who wants to live forever
“James Potter.” She says, frowning down at the boy who is trying his very best to look apologetic. He’s failing, quite spectacularly too, if she may add. “How many times have I seen you here this week alone?”
“...Five?”
She narrows her eyes at him. “And yet you keep coming.”
“‘S not my fault this time, I swear, Madam Pomfrey. I was just on the pitch practising for the match tomorrow, and a bloody–”
“Language.”
“--Slytherin hexed me from behind.” The boy scratched sheepishly behind his ears. “I’ll be more careful next time.”
“Hmph,” she moves his arm up and down. “Any pain?”
“None.”
“You’re good to go then. Be careful on this arm, and don’t do anything stupid again, do you hear me, Potter?”
“I do, I do. Thanks, Madam Pomfrey. You’re the best!” With that, he jumps out of the cot, already rushing towards the door where, if she’s not mistaken, Poppy can see the tip of a boot that she knows without a doubt belongs to that Black boy. She shakes her head fondly. She remembers the days when she, Sybill, and Pomona would get up to trouble, but those four Gryffindors have truly made her days as Matron much more difficult than she had anticipated all those years ago when she agreed to return to Hogwarts.
She waits. She knows what comes next. She is not wrong, when Remus enters, looking sheepish. "Sorry about James, Madam Pomfrey," the boy says. "He doesn't mean to keep getting hurt."
"I'm not blaming him," Poppy says. "But next time, try to convince your friend to be more careful, alright?"
Remus nods solemnly. There is a sobriety to him, a weight that Poppy yearns to be able to relieve the boy of. She knows what he is afraid of, what he is worried about, and even though it warms her heart to see that he has friends that care about him the way that she cares about Pomona, part of her heart still aches for the loneliness that sometimes will pass on the boy's face. "Alright then," she says, primly, heading to her office. "Run off, then." She passes by him, and with a wink stuffs a piece of chocolate in his hands.
"Thank you," Remus says, beaming at her.
She waves her hand at him absently, and he leaves, no doubt already running off to share his new treasure with his friends. She shakes her head to herself, her fondness for the quiet boy leaving her with a nice warmth as she pulls out a few forms that she needs to fill for the incident. She’s nearly forgotten about the incident, busy with taking care of another student who somehow managed to hex her forehead into growing a unicorn horn, until there is one sharp knock on her office door. “Come in,” she calls, not looking up from her notes. “One second, I’ll be right with you. I just have to check…”
“It’s alright.” The words are crisp, and Poppy instantly forgets what she was supposed to be doing and lifts her head. In front of her, clad in emerald robes streaked with black, black hair tied up in a severe bun, is Minerva McGonagall. “It is not urgent.”
“No, no,” Poppy hurries to shuffle aside her books, and resists the urge to run her hands through her hair to make sure that it doesn’t show the tell-tale signs of her frustration. She knows she is being stupid. Minerva is likely still in mourning for her husband, even if the gossip proves to be true and there was never any romance between the two of them, and there is no hiding what her hair looks like. “Sit, please. What can I do for you, Minerva?” The name felt odd in her mouth, a name she was used to thinking and not at all used to saying. No matter how many times she has easy conversations with Minerva, she can’t help the butterflies that always appear for a moment whenever Minerva appears. This is the fifth time this month that Minerva has dropped by her office, and yet even now, Poppy still can’t say her name without feeling a little thrill dart across her chest.
The woman sat down in the chair across from Poppy’s desk, clasping her hands. “I was only wondering about the Potter boy’s health. I heard that he had been toppled from his broom by a student today. Is he well?”
“He’s fine,” Poppy dismisses. “Just a broken bone. I had him up and about in no time.”
“Ah. That’s very good.”
The silence that falls on them after Minerva’s declaration is odd. By rights, it should have felt awkward. They are two near strangers, existing in parallel with one another for so long, and despite being on friendly terms with one another they know nearly nothing about each other outside of the small talk that they make nearly every month at faculty parties. Well, Poppy amends in her head, Minerva knows nothing about her. She knows plenty about Minerva. She offers Minvera a Ginger Newt to prove it to herself, and it pleases her too much when Minerva takes it with an incline of her head.
“Will he be able to play tomorrow, then?”
“I think so,” Poppy tilts her head. “Surely there’s no way that you are so invested in the Quidditch match tomorrow that you took time out of your day to come and ask me about James Potter’s arm, is there?”
Minerva, to her credit, doesn’t move an inch. “Certainly not.”
