Post by Drake on Jul 25, 2008 0:53:53 GMT -5
(A/N): Hello, and welcome to my epic!fic. And by epic, I mean epically long. Whether or not it is epically good is for you to decide. Though I somehow doubt this, nevertheless I cannot help but hope you love it as much as I do.
Feel free to skip this introduction. Firstly, it is pretentious as feck, possibly even more so than the fic itself. This, I trust you will find, is an extremely difficult thing to have accomplished. Secondly it is very long.
You may or may not have noticed that I more or less disappeared from this forum for almost a year. This is because, once I had finished this fic, I had said all I needed to say about how I view the passionate, mercurial, and not-entirely-healthy relationship between Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall. It was astonishing, because honestly, I'd ficced these two in my head and notebooks before I even knew what fanfiction was, and yet, I'd finished with them. The thought still completely blows my mind.
I would like to caution those among you who like it light that things do get dark and nasty and borderline abusive. It is entirely psychological abuse, of course, but perhaps this only makes matters worse. There are some parts that are supposed to be humorous, and some that should strike you a sweet, but all in all, this is not your baby cousin's ADMM.
(This an indulgent enough introduction yet? No? OK, then. I'll quote "De Profundis" at the beginning. Maybe that'll make me enough of a shmuck to have written this thing.
)
Altogether, I really hope that this is not overly-grandiloquent, and instead actually good. Personally, I believe it is the best thing I've written, but, then again. I am wrong more often than not.
Oh dear. Now the nerves have set in.
Still, I sincerely hope you enjoy.
~Fran.
EDIT: As I should have afore mentioned, this fic is rated T.
"Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. Some day people will realise what that means. They will know nothing of life till they do."
~Oscar Wilde
Luxuria
Minerva McGonagall has beautiful hands.
He notices this one night at dinner, while she is in the middle of an animated discussion with a few of the other professors. She uses her them liberally. They mold and sculpt her points in air, and sometimes paint them off in the distance, and then frame the painting and showcase it to her audience.
They are not conventionally beautiful. Yes, they are long and white and have cunning, pointed fingers, but her nails are ragged and too short from where she has nibbled away at them.
But there is something beautiful in delicate blue vein that ropes its way up her arm to her palm. The digits on her left hand that curve ever so slightly as they grasp the neck of her glass. The weight of the glass rests primarily on her thumb. She is rather careless with it, flicking it towards Kettleburn to emphasize her point. She sniffs its contents absentmindedly, and then begins to drink. As the glass touches her lips, she seems to have a thought, and lowers it a degree. But it is a butterfly thought, and it is soon shattered. She frowns hazily, trying in vain to rebuild it for a fraction of a moment before giving up. She drinks.
The contrast of her silver hands against the gold goblet is striking. Beside her, Fillius Flitwick says something funny, and she laughs, coughing her pumpkin juice back up. The rim of the goblet digs into her chin, and a bright red curve appears there. She presses three fingers to the spot, grimacing vaguely.
Ouch, she whispers reverently, as if she were discovering something new and precious.
Fillius Flitwick is very concerned for her.
Castitas
There may not be an excess of them, but there are boys.
There are boys who are want help with homework. There are painful boys as gawky as she is who think that they love her, and do love her, but not as they think. They love her for a moment; they are infatuated. They soon forget her.
This one is different. He is urgent and serious and smoldering with a quiet intensity. He grips her hand in both of his and fixes his sharp, clear eyes upon her face.
She stopped offering them excuses a long time ago. In her third and fourth years, her excuse had been that she just didn't feel ready for a relationship like that. That excuse had proved convenient. There were numerous benefits to being a “mature young woman,” as well as a smart one. There were many mothers that wished their sons to marry someone like that young Minnie McGonagall. The teachers swallowed it up greedily, as well. Here, at last, a girl focused more on her schoolwork than on boys. What a welcome relief.
In her fifth year, she said that she was interested in someone else. She refused to say who. That had, of course, started all manner of dreadful rumors, none of them as terrible as the ones that would whiz by her ear if anyone knew who it was she really fancied.
But now, she is seventeen, and all of her carefully crafted excuses die in her throat. She merely shakes her head slowly, and does not meet the boy’s eyes.
After all, how can she tell him the only one she would say “yes” to is never going to ask her?
Gula
He is not even sure he understands his fixation with sweets.
However, he knows that it has less to do with the sweets themselves and more to do with their meanings. They are cheerful, happy things, in vivid colors and dazzling patterns, swirled and speckled and iridescent and translucent and rainbow-striped and color-changing. He loves colors. And the world can be a very dark place. Hard candies are his favorite. They stay longer and sometimes take a while to pay off. They are like spouses, whereas soft candies are instantly satisfying and short-lived and bit like courtesans. She’d be a bright, round peppermint, were she a candy.
He especially likes lemon drops. They are multi-faceted and sour. And if one eats too many in a short stretch of time (he does) one’s mouth is raw and pained.
He was chewing on Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum, he remembers, all throughout his famous deal with Grindlewald. No one else knows. He is sure no one would understand but himself. There are memories in that gum. He remembers chewing it during late-night meetings with Gellert, popping bubbles to accentuate crucial ideas.
He tells Minerva McGonagall this, with an air of gravest importance, as if it were some dark secret, a boggart he had kept locked in his trunk for years and years. To him, it always rather had been.
