A/N: This is a dark, rather painful character study that contains sexual themes and complex characters dealing with disturbing events. It's also a story of hindsight and memory and re-evaluation. It's not as morose as I've made it sound, but I want readers to be prepared for an anti-romance.
Chapter One
The headmaster of Hogwarts, as yet unaware that he had entered upon his last day on earth, raised his thin hand to stroke the unsmiling face of the woman who had afforded him so much unlooked-for happiness. How ironic that, while children suffered and Voldemort prepared to strike, with his loyalties so deeply buried that only a discerning heart and penetrating mind could perceive their true shape, Severus Snape should lay to rest the ghost of his old love and touch the flesh-and-blood promise of the new.
~#~
Autumn, having already embraced winter, was bitter this year. 'Twas a raw day no matter how you sliced it. To stand upon the peak of an unprotected hillside for any reason short of love or death bespoke the sharp spur of necessity – or a sense of duty bordering upon masochism.
As another icy gust blew off the bare crags and stirred the shimmering purple heather, Jocelyn Mountjoy took a quiet step forward and nudged the wand inside her sleeve. The strong warming charm that wafted across the patch of moorland wasn't for her. Weather-chapped from nigh on fifty years of fell-tramping, snugly apparelled in wool and down, thick knitted scarves and brown leather gloves, she was proof against October's frost-burnt wind.
Not so the witch who knelt in the sere grass a few feet ahead, her white hair spread down her narrow back and her Malkin tweeds tucked primly into her brogues. Defy it as she might, the iron-willed Minerva McGonagall was hampered by a frail constitution, not surprising in one who'd recently passed her first century.
The peevish look she flicked over the upturned strip of her shearling collar fazed Jocelyn not a whit. Neither did the crisp words, "You needn't coddle me. I've been braving the elements for years."
"As have I," Jocelyn said, admiring the unspooled, feather-white hair flying up and tangling in a crosswind. "And if it's coddling you wanted, I'd be breaking out the firewhisky. A warming charm is pure common sense, McGonagall, and I've lost patience waiting for you to do the necessary."
Minerva hmphed and returned to unearthing a small wooden coffer from the hard soil of its hiding place, recently covered by a polished stone plaque. It wasn't that she faulted her companion for her kindness, but that she hated to give an inch to her failing body. She protested with just as much asperity on those wintry evenings when Jocelyn took the liberty of placing a heated shawl around her bony shoulders.
The truth of it was, Minerva felt the bite of age even when sat close to the hearth. But her intolerance of fuss tended to get the better of her. She had no intention of becoming one of those crotchety invalids who exploit their infirmities and impose upon their long-suffering caretakers. Quite the opposite. She was acutely aware of her luck in having Jocelyn turn up on her doorstep ten years ago: an aspiring biographer who'd taken a more than professional interest, a researcher who'd fallen altogether too in love with her subject. Their arrangement encompassed room and board and a stipend Minerva suspected Jocelyn fed right back into the household accounts. But the emotional debt exceeded Minerva's failing resources, and it was a source of silent regret between them.
She was scrupulous about not taking advantage, of course. Minerva hated to be a bother, always had. But magic could only do so much against thinning blood and rheumatic joints. Against physical deterioration.
Against memories.
Magic could only do so much, and as Minerva unravelled the protective charms on the wooden box, the frozen ground where she knelt pinched her bones so hard she trembled in spite of Jocelyn's spellwork. Stiff-fingered, she prised up the lid and touched the chilled silk lining within. Nothing broken, thanks to her protective charms. Nothing lost, even if she might have preferred it so.
Sealed for more than thirty years, three vials lay side by side, their misty contents waiting to be reclaimed.
If she re-buried the coffer, whatever she left behind would not see the light of day, or mind, again. In that case, she might as well spill them out onto the heather. If she brought the vials home - well, she'd be opening a bloody awful Pandora's box, wouldn't she? Ghastly last rites for the ghosts of war.
