Disclaimer: I don't own it. I wonder what would happen if I started writing my stories claiming that I was jkr! Do you think people would take me more seriously? I doubt it. Maybe I could say I was a Warner Brother (like I belong to the mafia! Hehe) somehow I think that is about as likely as me eating wombat tomorrow! But you never know! Question everything people! Hehe!

a.n: well I already wrote one in the disclaimer, so if you're still reading and haven't just skipped right to the story I'm proud of you. Here is a cookie!

MMAD about You!

Minerva never meant to flirt. It just seemed to come out naturally when she was around Albus. Her witty replies always shot back with such a warm smile and dancing eyes that he could never take offence. For his part Albus was well aware that he was the only one she opened up for. He considered himself highly privileged that he was allowed to see the woman beneath the stern façade. She was his best friend, his closest confidant and... and what? Albus tore his mind away from that line of questioning. He had her friendship. He was happy. He was.

He stared at the woman sitting across from him, her brow furrowed in thought as she studied the chess board, a twitch at the corner of her mouth and a small smile flitted across her face as she reached out and aggressively moved her bishop.

"Check mate, Albus" he positively yelled, "I've got you!"

Albus trained his piercing blue eyes on her and said, in a voice heavy with ill-concealed passion "Yes, my dear, you've definitely got me"

The change in Minerva was sudden and unexpected. A deep flush crept over her countenance, startling low on her neck and only ending deep beyond her hairline. She practically jumped to her feet like someone had run 1000v through her, and started gushing, "Oh look at the time. Albus is that really the time? I can't believe it's so late already. Oh I have so many essays to make before tomorrow, and now I will have to go them at breakfast. Honestly I don't know how the time has passed so quickly. I have to go!" With this last sentence she quickly grabbed her shawl and ran from the room.

Albus hadn't moved for a very long time. He knew that Minerva didn't feel the same about him, but still he was shocked at the violence of her reaction. Minerva was rarely flustered. He had, in fact seen her in several situations with an adoring man, and in every case she has simply let them down gently. Told them in the most sympathetic terms that no, she wasn't interested. She had always maintained her composure. He has no idea what had prompted such a disturbed reaction. Sure, he was her best friend, and that would definitely have contributed to the shock, but surely not this much! He would simply have to tell her tomorrow that his remark meant nothing more that he has said. Perhaps then the awkwardness that was going to arise between them could dissipate and he could continue loving her in private.

Albus started. Had he just said love? Of course that was what they were talking about, but he had never allowed himself to admit it before. Admired? Yes. Trusted? Yes. But love? At first he has assumed it was a stupid crush that came from finding someone with who he could really talk. At 110 he had thought himself over schoolboy crushes, and had dismissed it. But forty years was a long time for a crush to last, and it was time for him to admit to himself what his subconscious had known for years. He was in love with Minerva. And there was not a thing he could do about it!

In his long lifetime many people had asked him what was the most painful thing in his life. He had always answered flippantly, spouting something about socks, or bits from Aberforth's goat, he had thought long and hard about his inability to relate what pained him the most. Watching good people die, knowing that in many ways he had sent them to their deaths, knowing that many more good people would die before this was all over. Seeing Harry suffer under a burden that no one, let alone a child should have to bear. It was no wonder that he answered that question flippantly. The public didn't want to know that. It was only recently that he had further examined this topic. It was Minerva who had prompted him.

"Albus," she had said when he had related the problem, "I don't think it's a desire to protect the public that stops you revealing your fears. It's a conceit of yours to think that you must care about the whole world. No one can do that. No one fights for their country. Men, and women, always, without fail, are fighting for those they love. Who is it that you can't bear to lose?" the question had been posed across his desk. He had raised his head from his hands to find her face only scant inches away from his, looking searchingly into his eyes. He could see the fierceness there, the McGonagall temper that brooked no opposition, and he knew at that moment. It was her.

For Albus this train of thought was getting too deep. He could never have her, so there was no point moping about. He could still be her friend, and she needed him to be strong. He would go to the kitchens and fix himself a chocolate nightcap and return to bed.

