Chapter Twenty
In which the search is concluded and a charm is discussed
Two more mirrors had been found, which was wonderful news. One had been located in the prefects' bathroom near a painting of a mermaid. It had been discovered by Neville Longbottom, who was a prefect for his house, when he went into the bath to soak a couple of fingers he had inadvertently smashed in a door. The second had been located by Harry and Ron in the Divination classroom in the North Tower. Harry had pulled aside some draperies to find the small and ancient looking glass. This, of course, meant that they only needed to locate one more magical mirror and their friends and professors could be brought home.
But something was troubling Harry as they walked back down the stairs of the North Tower together, keeping a sharp look out for other mirrors they might have missed on the way up. There were things imprisoned within that world that were very dangerous, so dangerous in fact that they had managed to injure Professor Snape rather significantly. The quartet was obviously holed up in the dungeons, probably warded in by powerful spells designed to protect them from the demon hoard. How would they manage to get from the dungeon rooms to places like the prefects' bath or to the far off North Tower without being killed?
Remus was an expert in Defense Against the Dark Arts. He could probably manage the feat, but then the other three were not so lucky. Hermione was well-versed in several areas of magic, including defensive magic and charms, but she was hardly equipped to handle a large number of savage Dark Creatures. Ginny, thanks to her older brothers, was very good at nasty hexes, but that would hardly stop foes of this caliber, so menacing and perilous that the Founders themselves had sealed them away from the rest of the world. And Professor Snape, well schooled no doubt in the Dark Arts as well as defense against them, was injured and certainly not in exactly peek condition. To Harry the situation was not all that encouraging.
And they still had that one mirror to find before they could even think about their friends returning home.
As Harry and Ron reached a main corridor, intending to make their way to one of the other towers that had yet to be searched, such as the Astronomy Tower, they heard the sound of someone stepping up behind them.
"Potter, Weasley, come here a minute." said the cranky voice of Mister Filch, causing both young men to jump.
Mister Filch was holding Mrs. Norris, his creepy cat, in his arms as he stood in the hallway right behind them. Where had he come from? He looked at them impatiently and motion for them to follow him.
Harry looked at Ron and shrugged as he followed Filch between two suits of armor. The caretaker rapped on the stone wall with his knuckles to reveal a secret passageway, one of many in the castle. They entered the dimly lit passage behind Filch, who was moving at a rather rapid pace, obviously knowing the tunnel quite well.
The passage narrowed a few meters into it, but then they saw a dark, open doorway to their left. Filch took a lit torch from a holder on the wall and pointed them into the room with it. Ron gulped softly as he followed Harry into the room, Filch and his cat bringing up the rear.
Harry glanced around as he stepped into the room. There was a table, rough hewn and rather ugly, in the center of the room, two benches, and a few locked chests stacked against the wall. This had once been a private reading room or perhaps breakfast nook for someone once long ago. The room smelled a little musty from disuse, but it was rather clean despite that.
"Well, check that mirror. Do your magic." instructed Filch, waving the torch toward an aged looking glass on the far wall of the little room.
Harry pulled his wand from the pocket of his robes and walked forward to test the mirror. He tapped it twice in the center. The looking glass shimmered and the view changed slightly. The room was illuminated slightly better, and there were books and parchment on the rough table. Perhaps it had been a secluded study room in by-gone days.
"This is one of them!" Harry told Ron excitedly.
"Should've known." muttered Mister Filch.
Ron laughed aloud with relief, the small reading room ringing with the sound of his laughter. Harry grinned.
"Mister Filch, I could kiss you! We would have never found this place on our own." said Ron, continuing to laugh.
"See that you resist that urge, Mister Weasley. Go inform the headmaster of the discovery right away." ordered Mister Filch gruffly.
When Albus Dumbledore saw Harry and Ron dashing headlong through the corridor toward his office, which he had just left in order to search the hospital wing and the rest of that floor with Minerva, he knew immediately that they had found the fourth mirror. He smiled as they skidded to a halt and tried to catch their breath.