“Ah.” Poppy says knowingly, allowing a smile to spread across her face. “Just passing by, then?” Minerva gives a nod, and before Poppy knows it she is laughing.
Minerva looks at her in confusion for a moment, before something in her seems to melt and she raises an eyebrow. “Surely it is common knowledge that I was a rather proficient Beater for Gryffindor, once,” she says, drily.
“Humble, are we?”
Minerva’s eyes flicker down to Poppy’s collar and back up again. To Poppy’s surprise, a slow, sly smile spreads across her face. Poppy is mesmerised. The smile completely transforms Minerva’s face. She is no longer unapproachable, nor icy. Instead, she looks rather like a cat that has just swallowed a canary. “Honest, I prefer.”
The room is rather hot, all of a sudden. Before Poppy can get another word out, however, Minerva is standing up, her previous stoicism sliding right back in place. “Well, thank you for letting me know, Poppy. I shall rest easy knowing that the Potter boy lives to terrorise the Gryffindor Tower for another day.”
“Of course,” Poppy manages, hoping that she isn’t blushing. Merlin, it really has been a long time since anyone has flirted with her, hasn’t it? If only a look from Minerva is enough to get her blushing… She resists the urge to press her hands to her face to cool it down.
“Good day then.” Minerva gives her a sharp nod, and it is all Poppy can do to nod back before Minerva is gone, swept away in a whirl of fabric and the lingering smell of something flowery.
Jasmine, she realises later, when she is preparing for bed. Minerva McGonagall smells like jasmine.
The war changes her. It changes all of them. “Sybill!” She calls out, feeling older than her years and the war tearing at her appearance. There is no mistaking woman in front of her, frailer than she’s ever been, draped in so much fabric yet still shivering in the cold, turns.
“Poppy?” Sybill’s voice trembles, although Poppy can’t tell if it is because of the cold or if this is the way that Sybill speaks now. It could be both. The last time they had met up, Sybill had been buried away, speaking lies and spewing hope into the hearts of those few that still had enough money to waste on looking to the future. It’s been only three months, but she feels older and if the way Sybill’s curled onto herself is any indication, Sybill does, too. “Where’s Pomona?”
“At school. She couldn’t afford to leave. She’s growing something that is supposed to help the war effort.”
Sybill shivers, and without thinking Poppy casts a warming charm over her. Sybill looks up at her with hollow eyes. “Don’t lie to me, flower. Please.” Her eyes, larger than ever and grayer than ever, are watery.
The childhood nickname is what makes Poppy speak the truth, despite promising herself she would not before she called out. “I’m sorry.” Poppy whispers as she lays a gentle arm on Sybill before she begins to guide her into Hog’s Head. “I’m sorry, Sy.”
“She hates me, doesn’t she?”
Poppy can’t bear to lie to her. She can’t bear to tell her the truth. “She’s just… She’s just afraid. And she’s angry. We’re all angry, these days.”
“You’ll hate me one day, too.” Sybill’s eyes are wide before she clasps her mouth shut with a sharp sound and closes her eyes.
Poppy steps a little closer to her friend. “What?”
“I- Sorry. I don’t know… Sometimes, I say things.” Sybill shakes her head and wraps her arms around herself. “She doesn’t understand. She’s… Nobody believes me. H-how am I supposed to… What did she want me to do?”
“She’s just angry, Sy. She’s just… She’s busy. She’ll come around once the war is over, I know it.”
Sybill laughs, a watery thing. “If I’m alive to see it.”
That puts Poppy on alert immediately. She looks closer at Sybill. Besides the nearly unnatural thinness and the way that she looks like might crumble at the wrong touch, there is nothing unhealthy about her. Sybill’s always been delicate. This current change, Poppy had assumed, was just because of the war, the same way that all of them have been in some shape or form changed physically by it. But there is a haunted look in Sybill’s eyes that she’s never seen before, and instantly she can hear the cracks beginning to form in her heart as she looks at one of her longest friends. “What do you mean, Sybill?”
Sybill just shakes her head. “I’ve Seen, Poppy.” She sounds miserable, and Poppy’s heart aches for her carefree, weightless friend of the past. “It’s murky, but I know. There is very little light in my future.” The butterbeers that Poppy had ordered float down in front of them, and Sybill takes a healthy gulp out of it.
Poppy frowns. “What do you mean?”
“There will be more than one battle,” Sybill tells her tiredly. “And you and I, and Pomona, will be there for all of them. The voices have decreed, and what they decide on must come to pass.”