Minerva had fled from the room, still muttering about the lateness of the hour. If she kept herself occupied she would not have to deal with what she just had seen in Albus' eyes. She glanced at the pile of essays on her desk and almost sat down and started marking them, but she knew that her mind was in too much turmoil at the moment to do them justice. A bath would simply give her more time to dwell on the problem and she doubted if she could sleep in this state, yet she knew that there was no point staying up all night worrying about the past, and what the future might bring. Hoping that if she followed her routine, her body would recognise the need and go to sleep, leaving her unconscious mind to deal with her troubles.

She changed into her long white shift and unbound her hair and slipped between the covers. Sleep would not come easily, and Minerva was drawn into a reverie. She knew she loved him. She has loved him longer than she would like to admit. She had spent the first ten years teaching with him denying what she felt, and the next thirty simultaneously repressing her emotions and trying to come to terms with what she felt. It was a dangerous path to tread to express your innermost emotions to a man like Albus Dumbledore, she could not bear the pity she knew he would feel if he knew that his best friend desired him more than anything else in the world. She could not bear the dreadful implications it would have on their friendship. Telling him how she felt would mean losing him altogether, if she could not have him in her bed, she could still have him by her side. And that was just as significant. Wasn't it?

Her mind flew back to that night a few months ago when she has asked him who he was so afraid of losing. At the time she hadn't realised the intimacy of the question, and the fact that he would perhaps not want to answer. After all, she kept he greatest truth of all secret from him. He had looked at her with such intensity, his blue eyes boring holes in her soul and at that moment she knew that she could never tell him. There was someone he cared about, someone he loved. And it wasn't her. At that moment she had made a promise to herself never to put herself in such an intimate situation with him again, lest she lose her precious self-control.

But tonight! Oh, she could hardly bear to think of it. To recollect the huskiness of his voice as he spoke, and the sudden flaring of longing in his eyes as they met hers. The look that had turned to sudden merriment at her obvious discomfort, and the fact that he had not come after her to apologise for putting her in that situation. She couldn't believe that Albus would toy with her that way. She must have inadvertently revealed something and he had surmised the rest. In her innermost dreams she has hoped he might be understanding. To tell her that it was ok to feel this way. But this? It was worse that a nightmare. He knew, and then he teased her about it. It was more than she could bear.

Wiping the angry tears that were pooling in the corner of her eyes she flung the covers off and decided to make the trek to the kitchen to get some strong drink and kill her pain. Maybe then she would sleep.

A/n: this should really end the chapter, but dammit I was going to write a one shot and a one shot I will write.

Albus ambled slowly down the corridor towards the portrait of the fruit bowl, his eyes barely glinting in the shadows of the corridor, deep in thought. At first he barely noticed a light green glow emanating from the other end of the corridor, but as the holder of the iridescent wand came closer he sank further into the shadows. He didn't believe in ambushing people out of bed at three in the morning without first ascertaining where they were going. You learned much about a student from where their late night ramblings took them. This was just the diversion he needed.

Needless to say, he was quite startled to find that the owner of the wand was none other than the goddess who had been haunting his reverie. At first he assumed he was hallucinating. The woman who was walking towards him was so beautiful that he could only have conjured her up in his imagination, and in his yearning, put it in front of his eyes. Her midnight black hair seemed to glitter in the wand light, falling in strands across her milky white complexion, and continuing to tumble in light curls down her back. The gown pulled over her nightdress was beginning to loosen and he glimpsed the base of her neck and legs that seemed to extend forever.

In an instant Albus was filled with a fierce passion for the woman standing in front of him. Oh how he longed to gather her slender body up into his arms. To smell her scent and to plant a million butterfly kisses deep in her neck.

In the back of his mind albus was quite surprised at himself. He had never lived a monk's life, but never has lust like this overpowered him so completely, intoxicating his senses and removing the possibility of rational thought from his mind. In a second he was in front of her, quietly breathing her name, and feeling her closeness shiver up his spine.

Minerva too was under the impression that she was imagining the apparition in front of her. The Albus softly breathing her name was definitely not the man she had left barely an hour beforehand, to revel in his humiliation of her. This was an Albus who treasured her, who needed her, who loved her. And seeing as that Albus only existed in her imagination, Minerva gave herself over fully to the illusion.

