[A/N: This is part 2 of Chapter 10]

Monday, 21 December 1992 - Yule Hogwarts

The morning of Yule dawned clear, and cold enough to chill even the Slytherin dorms. There was a layer of fresh snow on the ground, and the air in every room but the Great Hall and the Slytherin Commons bit and stabbed at the lungs. Mary ventured out, as she had the previous year, to eat breakfast and claim food for lunch, but before she set off to find a good corner of the castle for meditation, she was forced to return to her rooms for her scarf and outdoor cloak.

She was waylaid in the Common Room by Lilian, who was curled up on a couch in front of the roaring fire with a blanket and a novel.

"Morning, Liz!" she called brightly.

Mary smiled, and returned the holiday greeting. "Well met and glad tidings, Lilian."

"Ooh, right, I forgot. Sorry!" the older girl apologized.

Mary rolled her eyes. She had known that neither Lilian nor Hermione would be likely to remember that Yule was a day of contemplation, and that they weren't meant to be talking to each other. "I'm going for a walk. I'll see you at the ritual, yeah?"

"Sunset, main courtyard. I'll be there." Lilian nodded, and went back to her book.

The brassy-haired witch said nothing as Mary passed by on her way out, though she was certain she caught a smirk at the fact that she was all bundled up just to wander the halls.

As she had the year before, Mary spent a good bit of time wandering aimlessly, seeking a good place to sit and think. Her feet carried her to the same tower she had used the year before, but Professor Snape was already there, and the room was bitterly cold. She exchanged a greeting with him and moved on, wondering what book he was reading.

She peeked into the Great Hall, but Hermione was there, and Malfoy, and she did not want to try to think seriously around either of them. They were both prone to saying sudden and distracting things out of nowhere as their thoughts wandered.

On the fourth floor, she encountered the little blonde Ravenclaw, who quirked her head to the side after exchanging 'well met and glad tidings,' said that snakes should go underground to avoid the cold. She wandered away before Mary could think of a response. She was too disturbed by the fact that the girl was barefoot and wearing only a jumper in the ridiculously frigid corridor.

She did take the strange little girl's advice, though, and headed down to the third-dungeon level, below the Slytherin Common Room, which had maintained its normal equilibrium temperature. She had not done much exploring of the dungeons, because Lilian had been more interested in ways to get in and out of the Castle last time it had come up, and Hermione was not fond of dark, enclosed spaces.

Mary rather liked them – small, dark spaces. As much as she had hated being tossed in a cupboard as punishment as a child, she had become accustomed to it, and the cupboard was one of the few places Dudley, her eternal tormentor (until age eleven) would never follow her. Even Aunt Petunia had called her out of the cupboard to give her chores. It was a safe place, and a good place to think, odd as it sounded. She found a shadowy niche with a bench and a still-life portrait and settled in to reflect, nibbling on the pastries she had commandeered at breakfast.

What had she done in the past year? There was the whole business with Quirrellmort, and Hagrid's dragon. Norbert? Terrible name for a dragon. She had decided to stop speaking to Hagrid, and it had been easier than she expected. She had never had friends before Hogwarts, and she had certainly never stopped being friends with anyone before, so she hadn't really been sure how to go about it. It helped that he hadn't directly invited her around again after the dragon was gone.

She had taken her first-year exams, and passed easily. Hermione had been so worried, and really, if you had stayed awake in class, you were bound to pass. She had spent the summer with the Urquharts, learning how purebloods lived and meeting Catherine, who was probably the nicest person she had met in the wizarding world. For all she was terribly strict when she was teaching, she was absolutely helpful and never refused to tell Mary anything she needed to know. I should write her a letter, Mary thought. She had received her last letter from the older girl the day before, full of news about the little kids and Catherine's progress in Italian (Mary had to admit she had not kept her promise to speak Italian with Blaise, but that was because he was a condescending jerk about her accent), and glad tidings for Yule. She would do it tomorrow, she decided.

Right after last Yule, she had met Remus Lupin, the Last Marauder. He was out of the country again. A cursebreaker friend had asked him to come join their team to raid a particularly well-protected tomb. He had agreed, for a cut of the profits, of course, and had been there from September until just a few weeks ago. His latest letter had come from France, and included an overview of all his Egyptian adventures, where the earlier ones had just had snippets like: "Animated mummies – never again, pup!" and "It's strange, I always thought I would be the one at home, receiving these letters, while James and Sirius were off having adventures and writing them. But then, they were terrible correspondents," and "I'm not dead yet. If you hear otherwise, it is part of a ploy to get out of this thrice-cursed country. Bloody bureaucrats!" She now owed him a nice, long, catching-up letter as well. She hadn't told him about all this Heir of Slytherin nonsense, as she didn't want him to worry about her when his life was in danger, but she felt a bit guilty for hiding it from him.

