Resolving a Misunderstanding (complete)

[MMADfan]

Resolving a Misunderstanding
COMPLETE

*MOST RECENT EDIT - 03 May 2008*
Please note that if you are just starting this story, it is also posted on other archives.

Because this is a very long fic, for ease of reading, you may want to read the story over at ffnet, or at The Petulant Poetess (these links bring you directly to the story on ffnet and to my author's pages on TPP).

On TPP, the story is more polished in the earlier chapters than it is on the board or ffnet, and the story is in sync on all the sites. Many of the shorter chapters were combined when they were posted to the moderated archives, so there are nineteen fewer chapters on TPP, and chapter 100 on ffnet is the equivalent of chapter 81 on TPP, for example.

FFnet has the "T-rated" version of the story; TPP has the full, lemony, unexpurgated version.

This is a fun place to chat about the story, if you like, even if you prefer to read on other sites! But I confess to loving reviews on the other sites. . . . *blush*

Summary: Minerva has just finished her first term teaching. A series of misunderstandings leads to an embarrassing moment, injured feelings, regret, then resolution. Set in 1957, with forays into the past to Minerva’s childhood, her student days at Hogwarts, and her Animagus training. More than just a Romance. Many stories within stories! Features Minerva, Albus, and Poppy, with appearances by Slughorn, Grubbly-Plank, Hagrid, Moody, Tom Riddle, and other canon characters.

Not DH-compliant, obviously.

Genres: Romance, Drama, Humour, and even a little Adventure and Suspense ;D.

Audience Suitability: Adults and teens who like romance. Later chapters will include romance with suggestive situations, but all explicit material will appear in the Lemons Forum.

Disclaimer: Needless to say, this story is based on characters and places created by JKR; I don't own them and am making no profit from them.

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I: Minerva’s Grievance

If Minerva had been a different sort of woman, she might have immediately regretted her choice of words as soon as they were out of her mouth. If she were yet another sort of woman, those words would never have reached her lips. And yet a different sort of woman altogether would never have even thought such words. As it was, Minerva McGonagall rarely resorted to uncouth language, but she was quite capable of it, and when she used it, she made it a policy not to regret it. Although there were occasions on which she regretted using them in front of a particular audience, she never regretted her choice of words. In this instance, she immediately regretted not having noticed the wizard who had just passed through the door behind her. Soon after, she, uncharacteristically, came to regret even her choice of words. What became of that regret is the most interesting part of our tale, but that shall have to wait.

The conversation had started out as just a bit of a gripe session between friends. Minerva had flounced into Poppy’s office at a quarter to ten that morning, a look of exasperation on her face.

“I’ll tell you, Poppy,” declared the irate witch, “I’m getting sick of this. Is he never going to be punctual for our meetings? He doesn’t seem to have this problem with his other appointments. He always has time for old Sluggy, even without an appointment, and he’s never late for meetings with Gertrude! He doesn’t seem to respect me at all.”

“Well, Min, you know that he is trying to overcome the perception that he’s prejudiced against the Slytherins, after having been Head of Gryffindor House for so long, so of course he’s going to make time for Slughorn. And Gertie is his deputy. She’s been here for donkey’s years. They have an established relationship.”

“Don’t call me ‘Min’! You know how I hate that. I understand about Horace and Gertrude, honestly, I do. But this morning we had an appointment to go over the NEWT level Transfiguration curriculum – his idea, not mine! – and I spent all yesterday afternoon and evening reviewing, writing up notes on any changes I was suggesting or areas where I was unclear about the most effective pedagogic method – not that there are many changes, since I don’t want to experiment too much until I see how the curriculum works for me as it stands. And I did have questions about the incoming seventh years, since I didn’t teach them last term. This was not an insignificant meeting about the best source for buttons or beetles, or some such! And do you know what happened, Poppy, do you?”

Poppy shook her head and encouraged her friend. “Tell me, Min - Minerva! Something must have happened to get you so worked up!”

“I got there at 8:57, and gave the password to the gargoyle. I know I was a few minutes early, but I thought that by the time those stairs got me up to his office, it would be nine. Nothing happened. So I gave the password again. The only thing that happened was the gargoyle had the temerity to leer at me!”

“Well, Minerva, you have to admit that the gargoyle pretty much leers at everyone. That’s the way gargoyles are.”

“Whose side are you on, Poppy Pomfrey? The gargoyle gave me a . . . a deeper leer than usual. Then it sat back, crossed its scrawny little arms, and closed its eyes!”

Poppy was caught somewhere between amusement and sympathy. Afraid she would laugh, she just nodded with what she hoped was an understanding smile.

“Well, I then announced to the gargoyle that I had an appointment at nine o’clock with the headmaster, and repeated the password. The gargoyle only opened one eye. I thought perhaps I had the wrong password, but Albus gave it to me himself yesterday after lunch. He told me he was changing it for the summer, and I was quite sure that he had clearly said ‘pixie sticks.’ It was at that point in my reflections that I realized he must not have changed the password as he had said he would, so I decided I should use the previous password, 'candyfloss.' Guess what happened then?”

Poppy had no idea, and said so.

“The gargoyle opened both eyes, looked up at me, and it appeared the door was beginning to scrape open, but then it stopped. At that point, Gertie showed up, greeted me, asked me if I knew the new password, then without waiting for an answer, she said ‘pixie sticks’! And the gargoyle opened the door for her!”

“No!” Poppy was confused.

“As you can imagine, I was somewhat flummoxed by this turn of events. Gertie mounted the stair, and called behind her that if I wanted to come up, I should hurry before the door closed. I leapt onto the moving stair and stepped up a few feet to stand behind her. I told her I had tried the new password myself just a moment before, and it hadn’t worked. I was beginning to wonder whether Albus had instructed the gargoyle not to grant me entrance–not that I told Gertie that. Fortunately, Gertie clarified that Albus always sets his passwords to change at a specific time. He can even be out of the castle, and the password will change if he spells it in advance.”

“Well, that’s quite clever. I don’t think Headmaster Dippet used such a spell.” Poppy mused, smiling at her friend.

“Well, clever is as clever does, Poppy,” replied Minerva stiffly. “Apparently, he had set the spell to activate at nine o’clock, just the time of our meeting.”

“Well, I can see how all of that could be a bit annoying, Minerva, but surely you’re not so upset over such a small matter.”

“Oh, you haven’t heard what really bothers me, Poppy. That, that, that wizard! That wizard, when we got to his office, was not even present! Gertie just entered, called out for him, then instructed me to have a seat. She then went into his private rooms to find him.” Minerva rose from her chair and began to pace the matron’s small office.

“Well, I don’t see anything particularly odd about that, Min - Minerva. I mean, she’s his deputy, asking you to have a seat while she went to find him –”

Minerva sighed dramatically and rolled her eyes–something Poppy hadn’t seen her do since Minerva was in her sixth year and a certain professor had smiled gently and told her that such dramatics are amusing in a child, and then said nothing more.

Minerva returned to her chair, obviously restraining herself from throwing herself into it petulantly. “Poppy! I was up there last week for another meeting for which he was late–that one was on the first and second year curriculum, and so entirely superfluous!–and I tried to look for him in his rooms, which, as you know, are up those spiral brass stairs. I took a half dozen steps and those stairs turned into a slide and dumped me on the floor, where I landed like some gormless first-year Gryffindor wizard. And at the top of the stairs stood Albus, looking down at me, laughing. Of course, he did come down to see if I had bruised anything other than my pride, but he told me then that the stairs to his private quarters are charmed to do that when anyone steps on them without his invitation. So you can see why I wondered about the gargoyle after it let Gertie in with the same password that I’d tried just a few moments before.”

“Ah, now I see.” Poppy looked at her friend thoughtfully. Minerva sat stiffly in one of the hard wooden guest chairs that were standard issue in all Hogwarts’ offices. How different, Poppy thought, from the man about whom she was complaining.

[DaBao]

Cuuute!!! I can't wait for the next update!

[Gosuto]

Oh no? What is Albus doing with this Gertie?
Update soon!

[MMADfan]

I told you Part II follows! I hope you believed me!

Part II: About a Headmaster

Whenever the headmaster entered the office that had been Poppy's for the past three years, she noted that he reflexively transfigured the guest chair into something more comfortable. The shape and the amount of padding of the resulting armchair seemed dependent upon his mood, and the ease and spontaneity of the transfiguration showed Poppy that not only was this a transfiguration he performed often, but one that he performed without much forethought. Occasionally, he’d even seem unexpectedly pleased with a particular colour or configuration, and mutter something about needing to remember that one. Minerva, on the other hand, would never dream of transfiguring a chair in someone else’s office without so much as a by-your-leave, and even then, only when attending to the need or comfort of another. She might not have been able to achieve the effortless, seemingly spontaneous, transfiguration that Albus could, as he was much older and more experienced, but she could have done it and made it look easy. Whereas Albus would change things to suit himself, Minerva would simply deal with things as they were.

It was not that Minerva lacked flexibility, thought Poppy, nor that Albus was self-absorbed or self-serving. But Albus clearly did believe in taking the initiative to change the circumstances in which he found himself if those circumstances did not suit him. Such a thing would not occur to Minerva. She took things as she found them, and adapted, or didn’t.

