Chapter Nineteen

Minerva was sitting in her office, making notes from a series of books and journals spread out across her desk, when she felt the brush of lips and the tickle of a moustache at the nape of her neck.

"Happy anniversary, my love."

She turned in her chair in time to see Albus shimmer into being.

"You think you're very clever, but one day we'll be caught," she said.

"That's what memory charms are for."

"I understand that it's considered very bad form for a Headmaster to Obliviate the students in his care."

"Oh, very," he said, coming around the chair to look at her desk. "You've been in here all day. Working on something in particular?"

"Just some background research for a project I've been kicking around."

He leant over and picked up a slim volume, opening it to the bookmarked page. "'Determinants for Regulation and Initiation of Expression of Tryptophan Genes'. You're looking at Muggle articles?" he asked, dropping the book back on the desk.

"They've done a lot more in genetics than we have."

"So your project has to do with genetics?"

"Something like that."

He smiled at her over his glasses. "Which means you don't want to discuss it with me."

"Not yet. Maybe when I'm a bit further along."

He kissed the top of her head. "Do you think you'll be ready to leave off soon? I thought we could have dinner in your rooms, just the two of us."

"I'd like that. I'll just be a few more minutes here," she said.

/***/

Dinner turned out to be a surprise. Albus had arranged for them to have the same menu they had had the evening of their wedding: roast saddle of venison with wild mushrooms and mashed parsnips, finishing up with Tipsy Laird made with Old Pulteney and topped with Monorgan pears, both brought in specially. Albus had had the head Hogwarts kitchen elf send to the elf in charge of the McGonagall kitchen for the recipes.

As they sipped the last of the 1957 Latour he'd gotten to go with the meal, he said, "Not a stellar vintage, but I couldn't get hold of any of the 'forty-five...your father didn't have any more, and it's not to be had for less than a small fortune anywhere else...so I thought the 'fifty-seven might be appropriate, for sentiment's sake."

"It's wonderful," Minerva said, finishing hers and holding out her glass for more.

He poured, then held up his glass in a toast. "Ten years, Madam Dumbledore, and you are twice as beautiful as on the day I married you."

"And you, Mr Dumbledore, are twice as blind," she said.

Whey they'd finished their pudding, Minerva said, "You must have gone to a great deal of trouble to come up with this meal. It was lovely, thank you."

"You are lovely." He kissed her forehead. When he made to step back, she caught him by the front of his robe and pulled him close again, standing on tip-toe to reach him. Kissing him gently at first, when his arms came around her, she pressed her tongue against his lips and into his mouth. She felt him hesitate, but then he yielded and met her tongue with his.

He pulled away after a minute and looked at her. She let her head fall forward to rest against his chest.

"Will you stay tonight?" she asked.

He didn't answer immediately, and her heart began to pound as she listened to him breathe.

Caressing the back of her head, he said, "Is that what you want?"

"I asked, didn't I?"

He lifted her chin with his fingers and kissed her again, then said, "You did."

They went into her bedroom, and Albus disappeared into the bathroom to ready himself for bed. When he emerged in his dressing gown, she went in. The door closed behind her, and she began to undress. She slipped off her dress and underthings with her back to the mirror and pulled on her dressing gown. After cleaning her teeth, she spat into the sink and rinsed her mouth with water. Then she stood for a few moments to look at herself in the mirror, something she'd avoided doing since her illness, other than to make the most perfunctory checks of her appearance before leaving her quarters each morning.

She was still a trifle pale...even more so than she normally was...and her eyes were still slightly sunken and underscored with purple rings of fatigue. Not especially attractive, she thought, despite Albus' earlier assessment of her charms. Empty compliments about her appearance annoyed her, but she appreciated the sentiment behind her beloved's effusiveness. She'd never been vain or insecure about her looks, but she had to admit that her recent experience had shaken her confidence. Her body had always been strong and obedient to her will...other than a bout of Mumblemumps when she was seven, she'd never had a serious illness. And she'd recovered "indecently fast," as her father had put it, from the injury she'd sustained as an Auror-trainee in the war. The frailty she'd experienced after the loss of her son had been like a double-betrayal. Not only had her traitorous body failed at something most women seemed to be able to do with ease, but it had rendered her weak and dependant and feeling as if she were someone else.

She steeled herself, then undid the tie to her dressing gown and let it fall open. Telling herself not to be foolish and vain, she opened it wider and looked at herself.

