fic for nicolen: Geese (McGonagall, Marauders, Snape, others, PG-13)
Title: Geese
Recipient: nicolen
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Minerva McGonagall, Remus Lupin, James Potter, Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore, Poppy Pomfrey
Warnings: The teensiest, tiniest foreshadowings of character death; cruelty to animals
Author's Notes: For the purposes of this story, "the prank" occurred during the autumn of the Marauders' fifth year, and before "Snape's Worst Memory."
Much love and thanks to my wonderful betas!
--
Autumn is full of omens that Minerva ignores. With the restless movements of the giants, the gruesome articles in the Daily Prophet - only a foreshadowing of the horrors that are sure to come - and the tight-lipped, somber expression that Albus tries to conceal with twinkling eyes and sherbet lemons, she has no attention to spare for the Divination Professor's fainting fits and hysteria, or the indecipherable mutterings of the centaurs. Shadows on the moon and tea leaves and the alignments of the planets, all of these so-called omens are foolishness. Star-gazing is a waste of time.
Minerva pours the last of her tea into the sink, ignoring the wet splash of the tea leaves in the basin. She rinses out her cup and puts it on the rack with the rest of the professors' teacups before making her way to the Transfiguration classroom for her first class. Students scatter through the hallways, abandoning their chatter and hurrying to their classes when they see her approach. Their expressions are taut with fear, their laughter is falsely bright, and Minerva forces a smile onto her face to reassure them. It isn't possible to keep the knowledge of the approaching darkness from them. Young and impressionable as they are, they can't be convinced to disregard the portents and omens.
Minerva's first class is the fifth-year Gryffindors and Slytherins, never an easy group. This year, they're caught up in their worries about the war and not focused on their upcoming OWLs. Minerva sweeps into the classroom, willing her face to show no hint of the tension she feels, and spends a few minutes watching the students as she organizes her notes.
She needs no gift of prophecy to interpret their behavior. Severus Snape has left off his Slytherin tie, dressing in stark black, unrelieved by the touch of silver and green - Minerva doesn't take points for his deviation from the school uniform, knowing how he had lost his tie during the full moon that month. His school robes have the stretched, uneven look of poorly Transfigured clothing, and his expression is sullen. It takes little imagination to see him in another black outfit, masked and Marked and deadly.
Then there are her fifth-year Gryffindor boys, divided for the first time since their arrival at Hogwarts. Remus Lupin and Sirius Black sit at opposite ends of the classroom, each of them casting furtive looks at the other, neither of them aware of the other's regard. James Potter has abandoned them both. He sits next to Lily Evans and directs his charming smile at her. With a confused expression on his face, Peter Pettigrew has shadowed after Potter.
With a sharp clap of her hands, Minerva brings the class to order and transfers her notes to the chalkboard. "Now, remember that when you Transfigure an inanimate object into an animate object, you need to ensure that the circulatory system is fully functional. The animal must have a heart, either two-chambered or four-chambered, according to its physiology. Today, we'll work on the relatively simple Transfiguration of quills to geese. The starting material remembers having been a part of the living animal at one time, as it were, and this makes the Transfiguration easier."
Pettigrew, stuttering and eager to please, distributes the quills. Minerva moves among the students, correcting incantations and wand movements. Sirius Black is inattentive, his Transfigurations sloppy - there's a half-plucked goose running around in her classroom - but when she sees his contrite expression, Minerva doesn't scold him. She picks up the goose and holds it in the cradle of her arms, ruffling its feathers to feel its pulse. The goose squawks. Its heartbeat is fast and thready, and Minerva strokes its neck to calm it. "This is a credible first step, Mr. Black. It appears that you've gotten the physiology correct, and now you need to focus on the exterior appearance of the goose."
Lupin is distracted, watching Potter and Black. Potter is attempting to impress Evans, distracting both of them, and so, out of all of her top students, it is Severus Snape who manages the first correct Transfiguration. His goose is grey-eyed and irate, preening its feathers and snapping at Minerva when she bends to examine it. "Well done, Mr. Snape," she says, and he smirks at his Gryffindor rivals.
Pettigrew's attempts are pathetic, and in the end Minerva sends Potter to sit elsewhere so that Evans can concentrate on her own work and help Pettigrew. Unabashed, James Potter gives Minerva a cheeky smile and a mock-gallant bow as he goes to sit beside Lupin. Minerva removes her spectacles to rub her temples, feeling the onset of a headache as she watches the boys draw invisible lines across her classroom.
Black's shoulders slump when he sees Potter joining Lupin, and his next half-hearted attempt at Transfiguring his quill yields a noisy explosion. The bright flash aggravates Minerva's headache, but one look at Black's obvious misery stops her from making a sharp comment. She banishes the charred remains of his feather and gives him a new one without a word. A quick spell takes care of the soot on his desk and hands, and she reminds him again to focus and enunciate with care.
"Yes, ma'am," he says. Minerva frowns at the unexpected lack of back-chat from Sirius Black, and at the front of the classroom, Snape snickers at him.
During Minerva's moment of inattention, James Potter has turned his quill into a gray gander and sent it strutting over to Lily Evans' desk, a Transfigured rose held in its beak. "Please focus on the assignment, Mr. Potter, and not on Transfiguring roses or harassing your classmates."
"Look, Potter, even Evans doesn't want you," Snape says in a quiet hiss, his ill-tempered goose pinned under his arm and his wand held at the ready. Potter jerks around to stare at Snape and then turns back to his friends with a furtive look at Black.
Minerva closes her eyes against her escalating headache. The remaining hour of the class ticks away, each second longer than the last. All of the so-called "Marauders" have earned detention by the end of class, Lupin and Black for their inattention, Potter and Pettigrew for their misbehavior. Minerva sinks into her chair as the students file out of the room, each of them with a quill that has been Transfigured into a goose and then back, and strict instructions to continue practicing. Even Pettigrew, who worked his way through a succession of failures that ranged from a rubber goose to a dead one, managed the spell in the end.
Massaging her temples with her forefingers, Minerva only just remembers to hold Snape after class. He glares at her, his eyebrows knit together in a sullen arch. His eyes are dark and bright, like a reflecting pool for scrying. "Yes?" he asks, omitting her title, his tone bordering on insolent.
Minerva puts her spectacles back on and glares at him over the wire rims. He returns her gaze without flinching or backing down. "You did well in class today, Mr. Snape," she says at last.
He continues to stare at her. "You kept me behind to tell me this?"
With a sigh, Minerva pushes a copy of the sixth year text across her desk to him. "You're doing well in class, as I said, but the spells used to transfigure clothing haven't been covered yet. I realize that you aren't at fault for being out of uniform, and you can allow me to repair your clothing or learn to fix it yourself."
With an abrupt slash of his wand and a Finite Incantatem, he removes the spell on his robes. Parallel slashes run along the left side of his robe, narrowly missing the neat row of buttons. Snape takes his Slytherin tie from his pocket and throws it down onto her desk.
Minerva stares. His robe is torn from collar to ribs and there are huge gaping rents in his left sleeve, the shadows and the fluttering fabric barely enough to conceal his arm. Snape scowls at her when he sees the direction of her gaze. He thrusts out his left arm, baring it to let her see the unMarked skin. There are two parallel scars, red and new, curving on his forearm. Snape scowls at her. "This is what your precious Gryffindors have done to me and you're concerned about my clothing?"
