Chapter Two - January 1982
The Potter’s cottage is, predictably, not in the state they left it in before the couple went into hiding. The top right quarter of the house, which the friends remember easily as Harry’s nursery, appears to have been blown off. The front garden, thanks to a wet November and despite the Christmas snow, is still thriving and Mary bristles at the sight of it, scorned by such an indisputable sign of life at her friends’ place of death. How can the flowers continue to bloom when their strongest, their most beautiful, will never grow again?
It's Remus, this time, who decides he has to be the brave one. With a shaky breath, he takes a step forward towards the front door and shudders as it creaks open at his gentle touch. Of course, there is no need to restore the violated wards if there is no one to return home to them. (Except for Harry, his mind screams at him, clawing at his scalp in tones of pain and guilt and loss). He turns back to Mary, who is frozen at the gate, a lone tear threatening to let loose down her cheek.
“You want me to do this one alone?” He asks. She has been doing all the big tasks for him for God knows how long, it's about time he shouldered an equal amount of the burden. Mary sniffs sharply, and straightens, pulling her teal scarf tighter around her neck as she walks up the cobblestone path.
“No, we’re a team now. We promised, didn’t we?” She steps inside.
It's chilling, how something can seem so accurate to memory yet oh so wrong all at once. The olive green bookshelves that the Marauders had constructed for Lily’s twentieth still remain as they’d left them, overflowing with leatherbound magical tomes and muggle paperbacks alike, though now they are coated in a thick layer of dust. Gulping the air forcefully, Remus picks up Lily’s well-worn copy of Jane Eyre and begins fingering through the pages, though his eyes remain fixated on the shelf in front of him. Wedged haphazardly between Lily’s copious amount of books are a plethora of little trinkets that have James written all over them. Among them: chocolate frog cards featuring his favourite members of the Chudley Cannons, a tiny golden snitch, and, mirroring it, a small golden football bauble Mary had gifted him at the start of fifth year. She remembers now how her dad had excess decoration stock after Christmas, and sneaking each of her friends their very own ornament - much to the delight and fascination of the purebloods of the group.
Mary bristles and pulls at Remus’ hand to hurry him up the stairs. Her eyelids begin to feel hot and gummy, and she honestly just wants to get things over and done with without falling into a complete nostalgia hole. The staircases creak, not a new characteristic of the dated cottage, but what once seemed charming now feel grating and obtrusive, as if the wood itself whines for a homecoming that it will never see.
Upstairs is where the damage becomes really apparent, the floor coated in layers of crumbled brick. Remus feels distinctly sick as, even months later, the thick smell of dark magic overcomes his senses, blocking his nose and causing his eyes to mist in its pungency. He begins to scan the perimeter of the master bedroom, carefully calculating which items James and Lily would want him to keep as mementos, and which should be left in the cottage to rest with them. From the corner of his eye, he can tell Mary is doing the same. The sun begins to set at around 4 pm, so the two friends rely on their wands and a Lumos charm to finish off their visit. It is the reflection from the light of his wand that draws Remus to them; two rings, identical in design save for the engravings: “Padfoot” and “Prongs.”
Remus takes three heavy steps backward, and lets himself crumble onto the double bed as a sudden coldness drives into his core. His thoughts whir and he covers his ears with his palms in an attempt to get them to slow down. Neither James nor Sirius went anywhere without those rings securely on their fingers, or, in Sirius’ case on a chain around his neck (a habit he’d picked up when he was still trapped at Grimmauld). They’d been a way for the two of them to communicate; tapping one of the rings would cause the other to glow. Remus knows Sirius had been the traitor. How could he not when his life since November 1st has been defined by his betrayal? Seeing the two rings together now, though, is physical proof that Sirius had been there that night. To Remus, it feels like a sign, a plea from James and Lily, Peter, Dorcas and Marlene, to rid of what doubt he had of Sirius’ conviction once and for all. He must bleach his thoughts, dissolve any remaining fondness for the man he had intended to dedicate his life to. Even, he decides, if it leaves him bitter and burning from the inside out.
