“Adam.”

“Mary.”

She couldn’t look at him anymore. For two people who had grown up less than a mile from one another, they could not possibly be any different. Her family had a very nice estate, paid for by her Muggle-born father’s successful business; his lived in a more modest dwelling down the valley, as far as they could get from any of the Muggles living in the area. The Sorting Hat sent her to Hufflepuff, only to assign him to Slytherin directly after to be with the rest of the pure-blooded proud.

When they were younger, they had managed to ignore these things and even become friends. Time, expectations, and human nature did their level best to unhinge that. But the earth didn’t see fit to erase the last physical marker that Mary and Adam had shared. It wasn’t spectacular, but it was special because it had been theirs. Just a bend in a stream, now frozen over and dusted with snow, and an outcropping of rock overlooking that bend, a berth just wide enough for two.

And as Mary sat on that stone, as she had done so many times before, she turned away from him because she preferred to remember him before he had become ugly, before he had become one of them. “What are you doing here? My family owns this land. I could have you arrested.”

“But you won’t,” he said simply as he sat next to her in much the same manner as he had when they first met. This time, though, there was no space between them like there had once been, no give at all. They were opposing forces — unbending and unrepentant. However, Mary didn’t move or inch away from Adam, either out of ingrained politeness or a sense of nostalgia. Instead, she pulled her cloak closer to her body and clenched her teeth to keep from shivering against the cold pressing down on them.

Adam seemed incognisant to the temperature as he flicked snow from his sleeve. “Well, you’ve got your wish, haven’t you? It is most definitely a white Christmas.”

Shooting him a glare, Mary said, “I don’t care. I couldn’t take being there anymore.”

“Look at you, running from your own family. The Mudblood side of the clan must be visiting.”

Mary whipped her head toward him and said, “Don’t say that word.” She then peered back out over the expanse of ice before adding, “And don’t think I’m talking to you because I’ve forgiven you.”

“That was business. It had nothing to do with you,” he said flatly.

“Bollocks!” she snapped. “You degraded me in front of the whole school to show off for your would-be Death Eater friends! Do you think I can just get over that?”

“No.”

“Then why are you here?”

For some time, Adam said nothing, which Mary took as a sign that he had no excuse for his presence. But when he spoke, it startled her. “I came to warn you. Your father is being targeted, and if you don’t want him to go the same way as your uncle, he needs to run. And so do you.” At last, he turned and looked at her, earnestness clearly in his eyes. “Don’t think for a second that you’ll just get pushed face-down in the mud again. What they’ll do to you . . . you’d beg for that instead.”

Mary stared at him, finally seeing a ghost of the boy she had met at age six, the boy with whom she had explored the forest and tested the first blooms of magic.

The first boy she had ever kissed.

“H-how do you know?” she shivered, this time not due to the chill.

“Come now, Mary. You’re not that naïve. My family isn’t untouchable like the Blacks or the Malfoys or the Rosiers. If I want to make something of myself, I have to be with the right people. The tides of the war are changing, and —”

Her shuddering had escalated, and Adam tossed his own cloak around her shoulders. “You should go home before you freeze to death.” He craned his neck to look at the rapidly greying sky. “Soon, by the looks of it. The snow’s not going to let up.”

He stood and began walking in the direction of his family’s home, leaving Mary to stare after him. Before she could stop herself, she blurted, “Adam, wait!” He froze mid-step but didn’t turn to face her. She slid from her perch and came to rest directly to his right. “Why are you really here?”

The only answer she received for what felt like an eternity was silence, but when Adam finally broke it, she wasn’t sure what she felt. “You’re freezing. You should go.”

Shaking her head, Mary said, “No. I’m not leaving until you tell me why you came here. There are any number of ways you could’ve warned me about my dad. You know what this place means to me — to us — so you’d better have a damned good reason for doing this when you are well aware of how much it hurts me to even look at you.” She grabbed his arm harshly and shook it. “I mean, how dare you after what you did?”

Adam hooked his elbow in hers and dragged her in the direction of the main house. “I’m taking you home.”

Mary bit back a screech of frustration and snatched her arm away. “I can walk fine on my own.” That his response was a mere quirk of the eyebrow infuriated her, but she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of being the only calm and collected one. It was bad enough he was right about the snow, which had accumulated to well over a half foot since it started the night before with no sign of stopping.

After ten minutes of trudging, with the icy crunching beneath their feet the only sound, Mary stopped walking to tug her wraps even closer. She cursed her lack of forethought in coming out this far when she could’ve been drinking hot tea and up to her elbows in Christmas sweets. But that was the only hint of holiday spirit in the house; its occupants were not willing to let Mary forget, not for a second, that war was coming and that it had already claimed one of their own.

Noticing her lack of forward progress, Adam stopped as well. “There’s an outbuilding just over there. We’ll just stop there for a bit.”

Not in a position to argue with his logic, Mary nodded and followed him to the aforementioned building, which was a storage shed used to store apples and pears during the fall harvest. She knew there would be an Everbright Lantern or two in there, which would put off at least a little bit of heat.

Soon, they were sitting on upturned baskets, their hands held out to absorb the meagre heat of the lantern. Mary saw Adam shiver, which made her feel guilty for letting him walk all that way without his cloak. She quietly handed it back to him, trying not to miss the evergreen scent that had dwelt in its fabric. But after the brief sound of rustling cloth, it was even more silent than it had been on the way there.

It made the next words spoken that much more impactful. “I thought you’d forgive me.”

Mary turned to Adam and gaped. “What?”

“I had to do it, to prove myself, but I couldn’t afford to be caught. I chose you because I knew you wouldn’t turn me in to Dumbledore.” His gaze fixed on his hands, he added, “And I figured that you would know why I did it and forgive me. This theory proved to be . . . unwise.”

Gaping at him, Mary spat, “So you would’ve done this to anyone else if you thought you could get away with it? How is that an apology, Adam?”

“It’s not,” he said flatly. “It’s just the truth — nothing more, nothing less.”

Mary rubbed her temples, not even sure how she should process this information. He was being absolutely honest, of that she was certain, but it was beyond her how she could’ve gone so many years without noticing the casual cruelty that had seeped into him.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she said with a sigh. “I can forgive you for what you did to me, but I don’t think I can get over why you did it. It’s good that you don’t hate me, I suppose, but I don’t know you anymore.”

Adam examined his hands, pointedly not looking at her. “I always thought Snape was an idiot, mooning over that Mudblood Evans. We took the piss out of him so much for that. Doesn’t seem so mad anymore.”

Turning toward him, Mary just stared. “What do you mean by that? Are you saying . . .”

In the blink of an eye, Mary felt herself roughly yanked from her seat and flush against Adam’s chest. “Do I have to spell it out for you?”

Her breath hitched in her throat. What was murky only seconds before had become startlingly clear at that very moment. It was completely insane and not at all advisable, but the rest of her had decided that it didn’t care one whit what her brain had to say. Whether he moved first or she did or they met in the middle, she had no idea, but the urgency with which their lips met echoed the relentless snowfall outside.

And this is how Mary Macdonald chooses to remember Adam Mulciber — not as that Slytherin boy who broke her heart, nor as the Death Eater who had divested himself of his innocence so completely. He was just a boy, just Adam, and she was just a girl, just Mary.