Minerva was sitting in her office, making notes from a collection of books and journals spread out across her desk, when she felt the brush of lips and the tickle of a moustache at the nape of her neck.
"Happy anniversary, my love."
She turned in her chair in time to see Albus shimmer into being.
"You think you're very clever, but one day we'll be caught," she said.
"That's what memory charms are for."
"I understand that it's considered very bad form for a Headmaster to Obliviate the students in his care."
"Oh, very," he said, looking over her shoulder at her desk. "You've been in here all day. Working on something in particular?"
"Just some background research for a project I've been kicking around."
He picked up a slim maroon volume and opened it to the bookmarked page.
"'Determinants for Regulation and Initiation of Expression of Tryptophan Genes'," he read. "You're looking at Muggle articles?"
"They've done a lot more in genetics than we have."
He dropped the book back on the desk. "So your project has to do with genetics?"
"Something like that."
He smiled at her over his glasses. "Which means you don't want to discuss it with me."
"Not yet. Maybe when I'm a bit further along."
"Will you be ready to leave off soon? I hoped we could have dinner in your rooms, just the two of us."
"I'd like that. I'll only be a few more minutes here."
~oOo~
Dinner turned out to be a surprise. Albus had arranged for them to have the same menu they had enjoyed the evening of their wedding: roast saddle of venison with wild mushrooms and mashed parsnips, finishing up with Tipsy Laird made with Old Pulteney and topped with Monorgan pears, both brought in specially. Albus had had the head Hogwarts kitchen elf send to the elf in charge of the McGonagall kitchen for the recipes.
As they sipped the 1957 Latour he'd got to go with the meal, he said, "Not a stellar vintage, but I couldn't get hold of any of the 'forty-five. Your father didn't have any more, and it's not to be had for less than a small fortune anywhere else, so I thought the 'fifty-seven might be appropriate, for sentiment's sake."
"It's wonderful," Minerva said. She drank down the dregs of hers and held out her glass for more.
He poured, then held up his glass in a toast. "Ten years, Madam Dumbledore, and you are twice as beautiful as on the day I married you."
"And you, Mr Dumbledore, are twice as blind."
Whey they'd finished their pudding, Minerva said, "You must have gone to a great deal of trouble to come up with this meal. It was lovely, thank you."
"You are lovely." He kissed her forehead.
She caught him by the front of his robe and pulled him closer, standing on tiptoe to reach him. She kissed him gently at first, but when his arms came around her, she pressed her tongue against his lips and into his mouth. He hesitated, but then yielded and met her tongue with his.
He pulled away after a minute and looked at her. She let her head fall forwards to rest against his chest.
"Will you stay tonight?" she asked.
He didn't answer immediately, and her heart pounded as she listened to him breathe.
Caressing the back of her head, he said, "Is that what you want?"
"I asked, didn't I?"
He lifted her chin with his fingers and kissed her again. "You did."
They went into her bedroom, and Albus disappeared into the bathroom to ready himself for bed. When he emerged in his dressing gown, she went in. The door closed behind her, and she began to disrobe. She slipped off her dress and underthings and pulled on her dressing gown. After cleaning her teeth, she looked at herself in the mirror, something she'd avoided doing since her illness, other than to make the most perfunctory checks of her appearance before leaving her quarters each morning.
She was still a trifle pale—even more so than she normally was—and her eyes were a little sunken and underscored with purple rings of fatigue. Not especially attractive, she thought, despite Albus's earlier assessment of her charms. Empty compliments about her appearance annoyed her, but she appreciated the sentiment behind her beloved's effusiveness. She'd never been vain or insecure about her looks, but she had to admit that her recent experience had shaken her confidence.
Her body had always been strong and obedient to her will. Other than a bout of Mumblemumps when she was seven, she'd never had a serious illness. And she'd recovered "indecently fast," as her father had put it, from the injury she'd sustained as an Auror-trainee in the war. The frailty she'd experienced after losing her baby had been like a double betrayal. Not only had her traitorous body failed at something most women seemed to be able to do with ease, but it had rendered her weak and dependent and feeling as if she were someone else.
