A/N: See, progress! Two chapters in under two weeks! To all of you who have review or PMed me recently (or not so recently) and I haven`t replied back yet, I`m super sorry for the delay. I figured you`d prefer a chapter over an apology anyway, so here you go, and I definitely will be responding to you guys soon.
"James?"
"Um…not James." Harry stumbled, wiping the stray owl residue guiltily from his face and hair. "Sorry."
The blonde wasn`t looking at him like a extraterrestrial, which was a good sign, but he still had no clue who she was, so there was no way he knew to reassure her that he was not in fact disreputable. Harry just clutched tightly to the broom and hoped that this girl did not house the same instincts as Melody.
"Should I even bother ask why you felt the need to fly up to my room covered in bird crap, Not-James?"
"Well, I needed a place to hide from these pissed off Slytherins…"
She nodded, breaking out into a smile. "Ah, that`s right, you`re Mattie`s cousin, then. They were wondering what happened to you. She probably would have started a betting pool if you were gone any longer."
"That`s me. Harry… Finnigan. Sorry if I lead an angry mob to your window…" He stuck a hand out, which after a few seconds of the unreciprocated gesture did he realize he`d just used to cleanse the reminder of the owlery from his face.
"Mary McDonald, and don`t worry, I`ll help you fight them off if necessary. Sorry I didn`t recognize you at first, but we met this morning at the greenhouse."
"Oh yeah, the bloody genius, that`s right. Hey, tell me honestly; I just broke into your room waving a broom and covered in owl droppings, and you weren't even fazed. Are you just amazingly good at containing panic, or does this kind of this happen a lot?"
She shrugged. "Spend enough years at this school, you see so much bizarre stuff that you learn that sometimes it`s best not to know the full story. With the Marauders around, there`s never a dull moment, that`s probably why I could have sworn you were Potter when you dropped in. Well, that and the broom."
Harry nodded, patting down his windswept hair in a vain attempt to less like his father.
"Here." Mary tossed a towel at him before plopping down on one of the beds. "If you`re going to hide here, at least de-birdify yourself."
"Thanks." Scrubbing of his glasses, Harry resisted any hair-fixing urges that would link him to James. Without the glasses, the papers layering Mary`s bead looked like something out of a kaleidoscope. Even with them, he soon realized, the effect was similar. "What is this?"
"Star charts. Oh, come on, don`t judge me Bird Boy!"
"Sorry… are you interested in being a seer or something?"
Mary squinted at him through her glasses, trying to detect hints of whether or not he was kidding or teasing. "No, I`ve read about those and I`m not quite sure they exist. Actually, I`m looking for geometric patterns and possible runes or signs of… aaand you`re giving me that look."
"What look?! I`m interested, I swear."
"It`s just that whenever I talk about this kind of stuff, my roommate Lily gets this look that I just know is restrained judgmental skepticism, and it drives me positively mad. Promise you won`t think any less of me if I tell you about this?"
Was it possible this girl actually was a seer? She`d managed to recognize both of his parents in him within mere minutes. Based on this, he nodded his promise, willing to hear this girl out.
"Okay, so I`m not sure if you know what a muggle weatherman is…"
"I do."
"…sorry, I`m muggleborn, just checking. So you know how they can usually predict the weather, or the percent chance of it happening, anyway? Centaurs do that too, but with the stars. They can read the skies and get a rough outline of the future, isn't that awesome? I`ve never met a centaur in person, but I`ve read up on them loads trying to grasp the concept…" Mary looked back down to her charts. "Don`t you just wish sometimes you could see the future like that?"
"Sometimes." Harry replied, wondering who this girl was in 1996, if she was even still alive. Maybe it would be better if she could see the future, because then she would be able to do his job for him and warn Lily, James, and Sirius before it was too late.
"This probably sounds absolutely loony." She sighed, getting up to close the window. When she stepped into the direct sunbeam from the window, the shade of blonde in her hair sparked an image in Harry`s mind of another blonde with sometimes outlandish interests that was labelled as loony. "It`s just… well, everyone has something they wish they could have predicted, right?"
