Chapter Twenty-One

Minerva hadn't made it as far as the dining hall before Harry Potter had reared on her. "How dare you?" he seethed. "How fucking dare you?"

She sighed. "If this is about yesterday…"

"Of course it's about yesterday!" he shouted. "For fuck's sake Minerva, one day you tell me you'd never do anything to hurt Hermione, and then the next, you throw a bloody killing curse at her. What the hell?"

"First of all, Avada Kedavra is more often referred to as the 'ward breaking curse' these days," she argued. "Second of all, and more to the point, I cast at the bloody ward, not at her. I wasn't even close to her."

"You still cast it! After everything we went through! After seeing what that curse did to me, and what it did to the wizarding world!" Harry continued with passion.

Minerva rubbed her temples. "Frankly Harry, I was sorry the minute I cast it. So there, I'm bloody sorry. I'll promise to never cast it again if it makes you feel better."

"It might," he grudgingly agreed.

"Fine, I'll never cast it again," she said. "You have my word. Now can we talk about something a bit more pressing?"

"Like what?"

"I can think of at least two subjects," she replied. "Your son's arrival, and the fact that Hermione was clearly holding back yesterday."

"Which son?" Harry asked.

"Albus is here," Minerva answered. "Didn't you know? He evidently had a bit of a row with his mother. I'm surprised Ginny didn't Owl, even if Albus didn't let you know he was here."

"I'm surprised on both counts," the head of the Potter household admitted. "Albus and I have always had a pretty honest and open relationship, and it's out of character for Gin not to get in touch with me if she's had a row with one of the kids. You have no earthly idea the amount of Owls I received during my early years at Hogwarts on parenting-related issues when the kids were little. She was always so intent on me being completely involved. She didn't want to leave me out of things just because I wasn't physically there."

"Well, it sounded pretty serious, whatever it was. Albus went right to Rose, but wouldn't tell her what had happened exactly," she said, motioning him to follow her toward the dining hall. She needed a cup of tea, especially if they were going to continue talking. It was still really bloody early by her reckoning. "Rose seemed to think that Hermione might be able to worm the details out of Albus, and I did already say something to Hermione. She said she'd try to talk to him today or tomorrow. In any case, the only reason I'm as concerned as I am is that frankly, Albus is a fairly mild-mannered boy who, while he'll use the language of youth around fellow youth, he's not disrespectful, and he admitted to calling his mother a particularly disrespectful name before he left the house. It's not like him at all."

"What the hell did he call her?" Harry wanted to know, looking stunned.

Minerva looked uncomfortable. "Do you really want to know? It's not a term I like to use."

He looked seriously at her. "That bad?"

"That bad."

"Starts with a C?" he speculated with a wince.

She nodded sympathetically. "Dare I ask how you would even guess that?"

He shrugged. "Minerva, I've known you for more than thirty years. I've seen you battle-crazed, drunk, high, post-orgasmic, and grieving deeply. In the course of all of that, there is only one profanity I've never heard you use. I'm assuming you don't use the Gaelic equivalent either, because I'd just be guessing on that point. That time you accidentally ate those hash brownies Pomona made, you were doing next to nothing but cursing in Gealic and to this day I wish I'd gotten that on bloody film."

Minerva chuckled. "I'm never going to live that down, am I?"

"Not a damn chance. You ever going to tell me the identity of the lover from the trenches of the first war that you went on and on about that night?" he asked.

"Do I have your word it stays between us? Hermione knows, and you'll understand why, but beyond that, people don't need to know," she said, offering conditions.

Harry grinned. "Of course."

"It was Albus. I was his singular heterosexual relationship," she admitted. "War makes you seek comfort places you wouldn't ordinarily look."

"Hell," he breathed out. "Wouldn't have expected that, given I knew he was gay, I mean. But why would Hermione have already… oh."

Her Defense Professor paled as he realized that his employer knew what he probably considered one of his deepest secrets. "Yes, she told me," Minerva admitted. "Don't fault her for that. You had made your choice, and then Ginny had taken off, and she began to wonder if you'd both made the wrong decision. She needed advice. She didn't want to make an advance on you that would just lead down the same circle again, but she had to wonder if perhaps the two of you were missing the obvious right in front of you."

"How did you convince her not to try to stir things up with me again?" he wanted to know.

"I simply asked her whether she'd have considered you as more than a friend had you not been put in a position of extreme loneliness, with only each other, at a time when grief was paramount and sexual release was the obvious avenue to make all of that seem less overwhelming for a time."