She was no pushover, despite that, not Minerva McGonagall, and she certainly was not hesitant to change things she believed were wrong. Principled, she would stand up for her friends, and for what she thought right, but she would consider it a peculiar waste of magic, not to mention at least slightly rude, to transfigure a perfectly serviceable wooden chair into a pouffy chintz armchair in order to be more comfortable for the short time she’d be using it. No doubt she’d seen Albus do just that, and thought nothing of it, since she usually made allowances for what the wizarding world affectionately considered his “eccentricities.” In fact, on any other day, Poppy would have sworn that Minerva had a soft spot for her old Transfiguration professor. And she had certainly seen no sign that the headmaster lacked respect for her, as Minerva had suggested.

What was bothering Minerva that day was only peripherally related to her penchant for orderliness, Poppy decided. Of course it would be somewhat disturbing to the meticulous and punctual Minerva McGonagall to have to wait for someone who was habitually late, but Poppy suspected that if Albus were as frequently late with others as he was with her, Minerva would have dismissed it as easily as she dismissed his eccentric transfiguration of wooden seats into chintz armchairs, or of heavy beakers into delicate teacups. No, what bothered Minerva was his seeming punctuality with others, and the apparent disregard with which he treated appointments with her. She was also none too pleased that Gertie could mount the steps to the headmaster’s private quarters without invitation, while she was relegated to being dumped on his office floor.

“Well, Minerva, I’m just trying to be a friend here, so if what I’m saying seems unsympathetic, please bear that in mind.”

Minerva, who had not quite burned out the fire of her righteous anger, nodded at Poppy and relaxed somewhat into her chair.

“Minerva, it seems to me that it would be impractical for the headmaster to have stairs to his quarters that would not admit his deputy. I imagine that the first time Gertrude encountered his little slide, she let him know in no uncertain terms what she thought of it. On the other hand,” said Poppy, looking at her friend carefully, “it certainly would not do to eliminate all barriers to his privacy – do you remember what it was like for him after he defeated Grindelwald? It seemed that every witch in England and Scotland, and even a few wizards, wanted to snag him. You weren’t at Hogwarts, Minerva; do you know that they even managed to get into the castle? That’s why Dippet ended up renewing the wartime wards that restricted entry to the grounds. He’d wanted to revert to the original wards, the ones that allowed anyone who was a current or former resident to enter the grounds at the gate without any further ado–were they changed after you’d started school, Minerva, or before? The wartime ones had already been implemented by my first year, so I never really knew what it was like before. Dippet never even got around to lifting the anti-aparition wards before he and the Board of Governors decided that they’d still have to screen visitors as they entered the grounds because of all the problems these nutters were causing, and they reinstituted the tighter perimeter wards.”

“But Poppy, this is completely different. It’s not as hard to get onto the grounds today as it was a few years ago, of course, but the wards on all of the exterior doors would alert Dumbledore and the House heads as soon as anyone entered the castle who didn't belong. And I'm obviously not one of those nutters.”

“Hmmpf. Obviously." Poppy gazed at Minerva thoughtfully, and continued. "They were even coming in through the windows back then. My seventh-year Charms class was interrupted when a witch flew in through the window.” Poppy chuckled at her reminiscence. “We had the opportunity to practice a few nice charms that day. I cast the one that froze her broom but held it in midair. Quite clever, I thought at the time.”

Minerva snorted. “Even so, Poppy, you have to have a password to get into the headmaster’s office. Even if he wants privacy in his quarters–which I completely understand; I enjoy my own privacy, after all–he could require a password at the door to his rooms, or set up an invisible barrier at the bottom of the stairs, and require a password there. No doubt Headmaster Dippet used such a system. Setting up a slide like the one in Gryffindor tower is just, just puerile!”

Poppy finally gave in and laughed. “We didn’t have anything quite like that in Hufflepuff, but I understand that the stairs to the girls’ dormitory have had that charm on them for at least a couple hundred years, possibly ever since they combined the Girls’ and Boys’ Common Rooms to encourage greater internal House unity back in, what was it, sixteen-something?”

“1594, as you would know if you ever bothered to read Hogwarts, a History,” grumbled Minerva. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that Dumbledore no doubt encountered those stairs himself back when he was a student. Knowing him, he probably thought it was quite funny, once he got over the embarrassment of landing flat on his arse, and now that he’s headmaster, he decided to have a set of them for himself. I can even imagine him activating the charm on purpose just to slide down to his office in the morning.”

“Hmmpf. That’s as may be, but I am not a child. And what if one of the elderly staff members triggered the stairs and broke a bone, or something? It’s irresponsible.”

“I’d set them to rights,” Poppy interjected.

Minerva sighed, and a fleeting look of sadness crossed her face, to be replaced by one of anger. She balled her fists, and through gritted teeth, hissed, “You haven’t heard the capper, yet, Poppy.”

“There’s more?”

“‘There’s more?’ she says! Of course there’s more; none of that would still be irritating me if there weren’t more!” Minerva closed her eyes in frustration, or perhaps she was just reviewing the events of the morning. “Gertie found Albus, obviously, and they came down stairs together. They were discussing something or other to do with the school, I gathered that much, when Albus caught sight of me.” Here, Minerva closed her eyes again, and swallowed. Poppy recognised this Minerva McGonagall. This was the Wrathful Minerva whom everyone in Gryffindor had learned to avoid provoking–or learned simply to avoid once provoked. She’d gotten rather better at controlling her temper over the years, and Poppy doubted she’d be hexed if she said the wrong thing, but she stayed quiet and allowed Minerva to gather herself.

And Parts III and IV will follow in quick succession, then there'll be a bit of a breather.

[MMADfan]

I hope you are enjoying the installments of my little story. Here is Part III for your MMAD reading pleasure! (Still no lemons -- when they arrive, I'll let you know and post them to the Lemons forum!)

*Content Warning: the use of a certain expletive toward the end of the chapter may offend some readers. (Since the use of this word is rather necessary to the plot, it's not gratuitous on the author's part . )*

Part III: A Few Well-Chosen Words?

Minerva let out a shaky breath and continued her story.

“‘Oh, Minerva, there you are!’ he says, as if I’d be anywhere else at five minutes after nine when we had an appointment at nine in his office. ‘I’m so sorry, Minerva, but Gertie has a few things she needs to discuss with me before she leaves for Cornwall this afternoon. We’ll have to postpone our meeting,’ he says. That’s fine with me, Poppy, I understand completely. Gertie is his deputy and will be leaving to be with her family for a few weeks. It makes perfect sense that they meet this morning. It does not make perfect sense that our esteemed headmaster make an appointment with me when he is aware that she will need to meet with him.”

“Now, that’s not fair, Minerva,” Poppy protested. “It could very well be that he thought they’d wrapped up all their school business, and her visit surprised him.”

“Yes, Madam Poppy Pomfrey, Voice of Reason!” Minerva fumed. “Would you PLEASE let me finish? I told him that was fine with me–after all, I have no grounds to protest such a reasonable proposal. But then I asked him if I should return in an hour or two, and do you know what his response was? Do you?” Wrathful Minerva had entered full-blown rhetorical-question-mode, so Poppy just shook her head. “‘Oh, my, no,’ he says, ‘no, I can’t meet this morning. I’m afraid Gertie’s arrival interrupted my weekly beard conditioning. The potion has to sit undisturbed from start to finish and I had to charm it off early, so I’ll have to start the process all over from the beginning, then I have a floo-call scheduled with the minister of something-or-other at eleven o’clock,’ –he didn’t say something-or-other, of course, but I don’t remember which insignificant minister he was talking about. ‘It’ll have to be this afternoon, my dear. Perhaps we’ll see one another at lunch; we can arrange something then. There’s a good girl, Minerva.’”

Poppy shuddered when she heard that last phrase. No wonder Wrathful Minerva made an appearance today!

“‘There’s a good girl, Minerva.’ The nerve of him! I am a Professor of Transfiguration at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry! I may not have been here long, and I may not have his experience, but I still deserve a LITTLE respect. ‘Good girl,’” Minerva fumed, her eyes tearing up. She rose from her chair again and leaned toward Poppy, one hand resting on the edge of the desk separating them. “How dare he! How could he? How? It’s just one insult or indignity after another, Poppy, and I am beginning to think that he doesn’t think me a capable, mature witch! Well, if that’s the way he feels, then fuck Albus Dumbledore! And fuck his stupid beard, too!” Minerva didn’t notice that as she was making this final speech, Poppy’s eyes were growing wider and rounder, and so impassioned was she that she ignored Poppy’s sudden wild gesticulations.

“Hmm, interesting idea, Professor McGonagall. Certainly an interesting idea.”

Sorry about the bit of a cliffie, but it isn't too evil, really! ;D

[MMADfan]

And now for Part IV, the final part to be posted before a little breather (for feedback, if you'd care to give any!), but hopefully with not too much of a cliffie at the end.

Part IV: Minerva's Mortification

“Hmm, interesting idea, Professor McGonagall. Certainly an interesting idea.”

Minerva whirled around at the sound of Albus Dumbledore’s voice. “Professor Dumbledore, I mean Headmaster, er, I mean Albus, I didn’t know that you were there.”