The moment of silence is omniscient and all-encompassing. “Merlin,” Poppy gets out finally.
“Merlin indeed.”
The silence that falls over them is loaded with questions that are not asked. Poppy can’t bear it. “Where have you been, Sy?”
“Hiding,” is all Sybill tells her.
“From whom?”
“There is only one person I need hide from.” Poppy doesn’t understand, and she says as much. The look in Sybill’s eye is one of utter despair. “There are those who would do anything to harness the Sight for themselves.”
“Did the Sight tell you how to keep Pomona’s family safe?” Poppy asks, willing to ask anything now in order to help her friend. “You know how stressed she’s been recently because of them.”
“The Sight doesn’t work like that. I wish it did.”
Sybill falls into a silence that seems to suck all of her thoughts, so Poppy leaves after a while after paying the bill. Sybill stays, nursing her third firewhiskey, and through the window her back is alone and scared. It makes Poppy terrified.
She bursts into Pomona’s rooms unannounced the moment she gets back, ready to tell Pomona everything that she had just heard. Two heads snap up at her, one of them her best friend and the other, Minerva McGonagall. The latter’s eyes are red, and from the way that Pomona is holding her tea, Poppy knows she’s just intruded on something private.
“Oh-” Poppy falters. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t- I didn’t hear. I thought you were in here alone, Pom. I’ll- I’ll leave you two…”
She’s just starting to turn around when Minerva McGonagall’s voice interrupts her. “No need, Poppy,” Minerva stands, rather stiffly, and straightens out her skirt despite not needing to. “I’ve taken up enough of Pomona’s time.”
“Oh, don’t be daft, Minerva.” Pomona stands too, looking concerned. “Are you sure you’re alright now?”
“Quite.” Minerva says, her face inscrutable if not for the reddened eyes. “Thank you for listening. And the tea.”
“Anytime.” Pomona looks as though she is about to reach forward to give Minerva one of her famous hugs, but she stops herself in time. “Let me know if you need anything at all, alright?”
“I will. Thank you.” Minerva nods at Poppy. “Poppy.”
“Minerva.” Poppy replies mechanically, nodding back in the same way. She can do nothing but watch when Minerva sweeps away, the sharp clacking of her boots moving further and further away from her. She turns to Pomona, who is watching her without her trademark amusement whenever she catches Poppy staring at Minerva. “What was that?”
“The news just came. Robert was killed.” Pomona says, simply.
She cocks her head in confusion for a moment, before the realisation hits. “Oh.”
Pomona steps forward, and Poppy opens her arms instinctively. Pomona sinks into her embrace with a small, hitched breath, and Poppy instantly forgets about everything except making sure that her friend is okay.
“The war has taken too much from all of us,” Pomona whispers into her shirt. “Too much.”
Poppy thinks of young Robert. He had been tall, too, like his sister. His hair was lighter than Minerva’s, but they had the same eyes. Piercing, as though he could see straight through her. He had been one of the first Hufflepuffs that she met, and it was through him that she had met Pomona to begin with. They hadn’t been great friends, but Robert was always ready for a laugh and a drink, and Poppy suspected that if she hadn’t become so close with Pomona and Sybill, he would have become a much greater friend to her. They had fell out of contact after they graduated.
She closes her eyes and presses Pomona closer to her. Her heart aches for Minerva, for the losses that she has already faced and the many more that she wishes so much will never come. It also aches for herself, for the friend that she had once, and she has never wished so fervently for whatever Sybill said to be false.
“I don’t want her to be alone,” Pomona says to her, still gruff. “But I don’t think she wants to see me right now. I don’t know what to do.”
“What would you want, if you were her?”
Pomona doesn’t even hesitate. They’ve both lost enough people now that they don’t need to hesitate anymore before they imagine what was once impossible to. “I would want to be busy.”
Poppy hesitates before she offers, aware that she shouldn’t but still undeniably afraid, for some reason, for Minerva to be alone, “I have some wards that needed to be touched up in the Hospital Wing? I was originally going to see if I could do them myself, but. Well. You know I’ve never been particularly good at wards. And I have a few things that I’ve been meaning to ask Albus to transfigure, as well. Might as well ask her.”
Pomona appraises her. For all that they have grown up with one another and loved one another like sisters for most of their lives, Poppy understands why Pomona needs to make sure before she gives her advice. Pomona is Minerva’s friend, too, and it warms Poppy’s heart, to know that Pomona would do this and more for her if she ever needed to. “I think that would be alright,” Pomona says finally. “She’ll probably be in her office right now.”