After he's stalked out of the room, Minerva picks up the tie. It's been unevenly severed, the cloth fraying at the edges of the fabric. A simple Transfiguration mends it and restores the faded colors to their original brightness. She summons a house elf to return the tie to Snape's dormitory.
****
The tree outside Minerva's office is older than anyone can remember, pre-dating even Albus's days at Hogwarts. It's a twisted oak tree, with full leafy branches that bend down toward the ground and provide the students with some measure of shade and concealment from the professors' eyes. Each generation of students thinks that it's the first to discover this fact and all of the possible means for making mischief there, and Minerva has always kept charms on the tree to monitor any havoc that might begin there.
That autumn, an early windstorm took down the tree, felling the upper half of its branches and revealing the rotten heart of its trunk. Hagrid had roped off the area to keep the students out of harm's way, but Minerva never dispelled her babysitting charms. They wake her from the lazy, half-focused afternoon haze that sets in between tea and dinner.
Minerva shakes her head at the soft buzzing sound of the alarm and blinks the fatigue from her eyes. Crossing over to the window and pulling the curtains open, she stands in a warm patch of sunlight and looks out at the tree. The severed branches have been cleared away and the remaining lower branches have only just begun to shed their browning leaves. These last branches no longer provide a good cover for errant students, and she blinks when the area appears deserted. Prodding the wards with a spell, she sees a figure underneath the tree, close to the rotten trunk, outlined in a sparkling haze. Recognizing James Potter's infamous invisibility cloak, she presses her forehead against the cool glass windowpane.
It's Remus Lupin. He sits on the grass, leaning against the tree trunk, his shoulders hunched and his knees pulled up to his chest. The other Marauders aren't there, and he sits alone, pale and slumped. Shadows move over his face as the branches move in the wind and Minerva presses the palm of her hand against the window. She hasn't seen Lupin look this alone since his first year at Hogwarts.
Minerva's heartbeat thudded in tempo with her footsteps - faster, faster, faster - as she rushed through the empty halls. The torches sputtered with the breeze of her passage, shadows flickered, and Minerva stumbled in the dark corridor. She took a thready breath, ignoring the spreading, feathery fire in her lungs. There, at the end of the corridor, the infirmary door stood ajar. Minerva pushed the door open and entered.
Remus Lupin lay on one of the white beds, Poppy bent over him. The moonlight from the open window highlighted the bruises and gashes on his face. Unconscious or asleep, he was restless still, moving away from the moonlight. The bed next to his was silent, and the light of the torches cast a shadow show on the white curtains.
Minerva pursed her lips as the torn student robe swayed on the rod by the curtained-off bed. With slow steps, she crossed the room to close the window. The moonlight outlined her fingers on the window sill and darkened the shadow they cast. Minerva drew away from the window, pulling the curtains closed.
Poppy made irregular clicking noises as she worked, with the sharp clack of her fingernails against glass potions vials, the tapping of her heels on the tile floor, and the clatter of her wand as she set it down on the bedside table. The sounds echoed in the infirmary, and Minerva leaned closer to the bed to hear Remus Lupin's uneven breathing. The rasp was almost swallowed up by the silence, and Minerva leaned closer, feeling Lupin's wrist for his pulse.
She sat down in the bedside chair, her fingers still around Lupin's wrist, and turned her gaze away from him, away from his pallor and his wounds. The curtains that shrouded the other bed were motionless, and the torn student robe hung there, black against the white. There was no noise at all coming from that bed. The silence was more unnerving than the faint sound of Lupin's breathing.
"Tapping your fingers on his wrist in time with his pulse won't encourage Mr. Lupin's heart to keep beating," Poppy said. She set an empty vial on the table with a last click.
Turning to look at Poppy over Lupin's still body, Minerva dropped his wrist. "Will he be all right?"
"Yes, he will. All of your Gryffindors are just fine, in spite of their irresponsible antics tonight."
The image of Lupin, alone and pale on the infirmary bed, superimposes itself over the boy sitting under the dying tree, and Minerva blinks to chase it away. She clasps her hands together, her fingers lingering on the flutter of her heartbeat at her wrist, and leans against the window for a moment. Blinking in the sunlight, she turns and summons a house elf, asking him to bring Remus Lupin to her office.
After two cups of tea, spread out over an hour of fidgeting and nervous knee-bouncing, Remus Lupin tells Minerva the truth. He swirls the teacup in his hand, sloshing soggy tea leaves onto the saucer. His school tie is crooked, the untidy knot bobbing up and down when he swallows. "I didn't have anything to do with it," he says.
Minerva adjusts her spectacles and pulls her lips into a straight line, stern and pinched. She keeps a politic silence and pours herself another cup of tea. She banishes the soggy tea leaves from Lupin's saucer and sets the teapot down with a heavy thud on the wooden desk.
"Honestly, I didn't know that Sirius was going to do it," Lupin says. He twists his red and gold tie, and Minerva represses the impulse to take it from his hands and straighten it.
"No one was implying that you did know, Mr. Lupin," she says, and waits for him to continue.
The tea leaves swirl in her cup as she takes a sip of the strong, unsweetened tea. She studies Lupin over the rim, watches him fidget and squirm in his chair.
"I - I hate Sirius," he said. His face pales and he looks down at his fingers, away from Minerva.
The sunlight streams in through the window, settling a cloud of dust motes around his shoulders like an indistinct halo. His shoulders slump and he looks as insecure and lost as he did when he was a first year, the brim of the Sorting Hat falling down past his ears.
"And do you hate James and Peter?" Minerva asks.
There's a long pause, Lupin studying the window over her shoulder. "Yes," he says, "sometimes I do."
Minerva isn't in the habit of hearing her students' confessions, and instead of offering a comforting platitude, she pours him another cup of tea. Her fingers curl around the lukewarm porcelain teapot, and she watches Lupin spill his tea again, tea leaves swirling in the dark liquid.
****
The Transfiguration exam for the fifth years is held outdoors, on the open lawn between the dying tree and the lake. Minerva is late for class, her boot heels snapping out a quick rhythm in the corridor, the almost-forgotten basket of goose quills swaying under her arm. She takes a short-cut from her office through the dungeons, exiting the castle by a smaller door and coming out onto the grounds near the tree.
She stumbles on the threshold as she hurries outside, her tardiness no good omen for the upcoming class, and then steps out into the castle's shadow, onto the frost-silvered grass that crunches beneath her feet. She takes a deep bracing breath of the crisp autumn air, and the breath catches in her throat and freezes in her lungs when she sees her students in a cluster by the shore of the lake.
James Potter hangs in midair. He's suspended upside down, his robes falling down around his face, and Severus Snape, a smirk on his face, holds a wand pointed at him. A crowd of Slytherins surround Snape, their wands pointed at the remaining Marauders. Lily Evans and the other girls giggle at the sight of Potter's underpants, a Gryffindor red that matches the color of his face. The Gryffindor boys, divided, hesitate. Their wands waver, pointing at Snape and then shifting to point at the other Slytherins.
Frozen, Minerva sees it all, the details etching themselves into the bright clear air like a tableau - the visible tremor of Potter's pulse in his throat, the cruel twist of Snape's lips, and the awkward, defeated slump of Black's shoulders. Snape's tie, shining in silver and green, is wrapped around his left forearm, holding together the tattered sleeve of his robe.
At last, Minerva finds her voice. "That's quite enough, Mr. Snape, and that will be fifty points from Slytherin and a week of detention for hexing another student. Take your places, all of you, and if I ever see a repetition of this disgraceful scene, the person responsible will rue the day that he was admitted to Hogwarts."
