Leaving for Easter
Dear Mary,
I’m writing this long before we even leave Hogwarts, or long before I’m missing you horribly. You and Remus are off doing some semi-illicit cigarette trade, which you think I don’t know about. (See how I’m all knowing. I’m also going to pretend that you’re laughing at that as I write). Your laugh is more recent in my head, now. I can picture it with simple ease. I miss you, Mary. I’m sending this ahead of time to tell you so, but I can only imagine how badly it hurts the moment you’re reading this. I miss your smile, and the way it reaches your eyes. Most of all, I miss the way you kiss me. Or the way you hold me to sleep.
I can’t wait to see you again. I’ll start preparing Killarney for your arrival this summer, eh? I can’t wait.
Yours,
Lily Evans
(P.S. I said it all)
Chapter 34
It was Easter before she even knew how, and it was time to go home again. Back to London, she tried to think of it. She hadn’t been home since she knew how bad Lily wanted her, or understood how bad she wanted Lily herself. What if the city didn’t recognize her anymore?
They woke up together the day after the last day of term, Mary and Lily. Marlene had gotten very good at pretending graciously that they hadn’t been up all night talking, whispering, so there was no rush to run out before she saw. They made out plenty too, but the silencing charm covered that. The dorm had settled into a rhythm more than pleasant. It was the perfect place to live, one room without any secrets at all. Discussions were already thrown around about summertime, a visit to Ireland for all three of them, plus Dorcas.
Mary rolled over, though there wasn’t much rolling to do in a bed so small, to smooth Lily’s hair from her forehead and press a kiss to her forehead.
“Good morning,” she murmured. “I miss you already.”
Lily laughed, pure like the chime of a bell, something ringing early in the dawn to be awoken by.
“Let’s not waste our last hours on being sad already,” she sighed dreamily, softly running her hand through the curls at the base of Mary’s neck, and pulled her in for a kiss, deeper this time.
“That would be a shame indeed.” She smirked through the kiss. Lily felt good against her, good like nothing else, soft like something beautiful.
So they woke up together but really, they didn’t get out of bed for quite a while. It was too nice to give up that warmth. Hogwarts was finally turning its back on winter and looking back to the sun, but it took a long time for the stones of the castle to warm back up again. Mary didn’t mind, she liked being under the covers with Lily.
Still, they had to get up eventually. All good things must come to an end. Mary’s mother would add, most sooner than later.
“Come on,” Lily poked her, giggling. “I’m sure there’s some delicious scones cooked up for us downstairs or something like that. You love those scones, don’t you?”
“Oh boy, do I!” She sprung out of bed, placing all the fake energy of a cartoon character into her movements.
Lily laughed. “Yeah, yeah, let’s get moving on.”
Across the room, Marlene stirred, and Lily’s enthusiasm dampened. Sure, Marlene had gotten very graciously good at pretending, and sure, they talked of vacations in the summer, but that didn’t make it easier to wake up. The world was scary. Being who they were was scary. Marlene was scary, though she didn’t mean to be. Giggling didn’t exactly stop once the sun came up, but it fell to lower volumes.
They made quick work of getting ready, simple work. Lily took a shower while Mary got dressed, then Marlene took a shower while Lily got dressed. A smile here, a joke there, they had the morning routine down to a science. Mary was sad to leave it, sadder than usual.
The boys were running late, announced by a lounging Remus in the common room. He and Sirius wouldn’t be joining them on the Express, news which he gleefully imparted. She envied them spending all that time alone, in the wonderfully quiet presence of unhalted magic. The girls, without his company, were left to scrounge up breakfast alone
It made sense then, once they were alone, that Hogwarts would find a way to remind them that it was not made all of sunshine. A wall of black formed in front of them. A wall of unyielding fabric and frowning faces.
Mary watched, frozen, as Marlene’s mouth fell open and close. Lily was shrinking next to them both. What was she meant to say, then, when her friends froze?
“I smell something,” one of the more evil ones, Mulciber, she thought, sneered at them. He was tall and dark, with the shadows of a wiry mustache ghosting across his face and the look of something pitch black in his eyes. There was nothing but hate there, all across his face.
