III: Albus Reflects

III: Insults and Indignities

He walked slowly down the corridor. For Albus, the vast hallways of Hogwarts fairly rang with emptiness during the first weeks after the students left for the summer. By the last week of August, those same hallways would seem enveloped by a warm, inviting hush. Today, however, the emptiness felt particularly pronounced as Albus returned to his office from the hospital wing.

He reflected on the events of the morning, puzzling over them a bit, chiefly trying to gain perspective for himself. The day had simply gone from bad to worse, and the one thing he believed would be its saving grace – a meeting with Minerva – had turned out to be the most nightmarish part of this day. The day was not nearly over yet, either.

He had been utterly gobsmacked to overhear Minerva as she railed on at Poppy, chafing at his treatment of her. He listened from outside Poppy's office for a moment as Minerva described their encounter in his office. She had clearly viewed that brief meeting in a very different light than he had. Believing that he could assuage her feelings and calm her down a bit – perhaps even offer her a peppermint pillow, his most recent favourite sweet – he had stepped into the open doorway of the office. He had been dumbfounded to hear Minerva's reaction to his calling her a "good girl," however, and froze where he stood, suddenly unsure of his half-formed plan to cajole her out of her mood.

Albus reached the gargoyle, which swung the door open without a word from him. Sighing, he mounted the moving spiral staircase; he saw clearly now that he should have made good his escape as soon as he had realised Minerva was unhappy with him, but he hadn't understood precisely how distressed she was. In retrospect, perhaps it wasn't particularly appropriate to address a witch of thirty-two as a "girl," but Minerva seemed inordinately disturbed by it. Griselda Marchbanks always giggled when he called her a girl, and she was older than he!

Standing motionless in the doorway to Poppy's office, Albus had quickly processed that it wasn't merely the appellation that distressed her, but some unknown series of insults and indignities that he had apparently inflicted upon her. That mysterious fact had only just registered with him when he thought his heart had ceased its beating. The words that Minerva uttered at the culmination of her tirade seemed simultaneously to ring in his head and to be utterly impossible. This was Minerva McGonagall, his prize student, his protege, and, he had believed, his friend. What had she just said?

Albus crossed his office, looking reflexively at Fawkes's normal perch to see if he'd returned yet. If ever Albus had needed the phoenix's song in recent years, he certainly felt he could benefit from it today. Hearing Minerva's harsh words echo in his head again, Albus wished he could wash away the feelings they had evoked in him. Even now, in the sanctuary of his office, he could scarcely believe what he had heard or how it had affected him.

Whilst standing stock-still in that doorway, still trying to process Minerva's inexplicable words, Albus realised that Poppy had been staring at him, wide-eyed, gesticulating at Minerva in a wholly ineffective attempt to get her to stop speaking. Discreet escape was no longer possible. He could not leave and pretend he had never heard what he so obviously had. Although that spared him the burden of creating such a pretense and carrying it about with him, he was now faced with an immediate problem: what to say at that moment. Albus was always quick on his feet, and he said the first thing that came into his head.

As he sat down behind his desk, he shook that very head. "Interesting idea, Professor McGonagall. Certainly an interesting idea." One should never say the first thing that pops into one's head in such emotionally-charged situations. Nonetheless, it hadn't seemed to make things any worse. His ensuing speech, though . . . he was not sure whether that had been such a good idea. It was a variant of what he would have said to her a moment or two earlier in an attempt to reassure her that not only did a meeting with her not come in second to his beard conditioning and that the Floo-call to the Ministry really would have been important enough to take precedence over a meeting about the NEWT-level curriculum, but also to reassure her that she herself was more important than his personal grooming, the curriculum, or even an international treaty. Not that Albus would have put it precisely that way, of course. He couldn't very well tell her that she was more important than either conditioning his beard or ratifying an international treaty; those comparisons sounded simply ridiculous. For the first time that morning, a genuine, if fleeting, grin crossed his face.

He sighed and removed his glasses, rubbing his eyes as he considered what he'd actually said to her. He could use his Pensieve to review the event and go over his precise words, but he felt that the actual experience had been bad enough the first time without having to relive it so soon.

No doubt he had come across as the pompous, upright Headmaster rebuking an underling. He didn't know himself what his intent had been at the time – there really hadn't been an opportunity to form one. He had simply spoken out of a desire to clarify his position to her and, if he were truthful with himself, out of a still-acute sense of anguish.

