I don't want to wait for our lives to be over,
I want to know right now what will it be.
I don't want to wait for our lives to be over,
Will it be yes or will it be sorry?

These are hard times that the wizarding world is going through at the moment.  Hard for everyone even though some people like to pretend its not.   Some other people like to pretend the reason isn't what it really is.  That makes it even harder for those who do accept the truth. 

For when the person who won't accept it is Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic it makes it even harder then it already is, increases the battles that have to be fought and won before anything important and essential in the real fight can be undertaken.  And when you're me its worse then it would seem.

Every member of the Order of the Phoenix sees me as a Hogwarts teacher, a spinster and the deputy Headmistress of the school.  They see the tabby cat animagus and the stern faced transfiguration professor with her hair always pulled back in a bun. 

They miss the young woman with a daughter and a son who lost her daughter and so nearly lost her son too during the war with Grindelwald and then couldn't get pregnant again, no matter what she tried.  They miss the battles I faced when I looked at my son whilst he was at Hogwarts and couldn't admit that he was my son, had to pretend he was just another student of no more concern to me then any of the others in his year. 

The young bride who was so full of hope on her wedding day and could only share it with her parents and one friend was another thing they missed and still to this day nobody outside the inner circle knows.

They know me as Minerva, or Professor McGonagall, they know my persona, the mask I show the outside world.  They don't know the real woman I am on the inside; they don't know my real name.

I did used to be Minerva McGonagall, that's true.  For the last fifty years, though, I've been taking part in something of a masquerade.  May 1941 I got married.  It's something of a shock I know but now it's time the truth came out.  For the past fifty years I've been Mrs. Albus Dumbledore but only in secret, only when we are alone.

So open up your morning light,
And say a little prayer for I.

The terror felt during the very first Light versus Dark war was unbelievable.  No one who lived through it can ever understand it and I pray every night that none of the bright young faces smiling up at me from the desks in my classroom on a daily basis ever have to find out.

We used to pray every night before we went to bed that we would wake in the morning safe and well, that there would be no stealth attack in the night.  I used to be paralysed with fear at the thought that one morning I might wake and find his arms weren't around me any more.

Then it happened.  One morning I woke up alone, the other side of the bed was empty and cold too. 

Terror gripped me from the bottom of my soul.  I couldn't move, couldn't think, could hardly even breathe I was so scared. 

I really don't know how long it was I lay there thinking it was over and I would never see my one true love again.  It may just have been seconds or minutes but it felt like hours, no days, had passed before I saw a familiar glint of red and those lovely blue eyes which should be mischievous but which had been dulled by the trials of life and so had lost their spark.

Tears streamed down my face, tears of relief and of joy all at the same time.  He put his arms around me and held me.  I pulled him closer and wished we could stay like that forever.


you know that if we are to stay alive.

Finally the day came; the day when my darling Albus triumphed over the evil he had lost years fighting.  That was such a joyous, joyous day. 

It was a bit of a culture shock too though having to come to terms with the fact that we were no longer in mortal danger every minute of every day, no longer having to second guess each move we made and look over our shoulders the whole time for something which may never come.

There's more to surviving then just staying alive though, that's a lesson I was to quickly learn. 

There was something not quite right about my husband, it was almost as if he didn't know what to do with himself.  He couldn't adjust to living in peacetime after being at war for so long.

It was the same for everyone, mothers had to learn to let go of their children and the children had to learn how to play for the first time in their lives, to try to reclaim the childhood they had lost.

Then see the peace in every eye.

It took a while, but we got there.  The first Christmas after the defeat I had good news to share with my beloved, the news we had dreamed of.  I was pregnant. 

Albus was so happy, happier then I had seen him in a long time and standing there at the service of thanksgiving to mark the first peacetime Christmas in five years seeing the relieved looks on the faces of every one we knew and loved I realised we had turned the corner.  We were going to have a proper family life from now on.


She had two babies. One was six months, one was three
In the war of '44.

Guess I had spoken too soon when I promised Albus a normal family life, that Christmas so many years ago.  We never did get it. 

The problem with being married to such a well-known and famous wizard is that well-known and famous wizard's tend to have enemies.  And when the aforementioned well-known and famous wizard is Albus Dumbledore, Order of Merlin first class, the one to defeat the dark lord Grindelwald, the danger these enemies can pose is even greater. 

So our marriage had to remain a secret, the birth of our daughter followed two years later by the birth of our second child, a son, was not a cause for family celebration.  Only ourselves and a few of the inner circle knew that the two children known as "Smith" who appeared to have no family actually had loving parents and should be known by their rightful surname – Dumbledore.

