June Week

Chapter 12: Eight Lives Left

It wasn´t complete unconsciousness. Unfortunately. That would have been greatly preferable to this floating in-between state, in which she could hear and feel, but do nothing to help herself.

Someone´s voice said "Let´s move her - carefully, now - one, two, three." She was lifted, swung to the side with agony flaring in every part of her broken body, and lowered onto a surface much more forgiving than the floor had been. Another voice said "Wipe up that blood, I keep slipping in it," and even through the pain Minerva was able to think I could have done without hearing THAT.

A green burst of wand light flared in front of her closed eyelids.

"Can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?" That was Madam Valerian, the nurse.

"I can´t breathe," she managed to hiss out on the slight bit of air that was available to her. It felt as if there were a tight iron band encircling her chest. This must be what drowning was like, or being buried alive.

"No?" Fingers probed at her side. "I can fix that." Madam Valerian muttered a spell. Suddenly, the iron band was gone, and with a great gasping noise, Minerva sucked in what felt like her first full breath in hours. To her utter shame, she used it to scream. She had to. The pain was too much for her to do anything else. She screamed for Dumbledore and her father and her mother and all the deities whose names she´d ever heard, for anyone who might be able to release her from it.

"Hush, dear, you´re making it worse. We´re going to help you. Try to be quiet." But Minerva couldn´t. In a moment she ran out of people to call for and just shrieked wordlessly. Madam Valerian was right - screaming did make it worse - but there seemed to be no way to stop. It wasn´t a question of courage, or lack of it; the pain was so huge and elemental that it washed concepts like courage away on its tide.

"Poppy, hand me the vial - no, the amber one. I hate to put her out when she´s so weak, but we haven´t got any choice." She felt a gentle hand under the back of her head, lifting it just a few inches, and a few drops of some bitter liquid ran down her throat. The taste was green, like freshly crushed leaves. Still tasting it, she sank down, into real darkness this time.

~~~

When she woke again, she was tucked tightly into a narrow bed at the rear of the infirmary. All her limbs still seemed to be attached, though very sore and weak. Carefully, she stretched and flexed them to make sure they worked. The friction of the crisp white sheets against them was a little painful, but reassuring at the same time - it meant she wasn´t paralyzed or irreversibly nerve-damaged.

"Oh, you´re awake," said a voice to her left. She turned her head to discover Madam Valerian´s assistant, Poppy, gathering what looked like a stack of bed linens from a cupboard.

"I have to -" she started, then stopped and tried to clear her throat. Her voice was harsh and rusty as a crow´s. "I have to talk to Headmaster Dippet. Or Professor Dumbledore. I have to tell them -"

"What happened to you? Dippet knows, or at least he seems to. He´s been here already. He didn´t say much, just that he was handling things and he´d come back to see you when you were stronger."

"And what about Professor Dumbledore?"

Poppy shrugged. "He´s still away on his trip. Dippet sent him an owl last night, right after you came in."

"Oh," Minerva said in bitter disappointment. Somehow she had thought, had hoped, that he would be here already. But that was stupid. He was on important business. He couldn´t drop everything and come running home right away.

"How long have I been here?" she asked, not wanting to think about that anymore.

"About twelve hours." Poppy put her burden down on a nearby chair and walked over to inspect her patient. "How do you feel?"

"As if I fell thirty feet onto a stone floor," Minerva said wryly. "How do I look?"

"Not bad, considering the circumstances. You had three broken ribs. One of them punctured your left lung and collapsed it. That´s why you couldn´t breathe properly. You also broke both your legs and your left arm, in several places. Shattered them, really. And -" She was about to continue the litany of injury, but didn´t get a chance, because Minerva suddenly remembered the terrible crunching-cornflakes noise she had heard when she landed on the floor.

That was my legs breaking, she thought, and had to clap her uninjured hand over her mouth to keep from being sick all over herself.

"Never mind, I don´t want to know any more," she said when she thought it was safe to take her hand away.

"I don´t blame you," said Poppy. "Anyway, Dippet wouldn´t tell us how you happened to fall, but he told us not to let anyone in to see you or to say that you were here. He said you weren´t to tell us anything either, until you´d talked to him or Dumbledore."

"I´m ready whenever he is," Minerva said.

She waited all that afternoon for someone to come, but no one did, unless you counted Poppy and Madam Valerian, who seemed to be in there, fussing about, every hour on the hour. The afternoon wore on toward evening as she lay in bed, watching a square of sunlight from the window moving across the wall opposite her and feeling both restless and lonely. She would have settled for talking to Dippet - she was on fire to tell someone what she´d seen last night and find out what had happened since - but the person she really wanted to see was Dumbledore. Surely Dippet would have asked him to come back for something this important. Surely he would have come back anyway when he heard she was hurt. Wouldn´t he?

Eventually, Madam Valerian came in to tell her that she was going down to the Great Hall for dinner in a few minutes, but that Poppy would be there if she needed anything. Minerva watched her bustling around the room, lighting the candles and oil lamps against the growing darkness. They cast tall, wavering shadows that reached halfway to the moldings encircling the plastered ceiling.

I won´t ask if anyone´s heard from Albus, she decided. When he comes, I don´t want them to say I was whining for him like a child.

That resolution lasted until Madam Valerian finished her work and started to leave. Just as she reached the door, Minerva blurted out "Wait - please wait!"

"Yes, dear?" the nurse asked kindly, turning back.

"Professor Dumbledore - Poppy said Headmaster Dippet had sent him an owl. Has he answered yet? Is he coming?"

Madam Valerian frowned slightly. "I really don´t know. You´ll have to ask the Headmaster. I´m surprised he hasn´t been in to talk to you yet. He´s been very busy all day, though. People from the Ministry are here. Aurors."

"All right," said Minerva, sinking back into the pillows. "Thank you."

"Don´t worry about it, dear. I´m sure everything is being taken care of," Madam Valerian said, and left.

Minerva went back to waiting. Without even the poor entertainment of the sunlight to keep her occupied, she fell asleep that way.

