Her stomach churned violently, and for one horrifying moment, Minerva thought she might be ill all over the professor's table in the Great Hall during breakfast.

A mixture of annoyance and fatigue flitted across her features before she composed herself once more and concentrated on forcing down at least a piece of dry toast. This weakness in constitution was beginning to perturb her, normally her health was ironclad, and she was rarely ill.

Well, she thought to herself, perhaps it wouldn't hurt to miss a meal. Only a month or so into the term and already the rich food was causing her robes to fit a bit more tightly. Part of getting older perhaps, she added wryly. Though she had to admit, the weight gain was odd. Minerva McGonagall's weight had never fluctuated more than two pounds either way since her thirty fifth birthday. Fast forward forty or so years and here she sat, though she was just at the age where a witch could start to be considered middle age. She brushed off the errant thought as she focused on mentally running through the classes she had for the day. Heaven help her, seventh year Slytherin and Gryffindor transfiguration classes first AND last period, she'd need something stronger than pumpkin juice to get through that.

"Minerva," Albus' voice broke through her mental preparation. "Are you feeling well? You've seemed a bit off colour the last week or so. Are you ill?"

"I'm fine, Albus," she snapped rather irritably. "Don't fuss. I'm sure that all I'm suffering from is a very mild cold."

"You'll still see Poppy after your last class," he continued, his tone low so that no one else could hear him.

"Really Albus, you're acting ridiculously…"

"I apologize, my dear, but it seems to me that right after I've returned from the dead I don't want you popping off either!" he countered.

"I am not planning on 'popping off' as you so elegantly put it, anytime soon. And in a hundred years or so, when I do pass on, I tend to do so with much more dignity than simply 'popping off' would afford me!"

He chuckled at this, but still lay a hand on her thigh until she met his eyes. "Please, Minerva?"

That final please undid her and she sighed, rolling her eyes at the ceiling of the great hall; which today was charmed to mimic the weather outside, cloudy and overcast.

"Fine, Albus. I'll go and see Poppy at the end of they day. Now stop fussing! I didn't make it public knowledge that we were together after you were dead, so no one knows now."

"Such a shame, don't you think?" Cerulean eyes crackled with sexual electricity that all but sent a current up her spine as she shivered deliciously at his tone of voice.

"Must I transfigure you into an ice cube again so you cool off?"

Not to be outdone, Albus lowered his voice even further. "Anything to be between your lips, my dear... In any form that bears no punishment."

Trying to disguise her sudden arousal, she flicked a look of disdain Albus' way; but he wasn't taken in by it. Not when the corners of her lips quirked up like that and the emerald eyes that flashed up at him did so more out of desire than of annoyance.

However, after her first class Minerva was feeling worse than ever as she dismissed the fourth year Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. She had a free period now, and instead of using the time to return to her office and grade papers, she found her feet taking her toward the infirmary. After very nearly being sick all over Dennis Creevey's transfigured toad, she decided it would be best to get the visit over with and get back to normal. This whole being unwell thing was really very tiresome.

"Madam Pomfrey?" Minerva called out to the infirmary, surprisingly empty of students. Although really, most students did wait until the first month was over before faking ill and performing hexes on one another in order to be let out of class. The biggest shareholders of 'Weasely's Wizarding Wheezes' no doubt was primarily made up of the underage witches and wizards of Hogwarts. Oh, and Albus of course. She smiled wryly at that last thought, she'd known him since she was 16, a student herself, and in the time that had passed his inner child still hadn't aged even a year.

"Minerva, what on earth are you doing in here?" her old school friend came out of her office incredulously.

"Normally, Albus or I have to drag you in here hissing and clawing or unconscious!" the mediwitch came over to Minerva and conjured a chart, which fell neatly into her hand.

"I just don't know what's wrong with me, Poppy. I just cannot shake this flu! It took so much out of me that I didn't even transfigure for my students the first day of school…Come to think of it, I've been so drained I haven't used my Animagus form since the summer."

