Gryffindor is for the Brave

Chapter Six
Yule Pall

“What?” Evan and Minerva said together.

“The notes. Schwartz’s notes about how to cast Imperio, and what it does and everything, they’ve been stolen from the staff room.”

It took a few seconds for them to respond. Finally, Evan recovered himself enough to ask, “How do you know?”

“Just passed by. I wanted to look in on the hospital -- don’t give me that look, Evan, I just wanted to see if she was there -- I knew you’d react this way, that’s why I didn’t tell you -- anyway, Professor Etoile had gone, so I took the long way back, the one that runs by the staff room, to see if she was still at school or what, and the door was ajar and Professor Schwartz was shouting like mad.”

“Are you sure you heard right, though?” Minerva asked. “Could you have misinterpreted, or anything . . .?”

She snorted. “Not bloody likely. He was pretty clear.” She deepened her voice in an impersonation. “They’re gone, my notes, have you seen them, I need them to cast the spell, my Imperio notes --” she flopped back. “Not very discrete, that one. He came running out so upset he didn’t even see me standing there.”

“Who would have taken them?”

“That’d be the question of the hour.”

Evan gave her a withering look. “I meant, who would want them?”

Julia gave him the same sort of look. “What do you mean who’d want them? Plenty of people. A spell to make people do whatever you say? Who wouldn’t want that?”

“Anyone with a spot of integrity,” Evan muttered, but he nodded in reluctant agreement.

“You really think someone stole them so they could twist people around and such?” Minerva asked incredulously. Even Julia couldn’t be that cynical.

“Why else would someone steal them? To paper an owl cage?”

Minerva sank back, slightly hurt. Julia and Evan didn’t seem to notice. “There was no way he could have misplaced them?”

“Schwartz? You’ve got to be kidding. He’s what, the most organized professor in the school? Except for maybe Paideia.”

“All right, then, they were stolen. Next question is where they were stolen from.”

Julia furrowed her brow. “What difference could that make?”

He responded with another disdainful look. “Only teachers can enter the staff room. But if they were stolen from his office, or from his classroom --”

“-- Anyone in the school could have done it,” Julia said, nodding. “He didn’t sound as if he was sure he left them there... more as if he just couldn’t find them.”

“So we are back to the question of who would want the notes for such a spell.”

Suddenly Minerva remembered something. “What about Margara, or one of the other Slytherins?”

“What?” The violence of their reaction startled her. But they didn’t sound angry, only surprised. She pressed on.

“If the notes were stolen from a classroom instead of the staff room, then maybe it was Kit Jones or Margara or someone who took them. Since they’ve been trying the spell and all.”

“They’ve been what?”

“Getting Schwartz to cast the spell on them. On weekends -- I heard two of the Ravenclaw prefects talking about it at the meeting. They all meet, and he casts it on them or whatever --”

Both of them shouted at once. “When did that begin to happen?” and “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I don’t know,” Minerva said, almost frightened. “It started awhile back, I guess --”

“Schwartz sanctioned this?” Evan asked, dismayed.

“Sounded that way, I think, like he was putting the spell on them --”

“How dare he?” Evan rarely so much as raised his voice; his outbursts were almost more unnerving to Minerva than Julia’s angry stare.

An angry stare that was fixed very decidedly on her face. “How long have you known about this?”

“A couple of weeks, maybe,” Minerva said, trying to remember. “I heard about it at the prefects meeting, you know, before the Hogsmeade weekend.” She couldn’t understand why that was important.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you didn’t tell us this,” Julia said, leaning over the table towards Minerva threateningly.

“I - I’m sorry,” Minerva said faintly. “I just -- I don’t know -- it’s just that --”

“That you don’t trust us with the information?” Julia finished for her, in a mockingly innocent tone. “That since you’re the Head Girl you have more right to know that sort of thing?”

“No -- not exactly -- not at all --”

“Right then. Thanks a lot for nothing,” Julia responded, scowling.

Evan threw up his hands in exasperation. “How could he have been doing this for so long? Why in the name of Merlin did no one stop him?”

“Well, Minerva was too scared of him, and we were never given the chance,” Julia snapped back. “I hate that, Minerva, I just hate it. It makes me feel totally untrustworthy. Bugger it all, we tell you whenever anything happens that we know about!”

Minerva looked at the two angry faces before her, and swallowed a lump in her throat. Julia was giving her a very nasty look, and seemed about to open her mouth again. Minerva felt tears pricking her eyes and her lower lip wanting to tremble. She shoved her chair away from the table violently and ran up the stairs to her dormitory.

