Chapter Thirty-One

PART III

1956-1957

Lover, lead forth thy love unto that bed

complete the perfumed paraphrase of death).

E.E. Cummings ~ "Epithalamium"

"I think I might like teaching younger students, and I think I could be good at it."

"Congratulations, Headmaster!" said Caspar Crouch, clapping Albus firmly on the shoulder as the other members of the Hogwarts Board of Governors applauded.

"Thank you, Caspar. And my thanks to all of you for your confidence in me."

"Nonsense," said Crouch, "you've been doing the job for months; it's time we made it official."

After Albus and Crouch had each signed the contract appointing Albus Dumbledore Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the meeting broke up, some of the governors stopping on the way out to offer their personal congratulations, while a few simply filed out, pointedly without comment.

When everyone else was gone, Caspar said, "What would you say to a spot of dinner? My treat. There are a few things I'd like to discuss with you."

Albus agreed readily. There were a few things he wanted to discuss with the Chairwizard of the Board of Governors himself.

The two men talked about several issues concerning both the running of Hogwarts proper and the politics of managing the governors. Albus gratefully accepted Crouch's advice on how to handle the fractious group ("smile and nod a lot when discussing the minutiae" and "it's generally better to ask for forgiveness than permission") and asked him what he thought the odds were on getting Herbert Burke to retire.

"Hmm, that's a tough one, old boy," said Crouch. "But for what it's worth, I'm in your corner on this. Burke is a disaster as a teacher. I had hoped we might get rid of his lovely wife in the next year or so, but she seems intent on soldiering on as a governor until she drops. I suppose it will depend on how attractive we can make the offer. If we were to, say, add a little to his pension...enough to help him get a second home for his retirement...it might fly. All Belvina cares about is his good name and that he's out from under her feet."

"I'll see what I can do with the budget," said Albus. "If I can find enough to sweeten the retirement offer, I'll certainly do it."

An idea occurred to him.

"Perhaps," he said as a smile broke out over his face, "one of my first acts as Headmaster should be to introduce a new honour. Something along the lines of a 'Distinguished Service Award' for staff who have been especially ... distinguished and are nearing the twilight of their careers. Perhaps attach a little honorarium?"

Caspar laughed. "I knew we were right to vote you in, Albus. It's a very good idea, and one that will appeal to Herbert, I think. And, more importantly, to Belvina. Make sure there's a medal... a big one. She likes to trot him out to all those tedious pure-blood functions as her brilliant scholar-husband."

They finished their dinner, chatting amiably, and Albus returned to the castle. He went to the Headmaster's office to collect several items of correspondence and took them back to his quarters in Gryffindor Tower. Since Headmaster Dippet's death two weeks after the close of the spring 1956 term, Albus had been doing both his own job and the Headmaster's. He had not moved into the Head's private rooms, as he had not been officially installed as Headmaster until that very day, although nobody had seriously doubted he would be appointed permanently.

He didn't mind the extra work especially, but as Armando's health had begun to fail, Albus had been afraid he was giving short shrift to both his teaching and his Head of House duties as the responsibilities of the Headmaster fell increasingly on his shoulders.

The first order of business, he thought as he went through his correspondence, would be to appoint a new Head of Gryffindor. His primary candidate was Diophantus Lemmas, who had been teaching Arithmancy at Hogwarts since 1949. The only other former Gryffindor currently on staff was Silvanus Kettleburn. The Care of Magical Creatures professor would have made a fine Head of House...he was certainly kind and nurturing, and level-headed to boot...but his duties to the creatures in his care would make him less available to the students in the castle.

Yes, Albus thought, Lemmas it will have to be.

