All Things Upright

All Things Upright

Minerva was sent to school two years before the world went to hell. Hitler was marching into Austria-Hungry, Grindelwald was rumoured to be hiding somewhere in Romania, and her mother had plaited her hair so tightly that it hurt, the skin pulled taut behind her ears.

"So it won't come out," she'd told Minerva. "You must look presentable."

Her father could've secured it with a painless charm instead. He didn't. (And Minerva had understood and hadn't asked him to, because she remembered the way her mother's face had fallen, just a little, when she'd gotten her letter. Minerva, already too much like her father, with his eyes and his accent, was now magic as well, and sometimes it was better not to mention these things.)

Minerva had understood, but her scull hurt and eleven was too young, just barely, to know the shame of puberty. She'd taken the braid out on the train, when the ache had overridden her ingrained desire to be tidy. As soon as Hogwarts was close enough that she could count its individual windows, pinpricks of light in the distance, she'd attempted to plait it again. But couldn't. (She'd tried until the ribbon was damp and her fingers were slippery with sweat, and didn't once think to ask one of the older girls for help.)

And so, when Minerva had been marched into the Great Hall with it's ceiling of stars and galaxies of floating candles, her hair had been lose and swinging, unkempt. She'd blushed, worried about first impressions, and mostly managed to keep from fussing with it.

"You have lovely hair," said the hat to Minerva McGonagall when her name was called.

"Oh, shut up," she thought, and the hat, perched on her lose hair, had screamed "Gryffindor!"

By her third week, Minerva had become an expert at braids.

-

Professor McGonagall had never intended to become Headmistress, but then - she hadn't intended for a large number of things (they happened anyways). Albus Dumbledore had died without leaving instructions, and she wasn't allowed to morn him because she hadn't been his wife and wasn't owed anything. It had never been a love story, that much was true, but parts of it - parts of it read like one. (She'd been young once; the world hadn't needed redemption and he'd had time.)

She should have wept at his funeral. She didn't. (But she'd carried a handkerchief with her and maybe she'd been expecting to.)

-

Immediately after his death the school had been filled with mourners, its stone walls bouncing their cries back and back and back. But then June had burned into August and people fell away from Hogwarts like leaves in autumn. One by one, the professors had packed up their classrooms, apologies falling from their lips even as they backed out the doors.

Sybil, of all people, had left last. She'd stood on the steps of the Great Hall, one hand clutching a bottle of sherry, the other resting on her trunk, yellow stars lacquered to its lid.

"Someday, Minerva," she'd said. "Someday, I see that Hogwarts will be back to normal again." (And Minerva had taken it for an apology because she hates prophecies and pity in equal amounts.)

-

Now the Headmistress lives alone in what would have been her castle, floating through its halls like one of the ghosts. Somewhere, Harry Potter is either going to save mankind or he isn't, and Minerva's only wish is that he does it quickly.

The staircases don't move anymore.

-

During Minerva's fourth year in school the sky was falling over London and you could tell the Muggleborns apart by their ashen faces alone.

But Minerva had gotten far cleverer about things like braids and appearances, and she'd made sure that no one, not a soul, could tell she was a halfblood (it didn't pay to be anything but pure and Minerva had always been a careful child). She hadn't reacted when they were told that France was gone, Germany was at the channel, England on its knees. She'd cursed and cried when the goblins went over to Grindelwald and Gringotts was looted. She'd been so very, very careful.

But Minerva had to look the part as well, and that was harder. She'd transfigured her clothing into finer things and charmed her ribbons different colours daily. Pearl grays and dusky blues, gold, burnished brass, and all shades of red, from scarlet to a near brown, the colour of blood on snow. Nevertheless, Minerva was still something like a child, even with her new breasts and the beginnings of hips, and more often than not the spells had slid off. She'd sometimes stepped into bathrooms between classes to renew them.

"My dear," Professor Dumbledore had said once after Transfigurations, "would you stay for spell?"

(A few times during her childhood at Hogwarts, Minerva would try to transfigure her ribbons the exact colour of his hair, which was like the dying sun caught in a bottle. She'd never get it right, not perfectly, and would eventually give up.)

"Would you stay a spell?" he'd said that day, and so Minerva sat on a stool by his desk with sky-blue ribbons in her hair, legs still not long enough to touch the ground. She'd tried very hard not to be anything more than politely confused, and he'd rummaged through shelves and chests as if he was digging through to China.

When he produced a wireless radio, Minerva had very nearly forgotten herself and reached for it. (But she hadn't. Instead, she'd folded her hands in her lap and said smoothly, "I thought Muggle artifacts didn't work here," with just enough contempt.)

"This one does," Professor Dumbledore said and he'd said nothing else, simply turned it on. And he hadn't spoken through the entire Allied broadcast, not even when Minerva's facade of polite disinterest failed her, halfway through reports of the damage to London.

"Shh," he'd told her at the end, and dried her eyes. And Minerva had been young and foolish and ashamed, charmed sky-blue ribbons in her hair and legs not long enough to touch the ground, swinging on the stool.

-

Now Professor McGonagall has many clothes and none of them, not a single one, has been transfigured or charmed or altered in any way. And even though there's no one left in the castle but ghosts and portraits and memories, she still wears them all.

