Epilogue
Towards the end of the year, letters began to fly in. Sporadically at first, then on a frequent basis. Minerva had not wanted to believe it, but Severus's assumptions turned out to be very true. It seemed that Vesta McGillivray had spoken to quite a few of her friends during one of their many social gatherings and cooked up the ridiculous idea that Minerva might be inclined to attempt a return to society and the goodwill of the pureblood witches and wizards who still defined themselves through marital status, blood purity and wealth alone, despite her and Topaz's being Great Britain's first and only wizarding couple living in divorce.
Minerva's mother organised her friendships and gatherings according to a fixed system of social rank, which Minerva had always found quite unintelligible and which she had given up trying to understand. Vesta McGillivray's friends were a particularly old-fashioned bunch of purebloods, though, sadly, also very familiar with Minerva, mostly through encounters that involved gurgling, cooing, sucking, or, in the best of cases, a horrible tartan dress and two long, black pigtails. Even before the end of autumn term, several of the larger pureblood families began to send Minerva personal invitations for tea and other gatherings, all signed by the respective head of the family. This was, most commonly, a man of roughly 150 years, who tended to comply to his wife's (or mother's) wishes in any situation involving social politics, because that was 'how it was done' in the wizarding world and no one had objected to this system in over two-hundred and fifty years.
The head of the family provided his signature for something he usually had little or no insight in. The social force behind him, however, was clear. You did not mess with so-called "pureblood wives" of Vesta McGillivray's status, although, strictly speaking, there was a hierarchy even among them, of course, with Vesta on top and others below. But none of them would accept a decline of their formal invitations lightly. None of them would, as a rule, be fooled by fake illnesses and other excuses when it came to dinner parties. With a sigh of resignation, Minerva threw her latest invitation to a Longbottom tea party into the rubbish bin next to the door of her office. The door minded its own business, but was rapped frantically when the deputy headmistress had just returned to her desk. So frantically, in fact, that the rubbish bin rattled and tumbled over, sending small pieces of parchment all over the carpeted floor. Minerva sat down with another sigh.
"Enter!"
The man who entered her office now was no taller than the smallest shelf on the window side of the room, next to which he seated himself without waiting for an invitation. He was elderly and balding, with a small, unpleasant smile on his thin face, and lively eyes full of polite curiosity.
"Minerva," he said warmly, having decided on day one that he was going to address all his colleagues by their first names. Minerva sometimes felt she should have put a stop to it at the time.
"What a surprise to see you up here, headmaster," she said stiffly, not wanting to make it too apparent just how unexpected his visit was to her. "And at this time of the day. I thought you might want to write your welcome back speech as you proposed earlier."
"Already finished, my dear, already finished," Belby replied with a small, artificial laugh. "My next concern is of a more serious nature, I'm afraid."
"Are there any problems?" Minerva replied, worried now by his would-be casualness.
"One could say so, my dear, one could say so," said the small man with a nervous twiddling of his fingers. "I have been meaning to talk to you about this for some time now, but the opportunity has not presented itself."
"What is it you have been meaning to say, then?" Minerva asked, straightening up in her chair.
"Well," said Belby slowly, not moving in his seat, "I was thinking about the school and its demands the other day – and about you, Minerva. To be quite frank, I have been thinking about you a lot lately."
"Another one," the middle-aged witch mumbled, but quickly added, "With all due respect, headmaster, I have to say that I do not appreciate people spending too much of their free time thinking about me." With one notable exception, a small voice inside her head said, remaining unheard by Belby and pointedly ignored by Minerva.
"I have been thinking about your family situation," Belby explained. "Your parents… they have been requiring a lot of attention lately, have they not?"
Minerva frowned. "Is this professionally relevant?"
"Very, dear, very," said the headmaster sweetly. "Minerva, if you will allow me to be direct, I fear you are starting to lose your touch. With respect, you are getting on a bit…"
"Are you trying to tell me that I am too old to do my job?" Minerva said slowly, comprehension dawning. The headmaster sighed.
"Don't take this personally, please," he said. "But I really feel someone else… say… Professor Slughorn could provide a lot more time and energy to this highly demanding position than you seem currently able to…"
He broke off when Minerva stood up.
"Highly, demanding, position?" she said sharply, placing both hands on her desk in pointed slow-motion. "I am not sure if I understand you correctly, Professor Belby. Are you insinuating that I may not be equal to the tasks which the position of the deputy headmistress entails? Is that what you are telling me, Professor?"
"Well, it certainly seems to me…"
"…as though I have not completed every single of my duties during the past three months? Is that it, headmaster? As though I have not seen to your smooth and speedy integration into the school and its requirements? As though I have not spent the free time available to me with the tasks necessary to cover up your inexperience with the Hogwarts regulations and the school routine? Is that what you are trying to say?"