His next task would be to find a new Transfiguration teacher, and it was a chore he dreaded. There were few truly qualified candidates to teach the tricky and dangerous branch of magic. Few people took apprenticeships in the art, as it was not as lucrative as Charms, Potions, or even Herbology; Transfiguration was too theoretical a discipline for any broad or remunerative application. He thought with a shudder of the disaster of a temporary replacement Dippet had had to engage in haste when it had become clear that Albus was needed elsewhere during the last war. When he had returned to his post, he had found the students so dreadfully underprepared that he had cancelled all N.E.W.T.-level classes for the next year in favour of holding remedial Transfiguration courses, a thing he had hated to do, but there wasn't any way those students would have passed the difficult exams, and there had been no good reason to pretend otherwise.

Finally, there was the matter of naming a deputy. This was tied up in Albus's mind with replacing Herbert Burke as Charms master, because he fervently hoped to persuade his old friend Filius Flitwick to take both posts. Aside from the fact that Filius was eminently qualified to teach the subject and had proven skill in teaching, Albus trusted him and felt comfortable sharing things with him that he would be unlikely to discuss with others. That, he felt, was an essential quality in a deputy, not least because, as had recently been demonstrated, the deputy could become Acting Headmaster in the skip of a heartbeat.

Six weeks later, he had achieved all but one of his immediate aims. Diophantus Lemmas was comfortably installed in Albus's old rooms in Gryffindor Tower, and Herbert Burke had been retired with his shiny new award, two hundred Galleons on top of his pension, and much fanfare. Filius Flitwick was welcomed as the new Charms master with less fanfare but greater satisfaction on Albus's part. He had also agreed, albeit somewhat reluctantly, to serve as Albus's deputy.

The first task Albus set Filius was to advertise for a Transfiguration teacher and to sort through any applications that came in, weeding out the poor candidates before passing the ones with potential on to the Headmaster. Advertisements were duly placed in the Daily Prophet, Transfiguration Today, and, in flurry of optimism, the European Journal of Transfiguration.

Two days after the first advertisement had run, Filius came to Albus's office bearing a small stack of parchment. Albus's eyes lit up expectantly.

"So many responses already!"

"Yes. And of them," said Filius, withdrawing a single sheet from the stack, "only one that's worth your looking at."

Albus's face fell. "That bad?"

"Worse. Not a single one of them has a mastery in Transfiguration, and this one," Filius said, shaking the parchment, "is the only one with any relevant teaching experience. One or two others had their names on some journal articles, but none as primary investigator."

"Ah, well. It's early yet. I'll have a look at that one, and in the meantime, let us hope our search bears sweeter fruit."

Over the ensuing days, a few more letters of enquiry and CVs came in, and most were as dismal as the first batch. One, however, caught Filius's eye, and he was surprised by the name at the top of it. He remembered the intense, sharp-eyed duellist with the amazing reflexes from the Hogwarts championship more than a decade past.Remembering also his private speculations at the time, he almost hesitated to include the CV in the small "to-consider" pile he would leave on the Headmaster's desk that afternoon. But hers was the best he'd seen thus far, so he left it on the top of the pile.

When Albus sat down at his desk after dinner and picked up the stack of enquiries, he had to blink several times to convince himself that he wasn't hallucinating.

What he saw on Minerva's CV was remarkable. In the short time since she had left the Ministry, she had built up a solid...no, an astonishing...academic career in Transfiguration.

He had read a few of her papers, of course, and had heard when she had won the Merlin Prize from Mallory College, the small magical college within Oxford University, but other than that, he had avoided following her career. He had let his own academic pursuits in Transfiguration wane, first with the escalation of the Grindelwald situation, then as Armando's health had gradually deteriorated, and more and more of the Headmaster's duties had fallen on his shoulders. He hadn't been to a conference in more than a decade.

The question that was foremost in his mind was: Why would Minerva want to give up her promising research career to teach children? He couldn't help wondering if it had something to do with him.

But no. That was nonsense. It had been more than twelve years since the end of their affair, and he knew Minerva had had lovers since. She had not married, true, but looking at her CV, Albus could easily attribute that to sheer lack of time for romance. Moreover, Griselda Marchbanks, who had apparently mentored Minerva through her academic career, tended to fill her lab with women, so perhaps there had been little opportunity for Minerva to have met many men.

