Chapter Text
Part 1: Stargazing
You and I stargazing
Intertwining souls
We were never strangers
You were right there all along
- Stargazing, Myles Smith
------------------------------------
September 1st, 1975
Margaret skipped through the barrier between Platform 9 and 10 at King’s Cross Station, slowing to a stop as she took in the scene before her. Platform 9 ¾ was already full of people. There were children running about, dodging rogue spells and trying to find their friends. Families smiling warmly while giving their children hugs before waving to them as they stepped on board the scarlet train that was the Hogwarts Express. Ministry Officials who looked stressed as they watched the scene unfold. Margaret turned around with a grin creeping up her face as she noticed her parents coming up behind her, having just stepped through the barrier themselves.
After a long summer that consisted mostly of reading books over and over again and learning to play the newest muggle albums on her guitar, she was really happy to be back in an environment full of magic. However much she loved literature and music, she was ready for some variety.
“Be careful, honey,” her mama said, tucking a strand of Mar’s hair behind her ear with a proud smile on her face. Mar marveled at how much younger her mama looked when she smiled, the lines on her face due to her perpetual stress gone for a short moment, even if the gray strands in her hair were still clearly present.
“I will,” Mar promised, knowing that her mama might not completely approve of her definition of the word careful but deciding that what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.
Her mama wrapped her in a tight hug before stepping back. “Well, have a good year, we love you!”
Her daddy nodded, giving her a quick smile before checking his watch. Her mama shot him a look before sending Mar off with an affectionate pat on her shoulder.
Mar beamed at her parents. “I love you guys too!” she said before grabbing her trunk. Or at least attempting to. It really was way too heavy for its own good. Maybe she had put too many novels and guitar songbooks in there after all.
“Need some help there, Mar?” came a familiar voice. Mar looked up to find one of her best friends, James Potter standing there, grinning widely.
“James!” Mar exclaimed, giving up on her trunk and rushing instead to give James a hug, which he returned with a laugh that made Mar feel giddy. She hadn’t realized it was possible to have missed James Potter, of all people, so much, considering she spent half her time rolling her eyes at his antics.
“Okay, let’s go,” James said eventually, extracting himself from the embrace. “Pete is waiting for us in the compartment,” He flicked his wand, making Mar’s trunk bob up in the air as she gave him a grateful look and hefted her broomstick and guitar case. She turned around one more time and waved, or well, waved her broomstick, at her parents before climbing aboard the Hogwarts Express.
She felt her steps loosen up with every stride the two of them took down the familiar aisle: compartments on one side, windows on the other. She peered into the compartments as they passed them. A group of third or fourth year Hufflepuff girls braiding each other’s hair sat in one, their laps covered in tiny colorful elastic hair ties. A group of Slytherin students sat in another, one of whom flipped her off when they caught sight of her looking at them. Mar just shook her head. Some people really took house rivalry too far.
Either way, she found herself marvelling at how each of the compartments offered a glimpse into all the lives folding out all around them. She sometimes found it almost overwhelming how there was a life and story behind every face she passed on the street, every one of them unique. There were just so many stories out there that she had no idea about. It was fascinating to think about.
As they went down the hallway, they also saw more and more timid looking First Years, looking wide eyed at everything around them. Mar looked at them fondly as they passed, remembering the time she had first stepped foot onto this train. She had been so clueless about everything going on around her. She had felt so out of depth, having lived the first 10 years of life having no idea about the existence of magic outside of books, only to have the door to the Wizarding World thrown wide open when Professor McGonagall appeared at her family’s new apartment in London, telling her she was a witch. That day changed her life forever, and she was ever so grateful for it.
“Hey, Peter!” she said as she followed James into their compartment at the very back of the train. It was the one the five of them, Mar, James, Peter, Sirius and Remus, sat in every time they traveled to and from Hogwarts, to the point where no one else even tried to come sit there anymore, except for Severus Snape the previous year, who had apparently not gotten the memo about their unofficial ownership of the compartment.
It was quite bad luck for him since James never said no to an excuse to hex him, something Mar thought was a bit much sometimes, but there was no stopping James. She knew which battles there was no use in fighting.