Albus could not remember the last time he had felt such a personal emotional affront – that squeezing in his gut, the sudden constriction of his throat, and the intense, heavy ache in his chest. At almost 117 years old, he had had plenty of opportunity to learn not to let the words and attitudes of others bother him inordinately. When he was a boy, Albus had been very sensitive to the opinions and insults of others; he remembered his father telling him, somewhat roughly, that not everything in the world was about him and not to take it all so personally, or he'd never be able to make it through life. Albus had not become insensitive, by any means, but he'd learned that his father had been right all those years ago. Allowing one's happiness to be ruled by the opinions of others was a certain mistake. Most of the time, it wasn't even you that people were really talking about, but some image of you they'd created for themselves. And even when it was about you, it was also about them and their own feelings about themselves.

He sighed again as he rubbed his temples. Even in this case with Minerva, he supposed that was true. It was about her, her feelings at the moment, and her feelings about herself, but it was also about him and her view of him. He still felt a keen sense of anguish when her words came back to him, unbidden. This simply was not a situation in which he could chuckle and go on about his day with some view to smoothing things over later. Minerva was not a mere acquaintance, nor even a simple colleague. He had not only known her since he had come to Hogwarts to teach during her second year as a student, but he believed they had developed something of a friendship during the years since she'd left school.

At the time he'd joined the Hogwarts staff, Dumbledore had not anticipated being there for more than five or six years, seven at the very most. He would teach Transfiguration, since Slughorn had begun teaching Potions that Spring term and since the current Transfiguration teacher had wanted to retire soon, in any event. His primary purpose, however, was to assist Headmaster Dippet with school security. Albus hadn't understood at first why he would have to live at the school in order to take charge of the wards, but once he'd been introduced to the Founders' grimoires and then begun to delicately probe the layers of wards attached to the castle and its grounds, he had known it was essential.

It would have been absurd, of course, for him simply to move into the castle, set up housekeeping, and go about his business as usual. Not only would his residence look peculiar on its face, but it soon would have become apparent he was there for some unusual reason that couldn't be explained away by saying he was conducting research; that excuse would only work for a few months. After all, what kind of bachelor-wizard wants to live in a drafty old castle filled with school children and adolescent witches and wizards if he doesn't have to, even – or perhaps especially – one of his age? He must be either up-to-no-good or up-to-something-mysterious – or both! Whatever anyone suspected his motives were, he would come under a scrutiny that Hogwarts could ill afford if he didn't appear to have a legitimate reason for being there. In addition, certain aspects of the wards would be inaccessible to him if he were not a member of the Hogwarts staff, no matter his skill or talent.

Normally, the school wards were under the direct control of the Headmaster or Headmistress, with magical reinforcement from the Heads of the four Houses. The wards were wholly renewed each year on August second in an elaborate process involving all five witches and wizards; they were periodically strengthened or refined as needed throughout the year – either by the Headmaster alone or by the Headmaster with one or more of the House Heads. In addition, they were keyed to the Headmaster and the House Heads' magical signatures, alerting them if any wards were triggered or breached.

Not only was Armando becoming less able to handle the magical stress of the Headmaster's warding duties, but the wards themselves had become increasingly misaligned over the last several decades. Some of the oldest, foundational wards had become curiously mutated over the years, particularly the most complex ones designed by either Rowena Ravenclaw or Salazar Slytherin, whilst others of them had become almost dormant. A few of the more recent wards from the 1600s were peculiarities that no longer served any useful purpose and only diverted magical energy away from the more essential wards because of the inept way in which they were applied. In 1874, to add insult to injury, the Headmaster of the time, believing himself an expert in wards, curses, and the like, had changed the operation for renewing the wards annually, both shortening the procedure and altering the order in which each ward was addressed. Apparently he hadn't realised that the superficially reiterative steps that appeared to be unnecessarily repetitive were actually vital for integrating the wards with one another, particularly for binding the later wards to the foundational wards. Until Armando had begun to look into the situation, he had not even been aware that the methods taught him decades earlier when he became Headmaster, and which he'd followed meticulously every August second, were anything other than those laid down by the Founders.

In addition to the procedure for renewing the wards annually, the Four Founders had created methods for adding new wards to the school, for incorporating them into the renewal procedure, and even for disabling or modulating the foundational wards as needed. These methods had been meticulously followed until the middle of the seventeenth century, when the peculiar additions were simply layered on top of all the previous wards. That deviation would have created only a few problems that would have been easily reversible even two or three hundred years later had the Founders' procedure for renewing and modifying the protective spells been adhered to. Unfortunately, the 1874 changes were instituted with undetected but ultimately disastrous results. This truncated renewal operation compounded the damage exponentially each year it was performed.

