Resolving a Misunderstanding (complete)

[MMADfan]

hogwartsduo said:

My heart is actually breaking for Albus at this point in his story. Having gone through so much in such a short period of time certainly took its toll on him and it's no wonder he slipped into such despair.

And Grindelwald leaving him in the mud, the debauched lifestyle, his redemption with the gypsies...utterly amazing. I truly believe he began his journey home, both literally and metaphorically, when he saw little Elinor crying over the pony. Out of his own sadness, he looked up and saw the saddness in an innocent child's face and knew he had to help. That's the Albus we all know and love at the most basic level of his humanity.

I think the hardest part for me to read so far was Albus participating in an orgy and waking up, not remembering any of the names or recognizing any of the faces. It just goes to show the depths to which he slipped and how far he's come on his road to redemption. And then to see him so controlled over that area of his life, especially around Minerva...impressive!

I'm very glad he is sharing all of this information with Minerva. I think it will help her better understand him as a person and why he does some things and not others. This backstory is immensely better than anything JKR could have imagined and as far as I'm concerned...this is my new canon!!!

Looking forward to the rest of Albus' story so don't make me wait too long!!!

I'm glad you appreciated this chapter. There's more to come, and I will likely update tomorrow, if it appears most folk have had an opportunity to read it between now and then.

When Albus Apparated to the side of the road, he was in that place beyond sadness, a place where he felt nothing at all but pain and emptiness. The small spark of compassion that was triggered by the little girl's tears allowed him to feel sadness and to want to comfort someone else. So you are right: that was the major turning point for him.

Albus is just as glad that he cannot remember the previous day. For all he knows, they all could have been too intoxicated to do very much. It was a wake up call for him, that's for sure! Particularly not knowing how he'd got there or what he'd done. It was certainly a situation he never would have dreamed he would find himself in, and it shook him to the core. At that point, he could have slipped further into despair, convinced of his utter unworthiness, or he could find his way out. Fortunately, at just the right moment, his compassion for others was triggered and became a beacon leading him out of his darkness.

I look forward to reading everyone else's reactions to this chapter, as well! I may hold off on any further responses until after the next one is up, however.

I'm glad you are finding a "new canon" that you are happy with, Ang! My Albus will always be something like RaM!Albus, even if I give him a slightly different personal history occasionally, and he will never be DH!Albus. (I do have another AU ADMM story floating around -- a different take on AD & MM getting together -- with different events and told from a different pov, and with Albus's development coming from a different source, but it will be a while before I start doing any more than making notes for it. After RaM is over, I am going to take a break from multi-chapter fics for a while, although I am going to finish the AAoL sequel and post that.)

[stefdarlin]

*sniff* *sniff* Hang on a minute while I collect myself.

Ok, I'm better now. That was so sad. It's hard to believe Albus would go that far into despair or depression but he has had a myriad of bad things happen to him. Losing both of your parents, no matter what age you are has to be hard. And when life doesn't live up to your expectations it is easy to get discouraged.

I am glad he is sharing this with Minerva. Although I am wondering why he decided now was the time to tell her about his life. I'm thinking he is worried by her gifts to him for his birthday and whether she will think he deserves them once he is finished with his story. Perhaps he feels she has placed him on too high a pedestal and he doesn't deserve it? Although, and I'm sure she will agree, I do believe, no matter what happened in his past that he does deserve it and more. Because, as Albus says to Harry in CoS (and please don't hate me for the canon reference but the quote came to mind during this chapter), 'It is our choices, [Harry,] that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.' (Because I am with Hogwarts Duo here~~non-canon compliant is cool with me!)

Albus could have chosen to side/go with 'Gelly' [the use of which I find kinda funny] many times but he did not. He could have chosen to kill himself to end his pain, but he did not. Instead, after a detour from his path, his compassion and humanity allowed his choices to lead him back to his correct path. Which I must say, eventually lead him to Hogwarts and Minerva. YAY!

*looks in dictionary to make sure she has put 3 more words in her list*LOL!

I hope my review doesn't sound too much like a book report. ;D But you have my mind whirring and that's a good thing. I was very glad you posted before I had to go to work. I have the late shift today and tomorrow. I am looking forward to your next chapter. Have a Great Day!

Cheers!

Stef =o)

[MMADfan]

stefdarlin said:

Because, as Albus says to Harry in CoS (and please don't hate me for the canon reference but the quote came to mind during this chapter), 'It is our choices, [Harry,] that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.' (Because I am with Hogwarts Duo here~~non-canon compliant is cool with me!)

I like to think of RaM!Albus as canon!Albus through Book 5. He's who I based my Albus on, after all -- the wonderful Albus we came to know and love in those first several books, not that peculiar fellow who showed up in Book 7. My Albus has always been about choices, about love, about making it through difficulties and coming out of them stronger and wiser. I have no idea who this DH!Albus was, but he didn't seem like he'd grown much at all. But that's my not-so-humble opinion, and I really don't feel like debating it . . . So, anyhow, I think RaM!Albus isn't really an AU!Albus, he's just not DH!Albus, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, I have to go do RL stuff, but I'm glad you liked it, even if it made you sniff a bit! (And really, this is TRULY my last comment until after the next chapter posts! Really. Honest. Well, I'll try, anyway. )

*EDIT* Just a reminder that RaM!Albus has been around for many long months, far longer than DH has been out polluting the universe (apologies! minor slip there! ), and that RaM!Albus's youthful drive for learning and power has always been a part of his personal history (hence the Faust reference); his acquaintance with Grindelwald has always been an integral part of his story because it is a part of his quest for knowledge and power (before Book 7 came out, could anyone believe -- if you thought about it, that is -- that Albus wasn't acquainted with Grindelwald before he defeated him?) Two of the most powerful wizards of their age, both living in the same general part of the world, and they never meet? Seemed highly unlikely to me, anyway. So Gelly (or "Gunny," as I used to call him, LOL!) has not been "inserted" into the story as some kind of afterthought. He is an integral part of the story; Albus's acquaintance with him has been pivotal, and provided the impetus, negative though it may have seemed at the time, for Albus to find his right path. So, that is the last RaM lecture for the day! LOL! (If I can restrain myself! Haha!)

[esoterica1693]

Dashing off to work, but....poor Albus. (Gives fictional character hugs). And good on Min for not being outwardly shocked. More later...

[stefdarlin]

mmadfan said:

I like to think of RaM!Albus as canon!Albus through Book 5. He's who I based my Albus on, after all -- the wonderful Albus we came to know and love in those first several books, not that peculiar fellow who showed up in Book 7. My Albus has always been about choices, about love, about making it through difficulties and coming out of them stronger and wiser.

Sorry, I remember you saying this a while back, DUH! I meant non DH compliant is cool by me. heh! *ducks*

mmadfan said:

(And really, this is TRULY my last comment until after the next chapter posts! Really. Honest. Well, I'll try, anyway. )

And even if it isn't we won't hold it against you. ;D We love you lots and your work too. Besides we, or at least I am always hoping for more insight to what is next....but I know it is fun to not only be sitting at the edge of your seat but to captivate everyone as well. ;D

tee hee,

Stef =o)

[dianahawthorne]

Such a great chapter - I love how you integrated Grindelwald and Albus's friendship into the story - it's so sad! Please update soon!

[minerva62]

Phew! I'm somehow struck by this chapter!

What can I say? Great work, anyway...

Minerva's sympathetic reaction shows already that she is not disgusted by Albus' story, as he might have feared.

I think that stefdarlin is right, Albus seems to feel that he does not deserve Minerva's love.

Going further into this I think that he does not allow himself to be physically with Minerva (he dreams of it but he scolds himself for doing so) because he views her kind of virginal (in the sense of unspoiled) and feels himself kind of dirty due to his earlier experiences. (Does that make any sense?)

Can't wait for more.....

[esoterica1693]

How about, "canon-transcending", "canon-improving," "canon-surpassing," "canon-restoring" .... :-)

I agree that RAM!Albus is more consistent w/ Bks 1-6 than is The Albus Who Must Not Be Named. You've picked up on *all* the themes and hints JKR put in--the importance of love, the importance of choices, loyalty to family, affection for Muggles, knowledge of foreign creatures and peoples, the sort of understated but deep wisdom which only comes from long life experience, the Flamels and Grindelwald, etc., and woven them together into a much more consistent character and narrative than what Jo gave us. RAM!Albus is wonderful and more authentic to what JKR wrote than what she actually came up w/.

I totally agree that DH!Albus didn't seem to have grown much, not even after death(!), and that is one of my main gripes w/ him.
His moment waking in the bed brings to mind the turning point in the story of the Prodigal Son, which he was surely familiar w/ thanks to his study of Muggle philosophy and culture...."but then he came to himself." Indeed how had the brightest wizard of his generation come to find himself in such a position, literally and figuratively? Thank Merlin for the Gypsies coming along when they did. And that Albus had enough slivers of self-respect left to apparate away from the bed rather than just totally give in to whom he'd nearly become.

Gelly is wonderfully written, the #%$*(#@.

And Minerva, you're handlign this so well. Hopefully your love will break through Albus's defences and insecurities, at last...

[MMADfan]

esoterica1693 said:

How about, "canon-transcending", "canon-improving," "canon-surpassing," "canon-restoring" .... :-)

Okay, I'll accept any and all of those descriptors! ;D

esoterica1693 said:

His moment waking in the bed brings to mind the turning point in the story of the Prodigal Son, which he was surely familiar w/ thanks to his study of Muggle philosophy and culture...."but then he came to himself."

And with which his "editor," MMADfan, is also acquainted! haha!

Thanks much for all your thoughts! Part three may be up tomorrow or possibly Saturday. Soon, anyway. Depends on when I get it formatted and am sure it's polished.

[Merriam]

My heart is breaking . . . but this is the best, most original, most realistic take on Albus' past that I have ever read. It is completely believable and emotionally "true"--canon-restoring, I'll call it. This is the real Albus, and I can't thank you enough for portraying him so faithfully. His tales are heartbreaking, but I believe that it is only through the process of revisiting these painful memories that Albus will be able to view himself as worthy of Minerva's love. I'm hoping for progress in their relationship; alas, I know you have at least one more "rock-bottom" moment for the couple.

I want the next update yesterday! I can't wait for more!

[MMADfan]

merriam said:

My heart is breaking . . . but this is the best, most original, most realistic take on Albus' past that I have ever read. It is completely believable and emotionally "true"--canon-restoring, I'll call it. This is the real Albus, and I can't thank you enough for portraying him so faithfully. His tales are heartbreaking, but I believe that it is only through the process of revisiting these painful memories that Albus will be able to view himself as worthy of Minerva's love. I'm hoping for progress in their relationship; alas, I know you have at least one more "rock-bottom" moment for the couple.

I want the next update yesterday! I can't wait for more!

Oh, gee, you've twisted my arm. While I am watching "Ugly Betty," I'll format and post the next chapter.