“Mudbloods,” he whispered mercilessly. “Two of them, eh? And one half-breed.”
“Oh, is it now?” Regulus Black wheeled around, before stopping in his tracks. As Sirius’s brother, he wasn’t necessarily supposed to hurl words like that at his brother's girl. But as a Black, and as the smartest out of all of those Slytherins, he was the leader of the group. He had a job to do. Mary understood that well enough.
“Piss off,” she stepped forward, figuring it would be better to take the beating then make them all keep this spluttering nonsense. Regulus stepped back. He couldn’t take her head to head.
“Is one of them speaking to you, Mulciber?” A second one stepped forward. Avery, she was nearly sure. Avery, much shorter than Mulciber, but nonetheless sinister. His blonde hair was combed across his forehead, his blue eyes watery and unsightly.
“Yes, one of them is,” she retorted. “And all of them would like to pass.”
“You don’t own this corridor,” Mulciber elbowed his way to the front.
“In fact, you don’t belong here at all,” Avery did the same.
“Good thing we were just trying to leave then, eh? Right girls?” She looked back to Lily, mouthing just out of view for the Slytherins, Do something.
“Right,” Lily took her advice. Marlene was still frozen, still staring at the girl across from her.
“Ah, Potter’s given you some guts, hasn’t he? Told you he’d protect you from us, his own kin?” Mulciber snorted darkly, making Regulus look pale and weak, shaking slightly, with the height of his anger. He was circling in on them, his blackened wand pointed directly at the bridge of Mary’s nose.
“He’s nothing like you,” Lily spat back.
“He has the same blood,” Avery smiled. “Isn’t that what matters?”
Mulciber was on top of Mary now, murmuring something about what a pretty little thing, what a shame, what a shame. About how, that pretty little face will go to ruin.
Lily tried to reach out, tried to stop him, but it was too easy to shrug her off. She didn’t have her wand in her pocket. She didn’t have the strength to stop him. Regulus Black didn’t move, didn’t flinch nor move nor anything else in the world. Mulciber’s wand was leveled at her eyes and she felt like it was as hot as a poker from a fire, dangerous like a gun leveled at your heart. She tried to smile it off, looking at Lily and shrugging, but it didn’t work. Mulciber began to mutter something, and her eyes slid closed.
Right when she accepted it, the beating that was sure to follow, right when she saw that maybe it would be alright and Lily would see her as brave and it wouldn’t hurt so bad eventually. Right when she understood, that was when Marlene stepped forward and stopped her thoughts where they were.
“It’s not.” Her fist was wrapped around her wand, pointing right at Mulciber’s gigantic face. His jaw slackened with shock. “You know that.” But she was only talking to one girl, really. One girl in the whole wide world who could hear what she was saying.
“Get lost, Mulciber,” Dorcas stepped forward. She knocked into his shoulder, brushing past all of her friends.
Avery murmured his dissent, but Marlene’s wand was already prodding closer to Mulciber’s beady eyes, and Dorcas’s echoing words rang true, as did her the clench to her fists. The larger Slytherin stepped back, shaking his outstretched hand like he was going to get them all one day, like all he promised was death.
“We’re going,” Dorcas stretched her wand at him pointedly, deafeningly. Brave, that’s what she was. There must’ve been some kind of ambition in there, some kind of Slytherin drive that Mary did not understand. She had more courage than Mary. Enough courage to be a Gryffindor, sure as hell.
They went, under her command, brushing past the crowd that still lingered. Mary pretended not to notice how tightly Marlene clung to Dorcas’s hand. It would only make her face feel flush with anger, flush with envy.
***
They took their seats on the train as they always did, when the time came, though Sirius and Remus were notably absent. James sat beside Lily; Mary sat with Marlene. Peter flitted in and out, largely afraid to disturb their equation. Dorcas was gone, finishing their business earlier with Pandora and the lot of them. Marlene told her that they did this often, the yelling and the absence of change.