Dippet was no fool, and he was well aware of his own limitations, both those that were innate and those brought on by age. He couldn't even begin to figure out how to bring the wards back into proper alignment. After spending two solid weeks poring over all of the records in the Hogwarts' Headmaster's private archive, Dippet had no doubt at all that simply reverting to the proper renewal method would actually make things worse, locking the mutations, weaknesses, and "mouseholes," as he came to call them, even more firmly into the ward lattice. He also had no doubt that he was inadequate to the task of making any changes that wouldn't merely compound the injuries to the ward structure.

It was Dippet, therefore, who proposed bringing in Dumbledore for the task. Dumbledore was easily the most accomplished wizard in Britain or Europe, with his knowledge and ability extending well beyond the Alchemical discoveries and inventions for which he was so well known. He would be able to read even the Founders' documents with ease, despite the archaic languages in which they were written, and his knowledge of protective spells and curse-breaking would assist him in unravelling the wards and reweaving them properly. In Armando's opinion, Dumbledore's Arithmantic expertise was equally impressive; it was that ability, after all, that had enabled him to make so many breakthrough discoveries in Alchemy at such a relatively young age. And it went without saying that Dumbledore was the foremost master of Transfiguration produced by Britain in at least two hundred years.

And so it came to be that Albus Dumbledore became professor of Transfiguration, Head of Gryffindor House, and Deputy Headmaster of Hogwarts all in one fell swoop. Under other circumstances, or had it been some other wizard, there might have been some grumbling about seniority, but the Hogwarts staff was aware of the dangers imminently facing the wizarding world, and even those who were not privy to the precise problems with the Hogwarts' wards were happy to have such a well-respected wizard arrive to help with school security. He was affable enough, so his installation as Head of Gryffindor House was seen as quite logical, particularly as the previous Transfiguration teacher had coincidentally also held that position. And the title "Deputy Headmaster" might sound glamourous to some, but those within Hogwarts knew that it just meant doing all of Armando's scut work. The position had been rotated amongst the Heads of House over the last two decades, no one lasting more than a few years before begging or bribing someone else to take up the job. Although the Deputy would be the first person considered for the position of Headmaster or Headmistress when Dippet finally retired or kicked the cauldron, there was certainly no guarantee that the Board of Governors would choose him or her.

Since the staff wasn't complaining about Dumbledore's whirlwind arrival, the wizarding world simply raised a collective eyebrow, murmured that Dumbledore was wasting his talents at Hogwarts, concluded that he had always been more than a little quirky, and then returned to its customary preoccupations. So it was with quiet relief and genuine warmth that the Hogwarts staff welcomed Dumbledore to the school in June 1937. And so it also happened that Albus Dumbledore began his acquaintance with Minerva McGonagall, a serious second-year Gryffindor, in September 1937.

He had invested in her emotionally, Albus realised as he sat idly behind his desk. Perhaps because he'd never had children of his own, he saw in her a kind of spiritual heir, he mused. Until that morning, he had assumed that she viewed him as a father-figure, if not a grandfather-figure. Albus had always been vaguely unsettled by that notion, although he was reluctant to explore why that might be. Now, though, that thought not only unsettled him, and more than usual, but grieved him, as well. Perhaps he had misjudged her view of him entirely, and she had never held him in esteem in that way. A sense of loss flooded him as Minerva's harsh words reverberated in his head. Albus shut his eyes tightly, as though that might prevent their echoing taunt. Recognising the futility of that, he relaxed, allowed his eyes to open partially, and began the exercises he had learned when he first practised Occlumency. A few moments later, he opened his eyes fully, knowing that, although Occlumency meditations might take the edge off his feelings, they wouldn't truly help him in the long run.

He called a house-elf for some tea. As he sipped the warm, sweet, and milky beverage, he considered Minerva and what he knew of her. He found it difficult to believe that he had seen a regard, or even an affection, in her that was not genuinely there. Albus had known her for almost twenty years. She would not dissemble in order to create such an impression – he was sure of it. He doubted that an act of that sort would even occur to Minerva and doubted further that she could carry out such a pretense, particularly not over such a long stretch of time. Besides, what would have been the point of it?

Finishing his first cup of tea and pouring a second, Albus felt a bit calmer and decided that Occlumency and tea combined to make a wonderful restorative for battered emotions. "Battered emotions," indeed! He certainly sounded overly dramatic to his own mental ears. He had overheard only one bit of conversation, he told himself; no need to carry on as though he had just lost his best friend!