She had also been avoiding telling Emma and Dan anything important, at Hermione's behest. It was a shame, because she really liked Emma, and was sure the older woman could offer good advice on how to deal with the Hufflepuffs and their vicious attitude problem. But Hermione was worried that they would try to pull her out of school when they found out that things were getting dangerous yet again, and Mary had agreed (against her better judgement) to keep the secret. Even if the older girl hadn't been dealing with the Veritaserum Conspiracy, she would have stayed so her parents couldn't just keep her home after the holidays. They were likely to be very upset when they found out, and Mary didn't know what she would do if they sent Hermione to Beauxbatons or something. It was a persistent worry at the back of her mind. She hoped they wouldn't be too angry at her, and she would at least be allowed to see her friend on the holidays, if worse came to worst.

She had learned more about Lilian's family since last Yule, too, though she still hadn't met the bold Slytherin's parents. From what little she said of them, they did not care even the tiniest bit what their children got up to at school or at home. They never wrote, and they had the house elves find Christmas presents for their children. When they were little, Mrs. Moon had insisted that the children have a tutor to prepare them for Hogwarts, which was where Lilian had learned all the pureblood nonsense, but Aerin's thirteenth birthday ceremony was the only real family thing Lilian could remember them doing together in years. Hermione didn't like to talk about her parents because she thought they were too pushy, always wanting to know more about their daughter's life. Lilian didn't talk about her parents because they effectively didn't exist for her, outside of providing a place to sleep in the summer. She and Aerin had mostly been raised by Sean, and looked after each other. Mary thought this sounded a lot like the way she had grown up, but with fewer chores, and for a few weeks she had envied the other girl intensely, because Lilian had siblings who cared about her. It had taken an incredibly awful Quidditch practice and Lilian standing up to Flint for Mary before she realized that Lilian, and Hermione, too, had become like the sisters she never had.

Since the previous Yule, she had been in danger with her closest friends at least four times, between the dragon smuggling and subsequent detention; the race into the stupid obstacle course after Quirrellmort and Professor Snape; and all the sneaking around they had done to get potions ingredients in November. They had visited her in her Hospital bed… twice off the top of her head – after the Deboning and Quirrellmort.

She supposed she could add those things to the list of things she had done in the past year – she had watched a man die, almost gotten possessed and then seen a real exorcism, and had seen Professor Snape laugh so hard he had to lean against a wall; she had been in the papers over the summer because of That Ponce, and had re-grown her right arm because of him, too, though she had learned a lot about house elves, that night in the hospital, so she wasn't as angry about that as she could be; she had stood up for herself against Creepy Creevey and watched as Professor Sinistra put the Headmaster in his place (she could see why Professor Snape liked her) – though it didn't do much good since he was petrified right after. She had outed herself as a Parselmouth very publically. She was surprised it wasn't already in the papers – Mary Potter – Dark Witch. And then Finch-Fletchley had been petrified, as well. She was beginning to suspect that someone was trying to set her up, though they hadn't done a very good job, if they were. She had an alibi for every attack.

She had been judged worthy by a unicorn, and assaulted a thestral, and gotten involved in a conspiracy which, she suspected, would be in a lot of trouble if they were found out before they could catch the Heir. She probably should have stopped it back in the Hospital Wing when the boys suggested it – she was the one who thought about the consequences! – but she hadn't realized all the implications of the "plan" then, and by the time she did, her weak objections made no difference in the face of Lilian's "Stop freaking out, Liz. We're twelve. What are they going to do? Send a bunch of twelve-year-olds to Azkaban?" That was another persistent worry that she couldn't talk to anyone about.

Mary was sure there were more things that had happened – it had been a very long year.

Looking back, she was amazed to see how many of those incidents were related to her friends. She would probably get in a lot less trouble (and that was including the foreseen and impending trouble with the Conspiracy) without them. But, strange as it was, she didn't think she would give them up for anything. They had managed, over the year and a half they had known her, to become a part of her life and who she was. She would just have to deal with the consequences.

