Title: Minerva's Mark
Summary: Minerva is very well connected to Hogwarts.
The sequel to Minnie's Match, which began when I realised I'd missed a few teachers. (And maybe had a few more ideas for the ones I'd already checked off). No longer confined to three sentences, because to be quite honest I forgot all about that until I was doing the first round of edits. So this is more of a spiritual successor, if you will, than a direct follow on. Not that you have to read that to make sense of this - each chapter is standalone. More or less.
Chapter Title: Minerva's Mark
Pairing: Minerva McGonagall/Sybil Trelawney
Chapter Summary: Deceit for gain is an age old solution to many wants - Minerva has merely never needed to come up with this particular stratagem up until now.
Ft a selection of tropes, including misscommunication (a classic), fraud (it's divination, who's going to guess), and the timeline being twisted into a pretzel (because I can).
And yes, the chapter and fic title are the same. I know. But it works for both! So.
This is the issue: Sybil needs both money and a place to stay. This would usually be little more than a tidbit of a fact that collects among witches their age, if Minerva had even heard about it, but they're friends of friends, and one thing, as it usually did, led to another, so Minerva's been letting her crash in her flat for the last number of weeks while she looks for employment. The arrangement is working for now - Sybil is not a bad flatmate, self-contained and observant enough to know when Minerva needs quiet while she works, quite unlike her roommates in Gryffindor tower - but soon Minerva will be leaving for Hogwarts and her summer lease will end for another year.
It's not as if the issue is particularly hard to become aware of, when Sybil pops down to the owl-office every morning and noon with armfuls of parchment. Hardly something that Minerva is in a position to aid further, but she keeps the problem ticking over in the back of her mind, until one afternoon she has a flash of inspiration over tea and biscuits. The droning of a fly on the far corner plays its parts in that, to be sure. "Your grandmother was a seer, was she not?"
"Yes?" Sybil blinks at her, eyes owl-wide behind her spectacles. "Cassandra. Mother's favourite history lesson. Why?"
"Headmaster Diggle is still in an awful flutter about finding a professor for Divination seat. He'd been hoping to get in an ICW expert, but that fell through. Dragonpox, of all things. In this day and age." She shakes her head ruefully and bites a biscuit in half. "The position's empty still. He'll take anyone who looks at it sideways. For the year, at least." And the year will be more than long enough for Sybil to get her feet in under a roof.
It seems perfectly logical to her. Not so to Sybil, whose face pales to a shade best described as 'Lovegood.' "You surely can't mean - Minerva! I can't! I don't know how! I have no gift! Not enough sight to fill a teaspoon, that's what She said." The inflection is enough to identify her famous grandmother, known (to Minerva at least) better for sending Sybil into a tizzy than any magical talent that she possesses. Her opinions, especially on the subject of divination, mean very little at all.
"Nonsense. A bit of acting is all that's needed - and I know you can do that. You were the very incarnation of the Lady Elaine when Hufflepuff put on that pageant of yours." Looks at the miserable face. Pats hand briskly. "It's not a skill that can be taught dear. You know that. And you already know more than the last two crackpots combined."
They send the owl winging northwards that same evening. The interview (such as it is, so close to the new school year, and with such a ... distinguished pedigree) takes place the week following. The result is no slower returning to their cottage.
Sybil gets the post. She gets the pay (admittedly, at a lower rate than the amount Minerva receives, as probationary junior professor), the prestige of teaching at Britain's premier educational establishment (and longest consecutively occupied structure to boot), and her choice of the accommodations, House Elves willing.
That is not to say that there isn't a degree of effort involved in the business. Minerva, whatever else her faults may be, would not subject her students to the mere appearance of being taught something of use. (Even if that use is questionable in itself.) To that end, they spend the long remaining hours of the holiday (short as they seem) putting together her lesson plans around the kitchen table. The kettle goes off at regular intervals. They're using the small decorative, floral cups today - small enough that forgetting the tea till it goes cold is no great loss.
September on the horizon, they travel to Hogwarts in order to set up Sybil's classroom as summer draws closer to a close. With their belongings for the moment piled in her office, Minerva is distracted for most of the morning with administrative upkeep - she may only teach three years, but has first years and that means checking she has all the folders that she needs to create new student files come the Sorting - and Sybil wonders the castle, poking in abandoned classroom s and lecture halls to pick one out for her own.