She steeled herself, then undid the tie to her dressing gown and let it fall open. Telling herself not to be foolish and vain, she opened it wider and looked at herself.
The first thing she noticed was her pubic hair. They'd removed it prior to the operation, Dorcas-the-mediwitch had informed her when she'd got up the nerve to inquire, but it had grown back in and looked a little unruly; she wished she'd thought to bring her wand into the bathroom with her to neaten things up a bit. The dark line that had formed over the months of her pregnancy to run from her umbilicus to her pubis was still visible, although faded, and her navel looked much as it always had.
She turned to the side and regarded her figure. Her belly was only slightly soft now, and her breasts had almost gone back down to their usual size. She faced the mirror again. Her nipples were still enlarged, and she wondered if they'd ever return to their pre-pregnancy state. She ran her hands over her breasts, remembering how they had grown hard and painful and leaked milk in the weeks immediately following the birth. The day she'd returned to Hogwarts, she'd awakened in the middle of the night to find the front of her nightdress soaked, and Albus had been helpless to console her as she wept. The next day, Poppy had given her cabbage leaves, charmed to remain cold, to press against her breasts to help coax them to stop producing milk. She'd felt ridiculous putting them under her bra, but they had been soothing.
There had been no leaking for several weeks now, but Minerva hoped Albus wouldn't attempt to touch her breasts, just in case. She couldn't bear another reminder of what had happened. Not tonight.
She closed her dressing gown. Giving her appearance one last look, she pinched her cheeks a few times to bring some more colour to them.
She was about to return to the bedroom when a thought occurred to her. Considering for a moment, she closed her eyes, and, placing a hand at her sex, she whispered, "Lubricus." She grew wet.
Albus was thumbing through a book when she came back into the bedroom, and he looked up and smiled at her. She felt strangely self-conscious about removing her dressing gown in front of him—more so when he removed his and she saw that he was wearing a nightshirt. He normally didn't bother with one until after they'd made love, and then only if he were chilly.
She shrugged off her dressing gown, letting it fall to the ground rather than hanging it up, and got quickly into bed. She used her wand to douse the candles and laid it on the bedside table.
He lay facing her, and she turned to him, reaching out to touch his chest and slipping her hand into the vee of his shirt to glide over his warm skin. His nipple hardened under her touch as she rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger. Still, he didn't move, and she wriggled closer to him, expecting to feel his erection against her belly, but there was nothing.
He rubbed her arm and said, "We can sleep together without doing anything else."
Minerva removed her hand from his chest.
"I see," she said.
"You see what?"
"No, nothing. You're right, of course. We shouldn't rush things." She turned over. "Anyway, I'm tired."
He squeezed her shoulder. "I don't know what you're thinking, but I simply want to be certain you're ready."
"Poppy says I'm fully healed."
"Yes, but do you want to?"
"I want you."
"You've been through a great deal."
"If you don't want to, just say so. I understand," she said, pulling away from him again.
"Minerva," he said, putting his hand back on her shoulder to get her to turn back to him. "I don't think you do understand. I want you. So much. But I don't want to hurt you—physically or otherwise. I don't want you to do this just because you think you should. I can wait."
"But I can't," she said. "I need you now."
Gods help her, she did. She hadn't realised it until just then. She'd wanted to be close to him again, to find a way back to some semblance of the way things had been before, but she hadn't felt any physical desire. In fact, the idea of anyone, even Albus, touching her intimately had made her cringe. But the nearness of him, his scent and the solid feel of him, the taste of his mouth, had lit a half-remembered spark in her centre, and she reached for him blindly.
She was afraid, but aching with want of him, much as she had been the first time they'd been together—the first time she'd ever been with anyone—so long ago now, but still vivid in her memory. She wanted to tell him to just do it, for Merlin's sake, to stop worrying so goddamn much about how fragile he thought she was, but she held her tongue and made her mute request with her hands, pulling at his nightshirt and burying her face in his neck.
He stroked her hair for a moment, then sat up, startling her. She thought for a desperate moment that he was going to get up and leave, but he removed his nightshirt in a single, fluid motion and dropped it on the floor.
He lay back down and pulled her into his arms.
