Disclaimer: I do not own or make any profit from Harry Potter. It belongs to J.K. Rowling, etc.

A/N: When I started this tale, it was not meant to be a particularly hopeful story. It wasn't a give-the-boot-to-Umbridge story. It wasn't a tribute to Albus and Minerva. It wasn't meant to change the larger future in Order of the Phoenix. It was about Harry and Minerva – with Harry sadly imagining all the things he never asked the less-obvious mother figure in his life as she potentially lay dying. In my heart, I couldn't (at that time) leave it like that. It hurt too much. So I created Boundless Salvation.

When I wrote the last author's note for Boundless, I explained, "I actually was going to have Professor McGonagall die in this scenario." I didn't realize how ambiguous my words were. This story that follows is my original intention. I believe readers of Boundless Salvation might be a bit surprised. Some semi-separate Harry angst has been added, since I can't ostensibly write this range of time in Book 5 without wrapping up some loose ends.

The first part is clearly the same as Boundless Salvation, but it veers off into the original territory very swiftly. It's quite short, but it was a very powerful thought I couldn't deny.

A Roll of Parchment

In the wake of the Astronomy OWL catastrophe, not a single Gryffindor could concentrate on anything. After the initial worries and talk, their group had congregated right on the floor in front of the common room fireplace. Hermione leaned into Harry's shoulder with tears running down her cheeks. Ron stared at the floor, numbly clutching the hand of Ginny, who had come down after hearing the commotion of their return. Lavender was still crying quite loudly and Parvati followed suit. Neville's fists were clenched tight enough to draw blood, Seamus repeatedly and methodically cursed the wall stone-by-stone, and Dean had not moved at all for more than two hours.

And Harry… Harry found himself thinking of all the things he had never known about his head of house. Things he had never asked and now probably never would. Had she ever married? Did she have children of her own? Did she lose loved ones as Harry had? If she had, was that why she was so stern in demeanor oftentimes?

He wondered how Hogwarts could ever survive without the pillar of strength that was its deputy headmistress. Who would clear their throat in order to stop Dumbledore from telling a particularly inappropriate joke at dinner? Who would shout at Lee Jordan for his language when Gryffindor was losing in Quidditch? Who would have the guts to stand up to Snape so bluntly when he was acting extremely unfairly to the Gryffindors? Or tell Peeves to unscrew a chandelier in retaliation against the Ministry regime?

The questions went round and round in Harry's head until it hurt to think anymore. It hurt to think, hurt to feel, hurt to remember.

How many times had he dismissed Professor McGonagall as a cold statue of a person who didn't understand how he felt as a teenager? But she just didn't want him getting hurt or killed or to lose a chance at his dreams of the future by failing his classes. Could he blame her for that? Wasn't that what parents did every day for their children? Molly Weasley constantly did the same kind of worrying. Minerva McGonagall was no different than any parent out there, really. The biggest difference was that she had to look after hundreds of children rather a small group of them. And she had to factor in sub-heading the school and teaching her classes. When Harry thought about it that way, Professor McGonagall had – in her own way – been a mother to him ever since he'd first seen her on the staircase in the entrance hall. To all her students, really, but Harry couldn't think that broadly without his head splitting.

In time, as no news turned to resigned misinformation, the Gryffindors moved away from the common room until only Harry, Hermione, and Ron were left. Hermione had moved from Harry's shoulder to Ron's and her tears had quieted for the most part. Ron finally stood from the floor with Hermione, turning to wordlessly ask whether Harry was coming too.

Harry just shook his head slowly, not ready to go sleep with the possibility of more visions. After Hagrid running into the night like a thief and McGonagall's terrible condition, the boy-who-lived didn't dare entice more dark dreams from Voldemort.

Hermione hesitated, opening her mouth slightly to argue the point, but Ron put a restraining hand on her arm. Catching the red-haired boy's eye, the bushy-haired witch finally closed her mouth in a worried line and allowed Harry's choice to go uncontested. Both his best friends retired up to their dormitories silently, each casting a concerned expression over their mutual best friend as they disappeared around the curve of steps.

In the midst of the departure, Harry kept thinking of all the many things he suddenly found of utmost importance about his Head of House. She had probably lived through so many things in her life, yet Harry never considered any of it; his concerns always barged in before anything else. No matter how serious his worries might have been over the past five years, Harry felt guilty for never bothering to know the woman who guided and protected him even when he thought he didn't need her to.

Every question kept volleying around Harry's overfull brain like a tennis ball, until finally he had to write it down or else go mad with the constant barrage of notions. Lucky for him, then, that he found blank parchment at the table in the far corner of the common room, as if it had been waiting for him all night to come and use the blank material for his anxious mind.

The emerald-eyed wizard was, however, forced to head up to his dormitory and fetch ink and a quill. As much as Harry had imagined no one able to fall asleep after the awful events of the night, he found every boy in the room, including Ron Weasley, fast asleep and even snoring at points. Struck by the very idea of sleeping at such a time, Harry rapidly took his quill and ink, then added his cloak and map for good measure.

Back in the common room and bundled into sofa near the fireplace, Harry worked at his parchment under the low firelight, emptying all of his inquisitive thoughts and curious questions, sometimes even writing an inquiry that probably would be considered inappropriate and too personal from student to teacher. Yet Harry didn't care. He couldn't keep allowing the thoughts to roll around in his mind. It would overcome him at some point and he would snap at the people closest to him in an unintentional effort at venting.

As daylight broke over the world, bathing the scarlet common room in gentle white light, Harry woke himself quite unexpectedly from a doze, only to find his parchment dangling precariously from his hand and the quill covered in thoroughly dried ink. Noticing he wouldn't have that long before the other Gryffindors started coming down for breakfast, the teenage wizard ensured his work was dry and quickly rolled the parchment up, slipping it into his pocket before anyone came down with curious eyes to read his private thoughts and queries about the brave, honest woman lying unconscious the hospital wing.

