"Congratulations, and goodnight," Headmistress Minerva Mc Gonagall called out to the Gryffindor Common Room, which was politely waiting for her to leave so that the gradation party could begin in earnest, with plenty of firewhiskey brought from Hogsmeade to help it along to it's most rowdy. With a sigh that said that they weren't fooling her, Minerva gave a curt nod and then turned to leave the room. It was the same every year, but truth be told they were no longer her students and this class more than ever needed a chance to celebrate.
Taking the opportunity that presented itself while their former Transfiguration Professor's back was turned, Ron Weasley turned to his best friend, Hermione Granger, seated next to him on the couch, and gave her a pointed look. Studiously, she ignored it, but the professor was nearing the portrait hole and he wouldn't be put off. Deciding that his not-so-subtle look wasn't obvious enough, he chose instead to elbow her in the ribs. Hard.
"Ow!" she hissed, turning to face him at last, if only to fix him with a baleful glare. "What, Ronald?" Every single nuance of the tone in which she said those two words spoke volumes about how upset she was with him. He gulped but tried not to let it bother him. Wordlessly, he gestured to McGonagall's retreating back. "Yes?" Hermione asked, as though she thought he was rather dull.
"For Christ's sake, 'Mione!" he exclaimed, trying and mostly succeeding in keeping his voice from carrying beyond the two of them. Truthfully, though, as long as it didn't make it as far as Minerva's ears, it really didn't matter how far his voice carried. "This is your last chance," he went on. "Go!" he added when she didn't move, giving her a solid push forward that forced her entirely from the couch. With a huff of irritation, she stood up, brushing herself off and scowling at him fiercely. If looks could kill…. But Ron, for once, was right. This was her last chance.
The portrait had opened and then closed behind her mentor, and casually Hermione hurried after her, hoping to catch the woman before she got too far ahead.
"Headmistress," she called, inwardly cursing her formality, the instant the portrait had firmly shut behind her. Formality and manners would do her no good, this time. Glancing down the corridor, Hermione couldn't help marveling at the speed with which the older woman had managed to make her way down the corridor. She hadn't thought she had been that far behind, but there was enough distance between them now to make her rethink her earlier supposition. Minerva stopped, turning at the sound of the familiar voice behind her, and waited for the younger woman to catch up.
"Miss Granger," Minerva replied, waiting until they were standing next to each other before asking what she could do for the now-graduated Gryffindor.
"I was hoping to have a word with you, Professor," Hermione replied, nerves making her voice a bit breathy. Hopefully Minerva thought it nothing more than the result of the brisk pace she had used to close the distance between them.
"Of course," Minerva responded easily. "What was it you wished to discuss?" she asked, gesturing that Hermione was to begin the intended conversation, rather than just provide the Headmistress with the topic. Hermione hesitated, fidgeting slightly. Normally she wouldn't have had a second thought about beginning the conversation, but this one, in particular, couldn't take place in the middle of a corridor.
"Actually, it's a personal matter," she hedged, unable to quite meet the other woman's eyes as she felt her face begin to heat. "And it's somewhat sensitive. Is it possible for us to go somewhere more private?" she asked, hoping that she wasn't presuming too much and that such a thing would, indeed, be possible. Minerva had never seemed to mind making time for the younger woman, but things had been much easier when Minerva had simply been the Transfiguration Professor and the Deputy Headmistress. Now, there was often things that she simply could not move aside for the Gryffindor, and it was highly likely that Minerva would have last minute work to do now that graduation had passed and term was only a few days from it's end.
Some amount of surprise at the request showed in the older woman's face, but Minerva nonetheless agreed easily enough. "I was just about to head to my quarters for a cup of tea," she announce. "Would you care to join me?" The offer was better suited to Hermione's needs than the younger woman had dared hope.
"That would be wonderful," Hermione said, knowing that any happier acceptance had to stay unvoiced. "You're sure that I'm not intruding, though?" Hermione asked cautiously. It was a question born not only out of concern that the Headmistress had work to do that night still, but also born out of the fact that Hermione had never been in Minerva's private quarters, despite the fact that the pair had frequently stayed up quite late talking over tea and biscuits.
