WISHLISTS: For Each a Stone Wall (Hooch/McGonagall)
Author: borealgrove
Recipient: kellychambliss
Title: For Each a Stone Wall
Pairing: Hooch/McGonagall
Request/Prompt: Initial hostility that turns to friendship/romance
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,016
Summary: She had felt herself too old to break another heart.
Author's Notes: Officer, I swear, I needed every one of those extra 16 words.
It was becoming a problem, the way Hooch kept finding ways to talk to her. Tonight's meeting would almost certainly be a surprise to the flying instructor, but if Minerva knew her at all (and she did... unfortunately), Hooch would be smug about it. Her bony fingers twitched in annoyance.
It was in a still-building temper that she stamped up to the entrance of the Quidditch store house, and rapped on the door. She pretended the weathered oak hadn't made her knuckle ache.
"What're-oh." A slow smile. "Oh. Evening."
Minerva scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Do you have a moment?"
This made Hooch laugh, so Minerva took a slow breath in to avoid saying something prickly.
"Yes," The flying instructor said finally, seeming to recognize the thin ice she treaded, though with considerable amusement. "Of course. I'm just polishing a boom handle. Fire away."
Minerva wouldn't put it past Hooch to be using a euphemism, she really wouldn't.
"We have rules in place for a reason," Minerva said with considerable annoyance, and no preamble, sweeping past Hooch and heading toward the back wall, where a line of brooms-some handles gleaming with polish, most dull and scratched-lay in an ordered row. The store house walls, made from old mismatched stones, were supported by a skeleton of wooden beams which were scalloped at the ends, as if to hint at the idea of clawed feet. Driven into each of these beams along the back wall were brass rings that stuck straight out at about the level of Minerva's shoulder. Through each of these rings, a broom handle jutted, never touching the brass, which was filled with a roomy cushioning charm. The curved edges of the wooden beams near the stone-slab floor gently repelled the brooms, so that their twigs and bristles always floated half an inch in the air.
Things hadn't been that way when Minerva had been a girl in school.
The brooms had been stored leaned up against the walls, laying on narrow broom-shelves, or else thrown, by overeager first years, onto the floor. She remembered the coach of her youth well, his passion, his insistence than anyone could ride a broom, could become adept at Quidditch if they applied themselves. His carefree attitude towards tidying. His tireless good-humour. She suppressed a smile at the sudden memory of dropping off her broom at the store house with the rest of her teammates after a particularly graceless practice, the way they had been talking and laughing all at once afterwards anyway, the smell of the lot of them (herself included).
Sir Derwen had always seemed more like a friend than an instructor, and his authority always lay in his approachability. Students respected him not because they feared being scolded, but because they feared disappointing him, having their esteem lowered in his eyes. Minerva remembered, vividly, lying in the hospital wing, in a bed near the window, the curtains drawn, after sustaining the injuries that would end any ideas she had nursed of becoming a professional Quidditch player. She recalled the way her whole face had been pinched in a supreme effort not to sob, and the warm tears rolling down her cheeks anyway. Of the steel blue clouds out the window that day, when Sir Derwen came to sit with her, and talk to her. She couldn't remember what he'd said, just that he'd sat with her that afternoon, companionate in his mourning.
His students were his life's work, something which Minerva, upon becoming a professor herself, had come to admire deeply. The depth of attention and empathy required to try to relate to each and every one of one's students, to devote such time to them; Minerva had only truly come to appreciate how draining it could be when she had been given her own classes. It was so much easier to state one's authority outright, to maintain control of a classroom through discipline, to keep some distance between herself and her charges. She found she did not have the patience to walk her students through bad behaviour-and her temper was too short, besides. Nevertheless, on particularly trying days, she would focus on the memory of her old coach shouting "I know you can do better than that!", half-laughing into the windy stadium. He was always right.
"Which rules are these, now?" Hooch asked with a secret smile, folding her arms comfortably and leaning against a tall locked chest which held referee robes and an assortment of weathered riding boots. The store room door thudded shut, the weight of the oak slowly pulling the old hinges together.
