Post by CrankyCauldron on Nov 19, 2007 22:39:24 GMT -5
Author: Just dug this out of the very dark, somewhat dangerous recesses of my laptop… it starts off well and then I’m afraid, deteriorates into complete and utter FLUFF! Reason for posting? I feel guilty for not updating, and I wish to reassure myself that I am not –quite- dead! Sincerely hope you derive some enjoyment from it!
Standalone!
Minerva was freezing. She rolled over and tucked her duvet under her chin. The crescent moon shone fleetingly through the crack in her curtains and she realised, with a muffled snort of disgust, that she had left her balcony windows ajar. The idea of sliding out from beneath the cocoon of warmth she was attempting to encourage, and scuttle out across her tiled floor, in her unfortunately brief nightie, to close them, did not appeal. Common sense dictated she would be warmer in the long run, and not wake up with a stiff neck either. Momentarily she considered her animagus form, but recalled that last time her cat self had become obsessed with phantom mice in the bedcovers, and she’d spent half a night chasing insubstantial shadows.
Realising that it was either close the windows or remain awake thinking about closing them, Minerva reluctantly poked an overgrown toenail out into the cold and realised she hadn’t been wearing down her cat claws again (some traits were transferable, over the years). Quickly, before she could digress yet again, she leapt from bed and dashed to the window. Unfortunately, in her haste she slid on a discarded slipper and fell right through the open windows she was attempting to close. And Oh! Wasn’t it cold!
Hopping desperately from foot to foot, in the desperate folly that the less time spent in contact with the icy slates the less heat would be lost; she disentangled the slipper from her right toe, a curtain tie from her left ear, and what felt like, in the dark, half a moor-full of fern from her loose hair. The sharp curve of the moon emerged again, cutting through the heavy November fog to set alight the ruby satin of her night gown, so that for a moment, she appeared to dance, wreathed in flame.
Albus Dumbledore walking the grounds of Hogwarts, had stopped to watch the moon fight for its light to land, and his eyes were burnt with the fury of colour that was suddenly exposed. He stood stunned for a moment wondering what he was seeing, and then watched unashamedly as Minerva’s body moved, outlined and highlighted against the rough stone of the castle walls. It was only a second before he realised just who it was he was ogling, and a split second later that he realised she was not, as he had perhaps –fantasised- dancing a pagan tribute to some ancient Scottish tradition, but attempting to stay warm. He felt the desire to laugh in his belly, and thought it was probably best to make his presence known before he started chortling at her predicament.
‘Ho!’ he cried, striding so that he was closer to the castle.
Minerva stopped hopping. Only one person would cry out “Ho!” in such a cheerful manner at two in the morning, she looked out, somewhat nervously, over the barrier of her not-getting-any-warmer balcony, and saw the Headmaster’s tall unmistakable form etched in shadow down below on the grounds.
‘Headmaster?!’ she called back, realising with some horror that she had been making a slight spectacle of herself.
‘It is I,’ he answered, cheerfully. ‘Cold night, no?’
‘I, uh.. Yes, Headmaster, it, ah, is. I –uh-‘ She stopped mid-stutter. ‘Are you laughing?’
‘Absolutely not!’ said Albus, and then laughed again.
‘This is not what you think!’ Minerva exclaimed, somewhat uppity at being mocked.
‘And what do I think?’ asked Albus, his dark moustache quivering.
‘You- that is I.. left my window open and I-’ she could see, now that he had moved closer, that he was still amused. ‘Oh you… toad! What were you doing out so late?!’
Albus Dumbledore grinned at being called a toad, but ceased teasing her. ‘My sleep was disturbed,’ he replied honestly.
‘By whom?’ she enquired. ‘Is something amiss with the students, the ministry?’
‘No, everyone is fine, to the best of my knowledge,’ he smiled vaguely.
Minerva crossed her arms across her body, and waited for him to elaborate; it was becoming agonisingly cold, her toes were wrinkling against the crispy moss.
Realising his young transfigurations professor had learnt, and mastered one of his own tricks, Albus obliged and explained. ‘Ghosts,’ he said succinctly.
