Chapter 6: (Mostly) Harmless Rituals
[In which Mary discovers even more things that purebloods take for granted.]
Saturday, 19 September 1992 – Hermione's 13th Birthday Hogwarts
The first week after their acceptance onto the Quidditch team passed very quickly for Mary and Lilian, because Mary was already anticipating the next major event of the year.
Mary fairly well bounced out of bed and all the way to the Great Hall on the morning of the nineteenth of September. She was extremely pleased with herself because she had, in fact, remembered Hermione's birthday this time around, and had followed through on her plan to have real chocolates (with real sugar) owl-delivered to her friend from Honeyduke's.
She had been looking forward to seeing Hermione's face when they were delivered over breakfast. Unfortunately, the Slytherin Quidditch team had practice from six in the morning until noon on Saturdays, so Mary, Lilian, and the rest of the team arrived in the Great Hall approximately three hours before any of the Ravenclaws.
This revelation had not entirely killed Mary's excitement for the day, because as soon as she had realized that Quidditch would keep both herself and Lilian away from Hermione at least until lunch, she had called on the house elves to arrange a surprise for the evening as well.
Cammy had been very pleased to see Mary back in the castle, but the elves had also been very busy, with all the students coming back and the especially large incoming class of first-years. Mary had arranged to have a cake made and delivered to one of the under-used third-floor classrooms after dinner on Saturday before the little elf shuffled her out of their domain with a rather rushed promise to track Mary down and have a longer chat once everything had settled a bit throughout the Castle.
Lilian had been nearly as excited as Mary when Mary had told her about Hermione's birthday, because it was not just any birthday, but her thirteenth. Her first words on hearing were: "Oooh, we get to do the birthday ritual!"
On seeing Mary's look of complete confusion, the other girl explained that thirteen was one of the most important birthdays for any witch or wizard – even in progressive families, it was the age by which a child was meant to have been introduced to magic.
Mary was even more confused by this explanation. Hadn't they already been introduced to magic? They were, after all, beginning their second year at a magical school.
Apparently not. Lilian had run off at that point to fetch Aerin, who had a free period at the same time as the Slytherins, and more importantly had celebrated her thirteenth birthday over the summer, and could therefore answer Mary's questions more clearly.
"We've all been using magic," the older girl explained, "but unless you've been participating in the major Sabbat rituals, you haven't really been introduced to the powers, and even then, magic is… polarized, kind of, into light and dark. A magical child is traditionally brought before wild magic on her third, seventh, and thirteenth birthdays, first so that magic can meet the child, then so the child can meet the magic, and finally so magic and child bond together."
"What happens if you don't do it?" Mary asked. She, like Hermione, had obviously missed the first two rituals.
Aerin shrugged. "Nothing. It's kind of like how muggles baptize their kids, and then have confirmation. It can give you a better understanding of your magic, and it feels wild, but it's not going to hurt you that you didn't do it."
"But you both think we should for Hermione?"
"Definitely!" the Moons chorused, then giggled at their timing. Mary grinned. She hadn't realized how much she missed Aerin.
"She'll love it," the Ravenclaw added. It was true – Hermione was by far the most interested in traditional magic out of the three second-years.
"So what do we have to do then?" Mary asked, and the remainder of the hour was lost to planning.
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The Slytherins returned from practice dripping and cold, but pleased with themselves. According to the older players, they were shaping up to be a good team, and they had done their drills well enough that Flint had let them go half an hour early. Mary and Lilian put this time to good use, changing into warm, dry clothes before running to the Great Hall to find the birthday girl.
They took seats on either side of her at the Ravenclaw table, and Mary was immediately pulled into a hug. "Thank you for the chocolates!" Hermione exclaimed, before turning to Lilian to do the same thing, thanking her for the wizarding fiction books the older Slytherin had ordered for her.
"What do you want to do this afternoon?" Lilian asked with a grin. She and Mary had decided that Hermione could decide what they were doing until dinner, but then they and Aerin would take her to the spare classroom where Mary had arranged for the cake to be delivered and perform the birthday ritual.
As expected, Hermione simply rolled her eyes. "The same thing we do every spare afternoon?"
"Explore the castle?" Mary suggested.
"Homework?" asked Lilian.
"No, no, go sit in the back of the library and chat while we pretend to do homework!" Mary responded.