The headmaster smiled slightly and said, “I presumed you were unaware. Yes, indeed.” He shifted slightly in a way that would suggest awkwardness in anyone else. He continued quietly, “I flooed the Ministry and spoke with, how did you so elloquently refer to her,” Albus gazed off, as if trying to remember, “Ah, yes, ‘the minister of something-or-other,’ and told her that as I had pressing business with a colleague, I would need to postpone our discussion of Britain’s participation in the International Wizarding Treaty on Extradition and Asylum until a later time. I also decided that I could wait until tomorrow morning to apply the potion that Aberforth has given me to test, even though it may skew his results some. Did you know that my brother Aberforth had been quite good at Potions in his youth? Hmm, probably not. But he was. He is also possessed of a rather entrepreneurial spirit, and continually attempts to combine the two, to a greater or lesser degree of success. Most recently, he has been creating a goat’s-milk-based potion designed to condition the beard of men past a certain age. Obviously, one of the drawbacks of this potion is that each application requires an uninterrupted half-hour, but Aberforth assures me that once he has refined the potion, he will be able shorten its working time. Personally, I do not know whether this enterprise will be more profitable than his last, in which daily ingestion of a certain potion made with goat horn powder was supposed to renew a man’s vigour, hmm. It had certain rather unfortunate side effects that limited its marketability. Yes, well. Hmm.”

As Albus shifted again, Poppy thought that the headmaster did look as though he was feeling awkward, and he had sounded as though he were rambling. But Albus never rambled. Meandered a bit, perhaps, but never rambled. Minerva simply stood, rooted to the spot, turned towards Albus, her mouth slightly open; from her vantage point behind the desk, Poppy could just discern a glazed and disbelieving expression fixed in Minerva's eyes.

Poppy didn’t know what to say or do, but it was clear to her that Minerva was even more at a loss than she, so she rose and came around the desk to stand between them. “Minerva was a little overwrought, Albus, before you came in. I’m afraid your timing was not particularly good.” Poppy tried to smile at her boss.

“I understand, Poppy. I had been looking for her, and thought it likely I would find her with you.” An uneasy hesitation left unsaid that he had not thought it likely that he would find her in such a state. Looking in Minerva’s direction, he continued, “Well, it seems that this is not a good time for us to meet, after all, as I see that you are engaged with your friend here. Perhaps we could speak during lunch.” Without waiting for Minerva’s reply, Albus nodded at her, then at Poppy, and said, “Good morning until then.”

With that, Minerva and Poppy found themselves alone in the hospital wing again. Minerva groaned and put her face in her hands. As she slumped forward, she felt Poppy’s reassuring arm around her, guiding her to a chair.

“Oh, Poppy, what have I done? Any respect he might have had for me is certainly gone now. And why did I have to make all of those assumptions? All of my interpretations were completely incorrect! He has been trying to fit me in amongst all of his other commitments. Even the business with his beard,” she wailed, “was not about him. I thought he was just being vain, and putting his personal grooming above his meeting with me!” Minerva was as close to hysterical as Poppy had seen her in years.

“There, there. I’m sure the headmaster understands, Minerva.” Poppy kept one arm around Minerva’s shoulders as she summoned the other guest chair and sat down beside her.

“What? What does he understand? That I am an immature, self-centred witch? That I am a disrespectful employee who should be fired? If ever I hoped to gain his respect, this has certainly destroyed any chance of it.” Minerva shook herself and sat up a bit straighter, trying to regain control of her emotions. “He won’t fire me, though, even if I deserve it. He’s Albus Dumbledore, and he won’t fire me. I should quit for his sake.”

“Now don’t be silly, Minerva. You are not doing the cowardly thing and quitting! You know it would be self-serving of you, initially, just until the shock of your embarrassment wore off, then you would regret it.” Minerva did not protest this estimation, so Poppy continued, “First off, I’m sure he’s heard much worse–hush, now, don’t interrupt!–and he knows you well enough to know that you are normally very composed and respectful. A-a-ah! What did I say?” said Poppy as Minerva opened her mouth to protest. “I don’t want to have to put a Silencio on you! As you say, he has been making time for you in his very busy schedule. He wants you to be successful, Minerva! You were his shining star, you know, when we were students. He always tried to be fair and not play favorites, but it was clear even to us younger years that you were special. And you deserved to be. You have a wonderful talent for Transfiguration, Minerva, and on top of that talent, you work very hard. You could have done half as much work as you did and still achieved an ‘Exceeds Expectations’ in Transfiguration, but you didn’t. You pushed yourself. If there were a grade above ‘Outstanding,’ you would have got it. Minerva, he hired you because he believed in you. He could have got someone else to fill the post, as you weren’t available until last December, but instead, he exhausted himself fulfilling the duties of both Headmaster and Professor of Transfiguration for over a year, insisting to the Board of Governors that no one but Minerva McGonagall was right for this job, and that unless the Ministry wanted to let you out of your contract early, Hogwarts would just have to wait for you.”

Minerva sniffed and rubbed her tears from her cheeks with the back of her wand hand. “I thought he just didn’t want to let go of teaching. I was rather insulted when he first told me that I was only taking the first five years, and he’d take the sixth and seventh years through June. I didn’t want to wait until September to teach NEWTs level classes, and I thought he was trying to keep the most interesting classes to himself.” She sniffed again.

“Of course not, Minerva! He always enjoyed teaching, to be sure, but I really don’t think he has the time to miss it very much. He wanted to take the sixth and seventh years because he didn’t want to disrupt the students’ lessons in their NEWTs years, when it’s so important they not be distracted by such a sudden change. Not to mention that it gave you time to adjust and get used to teaching. And he did let you take the fifth-year OWLs classes. That showed faith in your abilities.”

“I know. I see that now. Of course, it was easy to teach the fifth years, they were already so far ahead in the lessons. And most of them would have been able to take their OWLs when I took over in December. January through June was more or less revision of everything they’d already learned, and an opportunity for those a little weak in the subject to come up to standard and have some extra attention from me.” She sniffed again. “Well, even if he still thinks I’m a competent Transfiguration Master and Professor, he certainly must have lost respect for me personally and professionally after hearing my entirely unjustified and childish tirade.”

“Well, now, listen to you, will you! Just a few minutes ago you were in here ranting and raving that he didn’t respect you; now you see you were wrong about that, so you have decided that you must have lost his respect now. Minerva McGonagall, I don’t think it’s his respect you’re after, that’s what I think.”

“Whatever do you mean? Of course it’s about respect! Why on earth did he have to call me a ‘good girl,’ as though I were still some pesky but obedient student? It was like stepping back in time, Poppy. I felt as though I was just another one of his students again.”

“Minerva, haven’t I told you that you were never ‘just another one of his students’? And whilst I do think that you don’t want him to view you as a student, that you want Albus to recognize Minerva McGonagall as the fully fledged witch she has become, I really don’t think it’s about respect– or at least it’s not only about gaining his respect.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Poppy. You really aren’t making much sense.” She conjured a glass of water and drank deeply. “Although perhaps you are right, it’s not just about gaining his respect; it’s about gaining it and keeping it.” Minerva gave a shuddering sigh. “And I can’t do either if I behave like I did today. No, Poppy, I must be all business. I need to maintain my professional demeanor at all times. He should never have been able to overhear all that because I never should have been speaking that way anywhere anyone could just walk in. What if it were term time and a student overheard me speaking like that about their Headmaster? They would lose respect for both me and for him.”

“Well, you are right about that last, but I also believe you would have been more discreet during term time, or if you had any expectation that someone might interrupt us, but with all the students gone and so many of the staff away, you let your hair down.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right, Poppy, but he still must think what I said was terrible. He must think I don’t respect him at all.”

“I wouldn’t put it quite that way. I think he was embarrassed, both for his own sake as well as yours. I also believe that he was thinking more of your discomfort than of his. Whilst it may not have been tactful of him to emerge from the shadows just when he did, you really hadn’t said anything too badly embarrassing until after I’d already spotted him in the doorway, and I couldn’t get you to put a plug in it and stop talking. I think Albus had heard enough to know that you were distressed, and he felt that he’d upset you. My feeling about it, looking back, is that he wanted to reassure you that you have an important place here. It was just unfortunate that you continued carrying on after expressing your, um, distaste for the term ‘good girl.’”

“‘Continued carrying on!’ It was worse than that, Poppy. I remember very well what I said–and, no, I won’t repeat it.” Minerva sighed and closed her eyes; a few more tears leaked out and ran down her cheeks.

“I think it likely that he feels more hurt by that than anything else, Minerva. You didn’t see his face just then, but he went completely blank, and the colour drained from his face. It was like watching a little boy who had just been told his pet crup had died and who was trying not to cry.”

“Oh, Poppy, what should I do? What can I do? He really has been good to me, you know, meeting with me about classes, and so on.” Minerva sighed, and twisted the handkerchief she’d finally thought to pull from her pocket. “During term, there were a few times when I didn’t make it to dinner because I was so busy with grading and preparing for lessons, and he actually brought me a tray himself. It would have been thoughtful enough if he’d sent a house-elf in with something, but he brought it himself.” Minerva sat, shaking her head, struggling not to start tearing up again.