‘The ghosts are disturbing you?’ Minerva raised an eyebrow, that didn’t seem like them, they generally let the sleeping live, lie.
‘No, my ghosts,’ he answered.
Minerva immediately understood, and to her minor surprise, a surge of sympathy overwhelmed her; she had her own ghosts to keep her awake in the darkest of lonely nights.
‘Well, it will do you no good to be out wondering about in this chill. Come up,’ she instructed him briskly.
Albus Dumbledore raised both his eyebrows. ‘I beg pardon?’
‘And bring some of your hot chocolate,’ she continued, blithely ignoring his startled expression. ‘I’m freezing my ti-toes off out here!’ With which proclamation she promptly stepped back inside, her numb limbs delighting in relief from the winter night.
When Albus Dumbledore knocked quietly at Minerva’s bedchamber door it opened to reveal a very shivery Minerva, wrapped somewhat cumbersomely in her duvet, her room lit in spurts and flickers by the roaring fire in her hearth. He raised two steaming mugs in welcome, muggle squirty cream oozing over the rim, something Minerva professed to find far too sweet, yet he knew secretly delighted in.
‘Definitely, absolutely, please do, come in,’ she smiled and eagerly relieved him of a mug, waving loosely across to two armchairs sat before the fire to the right of her four poster bed, naked and forlorn without its covers.
‘Thank-you,’ he murmured, and noticed with a chuckle as he sat, that her balcony windows were now shut and obscured behind heavy drapes. She joined him, wriggling to manoeuvre her duvet comfortably into the chair. They sat in easy silence for a while, chocolate too hot to drink, mugs burning through the ice of their hands.
‘You have made it very cosy in here,’ Albus said, his eyes catching the photographs on the mantel; her graduation from Stonehenge University; her young self and her two brothers perched precariously in a tree; himself with a hand on her arm at a Ministry Ball, when she had still been an Auror, her face uplifted to his in a wide smile – he had been making her laugh. He was touched she felt the memory was worth displaying.
‘Thank-you,’ she said, accepting the compliment, she twirled a finger into her mountain of cream and ate it happily. Albus followed suit, choosing to chomp messily at his, most of it catching in his beard.
‘If you wanted to confide…’ said Minerva.
He glanced across at her: ‘Why ruin a beautiful night?’
She fell silent, and then when he thought the subject dropped, she surprised him.
‘I have my own ghosts,’ she admitted quietly.
‘I had not thought,’ he apologised. ‘I did not mean to make you sombre, my dear.’
‘Albus,’ she admonished, surprising him again with the familiarity of his name; she so rarely used it, despite his repeated requests. ‘I have been teaching at Hogwarts now for seven years. I am no longer your student!’
‘You are my valued colleague and friend,’ said Albus. ‘Whatever made you suspect otherwise?’
‘Sometimes your ...endearments sound a touch patronising, my dear,’ she emphasised tersely.
‘Ah,’ he said, aware that this was a sin he was quite often guilty of. ‘Surely my advanced years must allow me some faults of character!’ he bantered in a lighter tone.
She did not reply and Albus realised that he had done it again; he winced inwardly and started anew.
‘My ghosts,’ he began, ‘are at their worst when the world is at its best. When I am busy with the ministry, chasing dark wizards, disciplining errant students, writing reports- they slumber innocently, almost, I dream, I fancy, extinct. Then in the quiet of peaceful times, of pleasant happenstance I recall them, and am ashamed to have betrayed their sorrow by daring to desire them dead.’
‘Albus,’ she protested mildly, ‘you cannot betray the dead.’
‘But to forget them?’ he asked rhetorically, shaking his head. ‘It seems a grave sin to loose a memory. They deserve to be remembered.’
‘They deserve to rest in peace. And you are remembering their deaths, not their lives, and that is a graver injustice.’
Albus was startled by her insight, ‘I hadn’t even realised,’ he said, taking a sip of his cooling hot chocolate.
‘I hate to disabuse you Albus, but you are suffering from nothing more fanciful than survivors’ guilt, a very common result of War.’
‘And I thought I was special!’ he chuckled half-heartedly.
