A/N: Thank you, all! Mugglemin, I agree with you about the teacher-student relationship. What happened was just a one-off.
Here's another. I'm not too pleased with it, but ah well...
003: Ends
His absence kept her away from the concealed door, barring her from it as effectively as a hex. Everything about the room was theirs - the password was theirs, the bed was theirs, the furniture, the secret. To enter it alone was to violate the air they breathed together. The chamber was a place locked inside her, an unstained image to be held in the mind whenever he was away. He would return to find the bed still dishevelled, and his eyes would sparkle, and he would say:"I see we are not forgotten."
To enter the chamber was to enter a realm invisible to the prying eyes of the outside world. Absurd ideas such as professionalism could be left behind. A detached part of her mind expressed surprise at that idea. Minerva McGonagall, abandoning professionalism? Not quite, for Minerva McGonagall did not exist in the chamber; only two Professor Dumbledores conversed over tea, or made the bed so as to untidy it again…
Weeks passed. This was but another absence - he was called away on business, on an Order mission, on a teaching conference. She tied her bun more tightly. When she spoke, she thought of the chamber.
"Minerva, I'm always here if you want to talk," Rolanda said, one day in August.
"About what?"
There was nothing to talk about except the War, which thundered its way onwards as always. Letters passed between her and Order, and there were meetings to attend at Grimmauld Place. She argued, and gestured over diagrams and maps, hugging the secret to herself. Moody stumbled in and out of the office, effusive with information, but still completely ignorant. Energy swept her up and drove her. Potter's movements occupied her thoughts at night, gave her an exciting instability that was fleeting, as there would always be a point of gravity in the room, when he returned. The thought came to her whenever she passed the door-
Silence. A void gaped.
"Minerva, talk to us," Poppy said.
Foolishly, in a moment of utter numbness, she gave in.
Roses blinded her. They curled around chair-legs, hung from the bed canopy, gleamed with preservative magic. From the mantelpiece, blue eyes twinkled from a photo, so that she barely saw the woman next to him. The duvet was crumpled, and his weight still indented the sheets. The air was perfumed, and an enchanted piano began to play Chopin, for this was the end, this was the last outpouring, and for the first time, debilitating weakness had her sinking down onto the bed, with the female Professor Dumbledore, who had never really existed, as separate entity sinking down with her-
A small black box sat on the pillow. Her vision blurred, but her hands were steady as she opened it, to reveal the engagement ring inside.
"Yes," she said, but he was already in his sepulchre.