Author's Note: Last chapter. Promise. I may tweak it a bit over the next few days to correct errors, but this is essentially the finished copy.

The rain returned to the valley with a vengeance that evening and did not let up until two more nights had passed. When the sun finally reappeared sheepishly from behind the clouds on the fourth day of her stay; Hermione's body had recovered from the climb up the mountain and her hands had recovered from the unfortunate encounter with the gorse plant on the way back down.

The Senior Assistant to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement was also worrying herself sick over her temporary replacements at the Ministry.

It had started off small: idle thoughts about things she should have emphasized when training the trio over two days to handle the day to day minutia of the job – but quickly ballooned into very real concerns. What if they were incompetent? What if Hermione returned to work only to discover that paperwork had been filled out incorrectly? This realization had led to visions of her office flooded with allegations of poor management and failed responsibilities, followed by nightmares about stacks of Howlers piled up on her desk, sent by disgruntled wizards and witches who had experienced delayed legal proceedings and received unfair sentencing because of her absence.

What if the Wizagamot repealed the bill to revamp the Azkaban guard system? Had she even told her replacements about the proposal?

This had sent Hermione running to the owlery as fast as her newly-healed legs would take her.

To her dismay, Minerva had not shared her concerns over the imminent collapse of the Department of the Magical Law Enforcement ('I'm certain they can manage without you for three weeks'), and forbade her outright from contacting the Ministry; going so far as removing the letter Hermione had been about to send off from the owl's leg (the bird had not been pleased about being dragged out of the comfortable aviary for nothing) and pushing – literally pushing - Hermione in the direction of the library.

Any indignant thoughts that Hermione had had about this incident had dissipated shortly after seeing the shelf-lined room. Indeed, she had now spent two full days inside its walls and had barely noticed the passage of time, save for when a tray of scones and raspberry preserves and a pot of tea appeared on the top of her desk at odd intervals of the day. Minerva joined her every so often to read quietly, and Hermione couldn't help but feel that she was being watched in case she tried to fire-call the Ministry on the sly. Minerva needn't have bothered; it was quite easy to lose herself in this world of books, and Hermione's fears were quickly forgotten.

The tall-ceilinged, circular room spanned the first and second floor; ladders led to the upper shelves and housed a variety of works of literature that were rare, unavailable or unobtainable through the Ministry's governmental collection. To Hermione's joy, she discovered the complete anthologies of a muggle-born charms specialist who spent his life researching the ancient spells of the Northern European wizards and translated them side by side with runic translations into Romanian. The wizard scholar, Baranay Szent, had become a particular pet project of Hermione's during her early years at the Ministry while working in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures because he had worked alongside House Elves in his translations, and cited them as collaborators in his studies.

The reason that the Ministry did not carry this particular set of books was an absurd one - related to an apparent insult by the Romanian Minister of Magic towards the British magical community during the nineteenth century – and had resulted in a full ban on magical trade with Romania that had lasted for more than 40 years. It turned out (after a Ministry official reviewing political documents had discovered to his horror) that the embargo was actually a product of a mistranslation on the Ministry's part (pertaining to a letter from the Romanian Department of Magical Agriculture thanking the British Ministry for their generous gift of Dirigible Plum seeds), and after many blustered apologies to the Romanian Ministry of Magic, trade had been reopened in the early 1960s (much to the delight of wizards and witches in Britain who had been forced to find the tasty Romanian sweet 'Basilisk Brand Baklava' on the black market for decades – at prices that regularly topped ten galleons a box).

Unfortunately for those who valued Romania's academic publications more then the national brand of flaked pastry soaked in honey (now imported exclusively by Weasley's Wizard Wheezes – 13 sickles a box, 20 galleons a case – price includes delivery to anywhere in Britain), there had been no attempt to acquire any of literary works that had been published in the interim, and Hermione's recent petition to spend more on correcting this sizable hole in the Ministry collection had been ignored – the Ministry choosing to instead spend more money on a redesign of the Chudley Cannon's colours in the belief that orange was too distracting to the team members and responsible for their steady history of losses. The league needed all teams to be on the same ground after all, and the fact that three of the members of the administration in charge of allocation of funds were vocal Cannons supporters had been conveniently ignored by the committee.

