Chapter Text
Getting shipped off to boarding school aged eleven kind of feels a bit like your parents don’t love you, Mary thought. Maybe she was just being cynical - after all, slogging through unpacking was mind numbing, and neither of her dorm mates had arrived yet, so she was left to stare at the blank walls in silence. It was not a hopeful beginning to the next seven years of her life.
She’d screamed when she found out she was being sent away (her parents insisted it was for ‘personal development’ and not because they hated her, but she wasn’t convinced). She might’ve even thrown a few things, much to the delight of her little brother Eli, who was 5 and hadn’t experienced much excitement in his life yet. Being pelted with balled up socks was his idea of a fun night out.
She’d stupidly forgotten to pack any photos of him, and she scrunched up her face trying to conjure the image of his chubby cheeks and still-tufty hair.
In fact, the only picture she’d remembered was an old, tattered postcard from her grandma. She’d shoved it in last minute to appease her mum – something about “making her space her own” - but looking at it now, she was glad she had. She took it and smoothed out the crumpled corners from where they’d pushed against the sides of her suitcase, before sticking it right above the bed she’d claimed. She’d picked the middle one in the hopes that she’d be able to make friends with the girls on either side, wherever the hell they were. Hogwarts didn’t have admission times, just a day where everyone was supposed to arrive. Mary hadn’t travelled far, having moved to Newcastle the previous year after Croydon had gotten too expensive, but the other two girls in Gryffindor were probably coming from further. She’d been assigned her house at random - it was supposed to represent bravery and chivalry, although she didn’t know how an eleven-year-old could feasibly be either of those things. She only just done her eleven-plus, she wasn’t exactly about to fight a dragon or defeat evil wizards or anything of the sort. She was having enough trouble unpacking a suitcase by herself.
The room was nice enough, she supposed. The walls were a stark white but everything else was a deep, homely red with gold detailing. The gold probably wasn’t real, but it was a nice touch. There were three beds surrounding a plush rug, the middle one facing a wooden door with large brass handles. They each had a small shelf, a bedside table, and drawers at their feet. Even so, it wasn’t much to write home about, so it was lucky that Mary was intending on giving her parents the cold shoulder for as long as possible before she got so homesick she forgot why she was angry in the first place.
Deep down she knew that they only meant well, that there wasn’t much point in decimating her eleven-plus if she was going to just go to the local comprehensive, and if she could go to a good grammar school almost for free, well, her parents weren’t exactly going to waste that opportunity. The only real issue was that she was going to have to live with a bunch of people who had also decimated their eleven-plus, and were therefore, most likely, insufferable drips. For all she knew, her socially optimum bed choice would be entirely for nothing. The other two girls would probably spend their whole time doing homework and talking about maths rather than doing each other’s makeup and talking about boys and whatever other cool things proper teenagers did.
Sighing, she took the mascara and lip gloss she’d nicked from Boots when her mum wasn’t looking and put them on the bedside table. So far, she’d only worn them for special occasions, and at bedtime just before she washed her face, but starting secondary was the perfect excuse to make it more of a thing. She had people to impress, boys to talk to - maybe if she did her makeup extra well some of the older girls would take her under their wing and save her from the almost certain nerd-fest she’d be stuck with in her own year. Mary was going to work hard, and she was going to look good doing it, and she’d go back to her family the successful, model woman they’d ordered.
She just had to follow some simple steps, that was all:
- Make respectable, non-obnoxious friends – She hadn’t had many friends in primary school on account of moving to the other side of the country a year before finishing.
- Get a respectable, non-obnoxious boyfriend – someone she could take to meet her parents, maybe even her grandma
- Ace her exams and go to university
- Study something worthwhile – something to keep the parents at bay
- Turn her respectable boyfriend into a respectable husband
- Get a respectable job, have a respectable life
Whatever happened, Mary was going to crush it. She always did.
It didn’t matter whether her roommates were boring or if the work was difficult, everything slid off her like silk. It took more than a little drudgery to stop her.
Well, unless that drudgery involved unpacking a suitcase, which was evidently not in her wheelhouse. In the end, she tipped the remaining clothes into her bottom drawer, leaving them crinkled and tangled together, and launched herself onto her new bed. The mattress was softer than she’d expected, and she began to like the little room. There were curtains to pull around her, like she was properly fancy - a princess, or at least a duchess - and there was an extra throw cushion between the regular two pillows. She was living in the lap of luxury, really.