"Shut up, you!" Hermione shoved Mary, but not hard enough to hit the Ravenclaw on her other side. "But yes," she admitted, "that." And they collapsed into giggles.
The afternoon went more quickly than Mary thought possible. Since they no longer saw each other every evening, they seemed to have more to talk about, and Lilian amused them for at least half an hour with a series of animated doodles she had been working on in various classes all week. Hermione looked like she wanted to scold the younger girl for goofing off, but she refrained so as not to ruin the mood.
After dinner, the quartet adjourned to the spare classroom. Hermione acted as though the cake alone was the best birthday present she had ever received. She and Mary explained to the Moons about muggle birthday traditions, and liberated a handful of taper candles from a chandelier in the Entry Hall to shrink and use as birthday candles. The Moons, predictably, thought this adventure was a bit silly, but Lilian was all for anything that involved breaking rules and setting things on fire, and Aerin was nearly as curious about muggle traditions as Hermione was about wizarding ones.
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After cake, slightly high on sugar, the four girls performed the ritual. Aerin explained briefly to Hermione exactly what they were doing and why, and then silenced her when it looked as though the birthday girl would keep them all until curfew asking about the ritual rather than doing it. Mary and Lilian were highly amused. Even Hermione thought it was funny, though she pretended to pout while they chalked a simple triangular diagram on the floor and made her sit in the middle of it.
Aerin had explained that as long as the number of people in the circle was magically significant, they could have as many or as few people as they wanted. Her circle had had seven – her parents, her siblings, her godparents, and her godbrother, who had already graduated from Hogwarts. Lilian's would probably have five, because her godfather had died in the war, and her godmother was a spinster. There were different diagrams for each circle, but they were all very simple.
They placed candles at each point of the triangle, and each of the other girls knelt at one of its sides. The three of them held hands across its corners, making a tiny circle around Hermione, with the candles on the outside.
The invocation was equally simple. Aerin led it, as the eldest of them.
"We call on magic, not dark nor light, but magic unbound by mortal notions. We call on magic, free and pure, strong and wild, without purpose or will. We call on magic to join us in our circle."
"Join us in our circle," Mary and Lilian echoed. Hermione, as instructed, stayed silent.
The candles flared, and the chalk lines of the "circle" began to glow.
"We welcome the magic, unformed and untamed. We welcome the magic, curious and open. We welcome the magic to our circle."
"Welcome to our circle."
The space inside the circle began to fill with light. Hermione's hair started to float upward. She grinned, looking around herself in delight.
"We call the magic to meet this child, child of magic, child of wonder. We bring this child to meet the magic, magic eternal, magic of the world. We offer to child and magic a chance, to be as one, to know and recognize."
"We witness for child and magic."
The light began to sink into Hermione's skin, and she gasped, watching her own hands begin to glow. The next lines were hers, and Aerin said that they were always different, drawn from the child by the ritual and the magic.
"I welcome the magic into myself, my own magic welcomes the world!" she declared, her face positively radiant.
"We witness for child and magic," the circle chanted.
"Know and be known," Hermione said, addressing the magic, "one and another, the same and distinct."
"We witness for child and magic," the circle repeated a third time.
The light began to ebb from Hermione's face, returning to the air around her. She was still beaming, though, so Mary assumed that was supposed to happen.
Aerin spoke again: "We thank the magic for answering our call. We thank the magic for recognizing our child. Our circle thanks the magic."
"Our circle thanks the magic." Hermione echoed this along with Mary and Lilian. The glow of magic left the circle entirely, though the candles stayed lit. Hermione and Aerin would take them back to Ravenclaw tower and let them burn out on their own.
Hermione, as they cleaned up, was uncharacteristically silent. Before they parted ways, however, she gave each of them a hug, whispering her thanks in their ears.
Tuesday, 22 September 1992 – Mabon Hogwarts
On Sunday morning, the Slytherins were reminded that their Mabon celebration would be held on Tuesday at high noon, in the Largest Courtyard, which was actually situated on top of the Great Hall, and could only be reached from the fourth floor. Most of their professors would turn a blind eye if they arrived late, but, the prefects said with secretive smiles, that shouldn't be a problem.
Mary and Lilian ran off to inform Hermione and Aerin at once, blatantly disregarding the convention that only third-years and up were allowed to invite students from other houses. The Ravenclaws, fortunately, were already aware of the event. The Deceptive Power, which was celebrated at Mabon, was also the Wise Power. There weren't as many traditionalist Ravenclaws as Slytherins, but if the Ravenclaws hadn't had a standing invitation to the Slytherin celebration, they would have had to hold their own.