~~~

"Wake up, Tabby," Dumbledore said softly, and she opened her eyes to see the faint outline of him in the dark, just as he lit the candles on her bedside table with his wand. In the sudden flare of light, he looked so dreadfully tired and worried that she forgot to be upset that he´d taken so long in coming. She held out her one good arm, and he bent down to give her a very careful hug.

"I wondered when you would get here," she said, slightly muffled against the collar of his cloak. It was cold, and smelled of the outdoors - he must have come straight to the infirmary upon arriving.

"I came as soon as I could." He let go of her and pulled up a chair so he could sit beside the bed. "Bella said she could carry on without me. And it sounds as if all the action has been here, at any rate. Armando told me what happened, and how badly you were hurt." His voice was as calm as it ever was, but Minerva saw a distinct wetness in his eyes. She had never known him to shed a tear in their nine-year acquaintance. The possibility of it happening now horrified her. To forestall it, she tried a little humor.

"Just imagine, I played Quidditch for four years without hurting myself once, and here I am practically in bits because of a stair-climbing accident," she said. "What do you suppose the odds of that are?"

"I wouldn´t put any money on it," said Dumbledore. "But it wasn´t exactly an accident, was it? Someone tried to kill you. Now I want you to tell me your version of the story."

She told him, from start to finish, omitting nothing except the fact that Isolde had reported the secret meeting to her on standing instructions to mention any unusual activity.

"And I have no idea what happened after that," she finished. "The Headmaster hasn´t told me anything. I haven´t even seen him. Do you know?"

"They were Grindelwald sympathizers," Dumbledore said. "You knew that part. Two of them were definitely Hogwarts students. They were taken into custody in the West Tower last night. A third was seen running across the grounds, but escaped before anyone could stop him."

"Or her," Minerva said. "At least one of them was a woman, or maybe a girl - her voice sounded young - so some of the others might have been as well." The effort of talking made her cough, and she flinched as renewed pain flared in her damaged ribcage. "The two you got were the first ones I stunned. I didn´t hit the third one hard enough to keep him or her down. There wasn´t time to aim properly."

"I´m impressed anyway," Dumbledore said. "Striking three out of five is excellent for one person acting alone."