She brings the class to order with difficulty, separating the students out of their small groups loud with their snickering or outrage. In the end, she leads them a short distance away from the lake shore, bringing them into the shadow of the dying oak tree and organizing them into a rough semi-circle, Gryffindors and Slytherins separated by a safe distance. She places the basket of quills in the center of the semi-circle and she calls the students one by one, asking them each to transfigure their quill into a goose. When they continue their chatter, a few sharp remarks from Minerva bring their attention back to their work.
Severus Snape glares at her, the other Slytherins trying to imitate him but unable to match the hatred and scorn that he conveys with the arch of his eyebrows and the curve of his lip. She ignores their gazes, the prickling of their loathing against her skin, and repeats the requirements for the practical exam.
Minerva isn't blind - she sees the dark shadows under Snape's eyes, the abortive movements he makes toward the tie bound around his left forearm - and she had read the paper that morning, the article about a bloody raid that killed several Muggleborn wizards, recent graduates of Hogwarts and left the Mark floating in the sky. There's nothing that she can do now except explain the grading system for the exam and pass out the quills.
"An effective Transfiguration must include all of the elements that we discussed in class: a functional heart and respiratory system, working muscles and wings, as well as the other physiologic and aerodynamic qualities that make flight and other natural movements possible. Your goose must fly across the lake and back in order to obtain full, passing marks for this exam."
Black, called first, Transfigures a credible goose. It's white, with shadows of gray highlighting each feather along its wingtips, and it snaps at Minerva when she ruffles its feathers to check its heartbeat. The pulse is strong and steady, and Minerva nods her approval to Black. He releases the goose, urging it to fly across the lake, but no matter how he prods or sweet-talks it, the goose refuses to fly. It waddles off across the lawn with a last snap at Minerva's ankles, and the Slytherins snicker at Black's discomfiture.
With a sigh, Minerva instructs Black to reverse the Transfiguration. His quill floats, lazy and spiraling through the air, down to land on the frost-tinged grass near the tree. Black scurries to retrieve it, and Minerva calls on Lily Evans for the next Transfiguration.
Evans' goose is pale, a gray light enough to be almost white, and is perfect and docile in Minerva's arms when she examines it. When it flies across the lake, however, it lingers on the other side and refuses to return until Minerva summons it back. She gives Evans an approving smile as the quill flutters back to the ground. "Well done, Miss Evans. Next."
A few of the Slytherins take their turns, performing well enough, even though their Transfigurations are not astounding. When Minerva calls Lupin forward, she sighs at his lackluster appearance. Nervous, his gaze darts at his fellow Marauders, lingering longest on Black, before he accepts the quill that Minerva offers him. His movements are slow and hesitant, the flick of his wand is jerky. With a slow, blooming expansion, his quill shifts into a goose, with a stuttering pause half-way through where it hangs in limbo. With an abrupt gesture, he sends the goose across the lake.
When it returns, the goose struts past the Marauders, arching its neck and hissing at them. With a final menacing snap of its beak at Black, the goose returns to Lupin and makes the same half-stuttering transformation back into a quill.
Pettigrew, despite all of the tutoring that Evans has given him, fails the Transfiguration - the heartbeat of his goose is irregular and thready, and Minerva knows that it won't be able to fly. It lays its head, weak and pliant, against her arm, and she directs Pettigrew to reverse the Transfiguration. He's unable to undo his work, and Minerva directs a quick Finite Incantatem at the poor goose, restoring it to its original state. The quill is a little bent, the nib mangled, and Minerva gives Pettigrew a stern look before she selects a new quill from her basket.
Potter and Snape, finishing off the round of Transfigurations, fare better, although Potter is still unable to create a goose that doesn't strut and preen for Evans, and Snape is unable to create one that's sweet-tempered and obedient. His goose refuses to fly across the lake, heading straight for the shelter of the oak tree and concealing itself in the shadows there.
Minerva dismisses the class with relief, reminding Snape of his detention. She takes up her basket of quills and precedes him into the castle, separating him from the Marauders by several meters. There's no use in asking for trouble, after all.
****
The Christmas roses are already blooming, pine green and blood red on their thorny stems, in the tiny greenhouse set aside for the house elves' use. Even in their suspended, frozen state as they wait for the winter holidays, the roses unfurl their wide petals and arch toward the sunlight that glitters through the crystal panes of glass. Supervising the students on what is certain to be one of the last sunny Saturdays of the season, Minerva walks the grounds with Albus and Poppy. The students gaggle together like geese, they chatter and laugh and squabble - they're bright-faced and happy, focused for once on sunlight and friendships rather than the news and omens of the war.
Minerva sighs, drawing her cloak around her. Sharp-eyed and kind, Albus conjures one of the roses from the greenhouse, charming it a royal purple before handing it to her. It flashes from purple back to red, and then through the entire spectrum of the rainbow, finishing with a sparkling white before it repeats the cycle. "Don't think about it," he says.
They turn around the corner of the greenhouse, coming to the lake. Albus jerks back, a quick hand on her elbow and Poppy's elbow, pulling them back into the shadows. He pulls an invisibility cloak out of his pocket and dons it with a dramatic swirl. "I can't interfere in this now," he tells them. "I'll be there if I'm needed."
Poppy, wide-eyed, looks at Minerva. With a nudge to her shoulder, Minerva steps around the corner of the greenhouse again.
Not all of the students have set aside the war to laugh and relax in the sunlight. Severus Snape, his black cloak fluttering around him, has drawn his wand on Remus Lupin. Minerva moves forward to intervene, but an invisible hand stays her. "Watch for a moment," Albus whispers in her ear.
"You're nothing but Malfoy's lapdog, Snape. Do you beg him for treats? Do you lick his boots on command?" Potter points his wand at Snape, who whirls to face him.
"Jealous, Potter? I'm not reduced to consorting with half-blood monsters in the moonlight like you are, if that's what you mean."
Lupin, Potter and Pettigrew have their wands pointed at Snape. Even with Black missing from the usual quartet, Snape is outnumbered, but he only sneers at them.
"It's the usual sort of Gryffindor bravery, I see," he says, lowering his wand to straighten the collar of his cloak. His tone is calm and nonchalant. "Three on one is your idea of sporting odds. It's a pity that the outcast Black couldn't join you to make it even."
"How did you repay Malfoy for your fancy new robes, Snape? Will you kiss his arse on the way to his next meeting with You-Know-Who?"
"Why do you ask, Potter, are you interested? Do you think that you can turn your pet monster into a real wizard if you find the right tailor?"
It's Potter who casts the first hex, and a flurry of bright lights and shouting follows it. Albus releases Minerva's elbow. She steps out of the shadows, Poppy on her heels. "That's enough, gentlemen."
The boys freeze, wands raised in the air and poised in the middle of spells. Potter is bleeding from a cut on his face, a red line running from his cheekbone to his jaw. Pettigrew is unscathed, but Lupin has been hexed at least twice and is tentacled as well as bleeding from a slash across his shoulder. Snape hasn't fared well either, with the effects of multiple hexes combining to turn his hair Gryffindor colors and disfigure his face with a collection of cuts and warts and bruises.
"Come along now," Poppy says. "Do you need a stretcher, Mr. Snape? Stop gawking and come with me to the infirmary, all of you."
