Chapter 10: February
February 2nd
"I'm pleased to report that we have had no additional fights between students, either at Hogwarts or in Hogsmeade," Calliope Quintin said, after Minerva called the staff meeting to order and gave Quintin the floor.
"What does that mean, do you think?" Vector asked. "Is this whole house integration thing working? Or did they just get it out of their systems?"
"Or are we gearing up for something worse?" Flitwick, ever the optimist, cut in.
"I don't necessarily think it's something worse," Quintin replied, then paused to sip from her gillywater. "Though that doesn't mean we let our guard down. We always assume another issue can arise at any time. As for what has caused it, I think you lot would know better than me."
"I think it helps, having the houses interact more," Sinistra said. "I don't know about the rest of you, but having a mixed group in my classes also lends a more diverse way of thinking about the subject. I for one would love it if we held onto this next year."
There was a murmur of general agreement, then Sprout said, "I agree, Aurora. The more we can get the students to interact, the more they can see that other students were never the real enemy."
"Thank you for the feedback," Minerva said. "Shall we move on?" With no disagreement, she glanced down at her scroll, to the agenda for the staff meeting. She didn't need to, however. This item was etched firmly at the front of her mind. "We need to discuss the battle that took place at Hogwarts last May. As we all know, our efforts to repair the castle have been limited at best. After performing several calculations and consulting with Professors Flitwick, Slughorn, and Sprout, we have come to the conclusion that we need to consider the protection spells that were used by the staff and the other defenders of Hogwarts."
"So, one of us broke the castle?" Hagrid asked.
"In a manner of speaking," Minerva replied. "But not intentionally. We have exhausted our efforts in countering any spells laid down by the Death Eaters, and we need to consider that one of us may have cast a spell – a spell somewhere between a transfiguration spell and a charm – that through its intent to protect the castle, has limited the castle's ability to receive other charms intended to repair it."
"What do we do, then, Minerva?" Hooch asked. "Go around casting Finite on everything we did during the battle?"
"I doubt this is a spell that will respond to a simple Finite," Minerva said. "But what you can do is list every protection spell you remember casting." She passed everyone a piece of parchment. "Be as explicit as you can – even if the spell was non-verbal, give me as close to the incantation as you can."
The room was silent for a moment, aside from the scratching of quills. Then Trelawney asked, "What if we threw crystal balls at people?"
"I don't think that will have a lingering effect," Minerva replied. "And there is no need to consider any offensive spells or tactics. Consider the defensive protection spells only – something you cast on the castle or the grounds."
"What about other Order of the Phoenix members?" Molly asked, looking up from her parchment. "Could it have been one of them? I'd be happy to reach out to them, to see what they used."
"That would be most helpful, Molly. Thank you," Minerva said. "The caster of this spell is still alive, so if there is anyone else we need to contact, please feel free to do so. I don't want the state of the castle described in the Prophet, but Order members can certainly know what we're facing."
The professors finished their writing and handed Minerva their lists – ranging from one to twelve protection spells each. She glanced at Flitwick, who raised his eyebrows in question. This was going to take a while.
February 5th
She had slept about three hours the previous night, after marking papers and planning lessons, then answering owls from professors with various questions. And now, in front of her Transfiguration classroom, full of second years, Minerva found herself wavering a little on her feet, exhausted.
Levitating the chalk up to the blackboard, Minerva relied entirely on memory and experience as she said, "Please take out parchment and quill." As the chalk wrote the incantation and transfiguration equation, she began the lecture. "Vera Verto is the incantation that will transform an animal into a water goblet. Like so." She reached out to perform the spell, only to realize she hadn't brought one of the school owls or one of Hagrid's strange lizards, as usual.
She covered her mistake by walking up to one of the students, who had brought an ugly toad that was sitting attentively on the desk. It was the only pet sitting still. As Minerva looked around the classroom, she saw owls flapping their wings, cats knocking over books, and toads hopping back and forth across the desks. There was even a tarantula, and Minerva felt a surge of anger that a student was not only stupid enough to bring their pet spider to school, but had the complete audacity to place it on a desk in front of a professor.
