Alliance: order of the phoenix
Faceclaim: shay mitchell
Age: b. March 2nd, 1959
Availability: taken
She was a miracle when she was born. Her mother did not survive the trauma, did not live to see the eyes of her little girl when she opened them to the world. Her father was no where to be seen when she was rearing her little head. Yet Mary Macdonald looked around as if she had known all this already and had adjusted to the fact. She was taken from the hospital by her grandmother, brought away to live in seclusion by the sea as she grew into a woman. Her childhood was lonely. She remained there, surrounded only by her grandmother’s friends and the parishioners of the local church, taught to smile when told how much she had grown. Her hours were filled walking, book and sandwich in bag so that she might sit down when she found a suitable place. She was alone, but she learnt to deal with the loneliness and became quite content with the life she was leading. With an imagination as wide as hers, why should she need to fill her hours with words? She was given the best of everything that they could afford. Homeschooled by an old teacher the family knew from the moment she displayed anything unusual. There was always something off about her, but in a world far from normal, there was room for it to develop.
The young girl didn’t know what to do with the abrupt change in her life that came when she was eleven. Of course, she’d been aware of changes around her. She’d always been able to calm animals with a whisper, always seen plants grown when she walked amongst them, but she simply believed she had been blessed, as her grandmother would say. She was not, then, ready for the presence of Professor McGonagall. The woman walked into her life with news that would change it forever and expected an answer in that moment. Her grandmother said yes for her, in the end, and Mary spent the next few weeks debating what she wanted from her existence. This was a chance to experience something different, to view her life in a way she had never considered before, but was she ready for that? She enjoyed her mid-afternoon walks and the predictability that came with the every day. She feared that her grandmother had become reliant on her. She despised the thought that she had to turn her back on something. And yet, there was a strange promise in the name Hogwarts. She would have a secret no one else would know, something she could call her own completely. It was with that in mind, and a nudge from the woman who loved her most, that had her on the train with the other first years, ready to begin her new life.
The school was a mixture of everything she had hoped it would be and her worst nightmares. She had never been around children her own age and she found quickly that she didn’t know how to speak with them. Mary wanted to make friends. She wanted to reach out to those around her and share in their commonality, the secret that pulled them all together. However, there were many who shunned her for her strangeness. She did not feel a need to fill the empty silences. She could never quite seem to force a conversation about the weather so that others felt better. Mary was a wallflower; a girl who watched everything around her, simply so that she might understand the human condition. She couldn’t help hating what she found. Mudblood, they would call her. At first, the word did not hurt. How could she feel the stab of something she didn’t understand? It crept up on her in the night, however, syllable by syllable, stretching her to fit a role she could not refuse. And she found, slowly, that the more she loved her new world, the more she felt like she didn’t fit it. Of course, she kept those fears to herself. She could not be seen to be weak.
In all honesty, though she was having doubts about her place, Mary remained happy through most of her early years at the school. She found she had an affinity for Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures, spending a lot of her free time helping the professors and seeking the greenhouses out for a source of solitude when she needed it. She adjusted. She became better at speaking to people she did not know. She moulded herself to fit. And then he happened. Fifth year, the week before the Christmas holidays. She remembers every detail of the event like it was still happening to her, going over and over it in her mind each night. The lamps seemed to flicker as he approached, and wasn’t that just poetic? Mulciber. The name left a tainted taste in her mouth, all copper and iron as if her very gums had tried to bleed him out. She never spoke of the events, never found the words to express what had happened to her, and maybe that was why he went without real punishment.  She had to watch as he highfived his friends in the halls, hear as he spoke about how she screamed, live with the thought of him coming back to finish the job. It was enough to drive anyone mad, and that was exactly what it started to do to Mary.
She didn’t know when the cracks started showing in her facade. All she knew was that she was suddenly finding it harder to breathe, going out of her way to hide from people she was meant to talk to. She couldn’t cope. She didn’t know when she stopped sleeping, when her hands shook if she didn’t have the cup of tea in the mornings. She didn’t seem to know much anymore. When she closed her eyes, she heard his voice, always laughing, always there. She didn’t know when Mulciber became more than a boy to her, but soon enough he was every monster she’d ever feared was under her bed. She hated how much she hated him. It made her feel physically sick to know he was still out there, he was able to hurt other people because she hadn’t had the courage to speak up. He was her nightmare. And she was forced to face him every day. She was on edge, constantly, waiting for the news that he had killed this time, that he had picked another little girl to pick on, that he was coming for her. Her limbs ached with fear, remembering daily what they went through that night. She hated it. She hated him. She hated herself.