The infirmary is warm after the chill of the outdoors. Minerva steps out into the corridor, calling a house elf and asking it to send Sirius Black to the infirmary. With an eager nod and a string of happy, incomprehensible words, it hurries off to find him.
Poppy is bent over Snape when Minerva reenters the infirmary, muttering about irresponsible hex-happy students with more magic than good sense. James Potter, several beds away, moans in melodramatic pain. Lupin, next to him, is quiet in his suffering, and the only sign of his pain is the tight set of his lips and the crease between his eyebrows.
Finishing with Snape's more serious injuries, Poppy leaves him with red and gold hair, bustling over to check on Potter and Lupin. "That's a very nasty hex, Mr. Potter," she says. "Stop squirming. You shouldn't have gotten into this situation to begin with - fighting like a common hooligan, indeed."
Potter, quick to charm her, soon makes Poppy abandon her tirade and begin smiling at his jokes and his outrageous moans of pain. Minerva shakes her head at his antics and, after glancing at Poppy for permission, moves over to Snape, where she starts to try countercurses to restore his hair to its normal color.
The third spell works, although it leaves his hair shiny and smelling like roses. Minerva raises her wand again to try a cleaning charm, but he brushes her off with a curt, "Don't bother." He hops down off the bed and darts out of the infirmary before Poppy, distracted by her other patients, can stop him.
Snape nearly collides with Black, who is just entering the infirmary, but apart from a sneer and a glare, they let the encounter pass. "You wanted to see me, Professor?" Black asks, and then he stops in the middle of the room, looking at his friends. "James? Remus? Are you all right?"
With a rare smile for all of them, Minerva slips out of the room, leaving them to their reunion.
****
Cat-eyed in the dark, Minerva turns in time to see the rainbow shimmer of an invisibility spell, the soap bubble-like distortion it creates in the air. A breeze flutters against her skin, and the rainbow shimmer disappears through the door and down the stairs before she can catch the miscreant. A silent, eerie alarm thuds through her veins, an uncanny premonition battering her nerves, and Minerva shudders. She pulls her cloak tighter and steps out onto the Astronomy Tower.
The moon is full, bathing the tower in an eerie, otherworldly light. Shadows flit around the periphery of the tower, a dark fluttering dance that mirrors and hastens the stately moves of the stars in the night. The night has a pulse, a strong and vivid heartbeat that sets the pace for the dance, that strengthens the crisp breeze, that thrums through the stones of Hogwarts. Taking a deep breath, Minerva looks around the tower for signs of mischief caused by the student out after curfew.
There, on the stone ledge, is a soft and crumpled outline. She steps closer to it, taking deep bracing breaths of the cold air. It's a goose, pale gray against the dark stone. Black eyes flutter at Minerva's approach - it's alive.
The goose's neck is twisted, its feathers torn out in handfuls, and it's been eviscerated. The entrails, gleaming in the moonlight, shimmer with a slow, thready pulse.
There's nothing to see in the entrails of a dying bird - no omens, no possible future, no hope or despair, only pointless blood and slaughter. The goose takes a rasping breath and shudders.
Minerva grasps the stone ledge, and then Albus is behind her, his hand steadying her shoulder. She takes hold of her wand and casts Finite Incantatem at the goose to banish any illusion or curses that linger there. The magic hovers in the air around the goose for a moment and Minerva draws in a deep breath when it remains mutilated, unchanged.
With a shimmer and the quiet pop of dark magic dissipating, the goose is gone. There's a battered quill on the ledge, and fine wisps of feather that have been broken off the quill are caught up in a swirl of the wind and hover there, outlined in the stark moonlight, before they're blown away.
The silence, resonant and deep, is broken at last by Albus. He transfigures the mangled remnant of quill, his wand movements precise and controlled, his incantations ringing out in the still air, and in the end, there's a rose bush, half-starved and bedraggled, anchored in a crack on the stone ledge. The half-blooming roses are white, catching the moonlight and reflecting it. Minerva reaches out to touch one of the roses, the petals like perfect velvet-silk under her fingertips.
With firm and unyielding fingers, Albus holds her elbow. "Sometimes, we do everything that we can do, and it still isn't enough. Sometimes, there's only so much stress an object can take, and then when it's broken, it can't be repaired by magic."
Minerva glances from the rosebush up to Albus. There's no sign of the amiable professor that she knows, no sign of humor or eccentricity except for his incurable habit of speaking in abstractions and riddles. He's changed, his twinkle worn away by the war. There are lines gathered in the corners of his eyes, and there's a grim twist to his lips.
"The quill," she says. "It was too badly damaged."
He nods. With a swish of his wand, he conjures water and fertilizer, and stoops down to tend to the plant. "Then again," he says, "it may be that the house elves can salvage this, if they transplant it for us."
When he finishes, he reaches out to grasp a shadow at the base of the wall, and he stands again, holding it out to Minerva. She takes it, her fingers brushing against his gnarled ones, and it's thick and weighty in her hands. Unfolding it, she finds a student robe, black wool frayed at the hems. Parallel slashes mar the fabric, running from collar to waist, shredding the left sleeve.
The fabric is stretched and worn by years of use and Snape's imprecise Transfigurations. Minerva studies it, her vision attuned to the subtleties of Transfiguration, the whispers and shadows of magic that cling to the robe, and with a flick of her wand, she knits the torn fabric together. The robe lightens a little in her hands, its fabric stretched out and thinned, but it's mended. She looks up at Albus, holding the robe out to him, but he shakes his head.
"I'm afraid that it still isn't time for me to intervene, my dear Minerva."
When she looks at him, she knows that she'll receive no more answers tonight. She summons a house elf to take the mended robe back to Snape's dormitory. Falling into a comfortable silence with Albus, she leans against the rampart and looks out over the Hogwarts grounds, over the peaceful trees and the lake. She looks across the castle at Gryffindor Tower, the darkened windows assuring her that her charges are asleep and not wreaking havoc in their dormitories. The wind blows across the tower, and she watches the branches of the dying oak tree rattle against her office window. The full moon shimmers, high in the sky, and there's no sign in the night that anything unusual happened on the Astronomy Tower.
Hours later, still sleepless and restless, Minerva slips into the infirmary through the half-open door. The long white room is shrouded in shadows and dense with silence, and her steps are slow, her feet almost silent on the stone floor. Moonlight spills into the room from an open window and falls in bright patterns on the floor and the empty beds.
Minerva moves along the wall, in the darkest of the shadows, to the bed at the end of the row, the only occupied bed in the infirmary. In the silence, her heartbeat thuds. She stills her breathing and calms herself.
All four of the Marauders are there. Remus Lupin is on the bed, his wounds swathed in white bandages. In sleep, in the shadows, his face is unlined and carefree, as innocent as it was when he first came to Hogwarts. Peter Pettigrew is curled up at Lupin's feet, a halo of moonlight pooled around his shoulder and arm. He stirs in his sleep, his arm brushing against the railing at the foot of the bed. Minerva freezes, trying not to wake the sleeping boys.
James Potter and Sirius Black are sprawled together in an enlarged chair next to Lupin's bed, a patch of moonlight falling over them. Shadows fall onto them from the lattice that separates the window panes. Parallel lines and crosses mark their faces in an eerie pattern.
Minerva shudders. It's surreal to see them thus marked for death, a premonition creeping over her worse than any augury or fortune read from tea leaves or bird entrails. Minerva's heart thuds in her chest, almost audible in the silence. She moves to the window and pulls the curtains closed, shutting out the moonlight and the omens.