BTW, totally OT, but anyone else who's watching it, wasn't it a total "awww" moment when Cliff walked in and Mark's eyes lit up? Of course, then Mark had to go and ruin it. *sigh* Peoples is dumb sometimes! ;D

[MMADfan]

Note: Not DH-compliant! Happily so!

Posted in two parts because of length.

CXXII: Defeating Darkness

Albus took another sip of chamomile tea, then finished his cup and poured both of them another.

“I found myself heading south through Turkey then continuing to Persia and over to Egypt, then moving eastward again, stopping occasionally, meeting wizards, and humbly accepting whatever hospitality was offered me. I was feeling more like myself, my curiosity was returning, and I sought again to learn all I could from anyone who offered to teach me – even if it was something as simple and Muggle as how to smoke a hookah,” Albus said with a slight smile. “Eventually, I found myself in India, where I heard of a wizarding Master of every Art who lived high in the Himalayas. I now travelled with a goal in mind, to find this Master and beg him to teach me. I did find him, and daily, I presented myself, and daily, I found myself essentially ignored, though in the most friendly manner. I could never find myself resenting this cheerful and kind old wizard, his face like a wrinkled, brown apple. He gradually began offering me lessons, although I did not recognise them as that at first. A few words, a story, a question without an answer . . . then he invited me to join him for a meal, and for six months, I ate at his table and slept on his floor and cleaned his small, two-room house, sharing tasks with a few others who had also come to the Master for what they could learn from him. Somehow, no matter how menial the task, I did not mind it, and I found peace in the most mundane work.

“Finally, one night I told Master Nyima all that had brought me to him, my mother’s death, my flight from home, my escape from myself, every seedy and humiliating detail; I told him of my guilt and my despair and my arrogance and my sorrow and my yearning, and as I told him, it was as though it were he who was telling the story, and as though it was a story he had always known and had often told. I . . . I wept then, and I felt . . . it is hard to describe,” Albus said, his voice hitching. “I felt liberated, in a way, something similar to the way I had felt when I awoke in the mud after having been discarded by Gelly. But this was better . . . I felt as though I had escaped not some constraining force outside of me, as I had then, but from something within me that had held me enslaved to it.

“A few days later, Master Nyima led me to a mountain, pointed to a cave, and told me to stay there and to practice. I asked him what I should practice, and he merely laughed. Before he left, he told me that he often took the wands of foreign wizards in order to assist them in their practice, but that he would leave me with mine because he believed I already knew it to be a mere tool and not the source of my magic.”

“He left you alone in the mountains? At a cave?” Minerva asked, incredulous. “What were you supposed to do for food?”

Albus laughed. “Oh, I could scavenge, but I usually just came down to the village every several days and . . . um . . . well, I suppose one might call it begging, but it was something different there. I would show up, people knew that I needed food, and they would bring it to me, and I would leave again. It was somehow normal there. We are all dependent upon one another all of the time, anyway, it’s just evident more at some times than at others. It was . . . it was like being reduced to infancy, again – not in a bad way, not at all – but I was beginning again, and like a baby seeking his mother’s breast without thought of anything except the care and nourishment he receives, I accepted the care and nourishment provided by the village. It was, in a way, my mother. I was in its care, her care, and when I left her, I repaid her by passing that care on to others when I could.

“What Nyima did, in fact, was leave me a few hundred of yards from the cave. And I soon discovered why. There was an aged dragon living in the next cave adjoining it, an ancient mother of dragons. She did not take very kindly to having a human neighbour. It took me four days to actually move into the cave. In the meantime, I made do with a nightly fire and the occasional warming charm. I did not sleep well or easy, however. Finally, we reached a kind of . . . truce, I suppose you would call it. I even brewed her potions to clear her sinuses. A dragon with congested sinuses is a sad sight, Minerva, truly,” he said, chuckling at Minerva’s incredulous look. “And I scratched her back. Literally. With no mate around, and her children long gone to their own territories, she had no other dragon to scratch the itchy scales she was unable to reach. She could roll about in the dirt and loose stone, of course, and that helped, but she was genuinely ancient and appreciated a more passive way to relieve her itching. And she, in turn, would occasionally share a goat or other animal with me. It was quite a surprise when I first woke one morning to find the slightly charred haunch of some unidentifiable hoofed beast outside my cave. I learned a great deal about dragons during those months I lived beside Mother Dragon.

“I used little active magic, though I practiced the exercises in mental magical control that Nyima had taught me and the Occlumency exercises that I had learned from Nicolas Flamel years before. It was a wonderful time for me, Minerva. I cannot express the peace I found there. I began to find ways to assist the villagers. I set up some wards for them – warding in that part of the world is quite different from what it is here – and did a few other magical tasks as I was able. Their love and compassion, though, was not dependent on what I did or didn’t do for them. It was remarkable. And I began to remember all of the others in my life who had loved me, who had cared for me, and I began to understand the lesson that Flamel believed I hadn’t learned. That my greatest asset, my greatest potential, lay not in my mind or in my magic, but in my heart. It always does, for anyone, no matter their talents or abilities, whether magic or Muggle. It was only love that mattered – true love, generous love, based on compassion, and not on mere desire for possession and control – and I felt that love there from them in the village, and even from Mother Dragon there on the mountain. It was not enough to gain knowledge and self-mastery, but one should use it in the service of others, even if only in a small way. Quite the opposite of the lessons I had rejected from Gelly those years before.

“Then one night I awoke to the roaring of my neighbour. I rushed from my cave and found that a band of wizarding thieves had come to rob my cave, believing the foreign wizard to be hiding riches and Charmed objects. I had no such things, of course, but I do not doubt that they would have killed me to search the cave or in an attempt to get me to reveal the location of these nonexistent riches. But my neighbour, Mother Dragon, came to my assistance. We were doing well together, and I believed we would drive them off and remain unscathed ourselves, but then one of their number raised a Muggle crossbow and loosed a bolt that found her eye and went deep into her brain. With an unearthly scream, Mother Dragon thrashed a moment in midair, then plummeted to the ground, landing on several men and killing them instantly. The others fled into the darkness. I raced to her side, but my ancient friend was dead.” Albus paused, blinking back tears. “She gave all she had to protect me. I used my wand to dig a pit and I buried the thieves there, but she . . . her heart had been so great and so giving, even if in a dragonish way, so I took her heart and packed it into a charmed urn, then at dawn, I incinerated her after the manner of dragons.

“Incinerating an entire dragon was tiring work after a long night, but I left the mountain immediately. I went to Nyima and told him what had happened and what I had learned. He would have continued to teach me, and I knew I had more I could learn from him, but I felt it was time to return to my own people and to resume my life here.

“Still, I took my time and travelled back to Europe stopping along the way and seeing everything with newborn eyes. In Egypt, I found a new friend. One morning, I awoke, and he was there beside me, beautiful in red and gold, and he allowed me to name him Fawkes. He has been my companion ever since.

“Eventually, I reached France and, with some trepidation, I sought out Nicolas and Perenelle again. I did not know if they knew about my mother, or, more embarrassingly, how I had passed through Europe on my way east, and how I allowed myself to go to seed. Now, though, dressed in the bright colours of the east and with Fawkes at my side, I overcame my embarrassment and returned to them. They embraced me . . .” Albus bent his head and Minerva could see tears shining on his cheeks. “They embraced me and Nicolas began to teach me again. I told him of a peculiar phenomenon that I had been experiencing. As you know, I had been an Animagus from the age of seventeen. I was self-taught, but I had never had any trouble with my transformation. I had been very careful always, although I suppose that it may have been somewhat reckless to have taken it on at all without a teacher, but there was no one available to me at the time. Still, I had never had any difficulties, none but the most minor sort, and those many years before. And yet now, my transformation was uncomfortable, and more uncomfortable each time I tried it. In addition, I found that my wand was not as responsive as I was used to. I put that down to my becoming accustomed to doing so much wandless magic for such a long time. But Nicolas was intrigued, and he did another divination, as he had before, with his coloured smoke and its dizzying effects on me.

“After this . . . divination, Nicolas instructed me not to transform into my Animagus form until he told me to, but to begin doing the novice mental exercises again, the internal ones only, as though I had never been an Animagus at all and was learning it for the first time. I did as he instructed without question. After approximately six months of this, during which time I lived and worked beside Nicolas and Perenelle and he treated me as an equal, although his knowledge and understanding far surpassed my own, the two brought me out to their garden one early morning and instructed me to transform into my Animagus form and to do it without any reflection.

“I did as they told me, and to my great surprise, my Animagus form was different. Not terribly different, but where I had been an Augurey before, I was now a phoenix. To say it was surprising would be an understatement. This phenomenon was almost unheard of. Even Nicolas, at his great age, only knew of three instances in history when a witch or wizard had their Animagus form change. And then to have changed into such a strongly magical form . . . it was almost unbelievable.”

“How utterly extraordinary!” exclaimed Minerva, who had been listening quietly for some time, trying to absorb all that Albus was telling her and trying to understand that he was speaking of himself and of his own experiences many years before she was born. It seemed hard to comprehend that the kind, caring, vital, and courtly wizard whom she had known for so many years was the same man who had experienced such a youth. Her own life and her few trials seemed to pale in comparison. “Why did this happen? And how?”

“Nicolas said that I had undergone . . . a kind of purification and had become more myself and that the shift in my Animagus form was one sign of it. He compared it to an alchemical process, in fact,” Albus answered. He turned his head, rolling his shoulders and stretching slightly. “It is late, but there is more, if you would hear it, my dear.”

“Yes! Yes, of course. I do want to, very much,” Minerva answered.

“I stayed with the Flamels for a while, and we developed a good working relationship, but my thoughts turned more and more frequently to my brother and to my uncle and his family. It had been years since I had been home or had word from them. My brother had written to me a few times those first months I had been gone, but when I never answered his owls, he ceased. I wrote Aberforth a letter then, telling him I was coming home. I did not know where to find him, however. One of the last letters he had sent told me that he had sold Mother’s property and split the proceeds between us, depositing my share into my Gringotts account. But he did not tell me where he would be. So I waited, hoping that Aberforth would respond to my letter, despite not having heard a word from me for almost five years. Two days after I sent my owl off, I received a letter from him, remarkable only for its brevity. He was still in Godric’s Hollow and worked at the Hag’s Hump. He told me nothing else.

“I arrived at the Hag’s Hump at two in the afternoon and found my brother, now a bearded young man, behind the bar. He greeted me curtly, asked me whether everything was in order with my accounts, and said that I was welcome to look at the papers from the sale of our mother’s property if I wished. He had kept them for me. I told him I had not even given that a thought, but that I was home now and wanted to see him, learn how he was. That is when I learned that my Uncle Christopher had died the previous year and his daughter, Deborah, had married and moved to Canada with her new husband. Great-aunt Sarah, my father’s aunt, had died a couple years before that. But Aunt Beatrice, Uncle Christopher’s wife, still lived in the same house in Cornwall. Aberforth scarcely needed to say it, but I heard it in his voice, that Aunt Beatrice might be only marginally happier to see me than he himself was.