Well, if he were correct about Minerva's character, that meant that she had some positive regard for him. He actually believed they had become friends of a sort over the last ten years of intermittent contact and correspondence. It was time to act like a friend, then, and stop behaving like a petulant child! He had been thinking so much of those few, stunning words that he had forgotten the fact that she had been upset with him about the postponed meeting and apparently other – what did she call them? – insults and indignities? What kind of friend was he to concentrate only on his own feelings and forget hers?! He thought he remembered seeing tears in her eyes.

One thing all of his friends knew about Albus was that he loved lists. They didn't even have to be lists of rationally related things, such as to-do lists or grocery lists. Nonsense lists were best of all, he thought, because they inspired the imagination. In the heyday of his Alchemical research, whenever he encountered a particularly vexing problem, he made long lists of everything that entered his head, never stopping to think about any one word. Then he would go through the list and pick a few of his favourites, although he would not try to articulate why they were his favourites, and start a new list with those words, seeing what other words occurred to him after he'd written down each of those. Not very scientifically, Albus would sit down with the two resulting lists and draw circles in different colours around some words, and arrows pointing to others, then add a few squiggly question marks. After he was through, he would turn the parchment over and go take a nap or retire for the night, if it was late (which it usually was since he would lose track of time when playing with his lists). When he got up, he would call for tea, or brew some himself, and sit down with four fresh pieces of parchment, a quill, and his favourite indigo ink. Then he would write.

The first parchment was for any dreams he could remember. On the second parchment, Albus would write down what it was he was trying to accomplish in solving the current problem, but without explicitly stating what the problem was. On the third parchment, he would write why the problem was a problem.

He would finish his tea, have something light to eat, and turn over the two parchments with his original lists. Then he would just stare at them for a while. At some point, he would pick up his quill, pull the final fresh piece of parchment toward him and begin to write. Sometimes it would be an Arithmantic equation that placed the elements of the problem in different relation to one another than any equations he had tried earlier; other times, it would be a few paragraphs describing his dilemma in a new way and the beginnings of how a solution might present itself.

Albus remembered a time he was visiting Aberforth when a friend of his brother's dropped by. Albus was sitting at Aberforth's kitchen table, the two lists in front of him. The friend had never met Albus before, and when he saw him sitting at the table staring blankly at two parchments covered in colourful arrows, circles, and nonsense words, the friend nudged Aberforth with his elbow and whispered to him, asking with some sympathy if his brother was suffering from spell-damage, or perhaps was a bit simple-minded.

Yes, Albus found lists very inspiring. This time his lists would be practical ones. He drew a line down the centre of his parchment, dividing the page in two neat halves. At the top of the first half, he wrote, "Knowns," and underlined it. On the second half of the page he wrote, "Possibles," underlining it.

He would worry about the utility and the priority of each entry after the lists were done, he decided. Brushing the feathered tip of his quill against his lips thoughtfully, Albus considered what might be "Knowns." Hmm. He started to write, stopping now and then to think back at what he knew, rather than what was just conjecture:

* she had an appointment with me at nine o'clock to discuss NEWT-level curriculum;

* I suggested the appointment;

* she came up the stairs with GG (who found her caught at the password change);

* she said to me and to Poppy that rescheduling the appointment was fine;

* she described the Minister I was scheduled to Floo-call as "insignificant";

* she was angry that I had called her a "good girl";

* I didn't notice whether she was upset when she left my office;

* she wants to be respected;

* she perceives "one indignity or insult after another";

* she thinks I don't consider her a capable witch;

* I gave her the password yesterday at lunch;

* I scheduled her appointment to coincide with the password change;

* she was very angry with me.

Finishing that list, he started on the other side of the page under "Possibles":

* she has always disliked me or held me in contempt (more an "Unreasonable Fear" than a "Possible");

* she has always respected me;

* she has always liked me;

* I have insulted her (how?) and subjected her to unspecified indignities (what?);

* she was upset when she left my office – and I couldn't tell (GG did ask me whether I shouldn't have scheduled an appointment with MM immediately and then arched her brows at me, which, when we are playing chess, usually means she thinks I'm making a foolish error);

* she wants to quit;

* she will quit;

* she is looking for excuses to quit.

At that point, Albus returned to the first list he had made, and added, "I don't want Minerva to quit." Looking at that last addition to his list, he considered it, grazing the tip of the feather against his lips. He added yet another "Known": "I want Minerva to stay at Hogwarts." After a slight pause, he wrote, "I respect her intellect and her character" and "I enjoy and appreciate her company."

He sighed, raised his head and looked out the window at the blue Highland sky. There was one other thing he could add to that list of "Knowns": "I am too fond of Minerva for my own good." But he didn't and chased that thought away.