Peter tore his gaze away from the window where he was watching two kids trying to catch a runaway cat and turned instead towards Mar. “Oh, hi.”
She grinned, feeling extra energetic as if life had started moving again after the long, dreary summer. She sat down across from Peter, tapping her foot against the floor as she watched James levitating her trunk onto the rack before yelping as he came very close to knocking over her guitar, which she had propped up against the wall on the seat next to her. “Watch the guitar!”
He held his hands up in surrender as he sat down, playfully poking the guitar case one more time with his foot. She shot him a warning glare before turning back towards Peter, ignoring James’ snickers.
“Right, so tell me about your summer,” she said, leaning forwards and propping her chin on her hands, delighted to finally have someone to talk to again.
She was an only child whose parents were at work all the time. They had told her to go hang out with their muggle neighbors, which would have been a good idea if said neighbors weren’t still slightly suspicious of her broomstick and owl, among all the other weird things she owned and did. She tried to convince them that it was for a stage play or something of the sort, and they mostly seemed to believe it, but still occasionally gave her weird looks when she passed them on the stairs of the apartment complex.
She wished she hadn’t been stuck in England for the last two summers. She missed Texas. Her daddy had moved their family to England when she was 10, and kept on promising that he’d move them back home, but every year, he found another excuse to stay. Not that it made much of a difference to Mar, she would continue at Hogwarts in any case. She just wished she could at least go back to Larkin’s Creek for the school holidays.
“Ours were dreadful,” came a new voice, answering Mar’s question before Peter could. Mar immediately whipped her head around to see the rest of their little group standing at the door of their compartment, making her forget her curiosity about Peter’s summer stories for the moment.
“I wouldn’t say mine was dreadful,” Remus corrected, pushing past Sirius who was leaning against the doorframe with a smile tugging at the corners of his lips, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Remus sat down next to James as Sirius took the spot next to Mar.
“I read quite a lot of good books.” Remus continued. “And Mar, I finally got around to reading that series you recommended,”
“Sounds dreadful to me,” Sirius muttered and Mar elbowed him in the ribs, making him wince.
“Respect the literature,” she told him before turning back to Remus. “So? How did you like it?”
Remus’ answer was cut off by the train lurching forward. Mar lunged to catch her guitar, which almost fell off the seat as James leapt to his feet, waving to his parents through the window excitedly as the train moved out of the station. Sirius turned away for a moment, biting his lip.
“That was not me this time, it was the train,” James said as he sat back down, noticing Mar’s glare as she patted her guitar case, tracing her fingers across the stickers she had collected over the years. The little red maple leaf she had gotten at an airport in Canada. A purple guitar that was the logo of an indie record store that she had visited with her cousin once. A neon green cowboy hat she had found at a gas station while on a roadtrip. The stickers made her nostalgic every time she looked at them. They marked all the things she and her guitar had been through together.
“Sure,” she said, shaking her head at James, knowing it had in fact been the train that had made the guitar almost topple over but choosing to poke fun at James anyway. “In any case, I’m ready to get back to school life, summer was boring,”
Peter gave her a doubting look. “School life as in?”
Mar shrugged, she felt it was rather self explanatory. “Well, you guys, classes, homework—”
“As flattered as I am that you mentioned me—homework, really?” Sirius interrupted. “Why do you miss homework?”
“Well, it helps me learn, you see? And having a rhythm is nice. Otherwise I’m just wandering around aimlessly with nothing to do,” Mar explained slowly grinning as Remus started laughing at Sirius’ mock disgusted expression. Sirius was as much of a drama queen as ever, whatever had made his summer dreadful had clearly not changed that.
“You’re weird," Sirius declared, glancing at Remus, looking amused.
Mar’s eyes widened, her hand flying to her chest in mock surprise as she fought back a fit of giggles. “Oh, you just realized? I am so sorry I didn’t tell you before,”
Remus laughed harder as James grinned at her.
Mar looked around at the four of them, shaking her head. “For the record, y’all are even bigger weirdos than me, and that’s saying something,”
She had long ago decided that people were going to call her weird whether she liked it or not, so she might as well be proud of it.