"Where is it, my boys?" he questioned, laying a hand on each of their shoulders.
"Secret passage on the third floor, sir." Harry told him.
"Mister Filch is waiting to show you the way, professor."
"Excellent job. Some people," he said, meaning Minerva and a few of the prefects, including Parkinson and Malfoy, "were beginning to have their doubts."
"Well, we showed them!" said Ron, giving Harry a bit of a look.
"You certainly have. I believe I can find my way down there. Why don't the two of you return to your dormitories and try to get a good night's sleep?"
"But what about Ginny? And Hermione and Remus? We want to be there when they come back and all." protested Ron, who had obviously yet to take the demons into account as Harry had.
"It will be several hours at least before you need to worry about that, Mister Weasley, and it is rather late, almost midnight I would say." said Dumbledore, looking over his spectacles at him.
That was almost always enough to silence any student who dared to question him. Ron sighed and was no exception.
"Yes, professor."
"Be assured that you will both be permitted to be on hand when they are returned to us." he assured them both.
"Thank you, sir." said Harry as they turned and began walking back to their tower.
Minerva was just leaving her rooms again with a cup of tea to keep her awake as the search was obviously not going to end any time soon and the night was going to prove to be a very long one; she just knew that it would be. Sibyl Trelawny had been right. She just didn't have the Inner Eye.
She nearly crashed into Ron and Harry on her way out of the tower. None of them, herself included, were looking where they were going.
"Sorry, professor." said Harry as she steadied herself against the wall.
"It's all right, Potter. We all have things on our minds. Just pay more attention in the future." she told them with a small sigh.
"If it helps any, the fourth mirror has been found." offered Harry, smiling.
"Yes, it does. It helps a great deal." said McGonagall with a pleasant, relieved smile, which was a rare sight indeed.
"Professor Dumbledore is on his way to inspect it just now. It's in a secret passage one floor down." Ron told her.
"Did he send you two to find me?"
"Oh, no, we've been ordered to bed." said Ron, his frustration and annoyance coming through a bit too clearly.
"Then to bed you should both go." said their head of house, not giving an inch.
"Yes, professor." sighed Weasley, starting to trudge up the stairs to the Gryffindor common room and dormitories.
"Professor?" asked Harry quietly, watching the retreating form of his friend.
"Yes?"
"How are they going to get to the other mirrors?" he questioned, looking her in the eye with a very searching expression on his face.
"We haven't worked that out yet, but Albus certainly must have a plan." said Minerva firmly.
"Of course, professor." nodded Harry.
Most of her tea had been sloshed from its cup during her collision with Harry and Ron, but Professor McGonagall didn't mind so much as she strode through the corridor toward the secret passageway that her students had mentioned. Albus was talking with Argus Filch as she approached the entrance to the passage. Dumbledore smiled at her as she approached. Mister Filch gave her a deferential nod.
"Sorry I didn't remember this place sooner, but no one uses the room for anything. It isn't even large enough for a proper storeroom." Mister Filch told the headmaster.
"Think nothing of it, Argus. You can't be expected to remember every nook and cranny in the castle. No one can." said Dumbledore.
"Professors." Mister Filch said in parting before making his way back toward his office with his gray cat slinking after him.
"So it's in there." said Minerva, nodding toward the opening between the two suits of armor.
"Indeed it is." said Albus.
"Now what?" she questioned.
"They will need the incantation, of course, which should be easy enough to provide to them."
"Naturally."
"And they will need a way to get to the mirrors located outside the dungeons."
"You have a plan then?"
"Not even the foggiest notion, Minerva. But I think very well at night."
"Albus, are you going to tell them that the mirrors have been located?"
"In the morning, perhaps quite early; you see, the moon is full at the moment, and I mean to have a conversation with Remus."