"Nonsense," Minerva replied briskly, turning to walk away but hesitating the slightest bit to make sure that the younger woman was following. "It is, after all, a place that we can converse without worry and a place where I am always happy to receive my friends. And now that you are no longer my student, Miss Granger, I hope that I may take the liberty of calling you a friend." The woman's voice had an odd tone in it, but Hermione barely paid it any attention.
"Hermione," the younger woman corrected her gently, but firmly. "My friends call me Hermione." The professor shot her a smile that was gone as quickly as any of her rare smiles ever were.
"Then, Hermione," Minerva replied, testing the name out on her tongue, "I should inform you that my friends call me Minerva. Well," she amended, "some of them do." There were still plenty of her ex-students that she considered to be more acquaintances than friends whom she nonetheless called by their given names. They, of course, referred to her as they were accustomed to doing after seven years of Hogwarts. However, in those cases the usage of their given names had started without invitation, and had never been corrected; most were glad of the symbol that they were adults and familiar enough with the stern Transfiguration mistress that she used their given names and rarely wondered why, if at all, they had not been invited to do the same with hers. However, with Hermione, Minerva hadn't wanted to presume and she hadn't wanted it to be a one-sided thing. Minerva had spent the last seven years trying her hardest not to favor the young woman before her any more than she favored the rest of her students, because favoritism was something that McGonagall didn't do publicly. But now that they were no longer tied to the roles of student and teacher Minerva couldn't help but favor her, now, in every way possible, as if making up for lost time.
"Are you sure that this cannot wait until tomorrow, Hermione?" Minerva continued, gently. The quick jerk of the Gryffindor's head in her direction and the sudden falter of her footsteps told the Headmistress that she had phrased the sentiment poorly. "Your friends, after all, will no doubt be eagerly waiting for your return to the party that must now be in full swing in the Common Room. I'd be willing to wager that I've been gone for long enough that they've pulled out the firewhiskey they smuggled in from Hogsmeade by now." She could feel Hermione's astonishment, but she was too glad to see that she had managed to turn away potential disaster to care much that she was about to divulge a carefully kept secret. "Yes, Hermione, I know what goes on in the common rooms on graduation night, and ignoring it has become somewhat of a tradition. Far be it from me to stop tradition," she added dryly. "They will not be any the wiser, and they shall feel more daring to have smuggled party goods into the castle if they feel like they actually smuggled them in, rather than if they knew that the staff simply allowed it to happen. Poppy brews dozens of hangover potions in preparation for tomorrow, and gives them to every student who comes in looking for a simple anti-nausea potion. They will never notice that it works much better to cure them than it should, if it were truly an anti-nausea potion." Minerva allowed herself a small chuckle at the entire situation.
"The party will still be there when I get back," Hermione said dismissively, answering the original question, her eyes showing amusement at the professor's admission. She had never thought she would be hard pressed to make up her mind about which she wanted to do more: spent time with Minerva or attend the party. However, it wasn't at all a hard decision; the party would still be going when she returned, and Ron was right about this being her last chance to have this conversation with Minerva. That, and she knew that if she turned back now, she would never have the courage to try again.
"I would be surprised if it was not." Minerva acknowledged the younger woman's decision with a small nod of her head. As it was, they had traveled quickly and were close to the corridor which housed her new office and quarters; for Hermione to turn back now would be slightly foolish when they had come so far.
"You must have left the other Common Rooms long enough ago that their parties must be on the verge of debauchery already," Hermione commented lightly, trying to make conversation. She was surprised to see the other woman shake her head negatively. "No?"
"You misunderstand me, Hermione," Minerva said patiently. "I didn't visit the other houses." It was inevitable that the other woman would ask a follow-up question.
"Why not?"
