AN: Well, this one-shot is rather random, but I was stuck on chapter three of After We Have Loved, so I decided to send some ideas in another direction…Sometimes that helps…This is rather short, but any longer and it wouldn't have done it for me… :) Enjoy.
Means of War
In this world, there is fear. There is oppression. And there is love.
It seems right, to say that love conquers all, but not always is a war based upon means of right and wrong.
"No, Albus!" Even the walls seem to tremble at her rage. "It will not be!"
He slams a fist into the aged oak desk. "Then it is only because you will not make it so!" The windows seem to rattle, wishing themselves shattered to allow the volume to escape.
She does not cower or shrink away from him. "I will not make it so because-"
She has lost his respect. "WHY?!" His shout echoes off the walls of her heart.
She holds inside all that would spring from within. "Because, Albus. It is not right!"
He is furious. "And you believe then, that it is wrong…" There came a great silence. "Damn it, Minerva! What are you trying to justify? We were once there, or have you forgotten?!"
Her eyes pierce his being with sadness. "No, you haven't, have you? Then why now?" He asks softer than before.
She chokes on their memories. "Because I barely came through our time. You were much, much older," she stops.
"And this time is no different," he whispers.
But she will not hear it. "NO! Now it is a girl, Ablus!" The exclamation seems to ring on into another time.
But I am no girl. In this case, nor am I a woman. I can be only a person who offers all I have to someone else. I can be only filled with courage that this may not be enough, but that does not make me any less afraid of it all.
"You're making this terribly difficult, Hermione."
"It will be difficult, but you must have courage."
She looks up. "So you have no fear?" she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.
"No," I reply. "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear."
Minerva shakes her head. The pride and the love wage war inside her heart, and one of them will lose.
As her tears start to fall, I know the outcome.
It is all I have left in me to place a kiss on her cheek and leave, no words now able to change her mind.
In this world, there is war. Big and small, the damages are all the same. This was a war of pride and love, and not of right and wrong.
Our integrity sells for so little that it is all we really have…And I couldn't take it from her…
AN2: Well, this idea had been itching me for a while, and so I decided I would scratch it today…I don't really know where the idea came from, but the integrity bit is from my favorite movie, "V for Vendetta," which should be seen by every person across the globe. It truly is beautiful…
Ashton