Her tears had already broken forth by the time she shoved open the door. She threw herself onto her bed and shoved the draperies shut with all her strength. Once she was enclosed, she stopped even trying to fight her tears and began to sob into her pillow.

There were a few minutes of uncontrolled weeping, while she lamented that she had just lost her only friends, that somehow or other it was all her fault, and that she was just doing her best, which apparently wasn’t good enough, that she obviously wasn’t worth Julia’s effort to get to know, although -- bitterness tinged her thoughts -- Evan certainly seemed to be -- maybe that was because he was trustworthy -- but she’d tried -- she had no idea -- she hadn’t meant for them to react that way at all -- she didn’t even know the information was important -- it hadn’t even occurred ot her -- did that make her a bad friend? -- she supposed it did -- she supposed a real friend would have thought about it and told them right away -- she just wasn’t used to sharing things -- she did trust them, she really did -- didn’t she? Apparently she hadn’t acted like it!

She hiccuped and pulled off her glasses to sob harder. But after a few moments, she began to remember that she ought to have control of herself. She was seventeen years old, she had no business throwing a fit like a toddler. She was Head Girl, for Merlin’s sake. Head Girls didn’t give way to upsetting emotions. They carried on calmly and collectedly -- maturely. She definitely wasn’t being mature at the moment. Well, that could start now, then. If Evan and Julia didn’t want -- she swallowed a sob. It wasn’t fair. Julia could be friends with anyone she wanted, this fight wouldn’t make a difference to her -- but to Minerva -- who had no one else --

It was another few minutes before she regained control of herself again. Head Girls don’t cry, she informed herself firmly. They’re strong, not childish. They wouldn’t have made you Head Girl if they thought you were going to cry just because someone snapped at you. Just because someone didn’t want to talk to you anymore. She bit the inside of her mouth, hard, taking deep breaths. Right then. She would just go back to being alone most of the time. She had a hard time socializing anyway. This evening had certainly proved that. She swallowed a lump in her throat that threatened to break into another sob. No. She was fine with being alone. She’d done it for years. This was just going back to what she was used to. And she wasn’t going to cry about it anymore!

“Minerva?” It was Julia’s voice.

“Yes?” Minerva answered coldly. She wiped her eyes hard on her hand and pulled the drapery back.

“Are you coming back down to talk about it? Do you know anything more? I just can’t believe you didn’t say anything before . . .”

Minerva stared at her. Julia had come up all this way to yell at her? Or to ask her to come downstairs so she could face more anger from two fronts? “No, I’m not coming down,” she said with finality.

Julia flinched. “Right then,” she said, turning on her heel and exiting the room. “Suit yourself, you stubborn . . .” Her voice was lost as the door slammed behind her.

Minerva flopped back onto her pillows, idly shoving the drapery shut behind her. “Thank you, I will,” she murmured to herself.

She did. Julia tried to bring up the subject of the notes with her the next morning on the way to breakfast, but she refused to answer and swept by the shorter girl with her nose in the air. She didn’t need any friends. Especially not friends who were probably planning on yelling. I sound like a four year old, she noted to herself. Whiny. Thirteen years, and nothing’s changed. But I don’t care. I can’t deal with another fight.

Evan said hello at Quidditch practice the following week, but he was more stoic and silent than usual, and anyway, there wasn’t much chance to talk, not between Val’s angry threats and the demands of the game. Valkyrie seemed to take their loss to Hufflepuff to heart; she got rid of her following far more quickly than usual and spent the practices shouting insults at her players.

The month passed very quietly. After a day or two, Julia stopped making any kind of overtures toward her, and their friendship seemed at an end. Minerva spent her evenings studying in the library or reading behind her curtains by the light of her wand.

She knew she was unhappy, and admitted to herself that she was probably to blame. But by the time her anger and hurt wore off, she had already ignored Julia too many times; the latter had simply stopped trying. And Minerva, though she knew she ought to, had absolutely no idea how to make the first move.

They rarely saw each other, except in class, when Minerva firmly devoted all her attention to the teacher. Occasionally, she’d look up from her homework in the study hall they still had in place of Charms, or come into the common room in the evening, to see Julia and Evan laughing together, their heads bent low over the table, talking about something private and happy between the two of them alone.