Hermione seemed to be fully recovered from the previous night's celebration – back to her usual outgoing and talkative self. She thanked her friends again for performing the ritual for her. It was transcendent, she said, and they both must, without a doubt, do it on their own birthdays as well. Mary and Lilian, who had never had any plans to the contrary, readily agreed.
The following three days passed quickly. There was only one incident of note: on Monday, the Weasley twins caused Professor Dumbledore's robes to trail glitter wherever he went, like some kind of enormous, fabulous slug. The Headmaster was highly amused and refused to end the spell, or to allow any of the other professors to do so. By lunchtime, Professor McGonagall had assigned a house elf to follow him around, periodically vanishing the glitter he left in his wake.
On Tuesday at noon, Mary, Lilian, and Hermione, along with what looked like two-hundred other students and staff, assembled in the "courtyard" atop the great hall. The Young brothers, who were apparently in charge of the day's ritual, along with the Slytherin and Ravenclaw prefects, directed everyone to certain positions around the courtyard, creating what Hermione called a nautilus spiral, instead of a simple circle. Mary supposed this made sense. If they had made a normal circle, they would hardly be able to see across it.
Mary was between Lilian and Hermione, near all the other Slytherin second-years. Kevin Entwhistle, Padma Patil, and Morag MacDougal of Ravenclaw were also present, and from where she was standing, Mary could see at least twenty tiny children, some of whom she thought had to be Ravenclaws, because she didn't recognize them at all. One of them had Weasley-red hair, which was odd, because Mary could have sworn Ginny Weasley was a Gryffindor, and the twins knew better than to invite their little siblings. The twins in question didn't seem to have noticed their sister. Mary could see them on the other side of the spiral, laughing with Morgana and her friends, probably about the Dumbledore prank.
Finally, everyone was in place. A hush fell over the crowd as Marcus Young, who had taken a point at the center of the spiral, began to speak.
"Welcome," he said, his amplified voice seemingly flattened by the clouds above. "We gather here on the day of Turning Darkward to honor the Deceptive Power, the Wise Power. We, the children of Slytherin and Ravenclaw, call the Power to move among us, as the darkness supersedes the light.
"We gather beneath the open sky, at the hour of balance, poised, timeless, at the precipice of a turning-point of the year, to witness the shift as light wanes and dark waxes full. We witness the majesty of this day's Power, in all its aspects: Experience, Wisdom, and Deception, for it is a great and terrible Power, but it moves above all other Powers to draw us ever nearer to what is.
"In this moment of transition, we offer ourselves to the will of the Power, sacrificing secrets for wisdom. We call upon the Power to take from us what we would not tell, and tell us what we need to know!"
There was an uncomfortable shuffling from some people in the crowd, who seemed to want to leave, rather than tell their secrets to the crowd, but none could move – the ritual had already begun. Mary knew, because she was one of the ones who tried.
Bugger, she thought, as a bright blue light approached her, leaping from one head to the next, outward through the spiral, trailing a cord of flame behind it, connecting them all to one another. It linked Lilian to her, and then her to Hermione, and she felt what she could only describe as a cool sense of comfort wash through her mind, soothing her nervousness. It was as though the magic said, Don't worry, I won't hurt you. And even though it was the Deceptive Power, she believed it.
And then it began – a litany of deepest, darkest secrets, each held most closely to the heart of one person, buried deeply under years of fear or resentment. Each was spoken in the voice of the magic – not clearly male or female, young or old, as it moved through the circle.
"I don't know what I want out of life," it said, and from the circle, as though compelled, a dozen voices rose, saying, "You are not alone." Tiny filaments of light shot out, connecting those who shared a secret.
Mary felt her eyes grow wide as the words forced themselves past her lips. She was not forced to join the refrain every time, but always someone did.
"I am jealous of my siblings."
"You are not alone."
"I am a homosexual, and my family doesn't know."
"You are not alone."
Some of the secrets were funny, or things that she didn't think were really secrets for most people.
"I hate my name."
"I don't hate my family as much as I pretend I do."
Far more hinted at sad and terrifying stories.
"I believed them when they said I was mad."
"I don't think I belong here."
