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Uncomfortable as she headed down the stairs to the potions classroom, Mary was very well aware of how close she was to the Slytherin common room. She hated being close to any number of Slytherins, and being so close to the root of – in her mind – all evil, she was just extremely cautious. That didn’t stop her from being incredibly jumpy though, so jumpy she felt as if she might as well be trying to walk on eggshells in boots made for a lumberjack. She whimpered a little, mostly to herself, as she set foot on the stone floor that, in one direction, would have lead right up to the entrance of the Slytherin common room. She promptly turned in the other direction, and ignored all her instincts.<br><br>

She was early to class, as always, to avoid any stragglers from Slytherin, or anyone that might be popping in or out. She didn’t want to get caught down there, in those horrid dungeons, with people she would have walked all the way around the castle to avoid, even if they were outside. She was a very determined girl at times, and this, bloody hell, was one of them! <br><br>

She walked down the hallway to sit outside the classroom in which she would be tortured with quite a bit of fluids and smelly things – things she would never get the hang of anyway – and sat down. So far she’d been able to avoid all the people (boys in particular) that had green anything on them. She did have some skills, too bad it just wasn’t applicable to school and things that somehow would matter much more later on in life. Too bad in deed.<br><br>

She was half dozed off, after only a minute in the poorly lit hallway, when she heard something that reminded her of a very particular scarping sounds (claws against stone to be precise) and gave out a horrified sound as she saw a dark shadow come closer and closer. Her heart felt like it was about to beat out of her chest, and not in a good way! <br><br><div style="width: 425px; height: 5px; background-color: #8A0808;"> </div>[/dohtml]

[dohtml] <br><div style="width:450px; text-align:justify; font-size:10px; color:black ;"><br>Normally, Ciara would've been in a better mood. She enjoyed potions more than most of her other classes- she was less likely to get called out in the middle of the lecture in there. Besides, even if she did, she was good for knowing the proper amount of an ingredient that was needed or how adding or taking away something would alter the desired effect of the potion. Not like some of her other classes where she could get called on and would be horribly embarrassed because she couldn't cast a spell properly. Potions was much more Ciara's thing than Charms or Defense Against the Dark Arts. Granted, she was sincerely wishing she was better- specifically at that last one, as of late. <br><br>

She hadn't told anyone except for Brogan about what had happened, she didn't think there was a chance that anyone else would believe her. Peter Pettigrew tying up and torturing (well, she thought so) mean, loner, weird Ciara McLaughlin? No one would ever believe it, they would insist it had happened the other way around and Ciara was trying to cover up what she'd done. She guessed having been more cheerful and friendly could've helped her situation some.<br><br>

Already shaken up and walking alone, Ciara was wary of the dark corridors that lead up to the Potions classroom. Normally she didn't mind them- Ciara was a dark and twisty kind of girl, at times. However she'd realized that compared to some people, well- she was scared of everything. At least she was, then. When she heard another girl yelp, well, her voice rose in pitch right with it, a little scream coming out of her. "Why- why did you scare me like that?" she accused once she caught her breath. So apparently she hadn't learned that much from her last encounter. However there wasn't any actual malice or anger behind it. Just the self-centered assumption that the other girl had been trying to scare her. She sat down beside her as if she was being friendly, because, well this was friendly for Ciara, especially now.</center>[/dohtml]

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After feeling her throat constrict around the horrified sound, she realized she wasn’t the only one making scared noises, and opened her eyes widely to see who it was. She was about to cure – a whole row of ridiculous and not very nice muggle curse words, that the person on the other end of them would be familiar with, because it was Ciara. ”Me?” she asked, her voice pitching a little higher as the other girl sat down. ”You scared me,” Mary said, her voice a little thin as she said it. She knew why she was freaking out though, it happened every week at the same time. The day before her class with the Slytherins.<br><br>