“Well, you have been downright foolish, Minerva McGonagall, if you ask me, thinking the headmaster doesn't respect you or care for you. I don’t think Headmaster Dippet ever brought anybody dinner, and he was known to be an old softie. Of course, you would have heard about it from him the next day if you missed a meal, and been instructed to be sure to get a sandwich from the kitchens and keep your strength up if you missed dinner again. If it happened too often, you might even get an avuncular lecture about the perils of overwork, but I can’t say that Dippet would have brought you dinner himself, even if you missed it seven days running.”

“He even brought me macaroni and cheese one night. He said he’d remembered that when I was a student I seemed to like the house-elfs’ macaroni and cheese, and he hoped I still did.”

“Now do you agree with me that you have been very foolish?”

“Yes,” Minerva sighed. “But what will he think of me? And what can I say to him?”

“Hmm, I think that, since he seems to know you fairly well–although clearly not well enough to avoid calling you a good girl, or to realise that his tardiness would feel like an insult to you–I think that he will realise soon, if not at this moment, that you were speaking out of a sense of hurt and from your own insecurity.”

“Insecurity!” Minerva straightened and looked directly at Poppy for the first time since Albus had left. “I am not insecure!”

“Not generally, no,” soothed Poppy. “But with regard to your position here at Hogwarts, and vis-a-vis Albus, especially, you are. Think about it before you reject the idea outright. I also think you should consider what else might be at play besides a desire for his respect.”

“But it's almost quarter to eleven now! Lunch is in just over an hour! He said he would speak to me at lunch.” Minerva was clearly beginning to panic anew.

“Then go back to your rooms, have a bath, put on something fresh, and come to lunch looking like the accomplished, composed witch you wish Albus to see.”

With that good advice, Minerva rose, thanked her friend with a hug, and left for a restorative bath and a good long think.

You'll have to wait a bit now to hear about Minerva's bath, the conclusions she draws after her "good long think," and how she decides to deal with her current situation. I hope you've enjoyed the story so far! Please let me know what you think. Unless, of course, you think it's the most dreadful thing you've ever read--which means if I get no feedback, I may interpret it to mean, "That's the most dreadful piece of horse manure that I have ever read!" Just kidding! Let me know if you'd like a snippet telling about what Albus thought and did after his encounter with Minerva and Poppy.

[Aurinko]

I've very much enjoyed what I've read so far. It's a different interpretation of Albus & Minerva, and I'm curious to see where you go with it--and what's happened to Albus. Poppy and Minerva's interaction was fun, as was her tirade. Post soon!

[MMADfan]

Glad you liked it, Aurinko! I am happy that Ketseki and DaBao are looking forward to more--hope they like the parts I've posted so far. I hope to post more later today.

[morethanacrush]

Omg... Minerva is my IDOL. Sorry, I think it's hilarious that she started swearing at him and his beard. I feel bad... but I guess it's cause I know she didn't mean it. lmao that's just so funny. I can't wait for more either!
Love
Cody*

[MMADfan]

I'm happy you're enjoying the funny bits, morethanacrush! (Did you like the gargoyle leering at Minerva? I know I'm not supposed to laugh at my own jokes, but I found that image very amusing. ) There are more funny scenes to come, although not in the next couple installments, in which we will see more of Albus and his reaction to Minerva's outburst. We'll also learn some background info about how he came to Hogwarts as Transfiguration professor, which I find interesting (even though I wrote it!), but which can probably just be skimmed through if you don't find it endlessly fascinating, or even just a tiny bit diverting.

I'll be posting the next installment, in which Albus begins to think about the events of the morning, very shortly.

[MMADfan]

Here's the fifth installment, in which we get a little bit of Albus's perspective on the entire affair. There will be two more "Albus installments" before we get back to Minerva.

Part V: Albus Reflects

He walked slowly down the corridor. For Albus, the vast hallways of Hogwarts fairly rang with emptiness during the first weeks after the students left for the summer. By the last week of August, those same hallways would seem enveloped by a warm, inviting hush. Today, however, the emptiness felt particularly pronounced as Albus returned to his office from the hospital wing. He reflected on the events of the morning, puzzling over them a bit, chiefly trying to gain perspective for himself. The day had simply gone from bad to worse, and the one thing he believed would be its saving grace–a meeting with Minerva–had turned out to be the most nightmarish part of this day. The day was not nearly over yet, either.

He had been utterly gobsmacked to overhear Minerva as she railed on at Poppy, chafing at his treatment of her. He listened from outside Poppy’s office for a moment as Minerva described their encounter in his office. She had clearly viewed that brief meeting in a very different light than he had. Believing that he could assuage her feelings and calm her down a bit–perhaps even offer her a peppermint pillow, his most recent favourite sweet–he had stepped into the open doorway of the office. He had been dumbfounded to hear Minerva's reaction to his calling her a “good girl,” however, and froze where he stood, suddenly unsure of his half-formed plan to cajole her out of her mood.

Albus reached the gargoyle, which swung the door open without a word from him. Sighing, he mounted the moving staircase; he saw clearly now that he should have made good his escape as soon as he had realised Minerva was unhappy with him, but he hadn’t understood precisely how distressed she was. In retrospect, perhaps it wasn’t particularly appropriate to address a witch of 32 as a “girl,” but Minerva seemed inordinately disturbed by it. Griselda Marchbanks always giggled when he called her a girl, and she was older than he!

Standing motionless in the doorway to Poppy’s office, Albus had quickly processed that it wasn’t merely the appellation that distressed her, but some unknown series of insults and indignities that he apparently had inflicted upon her. That mysterious fact had just registered with him when he thought his heart had ceased beating. The words Minerva had just uttered at the culmination of her tirade seemed simultaneously to ring in his head and to be utterly impossible. This was Minerva McGonagall, his prize student, his protege, and, he had believed, his friend. What had she just said?

Albus crossed his office, looking reflexively at Fawkes's normal perch to see if he'd returned yet. If ever Albus had needed the phoenix' s song in recent years, he certainly felt he could benefit from it today. Hearing Minerva's harsh words echo in his head again, Albus wished he could wash away the feelings they had evoked in him. Even now, in the sanctuary of his office, he could scarcely believe what he had heard, or how it had affected him.

Whilst still trying to process Minerva’s inexplicable words, standing stock-still in that doorway, he had realised that Poppy had been staring at him, wide-eyed, gesticulating at Minerva in a wholly ineffective attempt to get her to stop speaking. Discreet escape was no longer possible. He could not leave and pretend he’d never heard what he had; although that spared him the burden of creating such a pretense and carrying it about with him, he was now faced with an immediate problem: what to say at that moment. Albus was always quick on his feet, and he said the first thing that came into his head.

As he sat down behind his desk, he shook that very head. “Interesting idea, Professor McGonagall. Certainly an interesting idea.” One should never say the first thing that comes to one’s head in such emotionally-charged situations. Nonetheless, it hadn’t seemed to make things any worse. His ensuing speech, though . . . he was not sure whether that had been such a good idea. It was a variant on what he would have said to her a moment or two earlier in an attempt to reassure her that not only did a meeting with her not come in second to his personal grooming, and that the floo-call to the Ministry really would have been important enough to take precedence over a meeting about the NEWTs curriculum, but also to reassure her that she herself was more important than personal grooming, the NEWTS curriculum, or even an international treaty. Not that he would have put it precisely that way, of course. He couldn't very well tell her that she was more important than either conditioning his beard or an international treaty; those comparisons sounded simply ridiculous. For the first time that morning, a genuine, if fleeting, grin crossed his face.

He sighed and removed his glasses, rubbing his eyes as he considered what he’d actually said to her. He could use his pensieve to review the event and go over his precise words, but he felt that the actual experience had been bad enough the first time without having to relive it so soon.

No doubt he had come across as the pompous, upright Headmaster rebuking an underling. He didn’t know himself what his intent had been at the time–there really hadn’t been an opportunity to form one; he had simply spoken out of a desire to clarify his position to her, and, if he were truthful with himself, out of a still-acute sense of anguish.

Albus could not remember the last time he had felt such a personal emotional affront, that squeezing in his gut, the sudden constriction of his throat, and the intense, heavy ache in his chest. At 117 years old, he’d had plenty of time to learn not to let the words and attitudes of others bother him inordinately. When he was a boy, he'd been very sensitive to the opinions and insults of others; he remembered his father telling him, somewhat roughly, that not everything in the world was about him, and not to take it all so personally or he’d never be able to make it through life. Albus had not become insensitive, by any means, but he’d learned that his father had been right all those years ago. Allowing one’s happiness to be ruled by the opinions of others was a certain mistake. Most of the time, it wasn’t even you that people were really talking about, but some image of you they’d created for themselves. And even when it was about you, it was also about them, and their own feelings about themselves.

He sighed again. Even in this case with Minerva, he supposed that was true. It was about her, her feelings at the moment, and her feelings about herself, but it was also about him, and her view of him. He still felt a keen sense of anguish when her words came unbidden back to him. This simply was not a situation in which he could chuckle and go on about his day, with some view to smoothing things over later. Minerva was not a mere acquaintance, or even a simple colleague. He had not only known her since he had come to Hogwarts to teach during her second year, but he believed they had developed something of a friendship during the years since she’d left.

