Chapter Five

Albus held the girl he loved as she cried, caressing her long, raven tresses as she hid her face in his thick, purple robes. He knew very well she did not like to cry in public- and he knew, too, that even he had to consider it as a rare… privilege, almost, to get the right to witness her sadness. Of course he hated to see her unhappy, of course he wanted to watch her smile- but at the same time, he was glad that at least he provided her with someone she could trust. With a shoulder to cry on, even- with someone who would listen.

Months had passed since the horrible news of her family's being arrested had reached Hogwarts, and it with a worried look in his eyes that Albus had witnessed Minerva undergo the massive amount of sympathy both students and teachers had provided her with. She'd accepted it all with a grateful nod and a smile here and there- but Albus had watched it and known that it would pass.

It had passed. Slowly, the student body returned to its usual life, with little and bigger problems, with homework, with gossips- and he had seen the breach between Minerva and the others gradually become wider and wider until, now, in the end, he knew she was fighting herself. It was a fight he knew he couldn't and wouldn't fight for her- and yet that didn't mean that he didn't pity her.

As sadness was replaced by anger, and finally by dissappointment, he just sat there and watched- watched Minerva as she paced, raged, yelled- knowing that every single word she spoke was true and rightful, and yet knowing that no-one would understand it.

"How can they be so ignorant? How can they just sit there and go on and on about copying my homework while- while people are dying, being tortured- starving! How can they not care? How can they gossip about- about nothing, while- oh Albus-"

Here she came to a stop, kneeling right in front of where he sat, and in her big, emerald eyes he read every ounce, every single little bit of that silent, ear-deafening despair he'd known had been hidden inside of her for a very long time.

"How can they be what they are and yet grow up unharmed? I don't want them to be harmed- of course I don't- and yet why is this so unjust? How can they live in such ignorance?"

Albus knew what he had to reply- and he knew that she knew it as well. It was the truth, the inevitable truth- however painful it could be. But he knew she would never regard it as painful, after all- for if there was anything Minerva McGonagall esteemed more than courage, it was truth.

As he, endlessly tender, rested the palms of his hands against her pale, tear-stained cheeks, carefully guiding her head until it rested atop of his purple-clad lap.

"The same way you, Minerva, lived in ignorance before all this started."

As she looked up, he knew that she'd understood his words and even grasped the truth in them. Pulling the young, now shivering, woman closer with one arm, he once more spread his cloak over both their sitting silhouettes. As she, almost reluctantly, cuddled up to him, her muttered words were barely audible, yet painfully honest.

"I- I know… I was- I am- an awful person too-"

"Minerva, that is not true, you know it. You are not awful, they are not awful. If anything, it's human nature that is awful. We were not born to know, see and understand everything right away. We are born not knowing, and we only have a little time to change that- here and there. We're not made to worry about things we don't have to worry about."

As Minerva tilted up her face to him again, Albus knew he'd made the right decision in remarking this. She was intelligent enough to see this as what it was- an information, a comfort, not a reproach, and as softly, only a short moment, her lips locked with his in a short, grateful peck, he smiled as he held her.

"Albus- thank you."

A mere nod of his said more than a thousand words ever could, and as Minerva leant her head on his shoulder, heartbeat slowly returning to normal again, the man knew, on that very moment, as the starlit sky was stained by the bloody red airplane lights, that he'd do everything to protect this woman he loved. Everything.

It was basically that feeling which made him frown as, moments later, the girl looked up to him- eyes soft and begging, yet equipped with that steely stubbornness he knew so very well.

"Albus," she said.

"Will you help me to become an Auror?"