More than she could ever know. "Yeah…"
"A few years back, I decided I wanted to go home for the winter holidays. My parents were thrilled to have me home, my mum even took off work so that they could drive up together to pick me up from the train station. I was worried after the first hour when they hadn`t shown, but it wasn't until the ministry workers showed up that it finally clicked something was wrong. Car crash, they told me, possible magical terrorism suspected. It`s always suspected these days when it comes to muggles, you know, especially family of a muggleborn witch. I almost wished it had been another pureblood supremacy attack at first, because then I`d have someone, anyone to blame, but in the end they were able to eliminate all that."
Mary calmly shuffled through her charts until they were neatly stacked on her lap, never meeting Harry`s eyes. He attempted to speak, but found no words that were right for this. Everything he could say, everything that he knew could help her let go of her guilt would endanger the still unsure safety of his parents and godfather.
"I spent months; years wishing I could go back and make myself sign up to stay here instead. It gets to the point where you think, if you just knew then what you do now, you could warn yourself, warn them, do anything to stop those dominos, from falling from tampering with the car to giving yourself so much homework that you couldn`t possibly go home for the holiday. But no matter how well you have it thought through, no matter how much you wish, you can only move forward. The past is resolute, and maybe that`s for the best, because eventually, you learn how to move forward. If I can save at least one life by cracking these constellations, then at least my parents would not have died in vain."
She was the girl who wanted to believe her parents were killed by Voldemort instead of a car crash; he was the boy who had always thought his parents died in a car crash but now knew Voldemort was responsible. Survivor's guilt wasn`t enough to bring them back, and Mary obviously knew that, and had come to terms with it.
Harry, however, had found a way that might, but it depended on Mary never knowing how similar they really were. Still, he felt like he owed it to her to at least try and console her.
"My parents…" How could he tell her without, well, telling her? There had to be a way to get the point across without spilling spoilers or lying. Although, hopefully these wouldn't be spoilers for long, but long-lost would haves. "…died in a raid on our house. I made Mattie promise not to tell anyone, and say they were just still on the run. They died protecting me, but I just wish I could have protected them."
Technically all true, yet no danger of Mary finding out the actual truth. When Mary`s gaze softened, though, Harry was surprised to note her expression was not of the same octave of sympathy as he was used to receiving when people found out he was an orphan. The Weasleys and everyone back in 1996 had always been kind, protective, and compassionate, but that was all sympathetic. Mary was looking at him with pure empathy, because unlike the Weasleys, unlike Hermione, or Dean, or Seamus, she`d been there. She knew what it was like to be completely alone, to know that the people you`d loved, the people who loved you, were gone forever.
But suddenly, Harry realized why Mary seemed so familiar, and why he`d thought of Luna when she`d said loony. Mary was not the only person he`d ever known to show empathy in place of sympathy. There were a few people he`d forgotten from 1996 who `d had that expression before.
"Can you see thestrals?"
"Can you?" She asked, and as her expression changed, Harry guessed the answer before she could even reply, "I wasn`t at the crash, so no."
Instead of answering her possibly rhetorical question, Harry chose to glace back at the star charts. "What if you figured out how to see the future, but there was unavoidable and unbelievable pain in store for your friends? Would you tell them?"
"Of course. If I could warn them or even try to stop the pain, at least that would be better than knowing and just sitting back and watching things run their course."
"But what if telling them would only make the pain come sooner?" He prodded. After all, even if Sirius, Remus, and James did believe him about Peter –which they wouldn't, not now, not at this point in time- it would only hasten the betrayal.
Mary frowned. "Well…"
"-an entire caldron of it down his back, couldn't even walk straight." The dorm room flew open, and Mel, Mattie, and Lily breezed in, falling onto beds around the room as they brushed various bits of debris from their clothes and hair.
"Good to see you`re not dead." Melody commented. "How exactly did you manage to lose that parade o' pain?
Stuffing her charts into a drawer, Mary snorted. "He didn`t really lose them so much as give them the slip by attempting to sneak in here."
"Is that my towel? Ew…Mar, why couldn't you have given him Mel`s?" In one swift motion, Mattie had plucked the filthy towel from Harry`s hands and Scourgifyed the crap out of it (literally), an effortless spell neither muggle-raised Harry or Mary had thought to use. "Ugh, did you roll around with hippogriffs before coming here of something? I know Slytherins are vile, but I doubt covering yourself with dung would ward them away…actually, it almost certainly reminds them of their home in the dungeons…"
"I cut through the owlery, actually."
