After the short northern night, the morning dawned misty and cool. Minerva and Albus rose early and went to breakfast, which was laid out in the dining room. After Albus had coaxed Minerva to add some eggs and lox to the toast and tea she had taken, she knocked at her father's study door.

"Enter," came Thorfinn's voice through the heavy oak door. "Good morning," he said as she crossed to the large desk to kiss his cheek. "Sleep well?"

"Very. Albus and I are going to take a walk—go look at the firth—and wondered if you'd like to come along."

"No, lass, but thank you. I've still got this to get through before morning's end." He tapped the end of his quill on the large stack of parchment on his desk. "You two go on. I've a suspicion you don't get your handsome lad to yourself that often."

"All right. See you at lunch then?"

"Aye."

Minerva and Albus strolled through the grounds and out past the wards that protected the property. The mists cleared as they walked at a leisurely pace about a mile through the blooming heather and gorse until they came upon the view they were seeking. The heath suddenly gave way to a craggy cliff, shot through with age-old striated rock. It fell in vertiginous descent to the stone-blue of the Pentland Firth, which churned and frothed against the rocks below. At the horizon, they could make out the gently sloping contours of the Orkney Islands.

Albus watched Minerva as she looked out over the water, shielding her eyes from the sun's glare. The ever-present wind had loosed a few strands of hair from her bun. It whipped around her cheeks and jaw like licks of dark flame. She looked to him in that moment like the Viking she was by blood, holding vigil as her ancestresses must have done, waiting for their men to return from the sea.

She finally noticed him looking and turned to him, taking both of his hands in hers.

"Thank you for coming. It means a lot to him," she said.

"You don't get to see him often enough. I'm sorry."

"It's the way of things, with children. They grow up, leave home. I do worry about him, though. All alone in that big house, with me at Hogwarts and Einar in Inverness. I know Einar tries to see him as often as possible, but he's busy too."

It always amused Albus that Minerva and her family referred to their home as a "house". It was, in fact, a castle, albeit a small, plain one. Thorfinn had told him the family had occupied the land since their Scandinavian forbears had first crossed the North Sea in the ninth century. The edifice had been knocked down, rebuilt, and added to over the centuries, the family who eventually became the McGonagalls aided by strong magic in keeping what was theirs safe from the upheavals of broadaxe, plague, and gun.

"He's worried about you," Albus said as they walked a little further along the cliff, hand in hand.

"Me? Why?"

"He can't help thinking about what happened to your mother."

She looked at him, frowning. His gaze searched her face.

She turned towards the firth again. "I knew I shouldn't have left you two alone."

He took her waist and pulled her gently against him, his arms coming around her to rest his hands protectively over her swelling belly.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.

"I did."

"Not everything."

"No. Not everything." She sighed. "I didn't intend to hide it from you. I almost never think about it, actually. Then when this happened," she said, laying a hand over his, "I thought it might worry you, so I just … didn't mention it."

"Does Poppy know?"

"Of course. She took a thorough history. It isn't something that's genetic, apparently. Sometimes, it just happens. Rarely, she says."

"Are you worried?"

She didn't answer for a few moments.

"I suppose."

He knew it was a thing she would admit to no one but him.

"But I won't be ruled by fear," she said.

He smiled. "That's what Thorfinn said."

"I am, after all, my faither's daughter. Sigrid Thorfinnsdóttir," she said, giving her Viking name.

He recognised it as a talisman against fear. Her mother had not been a descendant of Scotland's Viking invaders. According to Thorfinn, Morrigan MacLaughlin had been Gaelic through and through. Albus was not surprised that Minerva tended to ally herself with the fierce magic of Odin and Thor rather than the nature-bound spirituality of her mother's people. She was a woman more inclined to bend lightning to her will than to worship its power.

"I wonder who our little one will be like," Minerva said.

"It had better have your looks."

She pulled out of his embrace and turned, raising an impish eyebrow at him.

"And your brains? Is that what you're implying?" she asked.

"How about a combination of your logical mind and my creative one?"

"Creative? Is that what they're calling it now?"

"And what would you call it, Mrs Dumbledore?"

"Untidy."

His retort was to gather her in his arms again and kiss her until she was gasping for breath.