Fourth Version

This is the last installment: the fourth of the Four Versions. I have a personal soft spot for this one, for reasons that may become obvious as you read it.

I also have a story planned in the continuity of this fourth version, though set about two decades later. And, if I dare to mention it, a strange idea about a graphic study of the relation between the two characters throughout the years. But my drawing is slower than (and probably not really as good as) my writing. May the motivation stay with me.

FOUR

Minerva McGonagall was blushing. Profusely. Her cheeks burnt despite the relatively cool air of the room. At 21 years old, Minerva McGonagall was not given to blushing. The most usual cause to red cheeks would have been the winter wind on her face during a Quidditch game...but she rarely played Quidditch anymore, and her hip still hurt occasionally. Or temper, she might admit to having a healthy, vivacious temper. But she would not admit to being prone to... She was not the kind of women that...

Minerva McGonagall was blushing discreetly, though, hiding her face against the shoulder of a very paternal and appeasing, if somewhat surprised, Albus Dumbledore. And this, the man, the tickling beard, the faint unexpected scent - what had she expected, really, that he would smell of Transfiguration textbooks? - this was not helping. This came actually very close to being the cause of her blush. The secondary cause.

Minerva McGonagall was blushing, although trying to ignore any collusion between her thoughts of deluded persistent love and the man sitting next to her - all right, the man against whom she was uncharacteristically cuddling - cuddling, for Merlin's and Morgana's sakes... the man who had nothing to do with the original, with the real cause of her heartache.

**

It had all begun earlier that Friday evening, in the relative quiet of the Transfiguration corridor after classes. On such evenings, Albus Dumbledore, Professor of Transfiguration at Hogwarts, and Minerva McGonagall, his young apprentice of a few months, were often to be found together in his classroom or in hers, discussing teaching methods of Transfigurations, working, or otherwise indulging in what could only be described as having fun, although students might have resisted the concept of their friendly transfiguration games described as such. Whatever younger students may say, repopulating Dumbledore's classroom with unlikely objects and beings and transforming them into even more unlikely objects before he would catch up on her was one of the few precious things that made Minerva McGonagall laugh heartily those days.

Only, this evening, she had declined the cup of tea offered by her mentor and expressed her wish, if he did not need anything from her as an apprentice, to remain in the privacy of her quarters for the night. And so it happened that Dumbledore was to be found alone, tediously marking papers and occasionally gazing through the window, while all other doors along the corridor remained closed.

**

In fact, Dumbledore had been looking forward to an evening talk with his apprentice, maybe a game of chess... He could get used to this life of working together. He appreciated that they could talk about research, books and-oh, books. That was what he had forgotten. He was supposed to give her back the book she had been reading.

Albus Dumbledore sighed. He did not like to disturb his young apprentice when she had expressed the rare request for a quiet night, but he could at least place the book at the door of her rooms. She would find it all right. And the short walk through their classrooms would be a welcomed distraction from the fourth years' essays.

He stood, closed from afar the door to the corridor, turned on his heels and went through the other door. He shuddered, crossing the cold, unused office that was situated between their classrooms where he had been wanting for months to install a working space for them, or maybe a relaxing space - but somehow, it had not yet happened, and the classrooms had always seemed enough. He waved open the entrance to her classroom without thinking. He walked in decidedly, past the last row of desks, toward the other side, planning to conjure a shelf next to her private room's door. He was already gleefully designing in his mind an orange pattern for the wood panel to be.

But this was made useless. By said Minerva McGonagall. Sitting on the ground under a window. Reclining on the wall. Clutching a piece of parchment. Crying as if her life depended on it.

**

Dumbledore stood motionless for an instant, bewildered, before covering the awkwardness of going and kneeling beside her by a waterfall of sentences.

"Minerva, dear, I am sorry. I thought you were in your room. I would never have marched in on you like that. Minerva, are you all right? What happened to you?"

Minerva McGonagall dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief and did not answer. She was mimicking a reasonable demeanour very efficiently, until she folded the parchment that she was holding, put it away, and began to tremble slightly, then sob wordlessly again, hiding her face on her knees.

She did not protest when Dumbledore picked her up and carried her to her private room. She gave the password. She did not object to either the cheering charm or the hot chocolate that she was now holding in her hands. Nor to expanding her armchair into a comfortable settee. All in all, Minerva McGonagall was rendered uncharacteristically cooperative by emotion. Albus Dumbledore had half a mind of mocking her on the subject, already.