"The Headmistress, Hermione, is supposed to embody all of the qualities that Hogwarts represents, so much so, in fact, that they are supposed to be difficult to place in a House themselves. Supposedly, this is supposed to decrease favoritism, but I cannot pretend that I am not genuinely fond of your class, nor must I try to keep up the pretense. It is hardly a secret that I was your Head of House, and that means that it is totally natural for me to favor those classes of Gryffindors that I knew first through the eyes of their Head of House. Now that I'm Headmistress, well, age old habits are hard to break," she added ruefully. "I couldn't walk into any other common room and attempt to create a heartfelt speech, and truly mean it; and I suspect that they will no miss my presence," she added with a slow, mischievous smile.
Hermione felt a similar smile spread across her face. "You'd better not let Fred or George hear you say that, or you'll have created a monster. They'll be telling the entire world that you were enormously fond of them the entire time and that the whole detention thing was a façade."
"I am enormously fond of them," Minerva said, surprising Hermione slightly. "But the detentions weren't a façade, and I will deny that I favored them with my last breath," she warned, eliciting a delighted laugh from Hermione with the declaration.
They had, by that point, reached the portrait that guarded Minerva's chambers.
"Domina," said a voice from what Hermione had thought was a seemingly empty landscape. It was then that she saw the speaker, one of the dozen or so men huddled around the embers of a campfire and a few tents in the bottom corner. They wore the distinctive armor and red cloaks of Roman legionaries, the man who had spoken wearing a different enough uniform that Hermione took him to be the leader of the troop. However, something about the title he had given Minerva caught her attention.
"I didn't know that Roman soldiers were allowed to lead troops if they were slaves, she said blandly. The title was one that literally meant mistress, and a free Roman wouldn't have used it.
"They didn't," Minerva answered her with the slightly frustrated tone of voice that said there was a story behind the title. "Talius simply calls me that because I left him alone with Albus for too long and Dumbledore thought it would be hilarious. The entire portrait, of course, was his idea of a play on the origins of my name, and Talius agreed when Albus suggested that every good Roman soldier must be a slave to the goddess of wisdom and war. When I became Headmistress, I found it totally impossible to keep him from addressing me like this." A small smile twisted her lips at the memory, though she was still attempting to pretend as if she found nothing about the situation funny at all.
Talius hadn't moved for the entire conversation, standing stiffly at attention, awaiting his orders. "Courage," Minerva told him, causing the picture to swing open as the soldier gave her a salute of acknowledgement. With a grin at the password and a shake of her head at the antics of the two venerable professors, Hermione allowed herself to be shepherded ahead of the Headmistress into the other woman's quarters.
Instantly, she was hit with a bout of nerves and instead of taking a seat opposite Minerva, who had flowed gracefully past her to settle comfortably on a green sofa, she chose instead to wander around the room, trying to recall her courage. Slowly, it returned to her, but she found herself still unable to sit down, and continued the pretense of examining the wall of bookshelves that Minerva had lining her sitting room. The witch in question was waiting patiently for Hermione to collect herself, not saying anything, but filling the silence with the motions of unpinning her hat and sending it across the room to settle gracefully to settle on the cloak stand with a practiced toss. The young Gryffindor turned at the movement, momentarily stunned to see a hat-less Minerva McGonagall sitting in front of her. The older woman had never been so casually comfortable with her, even after hours of chatting together, and Hermione couldn't recall a time when she had seen the professor actually remove her hat. Doing so meant that Hermione was treated to a view of the glossy ebony locks that Minerva kept pinned back into a severe bun. Her fingers itched to take those pins out.
"Why don't you ever wear your hair down?" Hermione asked absently, subconsciously taking a step forward so that she was standing directly behind Minerva.
"Habit, mostly," Minerva answered her, not turning around to face the woman behind her, even though she could feel Hermione's gaze on her. "I started wearing it years ago when I started teaching, and then it just became what I did with my hair," she explained softly, hands going to one of the long, elegant hairpins that held the bun in place. Hermione's hand on hers stopped her.
