Julien's Gift
Dear Mary,
The season is in full swing over here! Christmas in Killarney, as they say. It’s fun to see all of everybody finally being home for the holidays, the girls in town fawning over the new fellas and families reuniting! I feel like I know everyone again, and it’s very comforting. Also, my mother has brought out all of her old recipe’s again! I tell you, I feel like a child again. Eating Christmas cookies, having my fill of gingerbread. Badly, I wish I could show it to you.
I hope things are good and lively in London too! And extra Christmas-y!
With much cheer,
Lily Evans
---
Dear Lily,
The Yuletide is certainly being felt here in London town, I tell you! There’s always nice things to do here, walking under the lights, catching sight of Saint Nick in particularly odd shops. People have even popped up selling hot chocolate all over! How nice is that, eh? I can’t say the same thing about childhood recipes, of which I’ve never had. We’re making good progress on food and everything too though, so I think that Christmas Eve and Christmas Day will be a fun occasion all the same. Still, how much I imagine Killarney.
Your spirit alone is enough to set my cheer to the next level. Thank you, dear.
Attempting to match the spirit,
Mary Macdonald
Chapter 22
The days of break slid by in a whirlwind of triplet activity that swept Mary away from most things. She kept up a hearty correspondence with Lily, receiving four letters in as many days, and took morning walks with Julien when he would show up.
Pretty soon, it was the day before Christmas Eve, and even sooner, it was Christmas Eve itself. Mary’s mother had managed to get a whole two days off, leaving them all in an awkward state of family. On this Christmas Eve, the girls were sitting around the television watching a holiday program while they cooked a small dinner in the kitchen.
Her mother wasn’t really drunk, only slightly tipsy, which made Mary feel some kind of fear. Her mother was never kind when she could remember.
“Could you pass me the salt, Ma?” she asked politely. Her mother coughed, and handed her the salt to mix into some mashed potatoes.
For all the time she’d been home, this was the closest they’d been. She wondered what Lily’s mother was like in the kitchen. She wondered if they talked while they cooked dinner, or if it was as silent as the Macdonald flat currently was. Over the sound of inane cartoons, she thought that Mrs. Evans would probably detest Mary if she ever met. Women like her must be able to see it on her face, see the way she looked at her daughter. She turned her eyes away from her mother, afraid that she could see just as much.
“There were carollers on the corner the other night, did you see them?” She realized she didn’t have to make eye contact with her mother to have a conversation, so dove head first into covering up everything that was wrong with her.
“Can’t say I did,” her mother replied. Mary frowned, whisking at the potatoes, which were turning out watery.
“It was really lovely.”
“Sounds it.” She could only pretend that she understood why her mother was carrying on being so miserable. It made her half want to cry.
“The city’s so nice this time of year, don’t you think? I love being back home.” Still, even though she didn’t understand, she kept on trying. Her mother frowned angrily. If Mary didn’t understand one lick of her mother’s psyche, her mother couldn’t see why the hell she insisted on trying so hard.
“What, they don’t have Christmas at the damn school I send you to?” She dropped her fist to the table, leaving an empty, thudding, rattling noise.
Susan looked up from the television to pear through the narrow opening from the living room to the kitchen. Mary tried to smile at her, shooting a little thumbs up. Her sisters knew that their mother hated her, but she couldn’t stand to watch them know it.
“No, no, they do!” she desperately explained. “Christmas is great at school, it’s just nicer here.”
“Of course, you’re better than all of us now.”
Mary just stood there, set her mashed potatoes to the side, and stared at the counter.
“Isn’t that right, Mary? Isn’t it?” The thing about family was, they looked crazy in the same way. She had her mother’s eyes, brown and warm irises that got wide and desperate when they started to get angry.
“Come on, Ma,” she said in a very pronounced whisper, “I just got home, can’t it just be Christmas?” They kept asking each other questions, questions they couldn’t answer.
“We haven’t had Christmas in a long time.” Her mother responded.
“That’s true.” They could agree on one thing.
She didn’t remember her last Christmas with her dad. She had the gift to prove it happened, a little toy pony he’d bought from the secondhand store a couple blocks away. The pony lived at the bottom of her trunk at Hogwarts, languishing in a state of rubbed-off paint and rubber disrepair. He’d left them a month later at the end of a cold, bleak January. When she was younger, Mary had dreamed that the pony was a sign. One day her father would come back riding a pony to take her and her mother away. They’d all be happy again. That’s why she couldn’t look at the pony anymore, and why they hadn’t had Christmas since.