Two years later, the collection of Eastern European magical literature in the Ministry Library still remained incomplete and the Chudley Cannons had yet to win a single game in their new purple and white silks. Hermione did her best not to feel too bitter.

The early afternoon sun suddenly passed out from behind the clouds and shone through the windows lining one side of the library; illuminating the large wooden desk in the center and making the handful of candlesticks scattered around it unnecessary. Seven books of varying sizes and bindings were spread across the desk's surface; three on runic symbols of the North, one on Romanian translation and grammar, the fifth a comparative analysis of changing meanings of runes over two millennia and the last; Szent's paper concerning three Norwegian wizards in the Middle Ages and a geographical text of the historical Scandinavian settlements. Even her well-disciplined mind was struggling to keep everything sorted.

It was also taking all of Hermione's considerable willpower to keep her eyes on her books; what with the tempting visual distraction within ten paces of her. Minerva was stretched out along the length of the settee; the small book she had been reading for the previous hour lay on the carpet below, one pale arm hanging above it, long fingers brushing the cover. Her eyes were closed and her face near expressionless save for a slight smile of pleasure as she soaked up the warmth of the unexpected afternoon sunlight shining through the tall windows.

Hermione tore her eyes away from the scene that had sent a sharp thrill through her heart and ducked her head to frown at the passage she was busy translating into English. She was more interested in the primary documents than Baranay Szent's interpretations, wanting to compare his translations with her own. It would have been tricky to decipher the ancient runes under the best of conditions but this particular tome had suffered water damage sometime in the past and the sepia walnut husk ink had run enough to make some of the pages nearly unreadable.

'Minerva?' she called out, finally giving up all hope of accomplishing it on her own, her need to continue beyond this one word outweighing her dislike of disturbing Minerva's rest.

'Yes?' came the prompt reply from the divan.

'Are you familiar with the runic word beginning with the letters kaunaz, sowulo, naubiz'?'

There was a pause.

'Naubiz?'

Minerva sounded as confused as Hermione felt.

'Yes.'

'This is Elder Futhark?'

'Yes.' Hermione settled back in her chair, rubbing a hand over strained eyes. 'It doesn't make much sense – I've been pouring over the books for half an hour now and can't find anything.'

Frowning further, Minerva stood up and walked over to where Hermione was sitting, leaning over her shoulder to get a better look at the text. Hermione forced herself not to reflexively shrink to one side, instead fixing her eyes on the empty porcelain tea cup on its saucer, flanked - at a safe distance - by Urud Scandson's Guide to the Dark Ages of the Northern Countries, and counting to twenty in Gobbledygook.

She had reached 14 when Minerva spoke.

'Ah,' she said, pointing with a long index finger at the appropriate line, the other hand resting on the corner of the desk for balance as she leaned over the tome. 'My great-uncle Ewan's penchant for drinking tea while reading ruined many a good book – I believe that first rune should be jera...'

'...making the word erdbanz,' Hermione finished, her mind buzzing through all the possible combinations and arriving on the most likely one, simultaneously pushing away the heady rush of feeling of being inches away from her.

'Correct.'

'Thank you.' Hermione scribbled the correction down on her own parchment roll before glancing back up. 'I don't know why I didn't figure it out myself.'

Minerva turned to lean back against the desk, quietly regarding her guest's head as Hermione flipped back a few pages to double-check the translation with the Szent document.

'Although I'm delighted that you're getting good use out of the library, Hermione,' Minerva began dryly, '- I did give my word to the Minister that you would spend this time relaxing.'

Hermione's cheeks flushed a faint pink, and she faltered in her search for the desired page.

'I'm sorry, I didn't mean...'

Minerva's eyes softened and she brought a hand up to touch Hermione's shoulder, drawing her gaze away from the reading and up to meet her own.

'My observation wasn't meant as a criticism, Hermione. You enjoy working on problems, solving puzzles, recovering lost information.' Minerva smiled faintly. 'I also become bored if not occupied.'

Hermione opened her mouth to reply, but was silenced by Minerva's long fingers brushing briefly over her lips.

Her mind had gone blank at that.

'But this is a little different,' Minerva continued, tilting her head slightly to the right and regarding Hermione over the top of her glasses, '– and I have reason to believe that it has nothing to do with boredom, and more to do with a subject that you do not feel comfortable discussing.'