She went to settle in, reaching for the book she’d started the night before – a fantasy about a boy and a shadow - and wrapping the blanket she’d packed around her shoulders, when a creak of the door interrupted the silence.
“Shit, sorry, didn’t know anyone was in here yet,” a girl said, who’d just popped her head round the door frame. “Shit. ‘M not meant to swear, mum hates it.” She stepped decisively into the room and shoved her suitcase to the foot of her bed, before striding right up to where Mary was sitting. She stuck out a hand and Mary took it, feeling calluses against her palm. “Marlene.”
Marlene was blonde, but not in the way the blonde girls in Mary’s books often were. Her hair wasn’t smooth or princess-like, but a bit straggly, the ends dry and frizzy where she’d pulled them back into a low ponytail. Her clothes were a little baggy, too, but had obviously survived all sorts with very little wear and tear.
“I’m Mary.”
Marlene dropped her hand and sat cross-legged on her own bed, facing Mary. “You been here long?”
“Feels like an age. I’m shit at unpacking.”
Marlene grinned at the swear. “Very shit,” she agreed, nodding towards where t-shirts and skirts were spilling out of the drawer they’d been shoved in. “I would offer to help but I’m probably worse. Doubt I’ll ever get round to putting anything in drawers at all.”
“Are you just going to use your suitcase all year?”
“Yeah. Or the floor.”
Mary huffed a laugh and shook her head. She definitely hadn’t needed to worry about her roommates being squares, at least not yet. “Just don’t get all your crap in my area.”
“My crap? Your area? It’s our crap now.”
“What about our other roommate? I might not care if you’re messy, but she might.”
Marlene rolled her eyes. “Then we can’t be friends with her.”
“That’s a bit extreme.” Mary knew she was being hypocritical – she’d been very ready to ditch her whole year in favour of the older girls if they’d ended up being a bit uptight.
“Maybe so, but I won’t be dealing with anyone all hoity-toity.” As if to make a point, Marlene chucked the throw pillow on her bed onto the floor and piled the remaining cushions on top of each other. “You have any clue who the last one is?”
“Nope - I kind of just rushed off when I got here, didn’t even give them a chance to tell me about you lot.”
“Wanted to get here that badly?” Marlene raised an eyebrow.
Mary blushed. “I sort of thought… you’d both be kind of nerdy.”
Marlene gasped in mock-hurt. “You do know you being here means you’re a nerd, too. I see that fantasy book. Ursula Le Guin? Very cool.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Mary drawled. “I was clearly wrong. You’re dressed more like a lumberjack than a snotty teacher’s pet.”
“Ah, the curse of having brothers. Still got the hand-me-downs but with an added woodworking aesthetic.” She tugged at the flannel sleeve that hung slightly past where her hand ended. “You got any siblings?”
“A brother, but he’s younger. Elijah.”
“Must be nice only having one. I’ve got three older brothers, and they all go here.”
“Family of nerds.” Marlene poked her tongue out at that.
“Must be.” Her eyes caught on something above Mary’s head. “Holy shit! Who’s that postcard from?”
A small smile tugged at Mary’s mouth. “Oh, that’s from my grandma. She lives there.”
“Your grandma lives in Jamaica? That’s so cool.” Marlene jumped up from her bed to take a closer look, tracing her forefinger across the illustration of white beaches and crystal blue sea. “Have you ever been?”
“Once, when I was little.”
“Wow,” Marlene whispered. “I can’t believe I have a friend from Jamaica.”
“Well, I’ve lived in England my whole life,” Mary said pointedly, and Marlene shot her a wry smile.
“Oh, I know. Proper posh little southerner, you are.” She flicked Mary lightly on the forehead before plopping down next to her, their forearms brushing as she did. “I’ve just always wanted to go to Jamaica. Anywhere with a beach, really. All we’ve got in Notts is forests.”
“Adds to the woodworker aesthetic,” Mary joked, before something dawned on her. “Wait a second. You said we were friends.” Friends already was more progress than Mary had ever thought she’d make on her first day.
“Well yeah,” Marlene said, as if it was obvious. “We’re going to have to be if we want these next seven years to be even close to tolerable. Plus, I think you’re pretty cool. Do you not want to be my friend?”
“I’ll get back to you on that one.” Mary teased. Marlene didn’t seem too concerned by this, squeezing her on the shoulder.
“Let me know when you make your final decision,” she replied seriously, but the smirk that played on her lips gave her away.
A knock on the door cracked through the air, and the girls jumped up.