Next up: How Albus Dumbledore Became Transfiguration Professor of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

[Gosuto]

Oh my... ... I'm not sure what to say at this point, other than: I adore this story and please update soon.
(And thank you for so many updates this soon.)

[MMADfan]

You are very welcome, Ketseki! Knowing that people like yourself are enjoying the story encourages me to update!

[Jessabelle]

Wow, this is fantastic! Your write superbly and portray emotions very efficiently. I look forward to more!
- Jess

[MMADfan]

Thanks, Jessabelle. <blushes furiously> I'm very glad you like it! I am about to post another installment--one with less emotion, but with, I hope some nice background. The next one after that, which will be posted tomorrow, features an introspective Albus. Please let me know what you think!

-MMADfan, in full "Aw, shucks, you liked my little story" mode!

[McGonagallsGirl]

Cute! That's the word to describe this one. Cute!

I always thought those moments where you were complaining about someone and they happened to be standing right behind you only happened in stories.

Then it happened to me in real life.

whoops.

That was a funny day.

...That was, actually, last Sunday.

[osusprinks]

I'm really impressed with your writing. I have to agree with Poppy that there must be more there than just wanting his respect. It's sad that Albus thought of her as his friend but Min didn't. I hope they can work this out.

[MMADfan]

Here is Part, hey, are we on Part VI already??? <she scrolls down and checks> Yup! Part VI it is!

I am so glad that folks are enjoying my little MMAD-fantasia, that I am posting one more part before I put away my quill, er, fold up my laptop tonight. I would add Part VII if I could manage it, but I think it will have to wait until tomorrow. (I always tweak the formatting slightly and proofread a bit after I cut-and-paste into the message box, so it takes longer to upload than my lazy-self would prefer. My perfectionist-self, on the other hand, sanctimoniously repeats annoying cliches such as, "haste makes waste," and "measure twice, cut once," and, worst of all, "a penny saved is a penny earned," which has absolutely no relevance in this situation, since I am doing this for fun, not profit!)

Without any further ado--or annoying Author's Notes:

Part VI: Dumbledore Arrives

At the time he’d joined the Hogwarts staff, Dumbledore had not anticipated being there for more than five or six years, seven at the very most. He would teach Transfiguration, since Slughorn had started teaching Potions that Spring, and since the current Transfiguration professor had wanted to retire soon, anyway. His primary purpose, though, was to assist Headmaster Dippet with school security. Albus hadn’t understood at first why he would have to live at the school in order to take charge of the wards, but once he’d been introduced to the Founders’ grimmoires, and then begun delicately to probe the layers of wards attached to the castle and its grounds, he knew it was essential.

It would have been absurd, of course, for him simply to move into the castle, set up housekeeping, and go about his business as usual. Not only would his residence look peculiar on its face, but it soon would have become apparent he was there for some unusual reason that couldn’t be explained away by saying he was conducting research–that excuse would only work for a few months. After all, what kind of bachelor-wizard wants to live in a drafty old castle filled with school children and adolescent witches and wizards if he doesn’t have to-- even, or perhaps especially, one of his age? He must be either up-to-no-good or up-to-something-mysterious–or both! Whatever anyone suspected his motives were, he would come under a scrutiny that Hogwarts could ill afford if he didn’t appear to have a legitimate reason for being there. In addition, certain aspects of the wards would be inaccessible to him if he were not a member of the Hogwarts staff, no matter his skill or talent.

Normally, the school wards were under the direct control of the headmaster or headmistress, with magical reinforcement from the heads of the four Houses. The wards were wholly renewed each year on August second, in an elaborate process involving all five witches and wizards; they were periodically strengthened or refined as needed throughout the year, either by the headmaster alone, or by the headmaster with one or more of the House heads. In addition, they were keyed to the headmaster and the House heads’ magical signatures, alerting them if any wards were triggered or breached.

Not only was Armando becoming less able to handle the magical stress of the headmaster’s warding duties, but the wards themselves had become increasingly misaligned over the last several decades. Several of the oldest, foundational wards had become curiously mutated over the years, particularly the most complex ones designed by either Rowena Ravenclaw or Salazar Slytherin, whilst others of them had become almost dormant. A few of the more recent wards from the 1700s were peculiarities that no longer served any useful purpose, and only diverted magical energy away from the more essential wards because of the inept way in which they were applied. In 1874, to add insult to injury, the headmaster of the time, believing himself an expert in wards, curses, and the like, had changed the operation for renewing the wards annually, both shortening the procedure and altering the order in which each ward was addressed. Apparently, he hadn’t realised that the superficially reiterative steps that appeared to be unnecessarily repetitive were actually vital for integrating the wards with one another, particularly for binding later wards to the foundational wards. Until he’d begun to look into the situation, Armando had not even been aware that the methods taught him decades earlier when he became headmaster, and which he’d followed meticulously every August second, were anything other than those laid down by the Founders.

In addition to the procedure for renewing the wards annually, the Four Founders had created methods for adding new wards to the school, for incorporating them into the renewal procedure, and even for disabling or modulating the foundational wards as needed. These methods had been meticulously followed until the middle of the eighteenth century, when the peculiar additions were simply layered on top of all the previous wards. After that deviation, which created only a few problems that would have been easily reversible even one or two hundred years later, had the Founders’ procedure for renewing and modifying the protective spells been adhered to, the 1874 changes were instituted with undetected but ultimately disastrous results. The truncated renewal operation compounded the damage exponentially each year it was performed.

Dippet was no fool, and he was well aware of his own limitations, both those that were innate and those brought on by age. He couldn’t even begin to figure out how to bring the wards back into proper alignment. After spending two solid weeks poring over all of the records in the Hogwarts’ Headmaster’s private archive, Dippet had no doubt at all that simply reverting to the proper renewal method would actually make things worse, locking the mutations, weaknesses, and "mouseholes," as he came to call them, even more firmly into the ward lattice. He also had no doubt that he was inadequate to the task of making any changes that wouldn’t merely compound the injuries to the ward structure.

It was Dippet, therefore, who proposed bringing in Dumbledore for the task. Dumbledore was easily the most accomplished wizard in Britain or Europe, with his knowledge and ability extending well beyond the alchemical discoveries and inventions for which he was so well known. He would be able to read even the Founders’ documents with ease, despite the archaic languages in which they were written, and his knowledge of protective spells and curse-breaking would assist him in unraveling the wards and reweaving them properly. In Armando’s opinion, Dumbledore’s arithmantic expertise was equally impressive; it was that ability, after all, that had enabled him to make so many breakthrough discoveries in alchemy at such a relatively young age. And it went without saying that Dumbledore was the foremost Master of Transfiguration produced by Britain in at least two hundred years.

And so it came to be that Albus Dumbledore became Professor of Transfiguration, Head of Gryffindor House, and Deputy Headmaster of Hogwarts all in one fell swoop. Under other circumstances, or had it been some other wizard, there might have been some grumbling about seniority, but the Hogwarts staff was aware of the dangers imminently facing the wizarding world, and even those who were not privy to the precise problems with the Hogwarts' wards were happy to have such a well-respected wizard arrive to help with school security. He was affable enough, so his installation as Head of Gryffindor House was seen as quite logical, particularly as the previous Transfiguration professor had coincidentally also held that position. And the title “Deputy Headmaster” might sound glamourous to some, but those within Hogwarts knew that it just meant doing all of Armando’s scut work. The position had been rotated among the senior faculty over the last two decades, no one lasting more than a few years before begging or bribing someone else to take up the job. Although the deputy would be the first person considered for the position of headmaster or headmistress when Dippet finally retired or kicked the cauldron, there was certainly no guarantee that the Board of Governors would choose him or her.

Since the staff wasn’t complaining about Dumbledore's whirlwind arrival, the wizarding world simply raised a collective eyebrow, murmured that Dumbledore was wasting his talents at Hogwarts, concluded that he always had been more than a little quirky, and then returned to its customary preoccupations. So it was with quiet relief and genuine warmth that the Hogwarts staff welcomed Dumbledore to the school in June 1937. And so it also happened that Albus Dumbledore began his acquaintance with Minerva McGonagall, a serious second-year Gryffindor, in September 1937.

Will we hear about how Albus Dumbledore made the acquaintance of Minerva McGonagall in Part VII? you may ask. I might reply quite rudely by saying that they met in 1937, not in Part VII, but since I wrote the question myself, best not to get snarky about it! I shall only say that yes, you shall read about how they met, but not just yet. Part VII will be a continuation, in a way, of Part V, in that it brings us back to Albus at the very moment we had left him at the end of V. I hope you continue to read and enjoy! --and don't worry, the romance may not be evident yet, but it will arrive, and knock your purple-and-gold socks off! What, not wearing your purple-and-gold socks! How can they be knocked off, then! Better pull them on and get prepared! (Can you tell I'm a tad punchy? )

[MMADfan]

mcgonagallsgirl said:

Cute! That's the word to describe this one. Cute!

I always thought those moments where you were complaining about someone and they happened to be standing right behind you only happened in stories.

Then it happened to me in real life.

whoops.

That was a funny day.

...That was, actually, last Sunday.

Thanks for sharing that! It gave me a grin! I'm glad you're enjoying the story. (BTW, I like your "weirdest shopping trip ever" sig--life is just strange, ain't it?)