Poppy pursed her lips and magically pulled up one of the cots, locking the infirmary doors as she did so with a sign that read 'back in 20 min.' Seeing Minerva's arched brow she smiled wryly. "I figure the sniffling masses can wait a few moments, jokes aside the fact that you're here at all other than for a social call has me a little concerned, Min."

"I told you, I'm fine, I'm sure of it. I just need a little boost or a Pepper-Up potion or something of the like."

"Hmm, we'll see about that. Come on now, lie back on the cot."

Minerva opened her mouth to protest that she didn't need to, but one look at the stern expression on her friend's face was enough to silence any argument she was about to make and lay back.

"Infirmitate Revelata, Corpus Dolor, Seperata Opus", beams of pale blue and yellow lights washed over the professor's body, but appeared to reveal nothing out of the ordinary.

Poppy's face whitened, but still she continued to cast the different healing and diagnostic spells.

"Poppy…" Minerva's voice was low and scared now. "If you can't find the simple source of this, I assume you've considered the fact we may be dealing with a curse."

"I'm not finished yet, Minerva… I want to look at this on a cellular level, this may burn slightly love."

She drew her wand against a patch of skin on Minerva's arm, and they both watched as a drop of blood from the area glowed blue and rose before expanding mid-air.

Murmuring and counting under her breath as she whisked away the different layers of cells, she stopped at the third layer, which to Minerva appeared to be a series of octagonal platelets with rounded corners that had a purplish tinge to the normal red colour. At this, Madam Pomfrey stopped, and the vision began to fade. But coming to her senses, she waved her wand again with a muttered 'Statis Visio' and the dissipating image returned full force. After another careful moment of consideration, Poppy cleared the picture and healed the wound on her patient's arm.

"For Merlin's sake, Poppy, just tell me what the matter is! Good Lord, from the expression on your face I'm beginning to think I'm going to drop dead in the next thirty seconds!" She tried to joke, hoping to mask her own fear that echoed what she saw on her friend's face."

But slowly, the shock on Poppy Pomfrey's face turned to a wide, beaming smile and she threw her arms around her friend. Minerva patted her on the back awkwardly wondering what on earth had gotten into her old, level-headed friend. "Erm, Poppy, dear, would you like to explain to the patient - what on earth you could possibly be smiling about?"

"Min, I need you to be calm about this. Now obviously, you have resumed your relationship with Albus. Merlin, that man adores you Minerva. If I weren't your best friend I'd be absolutely green with envy."

"If you do not tell me this very instant WHAT is going on with my body, you may very well end up green, Persephone Pomfrey!"

"Don't you EVER call me that again, Minerva. If you weren't with child, I would hex you right now. But as I was saying, hiding the relationship between the two of you is going to prove much more difficult now that there are four of you!"

But Minerva McGonagall was still stuck on the first part of her friend's statement. "P-Poppy, I cannot have heard you correctly, what child are you talking about?"

"The ones in your belly, love," Madam Pomfrey replied beaming, her eyes sparkling as she waited for Minerva to process the other half of her statement.

Amazingly, Minerva stopped sputtering and slowly lay back down on the bed, one trembling hand over her face. For a moment, Poppy thought her friend's reaction was caused by horror at the news she had just given her. But as Minerva sat up once again, her hand moved shakily from her face to her belly and her expression turned to one of tremulous, exultant joy.

"Please, don't be joking Poppy…"

"I'm not, I'm not Min, I swear it. You're having twins, love! Eight weeks along apparently too."

Rare tears sprang to her eyes as Minerva started to let herself believe in the two, tiny lives that rested beneath her heart.

"I th-thought I wasn't able, a-after…"

She would never know if she could have been happy with Dougal, her first love and muggle fiancé, the thought of what might have been still plagued her some nights as she lay in bed alone. If only he'd been a wizard, or had there been some way to tell him she was a witch without breaking the Statute of Secrecy…but there hadn't been, and even then, still in her youth Minerva had known that you couldn't be happy without being free to be yourself, and having someone love you for who you were and not the façade you put up.

Unfortunately, even back in the wizarding world, that façade had simply turned into a wall after her heart was broken, and there was never anyone strong enough, or willing enough to break through that wall to get to her, rescue her from herself. That is, until Albus Dumbledore came into her life; and like the phoenix of his Patronus, brought back to life what she thought had died so long ago, and rekindled the fire in her heart.

