Hello everyone, I apologise for my long absence :) Unfortunately, this chapter is short, too...university keeps me on my toes. I also apologise that I haven't been able to reply to your wonderful reviews personally, I promise, I am going to do soon, but I didn't want to keep you waiting any longer and so here's the new update! Thank you for your marvellous reviews, Mara, B-lieve-in-YOU-rself, Emily, Megii, Sarafina, SherbetKitty, Anne and iviscrit! They are always much much appreciated and make the dreary November weather outside a bit easier to bear :)
Important note:
I have two other things to say in this chapter-
One- if you've got the time, please go to Reiko Anne Nguyen's profile here on ff and check out the fanart she made for this story. It's amazing, it truly is, and I can't find words to express my gratitude! Thank you so much :)!
Two- I am sure that you are all quite fond of reading about Tom and Minerva- otherwise you wouldn't be here, I guess :) - and I can truly recommend the works of iviscrit to you! They are truly marvellously-written with an attention to detail that I could never hope to possess, so please read her work! It's truly wonderful!
But enough from me :) Please do tell me what you think of this chapter. The next one will be longer, I promise!
Sachita :-)
Chapter Twenty
Hogwarts, November, 1942
The days following her confrontation with Antonin Dolohov, he came to breakfast with his eyes averted, looking pale and drawn and much like a kicked dog.
There was a satisfied smile dancing on Tom's thin lips though and Minerva gazed at him in horror. Tom refused to look at her though, and with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she dropped her look to her porridge.
A few days later, the owl with the letter arrived. The sky was a milky blue on the day when Minerva got said letter from Andrew.
Small clouds clung like whispers to the edges of the world and a flight of birds took wing as she walked on towards the lake. At the edge of the water she stopped and watched the blurred reflection of coloured autumn trees in the water- a vibrant yellow, a scarlet red- just until the wind came and moved the waves so they were just one mixture of vibrant hues and shadows.
"Dear Minerva," the letter said in Andrew's refined handwriting,
"I am writing to you from a frenzied Bombay, caught up in India's struggles for a free Nation. The monsoon season has ended, yet I feel as if some of the humid wetness has stayed, seeping through the façade of deceit that is so strong here these days, thinly veiling long-boiling feelings of suppression and humiliation. People in the Indian Ministry of Magic strive to assure us of our safety, yet there is unrest on the streets and Inéz doesn't feel secure at all. I must say, I don't feel very safe either. Hopefully we will be able to depart for British shores soon.
Another reason compels me to write to you, Minerva- a letter from Mother has arrived, telling me that Father has fallen ill. I trust you will go home for the Christmas Holidays. Please inform me more thoroughly of his condition.
With love,
Your brother,
Andrew."
Minerva dropped the letter and frowned. Mother had apparently not felt the need to inform her daughter of her father's illness so far. Concern gripped her and she went to find Caelus in order to write to her mother herself. The letter was soon written and Minerva followed Caelus's flight with her eyes until he had disappeared on the horizon. A sharp gust of air made her shiver and she wrapped her arms tighter around herself.
Two days passed in dullness- the terror that had hung over the castle had abated somewhat seeing that there had been no further attacks, yet Tom refused to even look at her. That November, they read of continued Grindelwald attacks in Central Europe and of Germany's invasion of Vichy France, thus violating the armistice with them made two years prior. Several French-born students paled upon hearing the news.
As the darkness grew, Minerva stuck to Poppy. She lay awake at night, worried sick about her father and also about Tom if she was honest with herself.
On the morning of the third day after Andrew's letter had arrived, Caelus came back with a parchment bearing the insignias of the McGonagall family crest. Minerva, with a glance at Poppy, who looked concerned, got up after dinner to read the letter without being disturbed by her housemates. She shivered as she reached the outside.
The sun had long since disappeared to make way for the encroaching dawn and blankets of fog crawled along the Grounds. The vivid autumn colours of the trees had long lost their lustre and they seemed insipid, even frightening, for the red hues of their leaves looked uncannily like dried blood.
"Lumos," Minerva whispered and sat down in the deserted stands of the Quidditch Pitch, leaning forward to read the letter in the light of her wand.
"Minerva," it said, coldness conveyed even through the manner of address,
"Your father is very ill. We've consulted with St. Mungos. The doctors don't give him long if they don't find a cure soon. Come home over the winter holidays.