"Gods, Minerva, but I love you so. I came so close to losing you … so close …" His breath hitched, and his lips met hers to feather gentle kisses against them, then on her cheeks and eyelids. When he lay back, tears had tracked their way down his face. She brushed her thumbs gently over them.
"I'm still here … right here," she whispered.
He shifted them so they lay on their sides, face to face. His hands moved over her body, and she didn't stop him when his fingers played over her nipples, sending electric sparks to her centre. When he reached between her legs, she opened them and pulled his head to her to kiss him fiercely. His fingers found her clitoris and rubbed it in firm circles as she pressed herself into his hand.
He touched her until she came with a mewling cry. She lay floating on her euphoria for a few moments, then he moved over her, supporting his upper body with his arms, and looked down at her, his face hardly more than a shadow in the moonlight coming through the window, but close and comforting.
"Now, my love?" he said. "You're sure?"
"Yes."
He reached down to rub the tip of his cock against her opening, spreading her moisture, before sliding slowly into her. Expecting pain, she tensed, but there was none—just the welcome and familiar feeling of him filling her.
It was heavenly, and she gasped.
He mistook the meaning of the sound and withdrew, but she pulled on his bottom to urge him down again.
"It's good," she said. "You feel good. More, please."
He pushed into her again and began to move, with slow, smooth strokes.
She brought her hands to the sides of his face and leant up to kiss him, and he relaxed down into her body.
He was gentle and careful, and it took longer than it usually did until he sped up, moving more forcefully. He moaned her name as he climaxed, and she stroked his back as he shuddered.
He opened his eyes and looked down at her. "All right?"
"Better than all right."
"I didn't hurt you?"
"Not at all." After a moment's hesitation, she asked, "Was it different?"
"What do you mean?"
"Did it … did it feel any different?"
"No. Did it feel different for you?"
She thought about it for a moment before answering, "No. I thought it might, but it didn't."
He shifted off of her and pulled her close to him.
As she lay with her head on his chest, sleepy and more settled than she'd felt since before her illness, she became aware of an odd noise, almost like a soft buzzing. She lifted her head to see if she could pinpoint it.
"What's the matter, my love?" a sleepy Albus asked.
"Nothing." She put her head back down. The buzzing—more of a hum, really, when she focussed on it—was still there, and now it seemed less like a sound and more like a sensation, pulsing gently—something like a heartbeat, but less definite and not from her chest. This seemed to be coming from the whole of her.
A little alarmed now, she said, "Do you feel something?"
"What?"
"I don't know … it's like a sort of humming. It's … this sounds mad, but it seems like it's coming from inside me."
His hand tightened on her shoulder. "Stay still for a moment."
After a few seconds, he said, "I feel it too. But I can't tell if it's coming from you or from me."
She shifted over and lay on her back, trying to locate the sensation.
"Me, I think," she said. "I can still feel it."
"So can I."
"What is it?"
"I don't know. Stay here. I want to try something."
He lit a candle with the wave of a hand and got up. Without bothering with his nightshirt or dressing gown, he went into her sitting room.
He called in, "Do you still feel it?"
"Yes."
He reappeared in the doorway. "So do I."
As he joined her in the bed again, she said, "It's the bond, isn't it?"
"I suspect so, yes."
"Does this normally happen with a blood bond?"
"Not that I'm aware of."
"We're feeling one another's ambient magic."
"Yes. I don't know if it was happening before, and we've only just realised it because we haven't been this close, or if the sex triggered it somehow."
Remembering what Marlene had told her, Minerva said, "The latter, I think." After another moment, a thought occurred to her, and she added, "Do you think it will get stronger every time we make love?"
"I don't know." He kissed her gently. "But try to get some sleep. We'll look into it more over the holidays."
She let him wrap his arm around her waist. As she closed her eyes, she focussed on the humming. Despite her unease about what was happening, the sensation was somehow soothing, and despite her jumbled thoughts, she fell into a deep sleep, uninterrupted until he stirred in the early-morning light. She fell back to sleep and didn't wake again until Quinsy brought her a tray and informed her she had missed Christmas breakfast.