“Forget it,” her mother grumbled. “Do you have a lad yet? It’s been too long since I’ve asked.”
That was the only thing her mother really cared about. She wanted exactly to know which boy could be trusted to break Mary’s heart, like it was some sort of karma, like Mary had been the one to drive her dad away.
“I have a boyfriend, yeah. Back at school.”
“Well, good job then! It was about time, I say,” her mother talked absentmindedly, thankfully quieter than before. “That school is doing you one good thing. I mean, it’s strange but you’ve always been a strange girl, and in worse ways than just going to a right odd school-”
“Jesus, Ma.”
“Don’t take the Lord’s name.” That was another thing Mary’s mother loved, the Lord. She felt herself cowering in his invoked presence, reminding her of her name and her place and everything that her mother would so badly hate.
“Bugger off then, Ma.”
“There’s my girl,” her mother taunted. “All the same, except you finally decided to like boys.”
Mary clenched her fists in defeat. She didn’t know what else to say.
“And that boy you’ve been slagging with, eh? Who’s he?” Yet her mother would never stop.
“Julien’s just a frie-”
“Does your boyfriend know about him then, girl?”
“No, not-”
Her mother breathed in so deep, cutting Mary off with pure fear. She made herself so small. Maybe if she shrunk enough her mother would forget that she’d ever lived there at all, the triplets wouldn’t have to see her in defeat.
“You are just like your father.” There it was, finally. She’d half been waiting for it since they’d started making what the Macdonalds passed as the first course.
Mary backed away from the counter, turned her head to the floor, and walked away. She knew that her mother needed to say this to her. She needed to vocalize the fault in this situation, the blame that would always lay with Mary for sharing any of his genes. So she took it, and did not complain.
She kissed each of the triplets on their heads and told them to get her in half an hour for Christmas Eve supper, knowing that her mother wouldn’t dream of doing so.
Then, she shut herself in her room and stared at the ceiling. Mary stared for so long she forgot that her eyes were even open as they drifted over the light and the graying crown molding.
Her mother was right, when it came right down to it. Just like her father, she was good at abandoning things. Half the people she loved had caught far too many sights of her with her back turned, walking out of the room, and she hated herself for it. And because she hated herself, she hated all the people who she walked out on. She hated Sirius and Lily and Julien and all of her friends because of all the way they proved what was wrong with her.
Right down to it, her mother could see what she’d done. She could see Julien for what she’d done and why she’d done it. That was that. Mary was just like her father.
After dinner, the girls told her about how Saint Nick was going to come, and Mary told them about ponies long gone by.
***
On Christmas day, Mary took the triplets out for breakfast with the last of her cigarette money. Her mother was drunk again, so she was much more peaceable. That, or she knew she’d already done her duty of kicking Mary back into place.
Whatever was going on, the damage was done. Julien showed up at the tail end of breakfast, she’d invited him days ago. He was a different kind of boy from her usual. She got the feeling he wasn’t a boyfriend, nor just a friend. He was the kind of guy who was allowed around her sisters, the kind that understood her.
Obviously, she could barely stand to talk to him.
“Josie, you best be giving me a bite of that strudel!” Currently, Julien was joking with Josephine, pretending to yank at her pastry while the other girls lost their minds with laughter.
“Calm down, both of you,” Mary told them, reaching out to grab her sister away. “I think breakfast is over, anyway.”
The girls immediately started whining at her. They had a nasty habit of tugging on her jacket sleeves when they got annoyed, and she had to yank her arms away at their grabbing hands.
“Don’t you want to go play with your presents!” she called out to them in an awkward attempt to laugh over the noise of the coffee shop. She’d got them a used deck of Exploding Snap and three knight figurines to split amongst themselves and duel with each other, which was all possibly breaking about fifty wizarding laws, but were the perfect presents.
The girls erupted with joy, “Yes, yes, yes!” They all called in unison, and she looked at Julien half apologetically.
He tried to say something, but she cut him off.
“You guys can run along home, right?” she crouched down in front of the triplets, “Mrs. Gordon told me you’re good with the streets now.”
“Sure Mary,” Jane winked.
“We’ve got it!” Susan assured.
“I’ll lead the way,” Josephine confirmed, and they were off like a rocket.
She turned to Julien and frowned, wishing he would disappear. The lad was probably seeing right through her by now. He was very good at formulating his questions for her ahead of time like the most skilled of interviewers.
“Are you alright?” He stood right in front of her with those very piercing eyes. She looked at the floor.
