New Year's Eve
Dear Mary,
The most horrible news of all has recently come down the Killarney chain. The town’s one and only true pub, for locals rather than American tourists, is completely shut up for New Year’s Eve. I know the gasps that are probably echoing around your flat right now, and I know that this news has probably stolen all the air from your lungs, but it’s true! We are completely shut in on the biggest partying night of the year. If only I was back at Hogwarts, we could be having the most maddening time right now, don’t you think? Me and you, slightly tipsy. There’s nothing I enjoy more. However, I’m instead going to be stuck with the horrid Vernon/Petunia pairing, and there is no way of getting out of it.
Basically, I’m begging you to hop on the nearest train and sweep me away like the knight in shining armor that I know you are.
(P.S. Now I have the picture of Vernon Dursley choking in a suit of armor in my mind.)
(P.P.S. It is ridiculous, truly.)
Laughing in great fits,
Lily Evans
---
Dear Lily,
I tell you, living in a village like Killarney seems like absolute hell in my books! I cannot imagine a place where pubs are so small that tourists and locals can’t intermingle, or people can’t get so pissed that they don’t realize who has a funny accent and who sounds like home. Though to be true, Hogwarts throws parties like none in the city. There’s something wonderful about getting drunk with kids who are all your own age, versus the clubs, where all the men are ten years older and somewhat easily open for business. And dear, how I long to see you tipsy again. It gives you a glow, something I don’t think is made up unless it’s my additional tipsiness. At the very most, I think I could cheer you up from horrible, melting Vernon!
Most of all for you, I would do my best Lancelot.
(P.S. I think he would melt, literally.)
(P.P.S. I think he would do numbers on a comedy circuit.)
Wishing to see you laugh,
Mary Macdonald
Chapter 23
With Mary breaking through to the other side of London, Julien found himself a more and more permanent fixture of the Macdonald flat, at least while her mother was out. She felt proud of herself for finally finding a lad whose company she could stand to bring around the girls, or actually enjoy for herself. Sirius was something, but she knew he could never be trusted around the triplets, just like he made her want to leap from the Astronomy tower when they’d been together for too long.
In her most recent nights laying awake in bed, she’d pictured telling Lily about Julien. She took pleasure in imagining how her lips would purse, her eyebrows crease. She clearly heard herself describing their nights together in exquisite, roaring detail. Only then did she let herself think about how Lily would react. She knew what it felt like to hear about James’s lips pressed against Lily’s. Finally, soon, she got to return the favor.
Still, that gloating and whatever heat that would eventually come from it was far off. They still had days of break to go and, most notably, New Years Eve.
Julien and Mary spent far too much time debating what they would do on that night, deciding it was obvious to spend it together but not so obvious what they would actually get up to. He wanted to stay in with the girls, wait up to ring in the tidings with them, and she believed that he was only saying that to make her happy after the shock to her system of the goddamn club and would actually prefer to go out partying, thus making it her pick.
After much teasing and convincing and long talks, he finally got her to agree with him. Among all the shit, they were becoming very easy friends. She enjoyed it, and was even starting to feel actually comfortable in her own skin.
Even Josephine, who usually told Mary she looked like she hadn’t slept in two weeks, even started to have some nicer things to say, like remarking her hair was shiny and poofy and pleasantly gigantic (though she said it in a lot more simple and joyful terms).
Goddamn, and it was all because of Julien, the only person to ever make her feel even close to as happy as Lily Evans.
That didn’t mean that she didn’t wish it was Lily, though. He would put an arm around her warmly and she would picture Lily’s arm around her instead. He would giggle with the triplets and she would picture Lily laughing and joking with the girls. He didn’t try to kiss her anymore, so at least that was up to her own imagination. They had a silent understanding, holding quietly that neither of them wanted that from each other. Shagging once was good enough for her lifetime. They’d done it, they knew how, and it was perfect to sit in their own strangeness.
So her thoughts turned back to what she couldn’t get from anyone else. Mary wrapped her head around the idea, remembering the girls in the club and the music and the sounds and the man dressed as a woman. She kept it in her heart, and missed Lily with renewed, painful passion.
People like me, she would think. People like Lily. People like us.
It was enough hope to even dream of those people being like Lily, of there being ‘us.’
***
“I’m going out tonight,” Mary’s mother told her with about two hours till when the clock would strike midnight on New Years Eve, ringing in 1976. She’d been working all day long, and the smell of grease and chips still hung to her clothes and hair like a signpost for poverty.