Mary then decides to step in, adamant not to let Remus slip back into the self-pitying hole he’d wallowed in for months. She grabs the rings, stuffing them into a brown leather shoulder bag before lightly stroking the man’s forearm, “What do you reckon? Is it time for the next stop on the grand tour?’
Remus huffs a laugh despite himself and forced himself to stand up, “What are you hanging about for then, Macdonald?”
In a haunting contrast to the Potters’ cottage, the outside of Dorcas’ flat remains completely unchanged from Mary’s last visit. The inside, however, is ransacked; papers strewn all over the floor, Dorcas’ prized jewellery box that she'd had transfigured in fourth year abandoned in two uneven parts. Nevertheless, she finds comfort in the pops of colour that characterise Dorcas and Marlene; royal blue and praying mantis green, a symbol of their union, a disregarding and serenading of their houses and all that they stood for.
Mary decides to start at the wardrobe, and lets a slight smile pass over her face. Her friends’ clothes have thankfully been left unhandled, allowing her to bask fully in the nostalgia. She eyes at least ten items that had once belonged to her, or Lily or even Sirius at some point. She stops on a pair of brown platform clogs laying on the wardrobe’s floor and lets her breathing slow as the memory takes over. The shoes had been hand-me-downs from Alice Longbottom, then Fortescue, who was two years above Mary in school. As they had been the only two first-year Gryffindor girls to start Hogwarts in ‘71, Alice had instantly taken she and Lily under her wing. Mary kneels down and holds the aging shoes to her breast, cradling them carefully like a newborn baby. “Always the perfect mother, our Alice,” she whispers into their soles, “I wish you’d been able to prove it to the rest of the world.” (Sometimes Mary yearns to go after all her friend’s goals, let them achieve them by proxy. And they would be achieving them because she carries them with her everywhere she goes). Every piece of clothing holds memories upon memories; a true time capsule of their shared adolescence. She slips a few items into the bag, the threads of a project beginning to twist together and come to fruition in her mind.
Remus, ever curious, calculating, analytical (a Ravenclaw in the making, Marlene would sometimes chuckle), kneels down and began to look through the notepaper that litters the hardwood floor. Each page features a rough sketch of some sort of accessory and a strange language Remus isn't familiar with. Gnawing at his nails, he tries to decipher the code he's faced with, to no avail.
“Maz, come here a second, please.” he calles out, hoping a second brain would quicken the translation process. As luck would have it, it did.
Mary lets out an amused snort as her eyes quickly skim across the pages, “Are you serious, Remus? Where’s your Muggle side run off to? It’s clearly gibberish.”
Remus looks at her blankly. Exasperated, “I can see it’s gibberish Mary, that’s why we need to work out what language it’s in and get on with translating it. This could be something important.”
Mary frowns and shakes her head solemnly, “It looks important alright. But if you’d let me finish , I would’ve been able to answer your questions. It’s been written in Gibberish, as in the Muggle playground language. It basically just lengthens all the letters to the point where they’re incomprehensible, to an untrained pureblood eye at least.”
Remus shuffles closer to get a second look at handwriting that was undeniably Marlene’s. He supposes the illustrations can be accredited to Dorcas.
“I would be somewhat insulted that Marls and Dorcas are- were somehow more versed in muggle culture than me, but from your face right now, and the state of this flat, I’m guessing that’s about to be the very least of my problems,” he pipes up nervously.
When Mary speaks again, it's accompanied by a long, low sigh and a thickening voice.
“I think that would be a fair assessment.”
The papers, it turns out, detail the existence of Horcruxes that, according to Marlene’s rushed scrawl exist in the form of a ring and a diadem, and, seemingly, each contain a segment of Voldemort’s soul. Having spent the better part of his adolescence holed away in the restricted section of the Hogwarts library, Remus is familiar with the concept. His body goes cold. His airwaves occlude. He's choking, drowning. He is eighteen years old again and putting his life on the line.
Mary, too, feels like she’s gone back four years. At eighteen, she’d refused to fight, and at twenty-one she still respects that decision. This time, though, there is less to lose. This time, there is everything to avenge. This time, she will ensure she is in control.