It was the worst part of her week, the class where she, and her fellow Gryffindors, had to sit through two hours along with the Slytherin sixth years; it made her skin crawl. Not that the boy who had left her bleeding was a sixth year, or that it really mattered when she was in a classroom filled with people, but it still wasn’t something she was very keen on at all. She’d been trying so hard to not make them notice how much the annoyed her, that she had probably gone overboard and been too nice – which also meant they knew. Something she didn’t want – at any cost, they couldn’t be allowed to know how much the scared her. Which was a very childish way of dealing with things you didn’t like, she knew that.<br><br>

She knew why she was jumpy, but her natural and normal curiosity crawled out from under the temporary hiding place it went to when she was scared, and she remembered Ciara yelping right along with her. ”Are you all right?” she asked, her forehead creasing just a tiny bit as she asked. She didn’t think Ciara was the kind to be afraid of much, least of all her, Mary MacDonald, sitting in a dark corridor. Of course, it could be that dark corridor that had made her react the way she did. Could.<br><br><div style="width: 425px; height: 5px; background-color: #8A0808;"> </div>[/dohtml]

[dohtml] <br><div style="width:450px; text-align:justify; font-size:10px; color:black ;"><br>"Oh," she said quietly as she settled down onto the bench. She fluffed out her red hair in an attempt to get herself back together. She'd been so jittery and out of sorts lately. Not that it could really be blamed once you knew the cause, but only two people did and one of them had been the one to cause it. Ciara had considered writing her mother, but she knew that would just scare her and she'd insist the girl come home immediately. While, to some degree, that was tempting, Ciara didn't quite want to go back home and be the odd girl out, again. She liked the fact that she finally felt like she belonged somewhere. Even if apparently that somewhere included people who wouldn't stop at hurting her. "I did, uh, sorry, then," she said. It probably didn't sound heartfelt, more tacked on than anything else, but she did mean it. Apologies just weren't her strong suit.<br><br>

She just wanted class to start. It gave her something to think about that wasn't herself- more than appreciated. It was probably dismissed because of her house and the fact that she seemed to just be going along with what was expected of her, but she'd started studying more to keep herself busy. Never mind that while Ciara had a perfectionist streak, before she'd never gotten particular pleasure out of studying, like some seemed to. Since... then she'd taken to lots of extra schoolwork- doing a few things of Brogan's, even. It wasn't so unusual, and she didn't think anyone could tell, but it helped.<br><br>

She shifted a little uncomfortably when Mary asked if she was all right. She knew it was a friendly gesture and probably the right thing to ask, but she didn't really want to talk about it. "M-me?" she stuttered a little. She'd never had a stutter when she was younger, but in the recent weeks, one had started to crop up when she was nervous. "Oh, I'm fine... just startled me is all." It was a lie and she almost felt bad for it. A part of her wanted to speak up and tell Mary something of what had happened. Maybe someone else would believe her, after all? She didn't put much hope into that, though. And then she didn't want to bring it up. What good would telling do if no one believed her? "What about you?" she asked.</center>[/dohtml]

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As Mary watched the other girl, there were a few things she sort of recognised. Not in the “oh wait, hasn’t this happened before?” kind of way, but in a way that she had seen the look on Ciara’s face on her own, not too long ago. She reckoned it hadn’t been more than a few hours; when she’d been getting ready for the day. <b>”It’s quite all right, it’s pretty dark and I’m still a little tired,</b> she said, feeling a yawn split her skull painfully. She hated yawning, she hated feeling tired and dazed; it offered the kind of opportunity she didn’t like giving people. Like giving her a right fright. She didn’t like being jumpy, but she was having an added appreciation for the girl next to her. Even if she didn’t know her very well, there was something about not being alone, and having the company of someone who seemed as easy to startle as she was herself, that was oddly comforting. <br><br>

Mary would have liked to go back to her room, or to the common room, maybe spend some lazy time teasing Sirius while pretending to read a book to humour her friends. He was one of the few people who let her get away with stupid things like that, and it was one of the things she found utterly and annoyingly charming about him. Of course, half the time she wanted to hate his guts, because it would be vastly easier to see him flirt with other girls, even with Marlene, but she never could stay mad at him, for anything. All he had to do was smile at her, say her name a little with a flirty glint in his eyes and she was… well, done for. She pushed back the idea of a lazy hour on the couch for something much more relevant; the slight stutter in Ciara’s voice, as well as her question. She’d have to ask about the stutter later, since she’d never heard that before. At least not from the girl sitting next to her!<br><br>