Instead, he turned back to his list of "Possibles" and scanned it. Well, it seemed highly unlikely that she had always (or ever!) held him in contempt, so charming his ink a deep reddish-orange, he crossed the first item off his list. He assumed that she had always held some sort of positive feeling for him, so he quickly skipped those next lines, moving on to "I have insulted her." Hmm, well, whether he had insulted her or not – for he certainly never intended any insult – she certainly appeared to feel genuinely insulted. Charming his ink to a bright turquoise, he circled the word "insulted," then did the same to the word "indignities."

He read the next entry. Since it seemed improbable that Minerva would have been so upset with him after leaving his office but not been upset as she left it, he deemed it highly likely that she had been upset; he just hadn't noticed. He underlined "upset when she left my office." After thinking a moment, he extended the underline to include "and I couldn't tell."

Finally, he looked at the last three entries. Charming his ink to a rather violent mustard yellow, he crossed out all three, drawing a double line through "she is looking for excuses to quit." Perhaps he was cowardly, but he simply would not consider those possibilities yet.

Pulling out a fresh parchment, Albus titled the new page, "Insults and Indignities." He believed Minerva would not have said she'd experienced one insult or indignity after another if she hadn't. He could easily put the first one on his list: "I cancelled our appointment at the last minute." He snorted to himself; "last minute," indeed! He had cancelled after she'd already arrived for the appointment! He thought about those few moments earlier that day.

When Gertie had come up to his quarters, she found him in a rather undignified state, he reflected, although it wasn't as bad as if she had caught him on the toilet or in the shower. He was sitting on a high stool in the centre of his bathroom, which was still warm and humid from his earlier shower, with one towel wrapped around his waist and another draped over his shoulders, reading the Daily Prophet agony columns, his hair up in a Muggle hairnet. That alone wouldn't have been so bad, really, since Gertie had taught with him since 1938 and had seen him in all kinds of states. But in front of him floated a small bucket filled with a potion that smelled like a combination of sour milk, rotting cabbage, and dragon manure. And in that noxious-smelling concoction soaked his beard, neatly gathered at his chin with a red ribbon. Gertie Gamp was not possessed of what one might call a mirthful nature, but when she looked through the partially open door of his bathroom and saw him sitting there, half-naked with his beard in that bucket of stinking sludge, she guffawed. Fortunately, Albus was quite aware that he looked ridiculous and didn't take offense. Nonetheless, it was not a position any Headmaster would like his Deputy Headmistress to find him in.

Albus removed his glasses again and rubbed his eyes. The only reason he had been sitting there, beard still soaking in that putrid potion, was that he had received an urgent early morning Owl from Goban Govannon, the son of an old school friend, informing him that the young man's father – well, Albus supposed that at eighty-two, Goban no longer qualified as a "young" man – had taken a bad fall off his broom the evening before and had lain out half the night before he was found by some Muggles and brought to a Muggle hospital. Fortunately, living in Leeds, he carried Ministry-approved, Muggle-friendly identification in his pocket, and a couple of policemen had appeared at his mother's doorstep a few hours before, notifying her that Garbhan Govannon was in hospital suffering from multiple broken bones and other injuries. Naturally, she had contacted Goban, who had met her at the hospital in Doncaster.

All attempts to persuade the hospital to release him to their care had failed. The doctors believed that Garbhan was suffering from dementia or some other neurological or psychiatric condition since he had not been entirely lucid when he was brought in: he had told them he had fallen from a comet and could they please howl St. Mungo's. Not only that, but he had been wearing a most peculiar "gown" when he was found.

The doctors had kept the old man partially sedated and would only allow the family brief visits. He was in an open ward, so they couldn't just Apparate him out – besides, they didn't know what effect the Muggle medicines might have on someone in a Side-Along-Apparition. Because Goban felt he should stay with his mother and father at hospital, he had sent an urgent Owl to Albus asking that he contact St. Mungo's for them.

So by six o'clock that morning, Albus had Flooed St. Mungo's, contacted the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes at the Ministry, and Apparated to Yorkshire, where, outside Doncaster Royal Infirmary, he met a St. Mungo's mediwitch and a representative from the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee. Between the three of them, they extricated Garbhan from his predicament and transported him to St. Mungo's, where Albus had given him a stern lecture about the importance of wearing trousers in a Muggle district, even if one was out flying, and scolding him for riding an old Comet whose charms hadn't been properly maintained.