She presses another kiss to the top of Pomona’s head, and even though she’s older now, old enough to have seen decades of death, she remembers what it was like to be young. She remembers what it felt like to have the world at the tip of your fingers, so close, and what it felt like when your skin didn’t feel like it was stretched with every message that came through. She remembers, and she pulls those memories around her like a cloak when she knocks on Minerva’s office.
“Enter.” Minerva’s voice is, through the door at least, inscrutable.
“It’s me,” Poppy says, not entering fully into the room but not leaving it, either. “I don’t know what you’re doing right now, but I-”
The original plan is for her to ask Minerva to help her. The original plan is for her to provide something for Minerva to do and then leave, allowing Minerva her space to grieve.
The original plan didn’t include Minerva looking at her like something is broken and she doesn’t know how to fix it.
Poppy crosses the room in two long strides, her hands reaching for Minerva’s hands before she can even begin to process what she is doing. She hesitates, a split second before she touches Minerva’s hands, giving Minerva the chance to move away. Minerva doesn’t. In Poppy’s hands, Minerva’s hands are slim, delicate, calloused and cool. “I wanted to ask you for your help,” she continues, as though it is completely normal for her to be kneeling in front of Minerva McGonagall’s desk, holding her hands like she were a student in need of consolation. “But I also wanted to offer you a cuppa and a biscuit.”
“For what?” Minerva’s voice is clear, and for that Poppy is glad. She doesn’t examine it too closely, but there is something in Minerva’s voice that threatens to shatter her if she pushes or looks too hard. So she doesn’t, and lets herself call it cowardice.
“Some of the wards in the Hospital Wing need to be repaired.”
“I can do that.” Despite her words, Minerva makes no move to stand up, or to remove her hands from Poppy’s. It has only been a short while, but Poppy’s knees are already beginning to cry out in protest at the position she is holding. She ignores them.
The silence stretches out, so long that before long it is a comfortable blanket that settles over them, warming them. Minerva is studying her desk with an intensity that Poppy recognises, the same one that she sees in students who come in after a particularly bad battle with their friends and families and hearts on the line. It feels intimate, so Poppy bends her head and studies Minerva’s hands instead. They are clean, well maintained, her nails cut and her cuticles clean, but they are also clearly the hands of a person who works. They’re just like Minerva, in many ways.
“It doesn’t feel real yet.” Minerva says, rather primly considering the topic they are discussing.
“I know.”
“I keep thinking this might just be some sort of joke. Not-” Minerva chokes on the name that is too raw now to be said, and Poppy dares to run her thumb once against Minerva’s knuckles. “My baby brother.”
Poppy has nothing to say to that. They sit there, in silence after Minerva’s declaration, for a long time. Poppy’s heart weeps for all that they have lost, all that they will come to lose, and for a moment she allows herself to mourn the way she hasn’t since she first received news of a student being killed on the front lines. There is nothing moral about any of this, she remembers thinking fiercely to herself. There is nothing moral about killing children. And that is all that they are. Her students, Robert, they are all so young. So young, their graves too new for them, their graves not yet ready to be filled with their bodies.
They don’t let go of each other. In the dimming light of the day, like every other person in war, they huddle next to one another, craving each other’s warmth, afraid to get too attached lest the warmth turn into something that burns them.
In the end, it is Minerva who stands up.
“You said there were wards you needed mended?”
Poppy does her best not to wince as she stands, her knees protesting. “Yes.” She doesn’t miss the way Minerva’s eyes flicker down to her knees, but she smiles anyway, the expression worn and familiar in a way that is grounding after all the new revelations she has experienced today.
In the end, all Minerva says to her is: “Lead the way.”
The first school year after the war starts with a grey, wet sky. Looking out of the Hospital Wing window, Poppy thinks that the school seems to be covered with a shroud of what had just come and what will come to pass. “Bloody dreary, isn’t it?” Pomona says, standing next to her. There’s a sheen of exhaustion layering over her every word, rare to see before the school year even begins, even rarer to hear from Pomona. Poppy understands it. She feels it, too, bone deep. She is rubbed too raw now to be able to celebrate, even though she knows of the celebrations that are still occurring around the wizarding world.
She closes her eyes and breathes deeply. It is a reminder, feeling her lungs expand and contract, that she is alive. That even though so many bright flames have been extinguished, so many lives lost when they should not have been, life continues. As it always will. She needs the reminder, if she wants to be able to face the children that will soon come into her care. “You’re a ball of sunshine,” she replies, fighting to keep her voice dry. It’s been too long since they’ve spoken in tones that are anything but serious, quiet, and solemn, grief shading every syllable.