[MMADfan]

osusprinks said:

I'm really impressed with your writing. I have to agree with Poppy that there must be more there than just wanting his respect. It's sad that Albus thought of her as his friend but Min didn't. I hope they can work this out.

Be reassured, the angsty bits won't overtake the story (I hope!), and there's hope for our couple. Remember, too, that so far we've only had Poppy's and Albus's perspectives. Even though we know what she said to Poppy, and what Poppy observed, we don't know yet what's going on inside her (rather-confused-but-clever) head, or what her gut, throat, and heart have been doing lately. Don't worry, we will be visiting Minerva a bit later -- until then, she wishes me to inform you that she hasn't been called "Min" since she was 16 (although I will point out, once I am out of hexing range, that some of her old friends forget on a regular basis that she's not been called "Min" since she came of age). ;D

Thanks very much for your comments!!! I hope you continue to enjoy the story.

[osusprinks]

Don't worry, we will be visiting Minerva a bit later -- until then, she wishes me to inform you that she hasn't been called "Min" since she was 16

Well, Min will just have to deal with it, lol.

I liked this chapter. That's an interesting reasoning for why Albus came to Hogwarts. I'm looking forward to more of this thoughts and of course to Min's thoughts too. Thanks for sharing!

[morethanacrush]

aww you are adorable. I love this story, and I can't wait until your next chapter, darlin!
Love
Cody*

[Trulyamused]

Excellent story. Very thought out.

I hope to read more soon.

Truly

[Gosuto]

XD Will it knock my purple-and-gold socks off?
I can't wait for another update! ^^

[MMADfan]

I hope everyone enjoys this installment! I had to split into two--Part VIIa and Part VIIb, because it was long.
(Thanks for your kind remarks, Trulyamused!)

Part VIIa: Insults and Indignities

He had invested in her emotionally, he realised as he sat idly behind his desk. Perhaps because he’d never had children of his own, he saw in her a kind of spiritual heir, he mused. Until that morning, he’d assumed that she viewed him as a father-figure, if not a grandfather-figure. He had always been faintly unsettled by that notion, although he never explored why that might be. Now, though, that thought not only unsettled him, and more than usual, but grieved him, as well. Perhaps he had misjudged her view of him entirely, and she had never held him in esteem in that way. A sense of loss flooded him, Minerva's harsh words reverberating in his head. He shut his eyes tightly, as though that might prevent their echoing taunt. Realising the futility of that, he relaxed, allowed his eyes to open partially, and began the exercises he had learned when he first practiced Occlumancy. A few moments later, he opened his eyes fully, knowing that although Occlumancy meditations might take the edge off his feelings, it wouldn’t truly help him in the long run.

He called a house-elf for some tea. As he sipped the warm, sweet, and milky beverage, he considered Minerva and what he knew of her. He found it difficult to believe that he had seen a regard, or even an affection, in her that was not genuinely there. Albus had known her for almost twenty years. She would not dissemble in order to create such an impression, he was sure of it. He doubted that such an act would ever occur to Minerva, and doubted further that she could carry out such a pretense, particularly not over such a long stretch of time. Besides, what would have been the point of it?

Finishing his first cup of tea and pouring a second, he felt a bit calmer and decided that Occlumency and tea combined to make a wonderful restorative for battered emotions. “Battered emotions!” He certainly sounded overly dramatic to his own mental ears. He had overheard only one bit of conversation, he told himself, no need to carry on as though he had just lost his best friend!

Well, if he were right about her, that meant that she had some positive regard for him. He had actually thought they had become friends of a sort over the last ten years of intermittent contact and correspondence. It was time to act like a friend, then, and stop behaving like a petulant child! He had been thinking so much of those few, stunning words that he had forgotten the fact that she had been upset with him about the postponed meeting, and apparently other–what did she call them?–insults and indignities? What kind of friend was he to concentrate only on his own feelings and forget hers! He thought he remembered seeing tears in her eyes.

One thing all of his friends knew about Albus was that he loved lists. They didn’t even have to be lists of rationally related things, such as to-do lists or grocery lists. Nonsense lists were best of all, he thought, because they inspired the imagination. In the heyday of his alchemical research, whenever he encountered a particularly vexing problem, he made long lists of everything that entered his head, never stopping to think about any one word. Then he would go through the list and pick a few of his favourites, although he would not try to articulate why they were his favourites, and start a new list with those words, and see what other words occured to him after he’d written down each of those. Then, not very scientifically, he would sit down with the two lists and draw circles in different colours around some words, and arrows pointing to some, then add a few squiggly question marks beside others. He was not at all systematic, moving back and forth between the two lists seemingly at random. After he was all through, he would turn the parchment over and go take a nap, or retire for the night, if it was late (which it usually was, since he would lose track of time when playing with his lists). When he got up, he would call for tea, or brew some for himself, and sit down with four fresh pieces of parchment, a quill, and his favorite indigo ink. Then he would write. The first parchment was for any dreams he could remember. On the second parchment, he wrote down what it was he was trying to accomplish in solving the problem, but without explicitly stating what the problem was. On the third parchment, he wrote down why the problem was a problem.

He would then finish his tea, have something light to eat if he were hungry, and turn over the two parchments with his original lists. Then he would just stare at them for a while. At some point, he would pick up his quill, pull a final fresh piece of parchment toward him and begin to write. Sometimes it would be an arithmantic equation that placed the elements of the problem in different relation to one another than any equations he had tried earlier and abandoned; other times it would be a few paragraphs describing his dilemma in a new way, and the beginnings of how a solution might present itself.

Albus remembered one time he was visiting Aberforth when a friend of his brother's dropped by. Albus was sitting at Aberforth’s kitchen table, the two lists in front of him. The friend had never met Albus before, and when he saw him sitting at the table staring blankly at two parchments covered in colorful arrows, circles, and nonsense words, the friend nudged Aberforth with his elbow and whispered to him, asking with some sympathy if his brother was suffering from spell damage, or perhaps was a bit simple-minded.

Yes, Albus found lists very inspiring. This time his lists would be practical ones. He drew a line down the centre of his parchment, dividing the page in two neat halves. At the top of the first half, he wrote, “Knowns,” and underlined it. On the second half of the page he wrote, “Possibles,” underlining it.

He would worry about the utility and the priority of each entry after the lists were done, he decided. Brushing the feathered tip of his quill against his lips thoughtfully, Albus considered what might be “Knowns.” Hmm. He started to write, stopping now and then to think back at what he knew, rather than what was just conjecture, and adding parentheticals:

• she had an appointment with me at nine o’clock to discuss NEWT-level curriculum;
  
• I suggested the appointment;
  
• she came up the stairs with Gertie (who found her caught at the password change);
  
• she said to me and to Poppy that rescheduling the appointment was fine;
  
• she described the Minister I was scheduled to floo-call as “insignificant”;
  
• she was angry that I had called her a “good girl”;
  
• I didn’t notice whether she was upset when she left my office;
  
• she wants to be respected (by me?);
  
• she perceives “one indignity or insult after another”;
  
• she thinks I don't consider her a capable witch;
  
• I gave her the password yesterday at lunch;
  
• I scheduled her appointment to coincide with the password change;
  
• she was very angry with me (and hurt?);
  
• she said she did not know I was standing there (I believe her).

Finishing that list, he started on the other side of the page, under “Possibles”:

• she has always disliked me or held me in contempt (okay, more an “Unreasonable Fear” than a “Possible”);
  
• she has always respected me;
  
• she has always liked me;
  
• I have insulted her (how?) and subjected her to unspecified indignities (what?);
  
• she was upset when she left my office and I couldn’t tell (Gertie did ask me whether I shouldn’t have made an appointment with Minerva before she left, and then arched her brows at me, which, when we are playing chess, usually means that she thinks I’m making some kind of foolish error);
  
• she wants to quit;
  
• she will quit;
  
• she is looking for excuses to quit.

At that point, Albus returned to the first list he had made, and added, “I don’t want Minerva to quit.” Looking at that last addition to his list, he considered it, grazing the tip of the feather against his lips. He added yet another “Known”: “I want Minerva to stay at Hogwarts.” After a slight pause, he wrote, “I respect her intellect and her character; I enjoy and appreciate her company.” He sighed, raised his head and looked out the window at the blue Highland sky. There was one other thing he could add to that list of “knowns”: “I am too fond of Minerva for my own good.” But he didn’t.

Instead, he turned back to his list of “Possibles” and scanned it. Well, it seemed highly unlikely that she had always (or ever!) held him in contempt, so charming his ink a deep reddish-orange, he crossed the first item off his list. He assumed that she had always held some sort of positive feeling for him, so he quickly skipped those lines, moving on to “I have insulted her.” Hmm, well, whether he had insulted her or not–for he certainly never intended any insult–she certainly appeared to genuinely feel insulted. Charming his ink to a bright turquoise, he circled the word “insulted,” then did the same to the word “indignities.” He looked at the next entry. Since it seemed very unlikely that she would have been so upset with him after leaving his office but not been upset as she left it, he deemed it highly likely that she had been upset; he just hadn’t noticed. He underlined “upset when she left my office.” After thinking a moment, he extended the underline to include “and I couldn’t tell.” Finally, he looked at the last three entries. Charming his ink to a rather violent mustard yellow, he crossed out all three, drawing a double line through “she is looking for excuses to quit.” Perhaps he was cowardly, but he simply would not consider those possibilities yet.