A bell tolled somewhere in the castle – five o'clock already? She stretched her legs and back, grown stiff from the stone bench in her nook, and began to make her way back to the main courtyard, to see what the Ritual held for her tonight.

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Mary was early this year, but Wendy was already waiting when she arrived, and had set warming charms around the courtyard. It was cold, but not unbearably so. They nodded to one another in greeting, but did not speak. Blaise and Theo were the next to appear, then Hermione and Draco, with a certain distance between them that implied they had not walked in together, but had simply been travelling in the same direction in one another's general vicinity. Professor Snape wafted in after that, followed by Professors Sinistra and Vector, who very clearly had been walking together, as they arrived arm-in-arm. When Lilian arrived, Mary rather stopped paying attention to new arrivals, dragging her friends together so that they would be able to stand beside each other in the circle.

Professor Flitwick was the last to arrive, shoving his watch into his pocket as he hurried into the courtyard. As he bustled in, Wendy called them to order. The circle formed, smaller than the year before. Mary found herself between Theo and Lilian, with Blaise and Draco and the other Slytherin students on the far side of Theo, and Hermione, the twins, and Professor McGonagall beyond Lilian. Ginny and the little fae blonde Ravenclaw had appeared as well, and were set among the other professors across the circle.

"Welcome, friend and allies, children of Hogwarts," she declaimed. "Well met and glad tidings on this, the day of longest night. This evening we gather beneath the falling sun to honor the darkness in its hour of strength, and the memory and expectation of the light it represents. I stand as the witness and Mistress of Ceremonies as we gather to perform the Song of the Waking Dreamer, as proof of the Power of Infernal Mystery."

Mary had never heard of the Waking Dreamer, but as Wendy made her claim, she thought she heard the sound of pipes in the distance, drawing nearer. Professor Snape, who was opposite Mary, raised an eyebrow at their Mistress of Ceremonies, but did not object.

"I stand as the guardian to assure our safe return, by the grace of the Power of Transience."

Where are we going? Mary wondered. The pipes had been joined by light, high-pitched bells, drawing nearer. Magic was swirling up around each of them, now, tugging at Mary's robes like a tiny whirlwind. It was a pleasant, tingly feeling.

"I stand as the gateway of the Power Solitaire, the axis of the ritual, that all may know what might have been, and in so, know themselves!"

At that, an ethereal voice joined the bells and fluting pipes, singing in a language Mary had never heard before. The magic swirling around her dove into her, but before she could be overwhelmed by its presence, it had gone again, streaming out from her, into Wendy and, she thought, through the older girl, as though it vanished entirely on reaching her. There was just enough time for Mary to wonder what was supposed to happen next before everything went black.

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Mary Potter, six years old, woke to the sound of a small elephant – her cousin Dudley – making his way down the stairs which lay on the other side of her cupboard. She had a moment of panic on realizing that she could see a strip of light beneath the door – she had overslept! She was neglecting her chores! Aunt Petunia was going to kill her! But then she remembered that she had been sentenced to a whole week in the cupboard for turning her teacher's wig blue. She honestly had no idea what had happened or how, but regardless, she still had three days to go.

Daytime in the cupboard was always terrible. It got too warm, and the Dursleys were too loud for her to sleep, and she couldn't sneak out for food or to use the bathroom. If she was caught, she would be sentenced to stay there even longer. The only good thing about daytime was the little strip of light under the door: the light bulb had burnt out last week, and, according to Aunt Petunia, turning a teacher's wig blue did not earn her a new one.

She lay on her cot, bored and hungry, trying very hard to focus on nothing at all – especially the fact that she really needed to use the loo – until night fell and she could get out.

When she finally ventured forth from the cupboard, she hid away food, first, and water. Despite her desperate need to use the restroom, she knew that once she had, she needed to be back in her cupboard ASAP. Sometimes Aunt Petunia couldn't sleep, and came to investigate odd noises like the downstairs toilet flushing. On her way back to her cupboard for the final time, at least until the following night, Mary saw something out of place – a box of matches, carelessly left out in the kitchen. Uncle Vernon must have used them for something, because Aunt Petunia would never have left them out, and Dudley wasn't allowed to play with fire, after he had nearly burnt down the Christmas tree last year. Mary, of course, had never been allowed to use a match, but it hardly seemed all that difficult.

She hesitated for only the briefest moment before she snagged the box, desperate for even the short-lived light of a burning match in her cell.

