It was raining. Big, heavy drops of rain that fell and fell and fell, and gave no sign of being tired of falling. It was a rain, Minerva McGonagall thought, that her mother would have said was there to wash away the sins of the world. McGonagall cradled the hot cup of tea in her hands, and felt mildly depressed. She could work a weather spell, she knew, and send the rain away, but another storm would be along in a little bit. She could work a pain charm, remove the ache of her joints... but it would just be a disguise, and in a while, the pain would be back. No; what she needed was sunshine, to bake the pain out of her bones, to dry her out.
Grouchet, her doctor, had said much the same thing in a quiet voice to Mrs. Hudson when he'd left. "Nothing really wrong with her, the old dear," he'd said, "but she's almost a century old. The human body..." He'd trailed off, shaking his head. McGonagall knew. Witches and Wizards didn't fall prey to the things that killed muggles... they had charms against bacteria, could spell away viruses, could transform the harmful into the helpful. But time... time still wore on them. If a Wizard wasn't killed by another of his own kind, he could expect the same century or so that a muggle could.
Unless, Minerva thought, the Wizard had the Elixir of Life. She'd seen Albus sip it once, at the beginning of her time at Hogwarts. She'd never had Flammel's skill at alchemy, though, and anyway, she'd seen the price Albus paid for his long life; had seen the care and worry eat at him like rot. "No," she said aloud, and Mrs. Hudson looked up from her knitting. Minerva shook her head, and Mrs. Hudson nodded.
Albus had needed to take the potion; Minerva understood that. Voldemort... Tom Riddle... had been unfinished business, business that Albus needed to see to completion. She hadn't Albus' influence, and Fudge hadn't had his wisdom. Only Albus could have seen the thing through. Minerva had no such unfinished business, she thought. None of the students of her time had turned into dark wizards... or if they had, they'd been much quieter about it than Grindlewald or Voldemort.
And, despite what some people taught to young children, muggle witch-hunts could be very dangerous indeed... so quiet was good. Minerva shuddered for a moment, thinking of things she'd read, of Wizards and Witches separated from their wands, held until potions wore off, standing enchantments grew dim, and then...
Thunder rolled, close by, and for a moment, Minerva was startled, remembering the blitz, the German airplanes flying over and dropping their eggs of death. They'd huddled in the Anderson shelter, she and her mother, listening to the concussions, wondering what they'd find when they came up again. She'd been in the Anderson shelter when the owl arrived, addressed to "Minerva McGonagall, Anderson shelter, back garden, No. 14 Argyle Way." Her Hogwarts letter had kept her busy, and her mother too, while the bombs fell. The owl had hopped from bunk to bunk, frustratingly unable to provide any more answers than were in the letter.
She'd written those letters, later. She'd tried to be more helpful to new muggle-born witches and wizards. Had tried to tell them how to find their way to suppliers for the things they'd need, how to find their way to the train. Still, every year, one or two wouldn't come. Minerva had always wondered if it was because they found the idea of witchcraft and wizardry daunting, or if they'd simply not been able to follow her directions. Then, too, once in a blue moon, one of the old families would send a child to a muggle school. One of the Longbottom boys had gone to... Eton? Or was it Harrow?
"He's a squib," Neville had said of his son, without shame. "He'll live in their world; I want to do the best by him I can."
It would be hard, Minerva thought. As a muggle child, she'd had no idea of the Wizarding world, of course; she could have lived her life without knowing, without missing it. As a Witch, she had been able to have the best of both worlds, had been able to move freely among muggles without suspicion. But it would be hard, to come from this world, where tea could be summoned with the wave of a wand, where things could be done with a wand and a will, and then, to enter the muggle world, where everything had to be done, the long way, the hard way.
"It's not good for her lungs," Grouchet had said to Mrs. Hudson. "I do wish she'd go someplace warm." But going someplace warm would mean leaving Hogwarts, and that was something Minerva was not able to do.
"Soon," she murmured, staring into the depths of her teacup. "I'll leave, soon."