"We are not to leave students unattended," Minerva barked, jabbing her finger at the wall before turning to face the flying instructor. "In the case of an emergency, we are to alert another staff member-"
"Poor Mr. Longbottom had a broken wrist, and we saw no staff members on the way to the Hospital Wing, so-"
"You could have sent a Patronus."
"Can't produce one; never learned that charm." Her tone was more matter-of-fact than defensive. "Actually, I was never all that good at charms in the first place."
"Don't give me that nonsense! You charmed all of these broom rests!"
"Rather minor charmwork though, between you and I. Terribly repetitive. Not a lick of finesse to it."
Minerva tsked and rolled her eyes. Of course it was 'rather minor'. What gall, to lean there, and look so pleased with herself. To fish so shamelessly for compliments. Well, she certainly wasn't about to get any from Minerva. She continued to look over at Hooch with disapproval, arms crossed, and fingers curled stiffly over her elbows.
"I hear you found a new Seeker."
That woman. That horrible woman with her knowing smile under a conversational tone.
"I suppose you'd like to take credit."
"I wouldn't dream of it," Hooch replied with mild affront. "I had, after all, abandoned my charges while all the excitement was happening... saw Mr. Potter and Mr. Malfoy from a window, did you?"
Minerva tsked again, her annoyance giving way to exasperation. "You know very well I did."
"Had you looked out the window hoping to watch me?" Hooch asked, crossing a hand over her heart with an exaggerated motion. "I find I'm quite flattered."
"Oh Circe."
This made Hooch laugh, dropping the hand over her heart to her stomach instead. She was shaking her head, still lit up with mirth, when she pushed off of the locked chest and came to rest beside Minerva next to a rack of scuffed practice-Quaffles.
"It is a striking image, really."
Minerva tried to draw up her best unimpressed expression.
"Deputy Headmistress," Hooch continued on, unaffected, "pining away up in her-"
"I have never pined, never, not once in my life." Minerva's arms untangled as she cut off Hooch's wild imagination.
"At least once, surely," Hooch pressed her, expression wavering between earnest and teasing.
"Never," Minerva repeated, feeling her eyebrow raise in challenge.
Hooch was laughing when she pulled Minerva in by the waist and kissed her. It took two brushes of the lips, and then Minerva was running her hands along the flying instructor's arms, up to her shoulders, and then found herself stepping in closer, responding, despite her better judgement. It was always the last time, always. Her heart would thud, warming her chest, making sweat build at the base of her neck, her fingers along Hooch's back shaking because she wanted both to go further and to storm out (of her own office, of the empty staff room, of an alcove on the fourth floor, of her sitting room, of the store house, of the store house, of the-)
Minerva was not like this.
She wasn't a widower whose grief could be folded up and given away as if it had never once been a part of her. She deserved that grief. She'd already deliberately hidden away when love had found its way to her the first time; had settled, when she'd become tired of chastising herself for that. She had felt herself too old and too alone to break another heart. Her own didn't matter; she'd given it away so completely the first time that it became more a memory than a thing that lived in her chest. Each new pain came to her slowly, spread itself thin, and then disappeared. She did deserve to mourn. Her first love, pushed away, her late husband, his hopeless longing for a love she could never return to him in kind-her inability to have ever put her own heart first.
Rolanda pulled back, her cheeks rosy and bunching up with a grin.
"Yes?" Minerva asked feeling both testy and self-conscious after the flying instructor had held her gaze a moment too long without saying a thing.
"What I wouldn't give to see you with your hair down."
Minerva huffed, slapping her hands onto Rolanda's collarbones lightly.
"Really-" Rolanda insisted, unfazed, "splayed out over my desk, perhaps..."
"I have no intention of being manhandled on a desk or any other such-"
"It's not really manhandling, though," she cut in, grin still there.
Minerva scoffed. "Whatever sort of handling you have in mind, a desk would be the very last place-"
"Ah, but you do have other places in mind, then," Rolanda interrupted again, voice lower and the corners of her eyes crinkled with mirth. Minerva felt the hands at her lower back move, tracing her waist, moving higher, pulling her closer again. Rolanda leaned in and kissed her cheek, her temple, her nose resting just near Minerva's ear. She could feel the grin still there, pressing against her face.