“I could not blame Aberforth for his attitude. He was five years behind me in school, and in his eyes, I had always had so much handed to me. I believe he even resented me my memories of our father, whom he barely remembered, except for the feel of his beard and the smell of his tobacco when he held him and told him his bedtime story. And after Dervilia died and I left my apprenticeship soon after, I was gone for four years, only to return and become my mother’s little hero – that was what he called me at the time – and he resented my closeness to her when he had had her to himself and had done his best to help support her and be a good son during my years away. I do not blame him . . . and then, of course, he blamed me for her death. He knew my suspicions about the cause of her death, and he felt that whatever the cause, I was responsible for it. If it was, indeed, Gelly who had done it, I had brought the wizard into our lives and into our mother’s home. If it was not Gelly, then it was still my fault, either something I had done, a bad potion I had given her, or something I had not done that would have saved her. And I did not hold those feelings against him, either, as I blamed myself, and for the same reasons he did. I think . . . I think that even after all these years, I still do, but he has moved on . . . .

“I went to see my Aunt Beatrice, and to my surprise, I did receive a warm reception from her. Still, most of my ties had been cut, and somehow, some word of my earlier dissolute wanderings through Europe had reached the ears of my former friends and acquaintances. Some had even believed me dead, not having heard word of me in so many years. Seeing me again, quite whole and healthy, most did not credit the earlier rumours. But nonetheless, I could not simply pick up precisely where I had left off. There was no need to, of course, and I hadn’t expected to do so. I was, after all, a Master of two Arts, and had learned so much more in my travels and in my work with the Flamels. I had a new beginning. And for this fresh start, I took some of my small inheritance and bought a small cottage in the North of England. I began my own alchemical researches, corresponding on an almost daily basis with the Flamels and visiting them often. For income, I brewed potions, usually ones that were rare and difficult to brew because they brought the most Galleons and I then had more time to devote to my own studies. I was by no means a hermit, however, and travelled about England, Scotland, and Wales, visiting friends and acquaintances, lending my assistance, magical or material, whenever I could, remembering the assistance that so many had given me so unselfishly during my journeys.

“I did visit your Grandmother Siofre shortly after your grandfather died. I had seen him only twice since my return from my travels, and yet I grieved his loss, for we had been great friends in school, but your grandmother,” Albus said with a wry smile, “did not believe I would be a fit example for her young son, Merwyn. She told me I could come back when she was sure I had actually grown up and that this was not simply a temporary lapse into respectability. I could hardly fault her. I had been back for less than a year when Collum died, after all. In the ten years between Dervilia’s untimely death and my most recent return to Britain, it seemed to her that I had done nothing but attend my mother’s death and lead a wastrel life.

“In the meantime, my wand was becoming less and less responsive to me. Still perfectly useful, but . . . something was not right with it, or with me, and thinking of the internal transformation I had undergone that changed my Animagus form, I decided to visit Ollivander’s for a new wand. I had recently bought my cottage, and my funds were somewhat depleted, as they say, so I decided to offer him a barter. I would give him the dragon heart that I had harvested from Mother Dragon, and, because my new form was a phoenix, I gave Mr Ollivander a tail feather from Fawkes, thinking he could make me a custom wand using a core from my companion. What would be more fitting than that, I thought. After taking some measurements from me, he asked me for two tail feathers, not one, because he wanted to try two different woods. My first wand had been holly with a unicorn tail hair, but he was unsure whether holly would be the appropriate wood for my new wand, given the measurements he had just taken. He accepted the dragon heart in payment.

“Several weeks later, I received an owl from Mr Ollivander telling me that my new wand was awaiting me, and I Apparated to London on that very day. He had made two wands with the tail feathers I had given him, one in holly and one in yew. I first tried the wand of holly and Fawkes’s tail feather, since my previous wand had been of holly, but the results were hardly any better than my current wand, much to my disappointment. Ollivander didn’t seem fussed, however, as though he had expected that result, and he handed me the one of yew and phoenix tail feather. That one was, unfortunately, no better than the first. I was very disappointed and resigned myself to taking a wand that Ollivander had made with no particular wizard in mind; I had truly hoped that I could carry and use a wand that was connected closely with my companion and with my own Animagus form. I could not understand why neither wand was suited to me.

“Ollivander drew out two other wands and handed me one. I tried it, and it was much more responsive, to the extent that I would have been satisfied with it, but he declared it lacklustre and unsuitable, and he took it and handed me the other. I knew as soon as it touched my skin that this was the one, and when I waved it, Ollivander declared that my wand had found me. The first wand was of Hedera pythonica, magical ivy, and dragon heartstring, and the wand that chose me was of yew and heartstring from the same dragon. Ollivander further explained that, just as the two with the phoenix tail feathers were brothers, the latter two wands were mates and had been made with cores of heartstring from the very dragon heart I had given him in trade. And although I felt some sense of . . . loss, perhaps, leaving behind the wands that had not chosen me, it was a fair trade and we had had an agreement. And that is how our wands came into being, my dear.”

“So my wand . . . my wand contains the heartstring from Mother Dragon, the dragon who helped save you?” Minerva asked, pulling her wand from her pocket and looking at it as though she was seeing it for the first time.

Albus nodded. “The very same . . .”

“No wonder Ollivander told me that the dragon heartstring core was from an unusual source,” Minerva said softly, brushing its polished length with a fingertip.

“A very unusual source . . . that heart beat within the breast of an ancient dragon who permitted me to share her living space and who even cared for me in a dragonish way, perhaps seeing me as a peculiar sort of naked, abandoned dragon pup, and who fought beside me and died doing so. And now . . . her heartstring continues to provide me with care and protection, and you as well, my dear.

“But the story I was telling you does not stop there, as you know. Sixty-six years after I received my new wand from Ollivander, I received word from him that its mate had chosen a witch, a young witch about to begin school at Hogwarts. I had never forgotten that my wand had a mate, but after the first few decades had passed, I thought that perhaps it would not find its witch or wizard during my lifetime, that it was waiting until my wand had been passed on to another, perhaps . . . I did not know, and I ceased even speculating about it. I simply got on with my life.

“I lived quietly, simply . . . as I say, I was not a hermit, but having had the experiences of my youth, I did . . . abjure certain aspects of wizarding social life. I felt . . . I felt that it was for the best for me, for my work, and,” he said with a slight self-deprecating chuckle, “best for those around me, as well, particularly the witches. And, as most of my friends were married and well-settled in life, it was just as well. Indeed, it was during this peaceful period of quiet study and experimentation that I met Gertrude, a young witch, newly married, barely out of Hogwarts, and yet with a brilliance in Arithmancy that challenged and excited me. She had novel ways of approaching problems, and her imagination in those days . . . . When we began corresponding, I actually believed that I was writing to a witch much older than she was, and even after learning that Gertrude was as young as she was, it was still a surprise when I first met her. She was nothing like I had imagined, you see. She was very quiet, soft-spoken, and pretty, with a gentle, feminine way about her – I had envisioned someone much more brash and out-going, given the nature of her letters to me and the vibrancy with which she discussed her discipline, yet she did have a certain . . . inner strength that reflected my expectations. We became close friends, and as she and Reginald lived in York, I often visited them. He worked for the Ministry in one of the local offices, though he spent much of his time in London. So Gertrude and I would work on our Arithmantic problems during the day – my problems, actually, as I was working on new uses for Arithmancy in Alchemy and she was assisting me – then in the evening, Reginald would come home and we would have dinner together and the three of us would talk late into the night. It was with some sadness that I saw them move to Berlin, where Reginald’s work brought him, but we could still owl, of course, and I visited Berlin occasionally and stayed with them, coming to know young Robbie as he grew up, as well.”

Continued in the next post!

[sevherfan]

If you're going to post during the Ugly Betty commercial I'm going to review before we see if she can successfully stop the wedding.

I gotta say, I agree with the other review: I was so proud of Minerva for not being more shocked. She isn't a prude, as Obliging Minerva shows, but she is a bit... repressed right now. Poor Albus made me want to cry. But it was incredible progress that he TOLD her it all. EVEN the embarassing part.

(I broke up the chapter! That's so bad! And Betty is in so much trouble!)

[MMADfan]

Continued from the previous post!

CXXII: Defeating Darkness, continued

“When was this? I’m afraid it’s all rather confusing to me,” Minerva said.

“Hmm . . . Mother died in eighteen sixty-five, I returned to Britain in early seventy and received my new wand that year, then I first met Gertrude in nineteen-seventeen, the same year she married. Robbie was born in England in the summer of nineteen-nineteen, and then they moved to Berlin in . . . hmm, late nineteen-twenty-one or early twenty-two. It was twenty-two. I remember because we had Christmas and New Year’s in York just a month or two before they left the country.”

Minerva nodded. “All right, I see now, and it fits with what else I know.”

“As I mentioned, I would visit them in Berlin from time to time. Seeing their happiness, my own thoughts began to turn toward a settled life with family, but with my situation as it was, and the events of the ensuing years . . . I was content enough, for one thing, and then later, the responsibilities I took on were naturally not conducive to such a thing for me.

“Gertrude and Reginald, of course, were not my only friends, and I also would visit the Flamels occasionally, but my visits to Berlin are notable because on one occasion, I ran into an old friend. ‘Old’ in the sense of ‘former,’ to be clear about it. Gelly . . . I had heard he had established his so-called academy. I was grateful I had never been a part of it. It sounded to me as though his academy was merely a way for him to get sycophantic followers who hung onto his every word. It also sounded to me as though it was somewhat . . . unsavoury. But as I, in the manner of so many others, did not particularly wish to recall the painful events surrounding our earlier relationship, so I also did not pay very much attention to the rumours about this academy of his and of his own forays into the German wizarding political arena. Regardless of how well I had come through the past and how much I had learned along the way, Gelly never would be someone whom I cared to remember. I had had many quiet, peaceful decades of study and experimentation, writing and publishing, and a little travel, a few good friends, a mended relationship with Aberforth, and I was content. I wanted nothing from my former life.

“So, as I say, I found myself one evening in Berlin, sitting in a café waiting for Gertrude to join me, and who should walk up to me but Gelly. Still as handsome as ever, and even more charming and charismatic, if that was possible. But now I could detect a coldness in his eyes that I had not seen before . . . I believe it had always been there, but I had not seen it, being blinded by his charms and his empty blandishments. This was a wizard, a man, with little to no ability to muster compassion for others, and certainly no desire to do so. To the extent he was able to discern what others were feeling, it was only in order to exploit those feelings for his own gain. It was, essentially, an unremarkable encounter and it proceeded as one might expect. He scoffed at me and at my choices in life, deriding my continued belief that he was responsible for my mother’s death – saying, why would he, of all people, go to that dirty little village and waste his energy killing a pathetic, invalid witch – and then telling me what I could have had if I had chosen to join him in his academy, the power, the influence, the knowledge. And when Gertrude arrived, his derision grew, and he said he pitied me my choice of companions. At that point, the party he was meeting arrived, consisting of some very wealthy wizards and a few well-dressed, well-coiffed, and rather attractive witches who had apparently been trained to laugh and nod in all the right places in a conversation. I couldn’t abide the sight of him. Gertrude and I left to find a more congenial atmosphere elsewhere.

