After

With that job done, and not quite as painfully as she had anticipated, Minerva went back to Hogwarts and collapsed in the chair behind her desk. She was still expecting a postponement from the ministry, what with the amount of pressure she and other members of the order had put on the governing body, but at least they were somewhat more prepared if they didn’t get the time they needed. 

She laid her spectacles on the desk, atop the small mountain of paperwork still to be done, and sighed deeply. This was all too much. Too much to do, too much to take on, too much to live with. The depth and scale of the tragedy were never lost on her, she knew war for what it was, and she knew it all too well.  She’d had no delusions of grandeur or heroism that had come crashing down to reveal the ugly truth, nevertheless, the scale of it still seemed too massive to see all at once. Not only did they have to come to terms with the grief of the loss of their loved ones, not only did they have to try and fill the empty spaces they left behind them, but they also had to answer for their causes. They had to answer for the deaths they had caused, for the deaths that they had witnessed, and for the deaths that they had no account for.

She had to look at a list of names and try to remain as detached and cold as possible as she took direct responsibility for seven of them. She had to think of them as names, as something rather than someone, lest she recall that every name on the list of the dead was the name of someone she knew. 

Because it didn’t matter that they did wicked things, or died deservedly, most of them were still her students. She had trouble seeing past that at the moment. There was potential in all of them, as there is in every child. Potential for evil, yes, and too many of them had that potential nurtured by prejudiced parents and a bigoted world, but there had been the potential to do good. 

It made her think of Sirius Black, born to a family that would have cultivated in him a pure and hateful evil… if he had allowed them to. He hadn’t, though she had lost faith there for a few years, he had been innocent all along. His choices, a bit of good luck, and a few helping hands along the way led him to be a good man, one that any family in their right mind would be proud of. One that she was proud of.

Of course, his goodness hadn’t exempted him from suffering, it hadn’t exempted him from dying before his time. Only the good die young, as the phrase goes. She turned to wondering what she had done or hadn’t done, that exempted her from that fate. What evil had she committed that meant that her youth came and went long before death would seize her?

“My goodness, a bit melodramatic tonight, aren’t we?” She muttered to herself, shaking the idea from the forefront of her mind and putting her spectacles back on. She had moved back into the Headteacher’s office, after promptly turning Dumbledore’s portrait to the wall. Now she stood and crossed the tower room to look out the window over the top of the castle and the few lighted windows of Hogsmeade village. It was as she stood there, gazing blankly out the window, distracting herself by running over the numbers for the new school supplies she had ordered, that her thoughts were interrupted.

“Worried muttering is unlike you, Minerva,” The portrait of Albus Dumbledore said. Minerva’s back stiffened and she frowned more deeply but did not turn to look. He went on, “You always did your worrying silently, or very much out loud.” His voice told her he was smirking as he said it and she wondered if the artist had managed to capture the way his eyes could sparkle when he was teasing someone. 

She turned and found that he was in fact, smirking, sharing the frame of Armando Dippett’s portrait, and that that former Headmaster looked none too pleased about the fact. She did not share his amused expression, “I thought I told you not to talk to me.” 

“Perhaps, yes, but there are some things you should know, Minerva. Thus far you have been to stubborn to look into the pensive to find your answers.” His tone was more chastising now, in response to the cold tone Minerva had taken. “You always were one to let anger sit and compound rather than do something about it.” 

That jab made Minerva’s blood boil. “Oh, you have no right to criticise me, Albus. I was bound to inaction and it was you that tied the cord. Every time I meant to act against a problem it was you who stopped me, whether by your order directly or just by my unreciprocated loyalty to you.” 

She crossed the room to stand directly in front of the portrait, and the painting of Professor Dippet slid into the next frame over, much to Headmistress Worthington’s chagrin. 

The portrait of her longtime friend seemed to be waiting for more, and she was all too willing to give it to him. “Every time I made to do something about a problem you counseled restraint, you told me to cool off, you made it seem as if I were some rash child and told me to hold my tongue. There were times I was half sure that either I was mad or you were, but I could never be sure which.” 

He seemed somewhat surprised by this revelation, and a look of sorrow came across his face. “I… I didn’t know, I am sorry if I ever made you to feel as though you couldn’t trust your senses, I’m very afraid that I should have trusted them more, my dear Minerva.” 

That almost cooled Minerva’s temper, but not quite, “Yes, you should have. If you had trusted me with one-tenth of what you told that deceitful traitor of a man, everything might have been different. If you had told me of this ridiculous prophecy nonsense when it began I could have tempered your blind willingness to believe with a bit of rationality and everything might be different.  If you had trusted me to volunteer as the Potter’s secret keeper everything might be better still.” Her volume had risen with every subsequent example until she was shouting. She was silent for a moment and the portrait made no response. 

Her voice was much softer when she said, “When you said ‘No, don’t’ I didn’t, when you asked that I hold my tongue I did, when you insisted on inaction on my part I fulfilled that. Because I trusted you. I trusted you almost without reservation, and it seems that was entirely one-sided. I thought that we were the kind of people who told each other the things that no one else could know, I’ve kept nothing from you that you had any right to know and I told you things about myself you had no need of other than knowing me better. I always suspected that you held back certain things, even though I know I knew more about you as a man than most anyone else alive, but I never suspected that you were lying to me, that you were another thing behind my back.” 

