She had written the letters. Not the usual letters she had been writing for the last 26 years, with notification of the start of term and booklists enclosed.
No. This year she had included the contact detail of other schools and private tutors who might be willing to help continue the children's education where she no longer could. And this year she had been signing them differently as well.
Minerva McGonagall
Headmistress.
She didn't like it.
The task had been heart-wrenching. Of all the promises she had made over her many years, her promise to Albus to look after the school and their students had been perhaps her most sincere. Yet here she was… alone in a school that would not be opening again in September, whose staff had been laid off and whose House Elves had been relocated.
This was perhaps the only fact that made her glad that he wasn't here. It would have killed him to see this. Everything he had worked so hard for- dashed because those imbeciles at the Ministry couldn't see that the children would likely be far safer here than at home.
In any case, she had fought the fight hard. She had argued logically and impassionedly, she had asked, demanded and begged but she and not made near enough headway to succeed in keeping Hogwarts open. She had failed.
The letters were gone now, she hadn't been able to bear them sitting there. The owls would be arriving tomorrow morning and no doubt all hell would break loose shortly there after.
Minerva knew she should be making the most of the calm before the storm but she couldn't rest. She hadn't been able to sleep through the night since Albus had died and her current state of exhaustion had long since become the norm.
She started as cold water sloshed further up her arms, drenching her sleeves. He had obviously misjudged that plunge into the bucket. There was no real point in drying them off though; they would be soaked again soon enough. So, wiping some stray hairs out of her face she went back to scrubbing.
It was mind-numbing work. But that was exactly why she was doing it. She didn't want to think anymore. Couldn't bear to think any more.
The cold stone flags of the entrance hall were hellish on her old knees, and her shoulders and hand ached something fierce but he kept going. Kept on going until she reached the entrance to the dungeons.
She stopped. She stared down the dark stair well. It was almost as though it was goading her. The blessed silence of the empty school was suddenly broken in her head, and like a dam bursting she was suddenly engulfed by a myriad of sarcastic, caustic comments.
"No!" she cried softly, "No!" but the voices continued mocking and taunting her.
"NO!" she finally yelled, snapping for the first time in what seemed to be an age. It was all too much. All far too much.
In a fit of temper she threw the scrubbing brush down the stairs closely followed by the bucket of soap water.
"No." she sobbed, sliding back down till the floor. And she cried. For the first time since that night, she cried with her heart and her soul until it was all too much and she fell into a fitful sleep on the still wet floor.