She scrunched her nose and thought about it. <b>I think I might just be a bit, uhm, jumpy.”</b> To distract herself she twirled a strand of hair around her finger, keeping it twirled between her finger and her thumb before letting go. It was a bit of a nervous habit; she usually did it while she was trying to study for a big test, or had a paper due she knew she wouldn’t do well on. <b>”It’s these halls,”</b> she said, slowly. She knew it was the halls, she felt trapped down here in the dungeons. Like a fish out of water, because Mary, Mary loved the fresh air and the long way down that Gryffindor tower provided for her. <b>”I am always expecting some monster to come jumping out from behind a door,”</b> she muttered; she did. She always expected Mulciber to jump out and grab her again. She wasn’t to keen on that. <b>”Half the time I think the war is more in here, than out there…”</b> Her voice didn’t falter, but she did have to swallow hard around the lump in her throat.

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She smiled, a small smile and relaxed. Well, it wasn't really relaxation. She was still sitting ramrod straight and far too focused on her surroundings, as if she was expecting trouble and was trying to be prepared for an adversary that wasn't going to come. However it was close enough to it... besides, even before it had happened, she'd only ever really relaxed in her sister's presence, anyway. Mary was sort of comforting. She didn't know the other girl well, but she'd also not done anything to invoke Ciara's wrath- and that was saying something, to a certain degree. Ciara knew she wasn't an easy person to get along with, though, so maybe that was why she felt alone all the time. Sitting next to someone who didn't want to hurt her or be annoyed by her on principle was comforting. She liked to pretend that she didn't need other people, but that wasn't as true as she liked to put on. "It is still early, I'm tired, too," she agreed. She wasn't good at small talk or friendly, apparently even when she was trying: and this was her trying.<p>

"That's quite all right," she said, meaning to be comforting. It was the sort of thing she'd say to Brogan, anyway- though that'd be combined with a hug and a cuddle or something- and Ciara didn't do that with non-Brogan people. She smirked a little at the idea of a monster or something. Seemed more possible at school than it did at home, anyway. She almost said 'Hogwarts is pretty safe from monsters' but the words died on her lips. She didn't feel safe, either. Not that she wanted to talk about that.<p>

She bit her lip when Mary said that sometimes it seemed like the war was coming inside the school. Before she would have laughed it off- the war was just a bunch of crazies with too much time on their hands. Not anymore... Peter hadn't seemed to care that she was muggleborn, but the simple fact was that she was. It could have been. And there were people out there who'd likely do worse to her than he had, simply because of the fact that her parents weren't wizards. "It-it's not, it can't b-be," she stuttered because she needed it to be so. And that was when she did something she didn't normally do- she started counting the stones on the walls. That was normal, it was one of her best ways to calm herself. Get her mind going on something repetitive and easy- however normally she could calm herself down by counting in her head. This time, the numbers softly passed her lips. No one would notice if they weren't paying attention, but Mary was sitting close and they'd been speaking, so there was a good chance she did. While part of her was screaming that she needed to get it together- one of the most important things to Ciara was how she was perceived, and the counting, the way she'd pulled her hands into her lap, tapping the fingers of one hand against her other palm with each number- that wasn't quite normal.
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Mary felt herself let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding. Normally she wouldn’t feel so out of place, so jittery and terrified by just sitting on a bench in a dark hallway. The stupid dungeon, it was all she could think to blame for her uneasiness. She smiled to herself as she looked down at her hands, noting that she needed to paint her fingernails again; the Gryffindor red nail polish had started to chip and she didn’t like the look of it. Either remove, or redo, she decided in the small, relaxed, silence. She didn’t really know Ciara – she didn’t think anyone ever really knew another person, but there were different levels to that as well. She was feeling safe and a lot more relaxed with this girl, than with a lot of other girls she knew. Knew of, she corrected herself. There was something about Ciara that Mary agreed with, what that was, she didn’t know. And a part of her really didn’t care much. <b>”I could really use a cup of something warm,”</b> Mary said in a small voice, her one response to Ciara’s comment about it being early. She looked at the other girl with a slow smile. <br><br>

