Chapter Thirty-Four

"You're quite smitten with our lovely Transfiguration mistress. The only question is, what are you going to do about it?"

"Rook to D-one."

"Queen to F-three."

When her black queen drew her sword and plunged it through the flank of the hapless white knight's mount, Minerva saw the ghost of a smile pass Albus's lips. "You need to watch that," she said, looking back at the chessboard.

"What?"

"Your chess face. You smiled at my last move, which leads me to believe you're up to something."

He said, "How do you know my smile was not due to the brilliance of your own move? I am now threatened on either side."

"Because if it had been at my brilliant move, you wouldn't have tried to hide it."

"Ah. You are entirely too clever, my dear. Rook to E-seven. Check."

"If I'm so bloody clever, why am I now in check?" she asked. "Knight to E-seven."

Albus watched sanguinely as his castle crumbled to pieces.

"Because I'm cleverer," he replied. "At chess, at least. At the moment. Although that seems to be changing. Queen to D-seven." The black pawn cowered as the white queen drew her sword and plunged it through the pawn's back, pinning it, twitching, to the board. "Check."

Minerva frowned. Silence reigned for a time as she stared intently at the chessboard, weighing her options. The quiet was broken with a knock on the door that led from Albus's office.

Both players looked up in surprise.

"It could only be Filius," said Albus, "he's the only one with the password to my office. Other than Alfidia, of course, but somehow I doubt our redoubtable matron is at my door."

"I certainly hope not. I can only imagine what she'd make of seeing me in your private quarters at nine o'clock at night."

"Alohomora," he said, and the door opened to reveal the Deputy Headmaster. "Ah, Filius ... please come in."

Flitwick hesitated for a moment, seeing Minerva seated at the table in the Headmaster's private sitting room. "Oh, I am sorry, Albus. I didn't know you had company."

"It's fine, Filius. Minerva and I were just having a game of chess. You're just in time to see her take my queen," Albus said with a mischievous wink at his opponent, who practiced her annoyed glare on him.

Filius went over to the table and Levitated himself so he could have a better view of the chessboard.

"I am amazed every time I see you do that," said Minerva. "I would never be able to keep myself steady."

"Years and years of practice," answered Filius. After studying the board a moment, he gave a slight chuckle. "So you are."

"What?" asked Minerva.

"About to take his queen."

Minerva frowned, then agreed glumly. "So I am. And then I am well and truly buggered. Any advice to offer?"

"I must protest," said Albus. "Soliciting help from the audience is distinctly cheating."

"Oh, well. We both know I'm going to lose this game, so what's the harm in Filius giving me a few pointers before it happens? You wouldn't want to impede my education, would you, Albus?"

"Certainly not, my dear, but I wouldn't want Filius to sully his reputation as a fair and impartial observer, either."

"Well, Filius?" Minerva turned to the deputy. "Any advice?"

"My dear Minerva, as much as I would love to offer any assistance to a damsel in distress, I fear I must decline. After all, he pays me," said Filius with a nod at the Headmaster.

"Coward," she said, turning her attention back to the chessboard. "King to D-seven." The black king advanced on the white queen, drawing his sword. The white queen knelt so he could strike her head cleanly from her shoulders, which he did forcefully, sending the head sailing across the board to land with a clack on the floor.

"That was uncalled for," said Albus genially, although nobody was certain if he was speaking to Minerva or her king. "Bishop to F-five. Filius, would you mind retrieving that head? Double check, by the way."

"I say, Albus!" said Filius as he lowered himself and swiped the white queen's head from the floor. He must have clutched it too tightly in his excitement, because he cried, "Ouch! The little blighter bit me!"

"I do apologise," said Albus. "This is one of my livelier sets."

"Quite all right," said Filius, depositing the offending head on the table and sucking at the wound on his finger.

Minerva ignored the noise. Seeing no other options, she retreated with a sigh. "King to E-eight."

"Bishop to D-seven. Check."

Minerva surveyed the board for a minute before saying sharply to her black king, "Well? You know what to do."

The ebony king nodded at its commander, then moved haltingly across the board, square by square, brushing aside several pawns of both colours and nervously sidestepping a white knight, to present his crown and kneel before the white king, who accepted it with as much grace as could be attributed to a carved figurine.

"Well played, Albus," said Minerva, not entirely kindly.

He ignored her tone. "Thank you, my dear. You gave me quite a run. I wasn't sure I could pull it off."

"I do wish I had seen the beginning of the game. it looked most interesting," said Filius. "Although I'm sorry to have barged in."

