Chapter Text
Mary is half in and half out. She has one foot in the door at all times and the other firmly planted on the outs. She is in Hogwarts, she is a witch, and she has a place in the school. But last month she also had a place at home, among her muggle family who were the utter opposites to all that Hogwarts embodied.
And so she did both. She was both, she had come to realise. There was no separation of the two, and there could not be. It was an understanding that was as trying as it was relieving. It split her in half all the while keeping her fused together.
“What are you thinking so hard about over there?”
Alice’s voice was the one that rang out and ended Mary’s everlasting contemplation that she'd been stuck in since early dawn. Alice was the only other one in the room and had been there before Mary had come in and clambered underneath Lily’s bed. Alice hadn’t even bothered her to ask what she was doing under there, and Mary appreciated that.
Mary sat up, taking care not to hit her head on the bottom beam of the bed.
“I don’t know,” Mary mumbled instead of giving any real answer.
Alice raised an eyebrow, “If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to. I just wanted to make sure you’re alright.”
“It’s not that. I’m not… sure how I'd explain it, is all.”
“In any way you want to.”
“Okay… um, I guess it’s just challenging to be here sometimes.”
“At Hogwarts?” Alice clarified.
Mary nodded. Alice tilted her head to the side in return, but not in a scrutinising way at all. She was just looking, right at Mary, with an open expression ready to hear whatever it was Mary needed to say.
“When I’m at home, I’m one person, and here I’m another. But I’m not two different people, Alice. I am just the one and I do not know how to get everybody else around me to see that.” Mary took a deep breath, and with a reassuring smile from Alice, she went on, “My sister can’t understand what I’m doing here, no one here can understand what I do there. My life should not have to be split between the two. I should be able to be both at once.”
“So make me understand,” Alice told her.
Mary's eyebrows scrunched in,
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that not everybody is going to understand, whether they don’t try or won’t. I know that hurts, and so I’m saying: make me understand.”
Mary almost didn’t know what to say to that, to the offer of putting her whole self out there. Not in broken parts. Not in bits and pieces. Her entire self. She didn’t know if she could make somebody else understand it all together. Alice wasn’t from a muggle family; she knew less about muggles than Marlene did.
But Alice was asking her to. She was asking her to fit all those pieces together and present them to her however she wanted to, and more than not knowing how to do that, she wanted to.
She didn’t know where to start, so she began where it was easiest. She told Alice about how school used to be for her. Her primary school was right down the street from the dance studio, and so her maman would drop her off in the morning on her way to work. She knew all the kids who went to her school because they had lived around her for as long as she could remember. She didn’t talk to most of them–had never really interacted with any of them at all. She preferred her siblings to anybody else, but at the same time, no other kid acknowledged her much either.
She’d never minded her peers much, not in primary school. She remembered some girls who’d bothered her when she was about eight. They wouldn’t leave her alone and teased her continuously, though she couldn’t remember if it was for anything specific. She could only recall their mocking white smiles and the shiny black of their shoes. Besides them, everyone else was mundane.
Her teachers had not been noteworthy in any sort either and were quite like the children. Their attention was never solely on her, but that was likely because she never caused any trouble. They were starkly different from her Hogwarts professors, who paid attention to all their students no matter their behaviour. However, he could admit to missing some of the subjects taught to her by her primary school teachers.
Alice interjected every once and a while with questions. She always asked them with a slight crease in her forehead and an underlying tone of confusion. Mary answered dutifully yet couldn’t stop herself from laughing at every other inquiry. It was refreshing, to be on the side of knowing. She’d gotten so used to being the one people explain things to. It was a good change of pace to be the one who understood.
“What in Godric’s name is maths?” Alice burst out as she was explaining each subject.
“The closest you’d have to it is arithmancy, I believe.”
“That’s rather advanced for muggles.”
“It’s not really like arithmancy, it’s just the only thing I can compare it to,” Mary huffed out a laugh.
“I see…” Alice nodded but didn’t look as if she caught on to what Mary meant at all.
Once Mary was finished recounting her years in muggle schooling, there was a brief gap of silence before Alice launched into her own stories. The common theme between magical folks was that they were all homeschooled by their parents before continuing to Hogwarts and the other magical schools around them. Or at least, that’s what Mary gathered from what Alice was saying. More prestigious and wealthy families–such as the Sacred Twenty-Eight–quite often hired private tutors for their children.
Mary thought that her mum would have gone crazy if she had been obligated to teach her and all her siblings. She didn’t dare say that, though.
“Did you have many friends before Hogwarts?” Mary asked, curious to know how Alice would have met anyone if she stayed at home being tutored all the time.
“A few, but not ones I was close to. My family attended dinner parties regularly, and all of us children there were expected to play with each other.”
Mary’s nose crinkled at the thought, “How did you put up with that?”
“There were a couple of kids I liked. That’s actually when I met Frank, but we didn’t get to know each other until Hogwarts.”
Mary hummed. At some point, the two of them had moved closer together, with both of them pressed up against the end of Lily’s bed. It had become the girls’ safe space, a place to retreat to when they were feeling out of sorts or down in the dumps. Mary didn’t know what made it that way, maybe it was nothing, or maybe it could be attributed to the comradery they’d found there at the start of their first year. She chuckled under her breath at the thought. It felt so long ago since they had been uncertain around each other and not quite friends.
Alice nudged her with her shoulder, “What are you laughing about?”