“You ready?”
“Are you?”
“No.” She’s always admired Pomona for that, for her ability to be blunt and honest even when the rest of the world is still caught in trying to tell themselves everything is okay. “But I will be. We have to be.”
Poppy watches the small boats that make their way across the lake, knowing that with every light there are a few children, looking up at the castle for the very first time, feeling the same awe she had felt once, a millennium ago. “I know.” She falls silent again. “It will be good for you to see Sybill again.”
Pomona scoffs. “It will be good for her not to see me again.”
“She’s our friend, Pomona.”
“No friend of mine hides away from You-Know-Who and calls it bravery.” Pomona replies, darkly.
“She’s always been…”
“You need to stop giving her the benefit of the doubt, P.” Pomona turns towards her, her eyes deadly serious. “I don’t know why Albus would bring her to Hogwarts, but I do not trust her. She isn’t the girl we once knew.”
“She’s our friend.” Poppy says, aware that her tone is nearly pleading. “Don’t be so cruel on her. She’s never been rooted in reality.”
Pomona gives her a look of disbelief. “It was war, Poppy. War. She doesn’t get to escape reality while the rest of us fight and die in it.”
Poppy has nothing to say to that, and they fall silent until Pomona leaves to attend the Sorting Ceremony. She is not needed in the Great Hall when the Sorting Ceremony begins, but this year, she feels the surprising tendrils of loneliness creeping up on her at the sounds of chatter and joy from the Hall that she can hear even in the Hospital Wing. She knows that she could go. There is no one who would stop her, and Albus has always left her a spot at the faculty table, despite her never bothering to show up. But she doesn’t know if she can go yet. She doesn’t know if she can face the smiling faces, the laughter, the hope and the joy of children who are just beginning to understand what the world is when she is still drenched in the screams that haunt her every night.
“Save my daughter, please, please, PLEASE!”
“You must be able to do something.”
“What the fuck do you mean you can’t do anything, you cunt?”
“You told me- You told me you could save him. You told me.”
And the worst one of all. The one word that haunted all of her dreams. “NO!”
Her stomach turns at even just the thought of the word. No, she decides. She cannot go to the Great Hall tonight. Not when she knows she will look out and her eyes will seek out those she recognises from St. Mungo’s, from standing next to the stark sterile sheets covering the dead. Instead, she pulls her hair back, pulls on an overcoat, and leaves the Hospital Wing without looking back.
She used to find comfort in the whites and the Healing. Now she knows how beautifully naive she had been. Healing is not an art. Healing is grounded in the very fabric of being alive, and it is bloody, gruesome, and so heartbreaking that she is no longer sure she can call what she has a heart.
She needs her heart. She has always known, although never as clearly as she does now, that Healers are lovers. They talk about hope, about the future, and they grasp onto even the smallest chances. But more often than not during the war, she had felt less like a lover and more like Death, coming to take the souls of the people that she cannot save.
She doesn’t venture into the Forbidden Woods. For all that the war is over, there are many Dark things lurking in the woods of a place like that, and although she has never approved of it being so close to the school, she cannot deny the draw that it has on her now. She has never found it beautiful before, but on the eve of the new school year, she finds herself staring at the path that leads into it, losing herself in the comfort of being able to see the Dark.
“Needed a breath of fresh air?” A voice asks from behind her. She is so lost that she nearly doesn’t hear it, and when she does, she is too tired to startle. The person the voice belongs to steps closer to her, until they are standing shoulder to shoulder and Poppy doesn’t even have to tilt her head before the smell of jasmine fills her senses.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at the Sorting Ceremony?” She replies, turning just enough so that she can catch the way that the moon outlines Minerva’s distinct features. She knows, somewhere deep down, that Minerva would not be considered beautiful by most conventional standards. She also knows, somewhere even deeper down, that from the moment she first saw Minerva so many lifetimes ago, she had been entranced.
“It ended,” Minerva says simply. “And I…”
She trails off, but she doesn’t need to finish. Poppy knows exactly why she is out here, just as she suspects Minerva knows exactly why Poppy is out here.
“It still doesn’t feel quite real,” Poppy says, quietly.
Minerva sounds thoughtful when she says, “Do you think it ever will?”
“I don’t know.” Poppy hates those three words, hates them with more gusto than she has ever hated anything in her life. She’s repeated those words more times than she can count over the past two years, and she is tired, sick of those words and what they mean. “Merlin. Everyone said that everything would be better, fine after.”
