#cepeheus black

[rabcantswim]

in the meantime of me working on rcu (regulus cinematic universe), i thought about just sharing some of my own headcanons of other characters who may or may not intervene in regulus's story. these things i will be describing have still happened and are sort of canon in the world where my short stories take place.

please do keep in mind that we all envision marauders & co. in different ways which means my marlene/mary/sirius/remus might not fit your own imagination exactly. i am just opening my imagination to you and you are more than welcome to take whatever fits for your own depiction of the character and leave the rest be. no need for crude words if you do not agree.

if you'll have any questions about a headcanon or are curious to know more of my ideas about a certain character(s) who hadn't been mentioned more in-depth - my inbox is open so please redirect your possible questions over there :)

♥ marlene headcanons here ♥ ♙dorcas headcanons over here♙

and now for best girl mary macdonald: just to be safe I'm going to put a TRIGGER WARNING for death, rape, and assault before this. i won't describe any details but i do mention that characters get murdered and a character gets assaulted and raped, and another one gets assaulted. there is also an insensitive joke made by someone who does not know the details of what happened. so please be wary of that. take care of yourself and put yourself first if you need to <3

i see her as a gryffindor

i don't have a certain image, i could never pinpoint what she looks like in my head

she has an older muggle brother who she loves dearly and was upset that she had to leave behind while going to hogwarts

hagrid ABSOLUTELY adores this girl. they both have the same wonderous way of looking at the wizarding world. they share their love for magical creatures, hagrid because he's hagrid, and mary, because she's muggleborn and never dreamed things from her children's books, could be real.

hagrid brings creatures to show to mary and tells her all about them and she says she wishes he could teach them care of magical creatures. mary really believes in him, sees his passion for the subject, and beckons him to try to apply for the position in the future.

she wanted to become a hogwarts professor herself and it was sirius who sparked that want in her.

all the way back in their first few years of school lily could not stand the marauders. sirius didn't want to constantly bug remus with questions about the muggle world - when it was before a full moon or after he couldn't ask him anyway, since he got moody or was unconscious.

sirius didn't want remus to think he was that ignorant but he didn't even know the bare minimum that james did and was super embarrassed about it. and since lily disliked him, he went to the only other muggleborn he knew in his first year which happened to be mary.

at first, he was super embarrassed about asking all the questions bc he thought that mary would make fun of him for not knowing. but she was always super excited to talk about muggle stuff since she didn't have anyone to talk to about the world she grew up in yet.

mary was so SO happy that sirius, as a pureblood, was interested to know more. she was just as nervous and embarrassed as sirius for not knowing much about the wizarding world so, in turn, sirius would answer her questions if she had any, but it was mostly sirius who came running whenever he thought of something.

sometimes he even asked questions mary didn't have the answer to, so she had to write letters to her older brother for answers.

after sirius figured out how comfortable talking about her world mary was, sirius always ran to her super excited shouting things like: "mary, Mary, MAry, MARY! what the bloody hell is a lava lamp and where can i buy one RIGHT NOW?!"

the amount of attention and curiosity he expressed about muggle stuff led to mary having the cutest little crush on sirius because let's be honest, if you're like 11-14 and a boy is willing to listen to you talk about washing machines and lava lamps and muggle school or anything else and he PAYS ATTENTION? he's special.

mary's brother loved music a lot so mary had a lot of niche knowledge about muggle bands and music shops. she wrote sirius the addresses for some that were in London to check them out in the summer.

it was mary who introduced sirius to bowie and beatles, but sirius loved freddie mercury the most.

since marry was used to such respectful and curious behavior from sirius as a pureblood she thought all purebloods were this nice while asking about the muggle world. so, it was a huge reality check when she forgot her quill and ink and wrote her notes with a glitter pen that she had in her bag and some group of pureblood kids in the class noticed.

one of them asked her about it obviously mocking her. the kids were snickering while mary enthusiastically explained to them how the pens worked, where she bought them, and that they help her with learning because she can color code with them. she even suggests they try them out for themselves and hands the pen to the boy that asked her about it.

now the kids are in absolute disbelief that she would think they would touch or use something muggles use so they just stare at her not knowing if she's serious or she's just making fun of them as well. when they realize she means it they call her probably every bad word an 11-year-old pureblood wizard kid could know, insult the muggle world, call the stuff she uses barbaric and stupid and one of the kids sends out a spell on the glitter pen and it explodes in mary's hands and ruins her notes for the class. it gets on her robes and face as well.

lily comes to her rescue and helps her clean up. after that she insists mary be seated somewhere far away from those kids. and lily always gets what she wants bc she's absolutely valid with her reasons why.

when sirius hears about what happened he insists they prank the shit out of those purebloods.

from then on whenever sirius asks mary about muggle stuff he's 10 times more excited to learn and always makes sure to let her know that whatever she was talking about is super cool to him (which it is most of the time).

