After

First things first, the entrance hall. Minerva wondered if she’d be able to apparate in the building now, which Hogwarts only allowed for the head teacher. So for a safe test, she tried apparating from the far side of the great hall to the entrance hall. She appeared silently amid the destruction with the only light coming from the torches she’d lit in the Great Hall and the moon shining in through the front doors that were still off their hinges. 

Satisfied that she was able to move about more easily, she raised her wand then, suddenly unsure of herself, lowered it again. She was so daunted by the task of repairing her home that she almost didn’t want to begin. It would be too difficult, too many reminders of what was lost, too much to bear. Minerva drew a deep breath, then let out a small groan as that hurt her chest. 

Nevertheless, she raised her wand again. Soon her magic was unbending metal and rejoining splinters of wood until the great oak doors stood again, promising safety and protection from almost anything. She couldn’t bear to see them closed, so she left them ajar, held open just far enough for two people to walk through, leaving a path of moonlight across the flagstones. 

She focused her efforts on the crumbled stonework next, realising that all the statues would need replacing, but she had finally gotten to use that spell. The tiniest of smiles crossed her face at that thought, but that scrap of happiness fled quickly. 

She gathered up the larger pieces of stone and found their correct places, then magically replaced each shard until the frame around the oak doors looked as it had before, or at least almost as it had, though she couldn’t understand what was different now. She repeated that process around the room and the piles of swept-up rubble shrank as she went along. She fixed flagstones as she found them missing or broken, and cleaned away blood while trying not to think which of her students it belonged to. 

By dawn, the entrance hall save for the statues, was in the right order. She lit the torches in the entrance hall despite the lightening sky, and though she ought to have felt some kind of relief, and although she was so deeply exhausted, she couldn’t stop now. 

She passed through the open doors to start on the front steps. She slowly wound her way down the stairs, careful to step only where the stone was sound, and looked up at the crumbled front of her beloved home. She felt the tears start again, but clamped down on the emotion and fought it back. She redirected her focus, just the steps, just the steps now. 

She started on the right side, slowly repairing and testing each weak spot on the steps. She worked without stopping, though she almost broke when she reached the spot where she had found Colin Creevey. Only 16, he should never have been there in the first place. She’d sent him away. One of her foolhardy Gryffindors, he came back. He came back to fight and by the time she found him it was too late to send him away again, he was already crumpled there on the steps looking much younger and smaller than he had alive. Her heart ached again, wondering why anyone so brave and endearing as he was would be taken so soon by such horrendous circumstances. 

She was very still for a moment, mind buzzing with unanswerable questions, and then she cleared the little bit of blood that had been Collin’s from the steps and thought of how many students would tread that spot without even knowing. She finished the front stairs before the sun had fully risen. 

Still, she couldn’t stop, she was weak with exhaustion, but it was going to take a lot more than that to enable her to rest.  She went back inside and through the entrance hall to the main corridor. Slowly she replaced the wall that had fallen and nearly killed Lavender Brown, and she thought of the girl’s tenacity. Though she tended to frivolity and mysticisms, like divination, she also had ferocity, and the guts to take on a challenge. Minerva hoped that tenacity was enough to get her through. Minerva hadn’t seen her in a month before the battle, So many of her seventh years had vanished during that horrible year, leaving Minerva to fear the worst and to wonder where they could possibly be. Lavender had been holed up with the rest of ‘Dumbledore’s Army’ in the room of requirement. Neville had told her all of that after the battle was over.

//

After that one joyous moment after Harry’s victory, after the remaining Death eaters had been bound by anti-apparation jinxes and taken away by some of the Aurors, the room had fallen into a state of quiet mourning. Minerva was standing at the head of the room, scanning the space, counting who was left, trying not to fall to pieces, and she spotted Neville walking in through the broken doorframe. She had seen him in the midst of the fray, and during the hour reprieve, but there had been no time to talk to him, or rather, scold him.

Now she stepped off the raised dais at the front of the room and marched the length of the Hall, which had others stepping quickly out of her way and watching as she approached the spot where Neville and Augusta were standing silently. 

Augusta spotted her and said, “It looks like you have someone else to answer to, young man,” causing Neville to turn around and see her, his face turned into a guilty expression. 

Minerva could hardly breathe. She resisted the urge to hug him and grabbed his arm, barely holding back tears when she said, “Where. Have you. Been?”

Neville sniffed, tears filling his own eyes, “Good to see you too, professor.” He did not resist the impulse to hug her. 

She had no choice but to return the embrace, though she clamped down on her emotional outbursts and refused to shed a tear. She pulled back from him and started in, “Do you know… Can you even imagine… what I have been through worrying over you? You didn’t think to tell me what you were doing? You couldn’t have sent a message through the portraits? Or the house elves? A single coded word on a scrap of parchment? Anything at all?” 

Neville grimaced guiltily before he admitted, “We were in the room of Requirement, professor.” He went on when her expression registered understanding. “They were torturing people, professor, and I know for a fact they weren’t stopping at students. If you knew they would have tried to get it out of you.” 

Minerva’s eyes went wide, offended at the implications of that statement. “And you think I would have broken and told them?”

Neville wasn’t stupid, he knew she would never. “No, of course not,” He said adamantly, “But this way we thought that maybe they wouldn’t try.” 

Minerva nodded solemnly, unable to think of something to say. They had tried, they tried every torture they could think of before truth serum finally made them believe her, but there was no way that she was going to tell him that. Finally, after too long of a pause, Minerva said, “Oh well, at least you’re alive.” 

//

She couldn’t blame them, they had saved themselves from the Carrows and the other death eaters who had… she couldn’t bear to think of all that they had done to those dear children now. 

She replaced the doors to the Hospital wing, which had been damaged by a blasting charm that sent Oddessa Packard flying into the solid oak. She had graduated the year before, but remained in the loop with the order and came running as soon as she was called. Minerva didn’t call her, but someone did, and she came ready to fight to the bitter end. Minerva remembered a hex that might have hit her except that Oddessa pulled her out of its path. She had shouted over the din around them, but it sounded like a whisper when she said, “Don’t die, Minnie, we’re gonna need you,” Before running off in pursuit of the hexer. Now Oddessa was dead, having bled out slowly before anyone could help her, just when she needed someone most. 

All of the portrait occupants had fled to higher floors when the battle moved into the school, which was a wise move on their part as most of the frames were broken pieces on the floor and the canvasses in tatters. Minerva decided there would be time for finer repairs later. With that thought came another, there would be time for all of this later. 

Because Minerva got to have a later. 

With that thought, she sank against a wall, beside the dented and scuffed remains of a suit of armour. She got to have a later, Oddessa, Collin, and too many others didn’t. Decades younger than she was and they were already dead. She survived too many wars, too many battles, and too many heartaches, yet their lives were cut off before they really began. Where was there any justice in that? 

At last, she gave up for the day. There was no way to go on fixing things when she could scarcely raise her wand. Painstakingly, she pulled herself up off of the floor. She apparated to her quarters which were untouched by the violence, the metaphor in that was not lost on her.