Mary MacDonald, age twenty-two, stares at the bottom of a bottle of firewhiskey. It burns and bubbles in her stomach and warms her veins from the inside out. She hasn’t lifted her eyes for quite some time. Every time she does, she hears her voice. She sees a shock of red hair, a glint of emerald in the corner of her small sitting room.
It’s been like this since last October. She hasn’t known a single moment of peace since…
Anyways, she can’t handle it anymore. She’s been struggling with it for nine months now. Red hair, green eyes, freckles and pale skin and a laugh like God.
She sniffles. Turns her eyes to the ceiling. Flinches away from the flash of fire in her peripheral. She’s just drunk enough to see her in the corner, though not drunk enough to hear her speak. Never drunk enough to bring her back.
“I wish you’d stop haunting me,” she laughs, humorless and raspy. The woman in the corner laughs, like tinkling bells and summer winds and everything Mary will never have again. She’ll never touch her again. Never paint her nails or braid her hair or help her pick an outfit. They’ll never have self care Sunday again. They’ll never swing Harry between them, giggling and squealing and tickling the ickle boy until he screeches for mercy.
Because Lily Evans — Potter now, she reminds herself, then tosses it out, because regardless — is dead. She’s dead and gone, buried in Godric’s Hollow beside her husband.
Mary has felt the loss of her ever since. Days and nights passed in a blur. Bottle after bottle of burning liquor left empty and discarded in the bin inside her tiny kitchen. There’s a black hole in her chest, sucking and pulling every bit of joy she may have felt.
Mary MacDonald, age twenty-two, stares at the bottom of a bottle of firewhiskey. She sniffles. Looks to the mantle, where all of her framed photos have been lain on their fronts. Happy faces, teenage recklessness, hidden away from her bloodshot eyes. She makes a decision in this moment, and stands on shaky legs.
When the sun rises, it touches a spotless apartment, an empty mantle, and a red and gold tie thrown in the rubbish bin. Bags upon bags of memories painted vermillion by the rising sun. Watercolors smattering a firmly locked chest of photos hidden in the top shelf of her closet. Mary MacDonald will not touch them again.
Mary MacDonald will not think of them again.
She visits with Emmeline first. Emmeline will be, by far, the easiest to part with. After all, the only thing they’ve got in common is the Order, and that’s been disbanded with the news of Voldemort’s death.
Emmeline looks every bit as devastated as Mary feels. Evan so, she plasters a smile onto her golden face and twirls a straw in her ice water. Mary appreciates her for this, even if she can see right through it.
Emmeline lost the Prewett brothers, after all, and they meant just as much to her as Lily and James mean — meant — to Mary. Everything, to put it plainly. They meant everything.
“So, MacDonald, what brings us here?” Emmeline asks, voice just as raspy from what Mary is assuming is also a small — large, but she won’t admit that — issue with substance use. Mary chuckles softly, another humorless sound, because nothing is funny without James and Sirius to tell jokes.
“Just wanted to check in,” she says, smiling pleasantly. She knows Emmeline can see through her just as well as she can see through Emmeline. “See how things are going with you, I suppose.”
“Oh, they’re going swell,” Emmeline muses dryly. Her dark eyes drop to the ice water and half-eaten pasta dish in front of her. “It’s a bit lonely in the house without Gid and Fab to keep me company, but I’ve gotten a cat, so it’s been a bit more bearable.”
“A cat?” Mary asks in a cracking voice. The Potters had a cat. She gulps down the wave of grief rising in her chest. “What’s its name?”
“Her name’s Hyacinth,” Emmeline says meaningfully, chuckling softly. “Cheeky little bugger. Love her to death, even if she claws at my leather jacket and refuses to let me take a piss in peace.”
Mary flinches. Flower names and leather jackets are a soft spot as of late. She smiles nonetheless, taking a long sip of the tea she’s left to cool. It’s cold now, tastes a bit bitter on her tongue. She grimaces at her cup.
“She sounds like a handful,” Mary says. Emmeline smiles fondly as she twirls her fork in the pasta she clearly doesn’t intend to finish.
“She is. Takes up quite a bit of my time, in all honesty. She keeps me distracted, though, so I can’t complain much,” Emmeline says. Through the dullness of her loss, Mary can make out a faint twinkle in her eyes.
Good. Emmeline is good. Emmeline will be fine in that lonely house with her cat.
Mary leaves that day with a heavy stomach and a bitter acceptance in her chest.
Remus is by far one of the hardest. He sits across from her at the pub, a pint held loosely in his hand. He looks just as miserable as her, not even bothering with the faux smile. The scars have stretched to his collar now, poking out from beneath it. The gash on his face seems more irate now than it ever has. Even his hair seems angry — tawny curls sticking out on the sides, swirling in a furious halo around his head.
“What are you planning?” Remus asks, cutting to the chase. Mary smiles a little sadly, feeling that pang of loss in her chest. She meets his eye across her fruity mixed drink. His eyes, wild amber hardened by immeasurable desolation, bore into her with a wisdom she can never hope to reach.
“You won’t like it,” she cautions. His jaw tightens and his nose wrinkles. Tears burn her eyes. “Can’t we just share a drink like nothing’s wrong?”
“I’m getting the feeling that this is our last pub night,” he says miserably. Mary sighs softly, pushing her drink around in front of her. “It is, isn’t it? You’re leaving.” It’s not phrased as a question.
“Not in the way you think,” she says. Remus makes a sound like he’s been punched. She flinches away from it, letting the tears taste her cheekbones.
“When?” he demands, sounding just as broken as she is. She smiles at him, and he must see the meaning behind it, because he clenches his jaw and turns his head to the ceiling. Even in the low lighting of the pub, she can see salt water dripping from his chin.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. Remus scoffs, then takes a long swig from his pint. He swallows it thickly and meets her eye, something pleading buried within his gaze.