**

Minerva had finally stopped crying and felt embarrassed. The silence was becoming awkward, she knew. But she was aware of nothing that she could say in that instant and that would not make it worse.

Somehow, Minerva McGonagall had a feeling that hearing an apprentice cry her heart out over lost love was not a registered part of Transfiguration's mastership. And as to those tingling, strangely comforting impressions newly coursing through her, there was no way she was going to express them to one Albus Dumbledore. Maybe she could just transform, and...

It had to be just sorrow fogging her brains, anyway - yes, brains, a small voice answered in her, because this is definitely what it is about, brains. She was not going to fall in love with Albus Dumbledore on top of everything else. Now, really. With that reassurance in mind, she was able to sit up and open her eyes.

She took a sip of her hot chocolate.

"I am sorry, Professor Dumbledore," she said.

"Not at all, my dear, not at all."

This was really like him. She stole a glance and was surprised to see that, apart from charming, so much younger than his age, powerful but gentle, and the kind of nonsense that you could still hear from some older students, he also did look at ease. Well, he may have gathered from her earlier mumbling about being silly and overeffusive that nothing life-threatening was going on.

"Although," he completed, "I must admit to being curious as to what caused such a distress."

Fair enough. But still highly embarrassing.

Come to think of it, he may be well into his seventies, and she was pretty sure that some wizards were showing signs of age by then. Granted, her father was a Muggle, so she wouldn't know, but at not even sixty, he already harboured his share of white hair. Dumbledore simply didn't. He looked like an eccentric contemporary of her father on the old wedding photograph at her parents' home. Maybe just a tad bit older around the eyes...

"Not that you have to tell me, of course. But you never know, old men are sometimes able to help."

"I don't think so, Professor, but thank you for the kind offer."

She was going to tell him that she had already abused his time. But she felt like she needed the company. Yes, company, the voice snorted. This was becoming very annoying.

Albus Dumbledore was still looking at her questioningly.

Unexpectedly, and though still puffy eyed, she did grin and spoke, "I am sorry, Professor, this is just, somehow, really so undignified..."

"Don't worry, Minerva, we shall mark tonight as an exception, and come tomorrow morning, I will still be suitably afraid of my terrible apprentice's wrath. So, care to tell me whom that letter was from?"

"Which letter?" she asked automatically, but of course he had seen her mother's letter in her hand.

He looked at her pointedly. And she felt a few years younger. "That was a letter from my mother...," she said, "just giving me usual news from home."

She could see that he expected more. She just searched for words.

"Am I to understand that letters from your mother usually leave you crying on the stone floor of the castle?"

"I suppose that was an unusual side effect."

They stared at the fire for a minute.

**

"Professor?"

"Yes, Minerva."

"Three years ago, when I came back home, after Hogwarts, I fell in love with a Muggle boy. His name was Dougal."

She could still remember how it had felt. So different from the vague attraction that she had sometimes fleetingly felt for another student at Hogwarts. So different from the ghost of a crush that she had carried hidden and repressed inside her for a certain professor. It had felt whole and allowed and possible, too large and too good to be true, more true, though, than anything else she had ever thought she knew, including her own existence. Colours where brighter and life felt more... just more. But no.

If Dumbledore was surprised or curious, he was not letting it show.

"I did not marry him."

After a moment, he asked, "Why not?"

"It would have been another life. As the wife of a farmer. I wanted this life."

"Your position at the Ministry?"

"Or here."

Professor Dumbledore looked grave and took a deep breath. "I am glad that you chose this life Minerva. You do very well with the children. And do not mistake me: having you here is one of the best opportunities that life in this castle has offered me in a very long time."

Minerva found herself blushing again.

"But," he went on, and her heart shivered, "do you regret it?"

"Of course not!" she said, as though scandalized, then realised that her display of that evening might reasonably have suggested just that, "I mean: no, Professor. I don't. But somehow, the... finality of it."

Dumbledore looked at her.

"My mother writes that he just married another woman," she explained. And her voice shook.

"Oh."

He looked at her again, and she felt unsure of her own opacity. "Only the finality of it, then," he said.

"Yes."

He seemed to expect something else.

"I am glad that you chose this life, Minerva," he finally said.

