The night was filled with sound, if you listened closely. From the mantlepiece came the quiet click-click-click of a clock, almost (but not quite) perfectly matched by the clicks of the wristwatch on the night stand. Both had been made by the Tickes family, half a century apart. From various pictures came soft breathing as the inhabitants slept. How long, Minerva McGonagall wondered, had she slept in rooms full of other people? When did it happen that she simply became accustomed to two-dimensional "people" watching her, talking to her?

She listened to the sound of the ticking. Her watch, custom ordered for her by a friend, long ago, was decorated with a lion... the lion of Gryffindor; the lion of Scotland. The clock might as well have been a muggle artifact, except that she had never, in over seventy-five years, wound it. "Entrain," she thought, then was surprised by the word. What did it mean? She searched her memory, then found the meaning... when two clocks lived side by side, they would come to beat at the same instant; their movements would entrain. "Hyugens," she thought, and then, "seventeenth century... late."

Minerva smiled in the darkness. Imagine describing clocks as "living side by side." What was the name of that Muggle psychologist who claimed that animism was a stage healthy children outgrew? In the wizarding world, many people never outgrew the idea that everything had a spirit... after all, didn't paintings talk to you? Didn't broomsticks behave as if they knew their rider's preferences, after a couple of years of riding? So why not describe clocks as living side by side?

It wasn't only clocks that entrained, Minerva thought. People did it, too. She thought of the castle, of Hogwarts, and what would be happening there, now. She fumbled for her watch, looked at it. Obligingly, it lit up for her, the numerals glowing softly. Just past three in the morning. Now, up at the castle, only the house-elves would still be awake, scurrying about silently as they cleaned up behind the students. And the ghosts, of course. "The dead," nearly headless Nick had told her once, "do not sleep. Having denied death, her brother's realm is closed to us, also."

Another hour, and it would be only the ghosts. Then, at five, the morning house-elves would begin stirring, beginning the morning's cooking. By six, the masters and the early risers among the students would be up. Showers would be taken. Teeth brushed. By seven, clean uniforms would be being put on, and the sluggards among the students would be waking.

By eight, everyone would be in the Great Hall, eating, except for those few who were cramming for tests today. By nine, classes would begin.

The students, the masters... all would do these things without thinking, as if they were afloat on a tide, pulled by the moon. Rise, fall. Rise, fall. Day following day, week, month, year... century.

Albus had been an important headmaster, Minerva knew. He had shaped the future of the school. So many of them, though, herself included, had simply been caretakers, entrusted with the sacred responsibility of ensuring that there would be a Hogwarts School for the next generation, and the one after that. There was no shame in being a caretaker; no shame in fulfilling the trust placed in her. She wondered if Headmaster Hatcher understood the trust; understood the implications.

There was a portrait of McGonagall in the headmaster's office. It was an image of her, as she'd been in the early years of her own occupancy of that office. An image of her body, of her mind, of her self. She wondered if Hatcher ever looked to it for advice, as she had looked to Albus' portrait after he was gone.

She should update it, she thought. She should share with the portrait the things she had learned since it was painted. It was strange to think it, but she'd been so young, then; only seventy. Minerva listened to the soft breathing of her pictures, and smiled. So long as Hogwarts stood, she thought, her picture would be next to Albus'. Perhaps, over time, they would entrain.