𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍

" let down "

✤ ✾ ✤

. . . MARCH, 1976

IN THE SHADOWS of the second floor corridor, Barnabas the Barmy stared at her with blank, embroidered eyes. His trolls were dancing around him. They spun and rolled in a dizzying ballet.

"Don't look at me like that," she whispered. To this, Barnabas shrugged and began to correct the form of a troll's plié.

Maeve pulled the tapestry aside. She tapped the pattern onto the brick just as she had seen the boys do: A quick tap in each corner of a central brick to mark a square, followed by a light double-tap in the middle. Before she could regret coming here at all, the bricks spun out of the way to reveal the room just beyond.

"I just don't think it's a good idea to–" James was saying, but he abruptly stopped.

Remus wasn't in the room. It was only James, Sirius, and Peter sitting between two chairs and the sofa. They all stared at her, but none of them looked surprised that she had come. It was a Thursday, after all. Tutoring night.

Maeve had not spoken to any of them since the night of the full moon. Even after they had returned to class on Thursday they hadn't spoken to her at all. By the time Slughorn told them they were dismissed, the three of them were gone before Maeve even saw them leave.

This was not how she imagined it would end. A few months ago she might have been glad to be rid of the situation so easily. But something had changed. Some part of her enjoyed the challenge, the dueling, the potions, the constant bickering. And standing in front of them now, about to say what she was, she found it oddly difficult.

"I hope you aren't here for tutoring," James said weakly.

"No, that's done with," Maeve said with finality. She stepped deeper into the room but didn't sit down. "Are you going to tell me what happened?"

The three of them looked between each other. This was clearly something that had already been discussed. She knew what it took to avoid someone at Hogwarts, and she knew they had been doing it to her.

"Remus is still in the hospital wing," Peter told her. He fidgeted with a pair of Gobstones and they clicked as he passed them between his hands. "We've been down there a few times. He's doing much better and he might even be allowed to leave tonight. But he, well–"

"He isn't currently speaking to us," Sirius finished, voice hoarse. He was bent slightly at the waist as if the remorse was dragging him closer to the ground.

"That's not entirely true," James said carefully. "He isn't speaking to Sirius. He's flaming mad at me and Peter, but at least he'll talk to us."

Maeve had never seen Remus anything more than annoyed. She could hardly picture him getting upset, and anger was nearly out of the question. But what they had done was almost inexcusable. Setting up Severus when they knew he was already out for blood, treating the entire thing like a game, sometimes forgetting that Remus had to wake up and live with what had transpired in the night.

"What about Severus?" Maeve asked.

"He knows the truth now," Sirius told her quietly. "We barely got to him in time to stop him from being torn to shreds, but by then it was already too late. He had seen Remus in the Shrieking Shack. Dumbledore has him sworn to secrecy, but it took a great deal of convincing to calm him down."

Maeve pursed her lips. "So do you think he'll say anything?"

"No," James said, shaking his head. "He's vindictive and he's wanted to get back at us for a long time, but he won't. If word started to get out we would know immediately that it was him. He may hate us, but not enough to be expelled."

Maeve imagined Remus sitting alone in the quickening dark of the Hospital Wing, isolated by secrets and terrified of his own hands. "What does Remus think?"

"He doesn't trust Severus," James said. "He thinks he's still going to try to find some way to hold it over him."

"Which is why he isn't speaking to me," Sirius finished. "I told Remus the truth, that I was the one that had set Severus off that night. I don't think he'll ever forgive me. I don't deserve to be forgiven." There was no hidden motive, no desire for their pity at his misery.

"That isn't true," Peter told him. "You know it isn't."

"Severus was almost killed, and Remus was badly hurt. Now Severus knows the truth," Sirius said, looking up at the ceiling. "It almost couldn't be worse, Peter."

Silence hung around them like a heavy cloak. The pewter cauldron had been pushed into a forgotten corner. Cramped handwriting covered the chalkboard in halting phrases about defensive spells. A jumper was draped over the arm of the sofa and Maeve realized it was the one she thought she had lost.

"Well," Maeve said, swallowing hard. "I mostly just came to tell you that you can consider the deal paid in full. The pranks, the tutoring, all of it."

James frowned. Of all of them, she didn't anticipate he would be even remotely upset about this. "But what about the transformation?"

