February 7th, 1982: Mary Cattermole

When Sirius finishes talking, the air in the Potters' house is very still. Sirius's mouth is a thin, bright red line; Remus looks down at his hands where they're resting in his lap, only slits visible where his eyes are below his eyelids; James and Lily exchange significant looks. Emmeline hasn't stopped pacing back and forth along the back wall of the living room since Sirius launched into his explanation—if anything, she's sped up, like she's running toward a magic door that Mary knows will never appear—and Mary can hear Alice's brain working from across the room.

Everybody looks resigned or determined, stuck somewhere on a spectrum between jumping into the fray and reluctantly accepting the role that the others hand to them. Nobody looks angry—at least, not for the reasons Mary is. Nobody but Mary is looking for the exit.

"So these—these Horcruxes, that's what you said they're called?" says Lily. "That's what you think Dumbledore is doing? He's trying to figure out—?"

"What they are?" Alice suggests. "Where to look for them? But they could be anything. Who's to say that Voldemort wouldn't use pieces of trash and then dump them in the middle of the ocean where no one can find them? How do you even begin trying to track them down?"

"Well," Remus reasons, "we think—and we could be wrong—but we think that Voldemort wouldn't be that concerned with keeping them hidden. None of us has ever even heard of Horcruxes before, right? Not even when you lot were spending all your time in the Hogwarts library Restricted Section looking for information about Animagi. Even Sirius hadn't heard of them before, and he grew up in a family that talks pretty casually about Dark Magic when they're in private. If no one knows what he's done to make himself immortal—and, I mean, no one would know that he even is immortal if it weren't for what happened with Dorcas—then there's no reason for Voldemort not to…"

"To hold onto them?" Emmeline says sharply. "To hide them in plain sight?"

"Or to set up kind of—shrines to them," Remus adds. "He probably would still put protections on them all, but he might protect them in such a way that he can still find them if he wants to. We think he might have picked things that matter in some way to him."

"So he's going to do—whatever the hell it is he's doing on his leave of absence to track these things down—and then he'll destroy them himself?"

James shakes his head. "He already approached me a couple months ago about completing missions for him, but he wouldn't tell me what kinds of missions. This has got to be it. For the record, I told him," he adds, shooting a look at Lily, "that if he wants help, he's got over a dozen more members of the Order who would all want to help, most of whom haven't been exiled from the British Isles. I mean, I can help a little, but I can only help from here."

"Yeah, because Lily cock-blocked him until he agreed not to get himself killed for this," says Sirius with a snicker.

James continues as if he hadn't heard Sirius, which is impressive given the reactions of literally everyone in the room. "But I don't think he's just going to put everything on one person—I'll bet you anything he's going to give bits and pieces of missions to different people, so that nobody knows the full plan."

And Mary can't take it anymore. "And you don't think that's strange?" she finally bursts, "that he wants to keep the plan to himself?" All eyes flick to her. "I mean, you aren't even supposed to have seen this memory, are you? And now, you want us to—what? Play along as if we don't know what he's up to if he starts delegating this stuff to us, all while running your own parallel crackpot mission to find these things just in case Dumbledore doesn't?"

"So you don't want to help Dumbledore do what needs to be done to kill Voldemort?" Sirius accuses her, raising his eyebrows.

"I'm saying," says Mary with impatience, "that all of this is theory. It's a good theory, but it's all conjecture, and we have no proof that this is the way to kill You-Know-Who or even that these Horcruxes exist in the first place. For all we know, Dumbledore doesn't even want our help, and if he does, he's not going to want us to be in on this—not like he is—as he shouldn't! We have no reason to trust that his plan will work, and we have absolutely no reason to go after these things blind."

"You can call him Voldemort, you know."

James's comment catches Mary off guard. "What?"

"You're the only one of us who doesn't call him by his name by now. You don't have to flinch every time someone says it. His name is Voldemort. You can call him Voldemort."

"Right, because the only way I can get your respect is to blindly follow you," says Mary furiously. "That's what this is, isn't it? You didn't want me around until I came back to the Order, and you won't want me around anymore if I don't go along with your stupid, reckless—"

"We're not seventeen years old anymore!" yells Sirius. "We're all of age. We're full members of the Order. We're old enough to risk our lives every night to save innocent people. Marlene has already died for this cause—you want that to be in vain? Marlene would have wanted—"

"How do you know what Marlene would have wanted? I knew her best. I was her best friend. I loved her more than you or anyone else did—"

"You loved her the most? You were barely friends by the end of her life. Marlene and I may not have still been together when she died, but she and I were closer once than you and Marlene ever were—"

"I was in love with her!" Mary erupts.

