Chapter Thirty

"There's something hard about her, and that suits me fine. I seem to suit her too. She's a helluva girl."

In July of 1947, Minerva and Amelia became the first two female Aurors since the inception of the programme at the middle of the 19th century. The applause from the invited audience...including Elizabeth Barnes, who had dropped out of the programme due to a serious training injury...at the ceremony was loud and boisterous as Minister Greengrass pinned the official badges on the two women.

Thorfinn McGonagall did not attend the ceremony. He and Elisabeth were in Caithness with a private Healer hired to care for Elisabeth as she lay dying of the breast cancer that was consuming her. Einar, Minerva's grandmother, and Edgar Bones, however, were in lively attendance to see Minerva and Amelia become full-fledged Aurors, and Edgar snapped lots of pictures with his new auto-developing camera. The movement in the images was blurry, but Thorfinn and Elisabeth were very glad to have the photos.

Each of the new Aurors received a licence to use Unforgivable curses and a desk, and on their first official day, Senior Auror Greg McKinnon grinned as he dropped a heavy pile of parchments on Minerva's immaculately clean desk.

"Here you go, McGonagall; let's see how long it takes you to get through these."

"What are they?"

"Cold cases. Your job, Junior Auror, is to go through them and find any reference to objects that could potentially have been Transfigured or cursed. Have the list on my desk by the end of next week."

"What about our research?"

"You're on salary now, McGonagall, not stipend. The Ministry expects its money's worth. Your salary pays for grunt work, mine pays for research and field ops."

"But..."

"Take it up with Edgecombe." He lowered his voice a bit and added, "If you still want to work with me in the lab, it's fine; we just need to make sure it's outside official work hours."

The months passed, and Minerva received many such assignments, punctuated with the occasional call to the field to investigate a crime. With the defeat of Grindelwald and the subsequent roundup of his supporters in Britain, the relative calm predicated by Marius Edgecombe had come to pass, and the crimes that were committed didn't generally involve Dark Magic. The few more serious incidents were the province of the Senior Auror corps. Minerva's days of chasing Dark wizards were apparently over for the moment.

Amelia was in much the same boat, but without the added attraction of extra-curricular research to make the drudgery more bearable. She didn't care much for research, in any event. Her outlook brightened considerably when McKinnon recommended she be assigned to assist Marius Edgecombe and Hildebrand Abbott in updating Ministry policy regarding Auror training and operations. It wasn't the field work she had hoped to do when she'd joined the Auror training programme three years before, but she found she liked policy-making. She had a logical, rational mind, much like Minerva's, but she also found she had a knack for understanding the politics underlying law...something that made Minerva grimace in distaste.

~oOo~

Elisabeth Bones-McGonagall died on 2 November 1947. Minerva and Amelia attended the funeral, both white-faced but dry-eyed, and accompanied Minerva's father back to Caithness for the weekend. After seeing her father to bed, Minerva snagged a bottle of good whisky from the liquor pantry and took it to Amelia's room, where the two got rip-roaring drunk.

During the course of their sodden evening, a bleary-eyed Amelia asked, "So, what was it with you and Dumbledore?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean..." she leant in close, peering intently at Minerva "...were you in love with him?"

When Minerva didn't answer, Amelia pressed on. "Are you in love with him?"

"I'd rather not talk about him, if you don't mind," Minerva said with as much dignity as she could muster, given that she could barely sit upright. But it wasn't precisely the truth. Part of her ached to talk about him, but she didn't think it would do her any good to drudge up the old feelings at this late date. As much as she trusted Amelia Bones, she didn't feel right about letting her in on the secret she had kept for nearly four years. And the secret was not hers alone, she reminded herself.

"All right, Minerva. But I'll just say this and let it drop: If you do love him, you should do something about it. You're not his student anymore, so maybe he'd be receptive. You never know."

She took another swig of the whisky, which they were drinking straight from the bottle by this point, and added, "You have to grab your happiness with both hands. That's what Thorfinn and Mum did. And that's what I'm going to do."

"Marlene?"

"Yes, Marlene. Yes, yes, and yes. I'm going to tell her she needs to make up her mind to be with me ... really with me ... or to finish it for good. No more silly-shallying...shilly-shallying...around."

"What do you think she'll do?"

"Fuck if I know." Amelia collapsed in a fit of nervous giggles. Sobering up a bit, she said, "But she can't live her whole life worrying about what her father will think. I don't care if he wants to be Minister; she has to live life on her own terms."