…

Mary might have been delirious, but she thought she could control how high the matches burned, and how long they took to creep down the wood and scorch her fingers. She had lit half the box, now, one at a time, dropping their charred remains in a tiny pile on the floor and waiting, waiting as long as she could, resisting the temptation to light another. At this rate, she would run out long before her punishment was over. But she never lasted very long. The company of the tiny flames was comforting.

She was so tired of living in the dark.

…

She was down to the last five matches when the light of morning crept into her cupboard again. She should have been expecting it, Aunt Petunia's first screech of the day, but it took her by surprise, and she dropped one, lit, in the midst of its fellows. First the other matches, then their box, caught fire more quickly than she thought possible.

At first she tried to pat it out, but it scorched her hands and dodged away, apparently with a life of its own. It started to creep toward her, burning her blankets, and she pushed it away, with her mind and her hands, the same way she had been teasing it earlier. It turned, and, leaving a blackened mark on the floor, slipped out of the cupboard. A minute later, the screaming started – first Aunt Petunia, then Uncle Vernon. Dudley's elephantine steps hurried toward his parents, and then he joined in the shouting.

Five minutes later, Mary was hauled out of the cupboard and dragged into the dining room. Uncle Vernon threw her down into the charred remains of the table, shouting about how he'd beat it out of her, quash the magic right out. Aunt Petunia shrieked when he said 'magic'. Dudley just looked confused, which was his normal expression. Ten minutes after that, she was thrown back into the cupboard dizzy and headachy, bruised from where Dudley had gotten a few licks in, and bleeding where Uncle Vernon's belt buckle had hit when he whipped her. She had tried to defend herself – explaining that she didn't know what had happened – but was quickly reduced to crying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," over and over.

…

The Dursleys' home, never pleasant, had become Mary's own little corner of hell. Her aunt and uncle were afraid of her, and so they hated her. They 'kept her in her place' through isolation and starvation, and whenever anything 'abnormal' happened in her vicinity, she was beaten ferociously. It wasn't long until she lay on her cot at night fantasizing about killing them all, but day after day for five long years, she failed to follow through on any of those plans. They would never have worked, anyway.

When Mary was eleven, or almost eleven, a letter came for her. Uncle Vernon had confiscated it before she could open it. The next day there had been another, and another, then three, then two dozen, and then hundreds, flying through the chimney. Mary snagged one, then, but did not have a chance to read it, as she was forced to watch Uncle Vernon burn the rest, and was never out of Aunt Petunia's sight while they prepared to flee the house. She ran through the rain at a truck stop, popping into the loo to read it, only to find that the old-fashioned ink used to write it had bled and smudged. It was an invitation to a school, Hogwarts School – but that next word couldn't have been witchcraft, could it?

It had been. As the clock struck midnight on her birthday, a giant man had knocked down the door of the hut Uncle Vernon had rented on a rock in the middle of the ocean, and she had finally received the letter. She had agreed to go at once, of course. She couldn't think why the Dursleys would have wanted to stop her going – they would be well shot of each other for the whole year, or near about.

The giant accompanied her to Diagon Alley, a wondrous and bizarre collection of little magical shops, where she visited a bank (she had money?), got her school supplies and wand, and a brilliant snowy owl, and ran into an absolutely horrid blond boy with a face like a rat, who "kindly" offered to take her under his wing when they got to school. Thankfully his mother had called him away before she was forced to come up with an answer. Then it was back to the Dursleys for one last month of torture – she spent the whole time in "her" bedroom, venturing out only when necessary – and then she was being dropped off at the train station, trunk in hand, with no idea how to get to the platform.

…

She met a boy named Ron, who said she reminded him of his sister, and was terribly impressed when he learned her name. She was sorted into Gryffindor, a knee-jerk response to the fact that Malfoy, the horrid, rat-faced boy, was sorted into Slytherin. She had thought 'Not Slytherin,' at the Hat, and it had said Gryffindor was second-best for her, but let her go there nevertheless. She was led to a dorm with five other girls. Two of them already knew each other and two others became fast friends that same night, bonding over their exact same nightclothes. Mary was thrown together with the other odd-girl-out, Hermione, who was more than a bit of a swot, and terribly excitable, but better company than her other roommates.

The other students stared at her in the halls, and even her teachers seemed to expect her to be someone she wasn't, this 'Girl Who Lived.' She hated the attention, but it was better – far better – than being at the Dursleys'.