“Nothing, really,” Mary said in a breathy giggle, “Just how I’d been so annoyed with Lily and Marlene when I first met them. For a good two months and everything!”
“Now look at you three,” Alice laughed alongside her. “Practically inseparable.”
Mary’s face softened, “Yeah, we are, aren’t we?”
“Have you told them any of this?”
“... Bits and pieces.
“You helped me to start to understand it, didn’t you? I’m positive that since you found the courage to do that, you’re able to do the same with your best friends.”
Mary looked up at Alice with wide eyes and mulled over that thought. Alice made it extremely easy to talk to her, and maybe that’s what had gotten Mary to open up when she hadn’t considered telling Marlene and Lily at first. But when had her friends ever given her the impression that she couldn’t tell them everything? That was just it, they never had.
“You’re brave, Mary. Don’t ever forget that.”
--❀❀❀❀❀--
Somehow, Alice had convinced Mary and Lily to wake just as the sun did and accompany her and Marlene to quidditch practice. When they could, they usually opted to attend Gryffindor’s afternoon practices. The morning ones always dragged on in the cold, dreary January of Scotland. Mary always felt bad for Marlene on those mornings, but the girl herself had endless energy the second she was out on the pitch. Mary understood, in a way, as it was Marlene’s passion and practically her biggest interest in life.
Even still, Mary couldn’t understand why anyone would want to freeze themselves half to death at six in the morning just to play some quidditch.
Mary and Lily stayed huddled together in the stands for the duration of their practice, with their scarves tucked around their necks tightly and their robes bundled around their bodies. Mary couldn’t even imagine how cold Marlene must have been with the winds wrapping around her that high in the sky. By the time they were done and circling down to land, Mary’s fingers were numb and she was experiencing a full-body shiver she couldn’t shake off.
Lily had her arms wrapped around herself as they made their way down the stands and to the pitch, to which Mary could sympathise with. Neither of them had mastered warming charms just yet and so they only ever lasted a couple of minutes maximum.
Marlene bounded up to them the second her feet were on the ground and the moment they were close enough to her. She started chatting their ears off about practice and if they’d seen this or that in which she’d done. Her words were a beautiful yet messy amalgamation of her love for quidditch, that much was obvious. She would go on for the rest of her life about it if everybody let her. If it was up to Mary, she could have.
At some point, Alice sidled up beside Mary and listened intently to Marlene as well. They kept at that for quite some time, with the sky around them getting brighter by the second. The reds and oranges faded around them as the sun gained height. It was a stunning view Mary didn't get most of the time. She wasn't in the habit of getting up to see the sunrise, but she might have to rethink that.
Eventually, Marlene dragged Lily off to explain a manoeuvre to her that required some sort of visual component. Mary waved them on and hung back with Alice. She watched her two friends go, happy all the while. Marlene was excitedly waving her hands all over the place as Lily trailed after her with a content smile. Everybody else had made their way to the locker rooms, and it left them alone in the peaceful morning quiet.
“You know what I love about quidditch?” Alice spoke up.
“What’s that?” Mary glanced over at her.
“I only have to worry about the game. Nothing afterward or in the future matters at that moment. It brings me the most simple joy,” she pauses wistfully. “What brings you joy, Mary?”
“Dancing, I suppose." Her answer came immediately. "But I don’t know where I’d do that here.”
Alice waved her arms out at the pitch in front of her.
“You have a whole empty space right around you.”
Mary’s eyes went wide in surprise, “Are you saying I should dance here in the middle of the quidditch field?”
“Why not?”
A laugh burst out of Mary, loud and unabashed. The idea Alice was presenting to her was one she had not considered. It was absurd, yet made sense all the same. She’d gone on and on the other day about how she didn’t know how to combine the two parts of herself, and yet Alice suggested it in such a simple way. She could just–do it. Be herself, no matter who was watching or not.
“Have you ever seen ballet before, Alice?” Mary asked.
She shook her head as her lips curled into a smile, “I can’t say I have.”
Mary grinned at her and walked a few paces forward to take a spot on the pitch. She raised her arms above her head, fingers flaring in perfect positioning, and settled into a suitable stance to start. Like she had the month before, when she had been in the midst of her muggle town, she started to dance. She let her body take her in whichever direction it felt, swaying to the laughter of her friends behind her. Maybe it was not perfect, and maybe there were movements she could tweak, but nothing mattered more than the fact that she was there on Hogwarts grounds doing it. Being herself.
Somewhere near her, Marlene cupped her hands around her lips and let out a whooping cheer. Mary spun to a stop to face her friends. There was a smile split across Lily’s face and genuine awe in her eyes. Marlene had continued to cheer her on even though she’d stopped.
Mary took a bow, her heart beating quickly and fiercely in her chest from the exertion of the dance and how much she downright loved her friends.
As she turned to head back over to Alice, Marlene and Lily continued fooling around, with Marlene jokingly pulling Lily into a spin. They had both their hands intertwined as they dragged each other in dizzying circles.
Alice nudged her arm once Mary made it to her side,
“Do you see what I meant, now? About how simple joy can be?”
“I do,” Mary murmured as she watched her friends in the orange hues of the morning.
Mary had an overwhelming urge to join her friends as they toppled over onto each other. She gestured toward them and turned to tell Alice, but the other girl was already walking away. She threw one last smile Mary’s way with a small nod and left them to dance in the dewy morning grass.