Spring break, yayyyyyyyyyyyyyy! I know this chapter is short...but it's complete, yah know? If I can make the time, I just might finish the next chapter within this WONDERFUL week off.

aha...yup...well, I have broken a precedent, I think. It's Tuesday and I only post on the weekends! haha. well, I was proud of this chapter, thus, it is being posted. :) you guys are great.

Thank you to the following for reviewing last chapter: It's me, get over it, Zoeteproet, SevyHero, Kyra Goddess, alix33, Hogwarts Duo, JoolsFan, princessmai101, MaraSevvie17, Chell, and gahhMinerva. You all made me so happy. The mood shall get lighter and then heavier as the story proceeds...as you shall learn in this chapter, it merely depends on the time of day.


Chapter Seven: Seashells

There was nothing as horrible as to lose everything, Minerva imagined—to have absolutely nil, save for (if one were lucky) the air which flooded through one's lungs. And even then, she hypothesized, there would be no way to claim oxygen. Thus, to have nothing meant to have been better dead. At least then, there could be no quarrel over if air actually belonged to a person; they wouldn't need it, nor have the breath to fight their battle.

She felt that loss of war inside of herself when she dreamed of loneliness, which was certainly comparable to having nothing. Alone for her was never the same embodiment: a little girl of no name, grown man left from war, cellist who sold the cello, dancer without a partner—such were the usual personifications of loneliness. And what's more, she knew as well as the elements of her dreams that they would never find their missing half. Had they continued in her nightly thoughts, Minerva was with certain knowledge that they would indeed eventually die while in her dreams. Her heart would break while in slumber for the images she conjured, and one could only assume that in the morning when she had every reason to wake, she too would die. For in the early hours of the morning, her mind would have finally given in to what she most feared and been named for dead. Hence, Minerva knew well that she would die of having nothing for no reason other than the fact that it was her deepest fear.

She traced the charm along her necklace as she sat in her dark and empty bedroom, staring at the wall with the picture as tears leaked down her face. There was no reason to cry, she knew, but she did. Minerva somehow always found a reason to make herself shed tears. It was a ghastly trick that her mind liked to play upon her, but that neither mattered nor made up for her nightly hysterics for it was her own emotion which plagued her so. The woman was terribly unhappy.

Minerva only thought of loneliness when she was alone. The times that she spent with someone held happy notions, rarely the morose "what ifs" that she asked thousands of times. In fact, the melancholy part of her brain didn't even seem to function when there was someone worth talking to within speaking distance. She was only soothed when a person who cared was close.

A knot pushed hard upon her throat as she thought of a man, a wonderful man who she had certainly deceived. She told him that she loved him. Perhaps she would some day, after her heart gave in to its natural emotion, but she did not at that moment. He was simply there, whispering beautiful things to her that she had waited an eternity to hear. What else could she do but tell him that she loved him? If she hadn't, he probably would have left. Then what? She would give anything if it meant not being alone!

She'd been much too alone for much too long. Minerva wanted companionship…security…perhaps even love some day. Well, more than anything she wanted love. But at the very same moment, the girl was not yet healed from being broken so many years before that. She'd been damaged and no one, no one, knew how much except for her…her pain ran deeper than in her mind, but there ought to be no care on that part, save for Minerva.

It was not her desire on one hand to ever say the words 'I love you' again and mean it, but on the other, she wanted only to be loved and have no fear. "If only," she whispered unhappily, "there was a way to love and not risk anything." Even she knew that there was no way around it, however. She would either have to leap in order to love and have the security which she needed or not take a step at all. And, except for during her temporary moments of insanity, she knew that it was much safer to not move because the second she took a leap, she would fall deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, and deeper into a world of darkness. The woman was too fragile a being to have her heart dropped from its highest point; she'd break if ever such a thing were to happen.

Despite everything, she thought only of being with a man, though for what reason she could not decide: for his ability to keep her cheerful, or the rush that he seemed to shock her with every time they touched. This man, who she did not love but who gave her happiness, was named Albus. He was across the lake, perhaps sleeping, dreaming sweet dreams of life. It was only in his nature to think of wonderful things while in slumber.

