Minerva studied the scene critically. The two armchairs were placed a few feet apart - enough to be confidential but not so close as to be claustrophobic - and the tea set was positioned on the coffee table, ready to dispense a polite service. The chamber had been thoroughly cleaned beforehand; not a speck of dust dared float in the air. Minerva herself had selected a set of dark green robes to wear - ones that she judged to exude a professional, logical air - and had spent an unusual amount of time surveying herself in a mirror. She had a strange desire to ensure that Eleanor Reeves, of whatever character she may be possessed, would not find the area lacking, nor find her client ‘going to pieces.’
Of course, Poppy had probably exaggerated the situation and made her sound like a woman on the verge of grief-stricken prostration; Miss Reeves most likely expected to find a tear-stained invalid donned in black, clutching a small lace hankerchief. Well, Minerva thought, leaning on the walking stick, invalid is half correct.
Her eyes darted to the clock for the fifth time. Miss Reeves was due any minute. The more she thought about the concept, the less she liked it. For one thing, the idea of opening up her heart to a perfect stranger was almost incomprehensible and for another, counsellors were probably supposed to be strictly the province of actual tear-stained invalids near suicide, rather than foolish old women who simply could not move on after a tragedy and spent their days living in the past. How… attention-seeking, she thought.
The sound of Poppy’s voice reached her from her office - and there was a knock on the door to her chambers. Minerva braced herself and marched forward. The door opened, the tapestry swung aside - and Eleanor Reeves stood before her.
The first impression Minerva had was of a pair of uncommonly large, dark eyes, sitting in a round face like two pools. The second was of a set of calm blue robes hanging off a body that was too small for them and the third was a set of grey curls that had been tamed, with varying degrees of success, into a small ponytail that served to emphasise the owner’s lack of hair rather than length. Minerva was in the habit of assigning possible Animagi creatures to people, and the image that struck her was of a very small owl, head tilted to one side in a way that was slightly quizzical. The picture was neither alarming nor unappealing and she found herself shaking the proffered wizened hand readily enough.
“Minerva. I’m Miss Reeves, but you are welcome to call me Eleanor. Hogwarts is as beautiful as it was during my own days here - days long gone, I fear.”
The dark eyes quivered with a spark of amusement.
Minerva heard herself murmur something polite and meaningless. Eleanor Reeves smiled and peered over her shoulder at the prepared space - and promptly flicked her wand, transforming one of the armchairs into a recliner.
“I apologise for the alteration, but clients tend to prefer speaking when in a more relaxed position. Forgive me. I must say this is quite an ideal environment.” The counsellor beamed at the tea set out on the coffee table - and the Headmistress saw her eyes rove quickly around the rest of the room, before coming back to rest on herself. Minerva blinked; she was being assessed already before she had even begun talking. She cast a look around, wondering whether some out-of-place object had betrayed her, but her previous satisfaction remained preserved. She started at the sight of Miss Reeves already ensconced in the armchair and gesturing towards the recliner. Her muscles tensed. She had expected small talk and diversions in the form of sugar and tea and on subjects such as weather - not for the counsellor to charge determinedly to the meat of her purpose the moment she had arrived. Feeling distinctly ruffled, Minerva seated herself gingerly on the recliner.
Of course, she realised suddenly, the counsellor wanted her business over and done with as quickly as she did. It was a business like any other; Minerva was a client, a face to put a name to and nothing more. The sympathy extended would be professional, the listening something endured for payment. Perhaps she was even an interesting specimen, a psychological study in grief that the woman before her would eventually produce some article or report of. Her jaw tightened; she knew her thoughts were in the grip of cynicism.
“Now Minerva,” Poppy’s voice resounded in her head. “This isn’t the time to be rational - just blurt it all out.”
‘Blurting out,’ however, was more the province of Rolanda Hooch than Minerva McGonagall. Minerva McGonagall was a calm, self-controlled - some would say reserved - woman, who… A pang in her temple indicated the beginnings of a headache. The banshee in the mirror draped in Albus’s dressing gown battered against her skull, screaming. If that was Minerva McGonagall, then who was she?
“Minerva, just to put you at your ease,” Miss Reeves said, supporting her head with a rested elbow, “I would like to make two things absolutely clear. Firstly - and most importantly - nothing you ever say to me will ever leave this room. Everything is confidential, meaning that you are free to speak about anything you wish. Secondly, I am here to listen, and to understand - and to perhaps help you have insights you would not otherwise have. I’m not here to judge or condemn. I know nothing of your problem and so I come to you fresh and unbiased. I cannot help you based on the words of others; only your own words can tell me what I need to know to aid you. There’s no rush, no unnecessary haste… Talk whenever you wish. Please treat me as a sympathetic, impartial ear.”
The counsellor smiled encouragingly. Minerva sat at a loss, cradling the end of her walking stick in her hands. A kind of apathetic irritation weighted her. She had assumed that Miss Reeves would at least know something of the problem - the knowledge of complete ignorance and the fact that she would have to narrate everything from the beginning surely destroyed the point of the whole process. She looked up; the dark eyes were expectant. What could she say? “I loved my superior and now he’s dead.” Her lip curled at the absurdity of the image.