Resolving to deal with that at the end of class, Minerva lifted the toad and brought it to the front of the room. "Like so," she said, raising her wand above the toad's head. "One, two, three. Vera Verto."
February 6th
Having brought Dougal into her world was such a relief, Minerva realized, as the two of them apparated from Dougal's living room directly onto the Hogsmeade Trail. Not only could she allow him into Hogwarts and more fully into her life, she was excited to do things like this – to bring him to the village, buy him a butterbeer, and sit in the Three Brooksticks watching him look around in fascination.
"This is delicious," Dougal said, spinning the stein of butterbeer around in his hands. "I have no idea what's in it. I'm assuming neither butter nor beer, but that could be false."
"You likely don't want to know," Minerva said as the food and her gillywater arrived.
"Is it alcoholic?"
"We'll find out, won't we?"
Dougal snorted into his shepherd's pie, then continued the conversation they had begun on the trail. "So you had everyone list the spells they used. What are you going to do to see which one is the problem? Does the person who did the spell originally need to be the one to undo it?"
"That's usually the case," Minerva said. "But not always."
"How do you undo a spell?" Dougal asked. "Is there some kind of undo-spell spell?"
"There is, but I don't think it will work here."
"Hmm." Dougal drank more butterbeer, then paused to watch as a group of wizards came in, all carrying broomsticks from the Nimbus line. "Are those brooms?" he whispered loudly. "Do you really fly on brooms?"
The wizards looked in their direction, but looked away once they saw who Dougal was with. "Yes, we fly on brooms," Minerva answered, amused.
"Good lord," Dougal said. Then, "Anyway. I obviously don't know anything about spells. But when I was building my car, and I needed to see why something was broken, I usually ended up taking it apart. I broke it further, but at least I knew what was wrong."
Minerva sipped at her soup, considering. He could be onto something. It was at least worth a try.
February 11th
Minerva knew her presence alone could cause things to go differently than they would if she weren't around. Dumbledore spent years mastering cloak-less invisibility for that very reason. And Minerva never needed to – she was an animagus, after all.
So it was in her feline form that she watched Arthur's student club lining the Quidditch pitch to play football. Over the last few days, she had witnessed a few more students sitting at tables that weren't historically reserved for their house. But she wasn't sure if she should interpret that as a good sign or not.
Until she saw how many students had showed up for the football match. Where before, there had been mostly first-years, now she saw students of all ages and houses littered around the field. It appeared that no one really knew what they were doing, especially the wizardborn students. Ginny Weasley went flying through the air after the ball, tackling Jason Harper as she did. "Fuck, Weasley," Harper said, as Ginny pulled him up. "I'm on your team."
"Language," Arthur said, as one of the first-years yelled, "That's not how you play football!"
"Dad, I wasn't even the one who cursed that time," Ginny said, turning to her father.
"Ginny, if that's supposed to make me proud, you're extremely misguided," Arthur said before turning to the rest of the students on the field. "Play ball!" he cried.
As the students rushed the field again, all swarming around the ball, Minerva turned back toward the castle, feeling a little rush of relief, of pride.
February 13th
Minerva had never owned an owl. When she was a student, her mother didn't want to deal with explaining to the rest of Caithness why the minister's family had a pet owl, so she had used the muggle post for communication with her family and the school owls for everything else.
And as an adult, being a cat part of the time limited her ability to have a bird in her chambers. Owls were intelligent – they could find anyone to deliver a letter, after all – but they weren't smart enough to tell a real cat from an animagus who looked like one.
So Minerva stood in the owlery, a room she rarely went to. She could always summon an owl from her chambers if she needed to send a letter, and the upkeep of the owlery fell into Filch's job description. But she didn't want to send an owl on an errand – she wanted to borrow one.
The school owls were kept in a separate area from the student owls, with each pen labeled with the owl's name, breed, and the distance they were able to travel. Minerva looked through them, through the many barn and screech owls, to find the right one. Then she saw it – the label read "Beatrix, Little Owl, Local Deliveries Only." The owl was only about half a foot long, brown with white speckles. It had huge eyes. It was perfect.
