Intense emotions, either negative or positive, had a way of causing physical responses within people, too.

Once the silvery white horse had brought its message to her, spoken in Ginny's voice, and disappeared into thin air, Hermione's heart had instantly begun to pound harder and louder in her chest, even as the rest of her being seemed frozen in time and space as she processed the Patronus message. Several thoughts spiraled into her brain, pushing the conversation that she had been having easily aside. She looked into the wide blue eyes of the middle-aged woman before her, who had been trying to get her on board about more funding for her department but had also fallen silent. It seemed that she, too, was trying to piece the rather cryptic arrangement of words together. It was not the time or space to explain, however. The message had been carefully formed for her to understand without causing chaos in case she weren't alone when she received it, and it had clicked like intended at once. If Ginny's Patronus message was as real as Hermione had understood it, it would cause consternation in the whole Wizarding community.

'The tabby has had nine lives.'

"I have to go," Hermione said as she stood. "I'm terribly sorry. We will have to continue our conversation later."

Since Hermione strived to be fair in the execution of her job and in the funding across all seven Ministry departments, she was willing to at least always listen to her department heads' arguments, no matter how likely or unlikely she felt extra funding was. In a haze, she heard agreement from the head of Magical Games and Sports, but she was already walking to the prominent fireplace and reaching for the pot of Floo Powder on the mantle. She didn't look back as she called out for the headmistress' quarters and went up into smoke.

The very second the ghosty animal had appeared into her office at the Ministry of Magic and begun speaking, she had found herself wondering why Ginny had been at Hogwarts anyhow, and if Ginny had sent Patronuses to Harry and Ronald already as well or if she expected Hermione to inform them from there. Before she had been able to dissect the possibilities and likeliness of either option, Hermione had decided that her time was too precious to worry about those things right then and had made up her mind to get to Hogwarts immediately. She could get answers to the how and why from Ginny there, sooner or later.

It wasn't Ginny she met first upon exiting the fireplace in the headmistress' office, however.

"Miss Granger," the portrait of Albus Dumbledore greeted her, pulling her attention towards the face of the headmaster who had guided her through six school years at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. The look beneath his half-moon spectacles was solemn and saddened, and any inconcrete hope Hermione had fostered of the news not being accurate, began to evaporate. She swallowed the bile that was forming in her throat. Her heart pounding as hard as it did seemed to continue to push the bile upwards. The urge she had felt minutes before to get to Hogwarts as soon as possible had morphed into a hesitance to continue once she stood in the circular office, though. She wasn't entirely certain why initially but quickly realized that it was fear that kept her frozen on the spot.

The Minister for Magic's fear was multi-dimensional. Fear of not having made it in time. Fear of being confronted with the facts if she had made it in time, too, and fear of what the Wizarding world would look like in several hours.

Fear often triggered regret in its different forms and amounts.

Realistically, with how little Minerva and she had seen each other privately the past few years, Hermione's life wouldn't change too dramatically. Still, the idea of a world in which their get-togethers wouldn't be possible anymore, was frightening. Mentally, a great deal would shift. The idea of Minerva McGonagall being reduced to a non-corporeal being in a frame was both devastating and insulting. The bearded man greeting her was a prime example of how a painted frame could never capture all of someone's worth, aside from the fact that the essence that was captured could only ever stay and travel in one place – Hogwarts castle.

Quietly, Albus Dumbledore nudged his chin towards the door leading to the headmistress' private quarters. While resilient and level-headed in the worst case scenarios, as she had proven countless times before, Hermione felt herself shake as she turned to the door indicated by the former headmaster and forced herself to keep going.

The same solemn look that had been prevalent on Albus' face was reflected in Poppy Pomfrey's expression. The matron caught her gaze as she just closed the door to where Hermione knew Minerva's bedroom to be.

The look of recognition in the nurse's face made Ginny, who had had her back turned towards the door leading into the headmistress' office, turn around. She, too, looked morose. It was a look that would be reflected on many faces in the Wizarding world once word got out, Hermione knew.

"Am I too late?" she asked, interpreting the exchange before her, her voice barely above a whisper.

Poppy's response was a shrug of her shoulders somewhere in-between a yes and a no, and Hermione's heart fell. Internally, invisible hands seemed to grasp at it and try to shove it back in place, but all of them failed, and the sinking feeling she had felt since the Patronus message nearly became all-encompassing. It took all she had not to break then and there. If there was a chance for her to see Minerva alive one last time, however, she couldn't and wouldn't give in before she had to.

"She doesn't have long," Poppy spoke. "I doubt she'll be able to speak much, but she might hear you still."

Without asking for permission or waiting for anyone else to say or do anything, Hermione took her queue to pass by the two women in the small corridor and pushed the door to Minerva's bedroom open. If there was a chance that she might hear her one last time, Hermione knew what she would say. Speaking became a surprisingly difficult task for her as well, though, when she closed the door behind her and stepped close enough to the bed for the glow of the warm light behind the headboard to illuminate the woman under the covers.

