Minerva gently pushed open the door to her office and walked inside. With a flick of her wand she transfigured her stiff desk chair into a comfortably upholstered wingback chair and settled into it with a sigh. The students were gone for the summer, safely onto the Hogwarts Express, and the Castle fairly rang with the stillness that they left behind.
Reaching into the little cupboard behind her desk, the professor pulled out her china teapot, and with a tap of her wand filled it with freshly boiled water. She carefully measured out the tea leaves, and then sat back again. A few minutes later she poured herself a cup of tea and lifted it to her face to breathe in the steam. As she swallowed her first sip she could feel her shoulders loosening, her brow un-furrowing, and her lips turning up at the corners, just a little bit.
Perhaps in a little while she would go for a walk through the corridors - though nowhere near Sir Cadogan; he could make as much ruckus as a whole class full of students! - to enjoy the echoing silence, and under it the murmerings of the portraits to each other; the sighing of the drafts through the tapestries; the rustlings and clankings of the suits of armor. She could almost feel it now, the voice of the Castle itself, never heard when the students were present. A voice more felt in the bones than heard with the ears. A feeling of great age, rooted down in the bedrock. A castle that was aware of its inhabitants and glad, perhaps, as she was, to see the chattering masses off for another summer of quiet contemplation. Though what a castle would contemplate, Minerva wasn't quite sure.
Well, that was for later. For now, she was content to simply sit and enjoy her tea.