Chapter Text
Privet Drive was full of unspoken things. It was a place full of half-spoken sentences, half-closed doors, and half-acknowledged truths that hung in the air like dust. Never quite settling and never quite gone. Mae was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, her shoulder gently brushing her younger brother's. Harry Potter leaned forward, elbow on his knees, completely absorbed in the flickering of the television. It was one of those rare nights that the Dursleys had forgotten about the two siblings' presence. The light glimmered faintly in her brother's glasses, obscuring his eyes while Uncle Vernon grumbled in his chair, and Aunt Petunia tutted under her breath
The air of the living room was thick, stale, and ultimately predictable.
“-Authorities continue the search for escaped convict”, the television spoke out. At hearing the announcement, something shifted, and Mae felt it before she understood it. There was a quiet, almost imperceptible pull on her heart, like a thread tightening somewhere deep in her chest.
Harry straightened. “Turn it up.”
Uncle Vernon span in his chair, eyes sharp. He had clearly forgotten about the scarred boy's quiet presence “Don’t be ridiculous, boy-”
“Sirius Black”, Mae whispered, echoing the announcement on the screen
The name landed not in a loud way or a sharp way but with a certain amount of weight. Sirius Black. Mae went very still. She didn't believe that it was fear that settled over her body, she didn't think it was a cold intrigue. It was something that unsettled the girl to her bones- recognition.
“…armed and extremely dangerous…” Mae swallowed a lump in her throat.
Uncle Vernon snorted. “Looks like a right lunatic.”
Aunt Petunia gave a thin, satisfied nod. “Best kept locked away, if you ask me.”
Harry didn’t respond to the pair, and neither did Mae. He was watching too closely to the blue screen, listening too carefully. Beside him, his Hufflepuff sister wasn’t watching anymore. Instead, with her arm still pressed against her brother, she began listening to the silence behind the name. The way the room immediately felt colder and the way the name seemed to echo somewhere deep inside the girl/
“Did you feel that?” Harry murmured.
She hesitated with her answer. There was comfort in saying no to her brother, to lying and in pretending everything was normal. But her brother, her brave, caring brother, always noticed things that other people didn't. He could read her like a book he had memorised as a child. She had always wanted to protect her brother, but she found time and time again that danger followed Harry like a moth to a flame. And she felt that this feeling in her wasn't nothing.
“…Yeah,” she said quietly.
“What was it?” he asked, placing a hand on to her knee gently. Mae swallowed, “I don’t know.”
And that was the truth. Yet somehow, it was worse than any lie or fake answer that she could have given the little boy.
Mae didn’t sleep much that night. Privet Drive had never been exactly a quiet place, not truly, but that night, every sound felt sharper. Closer. As though something unseen had shifted just out of sight.
And so, Mae lay awake, staring at the ceiling, watching shadows stretch and settle.
Waiting. She didn’t know what for. But what she did know is that the feeling in the pit of her stomach had never left since she heard that man's name. If anything, throughout the night, that feeling began to grow stronger. Her eyes flickered over in the dark to her brother and as she watched his chest rise and fall, Mae let her exhaustion of emotion drag her under. She didn't really sleep, not properly anyway. But she fell into something deeper. Colder, stone, a darkness.
She heard a distant, hollow echo and a voice. A broken, hoarse and desperate voice, "Mae..."
Even in the weird limbo between sleep and real life, her breath caught. The darkness seemed to twist around the sound of her name, clinging to it and forcing it towards her. Closer, and closer.
"Mae.-"
Mae woke with a sharp inhale, her heart racing and her fingers clenched tight into her sheets. Sweat glistened over her head. Her eyes ran around the room. It was empty. Unchanged. But while her brother continued to sleep, his sister felt like her name wasn't hers in that moment. It felt like something remembered, and something deeply missed. The young girl grabbed the book next to her bed and began to read alongside her brother's gentle snores.
By the time the two siblings reached Kings Cross, that dark feeling had settled into something quieter, but no less persistent. Like an uncertain hum beneath her skin. The barrier to platform Nine and Three-Quarters shimmed faintly as the two passed through, and suddenly, Mae could not focus on the unsettling feeling in her stomach because everything was louder, brighter, alive in a way that privet drive never was, or could be. Steam curled into the air and her lungs, voices overlapped with a thrill of excitement and laughter rang out familiar and warm. For a moment the girl let herself breathe.