She found herself inexplicably on the Quidditch team after her first flying lesson, much to Hermione's irritation. Hermione loved rules, and she was appalled that Professor McGonagall was breaking them, but she forgave Mary when she explained that none of it was her idea at all – she'd just been trying to embarrass that jerk Malfoy, and had fully expected to get detention, not a place on the house team. She didn't know the first thing about Quidditch, for God's sake. But flying was amazing.

On Halloween, Ron made Hermione cry, and she was alone in a bathroom when a troll got into the castle. Mary forced Ron to help her go find her friend, since it was his fault she was missing in the first place. They ended up fighting the troll and barely escaping, and Ron joined their little group of outcasts.

They solved a mystery together, or thought they had solved it, over the course of the year: Professor Snape was trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone, which was being kept on the third floor, for some God-unknown reason. When they followed him down to try to stop him after exams, they realized it was Professor Quirrell all along, and Mary came face-to-incorporeal ghost-thing with what remained of the man who had killed her parents.

…

Despite her best efforts, Mary was returned to the Dursleys over the summer holidays. They had put bars on her window and locks on her door. She languished in solitary confinement for a full month, wondering why neither of her friends had written her. On her birthday, while she was pretending not to exist during Uncle Vernon's important business dinner, a horrifying little creature called a House Elf had levitated a pudding, which resulted in a snotty letter from the ministry, and a beating for Mary. The next week, Hermione had called asking to speak to her, as she had not gotten a response to any of the letters she had sent. Uncle Vernon had shouted over the phone at her for being a freak, and hung up. That weekend, Hermione had turned up on their doorstep with her parents in tow. The Dursleys hadn't let Mary come down, but they hadn't been able to stop the Grangers seeing Mary in her barred window, still bruised and far too thin, waving morosely as they left.

The week after that, Emma Granger had turned up with a woman from Social Services and all the fury of an avenging angel. Mary talked to the lady, and then the police, and was placed in a temporary home for the last two weeks of summer. She gathered later, from Hermione, that furious letters were sent in every direction between her mother, the Ministry, the Headmaster, the Dursleys and, unfortunately for Mary, the newspapers. She was mobbed by the pitying public when she tried to get her school supplies, and resolved to owl-order them from then on.

…

Mary and Ron got trapped in Muggle King's Cross, and Mary let herself be convinced to fly the Weasleys' car to school. Back at Hogwarts, finally, Mary met Ron's little sister, Ginny, who was having trouble making friends in her own year. Aside from earning detentions before they arrived, the term got off to a smooth start. At Halloween, however, on her way back from what she officially considered the Worst Party Ever (seriously, she didn't know why the ghosts even bothered), she heard an evil voice whispering in the walls that Hermione couldn't hear. The Heir of Slytherin announced his presence, and the school descended into paranoia, which only grew worse when Colin Creevey, a creepy, stalkery first-year Gryffindor got petrified after taking photos of Mary with a broken arm. Somehow, this, along with the knowledge that she had been abused by her muggle relatives, became evidence that Mary was the so-called Heir, and everyone grew uncomfortably wary of her. (This was, of course, patently ridiculous – she was a Gryffindor, and if she was going to attack anyone, it would have been Lockhart the de-boning DADA 'professor'.)

Ron was convinced that Malfoy, the poncy blond idiot… well, the poncy blond student, was behind the attacks. Hermione had come up with a plan to find out for sure, and they had put it into action, brewing Polyjuice potion on the sly. If all went well, they could find out by Christmas if it was Malfoy.

The week before Christmas, everything got even worse, when Malfoy, that utter arsehole, managed to reveal to the entire school that she could talk to snakes – something she hadn't even known she could do. This cemented in everyone's minds that Mary was, in fact, the Heir of Slytherin, never mind that she had an alibi for all of the attacks so far, and no reason to attack Justin or Nearly Headless Nick. She was in a foul mood by the time the holidays arrived, and had taken to wandering the halls at all hours of the day and night, avoiding everyone.

It was on just such an angry, wandering day that she came across some kind of ritual going on in the main courtyard. It looked like mostly Slytherins there, but Professors McGonagall and Flitwick were present as well. She paused, and an older girl called out to her, "Well met and glad tidings! Come join the circle!"

It was the first friendly thing anyone except Hermione and Ron had said to her since the Dueling Club fiasco. She did not hesitate, and joined the circle.