‘First signs of a delusional mind,’ murmured Minerva, cheekily.
They drank their luke-warm chocolate, returned to the earlier companionable peace, Minerva was wriggling her stretched out toes in front of the fire, enjoying the warmth on her soles, Albus drank the last of his hot chocolate and put the mug down, with an audible clink.
‘Am I cured, then?’ he asked, watching her toes, slightly concerned about the length of her toenails- she must get through a lot of shoes!
‘Nowhere near,’ said Minerva, and heaved a heavy sigh of high drama, knowing it would make him laugh. ‘But if I had it within my power, Albus,’ she added quietly, over his chuckles, ‘I would forgive you your imagined sins.’
He fell silent so suddenly, she worried that she had overstepped the invisible boundaries that marked the borders of their clearly delineated friendship, she stared at the fire, determinedly not looking at him, watching the log basket heave half a trunk onto the coals, embers spitting like shooting stars into the darkness of the room.
‘And if it was,’ Albus said eventually, and he, unlike her, had fixed his eyes intently on her profile. ‘Why would you?’
She avoided answering by swallowing the dregs of her chocolate and leaning forward to stand her empty mug beside his.
‘Worst answer, ever,’ Dumbledore told her, when she had still failed to respond. ‘Ten points from Gryffindor.’
She choked on a laugh, and finally turned to look at him, her long hair shadowing her face from the fire, only her eyes glittering up at him.
‘I don’t mean to be patronising,’ he told her, referring back to the beginning of their conversation. ‘But sometimes it’s the easiest way to remind me of how much younger you are.’
Minerva stared. ‘For Merlin’s sake Albus, what has age to do with anything?’
He did not speak any words in reply, but looked at her, his eyes following the length of her hair to her bare shoulders, her bowed lips, her pointed nose, her emerald eyes behind square spectacles, and she found her cheeks flushing; it wasn’t that he was leering, it was that he was caressing, slowly, and sadly.
‘This is my sin,’ he whispered, and Merlin, but his heart ached.
‘Then this I would not cure you of,’ she said, her breath suddenly short. ‘Even were you suffering agonies, I would selfishly deny you freedom.’
‘I am simply a lecherous old fool,’ he stated, almost angrily. ‘I would not ruin-‘
‘No you would not!’ she interrupted, fiercely. ‘I’m thirty-two, Albus, not seventeen!’
He was shocked into silence by her vehement contradiction.
‘I have made my life here, at Hogwarts,’ Minerva said firmly. ‘This will be my life, and I love it. I am content.’
Albus Dumbledore wanted to say that she deserved better, that she could have a glittering career at the ministry, in research, in travel and discovery, that a young lover and a family should be her goals, not a school full of grumpy old professors and sulking, preoccupied pupils, but she was correct, it was her life, and her choices alone; he just didn’t want her to settle for anything less than perfection.
The fire cracked and startled them both.
‘I fear your beauty tonight has led me to be more honest than was perhaps wise,’ smiled Albus ruefully.
A warm glow spread through Minerva, she beamed at him shyly, ‘My beauty?’
‘I saw you dancing on the balcony, a heavenly creature, lithe in red satin.’
‘I wasn’t dancing actually,’ Minerva pointed out, almost regretfully.
‘I know,’ he grinned at her. ‘But even hopping, you were the most incredible-’ he stopped and bowed his head, his hands covering his face. ‘I apologise,’ he spoke through his trembling hands.
‘Don’t,’ said Minerva. ‘Nobody has ever called me beautiful before- my features do not normally engender such praise.’
Albus dropped his hands, her words making him fierce. ‘Then the fools did not love you as much as I do.’
Something hot imploded in Minerva’s heart and expelled the air from her lungs, his words had stunned her, overwhelmed her, her entire body hummed, ecstatic shivers raising the hairs across her arms and neck. She stood, her duvet falling away from her shaking body, and he stood also, they met somewhere between the two chairs and he lifted her up to hold her hard against him.
Their hearts together, he touched her face.
‘I forgive you,’ she whispered.
