Chapter Twenty-Six

"Oh, lass," he said. "It's all right to grieve for him."

Minerva and Amelia were having breakfast at the small table in their flat when the owl bearing the morning's Daily Prophet tapped on the window.

"I've got it," said Amelia, rising and going to the window. "Throw me a bit of your toast, eh?" Feeding it to the owl, she said, "There's a good bird. Off with you, now."

She shut the window and unrolled the paper, scanning the front page.

"Merlin's beard!"

Minerva put her toast down. "What?"

When Amelia said nothing else, her eyes racing across the page, Minerva said, "What is it?"

Amelia looked up at her. "They've caught Grindelwald."

"When?" asked Minerva, rising.

"Yesterday. In Dresden."

"Who got him?" Again, there was no response from Amelia, and Minerva moved towards her to grab the paper.

Amelia batted her hand away. "Just wait, I'll let you read it ... just let me ... says he was brought in by a Czech Auror. There was a duel, and... oh, no!"

"What?" asked Minerva, alarmed.

"A bunch of Aurors were killed ... nobody we know. Oh, wait, Shacklebolt, wasn't he Department of Mysteries?" Her eyes went back to the paper. "Oh, Merlin ..."

"What?" Minerva asked yet again.

"Dumbledore's missing," Amelia said, still reading. "Apparently, he duelled Grindelwald and managed to disable him, but the building was on fire, and he made the Czech leave before he got out. When they went back, they... Minerva?" She had looked up from the paper to find that her friend had gone white as parchment. "Are you all right?"

"Fine ... yes ... I ... go on. What else does it say?"

Amelia looked back to the paper. "They sent someone back to look for him, but the whole city had been burnt down. Damn! Do you suppose the duel did that?"

"I ... I ... No. I don't think so."

"No, you're probably right." Reading on, Amelia said, "They didn't find Dumbledore. Most of the bodies had been cleared away, so there was no way to know if he was dead. Damn. That would be an awful thing, though. He was a great man."

"Don't!"

Amelia looked up at her in shock and put down the paper. "What is it, Minerva? You're really scaring me."

"Just ... don't talk about him as if he's dead. We don't know that."

"Oh, Minerva. I'm so sorry. I forgot he was... is your mentor."

"Yes," Minerva said faintly. "I ... let's clear up. We'll be late." She d began scooping up dishes from the table as Amelia watched her warily.

When she had deposited the dirty dishes in the sink, Minerva raised her wand to Scourgify them. Both women jumped when the dishes exploded.

"Bloody hell! Minerva, are you hurt?" Amelia rushed to the tiny kitchen where her friend stood in shock with bits of egg dripping from her cheek.

"No, I'm fine. I don't know what happened. I just ... I just ..."

Amelia took Minerva's wand, grasped her hand, and led her back to the sitting-room sofa. She conjured a handkerchief and dabbed the egg away from Minerva's face and dressing gown.

"You're in shock," she said.

"No, I'm fine."

"You've said that several times, but clearly you're not. Look at you, you're white as Abbott's moustache and shaking like a firstie facing a Boggart."

"It's just a surprise, is all."

"I know. Why don't you sit here, and I'll fetch you some more tea."

"We'll be late."

"Never mind about that," Amelia said. "Besides, I'm guessing today will be like a bank holiday around the office."

"But we should get in. There will be things to ... briefings ..."

"Yes, and we'll get there, but you need some tea first."

While Amelia made tea, Minerva scanned the newspaper. On the front page, there was...unusually...a Muggle photograph of the burnt-out city. The accompanying article said little more about Albus other than that he had gone to Germany with a group of international fighters to find Gellert Grindelwald and that only the one man had apparently survived the ensuing duel. The fire, the article said, was the result of a raid on the city of Dresden. The Muggles had somehow made explosions that had created an enormous conflagration. Not much else was written about it, which Minerva found extraordinary, given the level of destruction that was apparent in the photo.

He couldn't have survived that. No one could.

She slammed the paper down and attempted to control her breathing, using a tactic she had learnt in what little training the fledgling Aurors had received before being sent into the field. By the time Amelia returned with the tea, Minerva was outwardly calm again.

The two young women drank their tea in silence, Amelia watching Minerva, noting how her friend's hands shook as she raised the teacup to her lips. She sent Minerva to use the shower first while she cleared up the tea things.

When the bathroom door shut behind her, Minerva sat on the toilet lid and put her face in her hands.

He isn't dead.

The phrase kept repeating itself in her head, even as the rational portion of her mind told her otherwise. If he wasn't dead, where was he? And how could anyone...even Albus Dumbledore...have survived the kind of fire that the photo in the newspaper suggested had occurred?

He cannot be dead. I'd know.

She told herself firmly to stop it, stood, stepped into the shower, and turned on the cold tap. The sudden burst of frigid water did its job, shocking her body and her mind firmly into the here and now. By the time she got out, shivering and nearly blue, she thought she was ready to face the day.