Everyday she dresses as though she were going to teach a class, with full skirts and petticoats and stockings. She pins her hair up into its bun each morning and takes it down every night. Most days, she even wears gloves. White ones that button at the wrist, others that are pearl gray, dusky blue, gold and burnished brass, and a pair the colour of blood on snow. She wears them because Albus had been Victorian to his very core, and, if she chose to, she could hang each kiss he pressed to her bare fingers on a star and still have some left over when she was through. (And although it is foolish, Minerva finds that now, without him, her hands become cold far too effortlessly.)

She's kept her old rooms. She was never really Headmistress, and, when she enters his office, there's something in the portraits' eyes that looks just a little too much like pity. She still takes her meals in the Great Hall (and she had tried to sit in the middle chair at first, but stopped when she'd noticed the way she was still instinctively angling her body to the left).

Sometimes, Minerva sees things that she shouldn't be seeing.

There are twenty-three ghosts in Hogwarts, and Minerva knows them all by name and cause of death. They float through the halls like smoke and don't bother to go through the walls, now that there's no one to impress. Mostly they avoid Minerva, because the castle's cold enough already without the chill they bring.

There are twenty-three ghosts in Hogwarts, Minerva knows them all by name and cause of death, and sometimes, sometimes Minerva sees things she shouldn't be seeing.

(Sometimes she counts twenty-four.)

-

Two days after Minerva turned sixteen years old, an owl had arrived during breakfast with the address typed on. Minerva made it as far as the main staircase before collapsing.

We regret to inform you--

They had sent her home for two weeks. In her haste, Minerva hadn't packed anything, not one single piece of clothing, that was black. When she'd opened her trunk later, poured it out onto the floor, there was nothing but a whirlwind of yellows and greens and reds, fluttering to the ground.

--that your parents, Jane and Ainsley McGonagall--

Minerva didn't have enough money to pay for a funeral. She'd walked through the charred remains of her childhood yard and collected the few fallen leaves that had escaped the flames. Later, as she had handed them to the vicar, transfigured so as appear as pound notes, she'd only felt a brief flutter of guilt, lasting no longer than a second.

Before the service Minerva had gathered up all her clothing, old and worn and unapologetically, unflinchingly colourful, and she'd picked up her wand. When she was finally through she was left with a simple black smock, buttons all the way up to her throat, lace gloves, and a single black silk hair ribbon.

--were killed in an air raid, October the 4^th--

Two feet from the graveyard entrance, after burying her parents in the prematurely frozen ground and still dressed in black, Minerva had transformed herself for the very first time. Years later, she will always remember being unaccountably relieved that she became a tabby. (Because the situation had been terrible enough, and Minerva still doesn't know what she would have done if her fur had been black, the colour of her dress and her ribbon and her gloves, the colour of nothing.)

In the graveyard that night, that first transformation, Minerva had remained a cat for the total span of twelve-and-a-half seconds.

Then she'd transformed herself back into a girl so she could have the luxury of crying tears.

--1942.

-

Minerva had flooed back to Hogwarts. She'd thrown the powder into the fire and kept her elbows in, and less than a minute later she'd been knocking on the door to Albus Dumbledore's private quarters, brushing soot from her clothing.

"I'm terribly sorry to bother you," she'd said. "It can wait," she'd said, "if you're busy." And he'd looked at her with unfathomably blue eyes, shook his head.

"Minerva, come inside."

-

Minerva had transformed herself into a cat for the second time that night in the middle of Albus Dumbledore's study, between the books and bobbles. It had lasted a little over a minute, and when she'd become a girl once more, when she could see in colour, his eyes had been blue and worried and his hair was like the sun caught in a bottle. And he hadn't said a word. He hadn't said a word, and the back of her throat burned from choking on her sobs.

It was in that precise moment that Minerva's transfigurations, done under the strain of grief and guilt and pain, had failed her. Instead of a black smock, buttons all the way to the neck, she had suddenly found herself wearing a faded yellow sundress, worn thin at the elbows and with a threadbare hem. Her black silk ribbon had reverted to a simple piece of string, and her hair had come undone, loose across her shoulders. (And for all the world, Minerva had felt like the girl in the muggle-fairytale, the one who sat by the fireplace with cinders on her face, the one who only had until the clock chimed midnight.)

She'd reached for her wand but Dumbledore had caught her hand, exposed and naked without her gloves, between the two of his.

"Leave it like this," he'd said, and bent for the first time to kiss her bare fingers.

-

Professor McGonagall sits in the Great Hall, alone at the High Table, and the sky-ceiling isn't a true colour, but caught halfway between blue and black like it cannot make up its mind. She is wearing a dove gray dress with purple petticoats (and today she can see twenty-four ghosts).

The candles flicker as he floats over to her, bouncing suggestions off the silverware.

"Go away," Minerva McGonagall tells the ghost of Albus Dumbledore. "I refuse to be going insane."

He smiles sadly at her, eyes twinkling because of course they would be. "Shh, my dear," he says, and kisses her on the mouth like he had never done when he was alive. It is breathlessly cold, and when Minerva closes her eyes she sees red, the colour of the sun caught in a bottle. Somewhere a clock chimes midnight.

(fin)