Disclaimer: Unless you're really new to fanfiction, you know what this is. I promise I'm not Rowling and I'm not trying to pretend to be cause then I'd have to live with the fact I killed Remus and Fred and I just couldn't handle that. So to be clear, all her characters and whatnot remain hers. I just like to borrow her toys now and again.
AN: I honestly intended to get this out way faster, I swear! It's been done, minus the epilogue, for months now, but Teddy just doesn't want to work for me. As such, I'm marking it as completed until such time as he starts cooperating with me again. Those Marauder genetics mean he enjoys tormenting me. This first chapter is pretty much the same as the oneshot version. I just really felt like it was a great set-up already and let it be. Enjoy!
The portrait looked on sadly as the woman in front of him sat slumped over her desk with her head cradled forlornly in her hands. She looked up with an obvious sheen to her eyes that would have surprised any who knew her, for Minerva McGonagall was not a woman who cried easily. Though the war had ended over a year ago its damage was still plainly visible in the eyes of its survivors, but few more so than the Headmistress of Hogwarts. It seems that every day the toll on her grew as she was forced to see the lasting pain and agony the war had left behind on her students faces with no idea how to help them. One can only bear the pain for so long and it seemed that today was when the Headmistress could take it no longer.
Looking around the room at her assembled predecessors she lost yet more of her carefully crafted control and implored them, "There must be some magic, some way to help them move on from this pain! They are only children and shouldn't have to live like this! If you, with all your assembled knowledge and accomplishments, cannot help me then find me someone who can!" Several of the portraits protested the disrespectful tone of the new Headmistress, but most only looked on with pity in their eyes.
One portrait from the corner of the room called out to her gruffly, "There may yet be a way but the question, Headmistress", he spat the word with a mocking tone she was far from unaccustomed to hearing from him, "It's just a question of what magics you're willing to use in order to achieve it."
Minerva turned sharply and, in a cutting tone that had made many a troublemaker cower in her years of teaching, snarled, "I have no time for your games, Phineas! If you have something of use to say, for once, I demand you to spit it out lest I move your portrait to the Muggle Studies classroom! I know how much you miss teaching!"
The portrait of Phineas Black looked affronted at such disrespect but seemed to think better of pushing the Headmistress any farther at the moment. Merlin only knew what horrors he would have to suffer through should she follow through with her threat.
With a disgruntled sigh he asked, "What do you know of the Feast of the Dead ritual?"