Minerva held out her arm to the owl, who jumped on without hesitation. Then she carefully walked down the staircase of the owlery, out onto the grounds, and to the Hogsmeade Trailhead. Gripping the owl with both hands, she apparated.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-
She arrived just outside of Malcolm's house. Though it was a walk from the Manse to Dougal's farmhouse, she couldn't risk being seen, either by Dougal's family or the villagers in general. So instead, she realized, she would risk being seen walking through John O'Groats with an owl on her arm.
As she arrived at the farmhouse, she paused, looking through the kitchen window. Though the day was gray and dreary, the farmhouse was warm and inviting. She could see Dougal and Ian in the kitchen, Dougal lifting a baking pan and Ian covered in flour.
Dougal opened the door when she knocked, reaching out to kiss her, then stopping. "Is that an owl?" he asked.
"Your mind hasn't gone yet," she replied.
"Is it from the Owlery?" he asked, probably to demonstrate his newfound expertise on Hogwarts.
"Indeed. I thought Ian might like to…"
Dougal lit up. "He will. Just come in…wait. Can a wizard owl come inside?"
"It's a regular owl, and yes. It can come inside."
Dougal showed her in, and Minerva caught the scent of whatever Dougal had placed in the oven – cinnamon and cloves, with some kind of fruit. Ian was at the kitchen table, coloring with crayons on a sheet of white paper, but he looked up when Dougal said, "Ian, Minerva brought something for you to look at."
"This is Beatrix," Minerva said, holding out her arm. Beatrix flapped, and Ian reached out tentatively. "It's alright. You can pet her."
He did, and Minerva's heart just about melted. Slowly, she showed Ian how to hold out his arm, then transferred the owl to take it as a perch. Dougal smiled at her, then seemed to realize he had forgotten something and took the pan out of the oven. It was some sort of cake, and it looked delicious.
Just then, Minerva could hear the sound of a car pulling up and car doors opening and closing. The front door opened a minute later, and Iris' voice called out, "Smells good!"
"Minerva's here," Dougal called as a response, as if he wanted Iris to know before she embarrassed him.
"I'll behave myself," Iris said as she came into the kitchen trailed by Lisa, who was holding a few shopping bags. "Ian, were you good for -" she stopped abruptly. "Holy shit, is that an owl?" She looked back and forth between Dougal, Minerva, and Ian. Minerva didn't know what to say.
"Can I tell her?" Dougal asked.
Minerva considered it for a moment. She had already broken the rule by telling Dougal – telling more people would make it worse. But then again, this thing she had with Dougal…it was going somewhere. It would be wrong to make him complicit in a lie, to hold something so important back from the family he still had, the family he had invited her into without reservation. "You can."
February 17th
After a late night of compiling a master list of transfigurative charms and a long day of classes, Minerva and the other professors waited until after curfew to take to the corridors. Minerva, along with Flitwick, Slughorn, Sprout, and Molly Weasley, had methodically gone through each of the defensive spells, determining which were both charm and transfiguration.
They had come up with twelve spells – four from Flitwick, one from Molly, two from Babbling, one from Vector, one from herself – a concealment charm - and three from Kingsley Shaklebolt. She and Flitwick had called all of the casters together, Shaklebolt included, to walk through the castle, attempting to cast the spells again.
"Do you think this is a good idea?" Flitwick asked for the thousandth time. "We could cause more damage."
"We likely will cause more damage," Minerva corrected as they came to a stop in the fountain courtyard. "But it's the only way we'll know. If the spell causes additional problems or if the castle responds after casting it again, it is our thought that it is the one still having an effect."
Flitwick nodded and gave up the argument. If anyone agreed with him, and Minerva was sure someone did, they didn't say anything.
"What's the spell for this area?" Minerva asked.
Flitwick consulted the scroll he had insisted being in charge of. "We had Aqua Eructo cast on the fountain here."