Minerva remembered the day that Sir Derwen had retired, introducing his old student, an accomplished Quidditch player, as the person who had been selected as his replacement. Rolanda Hooch-the star keeper of a frankly mediocre team, several years into her career before Minerva had even received her Hogwarts acceptance letter. She had wanted to feel greater disappointment at the replacement, at one of her mentors leaving the school, her home, but she hadn't been able to. Instead, she had looked over at the delighted-looking witch, recalled the impressive saves she had witnessed during the few games she had gone to where her favourite team had been facing Hooch's, and felt a grudging interest stirring.
She should have been mourning.
She remembered how the death of her husband had still been in her thoughts daily, at that time, the way he had looked at her, right until the end, as if she were the source of some higher comfort or happiness. She didn't deserve to be looked at in such a way, not when she had still looked through him, sometimes.
She remembered saying farewell to Sir Derwen, how his spidery, weathered hand had gripped her shoulder with affection, and how he had said take care of yourself, my dear.
She was taller than him by then.
"Minerva."
It was a breathless question, next to her ear.
When Rolanda had kissed her the first time while they'd been bickering (was that change to the training schedule really necessary?), Minerva had felt more shocked than at any other moment in her life. She had never imagined that the flirting had been earnest, or even there at all to begin with-She should not have felt longing at the contact, should not have responded to it. Being in the wizarding world for so long had numbed her to the idea that same-sex relationships were wrong, but nevertheless, having grown up in a Muggle environment, some small part of the old preconception remained. She should not have enjoyed it, her stomach should not have flipped when Rolanda had kissed her again, wrapped her hand around the back of Minerva's neck-
Her stomach flipped again, just remembering.
"I suppose there will be no end to your determination," Minerva finally answered, feeling some vital part of herself give.
"You are so very clever," Rolanda said with great satisfaction and a laugh-always a laugh.
Recipient: kellychambliss
Title: For Each a Stone Wall
Pairing: Hooch/McGonagall
Request/Prompt: Initial hostility that turns to friendship/romance
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,016
Summary: She had felt herself too old to break another heart.
Author's Notes: Officer, I swear, I needed every one of those extra 16 words.
It was becoming a problem, the way Hooch kept finding ways to talk to her. Tonight's meeting would almost certainly be a surprise to the flying instructor, but if Minerva knew her at all (and she did... unfortunately), Hooch would be smug about it. Her bony fingers twitched in annoyance.
It was in a still-building temper that she stamped up to the entrance of the Quidditch store house, and rapped on the door. She pretended the weathered oak hadn't made her knuckle ache.
"What're-oh." A slow smile. "Oh. Evening."
Minerva scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Do you have a moment?"
This made Hooch laugh, so Minerva took a slow breath in to avoid saying something prickly.
"Yes," The flying instructor said finally, seeming to recognize the thin ice she treaded, though with considerable amusement. "Of course. I'm just polishing a boom handle. Fire away."
Minerva wouldn't put it past Hooch to be using a euphemism, she really wouldn't.
"We have rules in place for a reason," Minerva said with considerable annoyance, and no preamble, sweeping past Hooch and heading toward the back wall, where a line of brooms-some handles gleaming with polish, most dull and scratched-lay in an ordered row. The store house walls, made from old mismatched stones, were supported by a skeleton of wooden beams which were scalloped at the ends, as if to hint at the idea of clawed feet. Driven into each of these beams along the back wall were brass rings that stuck straight out at about the level of Minerva's shoulder. Through each of these rings, a broom handle jutted, never touching the brass, which was filled with a roomy cushioning charm. The curved edges of the wooden beams near the stone-slab floor gently repelled the brooms, so that their twigs and bristles always floated half an inch in the air.
Things hadn't been that way when Minerva had been a girl in school.