“I barely spared him another thought, even when Reginald’s letters, and Gertrude’s, as well, never seemed to avoid mention of him. Reginald was becoming convinced that Gelly’s talk, and his supposed academy, were actual threats to the wizarding world, and Gertrude was becoming worried that Reginald’s talk of Gelly would lead to trouble for them. It was said that wizards who opposed him would simply disappear, or would turn up dead in some Muggle alley. Gertrude was worried about her husband, and I began to worry as well, despite my desire not to spend another second’s thought on Gellert Grindelwald. And then that fateful day came in late July 1935, some seven years after Gertrude and I had seen Gelly in the café. I rushed to Berlin as quickly as I could upon receiving the news that Reginald had been attacked and deposited on the Crouch doorstep. It was one of the most dreadful things I have ever experienced, and not just seeing Reginald like that, but also seeing Gertrude and the effect it had on her. And Robbie – they, quite sensibly, would not allow the boy in to see his father, but he knew what had been done to him. I did what little I could do . . . there is a method of alleviating pain that I learned when I studied with Master Nyima. I cannot say that I ever was particularly adept at it, but I did what I could, and I believe he suffered less in the end.”

“What is this method?” Minerva asked curiously, wondering if it was anything like the practices her mother used as a Healer-Midwife.

Albus hesitated perceptibly. “It is a magical mental discipline and it allows the practitioner to . . . let the patient bleed off some of the pain.”

“I don’t understand at all. Bleed off?”

“The pain becomes experienced less by the patient and more by the other person through something akin to Legilimency. It cannot cure . . . it is palliative only. And, sadly, it was all anyone could do, despite the presence of four of the best Healers in Berlin.”

“You mean . . . you experienced the pain rather than Gertrude’s husband?” Minerva asked, sure she had misunderstood.

“I am not very adept at it, as I say, and I have only done it a few times, and this was the only time I had attempted it since leaving Nyima sixty years before. But I did what I could for Reginald . . . and I believe he died in a bit more peace than he otherwise would have. It is a difficult practice, and I do not know if, after this many years, I could do it again. My life has, for better or worse, required me, or allowed me, to develop other skills, and I believe this one, never well-developed, is lost. It was hard enough then to even remember how to initiate it . . . I think it was more luck than anything else that I had any success with it at all. But I think it helped Gertrude even more than it did her husband, believing that his pain was being diminished. What Grindelwald did to him . . . he remained conscious, and there were spells . . . the Healers’ magic simply caused him more pain when they tried to use them. It was diabolical, Minerva, what Grindelwald did to him, and I do not use that word lightly.” Albus sighed and looked very old and very tired. “I don’t think I ever regretted allowing Grindelwald to live after my mother’s death as much as I did in the moment that I saw Gertrude’s face on arriving at the house in Berlin, and then seeing Reginald, brave Gryffindor that he was . . . but I did not kill Grindelwald after my mother’s death, and I did not even kill him later, although there was a part of me that wanted to do that. If not for my sake and my loss, then for Gertrude and her on-going suffering. Her hair had been a beautiful, deep chestnut brown, and within weeks, it seemed, it had gone completely grey, as had her spirit. Grindelwald had already caused so many so much suffering . . . and it would only worsen. And I had done nothing to stop him when I was young and so I felt . . . pain that I had not, and responsibility for the suffering he continued to cause.

“Ah, Minerva, it is late . . . I wish to tell you about Grindelwald, but only if you wish to stay and hear it,” Albus said, looking at her with weary eyes.

“I do. I couldn’t leave now unless you forced me to,” Minerva answered. She thought she would perish from curiosity if she did not learn that night – or morning, as it now was – how he had defeated Grindelwald.

“Very well, then, but in respect for the late hour, I will give you an abbreviated version, complete, but not detailed. Many of the details are unpleasant ones, anyway. If at some later time, you wish to ask me questions about it,” Albus said, nodding slightly, “I will do my best to answer them.

“Soon after Reginald’s murder, Grindelwald declared his intent to bring ‘rationality and unity’ to wizarding Europe and to ‘uplift the wizarding spirit,’ and he moved to new headquarters, an old Grindelwald family castle, unplottable and heavily warded with ancient blood wards. Although there were attempts to locate this castle, they were unsuccessful for so long that, eventually, those who were trying began a different strategy. Although Grindelwald did stay within his fortified home most of the time, there were occasions when he travelled. The new strategy was to attack him while he was in another place. As you know, those attempts were never successful. You know, too, that the war, such as it was, was a long, protracted, and very nasty one, complicated by the Muggle war and Grindelwald’s interference in it.

“I told you once that I believed it inevitable that Grindelwald would one day capture me. I had hoped, though, that it was not. But so firm was my belief that it may actually have helped bring it about, I do not know. That last mission, however, it was meant to be the last mission. We had finally located Grindelwald’s hidden castle – your father’s assistance was actually instrumental in that, Minerva, although he never knew it – and I set out with a small group of Aurors, four of whom were very accomplished Occlumens. To them, I entrusted my belief that we might not prevail in our attack, which was deliberately deceptively small and highly targeted. I also informed those four, and only those four, what my strategy would be if we were, in fact, captured. To entrust this knowledge to anyone else would completely doom our mission and seal our fates.

“Unfortunately, the mission went even worse than we had anticipated. We were detected as we were attempting to dismantle or fool one of the blood wards that shielded his stronghold. Of the twenty Aurors who had started out with us – yes, Minerva, twenty, not the small handful that the Ministry claims were lost – of those twenty, only six of us survived the attack, and only four of us were in any condition to be questioned. Grindelwald, on hearing that I was among the captives, had the four of us brought to him personally. Unfortunately for me, only one of the Aurors who knew of my fall-back plan had survived – Rufus Scrimgeour, whom I believe you know – the other two who were conscious and still with me, Alastor Moody and Katherine Fellows, knew nothing of it. And that was painful for me.”

Albus sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I could go into detail of how I subtly convinced Grindelwald that I had deliberately triggered the wards so that our presence was detected, how I persuaded him that I had come to admire him all over again, and to become disgusted with the Ministry and with the general state of the weak wizarding world, and how I had come to regret my choices years earlier and longed to be accepted by him once more. He was sceptical, as should not surprise anyone, but he performed intensive Legilimency on me. I have never experienced such gruelling hours. It was like the worst interrogation possible, but he was not looking for information about Ministry strategies or resources, and I knew that would not be what he would seek. When I had known Grindelwald more than eighty years before, when we were both striplings, my skill at Legilimency and Occlumency was poor and undeveloped. Grindelwald greatly underestimated what skills I had attained in the intervening years. Oh, he believed I was skilled enough at brewing Potions and at performing Transfiguration, but he believed that even any achievements I had made in curse- and ward-breaking was all done on the backs of others, and that none of it was truly a product of my own skill and diligence. And I encouraged this belief. I presented him with memories and emotions skewed to show him precisely what he wanted to believe. I showed him myself using Gertrude Gamp shamelessly, stealing her ideas and her work in order to advance my own, exploiting her affection for me and toying with her, even taking advantage of her grief, and then I showed him others whose work in Runes, archaic spellwork, and defensive wards I took, used, and presented as my own. I presented him these memories with a veneer of disdain for the lesser witches and wizards whom I used and discarded. I made him believe that I had charmed these folk, lulling them so that they did not even realise what I was doing. Even you, my dear, I presented to him in a false light, and it was so difficult . . . he wanted to know how I had escaped him a few months before, that time in France, for he was certain I had been gravely injured and unable to escape on my own. And so I showed him you and your accomplishments and I conjured up a sense of pride in you distorted by a possessiveness and a sense of control over you that I have never had – I do hope you believe me, my dear. He believed I saw you as a mere product of my own doing and as my tool to use as I wished, and not as an independent person in your own right. And the Flamels . . . I convinced him that I still resented them both, that I chafed because they would not share with me all they knew, and that I had left them on poor terms. And I showed him my time of dissipation after my mother’s death, and I convinced him that it had gone on for years, not mere months, that I had barely managed to pull myself out of the gutter, so to speak, and that I was desperate to join him and to regain my pride and to exercise power over those who had wronged me in my past.

“I cannot describe to you what it was like, distorting my feelings and my memories in such a way, hour after hour . . . and I had to behave as though I was resisting, as though I did not want him to see my weaknesses and to know of my debauchery, and to then give in with the appropriate mixture of pain and relief. But worst of all was the sense, deeply hidden from my interrogator, that I was betraying myself and all whom I loved. Yet I could not think about that, and I could not even think about those whom I loved, you, Gertrude, the Flamels, my mother . . . . It was only later, after it was all over . . . I felt as though I had deliberately filled myself up with the most vile sewage imaginable. It was hard for me to feel clean again . . . .

“But he believed me, and he returned my wand to me, and he had one last test for me. He wanted
me to punish my compatriots. That was perhaps the worst moment of all . . . seeing Alastor, Katherine, and Rufus dragged out before me . . . wandless and weakened. I had not planned for this, although I should have, and I was not yet ready to duel Grindelwald. There were many people around him, and my friends had no wands. Desperately, I cast about the room, using Legilimency to try to find some weak mind that would allow me access whilst I talked with Grindelwald and scoffed at the Aurors. And then I found that weak mind and I knew where the Aurors’ wands were being kept. They were close by. If they had not been . . . I would have had to provide them with wands from Grindelwald’s guard and hope that they functioned moderately well for them.

“I could stall no longer, but I had been able to cast a wandless nonverbal Accio, and, knowing that the wands were sailing through the castle, I told Grindelwald – and I addressed him as Gelly, as I did in the old days – I told him that a witch was hardly worth the magic expended and that Alastor . . . that Moody was . . . that he was a . . . a pathetic cripple and also not worth my energy, and I . . . oh, Minerva . . .” Suddenly, Albus’s cool narrative broke completely and his eyes filled with tears. He covered his face with his hands and took a few deep, shuddering breaths before lowering his hands, regaining his composure despite his tears, and continuing. “I turned my wand on Rufus . . . he, at least, knew and, I hoped, still believed, that this was a ruse. I cast curse upon curse . . . I did not put a great deal of force behind the spells, but they had to be real. It was . . . sickening. And yet I continued. I will never forget the expression of pain and dismay on young Alastor’s face. It was as though his world had crumbled and disappeared before his eyes. But then there was a shout from Katherine. She caught her wand and the other two wands sailed to their respective owners. Without hesitation, I turned on Grindelwald and cast a strong Stupefy. Of course, he blocked it just as quickly as I cast it. Despite his weakened state, Rufus immediately attacked, disarmed, and Stunned a few of Grindelwald’s guards, and Katherine did the same. It took a moment for Alastor to gather his wits, but soon, he, too, was keeping Grindelwald’s guards at bay, allowing me to continue without interference from them. Fortunately for us, because we were in the centre of his castle and Grindelwald felt safe there, there were relatively few wizards actually in the room with us, and the Aurors took care of them quickly, leaving me to deal with Grindelwald. They sealed the doors and kept out any other of Grindelwald’s men who attempted to enter. It was work for them to stay ahead of the guards’ efforts, and if it hadn’t been for the Aurors, I would not have had a chance at defeating Grindelwald.

