Emotion prompt: Humiliated

Characters: Mary Cattermole

Summary:The accusation of stealing magic was the greatest humiliation Mary Cattermole had faced in her life.

She remembered the time when they came for her.

She remembered the day she had got her letter from Hogwarts. She remembered the crest representing the four houses as if it were yesterday, and the thick, heavy parchment which invited her as a student. She had been so disbelieving, unable to accept that magic existed (but then, what were all those times when strange things kept happening around her?) and so were her parents. But she remembered the acceptance, the understanding and the excitement, that she was really a witch and she was going to Hogwarts.

And most vividly of all, she remembered the joy as she realised that she was special.

She remembered how they had shown up at her place when Reg was gone to work, holding that grand, official-looking parchment right at her face. She remembered them telling what they thought of her, what the Ministry thought of her, what the 'world' thought of her. She remembered her confusion, her incredulity.

She remembered her first visit to Diagon Alley. It was such a wonderful place; she had felt so small and so lost, and so amazed. There were so many people there — so many billowing cloaks and pointed hats and screeching owls and... it was nothing like anything she had ever seen before. She remembered jumping around, pulling her parents from one shop to another, pressing her nose against the glass windows of the shops and staring in wonder. But despite being overwhelmed, she felt what she now knew — she belonged here, in this world.

She remembered bringing out her wand, telling her that it was her own, that she had used it for over twenty years, for every little and great thing. She had told her its specifications to the finest details, and the experiences she had shared with it. She remembered her desperation, her frantic tone. She had argued to the last breath she could muster.

She remembered how they had laughed. How they had snatched it from her hand and tossed it to the floor, proclaiming that it was a stolen tool.

She remembered entering Ollivander's to get her wand. It was probably the vividest memory of her life; she'd never forget it. The mysterious air of the shop, the towering piles of slim boxes that had wands of so many lengths and textures. And then the wandmaker himself — ancient, ageless, and unnerving in the way his trained eyes looked into her soul. She remembered the wand selecting process — singeing a bit of Ollivander's hair with one, breaking a glass vase with another. And finally she had got it — ten and a quarter inch, cedar and phoenix feather, surprisingly swishy. She remembered the warm, comforting sensation it gave as her hand closed around it. It would be her companion for a lifetime, she had thought.

She remembered how close she had come to losing that companion. She remembered how she had repeated the details of her wand accurately, and how she had recounted the day she had got it, only to be jeered at.

She remembered her days at Hogwarts — learning her lessons, enjoying flying, meeting Reg and their first kiss. She remembered her nine OWLs and the six outstandings she had got in them, and the five out standings and two E's that she had scored in the NEWTs. She remembered how proud her professors had been, how they had praised her.

She remembered her time at the Ministry, where they had dragged her in, and that horrid woman, denying again and again her frantic claims of being genuinely magical.

She was now safe, although hiding, thanks to the strange man who had impersonated Reg. But no matter how much time passed, she knew she would never forget those terrible days, the accusations, the insults. She remembered, and she would always remember.

They had called her non-magical. They had called her a fraud. A liar. A criminal. A mudblood. A thief.

Mary Cattermole had never been so humiliated in her life.

A/N: Although many might object at Ministry workers being so jeering and insulting, in this story, I imagined them to be similar to snatchers, as those lots too, worked with the Ministry. I you wish, you can think of them as snatchers too.

Review please! :)