Out of school, she believed she would be safe. Mary bought herself a little flat in Diagon Alley and got herself a job at Florish and Blotts and she pretended that she was living a perfectly normal life. It perhaps wasn’t glamorous or as exciting as she had once dreamt it would be, but she could pretend she was safe for a little while and that was enough. There were some days when she could close her eyes, hold tight to her grandmother’s cross held at her neck, listen to the bustle of the street and pretend that this was the way her life was meant to go. She got better at pretending, better at lying to herself to make it seem like she was coping and she knew it wasn’t much, but she’d always thought that it was enough to see her through, for now at least.
She likes to pretend that she’s happy. Mary plays the part she was meant to play. She hums along to the radio in the stockroom, brings tea whenever her friends visit her, goes to visit her grandmother to make lemon cake on a Sunday afternoon. Outwardly, she is the picture of a girl who adjusted well to the world and isn’t letting the war get to her. However, behind that, she’s more scared than she lets on. She locks doors three times, lays in silence at night believing there are footsteps coming for her. She feels best when she’s alone, because then she believes she is less of a target. Her madness has been coming every since Mulciber attacked her, and now she has no idea to how she is meant to stop it. There are nights when she washes the apartment from top to bottom, scraping away blood stains that no one else can see. She is not brave like her friends. She cannot run head first into a battle and come out smiling over a win. She feels every single loss, even for people she does not know.
Mary joined the Order because she felt she had to. All of her friends were heading there and when Dumbledore pulled her into his office and looked at her with his eyes so big, she didn’t know how she could say no. She doesn’t want to be a fighter. She doesn’t have it in her to do anything like that. She looks around the table in meetings and sees people who are doing so well and she knows that she’s the weak link. She the one they will all die to protect and she hates herself for that. She helps more behind the scenes, teaching people about the muggle world in case they have to go hide there. Mary is the girl who knows exactly what kinds of plants are poisonous and how to detect them. She’s always on watch. No one thinks to send her into the middle of a battle because she’d be so much more helpful when it ends. She’s been teaching herself to Heal, spending nights pouring over books so that she knows what to do in the moment when she could save her life. She is not a fighter; she knows it, they know it. She will never be a fighter, but that does not mean that she is not worth something.
If Mary were a beverage - because some personality tests are strange - she would be a cup of tea; dependable, refreshing, like coming home when one has been away too long. However, she is not a beverage, she is a girl. She rarely uses her voice; choosing only to volunteer information when she’s certain of it’s importance. There is no wasted conversation to her. For Mary to share something, she must have no qualms about whether people need to hear those words. She is soft-spoken, soft-hearted, but that does not mean she is not strong. Mary Macdonald will not argue. She will not yell harsh words made to put another person down. She will, however, harden her expression, lower her tone and confess that she find herself disappointed in that person. She believes, wholeheartedly, that in everyone there is the capacity for good. She will give chances, over and over again, hoping that they can find that out for themselves. She will not give in. She is steadfast, the lighthouse in the storm that feels the waves crashing but holds its ground regardless. In private, she may break down, she may try to become as small as possible so they could never find her, but all that pain, all that misery, all that loneliness, it only succeeded in creating a girl who could be unceasingly kind.
[ + ] kind, steadfast, intuitive / [ - ]Â jealous, anxious, shy
KNOWN CANON FACTS + FUTURE
Attended Hogwarts at the same time as the Marauders and was sorted into Gryffindor.
Mary was attacked at some point in her school years by Mulciber through the use of dark magic, and was written off by many as a harmless joke.
Is known to have had contact with Lily Evans, at least, when she informed her that Severus Snape was wating outside the Gryffindor Tower for her.
LILY EVANS — friend. Despite being a year above Lily, the two became quick friends when Lily arrived at Hogwarts. Their shared muggle heritage bonded them together, and Mary only joined the Order after Lily did.
NIKLAUS MULCIBER — enemy.  Mary never forgot what happened to her at the hands of Mulciber - and it was no surprise to her that the older boy joined the Death Eaters after leaving Hogwarts. Despite being an accomplished witch herself, Mary is still fearful of squaring off against Mulciber.
SEVERUS SNAPE — undecided. It’s now become a popular rumour that Snape has fallen to Voldemort, but Mary still has faith in the boy — he always seemed genuine to her, and she pitied him at Hogwarts. She also knows that it would break Lily’s heart if Snape was working for Voldemort, so Mary has made it her mission to find out the truth — and if it’s bad news, she’ll do her best to change his mind.