One look at Hermione's expression told Minerva that her shot-in-the-dark guess had just been proven right. A confirmation, but Minerva knew better than to push.

'You will tell me when you're ready, won't you?' she asked, searching Hermione's face intently.

Hermione blushed again.

'I'll...try, Minerva.'

Satisfied with this odd concession, Minerva raised her other hand and ran it slowly through Hermione's hair, smoothing several strands so that they lay behind her ears. Instinctively, Hermione tilted her head to one side slightly, her lips parting and her eyes closing in relaxation. Nimble fingers down once along Hermione's cheek, drifting down to the jaw line and then returning to the crown of her head, poised to begin the descent again.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the hand drew back.

'When you are ready, Hermione,' Minerva said quietly before straightening up and leaving Hermione to her translations.

It was the next afternoon, while Hermione was working alone on the eighteenth consecutive page of Szent's manuscript (the translation was going slower than anticipated due to the sorry, tea-damaged state of most of the pages and her eyes were becoming quite strained from sorting out the blurred blots of ink into recognizable runes) that the sound of distant music drifted in through the library doors.

A glance towards the empty tartan-patterned settee told Hermione that she had been so absorbed in her work that she hadn't even noticed Minerva leave.

Curiosity overcoming her desire to avoid her host as much as possible – she had almost been caught staring earlier that morning – she set her goose quill down on the sheet of blotting paper, closed the bottle of ink with one hand, and ventured out to find the source of the melody.

Her ears led her to a small room that she had only glanced into previously, at the furthest end of the house. Several tall oil paintings adorned the walls, the figures in them turning to look with mute interest at the newcomer, but there was nothing else of note in the room save for the instrument set in the middle. Feeling very much like an intruder, Hermione hung back at the entrance, resting one hand on the open door frame, silently observing the slim figure who sat at the piano as the music had drifted into a slower passage

Over the course of a week, she had seen a side of Minerva that she had only glimpsed in her school days during the late evening talks and rarely at Molly's holiday gatherings. All the traits associated with Professor Minerva McGonagall, Headmistress of Hogwarts, were still there, but expressed in different, indescribable ways. She watched as long fingers moved over the keys precisely and without flourish; elegantly efficient, just like Minerva's wand work. The dry wit and cutting intellect were ever present, but this new Minerva was open, relaxed and smiled more in a day than she could recall seeing in a school year. Hermione hadn't even known that the woman enjoyed music, let alone could play an instrument.

'Please come in, Hermione.'

Minerva's hands had halted their movement across the keys, the final chord of the piece fading softly into silence, and she was looking over at Hermione expectantly.

'Do you play?' she asked.

Hermione took a few hesitant steps from where she had been standing in the doorway. 'No. I...'

Hermione had in fact begun lessons with a neighbour at the age of 11: any proper middle-class child of dental-practitioners was expected to be proficient with at least one musical instrument, but an unexpected invitation to an obscure public school in Scotland – extended in person by the very woman seated at the piano before her – had cut her musical education short.

'...I was in a choir when I was in Muggle school, and had started piano lessons, but the Hogwarts letter arrived, and then...' her voice died away, smiling wryly as she finished off. '...And then things turned out a little differently.'

Minerva let out a soft laugh. 'So I'm to blame for the missed opportunity. Here.' She shifted down to the left side of the small bench, making room for Hermione to sit down. '..I feel obliged to correct this appalling gap in your education.'

Hermione hesitated, a reluctance that obviously did not go unnoticed by Minerva as a flicker of vexation crossed her elegant features.

'Hermione, I suggest that you give your mind a rest for a few moments. The translations have waited for almost 100 years to be looked at; they can wait an hour longer.'

The mundane spell that had been holding Hermione back broke, and she blinked.

'Who taught you to play?' she inquired curiously, cautiously approaching the final few steps and easing herself onto the seat beside Minerva, taking particular care not to brush against the other woman's body despite the close proximity. The piano that she had practiced on as a girl had been a shiny black upright; this instrument was a parlour grand configuration made of a beautiful red-tinged wood, and it was more than a little intimidating to sit at.

'Albus took it upon himself to teach me during a rather slow summer in the 1960s.' Minerva grimaced before adding, 'He had a particular affection for works by Debussy, a composer whom I hold in utter loathing.'

