At Any Moment II

Minerva II

By OzRatbag2

About nine o’clock in the evening...

Hermione and I met up for our usual Friday lunch today. It was wonderful just to escape the madness of the school for a scant few hours, even given our eventual conversation. I was glad to get away from the noise of the seventh years all chattering at once as they try to cram in a few more memories to remember each other by when they lose contact. It’s invariable, really. They all do it to a degree, though none of them would admit to that possibility at this moment. It’s such a change from this time last year when Albus told me that the only activity was reserved for the harried expressions of the Aurors and others cataloguing the deceased, and the parents of those injured or missing trying to find out any tidbit of information. It’s a flippant thing to say, but I’m rather glad I was out of it all...literally and therefore not conscious to the grief and stress around me.

I would have had to remember far more about that day than I would have cared to force upon myself.

Albus and I have only just started to piece things together and patch our relationship up in a tentative way. It’s almost as though we’ve had to begin to know each other all over again. We’ve yet to fully become intimate with each other again. We dance around the edges of it...often, but, well, it’s hard to just up and try and carry on after everything that’s happened in the last year. It was made all the harder by Albus’ insistence that I had to ‘deal’ with the battle and stop running from my past. That was easy enough for him to say, but it was much harder to actually try to rationalise the whole thing myself. I have worked it all out to a degree; worked it all out, nutted out my fault in the whole thing and rather than my usual avoidance tactics, I have begun to tell my secrets to someone other than Albus or Severus.

Hermione knows it all absolutely now and she said herself that she couldn’t understand why I kept apologising for both Lucius and Draco until very recently. She asked me about my reaction to Draco’s death during the fighting again at lunch and I suppose it all just tumbled out after that. I had to remind her that she already knew a lot of my past, but it seems that she’d forgotten some of the salient points. We both shed more than a few tears this afternoon, once we’d returned to her home, and I’m bone weary because of it. Strangely enough though, I also feel relieved to finally tell my story and I am more than grateful for Hermione’s maturity that she didn’t seem quite as appalled as I’d imagined she would be once the whole truth was out. I know I had told her not long after she awoke last year that I had been married previously to a Malfoy, but the shock she tried to hide at my confession that I’d left my child with his father’s family was palpable. If I’m honest with myself, I just left the rest to simmer for a better time...or no time if it had come to that.

I’ve held onto that secret for so long that it was almost as though it was an imaginary tale. It wasn’t my imagination, though, but there is a part of me I have kept hidden for almost half my adult life. I suppose in a way that’s partly why it was so hard to confide in Albus as he tried to tease the memories of the battle from me. He would have forced me to deal with it before I was ready to confront my past mistakes and our relationship would have been destroyed with it all. I never wanted that to happen, but with my solitude and lack of trust these last few months, I seem to have almost accomplished the feat I so assiduously tried to avoid. It’s testament to his general character and the fact that he loves me as much as I love him that we’ve managed, at least in spurts, to start to clear the air.

There is much more to do to bring us full circle to the trust we had in each other prior to my reticence to share my knowing absolutely that both Draco and Lucius had died on the Hogwarts lawn in that horrible battle. Albus’ Pensieve memories gave me the bare bones of my reaction that day, but it wasn’t until a scant few months ago when I was reviewing our Pensieve that the rest of the jumble righted itself and all of it came tumbling out as my memory cleared. I remembered all of it then as though it was happening all over again. What Albus doesn’t know, and what I tried to tell him a few times after I had realised my memories had returned, was that Draco actually spoke to me as I cradled him in my arms. It was only one word, guttural and hard to understand, but it was then that I understood that he knew absolutely who I was. He called me ‘gran’ and I could see his right hand reaching out to me. I’d like to think he wanted some connection, just a touch that wasn’t laced with pain, but I’m not sure exactly why he tried to reach out. He died before his hand ever made contact with my face and I was too grief stricken and shocked to do anything more than hug him to me tightly in what little window of time I had before I realised my danger in the distraction and went back to Severus and the group of students surrounding Harry Potter.

Hermione and I talked it all out this afternoon. She’d finally finished with the solicitors a few days ago and all the death taxes and such like had already been released following the sale of her parents’ business. We had a good old fashioned cry, the pair of us, sitting on her big lounge with a rapidly dwindling supply of tissues. Hermione had let me say my piece, as I watched to see for any signs of revulsion that I assumed would come as Draco had been most strident in his hatred of any Muggleborns, but more particularly focused on Hermione.