You were forewarned! LOL
Incidentally, anyone who has read (and recalls) Nouveau (a long-suffering fic of mine) and has the ability and perseverence to beta the last chapter, please email me! It's essential that you have read it, and you have to be a HUGE fan of the ship - it's quite an undertaking!
Standalone!
This Is My Sin
[/center][/b]Minerva was freezing. She rolled over and tucked her duvet under her chin. The crescent moon shone fleetingly through the crack in her curtains and she realised, with a muffled snort of disgust, that she had left her balcony windows ajar. The idea of sliding out from beneath the cocoon of warmth she was attempting to encourage, and scuttle out across her tiled floor, in her unfortunately brief nightie, to close them, did not appeal. Common sense dictated she would be warmer in the long run, and not wake up with a stiff neck either. Momentarily she considered her animagus form, but recalled that last time her cat self had become obsessed with phantom mice in the bedcovers, and she’d spent half a night chasing insubstantial shadows.
Realising that it was either close the windows or remain awake thinking about closing them, Minerva reluctantly poked an overgrown toenail out into the cold and realised she hadn’t been wearing down her cat claws again (some traits were transferable, over the years). Quickly, before she could digress yet again, she leapt from bed and dashed to the window. Unfortunately, in her haste she slid on a discarded slipper and fell right through the open windows she was attempting to close. And Oh! Wasn’t it cold!
Hopping desperately from foot to foot, in the desperate folly that the less time spent in contact with the icy slates the less heat would be lost; she disentangled the slipper from her right toe, a curtain tie from her left ear, and what felt like, in the dark, half a moor-full of fern from her loose hair. The sharp curve of the moon emerged again, cutting through the heavy November fog to set alight the ruby satin of her night gown, so that for a moment, she appeared to dance, wreathed in flame.
Albus Dumbledore walking the grounds of Hogwarts, had stopped to watch the moon fight for its light to land, and his eyes were burnt with the fury of colour that was suddenly exposed. He stood stunned for a moment wondering what he was seeing, and then watched unashamedly as Minerva’s body moved, outlined and highlighted against the rough stone of the castle walls. It was only a second before he realised just who it was he was ogling, and a split second later that he realised she was not, as he had perhaps –fantasised- dancing a pagan tribute to some ancient Scottish tradition, but attempting to stay warm. He felt the desire to laugh in his belly, and thought it was probably best to make his presence known before he started chortling at her predicament.
‘Ho!’ he cried, striding so that he was closer to the castle.
Minerva stopped hopping. Only one person would cry out “Ho!” in such a cheerful manner at two in the morning, she looked out, somewhat nervously, over the barrier of her not-getting-any-warmer balcony, and saw the Headmaster’s tall unmistakable form etched in shadow down below on the grounds.
‘Headmaster?!’ she called back, realising with some horror that she had been making a slight spectacle of herself.
‘It is I,’ he answered, cheerfully. ‘Cold night, no?’
‘I, uh.. Yes, Headmaster, it, ah, is. I –uh-‘ She stopped mid-stutter. ‘Are you laughing?’
‘Absolutely not!’ said Albus, and then laughed again.
‘This is not what you think!’ Minerva exclaimed, somewhat uppity at being mocked.
‘And what do I think?’ asked Albus, his dark moustache quivering.
‘You- that is I.. left my window open and I-’ she could see, now that he had moved closer, that he was still amused. ‘Oh you… toad! What were you doing out so late?!’
Albus Dumbledore grinned at being called a toad, but ceased teasing her. ‘My sleep was disturbed,’ he replied honestly.
‘By whom?’ she enquired. ‘Is something amiss with the students, the ministry?’
‘No, everyone is fine, to the best of my knowledge,’ he smiled vaguely.
Minerva crossed her arms across her body, and waited for him to elaborate; it was becoming agonisingly cold, her toes were wrinkling against the crispy moss.
Realising his young transfigurations professor had learnt, and mastered one of his own tricks, Albus obliged and explained. ‘Ghosts,’ he said succinctly.
‘The ghosts are disturbing you?’ Minerva raised an eyebrow, that didn’t seem like them, they generally let the sleeping live, lie.
‘No, my ghosts,’ he answered.