Minerva put her free hand to her mouth as she realized what he was saying. Remus was in werewolf form at the moment, which limited his abilities as a conversationalist for one thing.
"I didn't notice! With so many other things ..."
"No one faults you for that, Minerva. Severus had a fair store of Wolfsbane potion when last we discussed the matter, enough for two nights, if not three. No need to fret about it unless I am much mistaken about their accident."
"Of course."
"And they are all certainly sleeping right now, as you should be."
"Albus, how could I sleep at a time like this?" she questioned almost indignantly.
"Well, it usually involves a bed, some comfortable clothing, and putting out the light ..."
"You know what I mean."
"Minerva, really, there isn't very much that can be done at this moment. I told two of your students almost the very same thing. And you look to need the rest far more than they did."
"But won't you need me to help plan?"
"Perhaps later." Albus commented. "Or are you afraid?"
Minerva pursed her lips and drew herself up to her full height, which was certainly neither towering nor threatening, and asked, "And what would I be afraid of?"
There was a peculiar and unfamiliar sadness in Dumbledore's eyes as he replied, "The nightmares."
At first Minerva wasn't certain what he meant by that enigmatic comment. Then she inhaled sharply, recalling a particularly vivid nightmare that she had had fifty years earlier during the last hours of darkness on the day after Grindelwald had been captured and banished. In the dream she had followed Albus out of the school and into Hogsmeade, just as she had in reality, but when she had caught up with him and illegally apparated in tandem with him by grabbing him from behind and concentrating, it was no longer Albus. It was the insane Dark Wizard Grindelwald, leering at her and drawing his wand to perform a killing curse on her. His beady eyes had rolled crazily. She had awakened everyone in the sixth year girls' dormitory with her screams.
The nightmares had gone on for days, she remembered, until she had gone to Albus after class and requested that he place a memory charm on her. He had been reticent despite her blood shot eyes and the reports from the Gryffindor prefect complaining about her screams and her stubborn silence on the matter. Wiping the memory of a witch or wizard was not something to be done lightly. But Minerva had been adamant.
"You will forget everything we did. The good and the bad. Everything ..." he had warned her with regret in his eyes.
The kiss. That had been so important to her, though her friend and mentor had hardly kissed her back, returning only the most meager portion of her affection. Only that afternoon did Minerva realize that the kiss had meant anything at all to him. That Albus Dumbledore might have feelings for her that extended beyond those of a professor and the head of her house.
Her auburn-hared professor had allowed her to sit in his chair as he prepared to cast the charm. He was neither young nor foolish, but she was perhaps just a little bit of both, willing to trade that discovery for restful nights of slumber. He gave her every chance to change her mind.
"It isn't going to be a strong charm. I mean for it to be broken someday when you are strong enough, when you are ready." Albus told her, brushing errant strands of sable black hair from her face.
But Minerva McGonagall remained adamant. Nothing could change her mind, and he had honored her request, though it very nearly broke his heart.
Albus regarded Minerva as they stood in the vacant corridor with a strange expression as he watched her eyes widen as the fifty-year-old memories came back to her like a dam being burst by a flooding river.
"After all this time, Albus! Why didn't you say something?" she questioned.
"This is not in reference to the nightmares, is it?" he said, recognizing the expression of shock upon her face.
"You ... you ..."
"Yes, Minerva, your feelings were not unrequited. I had hoped that you would remember that too in time. But time has a way of cheating those that depend upon it." he sighed with a soft smile.
"Fifty years, Albus! You've kept this to yourself for fifty years!"
"Very nearly, fifty, yes." he agreed. "But they have been a very busy fifty years, you have to admit."
"You could have ... could have at least dropped hints or something."
"And you could have said how you felt even after the memory charm was put into place. But all of that was said and done a long time ago, Minerva, and in the intervening years between then and now I have had the pleasure of calling you one of my closest friends and staunchest allies."
Minerva looked at him with tears in her eyes and said, "But if you felt the same way about me that I did about you, there could have been so much more."