Mary could only shrug at that. It was hard to break out of cycles like that. They started, and before you knew it you were buried to your neck.
She talked over the newest edition of Witch Weekly with Lily, watching her eyes as they flitted to the magazine on the table. She remembered how they’d looked in the morning light, soft orange fighting the dark green. Before Hogwarts, before Lily, she’d never met a person with features even close to hers. Everyone she knew in London came from the same stock of people, so they looked largely the same, beautiful in the same way. But no one was beautiful like Lily, she thought. Even at eleven years old, Mary understood that there was something special about her best friend. She didn’t need Witch Weekly, not a single potion in that mix could give her a thing that she didn’t already have.
“I heard the hair dying serum is very good,” Marlene interrupted Mary’s thoughts with her own conversational jab. She was always rattling around ideas of bright blue hair, or purple, or some fantastic bubblegum pink invention.
“Your hair is already bleach-looking enough!” Mary retorted, and flipped the page.
“If you went orange, we could be twins, eh?” Lily laughed alongside Mary, leaving Marlene to grumble.
“You two have no taste for the alternative!”
“That’s what Dorcas is for,” Mary agreed.
James and the boys shuddered a little at the name, still not used to it thrown around without pure hatred.
“So you’re still hanging with her, eh?” he asked.
“Sure am, Potter. Hope that’s alright,” she replied slyly. “She isn’t interested in our Quidditch secrets, if that’s what worries you.”
“No, no, I suppose not.” He picked up his wand from where it rattled on the table, enchanting a chocolate frog wrapper to fling itself at the sliding door the moment Peter’s face popped into the entrance.
“Oi!” he protested, making James laugh.
“What do you think, Petey?” he inquired. “Is Dorcas Meadowes alright by the Marauders?”
“Haven’t thought about it enough.” He frowned and snatched the flying chocolate wrapper from the air, defeating his foe and taking a seat next to Mary.
“It’s not really your business,” Marlene objected.
“She’s a Slytherin, Mckinnon!”
“And a person. Not that hard to see.”
“Some Slytherins aren’t people at all,” James spat out.
“You think she doesn’t know that?” Mary confronted him softly with the truth. She’d been called mudblood enough times to know what it felt like when someone really didn’t believe you were a person at all. It was worse than anything, to be looked in the eye and denied existence.
So many things could be said of James Potter. He was arrogant, handsome, funny. He could be a prick when he wanted to and he was more loaded than Mary could even dream. And he was kind. He might not have known when to admit he was wrong, but he knew when he had hurt someone else, and that he could never stand for. At her words, he immediately fell into apologies.
“You’re right, I’m sorry.” He grinned gently. “If you like Dorcas, you should be friends with her, Marls. I worry for you because I forget that you’re smarter and stronger than me all in one.”
Marlene laughed, shaking her head proudly, “You arse, I know you care.”
“I approve of Meadowes too,” Peter declared before James elbowed him. “Not that I need to!”
“Good save, Pettigrew,” Marlene guffawed.
Across the table, Lily closed Witch Weekly. She’d been pretending not to listen, but Mary knew better.
Thank you, she mouthed.
Mary shrugged in return, smiling easily. That made it all worth it. They communicated wordlessly, without even meaning to. Their legs brushed under the table. Silently, unknown, they had each other.
***
Mary and Lily couldn’t stand saying goodbye to each other. When the rest of their friends parted ways, exchanging quick hugs and waves, they stayed long after. Break was only two weeks long, but, when stretched out in front of them, felt like an eternity. Marlene, Peter, and James took a Portkey to their areas of the country. Only Mary and Lily crossed back over into the Muggle world.
Lily’s train wasn’t for another half hour. She had time enough to wander the fluorescent aisles of an unfamiliar corner store, and because Lily had the time, Mary had the time too. Ducking between bottles of cheap wine and tooth paste, they chatted it up.
“Marlene seems happy,” Mary said absentmindedly, perusing the cigarettes. Julien would need more, and she had a few pounds to spare for this little gift. “I pray her and Dorcas would never split up, it makes her that much more bearable.”