And then, later, when she thought he would excuse himself, "And you should not be ashamed of still loving him. Nobody expects you to be devoid of feelings."

Minerva McGonagall could not remember having such an improper conversation with anyone before. Or so she told herself to justify the awkwardness that she felt.

"I don't... I am not trying to suppress feelings, Professor. Just to get over them."

"I am glad to hear that."

He hesitated.

"May I tell you a story of my own, Minerva?"

"Of course."

"Good. A difficult story, it is. But you may recognise some elements. For when I graduated from Hogwarts, I fell in love, too."

Minerva's heart fluttered without an apparent reason.

"Unfortunately, the similarities stop here. For where you probably made the right choice, I made the wrong one, although it was infinitely worse than any choice you could have made."

She looked at him questioningly.

"But we need a bit of context, here. Suffice to say that at that point, my family was seriously damaged already. My sister was to die that summer. But her life had in fact been torn apart years before, bringing the whole family with her."

He sighed and Minerva listened.

"My sister, Ariana, was attacked, as a child. It was, of course, a traumatic experience. But it also left her in a very unstable state, unable to control her magic. In fact, she was dangerous for herself and for people around, if she was not properly cared for. My father did what he thought he had to do and retaliated, which landed him in Azkaban. This happened one year before I entered Hogwarts. We were left without a father, and our sister took most of the energy that our mother was still able to give. My years here were a relief in many ways. And I believe they were also such a thing, in a way, for my brother, although he always felt somewhat at odds with the preposterous demands of studies..."

It seemed that Dumbledore wanted to stop there, but willed himself to carry on.

"On that summer of 1899, a second event touched our family. In an explosion of Ariana's magic, my mother died."

"Your mother..."

"Yes," he interrupted. "My brother wanted to quit school. I strongly opposed his decision and resolved to take my responsibilities as Ariana's guardian. But it was against my own heart and my youthful ambitions to see the world..."

Minerva thought again that he was going to fall silent.

"That was a conflicted situation. And then came someone else, and the situation deteriorated even further. For I had fallen in love..."

Minerva could not see what was the problem.

"... with a young man..."

Ah, said the small voice in her head, so much for finding him charming... Minerva tried to ignore the voice and the pang in her heart. That did explain why he never seemed interested in the numerous women who had eyed him for the past decade, though... Or did it? Minerva was so caught up in that train of thoughts that she nearly missed his broken voice...

"... named Gellert Grindewald."

And then she suddenly thought that this needed more explanations.

"Now, keep in mind that you might have heard of him,"...she snorted..."but at that point, I had not."

Well, that made sense.

"He was, nonetheless, dangerous. And I was a fool not to see it. My brother could sense it. And he thought that Gellert... that Grindewald was dangerous for our sister."

Dumbledore sighed.

"Mind you, he was probably right, for sooner or later she would have stood in his plans of having me help him in his dark design..."

Minerva paled at the idea.

"And you refused?" she heard herself asking,

"Oh no, I didn't. It had to come to a catastrophe to shake me out of my blindness."

"Did it?"

"Yes, and Ariana died in it, thus completing the circle of destruction that had befallen our family. And letting each of us alone, for I have not made peace with my brother ever since."

There was a long silence again. Minerva felt a very old, very cold sadness settle on them. So much for girly, giggling thoughts of light attraction to the man...

It seemed that love was bound to mean only destruction, renouncement, or tragedy.

She tried to shake those ideas away. And was befallen by stupid questions again.

"So you are... attracted to men." She made it sound rather like a statement, but it still rang out of place, and she regretted it immediately.

"So it appears...," he smiled, "from the meagre data that is available."

"Did you ever fall in love again?" she asked.

"I never did. Nor do I plan to. It had been quite a traumatic experience."

She wondered if that was a warning, and which one.

"Do you think... I wonder... I sometimes feel as if I will also stay forever... like..."

"Stay at Hogwarts and never allow yourself to fall in love again, like your old professor?"

"Mmm..."

"Minerva, don't you dare convince yourself of such nonsense," he said in a very intense voice, and then, much lighter, "As much as I like having you here all for myself," and her heart leapt again at that, which was making a habit of something preposterous, that had not even been there a few hours before, really - really? - yes, really... "as much as I appreciate your companionship, I am sure that some day, someone will come that will have much more to give to you."

She did not dare to lean on him again. Normality had settled back. And a sense of finality to youthful passions, too.