5. Not a cheerful Monday


By Sunday, all First Years began to look forward to their flying lessons. Some had already mounted a broomstick, and most of those were repeating continually how wonderful it felt, how great they looked in the sky, and loads of other things, which didn't precisely fit with modesty. Those ones were impatiently waiting for their lessons, mostly because they wouldn't be allowed to fly before them to take place. The rumours that the Head Boy had announced they would take place before October had settled over the school like some sort of savage forest fire, and in the four Common Rooms, First Years were already speaking about nothing but it.
Minerva, like a lot of others who were Muggle Born, or whose family had never let on a broom, was quite curious, but by the middle of afternoon, began to feel a bit apprehensive, and was soon bored with all the stories the others had to tell. A First Year Gryffindor, Phil, had began describing them his first time on a broom making it look like any muggle born's first time on a bike, what was probably quite near the reality, but was finally detailing to everyone who would accept to listen about some sort of natural cascader he was, and his lots of adventures on fabulous racing broomsticks, which, as far as Minerva was concerned, his family certainly never had owned.

Well, everyone who would listen, at this point of the evening, was a rather non-enthusiastic Minerva, just after dinner in fact, walking with him toward the Common Room. She had decided to be nice. Really she had promised it to herself. Beside, she thought listening to his stories could distract her from what she had learnt about her mother. But that was becoming quite difficult by the time they had passed the portrait and settled in armchairs next to the fire, were two other First Years boys were already sitting, and began rivalling with Phil's story. Among those two was Matthew, a Muggle Born positively hanging at his friend's words, and Earnest. Earnest was from an old wizard family, but his father, a very unlucky and dreadfully clumsy man had had a traumatism with broomsticks the day he had fallen from one and made a twenty feet fly before colliding with the ground violently, and had ever since proscribed 'that horrible sort of highly dangerous stuff' from his house. He had learned Muggle-Driving, though, and could show with lot of proudness his wonderful acid green car with pink flowers... Minerva laughed at the mention of it, trying to represent herself the faces of muggles seeing this unbelievable vehicle among them. But as Earnest seemed quite annoyed that she laughed at him, she tried to hide it properly.
"Oh but I've already mounted a broomstick, 'cos' my neighbours are also wizards, and their son let me fly with him sometimes.", he said.

Minerva began fearing those boys would invent stories to impress her the whole evening, and wasn't really keen on spending hours listening to them, although the perspective of them pretending all to be genius and heroes was quite laughable. But then boys always made fools of themselves... Where was Albus by the way? ... She hadn't see him since lunch, and hadn't spoken with him since an eternity, well less than a day, but that was an eternity under those circumstances... How long are you supposed to bear loneliness when you've just learnt that your mother was murdered? ... Anyway she wouldn't be able to stand it much longer... Lost pieces of the conversation were still hitting her regularly.

"You know that time I had to run and jump on my broom, to escape this enormous dog, and then, you should've seen me, how I went at full speed, you'd think I was a comet..."
Phil knew really no limits to lying, she thought, intending again to spot Albus, which seemed to have mysteriously disappeared somewhere...
Then Earnest couldn't bear any more this supposed superiority of his friend in front of the others.
"But if you could just imagine what we lived with my neighbour..."
Oh, there was Albus, climbing through the portrait hole, apparently coming from the library. They smiled at each other from far, her rather more desperatly and less cheerfully than him, while a Third-Year stopped the Head Boy for some piece of information.
What were the boys still saying, by the way? Earnest had apparently finished his own story, and Phil had intended to make it look quite nothing in comparison to his own achievements. Well, she supposed so as she listened to them again, and Mattew was intending to prevent them from really quarrelling.
Albus was passing them and his and Minerva's eyes crossed each other as he went toward dormitories.
"You can't understand", Phil and Earnest finished both throwing at Mattew.
Then Mattew went all red, glanced at Minerva, and unhappily saw she was fighting a laugh, which he took for him, although she hadn't followed their chat in the slightest. So he began exposing his own exploits, no matter they were muggle ones!
What on earth was Albus doing?
Mattew finished his story with a satisfied smile, and intended to analyse the result of it on his fellows.
Minerva tried to assume a convinced look of admiration, although the only thing that was interesting her at the moment would come from the boy's staircase...
Albus finally came back from his dormitory, without the books he had let there, and turned toward Minerva. He hesitated, though, as he saw Charles waving at him from the corner where he and Carola sat, and he seemed to fear he would disturb the First Years. Minerva gave him an insisting frowning sign, clearly begging him to come.
The boys were discussing about the valour of wizarding and muggle achievements, as Albus reached their little group.
"Sorry", Minerva said immediately, "I think I've to go!"
Albus opened his mouth "Oh just if you want..."
She frowned so much her eyebrows nearly touched her eyes.
"You know, Albus, this stuff we have to do!", she articulated forcefully,
"Oh yes, he caught on, yea that one... err, very important, indeed
-Absolutely,
-So you must come immediately,
-Yea"
And she jumped out of her sit without further politeness and led him out of earshot of the First Year Boys...