For the second time, the room goes silent. Emmeline even stops pacing back and forth to stare at her. "You—you—" says Sirius.

"That's right. I'm a flaming, bloody lesbian, and my marriage is a sham, and I was in love with her," says Mary. "So don't you dare try and tell me what it's like to love Marlene, to know Marlene, because I know. I was the one paying attention the whole time you were destroying her. She may not have loved me like I loved her, but I was paying attention. Marlene wouldn't have wanted her whole family to get massacred because of her involvement in the Order, and she wouldn't want the rest of us getting massacred for this, either."

Sirius looks floored. He doesn't respond—instead, it's Em who says, "We're all going to get massacred anyway if somebody doesn't try and stop him. You can do what you want, but I'm in."

"I am, too," says Alice quietly.

"James and I will do what we can to research things from Canada," says Lily stiffly.

It's not like Mary didn't know she was going to be outnumbered, but to have them throw it in her face like this—for them not to say anything when she accuses them of only caring about her when she's risking her neck on fruitless suicide missions—she feels like she's going to be sick.

She rejoined the Order for a reason, she reminds herself. Maybe Marlene would want Mary and the others to get themselves killed for this mission, maybe she wouldn't—Mary was lying when she said she knew for sure—but Sirius is right that Mary isn't seventeen and scared shitless anymore. Well, maybe the scared shitless part is still true, but without Marlene here, Mary doesn't really care if she herself lives or dies. If she's angry about people putting themselves into needless danger, she's angry on behalf of her friends, not herself.

Nobody else votes, but then again, nobody else needs to: Mary already knows what side they're all on. "Fine," she says. "We do this your way. But when we're all dead in six months, and You-Know-Who is still in power, we'll see who's left in the world to survive him."

Sirius starts to argue, but she Disapparates before he has a chance to finish. Back home, Reg is in the living room and looks up casually from his Evening Prophet when Mary appears. "Back already?" he asks. "I thought dinner with the Gryffindors would take longer."

"I left," Mary says simply.

"Is everything okay? Mare—"

"It's fine. I'm fine. Do we have any leftovers from yesterday in the icebox?"

xx

She's not really being entirely rational when it comes to her feelings about the Order. Mary knows that, and she's willing to fully admit it, if only to herself. It just makes her so mad that her friends are diving all the way into Dumbledore's plan without him even having the decency to tell it to them, with them having to figure it out on their own, when all it's going to do is get them killed. Is it fair to be pissed at Dumbledore for keeping so many plans secret and simultaneously be pissed at the other Gryffindors for wanting to find out that plan and follow it? Not really. But so many people Mary loves have died—the person Mary loved most in this world has died—and her anger doesn't have to be rational. Her fear doesn't have to be rational.

Talk about seeing darkly. They have no idea whether what they're doing will have any lasting, positive effect on the world—that goes for everything the Order does, not just Sirius and Remus's lunatic Horcrux mission—and yet here they are, forging ahead anyway, because if they don't, they're all going to die anyway.

Well, Mary's had it. Mary has had enough.

Lily sends Mary an owl the next night, but Mary doesn't even read the thing, ripping up the letter just as soon as she can wrench it off the string dangling from Walsh's leg. Reg is in the room, too, and raises an eyebrow and says her name, but she just shakes her head violently and storms off into the bedroom.

She just wants Marlene to be here and make it okay. But, of course, the sensible part of Mary's brain reminds her that she and Marlene had diametrically opposed feelings on the issue, that Sirius was right about hunting Horcruxes being what Marlene would have wanted, and that Marlene hadn't really been Mary's best friend in an exceptionally long time. If anything, Marlene being here talking to her about the Horcrux plan would just infuriate Mary further.

When the next letter comes on Wednesday, she almost rips that one up, too—but it's not from Lily, and she doesn't recognize the owl it arrives with or the loopy handwriting on the outside of the parchment bearing her name. "Who's that from?" Reg asks with interest as she rips it open and scans it.

"Dumbledore," she says. She shouldn't be telling him this, of course, but she's so surprised that Dumbledore is contacting her directly that the words slip out without her permission.

"Dumbledore is owling you? What does he want?"

"I don't know," says Mary. It's not a lie: the letter says that Dumbledore wants to meet her tomorrow night, but it doesn't say why.