Minerva immediately understood, and to her minor surprise, a surge of sympathy overwhelmed her; she had her own ghosts to keep her awake in the darkest of lonely nights.
‘Well, it will do you no good to be out wondering about in this chill. Come up,’ she instructed him briskly.
Albus Dumbledore raised both his eyebrows. ‘I beg pardon?’
‘And bring some of your hot chocolate,’ she continued, blithely ignoring his startled expression. ‘I’m freezing my ti-toes off out here!’ With which proclamation she promptly stepped back inside, her numb limbs delighting in relief from the winter night.
When Albus Dumbledore knocked quietly at Minerva’s bedchamber door it opened to reveal a very shivery Minerva, wrapped somewhat cumbersomely in her duvet, her room lit in spurts and flickers by the roaring fire in her hearth. He raised two steaming mugs in welcome, muggle squirty cream oozing over the rim, something Minerva professed to find far too sweet, yet he knew secretly delighted in.
‘Definitely, absolutely, please do, come in,’ she smiled and eagerly relieved him of a mug, waving loosely across to two armchairs sat before the fire to the right of her four poster bed, naked and forlorn without its covers.
‘Thank-you,’ he murmured, and noticed with a chuckle as he sat, that her balcony windows were now shut and obscured behind heavy drapes. She joined him, wriggling to manoeuvre her duvet comfortably into the chair. They sat in easy silence for a while, chocolate too hot to drink, mugs burning through the ice of their hands.
‘You have made it very cosy in here,’ Albus said, his eyes catching the photographs on the mantel; her graduation from Stonehenge University; her young self and her two brothers perched precariously in a tree; himself with a hand on her arm at a Ministry Ball, when she had still been an Auror, her face uplifted to his in a wide smile – he had been making her laugh. He was touched she felt the memory was worth displaying.
‘Thank-you,’ she said, accepting the compliment, she twirled a finger into her mountain of cream and ate it happily. Albus followed suit, choosing to chomp messily at his, most of it catching in his beard.
‘If you wanted to confide…’ said Minerva.
He glanced across at her: ‘Why ruin a beautiful night?’
She fell silent, and then when he thought the subject dropped, she surprised him.
‘I have my own ghosts,’ she admitted quietly.
‘I had not thought,’ he apologised. ‘I did not mean to make you sombre, my dear.’
‘Albus,’ she admonished, surprising him again with the familiarity of his name; she so rarely used it, despite his repeated requests. ‘I have been teaching at Hogwarts now for seven years. I am no longer your student!’
‘You are my valued colleague and friend,’ said Albus. ‘Whatever made you suspect otherwise?’
‘Sometimes your ...endearments sound a touch patronising, my dear,’ she emphasised tersely.
‘Ah,’ he said, aware that this was a sin he was quite often guilty of. ‘Surely my advanced years must allow me some faults of character!’ he bantered in a lighter tone.
She did not reply and Albus realised that he had done it again; he winced inwardly and started anew.
‘My ghosts,’ he began, ‘are at their worst when the world is at its best. When I am busy with the ministry, chasing dark wizards, disciplining errant students, writing reports- they slumber innocently, almost, I dream, I fancy, extinct. Then in the quiet of peaceful times, of pleasant happenstance I recall them, and am ashamed to have betrayed their sorrow by daring to desire them dead.’
‘Albus,’ she protested mildly, ‘you cannot betray the dead.’
‘But to forget them?’ he asked rhetorically, shaking his head. ‘It seems a grave sin to loose a memory. They deserve to be remembered.’
‘They deserve to rest in peace. And you are remembering their deaths, not their lives, and that is a graver injustice.’
Albus was startled by her insight, ‘I hadn’t even realised,’ he said, taking a sip of his cooling hot chocolate.
‘I hate to disabuse you Albus, but you are suffering from nothing more fanciful than survivors’ guilt, a very common result of War.’
‘And I thought I was special!’ he chuckled half-heartedly.
‘First signs of a delusional mind,’ murmured Minerva, cheekily.
