A/N: In Which Wilhelmina Tuft Regrets Hermione's Vow of Frank and Open Discourse
The search to find someone other than Minerva who can kill a dementor halts when Minister Tuft comes to understand that the ability must be exceedingly rare, and that the Ministry is casting about in the dark in hopes of landing on something that cannot be identified. Is it a genetic ability, something endemic to one's magical gifts, or a character trait, like the ability to cast cruciatus and mean it? Whatever the answer, it quickly becomes obvious that allowing everyone to give it a try and then ripping the memory out of him or her after near-inevitable failure is not an efficient solution.
So.
Minerva it is. They ought to have asked her in the first place, instead of half-killing Jane in an attempt to repeat that first, accidental, and near-fatal, success.
If Feck had not retrieved Minerva that morning, summoning her to the control chamber, Merlin only knows what might have happened to Jane.
Feck yanks her through the ether faster than Minerva has ever apparated. She lands with a lurch nearly on top of Jane.
She's dead, Minerva thinks. She lies still on the floor, grey as ashes, with the dementors pulling something from her, in spite of the protection from the shield charm cast by Minister Tuft. The dementors look, to Minerva's clouded mind, like the Big Bad Wolf in reverse. They are sucking and sucking, but the thing that is her lover swirls about Minerva like a whirlwind, anchored around a center that Minerva cannot find, though she clearly occupies it.
Minerva cannot dim the memory of Jane's staring, glassy eyes.
"Relashio!" Feck shouts. It is all the prompting Minerva needs. She leaps to her feet already hurling the spell with murder in her heart. She casts it so hard and so fast that souls explode out of their wretched shells like fireworks on the fifth of November. It feels like – Minerva searches for an adequate word – it feels like slimy wind. It rushes through her hair and rips at her clothes. It smells briny, like wind whipping off the North Sea. It takes her a few moments to realize that the crashing roar filling the chamber isn't the ocean, but her own voice crying doom at the enemy.
And then the dementors are gone. Or, not exactly gone, but fundamentally altered in some irreversible way. They are drawn into a version of Jane's very intriguing watch. This version is shaped like an hourglass instead of a modern clockface. And then she is standing in an ice-covered chamber with a shivering Minister Tuft. Jane, she is told, has been spirited away by Feck and is receiving medical treatment.
It takes Minerva an agonizingly long time to understand that corpses do not receive medical treatment.
When she does, she realises that her wand is still raised, and her chest is heaving from the effort of the spell. She turns to Minister Tuft and says, "You'll nae have her do this again. Mark you what I did to those foul beasties. I'll do it to you, or to Dumbledore, or to God almighty if I am crossed in this."
"Rarefied company, indeed," the Minister replies.
"McGonagall will do it. She has agreed. That is final. Your objections are noted. They are also dismissed."
Hermione doesn't have the energy left to groan. I've fallen down the rabbit hole again, she thinks.
"When the second core is embedded in the transfiguration matrix, I will make the prototype available to you. Feel free to use it to return to your point of origin."
"Wilhelmina, you don't know what you're risking," Hermione croaks. Nobody, but nobody, should have to endure having her soul sucked out, stashed, and stuffed back in twice in one lifetime. At least this time, it happened under controlled conditions, and they were prepared for it. They being a euphemism for Feck in this instance.
Wilhelmina Tuft does not reply.
"Who needs dementors?" Hermione tells her, "You can suck the warmth out of the world without saying a word. In fact, I think you do it by not saying a word. That way, the next Dark Wizard to wage a war to end all wars won't be able to pluck the information right out of Minerva's head and use it to wrench a hole in the timeline large enough to blow London off the map and out of the history books. How far back do you think someone like Grindelwald could get a ruptured timeline to blow? Fifty years? One hundred?"
"But Grindelwald is dead."
"You may want to revisit that assumption," Hermione tells her. "And there are plenty more where he came from. There are always more."