“Y'all? Oh right, I forgot you speak American,” Sirius said, shaking his head before grinning at her. Mar stuck out her tongue at him playfully. Sirius never could seem to stop pointing out everything that her childhood in the States had left her with.
Remus rolled his eyes with a chuckle as James patted his pockets, a crease appearing on his forehead as he looked around for something.
Peter nudged him and pointed to the floor, where James had apparently dropped his pack of cards because he stood up a second later with the pack held up in the air triumphantly.
“Thanks Pete,” he said before turning to the rest of the group. “Who wants to play Exploding Snap?”
Mar groaned, remembering all the times they had played the game before. She was absolutely terrible at it. Her poor hair.
About an hour later, after the Trolley Witch had gone by, restocking their supply of snacks, and after Mar had lost countless matches of Exploding Snap, she finally gave up.
Mar groaned as another card blew up in her face with a loud, bright red, bang. At this point it didn’t even make her flinch, she was so used to it.
Peter snickered as Mar shot him a halfhearted glare, standing up and dusting off her blue jeans. “You know what? I’ll leave you to your card game, I’m leaving,”
“Aw,” Sirius whined. “Won’t you at least play one more round with us? I’m sure you’ll win this time,”
Mar rolled her eyes, gesturing to the charred tips of her long hair. “No thank you, I don’t believe I will,”
Sirius turned to James, eyes wide. “She’s abandoning us,” he said, sounding betrayed.
Mar laughed. “I’ll come and find you guys later, don’t you worry. Don’t set anything on fire while I’m gone,” she dug her Hogwarts robes out of her trunk along with a tattered paperback copy of The Ides of March, which she plopped into her currently empty satchel.
“You’re optimistic,” Remus said, yawning. The full moon was in a few days and it seemed that this one would be particularly bad, judging by how tired Remus seemed. Mar hoped he would be okay, considering that there probably wouldn’t be a whole lot of sleep happening in the Gryffindor Boys’ Fifth Year Dormitory that night.
Mar shook her head in amusement at Remus’ pessimism before spotting her guitar still leaning against the wall, safely in its case. “Peter, make sure these two,” she pointed to James and Sirius. “Don’t do anything to my guitar,”
Sirius looked offended. “What makes you think I was going to do something to your guitar?”
James looked up cheerfully. “I was totally gonna do something to your guitar,”
Sirius turned to him, sighing. “Mate, you’re ruining our reputation, now we won’t have a career in instrument-sitting,”
Mar giggled before giving Peter a meaningful look. He gave her a salute, which Mar decided to take as an indication that her guitar would be safe.
“See ya!” she called before heading down the hallway with a wave back at the boys, who judging by the sound of it, had immediately started an argument amongst themselves. Mar thought that the fact that the teachers let the four of them have a dormitory to themselves was nothing short of a miracle. They were lucky that most of the Gryffindors from their year were girls or they might’ve gotten someone in their dorm who wouldn’t have tolerated their mischief.
She winced as she heard another bang behind her. “Poor Remus and Peter,” she mumbled to herself, her lips twitching as she reached the nearest bathrooms.
She quickly changed into her robes, stuffing her jeans and t-shirt into her satchel as she turned towards the mirror, scowling at the sight of the blackened tips of her slightly wavy hair. She pulled out her wand, waving it at her hair, managing to get it to go back to the brown it usually was after a few tries. That was much better. She adjusted her scarlet Gryffindor tie one more time before stepping out of the bathroom, planning to go find her other friends, Lily and Mary.
She only made it two steps before something, or rather someone, slammed into her, making her crash against a window.
“Hey! Watch where you’re goin’!” she snapped, straightening her robes and rubbing the back of her head where she had collided with the window before looking up to find out who had barreled into her, ready to give them a piece of her mind.
“Oh, I didn’t see you there,” said Connor Rosier, a Slytherin in her year, part of a gang of jerks who seemed to enjoy taking every chance they had to torment anyone they deemed less worthy than them. Or at least Mar was pretty sure that that was their criteria, it was often quite hard to tell.
