March
Dear Mary,
What is the energy of London right now? Does that make sense? Hogwarts has this energy, this frenzy, that’s been stuck in my mind lately. I can picture the common room as I write. Records spinning, smoking sort of spilling from the fireplace, and the soft chatter of people who we only half know. It’s funny how a place can have a tone like that, a memory that you can implant for any other memory. Sometimes I remember something you said or a little joke or something like that and it’s suddenly taking place on those big, cushy armchairs or sunning next to the lake.
It’ll be nice to actually put a face to the thought again soon.
(P.S. I miss all of it.)
(P.P.S. That means I miss you.)
---
Dear Lily,
London doesn’t have quite so many enchanted record players or lakes to sun by (or best friends to chat incessantly with), so the energy is exactly the opposite of Hogwarts. It’s frantic in a more literally frantic way, like thousands of people all trying to have a life at the exact same time. There’s no soft chatter, but boy is there noise. I wonder how many of our memories aren’t really the real thing at all. Like did I really say any of those things you remember me saying? Or do you remember the smoke and the music so you imagine that I must’ve been there talking.
Scary, no? We’ll make memories that are real and will stay real next year, I promise you.
(P.S. We’ll be back there soon.)
(P.P.S. But I do miss you more.)
Chapter 33
The next months would be remembered, in hindsight, as some of the most simple of Mary’s life. They weren’t the happiest memories she had, nor the saddest. They weren’t thrilling or daring or heartbreaking, but they were beautiful in their own sort of way. Ease counted for something when things had been so hard before. She didn’t know whether they would get harder or easier. She couldn’t tell that now.
But Mary and Marlene had resumed their morning runs; Dorcas joined them and Lily in the library for homework most evenings, so things couldn’t ever be that bad. Even James Potter was bearable. Maybe he’d talked with Lily, maybe he’d decided to get a brain, but she found herself laughing at his jokes more and scoffing less.
Golden Years by David Bowie was big at Hogwarts in March of 1976, because it had been big in London three months earlier. Every wizard who fancied themselves a Muggle sympathizer or a Bowie fan enchanted their records to repeat the song, no matter that they got there on a delayed route.
Don’t let me hear you say life’s taking you nowhere. They would sing.
Mary didn’t understand why they thought that these were the Golden Years of the wizarding world, anyway. Maybe in the retirement sense. They were sinking and fast. Slytherins spat at her in the hallways if they didn’t know better, if the shield of beauty and popularity didn’t protect her enough. It only happened once in March, the simplest month of her life, but that was noticeable enough. Once she stopped being so preoccupied with whether Lily Evans would sleep with her or not she found it much easier to actually hear the words that were slung at her, at both of them.
For this reason, Mary only really liked the part where Bowie sang, I’ll stick with you, baby, for a thousand years.
She thought about calling Lily baby sometimes, when they were both tucked under the covers, but that would’ve broken the magic of March. No questions asked, but they’d stick together for a thousand years and they both knew it. She had a new duty to protect her from whatever happened next. It was like that in London, too. Punks would riot. She held the triplets through the dark. Men called them ugly words on the street. She let the girls cry into her shoulder and did not allow herself to break. What difference was it now? None to Mary. But to Lily, it meant safety she never knew she needed. At least, Mary liked to think so. That was what girlfriends did, what partners did. Is that what they could be called? She liked to think that too.
The cigarette trade boomed, supplied by an effort to save up before Easter Break, though it was still a month off. She saved because she had nothing to spend on. Lily’s birthday had come and gone long ago and the new Bowie album for Remus’s birthday was already coming on express letter from London.
March, in its brevity, was marked by this brand of ease. Lily didn’t ask her any questions, hard or simple. Marlene and Dorcas made no deep declarations. They boys kept their Marauders drama to an absolute minimum. And the month commenced, oddly, by a shocking appearance of Peter Pettigrew in her life.
He seemed to pop up at every corner, attempting to date every girl and poking his nose into every room, the mark of a boy who Mary thought didn’t quite know his place among their friends. She realized she’d never really talked to him much, even though they’d known each other for so many years. She took it upon herself, in the month of March, to speak to him more.
At a planning meeting for Remus’s birthday they became very absorbed in a conversation about chocolate frogs. Everyone else had a better job to do. Mary was in charge of bringing the fun once the party actually came, and no one quite knew what Peter was supposed to do. They were free, instead, to chat.
“I like the scientists best,” Peter sighed. If someone had told her he wasn’t drunk yet, but getting close to it, she would’ve believed them. Except there was no alcohol to speak of.
