London Interlude
Chapter 7: London Interlude
Fast asleep, Mary dreamt of a memory she tried to bury so effectively it had a headstone in her mind.
June 11, 1976
In London, people knew how to go out far better than anyone at school. Mary walked down the street in a gaggle of well dressed people, their hair done up elaborately and in shocking fashion. No one looked the same. Each face was so individual she felt like they all must be characters. Her friends all mingled together closer in the back, but she dove to the center of the pack. She longed to be anonymous, practicing for her lifetime of being a beautiful, mysterious girl on the sidewalk, the kind she loved to watch.
They’d taken the tube to Soho to hit up a club they’d never ever been to before. It was an escape, their chance to see into a different kind of life people were leading.
Now, they walked along the bright streets, lights flashing against her retinas so hard that it hurt. Wizards never appreciated the fact that muggles had done all this, the brilliant sights and sounds, without a hint of magic. They’d produced something to that mystical effect without getting in on any of the real process. To Mary, that was incredible.
A girl named Diane was already falling over herself drunk, stumbling over Mary as they came about the club.
“Oi Mac, you ‘cited yet?” she slurred and held onto her arm.
“Sure am, if I don’t have to babysit you all night long,” she winked as they slipped past the bouncer.
“Don’t worry about me! Brixton girls don’t fall alone, I’ll be pulling you down with me.” Arm in arm, they plunged into the club.
Mary adored music. She adored the feeling of body’s pressed right against hers, and she adored forgetting about the fact that she was dead broke and wasn’t going to be able to eat lunch for a week because she was in this place.
Lights flashed overhead like they were on a new planet. Music was pumped through large speakers that made her feel nauseous and on the edge of vomiting, her heart being shot nearly straight out of her mouth. Everybody inside the club was beautiful, and knew that they were. Even with their awful spray tans, insane fashion choices, and hair that was too large for life or the room, each of them were commanding. She found it fascinating how all social groups found it so easy to make themselves exclusive. Wizards had their funny clothes, habits, and castles. Soho party goers had complex rhythms, fashion, and inebriation. It felt like Mary was the only one who knew that they were all forms of magic, one way or another. That was what made both groups able to turn away people at the door. Her understanding, her sight through it, was what gained her acceptance to it all.
Diane, tragically drunken Diane, was gone before Mary could blink twice. No magic could’ve kept her by their side. Whatever slogan she could’ve said about Brixton girls, it was never true. Brixton girls fell alone, and often, especially when the most terrific disco song of the year was playing.
Mary could never remember the name for this one, the one that floated in the air like smoke above the crowd of dancing people. Her friends never could resist a good dance. As soon as she had the drink she very badly needed in her system, she would feel much better, and much more apt to dance.
She took approximately four shots and felt much better about life and the state of the world.
With a somewhat pleased harrumph, she left the bar to find better conquests.
There was a boy hanging off to the side of the dance floor, his blonde hair falling in soft curves against his eyes. The light was casting him in a golden way, pallid but still strong. Immediately, she knew he was the one for the night. He had the correct look about him. His tortured air stood only as a distraction from the fact that he had an important, expensive life to live.
She supposed she understood the feeling enough to make it sexy. The only issue was the tortured half of her life was actually true torture.
Across the whole club she went, hips moving to each beat. The boy was still leaning on his little wall. Still posing, still preening. In the pit of her stomach, she felt a little bit excited.
“Hello there,” she murmured into his ear, sliding against the wall.
Immediately, he turned to her. Their cheeks touched each other, just barely. She was half surprised that his cheekbones didn’t slice a huge gash in her face, and by God, she couldn’t wait to feel his chest beneath her hand.
“I saw you,” he murmured back, “watching me from all the way over there.”
“Oh?” Everytime a thing like this began, she still felt a nervous thrill. It was better than a kiss, those first few words.
“It’s a pity you came to me so soon. I was enjoying your eyes on me.”
“I thought it’d be better up close.” She kissed his cheek.