And Minerva, the woman who said she loved the man and did not, wanted nothing more than to hear his calming voice in the dead of the night in order to make her have good thoughts. Albus always managed to give her something happy to think about; Minerva had fallen asleep that night with the feeling of his lips upon hers…and indeed, she had fallen to slumber with a smile upon her face. His kiss had left her in a world that was quite unremembered by her—she took much sorrow in believing that once upon a time, she often fell asleep with a kiss upon her lips. The woman did not love him…

With the thought of his lips and only that, she got up from her bed and put a cloak over her nightgown. She was going to see him.

With a snap of her fingers, she was standing in his room, looking at a mass of pillows that seemed to be lacking one vital part: a body. Alas, he was not slumbering nor even—as it appeared—inhabiting his quarters.

Her stomach grew tight and for the first time, it occurred to her that she had no right to come to him in the middle of the night. He was, at most, a man who she had kissed once. That gave her no grounds for coming to see him—to make love with him.

A loss filled her throat when she realized he was not there. It was not as if she expected him to be wherever she wished for he was not hers to have, but she had hoped that he would be the sort who could comfort her. Perhaps even that was wishful thinking. Albus, sweet, wonderful, lonely Albus was away, loving someone else (as she supposed, for there was nothing to do at three o'clock in the morning save for make love).

It was no great beating on her poor soul, however, for she did not suppose she loved him…and her heart would always be broken, she knew.


Albus stared at the picture of Eleanor in the dead of the night. He'd been staring for hours and hours. Those gray eyes had become burned even deeper into his brain until all he seemed to see was that image. They pierced his heart in quick little stabs that were painful to stand, yet he did. The man knew that her memory was finally ready to be let go…ready to be sunk in the ocean and never looked for again. Albus merely wanted a few more hours with the thing that he had been holding onto for so very long. For indeed, he was ready to forget her.

Only a few minutes more did he waste, gazing into the eyes of his old love, before blowing out the candle in his library. Beautiful Eleanor was to be left well enough alone. And as for Albus? Well, he was quite sure that their time together had been well spent and was ready to end. The memories would always exist in his mind, but she was no longer a part of his present.

The man gathered himself up and left the room, walking only a short distance down the corridor to his room. An almost giddy feeling overcame him, however, when he realized that there was a long haired, dark, beautiful image standing near the threshold and he dared to believe that it was not a dream that he produced. Cautiously, he approached the door.

The woman spun around quickly when she heard the noise. A sigh of relief overcame her voice. "Albus," she whispered gently after a few moments.

He blinked as he stared at her face. She'd been crying not so very long ago—seeing as how the moonlight reflected off her drops—perhaps even within the last minute. A tear formed at the edge of her eye, the man could see it trembling, thought it refused to fall. The woman quickly brought a hand to the water and wiped her eye clean. Then she did something that he would never have imagined her doing; the woman pushed her hot mouth to his as she tangled her arms around his neck.

While he was an intelligent man, he was certainly not one without sin; he slid his wet tongue into her anxious mouth while winding his arms around her heartlessly thin waist, tracing up and down. She moaned to him, making no audible indication of anything other than enthusiasm. When they broke for air, her head did not seem at all to act with her body which pressed towards him. Along with her lips, her head fell back and she stared at him with a sweet smile upon her face.

"I didn't think you were here," she whispered, running her hands through his hair softly.

"And I did not know you were here," he smiled back. "Besides the obvious reason," he looked down at her vaguely covered chest, "what is the reason for your visit this evening?"

She took several careful blinks before answering, "I was thinking about you, Albus, and I decided I wanted to be near you…to hear your cheerful voice and to feel you," she leaned forward and met her lips to his, softer, with a more needy air this time.

The man grinned down at the woman. In all truth, he would have made love to her if she had not said such words—Merlin knows he wanted to; it had been an eternity since he had anyone worth having in his bed—he couldn't though…Minerva was doing it for all the wrong reasons. She was not seducing him for love, but because she had nowhere else to go—and both of them knew it. She would not have been crying if she had only a whim.

He slid his hands up and down her waist, attempting to think of an appropriate approach for what he had to say, and then finally moved them to her face. He lifted her chin up softly. "Let's go for a walk."

Minerva seemed quite put out by this idea for she drew gently away from him with an open mouth, "A walk?"