Lily laughed, “Have you noticed she’s stopped having Quidditch dreams?”
In earlier years, the girls had been kept up for hours at night with Marlene’s grunts, her limbs twitching as she strained for imaginary Bludgers. When it happened, Mary and Lily would wake up around midnight and turn over in bed to giggle with each other across the space between beds. This year, they would cast a silencing charm around Mary’s four-poster and giggle about it until they devolved into late-night chatting. It was good for them to find new things to talk about, these days. She learned the most about her on those chats.
“Oh, yes! Allowing us to move on to much better topics of conversation,” she giggled, and realized she’d certainly never been so grateful for anything.
“God bless Dorcas Meadowes,” Lily came up beside her with a gentle nudge to the arm and a soft chuckle.
She found Mary’s favorite pack of cigarettes with ease and picked it out, tossing it into her hands. Maybe she learned something from their night time talks, too. Or maybe she watched her when she smoked, examining the smoke pouring from her mouth.
“They’re your favorite,” she explained.
“It’s true.” Mary tossed the box around for a second. She looked up to puzzle over Lily’s face. Those green eyes flitted to and fro, all knowing. She saw everything about Mary, even when they both pretended to look away.
Softly, under the hum of the fluorescent lights and the chatter of other customers, Mary squeezed her hand.
“I’m going to miss you,” she said. “Always.”
“You don’t have to miss me forever, you know,” Lily returned with equal comfort. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Mary would’ve kissed her, if she could. It was the best goddamn goodbye anyone could ask for. It said the most, held the most, kept their heads so far above water. She didn’t know how she was going to hide that from everyone back home, now. Julien already saw through her. What would she look like to those who’d been close?
***
Hair tossed in the wind, leather jacket wrapped around his torso, Julien waited for her across the street from the tube station, leaning arms-crossed against a brick storefront with an unlit cigarette playing in his hands like a metallic statue of a recently dead, stuck-up poet-songwriter.
A smirk of recognition flashed on her face, mirrored across the street, even over the rush of cars and buses and passersby.
“That’s really you?” she called across the crowd, shaking her head.
“‘Course it is, Macdonald!” He stood straight up, saluting. “Your girl said a nice goodbye, eh? I can see it in your smile.”
A car zinged by, just barely missing the first step he took into the street. The next slammed on their breaks when he deftly crashed into their past, as did the one after that. By then, he was clear across the street, standing in front of her looking like he always did. Dirty bomber jacket, clean white shirt, and jeans that clung to his hips. His curls fell into his eyes, but he flipped them away to grin at her.
“You’re going to die one of these days.” She shoved him lightly on the shoulder as they began to walk. Niles, from the corner store, was waiting to kick off her welcome home tour.
“I’m your most mortal friend, eh? Posh kids don’t jump like I do.” He lit his cigarette, took a drag, and passed it off to her in one motion.
“Ay, can’t say they do.” The cigarette felt good in her mouth, the right weight, the right taste. A good Londoner’s fag.
“But some of them kiss better, I reckon. Or you wouldn’t look so damn happy.”
“One of them does,” she grinned. “Has started to, maybe.”
“So she admitted it?”
“Yeah,” she nodded sheepishly. “In her own special way.”
“You gotta love that about people, all their own special ways.” The place Niles worked was just up the street. She felt right at home, seeing it and walking next to Julien.
“How’s your hairdresser? If we’re chatting about it.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled in a sad smile. When he passed her the cigarette he made sure to brush just that much against her hand.
“She has a husband.” His eyes flickered mischievously. “A rather tall, beefy, boxer type husband who caught us in bed one day. This hairdresser is quite the player, see. Gets on real nice with guys like me and the girls, too. Nearly put me eye out when he found us.” He pointed to his left eye, where she could see just the faintest yellow bruising.
“You’ve become an adulterer in my absence!”
“Ach, the best girls are taken, Mary. It’s what makes them so hall-of-fame.”
“Yes,” she laughed, louder than the bell that chimed as the door to the corner shop opened. “It certainly does.”
Inside, Niles gave them a hollering hello. “Ayyyy, home again, mate! And with the ol’ boy too!”