Quite predictably Minerva was a wonderful instructor. After showing Hermione the proper fingering positions and the major and minor scales, she demonstrated several simple chords – gently correcting Hermione's fingers when they strayed off the assigned keys. Minerva did not use sheet music to teach, but rather had Hermione copy her fingering and play by repeating what she heard. Hermione caught on quickly, she hadn't forgotten everything that her eleven-year-old self had learned, and had soon picked up the simple melody that Minerva showed her, even if the black keys were a little fiddly to touch compared to their wider white neighbours.

'Now, play your part,' Minerva said after Hermione had finished the piece without error, 'And I shall add the harmony .'

Dutifully, Hermione returned to the beginning, quite confused when the woman next to her didn't begin playing at the same time. It was only several bars later that she joined in, surprising Hermione so much that her own fingers faltered over a few notes and she nearly lost the rhythm.

She was stunned not by the artistry of Minerva's playing – which was considerable even to her inexperienced ears - but rather the sound of the duet that she herself was part of. The layer of complexity that the lower accompaniment brought was unexpected: a seemingly simple addition that would echo Hermione's melody at certain points, but also turned to a deeper counterpoint in some sections and provided an overall richness that she had scarce thought possible. Hermione found herself slipping into a rhythm that wasn't as mechanical as she had been playing, but rather one that was more natural, responding to the lower part as it ebbed and flowed in a cascade of notes to the finish.

'That was...wonderful,' Hermione finally managed to say after the last refrain had echoed into silence. 'I didn't think...'

Minerva smiled, fine lines appearing at the corners of her eyes.

'The addition of the lower part emphasizes the higher. One single strand of song may be significant, but the harmony is the depth to the melody – it is the ground on which everything rests; anchoring the piece so that the first strain does not float away.'

Hermione never returned to her books, too preoccupied with playing piano, picking out long-forgotten pieces that came back with the barest prompting, and it was over an hour later when she finally left the small music room and returned to the library.

Minerva was folding up a letter at the other desk when she walked in, giving the envelope to a small brown owl which disappeared out an open window.

'A message to the Minister with the news that I've finally done something that doesn't involve research and books, Professor?' she asked innocently.

'Such accusations, Hermione,' Minerva retorted, standing up and moving to the other side of the room. 'Whatever must you think of me?'

Hermione sat down on the couch nearest to the empty fireplace. 'Are my suspicions truly unfounded?'

'If you must know, it was a letter to the Board of Governors'. Minerva had opened the doors of a wooden cabinet against the wall and pulled out a wine bottle, before moving towards her guest. 'They have been pestering me to stay on for a few more years; finding my replacement is proving to be a more difficult task than expected.'

'And you told them that you felt Celestina Warbeck was the best one for the job?'

'Behave, Miss Granger; I'll not have some half-witted soprano ruining my school, even if her bust measurements match her high F.' Minerva waved her hand and drew a glass out of thin air. 'Wine?'

'I always pinned you as a wine drinker,' she said, accepting the offered glass of Chardonnay with an upward tilt of her lips. 'Even when Ron swore you lived on whisky.'

Minerva set the slim bottle on the side table and moved past Hermione to sit on the other armchair.

'I had a terrible experience with Highland moonshine when I was still in Hogwarts,' Minerva said dryly as she settled down into the cushions. 'I will not go into too much detail, but suffice it to say, the next morning I found myself on the top of the North Tower, clad in only the bare essentials and without a clue as to what I had been up to in the interim; only that it had involved a broom, two Nifflers, and Pomona Sprout. I have avoided the drink ever since, much to the relief of the stores of whisky that were left to me by my parents.'

Hermione laughed softly. 'I've been meaning to ask - how long has this house belonged to your family?

'Two centuries.' Minerva shot an oddly disdainful glance up at the ceiling. 'And it will likely stand for just as many more.'

Hermione was surprised by her response.

'You don't like it? But it's...'

'...Ostentatious, impractical and – although it's been quite some time since I experienced it – downright freezing during the winter months. It's far too large for one person – more suitable for twenty – and if I wasn't ridiculously sentimental, I'd have replaced it with a more appropriately-sized dwelling years ago.' Minerva paused for a moment, before smiling wryly at her guest. 'The house is, however, in a wonderful location, far from the troubles of the outside world and the people in it, and I treasure that quality about it above all else. Privacy is possibly the most precious commodity one can have in this day and age – particularly for one who spends much of the year surrounded by adolescents.'