"Your support has been duly noted, of course," said Belby quickly. "It merely seems to me that you are a little overtaxed…"
"I decide when I am overtaxed!" hissed Minerva. "It is I who will decide when to cut my duties in order to match my payment again, because, Professor, I have been working overtime ever since I arrived at this establishment over forty years ago. The fact that I am now using some of my contracted free time for private purposes cannot and should not be a reason for you to even think about letting me go! Especially…"
"No one is talking about a dismissal," Belby interrupted. "It is a mere matter of title, Professor. You would still be head of house…"
"I have led my students through thick and thin," Minerva interrupted in turn, glaring down at her superior through her square glasses. "All students, in fact, from all four houses. I have protected this school with my life at various points in time. I have performed the duties of a headmistress at times when Professor Dumbledore was engaged in political matters of great importance, at times when he was discharged from this school for political or other reasons, and at times when the school was under no real leadership because Headmaster Snape was too busy keeping up his disguise as one of You Know Who's most trusted servants. I succeeded in concealing from the Ministry for Magic, until now, Headmaster Belby, the extraordinary amount of time you have been requiring to settle in and get acquainted with Hogwarts school life. This, I achieved, and still achieve, by effectively doing the job of both, the headmaster and the deputy headmistress. If you find fault in the ways the school is run at times when I am concentrating on my duties as the deputy headmistress, Professor Belby, that might be because you still, after over three months, cannot run this school without me filling in for you. And no, Professor Slughorn is not going to be able to cover up this inadequacy as efficiently as I have, because he does not, alas, have the necessary years of experience."
Minerva breathed in and out through her nostrils a couple of times, desperately trying to regain some control over her welling anger again. Without noticing, she had performed a speech, which she had started rehearsing in her mind ever since the first complaints had cropped up, ever since her encounter with Filch earlier this year, ever since she had unconsciously realised that the reason she was not even considered a suitable successor to Dumbledore's position was that she, Minerva, was deemed inadequate for the job because a bunch of governors preferred old men with long, white beards in society's highest positions. As in pureblood society, as in real life, Hogwarts was supposed to be run by a capable deputy headmistress, acting under the pretentious cover of a Dumbledore-type headmaster, who could then fulfil a politically representative function, much like pureblood husbands did. Much like even Minerva's own father had for the most part of his life (even though he had rejected the notion).
Without being aware of this, Minerva now realised, she had also given her speech not only to the headmaster alone, but to a group of four or five staff members who had been lurking nearby, heard the sounds from her office, knocked two or three times, and then entered just when Minerva's last sentence reverberated from the office's stone walls and gave way to a stunned silence. The headmaster sat in his chair, slightly dumbfounded, Pomona Sprout and Horace Slughorn looked at each other in amazement, and someone outside shoved the door just an inch more open in order to be able to peer in and participate in the sudden solemnity of the situation.
"I was not aware that you had not spoken to Minerva about this, Damocles," said Horace Slughorn eventually, serving a painfully apparent urge to justify his own position in this dilemma.
"I was not aware that this kind of decision can now be made without a consultation of the board of governors," said Pomona Sprout. "Damocles, on whose authority do you think you can just reassign the position of the deputy head?"
"I have governor support in this," said Belby angrily. "Some of them feel that I have not been getting enough back up for the introduction of… new regulations. Suggestions for improvement made by the Minister for Magic himself, as it were."
And suddenly Minerva knew what this was all about.
"The fifth year regulation," she whispered. "That's all this is, is it? It's all about but the reintroduction of compulsory military training for fifteen- and sixteen-year-old wizards and witches? The re-establishment of the old wizarding army?"
"That is Malfoy's basic idea, yes," Belby said. "And a lot of people support him in this, among them the Minister for Magic himself. You should see the kinds of changes that come to pass these days. Our society is united again, Minerva. Stronger and better than it has ever been."
"A strong society doesn't depend on a strong military…" Minerva began, but then broke off. It was useless, they had discussed this before. She had made her point more than clear.
"I think that I shall speak with the Minister for Magic directly," she said in a fit of boldness. Never before, not once, she suddenly realised, had she taken political steps of this magnitude on her very own, without the consultation of a headmaster to back her up. She had never considered herself a very inspiring leader, despite her profession. For a moment, Minerva felt very heroic – as though a new age had begun to dawn with her as its central figure.
Then, on a sudden impulse and with the help of lots of polite swearing, she ushered everyone out of her office. Belby impressed the fact upon her that he would talk to the Minister himself as soon as 'Kingsley' could spare some time, but Minerva ignored him. She realised that she had opened more questions than she had answered tonight. She realised that the battle was won, but the war had only just begun. In full calm, the black-haired witch reflected that in a moment such as this one, there was probably only one person to whom she could talk in this situation – only one person who had the necessary social influence and experience to advise her effectively.
Checking her watch and a calendar she had hung up next to her desk specifically for this kind of purpose, Minerva locked the door of her office and stepped into her fireplace, taking a very special kind of floo powder from the mantelpiece, one that made yellow flames and was designed specifically for the purpose of creating a time-delay in mid-journey in order to allow her to arrive at McGillivray manor the very moment the house was in temporal reach again.
To be continued...