“Are wizard scientists even real scientists?” She stopped mid drag, taking her cigarette from her lips and coughing.
“Duh,” he drawled, sinking further into the cushions of the fireside couch that was eating him. She’d nearly forgotten that he was a pureblood. Most purebloods were prettier, smarter, and better at magic than him, the very picture of wizarding promise. Remembering this fact, it made sense that he would believe in an idea like Merlin. It was what he grew up with, after all.
“Do you like Muggle music?” She changed the subject quickly, preferring not to think of such things.
“I like the Eagles,” he chuckled. They were an American band, she thought. The kind that certainly never interested teenage girls. “My sister lives in America, you know.” Now he was drunk. She could tell by the way he pointed his hand, frowning.
“That’s very nice,” Mary told him sincerely. The first conversation she could ever really remember alone with Peter Pettigrew and she badly wished for it to end. At least he hadn’t talked about Golden Years. That would’ve made her think of Lily and that would’ve made her blush which would’ve introduced some horrible ideas in Peter’s mind.
“My parents don’t think so. Wizards in America are strange.” Mary wondered faintly if there were Jamaican wizards. She hadn’t thought about wizards of a different kind before. Maybe Peter Pettigrew was smarter than her. Wouldn’t that be terrifying?
“Why’d she leave?” she blurted out. If someone asked her what kind of wizard she was she would’ve stammered and said nothing. Or a Londonner, a London wizard.
“She needed to be in a different place with different people, I guess. She told me once she couldn’t be her own person if she didn’t do that.”
Mary didn’t know how to reply to that . She looked at Peter who was looking at the ceiling. He seemed happy, maybe, even if his words were far off and somber.
“I don’t know who I’d be without Hogwarts and all the lads,” he told her, twiddling his thumbs. “But I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It just means they’re my best friends, not that I’m not my own person. I am my own person, after all.”
Remus and Sirius’s bickering voices popped through the portrait hole, causing them all to scatter and immediately halt their planning conversations. Whatever huge fight they’d been in had blown over in deference to the month of March, so the boys chose to bicker with each other instead. It was Remus’s birthday on top of everything, after all. They couldn’t really fight through the easiest month of their lives. Not the best birthday Remus would ever see, but the most routine.
Mary said a quick goodbye to Peter, not remembering whether he was mid sentence or not, and ran towards Sirius’s awaiting smirk. They did the whole friendship thing much better when Lily and Mary were on speaking terms, and even greater than that when Lily kissed her daily.
She looked back once, just once, and saw Peter sitting absentmindedly by the fire. He was just staring, just sitting there and staring. A peaceful sort of fellow, she thought. That must be nice. Like the month of March.
***
The party was a Friday night nearly a full week after Remus’s birthday actually fell. They needed adequate time to prepare, especially after their fireworks had been delayed two weeks, sending the lads into a tailspin of panic.
Still, the back order gave them much needed time to procure provisions that had previously been remiss. Mary and Lily took the errands very bravely upon themselves.
Thursday night, they left while everyone else ate dinner to sneak down to the kitchens and beg the house elves for cakes and sweets and all of the trappings of a birthday surprise. Mary hated the kitchen. Though she poured herself into Remus’s birthday errands, she refused to go inside. Lily would go for her, deferential to the pain that seeing those damn elves caused her. Their huge eyes, their reaching hands.
She’d almost sent a complaint to Dumbledore about it once, walking herself up to McGonagall’s office and getting ready to knock on the door before realizing, stunningly, that no one would ever listen to her. She was Muggle born, one of the poorest students in her year, Jamaican without a father. You couldn’t even say she was particularly bright, aside from the healing classes she took. So the house elves remained in the kitchen and Mary remained firmly outside.
Lily was telling her about Arithmancy on the walk down, something about numbers and floating and magic. Mary listened with baited breath and tried so badly to understand. It was nice just to hear her talk. Nicer still to smile with their secret.
“Professor Vector gave us a chart the size of a rug, I tell you, all to fill in with numbers and their properties and all that whatnot,” Lily raved.
“See, I became a witch to get out of maths,” Mary laughed in reply. Sometimes she struggled to imagine just how smart Lily was. The same potions problems that took her hours took Lily twenty minutes, cracked with ease. “I can’t fathom what makes you want to take that class.”
Lily laughed, “Some people like maths, you know.”