Hermione chuckled as she brought her wine glass to her lips.

'And yet you invite guests here all the same.'

'There's a considerable selection process.' Minerva countered.

Hermione laughed. 'One wonders how I managed to slip through.'

Minerva smiled, but said nothing until Hermione switched to another topic: this time questions about the dragon breeding grounds twenty miles to the north. The fact that their conversation was lurching back and forth between odd silences and stilted inquiries was not lost on Minerva.

She had spent half of the last century around teenagers after all.

'A knut for your thoughts, Miss Granger?' she finally asked after another unnatural pause punctuated their conversation about Muggle Repelling charms in the Highlands not five minutes later.

'It'll cost you more than that, Professor.' Hermione had finished her wine, but refused Minerva's offer to refill her glass.

Minerva's dark eyes danced. Almost at once, a small wooden box flew over from a side table next to the far wall and landed in Hermione's lap. She raised her eyebrows and with no small amount of apprehension, lifted the lid to peer inside.

'Well?'

Hermione looked up at Minerva, struggling not to smile.

'You believe my thoughts to be worth one of your precious Ginger Newts.'

'Humour me, my dear.'

Sighing, Hermione picked up one of the squirming cookies before setting the box on the table between them and sitting back in her chair to stare at the other occupant of the room.

'I was thinking about Minerva McGonagall in her younger years, actually,' she said truthfully.

'Ah, so long ago. I was righteous to a fault, occasionally overconfident, and had better skin.'

'I disagree,' Hermione said lightly, setting her empty wineglass on the low table, watching as the other woman tilted her glass to her lips. 'You're into your seventh decade and hardly have any wrinkles.'

Minerva choked on her wine.

'You obviously haven't been looking closely enough, Hermione,' she said after recovering some of her poise, dabbing her lips with a napkin that she conjured out of the air. 'They multiply ever year. I've habitually avoided mirrors since I turned sixty.'

'I don't see any signs of ageing.'

'And these by my eyes?'

'Laugh lines.'

'You're mistaken again, my dear - I never laugh. Ask any student at Hogwarts.'

This time there was no mistaking it; Hermione's face fell visibly at the mention of the school.

'Hermione?'

And for the first time in recent memory, Hermione spoke without thinking.

'Why now?'

Minerva blinked, not following the sudden change of subject. Fully aware that she was gazing over the edge of a fissure in her self control that was much, much deeper than she had anticipated, Hermione struggled to correct herself, stumbling clumsily over words as she sought to voice a question that had been bothering her ever since that fateful day when she had picked up the Daily Prophet and dropped her toast on the floor.

'I mean...' Hermione tried again, shutting her eyes tight as she fought to compose her scattered thoughts, blocking out the sight of the woman that scrambled them without any knowledge that she was doing so. 'Why leave Hogwarts now?'

There was the briefest of pauses before the answer came.

'I am old, Hermione.' Minerva said simply. 'After three wizarding wars and fifty years of teaching, I would like to take advantage of the time that I have left without spending my evenings with endless correspondence with the Board of Governors or being taken from my bed at the wee hours of the morning by the antics yet another wayward student who has attempted to become an animagus in their free time.'

There had been two such incidents the previous school year. The girl, terrified and hysterical, hadn't done anything more dangerous than change her arms into half-formed bat wings but the second student, a seventh-year, while unsuccessful at a full transformation, had shifted his blood to that of an unknown reptile. Such an alteration was not particularly conducive for the health of a being who was otherwise physiologically a warm-blooded mammal and there had been a tense couple of hours while Poppy and Minerva waged war against the mess of botched internal transfiguration and the accompanying injuries so that he could be moved to St. Mungos without certain death. The cellular damage to his body had been catastrophic, and he had been in the hospital for three months recovering.

'No,' Hermione said, shaking her head once, staring at Minerva. 'Not compared to some of the other professors – Filius, Hooch, Vector, Madame Pince - even Filch is still there. They're all older than you.'

If Minerva was surprised by Hermione's knowledge of the ages of the Hogwart's staff, she did not show it.

'Is it the Ministry?' Hermione pressed. 'The new teachers? The students?'

