They were lying in bed the following Saturday, Albus spooned against Minerva's back, one of her legs thrown casually over his. This was the position they had been using to make love lately, not so much out of deference to Minerva's growing belly—it was not yet an insurmountable obstacle—but because it was easier for Albus to control the depth of his thrusts, and he was still nervous about harming Minerva or the baby with his customary ardour. He knew it wasn't Minerva's favourite position, but she wasn't complaining. It allowed him free access to use his hands to bring her to climax.

Which is precisely what had just happened, when Minerva had caught her breath and said, "Molly Prewett knows about the baby."

It took Albus a moment to realise that the subject had suddenly changed from her enthusiastic encouragement of his busy fingers to something more prosaic. He wasn't sure he would ever fully follow the twists and bends of his beloved's mind.

"Molly Prewett? The seventh-year Gryffindor?" he said.

"Yes. Do you mind?"

"Not exactly, but wouldn't it be wise to tell all the students at the same time?"

"Yes, but it seemed the thing to do under the circumstances."

"What circumstances?"

"She asked me if I was pregnant."

"And in what context did the subject arise?" he asked, truly curious. It was unlike Minerva to have personal conversations with students.

"She needed some advice on a delicate matter," said Minerva.

"I see. I take it I shouldn't ask what matter?"

"You would probably regret it if you did."

It had long been Albus's experience that when Minerva told him he would regret an action, she was painfully correct.

He said, "In any event, I think it's getting to be time to inform the students." He put a hand on her belly. "Your figure, while still lovely, is now noticeably altered."

"Mmm."

"What would you say to an announcement at the Halloween Feast?"

"If we must."

He knew what was troubling her. She disliked being the centre of attention—other than in her classroom, of course—and this announcement would place her squarely in the uncomfortable spotlight. It was also a very public declaration of their relationship, which had always been, if not a secret, exactly, at least conducted with discretion, particularly where students were concerned, which suited her just fine. He knew she didn't like the students knowing too much about her private affairs; it was probably a holdover from when she had been a young teacher anxious to exert her authority, just as the tight bun in which she wore her hair had been.

Command and control were her weapons in the classroom, and she wielded them with deadly precision. A fecund belly was a physical repudiation of those attributes. Perhaps she considered it a sign of weakness, he mused. It certainly signalled a particular kind of surrender. No wonder she was uneasy.

"You'll need to alert the Board of Governors," she said. "They won't take kindly to hearing it from the Daily Prophet."

"No," he said, chuckling. "I'll send an owl."

"An owl? Isn't that a bit impersonal?"

"Possibly. But they are not scheduled to meet again until December, at which point the proverbial Kneazle will be out of the bag, whether we tell them or not."

As it turned out, they needn't have worried.

~oOo~

Minerva glanced at the clock.

Twenty minutes of two.

The time would later become etched in her memory as the final moment of "before". It wasn't really, of course; it was just the last time she had noted the precise hour and minute, and precision was a talisman Minerva could cling to in a world of grey uncertainties.

Now, however, her concern was to finish marking the essays in front of her so she could return them to the class that was scheduled to report for duty at two o'clock.

Her quill moved rapidly across the parchment. She rarely left her marking—or anything else—until the last minute, but the previous night she had been so tired and dyspeptic that she had found herself falling asleep mid-comment, requiring her to Vanish much of what she had scribbled in the margins of several students' papers, so she had just given it up as a bad job and went to bed.

She had just slashed an emphatic, "No!" in red ink in the margin of Ian Robinson's essay and was about to enumerate its many shortcomings when a tightening gripped her lower back. It grew in intensity and wrapped itself around to her abdomen like Devil's Snare until all she could do was breathe.

Poppy had told her she might start having small, painless tightenings in her belly and that these were just "practice" contractions, not signalling real labour. This was different. It felt forceful, purposeful—and certainly not painless. She waited, her hands clutching the edge of the desk, watching her knuckles turn from white to pink again as the pain released her.