In the past, even under incredible duress, the Headmistress had held a sense of strength, resilience and even grace. The fact that those traits were nowhere to be found anymore as the former head of Gryffindor house lay in the bed before her, spoke volumes. In fact, Hermione barely recognized the witch before her.

The bile in her throat became harder to swallow. Fear, regret and despair spidered through every fiber of her body. She felt the tension in her fingertips as she gripped her wand tighter in her right hand. Achingly, she held onto the physical core of her magical abilities, watching the life of the person who had encouraged her into the magic world like no one else run out.

"Professor," Hermione voiced, the word eschewing out of her mouth in something like a sigh. She sat down on the side of the bed carefully, perching as close to the edge as possible so that the woman in the bed wouldn't feel the indent in the mattress too much from where she lay. At the sound of the younger witch's voice, Minerva's eyelids fluttered, but she seemed too weak to open her eyes completely.

Pushing past her reservations, Hermione reached for the older woman's frail hand, focusing on the reality of the situation, and trusted Madame Pomfrey's words and her own gut. Before long, she would not get the chance to do so anymore, and she didn't want to add to the mountain of regret on that particular day.

Minerva's hand felt neither cool nor warm to the touch, but the lack of resistance Hermione encountered as she grasped it in her own only added to the gravity of the moment. Deep down, she must have known that no one lived forever, but still, in an uncharacteristic ignorance, she had felt that Minerva McGonagall would always be there, and now it seemed to be the tipping point where that would become no longer true.

Sitting there next to the dying figure of the woman she had always looked up to, she felt nothing like the person who stood tall holding the Minister for Magic position. She didn't feel unwavering or uncompromising as she sometimes had to be in her professional life, as a wife or mother. In that moment, she felt more like the child and teenager who had been taught the wonders of magic in that same castle than she had for years.

Despite the fact that they hadn't had private moments together in those years, the idea of Minerva disappearing out of her life made her feel oddly orphaned. Hermione's parents had always tried really hard to be supportive of their daughter, whichever path she chose, and did the best they could to understand her life and be involved in it. Truthfully, however, there would always be a big chunk of her life they knew nothing about. As such, they had only ever been able to fulfill part of the exemplary parent role for their daughter. The other part had been fulfilled by the woman whose hand Hermione was holding.

While Mr. and Mrs. Granger had taught their daughter kindness and politeness, among other things, as well as hard work, Minerva had provided a great example of ambition, grace through resilience, wittiness through justice. Those qualities fusing together had molded Hermione into the person she was that day. Like everyone else, she, too, felt like she had room for growth still, and ever since she had been eleven years old, the person pulling her towards that growth had been Minerva McGonagall, whether actively or passively. Hermione's parents had provided her with a good baseline to mature from, but ever since her world had shifted from Muggle oriented to Wizarding oriented, Hermione's go-to had shifted, too. With Minerva, it wasn't exactly a mother-like feeling, though. In fact, as she had evolved into a young woman, Hermione's hormone-infused feelings towards Minerva had been decidedly un-mother-like at one point.

Since an ethical distance between students and teachers existed, an exploration of those feelings hadn't been encouraged or possible – and that was aside from the confusion that came with harboring feelings for someone of the same gender who was also a great deal older. Even if all of those things hadn't been true at the time, Minerva McGonagall would have still been out of reach that way. Hermione hadn't considered it likely that Minerva was anything but strictly heterosexual, or that she would ever be interested in someone so much younger and more inexperienced. She had overthought it many times in her younger years, including all of the alternative scenarios she could have thought of.

At forty-five, settled into the life she had built for herself and her family, she had learned to look at whatever she did or didn't feel regarding Minerva with resignation and acceptance, not necessarily sadness or regret. It wasn't in spite of her age but more because of her age that Hermione was inclined to accept that those feelings had existed and in part still did exist, albeit less intensely.

At that moment, faced with Minerva's departure, she felt an urge to tell the other woman the complete truth, including emotions she had buried decades before. Her intention wasn't to shock or anything of the sort at such pivotal moment, but Hermione felt, instigated by the heaviness of what was happening, they were past half-truths. Half-truths felt like a watered-down version of what Minerva had meant over the years, and if there was anything she wanted to say before Minerva went, it was that she had meant a great deal. When her time finally came, those were the types of things Hermione herself knew she would want to hear, too. She would want to know she had mattered on a more personal level, rather than been influential in her professional life.

Over the years, so much time in which she could have told Minerve what she meant to her had been wasted. Therefore, it wasn't even unlikely that her sentiments would come across with dubious genuineness. She could only hope Minerva remembered that she wasn't the kind of person to be ingenuine.

The Minister for Magic twisted and turned her tongue in her mouth as she filtered through her full list of vocabulary in her head, in search of the right way to breach the subject. She found, however, that anything she chose to say would very likely alter the message she wanted to convey or dull the meaningfulness of it, like a pillow might soften a terrible fall or blow.