It was an impossible task to explain why she needed to know. How to express that Hermione needed the woman to be contained within Hogwarts because it helped Hermione contain her feelings, control them. Compartmentalizing her feelings had been her one sure-fire way of dealing with them. Inside the castle, Minerva McGonagall was a teacher, and Hermione's confusing attachment after all these years could be shrugged off as an adolescent infatuation of a beloved and admired one-time mentor.

But if the woman was no longer there? When, in less than a year's time, Minerva stepped down from the post and spent her remaining years outside of the castle?

Even the very thought of it terrified Hermione.

Minerva did not speak for a minute.

'It is not the Ministry, Hermione,' she finally said, an unreadable expression on her face as she regarded Hermione. 'Kingsley has given me a free rein over the castle, and the Board of Governors rarely finds fault in my leadership. Nor does it have anything to do with the new teachers; all of whom are excellent additions to the staff. And as for boredom as a teacher -,' here, Minerva's lips curved into a wry smile, '- working with children is never dull.'

'Then what...' Hermione began, only to be abruptly silenced by a raised hand.

'You don't understand, Hermione,' Minerva said, shaking her head once, 'It is for precisely those reasons that I am able to leave. My successor will have been handed a Hogwarts that is well-structured, well-staffed and has an excellent foreseeable future ahead of it. I have managed to take a half-ruined school from a war-torn country with only a handful of returning staff members and bring it – with help - into this golden state, and that, Hermione, that, is enough for me.'

Leaning forward, she reached out and cupped Hermione's cheek with her right hand, '...but obviously, not for you,' she finished quietly.

Hermione averted her eyes, ducking her chin down, only to have it raised up again by a slender finger.

'Look at me, dearest.' Minerva said softly, searching Hermione's eyes with her own dark ones 'You've avoided my gaze for an entire week now, you flinch whenever I so much as brush against you...'

Here, she gently laid her other hand on the inside of Hermione's wrist.

'...and your pulse is racing a mile a minute.'

Hermione's eyes fluttered closed as long fingers feathered their way along her inner forearm. For a week now, she had been standing on a metaphorical precipice high up on an alpine meadow, conscious of the dangers of wind and height but edging closer still. Hermione had been making her way up this mental mountain since – how old had she been when the first stirrings appeared? Sixteen? Fifteen? - and she had finally stumbled on the smallest of pebbles and been pitched head-first over the cliff edge, arms flailing uselessly.

She was hurtling down towards the ground so far below, faster and faster and there was no magic wand or broom to use to slow her descent.

'So, Miss Granger,' came the gentle voice again. 'I ask you again. What can I possibly have I done to make you so uncomfortable?'

This was all wrong; it wasn't supposed to happen like this. I was hiding it so well – I could have hidden it forever if I had to.

'Why this withdrawal?' Minerva pressed; picking up Hermione's other hand in her own. 'We have been so close in the past.'

Hermione's eyes were welling up with bright tears and her face had become a study in mortification.

'Hermione?'

With a soft cry of despair, Hermione tore away from the touch, jumping up from her seat and striding away.

'Hermione…whatever is the matter?'

Minerva had stood up immediately, clearly not having expected this reaction to her questioning. She received no response; Hermione was standing five paces away, both hands curled into the top of an armchair, her entire body shaking with stifled sobs. Astonished, Minerva began to walk towards the distraught younger woman, only to be stopped by a hand that had been thrown up to hold her away.

'Don't,' Hermione's voice was raw. 'Please don't touch me.'

Hermione began to truly cry then, tears finally escaping her grasp in the presence of the one person for whom she had kept them secret from at all costs. Sheer frustration at her failure of focusing on this woman as a friend and not as a romantic interest. Shame at her own dishonesty. Desperation and despair at the inevitable withdrawal of the friendship that she had treasured above all else.

Loneliness.

Without hesitation, Minerva took the final two steps to close the distance between them and wrapped her arms around Hermione, holding her tight against her body and not letting go. After several attempts to pull away, Hermione gave up fighting.

'Hush, dearest.'

'It's you,' she whispered, her head resting on Minerva's chest. 'It's you...it's always been you. It never stopped. I tried...so hard.'

A kiss on her forehead was the only reply, soft lips brushing over her temple.