As Amelia had predicted, there was a distinctly celebratory air around the Ministry. People walked around with smiles on their faces, and nobody seemed to want to stay in his or her office but milled about, exchanging thoughts and theories on what had happened and what would happen next. The Auror corps, including the trainees, were called to a meeting just before the lunch hour.

Marius Edgecombe, the head of the Auror Office, spoke to the assembled group.

"As you all know by now, Gellert Grindelwald has been apprehended. He's being held in a secure location by IMLE forces and will stay that way for a good long time. The situation on the Continent is still highly unstable, thanks to the ongoing Muggle war, but I think it's a good bet that none of you will be called over there in the foreseeable future. His followers seem to have gone to ground, and I have assurances from the Minister that every effort will be made by the various European governments to round them up and contain them. We'll be doing the same here, and it's likely the majority of you will be spending some time on that over the next months.

"We can't predict precisely what will happen, of course, but if I had to guess, I'd say we can expect things to settle down considerably. As you all know, Grindelwald's Blackrobes were most active in Eastern Europe, and we've been relatively fortunate to have had only a limited number of attacks here. Nevertheless, I expect every one of you to exercise constant vigilance. Followers of the Dark Arts never go away and never stay quiet for long. The fall of one Dark wizard only postpones the rise of another. It's our job to ensure he...or she...never finds a foothold in Britain.

"Now, I'd like to take a moment to give thanks and to remember all the brave fighters who lost their lives to help ensure this day would come. There are too many to mention them all by name, but I ask you all to please bow your heads and give them silent thanks, especially those who died in the final confrontation: Renate Fassbaender, Greta Weiss, Konstantyn Wronski, Aubert Delacroix, and our own Aegeus Shacklebolt and Albus Dumbledore."

There was a murmur at this last, and Minerva's belly clenched. She was thankful that the group had bowed their heads for a moment of silence, giving her time to focus once again on diaphragmatic breathing to calm herself.

When the moment was over, someone in the middle of the group asked Edgecombe, "Sir? Is it true? Is Dumbledore dead? The papers only said he'd gone missing."

Minerva saw Amelia glance at her and dropped her eyes to avoid looking at her friend.

Edgecombe answered, "That's correct. Dumbledore is listed as missing. They found no trace of him at the site of the duel, and, as you know, the entire city has been destroyed by Muggle fighting. The lone survivor of the duel...other than Grindelwald...told us Dumbledore had been trapped and that the building was afire. The man barely made it out with Grindelwald in tow, said the heat and the smoke nearly killed him before the Portkey activated. Given that report, I think it is reasonable to assume that Dumbledore was among the casualties. Unfortunately."

There were a few more questions, but Minerva didn't hear them. She had manoeuvred her way quickly and quietly through the group and dashed for the loo. She slammed the cubicle door behind her, turned to the toilet, and vomited.

Amelia found her there several minutes later by peeking under the doors until she came upon the cubicle where Minerva still knelt. She said nothing when Minerva emerged, but handed her a handkerchief and a cup of water she had conjured.

Minerva managed to get through the rest of the day by going numb and staying busy. When she got home, she left a note for Amelia, telling her she was going to make an early night of it. She shut herself in her tiny bedroom and got out the charmed volume of poetry Albus had given her. The words barely registered in her brain, and she focussed on his still-familiar, loopy handwriting. She knew his hands had not held actual quill to this journal, but she ran her own hands over the pages anyway, seeking a glimmer, a hint...anything that would connect her to him. She wished she had some token, some physical reminder of him.

The one letter he had written her when he had gone to care for the wounded Aberforth, along with the school-related notes from him she had been keeping since her fifth year at Hogwarts, were locked in a charmed box in her old room at her family home.

She decided she'd visit Caithness for the weekend. She craved the warmth and comfort of her father's presence and the reassuring familiarity of home. Moreover, she needed to be far from London and from the office, where the talk would be of nothing but Grindelwald's fall and all that had accompanied it.

Shivering with the February cold, she pulled the bedclothes around her but didn't bother lighting the fire. She felt spent and unable to manage even the simplest spell. Before she drifted into a troubled sleep, she wondered if she'd manage to Apparate without Splinching. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if she cared.

~oOo~

Something was dreadfully wrong with Minerva.

Thorfinn McGonagall knew his daughter well, and though she denied it, he could see how distressed she was. It was there in the way she would suddenly start talking when he caught her chewing a fingernail or looking gloomy, it was there in the way her words would suddenly trail off mid-sentence, and, most of all, it was there the way she would change the subject whenever Grindelwald's capture entered the conversation.

She was upset about Dumbledore, of course. The man had been an important influence her life, although Thorfinn guessed he hadn't realised just how important. It didn't occur to him that her feelings might have been deeper than she'd let on until he returned from his afternoon walk...on which Minerva had declined to join him...to hear the faint sounds of singing from the music room. When he approached the room, he could hear Minerva through the partially closed door, singing an old song and accompanying herself with halting chords on the piano:

"He's brave as brave can be,

His life is dear tae me, send him hame.

"He'll ne'er come ower the sea, Willie's slain, Willie's slain,

This warld's nae mair for me, Willie's gane."

