And years passed. Years and years and years passed after her graduation, and I was happy. Or- I was as happy as I could possibly be, being the woman whose only daughter was a Death Eater who loathed her… Still, the first years after her leaving Hogwarts came as nothing less than a real relief to me. Seven years, seven long, bitter years of sheer torture I had lived through, and with her gone, everything, my dear, beloved home of Hogwarts, finally turned back to normal again. I could finally, finally take my seat at the Head Table in the Great hall again, without feeling my eyes being dragged to that black-haired, dark-eyed slender little thing and her Slytherin friends.. Without having to hear her sniggering, without hearing her scold me because of the huge amounts of homework I gave. It's strange- I've known generations of students to complain about me for that, yet suddenly, those very well-know words cut like a blade through my heart. It was a new experience, and one I could certainly live without. Her seventh year was the worst, I recall. Albus saw me suffer and, darling he was and is, proposed to me at least once a month that year. I refused, of course, but he never gave up. Albus Dumbledore, most powerful wizard ever, my best friend and the one and only never giving up suitor I have ever had…
It's not that he just proposed to me to help me, to be able to protect me or whatever so called "good" but so unsatisfying reason a man may have for a proposal. No, he loved me, and I recall he still does.
And I love him as I always have.
But Belle stands, and has always stood, between us.
Yet it's not as if that isn't entirely my own fault.
But those years after her graduation were really happy. One time, about ten years later, I even considered actually saying "yes" when Albus would ask me again! Poor dear- he'd probably immediately have died of a heart attack, and left me an early widow… But I must not be joking. Because that is what I have been- a widow, and though I have never been married, and though Belle's father isn't even dead, I mourn over the person I once loved.
I will remain a widow.
So I did not say "yes" to Albus, but not because of that reason. I didn't even properly realize that by then. Realization always dawns too slowly, I have experienced in my long life. And now, in my relatively old age, it has finally come.
My reason for what perhaps was about my fiftieth refusal to Albus, was something entirely different. Something horrible, something unimaginable and the only thing I have ever really blamed my child for.
I was utterly shocked when I heard about the attack on Frank and Alice Longbottom. Frank- one of the most talented and kindest Gryffindors I had ever taught, and Alice, that little, smiling Hufflepuff with her two, dark-brown braids and all her courage…
Both Aurors they had become, and I could not tell how proud I was of them. And still am, for that matter. Poor, poor Frank and Alice, and poor Neville- their son of barely six month of age. Poor couple, tortured into madness by the greatest devil but one.
My daughter.
My Belle, named by me after her half-French, half-Scottish grandmother.
Belle Rosemary McGonagall-Merlynn. My mom.
And now I, Minerva, daughter and mother of a Belle, attended the Wizegamot trial of the girl I had given life, so long ago. I sat there, among the crowd, next to Albus, who held my hand which I gratefully squeezed. He could never have understood my fear, my anger, my sadness, yet I have the strange feeling he did. He saw the tears which no-one else noticed, he felt my shivers which no-one else perceived, he heard me silent prayers to which no-one else listened. And he answered them with prayers of his own- soft and perhaps meaningless, yet soothing whispers in my ear.
I could only think of one thing, though.
Don't, please don't, sentence her to the Kiss…
Everything, but not that, please, please…
My love for her went beyond reason, beyond my own feelings even. I loved her beyond what was true and right, I loved her with the same, unexplainable love I had once given her father.
My prayers must have reached the good Lord, because she wasn't Kissed by the Dementors. She and her- her horrible husband, Rodolphus Lestrange, one of the most despicable Slytherins I had ever taught!- were locked up in Azkaban to die there…
I didn't pity her, though. She had done wrong and she would have to pay for it. That was only right.
Yet I still love her, the first-but-one greatest devil ever.
And do you then really want to know who the greatest devil himself was?
It was her father.
THE END
A/N: So here ends the first part, Minerva's POV, of the trilogy this will become! Look out for the second part "Daughter of a Saint", from Bellatrix' POV!