The old tabby cat making herself comfortable in the windowsill was mostly grey now, her markings faded over the years. She lay with her chin on her folded paws, looking out the window, watching water drip from a large, melting icicle.
"It is an age," the cat thought, "of isolation."
The cat laughed at herself, silently. What had brought on that thought? Why, even now, she could hear Mrs. Hudson's crystal ball, tuned to the Gnome Gnews Gnetwork. In the parlor, two of the portraits were having a discussion about the latest scandal in Government, while overhead, the young wizards Mrs. Hudson had hired to have a look at the roof discussed the condition of the water-repelling spells woven into the thatch.
And yet, McGonagall thought. In another time, people had walked from room to room to speak to each other, instead of sending ætherscriber messages. In the past, people had believed in the art of writing letters; had not dashed off two lines without thought for spelling, or conscience expression of ideas.
The cat sighed. Perhaps, she thought, she was just getting old. She watched water drip from the melting icicle, and remembered a letter she'd written, an angry letter, to Ancelm. She'd never sent it. She'd sat down, and written it in that awful little garret she'd had in Paris that year, all of her hurt and anger poured out in beautiful prose. How she'd slaved over that letter... and then, when it was finished, when it was the model of anger and hurt and betrayal put in words, she had tossed it in the fire.
There were things in her life that Minerva McGonagall regretted. Sometimes, when she was thinking of something else entirely, the memory of some unkind word she'd spoken, some thoughtless thing she'd done, would come floating up, and she would feel again the chagrin, the embarrassment of the thing. "How could I have done that," she would think, embarrassed.
The cat stretched, and yawned. It was the price of having a conscience, she supposed. It was what set people like her apart from people like Voldemort. She could not imagine the thing that Tom Riddle had become, waking up in the middle of the night to face the memory of the people he had killed, the lives he had destroyed; could not imagine him wondering, "did I really do that? How could I have been so stupid?"
Mrs. Hudson walked through the room. "Tea in a moment, Headmaster," she said.
Minerva stood, transforming back to her normal, Human, self. "Thank you, Mrs. Hudson," she said, and she smiled. "Why don't you invite those nice young men in?"
Mrs. Hudson nodded. "I think I will," she answered.
Minerva smiled. So long as there was tea in England, she thought, no one would be completely isolated.
