Chapter 7: and Left Undone

When Albus returned to the castle, Poppy indicated Minerva was ready to see him in the Hospital Wing. She had technically released her the previous day, and she even had resumed teaching, though not doing any magical demonstrations. But it seemed wise that her conversation with Albus happen someplace other than either of their rooms, and where a trusted third party was nearby. Minerva's anxiety had nearly disappeared once she received Albus's handwritten message that "Rapier" would definitely not be coming to Hogwarts, but discussing the entire matter with Albus could possibly set her back.

Poppy explained that she had given Minerva an anti-anxiety potion which should prevent another attack if they ended up discussing "the situation." It would also lower her inhibitions slightly, but Minerva did seem to want to talk and Poppy thought that the more she could tell Albus, the less power her fear would have over her, and the faster her overall healing would be. If she needed another dose the bottle was on the table next to the bed.

Albus walked into the private room in the Hospital wing reserved for staff. Minerva was sitting in a chair looking out the window, and Albus pulled another chair up beside her. Her face was turned away from him.

"Albus, I'm so sorry for what I said to you. I was not…"

"Shh, shh Minerva, you don't need to apologize for anything. I understand. Poppy explained at the time what was affecting you and why you reacted to me the way you did. And then when I looked at my memories of him in my pensieve I realized who he was. I'm so so sorry, Minerva . What you have been through. And this has brought it all back. I'm so very very sorry. For everything."

She turned her chair to face him. "But how much do you know about him? What he did? Who he was?"

Albus took a deep breath. He had thought about how much he should say about his own involvement, though he still wasn't sure.

"I now know he was your father, though I didn't until two days ago. I know who he was in the war, and what he did on his missions, both what he was ordered to do and the other things, or at least enough of them to know why he was ordered out of the field. And I think I know what he did once he returned to Scotland, though I don't know the details. But I do know that he was responsible, in some way, for your mother's death."

"And I know that you had to stay with him for the rest of that summer. And I know what kind of man he was, enough to imagine to some small degree what that summer might have been like. Not that I can really imagine or understand, of course, but I have at least a theoretical idea. I am genuinely amazed that you survived, physically or emotionally."

Albus had managed to maintain his composure, but now looking at the woman he loved, who had endured so much before even graduating from school, his voice began to break. "I am so very very sorry for what you went through, Minerva."

"But it's thanks to you that I did survive."

"What do you mean? What did I have to do with it? I did not even know who your father was, or about your mother."

"You're the one who taught me what I needed to know to escape. Without what you had taught me, and the confidence you had given me, I'd have never been able to do it. And I would have died."

"Do what? You escaped? How? Where did you go?"

"Out into the fields. As a cat. I'd sneak back at night when he was passed out drunk, and get food and supplies in my human form. But I spent my days hidden in the woods or fields as a cat. He thought I'd run completely away—he'd certainly given me reason enough to after the first week—and he was too out of it to try to follow me. The first week was horrible enough, though."

"Fortunately I'd brought some animagus books home with me for the summer, the ones you had mentioned in an article I'd read. I'd always wanted to learn it, ever since my first year when you demonstrated it, and then it had occurred to me that it might be useful for when I had to be around him. It wasn't just that summer that he was awful, you know. The last time he was home, on just a brief leave during my sixth year, had been almost as bad."

"I hadn't planned to actually try the transformation until I was back at Hogwarts and you could help me, but by the end of the week after Mum died I realized I literally had nothing to lose. No damage I could do to myself could possibly…."

"Shh, you don't have to tell me any more…."

Minerva took several deep breaths. "So I practiced a few of the exercises as much as I could for a few days, and then when I didn't think I could bear it any more, and didn't care if I died in the attempt, I tried the transformation. It worked. I was free. And it was thanks to you."

"No, no, my brave, talented Gryffindor. It was thanks to you. I had very little to do with it. But I am glad you told me. One week was bad enough, but I am glad to know you were spared that the rest of the summer. It helps my guilt somewhat. "

An owl flew into the ward and landed on Albus's arm. He removed the parchment, cast several spells on it, read it and gave a smile of grim satisfaction.