"Not at all," said Albus. "Was there something you needed to see me about?"

"Not really, no. I was simply hoping for your company...thought we might have a snifter or two of brandy on this chilly Saturday night."

"A fine idea," said Albus, "Minerva, will you join us for some brandy, or would you prefer whisky?" he asked, crossing to the sideboard.

"Neither, actually, thank you. I should be getting on. I'm visiting my father tomorrow and want to get an early start."

Albus tried and failed to suppress the look of disappointment that crossed his features. "I see. Well, give your father my regards, will you?"

"Of course. Good evening, Filius," she said and went to collect her cloak.

"Good evening, Minerva. Enjoy your visit with your father," said Filius.

"Just a moment, my dear," said Albus. "I'll see you to the Apparition point."

"There's no need, really. Stay and enjoy your brandy. Hagrid usually walks me to the gate if he sees me. Good night. Thank you for the game."

"Thank you, Minerva," Albus put a hand on her arm. "See you Monday."

The door closed behind her. Albus stared at it a fraction of a second longer than he should have. When he turned back to face Filius, he found his friend looking at him with a slightly quizzical expression on his face.

"Well, how about that brandy, hmm?" asked Albus, going to the sideboard once again and taking out two glasses and a bottle. "I have a bit of this Delacour left. That should suit."

"I hope I didn't spoil your plans for the evening."

"Nonsense. I had no plans...just the chess game with Minerva. We've been playing on Saturday evenings after dinner. You're most welcome to join us if you'd like to play."

"Oh, no, I don't think so," said Filius, taking the glass Albus held out to him. "I don't want to hamper your game."

"You wouldn't. I don't mind a bit of an audience when I play chess."

"It wasn't chess I was referring to."

It was Albus's turn to give his friend a quizzical look.

Filius gave a small smile. "Come now, Albus. How long have we known each other? You're quite smitten with our lovely Transfiguration mistress. The only question is, what are you going to do about it?"

Albus thought about denying it but decided against it. Filius had long kept any suspicions about the relationship between Albus and Minerva to himself, and Albus wouldn't insult their long friendship by lying about it now.

"Nothing. Not if I want to keep her friendship," he said.

"You don't think she returns your feelings?"

"I don't know, Filius. I don't know. I don't want to jeopardise what we do have by trying to turn it to something else."

"So ... chess games on Saturday nights."

"Precisely."

"It isn't my business, I realise, but I do wonder how long it will take you to understand that she's just as smitten with you."

"Perhaps. But things between us are complicated."

"Because of what happened before?"

Albus looked down into his drink as if searching for answers in the amber liquid. "And if I tell you nothing happened before?"

"I would believe it was the first time you'd lied to me."

"I will say nothing, then."

"That may be the wisest course. But I wouldn't advise you to take the same tack with Minerva. If you care for her, you owe her the truth. I don't know her well yet, but I suspect she's not a woman who will be comfortable with a quiet lie for long. She isn't your student any longer. There's no dishonour in courting her now."

Albus gave a mirthless laugh. "Dishonour. I have gone far past dishonour, my friend."

Filius was acutely uncomfortable, but he willed himself to speak. "Do you want to tell me about it, Albus?"

~oOo~

When Filius got back to his quarters, he had a second drink. The story Albus had told him had shaken him. He had known he was treading on dangerous soil when he brought up Albus's relationship with Minerva McGonagall, but he thought his friend needed a good talking-to on the subject.

Filius Flitwick was a romantic and optimistic soul, despite having endured tremendous heartache himself, and he thought it was high time Albus took some happiness from life. And it was clear that Minerva made him happy. What had been less clear to Filius was why Albus had apparently been reluctant to pursue her now that she was no longer a student.

The Albus Dumbledore Filius had known since their school days had never been a coward. To be sure, young Albus had never given much indication that he was interested in romance, but he had been bold and relentless in his pursuit of every other prize he set his considerable will to attaining. Later, when they had crossed paths again at Oxford, Filius had envied his friend's seemingly effortless ability to attract any woman on whom he set his sights. Envied his ability but worried about his choices. Albus had always seemed to select the one woman out of the crowd who would be least likely to make him happy, in Filius's estimation. They were always pretty, always ambitious, and always a bit aloof. Cold, Filius would have said, had he had a less generous nature. It was a puzzle, he often thought, because Albus was such a warm creature. Gregarious and affectionate, both physically and emotionally, with friends and even acquaintances, Albus Dumbledore seemed to have an uncanny gift for choosing lovers who would not or could not return that kind of affection.

