After

Two hours later night had fallen completely and she emerged from the forest, eyes hollow, heart heavy, limbs aching, but her task was complete, nothing remained of Tom Riddle now except ash and an awful, awful memory. 

From the edge of the forest, she noticed just how the silhouette of her school had changed in the last days, crumbling walls, broken turrets, and fallen statuary changed its outline against the sky. There were no lights on in what remained of the castle. Filius and Pomona must have left, and they must have thought that she’d left too. Good. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been completely alone in Hogwarts, except for the portraits and the ghosts of course. 

She slowly climbed the crumbling front stairs with a faltering step, then found herself in the entrance hall, or what was left, with the walls crumbling and the doors off their hinges. She stared deep into the dark of the entry hall as if waiting for that menacing blackness to leap forward and swallow her up. 

When it didn’t she turned to the Great Hall, whoever left last had snuffed out all the candles and torches along the walls, but the starlight came through the enchanted ceiling and brightened the room some. The furniture that was supposed to be there had all been broken and removed, and all the glass from the broken windows swept to the sides of the floor. There were still piles of stone debris scattered through the room but they had cleared walkways and begun to prepare for repairs. This was the only room in the castle to receive that kind of treatment ‘because there were families collecting bodies here today’ she thought. Of all the things that this room had seen that was not one Minerva anticipated, even in her wildest nightmares; and they did get wild, worse and worse with the passing years. 

She walked past the place where Remus had lain, beside Tonks, never to return to their infant son, and her knees grew weak in grief. How was she ever to reopen this place to students? How when not more than a few hours ago the bodies of some of her dearest friends had lain there dead? She wandered on through the space, heart breaking again and again. 

She reached the front of the room, where the teacher’s table had been before Filius smashed it into a group of Death Eaters. One of them was Aiofe Greenwich, she’d graduated in 1983 with top marks in Transfiguration all the way through school, she’d had such promise when she was young. But then again she was young, she was only 32. Minerva recalled she’d attained an almost perfect score on her written Transfiguration NEWT, and lost only two points on her practical exam for a slight imperfection in the teacup she’d transfigured from a bat. She died yesterday. More like very early this morning. She died when she was hit by a massive oak table thrown at her by one of the professors she’d very much admired in her school days. 

“Merlin, where did we go wrong? How did I let this happen?” Minerva turned and sat on the raised platform that the head table was now missing from and looked out over the desolate room around her. 

The tears she’d been holding back all day ran freely down her face now as she cried silently, alone in the massive, silent hall, under silent stars. All she had lost, all that was forever gone from this world was almost too much to bear. Everything was not a big enough word to encompass her losses. 

Minerva was alone and she felt it. There had always been something to hold on to before. Hogwarts was her anchor, and now? Now she could barely stand to look at the place. What did she have left in this world? 

After a while, the tears dried up and Minerva, still feeling numb, simply laid back on the flagstones and stared up through the enchantments to the starry sky. There she found the star Sirius staring back at her, and remembered the Marauders when they were young and happy and wonderful. She’d lost the last of them now, Remus had joined his friends now while holding his new wife’s hand. She thought of Andromeda, how broken and tired she had been, carrying with her a little baby boy with blue hair, weeks old. 

//

Minerva happened to look up as Andromeda passed through the broken doors of the Great Hall. A brand new baby in her arms, Teddy, she hadn’t seen him yet, and she had been so eager to before everything that had happened. The son of Remus, her Marauder mastermind and that notorious metamorphamagus trickster Tonks, he was bound to ruin her life when he got to school. She was surprised to find herself thinking of the future at that moment, she hadn’t done for quite some time. 

And the baby shouldn’t have been there then. But, of course, Andromeda hadn’t had anyone else to look after him while she came to identify the bodies of her daughter and son-in-law. She sat down on the floor, more like fell to the floor, at the side of her own child, that child’s child in her arms, and barely kept from wailing in grief. 

Minerva thought of running the length of the hall and trying to comfort the poor dear. She’d never been close to Andromeda before, she was a Slytherin in school, and though they were both very involved with the Order they weren’t often in the same place at the same time. Still, she cared about her. She hesitated just long enough. 

She watched as Harry, showing just how wonderful a godfather he was going to be, took the baby from her arms and let her have her moment of grief without restraint. Molly and Arthur came up beside Andromeda and Molly knelt down to wrap an arm around the other grieving mother.

But there was no time for unrestrained grief in Minerva’s case. She pulled herself back together again, pulled the iron facade down, and turned back to the work at hand. 

//

Harry was so grown up now, a man but barely more than a child. She’d had a difficult time recognising the man he’d become, in her mind he wasn’t more than an impetuous eleven-year-old at his first flying lesson, flying off after a rememberall in defense of a friend. She preferred to think of him that way sometimes. Remembering the more innocent moments of his childhood, which was so cruelly robbed from him. She could see that in his eyes now, just how much had been stolen from him by this god-forsaken war.

She couldn’t help but blame herself for some of that. If she’d only listened better, stood up for him more, protected him better, and forced the world to comply with her desire to keep him safe. She’d made so many mistakes that led to consequences more horrible than she might have imagined. If she hadn’t tried to save Hagrid when Umbridge and her ministry cronies were after him, she would have been there when Harry needed to speak to Sirius, and Sirius might still be alive. If she had listened to his concerns about the philosopher’s stone in his first year she might have saved him from chasing Quirrel down there himself. If she had said yes when Lily asked her to be Harry’s godmother he might never have had to survive in the Dursley’s house. Any number of things she might have changed with one little action or inaction or word on her part. Everything might have been different. This whole war might have been avoided, and all of this death and pain might never have come to pass if just one thing had gone right when it went wrong. 

Soon enough Minerva realised that she was being foolish. Focusing on all that was lost wasn’t going to help prepare for what came next. Hogwarts had to reopen, the world had to move forward, and they all needed to heal. She changed her thinking and remembered all that was left. She had already been made Headmistress, so she had something left to fight for, the future. 

She still had some of her friends and colleagues, Poppy, Septimia, Pomona, Filius, Hagrid, Aurora, and Sibyll even. Harry had made it through, the last remaining vestige of her Marauders, and so dear to her. Hermione, Ron, Ginny, George, Katie, Angelina, Bill, Fleur, Neville, Seamus, Dean, Padma, Parvati, Cho, Luna, Molly, Arthur, Charlie, Percy, Justin, Dennis, Hannah, Alicia, and on and on the list went. Not all was lost. Everything was suddenly much too large a word. So she stood up from where she had laid despondent, shook off the stiffness in her joints, and the weight on her heart, and lit the torches around the hall. The first step to banishing darkness once and for all was to turn on the lights.