“Grindelwald recognised that he had underestimated me before, but he did not realise the extent to which he had done so. I might have been weakened from the captivity and the Legilimency, but I had reserves of which he was entirely unaware, and I knew of magic that he could not harness. We duelled long, but in the end, I disarmed him and it was the very simple and standard spell, Petrificus Totalus, that ended the duel. And ended his reign of terror.”

The two sat silently in the sitting room in the high Hogwarts tower, dawn seeping in through the windows. Minerva had begun to weep when Albus described his interrogation at the hands of Grindelwald, but had swallowed her tears and blinked them away; then when he described cursing Rufus Scrimgeour and young Alastor’s reaction, her tears flowed and she could not blink them away. Now she pulled out a handkerchief and wiped her face.

“I am sorry . . . perhaps I should not have told you so much,” Albus said softly, his own eyelashes still wet and pain written on his face. “It was selfish of me . . . wanting you to know, to understand . . .”

“No, no . . .” Minerva said softly, rising from her chair and joining Albus on the sofa. “I am glad you shared it with me. And if you ever want to talk about it, about how you feel . . .”

Albus shook his head. “No . . . I rarely think of it, any of it, really.” He reached out tentative fingertips and grazed her damp cheek briefly, and said, his voice hoarse, “I just thought . . . you have wondered . . . and it is all of a piece, this story. And we are friends . . . I wanted you to know just what sort of friend you have, and that he is rather different from what you have likely believed him to be. He is not just the one for whom you feel affection and gratitude, but he is also this other wizard . . . you deserved to know.”

Minerva surprised Albus by returning his gesture, touching his face, and then combing his hair back with her fingers and letting her hand come to rest on his shoulder.

“You are the wizard I have always believed you to be and more. You are . . . you are Gryffindor, and you did what was hard and painful for you . . . I can only admire you more than I did before.” And she leaned forward and kissed his cheek, letting her lips rest a moment and her breath to pass warm across his skin before she sat back. “But now I see you are tired. And,” she added with a bit of a smile, “you have not had your Vitamin Potion tonight. Might I recommend the vanilla one?”

Albus smiled himself at that. “Of course, Mother McGonagall. And I think we might both have time for a few hours sleep, at least, as the dawn still comes early. I do hope you will be able to sleep after all of this. It hasn’t been the most pleasant of bedtime stories.”

“Perhaps not, but I will rest easy knowing that I am at Hogwarts and Hogwarts is in your care,” Minerva replied.

The two stood and Albus placed a hand on Minerva’s arm. “Now that your rooms are on the seventh floor . . . the backstairs will bring you close to your quarters in Gryffindor Tower.”

Minerva nodded and let Albus lead her from the sitting room, through his bedroom, then down the narrow dark stair, and in the darkness, she felt no fear, for Albus was there before her. She said good-night to him at the bottom of the stairway, insisting that he return to his suite and find his bed.

Albus nodded and cupped her face in his hand, leaning forward just slightly and placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. Then the scarred oak door closed between them and Minerva headed back to her rooms on the other side of the castle.

---

Next: "Gifts" 4 August 1957.

[MMADfan]

sevherfan said:

If you're going to post during the Ugly Betty commercial I'm going to review before we see if she can successfully stop the wedding.

I gotta say, I agree with the other review: I was so proud of Minerva for not being more shocked. She isn't a prude, as Obliging Minerva shows, but she is a bit... repressed right now. Poor Albus made me want to cry. But it was incredible progress that he TOLD her it all. EVEN the embarassing part.

(I broke up the chapter! That's so bad! And Betty is in so much trouble!)

You sure are bad, and everybody's in trouble! Yikes -- heartattack??? OMG, yes, he had one! Cripes!

I absolutely adore this show. It's the only TV I watch every week without fail.

(And the above was an OT comment on "Ugly Betty." Gotta love that show -- laughing and crying, loving even the worst characters and wanting to shake the best ones. Love it.)

[Hogwarts Duo]

I think I said it in my last review but I want to reiterate it here…this is my new canon story for Albus. I love the depth of emotion and despair blended with a sense of hope, love, and compassion. This is the way I imagined Albus to be. He’s not someone with a perfect past but one who has learned and grown from his mistakes.

“So my wand . . . my wand contains the heartstring from Mother Dragon, the dragon who helped save you?” Minerva asked, pulling her wand from her pocket and looking at it as though she was seeing it for the first time.

Albus nodded. “The very same . . .”

“No wonder Ollivander told me that the dragon heartstring core was from an unusual source,” Minerva said softly, brushing its polished length with a fingertip.

The way you wrote this passage, I can almost feel Minerva’s reverence for her wand, the core, and the source. I think for the first time, she realizes the sacrifices that went into providing her with her wand, something I doubt anyone else knows of their wand and its origin. The fact that the Mother Dragon died protecting Albus makes it even more special, both for Albus and for Minerva. It’s a brilliant story and one that really tugs at my heartstrings.

“…Yet I could not think about that, and I could not even think about those whom I loved, you, Gertrude, the Flamels, my mother . . . .”

Albus just admitted to Minerva that he loves her, yet I don’t think she fully comprehended what he was telling her here. Among those he loved, he named Minerva first and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Maybe Minerva will think on it when she’s back in her rooms and draw a few conclusions about what she’s heard…at least in this part.

Minerva surprised Albus by returning his gesture, touching his face, and then combing his hair back with her fingers and letting her hand come to rest on his shoulder.

And she leaned forward and kissed his cheek, letting her lips rest a moment and her breath to pass warm across his skin before she sat back.

Albus nodded and cupped her face in his hand, leaning forward just slightly and placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. Then the scarred oak door closed between them and Minerva headed back to her rooms on the other side of the castle.

I love this section of the evening. The tenderness expressed by both Albus and Minerva is so incredibly sweet and loving. The gentle touched and kisses spoke volumes of what they’re feeling but too afraid to express. I can only hope that they will both go to bed and draw upon those feelings and touches, growing even closer together than every before.

Thanks for a wonderful backstory for Albus and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next!!

TTFN,
GLM

[dianahawthorne]

Fantastic chapter - I loved the detail in how Albus defeated Grindelwald - and also how Harry & Voldemort's wands came into being! Great job, as always, and PLEASE update soon!

[sevherfan]

Ah, you're going to kill us. You get back to the rapid-releasing, and we ask for even more! hehe. It is just too good though.

We need to hear their private thoughts on it all now. I want to know what Minerva reallllly thought of Albus in bed with too many people (was I the only one out there wondering the sex of all those limbs?? forgetting any unsubstantiated things we've learned, probability alone would mean some might not be... well, ok, apparently I am the only one thinking about this!). And I absolutely want to know about what Albus thought about not being able to skip over the particularly embarrassing parts.

And her offering him vitamin potion after it all!!!! You gotta love that she's 84 years his junior (I do owe you, so I did my own math so you wouldn't need to correct me...) and offering him vitamin potion after he tells her he bartered his body for beds and woke up next to many pairs of naked limbs.

Talk about confusing the poor girl though. From fond to this fountain of private information. Men are so complicated.

Ok, now for the big question that has plagued me for the months you refused to tell us what his Animagus was: does she try to attack him if they are both transformed? Instincts, right?

[sevherfan]

Oops, I almost forgot about Mother Dragon. Everybody who thought about their pets when we learned that Albus scratched her back, raise their hands!

[stefdarlin]

mmadfan said:

Yet I could not think about that, and I could not even think about those whom I loved, you, Gertrude, the Flamels, my mother . . . .

“It was selfish of me . . . wanting you to know, to understand . . .”

And we are friends . . . I wanted you to know just what sort of friend you have, and that he is rather different from what you have likely believed him to be. He is not just the one for whom you feel affection and gratitude, but he is also this other wizard . . . you deserved to know.”

Minerva surprised Albus by returning his gesture, touching his face, and then combing his hair back with her fingers and letting her hand come to rest on his shoulder.

“You are the wizard I have always believed you to be and more. You are . . . you are Gryffindor, and you did what was hard and painful for you . . . I can only admire you more than I did before.” And she leaned forward and kissed his cheek, letting her lips rest a moment and her breath to pass warm across his skin before she sat back.

“Perhaps not, but I will rest easy knowing that I am at Hogwarts and Hogwarts is in your care,” Minerva replied.

Albus nodded and cupped her face in his hand, leaning forward just slightly and placing a gentle kiss on her forehead.

[glow=LimeGreen,2,300]YES!!!!![/glow]

Nuff said:

Stef =o)

[esoterica1693]

So much excellent, beautiful, thoughtful stuff in these long chapters. I can barely imagine how to review them properly.

Albus's obvious embarrassment and shame when he was describing his sexual wanderings to Minerva--poor fellow, how hard to have to tell her of them, but good on him for not editing them out entirely! And whatever inner reaction she might have she manages to mask entirely.

Carrying on w/ the Prodigal Son imagery I used above, Nicolas Flamel seems to be the father-figure here, receiving Albus back w/ joy and w/o judgement after his dissolute period.

Really Albus has the Roma, Nyima (and his Mother Dragon), and Flamel to thank for his very life. The Roma literally for his physical life, b/c it was their happening by which triggered his re-claiming life and beginning his emotional recovery; Nyima and Mother Dragon for his spiritual and magical recovery and growth into understanding the import of love and compassion; and Flamel for his vocational recovery, re-establishing himself in the UK wizarding world and economy--as well as putting the finishing polishes on the magical recovery.

In spiritual alchemical terms it is as if Albus had his Nigredo in Europe moving from bed to bed, moved into the White/Albedo stage of purification w/ Nyima, and then finally reached the final, red stage w/ Nicolas. Perhaps the beginning of the red stage was marked by his acquisition of Fawkes. Rather appropriate that a man who has undergone such a resurrection experience should have a phoenix companion and become a phoenix animagus.

I like the way you use the sharing of meals as the motif of hospitality throughout. Very traditional and true symbolism.

The contrast between how he responded to Nicolas the first time he studied w/ him and how he responded to Nyima shows the profound transformation that has taken place.

Albus as the wizarding equivalent of a novice Buddhist monk...that has to be one of the more creative plot points in your whole story! His ability to remain centered and calm and to keep life in perspective in canon1-6 makes it obvious that he has studied the contemplative spiritual disciplines, but I wouldn't have imagined it had included the Eastern/Buddhist variety!

His "auricular confession" to Nyima, which obviously granted him the inner freedom that those of us of an Orthodox or Catholic practice have possibly experienced along w/ absolution--that is what DH!Albus so very desperately needed to have had earlier in his life.

On a less existential note, I love Siofre's comment that he wouldn't be a good influence on Merwyn!

“So my wand . . . my wand contains the heartstring from Mother Dragon, the dragon who helped save you?”