"May I?" she asked, voice cracking even on those few words. Hermione had no idea what she was doing, and a part of her was wondering if she had lost her sanity, but the other part of her was thinking that she was soon going to be unpinning Minerva McGonagall's legendary bun and that part of her was winning. The Headmistress's hand pulled away from the Gryffindor's, and Minerva gave the slightest nod. With the ease of someone who had her own experiences with the use of hairpins, Hermione's fingers deftly pulled them all free, shaking the long strands of her Professor's ebony hair free from the spiral that it had kept even after the pins had gone so that the strands were free to curl on their own. A cursory search with her hands to make sure that all of the pins had been removed had Minerva's eyes close at the pleasure of feeling someone else's fingers tangled in her hair.
"Hermione," Minerva managed to say, as one of Hermione's hands tossed the main bulk of her hair so that it was no longer splayed across the back of the couch, catching the woman's wrist before she could pull away fully. "You had wanted to talk to me about something?" she reminded her gently, not wanting to pry but also thinking it prudent that the recent graduate ceased her ministrations before something else happened. Hermione jerked her wrist away as if she had been burned, shocking Minerva with the suddenness of the action, but nonetheless Hermione came and seated herself, nervously, on the far end of the couch. Minerva's hairpins, which Hermione had palmed as she had removed them, were still clutched in her hand, though Minerva was fairly sure that Hermione had forgotten that she had even put them there in the first place. A tea service popped into existence on the coffee table in front of them. "Shall I mother?" Minerva asked rhetorically, taking in her companion's complexion, which had gone totally white. Soon enough, a warm cup of tea was being pushed into Hermione's hand, and Minerva was settling back into her seat.
The elder woman was blowing gently into her cup to cool the hot liquid slightly, and using the excuse to carefully study her former pupil over the rim. Her subtlety hardly seemed to be called for, considering that Hermione seemed to have sunk into some sort of shock coma since she had sat down, and had barely noticed the cup she was now holding. Though Minerva was forced to admit that perhaps she was noticing more than the Transfiguration Mistress had given her credit for as Hermione raised the cup towards her lips in a gesture not dissimilar to the one that Minerva herself had just used. However, before Minerva could even fully process that thought, Hermione had placed the cup straight to her lips, despite the heat of the beverage, and had taken a sip, her eyes bulging as the pain of scalding her tongue brought her back to the present. Now, it seemed as if her effort to swallow, and not spit, the hot beverage was taking up all of her attention, but her shock had caused her to nearly spill her tea in her lap. Wisely, Minerva decided to rescue the cup.
Leaning forward, she placed her own cup down on the table before swiftly sliding down to the other end of the couch, gentle fingers prying Hermione's hand from around the delicate porcelain and placing it next to hers on the table. The hand that hadn't been busy with the cup never left Hermione's. Hermione turned to face her with a weak smile.
"Wow, that was hot," she announced rather lamely, her cheeks heating with the slight blush that was now gracing her features. Rather than laughing, the other woman simply regarded her over the rims of her spectacles, and nodded gravely.
"Indeed, it was," Minerva acknowledged. Then, she paused, searching for a was to be as delicate as possible. "Hermione, is everything okay?" she queried hesitantly. "I cannot help but notice that you seem to have become amazingly nervous since crossing the threshold."
"I am rather nervous," Hermione replied bluntly, when she had forced herself to stop looking at Minerva like a deer in headlights. "You see," she began, somewhat hesitantly, her ability to look Minerva in the eye getting smaller as seconds ticked by, "I, uh," her voice cracked, and suddenly the hem of her skirt was absolutely fascinating, "I think that I am in love with you." The entire admission had been said very quietly, just loud enough for Minerva's sharp ears to catch it.
Suddenly, Minerva was very glad that she had put her teacup down on the table earlier, and that she hadn't attempted to pick it back up. She had a feeling that, if she had done so, it would have resulted in her spitting the beverage back in Hermione's face.
