Mary Macdonald obliviated herself in 1981, after calling Remus to tell him what happened, and what she was going to do. Call her selfish, but Mary knew she wasn’t cut out to be a warrior who dies young. She got rid of all her memories of even becoming a witch, and she disappeared into the muggle world she was born into. When she woke up with no recollection of magic, she found her wand, or what she thought was a stick, along with photographs of her next to strangers all over her house. She went to go throw everything out, but she wasn’t able to. Even tho the pretty red head and the boy with long black hair and all the others were strangers, the simple thought of throwing out their pictures made Mary have a panic attack. So, she grabbed everything, including the wand, and shoved it into a box which she then put in the attic. She breathed a sigh of relief and sat on the couch, while trying very hard not to think about who the strangers could’ve been.
{Many years later}
Mary has been working at a little coffee shop for a couple of weeks now, it’s an easy job that pays decently. She’s waiting tables, and she walks up to a table with a guy sitting alone. His nose is stuck in a book and he’s wearing a grampa sweater. The man looks up and Mary swears she can feel her heart stop. The man’s face is covered in freckles and the most beautiful scars that she’s ever seen. She gets some major deja vu and just stands there for a moment, staring. The man clears his throat and she realizes she didn’t hear his order. The man looks sad as he closes the book and stands up, he walks to the front door and turns to look at her,
“It was good to see you again, Mary.”
She tenses at the sound of her name, but doesn’t have time to react before the man is gone.
That night Mary goes home and cries for hours, not really knowing why but understanding that she should be grieving.
Weeks pass and the man keeps coming in at least every second day. He never orders more than a tea, just sitting at his table reading for about an hour, before getting up and walking out, but never before catching Mary’s eye and saying goodbye. Mary has never felt this sad before in her entire life, and she doesn’t even understand why. She always forgets to ask for his name.
Weeks turn into months, and months to years. The man never stops coming. They both grow older. The man’s scars increase in numbers, his hair is laced with silver, and his eyes seem to hold a permanent tiredness that was always there, but grows worse. At some point she learned that his name is Remus. At some point Remus brought in a black dog that looked just as sad as the man did, if dogs can even feel such complex emotions. At some point he came in and ordered his tea, and told her blankly that the dog, Snuffles, had died.
At some point Remus brought in his apparent wife. A beautiful women with purple hair. They seemed like a perfect match, so she has no explanation for why seeing them together made her so damn angry. Apparently she didn’t hide the anger well, because when the two of them saw her face as she brought them tea, they exchanged a look and smiled ever so sadly. That night she went home and slammed all the doors she could find, just for the hell of it. She didn’t think she was causing all that much damage, but when she looked around at her house, at least half her mugs were shattered on the ground.
She never saw that woman again, never even learned her name.
In 1998, she felt constantly paranoid. There was constant news reports about terrorist attacks and people being killed. She went to sleep every night wondering if she would be next. On May 2nd, she went into work as normal. Today was a day that she expected Remus to be there. She had grown used to the silent companionship with the bookish man. But he didn’t show up. She brushed it aside, saying he was probably busy. But deep down she knew somehow. He wouldn’t be coming back. She cried that night, the same as the first time he came in. Weeks passed, and he never did show up again. Mary went into a depressive episode for months. That man had been coming in for years, and now he’s dead. She had no confirmation, yet she just knew. She thought of his wife, and even tho they only met once, and the woman made her angry even to this day, she felt sad for her too. The attacks stopped shortly after that.
The years continued to pass. Eventually Mary got too old to be on her feet all day, but she had significant savings so she could retire. She had never wed, nor had kids. She lived in her comfy little house on no. 7 Privet Drive with a small black cat. One day, her memory sparked and she suddenly remembered something. She walked as fast as she could for her age and pulled down the ladder to her attic. She pulled down the old, dusty box, not once opened since it was put away 41 years ago. She sat on her couch and smoothed her gray hair over her shoulder. She opened the box and pulled each item out, not really looking at anything. Once the box was empty, she picked up the stack of old pictures. There was one of her as a much younger girl with a red head and a blonde. They had their arms around each other and were smiling so big. She took it out of the frame, looking for writing on the back.
“Mary, Lils, and Marlene. Winter at Hogwarts, 1978.”
She put the picture down and picked up the next, taking it out of its frame.
“James, Lils, Alice, Mary, and Pandora. The team that won charades (they cheated - Wormy) (No we didn’t! - Alice) Gryffindor common room, 1976”
She kept pulling out photos, some had her in them, some didn’t.
“James getting the best news of his life! - 1976”
“Alice and Franks wedding! -1980”
“Snuffles (a.k.a. Sirius) trying to steal a Moony sweater - 1979”
“Marlene and Dorcas being in love, but they’re also quidditch rivals - 1978”
”Barty being smitten with Evan - 1976”
She pulled out photo after photo, smiling at each one. But then, one of them made her suck in a breath.
“Remus and Sirius, pretending they aren’t totally in love. (What the fuck, Mary? - Sirius) (Seriously, Mary? - Remus) - 1976”
Remus. Remus. It took her a minute before she realized. That’s Remus, her coffee house Remus! Why does she have a photo of him in her attic? Who’s the boy he’s with? She flips back a couple photo’s, to the one titled Alice and Franks wedding, and sure enough, upon closer inspection, there’s Remus standing right next to her, the same boy on his other side. They look sickeningly in love, the boy with black hair planting a kiss on his cheek and Remus with a dopey smile on his face. She looks through a couple more photos of the boy, his face now looking slightly familiar. It’s then that it clicks. He looks similar to Remus’ wife. They must be fucking related. Now, she can’t for the life of her remember these people, but she understands the anger from years ago. He was married to his ex (?) lovers relative, when him and the boy so clearly belong together.