"What does Greg say?"

"Same as me. He just wants his sister to be happy. And for some strange reason, he likes me."

Minerva smiled blearily at her friend. "Good for you. I hope it works out."

"If it doesn't, well ... better I should know now, don't you think? Give me time to find someone else before I turn into an old hag?"

"You won't be an old hag. Besides, your mum found someone at, what was she? Forty-eight?"

"Mmm. So, anyway, I think if you still have a thing for Dumbledore, you should tell him."

"It isn't that simple."

"So you do have a thing for him!"

"Please, Amelia. I really, really do not want to discuss it."

"All right. Just... no, all right. I won't say anything else. I swear."

Three weeks later, Amelia told Minerva she was moving out of their flat to move in with Marlene McKinnon.

Minerva, Greg McKinnon, Douglas McLaggen, Gareth Prewett, and a few other friends threw the couple a flat-warming party when they settled into a small walk-up in Marylebone, close to the Healer's office where Marlene was apprenticing after having finished her formal training at St Mungo's.

Minerva didn't regret Amelia's moving out; now that she was drawing a full salary, she could afford the rent on her own, and she had always liked her solitude. She would miss having someone to talk to when she felt like it...which wasn't all that often, when it came right down to it...but she would see her friend every day at the office.

She was happy for Amelia. Happy, and just a little envious. Minerva had only gone out with two people since resolving to move on with her life, and neither liaison had amounted to anything. She was now determined to try harder. The people around her seemed to be pairing off, and although she had no desire to get married or otherwise permanently attached, she envied the intimacy they shared and the sense of belonging that seemed to emanate from Amelia and her other friends who had found companions.

As usual, once Minerva put her mind to something, she was successful.

She finally relented and allowed Douglas McLaggen to take her out. She enjoyed his company, and, eventually, his bed. They were happy until, several months into their relationship, he asked her to marry him. Minerva didn't love him, or at least, not enough to become his wife, and told him so honestly and gently. He accepted it with the philosophical good grace that seemed to come naturally to him, and they eventually parted as friends. She was happy for him when he married another woman eighteen months later, and sent an extravagant gift when their twins arrived the following year.

She fell into a series of casual relationships with men who amused her or interested her intellectually or both. She took a few of them to her bed but none to her heart. Late at night, when she was tired, she wondered how long or how many men it would take to erase Albus Dumbledore from her thoughts as cleanly as he had removed himself from her life.

Minerva surprised herself by agreeing to go out with Alastor Moody, who had started an internship in the Auror office after finishing at Hogwarts. They had been friendly at school, thanks to their mutual interest in duelling and Alastor's friendship with Einar, although the acquaintance had waned when she left Hogwarts. She liked Alastor and had been happy to take up their friendship again when he joined up with the Auror office, and she was happy to go out with him when he finally worked up the nerve to ask her.

Alastor was very sharp, as she remembered, and he had become a rather handsome, if brash, young man, and she found his company surprisingly easy. His directness pleased her, and when he suggested she join him in his bed after their third real date, she surprised him by agreeing without hesitation. He turned out to be as surefooted and direct in sex as he was in everything else, and she appreciated it. Even better, he didn't push her to make more of their relationship than it was.

When she was honest with herself, however, she had to admit that part of his appeal was that his first assignment as a Junior Auror was to liaise with Albus Dumbledore to learn more about the suspected former supporters of Gellert Grindelwald he was assigned to keep tabs on, and the two men had developed something of a friendship that flowed naturally from the mentor-student relationship they had enjoyed back at Hogwarts. Somewhere in the back of Minerva's mind was the hope that Alastor would bring news of their affair back to Albus. She wasn't sure what she hoped it would accomplish, but she wanted to feel some connection with her former lover, even if it was through this most strange intermediary.

Alastor, of course, did exactly that. He was sitting with Albus in the Hog's Head, which they had chosen for their meetings, since Hogwarts students and staff rarely ventured in there, and the patrons tended to mind their own business.

They had concluded their business and were finishing their drinks when Alastor said, "By the way, Professor, I ran into an old protégée of yours at the Auror office a while back."

"Oh?" asked Albus. The Auror office was filled with his former students.

"Yeah, Minerva McGonagall. She's working on tracking unregistered Animagi and helped brief me. She asked after you and said to give you her best."