“And you’re the only one of that particular group that I can stand!” It was true. Mary had never met someone so obviously genius who didn’t bore her to tears. Most people back home either knew how to hide it or had never been given the tools to properly use it, spitting out intelligence through wit instead of facts. They were incredibly apologetic when they knew things, because it was better, usually, to let people tell you.
Not with Lily, though. Some people called her a know-it-all, condemned for the fact that she was a pretty girl who didn’t pretend to be stupid for anyone. It worked on a very select group of individuals. James Potter, notably. And Mary, above all else.
“A place of honor,” Lily smiled. She squeezed her hand just once before dropping it quickly. Girlfriend, she thought. Lover, like a movie where they talked half American and half British.
The fruit bowl painting came up very quickly. They stopped in front of it and squeezed hands one more time.
“You alright?” Lily asked her quietly, like she did in the days before they kissed, when they could talk about being good or bad without having to know exactly what was so wrong. Things had been coming back after the big talk. They laughed in front of other people like they used to. They knew things instinctively once again.
“I’m alright, yes,” she smiled. “Unsettled by this, not by you.”
“I’ll be in and out, barely a couple seconds, I promise.” One last time, she squeezed her hand comfortingly.
“Ah, ah, get on with it,” Mary grinning sheepishly. Lily gave her a backwards smile and disappeared.
She waited, leaning against the wall and looking both ways before lighting her cigarette and taking a drag. Smoking was done best when leaning against walls in places where you weren’t supposed to. Hopefully Lily would come back out and see her lounging like this and decide to jump her right there. She smiled slightly, settling into her stance, before she was rudely interrupted.
“Macdonald,” Sever Snape slunk from the shadows, his voice watery through the flickering corridor.
“Snape,” she frowned and her eyebrows furrowed together in disgust. “How’s it, eh?” Her leaning very quickly subsided, giving way to standing straight up.
“You can’t smoke in the castle,” he sniveled.
“Really?” she pretended as if she had never even known, and then thought it better to put out the fag entirely lest he use it as an excuse to do something awful.
“Yes, really.”
He blinked at her, his eyes darting like he was afraid of something. This was the second time they’d spoken all year long, since their run-in at Hogsmeade that had caused one of the many breakdowns throughout Lily and Mary’s relationship.
“Lily isn’t here, Snape,” she told him. “You just missed her.” To anyone, that would’ve been a clear signal to piss off, but not to grimy, greasy Severus Snape.
“I can wait,” he coughed.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Mary tried to be soft with it. It could never be nice to hear that a girl as pretty and sweet as Lily Evans wanted absolutely nothing to do with you. Though he didn’t deserve it, she gave him empathy. A cowards way, her mother would say. She had some saying that forgiveness only meant fear, or something like that. Maybe that's why her father never found his way back.
Mary laughed under her breath, looking back up to find that Snape was still standing there, “I mean, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to talk to you.” She added.
He was silent, and not a moment later, Lily stumbled back through the swinging painting. Her arms were laden with two baskets. One filled with sweets and pastries, the other filled only with spun sugar and chocolate frogs (Remus’s favorites). She was happy, stunningly so, her face breaking open into a happy grin.
“Mary! I got the-”
And then Snape stopped her dead in her tracks.
“Severus,” Lily mumbled, half-gasping. It had been a long time since she’d spoken to him too. They used to meet for breakfast everyday, long before Mary and Lily knew they were anything more than friends to each other. Mary would tag along awkwardly sometimes, half hanging onto Lily’s shoulder if Marlene wasn’t available. “What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk,” he stepped forward. Mary had half the mind to block him, but didn’t. “Things are bad, Lily. I can protect you.”
“Oh bollocks, I don’t need to be protected. I’m protected enough.” She talked calmly, pointedly. Her hands didn’t shake and her voice refused to waver. Mary watched her as she spoke to him, receiving the reassuring smile that she shot her way before returning to Snape.
“You don’t know what’s coming.” His voice was dark. His eyes were dark too. Unimaginably so, like no one she’d ever seen.
“Tell me then, Severus. Tell me what only you could possibly know.”
“She can’t hear it,” he pointed a finger in her direction, his dark eyes lit into dark flames.
“Then you can’t tell me.”
“Lily-”
“That’s it.”
“This isn’t you-”
“It is, actually. For once.” That was the first time Lily had ever called Mary something like hers. Something like they were together, standing there side by side as one.
“Goodbye, Severus.” Lily turned and stormed off, far away from Snape and the hate in his eyes.
It took a long time for her to stop, a long time that Mary spent jogging slowly after, calling out softly her name. When she stopped, soft tears streamed down her face, barely visible.