Harry nodded in agreement. "I basically realized the same thing. I love her dearly, but I wish to Merlin we'd never done what we did. She was meant to be the sister I needed, and I was meant to be the brother she needed. Shagging nearly destroyed that. In any case, you had mentioned something about Hermione holding back in the duel?"

Minerva smirked. Harry was obviously done talking about his sexual history with Hermione, and that was fine. She did want to talk to him about the duel as well. "James and I worked our bloody arses off for four hours trying to get past her defense, and she was completely relaxed in there, Harry. Her mind was somewhere else, thinking about Merlin knows what, but she wasn't focused on the duel. She hadn't realized she never switched from defensive-only spells. Our best effort was boring her, Harry."

He looked thoughtful. There was a bit of concern as well, but mostly, he looked thoughtful. "You got her attention there at the end though, yeah?"

"Quite. As soon as I pointed out to her that she wasn't using offensive spells, it was as though I'd lit a fire under her arse and transported her back to May of ninety-eight," Minerva went on, looking wary. She hadn't talked to Hermione about this yet because she didn't want to worry her lover over something that might just be her own paranoia. If Harry also thought she was right to be concerned, then there would be a conversation, but not before. "Honestly, for a moment I wasn't sure if she knew where she was, Harry."

He frowned. "You think she was having flashbacks? Honest flashbacks?"

Minerva nodded miserably. "More to the point, Harry, is that while this is obviously an issue that needs to be dealt with if I'm right, at the moment I'm a bit concerned about the fact that I'm expected to duel the woman I love in a couple of days, who is probably having PTSD flashbacks, is very likely more powerful than Albus was, and could potentially have a moment during the duel in which she thinks I am someone she feels a need to kill."

Harry suddenly understood the gravity of the situation. "And you'd be hard-pressed not to resort to kill or be killed actions which would be your only option given the power levels you'd be facing. Fuck."

"That was pretty much my thought," she replied. "Fuck."

Hermione sat down awkwardly at the hotel diner where Ron was staying, having left early to meet him. For all of her ex-husband's faults when she compared him to Minerva, at least he'd never had an issue with her preference to start the day early. He'd been just as much of an early riser as she'd been, and just as cheerful before his coffee as he was after. "Good morning," he said with a grin, sitting down where she'd been waiting. "So, how's single life?"

"Well, that's sort of why I wanted to meet before you off and vanish, Ron," Hermione said with a sigh. "I'm seeing someone."

He snorted. "That was fast."

"It was sort of the impetus to ask for a divorce," she admitted. "Not the reason; the reasons were long and varied and you know that, but this, well, it gave me that final push. I suppose it was one of those 'straw that broke the camel's back' sort of situations."

"Huh," Ron grunted, not giving away much emotion. "Anyone I know?"

Hermione bit her lip. "Do I have your word you won't make an issue out of it regardless of how you feel? I don't want to be responsible for their professional life suffering."

Ron rolled his eyes. "Look, 'Mione, I'm going to be gone in a matter of days. I'm saying my goodbyes, I'm making peace. I might as well be dying. I'm not interested in stirring up shite. I've been a crap father, a worse husband, a barely acceptable brother, and a vaguely passable son. In what little way I still can, I'd like people to remember me well. I promise, I will not fly off the handle. Even if it's someone mad like Draco Malfoy."

"Not even close," she laughed. "Minerva. I'm with Minerva."

Her ex-husband just stared at her for a moment, with this glazed over look that very clearly expressed that his brain was trying to figure out how that was even possible. It seemed no more feasible to him than a cat plus a dog equalling a monkey. "What?" he finally said. "How? What? Blimey Hermione, you're going to have to walk me through this one. I'm seeing Arithmancy or some shite."

"It's not that complicated. We got close after the war, you remember that, don't you?"

"Yeah, but after we got married you two stopped spending time, and you've not seen each other since," he reasoned. "How does that suddenly add up to rocking the mattress?"

"We stopped spending time together because she realized she was in love with me and I had married you, Ron," Hermione explained as simply as she could. "She couldn't stand to be around me after that, and I got so busy with life that I didn't push. Still, it didn't change that there was chemistry between us, and history. When we met back up here for the Duel-Off, the chemistry that had been there back then was still there, but this time I wasn't quite as naïve as to not recognize my own emotions. Back then, I just saw what I felt for her as a deep admiration for a teacher. I didn't allow myself to see her as a woman. Now that I'm older and do see her as a woman, I couldn't ignore what the chemistry implied about my own feelings."