"The owlery? You didn`t get cornered, did you?" Lily spoke up curiously.
"No, actually, I flew through…"
Lily`s eyes widened, and the charms homework in her hands plopped onto the bed unceremoniously. "Flew… How? In order to fly through the Owlery, you`d have to cut through the windows, and getting the angle right alone is…and when did the chase take flight anyway?""
"Er, I had summoned a broom to…"
"-Wow, this sounds like a great story full of heroism and daring exploits, but I think it`s time to bring Harry back downstairs. The guys will be out of McGonagall`s any minute, and besides, he probably has loads of school work to catch up on if he wants to make up the weeks he missed." Cut in Mattie, draping a strong arm around his shoulders and muscling him towards the door.
Confused, Harry managed a small wave goodbye to the others before he was dragged out into the hall.
"You`re welcome." Mattie whispered as she clicked the door closed behind them.
"I didn`t realize talking about narrowly escaping a Slytherin-induced death qualifies now as a danger to the preservation of the future."
"It doesn`t, but I`m pretty sure incest does."
Harry balked. "What?"
"Ugh, are you sure you`re not Sirius` son instead of James`? You have the same absolute blockheaded obliviousness, I swear…and I wouldn`t be surprised either, actually, if you were, he and James are so inseparable… anyway, please try not to encourage Lily, she`ll never fall for James if you keep talking about your broomstick like that." Mattie raised an eyebrow, causing Harry to blush angrily.
"I don`t see how it`s my fault if she keeps…!"
"-Okay, okay, calm down, I`m just messing with you. You can`t help that your mum is choosing to have a crush on you rather than get over her grudge against your dad and admit she has feelings for him or whatever."
Still miffed, Harry muttered, "Speaking of my parents, Mary almost completely figured out who I am, or she would have, anyway, if it hadn`t been so impossible that I was…well, you know."
"Thanks to those uncanny genes of yours, I`d be surprised if she was the last. It`s unavoidable, really, nothing you can do unless you know any sort of not-quite recognition spell that could mask the resemblance... I wouldn`t worry, though. The only one who even believes in the slightest chance of Lily and James getting together is Sirius, and half the time he mentions it he`s completely pissed, so nobody thinks he`s -well, not Sirius exactly, but accurate."
"Wouldn`t Sirius be enough to alter time though, if he worked it out?"
"He couldn`t alter a bogart if he wanted to, let alone time. You, however, have a Hufflepuff to find, a time turner to obtain, and a time line to alter back."
Ugh. What had once seemed a worthwhile, if a bit tedious, task, was now one of the last things Harry felt like doing after being chased around the perimeter of the school, nearly crash into a stone tower, and being coated in bird residue. Also, heading out in search of a possibly hostile stranger might involve him running into some definitely hostile Slytherins, who were also quite strange. "Now? Do I have to?"
"You don`t have to, not unless you don`t like having to get back to 1996 the long way, you know, the one that takes twenty years? Come on, it won`t be that hard. Hopefully Elise will be so Hufflepuffed she`ll hand the thing over easily. The quicker you get this over with, the quicker you can get back here, and eventually, home, once we clear the whole parental mess up."
A clump of bedraggled girls tromped past, fresh from McGonagall's. Noticing a boy, lest of all the boy who had started the very fight they`d just partaken in, they dissolved into whispers which soon dissipated after a strict look from Mattie.
Once they`d passed, she turned back briefly. "Thank you, by the way, for punching that Snake guy. I know you probably didn`t fully comprehend the situation, but…that was probably the best case scenario. Good Gryffindor reflexes."
Harry nodded, hoping that his expression didn`t betray the façade of innocence to the situation he was trying his best to maintain. "He had it coming to him, anyone could tell that."
"That`s for sure. Oh, and Harry?"
"Hmm?" He said, a step away from the would-be slide to the common room.
"When you do find Elise, try not to mention my name. It would suck if you were chased by two mobs in one day."
"Good to know."
Harry stepped, then slipped, all the way down to the common room, praying the whole way that Mary wouldn`t see a second angry mob in the stars for him that night.