"Albus where the hell where you? They were making up stories to impress each other, that was absolutely... well... absolutely...
-Yea?
-Unbearable!
-Oh really?, he said meaningfully
-What do you mean Albus with that nasty smile and that sarcastic 'Oh really?' ??
-Well quite nothing, just when three boys intend to impress you, they just bore you, instead of flatting your ego, little Minerva!
-They weren't... well... all right perhaps they were doing so, but... Boys are so... How can they always make fools of themselves?
-Minerva please, I AM a boy!
-Yea, of course you are, like I hadn't noticed... but you're just not the same..." She blushed, and went on a hurry, in order to stop him noticing her double-reddening because of both his notice about flattery and what she had just said: "What were you doing in the library anyway at such an hour? Don't you remember what you told me about not spending evenings there??
-Stuff on Dragon Blood, not strictly homework by the way, but... some idea I had..."
They stopped to sit with Charles and Carola.

After a while the Seven Years' conversation turned on subjects not barely interesting for a First Year, and Minerva slowly but surely fell in a sort of somnolent state in which she just heard voices, and then... she yawned... and then... then she was falling asleep...
Milane and Joyce, seeing her, shook her and said they were going to bed, where Lilian already was, so she followed them to the dormitory.

*************************************************************

On Monday morning, after a quick father's-letter-free breakfast with Milane, Joyce and Lilian, Minerva hurried toward her dormitory, because she had forgotten her quill and ink there, and then ran to catch up with them before the bell would ring. Fortunately she wasn't late, since she had made a lot of progress in orientating herself in the castle, after a week.

She was strangely in a particularly good mood, not only because of her practice with Albus on Saturday afternoon, which assured her she would be brilliant on the first period (As if she needed it in transfiguration... Well... No comments...), but also because she felt quite calm. Her first week had passed in such a state of distress she could barely understand how she had managed through it. But now she had showed how good she was to all the teachers, and above all proved it to herself, now she had grown to know a little her classmates, and seen they weren't terrors who would loath and despise her, well except the Slytherin, but this morning she felt strong and even the Slytherins couldn't change it, even less in fact if you considered she wouldn't see them before Herbology on the afternoon. Now, she had affectively settled in the school, and had decided as she had opened her eyes in the morning, that she wouldn't be so strict with herself any more, she wouldn't spend her whole evenings studying, she wouldn't die with work... And she would take some time for herself and some hindsight toward classes and everything else.

Well, that was more easily said than done, and to tell the truth it was only the result of an hours-long insomnia of the previous night, in which she had had time to remake her world, from her attitude toward her mother's death to her schoolwork. But anyway... For the moment, just before her first lesson, she still was in entire adequation with her new principles.
As she entered the Transfiguration classroom, she saw that Pr Diggory was already there. She settled next to Milane, on 1st row, and took her quill and ink out. She looked for her transfiguration roll of parchment in her bag, and finally found it and unrolled it on her table. She laid her wand next to it and waited, politely sitting on her chair, while the other students chatted animatedly. Well, some hindsight didn't mean she had to totally let her hair down, did it? But instead of keep worrying for her future performance, as she would have done a week before, she stared curiously at Pr Diggory. He was sitting silently behind his desk, his head in his hands and apparently reading the parchment on it. Yet Minerva felt quite sure he wasn't reading at all. Indeed he didn't move when the bell rang, nor did he say anything. After two minutes, some children were beginning to glance awkwardly at him, and Minerva wondered if he wasn't asleep, though he didn't seem to, and if they weren't supposed to make him take notice he was to begin the lesson.
Then he stood up, the class became quiet and some eyeings show the deception of most of the students, who had obviously hoped he wouldn't teach them that day, or at least the pause wouldn't be over so quickly. Minerva on the contrary, felt quite relieved, although Pr Diggory seemed definitely not himself, she couldn't help noticing. Well, he seemed just like some bit of herself she had thrown away as far as she could from her conscious self... The part that couldn't help being deliberately depressed...