Had Harry known what would happen in the ensuing days, and how much he would lose before everything came to a head, he doubted he could have spent so much mental ability on the parchment he had written. But he never knew and now that it stared him in the face, the young man could barely even look at that parchment without cringing.

Professor McGonagall had been moved to St. Mungo's in less than a day. That very same day, in his panic and inability to trust Snape's oily sarcasm, Harry led his friends to a trap that caused them all more hurt than Harry wanted to imagine. Order members damaged equally as badly now lay in St. Mungo's the same as his Head of House.

And Sirius…

Sirius was gone forever.

Before Harry could even cope with that terrible grief, that gaping hole in his life, before Dumbledore could speak to him about whatever horrible news he had planned to tell… as the headmaster and his student sat in that chaotic, silver-dotted office to speak of terrible things, an owl pecked and pecked at the window until Dumbledore finally allowed it entry to his office space and accepted the wax-sealed envelope it held.

With the letter swiftly opened to summer eyes, Harry felt dread settle in the pit of his stomach as the old wizard's troubled face went completely still.

Dumbledore tried, valiantly, to speak to Harry over what he planned to. He made motions to speak more than once, mouth opening and closing, but the words never escaping his throat. Harry sat, quiet and suddenly drained, as the older man closed his eyes and furrowed his brow tight enough to draw severe, distinct wrinkles across his aged forehead. The letter crumpled in Dumbledore's long, thin fingers while he fought silently with himself.

At last, the fight ended and Dumbledore gave up trying to control his expression, his emotion, his great pain. Harry watched in detached numbness as, with long hands pressed firmly against his face and head bowed to the desk's dark surface, the white-bearded legend of the wizarding world finally began to cry.

And Harry would have asked; he would have intruded on that deathly visage after his pain over losing Sirius reared its ugly head.

But somehow, Harry already knew what the parchment in the headmaster's hand said.

While he sat, mindlessly staring as his headmaster broke down in tears, his assumption was only confirmed by a glimpse of the rumpled parchment which had fluttered from Dumbledore's fingers as he cradled his tear-streaked face.

Harry couldn't feel anything anymore.

At breakfast the next morning, Professor Dumbledore entered the Great Hall like a ghost, dragging his feet as he crossed the long hall and turned around the head table to his ornate central chair. The employees of Hogwarts stood somber in shades of gray and black all along the staff table. Not a single member of the staff wore any life or color, save one.

As he stood to speak, calling for silence with his mere presence, Albus Dumbledore proved his devotion, love, and friendship in simple robes of emerald green.

The Headmaster could not withhold his tears once the fatal words left his lips, immediately retaking his seat and marking the great gaping hole which now stood to his side. The chair on Dumbledore's right hand stood conspicuously empty.

For Minerva McGonagall died at five-twenty-three that morning, never having woken from her unconsciousness.

Harry had never attended a funeral in his young life. Even when Cedric died, there had been no ceremony to observe. The funeral then had been a family affair kept in close circles Harry was not party to. But when Professor Dumbledore asked him if he would like to pay his respects to Professor McGonagall, Harry didn't hesitate.

With his friends still stuck in the hospital wing, it would only be him. Guilt niggled at Harry for his best friends not being able to join him in this vigil, particularly after how upset they had been by their Head of House's condition, but he really had no choice in the matter. Between Dumbledore, Hagrid, Lupin, Ron's parents, and the five eldest Weasleys, however, Harry felt he could do no better for companions in the absence of his closest friends.

Harry noticed a group of other students and what must have been their parents all huddled together outside the church as he and his ten companions approached from the road. Two tall, dark-haired men stood at the doors of the sanctuary, looking grim and upset as they prevented the group of visitors from entering.

Worried his own group would receive the same treatment, Harry wondered why they were being held back. The funeral had not been publicized, of course, but amongst those who truly cared about the transfiguration professor in life, the location and time had been easily procured.

It was only when Professor Dumbledore stepped forward to speak – when he argued Professor McGonagall's love for her students would stand in higher value than anything else to her – that the two tall brothers gave in. Their dull brown eyes closed in grief, the younger gripping the elder's shoulder in speechless pain. Those dark-haired men, graying where their beloved elder sister never had – and never would – finally nodded.

As asked by the family, Professor Dumbledore himself stood to offer words on behalf of his close friend and trusted ally. Harry learned things he never knew about his Head of House, things he hadn't even written on his parchment. Her great love for the Montrose Magpies, for instance, or the fact that her middle name was Alexandra, or the expensive chocolates she was too self-controlled and dignified to admit she secretly enjoyed.

Harry never knew that Minerva McGonagall was a Chaser on the Gryffindor team or that she became Captain in her last year of school. He didn't know she won an award for her study of transfiguration, or that she was a Hatstall nearly sorted into Ravenclaw. She was a prefect and Head Girl, of course, and the most outstanding student in her year.

More importantly than all of that, Harry learned by both experience and by stories told that his professor had always been an honest, upstanding woman who loved her students, her friends, and her family more than anything in the world.

Harry found himself wishing he had known Professor McGonagall better; that he had given her a chance to be more than a stern, unyielding barrier to his oftentimes wild, reckless behavior.

Watching a simple wooden casket lowered into the ground, his Head of House's once proud form laid to rest inside it, Harry felt numb.

Inside that silk-lined casket, nestled beside the emerald-clad arm of the first teacher who ever told Harry Potter he could be more than he believed of himself, there laid a roll of parchment – full of questions that had never been asked.

A/N: I'm literally holding a tissue to my eyes right now. Which is precisely why I had such a hard time putting it down the first time around! But I had to write it.

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