Recipient: nicolen
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Minerva McGonagall, Remus Lupin, James Potter, Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore, Poppy Pomfrey
Warnings: The teensiest, tiniest foreshadowings of character death; cruelty to animals
Author's Notes: For the purposes of this story, "the prank" occurred during the autumn of the Marauders' fifth year, and before "Snape's Worst Memory."
Much love and thanks to my wonderful betas!
--
Autumn is full of omens that Minerva ignores. With the restless movements of the giants, the gruesome articles in the Daily Prophet - only a foreshadowing of the horrors that are sure to come - and the tight-lipped, somber expression that Albus tries to conceal with twinkling eyes and sherbet lemons, she has no attention to spare for the Divination Professor's fainting fits and hysteria, or the indecipherable mutterings of the centaurs. Shadows on the moon and tea leaves and the alignments of the planets, all of these so-called omens are foolishness. Star-gazing is a waste of time.
Minerva pours the last of her tea into the sink, ignoring the wet splash of the tea leaves in the basin. She rinses out her cup and puts it on the rack with the rest of the professors' teacups before making her way to the Transfiguration classroom for her first class. Students scatter through the hallways, abandoning their chatter and hurrying to their classes when they see her approach. Their expressions are taut with fear, their laughter is falsely bright, and Minerva forces a smile onto her face to reassure them. It isn't possible to keep the knowledge of the approaching darkness from them. Young and impressionable as they are, they can't be convinced to disregard the portents and omens.
Minerva's first class is the fifth-year Gryffindors and Slytherins, never an easy group. This year, they're caught up in their worries about the war and not focused on their upcoming OWLs. Minerva sweeps into the classroom, willing her face to show no hint of the tension she feels, and spends a few minutes watching the students as she organizes her notes.
She needs no gift of prophecy to interpret their behavior. Severus Snape has left off his Slytherin tie, dressing in stark black, unrelieved by the touch of silver and green - Minerva doesn't take points for his deviation from the school uniform, knowing how he had lost his tie during the full moon that month. His school robes have the stretched, uneven look of poorly Transfigured clothing, and his expression is sullen. It takes little imagination to see him in another black outfit, masked and Marked and deadly.
Then there are her fifth-year Gryffindor boys, divided for the first time since their arrival at Hogwarts. Remus Lupin and Sirius Black sit at opposite ends of the classroom, each of them casting furtive looks at the other, neither of them aware of the other's regard. James Potter has abandoned them both. He sits next to Lily Evans and directs his charming smile at her. With a confused expression on his face, Peter Pettigrew has shadowed after Potter.
With a sharp clap of her hands, Minerva brings the class to order and transfers her notes to the chalkboard. "Now, remember that when you Transfigure an inanimate object into an animate object, you need to ensure that the circulatory system is fully functional. The animal must have a heart, either two-chambered or four-chambered, according to its physiology. Today, we'll work on the relatively simple Transfiguration of quills to geese. The starting material remembers having been a part of the living animal at one time, as it were, and this makes the Transfiguration easier."
Pettigrew, stuttering and eager to please, distributes the quills. Minerva moves among the students, correcting incantations and wand movements. Sirius Black is inattentive, his Transfigurations sloppy - there's a half-plucked goose running around in her classroom - but when she sees his contrite expression, Minerva doesn't scold him. She picks up the goose and holds it in the cradle of her arms, ruffling its feathers to feel its pulse. The goose squawks. Its heartbeat is fast and thready, and Minerva strokes its neck to calm it. "This is a credible first step, Mr. Black. It appears that you've gotten the physiology correct, and now you need to focus on the exterior appearance of the goose."
Lupin is distracted, watching Potter and Black. Potter is attempting to impress Evans, distracting both of them, and so, out of all of her top students, it is Severus Snape who manages the first correct Transfiguration. His goose is grey-eyed and irate, preening its feathers and snapping at Minerva when she bends to examine it. "Well done, Mr. Snape," she says, and he smirks at his Gryffindor rivals.
Pettigrew's attempts are pathetic, and in the end Minerva sends Potter to sit elsewhere so that Evans can concentrate on her own work and help Pettigrew. Unabashed, James Potter gives Minerva a cheeky smile and a mock-gallant bow as he goes to sit beside Lupin. Minerva removes her spectacles to rub her temples, feeling the onset of a headache as she watches the boys draw invisible lines across her classroom.
Black's shoulders slump when he sees Potter joining Lupin, and his next half-hearted attempt at Transfiguring his quill yields a noisy explosion. The bright flash aggravates Minerva's headache, but one look at Black's obvious misery stops her from making a sharp comment. She banishes the charred remains of his feather and gives him a new one without a word. A quick spell takes care of the soot on his desk and hands, and she reminds him again to focus and enunciate with care.
"Yes, ma'am," he says. Minerva frowns at the unexpected lack of back-chat from Sirius Black, and at the front of the classroom, Snape snickers at him.
During Minerva's moment of inattention, James Potter has turned his quill into a gray gander and sent it strutting over to Lily Evans' desk, a Transfigured rose held in its beak. "Please focus on the assignment, Mr. Potter, and not on Transfiguring roses or harassing your classmates."
"Look, Potter, even Evans doesn't want you," Snape says in a quiet hiss, his ill-tempered goose pinned under his arm and his wand held at the ready. Potter jerks around to stare at Snape and then turns back to his friends with a furtive look at Black.
Minerva closes her eyes against her escalating headache. The remaining hour of the class ticks away, each second longer than the last. All of the so-called "Marauders" have earned detention by the end of class, Lupin and Black for their inattention, Potter and Pettigrew for their misbehavior. Minerva sinks into her chair as the students file out of the room, each of them with a quill that has been Transfigured into a goose and then back, and strict instructions to continue practicing. Even Pettigrew, who worked his way through a succession of failures that ranged from a rubber goose to a dead one, managed the spell in the end.
Massaging her temples with her forefingers, Minerva only just remembers to hold Snape after class. He glares at her, his eyebrows knit together in a sullen arch. His eyes are dark and bright, like a reflecting pool for scrying. "Yes?" he asks, omitting her title, his tone bordering on insolent.
Minerva puts her spectacles back on and glares at him over the wire rims. He returns her gaze without flinching or backing down. "You did well in class today, Mr. Snape," she says at last.
He continues to stare at her. "You kept me behind to tell me this?"
With a sigh, Minerva pushes a copy of the sixth year text across her desk to him. "You're doing well in class, as I said, but the spells used to transfigure clothing haven't been covered yet. I realize that you aren't at fault for being out of uniform, and you can allow me to repair your clothing or learn to fix it yourself."
With an abrupt slash of his wand and a Finite Incantatem, he removes the spell on his robes. Parallel slashes run along the left side of his robe, narrowly missing the neat row of buttons. Snape takes his Slytherin tie from his pocket and throws it down onto her desk.
Minerva stares. His robe is torn from collar to ribs and there are huge gaping rents in his left sleeve, the shadows and the fluttering fabric barely enough to conceal his arm. Snape scowls at her when he sees the direction of her gaze. He thrusts out his left arm, baring it to let her see the unMarked skin. There are two parallel scars, red and new, curving on his forearm. Snape scowls at her. "This is what your precious Gryffindors have done to me and you're concerned about my clothing?"
