So one reviewer asked a lot of good questions about the story, the time period, plot etc. They were anonymous however so I'll have to answer this way! Hopefully this chapter will make a few things clearer & hook you to the story!
The dust of the Second Wizarding War seemed to be settling a year after its occurrence.
The Ministry of Magic was rebuilding itself from all levels, families were returning to their homes after fleeing for fear of their lives. Voldemort's death had scattered the remaining death eaters so far across the globe that there was little fear of a return, though the Auror's Office still kept a watchful eye out for any signs of uprising or new leadership. And Hogwarts had been rebuilt, and with her new post as Headmistress, Minerva swore no evil should pass through it again under her watch.
Best of all, perhaps, was the miracle that had occurred shortly after the final battle at Hogwarts that she still could barely grasp as real. Harry's 'death', and the shift in the spiritual and magical continuum that had occurred with it and Voldemort's demise had sent powerful after-tremors through the magical world, causing extreme feats of magic to be performed wandlessly, sourced from the core of the Earth itself.
The most learned wizards from across the globe had converged recently at a conference in London to try and figure out what had caused the 'involuntary magic' that seemed to have sprung from Nature itself in the following year. Minerva daren't question what had happened too strongly, if she did she feared she would lose him again. To her, perhaps the biggest miracle was that Albus was back, alive and as curiously corporeal as ever.
In the aftermath of battle, she had held herself together until every student was sent home, whether living or in a casket, but after that she had collapsed in the midst of the rubble of what had been her and Albus' beloved home and school.
The school had been her life, Albus had been her life, and they were both gone – and with their passing, she too felt as though her soul had died and her body cruelly refused to follow. It had been hard enough to go on after Albus' death, indeed she had stayed in her room for a week, not eating, barely breathing except for the sobs which wracked her chest.
The only thing that had kept her going was the knowledge that the time for battle was near, and it was that duty that brought her back to her feet again. Duty to the school she and Albus had loved so strongly, duty to the students she had sworn to protect, duty to the Order and to Harry, and duty to Albus' memory.
All her life, Minerva McGonagall had been brought up to understand that it was duty above all that was important, and that without following that duty, there was no courage and no honour. But it had been unbearable to watch as Death Eaters came into her school as acting faculty, and she felt as though the duty she had followed all her life had failed her, and her it.
But almost a year and a half after his death, he had returned.
The school was empty, the staff who had returned to help rebuild the school were living in Hogsmeade during the restoration, all except Minerva. She hadn't left the school since the final battle, and no one could pull her away from it. Her friends had tried; Poppy Pomfrey, Pomona Sprout and Rolanda Hooch had begged her to come live with any one of them. It wasn't healthy, they told her, to live like this.
But still caught in the throes of her grief, she had responded coldly and woodenly that remaining at Hogwarts was the only way she could live at all. And the wounded, almost dead expression in her eyes as she spoke convinced her friends of that fact, and they hadn't tried again. Instead they had stayed, along with most of the original Hogwarts staff, to help her rebuild the school once more. One night, as she had wandered the halls of the castle as the only living thing in its walls, she had heard a faint rustling which she simply attributed to the wind sweeping through an unfilled crack or crevice in the stone. But as she continued to walk through the empty corridor, a shadow moved at the end of it.
One tear slipped down her cheek, and her hand clutched at the robes at her chest as if her heart were breaking and she were trying to hold it together. "No…You're not real," she had whispered brokenly, as if it destroyed her to speak the words. "It's my mind, God, get a hold of yourself Minerva, Albus is dead. He's dead!" Her voice had risen to a yell as she tried to convince herself that was she was seeing was only her imagination, a cruel trick of the mind.
But then the spectre had spoken her name, softly and with such achingly familiar tenderness that it weakened her knees and she had fallen, sobbing as she screamed out spells to make the vision go away.
However, the 'vision' merely swept the oncoming spells away with a flick of his wand before disarming her with a softly murmured 'Expelliarmus' as he came closer.
"Minerva," the spectre of her dead love spoke again and she screamed with grief. Albus himself was crying now as well as he saw the broken, sobbing witch at his feet, knowing he was the cause of this pain.
"I'm alive, Tabby. This isn't a dream, I swear to you." Minerva started visibly at the use of her pet name that only Albus Dumbledore had called her when they were alone together. He took her gently by the hands and helped her to her feet as he watched a hundred different emotions flit across her face as she took in the impossible scene before her.
The warm flesh touched her, lifted her to her feet and she forced herself to look into the figure's eyes, thinking that that would shatter the illusion – there were no other eyes that could ever compare to those of her love's.
But the gently crinkled orbs were as brilliantly blue as ever, and held the same love, and knowledge they always had, but now were filled with a fiercer fire and regret than she had ever seen.
'A-Albus, it isn't really you, is it? It, it c-can't b-be you," she whispered hoarsely.
In answer, the man in front of her turned slightly, drawing out his wand once more before looking deeply into her eyes and yelling out 'Expecto Patronum!'
Minerva watched in horror, and disbelief and amazement as a ghostly Phoenix erupted from his wand in sparks and shimmers of silver, calling out in a piercing, clear tone, before spreading its wings and fading in the dusky shadows of the exposed sky.
Her knees gave out once more and she crumpled. Albus caught her to him as she fell against his chest, sobbing. After several long moments, the tear filled eyes registered a flash of familiar anger and she begain beating at his chest with her fists, seeing that he had taken her wand.
