Chapter 3
An eternity later and Minerva was gently handing Moira over to Poppy in the Great Hall. And to Minerva's dismay, Poppy looked as if she had aged ten years; her eyes were haunted, the lines in her face were deeper, her hair seemed greyer.
Poppy's usual authoritative tone was gone when she spoke. "There are too many, Minerva. There should not be this many."
"One would be too many, Poppy." A gentle reprimand, but one she directed at herself as well.
Poppy's grey eyes welled up with tears, and she swallowed hard to clear her throat of the emotion. She opened her mouth but nothing would come out, and she nodded instead.
Slowly, Poppy carried Moira over to an unoccupied cot situated between the House tables that Minerva had earlier moved back to their rightful places. It was a miracle that there were any open cots at all, and one that Minerva was grateful for. One more open cot hopefully meant one less injured student or staff or family member.
The infirmary was not big enough for all of the wounded and their families, and Poppy wanted them all in one place, so the Great Hall was the logical choice. But now, looking out across the room, Minerva felt as though a boulder had sunk into the pit of her stomach. The room had been filled with their wounded and their dead when the battle had moved inside. It should have been impossible; it should have been forbidden to fight over top of the already dead and dying, but it had happened. The thought had not truly crossed her mind with any real weight until now, and the revulsion it brought threatened to overwhelm her.
Another "impossible", "forbidden" thought: oh Merlin, that this would happen at a school. The past school year had been one terrifying day after another, every minute an internal battle where each professor walked a thin line. Somehow, protecting the students had been on both sides of that line, but while on one side it was done by choosing to back down and give the Carrows and Severus small victories, the other side meant standing up to them and possibly being "disposed of." Silently, but unanimously, the professors had decided to walk as close to the latter side as possible, and now not one of them could say they were a stranger to the Cruciatus curse. It not only tortured the body, but the mind as well—Frank and Alice Longbottom were proof of that—but hopefully because the professors knew the curse so well, many of the students were still strangers to it.
But even after all of that, no one had been quite prepared for the events of the past twelve hours. Voldemort's desire for control over Hogwarts had always been evident, and so when Albus was murdered Minerva knew that Voldemort's takeover at the school was practically inevitable. But the battle? Her own students having to fight witches and wizards over twice their age and probably that much more powerful? Nothing could have prepared Minerva or the other professors for that. It had been too horrific to even contemplate.
Until the nightmare actually began.
She shuddered as the scene before her told her that she had yet to wake up.
Harry is not dead.