An Early Morning
Dear Mary,
Have you ever wondered what possesses people to share themselves with others? I was thinking about an extremely embarrassing story I had to tell you (which was so unimportant it slipped my mind) and suddenly marveled at the fact that I even had the urge to tell you in the first place. I mean, this story probably would’ve destroyed some portion of your respect for me! Why would I do such a thing? Truly, I think it should be studied in a lab or something like that. What makes a person trustable? What makes people sense it so quickly? See, I’d trust you even if I’d never met you before. Immediately, I know I’d be at perfect ease with you. What does that even mean?
In a muggle life, I was probably a very insufferable therapist, I’d imagine. Tragically for you, I’m afraid you’re catching the full brunt of this missed career opportunity.
(P.S. My running theory is that trust is in the eyes.)
(P.S.S. People with beautiful eyes, like yours, couldn’t ever be untrustworthy.)
Conducting a case study,
Lily Evans
---
Dear Lily,
In a probably more paranoid way, I have wondered the same thing! London isn’t always a fun place to be, but I tell you all about it, and that almost makes it better, in a way. I see what you mean in the strangeness of that. I think it lies in the fact that I know nothing you could tell me would destroy my respect for you, so most parts of me hope that I’m the same for you. Sadly for your experiments, I don’t think that could ever be measured in a lab. That makes it a little bit scarier too, I guess. Anything we say will only ever be a theory, never actually fact. There’s no protection, you know? Besides the fact that in my mind, you equal safety. I get what you mean about the immediacy of that, too. You’ll always be safe, and it’ll always be clear as day to me.
For all those reasons, I’d want you to be my muggle therapist.
(P.S. I don’t believe this nonsense of forgetting the most embarrassing story of all time.)
(P.S.S. It seems like an excuse to me! I expect a very good explanation.)
Your test subject,
Mary Macdonald
Chapter 13: An Early Morning
When the school was still dark, the sky still sipping on tea, and all the sounds of the castle still dropped to a distant murmur, Mary obeyed her summons to the Headmasters office and strolled through the empty corridors to find Dumbledore. All she needed was to exchange her galleons and she could be off to the owlery to send out real pounds to her sisters. It was so stupid that wizards had their own currency and all, at least in Mary’s opinion. They lived with muggles a grand lot of the time. They shopped and bought clothes with them, at least in the case of young people. Out of all the things to have a specialty complex about, she didn’t understand why it had to be money.
Even worse, they made the process of getting the actual cash the most god-awful embarrassing thing in the entire school. Hogwarts was in very bad need of a secretary, or a registrar, or really any person who could handle such odious tasks besides the man who ran the whole school.
Hastily, she came to stand in front of a rather hideous stone gargoyle and glanced at the paper, looking to find whatever characteristically inane password Dumbledore had for her.
“Peppermint Imp,” she declared proudly, and began hiking up the tower's steps.
Mary stepped into a circular chamber, a desk sitting squarely in the middle of it, surrounded by spindle legged tables and the sounds of gently ticking machinery. She could tell immediately that there were secrets hiding inside each nook in this room, secrets that she did not want to find out.
“Ah! Miss Macdonald!” She heard a voice float down from atop one set of curving stairs. The patter of footsteps went along with it, bringing that smooth sound closer and closer to her.
Dumbledore was a formidable man, by her standards. His starkly grey hair and beard fell as a shroud around his head, usually topped off by some ridiculous hat or another. His robes always came in a pastel hue. She did not like the way he always seemed to speak in prophecies, like he had all the answers to where their lives were heading. Even now, the Headmaster looked at her with an aura that saw right through everything. Greatly, Mary suspected that his spectacles were laced with magic.
“Hello sir,” she replied, feeling funny in her own manner of talking. They didn’t teach how to talk to authority figures very well in Brixton. She was not nearly posh enough, not nearly smart enough, to ever come close to how she should behave.
“I hear you have some galleons to exchange with me, eh?”
“Yes sir, I’m very sorry sir.” She kept her head down, and did not look after that initial stare.
“There is no need to apologize, truly it is my pleasure.” He smiled lightly and sat down at his desk, opening a drawer and beckoning her forward. “Now let’s see what we have here.”
She took the chair opposite him, nearly being eaten whole by the periwinkle blue cushions. Her galleons rattled to a halt on the wooden surface, shimmering under the soft fiery lighting of Dumbledore’s office. He counted each individual coin with one long, spidery finger and a small murmur for each addition.
“All told Miss Macdonald, you have yourselves around eighty pounds,” he told her in a softly rasping voice. She would have been half worried the old man was going to puff out and die right there had it not been for the insistently keen fire in his eyes.
“That’s amazing,” she replied, trying to produce studious and appropriate wonder.
“I shouldn’t dare to ask where you’ve gotten all this money from, should I?”
She raised an eyebrow at him, not enjoying this line of questioning in the least. “No professor, it’s really all right.”
“How do you manage then? If it’s not trouble explaining.” Dumbledore smiled with each word. Mary almost smacked the smarmy bloke upside the head.
“I give boy advice,” she quickly explained. “Very, very, very excellent boy advice.”
“Advice that is worth that much? I’d say you were a prophet!” He chuckled, and she nodded too. No use denying it now.
“Prophet-adjacent, I prefer.”
The Headmaster chuckled and clapped his hands lightly in a manner not quite becoming of any warlock.
“Well then, I’m pleased your powers go towards a good cause.”
Mary shrugged her approval. It was halfway true, anyway. She’d practically gotten James and Lily together. If she managed to even so much as spook Marlene in a sideways direction, she’d probably do the same for her too.