After looking at all the photos, and the other objects from the box, she takes a minute to grieve Remus, she hasn’t thought about him in so long. She then stand up, puts all the photos back in their frames, and hangs them up around her house. She doesn’t understand why, but it makes her feel happy so she doesn’t question it. It’s rather unfortunate that her memory didn’t contain Snuffles.
Weeks pass, Mary’s health is declining. She went to the doctor recently, apparently she had some disease or another that can’t be cured. Honestly, it sounds awful, but Mary doesn’t find herself caring all that much. She’s lived a decent amount of time, and she feels ready. On one particularly bad health day, her doorbell rings. She forces herself to stand up and answer it. It’s a younger couple, possibly in their 30s-40s. The man has round glasses and messy hair, the woman has hair so ginger it’s comparable to flames. They say hello, and the man introduces himself as Harry Potter. Mary thinks for a second, before realizing. Her eyes open big.
“Oh, I know you! I think I have a picture of you as a baby, and you look like your parents. Now, I don’t remember how I know you or your parents, so bear with me. But would you like to see my photos?”
The couple accepts and enters her home. Mary points out her many, many photographs, taking out some to read the hand written captions. At one of the red head whose name she’s come to learn as Lily, sitting alongside the man named James, with a little baby Harry in the middle, the grown Harry smiles. Mary tells the man to keep it, it’s his family and he’s the rightful owner. At another photo, this one containing two sets of twins and labelled, “Gideon, Fabian, Fred, and George - 1980” the man’s wife, Ginny, starts to tear up. She tells Mary that those are her long dead Uncles, and one of her surviving brothers. Mary gives her that photo. She gives Ginny a small hug.
“I’ve always loved that photo, they all look like such mischief makers.”
Ginny lets put a wet laugh and Harry confirms.
“Well then, my dears, you seem to know these people better than I do, and I don’t have much longer left, so please, take all the photos.”
Harry and Ginny try to object, but Mary isn’t having it. They reluctantly agree.
The couple have to leave again after a couple of hours, taking the pictures with them. The house feels empty without the smiling faces, but Mary isn’t concerned. She picks up the stick that was in the box with the pictures, and twirls it in her fingers. It’s a very pretty stick, it doesn’t look natural, with grooves along it that look very intentional. She looks at the time and decides to go to bed. She stands up and takes the stick with her.
After getting ready for bed, Mary lies under the covers and sets the stick on her nightstand. She slowly falls asleep, thinking about the strangers, and how happy she looked with them. That night would be the night that Mary Macdonald died.
Mary opens her eyes in a dream. She looks down at her hands and notices that they’re wrinkle free, and the darkish brown colour that they used to be. She looks down at the rest of her body. She’s dressed like she was in one of the photos, a miniskirt, a red tank top, and a leather jacket. She can feel something against her arm, so she pulls up her sleeve, only to reveal a band around her arm with a very small loop on it. The loop is holding the stick. The whole contraption reminds her of a gun holster. While she’s been checking herself out, she didn’t notice the many many sets of footsteps coming her way. She looks up, and suddenly she looking into the faces of all her photos. She starts to cry as she recognizes the faces. She closes her eyes and opens them again, wondering if this is actually happening. But when she closed her eyes, something happened. Her head explodes in a burst of pain like no other, but the pain is quickly subsided. The memories are back. Every single one of them. She looks up into the face of her best friend, Marlene. Marlene who she remembers.
“Mary, fuck, I missed you.”
Mary scrubs her eyes, then runs right into Marlene. Marlene catches her in a hug and does a twirl, and the others laugh. God damn, it feels good to hear them laugh. Once Marlene finally puts her down, she turns and finds Remus.
“Rem. Rem, I’m so fucking sorry, man. I left you alone to deal with all that crap and I took the cowards way out. But you were still there for me, even if I didn’t remember you. Thank you. Thank you.”
Remus smiles at her and hugs her next. While in his arms, she whispers in his ear,
“And I’m sorry I was rude to your wife. She probably didn’t deserve that.”
He bursts out laughing.
“It’s okay, Mary. You were subconsciously protecting Sirius. We both thought it was sweet.”
One by one, all her friends hug her, and she tells them all how sorry she is for forgetting them. Sirius says he was watching that interaction and laughed the whole time, and Pandora thought it was sad when she did accidental magic afterwards and didn’t recognize it. Lily and James thank her for treating Harry so kindly. Fred and the Prewetts tell her they cried when Ginny did at their photo. Evan says welcome home. Dorcas ruffles her hair like she used to, always making sure Mary remembers how much taller Dorcas is than her. After everyone greets her, Mary remembers something.
“Hold on a sec, I haven’t done proper magic in 41 years. I need to do something cool.”
Pandora giggles,
“Don’t do the spell I did, it’s what got me here!”
Regulus reprimands her for making a death joke on Mary’s death day.
Mary rolls her eyes, then takes out her wand. She points it at the sky and releases a bunch of fireworks all at once, her old specialty. Her friends cheer her on as Mary does everything she hasn’t gotten to do in too many years.
A sudden thought hits her.
“Oh shit!”
“What’s wrong, Mary?” asked Marlene.
She turns to Lily,
“I hope your son takes my fucking cat, I left it alone back there!”
Everyone bursts out laughing.
“Oh Mary, it’s so good to have you back.”