“I’m fine, Julien. It’s been a nice morning, but I’m not sure how good of an idea this is.”
“This?” he objected. “What’s this, then?”
“Oh come off it, it’s us.” She rolled her eyes which made him laugh. They were always making each other laugh, which made her roil with anger.
“Everything has been fine with us until this morning. You’ve turned into Frankenstein, Boogeyman kind of arsehole quiet. What the hell is up with that?”
“Nothing is up, I just don’t feel like talking to you much.” Mary tried to shrug and failed miserably.
“Come on, Macdonald, don’t feel like talking to me do you?” Jesus, she hated it when beautiful people were frustrated with her. It was the same with Lily, though the feeling in her gut felt a little bit different. With Lily, she burned, and with Julien, everything felt sick and twisted.
“Bugger-”
“Just tell me what’s wrong.” In the middle of that crowded coffee shop, he took her hand. “All I want is to know, ok?”
“Nothing happened,” she murmured, shaking her head.
“I’ve had my fair share of bitterness and pain, Mary. I can recognize what it looks like better than most, and I can see it on your face.”
“It’s nothing.” Even more insistently, she objected in his face.
“Is it about your Ma? Did she go after you?” Julien, the bastard, pounded even harder.
“Jesus, she’s my mother, it’s her job.”
Mary covered her face with her hands, pressing the tips of her fingers against her eyes. She couldn’t hear about this, imagining somehow that her mother would be able to hear it too and see her face. “I deserved it, Julien. I’ve always deserved it.”
“I got it.” Julien let their hands fall limp between them as he stepped back and looked at her. “It’s about what we did the other night, and your mother too?”
Her face fell and went absolutely numb, horribly numb, even. She hated him, the slimy arsehole. She hated him and she hated his eyes and she hated not knowing whether he was about to hate her too or not.
Then, he practically fell forward and engulfed her in a hug. “It’s gonna be alright. It’s gonna be okay.”
No one had told her that in a very long time. If she’d ever had the heart for it, that would’ve been when she’d broken into tears.
“Let’s walk, don’t you think?” he said, taking her by the arm. “I promise, you can tell me anything, Mary, anything in the world. I’d understand more than you know, if you let me. I’m a pretty smart fella like that.” Julien rambled on and on, leaving Mary more and more certain on what he so believed he would understand and accept.
“What is this, Julien?”
Out in the cold air, she felt like she was shrinking and he was the only thing keeping her regular sized, or large enough to be seen by the naked eye.
“Can I take you out tonight? No strings attached, obviously, obviously, but I just have something to show you! No girls, just the two of us.”
He winked, and that was that, she had to say yes. Just like that, she had a way to finish off her Christmas Day.
“I’ll see you tonight,” she said.
“Where something hot!” he called, and she walked away fast enough that he didn’t get another chance to gloat.
***
At ten-thirty, Julien picked her up outside of her building. He was weathering flare-legged jeans, a ribbed white tank top that rode up over his stomach, and a jean jacket that matched the pants. Mary smiled, knowing that Sirius would’ve publicly detested and privately adored the whole ensemble.
“I hope you’re feeling better, seeing as we’ve got ourselves quite a night coming,” he winked and took her hand, pulling her down the street and hanging a left at the Underground entrance.
“Yeah, yeah, I guess my brain is re-adjusting to you, prick.” They clambered down the steps and jumped the turnstile, almost faster than she could register it was happening.
“I’m quite the package,” he raised both of his eyebrows suggestively and Mary frowned.
As they sat down on the tube, she looked away while he rubbed her shoulder apologetically. “Stupid, stupid joke, I really am a right ass. I swear I’m gonna make up for it.”
“Don’t see how that’s even possible,” she sighed. There was a lot more hurt inside her than what was produced when Julien told jokes about his knob. It wasn’t like she hadn’t already been personal with the thing. In fact, she couldn’t care less about Julien’s appendage, which was possibly why she felt so sick when she thought about it. That was the real hurt, as idiotic as it sounded.
“It is, Macdonald. Trust me, really.” He smiled, so she smiled.
They linked arms and leaned their heads back against the glass. She realized, looking at their reflection in the dark glass that they looked strikingly alike. Not really any features, besides their hair, but they crossed their arms in the same way. They opened their eyes with the same cadence and smiled with the same veil falling across their face. Mary had never met someone who was the same as her like that, down to the bones. That wasn’t supposed to happen, but it was.
She looked at him. He turned his head like she might’ve.
“I do trust you,” she said. “Shockingly.”
“And that’s enough for me!” he agreed.