"If I had to do everything again, I would make the same choices."
"Life would be easier for everyone if I just disappeared."
"I was raped by someone I trusted."
Some were scary.
"I hate people for no good reason."
"I like to hurt people."
"I have killed before, and would kill again if it were necessary."
Mary couldn't help but shiver as she realized even those people were not alone.
The magic worked its way outward from the center, one person at a time, just as it had done at the beginning of the ritual, connecting them all to one another. By the time it reached Mary, there were dozens of threads of light connecting her to people she couldn't even see – a single point in an enormous, glittering web.
"I have begun to question that which I have been taught." That was Draco's secret, on the other side of Lilian. Mary was surprised. He didn't seem the sort of person to question his father, or the kind of person who had many secrets.
"I think I care too much," the magic said, whirling around Lilian. Her eyes filled with tears and dozens of lines of light struck out as half of Slytherin House responded, "You are not alone."
"I think I might be forced into a role by those more powerful than myself," the magic drew forth from Mary, translating, she understood, her hatred of being the Girl Who Lived into a fear that others could relate to, "Even though I don't want it."
"You are not alone." It was good to hear, and she was sad to see that most of those who had responded were Death Eaters' children.
Her awareness of which strands tied her to those who shared her secret was lost as soon as the magic moved on. "I consider people who are less intelligent than myself to be inferior," was Hermione's secret, echoed, apparently, by most of the Ravenclaws, and about half of the Slytherins as well. The girl blushed furiously when the magic moved on.
Mary lost track of whom the magic was speaking for. More and more ties were drawn between herself and the others in the courtyard, until she felt as though she was dissolving under their pressure, a thousand tiny threads, pulling her apart.
"I hate lying, but I do it anyway."
"I don't trust anyone but myself."
"I don't know if I know what love is."
"I want to do something great, but I don't know what, or how."
"I am afraid that if I tell people my fears, they will use them against me."
"I hate when people look at me, because they never see me."
On and on it went until, finally, with one last "You are not alone," silence fell. The tension in the threads of light grew. Mary looked around, shyly catching the eyes of the people she was connected to, then quickly looking away, wondering what secret she shared with them. There was a certain anonymity in numbers.
The voice of the magic echoed throughout the circle, coming from everywhere and nowhere. "Remember your secret. Remember you are not alone. All else forget – their secrets are not yours to hold."
And with that, the light exploded, or imploded, maybe, the web tearing mind, body, and magic apart, or so it felt. If Mary had thought she was dissolving before, it was nothing compared to the feeling as the connections the ritual had drawn were broken, or, perhaps, as the connections remained, and she broke to follow them and join all the others to whom she was tied. It was painful, just as painful as sharing her most closely guarded secret, and as joyful and right as she had felt when she heard voices rising up to support her.
When Mary came back to herself, she was swaying unsteadily on her feet, and the magic was gone, along with her memory of the others' secrets. She was incredibly relieved that her own secret hadn't been shared, or any of the lesser secrets she had revealed by responding to others', and had no idea why she felt like she wanted to cry. Her chest itched, between her collarbones and her still non-existent breasts, and again, she had no idea why.
Marcus Young's voice cut across the crowd, who were, by now murmuring quietly, to themselves or their neighbors. "We offer our thanks," he said, "to the Power, and take from our gathering the knowledge it has offered to us, of ourselves and our fellows." A breeze rustled through the courtyard. "Remember your secrets, and remember you are not alone. Let the Mark remind you, for a year and a day, as you grow in age, in wisdom, and experience, and find new secrets to hold dear. Blessings of the dark!"
And with that, the rain, which had been threatening all morning, began to fall. The celebrants rushed for the doors, casting water repelling charms as they went, and drying charms as they flooded down the stairs and into the Great Hall.
It was only slightly past twelve, though Mary could have sworn the ceremony took hours. She decided it was probably best not to think too hard about that. Going to classes that afternoon might, she thought, have been the most difficult thing she had ever done at Hogwarts.
When she returned to her rooms that night and shed her robes, she found a tattoo, or a scar, or perhaps both, engraved on the skin of her chest – a nautilus spiral, pale and smooth, marked at thirteen points with tiny, ink-black dots. She ran her fingers over it and smiled as the words of the ritual echoed in her mind:
"I think I might be forced into a role by those more powerful than myself, even though I don't want it."
"You are not alone."