"Welcome, friend and allies, children of Hogwarts," the girl declared a few minutes later. "Well met and glad tidings on this, the day of longest night. This evening we gather beneath the falling sun to honor the darkness in its hour of strength, and the memory and expectation of the light it represents. I stand as the witness and Mistress of Ceremonies as we gather to perform the Song of the Waking Dreamer, as proof of the Power of Infernal Mystery."

Mary had no idea what was going on, but when the Mistress of Ceremonies made her claim, she thought she heard the sound of pipes in the distance, drawing nearer. She looked around the circle for familiar faces, but the only people she knew other than the professors were the Slytherins from her year.

"I stand as the guardian to assure our safe return, by the grace of the Power of Transience."

Where are we going? Mary wondered. The pipes had been joined by light, high-pitched bells, drawing nearer. Something strange was going on. Magic was swirling up around each of them, now, tugging at Mary's robes like a tiny whirlwind. It was a pleasant, tingly feeling, but it made her nervous.

"I stand as the gateway of the Power Solitaire, the axis of the ritual, that all may know what might have been, and in so, know themselves!"

At that, an ethereal voice joined the bells and fluting pipes, singing in a language Mary had never heard before. The magic swirling around her dove into her, but before she could be overwhelmed by its presence, it had gone again, streaming out from her, into the girl at the center of the circle and, she thought, through the older girl, as though it vanished entirely on reaching her. There was just enough time for Mary to wonder what was supposed to happen next before everything went black.

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The music continued, and Mary opened her eyes as the magic flooded back out of the Mistress of Ceremonies, into each of the celebrants. She looked around at Wendy, Lilian, and Theo, scared and confused. How did she know these people? She looked down at her scarf – Slytherin green. That was wrong… wasn't it?

Two lifetimes of memories warred within her mind as she looked around herself, trying desperately to figure out who she was and what had just happened. Theo looked like he knew, and so did Professor Snape – he hadn't been standing across from her a minute ago, had he? And Hermione (Ravenclaw Hermione?) hadn't been there, nor the Weasley twins… – but most of the others looked as shaken as Mary felt.

"Wake and welcome, Dreamers," Wendy called. "Know yourselves, know who you might have been. See how a single step may change the course of a life, and reflect this night on choice and chance, who you are and how you came to be. Thanks be to the Powers!"

"Blessings of the Dark," Mary replied along with the others, still utterly confused. Did she mean that they had only dreamed what might have happened? What had she just done?

"We bow before the majesty of the magic!" the Mistress of Ceremonies called again.

"Light of the Light!" was the more ragged answering call. Mary stumbled along with the others, lost in her own thoughts.

"Bow," Theo hissed at her. She did, telling Lilian the same. When everyone had bowed, or at least ducked their heads, the magic burst out of them, flying and scattering, falling to earth like the snow, which had resumed during the ritual. The Song faded away, and the celebrants meandered toward the Great Hall and dinner, quiet and pensieve to a one.

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It was not until late that night, when she wandered into the Common Room, unable to sleep, that Mary spoke to anyone about the other life she had lived in the ritual – Lilian was there, curled up on the same couch she had occupied that morning (so long ago), staring at a smoldering brazier, but clearly not really seeing it. Mary curled up beside her. She couldn't imagine not knowing Lilian.

"Hey, Liz," the older girl said in the most depressed tone Mary had ever heard her use. "Couldn't sleep?"

"No. I keep thinking about the ritual. It was horrible."

"Mine was nice. It was… kind of sad, actually, to come back."

"Really? What happened?"

"I… I spoke to Nott about it," Lilian said hesitantly, still staring into the glowing coals. "He says it's like there's lots of different universes, and the choices we make, and chance and, you know, happenstance, make them all different from each other."

"Okay…" Mary wasn't sure she understood, but then, she hardly ever understood what Theo was talking about. "What does that have to do with the ritual?"

"The ritual, the Infernal Power, he says it took us back to a time when one of our choices fundamentally changed our lives. The closest choice, he said, that would change our lives enough for us to notice a difference, where we still ended up performing that ritual. And it… switched us. The two versions of ourselves. And then we lived our lives from then until the ritual. When we got there, and did the first half of the ritual again, we switched back."

Mary shivered. It was terrifying, horrible, really, thinking that she might have had – no, really had – that experience, in another life. Another Mary had suffered through… "That's terrifying," she said, trying to pull her mind away from that train of thought.