Mind wandering, Minerva took a moment to ease the ache in her spine. She needed to stand up soon, but for now she let her eyes roam. The grey clouds were hazy mirrors to her mental state, blurry and wild, flowing in shapeless masses from horizon to horizon. All too often now her thoughts billowed her away like that, preludes to a storm, swirling through darkness outlined in light.
She shook off her fancies and pushed dirt back into the hole. The plaque had been camouflaged all these years by the intertwined roots of scrubby heather and half-frozen thistle. Around these memories was a landscape bracing in its bleakness, beaten into austerity by long months of harsh, exhilarating weather.
Severus would have seen the justice in it, surely.
Or perhaps not. He had, after all, been a townie.
She had, after all, not known him very well, and it was best to keep that in mind.
Off to the west, sunlight found a chink between the lowest clouds and the highest peaks, slanting across the valley to warm her. With concise wand movements, she floated two of the vials out of their velvety bed, cast a Cushioning charm, and conjured a drawstring pouch from a sprig of heather. The thin flasks slotted precisely into the bag and disappeared inside her robes with only the faintest clink. Keeping a tight grip on the casket, she struggled to her feet, Jocelyn's hand under her elbow, and waited for the dizziness to pass before turning to her companion.
"I've lived to tell the tale, and with your aid and quill, tell it I have." She paused. "But not all. And I feel someone should know, although I can't say the unreported bits cast me in a particularly good light." With a twitch, she shook damp and weariness off her face, anticipating the ordeal ahead. "It does, however, concern someone whose reputation might benefit from the truth."
The coffer's lid flipped up. Minerva lifted the remaining flask into the hectic light. The glass was opaque, designed not to reveal its contents, the only one of the three that wasn't transparent.
She stood holding the dark, glittering object against the sky, fog-soaked lavender rippling in the wind at her feet, her white hair swirling in streamers. After a moment, she placed the memories back in the box, closed the lid, resized it to fit a single flask, and surrendered it into Jocelyn's hands.
"As my biographer, I trust you'll assess the evidence and come to the right decision. I ask only that you not view these memories until after I'm gone."
Jocelyn had learned not to protest when Minerva spoke of her own death. She merely gripped the small wooden chest in her hands, frowning. "Severus Snape," she said. She studied the calm, wrinkled face, the sharp eyes attentive behind slightly misted spectacles. A light sprinkle of rain clung to Minerva's hair. "You and Snape, I take it? The bit that hasn't gone public?"
"In a manner of speaking." Minerva stared down at the ragged, crumbling little grave she'd desecrated through her unwillingness to let bygones be bygones. "Do you think less of me for it?"
"No, indeed. Far from it. I envy Snape. Only in this one particular, might I add," Jocelyn said, eyeing the box. "I wouldn't have wanted his life or, Merlin knows, his death for anything." She wedged the casket carefully down inside a carryall. "But you're already aware how very much I regret not having met you in your prime."
Minerva tilted her head mischievously. "I am a woman who likes sex," she said with a tart gleam in her eye. "I'm not sure I would have had as much reason to say that before Severus."
"Tease," Jocelyn groaned. "Heartless tormentor," putting a hand to her own heart and incidentally casting a drying spell over Minerva's damp, bedraggled figure. As the rain-spangled wind swept over them, she drew Minerva's arm through her own. "Very well. I'll let sleeping Slytherins lie until you're no longer here to editorialise or feel embarrassed by your dubious taste in sexual partners."
"Bollocks," Minerva said. "I have a great deal to say, most of it concerning that dreadful year. It's the voyeurism aspect of Pensieve memories that gives me the willies." She tightened her hold on Jocelyn's arm and silenced her with a look. "Don't start, my good woman. I know you too well."
"Ah, McGonagall, you wound me." Caught between a naughty smirk and a feigned pout, Jocelyn guided them away from the empty grave beneath the rattling heather. "I've probably exhausted my store of puns on the word 'willy' in any case. Although count on me looking forward with bated breath to hearing all about Snape's."