Every telephone ring, every heartbeat stinging

For a few short years, we were happy.  Those were wonderful, wonderful times.  The simplest thing would put a smile on my face that wouldn't leave for days.  Family picnics, my daughter telling me she loved me, they were special but it is only now she is gone that I realise just how special they were.


When she thought it was God calling her.

Then the greatest personal tragedy of my life happened and just as has happened during all the key moments of my life, our marriage, our children's lives, I had to deal with it alone.  Albus had had to go deal with the uprising of some sort of dark force somewhere or other, time and the tragedies that time has wrought upon us.

It started so simply.  Alice came in one morning and said she didn't feel well.  It just seemed like a simple cold, I was sure that was all it was.  Lots of sleep, lots of fluids and some good food and lots of tender loving care from mummy and she would be fine. 

Except she wasn't.  One minute it was just flu, a few days and my baby girl would be running around with her brother again, the next she collapsed in my arms.

Eight hours later my darling Alice was dead.

I fell apart, lost it completely.  I was crying and sobbing, begging the doctor to do something, anything to save her – couldn't accept that she was gone.

Then I realised what had happened, realised I would never see my baby again – a realisation I couldn't cope with.  And so I did it, tried to kill myself.  Or I would have had it not been for Nicholas Flamel and his wife Perenelle.  Those dear, dear friends of Albus and mine obviously knew me too well.  For only they managed to predict exactly where I had gone and what I planned to do when I disappeared the day after Alice's death. 

They tried to talk me out of it but couldn't so in the end they resorted to drastic measure, magically bound me so I couldn't use my powers and kept me with them, checking on me every ten minutes and never leaving me alone.

Even now, years later I have no recollection of exactly what happened in the days that followed, all I know is that I got through it somehow and eventually accepted the hand that life had dealt me.  It took a while but I managed to convince Nicholas and Perenelle that I could cope by myself and myself and my son Mark went back to our home and tried to rebuild our lives – without Alice and for the time being, without Albus either.


Oh would her son grow to know his father?

He was gone for years on end.  Years when I never knew where he was, if he would ever return to our son and me.

He hadn't been there when our daughter died, had missed the chance to say goodbye to his baby girl and it was beginning to look like he would return home to one child dead and another who had no clue who he was. 

There was no way for a sixth month old baby to remember the father who loved him, who rocked him to sleep and fed him Muggle sweets.  And he wasn't that baby anymore he was a boisterous four-year-old who needed a father figure, needed more discipline then his softhearted mother could provide.  Yet there were times when I thought that I would never have survived or have got through the trials thrown at me if it hadn't been for there.  If my little boy hadn't been there smiling up at me with his cheeky grin, I could very well have given into the darkness that tugged at my soul that called at me to let it envelop me.



I don't want to wait for our lives to be over,
I want to know right now what will it be.

We got our lives back to how they were after the first war eventually Albus but it took years, even after he returned.  We've still never had the chance to have that life we dreamed of though.  The life where our marriage was common knowledge, where we could show our love for each other in public and celebrate it with our friends.  The life where I too answer when students call out for Professor Dumbledore.  That's been my name for the last fifty years – Minerva Dumbledore but I've never had the chance to answer it for no one has ever called me by it.


I don't want to wait for our lives to be over,
Will it be yes or will it be sorry?

Regrets are a horrible thing aren't they?  I know we have had our life together, we have our relationship and together we are stronger then we are apart.  You know that too.  I just wish the rest of the world knew that too.  I don't want to be at your funeral Albus and nobody there knew we were ever married.

We're both getting older now, neither of us has as long left as we would like, lets face it.  Even if weweren't the fact still remains that we are at war and these are dangerous times – anything could happen.

The only thing I want now though, the only thing I want is not to be sorry.  I want to be able to look back on my life with no regrets and this is the only one I've got left.


He showed up all wet on the rainy front step.

One day a long time after Alice's death, a very rainy day when my son did nothing but moan about the fact he couldn't go outside, I got another shock.  But this one was a happy one!  Albus was home; my beloved husband was back with his family at last.


Wearing shrapnel in his skin.

He was injured, both physically and mentally.  He was there, though, and that was all that mattered. 

Yes he had curse scars that would never heal but those marks didn't matter to me – it was just a pleasure to have my beloved back with me.  Yes he had nightmares, woke screaming and crying every night, but that got better.  It never stopped completely, but it did get better.  That too never bothered me.  All I cared about was the fact that he was there, that he was with me once again.