What would it be like, he mused, to have her back at Hogwarts? Would it be awkward? He was under no illusion that his feelings for her had entirely vanished, but he seemed to have settled back into his cloistered shell after years of turmoil and had tried not to think of Minerva McGonagall, mostly successfully. Occasionally, she appeared in his mind, unbidden and without warning, and she featured prominently, he was ashamed to admit, on those occasions when he used his hands to relieve himself of an unwanted erection.

He read over her CV once more. On paper, she was an ideal candidate. It would be unfair not to give her a chance simply because he wasn't sure how her presence might affect him. Unfair to Minerva, and more importantly, unfair to the students of the school.

His mind made up, he took a fresh piece of parchment and his quill and began to write.

~oOo~

Minerva was having breakfast in her small kitchen in Oxford when the owl came. She took the letter it bore and gave the owl a bit of her toast, then, after some deliberation, put the letter down next to her plate and forced herself to finish her meal before opening it.

When she had set down her teacup, she took up the letter and broke the seal.

15 October 1956

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Hogsmeade, Scotland

Dear Madam McGonagall,

I have received your enquiry regarding our recent advertisement for a professor of Transfiguration and would like to meet with you to discuss your qualifications for the post.

Please let me know if you are available to meet in my office at Hogwarts on Friday at 2:00. If this is not convenient, kindly return with your response a list of alternative times you would be available.

I look forward to meeting with you.

Regards,

Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster

Minerva smiled to herself. She would have been surprised had she not received a response to her enquiry; she knew her CV was impressive.

When she had seen the advertisement in the Daily Prophet, she had thought long and hard about applying for the post. It had been needling around in the back of her mind since reading of the former Headmaster's death several months before. Everyone knew that Albus Dumbledore would be his successor, which meant that Hogwarts would be in need of a new Transfiguration teacher.

Minerva wanted the job. She was tired of working under the nose of Griselda Marchbanks. Griselda was a fine Transfiguration mistress and had been a good mentor, but she directed research with a heavy hand. Minerva had felt stifled lately. She had been able to get some of her pet projects done, but the plain truth was that unless Griselda was enthusiastic, one's chances of getting funded for a project were nil. And one daren't complain too loudly. Academic Transfiguration was a small world, and the word of Madam Griselda Marchbanks was analogous to Mosaic Law.

Minerva had enjoyed teaching and supervising her own apprentices more than she had thought she would. And she had been surprised to discover how much she enjoyed tutoring younger students who came to her for remedial instruction in more basic Transfiguration.

So the Hogwarts post intrigued her. Then, of course, there was the question of Albus. Even after all this time, the notion of being near him again set Billywigs fluttering about in her belly. She admonished herself not to be foolish. She had done fairly well at putting him firmly in her past, especially once she had left the Aurors to pursue her interest in Transfiguration. She had thought she might run into him at one conference or another, but she hadn't, and he hadn't authored a journal article, monograph, or book chapter in ages, so his name had rarely even cropped up, except on a few occasions when Griselda was waxing nostalgic for times and discoveries past.

The fact that Minerva still felt something when she thought of Albus Dumbledore gave her pause. Would being near him again stir that something back into disquieting life? Surely not. Surely, at thirty-one, Minerva was capable of curbing, if not fully controlling, unwelcome emotions. She was not the girl she had been. And she certainly could control her actions.

There was no harm in enquiring about the post, she had concluded. And if she were granted an interview, as she had suspected she would be, she would find out exactly how she felt in Albus's presence once again. If it was too difficult, she certainly didn't have to accept the post if it were offered.

Of course, it was possible that Albus wouldn't want to see her again. That thought had given her only momentary pause as she had fastened her letter and CV to the owl's leg and sent it off to Scotland.

Now, as she looked at the letter inviting her for an interview, Minerva couldn't help smiling. If Albus was comfortable seeing her again, she thought, she could be comfortable. She Summoned a quill and some parchment, dashed off a few lines confirming the appointment, then took herself off to the university's tiny owlery to send it.