Maeve just shrugged. "Best of luck."

"That's it?" James said shrilly. "After all of that, you're just walking away?"

"I'm not walking away. The job is done, all that's left is the transformation. You don't need me for that."

"But what if we do?" James said. "Those directions are adamant that this is the worst part, the part where the most could go wrong. What if something goes wrong?"

"What makes you think I'd be able to help?"

"Because you've helped us so much already, you know it better than any of us do," James insisted. Peter was swiveling his head as if watching a tennis match.

"It's done," Maeve said with finality. "I've realized this has gone too far. I don't want to be wrapped up in your messes anymore." It had cost her too much. Sleep, sanity, time. And after Severus, she realized just how dangerous it just might be.

"I know we haven't been very good about it. We didn't take things seriously until it was almost too late," James tried. He stared at Sirius. "Help me out, Sirius."

Sirius, who had been staring at his hands, looked up. "If you want to leave, you should go, Byrne."

"Sirius, c'mon," James began.

Sirius remained silent and Maeve was already leaving.

She hadn't asked for this. She asked for a seven-step plan to finish her O.W.L year and be two steps closer to graduating and leaving for Trinity. Instead, she would be lucky to pass any of her O.W.Ls, she hadn't studied properly for the entrance exams in weeks, and she hadn't been fully honest with anyone in months. Though she was upset with Sirius, she knew he was incredibly sorry about what had happened to Remus. She too knew how anger could creep in and split judgment in two. It wasn't difficult to understand why he had told Severus Snape about the knot in the willow.

But a part of her had hoped that when she told them she was finished with all of it, he might try to convince her to stay.

✤

IT was a sunny Saturday afternoon in March, the misleading kind of day where the world was awake with a false spring. Though the ground was still largely mud, the grounds were dotted with students studying (or pretending to study) outside. Maeve, however, was hunched over a pile of books in the library, furiously scribbling notes about advanced transfiguration theory. Every so often, she'd glance up at the clock, fully aware she had blown off another one of Avanti's plans.

They had wanted to meet by the lake today to have a picnic. It was a little ridiculous. Bundling up against the early spring chill and sitting on a blanket, praying that the sun would stay out for longer than five minutes. It was the kind of ridiculous that would always end in rib-splitting laughter when one of them inevitably slipped in the mud, or spilled food on the ground trying to eat with freezing cold hands. Almost tradition, in that way.

Maeve was thinking of grapes and cheese on crackers all the way back to Ravenclaw tower. She imagined the three of her closest friends sitting outside on their tattered red checkered blanket as Maeve made her solitary rounds through the castle. She had forgotten to put her rings on today. Forgot to eat breakfast. Forgot her quill back in the library. Everything felt too obsolete to ever turn back around and retrieve.

For a very long time, into the early evening, she lay on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. Joni Mitchell was playing on her battery-operated record player, adding to the solemness of her misery. Exhaustion pried at her. The Invigoration Draught slowed in her veins and pulled her dangerously close to sleep. Her book was open on her chest, but no reading would occur.

The door opened and shut twice. Maeve didn't open her eyes until a shadow blocked the weak, fading sunlight that shone through the window. Avanti stared down at her with disbelief.

"What are you doing?"

"I was just havin' a break," Maeve assured her, suddenly filled with the need to prove that she hadn't just been sitting in bed all day. She flicked her wand and the music abruptly stopped.

Mimi stood next to Avanti with one hand on her hip. The other arm still held a picnic basket in its crook. "We need to talk to you."

Maeve's heart sank. Elara was, for some reason, absent. "About what?"

"About you."

Maeve just looked past them at the door, but Mimi raised her wand and said, "Colloportus", making it slam shut. The lock clicked for good measure.

A dry laugh was pulled from Maeve's throat, though none of this was remotely funny. "You're holding me hostage?"

"Only because we can never get you to talk to us for more than ten minutes at a time! You skipped Defense Against the Dark Arts yesterday!"

"Yes," Maeve sniffed. "I wasn't feeling well."

"That's a load of shite, I saw the massive plate of food you ate for breakfast," Mimi huffed.

Maeve threw out her hands. "Maybe that's why I wasn't feeling well! Is that what this intervention is about?"