The portrait looked shocked by this attack and attempted to interrupt, but Minerva would have none of that, “Oh, You may have been the Albus I knew while I was here, but when I wasn’t looking you were nothing less than a puppet master, moving strings and trying to control the outcome of things without ever really showing your hand. You hid behind a cast of children to fight this war, enlisted them early based on some stupid prophecy, and raised them to be willing to fight to the death for you and for your ever beloved Greater Good.” She spat the last two words like acid. She knew it would be a knife to the heart of Dumbledore’s ego, as he was a Gryffindor and had always fancied himself a brave man who captained war efforts and led from the front.

Again he tried to reply, but Minerva was far too upset to allow him to get a word in edgewise. “And they were exactly what you wanted them to be, Albus, you’d have been proud of your creations. Hermione was a warrior poetess, an intellectual who had no trouble transferring that intellect into the heat of battle. She killed someone, Albus, aren’t you proud?” She asked facetiously, before going on, “And Ron, Ron was magnificent, really a lionheart who threw himself in the line of fire and is lucky to have made it out alive, he too had a hand in killing someone, isn’t that just the way you planned it?” Her voice was reaching a shout again as she said, “And Harry, Oh your prized weapon, Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the CHOSEN ONE, yes he killed Voldemort, he nearly lost his life doing it, but he won in the end, Albus. I suppose you were right there, he would be the one to do it. At Seventeen the three of them won the war just as you raised them too - Just as you had me raise them to.” She stopped to draw a breath, tears stinging in her eyes. “But they were the lucky ones.” 

She needed a few breaths before she could launch back into her diatribe and Dumbledore spoke, “Despite what you may believe of me, I didn’t intend…”“Yes you did, stop lying to me, for once just don’t even bother lying to me,” Minerva shouted over him. “You intended to leave no choice but for Harry to fight and die and end the war, it is but sheer dumb luck that he happened to survive. And others didn’t survive Albus, Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville, Luna, the survivors, they’re the lucky ones. Lucky to be scarred by indescribable horror at just seventeen or younger, lucky that they have inherited a broken system in a battle-worn world that they will have to take a hand in fixing, they’re lucky. Lucky because others died as young as fifteen, no matter how I tried to keep them safe, Lucky because other’s died on the eve of their baby boy’s fourth week of life, lucky because others died horrible deaths of pain and fear. The survivors are lucky because only luck could have kept us from that abominable fate that you may not have set into motion, but likewise did nothing to stop.” 

She was on a roll now, and when Albus attempted to argue her on this she set back to attacking his puppeteering style. “And while you were pulling strings, one of which was mine, I know, do you know where I was? I was doing my job, and yours, and I was watching over too many students without enough time to attend to all of them, but I was doing the utmost I could to take care of the children in my charge. You and Severus were raising them to die, picking them out, and drafting them as if this were a training ground for soldiers instead of a school, and I was just trying to teach them to be good people. I was just trying to educate them. Both in my chosen subject and in life. How to resolve conflict, how to study a subject effectively, how to control your temper, how to behave in a way that dignifies you, how to work inside a system that’s set against you, how to ask for help when you need it, how to have confidence in yourself without being arrogant, how to hold your head up and work hard and do your best. I just wanted them to survive and live and be happy, but because I trusted you each lesson is tainted, each teachable moment is coloured with everything that came after. Each time I told Harry to control his temper and reign in emotion I was training him to follow your orders. Each time I told Hermione to align her greatest interests with her studies, I was unknowingly telling her to study the art of surviving wars because you made that her greatest interest when you made it Harry’s. And Each time I told Ronald to be more confident in his abilities, to rely on his instinct for strategy and forward-thinking I was telling him to be the strategic advisor that you wanted Harry to have. Every reassurance, every vote of confidence, every gesture of affection I ever gave to the three of them is tainted now. It’s something else now, something much more sinister. I was complicit in raising them to face death.”

Breathing heavily she stopped shouting but said, “I was, unbeknownst to myself, part of your sick game. And now I bear blame for the end of it, though I had no idea how unclean my hands were until it was over. I lay that at your door, Albus. I’ll take the blame for not seeing through you, for trusting you too far, but I will not take the blame for your lies and deception and omission of facts that I had the right to know. I will not accept fault for being another victim of your manipulative ways, because while you were quietly arranging things I was on the front line, and when you died like the world's most idiotic martyr I stepped up to lead. Not to manipulate events and people, but lead them by listening and accepting ideas and not pretending to be omniscient and infallible, but by strategising in a way that others could see my meaning, and by explaining my purposes clearly. I led by exemplifying the qualities needed to win this damned war, not by pushing teenagers to the forefront and idolising their virtues. I fought right beside everyone else and did everything I could to protect the people and the place I was in charge of. I did everything you didn’t. I was the leader you could only have ever dreamed of being brave enough to be.”

With that final blow, she turned and stormed out of the office that was still so dominated by his presence.