"I know."
They stood there in the moonlit corridor for several minutes, looking at one another, and then Minerva simply whispered good-night to the headmaster and began to walk back to Gryffindor Tower, if not to sleep, then to be alone and to think.
Albus simply chuckled as he made his way back to toward his office, shaking his head. Throughout their long acquaintance and their only somewhat shorter friendship, he had flirted with Minerva McGonagall many times to no effect. She had simply never noticed, not in all their long years together. Dumbledore liked to believe that Fate gave people many chances to get things right, and he tried to be so generous himself. But it seemed that his young student and himself had had only one opportunity, lost to them because of the horrors that had accompanied it.
He hoped that Hermione and Severus would have the opportunity to take advantage of their chance, and, if he read his signs correctly, that Remus and Ginny would have the same. Albus chuckled again and began thinking of the best the way to bring all parties home safely.
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A/N: This was originally going to be two chapters, but I combined them. I don't know if it's exactly seamless or not.
Phoenix Flight: Thank you for reviewing!
coolchicgirl16: I have a lot of plans, but I can't divulge any of them. Thanks for the review!
Yukito Forever: I like your reviews. Some of them (the monkey ones) are very funny. Thank you!
bansh: I think that sums it up nicely: "a precarious balance". I like that. I'm very flattered that you think I write Sevreus well. Thank you very for the review!
plastic: Ebolic grapes? Okay ... How many chapters? Well, I just combined two, so less than I would have said yesterday. *shrugs* Under thirty? Thanks for reviewing!
HunnySnowBunny: I can totally understand the Snape-as-a-jaguar thing (or a panther perhaps?). He is very cat-like, isn't he? Thank you for reviewing!
BLV: It's very nice to know that you like my characterizations. I like to believe that Ginny should become braver as she gets older. She is a Gryffindor, so she should have that potential. Thank you very much for your compliments and your review!
Aqua Child: *laughs* Thanks for reviewing!
In which the search is concluded and a charm is discussed
Two more mirrors had been found, which was wonderful news. One had been located in the prefects' bathroom near a painting of a mermaid. It had been discovered by Neville Longbottom, who was a prefect for his house, when he went into the bath to soak a couple of fingers he had inadvertently smashed in a door. The second had been located by Harry and Ron in the Divination classroom in the North Tower. Harry had pulled aside some draperies to find the small and ancient looking glass. This, of course, meant that they only needed to locate one more magical mirror and their friends and professors could be brought home.
But something was troubling Harry as they walked back down the stairs of the North Tower together, keeping a sharp look out for other mirrors they might have missed on the way up. There were things imprisoned within that world that were very dangerous, so dangerous in fact that they had managed to injure Professor Snape rather significantly. The quartet was obviously holed up in the dungeons, probably warded in by powerful spells designed to protect them from the demon hoard. How would they manage to get from the dungeon rooms to places like the prefects' bath or to the far off North Tower without being killed?
Remus was an expert in Defense Against the Dark Arts. He could probably manage the feat, but then the other three were not so lucky. Hermione was well-versed in several areas of magic, including defensive magic and charms, but she was hardly equipped to handle a large number of savage Dark Creatures. Ginny, thanks to her older brothers, was very good at nasty hexes, but that would hardly stop foes of this caliber, so menacing and perilous that the Founders themselves had sealed them away from the rest of the world. And Professor Snape, well schooled no doubt in the Dark Arts as well as defense against them, was injured and certainly not in exactly peek condition. To Harry the situation was not all that encouraging.
And they still had that one mirror to find before they could even think about their friends returning home.
As Harry and Ron reached a main corridor, intending to make their way to one of the other towers that had yet to be searched, such as the Astronomy Tower, they heard the sound of someone stepping up behind them.
"Potter, Weasley, come here a minute." said the cranky voice of Mister Filch, causing both young men to jump.