~oOo~

Nothing has changed.

That was Minerva's first thought upon seeing Albus smiling over at her as she stepped through the door to the Headmaster's office. She felt an old, familiar warmth flood her when she saw his face, and she hoped she wouldn't blush at feeling his eyes on her after all this time.

"Madam McGonagall," said the Headmaster, striding toward the door she had just come through with Filius Flitwick. "It's such a pleasure to see you again!"

Minerva took the hand he had extended, and he clasped his other hand around hers and squeezed it warmly. She ignored the slight thrill this first physical contact in twelve years sent through her.

She said, "It's lovely to see you again too, Professor. I was very pleased to get your letter requesting an interview."

"Not nearly as pleased as I was to receive your CV. It is most impressive, what you've accomplished in such a short time." Turning to his deputy, Albus said, "Madam McGonagall, you remember Filius Flitwick, I'm sure. I have been very fortunate in luring him away from private practice to join me here as Charms master and Deputy Head."

"Yes, and I was delighted to hear of his appointment," replied Minerva. "Professor Flitwick was kind enough to escort me from the gate, so we've had the opportunity to reminisce a bit," she said with a polite smile at Flitwick, who returned it.

"Yes, Madam McGonagall's prowess on the piste was very memorable, and I've been happy to learn she's been keeping up her skills since then," said Flitwick.

"But not competitive duelling," said Minerva. "Just a bit of fun with friends."

"Well, it always pays to keep in condition," Albus said, "even in times of peace."

Flitwick said, "If there's nothing else, Albus, I'll just leave you two to talk. You can have a house-elf get me if you'd like me to see Madam McGonagall out when you're finished."

"No, no. I'll see her out myself, Filius, but thank you."

"Well, then, it was a great pleasure to see you again, Madam McGonagall."

"And you as well, Professor," said Minerva.

The door closed behind Flitwick, and she and Albus were alone.

There was a moment of silence, then Albus said, "Please have a seat," indicating a pair of club chairs at the side of the room near the great window that looked out over the grounds.

"Would you care for some tea?"

"No, thank you, Headmaster. But please go ahead if you would like some."

It was on the tip of his tongue to say, Call me Albus, but he didn't.

"No, not if you don't care for any. Madam Soranus informs me I must lose two stone or she'll have me on a diet of cabbage and rice."

"Madam Soranus is still matron?"

"Yes, although she's been making noises about retiring. I think she was just waiting for Armando to ... well, I think she didn't want to go until there was a change in administration. She's very loyal."

"Admirable," said Minerva.

"Quite." Sensing that it was time to switch to the topic at hand, he said, "Your CV was most impressive. You've made quite a name for yourself in just a relatively few years. Tell me, why did you decide to leave the Aurors?"

"After the war, there wasn't that much to do, quite frankly. The Ministry had taken on all sorts of new recruits, but things died down so quickly after Grindelwald fell...after you defeated him...most of us were stuck on desk duty or doing minor field work. I suppose, when I applied, I had envisioned more challenging work. I thought perhaps I could blaze a trail for women in Magical Law Enforcement," she said with a rueful laugh. "I didn't count on circumstances not living up to my ambitions."

He was smiling, so she continued, "Anyway, I was fortunate enough to become involved in some of the research MLE was conducting in Transfiguration, and I found that more interesting than anything else I was doing. But there wasn't that much of it, and ..." She hesitated for a moment. "Frankly, I didn't care much for the direction some of it was taking. So I decided to pursue further education in Transfiguration."

"I see," said Albus. "And you made quite an impression...the Merlin Prize? Not only is it remarkable in itself, but to win it for basic science is quite unusual. Most of the prizes tend to go to showier papers."

"Is this your polite way of saying my work has no practical application?" she asked with a smirk.

The Minerva McGonagall Albus remembered had suddenly entered the room.

He said, "No, not at all. Just that the adjudicators seemed to have finally recognised the essential importance of basic science when they awarded you...quite rightly...such an important prize. It's been my observation that many of the papers that make a big splash initially fail to deliver on their promise ultimately."