There certainly was a lot more studying that could be done when one didn’t have the distraction of friends, she mused, as she closed her History of Magic book with a loud snap. With winter exams approaching, she’d begun spending still more time in the library. She looked up guiltily, but Madam Causabon was in the Restricted Section and hadn’t heard the book slam. Wearily, Minerva shoved her books into her schoolbag and stood up to stretch. She looked at her watch. She really wasn’t supposed to be here at all, but few teachers bothered telling off the Head Girl for curfew violations -- and if they did, studying in the library was usually a good enough excuse to quiet them.

As long as I don’t run into Trinegal, she thought, I should be all right. The corridors were deserted this late in the evening. A good thing, on the whole, Minerva thought, not relishing the idea of telling students off just now. The Petrification scare two years ago had left its mark, and despite a culprit caught and a long respite of peace and safety, many still superstitiously believed that if they wandered alone after dark they were sure to get killed by a wild monster.

Minerva couldn’t deny small shivers of fear running up and down her spine, but she steadfastly refused to increase her pace. She’d get back soon enough, and anyway, the culprit had been caught. And anyway, one quarter Mudblood wasn’t really enough to be worried about. Half, yes; quarter -- pushing it. And most people at Hogwarts didn’t even know about that.

“Damn these ridiculous suits of armor . . .”

Minerva froze. High pitched voice, Salisbury accent. That was --

“If you would refrain from walking into them, they would undoubtedly be more pacifistic.”

“Shut up, Mr. Dictionary.”

-- Julia and Evan.

Bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, Minerva thought, biting her lip and feeling her face heat up. Of all the -- the voices sounded about a corridor away, and they were definitely getting louder. Bugger. She most intensely did not want to walk back to the Gryffindor common room with them, or walking all stiffly trying to stay at least half a corridor behind them, no matter how fast or slow they were going, or anything of the sort. She didn’t care to feel guilty again when she saw Julia’s hurt, proud countenance or Evan’s studied oblivion. No way to avoid them now. What if she were to --

Her fur was puffed out in anticipation of coming danger. The hall was lighter now, no, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t lighter, but she could see it better. And feel it. There were people, two of them, approaching. Footsteps banged, sending vibrations through the floor. She absorbed them, hissing softly and trying to flatten herself against the wall, further into the shadows.

“That stupid Curses assignment --”

Humans were huge. Minerva’s tail lashed and her hackles rose. She uttered a cry, somewhere between an exclamation and a warning.

“What the -- oh, hello there,” it said, bending itself in an odd way so that it could put its face down close to her. Its tone sounded kind.

The other one didn’t bend. “Julia.”

She could understand them, she realized. Julia stayed bent -- crouched, the right word was crouched -- and held out her hand. Still wary (wasn’t there something wrong about these people?) Minerva sniffed it delicately.

“That’s right, come on,” Julia said, in a friendly sort of way. Minerva sniffed again. Ink, and dust, and sweat, and some sort of citrusy soap. She recognized the smell. It and the face still seemed a little off, but they were familiar and therefore comforting.

Julia kept talking in a singsong voice. “Such a good kitty. May I pat you?”

She wants to run her hand on my head, Minerva realized. Well, she smells all right, and she talks very politely. Very well, I suppose I can allow that. She shoved her head under Julia’s hand to indicate her decision.

That felt very nice. It was -- yes, perfect, just there behind the ears. Minerva purred happily. Very nice indeed.

“Aw, aren’t you just the sweetest thing.” The pats pulled the skin away from Minerva’s eyes. It felt wonderful.

“Whose do you suppose it is?” the other one asked.

“Some student’s, probably, got lose from the dormitory for the night.”

“We really ought to go, Julia.”

No, don’t, Minerva thought. I like the patting. It’s nice. Stay.

“I know, I know.” Julia unbent herself and started to walk away. “Bye, kitty.”

Without thinking, Minerva followed her for a few steps. No, she mustn’t. She couldn’t quite remember the reason, but much better not to go. Yes, just back to the shadows.

Trembling, Minerva regained her human form and nearly collapsed against the nearby wall. Unbelievable. She blinked hard. Merlin’s bloody toes. She mustn’t allow herself to do anything of that sort again. She hadn’t even deliberately allowed herself to change, it just sort of happened, when she thought about it when she was panicking . . . she’d have to be much more careful or not knowing the right answer on an exam was going to send her bouncing back and forth between shapes.

She yawned. It wasn’t that that was bothering her. It was how nice it was -- not the patting, but the, the socialization. She missed that. She missed Julia and Evan. She wished it had been as simple as for her cat self -- just a question of patting. But it wasn’t.

She was proud of herself, for she held in the tears until she actually reached her bed.

