title: Somehow, Someway
prompt: write about a friendship (Beater 1 for the Ballycastle Bats), (word) name, (phrase) a man is known by the company that he keeps.
"Remembrance. Those who leave our side are not truely gone.
We define ourselves from the company we keep and from those who we emulate"
-Minerva McGonagall,
2007 biography "Minerva and Me" by Lilly Jookers
Somehow Minerva ended up with a child in the middle of the winter. Something had happened with the Weasley matron so she was pre-occupied and Andromeda Tonks had taken a quick trip to Malfoy manner and thought it distasteful to expose her grandson to their extended family so early in life. Harry Potter, bless the boy, thought it appropriate to beg a former teacher to take on a child charge for three hours to accompany her on her annual trip while he dealt with some "really important stuff, I promise Professor".
More quietly, in private, he had asked her to show Teddy how she honored her dead. Personally, Minerva thought that anyone in Potter's group of friends could have departed "tips to grieve", Potter being the foremost example, but Minerva accepted. If it had been anyone but Harry Potter who had asked she would have outright refused.
That boy (that man, rather) was the exception to many of her rules. Perhaps she was partial to speccy dark-haired Gryffindors or perhaps she still felt a debt to him for vanquishing Tom Riddle from the face of the Earth.
Either way, yes. Now she had a five year old boy skipping around, tugging at her arms.
She didn't typically mind children. She taught them for most of her life after all but today was a little different.
Mourning day after all.
She crouched down by Teddy and straightened his jacket. "Are you cold, Mr. Lupin?"
Her voice came out diluted from age but uncompromising in it's tone and directness. The boy shook his head, his blue locks shaking out into graying strands not unlike her own.
Minerva mustered up a thin smile. Tonks and Remus had done well. Andromeda and Harry too.
"Well then, Mr. Lupin. Take my hand. We are going quite the distance."
She held him tight, feeling the warmth that radiated out of him from his jacket. She selfishly hoped to absorb the warmth to chase away the shadows that had taken root in her skeletorn.
Indeed, it was cold at their destination.
Cold is the first feeling Minerva can remember. As a child, the cold was characteristic of her childhood. The earliest memories she has are the cold and light laughs.
On the Quidditch pitch, usually on the last games of the year, she closes her eyes. The cold transports her back to a time long forgotten. She sees her brothers in the shadows of her eyelids, wrestling over the firewood and her sister loud in the sky. Sometimes she forgets to keep her eyes closed and she opens to find them and the ancestral McGonagall home gone and the screaming Quidditch fans coming back into focus.
Frozen tear tracks wipe off easily.
Waking up as a child was an occasion welcomed in by the cold. The seeping chill would wander up to her childhood room like a too-familiar friend, coming and going with ease. Her room was small and shared, the wall across from her bed painted dusky in the dark of morning.
It's moments later that the cold has woken Minerva that her sister, long dead, yawns into existence. The rest of the house follows, slowly waking up.
She likes to wake with the cold creeping up her fingertips, leaving them purple and small.
Cold feels like home. Somehow, the loving way wind whistles up and stands benieth her arms, buffeting at her, feels righter than most things in her life. This was the feeling that crept up and warmed the freezing women, standing at a small funeral at the edge of a cliff.
Somewhere between World War I and the nineties, Minerva McGonagall lost everyone. Suzie, Michael, Malcolm, Da, and finally: Mum.
Last year, she watched her mother's coffin lowered into the ground with a young couple at her left. Golden haired and undeniably pretty, the young girl tugged her scarf tighter before approaching Minerva. She introduced herself as Lilly and her beau as Jake. She was a nurse. She stayed with Minerva's mother throughout the school year when Minerva was gone. She was very sorry for Minerva's loss. She would be happy to help Minerva out in any way and Minerva should just let her know.
She also had the same mannerisms as Suzie, long deceased. Perhaps it was the cold or the grief but the light in Lilly's eyes matched with Minerva's sister's striking green eyes that reminded Minerva of family long gone.
Minerva hated outliving her students. Too bad the universe cared little for the whims of an aging witch. The tides of violence came like the seasons, Minerva tried to help but often it was too little too late.
Lilly gave Minerva one last look. The blonde muggle saw a sage, declining woman. She might have been pretty three decades back but worry and and stress had overtaken the once gentle slopes of her face and hardened them into something indistinguishable. Lily only saw the girl in the elder woman because of the pictures she had come across while cleaning her patient's home. The pity that swelled in her chest was overwhelming.
Lilly and Jake said their goodbyes, making their way down the hill.
Minerva stayed, enchanting her mother's gravestone with the same enchantment she had used for her brothers and sisters before. All four McGonagalls laid next to each other with a slim empty patch of land waiting of her own use.
They walked up from a platform at the base of the hill to the McGonagall burial ground.
Teddy was an excitable child. He reminded her of Suzie - all that energy and earnest smiles. Minerva was suddenly very glad she was not alone as they climbed the steep steps. She was most certainly getting older.
Teddy squeezed her hand and fueled Minerva to keep her knees bending and legs moving.
On the way up, Minerva started talking. She typically was not a small talker. Like her mother and their mother's mother, she saw no need for empty words. Perhaps it was an effect of living with several brothers but she enjoyed the silence when she could have it.
"Do you know where your name comes from, Teddy?" Minerva asked.
The two were breathing a little harder, Teddy from his youth and Minerva from her age. What a funny picture they must make, Minerva thought.
Teddy shook his head no and looked up at her, shifting his eyes from brown to Lilly's shocking green. It was uncanny. Minerva rationalized that Teddy was likely imitating his Godfather but all she saw was Suzie.
"No ... well kinda ..." Teddy trailed off, breathing in the cold air deeply and looking at the long meandering path before them.
Minerva looked out beyond them, felt the cold at her back and the boy who held so many people who were so precious to her within the shades of his face and the make-up of his genes. Mourning day indeed.
She smiled.
It was not the cold smile she offered before, tight lipped and frail. The one that stretched across her face felt happy.
"I knew your father the longest, he was my student at school. You have his last name which is very special, Teddy ..." Minerva's steps became stronger as she re-lived memories long past. The chilly air carried reminders of her relative youth, reinvigorating her old bones.
She and Teddy made good time up the trail. When Minerva's stories ended, Teddy's began. He talked of his grandmother, his godfather, his godmother, and his new brother James.
Minerva learned that Teddy likes Hypogryffs the most but is also afraid of them at the same time. He likes the color orange the best but green is the best color for eyes. Minerva can't agree more.
Minerva decided that she liked recounting tales rather than freezing, lonely tears.
They reached the top of the hill.
From that point, the world rolled out before them like waves.