It’d been half an hour on those hard-plastic seats, listening to the very good-natured speaker announce each passing stop, when Julien grabbed her hand and pulled them both towards the opening doors. Deftly, they avoided five drunk men to leap over a pile of garbage and bound up the stairs, escaping out of the stale station air into the night that wasn’t quite dark as it would be at Hogwarts. She thought of Lily in the country and wondered what she would say about all the neon.
Julien spun around, still very real and holding onto her hand. “This sounds mad, but could you close your eyes for this last bit? Swear it’ll be easy, swear you’ll be able to open them soon.”
“Swear?” She rolled her eyes. Lads were always making people swear. It was only fun when Julien did it.
“On everything that I find holy!” he swore. For once, she knew he was being true.
He took her hand while she pressed the other one over her eyes, and they moved down the sidewalk faster than she thought would be safe. Dutifully, all that Mary’s senses took in was the air rushing along her skin and the sound of several people yelping in surprise. At the same time, there was music coming from each building front they passed by. She knew immediately they were on a party street, the kind that held clubs better than heaven.
Now she could only wonder what the hell Julien meant by this being such a different surprise. She’d been to half the disco clubs in the city, so it wasn’t like a change of scenery.
Still, when they stopped in front of one particularly grand-sounding building, she could sense something different in the air. The voices that she heard floated differently in the air, the cadence and pitch and lightness all different from what she might usually hear at a regular club.
Julien practically carried her down a set of thin stairs, the flooring of which her heels almost stuck to. He set her down in a place so loud it made the mosh pit at a punk concert her friends had accidentally stumbled into last summer. She could sense they were in some sort of basement, which didn’t seem good, but other than that the place checked out. There was a bouncer with a deep voice up ahead of them, presumably at the front of a long line.
She smiled, “Can I remove my hand yet?”
“No no! You have to take in the full picture! I’m telling you it’ll be worth it.”
“As you’ve been telling me ever since you picked me up.” Underneath her fingers, she rolled her eyes.
“I’m shocked that arm isn’t getting tired,” he remarked.
“I’ve been switching,” she giggled, which made him laugh too.
They steadily moved up in line, Julien still leading her by the elbow.
Then, right when she was about to get completely ticked off, the bouncer's voice came gruffly, “Ah bloody hell, Jules. Kidnapping now? I can’t let ya in with a girl practically tied up.”
“Jules?” Mary laughed.
“She doesn’t even know your name!” the bouncer said incredulously.
“No! She just doesn’t call me Jules,” Julien saved, filled with his usual charm. “And she’s not being kidnapped, or tied up at all. This is just a surprise, is all.”
“I’m catching it now.” Mary was not catching a thing. She wasn’t sure how the hell Julien knew this bouncer or why the hell they were talking about this for so long, but at least the bouncer man seemed more sure. “Is the bird gonna be down with our kind of surprise?”
Hand still covering her eyes, she frowned. Our kind of surprise?
“I’m sure she will be,” Julien assured.
Mary heard the bouncer sigh, and assumed he was nodding, “Then come on in.”
Immediately, she was almost knocked over by more than Julien’s tugging. Donna Summer was blasting over an extensive speaker system that seemed to fill the whole room. There was no room for echoes. All the sounds were dulled and absorbed by what she assumed was making the other noises, the laughs and the grunts and the cries of all sorts: the people packed into the place.
“Now, can I finally open my eyes?” she asked, turning her covered face up towards Julien’s.
Before he even talked, she could hear the grin in his voice, “Get on with it Macdonald!”
Slowly, she removed each finger one by one. He was the only thing in her field of view, at first, his dark skin and dark curls and dark eyes, all beautiful, until she turned her head.
Mary’s eyes found a stage illuminated by spotlights. It looked hastily erected, like it was floating on the sea of people dancing around it. She looked at the stained surface, at the weathered shine, and took too long of a moment to really look at who was standing on the stage. When she did, it sent her reaching for the nearest booth, diving for the easiest thing to hold her up.
Prancing around on stage, there was a man dressed like a woman. Or really, she assumed that was what it was. The person looked like it, with over the top make-up and a frizzy afro wig that looked like it wanted to fall off the figure’s head. They were pretending to grind on thin air, miming to the Donna Summer’s song, and beckoning to other men in the crowd with one very certain figure.
Mary scanned the rest of the crowd and knew what kind of people were here. She looked to the walls, to the outskirts of the revelry, and saw what kind of people were pressing themselves together. She knew what kind of club this was. She knew what Julien must think of her. She wished she could close her eyes again, and forget that she ever saw it.