Sure enough, he was currently not looking sorry at all as he looked down at her with a sneer that suggested that he had shoved her into the window completely on purpose, contrary to his earlier statement. Mar clenched her teeth as Connor continued standing there smugly, blocking off the entire hallway.
“Hm… sure you didn’t,” Mar said, forcing a smile that she hoped looked pleasant. She was in fact quite annoyed as she flicked an invisible speck of dust from off her robes, wondering whether he would move out of the way out of his own volition or whether she would have to push past him.
Connor looked her up and down, brow crinkling as he did. Mar crossed her arms, tapping her foot against the floor impatiently. Like any other person, she didn’t like being examined very much.
“You’re the mudblood who’s friends with Black and Potter, aren’t you?”
Mar couldn’t stop herself from flinching just a bit when she heard the slur. She remembered the last time she had heard it. It was during their previous year when the Gryffindor Quidditch team had beaten Slytherin in a match. Mar had nearly knocked Axel Mulciber off his broom with a well placed bludger, costing Slytherin the match. He had been furious afterwards and had tried to hex her before James and Sirius chased him off.
She would never forget the look in his eyes. One full of hatred and disgust. One that couldn’t have just been caused by a lost Quidditch game.
Connor Rosier laughed. “Sensitive are you?”
Mar scoffed, pushing the memory of Axel Mulciber out of her mind. “Oh hush up, Rosier. Who I hang out with is none of your business. And I reckon you have better things to do than waste my time out here anyway,” she stepped forward, pushing past him and heading down the hallway to continue trying to find Mary and Lily. Rosier stepped out of the way, watching silently as she went.
“Not that I care but I would suggest that you watch out!” he called after her. Mar whipped around, eyes wide and wand out, expecting a hex to come flying her way. Rosier laughed, giving her a wink before turning around and going off in the other direction, leaving Mar to stand there in the middle of the hallway, feeling very confused indeed.
↠ 𝄞 ↞
“Rosier? What did he want?” asked Lily, brows crinkling. Lily being Lily had noticed the look on Mar’s face the second she entered the compartment and had asked her what had happened.
Mar shrugged, not really wanting to talk about it. “He bumped into me, called me a Mudblood and—”
“What? He called you that?” Mary interrupted, looking up from the chocolate frog she had just unwrapped, sounding offended on Mar’s behalf.
“Yeah,” Mar said, brushing her concern aside, even though she was secretly feeling just a bit uneasy herself. “And then he proceeded to tell me to watch out just as I was walking away,”
Mary’s eyes widened. “He hexed you?” she looked Mar up and down, as if expecting her to be missing a limb she hadn’t noticed or something.
“No, that’s the thing, he just winked at me,”
Lily frowned, putting down the color coded papers she had been skimming through. Of course she had color coded them, how was Lily always so organized? “That’s bad,” she said. “What did you do to get on his bad side?”
Mar crossed her arms, feeling defensive all of a sudden. “I didn’t do a lick of nothing.”
“Don’t mind him, he’s just being a stuck up pure-blood git,” Mary said shaking her head as Lily stared out of the window, seemingly deep in thought.
Lily nodded, looking back at Mar. “But being careful might be a good idea,” she said, leaning back and picking up her papers again, rifling through them absentmindedly.
Mar groaned, leaning against the window, which was cold against her cheek as she watched the English, or perhaps Scottish, she didn’t even know at this point, countryside go by. “We haven’t even gotten to Hogwarts yet and I’ve already made an enemy. How is that even possible?”
Mary laughed, tearing open a bag of Bertie’s Botts Every Flavor Beans, popping one in her mouth and grimacing. Mar didn’t understand why people kept on eating them if half the flavors were horrid. You could just get normal Jelly Beans like any sane person.
“It’s a real talent,” Lily agreed. “Honestly, it’s like you’re trying to find trouble,”
Mar snorted. “You make me sound like some sort of professional delinquent. I do think I tend to try to avoid trouble when possible,”
Lily exchanged a knowing look with Mary, who was grinning. Mar sat up, raising her eyebrows.
“What? It’s true!” she said, crossing her arms.