Albus nodded, "Around the lake. We can get some fresh air and talk."

He could see a glimmer of wetness upon her eyes. Her face was scrunching up—only around the lips—and he could see her stomach tightening. As subtle as it was, he even believed that she may have started trembling. She was fighting tears. Even her voice seemed to crack when she replied quite sadly, "All right." With these final words, she made her way out of his room and down to the bottom of the house.

The man followed her, knowing well that she only chose to lead for fear of him seeing her sad figure. It made him all the more guilty, knowing that he had caused pain for the woman. She was in enough pain already without his help. Why couldn't he just do it? He loved her enough for both of them. Ah, but no, that was not his character; all must be right in the world for there to be any sort of sinful goings on.


If she were to never fall in love with Albus, the reason would be Albus. He was too cautious, too aware to be the right kind of lover for Minerva. The man would never—could never—make love if it was not for pure, untainted love. And the woman? She solely wanted that comfort, if only for an hour. Her reasons at times may seem unjust, but they made perfect sense to her; she didn't want to talk about her problems, merely to forget about them.

Walking, even next to him in the darkness, did not cause her thoughts to flutter away for once. There was much too much silence and not enough soft words. What the man did have to say seemed to be directly related to her mood, which meant very little on Minerva's part. She hated the way she thought and didn't want anyone else to know how terrifying her mind was, for it scared her on her own; if she let any person into her world, there would be the most terrible disruption. And Minerva, already vaguely unstable, could very well go mad. Thus, their conversation along the shore of the lake was a quiet and uneventful one.

The woman stared at the sandy ground as she walked, being careful not to trip over twigs or rocks. Albus said nothing and seemed to choose the stars instead of the ground to look at, that is, until he turned to look at the woman again. His tone was almost sorry as he spoke gently, "I used to wonder why they called this place Hermit Lake. It took me a few years to add two and two together."

"That's not very much like you," she whispered.

"I realize that," the man nodded. "Why do you think it's called Hermit Lake?"

Minerva blinked, "Because there is no one around for miles?"

"True, true," he whispered, "but that's not the reason. Do you want to hear the real reason?"

She looked at him for the first time since they left his house. The woman nodded apprehensively, interested. It was a thought that indeed had been plaguing her for some time. "If you promise it's interesting."

"It is," he nodded. "Look down at your feet."

The girl did. Both of them stopped. "All right," she whispered.

"What do you see?"

She blinked. "Rocks, twigs, shells—"

"—shells?"

Minerva bobbed her head up and down slowly. "Yes. Shells of some sort. What about them?"

"Well, Hermit Crabs use shells, do they not?"

The woman bobbed her head again. She understood…and it was not an interesting story at all. "So Hermit Lake is named after crabs? Crabs?" (Albus nodded his head) "Not much of a story, is it?" She began walking again, feeling let down in some cosmic way. So she had come to the crab lake? Minerva rolled her eyes.

"Well," he shrugged, "it depends on how one looks at it," he kicked a rock gently into the water, "There's the obvious way, which you are using, and the symbolic way, which I tend to use." Albus put his hand on Minerva's waist and guided her along the bed, pausing for a few minutes. "You see, this place was covered by ocean millions of years ago and has only recently—that is in comparison with the history of the Earth—hit a drought, thus leaving a lake and remnants of what animals once lived here. Now, there are obviously no crabs in sight, but their memory has been left. And as such, Hermit lake is not a crab lake at all, but a lake filled with seashells, and therefore memories." Albus bent down and took in his hand a beautifully shaped shell whose colors were not quite visible in the pale moonlight and gave it to Minerva. "For my memory, my dear."

She took it into her hand and then cradled it to her chest. He was forgiven for being himself, as odd a crime it was. Albus merely wanted everything to be as it ought to be before making love or doing anything that either of them may want to hold dear. He saw their affair as something righteous, heated, and soulful… He saw the world as being right.

And thus, Minerva smiled and wrapped her arms around him. She felt his strong hands graze over her back. Then she felt a drop. Looking up at the man, she knew he was not crying, but some greater being was, for the sky began all at once to fall heavy tears that covered the ground. They both smiled at each other.


thank you for reading :)