“I have only one more question then, where does this money intend to go?”
She could answer that one easily, not a lie to be seen. She was as proud of it as the clear blue sky.
“My sisters, Headmaster. They’re living with my mother back in London and I’m sending them some money, just to help them out.”
“Ah yes, very noble. I see why you were sorted,” he mused airily. She couldn’t help but frown. Did he know of the troubles she’d had in Gryffindor? Had this wizened old man somehow found out about the fact that she was a coward, and not nearly the kind of selfless any other Gryffindor was?
“I hope so, sir.” She couldn’t fully own up to something that wasn’t true, not when he saw right through her. “I’m only trying to stay in touch with my family, really.”
“And what is more noble than that?” He splayed his fingers in the air with a dancing, rhythmic movement. Mary nearly giggled at the sight.
“Nothing, I suppose.” She thought about it with rather purposeful intent. If she was there, trapped in that office, she might as well gain some sagely wisdom from it.
“It is important now, more than ever, that we remain proud of our roots. Especially when they are muggle, Miss Macdonald.” Out of nowhere, Dumbledore’s voice took an ominous tone. He stared at her through the bridge of his tiny glasses, watching with unflinching eyes as she worked through what he said.
It was all the same as his speech at the feast, the usual mantra all wizards who prided themselves on being just did. Muggle-borns had to remain strong. They always had an enemy, always had someone who wished them dead and gone. The Headmaster didn’t need to go around touting this knowledge at her. Mary heard it in the corridors, scratched out the words written into the back of textbooks, and silently cursed any fool who dared say it with vigor.
“Of course you sir,” she told him firmly, “I’m very proud.”
Without another thought of listening to him prattle on, she scooped up her money, spun around in the chair, and made for the door.
Still, Headmaster Dumbledore’s voice insisted on following.
“You should take care to remember that now.” He called to her retreating figure. “Remember it, and do not fail in remembering.”
***
Mary marched her way to the owlery, money tucked into the envelope she’d prepared for this exact purpose. She’d written her sisters a little note too, only detailing all of the most basic things about her life. She told them how she loved them and missed them, how school was going well and her friends were nice, and how she was going to get them the most cracker Christmas presents. Things had to be kept light for the triplets. They were too sweet for this world, too sweet to be hurt.
In the usual odd way, she was excited to finally get the letter sent off. It felt good to be doing something actually worthwhile for once instead of simply talking aimlessly about boys or the latest in gossip news. Not that any of those things didn’t have merit, obviously. Mary adored her regular past times like they were religious rituals, but they made her feel somewhat awful inside. To think that her sisters could be hungry and she was gallivanting at school, kissing and sleeping in late and eating so much food, that was unspeakable.
Of course, her path could not be so easy. Waiting for her in the entrance to the owlery itself was Lily, hair drawn back into a loose braid, her eyes still blinking away some semblance of sleep.
“Oh God, you didn’t-” she sighed heartily, already predicting the interruption.
“I followed you here, yes.” Lily said matter of factly. She looked beautiful and especially so for early in the morning, her green eyes flashing with tired haze. Momentarily, Mary was glad that she’d followed her here and that she’d gotten to catch the sight at all.
“That’s not crazy at all,” she loosely teased.
“You’re the one being crazy!”
At the raising of Lily’s tone, Mary slipped the envelope into her back pocket. Thank God for muggle clothing and easily accessible storage compartments.
“How am I being crazy, dear?” She honestly wanted to know what was wrong in all this. She needed to hear it from Lily straight away, did she even want to know what was going on?
“You’re sneaking off, not telling me or Marlene where you’re going! She half thinks you’re part of an underground dragon trafficking wing at this point!”
“So I have to give you my every move?” Mary responded indignantly. It wasn’t like she had gone around spreading all of her secrets before anything had happened. “Marlene has quite the mouth on her you know.”
“Well ay,” Lily said soberly. She looked down and bit her lip in a way that nearly felt on purpose, it was so tempting. “I just thought that you’d tell me.”
“So I have to tell you everything now?” She jabbed an accusatory step deeper into the room, inconspicuously scanning for an owl she could use. At this point, the whole fight would be a waste if she couldn’t get the letter out.
“I thought after-” Lily’s words died in her mouth, on the tip of her tongue and in between the breath of her lips. Mary knew that they would.
“After what?” She loved and hated how bitterly her words fell out. Everything, always a dare.
“You know what.”
Of course she did, really. They both did, in the most plainly obvious terms. The “what” was the thing that drove them in every direction, in every meeting that they had or didn’t have or even had with other people. That “what” which they’d done at least six times since it happened. The “what” that never seemed to quit.
She gently took hold of an owl and shook her head at Lily’s words, tying the parchment around one claw.
“I’m not sure I do, not if you can’t say it.”
“Mary-”
She released the owl into the air with finality. It took to the sky, soaring through an open window. She prayed with all the might that she’d ever been taught that it would move quickly. In her heart she knew that Lily was praying for the same thing, even if she didn’t know she was. They were always praying for each other.
Mary looked up at her and smiled a little. Lily smiled back.
“I don’t owe you shite.”
Just like the headmaster's office, she fled and did not look back. This time, though, there was a grin on her face and something burning in her core or dancing in the pit of her stomach.
That very night, they cast a silencing spell on Mary’s four-poster bed and made out until the wee hours of the morning, until both of them were red eyed and sleepless. They didn’t whisper anything, didn’t pass any remarks. It was made of silence and lips that neither of them understood, but she loved it just the same.