When she received the skyward eye roll she'd been angling for, Jocelyn cast another warming charm. She urged them a few steps further away from the burial ground Minerva would likely never see again, steadying her with a sturdy clasp around her middle as a few advance drops of heavy rain splashed her hat brim and Minerva's spectacles.
"I think we can agree there's no reason to stand here freezing our respective tits off and nattering about dead men's willies. There's not a stick of shelter visible for miles and the rain's not two minutes from pissing down."
"Incorrigible woman," Minerva said, with one shaky hand accepting the cane Jocelyn passed to her. Her fingertips automatically sought out the initials carved on the underside of the curved handle: MM & RH.
"Oh aye, me auld nan used to swear that I'd only me 'corrige' to recommend me."
Her Scots accent was even more atrocious than her pun, and Minerva smacked her reprovingly on the arm. But then she rounded with a grin, flashing the slightly horsey teeth of a very old woman. "Pity you and Rolanda never had a chance to raise a pint down the local. She would have given your punny mouth a run for its money." She teetered on a boggy patch and allowed herself to be steered around slippery tufts of grass onto firmer ground. "Of course, I would shortly thereafter have had to drown myself in drink."
"Never fear, we would have fished you right out again."
They halted at the trail's highest point, allowing Minerva to catch her breath as the two of them gazed out across the overcast landscape stippled here and there by escaping rays of light. In the cold, wet air, the lavender caught those rare streaks of sun and flared purple all the way to the farthest peaks.
"Now then, McGonagall, just so it's said and settled between us. You've placed your trust in me." Jocelyn patted the bag where the memories lay hidden. "I give you my word to be worthy of that trust. To tell the truth as I see fit."
She paused for acknowledgement, and looked over when none was forthcoming. Wispy-haired and red-nosed, Minerva seemed lost to the present moment, listening instead to whatever melancholy voices called to her in these wind-haunted hills.
Jocelyn gave her a minute, then collected her gently. "Here now, auld lass. Steady on your pins?"
Minerva sniffed, snapping out of it. "Of course. Do you doubt me?"
"Merlin hale my knickers out through my nostrils if I do. I reckon we're done here?" Minerva nodded, throat spasming around a dry swallow, and Jocelyn tightened her hold. "Right you are, then. Let's be off home."
~#~
Weeks passed, and no further mention was made of the memories. Then, out of the blue, Minerva informed Jocelyn she should take the day off.
"I've things waiting on me that are best done in private," she said, standing solitary and stiff-necked beside the window.
Most of Jocelyn's time was spent at Minerva's cottage, but she kept discreet rooms for convenience's sake. Knowing better than to argue, she donned her hat and coat and cocked her head in a courtly fashion, remarking, "I'm only a Firecall away," before Apparating to her flat on the wrong side of the Scottish border. There, determined not to fret, she settled in with a few volumes selected from the sagging shelves of her research library - Merlin's halitosis, so many dry academic biographies, humbug rehashes of Dumbledore's psyche and hubristic schemes, not to mention a rubbish bin's worth of I-was-there memoirs penned by bystanders who craved the fleeting experience of fame. Plus, drat it all, desk drawers overflowing with weeks-old correspondence. One did tend to neglect other social obligations in favour of Minerva's company.
While Jocelyn sat by the fire scribbling on parchment and savouring her gin, Minerva wandered from room to room, waiting. Listening for something trapped in the past. Rolanda, with a fond, forgiving laugh, would have told her to stuff it, just kiss the sodding vials goodbye and cast the memories out into the sea.
Daylight drained from the sky at about half past four. Minerva turned the lamps down one by one with quick taps of her wand. The curtains skated shut on skittery rings, and six candles winked to life, little dandelions of light bobbing above the sitting-room chair. When she laid the vials gently beneath a photo of Ro, they plinked on the table's surface like the keys of a child's piano.
No Pensieve and no plans to borrow one. Whether it was foolish or not, Minerva drew the threads of memory directly out of each unstoppered bottle and touched them to her temples with a steady wand.
She wasn't entirely reckless, however. She made sure she was sitting down.