“Don’t forget me,” he begs. Mary smiles at him and pats his hand.
“I won’t,” she lies.
The next morning, Mary MacDonald forgets Remus Lupin. One spell whispered in the sanctity of her apartment, and all of them wash away like a bit of dirt after a trip to her garden.
She doesn’t know why she’s crying.
In January of 1996, a man with brown hair and scars all over his face walks into the diner she works at. He stops in his tracks, something wounded in his eyes, and says her name. She asks him if there’s anything she can help him with. He leaves.
She has the strangest feeling that she knows him from somewhere, though it’s highly likely she’s seen him in passing on the street. After all, a face like that, scarred as it is, would be hard to forget.
Two weeks later, a man in a leather jacket orders a coffee from her and brings up the subject of magic. She gets the strangest feeling that she knows him too, though she’s probably passed him on the street, too.
She can’t explain the relief she feels upon hearing that he’s just been released after years imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. It runs deeper than being happy for a stranger being found innocent. She can’t explain that, either, though chalks it up to her pregnancy hormones.
She tells her husband about it that night, and he laughs it off, so she does too.
In 2020, Mary MacDonald contracts a rather severe case of Covid-19. She’s considered high risk due to the damage to her lungs from years of smoking in her youth.
As she lays in a hospital bed hooked to numerous machines, she sees a flash of red hair. She isn’t sure why she’s crying, but tears are rolling down her cheeks and her aching lungs contract with the weight of her sobs. She can distantly recall the sound of laughter, light and beautiful and sounding like God.
Mary MacDonald dies in 2023, surrounded by her children. Her eldest daughter has just given birth to her first grandchild. Her only son has just been married to a woman with striking red hair that he’s loved for years.
She closes her eyes, and her heart monitor beeps a final time, and she inhales the scent of eucalyptus and daisies. It smells distinctly of home, of broom polish and firewood and the strangest addition of wet dog.
When she opens her eyes, it’s to red hair and green eyes and pale skin and freckles and a smile she’d know anywhere. She looks down at her hands, smooth brown skin untouched by age, and runs her steady hands over tight coily hair she hasn’t worn naturally since the eighties.
She looks up, at the woman in front of her, and smiles.
“Lily,” she says. Lily Evans smiles back at her.
“Mary,” Lily says, sounding like God, and laughs like angels singing. “We’ve been waiting.”
Lily steps aside, revealing the faces of all those she’s loved and missed all these years. She sees Sirius first, youthful as ever, reflecting every photo of their school years that she’d hidden away in that chest in her closet. His hair is tossed up in a bun, and he’s wearing his classic leather jacket and bell bottoms, and he looks happy.
“Hey, MacDoogles,” he greets. James Potter, all brown skin and round glasses and dimples, throws an arm over his shoulders.
“Took you long enough, don’t you think?” James says, sounding just as loving as he always does. Mary is quite confused by the dark haired man wearing Sirius’ face tucked beneath his arm, seemingly hiding from her, though she’s learned not to question anything with this group of misfits.
“You lied to me,” Remus says, lacking the bite she’d been expecting. He’s grinning, wearing his favourite grandpa jumper, lacking the scarrings of his affliction. His eyes are green — a lovely, forest green that looks foreign on his face.
“I’m sorry, Rem,” Mary says breathlessly. Evan her voice is untouched by her years. She sounds like a teenager again, like the strong girl she’d been in her youth.
“You’re forgiven,” hums a voice to her right. She turns her head and meets the crooked grin of Marlene McKinnon, hanging off of Dorcas Meadowes’ arm. Marlene wears the same blonde hair, brown peaking through at her roots, and a matching leather jacket to Sirius’. Dorcas rolls her eyes and pinches Marlene’s sides with her long nails. Her braids swish with the action.
Lily takes Mary’s hand then, and it feels like coming home. Every wound beneath the surface heals instantaneously, knitting together like they’d never been there to begin with. She looks to Lily, at the softness in her emerald eyes, and breathes.
Mary MacDonald dies in 2023, surrounded by her family, and she remembers.
She remembers Lily Evans, and their self care Sundays, and laughing breakfast in the Great Hall. She remembers James Potter, and cheering him on after Quidditch games, and oiling his hair because his mother can’t. He remembers Sirius Black, and talking about Charms, and starting food fights over dinner. She remembers Remus Lupin, and studying in the library, and sharing desserts. She remembers Marlene McKinnon, and kissing a girl for the first time, and skipping potions to smoke in the bathroom. She remembers Dorcas Meadowes, and comparing outfits, and braiding hair on Saturdays.
She remembers them all. She remembers Hogwarts, and magic, and the people she loved along the way. She remembers sunny afternoons cuddling with Lily along the shore of the Black Lake. She remembers using Lily to perfect her makeup abilities. She remembers sharing a wardrobe with Lily. Confessing her biggest secrets to Lily. Loving Lily like breathing.
“I missed you,” she whispers. As she looks at all the grinning faces, looking so much like the people they’d been, she has no doubt that the sentiment is returned.
“Let’s go find Minnie. I’m sure she’d love to see you,” Lily says. Mary nods, lacing their fingers together. Lily — beautiful and bold and youthful — presses the softest of kisses to her lips. Not even James seems surprised by this development, though it makes sense when he shares a kiss with the short man at his side. Regulus, she thinks his name is. Sirius’ little brother.
“You’re home now, Mare,” Marlene says. She’s right, too. Everything here is right. It’s perfect, and beautiful, and she’s never felt more like she belongs.
She can’t wait for them to meet her children, someday far in the future when they pass. Hopefully peacefully, just as she had, surrounded by their family.