The Matron bustles into the isolated room and, pausing only to aim a particularly poisonous glance at the Minister for Magic, forces Hermione to lie back down on the bed from which she has half-risen. She fusses soothingly until Hermione's galloping pulse slows to a workable canter.
This activity takes most of ten minutes, during which Wilhelmina Tuft neither gives ground nor alters her posture in any way.
Before Matron gets out the door, Minister Tuft stops her. "Matron," she asks, clipping the word with a precision that any surgeon might envy, "How much has Miss Puckle aged since her arrival four years ago?"
"That is confident – "
"Matron!"
"A dozen years, give or take," barks the medi-witch.
Wilhelmina Tuft does not respond to this. The Matron hesitates, then clearly decides that she ought to take the escape route before it disappears.
Hermione closes her eyes. What is that? Fifty-six? Fifty-seven? "Somebody owes me a bloody boatload of birthday gifts," she says, having not quite intended to say it aloud.
Wilhelmina Tuft has traded her Edwardian lace for a velvet collar and a string of pearls. If Hermione were speculating, she'd say that the Minister for Magic has been dressing for a man, lately. A younger man. The feared fingers toy absently with the pearls at her throat. "They tell me," she says, "That you have a gift for memory charms."
"It isn't possible to heal trauma with memory charms," the medi-witch is telling the other healers gathered about Elphie, "Because a lasting memory charm requires an Obliterator. That is, the memory of a trauma so overwhelming that it overtakes other pathways of thought. Like a magnet, it keeps dragging one's mind back to itself. Memory charms performed without an Obliterator, real or implanted, wear off. Or, rather, the mind can heal itself around the charm and knit the strands of memory back together. And one cannot heal a trauma by inflicting a second trauma."
"Will his nightmares ease naturally, do you think?" Minerva asks, when the others have gone, "I hate to see him suffer so."
Right this minute, Elphinstone Urquart does not seem to be suffering much. He sits cross-legged on the floor of the Ministry's medical wing, browsing the enchanted magazines Minerva has brought to pass the time while she spends her daily hour with him. There is something in the end notes she needs to re-read. All the information about the behaviour of atoms is straightforward to a master of transfiguration. The really intriguing bits are about a fellow named Turing.
Elphie is "helping" her read.
Somewhere, someone has taught him to knit.
The needles dip and clack away like sleek wooden wands. Elphie knits a line or two from the pattern in one magazine before getting bored and moving on to the next magazine, finding some line of the knitting pattern to follow until he gets bored again.
"Where are the secrets, Minerva?" He asks her, wide-eyed. "I've lost all our secrets."
"I believe you've got to follow one knitting pattern from beginning to end to get anything that makes sense," Minerva tells him.
"Where is the Pickle lady?" He asks. "I like her. She'll know where the secrets got to."
Minerva lays aside the magazine she has been studying. "What do you remember of her?" She asks.
"I was lost," he says. Minerva waits, but no more comes. He's stopped his knitting, dropped the project to his lap. He's rocking back and forth and staring off into a dimension of space-time Minerva cannot see.
"You're found, now," Minerva soothes. "I'll let nothing harm you."
He stops rocking and, eventually, smiles. "Wizard!" He says.
The heap of multi-colored yarn in his lap gets held up and examined. He eyes it one way, and then the other. Finally, he puts his head through one of the many apertures and does a bit of wiggling to get the whole thing down over his shoulders. The jumper has three arms, two on the left-hand side and one coming out of the middle of his back. The right-side has no sleeves. It has no holes, either. The collar is lined with buttons. Minerva can see that small knit flowers have been attached to the inside of the jumper at the neckline, which describes a deep vee.
"It fits!" Elphie crows. He's lost weight, having acquired a taste for pineapples and bananas difficult for the Ministry to supply. He responds to exposure to Elphinstone Urquart's belongings with indifference or anxiety. He's acquired a rudimentary grasp of Bulgarian and a smattering of Hawai'ian. Urquart and Ruddlesby were right-handed. This man is left-handed most of the time. When Ruddlesby's uncle travels from Puddleby-on-the-Marsh to enquire into the circumstances of his death, this man reveals an encyclopaedic knowledge of great glass sea snails.