Sincerely,
Mother."
Minerva could feel herself shaking for long minutes, but she couldn't cry.
As she looked up after what might have been minutes or also hours, the sky was changing before her eyes. Cloud masses, dark and threatening, curled upon one another, threw out tendrils of greyness and concentrated to other, equally as menacing shapes. A bolt of lightning tore out of the furious spectacle sometime and raced to the ground in a twisted imitation of a forked path. Roiling thunder shuddered through her as it began to rain.
Later she couldn't have said how she came to sit on the floor of the Astronomy Tower that night, but she felt her face with shaking hands sometime and her fingers came away wet and glistening in the pale moonlight that stared into the Tower like a blind man's eye.
Then, the tears came, and they didn't stop for a long time. She was bent over with the force of her own sobs, desperately croaking: "Why? Why? Why?"
The full force of her mother's words hit her again and she dissolved into another bout of sobbing,
"Don't cry," a quiet voice told her and a pale hand held out a handkerchief to her. Tom.
Minerva's sobs dissolved into tortured hiccoughs as she slowly looked up at him, standing there, illuminated in the moonlight that fell into the Tower in pale shafts, stronger now that the rain had ended.
None of the happenings of the last months seemed important in that moment because Minerva had never needed him more than in that moment. In hindsight it shouldn't have surprised her that he had found her that evening for Tom was much like midnight- the nights had always seemed to belong to him in all their starlit glory. Everything was black and white and he was too, with that smooth pale skin and the gleaming eyes, so deeply blue in the starlit silence.
With trembling hands, she took the handkerchief and felt how its silky material crinkled beneath her hands. For a fleeting moment, she wondered how Tom could have come by a handkerchief made out of silk, but the thought was inconsistent and soon left her.
Tom sat down next to her, a black shadow, weariness evident in his movements. There was a feeling of surrealism to the entire scene- Minerva felt rather as if she was dreaming this moment than actually experiencing it. In her mind she envisioned that none of the things that had happened had in fact happened- Justin wasn't lying petrified in the Hospital Wing, Poppy was happy with William, Tom and herself were foolishly in love and happier every day, her father was healthy…
"Life is so unfair."
"No one ever said that life was fair," Tom pointed out smoothly and only after a long, shaken moment did Minerva finally realise that the croaky whisper before had been hers and that she had actually uttered her thoughts out loud.
"How can you live with it?" she whispered.
Tom didn't seem to be himself that night either. With uncharacteristic vulnerability, he replied gently:
"I deal life the same blows that it deals me. Living is a constant battle that is fought with unjust methods, yet it is better than dying, `for in that sleep of death what dreams may come´," he quoted Hamlet's famed soliloquy with a twisted grin, his teeth gleaming in the pale light of the moon.
A spark of Gryffindor anger rushed through Minerva, golden and red and furious, and she croaked harshly, her voice cracking under the strain of an evening spent sobbing:
"So dealing those blows means that you are willing to hurt innocents? I'll quote you. You said that I shouldn't be sad about the attack on Justin because he slighted me all those years. So there you said it yourself- you are willing to hurt anyone if it fits your aims. Isn't that hypocritical? Life deals blows to everyone. Shouldn't you have more understanding for the plights of others seeing how life has treated you so far? They might be in the exact same position as you found yourself in for so many years, Tom…"
"Dear God," he moaned as reply, nearly desperately and a part of Minerva thought that it was odd to hear him sound like that- Tom normally wasn't prone to passion, yet may there in the silence of the night he just might have been. They had little pretences before each other now. He didn't trust her completely and she knew it, but then again he trusted no one and maybe he trusted her most of all of those who he didn't trust.
What a conundrum, but then again, Tom was a conundrum.
"Minerva, I don't want destruction. I want reforms, Minerva, I want to build and create and see- do you really believe that such a black-and-white categorical thinking as we have it now applies to something as lively and vibrant as magic? Magic is not like that, Minerva. Can you have high without low tide? No, of course not. Neither can you have dark magic without light magic. There has to be a balance somewhere. And I do want to find it."
His gaze wandered past her, temporarily, to something only he could see. "Of course a human life is too short to achieve it all," he mused quietly and there was something about his words that made her shiver.