Pulling out a fresh parchment, he titled the new page, “Insults and Indignities.” Albus felt that Minerva would not have said she’d experienced one insult or indignity after another if she hadn’t. He could easily put the first one on his list: “I cancelled our appointment this morning at the last minute.” He snorted to himself; “last minute,” indeed. He cancelled after she’d already arrived for the appointment! He thought about those few moments earlier that day.

When Gertie had come up to his quarters, she found him in a rather undignified state, he reflected, although it wasn’t as bad as if she had caught him on the toilet or in the shower. He was sitting on a high stool in the center of his bathroom, which was still warm and humid from his earlier shower, with one towel wrapped around his waist and another draped over his shoulders, reading the “Daily Prophet” agony columns, his hair up in a muggle hairnet. That alone wouldn’t have been so bad, really, since Gertie had taught with him since 1938, and had seen him in all kinds of states. But in front of him floated a small bucket, filled with a potion that smelled like a combination of sour milk, rotting cabbage, and dragon manure. And in that noxious-smelling concoction soaked his beard, neatly gathered at his chin with a red ribbon. Gertie Gamp was not possessed of what one might call a mirthful nature, but when she looked through the partially open door of his bathroom and saw him sitting there, half-naked with his beard in a bucket, she guffawed. Fortunately, Albus was quite aware that he looked ridiculous, and didn’t take offense. Nonetheless, it was not a position any headmaster would like his deputy headmistress to find him in.

Albus removed his glasses again, and rubbed his eyes. The only reason he had been sitting there, beard still soaking in that putrid potion, was he had received an urgent early morning owl from Goban Govannon, the son of an old school friend, informing him that the young man’s father –well, Albus supposed that at 82, Goban no longer qualified as a “young man”– had taken a bad fall off his broom the evening before, and had lain out half the night before he was found by some muggles and brought to a muggle hospital. Fortunately, living in Leeds, he carried Ministry-approved, muggle-friendly identification in his pocket, and couple of policemen had appeared at his mother’s doorstep a few hours before, notifying her that Garbhan Govannon was in hospital suffering from multiple broken bones and other injuries. Naturally, she had contacted Goban, who had met her at the hospital in Doncaster.

All attempts to persuade the hospital to release him to their care had failed. The doctors believed that Garbhan was suffering from dementia or some other neurological or psychiatric condition, since, when he was brought in, he had not been entirely lucid: he had told them he had fallen from a comet, and could they please just howl St. Mungo’s. Not only that, but he had been wearing a most peculiar “gown” when he was found.

The doctors had kept the old man partially sedated, and would only allow the family brief visits. He was in an open ward, so they couldn’t just apparate him out–besides, they didn’t know the effect the muggle medicines might have on someone in a side-along apparition. Because Goban felt he should stay with his mother and father at hospital, he had sent an urgent owl to Albus asking that he contact St. Mungo’s for them.

So by six o’clock that morning, Albus had flooed St. Mungo’s, contacted the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes at the Ministry, and apparated to Yorkshire, where, outside Doncaster Royal Infirmary, he met a St. Mungo’s mediwitch and a representative from the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee. Between the three of them, they extricated Garbhan from his predicament and transported him to St. Mungo’s, where Albus had given him a stern lecture about the importance of wearing trousers in a muggle district, even if one was out flying, and scolding him for riding an old Comet whose charms hadn't been properly maintained.

It was eight o’clock before he got back to Hogwarts, and he hadn’t even had his morning cup of tea. Albus couldn’t imagine facing Aberforth’s beard tonic without fortification, so he had a house-elf bring him tea and toast. He had remembered his appointment with Minerva, but thought he would have just enough time to soak his beard and dress. If she got there before he was ready, he had been sure she wouldn’t mind waiting. He knew for a fact that his bookshelves contained several volumes that could hold her interest for as long as it took him to clean up and get dressed.

Now, he realised he should have sent her a message letting her know he would be late, and rescheduled to half-past nine. Not that it would have changed the fact that Gertie needed to meet with him, nor the fact that his beard-bucket time had been cut short. But at least if she had arrived at nine-thirty, he would have been in his office; and because the embarrassing interruption would not have been so fresh in his mind, maybe he would have asked her if she could return at ten, instead of telling her he had to condition his beard. That must have sounded like a terrible excuse!

Nonetheless, even changing these facts, it didn’t resolve the fundamental issue: Minerva had told Poppy that there had been one indignity or insult after another. She had clearly been unhappy even before he had upset her that morning. Albus returned to his list.

Part VIIb will be posted shortly. We will hear about how Professor Dumbledore got to know Miss McGonagall, second year Gryffindor.

[MMADfan]

Enjoy!

Part VIIb: Insults and Indignities, continued

What could she have viewed as an insult or indignity, Albus pondered, brushing his bottom lip lightly with his quill feather. Deciding that conjecture had a place on this list, he added:

• I didn’t reschedule our appointment immediately, and gave her excuses that she found inadequate;
  
• I called her a good girl, and she believes that shows I don’t respect her as a witch;
  
• I postponed our meeting in order to meet with GG, and MM inferred that meeting with GG was more important to me than our meeting.

Albus thought about the last few weeks, and tried to find any other instances in which he had done anything that Minerva could have interpreted as a sign he didn’t respect her. Suddenly, a mental Lumos seemed to go off, and he quickly wrote:

• MM triggered the charm on the stairs, causing her to fall on the office floor;
  
• I laughed when she fell;
  
• GG used my stairs this morning to fetch me, and MM saw that the stairs are charmed to recognize her;
  
• I was late to a meeting with MM when the stairs denied her admittance, and was late again today.

Albus stopped to think back. When was the last time he had been on time to a meeting with Minerva? There was the post-term staff meeting held the day after the students had left. But that didn’t really count, since it was with the entire staff.

“Let me see, let me see,” Albus murmured to himself. When she arrived at the school in December he had met her at the gates; well, no, he had intended to meet her at the gates, and had owled her that intention. Thinking back, he remembered he saw her enter the main doors of the castle just as he was hurrying down the stairs to meet her. He had been relieved that she was late, since that meant he could still greet her as she came in and escort her to her rooms. But had she been late? Minerva was always punctual. He had owled her that he would meet her at the gates at four o’clock, and it was almost forty-five minutes later that he had run down the stairs and taken her bags from Hagrid.

“Oh, no,” he thought. For the most accomplished, brilliant wizard of the last two centuries, he was certainly an idiot at times. Of course she had been on time. She had probably even been a few minutes early. How long had she waited at the gates before Hagrid or Ogg had let her in? Certainly at least a half an hour. Albus groaned. He then proceeded to think of all of the occasions on which he was supposed to meet her, and was aghast to realise that he’d been on time to only two of them. The first was on her second day at the castle, when he showed her her new classroom and explained that he had thought she’d prefer having her own classroom and office rather than having to share the old one with him for the rest of the year. But that meeting hardly counted, since he hadn’t told her of the time in advance, and had just shown up at her door in the morning. He had been punctual according to his own schedule in that instance, but not to hers.

The second occasion, he realised with some unease, was when he met with her for her review at the end of term last week. He began to see how, in the six months that she had been at Hogwarts, she must have come to believe that he did not take her seriously or value her time. That wasn’t it at all; Dumbledore thought miserably. Almost every time that he had been late or missed an appointment, there had been a very good reason, some emergency or other urgent interruption that delayed him. He had always felt so comfortable with Minerva, it had never occurred to him that she might feel slighted, or that anything more than a brief explanation and a quick apology would be necessary.

He had even missed the house-warming tea party that Poppy had arranged for her on a Saturday afternoon, two days before New Year’s Eve. Even Slughorn, who had been in Finland gathering some kind of exotic reindeer velvet, and Grubbly-Plank, who had gone to Romania for a special three-week intensive course on dragons and their mating habits, had returned for the occasion. He had walked in as the last of the guests were on their way out, and Minerva and Poppy were cleaning up. He had brought her a present, at least: a large tartan afghan of cashmere and mohair in soft heathery colors. He had placed a special warming charm of his own invention on it that would detect the ambient temperature of the room, and at the words, “warm me,” would gently warm whomever was wrapped in it to the appropriate degree, and then automatically deactivate when the afghan was removed or folded. Even without the charm, it was a cozy, warm blanket. She had seemed to like it, and had invited him to stay for a cup of tea with her and Poppy. Poppy hadn’t been able to stay, but they had had a lovely time, he thought, talking and drinking tea, getting hungry and calling the house-elves for sandwiches, then opening the bottle of cognac that Horace had given her and having a taste of that. Suddenly, it was almost midnight, and he hadn’t known where the time had gone. Surely that was better than having been on time for the party!

It had been a lovely evening, and they had spent some enjoyable time together since, although rarely more than a quarter of an hour unless it was connected to some school business. Dippet had socialised with the staff, and everyone who had ever worked at Hogwarts knew him to be approachable, should they ever have a problem with a student, or with their duties. Albus was sure that, now that he was headmaster, his faculty felt he was approachable, as well, even though he had been too busy to socialise much. Except for Minerva. Why didn’t she tell him how she felt before this?