Disappointed though she was that she hadn´t gotten every one of them, Minerva felt a warm flush of pride at this praise. Perhaps she´d done well enough after all. "Who were the two you caught, anyway?" she asked, hoping, almost expecting, that one of them would be Tom.

"Jeremy Javits and Stephen Cooke," said Dumbledore. "And we believe Benjamin Savard was one of those that escaped. No one has seen him since dinner last night. The other two were not students - everyone else has been accounted for and their whereabouts at the time of the incident confirmed by the Aurors."

Minerva frowned. "But Jeremy and Stephen are in Ravenclaw," she said, "and Benjamin is a Hufflepuff. I thought -"

"What, that they would be Slytherins?" Taking off his glasses, Dumbledore rubbed his eyes tiredly, then looked down at her with a very serious expression. "Minerva, if you are going to go around fighting evil, as you seem determined to do, you will have to stop thinking that it is predictable. It isn´t. Slytherin House has turned out many excellent wizards, including a number of Aurors, and the other three Houses have produced their share of villains and cowards."

"I know, but everyone says -"

"Yes, everyone does," said Dumbledore, "but that doesn´t make it true. Children believe what everyone says, Minerva. Adults form their own opinions." His voice softened. "I haven´t come here to lecture you. You did very well last night. I only wish I could tell everyone just how well."

"What do you mean?"

"Armando and I discussed the situation with the Hogwarts regents, and together, we decided that the best thing to do for the moment was to cover up this incident. Most people are already terrified of Grindelwald, and if they knew he was trying to establish a presence at Hogwarts, they would want to pull their children out of school immediately. We might have been able to calm them at another time, but after the Chamber of Secrets incident a year and a half ago, we lost a great deal of credibility. The Aurors have performed Memory Charms on almost everyone who heard what happened last night. Only you, I, and Armando know the whole truth. Madam Valerian and Poppy know as much as they need to know."

"But is that wise? Shouldn´t we tell everyone, so people will know what to look out for?"

"That is the course of action we have decided upon," said Dumbledore in rather formal tones, and she realized that the subject was not open for discussion.

"I see," she said. She settled down in bed again and yawned, closing her eyes involuntarily as sleepiness started to creep up on her. Then she remembered something and looked over at him again. "There´s one other thing. I thought I heard some students´ voices while I was lying there on the floor. Young ones. Are they all right? Did I just imagine them?"

"You did not," Dumbledore said. "While Grindelwald´s followers were on their way down the tower stairs, Alexander Barnett and John MacGinnis were on their way up with an extremely large bag of food they´d liberated from the kitchen. Apparently a member of staff had caught them down there earlier and escorted them back to the Ravenclaw dorm." His eyes glinted with sly humor. "I wonder who that staff member might have been?"

"Me," said Minerva resignedly.

"Yes. So they decided to try moving the location of their feast to somewhere more private. They thought they were caught when they saw people coming down the stairs, but relieved when no one paid them any attention. They went on up, and at the second-floor landing, they found you. Alexander stayed with you while John went to fetch Madam Valerian, who collected Armando on her way to the tower. Armando owled me as soon as they´d brought you here.

"Well, I´m not pleased that they were out wandering around again, but I´m very glad they wandered in my direction," Minerva said.

"They seemed to know you would feel that way," Dumbledore said. "They´ve already had their memories modified, but they asked to be allowed to write you a get-well letter first. Here it is." He removed a rather grubby-looking piece of parchment from his pocket, unrolled it and held it up so she could read it by the candlelight.

Dear Miss McGonagall, it said:

We´re sorry we were out of our dorm after you told us to stay inside. But not too sorry because it meant we were there to help you. You looked awful all smashed up with blood on your face. Madam Valerian says you´ll be fine though. Anyway, get better soon, and if you want to take some more points off us when you wake up, it´s all right.

Alexander and John

Minerva wasn´t sure whether to laugh or cry at this missive. She ended up doing a little of both.

"It must have been Alexander who wrote the bit about being smashed up," she said when she was calmer. "He´s very interested in that sort of thing. Ask him about air raids sometime."

"I will make a point of doing so," Dumbledore said gravely. Suddenly, he looked over at the window and smiled. "I think you have a visitor."