It was eight o'clock before he got back to Hogwarts, and he hadn't even had his morning cup of tea. Albus couldn't imagine facing Aberforth's beard tonic without fortification, so he had a house-elf bring him tea and toast. He had remembered his appointment with Minerva, but thought he would have just enough time to soak his beard and dress properly (he had to agree with Garbhan that a robe is more comfortable than Muggle trousers). If Minerva got there before he was ready, Albus had been sure she wouldn't mind waiting. He knew for a fact that his bookshelves contained several volumes that could hold her interest for as long as it took him to clean up and get dressed.

Now Albus realised he should have sent her a message letting her know he would be late and rescheduled to half-past nine. Not that it would have changed the fact that Gertie needed to meet with him, nor the fact that his beard-bucket time had been cut short. But at least if she had arrived at nine-thirty, he would have been in his office; and because the embarrassing interruption would not have been so fresh in his mind, perhaps he would have asked her if she could return later that morning, instead of telling her he had to condition his beard. That must have sounded like a terrible excuse!

Nonetheless, even changing these facts, it didn't resolve the fundamental issue: Minerva had told Poppy that there had been one indignity or insult after another. She had clearly been unhappy even before he had upset her that morning. Albus returned to his list.

What could she have viewed as an insult or indignity, Albus pondered, brushing his bottom lip lightly with his quill feather. Deciding that conjecture had a place on this list, he added:

* I didn't reschedule our appointment immediately and gave her excuses that she found inadequate;

* I called her a good girl, and she believes that shows I don't respect her as a witch;

* I postponed our meeting in order to meet with GG, and MM inferred that meeting with GG was more important to me than our meeting.

Albus thought about the last few weeks and tried to find any other instances in which he had done anything that Minerva could have interpreted as a sign he didn't respect her. Suddenly, a mental Lumos seemed to go off, and he quickly wrote:

* MM triggered the charm on the stairs, causing her to fall on the office floor;

* I laughed when she fell;

* GG used my stairs this morning to fetch me, and MM saw that the stairs are charmed to recognize her;

* I was late to a meeting with MM when the stairs denied her admittance and was late again today.

Albus stopped to think back. When was the last time he had been on time to a meeting with Minerva? There was the post-term staff meeting held the day after the students had left. But that didn't really count since it was with the entire staff.

"Let me see, let me see," Albus murmured to himself. When she had arrived at the school in December, he had met her at the gates; well, no, he had intended to meet her at the gates and had Owled her that intention. Thinking back, he remembered he saw her enter the main doors of the castle just as he was hurrying down the stairs to meet her. He had been relieved that she was late, since that meant he could still greet her as she came in and escort her to her rooms. But had she been late? Minerva was always punctual. He had Owled her that he would meet her at the gates at four o'clock, and it was almost forty-five minutes later that he had run down the stairs and taken her bags from Hagrid.

Oh, no, he thought. For the most accomplished, brilliant wizard of the last two centuries, he was certainly an idiot at times. Of course she had been on time. She had probably even been a few minutes early. How long had she waited at the gates before Hagrid or Ogg had let her in? Certainly at least a half an hour. Albus groaned. He then proceeded to think of all of the occasions on which he was supposed to meet her and was aghast to realise that he had been on time to only two of them. The first was on her second day at the castle, when he showed her her new classroom and explained that he had thought she'd prefer having her own classroom and office rather than having to share the old one with him for the rest of the year. But that meeting hardly counted since he hadn't told her of the time in advance and had just shown up at her door in the morning. He had been punctual according to his own schedule in that instance, but not according to hers.

The second occasion, he realised with some unease, was when he met with her for her review at the end of term last week. Albus began to see how, in the six months that she had been at Hogwarts, she must have come to believe that he did not take her seriously or value her time. That wasn't it at all, Dumbledore thought miserably. Almost every time that he had been late or missed an appointment, there had been a very good reason, some emergency or other urgent interruption that delayed him. He had always felt so comfortable with Minerva, it had never occurred to him that she might feel slighted or that anything more than a brief explanation and a quick apology would be necessary.