"Hermione," she managed, years of teaching assisting her in keeping her composure and not stuttering out her reply. "I must admit that I am flattered, beyond flattered, really, but," Minerva's throat tightened and she barely managed to force the next words from her lips, "I am many years your senior. Perhaps someone closer in age?" she suggested delicately, though the words sounded utterly wrong as they flew from her mouth. She was practically over the moon she was so 'beyond flattered', but that didn't change the fact that any sort of relationship between the two couldn't happen. Minerva had taught the young woman in front of her, for one, and then there was the age difference.
Hermione, though, seemed to have regained some of her courage, and wasn't giving up easily. "There is no one my age that even catches my eye in comparison to my feelings for you, Minerva," she asserted, though her confidence wasn't quite so repaired that she could look the Headmistress in the eye.
"You are my student, Hermione," Minerva cried, trembling as the realization struck her that Hermione had likely thought this entire thing through very carefully, and that, as such, she was likely about to be backed into a corner. And the worst part was that there was only a small part of her that didn't want to end up backed into that corner; only a small part of her brain was attempting to pretend as if she didn't want to tell the Gryffindor that she wanted this too.
"Was your student," Hermione corrected ruthlessly.
"Was my student, Hermione," Minerva said, acknowledging the correction. "Does it truly matter if you no longer are? That bond still exists between us, and has since you were eleven!"
"Minerva, I'm not sure if there is anyone left in Britain that you haven't taught at one point or another," Hermione pointed out, not trying to reinforce the age gap between them, but rather point out how foolish it was to date only non-students. "You can't possibly allow that to define your dating pool," she added sensibly.
"And why not, Hermione?" Minerva asked, a touch waspishly.
"Because if you did, then how on earth are you supposed to be happy?" Hermione cried. There was a momentary silence at the words, in which both witches stared unyieldingly into each other's eyes, not noticing that their hands were still clasped between them on the couch. "I don't care about the age difference, Minerva, and I don't care that you were once my teacher. Goodness, I am glad that you were, because otherwise I doubt I would have gotten the chance to see what a caring, loyal, brave, intelligent, wonderful woman you are. Anyone would be lucky to have you," she admitted quietly. "And all I am asking is that I am lucky enough to be given a chance."
Minerva couldn't help but suck in a slight breath at that statement. Because truly, that was the sort of thing that made her heart absolutely melt, and any woman would have loved to hear that spouted at them by anyone they were even remotely interested in. And truly, she was more than remotely interested in Hermione Granger. Age difference and the fact that their relationship had once been teacher/pupil had been addressed, and Minerva honestly found that she couldn't come up with any other objections that she could voice. Had she really spent years trying to warn herself off of thinking of Miss Granger in a romantic light and only managed to come up with two objections that the younger woman had argued her way through as if they were flimsier than parchment?
"I cannot help but think that you are making a mistake, Hermione," she admitted eventually, looking down at the admission and realizing that their hands were entwined, and had been since she had rescued Hermione's cup of tea. "However, I also cannot help but hope, for my sake and for yours, that you are not," she added, managing to cut short the inevitable argument from the younger woman that this was not a mistake.
"Really?" Hermione asked breathlessly, hardly daring to believe her own years.
Minerva allowed a smile to grace her features, though this one stayed much longer than her smiles usually did. "Really," she said quietly, leaning forward and closing the short gap between them to capture the Gryffindor's lips with her own.
Hermione climbed back through the portrait hole much later, instantly blushing as she realized that a certain redhead, who was now standing with a broad smirk by the punch bowl, had not missed her entrance. Wordlessly, he took in her slightly mussed hair, swollen lips, and flushed face and his smirk widened even further.
"Time to celebrate, then?" he asked casually.
"Yes," she shyly admitted, causing him to laugh loudly and pour her a drink. By the lack of firewhiskey anywhere in sight, it appeared that it had all gone to good use in spiking the punch bowl in front of her.
"Then cheers, mate," he said, clinking glasses with her and downing his cup in one go. Hermione followed suit, though at a much more reasonable pace, her mind still on the woman she had just left.