what never cares: magic.
*
Mary Macdonald’s world shattered for the first time in her fifth year, when she realized that this world will never love her the way she wants to love it.
Muggleborn, Black, solidly middle-class — the moment she stepped onto platform 9¾ she realized just how hard she’d have to fight to even be treated with human decency.
And, god, she fought. Tooth and nail she clawed her way to the top of her classes and made sure she stayed there, arriving to the Great Hall each morning with a carefully selected outfit and well-done makeup. Mary Macdonald, good at all her subjects, Mary Macdonald, well liked, Mary Macdonald, beautiful enough to make any jaw drop.
She reveled in every advantage she could get, snatching it close to her chest and snarling at anyone who would try to take it away from her.
But fifth year. Nearing the winter holidays. The castle is cold, and it’s almost eleven at night. Mary is hurrying back to her dorm from the library, a bag full of books held tight in her arms.
Four Slytherins, well-known soon-to-be Death Eaters, step out of the shadows. Mary stops sharply, backing away. She feels the cold ice of fear creep through her stomach as they sneer at her, throwing insults and slurs.
She holds her head high, as she taught herself to, but when the first curses start to hit she can’t help but crumple. They circle her, relentless in the pain they are so determined to cause to any person they think proves a threat to their self-built hierarchy.
Mary passes out at one point and wakes the next morning in the hospital wing, surrounded by the worried faces of her friends. They tell her what happened, and she sits up, head pounding, to ask for the time. Her friends rush out soon after to get to class, promising to bring her back notes and homework.
Mary settles back down, body aching, and waits. Madam Pomfrey bustles over from her office at one point to check how Mary is feeling. She is handed bottles of potion and assigned bed rest for the rest of the day, but no mention is made of the four Slytherins who cursed her. When Mary asks, Madam Pomfrey waves the question off, assuring her that they will be punished.
They never are. Mary leaves the hospital wing the next day, even more scared of the people who reside in the castle that was promised to keep her safe than she was before.
That was the first time Mary truly saw the wizarding world for how it is. Empty promises, shallow words, a call to fight for a cause that does not care for you. Dumbledore, the teachers, even her friends on occasion, talked about how this war must be fought to leave a better life for their children.
Mary didn’t care about her future children, though. She cared about herself, and surviving long enough to even think about starting a family.
Lily talked, sometimes, green eyes bright as she described how she’d fight for muggleborn rights. Mary wanted to scream, shake her, make her understand that this world would never love her, never care for her, never give her a chance for a life. Lily didn’t listen as Mary listed the ways she would still be tossed out. She tried to tell Remus too, that he would be hated for being a werewolf no matter which side won.
He didn’t understand.
None of them understood.
Perhaps things would have ended differently if they did.
*
what always cares: love.
*
The second time Mary’s world shattered was in 1978, when she was initiated into the Order along with the only people in the world she would die for.
She tried to show them.
She did.
If anything else, let that be remembered.
They refused, and so Mary joined a war that she could never win.
*
what never cares: time.
*
The third and final time Mary’s world shattered was on the first day of a crisp November, a silver Patronus awaiting her in her kitchen, a kettle boiling over, four sentences that she would have always remembered.
The war is over. James and Lily are dead. It was Sirius. Peter tried to confront him, was killed as well.
The war is over.
Over.
How many times had she wished this? For the war to end and for her to be able to try to live a normal life?
But not like this.
Not like this.
Never like this.
Mary sobbed, curled up with tears running down her face for each and every one of her loved ones that she lost. All of them, all of them, all of them but Remus.
She phoned him, and he’s crying as well, deep gasping breaths that don’t stop. He came to her house at one point, and they curled around each other, the last ones.
The last ones.
There were celebrations all through the wizard community for the following weeks. Mary wanted to scream. They are dead, all of them, they are dead and they took part of her with them. She is dead, she is dead, she is dead dead dead dead — alive.
She is dead, she is alive, she is alone.
The memories haunted her. Remus drowned in depression and broken bottles. Mary drifted away from the wizarding world, her tethers buried six feet under the ground.
To remember began to hurt. She stopped using magic. It was painful, tearing at her, any thought of wizards or her friends or the life she once had — or perhaps didn’t have, as it was torn away before she could live it. To think of the golden days at Hogwarts was impossible, happy memories tinged in black. Even then, they weren’t entirely happy memories, the war looming in the future like an approaching giant, Mary fighting for even the smallest foothold to let her live.
She began to wish that that letter had never arrived. If she had never gone to Hogwarts she never would have ended up here, picture frames tainted with rusty blood spilled and dried away.