Mary took her hand tightly, “He’s gone.” She tried to smile. “He’s gone and he won’t follow us.”
“He’s never going to leave me alone.” The tears continued to flow.
“Things aren’t as wrong as he says they are, dear,” she rubbed the back of her hand softly. “There’s no reason for him to stick around.”
They sank to the floor where they stood, tucked into a stone alcove in a mysterious corridor. Lily leaned her head on her shoulder as Mary shrugged an arm over her shoulder. It was warmer then, with the two of them so close together.
“James tells me differently,” she whispered, like a nightmare. “His father works at the Ministry and he says that the community hasn’t been this split in his whole life. Severus knows it because he sits in the center of the problem, but we can only tell from the names that they call us. The names that are becoming more frequent, don’t you think?”
“Things like this pass.” Mary felt a cold sweat at the back of her neck, fear that she’d never felt before.
“I can only hope,” Lily held her hand tighter as Mary pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“Besides you have me,” she smiled. Green eyes flashed up at her, hidden in this little alcove. Mary knew what was coming next.
“You promise?”
“Forever and ever and ever and-”
Lily cut off her ‘ever’s with a strong kiss. A face-grabbing, stomach-tightening, high-flying kind of kiss.
Mary prayed with all her might, one day she would best Severus Snape. Now all she had to show for her meeting with him was two baskets of sweets, a kiss, and the vague threat of hell to come.
***
Remus’s birthday, much to his protest, was a fiery affair. In March of 1976 the Gryffindors would take just about any excuse to get horrifically drunk. As the seventh years found their time at Hogwarts winding to a close and just about everyone else found themselves changing, parties seemed to be the best way to get your mind off of it. Remus was the guy who led open study groups for anyone who needed it, the guy who would sit and quietly listen no matter who was talking, the guy that everyone loved. Of course his birthday would be an occasion. Of course he would protest horribly.
The only thing that differed from usual was the guest list. Dorcas clung to Marlene’s shoulder, shifting her pose from affectionate to friendly when the audience changed. She’d caught eyes when she first walked in. It wasn’t like there was house paraphernalia splashed across her chest or anything, but people knew who she was. They knew all of the places she should not and should not be, and this was number one on the least likely list.
Acceptance slowly settled in as people got used to her presence. Now, Mary and Lily chatted with them and sipped fruit punch Sirius had not so subtly spiked.
“Do Slytherins party like this?” Lily snorted a little, and spun around before steadying herself. She was cute when she was drunk, giggling and smiling.
Mary laughed, “Yeah, can’t imagine little Black getting pissed like the elder one.”
Sirius was drinking like he had something to forget, slurring along the words to “Dancing Queen” while Remus laughed and laughed, smoking his cigarette.
“Nah, nah, Regulus can knock it back too!” Dorcas looked sad a little, thinking about her friends. They must’ve fought about it before, her and Marlene. Every couple had that hook, that thing that they had to get over. Mary imagined that one of their hooks must’ve been the other Slytherins, or something like that. She could tell it by the uneasy shake in the other girl’s voice.
“Ach, I don’t believe they can throw a party like ours!” Marlene shouted to the ceiling. She raised her whiskey to the sky before downing the whole glass.
“No,” Dorcas elbowed Marlene and smiled. It looked like how Mary felt when she wanted to kiss Lily but could not. “They certainly can’t.”
The music switched off suddenly, the enchanted record scratching. All heads whipped to the foot of the boys dormitory stairway where it seemed like a spotlight was illuminating one lone, joyous figure. James Potter lifted his armful of fireworks aloft as if they were a sacrifice to the adoring masses.
“Now, we celebrate!” He roared. Lily darted her way out from behind Marlene and Dorcas to rush to his side, planting a big kiss on his cheek as he paraded the fireworks in a slow circle.
Remus tumbled forward around the same time, likely shoved by Sirius and Peter simultaneously.
“The man of the hour!” James chortled again. Lily laughed at his side, visible enough to make Mary slouch uneasily where she stood. “The birthday boy, what do you say we take this show on the road?”
In response, Remus only smiled sheepishly, shrugging his shoulders with his hands in his pockets.
“That, ladies and gentlemen, is a yes!” He shouted finally.
The Gryffindors that were old and in the know enough to be included slowly filtered out of the Common Room and down to the main stairs and out onto the lawn. James was their leader, Lily close behind. She had a way of abandoning Mary when it hurt least, but hurt nonetheless. It was almost worse now, to see her with James. She knew that Lily didn’t mean it, she knew that James could be funny and kind. They both knew that it was a lie and yet still they played at it.