Thorfinn had been about to go in, but when he saw Minerva bury her head in her hands, he stepped back from the door, not wanting to intrude on his daughter's obvious grief.

After dinner, Minerva excused herself and went to her room rather than sitting up with her father and grandmother. Morna MacLaughlin gave her son-in-law a weighty look. "That girl isn't eating enough to keep a bird alive."

Thorfinn sighed. "I know. I don't know what's wrong. She won't tell me."

"It's a boy, I'll warrant. A broken heart always put me right off my food. Morrigan too. I think she lost a stone waiting for you to finally make up your mind to marry her."

Minerva had never been mad for the boys, to her father's profound relief. He knew she'd gone to the Hogwarts Yule Ball with one of her classmates in her fourth year and had stepped out with another in her sixth, but neither of these romances...if that's what they had been...had come to anything serious, as far as Thorfinn knew. Einar's friend had seemed smitten with her during the week he had stayed with them, but he was younger than Minerva and not a boy Thorfinn thought would be attractive to his serious daughter.

He wondered now if Minerva had developed feelings for her Transfiguration teacher. She wasn't the type to have schoolgirl infatuations, but Thorfinn thought it would not be entirely unlikely if his daughter had fallen a little in love with the man who had been her mentor for seven years. Dumbledore's intelligence would definitely have appealed to her, and his manner was certainly chivalrous and charming. No, Thorfinn thought, it wouldn't be at all unlikely.

An unrequited infatuation followed by the untimely death of the object of Minerva's affections...that might be an explanation for her melancholy, he reasoned. As painful as he knew it must be for Minerva, Thorfinn would be relieved if that was all that was troubling her. His daughter was a practical, resilient girl, and the shock of Dumbledore's death would wane eventually. It wasn't as if she had lost a husband or a fiancé.

He went upstairs and knocked on her bedroom door, and, after a moment, she bid him enter.

"What are you reading," he asked, quirking his chin at the book she had obviously just put aside.

"Idylls of the King."

"Tennyson, eh? I didn't think you much liked poetry."

"It's grown on me, I suppose."

Thorfinn sat down on the bed next to her. "I'm worried about ye, lass. Your gran and I both are."

"I'm all right, Da."

"I don't think ye are. Ye don't eat, you've barely spent any time with me...I'm not complaining; it's just an observation...and ye seem so unhappy. Will ye tell me what's ailing ye, Minerva? I'd like to help, if I can."

"It's nothing, really, Da. Just a great deal going on at work, and I haven't got as far as I'd like with Professor Falco. That, and the winter doldrums, I suppose."

"Work should be settling down some, now that Grindelwald's followers are all in hiding. We have your old friend Dumbledore to thank for that, don't we?"

Minerva blinked several times, and Thorfinn knew he had hit on the true reason for her troubles.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Oh, lass," he said. "It's all right to grieve for him."

He watched her lose the struggle to keep the tears from falling, and he wanted nothing more than for her to come into his arms and let him hold her as she cried, as he had done when she was a small child, but she just held herself stiff and still as she wept, and he felt powerless to help her.

He put an arm around her shoulder and drew her to him, saying, "There now. Let it all out."

When she finally calmed, she said, "I'm sorry."

Passing her a handkerchief, he said, "Not at all. He was your friend. It's only right ye should cry for him."

"My friend, yes."

"I'll have Glynnie bring ye up a tray." When she started to protest, he said, "I'll not have ye starving yourself, Minerva. That'll do nothing for ye but make ye sick."

"All right. Thank you, Da."

He kissed the top of her head and left.

When the door had closed behind him, Minerva withdrew the sheaf of Albus's notes from under her pillow. Silly, she knew, but she had read through each one several times, running her fingers over the parchment, imagining his fingers moving across it as he wrote her name. She drew his final note to her cheek and held it there for a moment.

It wasn't much, she thought, but it was all she had left of him. She still could not quite convince herself that he was never coming back, that she would never see him again.

When the knock came, she quickly gathered the notes, dropped them back in the small box, and shut the lid before she said, "Come in."

The door opened, and an elderly house-elf came in bearing a tray with warm milk and some fruit and cheese.

"Will this suit, Mistress Minerva?" the elf asked.

"Yes, Glynnie, this will be fine, thank you."

When Glynnie had gone, Minerva put the box in her wardrobe in the specially charmed compartment. She went to the tray and looked at the food. She had no appetite, but she forced herself to drink the milk and eat a bit of the cheese.

So her father knew she loved Albus. She had been a fool to think she could hide it from him...her father, who knew her better than anyone else did. It was clear he believed nothing had come of it, that it was just a schoolgirl crush. She almost wished she could tell him that it had been so much more than that, but of course, that would be foolhardy. Thorfinn was a liberal and understanding man, but Minerva knew his understanding would only go so far. Not that he could do anything to Albus now, but she didn't want her father to think badly of him.

She wished...oh, how she wished...that there was someone she could talk to about Albus. It was almost as if their affair had never happened, as if she had dreamt the whole thing. Over the past months, she had barely allowed herself to think about him. Now that he was gone, she could think of nothing else.