She wouldn’t have gone to Hogwarts, she wouldn’t have met the people she was willing to live a life she didn’t want for, she wouldn’t have laughed and loved and fought and cried and cried and cried as she was torn apart from her soul to her heart. Because they are gone now and Remus is alone and she is alone and it’s too late then to be alone together because their very skins were imbued with magic that she wanted off off off off off off off—Mary didn’t want the magic that killed and healed and maimed and taught and injured and took away the people she loved.
Because she was alone in a cold flat with a kettle boiling over and only memories of her friends that hurt too much for her to want to keep.
*
what never leaves: memories.
*
This time, Mary’s world didn’t shatter. It reformed.
A single word whispered through a flat, a wand held in a hand for the first time in months, closed eyes and pressed lips and tears and memories and then—no more. The memories dissolve like water through hands and the eyes open with confusion.
(Memories never fully disappear. They slide away until you think they’re gone, but they hook onto some deep crevice in your mind. Whatever you believe will happen, they will not let go.)
Mary spent the day confused, pictures of people she didn’t recognize in a flat she remembered buying with the money her mother gave her before she died.
(Though the pictures looked familiar, she couldn’t place it.)
Mary spent the week looking for a job, realizing she needed money even if she lacked remembrance. She found one, simply working at a bookstore register, the same job she had in her high school years.
(The high school years she doesn’t remember were filled with war and struggle, not jobs at bookstores.)
She worked, she bought groceries, she began to make friends. As always, life moves on. Mary went to the doctor to ask what happened to her memories, why she can’t remember much about her personal life for the last decade. The doctor had no answer, so she decided to try to figure it out herself. A lingering chill crept over her minutes into her research, a warning that this is one problem she does not want to figure out.
Mary left it alone, resolving to the blank and empty space that now resides in her mind.
Time continued to move, sweeping Mary along with it. She made friends, laughed a lot, got a roommate, went to university. A decade of her life stayed a yawning abyss, but she learned to live with it, treading carefully around the edge, never daring to peer in. She felt that she didn't want to know what lurks there.
It’s not until later, 1995, that she first started to creep closer to the edge. Standing at a bus stop, umbrella held carefully over her as the rain poured down, she saw a brown haired man covered in scars dart across the street, a huge black dog on his heels. Mary watched as they ran for cover, something in her screaming, reaching, remembering.
You. Part of her said. You, you, you. I loved you once. I loved, and I loved, and I lost you.
The man and the dog ran behind a building for cover, Mary’s eyes intent upon them. She followed slowly, part of her crawling up and towards them, part of her cowering away from the thought of that face. Mary turned the corner, eyebrows pinched as the rain blurred the buildings and her mind, streaking her thoughts with memories.
They were gone. Mary’s shoulders dropped, a wave of longing and relief washing over her. Gone. The feeling was familiar, people just out of reach of her grasping hands.
Come back, she was screaming. Come back, come back, come back, I miss you, I miss you, I miss every one of you.
Stay away, she cried, her mind crumpled like a paper under someone’s heel, shoved into a corner and ignored. Stay far, far away. Take all the pain you left with you. I buried it for a reason, so why do you return only to dig it up and leave me once again?
Mary’s hands shook, umbrella useless in her listless fingers. She was tearing at herself, clawing for these memories she knew she didn’t want. She wanted them back, if only to know why, when, how she knew this man and this dog, recognizing them so viscerally that whatever resided in the abyss inside her began to crawl up.
Glancing back, Mary saw that her bus had arrived. She composed herself, positioned her umbrella neatly above her head once more, and slipped in right before the doors closed. She sat quietly near a window, forcing her hands to still as the rain slid down the buildings, down the glass, down her cheeks and into her mouth with a faint taste of salt.
She knew the man and the dog, she did, she remembered nights and evenings and days with them, she forgot ever seeing them in the first place, she remembered laughter and screams and lights and graves. Mary could picture when she saw the man for the first time fifteen years ago, or perhaps right now, candles and a feast, rain and wet eyes.
She doesn’t know. She can’t remember, she’s so close to the memories that she feels as if she could reach out and grab them. Something holds her back and maybe it’s Mary herself, too scared to lunge off the cliff and hope she can hold on tight enough to not plummet. She doesn’t know, she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know what made tears fall from her eyes as the rain falls from the sky while this softly rocking bus carried her away from the best and worst part of her life.
Mary doesn’t know, and she doesn’t want to. She settled down into her seat, rubs the tears from her eyes and the thoughts from her mind, forgetting about the encounter just as she had countless times before.