The brooms had been stored leaned up against the walls, laying on narrow broom-shelves, or else thrown, by overeager first years, onto the floor. She remembered the coach of her youth well, his passion, his insistence than anyone could ride a broom, could become adept at Quidditch if they applied themselves. His carefree attitude towards tidying. His tireless good-humour. She suppressed a smile at the sudden memory of dropping off her broom at the store house with the rest of her teammates after a particularly graceless practice, the way they had been talking and laughing all at once afterwards anyway, the smell of the lot of them (herself included).
Sir Derwen had always seemed more like a friend than an instructor, and his authority always lay in his approachability. Students respected him not because they feared being scolded, but because they feared disappointing him, having their esteem lowered in his eyes. Minerva remembered, vividly, lying in the hospital wing, in a bed near the window, the curtains drawn, after sustaining the injuries that would end any ideas she had nursed of becoming a professional Quidditch player. She recalled the way her whole face had been pinched in a supreme effort not to sob, and the warm tears rolling down her cheeks anyway. Of the steel blue clouds out the window that day, when Sir Derwen came to sit with her, and talk to her. She couldn't remember what he'd said, just that he'd sat with her that afternoon, companionate in his mourning.
His students were his life's work, something which Minerva, upon becoming a professor herself, had come to admire deeply. The depth of attention and empathy required to try to relate to each and every one of one's students, to devote such time to them; Minerva had only truly come to appreciate how draining it could be when she had been given her own classes. It was so much easier to state one's authority outright, to maintain control of a classroom through discipline, to keep some distance between herself and her charges. She found she did not have the patience to walk her students through bad behaviour-and her temper was too short, besides. Nevertheless, on particularly trying days, she would focus on the memory of her old coach shouting "I know you can do better than that!", half-laughing into the windy stadium. He was always right.
"Which rules are these, now?" Hooch asked with a secret smile, folding her arms comfortably and leaning against a tall locked chest which held referee robes and an assortment of weathered riding boots. The store room door thudded shut, the weight of the oak slowly pulling the old hinges together.
"We are not to leave students unattended," Minerva barked, jabbing her finger at the wall before turning to face the flying instructor. "In the case of an emergency, we are to alert another staff member-"
"Poor Mr. Longbottom had a broken wrist, and we saw no staff members on the way to the Hospital Wing, so-"
"You could have sent a Patronus."
"Can't produce one; never learned that charm." Her tone was more matter-of-fact than defensive. "Actually, I was never all that good at charms in the first place."
"Don't give me that nonsense! You charmed all of these broom rests!"
"Rather minor charmwork though, between you and I. Terribly repetitive. Not a lick of finesse to it."
Minerva tsked and rolled her eyes. Of course it was 'rather minor'. What gall, to lean there, and look so pleased with herself. To fish so shamelessly for compliments. Well, she certainly wasn't about to get any from Minerva. She continued to look over at Hooch with disapproval, arms crossed, and fingers curled stiffly over her elbows.
"I hear you found a new Seeker."
That woman. That horrible woman with her knowing smile under a conversational tone.
"I suppose you'd like to take credit."
"I wouldn't dream of it," Hooch replied with mild affront. "I had, after all, abandoned my charges while all the excitement was happening... saw Mr. Potter and Mr. Malfoy from a window, did you?"
Minerva tsked again, her annoyance giving way to exasperation. "You know very well I did."
"Had you looked out the window hoping to watch me?" Hooch asked, crossing a hand over her heart with an exaggerated motion. "I find I'm quite flattered."
"Oh Circe."
This made Hooch laugh, dropping the hand over her heart to her stomach instead. She was shaking her head, still lit up with mirth, when she pushed off of the locked chest and came to rest beside Minerva next to a rack of scuffed practice-Quaffles.
"It is a striking image, really."
Minerva tried to draw up her best unimpressed expression.
"Deputy Headmistress," Hooch continued on, unaffected, "pining away up in her-"
"I have never pined, never, not once in my life." Minerva's arms untangled as she cut off Hooch's wild imagination.
"At least once, surely," Hooch pressed her, expression wavering between earnest and teasing.