“Hiya!” A ginger girl appeared from behind the door, her red face and quick breaths completely undermining the cool and collected demeanour she was trying to project. “I’m Lily. Have you lot been here long? Traffic was bloody awful!” She spoke as if the words were falling out of her mouth, talking at alarmingly fast rates, beaming all the while.
“I’m Mary, this is Marlene,” Mary said, standing up to shake Lily’s hand. It was more awkward than it had been with Marlene, Lily’s hands too soft, and clutching at least three plastic bags full of clothes. “You haven’t missed much. Where’d you come from?”
“Leeds,” she panted, as she heaved more and more bags from outside the door onto the last remaining bed. “Are you going to unpack?” She gestured towards Marlene.
“Wasn’t planning on it. How’d it take you so long from Leeds? I’m in Nottingham and got here faster.”
Lily fixed her with a stern look. “Do not get your crap in my area.” Mary liked her already. Marlene looked a little put-out. “And I left late. My sister didn’t want me to go.”
“‘My crap’. Honestly, you and Mary are soulmates.”
Lily turned to Mary, shooting her a soft smile. “Are you also a neat freak?”
“Not really, I just told Marlene earlier that she’d have to be considerate if you were,” Mary admitted. She suspected she wouldn’t have it in herself to complain even if Marlene dumped every single one of her belongings onto Mary’s bed. “That’s sweet that your sister didn’t want you to leave. Is she younger?”
Lily shook her head despondently, tutting, beginning to organise her stuff into piles on her bed. “Older. And it’s not sweet. She thinks I’m a right swot for coming here, wants me to go with her to the comprehensive.”
“That’s shit.”
“You’re telling me.” She paused, before snapping upright. “Right,” she said expectantly, “who’s helping me unpack.”
Mary and Marlene groaned in unison.
After Lily’s things were sorted to her liking (which was a much more intense process than Mary and Marlene’s put together), they trundled down to dinner to meet the rest of their housemates.
It turned out, when Lily was less frazzled, she was a lot of fun, and after an hour or so of chatting, Mary felt herself relax into their dorm completely. All three of them were brash, having had to spend their lives fighting with siblings - Marlene had it the worst, with a 16-year-old, 14-year-old and 13-year-old to deal with at home, but Lily could cut a snide remark here and there. They weren’t exactly the sort of respectable that Mary’s mother had envisioned, but Mary thought they were worthy of the title.
The rest of the year seven Gryffindors were a whole other ballpark. They were boys, first of all, a fact Mary wasn’t quite sure how to contend with. The boys at her primary school had been silly and intolerable, but the ones at secondary school were sure to be much more mature. As they left, she glanced at the mascara on her bedside quickly, before following Marlene and Lily out of the room. There would be time for dazzling later, she decided.
The Great Hall was aptly named, Mary thought: four long mahogany tables extended across its length, each assigned to a different house, and the thick stone walls of the place gave it an air of grandeur. At the front of the hall was a small hatch where four lunch ladies were handing out some sort of unidentified substance from steaming pans, that didn’t smell entirely unappetising. The girls each dutifully took a tray and their assigned meal before sitting at the end of the Gryffindor table with four boys who looked young and out-of-place enough to be the other year sevens.
“I’ve got this in the bag Black, don’t even test me,” one of them was saying, his eyes bright and his hair mad. He was holding out his hand to a boy with very shiny hair, scruffy in a way that was clearly the result of hours of carefully planned rebellion.
“I think you’ll find that I’m the Black family three-time arm-wrestling champion,” he replied.
“I thought you said you only had one younger brother, so that’s not that difficult.”
The boy – Black? – scowled. “Shut up Pete. Not helpful.”
None of the boys seemed to have even noticed the girls at all, Black and his arm-wrestling rival too busy gazing intensely into each other’s eyes, while the other two waited with bated breath as the match began.
Lily was not very impressed by this at all. She cleared her throat. “Hello?”
The boy with the messy hair jolted suddenly, Black using this moment of weakness to slam his hand down on the table, knocking over a water glass in the process. “Hah, Potter. Told you.”
“Hey, no fair! I was distracted!” He shot Lily a brief glance, then started trying to dry the table. “Hello to you too, by the way. I’m James.,” he said monotonously. A moment later, he stuck out his sopping wet hand for her to shake, and she sneered at him. “Oh, bugger. Sorry,” he said quickly, drying it on his trousers before trying again. Begrudgingly, Lily shook it.