“Whatever you want, Ma,” she replied, busying herself with preparing the fish sticks that Julien had brought by earlier on request of the triplets.
“Plans with the lad in the works?”
“We’re watching the broadcast with the triplets tonight. I told you the other day.”
“Ah, yes. Well, don’t let him ruin those little girls. They’re my last hope, you know. I need some halfway decent daughters.”
Mary couldn’t even muster the care to frown. She only shrugged, biting back words that if her mother had such high hopes, maybe she should see to her children herself instead of crawling home pissed the next morning.
“Sounds like a plan, Ma.”
And so it was. Mary’s mother left half an hour later looking prepared for whatever trouble she would get up to, and Julien arrived another half hour later.
Contrary to her mother, he looked nicer than a bouquet of roses, as Susan very astutely said. All of the triplets had a little bit of a crush on him, as many younger girls did with the first boy they ever really talked to. Mary was simply glad they hadn’t inherited her peculiarities, and smiled when they giggled at his jokes, even the ones that weren’t at all funny.
On this night, he was wearing a loud paisley shirt under a yellow jacket with belted cargo pants, so to the girls, he looked like the fashion and to Mary, he looked every bit as festive as the goddamn club he'd taken her too.
“Are you girls ready!” he hurrayed his way through the door, fistbumping all three of the girls with one-two-three quickness.
“For what?” Josie inquired, shaking her hand from the high-fave.
“Ready?” Jane mumbled with a tilt to her head.
“Were we supposed to be preparing for something?” Susan finished their line of questioning, and all three girls, plus Julien, turned towards Mary.
“You didn’t tell them our big plans!” he laughed incredulously, making her shake her head.
“I didn’t have the time, it’s been a lot of food making you know! Plus, you’re so much better at acting chipper and pumped up,” she joked with a huge smile on her face.
“Very true,” Jane nodded.
“He’s quite exciting,” Susan smiled.
“Better than Mary’s crying face!” Josie giggled.
“I’m begging you, stop with the groups of three.” Mary patted each of them on the head. “Now let’s show Julien into the living room so he can tell us about our surprise, eh?”
Eagerly, they jumbled into the living room and sat two of them cross legged on the couch and one of them on the floor, instantly beginning a game of patty-cake. She hung back with Julien to give him a little hug and smile.
“You just missed my ma,” she groaned.
“I am counting my lucky stars,” he took her elbow and leaned in conspiratorially. “How are you feeling? I mean- anymore letters?”
For all of the issues their night of clubbing had brought up, the two of them had rather taken to telling each other about their escapades. With Julien, that meant whatever girl, or boy (she shuddered with less and less severity every ongoing time he talked about it), he’d most recently spent the night with. With Mary, as always, that meant the letters from Lily. At least his problems managed to be interesting, as he actually accepted they were problems. All Mary could stand to do was read the letters allowed and then stare at the ceiling while he told her it was sweet. Pretty soon, they would be getting horribly tired of each other, but it was nice for now.
“Two more since we last talked about it,” she smiled sheepishly.
“Jesus but you two are prolific,” he laughed. “What were these ones about?”
“Petunia and Vernon.”
“Oh yeah! The mustache-walrus-blubber bloke, eh?”
“The very one!”
They both dissolved into giggles and she shook her head hard. “I wish you could come back to school with me.”
“Ah yes, if only I were a super genius who could get on scholarship like you. Or if only I had half the will to go to school at all!” Julien was still under the impression that Mary was brilliant enough to get out of London all by herself, as the magic thing was a little bit of a nonstarter.
“Well at least you could actually give me proper advice,” she grumbled.
“I don’t give you advice. I listen, Macdonald. Tell me there’s no one who could do that at school?”
She thought for a moment, and nearly vomited at the idea of telling a soul. Not even to Julien had she ever spoken the words allowed, he had only been awful enough to figure it out. No one would ever figure it out again. She vowed that to herself clearly, for Lily’s sake.
“No one. I think we’re the only ones,” she told him honestly.
“I showed you, we’re not the only ones.”
“We’re the only ones who are pretending.”
“Actually, Macdonald, that’s only you. And mystery Lily Evans.” They couldn’t find a reason to laugh at that, so they didn’t. She only shrugged.
“One day, I suppose.”
“Sure,” he smiled and she smiled back, taking her by the hand and heading for the living room, “One day.”
The triplets already had the television on to Police Woman, which would apparently be playing before the whole Dick Clark broadcast thing kicked off.