When she does, Minerva is ... skeptical. Magic can do a lot, with proper focus and control, but Hogwarts is covered in some of the most extensive wards on the continent. Save exiting via the window, her daily travel is sure to be, at its most generous definition, prolonged. And even more than that ...
"A tower, Sybil?"
"It's the aura of the room. How else will their third eyes break through the mist of mundane -?"
"Yes yes, you don't need to practice that on me." But her brush off is fond, despite herself.
The term begins, and the ancient castle weathers the hordes of students as it always does. Sybil somehow acquires twenty shawls and enough incense to choke a hippogriff without actually ever going as far as Hogsmeade. Minerva may or may not look with envy at the constant availability of hot tea in her proximity as she begins to teach an additional year their teacups.
As busy as they both are, the new habits of months spent plotting prove hard to break, so they grade together in the sacred hours between the end of classes and dinner. Minerva points out how to identify and decrypt handwriting - and some of it is truly horrific, they really should have a remedial class available - and Sybil dishes out all the gossip that Minerva's never bothered to notice when her smaller piles of homework are exhausted.
The year waxes and wanes, and they continue meeting through the long holidays, and its not long before they're having tea together because they want to, and then, just before three full years of joint employment have passed, they're dating. It's rather like it has always been, with slightly closer contact and more bedsharing.
Minerva's apartment bed is large, and as Deputy of Gryffindor, she has a spare bedroom attached to her chambers that doesn't get used for ought but storage. She keeps her papers there, stacks of parchment that are even now threatening to slide and cover the floor. Easily moved to an extended filing cabinet, if she leaves the elves their heads. As such, she sees no reason for Sybil to have to do her job anymore.
She says so, in as many words.
The argument - a screaming match, really, but for the fact that Minerva's never been known to emit something that shrill - that ensues can accurately be described as apocalyptic. Sniping about being a fraud, in hindsight, is a bit of a low blow. Even if it is true. Sybil pales, predicts her heartfelt remorse before the next morn, and retreats up into her tower.
Minerva has no tower of her own to retreat to, but the castle is large enough to avoid unpleasant company if avoidance is warranted. Lacking a Dark Wizard or six to pummel, she sets her roiling blood to power the ward maintaining the edge between the grounds and the forest. The squid peers out the lake at her and wisely slips under the surface.
By the following evening, she is ready to make another attempt at explaining her thought process. It's all perfectly logical to her, but obviously Sybil has another interpretation of events. She picks out her best set of robes, pins her great aunt's silver swan to her hair, and sets out to the battlefield. An early arrival is better than late. She wouldn't want to miss her.
Sybil is absent from the Great Hall. The seat beside hers is empty at breakfast, and emptier still come dinner. The Elves who provide her teaching supplies are, it seems, more than keeping her sufficed for nourishment.
Minerva knows when she is not wanted.
Time continues on. Their divergent paths hold their separation, like two divergent rivers breaking course. It is only natural, after all. With so little in common, there is no cause for them to meet. No cause to share meals, or gossip, or even proximity. Their subjects don't overlap in any discernible fashion. They are merely two witches employed at the same institution. Nothing more.
The biscuits that go with her afternoon cups if tea are ... less. The manufacturer must have changed the recipe.
They meet, come against each other, head in the clouds that hide even the minuscule warmth of the pale winter sun, in the stairwell. It is a small, twisting thing, on the second floor, the kind that may have been built by muggles in centuries past. Minerva is descending, on her way to have a word with Hagrid - the third years are making quite an inroads on the rats they are supposed to be transfiguring into goblets - and Professor Trelawney, junior no more, is climbing up. There is no graceful sidestepping possible, though they give the effort a go. The furthest extremities of their hands brush, and for an instant, Minerva is struck by the image of a painting.
They sidestep, quietly courteous, each to their own right, and continue on their way.
Like a vision, the light shifts. A break in the clouds, nothing more. Nothing more than that.
Minerva turns. And if had turned, and seen Sybil's retreating back - spinsterhood is no great hardship, will be no hardship, to her. Has all the companionship she needs, all the accomplishment and renown to focus her energies on.
Sybil has come to a halt, clutching at the wall.
She breathes. "Sybil."
"...Minerva."
"I," she clears her throat. "I've missed you."