Avanti's voice turned cold. "No. This is about the whole term. When you get like this with your chosen interest, you have a one track mind. It's incredibly selfish and we're tired of being strung along."

It sounded rehearsed. As if they had been planning on telling her this for a long time. "What do you mean?" Maeve asked, almost afraid to hear clarification.

"You missed Hogsmeade on Valentine's weekend, and you still haven't told us what you were doing that was so important," Mimi told her. "Where were you, anyway?"

"In the library," Maeve lied. Sirius and the giant spider flashed in her mind. Running through the forest, breathless but still alive, somehow less exhausted than she felt now.

"You haven't gone to Hogsmeade all term."

Only she had, but just to visit the Magic Neep. She had been in there so often, the wild-haired clerk had given her a little punch card. Purchase nine potions and your tenth is free!

"And what about game night? The picnic? Studying together in the library? Sitting together in the common room?" Avanti said, folding her arms in front of her. "You keep saying you'll be there next time. How many times is next time, Maeve?"

Without waiting for Maeve's defense, Mimi continued with, "And I keep finding you asleep in the common room, or out breaking curfew for who knows what reason," Mimi continued. "And this Invigoration Draught is becoming a serious problem. You can't function without it."

"That isn't true," Maeve said. In the corner of her eye she could see the empty bottle she had left out on her nightstand.

Avanti raised a brow. "When's the last time you went longer than a week without it?"

Maeve stayed silent.

"So after all of that," Mimi told her, "you still have time to hang around with those awful Gryffindor boys. And Lily Evans! Are you trying to replace us?"

"They are not awful. And I would never replace you! I just made more friends, that's all." It didn't seem like it would help to say now that the Gryffindor boys wouldn't be an issue any longer.

"Then why do you never make time for us?" Avanti asked, driving the final nail into the coffin. All Maeve could do was stare at her. There was no protestation or argument left to give because Maeve knew with certainty that Avanti was right. For all the things she had let slip through the cracks, this might have been her gravest error.

"If you won't make time for us, we're going to stop making time for you," Mimi told her. Avanti nodded in solidarity.

"Alright," Maeve said.

"Alright?" Mimi repeated shrilly. "Alright? Is that all you've got to say for yourself."

And Maeve finally lost her iron grip on her temper. "What do you want me to say? That I'll start carving out time for you? You know I won't, and I can't! There's too much that I've taken on and I'm nearly drowning in it. I'm going to fail all of my exams. Do you think I enjoy relying on a potion to get through the day? I don't have a choice anymore!"

"You made those choices," Avanti seethed. "Go talk to your new friends about your problems. We're done hearing about them."

Mimi swallowed hard and followed swiftly after Avanti out the door of their room. Maeve was left to stand alone on the plush rug. She remembered her papers taped to the train window as Scotland blurred by at warp speed. At the beginning of the term, everything had sounded so simple.

The door opened again and Elara slipped through.

"You weren't part of the intervention?" Maeve accused.

Elara just raised a blonde brow at her tone. "I wasn't, but I did hear the whole thing. They've been talking about doing that for the past week."

Maeve sank down to the floor and let the full weight of their confrontation crash over her. It was an evil, ugly thing that gripped at her heart with waves of guilt. "They were right about it all," Maeve muttered.

"When's the last time you played your guitar?" Elara asked.

Maeve frowned at the randomness of the question. "What?"

"I haven't heard you play it all term. You used to play it almost every night before bed. I miss it." Elara sighed, somewhere between disappointed and worried. "Maeve, when is this gonna end?"

She squeezed her eyes tight. She promised herself she wouldn't cry. No matter how tired and on edge she became, she would not cry. "I'm working on it. I just need a few days to catch up on things." As soon as the blasted lightning storm finally came, she would at least be fully free of the animagus task.

"And then what?" Elara asked bluntly, uncharacteristically upset. "You'll have more work, and then you'll say the same thing."

"You don't understand." She was falling apart at the seams. Everything she thought she had wanted was floating on the surface as she sank beneath murky water. All the way down to the mud.

"I understand very clearly what has happened. You're burning out, Maeve."

"I just have to get through this."

"If you can't be happy with where you are, what makes you think you'll find happiness at Trinity?" Elara asked her softly.