Mister Filch was holding Mrs. Norris, his creepy cat, in his arms as he stood in the hallway right behind them. Where had he come from? He looked at them impatiently and motion for them to follow him.
Harry looked at Ron and shrugged as he followed Filch between two suits of armor. The caretaker rapped on the stone wall with his knuckles to reveal a secret passageway, one of many in the castle. They entered the dimly lit passage behind Filch, who was moving at a rather rapid pace, obviously knowing the tunnel quite well.
The passage narrowed a few meters into it, but then they saw a dark, open doorway to their left. Filch took a lit torch from a holder on the wall and pointed them into the room with it. Ron gulped softly as he followed Harry into the room, Filch and his cat bringing up the rear.
Harry glanced around as he stepped into the room. There was a table, rough hewn and rather ugly, in the center of the room, two benches, and a few locked chests stacked against the wall. This had once been a private reading room or perhaps breakfast nook for someone once long ago. The room smelled a little musty from disuse, but it was rather clean despite that.
"Well, check that mirror. Do your magic." instructed Filch, waving the torch toward an aged looking glass on the far wall of the little room.
Harry pulled his wand from the pocket of his robes and walked forward to test the mirror. He tapped it twice in the center. The looking glass shimmered and the view changed slightly. The room was illuminated slightly better, and there were books and parchment on the rough table. Perhaps it had been a secluded study room in by-gone days.
"This is one of them!" Harry told Ron excitedly.
"Should've known." muttered Mister Filch.
Ron laughed aloud with relief, the small reading room ringing with the sound of his laughter. Harry grinned.
"Mister Filch, I could kiss you! We would have never found this place on our own." said Ron, continuing to laugh.
"See that you resist that urge, Mister Weasley. Go inform the headmaster of the discovery right away." ordered Mister Filch gruffly.
When Albus Dumbledore saw Harry and Ron dashing headlong through the corridor toward his office, which he had just left in order to search the hospital wing and the rest of that floor with Minerva, he knew immediately that they had found the fourth mirror. He smiled as they skidded to a halt and tried to catch their breath.
"Where is it, my boys?" he questioned, laying a hand on each of their shoulders.
"Secret passage on the third floor, sir." Harry told him.
"Mister Filch is waiting to show you the way, professor."
"Excellent job. Some people," he said, meaning Minerva and a few of the prefects, including Parkinson and Malfoy, "were beginning to have their doubts."
"Well, we showed them!" said Ron, giving Harry a bit of a look.
"You certainly have. I believe I can find my way down there. Why don't the two of you return to your dormitories and try to get a good night's sleep?"
"But what about Ginny? And Hermione and Remus? We want to be there when they come back and all." protested Ron, who had obviously yet to take the demons into account as Harry had.
"It will be several hours at least before you need to worry about that, Mister Weasley, and it is rather late, almost midnight I would say." said Dumbledore, looking over his spectacles at him.
That was almost always enough to silence any student who dared to question him. Ron sighed and was no exception.
"Yes, professor."
"Be assured that you will both be permitted to be on hand when they are returned to us." he assured them both.
"Thank you, sir." said Harry as they turned and began walking back to their tower.
Minerva was just leaving her rooms again with a cup of tea to keep her awake as the search was obviously not going to end any time soon and the night was going to prove to be a very long one; she just knew that it would be. Sibyl Trelawny had been right. She just didn't have the Inner Eye.
She nearly crashed into Ron and Harry on her way out of the tower. None of them, herself included, were looking where they were going.
"Sorry, professor." said Harry as she steadied herself against the wall.
"It's all right, Potter. We all have things on our minds. Just pay more attention in the future." she told them with a small sigh.
"If it helps any, the fourth mirror has been found." offered Harry, smiling.
"Yes, it does. It helps a great deal." said McGonagall with a pleasant, relieved smile, which was a rare sight indeed.
"Professor Dumbledore is on his way to inspect it just now. It's in a secret passage one floor down." Ron told her.