They drank their luke-warm chocolate, returned to the earlier companionable peace, Minerva was wriggling her stretched out toes in front of the fire, enjoying the warmth on her soles, Albus drank the last of his hot chocolate and put the mug down, with an audible clink.
‘Am I cured, then?’ he asked, watching her toes, slightly concerned about the length of her toenails- she must get through a lot of shoes!
‘Nowhere near,’ said Minerva, and heaved a heavy sigh of high drama, knowing it would make him laugh. ‘But if I had it within my power, Albus,’ she added quietly, over his chuckles, ‘I would forgive you your imagined sins.’
He fell silent so suddenly, she worried that she had overstepped the invisible boundaries that marked the borders of their clearly delineated friendship, she stared at the fire, determinedly not looking at him, watching the log basket heave half a trunk onto the coals, embers spitting like shooting stars into the darkness of the room.
‘And if it was,’ Albus said eventually, and he, unlike her, had fixed his eyes intently on her profile. ‘Why would you?’
She avoided answering by swallowing the dregs of her chocolate and leaning forward to stand her empty mug beside his.
‘Worst answer, ever,’ Dumbledore told her, when she had still failed to respond. ‘Ten points from Gryffindor.’
She choked on a laugh, and finally turned to look at him, her long hair shadowing her face from the fire, only her eyes glittering up at him.
‘I don’t mean to be patronising,’ he told her, referring back to the beginning of their conversation. ‘But sometimes it’s the easiest way to remind me of how much younger you are.’
Minerva stared. ‘For Merlin’s sake Albus, what has age to do with anything?’
He did not speak any words in reply, but looked at her, his eyes following the length of her hair to her bare shoulders, her bowed lips, her pointed nose, her emerald eyes behind square spectacles, and she found her cheeks flushing; it wasn’t that he was leering, it was that he was caressing, slowly, and sadly.
‘This is my sin,’ he whispered, and Merlin, but his heart ached.
‘Then this I would not cure you of,’ she said, her breath suddenly short. ‘Even were you suffering agonies, I would selfishly deny you freedom.’
‘I am simply a lecherous old fool,’ he stated, almost angrily. ‘I would not ruin-‘
‘No you would not!’ she interrupted, fiercely. ‘I’m thirty-two, Albus, not seventeen!’
He was shocked into silence by her vehement contradiction.
‘I have made my life here, at Hogwarts,’ Minerva said firmly. ‘This will be my life, and I love it. I am content.’
Albus Dumbledore wanted to say that she deserved better, that she could have a glittering career at the ministry, in research, in travel and discovery, that a young lover and a family should be her goals, not a school full of grumpy old professors and sulking, preoccupied pupils, but she was correct, it was her life, and her choices alone; he just didn’t want her to settle for anything less than perfection.
The fire cracked and startled them both.
‘I fear your beauty tonight has led me to be more honest than was perhaps wise,’ smiled Albus ruefully.
A warm glow spread through Minerva, she beamed at him shyly, ‘My beauty?’
‘I saw you dancing on the balcony, a heavenly creature, lithe in red satin.’
‘I wasn’t dancing actually,’ Minerva pointed out, almost regretfully.
‘I know,’ he grinned at her. ‘But even hopping, you were the most incredible-’ he stopped and bowed his head, his hands covering his face. ‘I apologise,’ he spoke through his trembling hands.
‘Don’t,’ said Minerva. ‘Nobody has ever called me beautiful before- my features do not normally engender such praise.’
Albus dropped his hands, her words making him fierce. ‘Then the fools did not love you as much as I do.’
Something hot imploded in Minerva’s heart and expelled the air from her lungs, his words had stunned her, overwhelmed her, her entire body hummed, ecstatic shivers raising the hairs across her arms and neck. She stood, her duvet falling away from her shaking body, and he stood also, they met somewhere between the two chairs and he lifted her up to hold her hard against him.
Their hearts together, he touched her face.
‘I forgive you,’ she whispered.
You were forewarned! LOL
Incidentally, anyone who has read (and recalls) Nouveau (a long-suffering fic of mine) and has the ability and perseverence to beta the last chapter, please email me! It's essential that you have read it, and you have to be a HUGE fan of the ship - it's quite an undertaking!