"It's you," Minerva assures him.
It feels so good, this kind of lovemaking with Minerva. It is long, and slow, and unhurried. It may have a familiar pattern, but it is nothing like the step-by-step script Ron followed. It is more like the meals she and Minerva make together, or the lesson plans they made long before that. It is something only these two can make, and only together.
It is some kissing, and some talking, and more kissing in places where the talk seems to call for kissing. It's back-scratching and massaging. There's stroking and caressing, toying and tickling. It may be laughing, or naughty words, or even wrestling for control of the next few moments.
It is asking.
How does that feel? More? Harder? Can you move like this? Will you lick me here? Can I touch you there?
It is telling.
Here, let me show you. I love you. Gods, you are so delicious. I want your mouth here. I need you inside me. That feels so good. That feels perfect. You are perfect.
It is demanding.
Bend over. On your knees. Fuck me. Make me. Now.
It is riding all the waves of sensation and emotion. It is stopping when the nerves have scraped raw and something unbidden has been brought up from forgotten depths. It is trying, and sometimes failing, and being at home no matter what happens. It is a tired tongue, a cramped shoulder, a knotted calf muscle, a finger-shaped bruise, all made holy by sighs, by moans, by pleading and pleased nonsense syllables, by the clutching of hands, by the arching of backs and the closing of eyes, by lips and chins and thighs sticky with satisfaction, by cheeks wet with unexpected tears.
It is Minerva trying to make no noise as she slips into bed behind her, passing a few moments politely allowing Hermione to sleep, then giving in to the need to spoon up against her and hold her, nested, breathing in time with one another until Minerva tenses in awareness that Hermione is not sleeping. It is feeling the smooth, cool flesh of Minerva's long body grow warm against Hermione's back, and feeling the way that flesh responds to Hermione's throaty chuckle.
It is turning over, smiling in the dark at slightly reflective eyes, and saying, "I'm fine. Fancy a shag?"
Hermione envies Minerva's night-vision. Then again, she doesn't. Not this time. It is, perhaps, better that Hermione can only just make out the dim outline of Minerva's sleeping form.
Our lives depend on this, Lintie. Possibly, everyone's lives depend on this.
If Minerva didn't know that, somewhere in her possible future, Hermione would not be here. Everything, from the properties of her wedding ring to the memory of first times, tells Hermione that this is true. Clever witch. She's found a way to send messages through time that cannot be mined for evil.
Hermione points her wand. Better to do it now. Nine turners will suffice until Tuft finds another maker. When the thing is done, Hermione will take herself away and decide whether to attempt a return, or to leave the Ministry with ten turners and succumb to the inevitable somewhere safe and private.
You loved an older witch. You nurtured Elphinstone Urquart through a terrible injury. You ought to leave the Ministry in frustration at being a secretary to those less gifted than yourself. Those laughing men take credit for your transfiguration expertise and keep you out of the inner circle, keep you ignorant and in your place. You're going to resign in the morning, move out of this dull Ministry flat, go home, and pour out your troubles to Dumbledore. He'll know what to do.
I've done this before.
Yoga breath, Hermione thinks, and holds her hand open, palm out, searching with all her senses for the passages that need re-writing in the book of Minerva's life.
Keep you ignorant and in your place. Keep you ignorant and in your place.
Why is her heart racing? Why is the bile rising up in her throat? Why have her trembling hands balled into fists? She clutches her wand to her chest, weak, and angry at her own weakness. She won't. She can't.
And Minerva has her wand.
It happens so fast, Hermione does not even register motion. Minerva's eyes are closed. But she has Hermione's wand.
"Right decision," Minerva tells the night. Then she opens her eyes and fixes them on Hermione. "I have a better idea," she says.