"That was me," Vector said, stepping forward from the small group. "What do you need me to do?"
"Do you remember where you were when you cast it?" Minerva asked.
"Yes." Vector moved around to stand behind the fountain, as she would have been when Death Eaters were approaching from the outside.
"Go ahead and cast again when you're ready," Minerva said.
Vector gestured to indicate that everyone should step aside. Not wanting to interfere by casting a shield charm, Minerva braced herself. "Aqua Eructo," Vector shouted, her wand pointed at the fountain. A blast of water emerged from the fountain, drenching them all in ice-cold water.
"Should have saved that one for last," Flitwick muttered. Minerva didn't want to give him the satisfaction of agreeing. "Now end the spell."
Vector lowered her wand, and the fountain returned to normal. "How will we know if that did anything?" she asked.
Flitwick turned around to face the stone wall and find one of the many places it was blasted apart. "Duro," he called. Nothing happened. He scratched something on his scroll. "Next," he said. "We have Flagrate."
"How is Flagrate a transfiguration?" Babbling asked.
"It wouldn't be, normally," Kingsley responded. "But I didn't cast it directly from my wand. I turned it on a fire the Death Eaters had set, to reshape it."
"Just like Septima did with the fountain," Minerva supplied. "Let's try it. Where did you cast that from?"
"I was near the Greenhouse," Kingsley said.
"Then let's move." Flitwick cast a drying spell on them all, and Minerva led them through the courtyard and onto the grounds.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-
It was a long night, reaching past one in the morning. But as Minerva walked back to her chambers, feeling defeated, she knew she wasn't going to sleep. It didn't work. Part of her should have known it wouldn't work. Perhaps the castle was doomed beyond repair. Perhaps she had wasted the greater part of a year trying to repair the castle when the smart thing to have done would have been figuring out how to go forward with the castle as it was now.
She couldn't face her chambers. Instead, she changed her route, finding each progressive staircase going upwards. She didn't remember the new route to the Astronomy Tower, but she figured it out eventually. The wind was biting, but she didn't bother casting a warming charm. She just sat on the precipice, her feet hanging over the edge, until the sun rose.
February 20th
It was a sad sight, to say the least. Minerva had allowed Hooch to rearrange the Quidditch schedule from its normal sequence of matches for this very reason – Slytherin barely had a team. They were going to lose, and lose soundly, but luckily, Hooch had the foresight to place them against Hufflepuff, a team that would catch the snitch quickly and put Slytherin out of their misery.
Minerva looked around the stands – full, except for the Slytherin section. Next to her in the teacher's area, Slughorn twisted his hands together, stopping only when Sprout, on his other side, laid a hand over his.
The game began, and it went just as predicted. After two goals within the first few minutes, Hufflepuff seemed to be holding off, waiting for the team made up almost entirely of first and second years to get their bearings. It was excruciating to watch.
Minerva looked away from the game into the stands, full of students. Glancing at the front of the Slytherin section, she could barely make out Astoria Greengrass beneath the layers of scarves wrapped around her face. She was too ill to be out in the cold like this, but Minerva didn't really have the heart to tell her to leave, not when she was working so hard to support her team. Astoria stomped her feet, rallying her housemates to the cry that had been going on since she was a student: two stomps, then a shout of "Slytherin!"
The response was weak at best. Stomp. Stomp. "Slytherin!" Stomp. Stomp. "Slytherin!" Even without Hufflepuff answering with their own cheer, it was almost hard to make out. Minerva was heartened though, when Slughorn, beside her, stood to lend his own voice.
Slytherin somehow got ahold of the Quaffle and made an attempt at scoring, blocked easily by the Hufflepuff keeper. Minerva winced a little in response, and Hufflepuff quickly scored another goal.
Across from her, Minerva saw Astoria Greengrass waver, as if to give up – but only for a moment. Then it came again. Stomp. Stomp. "Slytherin!"