Unexpectedly, it was right in that moment that Hermione's former Head of House seemed to find the strength to open her eyes, her gaze falling on the younger woman directly. Despite the gravity of the situation, Hermione couldn't help but smile, even as the tears that had been brimming at the corners of her eyes possibly ever since she had heard Ginny's Patronus message, broke through and ran down over her cheeks. She couldn't explain how grateful she was that Minerva McGonagall granted her the opportunity to look into her beautiful teal green eyes one more time. Hermione doubted anyone would ever understand how much that moment meant to her.

"Oh Minerva," she whispered. Her resolve had solidified the very second the Headmistress' eyes had opened. Fueled by the pressing feeling of time running out, she plunged forwards. "I don't quite know what the Wizarding world will be like without you. I don't know what my world will be like without you, but what I do know, is that it'll be much less beautiful."

Any word could have done instead of 'beautiful', but none would have been more accurate or all-encompassing. Even 'beautiful', the word she had settled on in the end, didn't seem to cover it all.

There was no time to beat around the bush. The expression in Minerva's eyes said that she knew her time had come. There was defeat and acceptance in one, and there was just no other way Hermione knew how to interpret it. If Hermione had doubted Madame Pomfrey's words in any way, or doubted her own interpretation of Minerva's condition, then the look in the Headmistress' eyes alone would have countered all of it. Even the most apathic person in the world would have been able to interpret the look in Minerva's eyes correctly. Her time was running out, but she was okay with it.

Minerva's mouth moved, but before she could form words, she began to cough from the strain on her vocal cords. Hermione found herself wondering if she would have much to say at that point at the end of her life, or if it would be the culmination of letting things go. She wondered if it would be hard at that point to want to speak but be unable to. For as long as the Minister for Magic could remember, she had been the one to hold onto both things and people long past anyone else – especially if seen from an ethical point of view. Her efforts towards the S.P.E.W. in her teenage years was only one of many examples that illustrated that. Hermione shook her head back and forth, squeezing Minerva's hand tightly. "I don't expect any kind of response from you now," Hermione whispered. "You've dedicated your entire life to the Wizarding world and to Hogwarts. You can rest."

The words coming from her mouth sounded strained, and it took all Hermione had not to sob in utmost despair as the reality of a world without Minerva McGonagall wrapped itself around her like invisible Devil's Snare. She felt like she couldn't breathe as she forced the words of goodbye past her lips. She was acutely aware of the fact that once she left the Headmistress' bedroom, she would never set foot in there while Minerva was alive again. She had seen death and despair. She had had to say goodbye to many good people in her life already – people who had felt like family, like Remus and Tonks, like Fred. They had just never been Minerva. In many ways, their bond had been much less personal, less family-like. In others, it had been far more personal than any other relationship Hermione had ever had, both in the past and in the present, including the ones with her husband and Harry.

Hermione wasn't quite sure as to the reason why she tore her gaze away from Minerva – because she didn't want the other woman to see her cry, or because she couldn't bear the sight before her herself. "You have been such a beacon of light for so many people," Hermione spoke, her words directed at Minerva but her gaze upon their hands. "You were the epitome of what Gryffindor House stands for. You showed me what courage is, and loyalty, and there isn't a single day since I met you that I haven't looked up to you. There isn't a single day I remember that I didn't lo–"

Just as she was about to finish her sentence and say the words she had gone there to say, specifically, she fell silent. Running her thumb along the back of Minerva's hand, she encountered no resistance, nor when she squeezed the older woman's hand just a little tighter. Dread filled her as she lifted her head to look upon the woman in the bed. Her eyes were closed, her forehead smoothed out, not scrunched up in pain or fear. Her mouth was slightly agape as if she had meant to speak, as if intending to challenge Hermione's suggestion to rest instead of try to speak even in her last moments. Hermione's gaze traveled down, looking to find solace in the slow rise and fall of the headmistress' chest, but she detected no movement anymore.

A small part inside her wanted to smile in relief at having had the chance to see the woman before her one last time alive still, and another, bigger part, had to fight the urge to wail in regret at not having been able to say everything. Perhaps she had known. Perhaps she had said enough for Minerva to have filled in the blanks before she had gone. Perhaps she had never had to say anything at all for her former Head of House to just know. The biggest part of Hermione felt abandoned and oddly alone in the world as opposed to minutes prior, and in that moment, she wasn't sure she would ever really stop feeling that way. Grief didn't exactly come with a set of rationalizations, and if one word could describe all of the things Hermione did and didn't feel right then, it was grief. Grief for having lost what they had had. Grief for what they hadn't.

She released a long, shaky breath. She knew that she should let Poppy know, so that arrangements could be made, but not yet. As the heaviest tendrils of grief washed over her, the Minister for Magic saw no point in trying to keep herself composed. She would stay there with Minerva for a moment longer before parting from her physical form.

"Thank you," she whispered into the dusky room as her cheeks began to glow from the burn of her salty tears. Even if she knew that Minerva couldn't hear her anymore, she liked to believe that she carried the sentiment with her wherever she went, to touch others with her incorporeal presence the way she had touched Hermione's existence – in which she never would have taken credit for.

Perhaps she had known. Hermione hoped so.

IN MEMORIAM

Dame Maggie Smith
December 28, 1934 - September 27, 2024

Thank you.