She sat very still, hoping that it was just a mistake, a random pang, and if only she sat perfectly motionless, it would not be repeated. A few seconds later, another pain came, as intense as the first, this time moving from her back to seize her belly more quickly.

When the pain had ebbed—this time not really ending, just settling to a dull cramp—she stood. She had taken three steps when a sheet of white-hot agony tore through her abdomen and lower back. She grabbed the back of a chair to keep from falling to the floor. Something warm wet her thighs.

"Oh, no," she moaned.

Fighting panic, she gathered her robes and skirt up, not caring who might see, and looked, expecting to find a stream of clear amniotic fluid wetting her legs. But what she saw was blood. For a moment, she did not believe her eyes, but as she watched, another rivulet of crimson trickled its way down her thigh to gather at the top of her stocking.

Poppy.

She made it two more steps before she doubled over with another contraction, accompanied by the knife-pain clawing its way through her belly.

Her wand—where was her wand? She couldn't walk like this, but maybe she could send a Patronus. She groped for the wand in her robe pocket, but it wasn't there. It lay on her desk.

It flew into her hand when she Summoned it, but she couldn't focus enough to cast a corporeal Patronus to carry her plea for aid. She gathered her strength and yelled.

"Help, somebody!"

Her cry echoed in the empty room, but nobody answered. It was still at least ten minutes before classes were due to resume, and if anyone was in the corridor, they would not hear her; the classrooms had been magically soundproofed so that noise from one would not disrupt another.

She crept her way back towards her desk but stopped when she felt a pop, followed by a gush of fluid she now knew was blood mixed with amnion. She looked down, almost hypnotised by the scarlet pool spreading on the classroom floor. Her breath came in gasps through the haze of pain. White spots of light danced in front of her eyes. Then the room shifted oddly and went dark.

When the first two students arrived at the Transfiguration classroom six minutes later, they were surprised to find it apparently empty. Professor McGonagall was usually seated at her desk when they arrived, or else using her wand to write an assignment on the board at the front of the room.

"Where is she?" asked Amos Diggory, taking the opportunity to regrasp Nigella Starsgaard's hand, which he had released just prior to entering Professor McGonagall's domain.

Nigella shrugged. "No idea."

She let go of Amos's hand and made towards her seat near the front of the classroom. A body lying on the floor between the first row and her desk stopped her.

"Oh, my god! Amos!" Nigella said as she rushed to their fallen teacher.

She knelt and took McGonagall's limp hand. "Professor?" She patted McGonagall's shoulder. "Professor, wake up." She turned to Amos, who was frozen with shock. "We need to get help. Go find someone—a teacher. Hurry!"

Diggory shot out of the classroom and seconds later ran into—or rather through—Professor Binns.

"Diggle, what are you—"

"Professor, you need to come! It's Professor McGonagall. Something's happened to her."

"Where?"

"Her classroom.

"Go get Professor Flitwick, he's probably in his classroom," Binns instructed.

Amos ran down the corridor, and Binns streaked through the air to his colleague's classroom. When he arrived, a student was bending over Professor McGonagall, who was heaped in a pool of green robes on the floor. The ethereal Professor Binns could do nothing but call his colleague's name as the student tried vainly to rouse her.

Three other students arrived at the door, along with Amos Diggory and Filius Flitwick, who pushed through the group of astonished children. Flitwick bent to McGonagall, calling her name and sharply tapping her cheek with his fingers. She didn't stir.

Flitwick said, "Mr Diggory, run ahead to the infirmary and tell Madam Pomfrey we are bringing Professor McGonagall. Cuthbert, find Albus and tell him to meet us there."

Diggory and Binns set on their errands immediately, while the increasing number of students filling the room crowded closer to the scene.