Yet he began his lesson as if there was nothing peculiar, and most of the children forgot immediately the small setback. When he passed through the class to hand out dices, Minerva took advantage of it to get a closer look at him. He had unusual circles under his eyes, eyes that by the way seemed to her suspiciously red, but then, perhaps that particular point was her imagination... She focused her mind all the same on the lesson, and had soon some marbles rolling on her desk. At the fifth one, Pr Diggory accorded 10 points to Gryffindor with an absent-minded "Well done, Minerva", and told her she could make them dices again, because he hadn't any more of them. When he saw her hand up 40 second after, to ask him what she was to do with the five dices she had now, he seemed to finally realise she was there, which gave him such a strange sort of look after 30 minutes of lesson that Minerva wondered what she had done so bad. But then he approached, took them, "15 points to Gryffindor", and told her to just help poor Mattew, who was apparently not having the trip of his lifetime. Though, as she stood up to go toward her classmate, Pr Diggory turned back. "Oh, and Miss McGonagall..." She stared back at him. "That was a good job", he said rather sadly, "You're a brilliant student." She stayed a while astounded both at the greatly unusual and flattering, and -in her mind- exaggerated compliment, and at his half-depressed tone... And she wasn't so sure it was actually HALF depressed... She went and helped Mattew - "No, think it more like a sphere, if you focus your mind on a circle, it'll definitely stay flat" - still wondering what could make a professor so over gentle and so sad when he said to a student he or she did her work good... All her thoughts leading to the conclusion that he was just really not in a good state this morning, and, she concluded after some glances, also not totally with them.

Though when the lesson ended, she had no time to let her mind wander after him, because Peeves tried to make her late to her charm lesson by scaring her so that she would let her bag fall and split off... And then she ran toward Pr Siwell's classroom, pulled herself back, and her mind on the test waiting for them there ("Theory of the levitating Charm: Pronunciation and exercise of your force of mind"), as a follow to their first lesson which had been about it. So she had half-forgotten the beginning of her day as she reached the Great Hall for lunch with Milane and Joyce. And by the evening, she was merely too concerned about the previous horrible Herbology lesson to think about it again. Not that she had problems in herbology, well, not really, but Pr Doyle seemed to have decided he would pass the year breathing under her neck, and bothering her, looking for the slightest error she'd do, what was bound to happen when he kept deconcentrating her that way! Although as Joyce pointed out in a whisper during history of magic, he wasn't to do that for one year, but for the whole seven years he would teach them... Lilian, more cheerful, simply supposed he would take interest in another Gryffindor when he would realise Minerva was not the one he would most be able to shout at... Which Minerva forced herself to believe, since her impression that he found her much more enjoyable to morally belittle than the others couldn't be anything but mere paranoia... Well, that's what she was trying hard to believe...

*****************************************************************

So with all that, when she finally saw Albus enter the Common Room, after Dinner, she had to restrain herself from jumping toward him and telling him about the whole lot. But as she more quietly waved, he didn't seem to notice. She would perhaps have been hurt if she had thought he had ignored her purposely, but he didn't answer either to Charles and Carola and took and armchair for himself. As he eventually saw Charles, he looked at him sadly and signified he just wanted to be left alone. Charles hesitated, but Carola seemed to stop him from standing. Seeing that, Minerva supposed it'd be no good to go and speak to Albus... But still, his mood seemed lower than she had ever seen it... But Carola and Charles knew him better, and if they thought he had to be alone... Still, she would have wanted company, if she were he, although she would perhaps have shown the contrary... But Albus wasn't her, and that was a bit complicated to...
"Minerva?"
She started. That was Lilian, who was obviously trying since a minute or two to ask her something.
"Yea?
-Are you all right? Milane interrupted
-Yea, just thinking...
-What are those yellow flowers of the 2nd Greenhouse called, again?
-Sunflowers Lilian, they're quite common Muggle flowers...
-Yea, yea... and what d'you make of it? Oil?
-Yea..."
Lilian went back to her Herbology work, and Minerva to Alb... But Milane stared smiling at Minerva:
"What were you thinking of, Minnie?"
She sight.
"Nothing and don't call me that way, I told you...
-Why?"
Joyce laughed.
"What?" repeated Milane.
"It's a mouse of a Muggle Cartoon, Minnie I mean,
-Oh, ok... so what about Mina?
-Why have you got to find me a surname?
-'cos' you're definitely not an Olympian! So it'll be Mina!
-Shouldn't have told you it was the name of a Goddess..."
But Minerva went quiet, letting Joyce explain about Mickey and Minnie to Milane. She was glad Milane had forgotten her question about what she was thinking of... She wouldn't have been keen on telling her about it...
Come to that, she definitely couldn't let Albus alone that way. She couldn't stand staying without him either, by the way.

