Ribbons

Ribbons

She's always loved him, always trusted him, so why, why, why has he let this - this awful woman, this bloody horrid old hag stomp in and take over their school? "What are you doing, Dumbledore?" she'd snapped in the last week before term began, using the same thin-lipped, tight-voiced tone that worked about fifty percent of the time on her students. "How can you do this?"

And again after the start-of-term feast: "Dumbledore, really! I don't know what you think you're doing, she's a perfectly - " a quick, cautious glance around - "dreadful woman, rotten and bitter to the core, and that speech! Honestly, Dumbledore ..."

And again after Harry Potter's second week of detention: "Albus, I'll thank you not to repeat this to him, but Potter's gotten himself into scrapes left, right, and centre with Umbridge - now don't look at me that way, I know he gets himself into scrapes all the time - but really, I can't say that I blame the boy ..."

Always the same response, delivered from behind solemn, pale-blue eyes that looked wearier every time she stomped into his office and yelled at him. "Now, Minerva, you know I must have my reasons."

Oh, she'd tried to argue, tried to be as diplomatic as possible - a tone that she did not normally take with her students - "Of course I understand that, Albus, and really, I see - "

"Then you will see," he had said quietly, "that my hands are bound in this matter, Minerva. Fudge has demanded some concessions and if I should choose to fight him in his placement of Dolores Umbridge, well, I daresay that I might be taking my energies away from other, more important matters. Minnie - " She had fixed him with a daggerlike look then, at the name that either spelled out something very important or something very condescending. "Cornelius Fud an inkling about the Order, but I would prefer not to bring it to the forefront of his attention. If he keeps Dolores Umbridge at Hogwarts, he may decide to overlook it, do you understand?"

She had tried talking, tried reasoning, even tried screaming at him, the veins standing out in the slightly wrinkled thinness of her neck while she tried to shout out her frustration, her anger, her absolute hatred and disappointment. "Never - in all my born days, Albus - not even toward You-Know-Who, and Albus, you know how I feel about Him - "

"I do indeed know how you feel about Lord Voldemort, Minerva."

Minerva McGonagall had winced visibly at the name, but she gave a stiff nod and went on. "You - you have let this woman infiltrate Hogwarts, don't you see what she is doing? The students are terrified, they're disappointed, they're hateful ..."

"Please trust me, Professor McGonagall," he kept saying, as if the formality of her name would keep her more respectful of his decision. She had stomped out of his office in a huff.

And it's been months, and there's something wrong with Potter, something more than the obvious fact that You-Know-Who is back and wants to kill him, something more than being banned from Quidditch and having to watch his best mate and his best mate's little sister play without him, something more than having to take Occlumency lessons from Professor Snape. The Weasley twins, having just up and left like that - well, she can't say that she didn't see something like that coming, in fact she's even a little proud of them, stomping out without a single backward glance the way she'd like to, if it wasn't for Dumbledore and the Order. Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley both seem surprisingly calm about things, but Lee Jordan - something happened to him too, earlier this year. She's not sure what it is, but she can feel, in her old, tired bones, that something wasn't right ...

More than once she finds herself pacing the length of the hand-knotted Egyptian rug in her office, cursing everything from this blasted Scottish weather to Dumbledore's bloody poor decisions to the horrid bitch Dolores Jane Umbridge, until she realizes that even her office may not be a safe haven from the million and one Inquisitional Squads that seem to exist around Hogwarts now.

How she hates Dumbledore for the position he's put her in! How she'd like to quit in protest of this horrid witch - and yet she can't. She's promised to remain loyal to him, to Hogwarts, and sometimes she curses herself for it.

On the day he escapes Fudge, Dawlish, and Umbridge, he tells her that he is not leaving to go into hiding, that Fudge will soon wish he'd never dislodged him from Hogwarts. And then he leans close and whispers briefly, "Blind trust, Minnie," before turning to give some soft last words to Harry Potter.

Blind trust, indeed, you bloody bastard! she wants to scream at him sometimes, until she realizes that he is no longer there, in his office, for her to scream at him. I'll give you blind trust, you dodgy old bastard, as I've been giving you all year ...

She also knows, in her heart, the heart that gets hit by four Stunners, straight to the chest and the center of her love and loyalty, that she would never, ever consider breaking her trust in Albus Dumbledore.

As she is recovering in St. Mungo's, alternately worrying about her House and about Hogwarts and hating Umbridge and Fudge and Dumbledore, she casts her resting mind back to another time, almost forty years earlier, a half-century and a lifetime, when there was no You-Know-Who, and no fear, no anger and no self-satisfied, self-righteous Minister of Magic, no hatred for the people she loved most. She remembers a young auburn-haired man holding out an arm to her at her first start-of-term feast as a professor, back before they knew who they would become and what roles they would play in the protection, and destruction, of the wizarding world.

Forty years ago she loved so much more than she hated. Forty years ago she wrapped a ribbon around the end of her braided hair.

finis