"Mare, what's going on with you lately?" Reg asks.

"I don't know what you mean," she says a little too hastily.

"Mare," he repeats. She looks at him—his eyes are big and earnest, and he's frowning. "I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and you're not in bed—you're not anywhere in the flat. You're going off for dinners with the Gryffindors and coming home fifteen minutes later, still hungry. And now Dumbledore is writing to you? Just—please, Mare, tell me what's going on."

"It's about Marlene," says Mary, and that's not exactly a lie, either. "I just… can't talk about it."

Reg sighs. "I know how much you miss her, Mary. I do. But you're not—tell me you're not concocting some crazy scheme to try to avenge her. She was killed by You-Know-Who's people—there's no avenging anyone when it comes to them." When she doesn't reply, he adds with a note of urgency, "That's not what this is about, is it?"

"Of course it's not," she snaps. "I just can't talk about it. Reg, I have to go."

"More food-free dinners with Gryffindors?" says Reg, his frown deepening.

"Don't try and be witty, Reg, it doesn't become you. Anyway, I'm getting drinks with Ver."

"You and I both know perfectly well that Ver is spending the evening in Hogsmeade with Greta. They're probably at the post office right now picking out which owl Ver wants to use to write to Gilderoy in Turkey."

"Well, I can't stay here."

"And why is that? I'm your husband. You're supposed to share your life with me. You're supposed to tell me the things that are upsetting you so that I can help you through them."

"No one can help me!" Mary shouts. "You-Know-Who is going to kill us all in a year or two or ten, anyway. What does any of it matter? What do you care if I keep secrets? You didn't notice when Marlene was alive—or if you did, you didn't say you did. Tell me: what the hell has changed? She's not a threat to you anymore, so why choose now?"

"Not a threat to me? What's that supposed to mean?"

It's the closest she's ever come to admitting her feelings for Marlene in front of Reg. Part of her has wondered for a while now whether he already knows—it's not like she's that stealthy, and it's not like the people who knew never gossip about things like this—but he looks genuinely confused. "Forget it," Mary says. "I have to go."

"Where? We've already established that Ver—"

"I have to go away from here."

In her anger and haste, she almost forgets to respond to Dumbledore's letter. She scrawls out an agreement to meet him tomorrow night—he's given her the location of some remote-ass clearing in a Scottish forest, and Mary wonders exactly where Dumbledore has been staying on his leave of absence—and then Disapparates in such a rush that she almost Splinches herself.

She lands in Diagon Alley and pays for a room overnight at The Leaky Cauldron—she doesn't want to be around her fellow Gryffindors and especially doesn't want to stay with Reg, so if Ver is busy with Greta, she's on her own finding a place to crash for the night. When she lets herself into her shabby room and plunks down on the twin bed, the mirror opposite her informs her that she's looking a bit peaky. She ignores it.

Work the next day cheers her up a little. For her Daily Prophet column this week, she's doing a segment on Bicorns, and Mary's mind is kept blissfully occupied as a couple of Welsh magizoologists walk her through how to track some Bicorns down and collect the horns that they've shedded for the year to use in several potions. They're incredibly dangerous if you directly get their attention, and it takes all of Mary's concentration to track the beasts unnoticed.

All too soon, five o'clock rolls around, and it's time to meet Dumbledore. With a sigh, she Disapparates, predictably landing several kilometers away from the location that Dumbledore gave her (typical for Mary when she tries to Apparate someplace she's never been). By the time she finds the place, she's twenty minutes late, but Dumbledore—who is perched precariously on a large, flat rock—doesn't look at all cheered by her arrival.

"Hello, Missus Cattermole," he says, bowing his head.

"So what's this about?" she asks, figuring that there's not much point in exchanging pleasantries and she's not in the mood for it regardless.

Dumbledore looks a little taken aback, but he recovers quickly. "I'm here to ask you for a favor," he says.

He reaches inside the left pocket of his traveling cloak and pulls out an egg—a chicken's egg, Mary would guess. He reaches inside the right pocket and pulls out a wriggling toad.

Care of Magical Creatures was Mary's best subject at Hogwarts, and it only takes her a moment to place what Dumbledore's asking her to do. "You want me to breed a basilisk. A basilisk."

"Only long enough to hatch it and drain it of its venom," says Dumbledore, as if that makes it better somehow. "It needn't stay alive for long."

"Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to breed basilisks? I could easily get half of England murdered by the thing in a day if it kills me and gets left unchecked. All it takes is one glance, Professor. I'm not doing it."

