Hello, all! Just a quick note from me: I've updated the past chapters, particularly Un bel di, so you might want to reread it, just for reference. It won't have a significant impact on this chapter, however, so if you'd rather not, don't feel obligated.

Thanks to Juno for betaing.

E lucevan le stelle

E lucevan le stelle,
ed olezzava la terra,
stridea l'uscio dell'orto,
e un passo sfiorava la rena...
Entrava ella, fragrante,
Mi cadea fra le braccia...
Oh dolci baci, o languide carezze,
Mentr'io fremente
La belle forme discioglea dai veli!
Svani per sempre il sogno mio d'amore..
L'ora e' fuggita...
E muoio disperato!
E non ho amato mai tanto la vita!

For the sake of his sanity, he had known that he had to get out.

Seeing them, all of them that were left, was too much for his shattered consciousness to take in every day.

Not seeing them made his every night full, and not of sleep but of memories and gruesome fillers--scenes that flicked by his subconscious and past the proscenium of his mind into the forefront of his reckonings; scenes of Sirius, twisted and wrong that turned his stomach to molten lead, scenes of Lily, screaming and running, scenes of Peter, doing what he himself should have done, a peaceful cemetery, with two matching white crosses standing erect and yet smaller than they suggested, and farther off, a simple plaque bearing a name too familiar to read... Dumbledore crying, openly. And the shocking absence of Harry, a hole that made the scene that much harder to bear.

Yes, he had to live, had to subsist on something. He travelled, at first not caring where he went, just so long as it wasn't where they were back where he had been. Surviving had presented its challenges; subsisting on a day to day basis could be quite hard when you didn't want to own a name or a history. Eventually he was disgusted with his actions, and settled more permanently, sometimes for months.

Everyone always wondered about that poor man that lived all alone down in the outskirts of their towns and villages. There were women, more concerned than the others, who made themselves accessible.

He couldn't see any of them without thinking of her. He never let her leave his mind. For years of his life, he trembled in her shadow, cast from thousands of miles or, once, just a few, on the place of his sanctuary. In some ways, if he let her go, he would have, in essence, let go of life. For him, Minerva McGonagall had become one of his chief reminders of life: the good and cherished, the loved and lost, the forsaken and forgotten. She became his everything. He couldn't bear to think of seeing her again, for if he did, he seriously thought that he might die. Romantic fool that he was. Fool that he was. Cowardly, useless, fecking fool. Running from life.

Somehow, after losing so much, and leaving all else, he didn't think he could manage to ever find everything again.

So he waited. For her to meet him, bump into him, just a touch, and then he would be dead. He even played a game with himself: how daring could he be? -- to find all his strength and live in Scotland in the summer.

He thought had seen her, once. It was certainly a black-haired woman, living in Aberdeen, shopping at the market and the book store. He didn't dare to even make sure.

He had flinched.

He went to the states then, living in the biggest cities he could find. Losing himself again. Losing her. He found a prostitute one night. Expensive, too, for anyone, not just him.

She had been a gorgeous blonde, blue-eyed confection that seemed not to resemble her in the slightest. They had shared a few kisses and a casual discarding of clothing when she asked to go and change a bit with a sly smirk. She came back with large glasses and tousled hair in his shirt. He smirked and moved towards her when he noticed her eyes again. Greenish-brown. Calm. He froze. Goddamn contacts.

He left the states just as quickly and travelled Europe, searching for a reason to subsist that wasn't everything. Himself, possibly.

But, in the end, he found her, and that was enough.

She hadn't been able to sleep.

Nights she would lay awake, long nights, when she could do no more than watch the moon cross the sky through the window she placed in her tower room. Every night, it followed the moon, and never was a trace of mist or cloud to appear in it.

Sometimes, she was lucky, and she could find a troubled sleep by just past the middle of the night.

Many times over, she never slept a wink.

They all saw that she was stressed. But she had ever been a severe young woman, and none could know her trouble but one.

Her devotion to him was as great as it was to any man. He knew this, and he respected her all the more for it. He tutored her and guided her, no matter her troubles, always using a gentle hand.

He was far too soft on her. But he was the only one, really. He was all she had left.

She cherished her students, and her peers, and she found satisfaction in her work. Long years she spent searching for the meaning her life had once held. The feeling of uselessness subsided. But she was always alone.

Because he had left her that way.

They all had.

A seventeen year old girl with long dark hair crept into the parlour room of what once was her father's flat.

She sidled up to a rather dusty black spinet piano and carefully opened the bench cover. Inside, her deft fingers quickly located the Rachmaninov book; she opened it to a page that, if the spine was any indicator, had been rather popular in its past usage.

Closing the lid and sitting down, the girl spread the pages open in a rather nervous habit. She began playing timidly, almost timorously, the melody more like a whisper than a piano, the harmony soft and moody. She looked at the music distantly as her fingers nimbled and grew loose, closing her eyes as the piece came back into her memory.

Grimacing slightly, she began to sway and forgot her fingers and piano as the music filled her ears and mind.

She remembered the exact silvery shade of her father's hair: a tinge of black still not giving up to the dark steely colour that was slowly taking over his head, cut modestly and parted on the left. She remembered the look of his hands, veins soft and throbbing, muscles still strong and exacting. His face, the wrinkles around his eyes that loosened each year, his eyes dark, almost black, his cheekbones high, his mouth, thin yet full. His quiet demeanour, his obsession with his craft, and the small smile he would wear around his daughter.

They were too quiet.

They always had been.

The two loved books almost as much as they loved each other. Found studies as intoxicating as hard liquor.