"Never," Minerva repeated, feeling her eyebrow raise in challenge.
Hooch was laughing when she pulled Minerva in by the waist and kissed her. It took two brushes of the lips, and then Minerva was running her hands along the flying instructor's arms, up to her shoulders, and then found herself stepping in closer, responding, despite her better judgement. It was always the last time, always. Her heart would thud, warming her chest, making sweat build at the base of her neck, her fingers along Hooch's back shaking because she wanted both to go further and to storm out (of her own office, of the empty staff room, of an alcove on the fourth floor, of her sitting room, of the store house, of the store house, of the-)
Minerva was not like this.
She wasn't a widower whose grief could be folded up and given away as if it had never once been a part of her. She deserved that grief. She'd already deliberately hidden away when love had found its way to her the first time; had settled, when she'd become tired of chastising herself for that. She had felt herself too old and too alone to break another heart. Her own didn't matter; she'd given it away so completely the first time that it became more a memory than a thing that lived in her chest. Each new pain came to her slowly, spread itself thin, and then disappeared. She did deserve to mourn. Her first love, pushed away, her late husband, his hopeless longing for a love she could never return to him in kind-her inability to have ever put her own heart first.
Rolanda pulled back, her cheeks rosy and bunching up with a grin.
"Yes?" Minerva asked feeling both testy and self-conscious after the flying instructor had held her gaze a moment too long without saying a thing.
"What I wouldn't give to see you with your hair down."
Minerva huffed, slapping her hands onto Rolanda's collarbones lightly.
"Really-" Rolanda insisted, unfazed, "splayed out over my desk, perhaps..."
"I have no intention of being manhandled on a desk or any other such-"
"It's not really manhandling, though," she cut in, grin still there.
Minerva scoffed. "Whatever sort of handling you have in mind, a desk would be the very last place-"
"Ah, but you do have other places in mind, then," Rolanda interrupted again, voice lower and the corners of her eyes crinkled with mirth. Minerva felt the hands at her lower back move, tracing her waist, moving higher, pulling her closer again. Rolanda leaned in and kissed her cheek, her temple, her nose resting just near Minerva's ear. She could feel the grin still there, pressing against her face.
Minerva remembered the day that Sir Derwen had retired, introducing his old student, an accomplished Quidditch player, as the person who had been selected as his replacement. Rolanda Hooch-the star keeper of a frankly mediocre team, several years into her career before Minerva had even received her Hogwarts acceptance letter. She had wanted to feel greater disappointment at the replacement, at one of her mentors leaving the school, her home, but she hadn't been able to. Instead, she had looked over at the delighted-looking witch, recalled the impressive saves she had witnessed during the few games she had gone to where her favourite team had been facing Hooch's, and felt a grudging interest stirring.
She should have been mourning.
She remembered how the death of her husband had still been in her thoughts daily, at that time, the way he had looked at her, right until the end, as if she were the source of some higher comfort or happiness. She didn't deserve to be looked at in such a way, not when she had still looked through him, sometimes.
She remembered saying farewell to Sir Derwen, how his spidery, weathered hand had gripped her shoulder with affection, and how he had said take care of yourself, my dear.
She was taller than him by then.
"Minerva."
It was a breathless question, next to her ear.
When Rolanda had kissed her the first time while they'd been bickering (was that change to the training schedule really necessary?), Minerva had felt more shocked than at any other moment in her life. She had never imagined that the flirting had been earnest, or even there at all to begin with-She should not have felt longing at the contact, should not have responded to it. Being in the wizarding world for so long had numbed her to the idea that same-sex relationships were wrong, but nevertheless, having grown up in a Muggle environment, some small part of the old preconception remained. She should not have enjoyed it, her stomach should not have flipped when Rolanda had kissed her again, wrapped her hand around the back of Minerva's neck-
Her stomach flipped again, just remembering.
"I suppose there will be no end to your determination," Minerva finally answered, feeling some vital part of herself give.
"You are so very clever," Rolanda said with great satisfaction and a laugh-always a laugh.