HA 1c: Pain

HIM AGAIN: Chapter 1: Death, Victory and Pain - Pain

Minerva McGonagall sat, frozen, quill suspended over the thick parchment, eyes fixed on a point in time - in a happier past. Her thinking had stalled, like it did so often, these days. She had failed again. Anybody watching would know by the tense rigidity of her posture, the way she’d paled slightly. The realisation of this made her blink and attempt to surface.

It had been seven years. Seven years, for Merlin’s sake! Six, since the turmoil had ended, and everybody, save her, had celebrated the long-awaited peace - peace which He‘d never been able to enjoy. Six wonderful years, she thought. Six wonderful years that she should be grateful for. If she thought them wonderful, then perhaps she could convince herself that they were.
Seven years was more than enough for a person to pull themselves together.

She remembered the quill and attempted to focus on the letter to the school governors. Incorrigible men, they were; it was quite tedious writing to them. She searched for words - and realised that her quill was not scratching on the parchment, meaning that other sounds were reaching her.

His office was almost silent. She could not think of it as hers. There was the quiet ticking of the clock, the whisper of the wind outside the window… and that gentle snoring, that awful snoring from the wall behind her. The pressure to turn around was familiar but she suppressed the desire; it never did her any good when she looked.

She tried to block it out. She had spent the last seven years trying to do so, and she’d never yet succeeded. The snoring was very much like the memory of Him: constant, irrepressible, upsetting. It was the one final cruelty which had been done to her.

Once, she’d taken the picture down and stowed it in a corner, in a feeble effort to quieten the snoring. The guilt and agony of it had tortured her, so she’d put it back up again a mere couple of days later. The worst thing in the world would be to do an injustice to His memory in His office, whilst sitting in His chair with His job, with the residue of Him all around her.

He was always strolling in and out of her mind, too. There was always the thought of Him, and His mistake, and what He’d done, and what she’d never told Him. Too much thinking of Him would result in an agitation of the hands, and tears, so she tried to direct her thoughts away from Him. Naming Him would be the worst error to make.

That snoring. She wanted to scream!

In the time after He’d gone, she’d waited, grief held at bay by the idea of speaking to Him, of telling Him… But her last comfort had been snatched away from her; snoring was all that was left…

There was a knock on the door.

The Headmistress came back to herself and put down her quill, grateful for the interruption. She could be Professor McGonagall again.

“Come in,” she said.

Filius Flitwick opened the door nervously. His eyes found the thin, sharp woman at the desk instantly. The corners of the woman’s mouth turned upwards slightly.

“Filius! What can I do for you?”

The small wizard walked into the room, clutching the papers to his chest. If a student had been present, they would have seen a different Flitwick to the one that taught them. Professor Flitwick was cheerful and exuberant and excitable; the Filius that entered the Headmistress’s office was far more subdued. Nobody liked seeing the ruins of Minerva.

Seeing her sitting there, dull green eyes circled with weary darkness and black shot liberally with grey, Filius felt a pang to his heart. He always felt miserable and confused whenever he entered this room. But he’d never been a close friend of Minerva’s, and if neither Rolanda nor Poppy had solved the mystery, then he certainly would never know.

“Well, I’m a little confused by the new syllabus outlines for the sixth years,” he said timidly, holding out the papers.

Minerva - or the ruins of Minerva - sighed. “You are not the only one, Filius. I was thinking that it could be sorted out in tonight’s meeting. Both Pomona and Rolanda have already been to see me, just as confused by the school board’s inability to write in plain English.”

Filius nodded. Another time, he would have laughed. Still, he had some hope - he had news that should put a genuine smile on the witch’s face. “Minerva, I have come good news!” he squeaked. “It was in the paper - Mrs Potter’s having her baby!”

Minerva sat up, and for a moment, her wan face was transfigured with sudden joy. “That’s wonderful, Filius! Harry must be pleased.”

Filius nodded happily - but as he left the office, he saw her smile fade. A distant, painful look had come into her eyes. He went down the stairs feeling disappointed and wrong-footed - if the news that one of her old cubs was having a baby wasn’t enough to cheer Minerva up, then what could?

Minerva found herself surrounded by the silence again. She clasped her thin hands together sadly. In another world - in a world that was more perfect, perhaps - she would have been present at the birth. She could have cradled the soft pink form and been truly happy. But she couldn’t and she wasn’t. After it had happened - that event which had caused her to fall in upon herself - she had known enough not to inflict her presence on others. The world was in dire need of cheer and light - and she was neither, not anymore. Her brooding presence and her inability to smile properly hurt others, she knew. Her lips twisted. The staff was worried about her - had been ever since they had first noticed the change in her. Only now were they beginning to accept that it wasn’t possible to change her back.

So she had drawn back from it all - even from poor Harry, as he had flailed around searching for a point of dependence and stability. Poor Harry, who wanted and needed another - another Him. She sighed when she realised the direction her thoughts were taking her. Him again.