"Come now, Mary," he says. He's still speaking in light tones, but something about his eyes is steely. "You bred dragons for the Ministry before you left your post to campaign for Missus Potter. I wouldn't entrust this to you if I didn't have full confidence that it was within your grasp."

"Say that I can breed one and collect its venom," says Mary. "I can't breed it just to kill it off again in good conscience. It's still a living, conscious thing. It still feels pain."

Dumbledore doesn't answer.

"And I don't suppose you're going to tell me what, pray tell, you need basilisk venom for, are you?"

"Would you believe me if I told you that the fate of humanity may depend on it?"

After a minute's deliberation, she stretches out a hand. "Give them here."

He looks like he was expecting her to put up more of a fight than this. "You'll do it?"

"Tell me what this has to do with the Horcruxes."

Dumbledore chuckles softly. "I should have known. I suspected as much the moment Minerva told me that someone broke into the Headmistress's office at Hogwarts, but I had rather hoped your friend Mr. Black would place more faith in me than this."

"So you won't tell me?"

He pauses. "We've come to something of a stalemate, I'm afraid."

Reluctantly, she puts her hands out again, and Dumbledore passes her the egg and the toad. She's still scowling by the time she Apparates back home.

xx

She's cooled off a little by the time Remus reaches out and sets up a dinner date. She's still pissed at him and everybody else from Gryffindor after their argument about Voldemort's Horcruxes, but she can still appreciate that she and Remus haven't really talked since before he almost died—or since she came out to the rest of her year in Gryffindor as gay. For a long time, Remus and Marlene were the only ones who knew, and she couldn't exactly have talked to Marlene about it even when Marlene was still alive, not when Marlene was the object of Mary's affections—and when their friendship had been slowly dying for years.

Remus, on the other hand—Mary's always been able to talk to him about being in love with Marlene because she's known the whole time that he was in love with Sirius. She still remembers the day they came out to each other: they'd snuck out of the castle with Sirius and Alice for Mary's birthday, and she'd gotten drunk and attempted to make out with a half-veela she met in a bar. Sirius and Alice didn't think anything of it, assuming that anybody could be susceptible to a veela's charms when they were that drunk, but Remus realized, probably because he already had gay on the brain, so to speak. Mary had a bit of a breakdown after that, and Remus took her aside in the Shrieking Shack, of all places, and asked her if there was anything she wanted to share with him—and told her about Sirius when she came clean about Marlene.

Ever since, Remus has been the person Mary's leaned on whenever she's been feeling particularly messed up about Marlene, which frankly tends to happen all the time, especially now that Marlene is dead and has left Mary here alone with her regrets. Horcruxes or no Horcruxes, fight or no fight, Mary still needs Remus—still depends on their big gay bond at times like this.

"I still can't really believe I admitted it to everyone, and like that," Mary confesses as she stirs her soda with her straw. They're in Muggle Britain today: she doesn't want to take any chances of being overheard by any witches or wizards who might know Reg and report back to him, even with Muffliato at her disposal. "Half of me is like—I'm sick of hiding who I am, and I don't care if they're shocked or they think less of me now that they know. But the other half is terrified that word is going to get out and back to Reg and—"

Remus's eyes are kind. "For what it's worth, I don't think anybody is going to spread word around. I know as well as you do that we can all be awful, nasty gossips—" Mary snorts at this because she's the worst of the lot, or at least used to be "—but if they want to debrief about it, they'll do it with each other. Nobody's going to talk to anybody who doesn't already know, and they're definitely not going to tell Cattermole."

"Am I a horrible person for staying with him? I keep lying to him—not just about the Order, although it's worse now that I'm lying about that, too, but about being gay and about how I really felt about Marlene. I don't want to live without him, but it's not because I… I know I'm not in love with him, but I do love him. It's… complicated."

Remus sighs. "You're not a horrible person, Mare. I've never dated a woman before, but I hid how I felt about Sirius to everyone for a long time, and I know how scary it can be to—disrupt the lie you've built up around yourself to hide it."

"But he deserves better than me. He deserves somebody who can reciprocate. Even if they never tell him now that they know, I don't like the idea that—that everybody else in my life who matters knows, and he's in the dark. It's already like that in the Order, and now that I couldn't keep my bloody trap shut about this…"

But Remus doesn't have any answers for her. How could he? It's her mess, and there's only one way out of it, and she knows that telling the truth to Reg about anything is not an option.