Filius occasionally wondered how much of it had to do with his friend's troubled family life. Albus had confided in him about the attack on his sister, his father's subsequent imprisonment, and the terrible accident that had claimed his mother's life. He had also spoken...very obliquely...about Ariana's death from a stray spell and his feeling of culpability for that tragedy. Filius had never pressed him for more details, but he had the sense his friend hadn't told him the whole story. It was a feeling that would become all too familiar over the long years of their friendship, but Filius Flitwick found he was a man who could live with secrets. He had come to suspect it was the basis for Albus's trust in him.

Thus, he had been unprepared for the confession his friend had just made.

While he had suspected long ago that Albus had been attracted to young Minerva McGonagall, he had never believed that they had actually been lovers. Insofar as he had ever envisioned it, he had imagined scenes of girlish attempts at seduction, gently but firmly rebuffed, perhaps with a tinge of longing and regret on the part of the professor. He had imagined his friend struggling a bit with his attraction...maybe even a kiss...and Albus's better nature naturally overcoming his baser instincts. Filius had imagined teenaged confessions, with tears, some embarrassment, and a proffered handkerchief. He had imagined...or, more accurately, tried not to imagine...cold showers taken and cooling charms strategically placed. Never once had he imagined his friend actually seducing his student.

He hadn't known what to say to Albus's story, nor had he been able to hide his shock and disappointment.

What he did say, finally, was that whatever had happened between them in the past, they had to live in the present and that Albus deserved a bit of happiness, whatever mistakes he had made. Filius was fairly certain he still believed that.

"Do I?" Albus had asked sharply.

"Of course. So does she."

"She does. I just don't think I can give it to her," Albus had said.

"Why don't you let her determine that?

They had parted with Albus's promise to think about what Filius had said, and Filius had all but raced back to his quarters to escape the overwhelming feeling of illusions being shattered.

"Steady on, man," he admonished himself as he downed his second brandy of the evening.

~oOo~

Minerva spent Sunday in Caithness with her father. The heavy rain kept them indoors, and they spent the morning talking, Thorfinn asking his daughter about her new job and about the last paper she had authored with Griselda Marchbanks, which had finally been published in the December issue of Transfiguration Today.

Minerva was delighted when Einar and his wife, Katherine, brought baby Morrigan to visit just after lunch. As Minerva was playing "this little Puffskein" with her five-month-old niece, Einar went on about Minerva's choice to give up her research to teach at Hogwarts.

Fed up, Minerva finally said, "If you're so keen on research, Einar, why don't you do some yourself?" She crooned at the baby, "Your daddie's being a right prat ... yes he is." Morrigan gave a happy squeal at her aunt's observation.

"Come on, Minerva. You know there isn't much research to be done in my area," Einar said. "I just don't see what could be so compelling about Hogwarts that you'd give up everything you've worked for. Last I heard, you were thinking about jumping ship at Oxford to work with Franklin at the U of L on that whatchacallit...x-rayography."

Minerva shot him an amused smirk. "X-ray crystallography. And yes, I thought about it. For about ten seconds. I just don't think I could do what Rosalind does. She grew up half in the Muggle world, so it wasn't such a drastic change for her. Besides, microscopy was really a sideline for me, so a move to work on it full-time would have made no sense."

"Oh. You seemed so keen on it when you and Rosalind were working on that chapter," said Einar, referring to the book their father had edited and to which they had each contributed.

Minerva responded, "Yes, I thought it was fascinating, what she was doing with diffraction techniques, and I did love learning from her, but for me, it's a means to an end rather than something I want to study in and of itself. She's working on identifying the particle structure of viruses, and that's pretty far afield from what I do with Transfiguration and mammalian cellular structure."

"Well, I still think it's a shame to waste all that brainpower on a bunch of spotty teenagers," he said.

"Einar, leave your sister alone. I think teaching is a wonderful choice," said Katherine with a smile at Minerva.

"Indeed, it is," said Thorfinn. "And please to remember that wee Morrigan there will get the benefit of Minerva's brainpower when she gets to Hogwarts. I trust ye won't think that a waste?"

"No, Da, of course not," said Einar. "Sorry, Minerva. I didn't intend to criticise. It was just a surprise, is all."

"Never mind," said Minerva. She didn't especially want to pursue the subject of her career change at the moment.

The rest of the afternoon passed pleasantly enough, and Einar and his family left before dinner. Minerva and Thorfinn settled in the library, a chessboard between them. Minerva won the first game easily, surprising her father.

