"Albus, for the last time, drop it."
"I will not. Not until you admit that I'm right."
Minerva shot him a very angry look. She hated it when he was stubborn. She wanted him to just give up and leave her alone about this, but he wouldn't. He'd be on about it for the past two days, though she really had no idea why he had been. It didn't make any sense to her.
"Albus, I've never noticed anything that—"
"If you will excuse me for saying this, my dear, you have never been particularly observant when it comes to the feelings of others."
Minerva fumed, furious that he had to be so right at such an inconvenient time. Why wouldn't he drop this? Shouldn't this be hard for him? Were their positions reversed she never would have come to him saying the same things as he was now.
"I think you're projecting your own feelings onto someone else," she replied calmly, ignoring the excellent point he had just made.
"Why would I do that?"
She snorted derisively. "You're asking the wrong person. Even if you are right—something I do not believe at all—I see no reason for you to be telling me this at all."
"I'm telling you because I thought it very possible that you might have noticed."
"Well that's not an answer at all, now is it?" She sighed heavily. "I really don't know why you're doing this Albus. Why so forcefully insist that I accept that another man is attracted to me?"
"In the hopes that you might, at the very least, allow him to pursue you."
Minerva felt her breath catch in her throat and her chest tighten. "Why would you want that?"
"For a number of reasons, really, but primarily because I love you as much as I do."
"That doesn't make any sense at all."
There were tears beginning to form in her eyes now, but she held them back. She'd cried far too many times over the past few years, worried for Alan's safety and scared of the thought that perhaps she was incapable of keeping her son safe from Albus enemies. She'd cried over Albus' himself as well, not nearly as often, but she had and she refused to do it right now. She kept a straight face.
"Of course it does. I love you, therefore I wish you to be safe and happy. As much as we may care for one another, pining away wishing for what we know is impossible does neither of us any good. So, having seen another man whom I believe to be of excellent character looking at you in the same way I do I have seen an opportunity. You're still young and have many years left ahead of you which I do not want wasted on me. It is best for you, and for our son, if you manage to attain a degree of separation from me and pursue a normal family existence."
"Why do you always push us away? I don't see how you can stand to always be telling me that I need to separate myself from you and to move on. I can hardly stand it when I hear the words leave your mouth. I don't know how you can even say them."
"It's not easy, Minerva. I know that sometimes you have a hard time believe that fact, but it's not easy for me to tell you these things. I want nothing more than to spend eternity with you, to raise our son together and to watch him as he becomes a man that any father would be proud to call his son. I can't have that, so I try and see that the next best thing occurs. All I want is for my family to be happy, safe and well cared for. That's why I do this."
"Albus," she began softly, sinking into the chair behind her desk. "I've been down this road before. I'm not certain I can be happy with someone else."
"Of course you can. I'm not perfect, Minerva. You know that. And human beings have very big hearts. If we let ourselves, we are capable of loving many people. Please let yourself. For me. For Alan as well. He needs a father figure. A real father figure, not some old man whom he dare not identify as his father. This is better for both of you."
"I'm still not certain."
"I can't have you wasting your life on me. Just because I am not in a position to move on, does not mean that you should not and I find nothing more painful than the thought that I am keeping you from something better."
She looked up at where he was standing, her eyes sad and resigned. "You're not going to give up on this are you?"
"I believe this is the right thing to do."
"Fine. If this will make you happy, then I'll do it. Maybe you're right anyway. Who knows. It can't hurt to try I suppose."
At least not much.
/E/E/E/E/E/
Sometimes Albus wished, when he saw Minerva and her new beau together, that she had stayed stubborn. He wished that she would have stayed steadfast in her determination to have no other. Each time he would do his best to remind himself that this was exactly what he had told her to do. This was what was best for her.
It still hurt, though, and he found he could not help but be jealous of the other man. He shouldn't be. Professor Rixon Moriarty was a good person and really a far better match for Minerva than he himself was. The man was 55 years his junior, handsome and practical in much the same way that Minerva was. It had been a good decision to push Rixon and Minerva together.
But he wished he hadn't. Every time he saw Rixon with the mother of his son something within he screamed that he should hex this other wizard into oblivion. Minerva was his. How dare another man even think of touching her.
Then the other part of his brain, the practical part which always managed to keep a level view of things, would intervene and save him from doing anything he might regret later. Minerva was not his. It was presumptuous of him to even think of her that way. He'd made love to her once—and only once—overcome by his own weakness. That did not make her his and what a monster he was be thinking of it that way. Even if circumstances were not what they were, that night would not have made her his no matter what he sometimes imagined.
He did his best to avoid thinking of the situation. No amount of logical thought of how this was better for Minerva or how he had no right to feel as he did helped so he simply did his best to avoid it all together. He was careful to only see Minerva when she was alone and when he did happen upon her with Rix he quickly turned about and went back the way he came. He'd tried to deal with them together but all that did was make him go crazy. Instead he focused his mind elsewhere.
He'd made it his business to keep an eye on his son whenever Minerva was otherwise occupied. He babysat when she went out with her beau and he'd even begun to spend some of his free time watching him invisibly. It was not something he did often, between his duties at Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic he did not often have free time, but occasionally he found that he simply wanted to see his son. He'd never gotten to do that before. Every time Alan saw him, he would immediately drop everything to interact with his father. It was a rare enough treat that seeing Albus warranted such treatment. Only through invisibility did Albus ever get the opportunity to simply watch.
