Disclaimer: LittleFics does not own any part of this story. Harry Potter is the property of J.K. Rowling, and is not LittleFics intellectual property. There is no financial gain made from this nor will any be sought. This is for entertainment purposes only.
Special thanks absolutely must be given to my beta reader SelfiesWithSprinkles for helping me bring this story to life in the best way possible. It has been an absolute joy and an enormous help to work with her.
Her Lie in August
Chapter One: Reverie
Minerva McGonagall was quite aware that there stood a fine line between a dream and a nightmare. It wasn't the kind of division that knocked one about the face with evil, growling monsters, or, on the other end, cloudless, sunny skies, but the kind that was found subtly in the quiet of night time- a line that her dazed fantasies frequently hopped back and forth between.
She suffered from a reoccurring pain. It was always the same dream and then always the same nightmare. It was always him.
In her dream, a young man stood exactly across from her, looking tall and strong against the midsummer sky. His deep chestnut curls quivered softly in the breeze, and Minerva smiled when she felt the same wind gust up to caress her cheek. The young man, who wore red tartan, began to beckon her forward with a familiarly cheeky grin on his freckled face.
For a moment, Minerva wanted to tell him no, that he simply looked too boyish with that mischievous glint in his golden, green eyes for her to go anywhere with him, but she didn't because she also thought that was beautiful. Her heart aflutter with what was most certainly love, she walked towards him.
"The sea," He called as she came closer. "Come, Minerva, let's run to the sea."
Minerva wanted nothing more than to make him happy. She was sure that if he had wanted to run to the moon and back, she would have gone, and so she began to move faster towards her lover with his outstretched hands. Minerva suddenly needed to feel his sturdy arms wrapped around her, she needed to smudge the dirt off his nose and kiss his sunburnt lips, but that was not to be. Their fingertips nearly touched and then it was all gone.
She woke to find herself a year more than fifty years older and quite alone, like all the other nights, with tears leaking from her eyes and sharp pangs in her heart. Her weak body had betrayed her sound mind and she noticed that her fingers were reaching out to the empty sheets on the other side of the even emptier bed.
Terribly solitude and in the cool dark- that was always when she considered her dream to have faded into a nightmare. It was when she realized he was gone, only to live anymore in her memory, and when she remembered that she alone had thwarted herself in such a desperately perfect love- that she was condemned.
And then, Minerva felt ashamed for more reasons than what were in the dream, so she drew her legs up underneath the sheets and linked her elbows around them in a rather sorry attempt to comfort herself.
Of course, there could be no comfort. Nights like those were always a mess and there was no getting out of it.
She found a horrible sense of betrayal in the fact that she only dreamed about the dead man she had shared a summer with, rather than the dead man with whom she had shared a life.
Minerva cursed herself for never finding her dear Elphinstone in her dreams.
There were times when she couldn't figure why, for she had cared deeply for him. Minerva's late husband had been so wonderfully good, so deeply understanding- so very willing to be her second choice when he knew she had left another behind. She saw it in his eyes. And for that, she respected him, certainly, perhaps, she even loved him the same way… But then there were other times when Minerva knew exactly why Eliphinstone couldn't haunt her dreams and she shivered at her own callousness. It was due to the sickening truth that she loved him only because she forced herself to. It wasn't in the same way, at all- it was a different kind of love.
Minerva was a sensible woman, and yet she couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't fair to her dead husband. That it didn't do justice to him or his memory to think in such a fickle-minded way. But, as often as she woke from that nightmare in the very middle of the lonely night, Minerva had much time to think. And through her long periods of reflection, she had come to but one, single truth.
The difference between the love of a person's life and their soul mate was quite simple. One was a choice, and Minerva McGonagall did not choose Dougal McGregor.
His name passed through her lips traitorously. Nobody was there to hear it, but Minerva was, and sometimes that was more deafening, so she still bit her tongue and tried to ignore the feeling of calm that overcame her through the sound. For some reason he seemed so real and alive to her, so much so that she felt that if she closed her eyes and opened them a moment later, she would be standing beside him on the Orkney Cliffs again.
It struck her very strange how all the many days, months, even years of her life had gotten swirled around, mixed together- lost in time- when every single moment of that summer was perfectly etched into her mind.
She was just a young lass- only eighteen years old, it was 1953, and the very last thing she was looking for was love.
A/N: This is my first attempt at a chapter fic and I'm not really sure how it's going to turn out so if it does not meet your expectations, I'm sorry. This story is going to be a fairly short one about Minerva and Dougal's summer together. Please tell me what you think so far and if you're even interested in this type of thing. I want to improve as a writer more than you can imagine so any feedback, criticism and not, is greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!