Author's Note: I just want to take a moment to thank Raybe, Alys, Dragon, deant33, and Fanfan for helping me to come up with the least-cruel way to make this story happen. I don't think we succeeded, but it was helpful nonetheless. :)
Written for…
Battlefield Wars. Team/Position: After All This Time – Always, Healing Cadet. Mandatory Character: Minerva McGonagall. Assisting Character: Harry Potter. Prompts: heal, exotic, ivory, diamond, cut, Medusa by Carol Ann Duffy (poem), "It hurts the most when the person who made you so special yesterday can make you feel so unwanted today." (quote)
It Will Fade
The church was strangely silent for the hundred or so people crammed inside, as if breathing would somehow break the nervous calm that had settled over them.
Minerva kept her eyes trained on the groom as he whispered something to the best man, who then hurried down the aisle. She remained seated when, just a moment later, the ceremony was being postponed and Harry Potter was running from the room in his best dress robes.
"I wonder what's happened," Poppy murmured beside her. All around them the church was coming to life, filling with shocked whispers.
Minerva pursed her lips and stood, walking calmly down the aisle lined with exotic flowers, paying no attention to whispers around her.
She knocked softly at the door of the bride's change room. There was no answer, but the sound of glass breaking inside. She pulled her wand from the folds of her green dress and stepped inside just in time to see the ivory train of a wedding dress slipping through the exit opposite.
Harry was seated at a small table in the corner with his head resting on folded arms as his shoulders shook. Minerva quickly closed and locked the door behind her before any lurking reporters could catch a glimpse of the poor boy.
There was a broken water glass by his feet, she noticed as she approached him. She repaired it easily, setting it atop the table next to a diamond ring she recognized as having been Ginny's engagement ring just moments before. She rested a gentle hand on his shoulder.
"Is there anything I can do?" she asked slowly. It would be foolish to ask if he was alright.
He looked up at her with watery, unfocussed eyes. His glasses were pushed up atop his head and now that he wasn't covering his hands, Minerva could see drops of blood dripping onto the linen tablecloth.
"What's happened?"
"Ginny's left me," he said quietly, eyes downcast.
"I meant about the blood, dear." She lifted his hand to discover a deep cut on the palm with tiny fragments of glass stuck in it.
"I knocked a glass over when I was trying to stop her from leaving." He sniffled, not appearing to care as Minerva went about meticulously removing the fragments.
When she was pleased with how well she'd cleaned the wound, she set is hand on the tabletop, palm open, and tried to conjure up some healing spells. She was not by any means a skilled healer, but you didn't spend upwards of fifty years with a healer for a best friend without picking up a thing or two.
When the cut was reduced to a jagged red line on his hand, Minerva retrieved a glass of water and some tissues from the adjoining bathroom, forcing them into Harry's hands.
"Just what I needed, another scar," he said, examining the cut after his eyes were dry and glasses back in place.
"It will fade, as all wounds do," she told him firmly, taking the chair opposite him. "Perhaps you would like me to get someone for you?"
"Who can I talk to? Her whole family is out there. Ron…" He trailed off, staring at the engagement ring. Minerva covered it with her hand to get his attention again.
"I'm sure there are plenty of people you would rather have this conversation with. Ms. Granger, perhaps?"
Harry shook his head roughly. "She's Ginny's friend too. I would've done anything for her, you know? But she's pregnant."
Minerva realized belatedly they were now talking about the former bride and frowned. "She's pregnant?" she prompted when Harry had gone silent.
"She got back together with Dean Thomas. All those late nights I was out fighting for my life with her brother, putting away criminals and saving up money to get her that ring, and all the while she was sleeping with Dean. He got her pregnant." He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. "I told her I didn't care. I'd raise the baby with her. She said she wanted to raise it with him instead."
Minerva nodded, removing her hand from the ring and placing it on Harry's hand instead. "It hurts the most when the person who made you so special yesterday can make you feel so unwanted today," she recited.
They were the words she'd said to all her students who had lived through a similar unfortunate heartbreak, and the same words that had been said to her by an old Transfiguration professor when she as a young girl spent a sorrowful week refusing to attend classes.
"I assure you, Harry, things will get better. Time breaks everything down, you see? It heals wounds and wilts flowers and it turns rocks to dust. And with a little time, that's all this will be: dust."