her and sirius dated for a few months in their third year but decided to stay friends later. sirius was way too childish for mary's liking and would often prefer to spend time with the boys being up to no good. they stayed close friends anyway but sometimes mary would catch herself wishing that they would have worked out.

so bare with me now... there's this asshole guy cepheus (collin) black - he's an older cousin to the black brothers and sisters, one year ahead of sirius and two of regulus. in my upcoming continuation of the "regulus cinematic universe", you will learn about him bc he's VERY IMPORTANT to the story. the most crucial thing you need to know about him is that he is a monster. (fun fact, in my brain i cast him as bill skarsgard, especially when he was in hemlock grove. he's handsome which collin definitely is but there's that strange creepy edge to him. exactly like collin. you'll also learn why i call him collin in the upcoming story. everything has its reasons).

see i'm talking about him here now bc it's actually him who attacked mary in her sixth year, not mulciber. although it kinda gets blamed on mulciber for cover. collin is a scary seventh year, basically the boss of the soon-to-be death eaters at school.

he (collin) had assaulted and raped another slytherin girl - ida rookwood - in the restricted section where he left her afterward a few months prior to attacking mary. and it's actually regulus who finds ida afterward and helps her get out of there.

collin is headboy while remus and regulus are both prefects, idk if that was an actual rule, i don't think it was in canon, but in my canon the heaboy/girl and prefects have access to the library's restricted section whenever they like. just one of the privileges.

when regulus is sneaking ida rookwood out remus sees them and notices her disheveled look, ripped skirt, and how she's clinging to regulus. he doesn't think much of it, trying to keep out of slytherin business but of course, when he mentions these things to sirius he assumes regulus and ida might possibly be a thing or at least are doing things together.

ida actually gets pregnant with collins baby. sirius has the audacity to claim that he could have a secret niece or nephew out there because regulus was seen with ida around the time she must have gotten pregnant. sirius of course never learns the truth. no one does.

regulus tries to ask ida about what happened and she denies his suspicion that it was collin who had done it and denies that anyone has raped her because she fears him. she asks regulus to just let it go. and while trying to cling to the hope that his cousin would never do such horrible thing to a fellow student - because he and regulus are pretty tight - deep down in his gut he feels he knows. but he respects ida and realizes that if she's not willing to report it to the authority he can't do much about it bc he doesn't have any evidence or proof, only a hunch.

regulus does clean up for collin like... all the time. and gets punished or blamed for a lot of the things collin does, seriously.. whenever this poor boy (regulus) does anything good, he gets punished for it. you'll see.. we'll delve into the things mentioned above in regulus's story. back to mary now though. this is about her, i just wanted you to have this piece of information about who collin is.

mary is able to defend herself when collin attacks her. she uses a spell that opens a wound on collin's stomach. he has to leave because he's bleeding a lot.

the rain is pouring outside as regulus - on his mission given to him by a mystery character (too many spoilers) - tries to come up with a plan while headed to a mystery place.

and on his way, he sees little drops of something. at first, he thinks it's just the rain that got in bc the wind is picking up and he's walking through the courtyard. but when he looks closer there are many more and seem to be leading somewhere. and most importantly they aren't colorless as you'd expect. they look like blood.

at the end of the trail, he finds mary drenched in water sitting in the hallway leaning on the wall.

she has bruises in multiple places that can and cannot be seen by regulus - including her hips, wrists, left thigh, and one very small near her lips along with a gash on her cheek and upper lip, and scraped knees with little droplets of blood forming on them.

now, i won't get into regulus's struggles with deciding if he should help mary or not, i'll save that for another time. just believe that he has many thoughts going through his head in mere seconds.

he has never interacted with mary. didn't have a reason or a chance to. he's only ever seen her once holding hands with sirius in their third year and she's only ever seen him at slytherin quidditch matches but you can't get a good look at those.

regulus makes sure to let mary know that he means no harm. still, he does not introduce himself for fear that mary could tell people it was him who helped her and his "friend group" of future death eaters would be suspicious of him and potentially could exclude him. and he's not sure if he wants that.

mary thinks regulus looks a bit familiar though they never interacted, she's unsure if she can trust him. regulus is genuine (basically lets the qualities i mentioned in my dorcas headcanons shine), so mary allows him to help her in the end. but the whole time she's clutching her wand ready to defend herself and survive.

regulus wants to make sure she's alright and again, he has a hunch this could have been collin's doing (at first just a hunch, later he is pretty sure for reasons i cannot tell you, bc spoilers!!). he doesn't ask her about it since the first priority is to make sure she's not hurt. he asks her if the person who attacked her touched her in any wrong way that she would not like to which she shakes her head no.

regulus helps her get up and stumbles to the infirmary with her where he helps madam pomfrey get mary on a bed. pomfrey asks him if he saw anything or has any idea what happened or who could have attacked her but regulus of course cannot be sure yet, so he opts for the truth. he says that he found her like this. pomfrey also calls him by his name and mary hears it which is going to be important in a minute.

the news flies around the castle almost immediately. after about an hour passes it gets to the marauders, lily, and marlene and they all insist on visiting mary.