“You know she keeps me ‘anging,” Julien knocked her on the shoulder, saluting to Niles.
“Good to see you, Niles.” She smiled softly. “Good to be home, too.”
“Whole buncha guys been sad ya picked Jules over here since you’ve been gone.” He wagged a finger at her knowingly. “See, he’s the best of the lot, what with the way he takes care o’ those girls and all.”
She turned around, looking to see Julien as he picked through the aisles, acquiring packs of Maltesers for the triplets.
“Takes care of me too, now that I’m back.” Mary admitted sheepishly.
“You can take care o’ yourself, mate.” Niles told her. “All Brixton girls do, eh?”
The city recognized her, alright. It couldn’t help seeing her for what she was. She felt it all in a rush, that warmth. She was glad to be home, taking mental notes of everything she loved all over again. One day, she would bring Lily here. They were something real now, after all.
Julien checked out, flashing back and forth with Niles in the quick banter of old friends. She subbed in when she needed to. It was easy to spar with lads like that. They were happy to laugh at anything stupid, and even happier to laugh at things that deserved it.
Niles saved his bomb for the very end, just as they were walking out.
“Your ma was in ‘ere the other day, Mary.” He leveled his hand at her, gripped with a sudden realization that this mattered. “At the pharmacy back there, or somethin’. But she was in ‘ere lookin’ like a storm was coming.”
Her eyes fell to the floor, Julien suddenly gripped at her hand. Easter didn’t start until she was packed into the church, smelling the pub on her mother and hopeful happiness off of the triplets.
Julien walked her back to the flat, laden with their chocolate. They stayed quiet, passing the cigarette gently between them and holding its weight.
“It’ll be alright, Mary.” He assured her.
“She’ll see it in my eyes,” she whispered. “She always knows what I am.”
“Maybe she’s realized, since you’ve been gone so long and doing what seems like changing to you, that she needs you. She’s your ma, she loves you.”
“Or maybe she’ll bite my head off.” Mary laughed darkly. “Not sure if she loves me at all.”
Outside of the flat, they said good-bye on the sidewalk. Julien would head to pick up the triplets from Mrs. Gordon’s and bring them home once she’d checked the coast was clear. If her mother was on a tear, she didn’t want them to see it, not when she could protect them from her wrath.
“Good luck.” He gave her a tight hug. “And be safe.”
***
Mary cracked the door to her flat open, loud as a gunshot. All the lights were off, and the locks were wide open. She called out, and stepped inside when there was no response. Waiting silently inside were a month’s load of empty beer cans, her sister’s old art projects, and her mother, stock still in the kitchen.
“Happy Easter, Ma,” she tried to smile, assuming that she must’ve stumbled into some sort of drunken stupor. Exactly why the triplets were off with Julien. “I’m glad to be home.”
Tentatively, she stepped further into the silence. Her footfalls creaked across the floorboards.
“Are you alright, Ma?” Mary pressed harder. She’d almost made it to her mother, and she began to reach out, to touch her, to give her a hug.
Her mother swung around, cutting her fist across her body in one swift motion. There was a letter in her hand, crumpled and shoved into a ball. Mary stared at it. Her hand was still outstretched as her mouth fell open, into pure shock.
“This,” her mother shook the thing hard, a strangle grip around the open parchment, “came for you.”
“It’s from a friend of mine,” she bargained. “She sends things ahead of me, sometimes.”
Mary didn’t know what the hell the letter was doing here, beating her with some kind of fresh magic. She stood there like she’d been condemned, unwitting in what she’d even done to deserve it. Who knew what Lily might’ve written? Who knew what she was thinking, if she wanted her, if she wanted her dead.
“Your friend?” her mother laughed in her face. She was rounding on Mary now, backing her into the corner.
“Lily,” Mary murmured brokenly.
“Yes, Lily. Your friend. I read it all,” her mother shook her once proud head. It’d been a long time since she’d been proud of anything, and she spoke like she knew this, like every disappointment was crashing over Mary’s shoulders. “This is what you come home from, eh? This is what you get up to at that goddamn school of yours?”