“Lily Evans.”
“Charmed,” Black said dryly. “I’m Sirius.”
Mary fought the smile that threatened to overtake her face. That was a very stupid name.
“That’s a stupid name,” Marlene said, wrinkling her nose. “Are you some sort of wanker celebrity baby?”
“Something like that,” Sirius said heavily.
A weird silence settled over the group, broken hastily by the fourth boy, who was tall but spindly, like he’d break if you touched him. “If you think that’s a stupid name, you’ll shit yourself over mine – Remus Lupin. I swear my parents must hate me or something.”
“Well, they did send you to boarding school,” Mary laughed. ‘Remus Lupin’ was even worse than ‘Sirius Black’, but only just.
“It’s not too bad, really. I mean, where else would you get served this delightful mystery meat,” James said, gathering some of the stew-like meal onto his spoon before letting it glop down onto the plate.
“Delish,” Remus said sarcastically, although he had mopped his plate clean, so the sentiment was unclear.
Marlene stirred hers around, grimacing. “There’s a fucking hair in mine.”
“Gross! Is it ginger? It looks ginger.” James sent Lily a pointed side-eye, waggling his eyebrows at her. She did not look impressed.
“Do you find ginger hair gross, James?” Her mouth was a stern line, her eyes hardened.
James immediately started spluttering. Mary caught Marlene’s gaze and struggled not to laugh. Peter simply gaped at her, while Remus raised an eyebrow in a way that was straddling amusement and curiosity.
“Woah, Lils, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant hair in general…” James trailed off, his explanation doing nothing to appease Lily.
“Lils?”
His eyebrows lowered a bit from where they’d sprung up, like he was trying to figure out how much of her pedantry was a joke. “Shit. Lily, sorry.”
Another glare. “That’s Evans to you.”
“Okay, Evans.”
“No need to say it like that.”
“I didn’t say it like anything, you cow!”
“You-” Lily seethed, and Mary decided from that moment on to drown out anything James and Lily would say to each other for the rest of her time at school.
“Well, this is going to be a delightful seven years,” Marlene whispered to her, leaning slightly forward across the table.
“They’ll have killed each other by the end of this dinner and then we’ll know peace.”
“We can be the well-adjusted ones,” Remus gestured to the three of them, very pointedly leaving Sirius and Peter out.
Sirius frowned. “Oi, twat. I’m well-adjusted.” The word ‘twat’ sounded funny in his carefully trained accent.
“You say that, but I’ve known you for maybe three hours and haven’t seen any evidence.”
Sirius’s scoffs were drowned out by the escalating Potter-Evans argument – Lily was berating James for not being able to describe where Leeds was – but Mary saw him sneak a packet of salt into Remus’s water (which didn’t really help his case). He caught her eye and winked. “You’re acting all high-and-mighty for someone who’s already threatened to beat someone up.”
“You have?” Marlene said, not doing much to mask the respect in her voice. “Who?”
Remus tutted. “See that slimy git over there? On the Slytherin table?” Mary nodded. It was almost impossible to ignore the boy once you’d seen him, the way spite hung off his features. No one around him seemed to be having a good time. “Met him on the way in. He tried to trip me up, said some nasty stuff, too.”
“That’s Slytherins for you. All my cousins have been in Slytherin, and I hate them.”
“Aren’t the houses randomly assigned?” Peter asked.
“Well, yeah,” Sirius shrugged, eyeing Remus as he brought his water glass to his lips. “But there’s something sinister about them, I swear.”
“You fucking arsehole!” Remus spluttered as he drank the salty mixture. Sirius winked at Mary again, and she tried rolling her eyes flirtatiously in response, but it didn’t have much effect – he was more focused on trying to escape Remus’s violent tendencies and was narrowly avoiding being put in a headlock.
Boys. Marlene mouthed at her, shaking her head.
“I know, right,” Mary sighed. Despite her overwhelming success with step one of her plan, step two was looking to be a lot trickier.
“You should be in Slytherin,” Remus hissed, before sipping some more of his water and spitting it right into Sirius’s food.
Sirius’s face lit up with a grin. “You’re vile.”
Mary decided that Sirius and Remus were probably no-goes for any productive, interesting conversation, and she vowed to set her sights on better, more distinguished prospects in the future, so she walked round to the other side of the table and plopped herself next to Marlene. She sat a little closer than she meant to, their arms and legs pressing up against each other. After a few seconds, she shifted away, not sure if they’d been friends long enough for that sort of casual contact. It was a kind of friendship she’d only read about – that classic ‘girly’ type, doing each other’s nails and makeup, holding hands and hugging all the time, braiding each other’s hair. It was essential to the teenage experience, really.