Albus had even missed the house-warming tea party that Poppy had arranged for her on a Saturday afternoon, two days before New Year's Eve. Even Slughorn, who had been in Finland gathering some kind of exotic reindeer velvet, and Grubbly-Plank, who had gone to Romania for a special three-week intensive course on dragons and their mating habits, had returned for the occasion. Albus had walked in as the last of the guests were on their way out, and Minerva and Poppy were cleaning up. He had brought her a present, at least: a large tartan afghan of cashmere and mohair in soft heathery colours. He had placed a special warming charm of his own invention on it that would detect the ambient temperature of the room and at the words, "warm me," would gently warm whomever was wrapped in it to the appropriate degree, and then automatically deactivate when the afghan was removed or folded. Even without the charm, it was a cozy blanket. She had seemed to like it, and had invited him to stop for a cup of tea with her and Poppy. Poppy hadn't been able to stay, but the two of them had had a lovely time, he thought, talking and drinking tea, getting hungry and calling the house-elves for sandwiches, then opening the bottle of cognac that Horace had given her and having a taste of that. Suddenly, it was almost midnight and he hadn't known where the time had gone. Surely that was better than having been on time for the party!

It had been a lovely evening, and they had spent some enjoyable time together since, although rarely more than a quarter of an hour, unless it was connected to some school business. Dippet had socialised with the staff, and everyone who had ever worked at Hogwarts knew him to be approachable, should they ever have a problem with a student or with their duties. Albus was sure that, now that he was Headmaster, his faculty felt he was approachable, as well, even though he had been too busy to socialise much. Except for Minerva. Why didn't she tell him how she felt before this?

Going back to his list, he wrote "MM insulted because I am not on time for meetings," then wrote, "Justified" in bright purple next to it. Always prompt herself, she no doubt found it particularly irksome to have to wait for those who weren't. And given that she could observe that he was capable of punctuality, she was understandably upset with him. Albus put little tick marks next to all entries on his list that pertained to punctuality, then reread those that remained.

No doubt being tipped onto the floor by his staircase could count as an indignity. He furrowed his brow. He knew she had a sense of humour, but she hadn't found it at all amusing. She hadn't been hurt, after all. Looking at the other entries on the list, he decided that the situation had made her feel like an errant schoolchild, reminding her of the stair in Gryffindor Tower.

Looking at the clock, Albus realised that it was already after noon, and he had told Minerva he would see her at lunch. Although during summer holidays, unless they made other arrangements for themselves, any staff remaining at the school took breakfast in their own rooms, lunch and dinner remained a communal affair, even when the castle was nearly empty. Otherwise, one could rattle around in the castle for weeks and never encounter a soul, even one of the ghosts. Albus did not think that was healthy. Instituting communal meals throughout the summer was one of the first changes he implemented after becoming Deputy back in '37.

Albus stepped onto his turning spiral stair, still considering the situation with Minerva. Whereas when he returned to Hogwarts to teach, it had been some eighty years since his NEWTs, she'd only been away a little more than a dozen years. Now she was working beside teachers who had taught her as a child. In addition, she had arrived in the middle of the school year, with only a few weeks to settle in before she was to start teaching. Although the two had met and discussed the curriculum several times since last January, when she had agreed to join Hogwarts faculty, it was still difficult to come in after classes were established and the students were settled into routines.

When Albus had come to the school in 1937, on the other hand, he had arrived at the end of June as the students were finishing up their OWLs and NEWTs. He'd had more than two months to settle in before beginning to teach. Granted, he was busy those two months with research on the ward structure in July, then the ward renewal in August, followed by more research, tests, and experiments, but he had felt quite settled and at home by the time term began in September. He almost felt put out that his teaching duties interfered with his work on the wards, but that quickly passed as he discovered he enjoyed teaching and being Head of Gryffindor House.

He had always made time for the little Gryffindors to come see him and scheduled a special Gryffindor Tea the second Saturday afternoon of every month that first year so they could get to know their new Head of House. When Quidditch practice fell at the same time as the Tea, he just moved the "Tea" to the Quidditch stands, somewhat perturbing the Quidditch Captain at first, but everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Albus chuckled remembering the serious little second-year whose book he had to take away during the first Tea in September. Minerva protested that she had Charms homework, but when he pointed out that the Charms textbook she was reading was for the third-year class, and he doubted that Professor Dustern expected her to hand in her homework a year early, she at first looked slightly sullen, but then suddenly flashed him a brilliant smile and said, "A year and a half, actually!"

At the Gryffindor Tea the next month, she had tried disguising her book as a romance novel, but he took it away, saying that teatime was for making conversation, not for reading the conversations of others. When Albus examined the book a little later as the students were eating cream cakes and chatting animatedly about the upcoming Halloween party, he discerned that it was the fourth-year Transfiguration text in disguise, and that Minerva had not simply charmed the cover to appear different, but had Transfigured it to actually be different. She must have decided that simply Transfiguring the cover was insufficient, because she had also charmed the text so that it actually read like the pages of a romance novel. Turning the pages, Albus had chuckled to see that the same four pages of the novel were repeated beginning to end. Clever of her, though, not to use just two pages. If someone had been standing behind her as she turned the page, they would not be presented with the same text they had just seen a moment before.