After he's stalked out of the room, Minerva picks up the tie. It's been unevenly severed, the cloth fraying at the edges of the fabric. A simple Transfiguration mends it and restores the faded colors to their original brightness. She summons a house elf to return the tie to Snape's dormitory.
****
The tree outside Minerva's office is older than anyone can remember, pre-dating even Albus's days at Hogwarts. It's a twisted oak tree, with full leafy branches that bend down toward the ground and provide the students with some measure of shade and concealment from the professors' eyes. Each generation of students thinks that it's the first to discover this fact and all of the possible means for making mischief there, and Minerva has always kept charms on the tree to monitor any havoc that might begin there.
That autumn, an early windstorm took down the tree, felling the upper half of its branches and revealing the rotten heart of its trunk. Hagrid had roped off the area to keep the students out of harm's way, but Minerva never dispelled her babysitting charms. They wake her from the lazy, half-focused afternoon haze that sets in between tea and dinner.
Minerva shakes her head at the soft buzzing sound of the alarm and blinks the fatigue from her eyes. Crossing over to the window and pulling the curtains open, she stands in a warm patch of sunlight and looks out at the tree. The severed branches have been cleared away and the remaining lower branches have only just begun to shed their browning leaves. These last branches no longer provide a good cover for errant students, and she blinks when the area appears deserted. Prodding the wards with a spell, she sees a figure underneath the tree, close to the rotten trunk, outlined in a sparkling haze. Recognizing James Potter's infamous invisibility cloak, she presses her forehead against the cool glass windowpane.
It's Remus Lupin. He sits on the grass, leaning against the tree trunk, his shoulders hunched and his knees pulled up to his chest. The other Marauders aren't there, and he sits alone, pale and slumped. Shadows move over his face as the branches move in the wind and Minerva presses the palm of her hand against the window. She hasn't seen Lupin look this alone since his first year at Hogwarts.
Minerva's heartbeat thudded in tempo with her footsteps - faster, faster, faster - as she rushed through the empty halls. The torches sputtered with the breeze of her passage, shadows flickered, and Minerva stumbled in the dark corridor. She took a thready breath, ignoring the spreading, feathery fire in her lungs. There, at the end of the corridor, the infirmary door stood ajar. Minerva pushed the door open and entered.
Remus Lupin lay on one of the white beds, Poppy bent over him. The moonlight from the open window highlighted the bruises and gashes on his face. Unconscious or asleep, he was restless still, moving away from the moonlight. The bed next to his was silent, and the light of the torches cast a shadow show on the white curtains.
Minerva pursed her lips as the torn student robe swayed on the rod by the curtained-off bed. With slow steps, she crossed the room to close the window. The moonlight outlined her fingers on the window sill and darkened the shadow they cast. Minerva drew away from the window, pulling the curtains closed.
Poppy made irregular clicking noises as she worked, with the sharp clack of her fingernails against glass potions vials, the tapping of her heels on the tile floor, and the clatter of her wand as she set it down on the bedside table. The sounds echoed in the infirmary, and Minerva leaned closer to the bed to hear Remus Lupin's uneven breathing. The rasp was almost swallowed up by the silence, and Minerva leaned closer, feeling Lupin's wrist for his pulse.
She sat down in the bedside chair, her fingers still around Lupin's wrist, and turned her gaze away from him, away from his pallor and his wounds. The curtains that shrouded the other bed were motionless, and the torn student robe hung there, black against the white. There was no noise at all coming from that bed. The silence was more unnerving than the faint sound of Lupin's breathing.
"Tapping your fingers on his wrist in time with his pulse won't encourage Mr. Lupin's heart to keep beating," Poppy said. She set an empty vial on the table with a last click.
Turning to look at Poppy over Lupin's still body, Minerva dropped his wrist. "Will he be all right?"
"Yes, he will. All of your Gryffindors are just fine, in spite of their irresponsible antics tonight."
The image of Lupin, alone and pale on the infirmary bed, superimposes itself over the boy sitting under the dying tree, and Minerva blinks to chase it away. She clasps her hands together, her fingers lingering on the flutter of her heartbeat at her wrist, and leans against the window for a moment. Blinking in the sunlight, she turns and summons a house elf, asking him to bring Remus Lupin to her office.
After two cups of tea, spread out over an hour of fidgeting and nervous knee-bouncing, Remus Lupin tells Minerva the truth. He swirls the teacup in his hand, sloshing soggy tea leaves onto the saucer. His school tie is crooked, the untidy knot bobbing up and down when he swallows. "I didn't have anything to do with it," he says.
Minerva adjusts her spectacles and pulls her lips into a straight line, stern and pinched. She keeps a politic silence and pours herself another cup of tea. She banishes the soggy tea leaves from Lupin's saucer and sets the teapot down with a heavy thud on the wooden desk.
"Honestly, I didn't know that Sirius was going to do it," Lupin says. He twists his red and gold tie, and Minerva represses the impulse to take it from his hands and straighten it.
"No one was implying that you did know, Mr. Lupin," she says, and waits for him to continue.
The tea leaves swirl in her cup as she takes a sip of the strong, unsweetened tea. She studies Lupin over the rim, watches him fidget and squirm in his chair.
"I - I hate Sirius," he said. His face pales and he looks down at his fingers, away from Minerva.
The sunlight streams in through the window, settling a cloud of dust motes around his shoulders like an indistinct halo. His shoulders slump and he looks as insecure and lost as he did when he was a first year, the brim of the Sorting Hat falling down past his ears.
"And do you hate James and Peter?" Minerva asks.
There's a long pause, Lupin studying the window over her shoulder. "Yes," he says, "sometimes I do."
Minerva isn't in the habit of hearing her students' confessions, and instead of offering a comforting platitude, she pours him another cup of tea. Her fingers curl around the lukewarm porcelain teapot, and she watches Lupin spill his tea again, tea leaves swirling in the dark liquid.
****
The Transfiguration exam for the fifth years is held outdoors, on the open lawn between the dying tree and the lake. Minerva is late for class, her boot heels snapping out a quick rhythm in the corridor, the almost-forgotten basket of goose quills swaying under her arm. She takes a short-cut from her office through the dungeons, exiting the castle by a smaller door and coming out onto the grounds near the tree.
She stumbles on the threshold as she hurries outside, her tardiness no good omen for the upcoming class, and then steps out into the castle's shadow, onto the frost-silvered grass that crunches beneath her feet. She takes a deep bracing breath of the crisp autumn air, and the breath catches in her throat and freezes in her lungs when she sees her students in a cluster by the shore of the lake.
James Potter hangs in midair. He's suspended upside down, his robes falling down around his face, and Severus Snape, a smirk on his face, holds a wand pointed at him. A crowd of Slytherins surround Snape, their wands pointed at the remaining Marauders. Lily Evans and the other girls giggle at the sight of Potter's underpants, a Gryffindor red that matches the color of his face. The Gryffindor boys, divided, hesitate. Their wands waver, pointing at Snape and then shifting to point at the other Slytherins.
Frozen, Minerva sees it all, the details etching themselves into the bright clear air like a tableau - the visible tremor of Potter's pulse in his throat, the cruel twist of Snape's lips, and the awkward, defeated slump of Black's shoulders. Snape's tie, shining in silver and green, is wrapped around his left forearm, holding together the tattered sleeve of his robe.
At last, Minerva finds her voice. "That's quite enough, Mr. Snape, and that will be fifty points from Slytherin and a week of detention for hexing another student. Take your places, all of you, and if I ever see a repetition of this disgraceful scene, the person responsible will rue the day that he was admitted to Hogwarts."
