The following 200-word drabbles were written for the HP_Halloween drabble fest on Live Journal.
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From 2011
Title: Bittersweet
Pairing: Minerva McGonagall/Rolanda Hooch
Rating: K+
Summary: To Minerva McGonagall, the first Hallowe'en after the war is bittersweet.
Headmistress McGonagall walks slowly through the silent Great Hall, checking to see that the floating jack-o-lanterns are in place and that a Hallowe'en party favour is set at each plate. She's never liked the Hallowe'en Feast - - too American by half - - but she's not about to cancel it now, not when Albus had loved it so and not when they need every celebration they can manage, in this difficult first year after the war.
Whatever her personal sorrows, she'll do her best to cheer the students. She'll open the party with a brief speech honouring those they have lost - - dear Albus and brave Severus and young Colin and all the rest - - and then she'll sit smiling at the head table, closing her ears to the din. For once, the children may have all the noise and sugar they want.
And she will not feel guilty when, after the Feast ends, she leaves the school in Filius's capable hands and takes herself to a private celebration of her own. She will gather her cloak and her jug of warm, spiced wine; then by wandlight she will make her way to the snug cottage near the Quidditch pitch and to her Rolanda's arms.
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From 2012
Title: Determination
Pairing: Minerva McGonagall/Septima Vector
Rating: M
Summary: On Samhain night, it's not just the universe that is disordered.
On Samhain night, the Veil of the universe parts, and the truths we think we know dismantle themselves. On Samhain, the dead can become the living, and the living can be reborn. Each change changes another. Samhain is the Uncertainty Principle embodied, the night the universe determinedly proves its indeterminacy.
Septima Vector lives for it.
She lives for universal Samhain because it brings the world to her doorstep; her arithmancer's heart is tied to these ancient rituals that shape and break reality.
And she lives for her particular Samhain because it brings her beloved to her arms; her woman's heart is tied as firmly to the Headmistress as the Headmistress will soon let herself be tied to Septima's bedposts.
They come together rarely, for Headmistress McGonagall is as predictable as Isaac Newton wrongly believed the world to be, and so she worries about the irregularities: about sleeping with someone on her staff, about the forty years that lie between her and her Arithmancy Mistress.
But on Samhain, the immutable laws shift, the Veil folds in upon itself, and the Headmistress becomes Minerva, a woman warm and wanting, her hair disordered, her rules broken, her eternity bound by Septima's determined hands.
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From 2013
Title: To and Fro
Character: Bellatrix Lestrange
Rating: T
Summary: Bellatrix has a special reason for looking forward to Samhain.
The Shades guarding the Veil flutter uneasily as Bellatrix approaches.
Yet they do not stop her as she glides past them into the temporal realm. Indeed, they cannot stop her. Not tonight.
For tonight is Samhain, the one time that the Veil thins, and any spirit who wishes can pass through to spend a brief, breathing hour among the living.
But only Bellatrix has the power to bring one of the living back with her.
Back to death.
Her Lord taught her the secret, for she is the only one He really trusted. She is His. Always and forever.
It is for His sake that she breaches the Veil, seeks out His enemies. Why should they live when He is dead?
She likes to choose someone who is loved and needed. Someone whose passing causes pain.
As the Veil closes behind her, Bellatrix draws breath.
And lives.
She has not decided, yet, who will return with her.
Perhaps hateful old McGonagall. Perhaps her ungrateful coward of a nephew. Or perhaps she will seize one of the Potter spawn, leaving its father alive to mourn.
She relishes the possibilities.
Taking another breath, Bellatrix dons her mask and joins the Samhain revels.