A/N I do not own Harry Potter. This story was written for the Head, meet Desk challenge. Charater - Minerva M. Pairing - MM/SS. Genre - Hurt/Comfort Humor. Prompts - miserable, grey, paper, faces, pointy, duck.
I stared at the grey, stone walls of the Ministry of Magic. Such cool walls. Like the walls at Hogwarts. I want to lean against these walls and cry. I can't believe Sirius is dead. A large number of Order members, including myself, had come to fight when Severus told Albus about Potter's message. There are pointy shards of glass from where the prophecy exploded. Severus shocked me when he showed up to fight along with the other Death Eaters. I saw him fire some curses that cause painful effects on children. Well, not children, teenagers, but still, he could have just stunned them. I hate this war. Everyone is miserable. And it doesn't help that the idiots who run this building won't tell the truth. The public is ignorant about the dangers from Voldemort, and us Order members are considered crazy. How I would love to punch that cow, Rita Skeeter. Punch her hard enough to knock some sense into her. She is such a demon. I told Albus I thought she was he devil reincarnated. He laughed for the longest time. But I can't punch her. She'd write about it and people would laugh at me, call me barbaric. Anyways, I am Minerva McGonagall. I am too proper, too stern, too uptight, too whatever you decide to call it, to fight with violence. I will get revenge. But not in a simple way that will be forgotten quickly and cause humiliation for both of us. Back to Severus. I see him, about to apparate back to Hogsmeade. I call out his name. We have to talk. He turns around, looking to see who called his name.
"Severus," I say again. He walks over, looking confused.
"What do you want, Minerva?" he asks in that stupid drawl of his. That arrogant 'I don't care what you have to say. Please shut up now so I can go back to being an arse' drawl.
"To talk. I saw you hex the girl. She's a child, and I know you know how painful that spell is." He gives me a 'so what' look. I sigh. "Severus, you know as well as I do how hard it is to look up while teaching, and instead of see the innocent faces of students, you see the hardened faces of children who have lived through war." Faces that belong to people who will draw the dark mark on your arm if you fall asleep. I hate grading papers and I hate Slytherin sixth years.
"They were trying to get the prophecy. My master wants the prophecy. What do you expect me to do? Say, 'Oh, we'll let you go' and then get crucio'd later? I have to throw hexes and duck theirs'. This is war, Minerva." I blink furiously. I will not cry. At least, not here, not now, not in front of a million reporters and Ministry workers. But still, how can he be so nonchalant about this? Riddle has corrupted him. I remember a boy, rarely smiled, but was kinder than other Slytherins. When Bellatrix and Lucius wanted to burn one of the books from the Restricted Section, to see how long it would scream, he talked them out of it. Gave some excuse about Pince would've killed them if they did. Kill them? That's an understatement. The only person who would've made them feel more pain than her is Voldemort.
"How can you be so- never mind." He looks at me, as if daring me to say what I was about to say. "Never mind. You're right. This is war. Let's go home." He grabs my hand and we apparate into Hogsmeade. We walk up the path to the castle. He gives me a sad smile as I go to my rooms. But instead of correcting papers, like I should be doing, I mean, there are at least eighty essays from the students at the N.E.W.T. and O.W.L. levels alone, I sit on my couch, kick my shoes off, curl into a ball, and sob. I pray that this war will be over soon. I got papers with terrible spelling, handwriting, and grammar to grade. What fun.