Chapter Four: January 1946

Chapter Four: January 1946

When Albus had entered the room, Minerva held her daughter tightly to her chest, not willing to let this man near their baby.

When he stepped closer to the bed and asked her if this was their child, Minerva glared at him, willing him to leave them alone. He ignored her fierce gaze and Conjured a chintz armchair near the head of her bed.

“Minerva, I am so sorry,” he said, tears dripping down his face. “I thought you were dead.”

She laughed humourlessly. “Not that you cared enough to check yourself,” she spat, relishing the injured look on Albus’s face.

“Alastor told me that you were hit by the Killing Curse,” Albus said defiantly. “He wouldn’t let me go back to find you – he said that he’d take care of finding your body.”

“So when did you find out that I was still alive?” she spat.

“This morning,” he said, looking her in the eye. “When I read the Daily Prophet.”

“And not before then?” she questioned him harshly. “Not when I saw you in the Minister’s office after Alastor had Portkeyed me back from Germany?” He shook his head, confused.

“Alastor never told me he found you in Germany,” he said, his frown increasing. “He said that he couldn’t even recover your wand…” He stood up and began to pace around the room.

“Then whom did I see in the Minister’s office?” she questioned him, still not believing his excuses.

“What day did you return?” he asked. She cocked her head to one side, thinking, before she shrugged her shoulders.

“I’m not sure… sometime in late June.”

Albus nodded his head. “I was in the States for the last two weeks of June and the first week of July,” Albus told her. “On my…” He trailed off, looking away from her.

“Yes?” she prompted him.

He looked down at the floor. “On my honeymoon.”

“Oh.” She leaned back against the cushions, his explanation hitting her like a particularly powerful curse.

“I don’t love her, Minerva,” he said, striding to the bed and kneeling next to it. “I love you. I was heartbroken when Alastor told me that you were dead – especially as he said you took the curse for me.” Tears dripped down his face and into his beard.

“Then why did you marry someone else?” she asked, her voice soft and deadly, but full of pain. “If you loved me, then how could you forget me so quickly?”

Tears continued to flow down his face, which seemed ancient in his grief. “I never forgot you, Minerva. When he told me that you were dead, it was as if the world had ended for me – I felt nothing anymore – nothing but pain. I went through the motions of livings – I couldn’t believe that this was not a nightmare. My parents tried to get me to start living again, and they arranged a marriage for me with Colleen. I only went through with it because Alastor said that you would not want me to be unhappy. Colleen’s family and mine have been friends for generations. Her parents, and mine, encouraged the marriage. By the time I realised what was happening was not a nightmare, that it was reality, it was too late, and we were Bonded.”

“Why didn’t Alastor tell you that he found me? Why did he lie to you?” Minerva asked him, fighting back tears of her own.

“I don’t know,” Albus said. “Maybe he didn’t tell me because I was already married – there was nothing – is nothing – I can do to break the Bond – unless Colleen agrees to break it. Maybe he wanted to save me some pain.”

“But what about me? He knew that I was carrying your child!” Minerva sobbed, tears finally breaking through. “How could he do this?”

“He knew?” Albus asked, straightening up, his tears put aside for another occasion. “How long had he known?”

“I found out the day Alastor brought me back from Germany. I fainted in the Minister’s office, and I was brought to Saint Mungo’s, where I found out that I was pregnant.”

Albus stood up, radiating fury. “How dare he,” he hissed, furious. He calmed himself before taking her hand.

“Minerva, if he had told me – if I had even the slightest inkling of information telling me that you were alive, I would have been at your side in a second. You are my everything – and though I hoped, when Alastor said that he could not find your body, that you were still alive, I trusted him and believed him when he said that he saw you die. My trust in him cost me too much – and I promise you that I will find out why he did this.”

“And then what? We’ll live happily ever after?”

“I don’t know what will happen after that,” Albus admitted, his head hanging. “I can ask Colleen to consent to break the Bond, but...”

“But you want to be together with her, as a family, to raise your child,” Minerva finished for him, her tone bitter.

“Please, Minerva, try to understand...” Albus began pleadingly.

She barked out a mirthless laugh. “Try to understand that you want to stay with your wife and have a happy family? No, I can’t understand that, especially when you are not even considering your daughter,” Minerva snapped.

“There is no good decision, Minerva,” he said. “Please understand why I am making this one.”

“I can’t understand it, Albus, and don’t ask me to. Now, please leave, before I do something that I will regret,” she dismissed him. Taking her free hand in his, he placed a kiss on the back, his lips barely touching her soft skin before she yanked her hand away from him.

“I love you, Minerva,” he whispered.

“Goodbye, Albus,” she said.

He walked out the door, looking back only once to see Minerva cradling their child.