Episode Ninety One
The deep silence Severus left behind him remained for quite some time. Dumbledore remained standing, looking at some of his knickknacks on the walls and shelves, waiting for Guenivere to make her move.
She saw no point in further postponing her thoughts. "I'm not the first to have questioned your judgment and I'm certainly not the last, but I am perhaps the most vocal."
"I would be quick to agree with that statement."
"I'm sorry Albus, I didn't mean to question you're honorability." She rushed. "I'm just… I just snapped."
Albus shook his head. "You've been under a lot of stress this past term."
"You don't even know the half of it. I don't know; the anger just took over me. I think I should leave Hogwarts."
"Leave?"
"I just don't think I'm right for teaching just now, and the holidays are beginning, and I'm sure Professor Smith wouldn't mind staying on another semester until you could find other help."
"If you're questioning your honorability you shouldn't. You earned your position here and you have done a great service to us and the students. Your anger has never come in the way before."
"Not before, but that's no guarantee that it won't in future. I just can't do it right now." She said. "So I'm tendering my resignation."
"And if I tell you that you cannot resign?"
"I'll leave anyway."
"Then it seems that we must part ways." He said, offering his hand. She took it in her own and shook feebly. When she drew her hand away she looked down at it as she had so many times before when she was feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders. It seemed that all life was made of was problems, heaped up on top of one another until there was nothing to do but give up. She was on the verge of giving up.
"I am truly sorry Albus, but I feel useless here." She said quietly. "I haven't even done anything to really help the Order." She heaved a giant sigh, a chain of sorrows connected by breath that hardly felt human anymore.
Dumbledore gazed at her evenly. "You have already provided a great service to the Order."
"When?" She said.
"When you delivered my letter to Madame Maxime." He replied.
"May I ask what was in the letter?"
"You may, but I may not answer."
"Then it seems that we've said all we can to one another."
"It would seem so."
"Farewell." She shook his hand once again and walked slowly from his office. He nodded quietly to her back. That would have to be good enough.