“What do you think of the food?” Mary asked, trying to think of something other than holding Marlene’s hand – they’d have plenty of time to get to that point in their friendship, she didn’t need to rush it all at once. “Don’t worry – Lily’s not listening.”
Marlene chuckled. “I’ve had worse. You should try my brother Liam’s cooking.”
“Should I?”
“No. Unless you want food poisoning.”
“A dream of mine, of course.”
“Ah, I should’ve known. You must come and visit at your earliest convenience.”
“It’s a date.”
Marlene turned away suddenly, prodding Lily in the back, and Mary frowned.
“Liiiiilllsss,” she said in sing-song sort of voice. “You finished talking to this imbecile?”
Ignoring the squawks from James beside her, Lily took a swig of her water. “Yep. He’s a lost cause.”
“He’s not the only one,” Mary sighed, nodding towards where Remus, Sirius, and Peter were playing a game which involved flicking peas at each other. “And here I thought the boys here would be so much more mature than in primary.”
Marlene snorted. “Once again, you really need to meet Liam.”
After they’d finished their meals, or played with them until they were no longer edible, all of the year seven Gryffindors made their way to the common room, Lily and James leading the charge but refusing to talk to each other about where they were going, leading them on a wild goose chase through the corridors.
They’d paired off when they’d left the hall – Lily with James, Peter with Remus. Mary had wanted to run and catch up with Marlene, who was clearly trying to avoid walking with Lily and James, but Sirius had called her back and she couldn’t exactly refuse.
Sirius was a very odd sort of boy, nothing like any she’d met before. He got offended very easily, scowling meanly when Mary had told him he didn’t look ‘punk rock’ because he was an eleven-year-old, but at the same time enjoyed nothing more than offending others.
“And he’s such a dickhead,” Sirius was saying, flinging an arm out to demonstrate the intensity of dickheaded-ness.
“Have you even spoken to him?”
Sirius paused. “Well, no. But I trust Remus’s judgement. He was proper awful to him.”
Mary shrugged. “I suppose so.”
“Why, do you think he’s alright?”
“Who?"
“Snape!”
Mary started. “That’s’ Snape? The ‘slimy git’ is Snape?”
“Well, yeah,” Sirius said slowly. “Do you know him?”
“That’s only Lily’s best friend from home,” Mary hissed. There was no way the intelligent boy Lily had described was the same one she’d seen at dinner, looking sourer than the stew. Personally, she thought he seemed a right bummer, but appearances weren’t everything, she supposed.
“Evans is friends with Snape? James should stay away from her. I swear if she says anything like what that nutter said to Remus, I’ll-”
“You’ll what, call him a twat? Very scary,” Mary laughed. Whatever Snape had said to Remus must’ve been Satan’s speak himself, the way Sirius was acting. They barely knew the boy, it was ridiculous. “You jump to conclusions a lot, you know that, right?”
Sirius huffed, crossing his arms and slowing down slightly. “Or I’m just very good at seeing what people are.”
“Maybe you are.” He was so weird. “I guess we’ll have to see.”
“Whatever,” he said, before stopping walking completely, hanging back with Remus and Peter.
For all his winking and smirking at her over dinner, Mary got the impression that Sirius didn’t like her much. No matter, she wasn’t sure whether she liked him either. He took himself far too seriously, that was certain.
Shaking her head, she jogged up towards Marlene.
“Released from your Black shackles then?” Marlene quipped when Mary reached her.
“I cannot for the life of me figure him out.”
Marlene laughed, but Mary couldn’t really work out why. “Don’t see why you’d want to, really.”
“Well, we’re going to have to talk to boys at some point. I’m trying to get some practice in.”
“Fair enough,” Marlene said lightly, as if she didn’t think that was fair at all. “We’ll have plenty of time for that.” She nudged Mary’s side. “I want to get to know you a bit better, first, though. If that’s okay with you.”
Ahead of them, Lily was spitting at James with unfathomable rage, her face crimson. James wasn’t faring much better, his hair sticking up in all angles like he’d been tearing at it, clearly about to yell something right back.
How anyone could bear screaming at James Potter when they could be talking to Marlene McKinnon was lost on Mary.
“That’s okay with me. I’d like to know you too.”