The first thing she noticed was her pubic hair. They'd removed it prior to the operation, Dorcas-the-mediwitch had informed her when she'd gotten up the nerve to inquire, but it had grown back in and looked a little unruly; she wished she'd thought to bring her wand into the bathroom with her to neaten things up a bit. The dark line that had run from her umbilicus to her pubis was still visible, although faded, and her navel looked much as it always had.

She turned to the side and regarded her figure. Her belly was only slightly rounded now, and her breasts had almost gone back down to their usual size. She turned back to face the mirror. Her nipples were still enlarged...about the circumference of a Galleon...and she wondered if they'd ever return to their normal state. She ran her hands over her breasts, remembering how they had grown hard and painful and leaked milk in the weeks immediately following the birth. The day she'd returned to Hogwarts, she'd awakened in the middle of the night to find the front of her nightdress soaked, and Albus had been helpless to console her as she wept. The next day, Poppy had given her cabbage leaves, charmed to remain very cold, to press against her breasts to help coax them to stop producing milk. She'd felt ridiculous putting them under her bra, but they had been soothing.

There had been no leaking for several weeks now, but Minerva hoped Albus wouldn't attempt to touch her breasts, just in case. She didn't think she could bear another reminder of what had happened. Not tonight.

She closed her dressing gown, and giving her appearance one last look, she pinched her cheeks a few times to try to bring some more colour to them.

She was about to return to the bedroom when a thought occurred to her. She considered for a moment, then closed her eyes, and placing a hand at her sex, she whispered, "Lubricus." She felt herself grow wet.

Albus was thumbing through a book when she came back into the bedroom, and he looked up and smiled at her. She felt strangely self-conscious about removing her dressing gown in front of him...more so when he removed his and she saw that he was wearing a nightshirt. He normally didn't bother with one until after they'd made love, and then only if he were chilly.

Shrugging off her dressing gown, she let it fall to the ground rather than hang it up and got quickly into bed. She used her wand to douse the candles and laid it on the bedside table.

He lay facing her, and she turned to him, reaching out to touch his chest, slipping her hand into the vee of his shirt to touch his warm skin. Finding his nipple, she rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger, feeling it harden under her touch. Still, he didn't move, and she wriggled closer to him, expecting to feel his erection against her belly, but there was nothing.

He rubbed her arm and said, "We can sleep together without doing anything else."

Minerva removed her hand.

"I see," she said.

"You see what?"

"No, nothing. You're right, of course. We shouldn't rush things." She turned away from him, saying, "Anyway, I'm tired."

"Minerva," he said, putting his hand on her shoulder, "I don't know what you're thinking, but I simply want to be certain that you're ready."

"Poppy says I'm fully healed."

"Yes, but do you want to?"

"I want you."

"You've been through a great deal."

"If you don't want to, just say so. I understand," she said, pulling away from him again.

"Minerva," he said, putting a hand back on her shoulder to get her to turn back to him. "I don't think you do understand. I want you. So much. But I don't want to hurt you...physically or otherwise. I don't want you to do this just because you think you should. I can wait."

"But I can't," she said. "I need you now."

Gods help her, she did. She hadn't realised it until just now. She'd wanted to be close to him again, to find a way back to some semblance of the way things had been before, but she hadn't thought she felt any physical desire...in fact, the idea of anyone, even Albus, touching her intimately had made her cringe. But the nearness of him, his scent and the solid feel of him, the taste of his mouth, had lit a half-remembered spark in her centre, and she found herself reaching for him blindly.

She was afraid, but aching with want of him, much as she had been the first time they'd been together...the first time she'd ever been with anyone...so long ago now, but still vivid in her memory. She wanted to tell him to just do it, for Merlin's sake, to stop worrying so goddamn much about how fragile he thought she was, but she held her tongue and made her mute request with her hands, pulling at his nightshirt and burying her face in his neck.

He stroked her hair for a moment, and she was startled when he sat up. She thought for a desperate moment that he was going to get up and leave, but he removed his shirt in a single, fluid motion and deposited it on the floor.

He lay back down and pulled her into his arms.

"Gods, Minerva, but I love you so. I came so close to losing you . . . so close . . ." She heard his breath hitch, and his lips descended on hers to light gentle kisses against them, then on her cheeks and eyelids. When he lifted his head again, she could feel moisture on her face where his tears had fallen. She brushed her thumbs gently over his eyes.

