"Death is a strange thing," Minerva McGonagall thinks as she studies the old photograph of a younger Albus Dumbledore, her friend and colleague, one of the few people she still considers herself close to. Minerva catches her breath and stares at the picture in her hands, where a calm and content miniature Albus smiles up at her through those half-moon spectacles of his.
She looks around his old office, in which she currently is, and tries to steady her breathing.
It's easy to forget, she thinks, and drops the photograph in her hands; for a moment, when she had stared into the eyes of photograph Albus, she had forgotten that he was dead.
It's easy to forget, she repeats in her head and stands up to survey this remarkable and quite personal room which is now her duty to clean. She walks back and forth before the book shelves that cover the walls and reads the titles of the books although her mind is far off in another world.
Minerva tries to remember other times in her life when she felt like this, felt this feeling eating inside of her, threatening to burst up through her throat and out of her mouth. She tries to remember if she has ever felt like this, if she has ever felt this feeling of knowing that someone is gone without really understanding the concept of it. She raises her eyebrows in concentration.
She does not actually know when and where Dougal died, although she is quite positive he must be dead by now; it had been decades since she last saw him. She compares the situations because what else can she do whilst standing in the office of the greatest wizard of all time, cleaning out his things? There are many other things she could be thinking of, actually, but her mind refuses to obey.
Many, many years ago she left Dougal and it was painful and it was one of the most difficult things she had ever done, but at least she got to make a choice. Death, on the other hand, is without options. Death is absolute, and death can surprise you. She made a choice when she broke Dougal's strong and healthy and beautiful heart; she chose to leave. Did Albus get to make a choice? Was there a possibility that he chose to die? He couldn't have. If he did somehow make this choice to die (one can never know with Albus) she likes to believe he would have at least told her. But one can never know with Albus. He was a strange man, she thinks.
Death is strange, she thinks. Maybe strange things belong together, she muses and comb her long and bony fingers through her hair in frustration, the hair that usually is in a tight and greyeing bun on top of her head. She feels like she is going mad. She probably is.