She squeezes her eyes shut, as if to clear an image from her head, and then opens them. He finds that when she does, her eyebrows vanish into her hairline. She shakes her head violently, as if to shake off the expression. Tugging on the back of her neck, she looks at the floor and sighs deeply.
He knows she understands.
Temperare
She lives a spartan existence.
She rises every morning at five-o-clock (sometimes even earlier, if she has too sneak back to her own quarters) and drinks a cup of black coffee, the coffee that is her one and only vice. And she needs it. Desperately.
She grades yesterday’s papers before breakfast. Sometimes she has to dash out to the kitchens to get some herbs and potions and other, more arcane things afterwards. This is so she can perform a quick mood-cleansing charm that she was certain was going to be ludicrously false but actually turned out to be quite useful.
Grammar. Why do their parents not teach them basic grammar?
She thanks Pomona, mentally, for the charm. She’s getting two boxes of Honeydukes next major gift-giving occasion, no matter what she says. And she will say something. She dearly loves Pomona, always giving the most and getting the least. But that’s the way she likes it.
Sometimes Albus creeps in and sits down next to her, or across from her. It depends on where they were the night before.
He does this to suffer with her, he says, kissing her cheek. She won’t look up, of course. He knows this, but it still makes him frown a little bit.
He sips his cocoa discriminatorily. He looks over her shoulder and wonders what she’s doing. He peers in her mug and remarks that it looks like mud. He gets a swat on the head for his efforts. He fills out forms or doodles or looks out the window or flicks little pieces of parchment at her, trying to distract her.
She chastises him. He says that he’ll stop for a kiss. She says that she’ll kiss him if he stops.
It is assumed that they both understand the distinction.
Acedia
There are days when he does not want to rise from bed.
He would be perfectly content, thank you very much, to burrow under his spangled plum covers with a good novel and a cup of hot chocolate. His bed is warm, his pillow deep, and he could easily sleep for another three hours, if his duties and his conscience would let him. He does not want to face the world of Minerva McGonagall and her beautiful hands and her pretty white smile and her particular way of not seeming to notice that he loves her.
Ugly things happen in that world. He has lost Gellert, and Nicolas, and Ariana and Mother and Father. And dear, sweet, smiling Pernelle. She used to make him cookies with little rainbow chocolate pieces when he visited. She was very pretty, curly and curvy and freckled and merry. Even when her husband lay dying and she sat beside him growing weaker, she smiled. He had loved her.
Love. Now that is something he does not want to think of, especially not now, not when Hagrid kissed Minerva McGonagall’s cheek last night and she giggled. That she may have been drunk is little consolation. In his experience, alcohol has only unlocked hidden traits and desires in its victims, but it has never placed them there.
There is grey light seeping through his window. He is getting old, or 4:30 is getting earlier, or house-elves are becoming less accurate. One of the three is true. He is inclined to believe the middle option. Even now, he can hear Bibsy’s slapping little footsteps coming down the hall with his hot chocolate and Prophet. He groans and rolls over, burying his face into his pillow, pretending he is dreaming it.
Industria
There are rings under her eyes, and as she reads him his itinerary for the day, she yawns. It takes her a moment to notice that she is doing so, and she finds herself standing in front of the Headmaster with her mouth wide open. Quickly, she hides it behind her hands, blushing hysterically. He looks at her with his blue, blue eyes, the ones that see everything.
Why didn’t you sleep last night, he asks softly from behind the temple of his fingers.
She ducks her head and bites her lower lip, wrings her hands and rubs her forearm behind her back.
I was doing paperwork, she whispers abashedly.
He sighs and closes his eyes, inclining his chair a fraction of a degree, popping a Peppermint Toad in his mouth. He chews it thoughtfully.
Are you trying to kill yourself, he asks. If you are, please remember that a mediocre job as a substitute Transfigurations teacher is not worth the shedding of blood.
She shakes her head furiously. Sir, I’ll be a full-time Transfigurations professor come December (if all goes well)… but I’m not trying to kill myself, she protests, I just forgot to do it during my free period, and so I…
He waves his hand to silence her. None of that. Just go to bed.
But sir! she protests, I have work to do today!
Please, Miss McGonagall, he interrupts, waving his hand to vanish all her protests, I will deal with that. Just go get some rest, for Merlin’s sake. He appears stern, but his eyes are twinkling.
Thank you, sir. She inclines her head slightly. And then scampers off, but does not quite make it to her chambers.
She crash-lands onto a couch in the vacant staff room and sleeps for hours.
Avaritia
She thinks that she asks too much of him, although she would like to ask a great deal more.
She rolls over and props herself up on her side with one arm. He traces phoenixes and stags and stars and abstract shapes on her stomach and the skin between her breasts. And then a curving slope around her bellybutton, and then four more lines. She starts to jolt up and stops herself and crashes back into the pillows.
What was that one? she asks sharply, jolting up.
It is winter, but she pulls away and turns so that her stomach is protected from his doodling.
It tickles, she says. She is not lying.
She tells him what she wants, and he laughs a little, but he agrees. It would not be so truly terrible to stay there all day, cocooned in blankets and sheets and even the tartan dressing gown that did not quite make it to the floor. And even if they can not do that, she wishes they could at least spend an entire day together. For once.