"I'm still here . . . right here . . ." she whispered.

His hands moved over her body, and she didn't stop him when his fingers played over her nipples, sending electric sparks to her centre. When he reached tentatively between her legs, she opened them and pulled his head down to kiss him fiercely. His fingers found her clitoris and began to rub it in firm circles as she pressed herself into his hand.

He touched her until she came with a mewling cry. She lay floating on her euphoria for a few moments, then he moved over her, supporting his upper body with his arms, and looked down at her, his face hardly more than a shadow in the moonlight coming through the window, but close and comforting.

"Now, my love?" he said. "You're sure?"

"Yes."

He reached down to rub the tip of his cock against her opening, spreading her moisture, before sliding slowly into her. Expecting pain, she tensed, but there was none...just the welcome and familiar feeling of him filling her.

It was heavenly, and she gasped.

He mistook the meaning of her gasp and withdrew quickly, but she pulled on his arse to urge him down again.

"It's good," she said. "You feel good. More, please."

So he pushed into her again and began to move, with slow, smooth strokes.

She brought her hands to the sides of his face and leant up to kiss him, feeling him relax down into her body.

He was gentle and careful, and it took longer than it usually did until he began to speed up, pressing into her more forcefully. He moaned her name as he climaxed, and she stroked his back as she felt him shudder.

He opened his eyes and looked down at her. "All right?"

"Better than all right."

"I didn't hurt you?"

"Not at all." After a moment's hesitation, she asked, "Was it different?"

"What do you mean?"

"Did it . . . did it feel any different?"

"No. Did it feel different for you?"

She thought about it for a moment before answering, "No. I thought it might, but it didn't."

He shifted off of her and pulled her close to him.

As she lay with her head on his chest, sleepy and more settled than she'd felt since before her ordeal, she became aware of an odd noise, almost like a soft buzzing. She lifted her head to see if she could pinpoint it, thinking for a moment that it was sound reverberating in her body.

"What's the matter, my love?" a sleepy Albus asked.

"Nothing." She put her head back down. The buzzing...more of a hum, really, when she focussed on it...was still there, and now it seemed less like a sound and more like a sensation, pulsing gently...something like a heartbeat, but less definite and not from her chest. This seemed to be coming from the whole of her.

Slightly alarmed now, she said, "Do you feel something?"

"What?"

"I don't know . . . it's like a sort of humming. It's . . . this sounds mad . . . but I think it's coming from inside me."

His hand tightened on her shoulder. "Stay still for a moment."

After a few seconds, he said, "I feel it too. But I can't tell if it's coming from you or from me."

She shifted off of him and lay on her back, trying to locate the sensation.

"Me, I think," she said. "I can still feel it."

"So can I," he said.

"What is it, do you think?"

"I don't know. Stay here...I want to try something."

He lit a candle with the wave of a hand and got up, then, without bothering with his nightshirt or dressing gown, he went out the door into her sitting room.

After a moment, he called in, "Do you still feel it?"

"Yes," she said.

He reappeared in the doorway, and said, "So do I."

As he joined her in the bed again, she said, "It's the bond, isn't it?"

"I suspect so, yes."

"Does this normally happen with a blood bond?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"We're feeling one another's magic."

"Yes. I don't know if it was happening before, and we've only just realised it because we haven't been this close, or if the sex triggered it somehow."

Remembering what Marlene had told her, Minerva said, "The latter, I think." After another moment, a thought occurred to her, and she added, "Do you think it will get stronger every time we make love?"

"I don't know." He turned to her and kissed her gently. "But try to get some sleep. I'll look into it more in the morning, and we can discuss it again before the Christmas Feast."

She let him wrap his arm around her waist. As she closed her eyes, she focused on the humming. It was soothing, actually, and despite her roiling thoughts, she fell into a deep sleep, uninterrupted until she felt him stir in the early-morning light. She fell back to sleep and didn't wake again until Quinsy, the house-elf who served the Deputy Headmistress, brought her a tray and informed her she had missed Christmas breakfast.

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Author's Note: The article Minerva was looking at is: Margolin, Paul, and Ronald H. Bauerle. "Determinants for regulation and initiation of expression of tryptophan genes." In Cold Spring Harbor symposia on quantitative biology, vol. 31, pp. 311-320. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1966.