The castle was full of chatter, as it often was on Friday nights. People from all houses were out. Those that they knew, some Ravenclaws here and there, a smattering of Hufflepuffs, came quickly behind to follow.
Mary walked a ways behind Marlene and Dorcas, watching them talk quietly to each other while a younger Gryffindor lad chatted her ear off.
“I mean, you don’t give it up very much, do you?” She faintly heard him say.
“What?” she blinked.
“Who are you saving yourself for?” The lad chuckled, eyeing her knowingly. Mary found herself gasping for air and trying to hide it. “I mean, you never did it with Black, did you? So who are you saving yourself for?”
“I- well-”
“Mysterious, you are.” And then he disappeared forever. He didn’t even know her and he knew that much about what she was.
Mary remembered that night with Julien, that night when he had taken her into his bed and made her something different. She didn’t know whether she had done that with Lily yet. No one ever told her what having s with another woman was, so she didn’t know whether or not she still had to save herself. How could she tell this lad she’d never met all that?
Marlene and Dorcas stopped for her outside of the castle, and let her join them to wander down next to the lake. They watched from the top of a little rise as James covertly propped up the fireworks, before struggling enough to enlist Marlene in help. She hopped down from her seat on this little ledge and jogged forward to help, laughing as she ran.
“They’re just perfect, aren’t they?” Mary laughed breathless, biting, watching the others set up and laugh and dance.
“Or something damn near close to it,” Dorcas agreed dryly.
“How did you meet Marlene?” What she really meant was: did you know what you were getting into?
Dorcas smiled. She looked down at her hands in her lap, then up to the sky, then back down again, before telling Mary how.
“I’ve hated her since we were eleven, you know. Every Quidditch season I just hated her more, and the whole year after that I would wait until Quidditch season would come again and my hatred would rise!” She laughed. “You remember how we hated each other, right?”
Mary laughed too, “I remember.”
Dorcas kept going, “We’d never been alone in the locker room before. There’d always been other girls on both teams, flitting around and stopping us from strangling each other, but then all the other girls left Hogwarts. And after the Gryffindor game we were alone in that locker room. So she talked to me, I guess, then proceeded to charm the pants off of me for over a month. We haven’t stopped talking since. That’s how I met Marlene.”
She had a far off look on her face, far off like Julien’s letter about his hairdresser.
“So you knew what you were getting into?” Mary chuckled. Marlene had James doubled over in stitches, laughing like the end of the world as she nudged him with joke after joke. She stood up when she noticed they were watching and waved.
“Ay, I knew what I was getting into,” Dorcas nodded. She waved back, blushing. “That’s why I got into it.”
Mary had taken to carrying around matches in March. She took the box from her pocket and retrieved a match, striking it to light and cupping it from the wind to light her cigarette. Lily was sitting on the bank of the lake with Remus, their arms linked and her head on his shoulder. They might’ve been the two smartest people she knew, she thought vaguely. That was something she liked about Lily. That’s why she got into it.
“Dorcas! Mary!” Marlene called. “The fireworks are starting!”
They hopped down from the ledge, Mary with her cigarette in hand, and strolled up to meet the rest of their friends and all others assembled.
She stood next to Lily. They linked arms too. If she and Remus could do it then so could they. They only looked like friends, even if it felt something more.
“Nice night,” Mary murmured. The stars were brighter at Hogwarts than in London. There was nothing to block them out.
“Sure is,” Lily agreed.
In a flurry of fanfare, James set the fireworks ablaze. The lads stood arm in arm, counting down their explosives, but they didn’t make it all the way to one. The fireworks waited for no man, not even the Marauders. On three they exploded into the sky, wizzing and popping and making such a fuss that the whole forest must’ve woken up, the whole world must’ve been turned on its axis.
Ablaze, constellations were dotted into the sky. A fire breathing dragon, a roaring Gryffindor lion, loping dog, a reindeer prancing, a tiny mouse, a howling wolf. The lads swayed from side to side excitedly as each projectile exploded.
“Happy birthday, Moony!” She could hear Sirius call.
“Yeah, happy birthday, Remus!” Mary shouted right back, deafened by the newest technicolor boom.
The show ended with one last shower of crimson and gold that fizzed down onto the spectators.
Lily’s face was cast just so in the light. The turn of her nose, the slope of her eyes. Mary only got one look at it before she was pulled away, ripped into a different conversation.
It wasn’t a good memory, that night. But it wasn’t a bad one either.