She flips herself back over and lands in the small mound of pillows with a soft bounce. Her hair pools around her head, and trickles down to his face. He smiles at her and braids a strand of it into his beard. She watches him scientifically, the great green pendulums of her eyes swaying back and forth, back and forth. She looks very much the cat. And then, catlike, she bats his wrist, untangling her hair. He sighs and tucks the strand behind her ear. Gripping his wrist as he tries to draw it back, she touches his hand to her face. She nuzzles it, kissing his palm. It is as soft and strong as a twenty-year-old’s. After a while, he reclaims it, and lies down again.
He has not closed his eyes for long before he feels a delicate, scratchy tickling on his left arm, and straightens up in shock. She has conjured a great, flamboyant quill, and she is writing something on his skin.
“Property of Minerva McGonagall.”
Liberalitas
He knows the poor dear is miserable at events like these. Although this is ---as he pointed out before they left--- a benefit for a very noble cause.
Tonight, the cause is St. Mungo’s. The exact nature of the benefit itself, however, is somewhat nebulous. It appears to be either a concert or an art auction. Or perhaps it is an art gallery. Whatever it is, the punch is excellent. He discovers this after he finishes dragging his assistant around to meet all the important people in attendance.
He sips it, tasting strawberry ice-cream, Butterbeer, some sort of red fruit juice, and just a hint of Firewhiskey. As a result, it is a pleasant, rosy-gold color. The texture is nice, too. It froths and bubbles and appears almost solid until he drinks it. He also thinks he caught a glimpse of a wide variety of little cakes, rare cheeses, and other assorted hors-des-vours that he will have to go back for later.
The chamber orchestra playing near the staircase is excellent. They are playing a Wizard concerto, but her thinks he recognizes a strain of melody similar to his favorite Mozart composition, and would remark on this if there were anyone else who cared. As it is, there is no one, and he sips his punch in silence.
He truly enjoys benefits. They always have the most delicious punch. He remarks on this to a young assistant to the Minister, who smiles politely and catches sight of an old acquaintance across the room. Unfortunately, Minerva McGonagall chooses this exact time to get entangled into her obligatory embarrassing situation. Tonight, it involves ruining Ambassador Wennanborg’s champagne-colored satin dress robes. Minerva is completely mortified.
He thinks she is very pretty when she is blushing.
Ira
She hurls the balled-up socks at his head. She did not expect them to hit him.
Unfortunately, they do, and he swivels around in total shock, his glasses askew. She claps her hands over her mouth. Her eyes widen. In all their years, she has known him to be a gracious, easygoing man, but then, no one has ever thrown dirty socks at his face before. To her knowledge, at least. This, perhaps, is something she will ask him about later, provided that he ever speaks to her again.
There is no hint of mirth in his eyes. He is still stunned, and he looks at her inquisitively, as a tiny child would look at a strange beetle. She wrings her hands and bites her lip. He looks up at the socks, and then down at her.
He smiles.
The ball has fallen apart, and one sock falls from the top of his head, sliding down his face. Her charms did not do what they were supposed to. But they were cast in haste and a tremendous rage. Another sock is caught on his ear. It flaps about ridiculously as he moves. She snorts, covering her mouth and nose, trying to suffocate the giggles that bubble in her throat anyway and spill out all over their chambers. He smiles, his eyes twinkling again, and brushes it off.
Not five minutes ago, they had been shouting. She is sure of it. She is also sure that she lost her temper first, and that whatever they were fighting about was most likely her fault, and that all of this is totally insignificant compared with the dilemma of getting a third sock with a Permanent-Sticking charm attached to it off his nose.
They may even have to break it again.
Patientia
He hasn’t slept in three days.
If he doesn’t stop insisting on trying to tire himself to death, she tells him, she is going to have to kill him.
She jabs her finger dangerously near his eye as she says this. They stand like this for a moment, and a strand of hair slips out of her bun and down her face.
Don’t move, he whispers. Please, please, don’t move.
She doesn’t.
He leans his head into the finger she has thrust in his face; he leans in until it rests against his lips. Slowly, slowly, he circles his hand against her wrist and kisses her palm and fingertips and the back of her hand.
Albus, she begs him, think about what you are doing.
He doesn’t. He is tired of thinking. He has thought too much. Thinking ruins everything.
He grips her hand tighter and kisses her wrist, and lets his lips stay there for years and years.
The strand of hair in her face swings in and out, in and out as she breathes.
Never letting go of her wrist, he steps in closer to her, until their faces touch. She closes her eyes. Please don’t do this, she whispers against his lips, it will break my heart.
She does not follow her advice to herself. She kisses him chastely, just a brush on the lips, it was supposed to be a demure, naive, almost platonic, even, expression of innocent affection, but then he tilts his head and opens his mouth and it becomes something else. She finds that she is crying, and her tears mingle with his tears, and he breaks her into tiny pieces, softly, softly, like the gentleman that he is.
That he will put her back together later is of no consolation to wither of them.
He has waited for this a long time, he says.
Invidia
In her seventh year, a tiny third year adores her. He is not so much of a god that he cannot dislike him.
When he runs into her some years later, she is on the arm of a man whose name he has since forgotten. But he still not a god, no matter what she thinks. He hates it.
When she is fifty, she grows very close to Fillius Flitwick and he hates him.