No wonder Mother Dragon's other heartstring chose Minerva as its witch--she who has already offered to lay down her life for Albus once, who helped him come to understand the import and dignity of another who actually did (Carson), and who would give herself up for and to him in an instant even now.

I get the sense that if Gertrude had been single when Albus first met her, we wouldn't have any ADMM to celebrate. <g> I don't think they've ever been together as a romantic couple, but if she hadn't been w/ Reginald, and/or if he had died of more natural causes, not breaking her spirit and heart in the process, so that her widowhood had a different character, I think she and Albus would have ended up as more than dear friends.... Not that he has ever felt those feelings towards her, or does now--she's always been off-limits in one way or another--but if things had been different, he *could* have developed such feelings, IMHO.... In a way Gertie is a mirror of Minerva--brilliant, spirited, but outwardly reserved and austere to those who don't know her.

How Albus had to portray Minerva during his interrogation by GG, and how guilty he feels....no wonder, years later when they're together, per AAoL, he is so very reluctant to say she's "his," his possession.

And yes, Albus admits that he loves her, even counts her first among the most important beloved people in his life, and I don't think either of them hears that confession for what it is at the moment, especially not Minerva.

And his pain at what he had to say about and do to his Auror comrades, and what the 2 uninformed ones must have thought...((((Albus)))))))

Minerva's ultimate response--the sitting beside him, stroking his cheek, etc.--absolutely beautiful. It reveals her depth of character and her love for him--true compassionate love, not just erotic love.

It is hard for me to imagine how they can have yet another disaster between them after this session! He has bared his soul to her, and she has received it w/ love and compassion. Short of sex, how much more intimate and trusting can they get? As a comment above said, the tenderness Minerva shows him throughout, especially at the end, and his explanation of why he told her all this--it just screams of their love for each other, which they are both semi-blind to.

Will he do another self-destructive thing out of his lingering shame? Utterly convinced that Minerva surely can't love a wizard such as he, will he do something to push her away so that he doesn't have to re-imagine himself as (gasp!) LOVABLE?

[esoterica1693]

sevherfan said:

Ok, now for the big question that has plagued me for the months you refused to tell us what his Animagus was: does she try to attack him if they are both transformed? Instincts, right?

IAN MMADfan. :-) But my impression is that phoenixes are pretty big strong birds, and that Min is at most an averaged-sized domestic cat--brilliant, beautiful, clever, but not physically extraordinary. If anyone's instincts kicked in, I'd think it would be the other way 'round, phoenix!Albus seeing tabby!Minerva as prey. However, Albus always recognizes Minerva's magical signature even when she's transformed, and so I don't expect he'd have any inclination to pounce on her. At least not in the sense of hunting his dinner . And since his magical signature is incredibly strong, I doubt she'd mistake him for predator or prey either. As for pouncing on her in other ways when not in his phoenix form--hopefully he'll get to that point eventually!

Speaking of phoenix!Albus....did Minerva previously know his animagus form before this narration? Did he transform for her as part of her training as a student? Or discuss it in those books written by "Aparius B. White"?

Speaking of bright flaming birds, Fawkes has been pretty invisible in RAM, only making a few appearances. Of course he's probably sitting contentedly on his perch in the background in lots of scenes but just not doing anything to capture MMADfan's attention. <g> I wonder what his opinion of Albus + Minerva is? :-)

[MMADfan]

esoterica1693 said:

sevherfan said:

Ok, now for the big question that has plagued me for the months you refused to tell us what his Animagus was: does she try to attack him if they are both transformed? Instincts, right?

IAN MMADfan. :-) But my impression is that phoenixes are pretty big strong birds, and that Min is at most an averaged-sized domestic cat--brilliant, beautiful, clever, but not physically extraordinary. If anyone's instincts kicked in, I'd think it would be the other way 'round, phoenix!Albus seeing tabby!Minerva as prey. However, Albus always recognizes Minerva's magical signature even when she's transformed, and so I don't expect he'd have any inclination to pounce on her. At least not in the sense of hunting his dinner . And since his magical signature is incredibly strong, I doubt she'd mistake him for predator or prey either. As for pouncing on her in other ways when not in his phoenix form--hopefully he'll get to that point eventually!

Speaking of phoenix!Albus....did Minerva previously know his animagus form before this narration? Did he transform for her as part of her training as a student? Or discuss it in those books written by "Aparius B. White"?

Speaking of bright flaming birds, Fawkes has been pretty invisible in RAM, only making a few appearances. Of course he's probably sitting contentedly on his perch in the background in lots of scenes but just not doing anything to capture MMADfan's attention. <g> I wonder what his opinion of Albus + Minerva is? :-)

Not in any particular order:

Albus's Animagus form is one of the few things that Minerva knew about Albus but that the readers didn't -- I was savin' it up for these chapters. ;D

Phoenixes are vegetarian. Owls are carnivores and predators. Albus feeds phoenix treats to the owls, but they aren't very popular with them. But they take them anyway! LOL! And RaM!Albus only very, very rarely gives Fawkes sweets, because they aren't good for him. Too many give him a tummy ache and also make Wilspy's clean-up of Fawkes's phoenix droppings even messier than usual! Haha!

An Animagus is still the witch or wizard and still retains their mental faculties. Minerva might enjoy playing as a cat, but she would find the thought of actually going after a mouse or something to be pretty revolting -- less so when she was transformed, but enough so she'd have very little desire to do so. Of course, if she remained in the form long enough (weeks at a time), the instincts would become stronger, but she'd still be Minerva. Peter Pettigrew was in his Animagus form so much, my theory is, that his rattiness became more actual and less metaphorical! LOL!

BTW, in a couple chapters, you do get to see Albus in his phoenix form (shouldn't tell you that, but it's not too much of a spoiler).

Fawkes is around, but he likes to fly about. He's Albus's friend, not his domesticated pet! *grin* He spends more time in the tower when he's either getting toward his burning time or just reborn. When he's at his physical peak, he takes advantage of it. I had something in one of the early chapters about that, but took it out as a boring digression that drew attention unnecessarily away from whatever it was I was trying to do in the chapter -- I think it was the one in which Fawkes joined Albus in his bedroom while he was dressing then transported him to his office. Anyway, just a bit of RaM trivia!

TTFN!

[esoterica1693]

I hope our very busy Albus is able to relax a bit in his phoenix form on occasion--surely a bit of flying and soaring would be very invigorating and take a serious wizard's mind off the cares of the world. As well as keep his upper body in fine shape--no wonder he's so darn buff at 117! Since he was sore from his flight at the beginning of this group of chapters, Mother McGonagall should put him on a winged exercise routine. <vbg>

Having Fawkes as a companion is really quite providential--it provides Albus a bit of 'cover.' While Minerva can easily blend in places as a cat, a phoenix attracts quite a bit more attention! But if folks know that there's a phoenix already resident at Hogwarts, they'll just assume it's Fawkes if they see Albus flying and apparating about....very clever....

[MMADfan]

esoterica1693 said:

Having Fawkes as a companion is really quite providential--it provides Albus a bit of 'cover.' While Minerva can easily blend in places as a cat, a phoenix attracts quite a bit more attention! But if folks know that there's a phoenix already resident at Hogwarts, they'll just assume it's Fawkes if they see Albus flying and apparating about....very clever....

Precisely!

On a completely different note: Are people too worn out from RaM to want an update this weekend? ;D

[dmf1984]

mmadfan said:

On a completely different note: Are people too worn out from RaM to want an update this weekend? ;D

No! Never too worn out for RaM updates, never I say!

(small voice) not to appear greedy or anything like that (small voice)

Hee. ;-)

[esoterica1693]

I don't think I really need to answer that question for you, do I, MMADfan? <g>...having confessed multiple times that if I'd lived in the days when most popular fiction was serialized I'd have gone nuts! I have total sympathy for those folks who allegedly clustered quayside to learn the latest plot developments in their favorite stories as transatlantic ships bearing the updates arrived ....

Although, since Albus is in many ways shaped by his Victorian era, it's only appropriate his story be told in this format...

[mystique]

I may not reply to your updates, but I follow your story religiously; and no, I don't think anyone (myself included) would feel overwhelmed by yet another RAM post this weekend.
Sincerely,
Mystique

[MMADfan]

Note: This version is mildly edited for content. To read the full version, check out the RaM Lemons Thread by following this link!

Not DH-compliant! I’m glad folks like Albus’s personal history in RaM!

Posted in two parts because of length.

CXXIII: Gifts

Minerva lay in bed, tossing and turning, her head still spinning from all that she had so suddenly learned about Albus. The mysterious and painful disappearance of his father, his youthful association with Grindelwald, his mother’s death, his . . . wanderings . . . . Minerva didn’t know what surprised her more. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised he had known Grindelwald when they were young. They were the same generation, after all; it made sense. But that he had been friends with the wizard, even for a brief time . . . still, Grindelwald must have been charismatic to have accumulated the followers he did. And Albus had had the nerve – the Gryffindor courage – to argue with him, even as he had wanted the older wizard’s approval. He had said that waking up in the mud, having been beaten by Grindelwald, had actually been a relief.

What surprised Minerva most, though, had been Albus’s reaction to his mother’s death. Not his guilt and sorrow, that seemed typical Albus. But the intensity of his guilt and how it had driven him to despair . . . she never could have imagined Albus wandering through Europe, drinking, carousing, and generally leading a dissipated life, as he had phrased it. And yet when Albus had told his story, Minerva could easily see how he had come to that point and her heart had ached for him. Someone should have helped him, someone should have comforted him and saved him from himself and his guilt, intervened before he had woken up in that room, so disgusted with himself. Hot tears rose in her eyes as she thought of young Albus, so alone and in such emotional pain, surrounding himself with people, but still alone and in such pain that eventually he no longer felt anything at all. Thank whatever good fortune that had brought those Gypsies along at just that moment. What would have happened to him if he had not seen that little girl and wanted to help her and save the pony? Would he have died? Or would he have eventually gone home to Wales and his brother, still feeling guilt, his sense of self-worth even more damaged after his dissolute wanderings, and then led an undistinguished life, perhaps working in the pub alongside his brother? Never to do his research, never to write his books, never to come to Hogwarts to teach . . . never to meet her? And her own wand – what wand would have found her, if not the mate to his?

Minerva had felt nothing but relief when Albus told her of how he had travelled with the Roma, and was even relieved to hear that he had found some comfort and love with Maria. Now, though, lying there in bed, Minerva imagined young Albus, hair still deep auburn, youthful and beautiful, his need great, his bright blue eyes shadowed with pain, making love to a dark-haired, dark-eyed young Gypsy woman. These visions simultaneously created a flow of heavy, throbbing, warmth in her, and a gripping jealousy around her heart.