“You seem uneasy, Minerva,” Miss Reeves observed softly. “Does something about this situation trouble you? Not to put words into your mouth, but I assume that the idea of confiding to a stranger bothers you.”
“It does,” Minerva admitted. “I am not used to such spontaneous expression. It takes me a long time to trust people.”
“Is this the basis of your problem? That you find that hard?”
“No. Not of my main problem - though I dare say it has not helped. I suppose I could have been more forward about the issue to my colleagues and friends.”
“Was there a specific reason why you did not trust them? Only tell me if you feel the need to.”
“I felt it to be a stupid problem,” Minerva said forcefully, realising that she still thought so. “Many others have faced the same problem and have been in the same circumstances. It is ridiculous that a woman of my age cannot put the past behind her.”
“You have very high, specific expectations of yourself then.”
“I suppose so. I expect myself to overcome obstacles, certainly.”
“This ‘obstacle’ is in the past, then?”
“Yes.”
“How long ago?”
Minerva’s jaw tightened more. They were approaching it now, drawing closer to her soul. “Seven, nearly eight years.”
Miss Reeves’s gaze became sharper. “During the Second War. Does it bear any relationship to those events?”
Minerva nodded, her throat dry. This delving was unpleasant, disturbing.
“May I ask what your situation was at the time? Again, don’t answer if-”
“I will.” The eyes had become whirlpools, drawing in her secrets like wrecked ships. “I was Deputy Headmistress and Head of Gryffindor House at the time. I dare say you have heard of the Order of the Phoenix - I was a member of it and intensely involved. I was second-in-command…”
“May I make an observation? There was a lot of uneasiness there, that was what I mainly got from that. Yet I don’t think it was necessarily your responsibilities that were the problem.”
“They weren’t.”
Miss Reeves sighed and leant back in her chair. Her shadowed orbs clouded. “Minerva, there is a lot of darkness surrounding the Second War - fear, grief, helplessness… You’ve said that the issue is one that you found hard to communicate to your friends; I think I’m encountering the same constraints here-”
“I’ll tell you!” Minerva found herself snapping. She glanced down at her veined hands. The implications were undoubtedly correct - evasion could not help, pride was something she should long have since abandoned - what woman who had behaved as she had that night had any right to pride? “That war took something precious from me - from the world. I did not realise how precious it was until it was gone. I cared about someone whom the war destroyed, with someone he most trusted as its instrument. Compared to this man - compared to what he did - we none of us have a right to peace. He worked tirelessly for it and yet never received it.” Her airways constricted. “I cared about him very much.”
Albus’s kind face rose before her. His deep, powerful voice reverberated in her ribcage; what wouldn’t she give to hear him again? What would she not suffer for one inane chat about socks?
“How painful - how very painful and difficult it must have been for you.”
“It’s been eight years. I should be over it. I cherish the friendship that I believe I had with him but there was no rational reason for me to have developed such fancies.”
“Minerva, what ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ be is not the question. I think what you’ve just told me demonstrates that your feelings were - and are - considerably deeper than ‘fancies.’ The length of time alone indicates real attachment there.”
“His name was Albus Dumbledore.”
The question hadn’t even been asked and yet now the utterance hung in the air like a sudden spell. His name! His name had finally passed her lips in its entirety - to fill a gaping void that was unbearable, intolerable. Irrepressible, the forbidden had spurted forth like an uncontrollable fountain or a surge of flame. Now there was someone in the world who knew - who had heard from her directly - who knew that Minerva McGonagall loved Albus Dumbledore - and loved him still, beyond all stretches! This was why, this was the admission; this was why she was become as she was, the banshee in the dressing gown.
“It was silly of me,” she said - and realised that it was a conclusion, rather than a starting statement, and that Miss Reeves’s eyes held the mirror and the tomb as completely as her own did.
“I do not think it was silly,” the counsellor whispered. “You were overcome - and no wonder, for I get the impression that you have spent most of the last eight years suppressing and hiding these emotions.”
Minerva nodded, shocked at how the words had slipped out.
“You were unaware that you loved him until he had gone?”
“Not - not entirely. I suppose - there were times when I-” The Headmistress paused, licked her lips nervously and continued. The past seemed incomprehensible; how could there ever have been a time when she did not adore his presence? “Sometimes he was my superior, other times he was my friend- and there were other periods still when I felt for him. But I don’t presume to have really known him… I idolised him from childhood, though in later years whether platonically or romantically I cannot say… I apologise; I’m rambling.”
“I think you should ramble more often, Minerva. You say from childhood?”
“He was my Transfiguration Professor and was the one to guide me in my first Animagus transformation.”
The stiff words meant nothing: the memories were returning, surfacing like ripples from the underwater movement of fish. Hindsight attached greater emotion to the visual snatches, the sounds and sensations of over sixty years before, daubing them more brightly and clearly than that old reality had made them, significance both ladening and lightening them. She pursued them - pursuit having been self-denied for so long.
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