The Headmaster's Office was strangely quiet for theHeadmaster's Office, the stillness of the moment only broken by the occasionalpuffs, hoots, or whirring of Albus's strange silver contraptions people hadgiven him over the years. Any other time she would have wondered if he evenknew what they all did - or if they did anything at all.
Minerva looked over at the others that shared the roomwith her. Severus looked pale, though with his sallow skin it was hard to tell;the man always looked sickly. Hagrid was already sitting on the floor, a handto his mouth and head slightly shaking. He was staring off into space and hadbeen that way almost from the beginning. She didn't know how she looked butthought she must be somewhere between the two.
"Abandonment?" she asked, completely at a lossas to what to think. Surely it couldn't be.
"That's what they claim," Albus said in thestrange nebulous way of his, as if what they were discussing didn't matter atall. "It's nonsense, of course-," the headmaster said as she began tobreathe again. "I've always intended to have a relationship with the boy,once the messiness of youth was behind him," Albus smiled.
Albus smiled? Albus smiled?How could he smile at an allegation of abandoning the most famous child thecountry has ever known - or any child for that matter? The very thought shouldhave smiling beyond the realm of possibility for the foreseeable future. How heshould look is concerned.
And if that weren't enough, goblins were involved andthey were alleging bank fraud, which would've been enough to keep her awakenights. Someone in the Ministry had her personal account at Gringotts auditedwhen she left - she'd always thought she must have stepped on the wrong toesduring her time in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement - and the goblinshad raked her over the coals for weeks, leaving her nothing to live on untilthey were satisfied nothing untoward was going on. Even then, some of themstill looked at her strangely for years after that.
Albus knew all this, he'd been there and it was only bychance she was able to take up residence in the castle and teach so she'd beable to eat again. Something in what he said ticked in the back of her mind.
"You intended to have a relationship with him - oncethe mess was behind him?" she asked scandalized. "That's all life is,Albus, one mess after another. When precisely were you planning on talking tothe boy, after you were both dead?"
"We actually had two very nice conversations justlast year," Albus said jovially.
"And what of the ten years before that?" sheasked. "How could you have left them with those people? I told you theywere the worst sort of muggles imaginable."
"And yet," Albus said with his arms spreadjoyfully wide, "you agreed with me that there was where he shouldbe."
"I thought I had no choice!" the deputyheadmistress explained. "I went there to beg the person from the Ministryto reconsider, no matter what the law might say. I thought that was you. Howwas I supposed to know you were his guardian?"
"His magical gua-" Albus smiled.
"You can't have it both ways!" the deputyheadmistress fumed. "You can't be his guardian when you help yourself tohis account and then only his magical guardian when it comes to raisinghim."
The old fool looked at her like she had suddenly growngills and spouted mermish at him.
"N-no," poor Hagrid mumbled, still shaking hishead in response to Merlin alone knew what. "We didna."
"You should have told me you didn't want him,"she pressed. "I would've taken him straight back to the Ministry andarrange to raise him myself."
"Which would've put you in the same position asI," Albus said. "With our obligations to the school-"
"-We have house-elves,"she countered immediately. "They would've loved the extra work of lookingafter him during my classes, and I couldn't imagine better friends for him. Hewould've been in a good environment, with an entire generation of witches andwizards able to meet him, which would have completely demystified him, and he'dable to learn everything he'd need from an early age."
"And it would have put all of us at greatrisk," the headmaster said sorrowfully. "I'm sure we all recall whathappened to poor Frank and Alice."
That chilled her to the bone like a dip in the lake inthe middle of a Scottish February. How could he expect her to forget friendsand former students who had been tortured into insanity? They weren't like theones who attracted no notice in class and simply slipped by, like she was sureSeverus had been. For the life of her she couldn't recall anything about himfrom when he was younger.
"Even at his height, You-Know-Who never dared toattack Hogwarts," she reminded him. "With him gone, the Death Eaterswouldn't have stood a chance. The only way they could've hoped to breach thecastle would've been if you'd let them."
She looked at her old professor with a sense of loss.What had happened to the powerful man who'd so captivated the minds of youngpeople and amazed them with the dazzling heights of spell work they could onlyhope to achieve through hard work and nearly constant practice? Where had thebrave defender of freedom gone after Grindelwald's defeat? What had happenedthe principled person who had stood in the halls of the Wizengamot and sobravely declared: 'If youallow such discriminatory laws against our brothers and sisters to take effect,simply because they happen to love the same sex as themselves, not only are youcondemning some of the most prominent names in magical history to the realm ofsecond class citizenry but you'll be condemning me to live so as well. '?
He looked like such a poor and diminished man now; thegoblins would tear him apart. And worse, he had left Hogwarts itself open totheir ravenous ruin.
"I cannot begin to say how disappointed I am in you,Albus," she said as she started to help Hagrid to his feet; the poor manhad suffered quite a shock. "Come along, Hagrid, let's see you home."
Minerva took one last look at Albus as she left. Wherehad her hero gone?
As the gentle giant made his way down the tightly curvedstaircase in front of her all the things she should've said came to her mind.James and Lily had put their trust in him, they had followed him, believed inhim, and this was how he repaid their trust? By stealing from their orphan sonand abandoning him? He might as well have taken him into the forest to beraised by centaurs.
Anger rising within her again, she turned back to givehim another piece of her mind.
"I risked my life-," she heard Severus say fromthe other side of the door as she inched closer. "-To give her and her sona chance to survive, to make up for what I'd done. Did you even warn them whatwas going to happen or was this all a part of your plan?"
Minerva felt her stomach plummet. Surely Albus couldn'thave changed so much as to engineer the Potters' deaths. It was unthinkable,but so was him abandoning and stealing from a child. She only heard a muffledresponse as she pressed her ear closer to the door, not even daring to pull herwand in case she was discovered.
Albus had been secreted away with Severus so often theselast several years she'd once thought them pillow friends before the youngerman's surly attitude and occasional lingering glances at some of the olderfemale students put an end to the thought. Now though seemed a perfect time tocatch a glimpse of what was really going on between them.
"He's her son!" she heard Severus say. "Asmuch as I wish he weren't, he is, and you leave him with Petunia? Tell me againhow indulgent amother Potter has."
'Petunia ?' Minerva wondered.Albus had never said what the family's name was. She'd found them all thoseyears ago but now couldn't remember the surname for the life of her, so howcould Severus know them so casually? 'It'salmost as if- '
Suddenly it made sense.
James Potter she clearly recalled from her class, usuallyin the company of Sirius Black. They were always causing a disruption of somesort - sword fighting with haddocks, changing the color of their hair, growingantlers or tails - while his eventual wife, Lily Evans, was best known forrolling her eyes, telling them to be quiet, and hanging around the thin, palelittle male friend of hers Minerva had always referred to as Lily's Shadow.Lily's sallow-skinned, hooked-nose, greasy-haired Slytherin shadow.
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