14 August 1995

Dear Amelia,

I'm writing to express my thanks for your efforts with the Wizengamot on Harry Potter's behalf. Albus tells me you made every effort to ensure that that farce of a hearing proceeded fairly and according to established Magical Law, despite the Minister's obvious bias.

As Mr Potter is in my House, I feel very much in loco parentis to him, and I was tremendously relieved to hear of his acquittal. I can assure you that, contrary to Fudge's mischaracterisation of the boy, he is a fine young man, and an honest one. Dumbledore believes that he saw You-Know-Who come back, and for what it's worth, so do I.

Quite aside from troubling recent events, I trust that this letter finds you well and happy.

It really has been far too long.

Warmest regards,

Minerva

14 August 1995

Dear Minerva,

Fair is my job.

Fuck You-Know-Who.

Dinner Saturday?

Yours always,

Amelia

They met for dinner at Atalanta in Diagon Alley.

Amelia had suggested the restaurant, new, noisy, and frequented almost entirely by witches, if the innuendo in the Daily Prophet's gossip column was to be believed.

Minerva recognised it as a test, but she found she was weary of tests. By god, she'd spent enough of her life on them. Let someone else worry about the answers for once. She was fagged out.

Their conversation revolved primarily around the Ministry and its failure to appreciate the changing Dark Lord situation.

"I envy you, Minerva," Amelia said.

"Why?"

"You killed one of those bastards during the last war. Wish I'd had the chance."

"Be careful what you wish for, Amelia. It's no great pleasure to kill," Minerva said softly.

Killing Domnall Rowle had been surprisingly easy, given the situation, although, as she told Amelia, Minerva had taken no pleasure in the act. Her soul had long since been weighed and measured, and she no longer worried over each decision and what it meant. She could not shed her destiny, whatever it might be, but she could apply her own version of efficacious grace.

Minerva reached out a hand and covered Amelia's with it. "I'm sorry," she said. "They never discovered who killed Edgar and his family, did they?"

"No," said Amelia. "Damn," she said, dabbing at her eyes with her napkin. "It's been fourteen bloody years. About time I stopped crying over it."

"I don't think so," said Minerva. "There are some hurts one never gets over."

After a few moments of silence, Amelia brusquely changed the subject to Quidditch, and the rest of the meal progressed comfortably.

When the coffee had been drunk and the bill paid, the two witches stepped out into the warm August evening.

Amelia offered Minerva her hand, and she took it. She didn't release it once the requisite moments had passed, but instead clasped it more tightly.

Just close your eyes and jump.

Minerva remembered saying it to her brothers when they were hesitating at the top of the hayloft. You'd either land in the soft hay and laugh, or you'd land badly, maybe split your head open, but it was in God's hands, and it felt good to test Him, Minerva had thought secretly.

She was no longer sure about God, but she still believed in providence of a kind.

So she leapt.

"Come home with me."

"Home where?" asked Amelia.

"Hogsmeade. My house."

Amelia paused, searching Minerva's face.

"We could go to my flat—" she began, but Minerva interrupted.

"No. My house. Please."

Amelia slid her arm around Minerva's waist and said, "Lead on, Macduff."

"That's a misquote," Minerva said, and before Amelia could answer, she turned and Apparated them home.

~oOo~

Times had grown darker once again. Albus mustered his old troops, and Minerva tried not to worry about his judgement in allowing green and relatively untried witches and wizards into the Order. Some of them would surely die, and Minerva had taken enough losses by now to know to distance herself from the children who had once been her students. She found she had grown to understand her father better as she had grown older; she no longer mistook his remembered coolness for disapproval or disregard. And hadn't they all flown away from Caithness and their father's God in the end?

She put her foot down at Amelia's joining the Order, though. Of course, that wasn't how she'd put it to her beloved.

"You'll be more effective if you stay Head of MLE," Minerva said. "You need to be seen as neutral."