"What do you have to be guilty about, Albus? You gave me the way to escape then, you've stopped him from coming here now."

"But I didn't stop his handlers from sending him home on leave then. I was one of the ones he reported to, though I wasn't one of his regular handlers. But I knew what he was, though not who he was. When I learned about the leave, I tried to stop it, but not hard enough. If I'd only been more insistent…."

"If you'd been more insistent, Albus, it wouldn't have happened then, but it would have happened eventually. Believe me. He'd almost killed my mum before, and he had already been nasty to me. It was just a matter of when, not if. Don't blame yourself. Blame him, blame his parents who always protected him, from when he first got my mum pregnant when he was home from Hogwarts the summer before his seventh year, and ever after. He learned then that there weren't any consequences for treating witches like dirt, for having his way with them, and he never stopped."

"So, he, your mother…"

Now that Minerva had told him the worst of it, she seemed determined to fill in all the gaps in his knowledge of her background.

"Yes, she was a maid in his parents' house, and their darling only son raped her and got her pregnant. With me."

Albus shuddered. For someone so beautiful to have been conceived in such baseness.

"His parents at least did keep Mum on as part of their staff, and let her raise me. They could be decent enough except where he was concerned. They even convinced him once he was established at the Ministry that he should marry her and make me legitimate. They figured that a wife who was talented at domestic things would be an asset in his rise through the diplomatic corps, and I think they thought it was a good thing for us too. They had visions of him becoming an ambassador."

"But when he had his first undercover assignment, sometime in the early '30s, it became clear that he had a rare talent for covert work. Those Slytherin traits, I guess. He never worked a regular diplomatic assignment again. He spent more and more time undercover, and when the war broke out, he was rarely home at all."

"Which was just as well. His parents insisted he support us financially, and he couldn't abide that. They actually paid my Hogwarts fees, because he refused to—said no girl needed a Hogwarts education—I could go into service like my mother had. But his parents tried to do right by me, at least as much as possible without bringing him into disrepute or compromising the elaborate lengths they'd gone to cover up his misdeeds".

"He still resented us, and as he became nastier and nastier, he let it show more and more. So Hogwarts itself may have saved me, or at least my sanity, if not…... And then what I learned from you surely did save my life that summer."

"Oh, Minerva….my brave, brilliant, strong Minerva." Tears flowed down Albus's face.

Minerva reached up her hand to wipe them away. "I didn't mean to make you cry, Albus!"

"These are good tears, Minerva. Tears of thankfulness that you have survived so much, and not let it turn you into something like him, full of hate. Tears of relief because if you can talk about it, as you just have, it no longer has such power over you. And tears of joy that you have trusted me enough to tell me all of this. And that you do not blame me for my part in it, even though I blame myself."

"Believe me, Albus, I do not blame you. Even if I had known your role at the time, I would not have blamed you. He was, he is, evil, and he would have ultimately done the same amount of damage no matter the timing. Do not blame yourself. Please. And he will get his justice eventually."

"Perhaps sooner than he had thought."

"What do you mean?"

"I found out why he was going to come here. His mother died last month, and as you know his father died a few years ago. Somehow some vestigial respect for her had kept him from harassing you once you were an adult—and she had some sort of financial hold on him too. But once she died, he figured he could come here and humiliate you in some way—I don't know what he had planned, but it surely wasn't reconciliation. Among other things, you were the only person surviving who knew for certain what he'd done to your mother, which was, as far as I know, the only capital crime he'd committed on British soil. So he was certainly intending you harm of some sort."

"But what he didn't count on was that it was also only his parents' influence and machinations for all these years which had kept the Ministry from prosecuting him for the atrocities he committed during the war, and from investigating the details of your mother's death more thoroughly, and that had ensured his steady promotion even after the war. With his mother dead, he has no more protection."