When she queried me some more about that day, I told her that Albus, from his position near the front steps, had told me that Draco had been seen advancing on her and that he was cursed a scant few feet from reaching her. Hermione had no idea, of that I was absolutely certain, and the realisation that she was seconds from whatever mischief Draco had planned for her started the tears for both of us in earnest. I apologised again then for my part in all of it, but Hermione wouldn’t hear <i>‘such bloody stupid nonsense’</i> as she called it. Then she asked me the oddest thing. She asked me when I was going to forgive myself for my mistake, a mistake I needed to get rid of or I’d never be able to move on. I sat on the lounge stunned at her insight and she was awfully quiet for a while, as though she had thought she’d overstepped the bounds of our friendship. She hadn’t; and rather than tell her as such I drew her to me and hugged her tightly. Then we both started crying again, but they were in many ways cleansing tears rather than painful ones.

I would have loved to stay with her for a lazy dinner, but I knew I had to be back in time for the Leaving Feast. Mind you, had I realised the drama of the whole thing I might just have dragged Hermione back with me – for the entertainment potential if nothing else.

Oh, that sounds like Albus now, so I’ll finish this when I can, but it was certainly a Leaving Feast unlike any other I’ve ever seen, and that includes the delayed feast abandoned last year.

About eleven o’clock in the evening...

I’ve just had the most horrid time trying to stop Albus from going after Severus. I finally succeeded by pointing out, none too subtly, that if he, Albus, went after Severus, it would make it all the harder if things didn’t go according to the Slytherin plan and the poor man’s pride stopped him from coming home. I knew I’d reasoned it well enough when Albus merely sighed and then wandered back to our rooms with nary a word to show he’d understood just what lack of faith such an endeavour would have showed.

So now he’s off brooding heaven knows where, but at least I trust him enough not to have hared off to London once he’d assured me that he wouldn’t. He knows that if I found out about it, there would be one of those fights he tries his upmost to avoid.

That’s the thing about Albus, Arcanus. Once you know exactly which strings to pull, he just follows along. Oh, he doesn’t like it in the least, but if he doesn’t want to completely alienate Severus, he’ll leave well enough alone...for now. It does of course beg the question as to exactly what Severus was thinking about to just up and leave like that. I’ve no doubt he had some plan or other in his mind for some considerable time, but I am awfully curious to know what he’s doing right now. If I were being particularly sneaky, I’d ask one of the house elves to keep an eye on him. The only thing stopping me is that if Severus ever found out, he’d be livid at the presumed lack of trust and the thought that we didn’t think he’d cope in the outside Muggle world.

The Leaving Feast was a minefield of emotions, all swirling around waiting for just the right spot to alight on, but then again perhaps it was more the drama of the announcement that caught everyone, myself included, by surprise. The look from Severus to Albus when all the preliminary announcements had been made for the end of the school year at the beginning of the feast was quite something. Expectation laced with a healthy amount of irritation, and it’s to Albus’ credit that he didn’t just allow Severus the floor to make the announcement himself. When Albus did finally announce the resignation of the Potions Master in that lull between mains and dessert, you could have heard a pin drop in the place – such was the shock factor.

I looked across at Severus just after the announcement, and a quick visual skim of the tables. Some students seemed so surprised that I wasn’t altogether sure that some spell wasn’t holding most of them frozen in their places. Random hands caught suspended in mid air as they reached for the serving tongs or some tasty cake in front of them, nary a whisper or any real sign that something quite ordinary had actually happened. But, of course, it wasn’t an everyday occurrence to see a teacher who had spent the greater part of his adult life as a teacher just up and leave. The whispers and looks didn’t actually start for what seemed an eternity, but could not have been more than a few minutes after the announcement.

Then the whispers started, followed by a more normal level of noise as the shock gradually wore off the assembled students. If it hadn’t been such a surprise, I might just have been all the more amused by the comedy of it. I do hope though that he keeps safe and once he’s wearied of the Muggle world, he finds himself back with us. But then, if he does find some attraction in his new life, Hogwarts will have lost a dedicated teacher and one who has never had a fatality in his classroom, which is more than can be said for some of his predecessors.

We all gathered in the fifth floor staffroom after the students had been let loose to create mayhem on their last night of school to have our own farewell for Severus, but the sneaky sod had already up and left the castle. When I next see him, I intend to have more than a few words about his lack of manners in that regard alone!