"Well, you've certainly handed me my hat," Thorfinn said when he discovered himself checkmated. "That's as quick as you've ever beaten me."

"I've been practicing."

"Oh?"

"Yes, I've been playing with Albus on Saturday evenings."

"I'm glad to hear it. So ye two have struck up a friendship, have ye?" Thorfinn asked.

"Yes, I suppose we have."

They spent another hour in conversation before Minerva began to make noises about getting home.

"Is Gran asleep, do you think?" she asked.

"'Tis half-nine, she probably is," Thorfinn said. "But go say goodbye anyway, she'll expect ye to."

Morna MacLaughlin had been ill with pneumonia for the prior month, which worried Minerva. Her grandmother had seemed increasingly frail over the past few years. At ninety-seven years old, Morna was firmly embarked on what would euphemistically be called her "golden years", although many witches and wizards lived well into their hundreds, provided they survived the inevitable magical accidents that claimed more than a few young witches and wizards, and escaped the dreaded dragon pox that had long been such a scourge to the wizarding world.

Minerva sometimes fretted about the time when her father would inevitably be left alone in the large house. Einar was busy with his own family in Inverness, and his work took him all around Britain, leaving little time for visits. Minerva had thought about moving back to Caithness and Apparating to Hogwarts every day, but Apparating in heavy rain or snow was dangerous, and she didn't want to risk being unable to get to work. In the end, leasing a room in Charity Burbage's small Hogsmeade cottage had made the most sense.

As she readied herself for bed that evening, Minerva thought about her living arrangements again. Staying at Charity's was fine for the moment, but it wasn't a long-term solution. Aside from other considerations, Minerva felt constrained by the need not to disturb the older witch with her comings and goings, and in truth, she didn't quite like Charity knowing when she came home evenings. Her former professor never pried or questioned, but Minerva still felt uncomfortable with the notion of her colleague knowing too much about her personal life.

She considered asking Albus if it would be possible to apply for a Floo connection from her father's house to her office, but there was no guarantee that her contract would be picked up at the end of the spring term, so it would make no sense to get on the Floo Network waiting list until she was certain she would be remaining at Hogwarts. She thought she had settled in well, and Albus seemed happy enough with what she was doing with her classes, but Minerva wasn't a woman to count her dragon eggs before they hatched.

For her own part, Minerva had begun to enjoy her classes once the initial nervousness had worn off. She had come to love the hum of satisfaction she felt whenever a student achieved a Transfiguration for the first time, particularly when the student had been having difficulty with it. They were a mixed lot, her first group of students...some possessed a clear talent for the difficult art, while others needed all the help she could provide, and she found different satisfactions in teaching each.

While classes were enjoyable, Minerva found marking essays less so. After her first week, she had gone to Albus nearly in despair, asking him how on earth she should approach the marking, as so many of the students seemed nearly incapable of expressing a thought clearly.

"Mark them as you see fit," was his unhelpful advice, so she had taken him at his word and marked the majority as "Poor" or worse. When the inevitable hue and cry rose from the affronted students, Albus had soothed his fledgling teacher's ruffled feathers, telling her to ignore the complaints and that he would ignore any owls from equally affronted parents.

"Were the students in my year this bad?" she asked.

"Some, yes," Albus said. "There is great variation in education levels of students when they first come to us. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have had parents as committed to education as your father was. We must demand the best of our students, but we must also recognise that not everyone comes to us with the same level of skill or talent and make adjustments accordingly. Teaching them Transfiguration is only one of your tasks, Minerva."

Minerva had taken his gentle admonition to heart, spending hours each evening painstakingly correcting spelling and grammar and making comments about basic composition in addition to addressing each student's grasp of the Transfiguration concept at hand. She was gaining a new appreciation for how difficult teaching children was.

All in all, though, she liked her new post. And she liked being close to Albus again. She found herself restless on Sundays, anxious for the start of the week...eager to see him take his seat at the High Table for lunch, eager to speak with him, however briefly and publicly, and most of all, eager for Saturday evenings, when they would play chess and talk in his sitting room, away from the various pulls on his attention and hers, if only for an hour or two.

They were easier with one another now, she thought. The chess helped. It gave her something to concentrate on other than the way his eyes sometimes followed her or the way she felt her pulse accelerate when it happened.

It was bearable. She would bear it because it was the price to be paid for admission to his presence and his thoughts on a regular basis. Merlin, but she hated the image of herself as a sort of hanger-on, anxious for any scraps from the great man's table, but she found herself happier than she had been in years in spite of it.

If this was all there was, so be it.