Can’t you talk about anything else, he interrupts curtly as she tells him of the funny thing that happened to them yesterday. I’m tired of hearing about you and Fillius Flitwick.
She is taken aback by this remark and looks a little hurt. He doesn’t care. He’s entitled to break her heart a little bit; she’s been breaking his heart for years and years. She flushes, humiliated, and looks very lovely. He represses the urge to smile.
Well, not everyone can be as scintillating a conservationist as you, she retorts quietly, looking as though she is going to start to cry. She tucks her hair behind her ear and looks steadfastly out the window. The teacup cradled in her hands clouds her glasses. She swallows a lump in her throat and excuses herself to leave.
The portraits mutter disapprovingly amongst themselves. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care a bit. He doesn’t care. He’s in the right. She talked about him too much. He was tired of hearing it. He was only being honest.
She deserves to have a bit of a broken heart. She’s been breaking his heart for years and years.
He hides his smile behind his steepled fingers.
He knows she will not be seeing as much of Fillius Flitwick from now on.
Humanitas
She finds him glorious. She loves him as the sun.
How hard it is, to belong to him so fully, so completely, when his own heart is divided into two or a thousand pieces. And to know that he could not be any other way, and would not be any other way, and that if he was not that way, he would be wrong, and she would not love him.
And as he sleeps, to listen to him murmuring quietly, calling all manner of names that are never her own! His name most of all, always his name, crying out for him, weeping for him, dreaming of him. And she dreams of it too, dwells on it, obsesses over it. Her poor diary is probably tired of receiving entire pages of nothing but That Name with the words “I hate” as a preface. If this is childish, then she is a child. She has been told, after all, that green is her color.
And then there’s the other him. The him with whom the affair that he had ended long ago, except that the other him is still passionately in love with her him.
This makes perfect sense, because no one ever falls out of love with Albus Dumbledore.
He’s let her read some of the old letters. And, she concedes, some of the not-old letter. She wants to belong to that Albus, the one from whose mouth endearments fell like diamonds and pearls, who let sentiment and affection flow like wine and honey. She wants him to tell her the Idea that made him so very quiet last night, or the Notion that caused him to chuckle into his pudding. Just once. Just once. Just once, she needs for him to tell her something. She needs for him to say something.
And perhaps, this is the hardest part of all. He does not say anything. He does not say the words “I love you.”
But she understands.
Superbia
She hates formal events like these with a passion.
She is always sure she is going to fall and twist her ankle. She’d consider it a huge success if she made it through the night with her pride intact. He seems to enjoy them thoroughly, however. She is sure this is because he has no dignity to worry about. They call him eccentric, so he can get away with anything.
She is having a decent enough time until one of the violinists from the chamber orchestra decides to get punch at the same time she does. They collide and she spills punch all over an elegant foreign dignitary whose name and title she has forgotten.
Afterwards, she attempts to hide in background. Unfortunately, he always insists on having her within quiet calling distance. And, of course, everyone remembers her when they see her near him. She is made to shake a great many people’s hands and smile and pretend she knows exactly who they are, wondering all the while if she could just have contracted dragonpox instead.
After he insists on introducing her to the Minister, she pulls him into the alcove behind the stairs and pins him to the wall.
She’s going to kill him for making her go to this fiasco, she says, waving her finger in his face.
He smiles merrily.
At least it will be a pleasant death, he murmurs softly, closing his eyes, to be killed by such a lovely creature.
She sighs, not in the mood for his silliness, and commands him to stop making fun of her.
He smiles apologetically. But, in all seriousness, he says, looking into her eyes with great intensity, death by Minerva sounds quite appealing.
She does not know what to make of this.
Humilitas
He is tired of being a hero.
She adores him, and he knows that now. But he is not her sun and moon and stars, not really, no matter what she says, no matter what she pleads in the middle of the night, when the stars are cold and everyone else is asleep. She loves only the illusion he has built for the world, and he can have none of that, not when he loves her, has loved her, so fully, so completely, for so long. She needs to hate him, because he deserves it and she loves too much.
He often thinks he would hate her for this.
He climbs the stairs to his office, where she is waiting for him. She looks anxious, as if awaiting an executioner. His or hers, he isn’t sure.
He sits down and leans into her, and tells her everything. She listens attentively, detachedly, like a schoolgirl learning lessons. Her eyes do not leave his face, and he rips away the layers of illusion like so much wet paper. Her expression remains the same. He wishes it would change. He wishes she would hate him.
When he is finished, he leans back in his chair and folds his hands in his lap. When he is finished, he buries his head in his hands. When he is finished, he begins to cry.
As great, heaving sobs rip him into pieces, she cups his face in her hands and raises his head to the light. She holds on tightly, she does not let him go.
She presses her beautiful, whole, white hand to his ruined one and threads her fingers through his. Forehead to forehead, nose to nose, heart to heart, she holds him close. She does not let him go.
Epilogue (Justicia)
When she wants to think, she visits his grave.
Sometimes she wonders where he is.
Sometimes she wonders who he is there with.
Mostly, though, she dosen’t think about that, and watches the students. Once, she wanted children of her own. Once, she hated him for knowing it was impossible.
But she understands now.
They have hundreds of children, they have thousands of children! They always have, and they will teach them and scold them and love them even after the castle falls to pieces and crumbles to dust about their feet.