Like a kicked dog, she slunk into a glowing pink booth. The lamp on the table was a woman’s leg, fishnet clad, which made her feel sick and dirty.
Julien was quick to join her, grabbing for her hand in the smoldering dark. “What’s wrong? Do you not like the place?”
“Do I not like the place?” she turned to him incredulously. “The place, Julien. What in the bloody hell would I do in a place like this?
“I thought-”
“You thought I would like it here? You absolute prick, you should’ve called me a slag right to my face.” Her face was going red and she shook her head on repeat, like she would shake something loose if it carried on for long enough. Poor Julien and his beautiful face, his punch-drunk giddy eyes. She would break his heart for that look to leave her life forever.
“I know how you felt about what we did,” he told her quietly. It had the kind of quiet force that made things loud, carrying over the sounds of the club. “Hell, I was there, alright? I can recognize the feeling, and I saw it in you.”
“Of course you think you recognize it, the bouncer knows you inside and out, and I mean that.”
He laughed, “Ahhh, now don’t be like that, Macdonald. Inside and out is far too dirty for the prim and proper girl you’re telling me you are!”
She would have punched him in the face if he hadn’t been so right.
“I’m more proper than you- you-”
“Can’t pull it out, can you?” He was right, Mary couldn’t hurl slurs like most Londoners could. She tried to hate Julien and came up with an empty mouth full of unbelievable lies.
“I just don’t understand why you would think that of me.”
Mary let him take her hand, finally. He looked her in the eyes very seriously, and she knew he was about to say something to set her off.
“Please don’t be angry.”
She prepared the rage, but nodded.
“I found your letters after you spent the night, when I was going for your coat.” Her mouth fell open like she’d been shot. Either way, she was gasping for air. “And I didn’t think anything of anything at all about Lily or whomever other than I’m a right ass for not asking if you had a boyfriend already and the two of you seem like the best of friends and I was happy you had that because you seemed lonely when we met. So I didn’t think anything at all, really, truly, until this morning.”
He took a deep breath and rubbed her arm, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pried. I wanted to help and ended up-”
“How could you tell?” With a very quiet voice, she looked up at him.
In her heart, she knew that there was nothing wrong with this place, so much as there was something very wrong with her. Here were these people, living their goddamn lives and here she was, sitting there watching them like they were the lepers and she was going to purify them with their eyes. She could’ve sobbed, thinking how none of her friends would ever stand to see something like this, how Lily most of all would scoff at the chance. She had to hide it, had to know what crack had let Julien see right through.
“What you said about your mom, and how it made you feel about me, I knew what that feeling was.” While he still rubbed her arm, she felt her heart rate settle back to normal. “It never seemed like you were in it with me, all the way, do you know what I’m saying? We would talk and you were in it until we were kissing and then you were gone. I thought it was the boyfriend when I read about him, but it wasn’t. I can see that now.”
“Come off it, how do you know that’s true?” she protested.
Julien gripped her hand with wracked insistence, “Because I’ve gone through the same thing, Macdonald. That same feeling lives inside of my chest. I can call it when I see it.”
They both looked at the man dressed as a woman on stage. Mary’s face was slack, her eyes pumped full of adrenaline. While Julien watched the performer she turned to look at his profile, the way she imagined it looked so much like hers, though it didn’t. She knew why, now. She wondered who his Lily was. She wondered if the letters reminded him of days long gone. Courageously, she decided she would ask him one day.
“So you brought me here?” Apparently, all she could do was ask questions, or think about asking them.
“The best place for people like us, you know. Somebody did it for me.”
“There aren’t people like me. Maybe like you, but not like me.”
“Take another look, mate.”
Julien pointed off across the wide room, the line he created worming through bobbing heads and intertwined men and intoxicated hands stretched to the sky. It took her a moment to realize what he was showing her, until it was as easy as hell to see.
At the other end of the club, there were two girls making out against the wall. The one doing the pinning had thick, black dreads, and the one being pinned had brown hair that reached all the way to her back. Mary could see it all the way from here, the way they reached for each other, they way their fingers tangled in long locks and wrapped around hips and intertwined with each other and cupped faces.
“They’re like me?” she murmured breathlessly, watching the two women with such intent it almost hurt, it almost poured out of her.
“They could be, Mary,” Julien looked at her with a steady smile on his face. He looked like he believed in her, like she had some sort of future. “They could be.”
That night, he gave Mary damn near the greatest Christmas gift she’d ever received, save only for a little toy pony from so many years ago.