"What, at the window? Who could it - oh! Let him in, please!"

Dumbledore went over to the window, opened it, and stepped back quickly as a white blur came swooping through it and over to the bed.

"Sorry, Sugar," Minerva said. "I didn´t mean to miss visiting you tonight. I´ve been a bit busy with other things."

Sugar hopped onto her pillow and looked down at her.

The Owlery owls told me you´d been getting yourself in trouble. Honestly! Are you trying to drive me into an early grave with your antics? Look at me! I´m molting from the stress. You could have been killed! Then what would I do? His wings flapped furiously. Unaware that she was on the receiving end of a severe owl scolding, Minerva reached up and scratched underneath one of them.

"It´s a good thing it´s me who´s hurt and not you," she told him. "You´d make a dreadful patient, I´m sure. Here, lift up that other wing and I´ll take care of it, too."

Don´t try to distract me with petting, Sugar complained. I´m still very - oooohhh. Oh, that´s just the spot. What was I saying? Never mind. Just don´t frighten me like that again, girl. I´m not a chick anymore, you know.

"I think I´ll leave you two alone," Dumbledore said, smiling again. "I´ll be here to see you first thing in the morning. Sleep well." He left as Minerva continued lavishing attention on her companion. Long before Sugar had had as much as he wanted, she got tired and had to stop. Too bad she couldn´t scratch under her own skin. The places where her shattered bones were still mending itched like mad.

"You´ll stay for a while, won´t you, Sugar?" she asked.

Of course I will, silly thing.He ruffled his feathers all over, letting his golden eyes go half-lidded as hishead sunk down in preparation for sleep. I told you, you should have been an owl. We never fall.

~~~

Madam Valerian insisted that Minerva stay in the infirmary for the rest of the week to make sure that her newly repaired injuries were going to stay that way.

"You didn´t see yourself when you came in," she said when Minerva tried to tell her that she was well enough to go back to work, or at least to rest in her own room. "You were in as many pieces as a jigsaw puzzle. Took me ages to put you back together. I´ll not have all that work going to waste. Lie down!"

Minerva did, torn between frustration at her imprisonment in the antiseptic-and-medicine-smelling infirmary and relief that she could avoid the whole Tom-Animagus issue a little longer. In a way, the enforced rest was nice. As Dumbledore reminded her so often, she tended to neglect herself in pursuit of her goals, and three days of eating and sleeping well did her a world of good.

Meals were mostly the way she marked time during those days, with long, luxurious naps to pass the hours in between. All this daytime sleeping left her awake late into the night - but she had an eager companion in Poppy. The other girl was being married in the spring, which meant weddings and all the paraphernalia surrounding them were her favorite topic, and as Minerva was not far from her own age and a captive audience, she seized the opportunity of having her there to ask her opinion on everything from color schemes to china patterns.

Minerva knew less than nothing about any of those things, but the discussions were a pleasant distraction from spying, fighting dark wizards and recovering from multiple broken bones. So she looked at pictures of Poppy´s favorite dress styles and discussed the weighty question of whether to serve beef, chicken or fish at the reception ("Fish," said Minerva, who still found herself craving the stuff at odd moments), and even joined in some slightly giggly speculation about the wedding night and what that would be like. She carefully avoided mentioning the blood and bruises that had been the only mementos of her own experience in that department - there was no point in scaring the other girl. Besides, it would surely be different for Poppy, since she would be with someone who loved her and wished only for her pleasure.

Later that night, after Poppy had announced that it was time for her to sleep and put out the lights, Minerva lay alone in her narrow bed, mulling that over. She could scarcely imagine what it would be like to be touched with real love, but it sounded so sweet and romantic that it brought tears to her eyes and an ache to her chest. If only ...

Turning over, she buried her face in the pillows so Poppy wouldn´t hear her and come back. Poppy was a born comforter, and she would try to hug her and soothe her and make her tell why she was crying. And Minerva didn´t want to. Her problems were her own. She didn´t intend to share them with anyone. Not her romantic problems, not her investigative problems. None of them.

Had she but known it, someone had plans to make her do just that.