Maeve's breath hitched. This was no longer about Trinity. Trinity was only the catalyst, the root of her hubris. She had been so sure, so certain, that she could do it all and face no consequences but success. It was the Ravenclaw way, she supposed, as the room blurred and her tears finally began to fall.

Elara wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled Maeve into her chest. They sat there up against the bed in silence until Elara quietly asked, "What's really going on, Maeve?"

Maeve just shook her head. "I can't tell you."

"Can't tell me?" Elara laughed slightly. "You can tell me anything."

"Not this time," Maeve told her through snotty tears. She wanted to tell Elara about everything, the whole story. But it wasn't her story to tell.

Maeve felt Elara nodding. "I don't think Mimi and Avanti were right to say what they did, and I can't keep doing this either, Maeve. I've made so many excuses for you this term. But, I don't think you're being selfish."

"You don't?"

Elara shook her head with a sad sort of smile. "I don't. I think you need to figure out what it is you're doing, what you really want, instead of trying to do everything. In the meantime, I'll keep waiting for you to sort things out."

"I don't deserve that," Maeve told her. "I've been a terrible friend to you. To all of you."

"And I love you despite. You aren't a terrible friend, just someone who's recently made some mistakes." Elara placed her palm on Maeve's cheek and wiped the tears away. "Now, do you want to make it up to me?"

"Yes," Maeve told her desperately. "I do, I really do."

"Play me a song," Elara smiled. Wise beyond all her years. "I want to hear your guitar again."

✤

. . . APRIL, 1976

A string of grey days passed until March rounded the corner into April. The entire castle was running rampant with anxieties about O.W.Ls, N.E.W.Ts, and end of term examinations. The library, which was normally a peaceful place, had steadily become packed at all hours of the day.

Avanti and Mimi had fully stopped speaking to Maeve. Elara had made it clear that she wasn't going to be involved in any arguments and had started sitting at the other end of the Ravenclaw table in the Great Hall with a few of the fourth years that she was friends with. Avanti and Mimi had set up camp in their normal spot. Maeve had begun sitting with Finn and the fifth year Ravenclaw boys. It wasn't all bad; Sam Pryes had even taught her wizard's chess techniques using carrots and dinner rolls.

Her priorities had shifted rather drastically, almost overnight. She had dumped the rest of her hoarded Invigoration Draught down the toilet and packed her Trinity books away in the bottom of the trunk. With some assistance from Lily, Maeve had compiled a list of everything she needed to revise on before the O.W.Ls came at the end of May.

"I'm wondering how much of this is realistic," Lily had said, watching as the parchment stretched from the library table top to the floor. "Are you planning on sleeping?"

Maeve tapped her quill against her lips as she read through each item they had written down. She had, actually, been sleeping horribly. Every morning she awoke in various states of distress. Her dreams were riddled with angry Avantis, a Sirius Black that turned away from her whenever she tried to speak, and examination results smeared with illustrations of dancing trolls.

But Maeve was out of options. She woke early and went to the library before breakfast, went to classes, went to Quidditch practice, and then went back to the dusty corner of the library that most people avoided because it was close to Madame Pince's office. It was the quietest area of the library by far. And, once the woman realized Maeve was only trying to study, she even hand-delivered an Astronomy book that Maeve had been looking for.

Her social interactions were limited to Lily Evans and the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. Lily herself was busy with revision and Prefect duties, which left Maeve to the mercy of the stress that was their upcoming match with Hufflepuff. After a particularly long practice one night near the end of April, the seven of them were huddled in the changing room in front of the blackboard.

"The Hufflepuff beaters are deadly good," Finn said. He removed his Keeper's helmet and his red hair was so ruffled it nearly stood up straight on end.

"I don't think we need to worry about the Beaters," Will told him, briefly meeting Maeve's gaze. Heat rose in her cheeks. "The bigger worry is how far ahead of us Gryffindor is in points. How much do we have to win by?"

Charlie looked up from the piece of parchment he had balanced on his knee. He had been running the numbers for the past fifteen minutes. "Only twenty!"

They all looked up in shock. "That cannot be right," Estella frowned.

Edmund pulled the paper away from Charlie and assessed it with scrutiny. It was a marvel how far the second year had come in the length of just one school year. He had gone from entirely timid to someone who could easily keep up with Kian and Charlie.

He pointed at the paper. "You added the wrong number here."