“We won.”
“We lost too much.”
Minerva falls silent. Poppy doesn’t need to look at her to know she is doing exactly what Poppy is doing: counting the list of those who are not here, each name another hundred stones laying heavy on her conscience. “The stars are beautiful tonight,” Minerva says, finally, when the silence gets too long and the list still doesn’t end. “My mother used to tell me that is where people go, after they die. Up into the sky. Up in the stars.”
Poppy looks up. “My father said they were shiny rocks.”
At that, Minerva snorts, a small sound of joy that stalls the Darkness for a lifesaving moment. “My father would have been inclined to agree.”
“I like your mother’s explanation more.” Poppy’s voice is quiet. “I think if my father had told me that when I was younger, I might have a little more faith.”
“In something after death?”
“In humanity.”
Minerva hums. “My mother told me when I was very young. We had a pet rabbit who passed away. But after I learned about what happened when people died… I lost that faith.” She is quiet for a moment. “I think the war has done more to build it than anything else.”
“Really?” Poppy looks at her. “You did see more of the fighting than I did.”
“It wasn’t the fighting. It was the meetings.” Minerva didn’t specify which ones, but Poppy was amongst the few people who knew about Minerva’s missions throughout the war on behalf of Albus. She had waited up too many nights, gnawing nervously at her lip or her fingernails, to not remember what Minerva had risked every night, slipping out in the form of the tabby cat. “It humanises people.”
“I’m not sure I ever want those people to be humanised.” Poppy says darkly.
Minerva shrugs, a motion choppy on her. “It reminds you, though. People on both sides have suffered. Many of them were terrible. But a lot of them were just people, caught and stuck in the throes of an evil higher than themselves.” She pauses, her eyes dark in the dim light. “It doesn’t make me less angry. But it’s why I can still be here at school, even after everything.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Poppy confides in her quietly. The words shock her the minute they come out of her mouth, because she hasn’t spoken them aloud to anyone yet, not even Pomona.
“You will.” Minerva is characteristically confident in her quiet statement. “You care too much to leave.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” Minerva’s quiet assuredness, while it should have irked her, simply soothes a wound that Poppy hadn’t even realised she had been nursing. “Not everyone can do what you do and go back for more.”
Poppy swallows against the lump that suddenly shows up in her throat. “I- I could have done more.”
“You did all you can.” There is a simpleness to the way that Minerva states things, and Poppy didn’t even know how much she craved it until Minerva stated it. There is a solid warmth that touches her arm, and it is only when Poppy looks down that she recognises that there have been tears spilling out of her eyes. “You did a good job, Poppy.”
She closes her eyes and lets herself lean against the woman that has been an undercurrent to her thoughts for the past few decades. She lets herself drown in the sound of her name out of Minerva’s mouth. She lets herself cry, ugly sobs racking out of her and tears rolling down like a string of cut pearls.
Minerva stays the entire time, murmuring soft nothings, her hand going around Poppy’s waist to steady her. At the feel of Minerva’s touch, Poppy’s tears flow even more freely, and for a moment she allows herself the selfish desire to weep at what she has yearned for for so long, weep at how close yet how far away she is from what she wants.
“Come have a cup of tea in my rooms,” Minerva says when Poppy’s tears have finally abated somewhat.
Poppy has waited for that invitation for so long that when it is extended to her, she is unsure what she should say. “What?” She manages to choke out around the lingering sobs in her throat.
Minerva doesn’t answer her. Instead, she takes her hand, soft and sure, and leads Poppy up an unfamiliar path. They move in silence, their hands clasped between one another, and it is not until they are in the warm rooms that Minerva releases her hand. “Sit,” she urges softly. Poppy has never heard Minerva soft before, but she has suddenly no doubt at all that if she had been braver, perhaps she would have long since realised that one of Minerva’s defining characteristics is how soft she can be.
“Let me make you some tea.”
Poppy nods, numbly. The tears are spent, and so is she. But she manages a small smile when Minerva hands her a cup of tea, wrapping her fingers around the hot cup gratefully. The tea smells wonderful, and when she hazards a sip she finds that it is exactly how she likes her tea.
Minerva sits down next to her, and together, in silence, they sip their tea. Tomorrow, Poppy will get up and be the Matron the school needs. Tomorrow, Poppy will recognise that everything Minerva said was correct. Right now, though, they sit, the sounds of children laughing and celebration slipping in from time to time through the walls, and they mourn for everything that has been lost and everything that has been won.