Through their children, they shall inherit the world.
Feel free to skip this introduction. Firstly, it is pretentious as feck, possibly even more so than the fic itself. This, I trust you will find, is an extremely difficult thing to have accomplished. Secondly it is very long.
You may or may not have noticed that I more or less disappeared from this forum for almost a year. This is because, once I had finished this fic, I had said all I needed to say about how I view the passionate, mercurial, and not-entirely-healthy relationship between Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall. It was astonishing, because honestly, I'd ficced these two in my head and notebooks before I even knew what fanfiction was, and yet, I'd finished with them. The thought still completely blows my mind.
I would like to caution those among you who like it light that things do get dark and nasty and borderline abusive. It is entirely psychological abuse, of course, but perhaps this only makes matters worse. There are some parts that are supposed to be humorous, and some that should strike you a sweet, but all in all, this is not your baby cousin's ADMM.
(This an indulgent enough introduction yet? No? OK, then. I'll quote "De Profundis" at the beginning. Maybe that'll make me enough of a shmuck to have written this thing.
)Altogether, I really hope that this is not overly-grandiloquent, and instead actually good. Personally, I believe it is the best thing I've written, but, then again. I am wrong more often than not.
Oh dear. Now the nerves have set in.
Still, I sincerely hope you enjoy.
~Fran.
EDIT: As I should have afore mentioned, this fic is rated T.
XxX
"Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. Some day people will realise what that means. They will know nothing of life till they do."
~Oscar Wilde
SEVEN
Luxuria
Minerva McGonagall has beautiful hands.
He notices this one night at dinner, while she is in the middle of an animated discussion with a few of the other professors. She uses her them liberally. They mold and sculpt her points in air, and sometimes paint them off in the distance, and then frame the painting and showcase it to her audience.
They are not conventionally beautiful. Yes, they are long and white and have cunning, pointed fingers, but her nails are ragged and too short from where she has nibbled away at them.
But there is something beautiful in delicate blue vein that ropes its way up her arm to her palm. The digits on her left hand that curve ever so slightly as they grasp the neck of her glass. The weight of the glass rests primarily on her thumb. She is rather careless with it, flicking it towards Kettleburn to emphasize her point. She sniffs its contents absentmindedly, and then begins to drink. As the glass touches her lips, she seems to have a thought, and lowers it a degree. But it is a butterfly thought, and it is soon shattered. She frowns hazily, trying in vain to rebuild it for a fraction of a moment before giving up. She drinks.
The contrast of her silver hands against the gold goblet is striking. Beside her, Fillius Flitwick says something funny, and she laughs, coughing her pumpkin juice back up. The rim of the goblet digs into her chin, and a bright red curve appears there. She presses three fingers to the spot, grimacing vaguely.
Ouch, she whispers reverently, as if she were discovering something new and precious.
Fillius Flitwick is very concerned for her.
Castitas
There may not be an excess of them, but there are boys.
There are boys who are want help with homework. There are painful boys as gawky as she is who think that they love her, and do love her, but not as they think. They love her for a moment; they are infatuated. They soon forget her.
This one is different. He is urgent and serious and smoldering with a quiet intensity. He grips her hand in both of his and fixes his sharp, clear eyes upon her face.
She stopped offering them excuses a long time ago. In her third and fourth years, her excuse had been that she just didn't feel ready for a relationship like that. That excuse had proved convenient. There were numerous benefits to being a “mature young woman,” as well as a smart one. There were many mothers that wished their sons to marry someone like that young Minnie McGonagall. The teachers swallowed it up greedily, as well. Here, at last, a girl focused more on her schoolwork than on boys. What a welcome relief.
In her fifth year, she said that she was interested in someone else. She refused to say who. That had, of course, started all manner of dreadful rumors, none of them as terrible as the ones that would whiz by her ear if anyone knew who it was she really fancied.
But now, she is seventeen, and all of her carefully crafted excuses die in her throat. She merely shakes her head slowly, and does not meet the boy’s eyes.
After all, how can she tell him the only one she would say “yes” to is never going to ask her?
XxX
Gula
He is not even sure he understands his fixation with sweets.
However, he knows that it has less to do with the sweets themselves and more to do with their meanings. They are cheerful, happy things, in vivid colors and dazzling patterns, swirled and speckled and iridescent and translucent and rainbow-striped and color-changing. He loves colors. And the world can be a very dark place. Hard candies are his favorite. They stay longer and sometimes take a while to pay off. They are like spouses, whereas soft candies are instantly satisfying and short-lived and bit like courtesans. She’d be a bright, round peppermint, were she a candy.
He especially likes lemon drops. They are multi-faceted and sour. And if one eats too many in a short stretch of time (he does) one’s mouth is raw and pained.
He was chewing on Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum, he remembers, all throughout his famous deal with Grindlewald. No one else knows. He is sure no one would understand but himself. There are memories in that gum. He remembers chewing it during late-night meetings with Gellert, popping bubbles to accentuate crucial ideas.
He tells Minerva McGonagall this, with an air of gravest importance, as if it were some dark secret, a boggart he had kept locked in his trunk for years and years. To him, it always rather had been.
She squeezes her eyes shut, as if to clear an image from her head, and then opens them. He finds that when she does, her eyebrows vanish into her hairline. She shakes her head violently, as if to shake off the expression. Tugging on the back of her neck, she looks at the floor and sighs deeply.