"Did he send you two to find me?"
"Oh, no, we've been ordered to bed." said Ron, his frustration and annoyance coming through a bit too clearly.
"Then to bed you should both go." said their head of house, not giving an inch.
"Yes, professor." sighed Weasley, starting to trudge up the stairs to the Gryffindor common room and dormitories.
"Professor?" asked Harry quietly, watching the retreating form of his friend.
"Yes?"
"How are they going to get to the other mirrors?" he questioned, looking her in the eye with a very searching expression on his face.
"We haven't worked that out yet, but Albus certainly must have a plan." said Minerva firmly.
"Of course, professor." nodded Harry.
Most of her tea had been sloshed from its cup during her collision with Harry and Ron, but Professor McGonagall didn't mind so much as she strode through the corridor toward the secret passageway that her students had mentioned. Albus was talking with Argus Filch as she approached the entrance to the passage. Dumbledore smiled at her as she approached. Mister Filch gave her a deferential nod.
"Sorry I didn't remember this place sooner, but no one uses the room for anything. It isn't even large enough for a proper storeroom." Mister Filch told the headmaster.
"Think nothing of it, Argus. You can't be expected to remember every nook and cranny in the castle. No one can." said Dumbledore.
"Professors." Mister Filch said in parting before making his way back toward his office with his gray cat slinking after him.
"So it's in there." said Minerva, nodding toward the opening between the two suits of armor.
"Indeed it is." said Albus.
"Now what?" she questioned.
"They will need the incantation, of course, which should be easy enough to provide to them."
"Naturally."
"And they will need a way to get to the mirrors located outside the dungeons."
"You have a plan then?"
"Not even the foggiest notion, Minerva. But I think very well at night."
"Albus, are you going to tell them that the mirrors have been located?"
"In the morning, perhaps quite early; you see, the moon is full at the moment, and I mean to have a conversation with Remus."
Minerva put her free hand to her mouth as she realized what he was saying. Remus was in werewolf form at the moment, which limited his abilities as a conversationalist for one thing.
"I didn't notice! With so many other things ..."
"No one faults you for that, Minerva. Severus had a fair store of Wolfsbane potion when last we discussed the matter, enough for two nights, if not three. No need to fret about it unless I am much mistaken about their accident."
"Of course."
"And they are all certainly sleeping right now, as you should be."
"Albus, how could I sleep at a time like this?" she questioned almost indignantly.
"Well, it usually involves a bed, some comfortable clothing, and putting out the light ..."
"You know what I mean."
"Minerva, really, there isn't very much that can be done at this moment. I told two of your students almost the very same thing. And you look to need the rest far more than they did."
"But won't you need me to help plan?"
"Perhaps later." Albus commented. "Or are you afraid?"
Minerva pursed her lips and drew herself up to her full height, which was certainly neither towering nor threatening, and asked, "And what would I be afraid of?"
There was a peculiar and unfamiliar sadness in Dumbledore's eyes as he replied, "The nightmares."
At first Minerva wasn't certain what he meant by that enigmatic comment. Then she inhaled sharply, recalling a particularly vivid nightmare that she had had fifty years earlier during the last hours of darkness on the day after Grindelwald had been captured and banished. In the dream she had followed Albus out of the school and into Hogsmeade, just as she had in reality, but when she had caught up with him and illegally apparated in tandem with him by grabbing him from behind and concentrating, it was no longer Albus. It was the insane Dark Wizard Grindelwald, leering at her and drawing his wand to perform a killing curse on her. His beady eyes had rolled crazily. She had awakened everyone in the sixth year girls' dormitory with her screams.
The nightmares had gone on for days, she remembered, until she had gone to Albus after class and requested that he place a memory charm on her. He had been reticent despite her blood shot eyes and the reports from the Gryffindor prefect complaining about her screams and her stubborn silence on the matter. Wiping the memory of a witch or wizard was not something to be done lightly. But Minerva had been adamant.