'Calm yourself,' Minerva whispered, echoing her words of nearly eight years ago when she had first learned of Hermione's secret attraction, and graciously accepted it but not reciprocated. 'I'm not upset.'

'I'm so sorry. I didn't mean...'

A second kiss, this time at the edge of her hairline.

'I love you.' Hermione breathed out, the raw truth slipping from her lips at last. 'I have loved you for so long.' Another rattling breath. 'I know you will never reciprocate and I'm sorry that I've ruined our...'

She was silenced as a slim hand caressed her jaw, slowly drawing her red-rimmed eyes up to meet Minerva's, and then...

Oh.

Victor, Cormac, Ron, all had been forceful, all assuming control. The latter had been particularly inexperienced. It had been a surrender to the more dominant party; a submission to pressure. A sacrifice.

This was different.

These lips were gentle and soft. They moved slowly, parted ever so slightly, and were tilted at just the right angle to fit perfectly against her own.

Hermione's heart was pounding in her ears, her face was wet from crying and her eyes were tight from the salt. It was a long moment before she was able to react to the kiss and when she did, a soft moan escaped her.

This was what it was supposed to feel like – what had been missing from Ron and Victor and Cormac – the giddiness, the thrill, the indescribably joy of finding a person that you belonged to. Wanting to merge into the other person, never parting again.

A match.

'Ah and here I was, expecting for Albus to pop out of his grave and ask me if I had seen Severus.' Minerva murmured softly as she leant back.

'You were quite truthful, if I recall.'

Hermione's voice was still hoarse from the bout of tears but her voice was steady and her heart felt lighter than it had in recent memory. Her eyes kept dropping to the other woman's moist red lips, wondering if this was all a wonderful dream that she would be forced to wake up from at any time.

'I am rather good at manipulation through half-truths, although never to the same mastery that Albus possessed. Nevertheless, even you were fooled by a hint of wandless magic several weeks ago.'

Hermione stared at Minerva uncomprehendingly, who smiled gently in reply.

'Allow me to demonstrate.'

There was a small noise from the side table beside them as Hermione's wine glass tipped up on the edge of its base for a brief moment, and came back down to rest. Liquid would have spilled over the tilted rim had the glass not already been empty.

Hermione Granger's brain was quite good at putting two and two together, and a concussed troll could have worked this out in a short amount of time.

'You...' Hermione slowly turned back to stare at Minerva in utter disbelief. 'You nudged my cup of tea...that night when you came by my flat. When I burnt my mouth and you...' The young witch's cheeks coloured a faint pink and her voice trailed off. Dark eyes regarded her calmly, with not even the barest trace of expression, and the brunette narrowed her eyes, her mind having found the final piece of the jigsaw.

'You wanted to see my reaction.'

A slim hand rose to caress Hermione's cheek, the long thumb brushing across her lips for the briefest of moments.

'- I needed to know that your feelings were still there after all this time.' Minerva's dark eyes dropped down, strangely regretful. 'I do apologize for the temporary pain involved – but I really could not think of another way that I would be in the position to kiss you.'

'Getting me drunk wasn't an option?'

Hermione's quip made her let out a brief laugh.

'Severus never did quite forgive me for what I did to him in retaliation for pushing me on that subject, my dear. I felt it best for you to stay sober.'

'You make a much nicer cat than he did, Minerva.'

Minerva chuckled. 'That isn't quite the achievement that you make it out to be – your Crookshanks was a veritable beauty compared to Severus's feline form.'

She paused then, regarding Hermione with a slight smile on her lips.

'I should add that I do feel that we have made some progress from all those years ago – ' she added, '-You haven't attempted to reorganize the library, are still wearing all of your clothes, and Mr. Weasley and Mr. Potter haven't interrupted us.'

'Well, Professor, perhaps we haven't spent enough time at it.' Hermione murmured with a sly smile, moving up on her toes to meet the Minerva's lips with her own.

'You have several feline mannerisms when you are asleep.'

Hermione frowned at the other woman on the couch, a small crease appearing between her eyebrows. It had been an hour since one of the more stressful events in her life had passed and Hermione was more relaxed and happy than she could recall feeling in years. Her biggest secret and biggest fear had been resolved. It had been an eventful day, to say the least.

'You purr.' Minerva clarified.

'I do what?'