She brings the class to order with difficulty, separating the students out of their small groups loud with their snickering or outrage. In the end, she leads them a short distance away from the lake shore, bringing them into the shadow of the dying oak tree and organizing them into a rough semi-circle, Gryffindors and Slytherins separated by a safe distance. She places the basket of quills in the center of the semi-circle and she calls the students one by one, asking them each to transfigure their quill into a goose. When they continue their chatter, a few sharp remarks from Minerva bring their attention back to their work.
Severus Snape glares at her, the other Slytherins trying to imitate him but unable to match the hatred and scorn that he conveys with the arch of his eyebrows and the curve of his lip. She ignores their gazes, the prickling of their loathing against her skin, and repeats the requirements for the practical exam.
Minerva isn't blind - she sees the dark shadows under Snape's eyes, the abortive movements he makes toward the tie bound around his left forearm - and she had read the paper that morning, the article about a bloody raid that killed several Muggleborn wizards, recent graduates of Hogwarts and left the Mark floating in the sky. There's nothing that she can do now except explain the grading system for the exam and pass out the quills.
"An effective Transfiguration must include all of the elements that we discussed in class: a functional heart and respiratory system, working muscles and wings, as well as the other physiologic and aerodynamic qualities that make flight and other natural movements possible. Your goose must fly across the lake and back in order to obtain full, passing marks for this exam."
Black, called first, Transfigures a credible goose. It's white, with shadows of gray highlighting each feather along its wingtips, and it snaps at Minerva when she ruffles its feathers to check its heartbeat. The pulse is strong and steady, and Minerva nods her approval to Black. He releases the goose, urging it to fly across the lake, but no matter how he prods or sweet-talks it, the goose refuses to fly. It waddles off across the lawn with a last snap at Minerva's ankles, and the Slytherins snicker at Black's discomfiture.
With a sigh, Minerva instructs Black to reverse the Transfiguration. His quill floats, lazy and spiraling through the air, down to land on the frost-tinged grass near the tree. Black scurries to retrieve it, and Minerva calls on Lily Evans for the next Transfiguration.
Evans' goose is pale, a gray light enough to be almost white, and is perfect and docile in Minerva's arms when she examines it. When it flies across the lake, however, it lingers on the other side and refuses to return until Minerva summons it back. She gives Evans an approving smile as the quill flutters back to the ground. "Well done, Miss Evans. Next."
A few of the Slytherins take their turns, performing well enough, even though their Transfigurations are not astounding. When Minerva calls Lupin forward, she sighs at his lackluster appearance. Nervous, his gaze darts at his fellow Marauders, lingering longest on Black, before he accepts the quill that Minerva offers him. His movements are slow and hesitant, the flick of his wand is jerky. With a slow, blooming expansion, his quill shifts into a goose, with a stuttering pause half-way through where it hangs in limbo. With an abrupt gesture, he sends the goose across the lake.
When it returns, the goose struts past the Marauders, arching its neck and hissing at them. With a final menacing snap of its beak at Black, the goose returns to Lupin and makes the same half-stuttering transformation back into a quill.
Pettigrew, despite all of the tutoring that Evans has given him, fails the Transfiguration - the heartbeat of his goose is irregular and thready, and Minerva knows that it won't be able to fly. It lays its head, weak and pliant, against her arm, and she directs Pettigrew to reverse the Transfiguration. He's unable to undo his work, and Minerva directs a quick Finite Incantatem at the poor goose, restoring it to its original state. The quill is a little bent, the nib mangled, and Minerva gives Pettigrew a stern look before she selects a new quill from her basket.
Potter and Snape, finishing off the round of Transfigurations, fare better, although Potter is still unable to create a goose that doesn't strut and preen for Evans, and Snape is unable to create one that's sweet-tempered and obedient. His goose refuses to fly across the lake, heading straight for the shelter of the oak tree and concealing itself in the shadows there.
Minerva dismisses the class with relief, reminding Snape of his detention. She takes up her basket of quills and precedes him into the castle, separating him from the Marauders by several meters. There's no use in asking for trouble, after all.
****
The Christmas roses are already blooming, pine green and blood red on their thorny stems, in the tiny greenhouse set aside for the house elves' use. Even in their suspended, frozen state as they wait for the winter holidays, the roses unfurl their wide petals and arch toward the sunlight that glitters through the crystal panes of glass. Supervising the students on what is certain to be one of the last sunny Saturdays of the season, Minerva walks the grounds with Albus and Poppy. The students gaggle together like geese, they chatter and laugh and squabble - they're bright-faced and happy, focused for once on sunlight and friendships rather than the news and omens of the war.
Minerva sighs, drawing her cloak around her. Sharp-eyed and kind, Albus conjures one of the roses from the greenhouse, charming it a royal purple before handing it to her. It flashes from purple back to red, and then through the entire spectrum of the rainbow, finishing with a sparkling white before it repeats the cycle. "Don't think about it," he says.
They turn around the corner of the greenhouse, coming to the lake. Albus jerks back, a quick hand on her elbow and Poppy's elbow, pulling them back into the shadows. He pulls an invisibility cloak out of his pocket and dons it with a dramatic swirl. "I can't interfere in this now," he tells them. "I'll be there if I'm needed."
Poppy, wide-eyed, looks at Minerva. With a nudge to her shoulder, Minerva steps around the corner of the greenhouse again.
Not all of the students have set aside the war to laugh and relax in the sunlight. Severus Snape, his black cloak fluttering around him, has drawn his wand on Remus Lupin. Minerva moves forward to intervene, but an invisible hand stays her. "Watch for a moment," Albus whispers in her ear.
"You're nothing but Malfoy's lapdog, Snape. Do you beg him for treats? Do you lick his boots on command?" Potter points his wand at Snape, who whirls to face him.
"Jealous, Potter? I'm not reduced to consorting with half-blood monsters in the moonlight like you are, if that's what you mean."
Lupin, Potter and Pettigrew have their wands pointed at Snape. Even with Black missing from the usual quartet, Snape is outnumbered, but he only sneers at them.
"It's the usual sort of Gryffindor bravery, I see," he says, lowering his wand to straighten the collar of his cloak. His tone is calm and nonchalant. "Three on one is your idea of sporting odds. It's a pity that the outcast Black couldn't join you to make it even."
"How did you repay Malfoy for your fancy new robes, Snape? Will you kiss his arse on the way to his next meeting with You-Know-Who?"
"Why do you ask, Potter, are you interested? Do you think that you can turn your pet monster into a real wizard if you find the right tailor?"
It's Potter who casts the first hex, and a flurry of bright lights and shouting follows it. Albus releases Minerva's elbow. She steps out of the shadows, Poppy on her heels. "That's enough, gentlemen."
The boys freeze, wands raised in the air and poised in the middle of spells. Potter is bleeding from a cut on his face, a red line running from his cheekbone to his jaw. Pettigrew is unscathed, but Lupin has been hexed at least twice and is tentacled as well as bleeding from a slash across his shoulder. Snape hasn't fared well either, with the effects of multiple hexes combining to turn his hair Gryffindor colors and disfigure his face with a collection of cuts and warts and bruises.
"Come along now," Poppy says. "Do you need a stretcher, Mr. Snape? Stop gawking and come with me to the infirmary, all of you."