Going back to his list, he wrote “MM insulted because I am not on time for meetings,” then wrote, “Justified” in bright purple next to it. Always prompt herself, she no doubt found it particularly irksome to have to wait for those who weren’t. And given that she could observe that he was capable of punctuality, she was understandably upset with him. He put little tick marks next to all entries on his list that pertained to punctuality, then reread those that remained.

No doubt being tipped onto the floor by his staircase could count as an indignity. He furrowed his brow. He knew she had a sense of humour, but she hadn’t found it at all amusing. She hadn’t been hurt, after all. Looking at the other entries on the list, he decided that the situation had made her feel like an errant schoolchild, reminding her of the stair in Gryffindor tower.

Looking at the clock, he realized that it was already after noon, and he had told Minerva he would see her at lunch. Although during summer holidays, unless they made other arrangements for themselves, any staff remaining at the school took breakfast in their own rooms, lunch and dinner remained a communal affair, even when the castle was nearly empty. Otherwise, one could rattle around in the castle for weeks and never encounter a soul, even one of the ghosts. Albus did not think that was healthy. Instituting communal meals throughout the summer was one of the first changes he implemented after becoming deputy back in ’37.

Albus stepped onto his turning spiral stair, still considering the situation with Minerva. Whereas when he returned to teach, it had been some eighty years since his NEWTs, she’d only been away a little more than a dozen years. Now she was teaching beside professors who had taught her as a child. In addition, she had arrived in the middle of the school year, with only a few weeks to settle in before she was to start teaching. Although the two had met and discussed the curriculum several times since last February when she had agreed to join Hogwarts faculty, it was still difficult to come in after classes are established and the students are settled into routines.

When he had come to the school in 1937, on the other hand, he had arrived at the end of June as the students were finishing up their OWLs and NEWTs. He had more than two months to settle in before beginning to teach. Granted, he was busy those two months with research on the ward structure in July, then the ward renewal in August, followed by more research, tests, and experiments, but he had felt quite settled and at home by the time term began in September. He almost felt put out that his teaching duties interfered with his work on the wards, but that passed quickly as he discovered he enjoyed teaching and being Head of Gryffindor House.

He had always made time for the little Griffindors to come see him, and scheduled a special Griffindor Tea the second Saturday afternoon of every month that first year so they could get to know their new Head of House. When Quidditch practice was at the same time as the Tea, he just moved the “Tea” to the Quidditch stands, somewhat perturbing the Quidditch captain at first, but everyone seemed to enjoy it.

He chuckled remembering the serious little second-year whose book he had to take away during the first Tea in September. Minerva protested that she had Charms homework, but when he pointed out that the Charms textbook she was reading was for the third year class and he doubted that Professor Dustern expected her to hand in her homework a year early, she at first looked slightly sullen, but then suddenly flashed him a brilliant smile and said, “A year and a half, actually!” The next month, she had tried disguising her book as a romance novel, but he took it away, saying that teatime was for making conversation, not for reading the conversations of others. When he examined the book a little later as the students were eating cream cakes and chatting animatedly about the upcoming Halloween party, he discerned that it was the fourth year transfiguration text in disguise, and she had not simply charmed the cover to appear different, but had transfigured it actually to be different. She must have decided simply transfiguring the cover was not sufficient, because she had also charmed the text so that it actually read like the pages of a romance novel. Turning the pages, he chuckled to see that the same four pages of the novel were repeated beginning to end. Clever of her, though, not to use just two pages. If someone had been standing behind her as she turned the page, they would not be presented with the same pages they had just looked at.

Although he had used a spell to reveal what lay hidden behind her charm, he didn’t remove hers. Instead, he had waited until she approached him at the end of the Tea to request her book back. He escorted her to his office, sat her down, and asked her who had placed the spells on the book, because it was a serious breach school rules to deface a textbook. He remembered the look of slight panic that briefly crossed her face, to be replaced by one of determination. “It is not defaced. I put the spells on it myself, and the book will be as good as new when they are lifted.” He had expressed doubt, and told her not to take the blame for someone else. When she continued to insist that she had charmed the book and that the book would be fine, he shook his head. Feigning disbelief, he had handed her the book, saying, “Well, Miss McGonagall, I had wanted to give you an opportunity to minimise the trouble you are in, but since you persist, fine. I want to see you lift the charm and the transfiguration.” After she had done that with a few quick flicks and whispered incantations, he said, “Now, Miss McGonagall, since you continue to insist that you placed the original spells, I want to watch you put them on again.”

Minerva’s eyebrows raised at that and she swallowed, shifting in her seat. For a brief moment, it was Albus who panicked, fearing that it wasn’t she who had charmed the book, after all, and that he had created trouble for her. But then she stood, walked to his desk, picked up a book, looked at it, put it down, then turned to his bookshelves. Silently, she ran her finger along the spines until she found one that apparently suited her. Albus said nothing as she pulled her selection from the shelf, a popular text on the ethics of magic. She opened the book, looked at the table of contents, then opened it to the middle and placed it next to her book. Making a complicated pattern over the opened pages with her wand, she uttered what Albus recognised as a variation on a common copy spell. Turning to her own book and opening to a random page, she furrowed her brow in concentration and, beginning with a charm to conceal the original text, she cast a series of charms, hesitating slightly only once. When she was through, the text now appeared to be that from the ethics book. She then tapped the closed book with her wand and whispered, “Converto integumentum caeruleum,” charming the binding blue.

Apparently satisfied, she turned back to the ethics text, picking it up, examining it, running her palms over its surface, scrutinising the spine, even sniffing it. Putting it down, Minerva returned to her own book, then closed her eyes for a moment; when she opened them, she pronounced, “Commuto gemellium volumen alter alia,” her wand describing a circle in the air just above the book. It shivered slightly, then the book’s binding melted into what appeared to be a perfect copy of the binding of the book sitting beside it. Albus had clapped and laughed happily. “It took me a while to figure that one out, and it still makes it easier if I charm the cover with the colour first,” she'd said, smiling slightly. “But how did you read it?” Albus asked. Minerva smiled more widely and tapped her wand against the stem of her glasses. “I usually only wear these for reading, anyway, so I put a charm on them that lets me read the concealed text. It’s annoying, though, because I still can see the shadows of the other words underneath what I’m trying to read.”

They had spent the next four hours discussing her choices of words and wand movements, and he let her demonstrate the amusing, and fortunately reversible, effect of simply pointing her wand at a book and commanding, “Geminio!” which caused another copy of the book to appear beside the first–as Albus had known would happen, of course. She had told him that the worst experience by far, though, was when, still trying to use a variant of “twin” as the verbal portion of the incantation, she caused a book to pop out twin copies of itself. “It was terrible! I didn’t know what went wrong; I thought it was about to explode. The cover just kept swelling more and more, and then the spine split open and out popped two miniature copies of the book–but with no pages!” They had both laughed about that. When he realised they had missed dinner, he called a house-elf and ordered two servings of shepherd’s pie, two glasses of milk, and a plate full of chocolate biscuits. It was the most fun Albus had had with another person since moving to Hogwarts. Of course, this didn’t become a regular practice, but he did begin to meet with her occasionally to give her extra credit projects and help her work through any difficulties she was having with them.

As Albus approached the Great Hall, he smiled slightly at his memory of the determined little Gryffindor. But when he remembered he would be seeing not Miss McGonagall, the schoolgirl, but Professor McGonagall, Hogwarts’ teacher, the smile faded. It had been less than two hours since they had seen each other under such awkward circumstances. How would she react when he walked in–if she was even there. She could have eaten quickly and left already, as it was almost twelve-thirty. He took a deep breath, entered the open doors of the Hall, and walked toward the round oak table at which several professors and staff were still seated.

Please note that, as wizarding Latin is not classical Latin, or even ecclesiastical Latin, Minerva's incantations are correct as they are, but I doubt they would translate into anything intelligible if you can really read Latin! (I actually studied Latin for a few years, a rather long time ago, but remember very little.)

Next Part, we meet up with Minerva again. The next installation may not be until the weekend.

[osusprinks]

I loved this. Albus was great. I loved that by working through his lists he really did come to the heart of the matter. I know he feels better but I hope he can make it up to Minerva!

[Trulyamused]

I love the lists.

Great parts, thanks for posting so quickly.

Truly

[Aurinko]

Loved the idea of the listing, and the part where he's finally beginning to get it. My favourite part, however, is definitely your young Minerva. She's so adorable it's just... . You can't help but love her and this fic! (The charming/transfiguring of the textbooks was fantastic!) I am eager to see what Minerva's thinking, although I'm rather afraid that you'll do a wonderful job of making it very sad...hoping to read happy stuff soon (but anything is wonderful!)-- ~A.

[MMADfan]

ketseki said:

XD Will it knock my purple-and-gold socks off?
I can't wait for another update! ^^

Oh, yeah -- at least I think it will!

Our delightful duo have been walking around with quite a few unresolved "issues" for quite a while, actually, and since they don't even know it, it will take a while to resolve them! Hopefully you'll enjoy reading about how they get there.

Thanks for the nice words!