“I mean, you do hang around Potter and Black,” Lily pointed out. “They’re practically magnets for trouble,”
Mar opened her mouth to argue but closed it again when she realized that Lily had a point. James and Sirius did seem to always be either in detention or just barely avoiding it.
“Okay, fine,” she relented. “But I wouldn’t say I ever look for trouble,” It was true enough, though she supposed she didn’t always avoid trouble as much as she could have, now that she thought of it.
Lily looked at her doubtfully before shaking her head. “Those two are bad influences,”
“You’re just saying that because you’re annoyed at James. Maybe if you go out with him just once he’ll stop,” Mar said, chuckling at the memory of his last attempt to ask Lily out before the summer. James had decided sometime last year that he wanted to go out with Lily. He had been asking her every chance he got since, getting rejected each time, and it was getting increasingly ridiculous.
“Well that too, he really needs to leave me alone. I’m not going out with him,” Lily said.
Mar laughed. “Yeah, I’ve noticed. It’s pretty obvious,”
Lily sighed. “You should tell him that. Maybe he’ll listen to you. Sure doesn’t seem to hear me when I say it,” she said, looking back down at her papers and stuffing them away in her satchel before continuing. “But they also have a sick sense of humor,”
“They only poke fun at Severus because he’s into the dark arts,” Mar said, knowing what this was about. Lily might not have understood why she spent time around James and Sirius but Mar understood Lily’s friendship with Severus Snape even less. He was a Slytherin and spent time around people like Mulciber and Rosier. The people that made fun of people like her and Lily at every turn.
“Yeah, but it’s still unacceptable!” Lily said, throwing up her hands.
“Well, he's a bad influence too, wouldn’t you say?” Mar said defensively, tired of the double standard. Lily turned around pointedly, crossing her arms and looking out the window into the shadowy forest that the Hogwarts Express had just entered.
“Now, now, girls, it’s the first day of school, let’s keep things civil,” Mary said, looking back and forth between the two of them, raising an eyebrow.
Mar sighed, twisting her hands together. She knew Mary was right. There was no point in picking a fight now. They should be catching up about their summers and complaining about the upcoming school year, not squibbling over their friends’ rivalries.
“Yeah, okay,” Mar agreed, looking over to Lily. “Sorry about that Lils,”
Lily turned back around, expression loosening a bit as she offered Mar a small smile.
“Let’s talk about something else,” Mary decided, clapping her hands together, offering them her Every Flavour Beans, which they both politely declined. Again, normal Jelly Beans existed! “Are you looking forward to the OWLs?”
Lily groaned, the tense expression on her face disappearing to Mar’s relief. “I don’t think anyone is looking forward to them. It’s more like absolute terror,”
Mar laughed, even though the butterflies in her stomach agreed with Lily. “Come on, you’ll do well, you ace pretty much all your classes. You’re like at the top of the class,”
“Except for you, Black and Potter,” she said gloomily.
“Oh, come on, I’m not at the top of the class, and you’re much better at Potions and Charms than James and Sirius. Have you seen Sirius in Potions?” Mar said. “Speaking of which, which subject do you reckon will be the hardest to pass?”
“All of them,” Mary said glumly, making them all laugh. “But potions is horrid,”
“Oh yes, I might just get a Dreadful from that,” Mar agreed, the nerves bubbling up already in advance.
“Well, at least I’m good at that,” Lily said, perking up a bit. “I’ll help you out if you promise to help out with History of Magic, I have learned nothing from that class,”
Mar gave an exaggerated gasp. “That’s literally the best subject!” She gave Lily a mock offended look which made Mary giggle.
“That’s only because you read about it in your free time. Not one’s learning anything from old Professor Binns,” Mary pointed out.
“Yeah, just because you teach history, doesn’t mean you have to be history,” Lily agreed, referring to the fact that their History of Magic professor was quite literally a ghost. Legend had it that he died on the job and went back to work the next day, not noticing that anything was different.
