To Mary, it's the middle of the night. To Mary, it's October fitfh year and the summer before that, to Mary, it's the day she receives the news that Lily is dead. It's Lily being dead all over again. It's Marlene telling her that she thinks she can't love Mary the way she wants to be loved, it's her kissing all the tears that fall from Mary's eyes like she's trying to kiss it better. It's Lily's last hug before they went into hiding, it's the phone call she never got to give them. It's her voice that was never heard a last time, it's baby Harry's hair that she never got to mess with. It's her dad's cloudy eyes before he passed, her mother's trembling hands as she held Mary's, it's Dorcas' promise that they would throw a birthday party to Pandora that year. It's all being taken away from her at once, brutally and without warning. Again. It's all again.
The night Emmeline dies Mary feels the grief awakes in her body so strong it shakes the entire neighborhood awake. She feels the death of every person dear to her over again, like her mind awoke with grief all of her dead, just to kill them a little more. The years that eased into Mary's mind did little to her memory. So, she knows what's coming. She did for a long time now. She knows what she has to do.
Her hand doesn't even tremble as she reaches for her wand. She wonders what it would feel like, she did even when Emmeline was here with her. Mary was a fighter, all of her life. She didn't back down all these years, she didn't run, even if every single nerve on her body was telling her to. Mary lost everything. She was about to lose everything forever. But she made up her mind.
If Emmeline was there, Mary knows what she'd say. Mary asked her not a week before. "Would you do it?" Emme's voice shook, tears on the brink of falling as she nodded. "Yes... I just wish you wouldn't ask me to. I'd... Miss you a lot, you know?"
Mary tells herself that it doesn't matter, because Emmeline was as dead as they come and she was not coming back from the dead just to do it for her. Maybe she should've asked it sooner, maybe she should've never asked it at all. Mary never doubted of Emmeline's love, but love could only go to a certain length, and their were no different.
Mary's hand stops at her temple, her wand just about to touch her head. She imagines it as a gun. Her last breath as Mary MacDonald is a shallow and short one, one that doesn't do her justice. Then, simple as that, Mary says it. Obliviate. Simple as that, there is no more Mary.
The first breath the stranger sat on a bed she doesn't recognise is a deep one. She doesn't recognise anything, and she doesn't recall picking up a stick or a photograph, but there they are, just in her trembling hands. She doesn't remember coming in, or sitting down, or how did she got here in the first place. She let her hands rest on the mattress below her as she toss the stick to the ground. Another deep breath. She gets up, folds the photo of several people she doesn't know and puts it on the nightstand.
Mary MacDonald leaves the house without any idea that it once was hers.