A/N: Hey all I wrote this piece for ReillyJade's After the Battle challenge. I chose to write about Professor McGonagal. I have never written a piece about her or from her viewpoint so I am really anxious to see what you all think.

Disclaimer: I own none of what you recognize. A thousand thanks to JKR.

Choices

She walked like a ghost amongst the broken and ruined walls. This school had been her home for so long. Its students were her children. She could remember every student she ever taught. Their faces, their OWL and NEWT scores even their Quidditch stats. This was quite a feat, considering that she has been teaching hundreds of students a year, at this school, for over forty years. She never married or bore children, instead forsaking her love and devoting herself to this school and its students. Now its walls lay cracked and broken and many of it's students, her children, lay still and lifeless.

She entered the annex where the fallen had been laid.

Remus Lupin, whom she had taught as a child and seen teach as a colleague. No longer would she have thoughtful debates with him over tea. His wife Nymphadora Lupin. Very rarely had she taught a student with as much life and zeal for living it, as her. That life was now gone. Little Colin Creevey,whom she had commanded leave the castle. She wasn't surprised he sneaked his way back into the fight. In the end he had more courage and bravery than his small body could withstand.

Fred Weasley. He had always been one of her favorite students. She could not count the number of times she had to fight the urge to laugh out loud at his antics. She would never again hear his laughter ringing off the walls of her home.

The instructor continued her ritual of stopping at each of the fallen, and committing something to memory unique to each of the heroes. She felt her age now. She didn't want to go on. She had seen too much death and destruction, too much of man's wanton disregard for life. Sure Voldemort was gone, but how long until some other charismatic madman would throw the world into chaos.

Exhausted she willed her legs to carry her into the Great Hall. The first table she saw was filled with her friends the Weasleys. They all sat at the table sobbing in stunned remorse. Mourning the loss of a son and brother.

George, poor George looked small and lost without his, previously ever present, twin.

Percy who sat a few feet away from the others looked as though the weight of grief and possibly guilt had crushed the life from him.

Molly, her dear dear friend Molly, was silent and stone faced in her grief. Her loving husband consoled her, as best he could, whilst dealing with his own agony. Parents should never have to bury their children, nor should teachers have to bury students. She had buried too many to count, yet fate kept distending the number.

Bill and Charlie moved among the family members trying to be strong and brave for their family. True Gryffindors she thought.

The two youngest Weasleys sat further down the table, with their respective consorts. Talking, grieving and just being. If nothing else good emerged from this hell, then she was happy that, at last, those four finally found each other.

The teacher continued to move though the hall neither acknowledging nor being acknowledged.

At a solitary table, sat a small family of three. The father looked shaken and deflated, a far cry from his normally hubris filled persona. He held his wife and teenage son as if, at any moment, they would be snatched away from him. The mother of the family had a haunted but resigned presence about her. She had made her choice to lie and was glad for it. The teacher had always considered the young man (really no more than a boy) to be one of her, too numerous to ponder, failures. But now she saw his gaunt face and remorse filled eyes and she was not so sure.

She moved her way to an empty seat next to the other teachers. They all looked to her as she sat down. She knew her duty then, just as she had known it four decades earlier,when she left her love for the job the world needed her to do. This school and her children needed her. They needed her strength, her discipline, and most of all her love.

So disregarding her heavy heart and her doubts about the nature of man, Minerva McGonagall decided she would stay.