And the war he saw lives inside him still,
It's so hard to be gentle and warm.

It is hard for him, but I don't think anyone else realises sometimes.  They see the laughing and joking, sweet eating headmaster of Hogwarts and don't realise that whilst that is him most of the time, it as also an act.

Just lately, it is an act.  Just lately, the nightmares are back.  I defy anyone to see what he's seen, do what he's done and not suffer like he has for the rest of his or her life.  Especially when you know you're going to have to do it all over again.


The years pass by and now he has granddaughters

Yes, I am a grandmother.  Mark's daughters Alice (named after his beloved sister who died too soon) and Minerva (the only clue she is my granddaughter is her name, no one ever notices the family resemblance) are 15 and 12 years old respectively; I teach them just as I taught their older brother without anyone knowing that I am any more than their head of house.  Just as I taught their father and never let on that I was his mother.


I don't want to wait for our lives to be over,

We've been waiting long enough, we've missed out on too much.


I want to know right now what will it be.

I know that we can't know what will be; the future is not ours – just the present.  I would like to know that we would face it together as husband and wife to the world.


I don't want to wait for our lives to be over,

We're not as young as we used to be, and these are dangerous times.  I'm tired of waiting.


Will it be yes or will it be sorry?

I'm tired of "what ifs" and "maybes", I don't want to wait for "later" or the "future".  More then anything, I don't want to be sorry any more.


You look at me from across the room
You're wearing your anguish again
Believe me I know the feeling
It sucks you into the jaws of anger.
So breathe a little more deeply my love
All we have is this very moment

All we have is this very moment – the past is gone and the future is uncertain, its not guaranteed.  I don't want to keep hiding everything, to keep planning for some point in the future when we can tell our secret and let our friends know the truth of our relationship once and for all.

I'm going to do it, take a deep breath, and take my courage in my hands and scream from the top of the astronomy tower that I am in love with Albus Dumbledore.


And I don't want to do what his father,
and his father, and his father did,

I don't want to think about protection, or safety.  What is right and what is wrong?  That's all anyone is Albus' family has ever thought about, has ever considered important.  It is important, I agree, but what about love and happiness?  What about the truth?


I want to be here now.

I want to live for the moment… stop thinking of the future and live in the here and now.  That's all we can do, treat each day as a new day, a day to be lived.  Live it to its full potential – carpe diem as they say. 


So open up your morning light,
And say a little prayer for I

That's all we can do, treat each day as a new day, a day to be lived.  Live it to its full potential – carpe diem as they say.  Sure we can pray for safety for something to happen to make us safer but we can't stop in the mean time we have to live our lives regardless of what happens. 

For if we give up living, let life pass us by, we may as well just give up and let Voldemort win.  The worst thing we could do would be too let fear paralyse us.  That's what the death eaters set out to do and is almost as bad as handing them victory on a plate.


You know that if we are to stay alive,
Then see the love in every eye.

It's like that muggle band once sang: "All you need is love"

I think they got it right, I think that is all we need.  And if we stay together our love will see us through no matter what happens, no matter the consequences.

I don't want to wait for our lives to be over,

I don't want to wait, I think I've waited for long enough and have earned the right to have what I want now, not in ten minutes, ten hours, ten days, ten months, or even ten years when it might just be a bit of a safer situation.  I don't care if puts me in danger.  I want the world to know and I want to tell everyone, right now.

That would be exciting wouldn't it?  I walk into my next class (fourth year Gryffindor's and Slytherins) and instead of

"Today class we will be turning pumpkins into pillows"

I do something a little different.

"Today children I'm going to tell you all about my relationship with the Headmaster – he is my husband and I have been in love with him for more years then I can count!"

Certainly cause a stir, wouldn't it?


I want to know right now what will it be.

Isn't that what everyone wants?  To know what is going to happen to be able to plan for the future and know that nothing will happen to stop things going according to plan.


I don't want to wait for our lives to be over,

One of these days our life together is going to be over and if we continue the way we are at the moment we will never get to share our joy with anyone else. 

I don't want to die with no one knowing that I loved you.  I want to scream it from the top of the astronomy tower, that I love you.  I want to sit there in full view at our grandson's university graduation, not like when he left Hogwarts and I had to sit with the staff at the leaving feast not the family, I am a proud mother and Grandmother and I want everyone to know. 

I don't want to wait for this war to be over.  I don't want to miss out on more of life then I already have.  So please, Albus, let's end this charade.

I love you and I always have.

Will it be yes or will it be sorry?