"How could you?" She screamed. "I needed you, Hogwarts needed you, Harry needed you? How could you leave us, how could you leave me? I thought you were dead!" Her flailing fists stilled as she buried her face in his warm, breath filled chest and continued to cry helplessly, unable to stop the terrible, animal like keens that erupted from her throat and from deeper in her soul than she ever could have imagined.
"Oh Min, Oh Tabby, I never would have left you, never. I was dead, I had died." Still holding her up, he carried most of her weight as he led her to a stone bench on the side of the corridor.
"I don't understand it fully myself. The night of the final battle, when Harry and Voldemort were killed, I met Harry in the empty space. A space not of the living or the dead, but a space inside his very conscience; I explained to him then, everything, and despite what I had done though I believed it at the time to be what was right, he forgave me when I never expected him to. And I think that his love, and his sacrifice, being so young and so burdened with adult responsibility, in part rendered some of the intense and ancient magic that has been occurring all over in the time since the battle. At least on my part. I am alive, Minerva. As old as I ever was, but alive, fully and completely, with as many years left as anybody. And I can only hope that there is still some small future for us, even if it is not as much of a future as I would be selfish enough to ask for and want."
He rocked Minerva softly as she cried, holding her tightly as she clung to him and sobbed as though her heart was breaking for a second time – although in actuality, the pain she felt was the pain of it healing again, once more becoming whole now that its other half was back from the dead.
He went on to explain that several of those who had died had come back, not all, but a select few. Among them were Fred Weasely and Severus Snape. The day after he'd come back, he'd explained, he had gone directly to see the one contact he had left at the ministry that he trusted above all else. There he learned that his was the fourth documented resurrection across the country.
"I didn't come to you first, Minerva, because I didn't know if I was staying. I couldn't do this to you knowing that I'd cause you the pain of losing me again. But it's been a week since I've been back, and only now have I returned from trying to get the full story on what magic happened after the battle. And perhaps we'll never truly know, I myself do not deign to believe that I know all there is to this, or any magic. It is, as I've always believed, a leap of faith. But oh, the rewards that are reaped from that risk…"
She had quieted now, and simply lay in his arms, her head against his chest – the tears falling softly from her eyes as she held him as closely as she could.
"I know better than to ask this of you, Minerva. But the folly of an old man was not erased by death. Could you ever find it in yourself to forgive me? My own mind's absolution may never come, but I shouldn't like to live in the shadow of your disdain either."
Minerva lifted her head shakily, saying nothing, but pressing her lips to his as her tears wet his face and beard. "Yes," she breathed. "Yes Albus, I'll forgive you if you forgive me for the mess I made of the school and what it stands for. I tried, and I failed. I was no you."
"No darling, in almost all ways, you are better. I've come back, knowing I've been dead, but with no real memory of where I was while I was dead. It's simply a kind of glow that comes with the memory, much like the strongest Patronus possible to make. But I saw everything that happened down here while I was gone. I have never been so proud of you Minerva. Never had I guessed you to possess such unerring skill and bravery and heart. I knew you contained all of those qualities, but not in the amount you showed during the final year of the War. I'm so proud of you, Tabby."
He pressed his lips to her forehead and she sighed, bringing his face down to meet hers as she kissed him once more. He could see that she was exhausted and shivering, and with every reason to be. So he carried her back to the rooms she was occupying during the reconstruction and conjured a large cup of hot cocoa and a plethora of brightly colored hot water bottles which he wrapped in the blankets he tucked her in as he put her to bed.
He could see that she was fighting sleep as her eyelids fluttered closed and she forced them open once more. "Min, Min you've got to get some rest. You're spent, you'll make yourself ill, more so than I suspect you already are." He brushed her hair back from her pale, drawn face, still marked with the damp trails of her tears.
"P-please Albus, don't leave," she pleaded quietly, not able to look him in the eyes during this moment of uncharacteristic weakness. "I can't wake up to find you gone, I just can't."
"Close your eyes, Tabby. I'm not leaving, not now and not ever. Even when I was dead, I never really left you. Every moment I knew what you were doing and loved you all the more for it. Shhh, darling, rest…I swear to you I'll be here when you wake." He cuddled her closer to his chest, rhythmically stroking her hair and her back; breathing a sigh of relief as her eyes finally closed in slumber.
For the most part, things had sorted themselves out. The few other families that had gotten loved ones back from the snares of death rejoiced, and those who hadn't eventually picked up the pieces and moved on. It was a year later now and Hogwarts had been almost entirely rebuilt. Dumbledore had once more been reinstated as headmaster, a position Minerva McGonagall was all too happy to remove herself from.
Almost as happy, in fact, as she was to be making the move from her previous chambers to those of Dumbledore's. Hers were kept as they were, of course, for appearances, and a charm had been cast so that with the use of a password, her chambers and Dumbledore's were connected to one another. It would indeed be a relief not to have to sneak around after hours in her Animagus form so that she and Albus could have a few stolen moments, or hours that is, of forbidden pleasures.
Minerva finally drifted to sleep in the arms of her lover, tired and pleasured beyond any further thought after the round(s) of lovemaking that had followed Albus' disruption on her 5th year class. Almost to the brink of sleep now, she lay thinking of the school's reopening a few weeks ago , and the students that had returned for the first time since the battle. Students, funnily enough, which included Harry, Hermione and Ron. Despite all they'd been through, they needed both their seventh year O.W.L's and their N.E.W.T's to be able to enter the workforce and start their careers. And for the moment, everything seemed perfect. Although in the wizarding world, as one knows, things are hardly ever as they seem to be...
As always, review, review, review! See how quickly I wrote AND uploaded this chapter? 'Writeus Moreus' - an effective spell if I do say so myself! Although the strength depends on the caster :) CAST AWAY!