So she rose and slowly walked to Albus, unconsciously ignoring Milane's bemused glance and the later jokes it would cost her. She settled in an armchair she had pushed toward him (she still hadn't learnt summoning charms, although she projected to do that before 4th year, when she would be supposed study it in charm, because it was so useful for everyday life...)
"Where have you been before?
-Head Boy appointment" he answered laconically and still glancing in nowhere.
She felt awkward in front of his deliberate lack of talkativeness, and began to understand what Carola had thought.
The moment she decided to talk again, a note appeared just next to the portrait hole, neatly pinned to the wall, which emitted a "ouch" as it came in it.
Instantly, all the students raised their heads to it, and the first years were the first to gather around it, to read.
They heard whispers from the ones which still couldn't see: "Perhaps it's the Flying lessons", "oh let us go", and then "you've seen already", "Can't you read properly or are you learning it by heart?!", they became impatient, because the others definitely didn't wanted to move, or didn't seem able either.
"Come on Albus, do we go to read it?
-No, we don't."
She stared curiously.
"Well it could be important, no?
-It is, Minerva...
-Would you just tell me...
-I'm not sure I would... Perhaps you'd better not know...
-Err...
-Pr Diggory will be absent this week...
-Well, that's a good news, isn't it?
-Because he has family problems..."
Then she remembered him from the morning, and instantly felt ashamed she could have enjoy the perspective of his absence...
"How d'you know it?
-That was my head Boy appointment..
-Oh, well, is it that serious?
-It is-
Milane came back running and told to Joyce and Lilian: "Pr's Diggory's boy... They say he's... it's... he's had an accident... Oh well, can't say it, go and read..."
There was a very strong silence as Albus, Minerva, Milane, Joyce, Lilian, and a group of fifth years not far from them all went quiet. Then one of those spoke: "He's dead"

It was five minutes before Minerva talked again, and then a chatting burden, although quite awkward and strange, had refilled the room...
"Albus...
-yea...
-What did they told us it for?
-What?
-That... I mean, it's a private matter, isn't it?
-I told them I wouldn't be able to talk you all into being respectful and gentles if you didn't know something so serious happened, and Professor Diggory didn't wanted it secret... Anyway it'll be in the newspapers… So there was no point of hiding it... Well that's what Headmaster Neminos though, all the same...
-Oh... Well... Was it that baby Carola talked of?
-No, he had 4 boys and a girl and it was one of the elder's boys I think... He was 9...
-Oh God... didn't know he had such a family...
-Neither did I. Doesn't speak of it much...
-No."
Minerva definitely couldn't find anything to say, and didn't wanted to break into tears or any other hysterical burst of emotion just there, in front of all those people that all behave themselves... Yet a considerable amount of them was going up to their dormitory suspiciously early...
"Were there a lot of people at your... well... Head Boy Appointment...?
-Heads of Houses, Headmaster and Pr Diggory... And the Head Girl and me...
-I supposed that was a nasty stuff, that sort of meeting...
-In that sort of circumstances....
-...
-It was...
-Did they pin it in the four Common Rooms?
-Yea... Well No, Pr Cora went herself to tell the Hufflepuffs...
-Their Head of House?
-Yea, and flying Professor...
-Oh... Good then..."
Silence was stubbornly taking advantage of all the gaps in the conversation to settle over their chat, and not leave it any more...
"Well, I'll go to bed, I think...
-Yea... I'll soon do that too..."
She stand, though her steps were not so certain, and went... but she turned, kissed Albus on the cheek,
"Good Night"
He tried a sort of sad forced smile:
"Have good... well have the best dreams you can...", and she left.

********************************************************

It seemed to her an eternity was going as she took her pyjama, went to the bathroom, washed her teeth... tried to brush her hair... That'd never finish... And when all that was over, she could only regret it was, and she now had to lie still in her bed, trying hard not to think... Wondering why in earth, why she had to be alone in that very moment... Wishing Albus was her brother, because she thought then he would have come and looked for her before she fell asleep... And then thinking he was probably not much better than her and finding herself egoistic... Wishing her father was there and then recording he had never been that good at cheering his daughter... But still, he would just be there and that would be better, she thought... Any other company than Lilian sobbing at the other end of the dormitory would have been better... Was it a topic of the wizarding world, that all those horrible things like deaths and murders had to happen so often? ... She wasn't sure she liked it... But no, it had to be just hazard and unluck. It had to. Was Albus already in his bed? Was he feeling like her? ...