Albus kept his tone even. "Did she? And how is she?"

"She's grand," Moody said. He added in a conspiratorial tone, "Actually, we've got kind of a thing going, if you can believe it...me with former prefect, Head Girl, and all-around Madam Perfect...I don't know why, but it works. She's not like other girls, all keen for romance with wedding bells in her ears. There's something hard about her, and that suits me fine. I seem to suit her too. She's a helluva girl."

Albus blanched at the thought of Moody and Minerva together. The image of Alastor making love to her that had leapt into his mind made him slightly ill. The thought that she might enjoy it more with this young man than she had with him made him sicker still.

"I've had my eye on her since my third year, but I guess you knew that, didn't you?" Moody said. "I'm ashamed to say it's taken me this long to work up to it," he added with a chuckle. "Worth the wait, though."

Albus felt slightly light-headed. "I'm happy to hear it. Is it serious between you and Minerva," he asked, trying to keep his tone interested but light.

"Yes and no. I like her a lot, and Merlin knows, I ... well, I like her a lot, and have done for a while. But I'm not ready to settle down...wife, kids, all that rot. And she doesn't seem interested in all that either. Got her eye on the ball, I'd say. I heard that one of her old mates from training asked her once. To get married, I mean, and she turned him down. I think she just wants a good time. I mean, erm ..." His Irish skin gave away his embarrassment. "We just enjoy each other's company, is what I mean to say."

The images that swam through Albus's mind during Moody's brief monologue were nearly unbearable: Minerva as someone else's lover, as someone else's wife, raising someone else's children ...

A thousand times over the past few years, he had thought of seeking her out. But he restrained himself. It was for the best, he thought, that she move on, find a more appropriate partner. One who would make her happy and give her the things he couldn't: a home of her own, children, a husband who could grow old alongside her. She had protested on occasion during the heady months of their affair that those things were unimportant to her, but she was so young, and perhaps too absorbed in the excitement of their secret romance to be able to make those decisions rationally. The fact that he had abandoned his responsibility to her in one respect didn't absolve him of looking out for her welfare entirely, he had thought at the time, and quite rightly, he now reckoned.

But when he had seen her at the Ministry ball, in the arms of that handsome young man, something had died inside him. They looked so right together. He had gone home, and for the first time, he used his Pensieve to watch memories of himself with Minerva. Every time he saw himself lay one of his large, age-lined hands on her smooth, perfect skin, he had flinched. He had withdrawn from the Pensieve hours later, weeping.

Now again, picturing Minerva with Alastor Moody, he wanted to weep. It seemed right, even in his mind's eye. Both young and strong and beautiful...so right. And he, Albus, was so wrong: wrong for her, wrong to have fallen in love with her, and most definitely wrong to have acted on it as he had. So he would endure. If he had been a religious man, he would have seen it as his just penance.

When Moody had finished his drink...Albus's still sat, half full, on the table...Albus stood to excuse himself, saying he had to get back to the castle. He shook Moody's hand and wished him well. He asked the young man to convey his best to Minerva.

It was, Albus later thought, his luck...good or bad, he couldn't have said...to run into her not two weeks later at the Ministry.

He had recently been appointed to a vacant seat in the Wizengamot and had come to fill out the endless paperwork regarding ethics, rules, and potential conflicts of interest, all to be signed and notarised in front of a proper Ministry functionary.

He was standing alone in the lift when the door opened, revealing a startled Minerva McGonagall. She hesitated before stepping in to join him.

"Well, hello!" he said, realising he was speaking too loudly.

"Hello, Professor Dumbledore." She turned to face the doors rather than look at him and pressed the button for her floor.

"How have you been keeping?" he asked.

"Quite well, thank you. And you?"

"The same. Not much changes at Hogwarts, you know."

"Some things change."

He could think of nothing to say to that.

"I hear Professor Merrythought has retired," Minerva said.

"Yes, a few years ago."

"You must miss her. You seemed good friends."

"Yes. I do still see her occasionally, though."

"That's nice."

The lift stopped at the ground floor, and Minerva stepped out.

He wanted to stop her from going, to take her arm, ask her to join him for dinner, lunch, tea...anything...but he only said, "Well. It was nice to see you again, Minerva."

"Yes," she said with a small, grim smile. "Take care of yourself, Professor." Then she was gone, lost in the crowd shuffling through the atrium.

They wouldn't see one another again for six years.

~ E N D O F P A R T II ~