Minerva reached out in the pale light and took the evil eye from its place on her bedside table. She looked at it, wondering if Maria had worn something similar, and Minerva slipped the cord around her own neck and held onto the talisman with one hand. She closed her eyes and imagined young Albus, surprised the first time that Maria came to him in the dark, and imagined the young woman, a lithe and sensuous shadow, undressing and joining him beneath his blankets. Minerva saw Albus kiss her and draw his hand down over the young woman’s breast, kneading and fondling. Then she saw Albus taking hold of the young woman’s shoulders, rolling her onto her back, and rising up, naked, parting her legs with his own, finding entrance. Minerva’s breathing quickened and her own hand began to touch herself through her nightgown, where she imagined young Albus would touch Maria. The young woman would cry out softly at his sudden presence, digging her fingernails into his back. Minerva’s hand increased its pressure, and now she was the woman, Albus was making love to her, his body warm and damp with sweat as he shifted, bringing her even more pleasure. Minerva moved aside her nightgown and moaned, imagining she was with young Albus, bringing him comfort, pleasure, and love after his long, arduous journey through darkness and back to the light. And her throbbing grew and released, Minerva turning her face into the pillow, biting down, crying out.

She gasped and sighed, catching her breath. There were tears on her cheeks, and Minerva felt a mixture of relief and regret. She should not allow herself such fantasies. It would only make things worse for her. But now she relaxed and let out a long breath. She was glad that Albus had found the Gypsies and that Maria had loved him for a while. He had needed that love, she was sure of it, needed to feel lovable again, and, perhaps even more important, he needed to give love.

As for the rest of Albus’s story . . . she could understand why no one spoke of the events leading to his victory over Grindelwald. They could easily be distorted, and even if they weren’t, they had been painful for Albus and for the Aurors. But now Minerva’s mind was growing foggy, and as her mind drifted, she had the thought that if Albus and Gertrude ever had been involved romantically, they both certainly had experienced enough pain, and enough shared pain, that she could no longer resent it. They both deserved love, and it was clear to Minerva now why Gertrude was so devoted to Albus. She had known him, after all, since she was little more than a girl; they had celebrated holidays together as a family. And when Reginald lay dying, Albus did what he could, no matter how little he claimed it to be, to relieve the other wizard’s pain and to take it on himself. Gertrude had good reason to love this very lovable wizard in a special way. And although Minerva no longer believed them to be currently involved – surely Gertrude would have brought his birthday present to his bedroom and waited for him there, if they were, and Gertrude would have done something more special for him and certainly would not have let him have his birthday dinner with another witch if she were in the castle that evening, as she was – Minerva thought that if they ever had been lovers, it could only have been good for them both. And whatever their previous relationship, the two were still friends . . . and Minerva felt gratitude that Albus had had at least one good friend close by who could give him the support and love he needed during the hard years of the war, and after, too.

Minerva sighed and rolled over, a slight smile on her face. She loosed her grip on the evil eye, which she had held onto with one hand since putting it over her head, and she fell asleep as the sun rose above the mountains in the east.

-/-/-/-

Albus readied himself for bed. It had been a long and tiring night. He had known it might be difficult to tell Minerva about some of those events, some of what he had done, but he hadn’t realised quite how emotionally exhausting it would be. Perhaps he should have told her only a little at a time. If he had, it wouldn’t have had the cumulative impact on him, reliving so much of those difficult days. There had been so many happy days, too, at school, at the Flamels, with Master Nyima and with Mother Dragon. And then there had been those decades of peace after he had returned to Britain, reading, researching, experimenting, writing, developing friendships, travelling occasionally, trying to live up to the responsibilities that his great gifts had placed upon him, but that was only a small part of his story, and the less interesting part.

It was best told as a whole, though, which is why he had chosen to do so. And Minerva’s reaction . . . it hadn’t precisely surprised him. He had not believed he would lose her friendship. But that she had been so accepting of it all, even of his disgusting behaviour after his mother’s death, that was somewhat unexpected. Albus was certain that although he had not gone into detail, he had told her enough that she had a very good idea of how he had spent his days and nights, and how very far he had fallen from that promising young wizard who had the highest cumulative NEWTs scores in the history of Hogwarts, and the most NEWTs, possible, as well, having taken twelve, sitting the exams in the History of Magic, Divination, and Muggle Studies despite not having taken the classes since his fifth year. And then, just seven short years later, he was a widower, his mother had died while in his care, and he had fallen into a pit of despair and self-loathing that he had dug for himself and simply enlarged through his own behaviour.

It was a miracle that on the very day that he had hit his nadir, he had crossed paths with the Roma, had felt the need of that little girl, and had managed to bestir himself to help her. And then the Roma’s silent acceptance of him, Albus thought as he climbed between the sheets, that had been his salvation, or the beginning of it, anyway. He had seen their need, and they had seen his, and, surprisingly, had not rejected him, leaving him for his own people to sort out. No, they had taken him in for a meal and then accepted his company as they travelled. And Maria. Beautiful, dark, loving Maria . . . she had come to him freely, even knowing, as she must have, that he would leave them, and her. So many gifts, so much generosity, if one only opened one’s eyes to it, and if one opened oneself and gave, as well.

Minerva was a gift. Albus closed his eyes and relaxed completely, letting out a long, slow breath. Such a gift . . . from the time her bright little mind had entered his classroom to her sweet, childish care of him when he returned, exhausted from a painfully unsuccessful mission, to her loving support of Hagrid as he made the transition from student to assistant groundskeeper, to the young, supremely competent witch who had saved him in France, and to the dear friend who kissed his cheek and accepted him and his past, faults and all, Minerva was a miracle in herself. Of all the people whom he had been graced to know and whom he had come to love, even of the witches whom he had loved, from his mother and Perenelle to Dervilia, to Maria, and even to Gertrude . . . of them all, Minerva was special to him in a way that none other was. It mystified him slightly, but he accepted his feelings for her. Somehow, Minerva being Minerva, he could not help but love her, and to love her above all others. If only he could separate his love for her from his passion for her, but they were one and inseparable. But his love for her, at least, was a good thing; miraculously, Minerva loved him, too, and she still did, even after all he had told her.

As the morning light blossomed over the mountains, Albus fell asleep, thinking of the wonder that was Minerva, and his heart was at ease.

-/-/-/-/-

Minerva woke to a flurry of feathers in her face. For pity’s sake, it was Bootsie, with a parchment larger than he attached to one leg. When she had finally freed the parchment from the obnoxious bird’s leg and herself from its annoying attention, she noticed another owl, much more sedate and well-mannered, sitting on the footboard of her bed. She took the letter from that owl, too. She had barely done that when a third bird arrived. Minerva recognised it as Hengist, her mother’s owl. Because she had no treats for any of the birds, Minerva told them to find the Owlery. It only had regular owl food, no special treats, but it was the best she could do.

Minerva cast a Tempus. Almost ten o’clock. Late, but not terribly, considering how very late she had gone to bed. Minerva took a quick look at the letter from Melina. As she expected, it was a wedding invitation, but there was a small note, as well, congratulating Minerva on her appointment as Head of Gryffindor and asking whether she had seen the announcement in the Daily Prophet the day before. She hadn’t. She hadn’t even looked at the Prophet in a few days. The next letter was from her mother, of course, also offering congratulations, enclosing a clipping from the Prophet, and with a post script from her father. They were both looking forward to seeing her again as soon as her duties at Hogwarts permitted.

Minerva sagged. She did want to see her parents, of course, but she had completely forgotten that she had promised them that she would take the rest of her holiday and spend at least a few more days at the house. Well, she would think about that later. Minerva turned her attention to the clipping.

New Head of Gryffindor Installed

Yesterday evening, in a private ceremony, a new Head of Gryffindor House was installed at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the preeminent institution of wizarding education in the British Isles. The new Head is one Minerva M. McGonagall, only daughter of Merwyn McGonagall and Egeria Egidius McGonagall. Professor McGonagall joined the staff of Hogwarts last December as Transfiguration teacher, replacing the renowned Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, who became Hogwarts Headmaster upon the death of Armando Dippet the year before.

Professor McGonagall is best known for her innovative work and leadership in the Ministry’s Special Committee for Experimental Transfiguration, which she joined after attaining her Mastery in 1949. After her first apprenticeship with Transfiguration Mistress Madame Feuilly, formerly of Beauxbatons, proved unsatisfactory, McGonagall, a former student of Headmaster Dumbledore’s, in a typical show of Gryffindor bravado, challenged Madame Feuilly in an age-old ritual combat. This Gryffindor daughter of Hogwarts prevailed in a public duel still remembered to this day by those who were present.

Good lord, Minerva thought, they made it sound as though she had engaged in a fight to the death or some such nonsense. And it hadn’t been very long ago, either. She hoped that people’s memories weren’t that short!

Although some anonymous former colleagues of Professor McGonagall question the wisdom of her installation as the youngest Head of Gryffindor in more than five hundred years, others are full of praise for the Transfiguration Mistress. Indeed, the most recent Head of Gryffindor, Professor Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank, praised her successor, saying that McGonagall would care for her House “as a mother lion would care for her cubs.”

Current Deputy Headmistress Gertrude Gamp, a Slytherin herself, made the following statement: “Professor McGonagall has always shown herself to be brave, resilient, and steadfast. She is an excellent teacher, a very talented Mistress of Transfiguration, and a role-model for all students at Hogwarts. I taught Professor McGonagall myself, and I can say that my regard for her, always high, has only grown over the years. I am pleased to be able to call her a colleague, and I have no doubt but that the House of Gryffindor will benefit from her leadership and her care for many years to come. I offer her my congratulations on her achievement.” High praise indeed from a Slytherin.

Her fellow Heads of House, Johannes Birnbaum of Ravenclaw, whose own installation created a storm of controversy, and Horace Slughorn, long-time Head of Slytherin, were also welcoming and unstinting in their praise of the young Transfiguration Mistress. There is currently no sitting Head of Hufflepuff, and the incoming Head, Professor Norman James, was unavailable for comment.

Headmaster Dumbledore, reached for comment the afternoon of McGonagall’s installation, had this to say: “Professor McGonagall was not only the most talented student of Transfiguration whom I had the good fortune to teach during my years here at Hogwarts, but one of the most talented of any Master or Mistress of Transfiguration whom I have known throughout my career. But she will be Head of Gryffindor not because of her talents in Transfiguration, considerable though they are, but because she embodies the ideals of Gryffindor. She is brave, yet not fearless, and her courage always defeats her fear. She acts selflessly to do what she believes to be right. Professor McGonagall will be an excellent guardian of both Gryffindor ideals and Gryffindor students.”

The staff of the

Daily Prophet offers its own congratulations to Professor McGonagall and its best wishes for many successful years nurturing generations of Gryffindors.[/blockquote]

The article was quite a bit longer than it needed to be, but then, Minerva supposed that being the youngest head of Gryffindor in so many years did make it a little more controversial. She was relieved that they hadn’t mentioned that she was currently the only Gryffindor on staff, nor had they offered a quote from the “anonymous former colleagues.” She imagined that one of those colleagues was Dustern, but wondered who the others might be. It could have been editorial license, she supposed, and there had only been the one “former colleague.” Minerva shrugged. No point in dwelling on that. Her current colleagues had been accepting of her, and Gertrude’s words had been quite warm. She was no doubt quoted at length partly because she was the Deputy, but also because it must have seemed somewhat peculiar for a Slytherin to be so full of praise for a Gryffindor Head of House. Albus’s statement had been nice . . . she wondered whether he had offered his congratulations but they had cut it when they quoted him.