“Okay, that I can agree on,” Mar nodded, then looked out the window thoughtfully. “Maybe I can be a History of Magic teacher someday,”
Lily grinned. “That would be amazing, a blessing to the students really,”
“Just a shame we have to suffer through Binns’ lectures,” Mary said with a sigh. “Mar, can’t you just hurry up and become a teacher already and save us from this lethargy?”
Mar laughed, kicking her feet up on the seat across from her. “I wish, I wish,” she said, glancing out the window, noting that the sun had gone below the horizon sometime during their conversation. She was slightly disappointed to have missed the sunset. They were always so pretty. The way they lit up the sky with the pinks and oranges always reminded her of home.
Mar tore her gaze away from the window, turning back to her two friends. “What do y’all reckon our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is gonna be like?” she asked, smiling a bit at the thought of their last teacher. He had been utterly incompetent at his job, but Mar, and most of their class, especially James and Sirius, had found him to be very entertaining.
“As long as whoever it is doesn’t let a bunch of Red Caps loose in the classroom I’ll be fine,” Mary said, sounding disgruntled, making Lily and Mar burst out laughing at the memory of how Mary had been so busy doing her Ancient Runes homework under her desk during the Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson that she hadn’t noticed the Red Cap appearing in front of her. The creature had given her quite the fright and the thought of the scream Mary had let out still made Mar dissolve into giggles.
“It’s not funny!” Mary complained, crossing her arms, though the twitch of her lips said otherwise.
“Seriously though,” Lily said when their fit of giggles had finally ceased. “I need someone who will teach well enough for us to pass our OWLs, I don’t know what I’ll do otherwise,”
Mar sighed, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear as she leaned backwards. “I have a feeling we’ll be hearing a lot about the OWLs in the near future, how about if we avoid talking about them while we can? I’m getting stressed just at the thought of them and we haven’t even gotten to Hogwarts,”
“Yes please! I agree,” Mary immediately said.
Lily laughed. “Fair enough,”
Mar sat up again, sliding her booted feet off of the seat across from her and planting them back on the floor so she could prop her elbows on her knees as she turned to Lily. “How’s it like being a prefect so far?” she asked, having just remembered that Lily had told her about that particular new development in her last letter to Mar during the summer.
Lily shrugged, absentmindedly adjusting her robes so that her shiny new prefects’ badge was fully visible. “Nothing much has happened yet, we just had a meeting earlier, I’m supposed to be showing the First Years to the dormitories later,”
“Remember how last year the prefect somehow led the First Years through some obscure passage that was supposed to be a short cut but instead got them horribly lost?” Mary said, chuckling.
Mar smirked at the memory of how annoyed Professor McGonagall had been and how flustered the said prefect had been. “Might have scarred the poor First Years for life,”
Lily pursed her lips, rolling her eyes. She had been indignant at the prefect’s incompetency last year and had not found the event anywhere near as humorous as Mary and Mar had. “Speaking of which,” she said, changing the topic. “Lupin didn’t show up to the meeting,”
Mar’s eyes widened. “He’s a prefect?”
“Yes, he didn’t tell you?” Lily asked, furrowing her eyebrows.
“No,” Mar said. “He must have forgotten,”
She was honestly rather surprised that Dumbledore would have chosen Remus as the prefect, what with the fact that he hung around Sirius and James but also with the inconvenience of his furry little problem, as James liked to call it. She also knew for a fact that Remus had not yet told James and Sirius about being a prefect either because they would never have passed up the chance to poke fun at him for it. And he probably had not told Peter either because why would Peter keep it secret?
“Hm… tell him that he’s expected to show up next time,” Lily said, sounding disapproving. Mar wanted to tell her that she should go easier on him because of the full moon but since she couldn’t explain that without giving away Remus’ secret, she just nodded.
“I’ll remind him,”
“Oi, look! Hogwarts!” Mary said suddenly, standing up and going to the window.
Lily and Mar turned and looked in the direction Mary was pointing, and sure enough, she could faintly see the lights of Hogwarts shining through the darkness, only visible if you knew where to look.
Mar grinned. Finally, she was back. Sure, the school year ahead was probably going to be full of chaos, stress and more chaos, but then again, she was going back to one of her favorite places on earth. How much could go wrong?