Snow fell thickly over Hogwarts on the first day of their Christmas holidays. Minerva checked her trunk carefully, made sure Verthandi was all right in the Owlery, tidied her room, rechecked her trunk, packed and repacked her schoolbag, but eventually could find nothing else to do except actually Apparate away. There was no one to say goodbye to, no one to wish her a Happy Christmas.

She cast a levitation spell on her trunk and walked alone down the long lane that led towards the village, trying to curl herself deeper into her thick woolen cloak while still watching where she was going. When she’d reached the spot she knew to be the edge of the Apparition Block around Hogwarts, she lowered her trunk and concentrated hard.

The first thing she felt when she arrived was her glasses, down on the end of her nose. One of these days, she would have to learn some sort of way to keep them in place when she Apparated. She wrinkled her nose to push them up, and squinted up at McGonagall Manor.

She’d landed at the edge of a long, snowy lane, this one leading up to an old and impressive looking building. She could see the flickering lights of candles coming from the window of her father’s study, as well as some from the windows on the third floor. Either Tibby had gone overboard in room preparation, or the others were here already.

Minerva sighed, and said “Locomotor Trunk,” in a resigned voice. She made her way up to the front door, and tried to keep a firm magical grasp on her trunk while she uttered a quick “Alohomora!” to open the lock. She entered the foyer in a rush of wind and snow.

“You isn’t ought to be tracking snow in here, young miss,” Tibby told her reprovingly. The family house elf had called Minerva “young miss” since she was old enough to understand when he spoke to her, and she didn’t think it likely that he would stop any time soon.

“Sorry, Tibby,” she said. “Is Diana here already?”

“Yes, young miss. She is being in the library, by the warm fire, with young master Jack and old master Naoise.”

“Naoise came too, did he?” Minerva said. Well, that should be interesting. Relatively speaking, of course. Naoise Ramsay Campbell was a first cousin of her father, probably older and definitely more eccentric than Sir William. He would show up occasionally for Christmas, always without warning, and never at any other time of the year. “Lovely. Am I in my old room, then?”

“Yes, young miss. I is taking your trunk up now.”

“Thanks, Tibby.”

She headed for the library out of default, because Tibby would only get defensive if she followed him up to her room. Tibby took the maxim of a good house-elf being an unseen house-elf very seriously.

Just as he had said, her sister was in the library, her long limbs draped gracefully over a large easy chair. Diana wasn’t pretty, not really, but she moved with an elegance that belied her long frame, and Minerva had been jealous of that since she could remember. Naoise, who insisted that every member of the family use his given name, was in another chair, closer to the fire, leaning on a cane. He was staring at the flames pensively, and probably hadn’t moved for hours. Little Jack, Diana’s only son, was playing with marbles and chessmen on the hearth rug.

“Hello,” Minerva said softly, wincing a little. Home sweet home.

“Minerva. Smashing to see you,” Diana said, without getting up. Naoise grunted in agreement.

“Hewwo, Minna,” Jack said solemnly, then went back to playing with his men.

Sighing, Minerva flopped into a chair rather further from the fire than her relatives. At least Frank wasn’t here --

“Eh? Minerva?” The voice was male, deep, without the raspy Scottish accent of her father or Naoise. Frank Dawlish spoke like the Londoner he was.

She rose. “Hello.”

He came into the room, walked past her without looking at her, and sat down next to Diana near the fire. Right, then. Well, it wasn’t surprising. She’d never gotten on very well with her sister’s husband; there was no reason that should have changed. Everyone present and accounted for then, except her father, who was no doubt in his study, where he would remain for the entirety of her vacation. Minerva sighed deeply. It was the loudest noise in the room for the next half hour.

The next came when she made the mistake of getting up, stretching, and taking a book down off the shelf. She knew better, but -- “What are you doing, Minerva?”

“Just reading.”

“It is impolite to read with others in the room.”

“Yes, Frank.”

Minerva tried hard not to fidget. You’re seventeen, she reminded herself. You know better than to behave like Jack. It will go much better for you if you hold still; you know that. To quiet herself, she allowed herself to sink into a daydream involving a large circle of friends, including Julia, Evan . . . and Tobey Allistaire, who was just confessing how pretty he thought she was when Tibby summoned them all to dinner.

“Minerva?”

She looked up from playing with her nephew on the floor. “Sorry, was I fighting with him too much?” They’d been completely silent, but there had been some small scuffles; she couldn’t think of anything else her sister might ask about.

“No. No.”

There was a long silence. Minerva blinked at her sister, confused. “Was there something else, Diana?”