He reached her side and the naked longing she saw in his eyes stirred her. This was the one true love of her life. She reached out a hand to stroke his cheek, and almost gasped when it met true flesh. Unwilling to follow that line of thought Minerva banished all possibility of thought and simply felt.

Albus reached a hand out to touch her hair, reverently running his fingers through it. It was like liquid velvet pooling in his hand. Lightly grasping the base of her spine he drew her slowly towards him, his breath coming in shorter gasps as her body melted into his, her hands sneaking around his waist, like she never wanted to let go. Albus lowered his head towards Minerva's and brushed his lips over hers. His light touch was enough to make her got weak at the knees and she melted further into his body. She was almost painfully aware of all the places that their bodies touched. It was as if someone has lit a fire under her skin. Her hands wound themselves around his neck and she pulled him inexorably towards her. Slowly she kissed his upper lip, then the corners of his mouth, and then he was kissing her back, placing gentle kisses on her lips. Minerva licked her lower lip, and then his lower lip, begging him to deepen the kiss. The passion each was feeling was unequal to anything they had felt before. Lost in the moment, and lost in each other. This was where they both belonged.

Minerva didn't know how long she had stood there, kissing Albus like she had so often imagined. Only this was better than anything she could dream up. This kind of feeling was not something one simply imagines by oneself. Minerva softly kissed his nose and breathed deeply the scent of his skin, a sweet yet quite bizarre mix of lemon, sugar and chocolate with an underlying musky male smell. Albus was exploring her body. Never in his life had he seen anything so perfect. He ran his hands over her soft curves, around to the small of her back, back to caress her stomach and up towards the perfect peaks of her breasts. He was in awe. Truly she was a goddess. He raised his head and kissed her deeply at the base of her throat, making her tilt her head back and moan softly at the ceiling. This was the first sound that has been uttered and instead of breaking the spell had only spurned him on further. Undoing the buttons at the top of her nightgown he pulled it softly away from his shoulders and planted a dozen fluttering kisses along her collarbone. Minerva moaned again and he raised his head and kissed her deeply and passionately, putting all the love and desire he felt for this amazing woman into the kiss. This time it was not only Albus who was weak at the knees.

Bending slightly he scooped her up into his arms and began to stride back up the corridor towards his rooms. There was no way he was going to leave her ever again, not when he had realised that this woman had just as much passion for him, just as much naked desire in her eyes as he had in his. He had seen it that night, when she leaned over his desk, her eyes boring into his, speaking to him of a love and devotion so deep that it thrilled him to the very core of his being.

Minerva wrapped her arms tighter around his neck and buried her face into his beard, smiling into the scratchiness and rubbing his chin with her nose. It took all of Albus' self control not to simply summon a bed right there in the middle of the corridor.

"Albus," she murmured, still hiding her face in his beard. The hesitant note in her voice stilled him in and instant, and he felt as if all his muscles had failed him, he had gone to far, taken advantage. The thought of it sickened him and he stiffened. Minerva barely noticed, she simply kept her head buried and softly whispered, "are you real?" This was not what he has been expecting, and replied, somewhat shocked that yes, he was definitely real. "Good," whispered Minerva, her voice husky and low, thrilling Albus in quite a different manner to only scant seconds before, "I don't think I could bare it if I was only imagining again. Promise you'll be mine Albus!"

"Oh my dear! Heart, body and soul, I have always been yours."

When Albus started walking again, there was a very subtle spring in his step, and a smile a mile wide plastered all over his face, remembering her last words.

"And I you, my love."

A/n There, are you proud of me. Halfway through (when they meet in the corridor) I could have taken the really angsty road (and indeed the scene wrote itself in my head) but I persevered and managed to turn out some delightful fluff (if I do say so myself) Hehehe. I hope you enjoyed it. There is another angsty one in the machine now, waiting for my fingers to spit it out. Makes the happy ending all the more happier.

Cheers

Tess

ps: i think i managed to write one without using the word "I love you" but somone will have to enlighten me about "nonlemon fic" if i really want to play tag.