This is the price I pay, he thought one evening as he watched Minerva put their son to bed one night. This is the price I pay for the ability to do good things in this world.
Honestly, it wasn't really that bad. At least he had the ability to do this, to not miss out on quite everything even as he kept his distance.
Still, it wasn't easy. On occasion, a certain guilt crept into his consciousness at his actions, at the way he violated the privacy of the two people he cared about most in the world. It seemed wrong, but then so did the entire situation. Watching Minerva move on with someone else, missing so much of his son's growth . . .
The price he paid was a very high one indeed.
A high price for a high gain, he consoled himself. Defeating Grindelwald had made him a fair number of enemies, but the world was better for it. It was the same with Tom Riddle. His wariness had made him a very powerful enemy, but it was the right thing to do. The enemies he'd made in this way might threaten his family, but there were things he could and had done to protect them from those things. If he let the world decay into what either of those two men would want them to be then there would be no protecting anyone. The price he paid now was high, but the other price was far higher.
He would rather give up his family than have them and not stay wary of what he could not prove to be, but felt very strongly was, a very big threat. He just wished he knew enough now to quell it right here—that he could eliminate the threat to his family and stop pushing them away.
But Tom Riddle was nowhere to be found right now. All that Albus could ever find of him were faint whispers of a man named Lord Voldemort.
So he was resigned to this. Watching invisibly from the sidelines as his family lived their lives.
"Good night, wee one. I'll see you in the morning."
"Good night, mum. I love you."
"I love you too. Sleep."
And I, thought Albus, I also love you both.
He watched quietly from his spot near the foot of his son's bed as Minerva killed the lights and left the room. He waited as his eyes adjusted to the small amount of light his son's night light gave off, then moved to the chair near Alan bed which Minerva had abandoned moments before.
He looked very peaceful when he was asleep. Most people did, of course, but there was something about a sleeping child that was particularly peaceful and touching. Especially when the child in question was your own.
What was that? He thought he'd seen Alan's eyes open, but he couldn't be certain. It had only been for a moment.
He began watching his son's face intently, focusing on his eyes. There it was again. That boy was definitely still awake. Awake and preparing to sneak out if he was correct. That was the sort of thing he and Aberforth had done around that age. Or attempted to do at least. They had often been caught. Had Minerva often been catching Alan sneaking out of bed and not telling him?
He watched curiously as his not quite four year old son climbed out of bed and tucked one of his pillows in, mimicking the form of a sleeping person. Albus was astonished. He and Aberforth had not thought to do that until Albus, the elder of the two, was at least a year or two older than Alan was now, if not older. Had his son really thought to do something like that on his own? It seemed to be a bit of a stretch, but then Albus was very aware of the fact that his son was quite bright.
He watched in wonder as his son sneaked from his room to Minerva's office undetected, employing more than one fairly sophisticated technique to avoid his mother's watchful eyes, and then sneaked from there out into the school. Where had he learned these things? There was no way he'd thought of all of this by himself. He was smart, but he was still just a little boy. Someone had taught him these things, but Albus had no idea who that could be—and it worried him. For all he knew this could be an attempt someone was making to capture, kill or otherwise harm his son.
He had not been following Alan long when he began to be able to discern four indistinct figures at the end of one of the corridors. Immediately he knew that they were the ones who had taught his son the tricks he'd demonstrated when sneaking out of his mother's quarters. He drew his wand, still following Alan as he headed straight towards the figures standing at the end of the corridor. If any of them did anything that look even remotely threatening, he would hex them into oblivion. Better safe than sorry.
"Come on, Alan, we've got a lot of stuff to show you tonight."
He recognized that voice. Its owner had been dragged unwillingly into his office more times than he wished to remember by Gryffindor's Head of House and Alan's own mother. Sirius Black. That could only mean the other figures were James Potter, Remus Lupin and what was that other boy's name? He was always tagging along after the other three, hero-worshiping James and Sirius . . . Petigrew? Yes, that sounded right. There was no doubt about it, the school's biggest troublemakers were the figures at the end of the corridor.
"I'm coming!" said Alan, speeding up to run toward the four waiting boys.
Albus followed quickly, wondering why his son had sneaked out to meet those four. Obviously they had taught him how to sneak away from his mother and he had a hard time believing they would wish to harm his son, but that didn't really explain what was happening here. Did Alan sneak out to meet these four often?
Alan skidded to a stop in front of the four, smiling brightly at the boys.
"Well, our apprentice has arrived. Let's get started."
"What are you teaching me?"
"You'll see. Come on, ankle-biter."
Apprentice? The worst trouble-makers this school has ever seen and they've made my son their apprentice? Right under Minerva's nose? Merlin help those boys if she ever finds out.
No longer apprehensive about who it was his son was meeting, Albus decided it was high time he got back to his work and left, though not before casting a small spell insuring that he would be alerted if anything happened. He trusted the boys to not harm his son, but he did not want them to end up in a situation where they alone were protecting his only son from anyone who might wish to harm him—no matter how unlikely it was that the situation would arise.