"Back away!" Flitwick commanded in a voice louder and sharper than anyone had ever heard him use, but Nigella still clung to her teacher's hand. Flitwick waved his wand to Levitate Professor McGonagall. When she had risen a few feet from the floor, everyone gasped. A thick smear of blood stained the floor where she had lain. Blood dripped from the saturated hem of her robe in thick, Knut-sized blots.

"Where is it coming from?" a student asked.

"I don't know," snapped Flitwick. "Now get out of the way. Miss Starsgaard, you need to let go of her hand so I can transport her." He floated Minerva as quickly as he could out of the classroom and down the corridor towards the hospital wing.

The assembled students stayed where they were, murmuring in shock. All except Nigella, who hurried behind Flitwick and Professor McGonagall, following the droplet-trail left by her professor's blood.

~oOo~

Albus was at his desk when the sound of a throat clearing startled him into dropping his quill.

"Cuthbert?" said an astonished Albus. "What brings you here?"

It was highly unusual for the History of Magic professor to seek him out anywhere, let alone in his office. Binns normally seemed concerned only with the past he inhabited.

"Headmaster, you need to go to the infirmary immediately. Professor Flitwick is taking Professor McGonagall there. She seems to have taken ill."

A chill gripped Dumbledore's spine.

"Thank you, Cuthbert," he said, standing. He tried not to run as he swept past the ghost and out of the office.

He wasn't sure what he'd expected, but nothing could have prepared him for the scene that greeted him when he reached the infirmary.

Minerva lay on an exam table, a blanket covering the top half of her torso. Filius Flitwick stood on a tall stool, holding one of her legs. Her other leg was held by a student whose name escaped Albus in his shock. Poppy was at the end of the table, one hand between Minerva's thighs, the other passing her wand back and forth over Minerva's lower abdomen while Poppy murmured words Albus could not make out.

None of this shocked him as much as the blood. So much of it! Dripping in stringy tributaries from the edge of the table. Spilling from his wife's body, the flow surging and ebbing with each beat of her heart.

Filius caught Albus's eye, pulling him out of his petrification.

"What's happening?" Albus asked as he approached the table.

Poppy spoke without looking up from her patient. "I don't know yet. That's what I'm trying to find out."

Albus knew she was concentrating, but he could help himself. "Is it her womb?" he whispered.

"I don't think so—her uterus feels firm," said Poppy, totally professional and in command in this moment of crisis.

She withdrew her hand from Minerva's body. "I think she may be abrupting. She needs to go to St Mungo's right now. Filius, wrap her warmly. Nigella, thank you, you can put her leg down." Nigella gently let her professor's leg down onto the table.

Dumbledore barked at the girl, "Go to your dormitory. Now!" Nigella raced from the room.

When Filius conjured the blankets, Albus took them and wrapped Minerva in them. Poppy Scourgified her hands and said, "Floo, Albus. I'll follow right behind."

Albus scooped Minerva from the table, carried her to the large fireplace, and stepped in. Poppy took a pinch of Floo powder from the tin on the mantel and looked at Albus, who nodded. As she tossed the powder into the fireplace, he said in a clear voice, "St Mungo's." He held Minerva tightly as they were swept through the dizzying maze of the Floo network.

Emerging from the Floo into the St Mungo's reception area, Albus Dumbledore let ring the full power of a voice toned by decades of public speaking and teaching.

"I need Healers! This woman is bleeding!"

Ordinarily, a bleeding patient was not so unusual as to draw the immediate attention of the St Mungo's staff, but the combination of Dumbledore's voice and the crackle of ambient magical power that ricocheted around him in his distress brought green-robed Healers, mediwitches, and mediwizards running. As they peppered him with questions, moving aside the blanket to see what he was holding, Poppy Pomfrey stepped from the fireplace.

She grabbed the nearest Healer, saying, "This is my patient. She's a forty-two-year-old pregnant witch, primigravida, twenty-seven weeks. Haemorrhaging badly. I suspect an abruption."

The young Healer sprang into action. "We need a room right now… this way!" He ran down the hall, Albus, still carrying Minerva, and several other St Mungo's medical staff rushing along behind. When the Healer had blasted open the third door with his wand and found the room empty, he said, "Here."