"You will forget everything we did. The good and the bad. Everything ..." he had warned her with regret in his eyes.
The kiss. That had been so important to her, though her friend and mentor had hardly kissed her back, returning only the most meager portion of her affection. Only that afternoon did Minerva realize that the kiss had meant anything at all to him. That Albus Dumbledore might have feelings for her that extended beyond those of a professor and the head of her house.
Her auburn-hared professor had allowed her to sit in his chair as he prepared to cast the charm. He was neither young nor foolish, but she was perhaps just a little bit of both, willing to trade that discovery for restful nights of slumber. He gave her every chance to change her mind.
"It isn't going to be a strong charm. I mean for it to be broken someday when you are strong enough, when you are ready." Albus told her, brushing errant strands of sable black hair from her face.
But Minerva McGonagall remained adamant. Nothing could change her mind, and he had honored her request, though it very nearly broke his heart.
Albus regarded Minerva as they stood in the vacant corridor with a strange expression as he watched her eyes widen as the fifty-year-old memories came back to her like a dam being burst by a flooding river.
"After all this time, Albus! Why didn't you say something?" she questioned.
"This is not in reference to the nightmares, is it?" he said, recognizing the expression of shock upon her face.
"You ... you ..."
"Yes, Minerva, your feelings were not unrequited. I had hoped that you would remember that too in time. But time has a way of cheating those that depend upon it." he sighed with a soft smile.
"Fifty years, Albus! You've kept this to yourself for fifty years!"
"Very nearly, fifty, yes." he agreed. "But they have been a very busy fifty years, you have to admit."
"You could have ... could have at least dropped hints or something."
"And you could have said how you felt even after the memory charm was put into place. But all of that was said and done a long time ago, Minerva, and in the intervening years between then and now I have had the pleasure of calling you one of my closest friends and staunchest allies."
Minerva looked at him with tears in her eyes and said, "But if you felt the same way about me that I did about you, there could have been so much more."
"I know."
They stood there in the moonlit corridor for several minutes, looking at one another, and then Minerva simply whispered good-night to the headmaster and began to walk back to Gryffindor Tower, if not to sleep, then to be alone and to think.
Albus simply chuckled as he made his way back to toward his office, shaking his head. Throughout their long acquaintance and their only somewhat shorter friendship, he had flirted with Minerva McGonagall many times to no effect. She had simply never noticed, not in all their long years together. Dumbledore liked to believe that Fate gave people many chances to get things right, and he tried to be so generous himself. But it seemed that his young student and himself had had only one opportunity, lost to them because of the horrors that had accompanied it.
He hoped that Hermione and Severus would have the opportunity to take advantage of their chance, and, if he read his signs correctly, that Remus and Ginny would have the same. Albus chuckled again and began thinking of the best the way to bring all parties home safely.
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A/N: This was originally going to be two chapters, but I combined them. I don't know if it's exactly seamless or not.
Phoenix Flight: Thank you for reviewing!
coolchicgirl16: I have a lot of plans, but I can't divulge any of them. Thanks for the review!
Yukito Forever: I like your reviews. Some of them (the monkey ones) are very funny. Thank you!
bansh: I think that sums it up nicely: "a precarious balance". I like that. I'm very flattered that you think I write Sevreus well. Thank you very for the review!
plastic: Ebolic grapes? Okay ... How many chapters? Well, I just combined two, so less than I would have said yesterday. *shrugs* Under thirty? Thanks for reviewing!
HunnySnowBunny: I can totally understand the Snape-as-a-jaguar thing (or a panther perhaps?). He is very cat-like, isn't he? Thank you for reviewing!
BLV: It's very nice to know that you like my characterizations. I like to believe that Ginny should become braver as she gets older. She is a Gryffindor, so she should have that potential. Thank you very much for your compliments and your review!
Aqua Child: *laughs* Thanks for reviewing!