“I love this show,” Josephine sighed.
“Bill Crowley is very dreamy,” Jane agreed.
“I do not think this is appropriate at all,” Susan wrinkled her nose as Angie Dickinson’s American police officer character pretended to strip for a particularly nasty undercover job.
“Why don’t we distract ourselves with some fish sticks, then?” Mary suggested.
All three of the girls, for their myriade of differences, jumped with absolute thrill. They were united in their total love for fish sticks and junk food. Mary plated them with four sticks each and a pile of potato crisps to go along with it. After only moderate begging, she even gave them a cup of Fanta.
And it was nice, really. Julien and the girls squeezed onto the couch and Mary pulled a wooden chair from the kitchen table to sit next to them. The return to Hogwarts was becoming more and more real, creeping up like a stalking predator that wound pounce in around eight hours. She’d spent whole days with her sisters, less time but time still, with her friends. Hours had been donated to Julien and his nice smile, but she felt like she was abandoning them all over again, for the millionth time.
She considered them, sitting there on the couch. Julien sat between Josie and Jane and let them tug on the sleeves of his shirt with insistent questions about Police Woman while Susan watched on and devolved into fits of giggles. She realized they comprised four-fifths of the top five people to ever make her smile. That number one spot, elusively held by Lily Evans. At least the four of them never made her smile sadly, though. She couldn’t feel the same depth of happiness, but at least she didn’t feel the need to cry.
After a whole other hour of Police Woman it was finally, finally time for the whole New Year’s part of Chicago’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.
The triplets had read about the TV event in the paper a couple of days ago and in their persistent effort to connect with American culture and had thus spent the next days first begging Mary to take them to the shops to buy a Chicago album, and after listening to that went in succession asking for the other acts: the Beach Boys, the Doobie Brothers, Herbie Hancock, and Olivia Newton-John. It cost half a fortune, all of Mary’s cigarette money and all of her savings, but it was worth it for their excitement, plus the dance parties that ensued.
Now, it did indeed come to bite them in the ass. The girls were thrilled, and knew every single word to every single song each performer was about to sing.
Funnily enough, it seemed like Julien could keep right up with the best of them. When the Beach Boys came on he got up to raucously dance with all three of the triplets, truly bringing in the so-called ‘Good Vibrations.’ She laughed so hard it gave her a stitch, and sat idly by as the program continued.
Around half an hour later Olivia Newton-John came on, which made the girls absolutely ecstatic. Out of all the records, hers was the obvious and clear favorite, which meant that her performance would make them basically laugh so hard they cry.
Lily loved Olivia Newton-John, too, almost more than the girls. She loved Olivia Newton-John and she loved the Beach Boys and detested the Doobie Brothers, so basically it was all Mary could do not to think of her incessantly. She played I Love You, Honestly I Love You, the title of which Mary found stupid and idiotically honest, only worthwhile if someone she actually cared for was singing it to her. Then, the goddamn Beach Boys came on to play Darlin’ another Lily Evans staple. She watched as Julien and the girls stopped around and snapped their fingers and partied so joyously and decided, in Lily’s honor, she would dance with them too.
And so they danced, all five of them. They held hands and twirled around in circles to their heart’s content, right until the song died out.
Then it was time for the countdown, for the whole big New Year’s thing. They lined up in front of the screen with their hands still held together and the triplets bounced up and down, brimming with huge excitement. Julien was practically bouncing too. He smiled at her when he thought she wasn’t watching, and she realized how grateful she was to have ever met him.
As Dick Clark counted down, she turned to face him and smiled when she knew he would see it.
Thank you, she mouthed, nodding.
Julien shook his head firmly, a grin plastered on his face, Thank you. He mouthed back.
With some fear she thought that she couldn’t wait for Lily to meet him one day, to meet all of them. She wanted to know how she would look in the same room with all of the people that she’d love. She looked at Julien again, knowing she had to try at least one more time. Dick Clark was just about at one and she’d missed almost half the numbers, but that didn’t stop her now.
She leaned up to kiss Julien, one last test drive. He felt surprised, but kissed her back like it was all that mattered. He would always kiss her back. She was constantly experimenting in the wrong direction, and he was always up for it.
The triplets shouted happily, “Happy New Year!”
She shuddered a little bit. So it was 1976, and so it was real, she supposed. She wanted Lily Evans to meet her sisters, to meet Julien. She wanted to show her London and she wanted to have her crawl into bed after a long night of club hopping. She got a flighty feeling in her stomach, worse than a shudder.