The people in the reception area were left in nervous surprise, quiet until a voice said, "Was that Albus Dumbledore?"

There followed a flurry of speculation as to the identity of the bundle of blankets Dumbledore had been holding. Nobody had glimpsed the face inside. The name Minerva McGonagall was never mentioned.

Poppy had to run to keep up with the little party that had swept Minerva away.

When she entered the treatment room, Albus was laying Minerva carefully on the exam table. He was pushed aside by a Healer who began unwrapping the blankets concealing the patient. A mediwitch waved her wand over Minerva, drawing symbols in the air while another gathered supplies from a cabinet in the corner.

The young Healer Poppy had spoken to was peeling the blood-soaked stockings from Minerva's legs. He gestured Poppy over. "How long has she been bleeding?" he asked.

"I don't know. She was already unconscious when she got to me."

"Do you know the condition of the foetus?"

Poppy glanced at Albus, who was stroking Minerva's cheek, apparently paying no attention to the conversation. Poppy looked back at the Healer and shook her head.

The Healer nodded curtly and removed Minerva's skirt, putting the soiled clothing aside before making a note in his chart. He didn't use a Quick-Quotes Quill, for which Poppy was grateful.

As he moved away to finish his notes, the other Healer replaced him at the end of the table. Jostling Poppy aside without a word, he used his wand to set Minerva's legs in a set of conjured stirrups and cast an Impervious charm on his hands. He reached inside Minerva and pulled out a wad of blood-soaked material.

"What is this?" he asked.

Poppy said, "Cotton wool. I packed her vagina to try to stop the bleeding. It's a Muggle technique. Nothing else was working."

"Pfft," scoffed the Healer. "Fat lot of good that'll do for an abruption."

Poppy was about to explain that she had done it on the chance that the bleeding was from a cervical tear, but she realised it didn't matter. She held her tongue and let the rude Healer do his work.

"Poppy," said Albus, startling her. "What's happening? Is it her womb? Has it ruptured?" She'd never heard his voice had sound so small, so child-like.

"No, I don't think so." At his sigh of relief, she knew she had to make him understand the gravity of the situation.

She moved around the table to stand next to him. "It looks like she's suffered a placental abruption. It's when the placenta comes away from the uterus, and it causes bleeding—sometimes severe." When he said nothing, she put her hand on his arm. "This is a catastrophic complication, Albus. You need to know that."

He looked at her then, his eyes unfocussed as she had never seen them, and whispered, "Will she live?"

"I … I don't know. But Albus, the baby—"

"Will she live?" Desperation made his voice hoarse, and his eyes searched Poppy's face. He was begging her to lie to him, they both knew it, and it pained her unutterably to see it.

"We have to hope." It was the best she could do for him.

A mediwizard approached them. "Professor Dumbledore?" he said, "I need to get some information from you, if you could just step out with me for a few moments."

"No."

"Please, sir, it's—"

"I'm not leaving her." His voice was calm, but the ambient magic crackled again, and everyone looked up from their tasks for a second. A whiff of ozone tickled Poppy's nose.

The mediwizard looked to Poppy for help, but she just shook her head.

"All right, sir. I can take the information here," the mediwizard said.

Albus nodded, not taking his eyes off the table.

"What is the patient's full name?"

"Minerva Sigrid Aithne McGonagall Dumbledore."

Several sets of eyes looked up again, but nobody stopped working.

"Date of birth?"

"Fourth of October 1925."

"Place of birth?"

"Caithness, Scotland."

"Place of residence?"

"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

"Place of employment, if any?"

"Same."

"Occupation?"

"Professor of Transfiguration."

"Next of kin?"

At this, Dumbledore finally looked at his inquisitor, who quickly looked down at his parchment.

"Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore."

"Relation to patient?"

"I'm her husband." The great man's voice broke on the final word.