“Evans!”
The girl didn’t need to turn around, she knew that voice anywhere. And sure enough, Fred Weasley and George Weasley were leaning halfway out of a carriage window, identical grins firmly in place.
“Well, if it isn’t our favourite pair of trouble,” Fred called.
George tilted his head, eyes landing on her with a spark of interest “Question is,” he added, “are you both equally trouble, or is only one of you doing all the work?”
Harry groaned. “We just got here. No need for the sibling rivalry to start”.
The siblings had this unspoken friendly war about whether the Weasley twins were better, and by better we mean more trouble, fun, and risk taking, than the Potters. Last year Harry alone made them win by going into the chamber of secrets. The Weasleys couldn't argue with him because he had saved their sister, but this year they aimed to win.
Mae folded her arms, raising an eyebrow. “That depends,” she said. “Are you planning on keeping up this year, or should we lower our expectations now?”
Fred clutched his chest. “Cruel.”
“Unnecessary,” George agreed solemnly. Then, after a beat—“Accurate.”
But he was still looking at her. Not just at her. Watching.
“Oi, move over!” another voice cut in.
Lee Jordan appeared behind them, trying unsuccessfully to push the twins aside, “Some of us need space to make important announcements to the Potter kids.”
“You’ve never made an important announcement in your life,” Fred said with a bewildered look plastered to his face.
Lee ignored him, pushing the tall ginger and leaning out instead. “Breaking news: Evans twins spotted. Chaos levels expected to rise dramatically.”
Mae huffed a quiet laugh and the sound seemed to satisfy something in George, because his expression shifted, just so slightly, into something more relaxed. He had been worried about her return to her Uncles. He knew from Harry that they were not nice people, and George didn't want Mae- or Harry- to experience a whole summer of abuse. They had all only just begun getting close to Harrys sister, yet he couldn't picture Hogwarts without her anymore.
“Mae?” This voice was quieter. Steadier, and on the platform where she stood.
Mae turned quickly. Cedric Diggory stood a few steps away, hands tucked loosely into his pockets, expression warm but calm as ever.
“You made it,” he said simply.
Mae nodded while something in her shoulders eased without her permission. The girl skipped over to the boy and welcomed him into a deep hug. “Yeah. Wouldn't miss coming back for anything.”
Cedric smiled a small, genuine smile and hugged the girl back.
“Interesting,” Lee murmured from the window.
Fred elbowed him. George said nothing. Harrys eyes scanned the platform looking for his two friends but his gaze flicked, quick, sharp, between Mae and Cedric.
The whistle blew and students began to climb aboard the train. Mae followed her brother onto the Hogwarts Express, the familiar hum of it settling briefly around her. For a while, it felt almost normal.
Laughter. Sweets. Fred and George arguing over something entirely ridiculous while Lee provided unnecessary commentary like we were at one of his Quidditch matches.
Cedric had joined there compartment briefly and he sat across from Mae, occasionally adding something quiet that somehow balanced the chaos.
Harry had gone off with Hermoine and Ron. Everything was perfectly normal until the train began to slow to a stop. Too early, too suddenly, and too urgently. The laughter of the twins faded, and the air suddenly shifted. A cold seeped in, not sharp but steady like smoke seeping under a door. Maes breath caught and her fingers instinctively tightened around the edge of her sleeve. George noticed, as he always did, and leaned forward towards the girl.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, quieter now.
She didn’t answer. She diidn't feel like she could. All around her body she felt a hum, a pull. The same one from the night before. This time it was stronger, more determined. The compartment door slid open and darkness filled the frame. A dementor. She had read about them in books. Everything fractured. The sounds around her dulled, the lights dimmed, and cold wrapped around her chest like a tight hand, squeezing hard enough to steal the air from her lungs.
Someone swore...Fred, maybe. Lee went silent. Cedric tensed. George shifted closer.
But Mae? Mae didn’t feel that fear, at least not entirely. Beneath the cold, beneath the suffocating weight of that pull, there was something else.
Something reaching back.
And then, the voice.
Clear. Raw. Breaking.
“Mae—”
The girls vision blurred suddenly and her heart twisted painfully in her chest. And in that moment Mae knew. She knew that Sirius Black was calling her name. And as her eyes slammed shut, she knew that she had to start listening.