Chapter 5

Chapter 5

When he entered the Room of Requirement the next afternoon (the door appeared for him at once), the cottage was just as he'd left it ― except that Professor McGonagall didn't seem to be there.

Panic washed over him. "Professor!" he shouted, racing to peer into every corner of the little house. "Professor McGonagall!"

"Out here, Neville!" came her voice from behind the kitchen, and he felt almost boneless with relief.

Sure enough, there was a door at the back of the kitchen that had not been there before, and it opened onto a small stone terrace that looked out over the bleak but beautiful moors. There, seated at a wrought-iron table with a cup of tea in front of her, was the professor.

She was wearing a fitted robe of pale blue, completely unlike her teaching clothes, and her hair lay in loose plait over her shoulder. She smiled a greeting, and as Neville approached, another chair materialised. He sat down, his heart still pounding.

"How. . .? " he began, gesturing towards the table and the terrace.

"Isn't it amazing?" she asked, looking pleased. "I confess, I was getting a little stir-crazy here in the cottage, and rather worried at not seeing anyone. This morning, I finally decided I was going to go in search of you or Matron, danger or no danger, but. . .I couldn't find a way to get back into your school. I was so frustrated that I spoke aloud ― I think I said something like, 'I must get out of here," and suddenly this door appeared. When I came out, here was the table, with a note on it saying that you would be visiting soon. It turned to flame as soon as I'd read it, but. . .now here you are! What does it all mean?"

Neville leant back in his chair, finally able to relax. "It's the Room," he said. "The Room of Requirement. That's how it works. It gives you the things you most need. But you have to ask it right," he added. He wasn't sure how he knew this, but he did.

"Amazing," she said again. "Well, I'm glad you understand it, because I certainly don't. Thank you for explaining." She looked at him consideringly. "You're quite good at all of this. You must be a top student here."

"Well, not exactly," Neville mumbled, looking away.

"Oh, come now." It was the brisk voice Professor McGonagall used when timid students tried to insist they couldn't do the day's Transfiguration lesson. "You're just being modest. I saw how Matron and the others treated you; they clearly put a great deal of trust in you. And so do I."

"But. . ." She seemed really to mean it, yet Neville felt uncomfortable. He just knew his face was reddening.

The professor looked a little perturbed and leant over to touch his hand lightly. "There now, I've embarrassed you; I'm sorry. Let's talk of something else, shall we?" She looked out around the moors while Neville collected himself, and when she turned back, the atmosphere was easy again. The sun had even come out.

"It's a miraculous thing, Neville, your Room of Requirement," she said, waving her hand at their surroundings, "and so far, it has made me very welcome. Shall we try to walk a little on the moor? I see there's a path."

"All right, professor," said Neville, curious to see how far the Room could stretch to let them ramble. He rose, but surprisingly, McGonagall did not. Instead, she gazed at him, her head slightly tilted.

"Could I ask you a favour, Neville?" she said.

"Okay."

"Could you stop calling me 'professor'? You're not my student any longer, you said so yourself, and when you say 'professor'. . .well, I have no memory of being one, you see, and so it makes me feel like even more of a stranger to myself than I already am."

That made sense, he thought.

"So," she went on, "if you could just call me 'Minerva'. . ."

Neville caught his breath. If this had been that other Professor McGonagall, the one in the high-collared teaching robes and the hat and the tight bun, he doubted that he would have been able to even to look her in the eye.

But this woman, sitting bare-armed in the afternoon sun, with tendrils of dark hair curling round her neck in the damp air. . .well, she was different. She was looking at him so appealingly that Neville thought he would probably have agreed to anything she asked.

"I'll try. . .Minerva," he said, and the word wasn't nearly as hard to say as he'd thought it would be.

She cocked an amused eyebrow at him, just as her other self would have done. But somehow that look wasn't as scary as it used to be.

"Good," she said. "Because if you hadn't been able to manage 'Minerva,' I was going to insist on 'Goddess.'"

Neville burst out laughing. Professor McGonagall might be terrifying, but Minerva was turning out to be good fun.

"Come on," he said to her, just as he would have to Luna or Ginny. "Weren't we going to take a walk?" He turned and headed towards the stone stairs at the edge of the terrace.

"Wait!" said Minerva, now rising, too, and catching hold of his sleeve. "Be sure to stay on the path. Moors are treacherous places, and you shouldn't wander into them without a testing spell ― "

She broke off, looking puzzled. "Now, how do I know that, I wonder?"

"I think you grew up in a place like this," Neville said, before he remembered that he was not supposed to tell her such things.

"I see. . ." she replied vaguely, her eyes still troubled.

Neville thought he knew how she must feel, being brushed by the edges of memories that she could not catch.

"The memories are in there," he said on impulse. "In your head. I'm sure of it. They'll come back. Any time now."

"Thank you," she said, and he thought she meant it, even if they both feared he was probably wrong.

They walked on for a time, the moor plants blowing in shifting colours before them. The air was cool, but not unpleasantly so, and the silence was so companionable that when Minerva took his arm, as she had done that night in the infirmary, Neville again covered her hand with his.

He was beginning to enjoy this closeness with her, his professor-who-was-no-longer-his-professor, who seemed to take as much pleasure in his company as he was coming to take in hers and who was content to walk arm-in-arm with him, so close that he could smell the light, flowery scent she wore. Neville thought of himself as someone who knew his plants, but he couldn't place this one. . .was it flitterbloom blossoms, overlaid with midnight orchid? No. . .

Well, he liked it, whatever it was.

Eventually the path ended (the end of the Room's magical space? Neville wondered), and they turned back. They hadn't gone as far as he had thought, for the cottage looked quite close, and they were climbing the terrace steps in what seemed like no time.

Only then did Neville remember the food he'd brought with him. In his initial panic at not finding the professor, he'd dropped the parcel on the kitchen table and then had forgotten all about it.

"I brought you some dinner," he said to her now. "Chicken and roasted potatoes. I know Professor Sprout gave you supplies, but I thought you might be running low."

"Not at the moment," Minerva said. "But a chicken dinner sounds delicious. You'll stay to share it with me?"

Neville shook his head. "I need to get back now," he said, and it was true. He'd already stayed longer than he'd intended, and he didn't think he should have too many unexplained disappearances.

"Next time, perhaps," she said. "You'll come again?"

"Yes, tomorrow," he agreed, and took his leave, feeling both relieved and disappointed about not staying for dinner.

He was relieved, because part of him still wasn't sure how to handle this new, softer Professor McGonagall. . .except that he had hardly thought of her as "Professor McGonagall" during this entire visit. She was Minerva, a woman who laughed and smiled easily, who had unbraided her long hair to let it blow in the moor winds, and who had leant warmly against him as they'd walked.

And he was disappointed, because another part of him very much wanted to spend more time with her.