"Okay, so she had feelings then, you got feelings now, chemistry is a thing," Ron followed, "but McGonagall is all about being proper, so how did you actually get together?"

"In short, I was pushy. You shouldn't be surprised on that count," she laughed.

"Totally not!" he agreed.

"In the process of Rose and James getting together, we had a conversation about love and she admitted to once falling in love with a female student. She didn't identify the girl at the time, but a week and change later we had another conversation in which she called me by my maiden name and I asked her why she'd done that, at which point she admitted that she remembered when I still was unmarried fondly and wished things were different. I asked her how she wished things were different."

"Then what?" Ron asked. Despite himself, he was engrossed.

"She tried to evade, blow me off and such. I pushed. Then she got up in my face and said 'the girl was you.' Then she bloody stormed off, leaving me to puzzle out what the hell that meant."

"Awww…" Ron cooed. "She told you you'd been the student she'd fallen in love with. Okay, I can see how it would have gone from there. Probably a ton of drama and angst and sexual tension I probably don't want to think about, but that's actually really sweet."

"I really didn't think it was sweet at the time," Hermione chuckled. "I actually fell over when I figured it out, I was so shocked. I mean, really! It had not crossed my mind as a remote possibility that I might have been the student she'd been talking about!"

"That's stupid," Ron chastised. "Honestly, 'Mione, that would have been the first thing to cross my mind if my former teacher had admitted something so detailed and personal to me. I'd be asking 'are they talking about me?', followed by 'does that freak me out?' and so forth."

"Yes, well, I'm all sorts of clever about plenty of other things," she said defensively. "I'm just rather dense when it comes to emotional things. Speaking of emotional things, when are you leaving?"

"Tomorrow morning, first thing," he said. "I'm meeting the kids for dinner for my goodbye with them. This will be it for us. I already did my parents, the siblings. Didn't make a fuss with nieces and nephews and junk because let's be honest, I've never been around for me to know them enough to care about them, and they don't know me enough to care about me. Hell, I can barely claim that with Rose. Harry's been more of a father to her, poor kid. I'm sorry about that, Hermione. I'm sorry I wasn't a better father for your children. I'm sorry I wasn't a better husband."

"We did the best we could in the circumstances," she said quietly. "I chose to stay with you just as much as you chose to stay with me, despite how poorly suited we were. Better luck next time, for both of us. Will you have that option where you're going?"

"Maybe," he admitted. "It's a lifetime commitment kind of post. I won't be coming back. You may see me again though, one day. I might look a little funny though. This job comes with a high cost, but it also comes with some perks. Not many people get the chance to really learn from their mistakes. Man, I wish I could tell you more. Next time I see you, I'll be able to tell you everything."

"Is Luna involved in this project?" she asked quietly.

He nodded.

She started to cry, knowing damn well what he was about to do. "Can you give me a number?"

"You're too smart for your own bloody good, you know that?" Ron said, leaning forward and wiping away her tears with his thumb. "Twenty."

"Fuck, Ron!" she yelped. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

He shrugged.

"Ugh!" she groaned. "How will I find you?"

He looked thoughtful. "Guess I'll just have to look up Hermione McGonagall when I get there. I won't have the same name. You are going to marry her, right?"

"Likely."

"Good. Have kids together?"

"Maybe."

"That would be good too."

"I'm going to miss you, Ron," she admitted.

"Please don't let Rose or Hugo name any of their children after me," he said seriously. "That's a thing for dead people. I won't be dead."

She laughed, stood, and moved to hug him tightly. "Goodbye, Ron."

"Bye, luv," he said into her hair. "Take care of yourself. Better yet, let McGonagall take care of you. Merlin knows you deserve to be the one looked after for once."

A/N So, that's goodbye for Ron Weasley, for now at least. I'll admit that I've put some consideration into a sequel for Dueling now that I've picked this back up again, to continue exploring the relationship of Minerva and Hermione, as well as the characters of Robert and Malcolm McGonagall, the Hagrids, Lupins, Potters, Weasleys, and Rolands, with a potential appearance of Luna Lovegood. How many of you would be interested in a continuation of this character group after the conclusion of the Duel-Off event which brought them all together? PLEASE REVIEW!