Yet, Minerva kept on worrying, especially after Dumbledore had left. But she didn't worry about her students, for once. She just couldn't get that one, simple sentence out of her head.

"Odi et amo."

I hate and I love.

She knew the whole poem by heart.

"Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior."

She sighed.

"I hate and I love. Why do I do it, perhaps you might ask? I don't know, but I feel it happening to me and I suffer."

How true the words of this verse were. It was almost- almost as if that Roman poet of so long ago, as if that Gaius Valerius Catullus had foreseen what would once be her fate. Her fate, the fate of Minerva Katherine McGonagall, of just a witch in just a school in just a land…

Maybe- wouldn't it be funny if… no, of course it was ridiculous, but what if that Catullus had been a wizard himself- a Seer perhaps… A real seer- not a second Sybill Trelawney… Not that Minerva, of course, believed such things really existed- her whole skeptical, Scottish mind resisted strongly at such a thing… but still… Just imagine this man had foreseen this.

That would mean- that would mean this whole poem, which she- very appropriately- loved and hated, had been written for her…

But that was, of course, a ridiculous and utterly childish thought. Really! A crazy, immature, foolish and totally untrue thought… Yet, a nice one…