggles every bit as much as Hermione was!"
The boy flushed. "That's different. You're almost a pureblood." Mary snorted. By the most lenient (and most common) standard – four magical grandparents – she was a pureblood, but no one knew that. "And you're at least trying to fit in. Mudbloods don't! They don't think they need to bother!"
"Don't use that word!" the girl snapped reflexively. "And that doesn't even count! It's not like anyone's offering any muggleborns the chance to learn, like the Urquharts have done for me!"
"Even if they did, the muggleborns wouldn't go. They'd much rather go to their little muggle club, and talk about how great life is without magic, and how backward and quaint Magical Britain is," Draco said with supreme confidence.
"And what would you know about it?" Mary scoffed. "Been skulking around their meetings, have you? Sore about not being invited?"
"Of course I'm not!" the boy hissed, clearly furious. "But I have my sources, and they say the mu-muggleborns spend half their time talking about all the changes they want to make so our world will be more like theirs, and it's not right! We're not muggles, and we shouldn't have to act like it!"
His face had been growing increasingly pink as he spoke, but by the end of his little tirade, it had reached a very frustrated shade of red. Mary couldn't really refute his (quite possibly made up) 'sources,' because she still hadn't attended another MSA meeting herself, and even had her own misgivings about the club – it had taken her a long time to put her finger on why, exactly, she was so unenthusiastic about it, but she was pretty sure that it was because there was something to what Malfoy was saying, at least about how it was an excuse for muggleborns to associate only with each other, instead of getting to know the magical world. It wasn't the same for the first and second-years as it was for Hermione and Finch-Fletchley and the older students – there were enough of them that it was a legitimate possibility they would never make any close friends who weren't muggleborn.
Still, she wasn't about to admit that to the classist blond prat.
She opted to end the conversation, instead. Her business with Malfoy was done, and she would be damned if she stood around listening to his pureblood superiority dragon-shite.
"Nobody's asking you to act like a muggle, Malfoy, just a half-decent human being," she sneered, injecting as much moral superiority into her tone as she could manage before turning on her heel and stalking out of the shed.
She refused to look back, and slammed the door behind her, drowning out whatever response her housemate attempted to make.
}{-}{-}{-}{-}{
That evening, her conscience truly clear for the first time since she had entered the Tempering Chamber, with the feeling of belonging and rightness after that very first Samhain firmly in mind, Mary finally managed to cast the Patronus against the boggart-dementor, a brightly glowing, feline form pouncing and striking at it, driving it back.
Hermione and Lilian were obviously jealous of her progress, and Remus was nearly as surprised as Mary, who was so proud and elated to have finally done it that she had nearly dropped her wand.
After the other girls made a few more attempts, she and Lilian returned to Slytherin, chattering giddily about the Gryffindor match in two days' time. Lilian was excited because she had been informed at dinner that she would be starting as a chaser, playing her first full match (due to an unfortunate Transfiguration accident involving Derrick Bole's left arm, a golden retriever, and a Switching Spell). Mary, for her part, was relieved and ecstatic, because for the first time since that first match of the year, almost five months before, she was certain that whatever happened on Saturday, she was ready.