"But there are things that can be changed and will be changed."
Then, he was at her ear, quickly, a mere flash of silver and white and black.
"Please, Minerva. Think. I want things to go back to the way they were." He caressed her cheek, fleetingly, inconsistently- and then got up to move out of the door.
Minerva stared blankly after him, the weight of this night's happenings and of her Mother's letter almost crushing her.
"Don't go," she whispered and hated herself for the despair in her voice.
With a quick movement Tom was back at her side and lifted her off the ground, crushing her to a chest in an embrace that nearly suffocated her. "I won't ever go, my Minerva. Don't you worry, now. We will be together and I promise I will never leave you, no matter what happens."
Minerva buried her face in his shoulder and, despising herself all the way for her weakness, inhaled his familiar scent. She was stupid for falling for him so easily again considering what he'd done, and she knew it, but as her world crumbled around her he seemed to be the only one who could hold it together.
"My father is dying," she choked out and another sob gripped her with all the finality of that statement.
As a response, Tom hugged her tighter, enveloping her in the comforting warmth of his embrace.
"I will be there for you," he repeated his earlier words, "no matter what happens. Even if I can't be now."
He seemed to sense her doubt at his words and continued quickly: "There are reasons for my absence as of late, Minerva, and you surely know they have nothing to do with school work. Please just keep in mind that there are darker things going on in this castle and you have to be careful."
With an air of finality, he carefully disentangled himself from her and brushed a few stray tears out of her face. "There are darker things going on here," he repeated, and added, seemingly disjointedly, "your friend Hagrid has a passion for dark creatures."
Without giving her the chance to reply, Tom brushed out of the room, looking back at the threshold with a mysterious smile on his handsome features. "So long, my Minerva," was all he said.
Hogwarts, November 20th, 1942
The next morning, Minerva McGonagall, Headgirl of Gryffindor, emerged from her rooms, paler, a bit drawn, but she was definitely doing her duties that day. Tom's words stayed with her though and she found herself watching her young friend Hagrid closely over dinner that day. The third-year Gryffindor seemed to be concerned for some reason; he was pushing his food- Haggis out of all things that day- around on his plate and didn't seem to be keeping up with his usual ravenous appetite.
"Is everything alright, Rubeus?" Minerva asked after watching his demeanour for a few minutes. She sat down beside him and suppressed the pang of guilt at the childish worry on his young face- it was true, she had sounded harsher than she had intended to.
"Yes," Rubeus replied finally with a small smile. "Thank you, Minerva, I hope you are fine, too?"
That immediately served to make her feel even guiltier for doubting him. "I am fine," she managed.
Rubeus watched her for a few moments longer, doubt written plainly on his face. "Alright then," he mumbled after another doubtful look. Minerva had seen what he had seen in the mirror that morning as well- she was looking decidedly unhealthy, white in the face and with a harassed air about her.
Sighing, she eventually opted for the direct approach. "Rubeus, I know that you are keeping something from me."
His gentle brown eyes widened as he paled dramatically. Her friend had never been good at keeping his emotions from showing on his face, the complete opposite to Tom in that regard as well.
"Please," he stuttered, shaking his curly mass of hair, "please, Minerva, I promise you, it is nothing dangerous. He- I mean- it- it would never be dangerous to anyone."
Minerva narrowed her eyes at him with a look that had many of the younger troublemakers quiver before their Headgirl already. "Do you promise me, Rubeus, that your words are the truth?"
Rubeus reddened fiercely but he held her look and bit his lip. "I do promise that, I really do."
Minerva nodded sternly and wanted to add that no matter what it was, they would probably both be feeling better if he just told her, so they could deal with the consequences, when suddenly the door to the Great Hall was wrenched open with a loud bang.
All heads swivelled around to look at their Librarian, Madam Scrittura, who was pale and whose eyes were widened in terror. Her black hair, normally so strictly put up in a bun, was tumbling around her shoulders and that alone seemed to be the epitome of something dire.
The Great Hall fell deathly silent.
"Headmaster," she spoke, not bothering to be discreet, shock compelling her to speak, "Headmaster! There has been another attack…"
In the panic that followed, Minerva happened to glance at Rubeus.
He had gone ashen-faced beside her.
tbc