“Are you doing ok?” Julien questioned with a gentle nudge.
“Lily,” Mary explained, and they both understood.
“Ah,” he laughed lightly. “What’s in store for her during this fine new year?”
“I want her to meet the girls. And you.” She watched as the girls ran into the kitchen to grab party horns and throw open the doors to the little balcony and ring it in for all to hear.
“An awful lot for one year.”
“Yeah,” she said mournfully. “It’s all a load of shite. I’m doomed to follow her around for the rest of my life.”
“Awful lot to decide in one minute.”
“If I want her to meet the triplets, it’s over.”
“Yeah, but maybe it isn’t doom. Maybe she’s already following you around too.”
“Maybe,” she shrugged.
“Hey, you’ll see all too soon, mate.” He let her lean her head on his shoulder and rubbed her shoulder. He was always rubbing her shoulders in the kindest manner.
“I guess I will,” she supposed gently.
“And you’ll always have me!” Julien reassured with perfect contentment.
“Awful lot to say to a girl you met a week ago,” she joked.
“Not if that girl is you, Mary Macdonald. It seemed to me that I had to cling tight to you or you’d slip through my fingers. And I didn’t want to do that. You’re one hell of a person.”
“You don’t say?”
“I do say.” Out closer to the night air, the girls blew their noisemakers. “You and your family. You’ll always have me.”
Though it took a deep breath to admit, she believed him. She smiled.
“Thank you, Julien. I- well, I needed you. In a simple way of putting it.”
“Hey, I needed you too,” he smiled, wrapped his arm around her, and they went to join her sisters in the kitchen. Her sisters made noises that were near deafening. “So mate, it worked out pretty well.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she waved him off to snap a party hat on his head. “Don’t make me thank you again!”
“Of course not, Macdonald! That would only wound your pride.” He feigned an arrow to the heart, fanning himself with dedicated acting.
“Come celebrate with us!” Josie broke him out of his reverie.
“We have poppers!” Jane shouted.
“Making noise is shockingly fun!” Susan giggled.
“The greatest New Year’s of all time, I tell ya!”
“Indeed it is, mate.” She gripped his hand tightly. He squeezed back.
“Join us Julien!” Josie beckoned him, and who the hell could say no to that? Julien threw his hands into the air and charged forward, ready to accept all of their partying supplies. To think, the lad had been doing shots from another man’s mouth last night, and this was the best New Year’s celebration he could think of.
***
Once the girls had proper tuckered themselves out, Julien and Mary set about tucking them in for bed. He picked up Susan and Jane while she wrangled Josephine, carrying them into their shared bedroom and setting them down lightly in each of their too-small beds.
“Goodnight girls,” Mary kissed them each on the head.
“Sleep tight, triplets!” Julien murmured cheerfully.
“Will we still see you when Mary leaves, Julien?” Susan asked.
“I-” he looked at Mary, eager questions in his eyes. “I’m not sure, missy.”
“We do need someone to drop us of at Mrs. Gordon’s,” Jane said with shocking wisdom.
“If your sister says it’s alright with her,” he shrugged sheepishly.
“She will!” Josephine urged.
Mary looked between all of them, a small smiling playing at her lips. They needed someone in their lives, someone who wasn’t a drunk and someone who wasn’t a lonely old woman.
“Sure, Julien will pop by to pick you girls up and drop you girls off, if he likes. You four can all coordinate with Mrs. Gordon. How does that sound?”
With sleep all on their voices, they nodded happily.
“Mhm,” Josie mumbled.
“Yuh huh,” Jane sighed.
“Of course,” Susan smiled, and that was just about the end of that. He was in.
Julien closed the door quietly and crashed on the couch, throwing his arm behind Mary’s head. They don’t even need any words. They lean on each other and he dozes watching late night programming.
It was a good last day, a good way to remember, and learn something new. Mary stayed awake. There were late night Doctor Who reruns on which she watched happily, not even attempting to wake the boy sleeping next to her.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. She whispered inside her head. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for letting me have this.
She didn’t know who she was thanking. Did it half matter? When you had something good, you said thank you. Before he left, her father used to say that. It was a prayer that things would never change. She needed more prayers in her life. Like a compass, she turned towards where she imagined Lily stood, or slept. That was another kind of prayer, too. All these good things back home, and what she really couldn’t wait for was to see her.
Imagining that she was standing in Lily’s air, she took a deep breath. She could practically smell her perfume. Only seven hours left.