The infirmary is warm after the chill of the outdoors. Minerva steps out into the corridor, calling a house elf and asking it to send Sirius Black to the infirmary. With an eager nod and a string of happy, incomprehensible words, it hurries off to find him.
Poppy is bent over Snape when Minerva reenters the infirmary, muttering about irresponsible hex-happy students with more magic than good sense. James Potter, several beds away, moans in melodramatic pain. Lupin, next to him, is quiet in his suffering, and the only sign of his pain is the tight set of his lips and the crease between his eyebrows.
Finishing with Snape's more serious injuries, Poppy leaves him with red and gold hair, bustling over to check on Potter and Lupin. "That's a very nasty hex, Mr. Potter," she says. "Stop squirming. You shouldn't have gotten into this situation to begin with - fighting like a common hooligan, indeed."
Potter, quick to charm her, soon makes Poppy abandon her tirade and begin smiling at his jokes and his outrageous moans of pain. Minerva shakes her head at his antics and, after glancing at Poppy for permission, moves over to Snape, where she starts to try countercurses to restore his hair to its normal color.
The third spell works, although it leaves his hair shiny and smelling like roses. Minerva raises her wand again to try a cleaning charm, but he brushes her off with a curt, "Don't bother." He hops down off the bed and darts out of the infirmary before Poppy, distracted by her other patients, can stop him.
Snape nearly collides with Black, who is just entering the infirmary, but apart from a sneer and a glare, they let the encounter pass. "You wanted to see me, Professor?" Black asks, and then he stops in the middle of the room, looking at his friends. "James? Remus? Are you all right?"
With a rare smile for all of them, Minerva slips out of the room, leaving them to their reunion.
****
Cat-eyed in the dark, Minerva turns in time to see the rainbow shimmer of an invisibility spell, the soap bubble-like distortion it creates in the air. A breeze flutters against her skin, and the rainbow shimmer disappears through the door and down the stairs before she can catch the miscreant. A silent, eerie alarm thuds through her veins, an uncanny premonition battering her nerves, and Minerva shudders. She pulls her cloak tighter and steps out onto the Astronomy Tower.
The moon is full, bathing the tower in an eerie, otherworldly light. Shadows flit around the periphery of the tower, a dark fluttering dance that mirrors and hastens the stately moves of the stars in the night. The night has a pulse, a strong and vivid heartbeat that sets the pace for the dance, that strengthens the crisp breeze, that thrums through the stones of Hogwarts. Taking a deep breath, Minerva looks around the tower for signs of mischief caused by the student out after curfew.
There, on the stone ledge, is a soft and crumpled outline. She steps closer to it, taking deep bracing breaths of the cold air. It's a goose, pale gray against the dark stone. Black eyes flutter at Minerva's approach - it's alive.
The goose's neck is twisted, its feathers torn out in handfuls, and it's been eviscerated. The entrails, gleaming in the moonlight, shimmer with a slow, thready pulse.
There's nothing to see in the entrails of a dying bird - no omens, no possible future, no hope or despair, only pointless blood and slaughter. The goose takes a rasping breath and shudders.
Minerva grasps the stone ledge, and then Albus is behind her, his hand steadying her shoulder. She takes hold of her wand and casts Finite Incantatem at the goose to banish any illusion or curses that linger there. The magic hovers in the air around the goose for a moment and Minerva draws in a deep breath when it remains mutilated, unchanged.
With a shimmer and the quiet pop of dark magic dissipating, the goose is gone. There's a battered quill on the ledge, and fine wisps of feather that have been broken off the quill are caught up in a swirl of the wind and hover there, outlined in the stark moonlight, before they're blown away.
The silence, resonant and deep, is broken at last by Albus. He transfigures the mangled remnant of quill, his wand movements precise and controlled, his incantations ringing out in the still air, and in the end, there's a rose bush, half-starved and bedraggled, anchored in a crack on the stone ledge. The half-blooming roses are white, catching the moonlight and reflecting it. Minerva reaches out to touch one of the roses, the petals like perfect velvet-silk under her fingertips.
With firm and unyielding fingers, Albus holds her elbow. "Sometimes, we do everything that we can do, and it still isn't enough. Sometimes, there's only so much stress an object can take, and then when it's broken, it can't be repaired by magic."
Minerva glances from the rosebush up to Albus. There's no sign of the amiable professor that she knows, no sign of humor or eccentricity except for his incurable habit of speaking in abstractions and riddles. He's changed, his twinkle worn away by the war. There are lines gathered in the corners of his eyes, and there's a grim twist to his lips.
"The quill," she says. "It was too badly damaged."
He nods. With a swish of his wand, he conjures water and fertilizer, and stoops down to tend to the plant. "Then again," he says, "it may be that the house elves can salvage this, if they transplant it for us."
When he finishes, he reaches out to grasp a shadow at the base of the wall, and he stands again, holding it out to Minerva. She takes it, her fingers brushing against his gnarled ones, and it's thick and weighty in her hands. Unfolding it, she finds a student robe, black wool frayed at the hems. Parallel slashes mar the fabric, running from collar to waist, shredding the left sleeve.
The fabric is stretched and worn by years of use and Snape's imprecise Transfigurations. Minerva studies it, her vision attuned to the subtleties of Transfiguration, the whispers and shadows of magic that cling to the robe, and with a flick of her wand, she knits the torn fabric together. The robe lightens a little in her hands, its fabric stretched out and thinned, but it's mended. She looks up at Albus, holding the robe out to him, but he shakes his head.
"I'm afraid that it still isn't time for me to intervene, my dear Minerva."
When she looks at him, she knows that she'll receive no more answers tonight. She summons a house elf to take the mended robe back to Snape's dormitory. Falling into a comfortable silence with Albus, she leans against the rampart and looks out over the Hogwarts grounds, over the peaceful trees and the lake. She looks across the castle at Gryffindor Tower, the darkened windows assuring her that her charges are asleep and not wreaking havoc in their dormitories. The wind blows across the tower, and she watches the branches of the dying oak tree rattle against her office window. The full moon shimmers, high in the sky, and there's no sign in the night that anything unusual happened on the Astronomy Tower.
Hours later, still sleepless and restless, Minerva slips into the infirmary through the half-open door. The long white room is shrouded in shadows and dense with silence, and her steps are slow, her feet almost silent on the stone floor. Moonlight spills into the room from an open window and falls in bright patterns on the floor and the empty beds.
Minerva moves along the wall, in the darkest of the shadows, to the bed at the end of the row, the only occupied bed in the infirmary. In the silence, her heartbeat thuds. She stills her breathing and calms herself.
All four of the Marauders are there. Remus Lupin is on the bed, his wounds swathed in white bandages. In sleep, in the shadows, his face is unlined and carefree, as innocent as it was when he first came to Hogwarts. Peter Pettigrew is curled up at Lupin's feet, a halo of moonlight pooled around his shoulder and arm. He stirs in his sleep, his arm brushing against the railing at the foot of the bed. Minerva freezes, trying not to wake the sleeping boys.
James Potter and Sirius Black are sprawled together in an enlarged chair next to Lupin's bed, a patch of moonlight falling over them. Shadows fall onto them from the lattice that separates the window panes. Parallel lines and crosses mark their faces in an eerie pattern.
Minerva shudders. It's surreal to see them thus marked for death, a premonition creeping over her worse than any augury or fortune read from tea leaves or bird entrails. Minerva's heart thuds in her chest, almost audible in the silence. She moves to the window and pulls the curtains closed, shutting out the moonlight and the omens.