Likewise, her brief marriage to her former boss, Elphinstone Urquhart. After his fourth proposal, she had finally accepted, and they had spent three pleasant years together before his untimely death from a Venomous Tentacula bite. She was fond of him, he had been a good man, but not even in those years of marriage did she feel as bound to him as she did to Albus so much so that her body flamed with the thought of him.

Her biggest regret was that during their marriage, she hadn't had any children. They had tried, Merlin, she tried – but her body seemed to refuse to conceive a child. Elphinstone hadn't been overly concerned. He was a good deal older than her and would be content if things stayed the same between them. It was Minerva who had so desperately wanted a child that she felt a pang low in her belly each time she saw an infant on the street.

She drank countless potions and cast endless charms to enhance her fertility and strengthen the chances of her becoming pregnant, but to no avail, after three years her womb remained as painfully barren as it ever had been. And with the death of her husband, her chances to have the baby she so longed for died also.

It had taken years for her to accept that she would never be a mother, and she threw herself into teaching, focusing her attention on the children in Hogwarts to whom the teachers were a sort of surrogate parent as they lived away from home for the first time in their lives. When she and Dumbledore had finally consummated the relationship that had begun in her seventh year at Hogwarts, having a baby was only a fantasy she sometimes brought out from the back of her mind. Between Voldemort's rising army and the stringent rules of the Ministry of Magic, she and Albus had to keep their coupling a complete and utter secret. Aberforth, Dumbledore's brother, and her best friends and fellow staff Poppy Pomfrey and Rolanda Hooch were the only ones who knew of the illicit relationship.

"Oh, Poppy, I'm going to be a mother…After all these years!" she mused, her hands still cradling her abdomen protectively.

Poppy smiled, "You're not exactly ancient, Minerva. You're only 75, and for the most part a witch's childbearing years taper off around 90, even a hundred. And love, for all you know, it could have been Elphinstone that was sterile, and not you all along. He had no children and he was quite a bit older than you when you married him."

"Oh Poppy, a baby!" her friend continued, uncharacteristically misty eyed and dizzy with awe at what she'd just found out.

But ever pragmatic, she finally came back down to earth, literally – she had managed to somehow levitate an inch off the cot before Poppy had gently pulled her back down and made her lie back once more so that she could feel her abdomen.

"Its early days yet, Min, you know that. But so far, everything looks to be going well. Your uterus is just below the halfway point to reaching your navel and the walls seem firm.

You know you'll need to take it easy, right? Although you're a good twenty years away from menopause, you're still not a young witch. And your body has taken enough spells and hexes and abuse to last every one of your nine lifetimes!" she teased her friend about the characteristics of her Animagus form.

"I'll start on a potion you can take to help with the nausea, don't worry it won't hurt the babies," she added quickly, seeing Minerva's expression. "Albus is going to be over the moon!"

"I hope so," Minerva mused, suddenly much more nervous about the future.

"Course he will. And I'll see you every week to check your progress, unless you feel ANY cramping or bleeding then you call me straightaway or get to St. Mungo's. I don't want to scare you Min, but this isn't going to be easy, carrying the babies to term and delivering healthy. Most miscarriages if they happen, occur within the first trimester. So for the next 4 weeks, if not the next 9 months, you are under orders from me and I'm sure Albus as well, to lead a life of relative leisure. Understood?"

Your reviews truly do mean the world to me, I'm not joking in the slightest when I say the review I just got spurred me on to write an extra 1200 or so words and allow me to upload this chapter (despite a temperature of 98 degrees, think I ate some of Fred and George's Fever Fudge or gave myself a Bat Bogey Hex, the flu is so bothersome... Although, it does give me an excuse to get more writing done as I'm stuck to my couch!)

So PLEASE, tell me what you think. Even if it's a simple 'Love it!' or a suggestion, a thought, a question. I perk up every time I hear my phone 'ding' happily to tell me I've got a new email for my writing account!

So wake me up tomorrow morning with some reviews! Good night loves ~