Minerva McGonagall was a careful woman. A cautious woman. A calculating woman.
She did not hide. She did not run. And she most certainly, unequivocally, did not cry.
So why was it that the sight of three sullen children with blonde hair and narrowed eyes threatened to send her teetering on the edge of an emotional precipice that neither death nor injury had ever before thrust her over?
Said children were the consequence of her foolish, fanciful younger sister's grand love affair that had resulted in many a scandalized expression. Sharp and quick-witted in a classroom, the younger Miss McGonagall had thrown away every hope and ambition she possessed in a ridiculous abandonment of both her family and her career in exchange for the perpetually wavering affections of Hugo Lynch, the cad who had ensnared Diana McGonagall with one lop-sided smile and a whispered request to dance.
Seventeen years and three children later, the starry-eyed Diana McGonagall was dead, and the responsibility now rested on the narrow shoulders of Minerva McGonagall.
Joy. Because she had so much experience with raising children.
The awkward moment when that is indeed your full-time occupation, Minerva.
This reminder floating into Minerva's frazzled mind, that, in actuality, experience in raising children was precisely what she did have, sounded remarkably like a smug comment from Albus Dumbledore. Just what she needed.
The black-haired witch took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and looked directly into the storm grey eyes of the eldest child.
Grace. That was her name. Grace. Minerva had always like the simple, elegant name, and she had to admit it suited the slim teenager, with her waist-length hair, golden at first glance, but touched here and there with an almost reddish tinge, and a type of effortless beauty that she herself had so often coveted in her youth.
The middle child was surveying Minerva with a resentful look that can only be found on those forced to play the role that from the dawn of time had been loathed. The middle child. Not the first. Not the last. Every action was a mere echo of a previous triumph, and one that would be forgotten in the glory that was to follow.
In those eyes, Minerva found not the scathing distain of the elder sister, but rather distrust and weariness, and it was with a heavy heart that she noted the clenched jaw, and the balled fists.
She too had fair hair, but not the fiery locks that had been passed down to Grace, but rather a duller blonde, as if the disillusionment of life had sucked out the very essence of this pale child.
The last child still bore the look of a baby, soft and protected, sheltered from the pain that her mother's death had brought. But no amount of shielding can truly block out the devastation that so characterizes the blow of death, and in Minerva's youngest niece's eyes, was not the hostility of her sisters, but rather an bewildered confusion and a sadness which unnervingly spoke, not of the innocence that one so often find in the face of a young child, but rather of an ancient grief of one who has witnessed too much horror, and too much pain.
Such grief startled Minerva, who stepped backwards, and promptly stumbled over the pile of luggage stacked precariously at her feet.
Grace snorted, and a blush rose to Minerva's cheeks. Defiance welled up within her – was she, Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts School and Witchcraft and Wizardry, and head of Gryffindor House, going to allow a sixteen year old with an attitude problem unnerve her? No, she most certainly was not.
And there began a journey that would see four lives turned upside down forever.