Surprisingly, Amelia acquiesced to Minerva's request. But she worked her special magic—the kind that had nothing to do with her wand—behind the scenes at the Ministry, blocking every suspected Dark sympathiser from advancement, insisting on the most thorough investigations of every magical "accident" with potential ties to Death Eater activity.

Despite their respective busyness with fighting the emerging threat, and despite her growing frustration with Albus and his mysterious machinations involving Harry Potter, Minerva was happy. She had work she enjoyed, work that was important and at which she was very good, she had a few close friends who had become a surrogate family, and she had Amelia. If this was her destiny, she would live and die a happy woman.

They shared Minerva's small house in Hogsmeade on weekends and school holidays, and when the summer rolled around, Amelia proposed giving up her London flat in favour of a permanent move to Hogsmeade.

"It's really easy enough to Apparate wherever I need to go," she said. "You're not here during the week when term begins, so my odd hours and comings and goings won't disturb you. The flat's more for appearance's sake now, and if you don't care anymore—"

"I don't."

Amelia pulled Minerva close and kissed her mouth, and they finished the conversation forty-five minutes later, in bed.

"Perhaps it's wicked to say it with everything that's happening, but I'm utterly content," said Minerva, her long fingers tracing half-remembered Runic symbols on the still-taut expanse of Amelia's belly.

"Are you?" asked Amelia. "I've never known you to be content, exactly."

"Age," replied Minerva. "And this ..."

"I don't say it enough, Minerva—"Amelia began, but her lover interrupted her with two fingers to her lips.

"You needn't. I know," said Minerva. She'd had a sudden feeling that, if the words escaped Amelia's mouth, they'd carry the force of a jinx. Best not to tempt fate with too much happiness. Irrational, Minerva knew, but still ...

"So shall I sell the flat?" asked Amelia.

"Yes. Do."

~oOo~

Minerva was at the cottage, re-setting the wards, when a noise from behind startled her. She whirled around, wand drawn, to see the tall figure of Albus Dumbledore standing just outside the garden gate, no trace of a smile on his weathered face.

"Albus! You startled me," she said, lowering her wand.

"I need to speak with you. May I?" he asked, gesturing at the gate.

Minerva adjusted the charm and allowed him to open it.

He stepped into the garden and started toward her, his face grave, his arm outstretched. "Minerva—"

"Don't!" she cried, but no power on earth could stop what came next.

He took her to the flat, empty of furnishings, but now bustling with Amelia's co-workers, white-faced and deadly serious about their work.

They moved solemnly aside as Minerva crossed to the corner where it had happened. Nobody stopped her when she reached out a finger to run it along the wall, gathering residue from the scorch mark that was all that was left of Amelia Bones.

She looked at her finger and thought how strange it was that the formidable witch who had been part of Minerva's life for forty years, and the centre of it for the past one, could be reduced to a few molecules of carbon and lipid.

Until that day, the most acute pain Minerva had ever experienced was when she had walked into the flat all those years ago to find Amelia in another woman's arms. She almost laughed at the memory now.

She had loved Amelia Bones all her life—even, it seemed, before she had even known her, even as each of them had found other people, other loves. Amelia had always been part of Minerva's orbit, sometimes visible, sometimes not, like the sun, but always there, and now that it had been blotted out, Minerva felt chilled to the very soul.

She shivered as she stood, even after Albus draped a cloak around her shoulders, and knew she'd begun the long winter of her life.

The funeral was a boisterous affair, well-attended and with the highest security in place—Amelia Bones had been an important witch, after all—and Minerva was quietly accorded the place of honour. She did not speak, but she accepted words of condolence and sympathetic hands on her arm with grace and resentment.

Later that night, she could not bring herself to sleep in their bed. She Transfigured a chair into a camp bed, and her body finally succumbed to its exhaustion.

She dreamt, not of Amelia Bones, but of her Shooting Starlet.

~FIN~