“It’s nothing,” she whispered. Maybe Lily had written the lie, anyway. Maybe it really was nothing.
Her mother stared at her, and she knew that it couldn’t be true.
“By the Lord’s name, this isn’t my fault. I didn’t make this ‘appen.” She rounded on her, turning the corner from the kitchen to the doorway, where Mary still stood.
“Nothing happened, Ma.”
She brandished the letter. It burned hot like a knife, like a gun. Something that can really kill. With a snap of her wrist, she unfurls the paper to its full length, and begins to read.
“I miss you, Mary. I’m sending this ahead of time to tell you so, but I can only imagine how badly it hurts the moment you’re reading this. I miss your smile, and the way it reaches your eyes. Most of all, I miss the way you-”
Her mother’s voice was sing-song, almost playful, as she marched ever closer. Her eyes were hot with the threat of tears.
“Stop-”
“I hope you’re thinking of me, Mary.” Mary’s mother was frozen the moment her father left, stuck in the moment that her life fell apart. She taunted, on and on, like she’d never grown a day over seventeen, like she hated Mary as a fierce school-yard enemy.
Tears fell openly, then, in an unending stream. She hadn’t cried like that since she was a very small child, since it all went wrong.
“You don’t understand-”
“Oh, I understand,” her mother closed in on her, groaning with each word. “You think I don’t understand? I’ve seen every stinking thing that’s wrong with you. I tried to fix it, ‘aven’t I?”
Standing before her, Mary’s mother asked the question with a finger pointed right at her heart. She looked down at the ground and turned her face away, her eyes shielded.
“Haven’t I?” she asked again, harder this time.
When Mary gave no reply, she grabbed at her chin and jerked her head up. For one second they stood staring at each other, mirrored eyes looking back.
“Answer me,” she demanded. “I’m your mother, Mary. Answer me”
She nodded jerkily, full of fear.
“You’ve tried,” Mary told her desperately.
“Good.” She threw Mary’s head to the side, releasing her with final force. “I’ve done everything but consecrate the ground you walk on. I’ve taken you to church each Sunday, built our time to pay and repent. I’ve given my life to you, Mary. This is how you repay me.”
She spat down at her, shaking the letter in her balled up fist. Mary flinched herself smaller. She’d been hit before, over and over again.
“Please-”
“You keep in line, you watch your sisters, and I’ll take you as far as eighteen. Then you can go on and rot in Hell, far I see.”
“Ma, please-” Deep wracking breaths came in and out, in and out. “We’re not like that,” she begged. “She’s not like that.”
Mary couldn’t stomach the idea that Lily would ever condemn her. It couldn’t be true, with her green eyes and soft hair and easy smile. Why wouldn’t that come out, when she told her mother? She couldn’t say that she thought she was in love with her. She couldn’t say that she’d felt it a while now, shifting in her chest when she breathed.
“But you are. You’re exactly like that, Mary. Just like your father.”
It always ended like that. Her father meant an abandoned life, a life that was distant and unimaginable. She smiled like her father, talked like him too. Ran away when it mattered most and left her mother standing there, screaming. Her father hadn’t been a fucking queer, but he might as well have. He left them all in the same way.
“I know,” she sobbed. “I tried to change.”
“Sometimes trying isn’t enough.” She looked at Mary with something just softer than disgust. “Sometimes you have to let it kill you, to be free.”
They were very quiet, then. So quiet you could hear the last of Mary’s soft sobs.
“You’d love her,” she finally said. “If you ever met her, I mean. She’s so much better than me, Ma. You’d love her for that.”
“Good, Mary. You did one thing right.”
That was something they agreed on. There was understood hatred behind her mother’s eyes, an understanding that it would remain. She hadn’t seen her before, but she saw her now. It didn’t matter if she hated what she saw, so much that she saw it at all.
The two of them made dinner for the girls, mirror images. The letter lay on the countertop, open to the light that poured down on it. Mary thought it was blinding, sitting like that. Enough to kill you, then set you free.