"When I went to Oswald and connected the dots between "Rapier" and your mother, he went to the Minister. Who authorized that his diplomatic passport be revoked and he be tried for assorted war crimes and murder if he ever returns to British soil. Lots of people who knew what he'd done in the war had been agitating for his prosecution for years even as he rose in the Diplomatic Service; now the Minister was finally free of whatever hold his mother had over him and could oblige them.

"That owl I received a little while ago was to inform me that he is now in custody at Nurmengard, Grindelwald's prison. Apparently the Germans want first crack at him now that we've waived his diplomatic immunity. Then, if he ever gets released, which I doubt, our courts will have him."

"You're serious?"

"Yes." He handed her the parchment.

"At last, at last." Now it was Minerva's eyes which overflowed with tears. She reached out for Albus, drew him to her and buried her face on his shoulder. "My turn for happy tears," she choked out between shuddering sobs. She cried for several minutes before leaning back in her chair.

"I don't think I realized until just this moment how I've been holding my breath for fifteen years, wondering why he has never come after me, to eliminate the only witness to my mother's death, which is the only one of his crimes that he figures he doesn't have some sort of diplomatic or political protection for. He'd tried to Obliviate me at the time, of course, but he was too full of anger and liquor to manage the spell. And afterwards I always practiced occlumency and avoided his eyes. But it's always been in the back of my mind that he'd finally come after me some day. That's why, when I heard he was coming to the conference, I broke."

"But now I never have to worry about him again. Ever. Thank you, Albus. Your teachings saved me from enduring more of his worst when I was a student, and now you've finally made me truly safe."

Her "happy tears" began again in earnest.

"Oh Minerva, dearest Minerva. My brave lion."

This time Albus could not prevent himself from taking her in his arms, pulling her into his lap and holding her close against his chest, carding her hair with one hand while rubbing her back with the other. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he whispered her name again and again, his lips barely grazing her ear. Her crying slowly eased, and after another moment he loosened his hold on her.

But as she drew her head back from his shoulder, she turned her chin and placed the lightest of kisses in the hollow of his collarbone, before drawing her head back and meeting his gaze. Her eyes were the darkest green he had ever seen them, and he realized her arms remained twined around his neck. She tilted his head towards hers and raised her mouth to his, and his lips parted in response, when he suddenly caught a glimpse of the half-empty bottle of anti-anxiety potion on the bedside table. He remembered what Poppy had said about it lowering inhibitions.

"Minerva, we are both utterly spent in every way. And in less than twelve hours several hundred diplomats and scholars will be in the Great Hall hoping to hear me say something intelligent."

"If this," he continued, tracing the outline of her lips with a fingertip, "is a good idea--which I do tend to believe it is--it will still be a good idea on Sunday. And I think we'll both enjoy it much more. Or, if after we've both gotten some sleep we think perhaps it's not such a good idea after all, then that's all right, too." He moved his lips to her forehead and kissed it lightly. "My dearest Minerva."

"Albus." She breathed his name against his throat, then with some clear reluctance sat back in her own chair.

"I should be going now. I've got everything basically ready, thanks to all your good planning and hard work, but I do have some final details to tend to for the morning. I hope Poppy made it clear that I am not expecting you do to one thing related to this conference? You are to teach your classes, but not pay any attention to the visitors or the conference. I will try to stop by your rooms briefly on Friday and Saturday if I can—though I don't think I'll be able to manage it at all tomorrow—I'm booked solid from 8 a.m. til midnight. By some hard taskmaster of a witch who did the schedule." He smiled at her broadly, his eyes twinkling.

"Don't worry about me. Poppy will be looking in on me, and I do have three days' back essays to mark to occupy me—I set them long essays yesterday and today so I wouldn't have to lecture or demonstrate. You don't need to look in. Just catch up on your sleep before Sunday. Because I do expect to see you on Sunday. Very well-rested. I will be, after all!"

"I shall be too. Until Sunday, then."