Mary turned to Ciara, feeling oddly open for once – with someone she hadn’t known since her first year or school. <b>”Is it quite all right that I feel like the monsters down here would be wearing green striped ties and be, mostly, human?”</b> she said, her voice just a little off. She wasn’t scared of Mulciber anymore. She was angry at him. She angry at the whole thing; at having allowed it to go so far, at having been hurt, at the fact that he had faced almost no reprimand. But she left out those bits, not actually wanting to push her own buttons when she was getting along quite well with someone new. She gave a smile that was more for her own benefit, to steady herself, than for Ciara. <br><br>

Mary bit at the inside of her lip, quite hard, and frowned. She would have responded to Ciara, but she realized there wasn’t much need; she didn’t have the attention of the other girl anymore. She watched, carefully, as the other girl’s eyes flicked across stones, a soft murmur or numbers leaving her lips. She swallowed hard, not sure how to deal with something that was so closely related to fear, or so it seemed. She wasn’t good at being afraid of things, she was reckless and headstrong, and so when Mary was afraid, she was terrified. She didn’t know the anxious kind of fear, the one Ciara seemed to be experiencing. With some effort on her part, since she had no idea what the right thing to do was, Mary placed a gentle hand over the two hands of the other girl, giving her a tentative smile. <b>”Ciara,”</b> she said softly. <b>”Hey, it’s okay. You’re not alone,”</b> she said, knowing the words to be one of the few things that had settled her own worried mind, not too long ago. <b>”I won’t let anything happen,”</b> she promised, and only hoped to God, and whatever else was out there, that it was a promise she could keep.
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Mary smiled, softly, and nodded as she looked at Ciara. <b>”If I wasn’t sure we’d run into someone we shouldn’t, I’d suggest we went up a floor to ask the tables for something to drink,”</b> she said, and wrung her hands nervously. She really was itching to get out of the dark corridor. <b>”You know what would be heaven?”</b> she asked, a grin forming. She didn’t wait for Ciara’s answer before she leaned in, a little conspiratorially. <b>”A cup o’ chocolate and a sandwich, maybe some cupcakes.”</b> She felt the warm glow of happiness due to food fantasies in her chest – before recognizing it as growing hunger – and felt oddly happy. <br><br>

If she had been asked about two years ago, if she really thought the Slytherins were that bad, she would have shrugged and gone “probably not”. Had it been just one lousy year ago, she would have run back to the dorm and not come out until someone dragged her from there, kicking and screaming. No, Mary didn’t think all of them was that bad. A few of them were probably just as good as the others were bad. She knew it was horrible to assume that everyone in a house were the same, when she knew that wasn’t true. There were very few people in Gryffindor that actually had the same ideas and ways of life, and there was nothing wrong with that. But how could she explain all of that, when she really wanted to complain about the evils in the world? Well, she’d just have to try. ”I don’t know. I’m sure some of them aren’t all bad… But maybe the bad ones outnumber the good ones?” she said, feeling the waver in her own voice. She hated it, but nothing to do about it now. ”Me either, I really don’t.” She was pretty sure they were thinking the same about the other side, apart from just being sure of them being in the wrong. Mary wished she could understand the inner workings of these people. Was it all born out of fear? <br><br>

Mary smiled. ”I don’t think you’re crazy. Everyone has something. I kiss boys,” she said, and gave a shrug to prove her point. She did though, she realized, just as she said it. Sometimes her insecurities flared up and she felt the instant need to kiss someone, or be kiss, or just snog until everything else didn’t matter at all. School, homework, her scars and those pesky Slytherins – not to mention the war raging outside and inside. Yes, she had her thing. And while Ciara’s counting was fairly harmless, Mary actually needed human contact to be provided with some kind of calm and relaxation. How she’d never seen the connection before seeing Ciara count was beyond her. She wrote it off as her not being very smart, and that it might simply be because of that.

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