"I did not!" Charlie protested, snatching it back. "That's–oh, that is wrong. Blimey, alright." He hunched forward and scribbled further with his quill, which was missing half of the feather and looked like a stubby bone. "Two hundred and ten points."

Will blinked. "So we have to be sixty points ahead before we catch the Snitch."

"It's been done before," Estella said weakly.

Will shook his head. He had Hogwarts Quidditch statistics memorized dating back to the beginning of the century. "Not against a team as good as Hufflepuff this term."

"Their Seeker isn't as good as I am," Kian said. Maeve rolled her eyes. "Don't laugh, Byrne, you have to admit that it's true."

Edmund and Charlie had moved the calculations to the blackboard. Edmund was scribbling furiously with the chalk, double checking Charlie's calculations as they argued in hushed tones. It's not my fault this school doesn't teach us bloody maths!

"Suppose we do have an advantage there," Maeve conceded, loosening and tightening her gloves as she spoke. "Their Chasers are deadly quick. You'd have to time catching the Snitch perfectly so we stay sixty points ahead. That's a massive gap."

"C'mere to me, our odds have been terrible all season," Finn reminded her. "No one expected us to win a single match after what happened at the end of last term. And here we are, in the second place spot once again. Unless you're plannin' on getting suspended from Quidditch again I think we have a fightin' chance."

"Um," Charlie began. "I think we might have been wrong again."

"It's got to be seventy points," Edmund announced solemnly.

Maeve just stared at Finn, daring him to argue with her now.

✤

AT breakfast the next morning, none of their discussion had tapered off.

They spoke quietly lest the Hufflepuffs be listening in for their strategies. Finn and Will had come up with an entire secret language system for Quidditch terms in their spare time and were talking openly about a peil and a lorgaire. Maeve hoped sincerely that none of the Hufflepuff players were Irish.

Maeve was pinned between Charlie and Kian and they continued to leave forward and back to talk around her. She even offered to switch seats with one of them, but they insisted it was fine.

Estella sat across from her, a vision of serenity as she cut into her cinnamon bun. "Are you going anywhere this summer, Maeve?" she asked.

Most wizarding families used summers as a chance to go on long traveling holidays. Elara spent half of the summer in Italy with her parents. Even Mimi and Avanti's Muggle families went on trips to visit long-distance family throughout the summer months. The Byrne family (except Aunt Josey) was entirely concentrated on the Eastern coast of Ireland. They had no reason or means to go anywhere.

"I actually work in a pub all summer," Maeve told her between bites of fruit.

"A pub?" Kian laughed, breaking his conversation with Charlie. "Don't tell me you work at the local chippy."

"Not all of us have a family trust fund that we're planning on living off of," Maeve smarted. "Tell me again what it is you're planning on doing after you graduate?"

His dark eyes narrowed. "You know I don't know that yet."

"Clock's ticking, Vu," Estella reminded him with a devilish grin. "Graduation is less than two months away."

Kian huffed and went back to talking to Charlie about the Chudley Cannons. Kian was the only seventh year student among their team. Tryouts for next year's team would likely be limited to trying to find a new Seeker. And, though Maeve would never admit it out loud, she knew it would be a difficult spot to fill.

Oat swooped low and deposited a singular envelope on the table in front of her. It was blank parchment and when she tore it open, there was nothing in it aside from a clipping of paper cut from the Daily Prophet. It was the weather forecast for the next week. A sun with some clouds marked all the days except for one day, which was marred by dark grey splotches that flashed on the page with intermittent lightning.

Slowly, casually, she turned around to face the Gryffindor table. Her heart leapt. Sirius Black was already staring at her, expectant. He motioned for her to flip the clipping over. Under a bulky headline about dragons in Bavaria was a note: second floor corridor, ten minutes.

✤ ✾ ✤

a/n someone put on 'parallels' by big thief rn. Maeve&sirius and their friendship woes mirroring each other is so so satisfying.

In all seriousness writing this big blow up between Maeve and her friends is very important to me.  Friendship is often something that characters get away with neglecting, and focusing on it like this isn't something I've ever really done before.  As you can probably tell, I'm not letting Maeve get away with much in this story 💃

And yes, Maeve did say she was done with the marauder madness but did you really think that would stick?