“Just wondering how you were,” Diana answered. “How is Hogwarts?”

“Fine.”

The older woman forced a smile. “Any new boyfriends?”

“No.” What did she mean, new? There weren’t any old boyfriends. Minerva recognized the conversation now. It was the one. The one they had every time they saw each other, the one where they inquired after each other’s lives in terms the other wouldn’t understand. “How’s your job?”

“Min, I don’t work,” Diana reminded her. “I just look after Jack.”

“Right. How’s, erm, Frank’s job, then?”

“Quite nice, actually. Plenty of Galleons.”

“What do you do, besides look after Jack?”

“Not much -- I garden, you know, have a wonderful plot of plants . . .and seeing my friends, of course.”

Minerva nodded. “And how is Jack?”

“Smashing. Apparently his name’s already down for Hogwarts.”

“Really? How do you know?”

“Frank’s got connections.”

“So you saw the list, or . . .? Because they keep the Quill all locked and guarded and don’t usually let people see the list and . . .”

“Someone did.”

“Oh.”

There was another pause. Diana said, “What are you studying this term?”

“Er -- Potions, Herbology, Runes, Divination, Curses and Countercurses, History of Magic, and Transfiguration. We used to have Charms, too, but then the Professor got leave after the French break happened -- she was French, you see, and her brother -- he’s an Auror --”

“Min,” Diana cut her off.

“Yes?”

“You don’t have to take Runes just because of Father, you know.”

“I - I don’t,” she answered. “I - I like Runes -- it’s -- they’re fascinating, you know --”

“I’m just saying -- don’t do it for him, he won’t care.”

“But I really do enjoy --”

“I won’t tell him or anything, don’t worry about that --”

“But the Merlin texts -- and the Ollivander I -- they’re really interesting, Di, honestly --”

“Well, if that’s really the way you feel about it.”

“Yes . . .”

Diana smiled a stiff sort of smile. “Well, good, then.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t say ‘yeah,’ Minerva, say ‘yes’.”

“Yes.”

“I should take Jack upstairs for his bath.”

“Yes.”

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

Minerva had been wrong about her father. Sir William appeared no on less than two separate occasions -- once on Christmas Eve, to eat dinner with the family, and once on Christmas morning to breakfast with them. At least he’d remembered this year, Minerva mused. He (or perhaps Tibby?) had even gotten her a gift -- a set of dark gold dress robes, of beautiful taffeta. The workmanship was exquisite, and Minerva was flattered, until she realized that she couldn’t remember an occasion in the last three years when she’d had reason to wear dress robes.

Diana and Frank had given her a long book on the history of magical medicine. Minerva hadn’t known you could combine the two most boring subjects on the Hogwarts curriculum into one book, but there you were. And from Jack, a picture of her done in crayon, with a piece of Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum Spello-taped to one corner. Naoise had given her by far the most acceptable present -- a tartan tin full of shortbread biscuits. There were no owls from Julia or Evan.

Minerva, deciding that she wouldn’t have another chance in the foreseeable future, donned her new gold dressing robes for the family breakfast that day. Frank sneered that he was glad to see her humble family warranted such fine attire; Diana kindly informed her that the gold made her look peaky and washed-out, and her father didn’t even notice. She was too used to all of them to care overmuch, but it cast rather a dark shadow on the day.

After Christmas, life at the Manor settled into a sort of routine. Minerva would wake early and was able, to her great relief, to spend her mornings alone in her room, on the pretense of doing homework. After lunch, she was expected to join the family in the sitting room, for long afternoons of silence and daydreams. Naoise disappeared after New Year’s, to go back to the huge empty manor house where he lived alone with his house-elf. Diana and Frank stayed a little longer, waiting to go back to London in the middle of January.

In fact, Minerva had only three days alone with her father before her vacation was over. Her routine varied only slightly -- she still spent her mornings at work in her own room, finishing homework and extra studies, and spent her afternoons reading or exploring the Manor as a cat. No one ever missed her unless she was late to a meal, so she divided her time between napping in front of the fire (warm, but depressing) and roaming far over the grounds, chasing insects and any small creatures not driven into burrows by the snow.

She got no owls from anyone, and talked so little to her father or Tibby that she began again to be resigned to being alone. She still felt a hollow, uncomfortable ache whenever she thought about returning to Hogwarts, and she wouldn’t admit to herself how often the ink of a homework assignment was smeared with tears. But it had become routine again, and she relaxed into it, trying to remind herself of the good in solitude.