'I still have nightmares about that tail,' Hermione intoned after Minerva had finished explaining her discovery. 'It hurt dreadfully when I sat on it.'

'You have to lean forward.'

Hermione's eyebrows shot up.

'Being an animagus takes time. I spent more than a few evenings while I was perfecting my form with rather persistent whiskers or occasionally- and more unpleasantly - the tail. It was an incentive to be diligent with my efforts to complete the change, and...' Minerva grimaced at the memory, '...to perfect my Glamour Charms.'

Hermione pushed herself up with her elbows.

'That was something I never understood; how did the Marauders become animagi so quickly during school? I know it took you the better part of a year, and that was after your left Hogwarts.'

'When Potter, Black and Pettigrew became animagi, they skipped a few steps.'

'Skipped?'

'Yes. Part of the finesse of the change was lost to them; their animal shapes were influenced heavily by the animal mind and instincts and they only had a rudimentary control while changed. It is characteristic of many rushed attempts, and can be quite dangerous if certain features are ignored.'

Minerva sat up.

'Whereas I...'

The words were still hanging in the air when Minerva flowed into the familiar form of a silver tabby. The cat crawled daintily into Hermione's lap before there was a snap of air being pushed outwards and Minerva shifted back to her normal self, arranged so that she was leaning over Hermione's frame with a knee on either side of her waist, slim calf muscle hugging Hermione's thighs.

'...find the change as easy as breathing,' she finished softly.

The unconscious act of respiration was not coming so easily to Hermione. Saddled by her former professor, Minerva's long hair tickling her neck, all she could really think about was something rather inappropriate.

From the Minerva's facial expression, one didn't need Legilimency to figure out what was foremost in Hermione's mind.

'Miss Granger.' Minerva purred, her dark eyes full of ill-concealed amusement. 'You seem rather...unsettled.'

Hermione croaked out something unintelligible and Minerva grinned wickedly, making Hermione's heart almost leap out of her body.

Minerva McGonagall was breathtaking when she smiled.

'I'm not really inclined to move, Hermione,' she murmured, moving closer so that their faces were mere inches away.

Hermione stroked the crown of Minerva's dark head, her hand slipping down to trace the contour of the woman's brow.

'You are beautiful,' she whispered, gazing up at the lithe woman with wonderment.

A wave of warmth passed from the region of Minerva's chest and spread across her entire being, showing as a faint blush across her pale cheeks.

'You are kind, Hermione - I am too old to be beautiful.'

'And yet,' Hermione breathed, raising her head to kiss the side of Minerva's mouth, her hands drifting down to her slim waist, '- my elegant creature - you somehow manage it.'

The End

And yes, it's time for another edition of the 'end of story' author's notes.

Depressing stuff first: I have a confession to make. I've been part of the MM/HG world for more than half a decade now, but admit to reaching a bit of a wall. A huge, almost insurmountable one. Picture the Great Wall: it's that big. The problem is that I've been out of school since mid '07 and the number of teacher crushes – gigantic, soul-aching crushes that drove me to write this pairing in the first place – have been thin on the ground, so to speak. Zilch. Inspiration took a sharp nose dive without a muse, much to the dismay of the rabid readers out there.

Life has sucked for the past year and a half for a variety of reasons, but things are looking up. So, there may very well be more Minerva and Hermione on the way in new one-shots (the one that seems to be the easiest to write is a 'Hermione's returned to do her seventh year'). It may be a while before I have another multi-chapter fic – I'm shamed to say that I'm running out of ideas that don't already exist in several variations by other authors. My, we are a prolific bunch – over five hundred, and that's not including any of the multi-chapter counts. Whoever knew that MM/HG would become mainstream?

Let me just add that I'm grateful to all those who left notes for me to 'hurry up and finish this story before we all die of old age and the sun collapses and we no longer have internet'. At each reminder, another part of this story was written.

Really, I don't know how asouldreams does it week after week. I'm still quite convinced, despite her protestations to the contrary, that she's not entirely human.

BTW: I'm not on Pottermore yet (October can't come soon enough!)but I did spoil myself and read Minerva's story at the earliest opportunity. I'll pull parts of the new canon into future fics – and gleefully ignore other parts as I'm quite attached to certain fan-made tropes.

And I think that I've managed to upload this in time to say Happy Birthday Professor McGonagall!