#mandmdrabbles

Alastair wasn’t sure what time it was when he slowly peeled open eye to peek down at the brunette clung to his side. The room was still shrouded in darkness, so it couldn’t have been too early, but the full moon casted just enough light in for him to see the heavy creases lining her trouble face. He’d just barely heard her fretting over something, unsure if it was his own imagination or not, but now that he was half conscious, he could see she was having a nightmare. “Hey, Mars.” He probed gently, his voice still thick with sleep. “Mary.” Alastair didn’t want to wake her, but he knew it would be better to free her from whatever horror was plaguing her dreams. It took a small shake for the brunettes eye lids to flutter open in surprise, her gaze moving wildly around the room before landing on the sleep heavy boy next to her. Almost immediately her face shifted from one of fear to comfort, the realization dawning that it had been a dream. “What were you dreaming about?” He crooned softly as he brought his lips to her temple, leaving a soft trail of kisses down to her jawline. “I uh- you were Mr. Darcy and I was Elizabeth and you were -” She paused and looked down at her fingers with a guilty expression. “ We’d just found one another and then you were taken from me. It was awful.” Alastair nodded in response, his heart heavy for the girl lying in his arms. This wasn’t the first dream she had like that and he knew how much they scared her.“I’m right here though. I told you I wasn’t going anywhere and I meant it.”  He enveloped her in a tight embrace, resting his head atop hers as he settled himself back into a sleepy daze. “Go back to sleep, babe, It’s okay.”

She heard it on the Wizarding Wireless Network, just as she heard about all deaths these days. It was strange, hearing it almost nonchalantly as part of an entire list of names, read by the same somber voice that crackled along with the static. She felt as if someone had punched her in the gut, her breath hitching and the rest of the names read slurring into background noise. She and Severus had never gotten along. Sure, she had hoped at times that she could forgive him, but never really regretted her insistence upon not doing so. She couldn’t explain the tears that began to well up in her eyes. Perhaps it was because she imagined how Lily must be feeling, how Severus’ family must be grieving. Perhaps it was the fact that she knew him, and now he was dead, and even if she wanted to forgive him, she couldn’t.

She knew that the Order had been on a mission that night, so when she heard the screaming all the way from the Spell Damage ward, Mary’s mind flew straight to the worst. She had too many friends in the Order not to be scared every time there was some mention of Death Eater skirmishes, every time there was news of someone being admitted for injuries won in battle. Patients of the closed Janus Thickey ward began to lift their heads from their cots as the shouting pierced the silence, but Mary didn’t notice. Her mind was flooded with images of her friends, their laughs and their smiles and the realization that there was a possibility she could never see one of them again. Dropping the tray of whirring silver instruments, she tore through the door and down the hall, following the shouts to the Emergency Confine. She shouts were cut off abruptly by the slam of a heavy door, and Mary cursed herself for not reacting sooner. After the door was closed, they would not let anyone else in. She skidded to a halt outside the door, wildly pounding her fists against it, hoping that they would allow her in just this once. Mary had to know, and the silence was deafening. After what seemed like ages, her fist flew forward into open air. The door had flown forward. For a second, she thought that she had gone hard of hearing…surely, if a patient’s life was on the line, there would be a bit more heightened sense of urgency. Then again, they had time to open the door. Mary walked forward slowly, passing the mediwitches and mediwizards and their solemn expressions, just far enough to see the ruffled red hair of the man who lay very still on the gurney, his thick rimmed glasses hanging askew from his nose. Mary let out a strangled sob, something pained and unintelligible. Arthur Weasley, his young face ashen and spattered in scarlet. She sank to the ground slowly, squeezing her eyes shut. She couldn’t look at him anymore, couldn’t accept it - wouldn’t accept it. Her bottom lip was pressed so hard between her teeth that she drew blood, and silent tears began to fall down her cheeks. She sat there, crying for a long while, even after all her fellow healers had trickled out of the room.

“Sod off,” Alffie replied quietly with a roll of his eyes, a grin ghosting across his face as he sat back up.

Alastair stared for a moment, a bit taken aback, before his features softened. “Are you…?” His voice trailed off as though asking was more of a formality for a situation he had already assessed, but Mary humored him and shook her head anyway. She reached out for him and he obliged, closing the gap between their chairs and pulling her half onto his lap as she snaked her arms around his torso. He didn’t talk and Mary was grateful for it, so they sat in silence bathed in the flickering glow of the fading library lanterns. 

Mary MacDonald could probably count on one hand the number of times she’d been late to a class throughout her Hogwarts career, and was set on not adding another tick to the count. She barreled through the corridors, slipping between throngs of students who had began to spill out of classrooms. A quick glance at her watch told her she only had less than two minutes to make it to Charms. In the brief moment she had stolen her gaze from the path, a boy had appeared in front of her, providing her little time to evade him. Shoulder first, she smacked into him, bag catching in the crook of her elbow as she spun. With wide, apologetic eyes she looked up at the boy. Amycus Carrow. She had planned on saying sorry, she really had, but for a moment articulating any sort of sentiment was far beyond her capabilities. She expected to be met with with a dismissive, curt retort, and would have almost preferred it to the dangerous calm that had glazed over his expression, lips tugging into a smirk. “MacDonald,” he said cooly, shifting his weight casually. “Please. Rude, running into people like that. Don’t make it a habit.” Mary averted her gaze, muttered a quick apology, and walked the rest of the way to Charms, not caring whether or not she was late quite so much anymore. 

Willow turned to Mary and grinned, eyes sparkling with excitement. “I’m going to have to surround you with more danger if your imminent death is the only thing that’ll push you to break some rules.”

“Muggles don’t tend to choose hand whisks as their preferred choice of weaponry, Alastair, that I can assure you of.”