But they were different, and Minerva couldn't see what her father saw. He found her like her mother, she never did. He loved her as he had loved her mother, quietly accepting and admiring her strength and will and her growing ken. She didn't quite understand him.

Then he went and died.

And she was never the same.

Of course, she had known that he would be targeted. As most of the staff would be: members of the pre-Order before this brainchild of Dumbledore would even present itself as necessary.

Term had ended; she had graduated. He had cried. She never knew, of course, he had become quite adept at hiding his emotions.

She had gone with Lily. The only Gryffindor that had ever really bothered to get to know her. She was forever the quiet, brainy one, or just one of the Quidditch boys. Rather an odd mixture, to Lily's eyes.

She had had a lovely time and was in a good mood. She Disapparated to her father's flat, waiting to tell him about the dinner, as was per usual for them, sitting around the den fire.

When she arrived outside the door, she found that-- there was no door. Her eyes widening with shock, she walked into the living area, seeing that much was destroyed: the cabinet that held her music, her father's bookcase and chair....

'Dad?' she half-cried out. 'Where are you?'

There was no reply. She ran quickly into his study to find the desk half blasted away. Her father was sitting in front of it on the floor, his back to her, swaying like a child with a toy. She rushed to him to see he was holding a dagger, his wand dropped and forgotten.

'Father! What's wrong?' Her lip was raised in total shock, her breathing quickened, her wand in her hand.

The man before her looked curiously at her, trying to understand the noise. He remained silent.

She knelt before him, looking in his dead eyes, before whispering again, 'Father?'

He looked back down at the dagger, his eyebrows coming together.

'Father, talk to me! Please....' She tried to make him look at her. He just sat there, unable to do anything.

'Oh, God,' she murmured, remembering something from the Daily Prophet. Attacks... by....

'Dementors,' she half-whispered. 'Father....'

Silence.

She cried out and sobbed uncontrollably, her stomach quivering, her teeth bared.

He must have gotten the dagger out before... and he must have intended to.... She touched his shoulder, cautiously.

He took her hand and examined it as though he had never seen one before. She stopped breathing.

He gave her the dagger, smiling innocently.

Horrified, she dropped it, and as it clanged on the ground, he picked it up again with a small smile, holding it out to her.

'Father.... No,' she sobbed and fell into his arms. His position didn't change. Suddenly, she stopped crying. She moved slowly until she was sitting across from him, watching his contented face.

She took the dagger from his hand, shut her eyes, and thrust it into his heart.

He was buried honourably on a sunny day that June, in a small churchyard just outside Aberdeen.

She had been living in her Animagus form for the past days. She transformed for the funeral, and swore to herself that she would never use it to hide again. Something hardened within her.

Albus had been watching her carefully.

He cared for his godchild, too much if truth were to be known. If Albus Dumbledore had one fault, it was his being human.

He watched her, at the head of the funeral party, saw her dropping the dirt onto his casket. He had been resisting the urge to touch her mind. It wasn't his place. But she was only a seventeen-year-old girl. He touched her just briefly, and saw her hand covered in his life's blood, her face covered in tears, his smile of incomprehension, the deadness of his intelligent eyes, and the fear of the cold deadness, the dreamlike sketch of what must have been his soul and then he knew. She turned and looked at him just then, and whether she had noticed his presence or merely glanced up by chance, the look in her eyes was as lost as he had just felt. He smiled wearily at her, the corner of his mouth just turned and felt relieved that she wasn't trying to mask herself.

After the ceremony had ended and most of the party had dispersed, he walked up to her. She looked at him inquiringly, almost as if she had expected him to do this and yet had no idea what to expect. As if she had been waiting for his words, brushing aside all others. Perhaps she had been.

'Hello, Minerva.'

'Headmaster,' she gave in reply, looking at him in that same lost manner.

'Just Albus will do now, or Dumbledore if you prefer.' She looked at him with the trace of a smile on her face, but did not speak.

'Do you know, the last time I talked to Euan, he was bragging on you?' She looked slightly shocked at his abruptness. 'He always was very proud of you -- and with good reason.' He smiled at her fondly.
She merely looked down at the ground.

'Minerva. Your father was a wonderful man, and I only wish that I had done something to help insure his safety. I feel that a large part of the reason for his death was his devotion to myself and the school, and I did feel that a threat could be expected, but certainly not of this severity.' His bright blue eyes were sober and saddened. 'You have my assurance that I'll be implementing measures to insure the safety of all those who are devoted to fighting against Voldemort--' he stopped as she winced frightfully. 'Minerva, I know that you are feeling all kinds of doubt about your actions toward your father,' she looked up at him sharply, 'but I must emphasise that no one can accuse you of acting wrongly; you were most courageous and thoughtful and-- I would just like to apologise to you for any pain that my failings might have caused you.' At this, she surprised him by embracing him tightly. He patted her on the back gently. He hadn't hugged her like this since she was merely a child. She looked back up at him, her eyes overbright.

'Dumbledore, I'd like to offer you my services in your fight against-- He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. If there is anything that I can do to help you, in any way--'

'I will most certainly let you know, Minerva. We really do need to organise an intelligence group to assist against his attempts. All that I can ask of you now is that you spread the news of his growth to your friends and beg them to arm themselves. Euan's sacrifice has lead me to the belief that Voldemort isn't merely interested in ridding the world of Muggles and their descendants but also any of those who are devoted to stop him from doing so. Be careful, Minerva.'

She smiled at him in gratitude and accompanied him out of the cemetery.