He knows she understands.
Temperare
She lives a spartan existence.
She rises every morning at five-o-clock (sometimes even earlier, if she has too sneak back to her own quarters) and drinks a cup of black coffee, the coffee that is her one and only vice. And she needs it. Desperately.
She grades yesterday’s papers before breakfast. Sometimes she has to dash out to the kitchens to get some herbs and potions and other, more arcane things afterwards. This is so she can perform a quick mood-cleansing charm that she was certain was going to be ludicrously false but actually turned out to be quite useful.
Grammar. Why do their parents not teach them basic grammar?
She thanks Pomona, mentally, for the charm. She’s getting two boxes of Honeydukes next major gift-giving occasion, no matter what she says. And she will say something. She dearly loves Pomona, always giving the most and getting the least. But that’s the way she likes it.
Sometimes Albus creeps in and sits down next to her, or across from her. It depends on where they were the night before.
He does this to suffer with her, he says, kissing her cheek. She won’t look up, of course. He knows this, but it still makes him frown a little bit.
He sips his cocoa discriminatorily. He looks over her shoulder and wonders what she’s doing. He peers in her mug and remarks that it looks like mud. He gets a swat on the head for his efforts. He fills out forms or doodles or looks out the window or flicks little pieces of parchment at her, trying to distract her.
She chastises him. He says that he’ll stop for a kiss. She says that she’ll kiss him if he stops.
It is assumed that they both understand the distinction.
XxX
Acedia
There are days when he does not want to rise from bed.
He would be perfectly content, thank you very much, to burrow under his spangled plum covers with a good novel and a cup of hot chocolate. His bed is warm, his pillow deep, and he could easily sleep for another three hours, if his duties and his conscience would let him. He does not want to face the world of Minerva McGonagall and her beautiful hands and her pretty white smile and her particular way of not seeming to notice that he loves her.
Ugly things happen in that world. He has lost Gellert, and Nicolas, and Ariana and Mother and Father. And dear, sweet, smiling Pernelle. She used to make him cookies with little rainbow chocolate pieces when he visited. She was very pretty, curly and curvy and freckled and merry. Even when her husband lay dying and she sat beside him growing weaker, she smiled. He had loved her.
Love. Now that is something he does not want to think of, especially not now, not when Hagrid kissed Minerva McGonagall’s cheek last night and she giggled. That she may have been drunk is little consolation. In his experience, alcohol has only unlocked hidden traits and desires in its victims, but it has never placed them there.
There is grey light seeping through his window. He is getting old, or 4:30 is getting earlier, or house-elves are becoming less accurate. One of the three is true. He is inclined to believe the middle option. Even now, he can hear Bibsy’s slapping little footsteps coming down the hall with his hot chocolate and Prophet. He groans and rolls over, burying his face into his pillow, pretending he is dreaming it.
Industria
There are rings under her eyes, and as she reads him his itinerary for the day, she yawns. It takes her a moment to notice that she is doing so, and she finds herself standing in front of the Headmaster with her mouth wide open. Quickly, she hides it behind her hands, blushing hysterically. He looks at her with his blue, blue eyes, the ones that see everything.
Why didn’t you sleep last night, he asks softly from behind the temple of his fingers.
She ducks her head and bites her lower lip, wrings her hands and rubs her forearm behind her back.
I was doing paperwork, she whispers abashedly.
He sighs and closes his eyes, inclining his chair a fraction of a degree, popping a Peppermint Toad in his mouth. He chews it thoughtfully.
Are you trying to kill yourself, he asks. If you are, please remember that a mediocre job as a substitute Transfigurations teacher is not worth the shedding of blood.
She shakes her head furiously. Sir, I’ll be a full-time Transfigurations professor come December (if all goes well)… but I’m not trying to kill myself, she protests, I just forgot to do it during my free period, and so I…
He waves his hand to silence her. None of that. Just go to bed.
But sir! she protests, I have work to do today!
Please, Miss McGonagall, he interrupts, waving his hand to vanish all her protests, I will deal with that. Just go get some rest, for Merlin’s sake. He appears stern, but his eyes are twinkling.
Thank you, sir. She inclines her head slightly. And then scampers off, but does not quite make it to her chambers.
She crash-lands onto a couch in the vacant staff room and sleeps for hours.
XxX
Avaritia
She thinks that she asks too much of him, although she would like to ask a great deal more.
She rolls over and props herself up on her side with one arm. He traces phoenixes and stags and stars and abstract shapes on her stomach and the skin between her breasts. And then a curving slope around her bellybutton, and then four more lines. She starts to jolt up and stops herself and crashes back into the pillows.
What was that one? she asks sharply, jolting up.
It is winter, but she pulls away and turns so that her stomach is protected from his doodling.
It tickles, she says. She is not lying.
She tells him what she wants, and he laughs a little, but he agrees. It would not be so truly terrible to stay there all day, cocooned in blankets and sheets and even the tartan dressing gown that did not quite make it to the floor. And even if they can not do that, she wishes they could at least spend an entire day together. For once.