Minerva heard a loud, "Aww, hell," and turned around to see which student to punish. But as her eyes trained on Ginny Weasley, the lead culprit for cursing in school, Ginny gave two stomps with her heavy boots. "Slytherin!" she yelled. Ginny elbowed Hermione, probably harder than she needed to, and Hermione joined in. It was infectious – at the lead of their Quidditch captain, it only took a few rounds for the Gryffindor section to burst out in the cheer. Stomp. Stomp. The Gryffindor stands rumbled. "Slytherin!"
Minerva tore her eyes away in time to see the Hufflepuff seeker start to dive.
February 25th
Minerva was in her office marking papers, staring out at the perpetually gray sky, when Dumbledore stopped by. He leaned in her doorway, as he often did, not fully coming into the office, as if this would stop him from disturbing her when he stayed there for a half-hour. He looked tired – he had looked tired all year – and he had been spending most of his time in private with Snape. She knew why. Snape was embedded with You-Know-Who, after all, and Dumbledore needed his intel. Not to mention, no matter how they acted, he cared deeply for Snape in a way she had never entirely understood. But then again, no one understood her relationship with Dumbledore either.
"What are you doing?" Dumbledore asked, his usual opening line for interruption.
"Just marking papers. Is there anything you need?" She looked him over, wanting to get up and do something for him. But that wouldn't be accepted or appreciated, so she settled for setting down her quill and giving him her full attention.
"No. I'm just taking a break from …" he trailed off, finishing with "Everything."
"That's needed sometimes," she said, unsure what else would be appropriate.
"True. Minerva," he said, "What do you think will happen? Once it's all over?"
Minerva hadn't allowed herself to think of it being over, of making it to a point where the war was no longer all they could consider. "I don't know, Headmaster," she said.
"Albus," he corrected.
"Albus," she echoed. "I think we'll find a way to carry on."
"Hmmm." Dumbledore closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them again. "Minerva?"
"Yes?"
"What do you think about? When you cast your patronus?"
Minerva just stared at him for a while. This was odd, even for Dumbledore. But he was looking at her so intently, she couldn't help but answer. "I think of the night I transformed for the first time. The night I became an animagus."
Dumbledore nodded, holding her gaze intensely. "I think of the same thing," he replied.
Minerva looked at him for a moment, confused, but before she could say anything, he had disappeared, walking away down the hall. It was the last time she ever saw him.
Seeing Dumbledore again after nearly two years, even if only in a portrait, struck Minerva to her very core. Harry Potter had commissioned the portraits, so she shouldn't have expected anything but the best. But when Kingsley Shacklebolt carried in one of the canvases, and Harry rooted around in a dark corner for the other (almost as if they were afraid to levitate them), she startled a little when they removed the coverings.
Dumbledore's she had seen when he was alive, of course, but it had always struck her as disingenuous and strange. Now, it took on a whole new sense of weight in the office, in her life. It showed Dumbledore slumped in the chair that was now behind the desk in her office, as if he'd only gone in for a nap, not fallen off the Astronomy Tower, never to return. Snape's was harsher – he was staring straight ahead, as if glaring at the artist, which no doubt he would have done were he alive to sit for the painting.
"It looks wonderful, Harry," Minerva said, falling back on niceties as her words failed her.
"I'm glad, Professor," Harry responded.
After a moment of silence, Kingsley said, "Where would you like these, Professor?"
Minerva had given it some thought, so she gestured just above her desk. That way, anyone visiting would see them first thing. And, she hesitated to admit to herself, she would only see then when she wanted to. Harry and Kingsley hung them silently, as if they all stood in a morgue.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Once Potter and Shaklebolt had left, and Minerva was alone with the portraits, she sat on the desk, staring at them. Neither spoke, for which she was glad. If they had…if they had, she didn't know how she would have handled it. In one way, it was just like when they had been alive – one of them on her either side, challenging her. But more than that, a picture of Snape or Dumbledore could never be anything other than a pale shadow of the man it attempted to portray. "So," she said, addressing both portraits at once. "Here we are again."
Snape's portrait cocked an eyebrow and smirked. Dumbledore just winked.