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Mary Macdonald is forty years old.
Mary Macdonald is forty years old and she has no idea who she is and what she is doing.
Well, she knows what she’s doing now. As in, this very moment.
She is standing outside a hospital, a bill in one hand and a sad, grey bag in the other. She thinks it has clothes in it. Maybe a toothbrush. She didn’t open it during her stay.
Mary Macdonald is forty, but last week she was thirty-nine, and she had planned on keeping it that way. It would have stayed that way, had it not been for her neighbour, some elderly man she can’t even remember the name of. He had come knocking on her door, dressed in his nicest sweater and holding a tin of biscuits he had planned to share with Mary. She had invited him over, you see, the week before. Mary forgot. She seems to do that often.
The elderly neighbour with the nice sweater and the tin of biscuits had found her lying face down in the kitchen. He called the ambulance. He brought her clothes and flowers when she was in hospital. He saved her life. Mary knows she should’ve thanked him.
She didn’t.
She wasn’t thankful.
☆
Two weeks after Mary leaves the hospital, she finds herself going through cluttered cupboards, opening up dusty boxes, and sorting through them. The neighbour is helping her. He’s been checking on Mary almost daily. She finally learnt his name.
Aberforth.
Aberforth Dumbledore.
When she first heard it, a feeling rushed over her, something pushing her mind around, begging to get out.
It wasn’t completely alien to Mary, that feeling. She used to feel it often, but it had faded over the years, becoming weaker, less insistent. The first time Mary felt it, nearly a decade ago, it felt as though she was empty. Completely void of memories and emotions. Just an empty vessel. She still remembers the feeling so well; it’s one of the few constant memories she has. She can barely remember her childhood, and her teen years - well, sometimes Mary wonders if she ever was a teenager. Her memories of being one are distorted and faded.
Sometimes, when she’s sleeping, they come back to her through bursts of careless laughter, a flash of red hair, a wicked grin. The sound of a train's wheels against the tracks. A face half-hidden by scars.
Other times, the memories aren’t so kind. They cut through her, leaving her face moist with tears for people she doesn’t know anymore. Blurry newspaper headlines. Anguished screams morphing into howls. Whispers of words she doesn’t recognise, but that make her cringe with fear anyway. Graves with names she no longer recognises.
As far as she can tell, Mary’s life started in 1982. The memories are clearer after then.
“Mary?” Aberforth’s voice pulls Mary from her thoughts. Mary wanders into her kitchen to find him.
The kitchen is as cold as always, and the soles of Mary’s feet stick to the dirty linoleum floor. A stack of cleaned dishes lay next to the sink; Aberforth must’ve cleaned them.
“Thanks.” Mary croaks, nodding to the dishes.
Aberforth shakes his head. “Not a problem, Mary. Now, I found this box when I was cleaning out your cupboards. I haven’t looked through it, but I thought I’d let you sort through them.”
Aberforth presents a small brown box that looks like it had been through hell and back. A duct tape with messy writing in a Sharpie labels it, ‘photos’.
Mary frowns.
Photos?
She thinks,
What of?
She looks up to Aberforth, puzzled look painted on her face. He merely shrugs as if to say, “don’t ask me!”, then turns to the remaining dirty dishes.
After a moment of consideration, Mary takes a seat at her coffee table and shimmies the lid off of the box warily.
They’re polaroids. About twenty of them.
☆
The first one is of three girls, all teenagers. They’re sitting huddled together on a red couch, a fire blazing in the pit next to them. The red-haired girl has her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth is open in a shriek of laughter. She has her arm wrapped around a smaller, blonde girl who wears big boots and gives the camera a devilish grin. Kissing her cheek is a girl with long, dark braids. The girls look young, happy, carefree. Mary wonders who they are. She wonders if she’s the one behind the camera.
☆
The next three photographs are various shots of lush and beautiful grounds. The hills seem to go on forever, and the forest has an enchanting quality about it. One of the photos features an old, almost Mediaeval castle. The longer Mary looks, the more details she notices; the patterns on the sandstone towers, the stained glass windows, the grand doors that surely led to an even grander interior. It is beautiful. Mary doesn’t recognise it.
☆
Another photo shows a younger version of Mary sitting between two boys, one with long black hair and a leather jacket, the other covered in scars and showcasing a shy smile. Mary has her arms slung around both their necks, pulling them in closer. The black-haired boy is staring at the other boy with such intimate intensity and longing. Mary wonders if the two were ever able to love each other.
☆
The next photo stars the black-haired boy again, this time with his hand over his mouth, acting bashful, as a brown-haired boy in a red jumper looks up at him from where he kneels on one knee, pretending to propose. In the background is the scarred boy covering his scrunched up face with a book. Next to him is a short, round boy with blonde hair. The boy is also focused on the proposal, yet not with the same happiness and laughter as the others. The expression he wears is contemplative, calculating, almost. Mary wonders who he is, what he’s done.
☆
Most of the other photos are similar, showing smiling friends, often in strange situations (one photo even had a large stag in the centre of a room with the black-haired boy sitting atop of it). Mart notices her odd feeling returning with every photo, yet none of her memories. One photo stands out from the rest though. Instead of happy teenagers and vibrant colours, it was dark and gloomy. At the centre of the photograph was a house. Well, to call it a house was generous. Half of it was seemingly blown to pieces, small fires littered the rubble, and what was still standing was stripped of any paint that was once there, only the foundations remaining. That wasn’t what caught Mary’s eye, though. In front of the house, sitting on the curb, was a baby. Jet black hair, chubby cheeks, and a red scar on his forehead. Mary turned the photo over. Written on the back in a messy scrawl read:
Your name is Mary.
Remember that, if nothing else.
Love, Mary.
☆
Evidently, the photos are Mary’s, yet she doesn’t remember taking them, she doesn’t know the names of the people in them, where they are now, where they were then.
Mary puts each photograph neatly back into the box she took them from. They sit on her kitchen table for a week before she throws them away with her rotting groceries and empty coffee cups.