pomfrey is desperate because mary doesn't want to say what happened so when they come, she hopes maybe mary will talk to her friends. in desperation to bring justice to the person who has done her harm she lets lily and marlene come all the way to her bed to try and speak with mary. the boys stay a little behind, but they can still hear everything.

so, lily tries to talk to her but the only thing that mary is able to murmur in her state is "regulus".

at this point sirius has already left home, he and regulus are on pretty thin ice. sirius is slowly losing all hope with regulus even though regulus is finding more and more need to do good in himself. due to lack of contact and regulus's cold exterior sirius thinks it's the other way around.

when he hears mary utter his brother's name in a fit of rage, sirius assumes the worst. that it must have been regulus who hurt mary. he doesn't believe that regulus did it by himself, sirius knows his brother couldn't cause someone these injuries on his own. but he still took part in hurting mary somehow. maybe his friends dared him to or wanted his help.

sirius goes to deal with regulus immediately. he ignores remus shouting after him to just wait for a second, while james goes straight to madam pomfrey to ask. he on the other hand does not believe regulus would be capable of such a thing for no reason. because he can't imagine there would be a reason to do this.

the rest of the marauders and the girls get an explanation out of madam pomfrey and put two and two together. regulus wouldn't have brought her here if he did it right?

the story goes on after this, there is so much more to it but it isn't relevant to mary, so you'll have to wait for my regulus stories to learn more if you'd like.

hagrid is heartbroken after he finds out what happened to mary. especially because mary is a lot different after the attack. she's traumatized by the attack and will often lash out at her friends when they try to comfort her saying stuff like: "the things... you cannot imagine the things he told me before i was able to hurt him. he's sick in the head!"

she's not as excited about the wizarding world and its wonders, she refuses to practice magic in class for a while, and she doesn't talk much not even to hagrid or sirius.

lily is there for her a lot, she makes sure she talks with mary every day because mary can go days without saying a word unless spoken to.

marlene tries her best as well. they've never been best of friends they hung out together mostly bc of lily but since the attack marlene's behavior toward mary changed. she grows very protective of mary. she invites mary to watch her quidditch practices and matches so that she doesn't have to be alone at weekends. marlene sits with mary in the library when she studies, when they don't have the next class together and she notices that mary looks uncomfortable at the thought of walking around the school alone, marlene accompanies her to her next class, the great hall, library or to her dormitory, or anywhere she wants to go before her own classes are to begin.

marlene just really wants to be there if anyone tries to attack mary again, especially because since the attack there are many supporters of voldemort's ideology/collin's friends paying attention to mary in school. they are waiting for their moment to avenge collin bc they know they'll get recognition and maybe a higher position in his eyes.

thankfully collin is not present at hogwarts next year since he finished his studies. the marauders take over and dominate the hogwarts student body fairly quickly. they of course aren't unbeatable, but they do have a lot of respect on their name along with ways of getting rid of annoying nosey people and that helps a lot.

but the main reason why hagrid takes this whole deal so personally is because he had been oppressed and falsely accused bc of tom riddle who was a student, just as collin is right now, to the point that it got him expelled from school and he was forbidden to do magic. mary is vocal that she doesn't want to teach at hogwarts anymore, she didn't even want to come back for her last year at hogwarts but hagrid tells her his whole story. how he didn't get to finish his education (it's the first time he shares it with anyone). so hagrid connects with her even more now since they have both gone through something traumatic that they didn't deserve, and it ruined their view and use of magic.

the rest of the gang tries to convince her to finish her studies as well and she decides she will in the end (a big part of the reason she agrees to go is that collin will be gone next year, but it still doesn't make her feel safe).

another thing mary is vocal about is the use of magic. she doesn't want it anymore. she wants to come back to the muggle ways, and wants to forget about the wizarding world. that's another thing that absolutely breaks hagrid's heart due to the fact he remembers how much she loved everything about it and how excited she was when she first came to hogwarts.

the war is about to be in its prime when mary is graduating. she tells her friends and hagrid that after she does, she's going to pack up her family and move them to someplace safe and go with them. once they are safe and somewhere else than england she will break her wand and never use magic again.

it breaks everyone's hearts but they respect her choice and plan to go on a trip together before mary moves away. to say a proper goodbye and celebrate the end of school.

when she graduates and goes home to see her family there's a little card with her name on it at the door to the house. it says, "your graduation gift :)" and when she walks inside, she finds her parents and brother dead. they had been dead for a few days. i don't think it's hard to guess which crazy death eater who wanted revenge for mary slicing his stomach could have done this.

what happened to the macdonalds gets in the newspapers. lily, marlene, and the boys try to reach out to mary but she doesn't want to see anyone. nobody has heard from her since then

it's only much much later, in the '90s when hagrid hears of rumors that she might be pregnant and people are afraid that if the child is born with magical powers and isn't allowed to use them, they will become an obscurus. 'till this day they still don't know what exactly collin has done to mary.