Lilian shrugged. "When I was eight I tried to run away from home. I didn't manage it. I had to go back two days later, cold and hungry. My parents never even noticed I was gone. In the other world, I asked Aerin to come with me. She did, and we made it a lot further together. All the way to mum's cousins' house, the Rosier Estate. Lord Rosier, Mandy and Carrie's father, he took us in. It was… a wakeup call, for my parents. They, well, they didn't become the parents I wish I had, but they at least paid us decent attention. Acted like a family again, you know?"

"What happened to them? In this world, I mean. You told me your dad taught you how to fly when you were little, but… Sorry, if you don't want to say, you don't have to."

Lilian sighed. "It's okay. You're practically family. I… I used to have a little brother. Connor. Their peacetime baby. He was my parents' pride and joy. Sweet little kid, you know? He was two years younger than me, so he would have been starting school next year. There was an accident, when he was five and I was seven. I think Sean knows, but he won't tell me and Aerin exactly what happened. We don't talk about it, anyway. Aerin and I were off visiting the Abbotts, and when we came back we found out that there had been some stupid accident, and Connor was dead." The girl sounded furious, but there were tears in her eyes. "My parents… they weren't the same, after. Sean says they push us away because they can't stand the thought of losing another child, but… In the other world, it was different. It could have been so different, if I had just asked Aerin to come with me when I tried to run off."

Mary hesitated. She had no idea how to comfort people.

Before she could think of a response, Lilian sniffled and brushed away the tears that were threatening to fall. "What was your other world like?"

"Bad. Horrible, really. I, well, it started, I guess when I stole a box of matches. In this world, I didn't dare. In that world, I did. And I lit them all, one by one, stayed up all night in my cupboard just lighting matches. I lost track of time, and my aunt scared me in the morning, and I dropped one, and, well, kind of controlled the fire. Accidental magic. It chased them through the house, I think, and burned down the dining table before they got it put out. It… scared them."

Lilian smiled cruelly. "They deserved it, from what you've said."

"Yeah, well… as bad as things were, they could have been much, much worse, and they were, in that world. They…" Mary hesitated again, and Lilian squeezed her hand with a concerned look. "They tried to beat the magic out of me," she whispered. "They tried to stop me getting my letter. And then Hagrid introduced me to magic, not Professor McGonagall, and I didn't know anything, and ran into Malfoy at Madam Malkin's and demanded that the Sorting Hat put me anywhere but Slytherin because I didn't have any friends, but I didn't want to be in the same house as him." The other girl giggled a little at this. "So I was a Gryffindor, and I was friends with Hermione, who was also a Gryffindor, and that moron Ron Weasley, of all people, and I don't think we had ever even spoken to each other. And when they found out I'm a parselmouth, not even the Slytherins stood by me. Or, they might have, I guess, but I considered them all enemies, since I was in Gryffindor. I had never done a ritual at all – I didn't even know they existed. The only reason I was in the courtyard that day, today, I guess, but in the other world, the other me – Circe, this is confusing!"

"I know. Nott kept correcting me earlier, it was awful."

"Well, anyway, the only reason Gryffindor-me was in the courtyard at all was that I was wandering around feeling sorry for myself, and Madden spotted me and called me over to join in, and I was so bored and lonely that I did."

Both girls sat quietly for what seemed like a very long time.

"I can't imagine not knowing you," Lilian said. "We were still friends in my other world."

"I'm glad. What I can't figure out is how Hermione ended up in Gryffindor with the other me."

"You met before school, right? Maybe you convinced her that Ravenclaw was the way to go."

"Yeah. Maybe." There was another silence, and then Mary spoke again. "Do you think we should go check on her? Just in case?"

"You mean in case this is all as disturbing and disorienting for her as it is for us?"

"Yeah. I mean, she doesn't even have a Theo to explain things to her, and I don't think she knows that other Ravenclaw who joined in today, the weird little blonde girl."

"Lovegood," Lilian said idly. "Yeah, we probably should."

Mary nodded. "Hang on, I'll go get the Cloak. Be right back."

The Ravenclaws didn't object to visitors in their common room as long as they could answer the requisite riddle, but there was every chance that Filch would be roaming the dungeons, because there were hardly any non-Slytherin students in the castle, and he would be only too happy to give Mary detention – he was still smarting over the petrification of Mrs. Norris, even though she had nothing to do with it. Using the Invisibility Cloak to get up to the fifth floor was only a sensible precaution.