Minerva/Severus -- 1: Beginnings
It wasn’t love, this feeling. It couldn’t be. Of that, at least, he was fairly certain.
They were decades apart, for starters. Not that that meant much; people had certainly speculated about her and Albus, and he was-what? Eighty, ninety years her senior? Suddenly twenty or thirty years didn’t seem so bad, but it was still...odd...
She could have anyone she wanted, of course. Nearly seventy, and she looked barely older than him. Severus scowled at the thought. She’d had who she’d wanted; a strapping, cheerful man who had, as far as Severus could tell, died nearly two decades previously.
She’d never think of him, anyway. He was ugly inside and out; a rank personality mirrored by a pasty, hook-nosed face and hair constantly oily from standing over potion fumes for hours at a time. No one would want that. He wouldn’t want that. He was just simply...unlovable. After her husband, she wouldn’t even consider it.
Besides, even if she hadn’t had a past, he certainly had. Lily Evans’s memory never failed to cause him pain. He had loved her from the moment he’d laid eyes on her (though, honestly, it had been so long that he was not even sure he remembered what that love felt like); then, he’d lost her, first to Potter, then to Death. For him, it had been her, and only her-wasn’t that what love was supposed to be, anyway? One person, forever? Or maybe he was incapable of really loving, the way it was supposed to be. He was a Death Eater, after all.
Death Eaters surely couldn’t love. They were cold-blooded killers at best, even spies like him. She was a Gryffindor, Albus’s confidant, a fierce warrioress for the Light. They never got along nicely, though Severus often wondered whether it had sometimes been an amused twinkle in her eyes when they bickered; he certainly enjoyed sparring with her far more than he should have. She was clever-far too clever to see him as anything more than her constant rival and arguing partner.
Severus scowled again. It was hardly a disappointment. He had long ago resigned himself to a lonely existence; any lack of affection, whether given or received, was normal and of no consequence to him. Except...
There was occasionally a painful little tug in the back of his mind, daring him to wonder what could be if there was ever someone-an intimate friend, perhaps, or a woman to hold close while they read or slept... A companion. Someone who cared about him, not his role as a professor or a spy.
The urge left him restless and irritated with himself, and he had done nothing the entire evening but stare into the fire in a fruitless attempt to clear his mind. There was no reason for this feeling, whatever it was. Especially about her-especially when he couldn’t even name when he’d begun to feel this way.
The knock on his door did not fully rouse him from his thoughts, but he wasn’t overly concerned. The only ones that had access to his office were some of the staff, and he very much doubted there was an emergency-they knew enough to use Floo powder, in that case. Knocking was easily (and almost always) ignored. But tonight....
Call it restlessness. Call it the need for distraction, or a semblance of companionship; call it the desire to figure out what the hell was the matter with him.
But at the sight of Minerva McGonagall, standing in his doorway in her dressing gown and holding an unnecessary cup of some steaming beverage, he invited her in.