Mary were sitting curled into a ball on the wooden floor of her living room. It felt empty. The memories of Lily laughing and Marlene popping a bottle of champagne. How many times had they not sat in that very couch? All gone.
Lily would laugh no more. Marlene would never joke again. They were gone. Everyone was gone.
The gryffindor party’s felt far away. Their raucous laughter could never have existed. Their worry’s and woes over bad grades felt silly.
Suddenly her radio started playing. It had broken and she had tried to fix it. Only now it randomly started playing before shutting down.
A long, long time ago, I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they'd be happy for a while
The song started. American pie. Unbidden a memory surfaced. They had all been sitting by the fireplace in the common room. After a rowdy night of drinking and truth or dare. The crowd had died down leaving them giggling by the crackling fire. They were all sitting with their own bottle.
Remus had drunk the most but he wasn’t drunker than the rest of them. He made all of them seem like bloody light weights. Remus could down bottle after bottle without losing his sobriety. Probably why he always drank more than any of them.
Marys trusted radio had been enchanted to survive the magic of Hogwarts. It was playing as they sang. Apparently even Remus was drunk enough to sing along.
So, bye, bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to The Levee, but The Levee was dry
And them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey in Rye
Singin', "This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die"
They all laughed when they finished each chorus. They joined arms and swinged back and forth, digging the music.
The happy memory felt like a taunt. Singing about last days when in only three years time they would all be dead. Only three out of seven remained. Out of those three one was in prison and the other wasted away in liquor. She was the only one left. All alone.
But February made me shiver
With every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died
Marlenes pale face, her eyes unseeing still haunted her nightmares. She had been propped against the wall. Side by side with her brother, mother and father.
Lilys red hair that had surrounded her face. The fire red had dulled leaving it cold and stiff. Her ever so green eyes hadn’t shon with emotion as they always did. No matter if she was angry or happy they were always bright with feeling. All the rosiness of her cheeks had drained away.
James was gone. His glasses had slipped down his long nose. He would never cast that aura of assortment again. Would never smile warmly or joke brazenly.
Peter’s timid smile was forever gone. He would never pull anxiously at a stand of his sandy blond hair again.
Sirius was responsible. He was in Azkaban. The bite of betrayal still stung. To believe that they had dated. That their lips had met. He had been inside her for merlins sake. It disgusted her.
Well, I know that you're in love with him
'Cause I saw you dancing in the gym
You both kicked off your shoes
Then I dig those rhythm and blues
I was a lonely teenage broncin' buck
With a pink carnation and a pickup truck
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the music died
All of them were dead, all but Remus. And he was closer to dead then alive. They lived as neighbours. Sirius and Remus had shared an apartment. She had tried to check in on him but he just sat in a corner, crying. The place stank of fags and liquor. Broken bottles littered the place.
She went there every day still he just ignored her. After she had told him he had just broken into a sobbing heap on the ground. He had screamed and cried. His fist had been punched into their yellow hard wall. A crack had formed and Remus knuckles had been covered in blood, a crunch of broken bones echoing in the room. Remus winced and screwed up his face but otherwise showed no signs of his broken fingers.
Now for ten years we've been on our own
And moss grows fat on a rollin' stone
But that's not how it used to be
When the jester sang for the king and queen
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
And a voice that came from you and me
One day she had found him with deep cuts to his writs. The blood had flowed onto the floor, colouring the carpet scarlet. She had just about managed to save him. Her heart had beat so fast as she had tried to remember the spells Marlene had babbled about during her healing practise. He had not thanked her afterwards, merely glowered. She had removed all mirrors and sharp objects from his apartment. He had tried another time but with a rope instead. So she removed all ropes and wires.
She was beginning to wonder if letting him die was the kinder option. Wouldn’t she like to escape herself?
A small part of her couldn’t help but resent him for falling apart so completely. She was grieving too. She had lost everyone as well. Mary needed him and he was unreachable.
Now, the half-time air was sweet perfume
While the sergeants played a marching tune
We all got up to dance
Oh, but we never got the chance
'Cause the players tried to take the field
The marching band refused to yield
Do you recall what was revealed
The day the music died?
Her mother had recently passed away too. She had been hit by a drunk driver whilst on her way to work.
They had a working class family. Her father had walked out on them when she was eight. She could still remember him. The chocolate brown eyes. Sometimes she could remember moments when he had held her hand or carried her onto the swings. When he had wiped away her tears after being bullied in school. How he would come home with mars bars and whisper “don’t tell your mother” with a secrative smile.
She had one older sister, two younger brothers and one little sister. He had just left one day, without a word. There had been some fighting between him and their mother. She was pregnant at the time with her little sister. He didn’t want another kid. So her little sister was brought into the world without a father.
They lived in a cramped little house. Their mother did the best she could. She worked two jobs just to support them.
How she missed her. Those warm, comforting hugs.
She missed her easy life. All of them. Her siblings. Missed how Katie would turn up the volume and sing the loudest she could to ABBA. When Elizabeth would ride on her back. The days when Charlie was young enough to look up to her. When Leo built his treehouse.
But they had very little contact. They had all grown up and gotten their own lives.
Oh, and there we were, all in one place
A generation lost in space
With no time left to start again
So come on, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack Flash sat on a candlestick
'Cause fire is the devil's only friend
She missed it, missed them. The time before Hogwarts, before war.
She wanted to go back in time. To forget it had all happened. Forget all the pain and suffering. Forget magic.
Her fingers shook as she raised her wand to her temple. Forgetting was easier, the only way she could continue forth.
She didn’t care if preventing Remus from forgetting only to make herself forgot made her a hypocrite.
“Obliviate” her voice trembled.
I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn't play
Memory after memory passed through her mind. The sorting hat on top of her curly hair. A crying red haired girl clutching a letter. The blond ponytail swinging before her.
All of her memories of her friends, hogwarts, magic, passing and vanishing.
Mary was laying hooked up to several machines in a hospital bed. Her black corkscrew curls lay still beside her. The only signs of life, the gentle rise and fall if her chest and the beeping monitor.
A neighbor had heard a thud and had rushed her too the nearest hospital. She had been unconscious, her heart barely beating.
The doctors had no clue what ha happened to her. They thought maybe an aneurysm but they found no evidence to support it. No one knew her name so her family never found her.
And in the streets, the children screamed
The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died
So she remained unmoving and still as the years past. Having taken to much of her mind, leaving only whisks behind. Not dead but not alive. Never would she join her friends as her mind had disintegrated. Only hints of her environment reached her on occasion. The stench of antiseptic. Low voices just out of reach. Other than that she was lost. Lost in the darkness of her own mind.
Rotting away as the years passed. Her body that had once been her temple was now her eternal prison.
She remained for years in a coma before, taking pity on her, the pull was plugged. Marys heart beat no more.
And they were singin', "Bye-bye, Miss American Pie"
Drove my Chevy to The Levee, but The Levee was dry
And Them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey in Rye
Singin', "This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die"
The music died.