She flips herself back over and lands in the small mound of pillows with a soft bounce. Her hair pools around her head, and trickles down to his face. He smiles at her and braids a strand of it into his beard. She watches him scientifically, the great green pendulums of her eyes swaying back and forth, back and forth. She looks very much the cat. And then, catlike, she bats his wrist, untangling her hair. He sighs and tucks the strand behind her ear. Gripping his wrist as he tries to draw it back, she touches his hand to her face. She nuzzles it, kissing his palm. It is as soft and strong as a twenty-year-old’s. After a while, he reclaims it, and lies down again.
He has not closed his eyes for long before he feels a delicate, scratchy tickling on his left arm, and straightens up in shock. She has conjured a great, flamboyant quill, and she is writing something on his skin.
“Property of Minerva McGonagall.”
Liberalitas
He knows the poor dear is miserable at events like these. Although this is ---as he pointed out before they left--- a benefit for a very noble cause.
Tonight, the cause is St. Mungo’s. The exact nature of the benefit itself, however, is somewhat nebulous. It appears to be either a concert or an art auction. Or perhaps it is an art gallery. Whatever it is, the punch is excellent. He discovers this after he finishes dragging his assistant around to meet all the important people in attendance.
He sips it, tasting strawberry ice-cream, Butterbeer, some sort of red fruit juice, and just a hint of Firewhiskey. As a result, it is a pleasant, rosy-gold color. The texture is nice, too. It froths and bubbles and appears almost solid until he drinks it. He also thinks he caught a glimpse of a wide variety of little cakes, rare cheeses, and other assorted hors-des-vours that he will have to go back for later.
The chamber orchestra playing near the staircase is excellent. They are playing a Wizard concerto, but her thinks he recognizes a strain of melody similar to his favorite Mozart composition, and would remark on this if there were anyone else who cared. As it is, there is no one, and he sips his punch in silence.
He truly enjoys benefits. They always have the most delicious punch. He remarks on this to a young assistant to the Minister, who smiles politely and catches sight of an old acquaintance across the room. Unfortunately, Minerva McGonagall chooses this exact time to get entangled into her obligatory embarrassing situation. Tonight, it involves ruining Ambassador Wennanborg’s champagne-colored satin dress robes. Minerva is completely mortified.
He thinks she is very pretty when she is blushing.
XxX
Ira
She hurls the balled-up socks at his head. She did not expect them to hit him.
Unfortunately, they do, and he swivels around in total shock, his glasses askew. She claps her hands over her mouth. Her eyes widen. In all their years, she has known him to be a gracious, easygoing man, but then, no one has ever thrown dirty socks at his face before. To her knowledge, at least. This, perhaps, is something she will ask him about later, provided that he ever speaks to her again.
There is no hint of mirth in his eyes. He is still stunned, and he looks at her inquisitively, as a tiny child would look at a strange beetle. She wrings her hands and bites her lip. He looks up at the socks, and then down at her.
He smiles.
The ball has fallen apart, and one sock falls from the top of his head, sliding down his face. Her charms did not do what they were supposed to. But they were cast in haste and a tremendous rage. Another sock is caught on his ear. It flaps about ridiculously as he moves. She snorts, covering her mouth and nose, trying to suffocate the giggles that bubble in her throat anyway and spill out all over their chambers. He smiles, his eyes twinkling again, and brushes it off.
Not five minutes ago, they had been shouting. She is sure of it. She is also sure that she lost her temper first, and that whatever they were fighting about was most likely her fault, and that all of this is totally insignificant compared with the dilemma of getting a third sock with a Permanent-Sticking charm attached to it off his nose.
They may even have to break it again.
Patientia
He hasn’t slept in three days.
If he doesn’t stop insisting on trying to tire himself to death, she tells him, she is going to have to kill him.
She jabs her finger dangerously near his eye as she says this. They stand like this for a moment, and a strand of hair slips out of her bun and down her face.
Don’t move, he whispers. Please, please, don’t move.
She doesn’t.
He leans his head into the finger she has thrust in his face; he leans in until it rests against his lips. Slowly, slowly, he circles his hand against her wrist and kisses her palm and fingertips and the back of her hand.
Albus, she begs him, think about what you are doing.
He doesn’t. He is tired of thinking. He has thought too much. Thinking ruins everything.
He grips her hand tighter and kisses her wrist, and lets his lips stay there for years and years.
The strand of hair in her face swings in and out, in and out as she breathes.
Never letting go of her wrist, he steps in closer to her, until their faces touch. She closes her eyes. Please don’t do this, she whispers against his lips, it will break my heart.
She does not follow her advice to herself. She kisses him chastely, just a brush on the lips, it was supposed to be a demure, naive, almost platonic, even, expression of innocent affection, but then he tilts his head and opens his mouth and it becomes something else. She finds that she is crying, and her tears mingle with his tears, and he breaks her into tiny pieces, softly, softly, like the gentleman that he is.
That he will put her back together later is of no consolation to wither of them.
He has waited for this a long time, he says.
XxX
Invidia
In her seventh year, a tiny third year adores her. He is not so much of a god that he cannot dislike him.
When he runs into her some years later, she is on the arm of a man whose name he has since forgotten. But he still not a god, no matter what she thinks. He hates it.
When she is fifty, she grows very close to Fillius Flitwick and he hates him.
Can’t you talk about anything else, he interrupts curtly as she tells him of the funny thing that happened to them yesterday. I’m tired of hearing about you and Fillius Flitwick.