Minerva said, "There is an increasing emphasis on translational research. The journals seem to want things that can be capitalised on immediately...new spells, or new variations of old ones. It's understandable. Aside from the pragmatic aspect, that kind of research can be turned into profits more readily, so the funders like it. But I think it has come at the expense of other research that may move slowly but has the potential for a more lasting impact."

"I see, and I quite agree. Your work on metabolic and cellular effects of Transfiguration being a prime example," he said, goading her slightly.

"Well ... yes," she said. "Everyone wants to find spells that can be useful medically...we'd like to be able to Transfigure a block of wood into a real, functioning leg, for example...but one of the stumbling blocks, in my estimation, is that we simply don't know enough about how Transfiguration affects living tissue. Until we do, anything we attempt to do to the human body with Transfiguration is simply casting in the dark."

"Indeed," said Albus. "Which brings me to the question of why you want to leave Oxford. You seem to have a thriving research programme going there."

She had been ready for this question and answered without hesitation.

"I'm finding it stifling. The kind of research I want to do isn't the kind that gets funding readily these days, and ... well, the truth is that I find I don't enjoy the kind of politicking that one needs to do to get projects off the ground. Madam Marchbanks has been a wonderful mentor to me, but there really isn't a great deal of room for two senior researchers in Transfiguration at Oxford, and I don't see Griselda slowing down anytime in the near future."

"You could find another institution. Or strike out on your own," he said.

"Perhaps. But the other universities are on the Continent or in America, and although I enjoyed my semester at the Salem Witches' Institute, I can't see myself making a life there permanently. And I think it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to set up a private practice. As you know, Transfiguration isn't like Potions or Charms in that respect. There's not much call for private services, and there are only so many people seeking private instruction. I found I very much enjoyed the teaching I've done at Oxford, but I especially liked working with the younger, less advanced students. It was nice to be able to give someone who was struggling both an appreciation for and foundation in the practice of Transfiguration. That's why the advert for this post intrigued me. I think I might like teaching younger students, and I think I could be good at it. I understand that I may not be the most qualified applicant, but I do appreciate your seeing me, Professor."

"I think you could be very good at it, Minerva," said Albus, forgetting his promise to himself to remain on strictly professional terms with her.

"Really?" she couldn't help asking.

"Yes. The post is yours, if you want it."

She was surprised in spite of herself, and could only repeat, "Really?" again, silently chastising herself for her lack of articulateness.

"Yes. Nobody else I've seen is nearly as qualified," Albus said, which wasn't entirely accurate. He hadn't actually interviewed anyone else. In truth, he hadn't quite intended to offer her the post then and there, but the offer seemed to have slipped out. But she was eminently qualified, and he had little doubt that she would fit in well with the current staff, himself included.

"I ... I don't know what to say ..." she said.

"Then it's probably best to say nothing," he said with a grin. "I'll give you a copy of the contract with all the particulars about wages, benefits, and the like. Take it home. Look it over and let me know if it is acceptable. Do you think you could provide your answer by Monday next?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"Wonderful!" he said. "I will look forward to your owl, then."

The two looked at one another for a few moments, then he rose, and she followed suit.

Albus pulled a small sheaf of parchment from a desk drawer and gave it to Minerva. "This is the contract. I hope you find it acceptable. Please feel free to owl me or Filius over the weekend should you have any questions."

"Thank you, Professor, I will." After a moment, she said, "Well, I best let you get on with your day. I imagine a Headmaster has a million things to do on a Friday afternoon."

He wasn't anxious to see her leave but could find no good excuse to ask her to stay.

"I'll see you to the gate, "he said, holding her cloak for her, then putting on his own.

When they reached the front gate, Minerva held out her hand, expecting him to shake it, but he took it and brushed his lips across it. "I look forward to hearing from you on Monday, Madam McGonagall."

When she was back on her doorstep in Oxford, Minerva was surprised she hadn't Splinched herself.