Although he had used a spell to reveal what lay hidden behind her charm, he didn't remove Minerva's own spells. Instead, Albus had waited until she approached him at the end of the Tea to request her book back. He escorted her to his office, sat her down, and asked her who had placed the spells on the book, because it was a serious breach of school rules to deface a textbook. He remembered the look of slight panic that had briefly crossed her face, which was quickly replaced by one of determination.

"It is not defaced. I put the spells on it myself, and the book will be as good as new when they are lifted."

Albus had expressed doubt and told her not to take the blame for someone else. When she continued to insist that she had charmed the book and that the book would be fine, he shook his head.

Feigning disbelief, Albus had handed her the book, saying, "Well, Miss McGonagall, I had wanted to give you an opportunity to minimise the trouble you are in, but since you persist, fine. I want to see you lift the charm and the Transfiguration." After she had done that with a few quick flicks and whispered incantations, he said, "Now, Miss McGonagall, because you continue to insist that you placed the original spells, I want to watch you put them on again."

Minerva's eyebrows raised at that and she swallowed, shifting in her seat. For a brief moment, it was Albus who panicked, fearing that it hadn't been she who had charmed the book, after all, and that he had only created trouble for her. But then Minerva stood, walked to his desk, picked up a book, looked at it, put it down, then turned to his bookshelves. Silently, she ran her finger along the spines until she found one that apparently suited her.

Albus said nothing as she pulled her selection from the shelf, a popular text on the ethics of magic. She opened the book, looked at the table of contents, then opened it to the middle and placed it next to her own book. Making a complicated pattern over the opened pages with her wand, she uttered what Albus recognised as a variation on a common copy spell.

Turning again to her Transfiguration text, Minerva opened it to a random page. She furrowed her brow in concentration, and beginning with a charm to conceal the original text, she cast a series of charms, hesitating slightly only once. When she was through, the text now appeared to be that from the ethics book. She then tapped the closed book with her wand and whispered, "Converto integumentum caeruleum," charming the binding blue.

Apparently satisfied, she turned back to the ethics text, picking it up, examining it, running her palms over its surface, scrutinising the spine, even sniffing it. Putting it down, Minerva returned to her own book and closed her eyes for a moment; when she opened them, she pronounced confidently, "Commuto gemellium volumen alter alia," her wand describing a circle in the air just above her target. The book shivered slightly, then its binding melted into what appeared to be a perfect copy of the binding of the book sitting beside it. Albus clapped and laughed happily.

"It took me a while to figure that one out, and it still makes it easier if I charm the cover with the colour first," Minerva had said, smiling slightly.

"But how did you read it?" Albus asked.

Minerva smiled more widely and tapped her wand against the stem of her glasses. "I usually only wear these for reading, anyway, so I put a charm on them that lets me read the concealed text. It's annoying, though, because I still can see the shadows of the other words underneath what I'm trying to read."

They had spent the next four hours discussing her choices of words and wand movements, and Albus let her demonstrate the amusing, fortunately reversible, effect of simply pointing her wand at a book and commanding, "Geminio!" which caused another copy of the book to appear beside the first – as Albus had known would happen. She had told him that the worst experience by far, though, was when, still trying to use "twin" as the imperative portion of the spell, she had incanted, "Gemellio!" and caused a book to pop out twin copies of itself.

"It was terrible!" she said, rolling her eyes. "I didn't know what went wrong; I thought it was about to explode! The cover just kept swelling more and more, and then the spine split open and out popped two miniature copies of the book – but with no pages!"

They had both laughed heartily about that. When he realised they had missed dinner, Albus called a house-elf and ordered two servings of shepherd's pie, two glasses of milk, and a plate full of chocolate biscuits. It was the most fun that Albus had had with another person since coming to Hogwarts to teach. Of course, this didn't become a regular practice, but he did begin to meet with the second-year Gryffindor occasionally to give her extra credit projects and help her work through any difficulties she was having with them.

As Albus approached the Great Hall, he smiled slightly at his memory of the determined little Gryffindor. But when he remembered he would be seeing not Miss McGonagall, the schoolgirl, but Professor McGonagall, Hogwarts' teacher, the smile faded. It had been less than two hours since they had seen each other under such awkward circumstances. How would she react when he walked in – if she was even there. She could have eaten quickly and left already, as it was almost twelve-thirty. Albus took a deep breath, entered the open doors of the Hall, and walked toward the round oak table at which several teachers and staff were still seated.