She is taken aback by this remark and looks a little hurt. He doesn’t care. He’s entitled to break her heart a little bit; she’s been breaking his heart for years and years. She flushes, humiliated, and looks very lovely. He represses the urge to smile.
Well, not everyone can be as scintillating a conservationist as you, she retorts quietly, looking as though she is going to start to cry. She tucks her hair behind her ear and looks steadfastly out the window. The teacup cradled in her hands clouds her glasses. She swallows a lump in her throat and excuses herself to leave.
The portraits mutter disapprovingly amongst themselves. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care a bit. He doesn’t care. He’s in the right. She talked about him too much. He was tired of hearing it. He was only being honest.
She deserves to have a bit of a broken heart. She’s been breaking his heart for years and years.
He hides his smile behind his steepled fingers.
He knows she will not be seeing as much of Fillius Flitwick from now on.
Humanitas
She finds him glorious. She loves him as the sun.
How hard it is, to belong to him so fully, so completely, when his own heart is divided into two or a thousand pieces. And to know that he could not be any other way, and would not be any other way, and that if he was not that way, he would be wrong, and she would not love him.
And as he sleeps, to listen to him murmuring quietly, calling all manner of names that are never her own! His name most of all, always his name, crying out for him, weeping for him, dreaming of him. And she dreams of it too, dwells on it, obsesses over it. Her poor diary is probably tired of receiving entire pages of nothing but That Name with the words “I hate” as a preface. If this is childish, then she is a child. She has been told, after all, that green is her color.
And then there’s the other him. The him with whom the affair that he had ended long ago, except that the other him is still passionately in love with her him.
This makes perfect sense, because no one ever falls out of love with Albus Dumbledore.
He’s let her read some of the old letters. And, she concedes, some of the not-old letter. She wants to belong to that Albus, the one from whose mouth endearments fell like diamonds and pearls, who let sentiment and affection flow like wine and honey. She wants him to tell her the Idea that made him so very quiet last night, or the Notion that caused him to chuckle into his pudding. Just once. Just once. Just once, she needs for him to tell her something. She needs for him to say something.
And perhaps, this is the hardest part of all. He does not say anything. He does not say the words “I love you.”
But she understands.
XxX
Superbia
She hates formal events like these with a passion.
She is always sure she is going to fall and twist her ankle. She’d consider it a huge success if she made it through the night with her pride intact. He seems to enjoy them thoroughly, however. She is sure this is because he has no dignity to worry about. They call him eccentric, so he can get away with anything.
She is having a decent enough time until one of the violinists from the chamber orchestra decides to get punch at the same time she does. They collide and she spills punch all over an elegant foreign dignitary whose name and title she has forgotten.
Afterwards, she attempts to hide in background. Unfortunately, he always insists on having her within quiet calling distance. And, of course, everyone remembers her when they see her near him. She is made to shake a great many people’s hands and smile and pretend she knows exactly who they are, wondering all the while if she could just have contracted dragonpox instead.
After he insists on introducing her to the Minister, she pulls him into the alcove behind the stairs and pins him to the wall.
She’s going to kill him for making her go to this fiasco, she says, waving her finger in his face.
He smiles merrily.
At least it will be a pleasant death, he murmurs softly, closing his eyes, to be killed by such a lovely creature.
She sighs, not in the mood for his silliness, and commands him to stop making fun of her.
He smiles apologetically. But, in all seriousness, he says, looking into her eyes with great intensity, death by Minerva sounds quite appealing.
She does not know what to make of this.
Humilitas
He is tired of being a hero.
She adores him, and he knows that now. But he is not her sun and moon and stars, not really, no matter what she says, no matter what she pleads in the middle of the night, when the stars are cold and everyone else is asleep. She loves only the illusion he has built for the world, and he can have none of that, not when he loves her, has loved her, so fully, so completely, for so long. She needs to hate him, because he deserves it and she loves too much.
He often thinks he would hate her for this.
He climbs the stairs to his office, where she is waiting for him. She looks anxious, as if awaiting an executioner. His or hers, he isn’t sure.
He sits down and leans into her, and tells her everything. She listens attentively, detachedly, like a schoolgirl learning lessons. Her eyes do not leave his face, and he rips away the layers of illusion like so much wet paper. Her expression remains the same. He wishes it would change. He wishes she would hate him.
When he is finished, he leans back in his chair and folds his hands in his lap. When he is finished, he buries his head in his hands. When he is finished, he begins to cry.
As great, heaving sobs rip him into pieces, she cups his face in her hands and raises his head to the light. She holds on tightly, she does not let him go.
She presses her beautiful, whole, white hand to his ruined one and threads her fingers through his. Forehead to forehead, nose to nose, heart to heart, she holds him close. She does not let him go.
THE END.
Epilogue (Justicia)
When she wants to think, she visits his grave.
Sometimes she wonders where he is.
Sometimes she wonders who he is there with.
Mostly, though, she dosen’t think about that, and watches the students. Once, she wanted children of her own. Once, she hated him for knowing it was impossible.
But she understands now.
They have hundreds of children, they have thousands of children! They always have, and they will teach them and scold them and love them even after the castle falls to pieces and crumbles to dust about their feet.
Through their children, they shall inherit the world.
, just taking the thoughts right out of my head 