Minerva sighed. Why on earth was she fixated on the fact that Albus had never congratulated her? He had joined the toast – made with the centaur mead he had brought out for the special occasion. He had been pleased that she accepted the position; he had told her that. And he had spent hours last night sharing details of his life with her that he had shared with very few others – some of them very embarrassing, private details. But somehow, no one else’s words of congratulations meant as much to her as hearing Albus’s, and she hadn’t heard him voice them. It was foolish of her. Perhaps she would say something to him . . . just something light. No point in simply dwelling on it and not saying anything at all. Just because she had noticed he hadn’t said those particular words didn’t mean that it had any significance, after all.

The third owl was from Quin, thanking her for the tour the previous day. The tour. It seemed a very long time ago, now, after having spent so many hours listening to Albus tell the story of his youth. Quin said that he’d had a nice visit with Hagrid and his Jarvey and made it home to Ireland in time to have dinner with his “wee beasties.” He had cleared his schedule to spend a few days with them before he returned to London later in the week, and the children were thrilled.

Continued in the next post!

[MMADfan]

Continued from the previous post!

CXXIII: Gifts, continued

Minerva set the letters aside and called Blampa, who arrived accompanied by a tea tray. After thanking the house-elf for the tea and asking for a crusty roll and some cheese for her late breakfast, Minerva took a quick shower and dressed in her favourite summer robes of deep yellow and raspberry, then took time to put her hair in a chignon. There was no particular occasion to dress for, but she felt like taking the time. The morning was half gone, anyway.

As she dressed and did her hair, pausing every now and then to take a bite of bread and cheese or a sip of tea, Minerva thought about all of Albus’s revelations the night before. It had taken him some courage, she was sure, to tell her all of that, especially about his period as – how had he put it? – as a debauched wreck of a wizard. He hadn’t gone into detail, but Minerva had developed quite a clear picture of the life he must have led at that time. She doubted he had fallen as far as he could have, but it was clear that he had despaired and become enmired in his own sense of guilt and unworthiness. It must have been very difficult for Albus to have admitted so much to her. He had said that she deserved to know just what sort of friend she had, and that he was different than she had believed. He had said it as though what she didn’t know of him was more important than what she had known, and as though her regard for him would be diminished now that he had given her a more complete picture of what his life had been before they had met. It had been hard to hear much of it, but it had been much harder for him to tell, and certainly far more painful to have lived. She had never experienced what Albus had, and she hadn’t the innate power he had and whatever drives went along with that power, and she certainly couldn’t imagine how she would react if someone she had believed a friend, even if not a particularly good friend, had killed her mother. And if she felt responsible for it . . . perhaps her reaction would not be what Albus’s had been, but he was a wizard, for one, not a witch, and he lived in a different era, had a different family, different friends, greater talents. Yet she could imagine feeling terrible loss and guilt if it had been her mother. And Albus clearly had felt completely alone. It wasn’t as though he had started his . . . meanderings just for the fun of it. She certainly couldn’t look down on him for the way in which he reacted to his grief or guilt, or his ensuing despair. Thank goodness he had retained enough of his sense of self to be appalled when he woke up in bed with those strangers. Minerva gave a shudder of sympathy. That certainly must have been an awful experience for Albus. It was probably a blessing he could not remember how he got there or what he had done. No, she could only be grateful that Albus had been able to escape his despair and that he had survived it.

Albus had even seemed to think that she might be disappointed in him because of what he had done in order to defeat Grindelwald, as though there had been some shame in it. It had been the only thing to do; if Albus hadn’t done what he had, he likely would have been killed, probably in one of the bizarre ways that Grindelwald liked to devise for his enemies, and the war would have dragged on. It is doubtful there would have been any single wizard powerful enough to defeat him; it was even conceivable that Grindelwald could have won, and not only conquered the wizarding world, but perhaps even attained supremacy in the Muggle one, as well.

Albus may have had to trick Grindelwald in a rather unpleasant way, and even had to have done some rather unpleasant things himself, but he had rid the world of Grindelwald. Cursing Rufus Scrimgeour must have been dreadful for him, but at least Scrimgeour had known of the plan. Although he could have doubted Albus, wondered if the “fallback plan” wasn’t truly a plan to defeat Grindelwald, but a plan to join him, or even to supplant him. It must have been a relief to see their wands flying toward them. And poor Alastor! The wizard who had taught him, who had been his Head of House, who had sacrificed his Portkey for him, who had risked so much to save him, suddenly betraying him, even scorning him and the injury he had obtained in Albus’s own company. It must have seemed unbelievable at first, and then when the first curse fell on Rufus, what must poor Alastor have thought then? And Albus . . . no wonder he had looked so bleak for so long after he had defeated Grindelwald. It had been like filling himself up with the most vile sewage, he said, all that he had thought and forced himself to feel in order to fool Grindelwald. To hide from his interrogator all whom he loved . . . he had named her among them, her, Gertrude, the Flamels, his mother.

Albus had said it. He loved her. He said it as though it were a simple fact, one that he didn’t have to reflect upon. He loved her. She was one of the people whom Albus loved. Albus loved her. Minerva sat on the edge of the bed. Why had Albus said it then, and not when she told him that she loved him just two nights before? Because it was a part of his story and he didn’t have to think about it last night? She had said it to him, and he had frozen . . . because he was surprised? Because he . . . didn’t know how to respond? Because . . . because . . . because . . .

Minerva sighed. She didn’t know. Even after last night and all he had revealed to her of himself, there was some part of him that she didn’t understand. Perhaps even a part of himself that he didn’t understand. Perhaps that was the part of him that loved her. But he had named her with Gertrude, the Flamels, and his mother; it wasn’t as though he had said he was in love with her. At least he did love her, and he had then, more than a dozen years ago. Just as her mother had said he had when he staunched her magical drain when she was seventeen. Even in the midst of his ordeal with Grindelwald, Albus counted her amongst those whom he loved. He had been in such pain then; even telling her about it had been difficult for him. And Minerva would never forget the bleak look that crossed his face when, during her visit to him at St. Mungo’s, she had asked him how he had defeated him. He had said that it hadn’t been without great loss, and she didn’t think he had been speaking only of the loss of the fifteen Aurors, as dreadful as that must have been, but also of some part of himself that he had sacrificed in fooling Grindelwald, and of the dismay he had seen in young Alastor’s eyes, the curses he had cast, the pain he had attempted to absorb from Reginald Crouch, and the loss of his mother all those decades before. Each time she had seen him in those months after Grindelwald’s defeat, there had been a shadow of pain in his eyes, even under his smile.

Minerva pulled the small picture of Albus from her drawer and gazed at it. Yes, even in this photograph, she thought she could detect that look in his eye. She had worried about him, but after her attempts at comfort had been rebuffed after Carson’s death, she hadn’t reached out to him at all then. Perhaps she should have. Even if he hadn’t accepted her comforting, he would have at least known that she cared, that she had noticed. She should have. But there was nothing she could do to change that now. And now, she better understood the guilt he had felt at Carson’s death. After learning of his earlier experiences, it seemed a much more natural reaction, even if it still weren’t reasonable.

Minerva sighed and put the small photo down on her bedside table, next to the evil eye that she had removed from around her neck that morning. An odd impulse that had been, putting it on as she had. She reached into the drawer and took out the two white stones and arranged them in front of the picture on either side of the Muggle talisman. She sat for a long time, gazing at Albus, the stones, the rose . . . her love.

-/-/-/-/-

Albus rose, drank his morning tea, and showered, wondering if Minerva was still asleep, and whether she had slept well after their long night and all of the nightmarish memories he had shared with her. She had been so accepting of him, so loving, so Minerva. And although he was uncomfortable with what she might think of when she saw him now, knowing of his youth and his mistakes, he had no fear that her feelings for him had changed.

He washed using his favourite Muggle sandalwood soap, using the handheld showerhead to rinse his chest and back and between his legs. Albus considered indulging in . . . some physical release, but given the direction of his thoughts lately, it was unlikely that he could keep it to the merely physical. His mind would surely wander, and he knew precisely where it would wander. He would not offend her modesty and her privacy by thinking of Minerva in that way. With a wave of his hand, Albus turned off the water. He had always thought it unseemly to think that way about a woman whom one knew, unless one was already in that sort of relationship with her. Appreciation was one thing, fantasy an entirely different matter. He would likely be considered quite hopelessly old-fashioned in that, if anyone knew, but if he were, that was fine with him. There were times when being old-fashioned was perfectly all right.

Albus towelled himself off and smiled slightly remembering Maria . . . she had been a sweet one, one who had often occupied his dreams in the years afterward, and one of the few women whom he counted among his actual lovers. Any others had been . . . something quite different. He had hardly been himself during those months, and he certainly hadn’t had any kind of relationship with any of them. He couldn’t even remember them, really, or what they looked like, let alone what their names had been. They all seemed to merge together. Remembering those months was almost like remembering something from someone else’s life, a story told to him rather than one he had lived, but live it he had.

Towel around his shoulders, Albus padded naked into the bedroom. It was nine-thirty. He really didn’t have anything planned for the day, except the usual. With the Hogwarts letters out, there were bound to be more letters from parents to be answered. Albus sat down on the edge of his bed. He truly wished that he had asked Gertrude to stay just a couple more days and deal with some of the correspondence. It wasn’t difficult, but with everything else . . . . Still, Gertrude was always diligent, and she certainly deserved her holiday.

Perhaps he could go back to bed for a little while. He could just lie down for a half hour, then have Wilspy bring him a bite to eat to hold him until lunchtime. Without really making a conscious decision, Albus tossed his damp towel toward the Charmed laundry basket, which drew the towel into itself, and then he lay down, pulling up just his sheet. Wonderfully soft Egyptian cotton, nothing like what he’d slept on during his travels, and certainly not when he had been with Maria. The woolen blankets had been quite rough, but he had hardly noticed. They had even seemed to add to the experience . . . odd that he hadn’t thought of Maria in so long, and now, after talking about her the night before, his memory of her was so vivid. She had had a beautiful mouth, her lips dark and full, and her eyelashes had been so long and thick, and her breasts . . . . Albus closed his eyes and drove the memory away, but not before his body, already sensitive, reacted. He rolled over and quieted his mind, but then another face invaded his thoughts, the dearest face in the world, and Albus wondered what it would be like to kiss those lips . . . and what her breasts would feel like under his hand and whether they would react to his kisses. Albus threw his covers back and went over to the wardrobe and selected a robe for the day. He would simply go to bed early that night, or nap in the afternoon. A nap that early in the morning was an absurd notion, anyway. It was time for work and for living up to his obligations.

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Next: The chapter title spoils too much, so you’ll just have to wait patiently or impatiently! Takes place 4 August 1957 and, of course, features Albus and Minerva, and Gertrude makes an appearance, as well!