“You were right.”
The boy kissed her, just as desperate as she was. She smiled into the kiss and let him take the lead. He was a pretty good kisser compared to some of the other ones she’d had. Once she got to it, his hair was soft in her hand. Maybe he had some kind of terrific shampoo, or conditioner made straight from alchemy. Either way, it was an enjoyable experience for her, to say the least.
When the song changed, he went down for her neck. At least the boy knew well enough not to touch her hair, which she prized above all else. It gave her time to search for Diane, at least. She needed to make sure that she was alive.
The dance floor wouldn’t yield anything of the sort. As the boy nipped lower and lower down her shirt she jumped from girl to girl, and couldn’t find even a Diane lookalike. Hopefully she was sitting down somewhere. That was always safer than the dance floor. More people with eyes watching other stationary humans.
Her eyes instead wouldn’t quit finding a different girl, red hair and an outfit that didn’t stop her from imagining what could be seen. Something bit at her earlobe and she couldn’t help but watch as red hair twirled around outstretched fingers. The figure in front of her was fiery. In the middle of the dance floor, all dark shades against sharp neons, she was a column of pure flame.
After more kisses, more presses of the lips, the girl wouldn’t disappear. She kept bleeding through masses of blonde locks, puncturing the haze of her drunkenness. Mary couldn’t do it anymore. The boy wasn’t working like he was supposed to. Things had been wrong like this before, but nothing else had ever made Mary’s antidote absolutely null.
Her imagination did quick work, of course. Soon she was seeing things she should not have been. She didn’t want to see them anymore. Without any more passing of saliva, she stormed out of the club and back to the tube and her real side of town, where she belonged.
The city was cold at night. The Underground was filled with staring, glassy eyes that didn’t see her but their own reflection in the windows behind them. She stopped at the chippy, blowing her breakfast budget for the next morning, because she needed something in her stomach if she didn’t want to end up vomiting. Mary needed another taste from the boy's mouth, because it only made her think about awfully flashing green eyes. Chips would be much better. There was a thing she could really love.
Back at the flat, she made her way through the darkened living area. Her sisters were soundly asleep in their room, her mother was passed out on the couch, and she felt satisfied enough to go to sleep.
She would’ve been able to fall immediately unconscious had there not been a letter on her bed, waiting and addressed in perfect handwriting. The mattress creaked beneath her weight. Her food felt sickening now. She laid down to sleep, still in the dress that had made her feel so beautiful only hours ago, and instead found herself reading.
Dear Mary,
I miss you terribly today, though I’m not quite sure why. It feels like a day you’d enjoy. Everybody is busy in town and there are people to observe, boys to talk to. The sun is out and there are birds in the sky. It’s a good day for ice cream and some light salad or something. I don’t know, really. I just wish I was with you. Is it possible that I see you everywhere, in so many things? Forgive me if this comes off as brash, but I feel like I haven’t really known you for who you really are this summer. Sure, I consider us to have previously been the very best of friends, obviously, but it feels different now. I used to know you as Mary Macdonald, Londoner, witch, and absolute fiend for gossip and wit. Now I feel as if I know you as something deeper, something that couldn't ever find a name. I’m very sorry for this whole trailing off business. It felt like it had to come out of me eventually.
How’s London? Do you wish I was there as much as I do?
(P.S. I never knew how much you liked food until this summer, for example.)
(P.P.S. And I never knew how beautiful a mundane fact like that could be, either.)
Yours in confidence,
Lily Evans
She didn’t sleep much that night, nor did she ever respond to the letter. In fact, she pretended she’d never even received it. Lost in the mail, she and Lily both decided that’s what had happened to the poor thing.
Back at Hogwarts, it was the kind of thing she consigned only to a dream. Mary decided that if it could only live unconsciously, maybe nothing Lily had said or anything she had felt in response was real. Still, she knew better. Things, tumbling one after another, continued to confirm that sinking suspicion.