#malbus

The first clue was the music.

She couldn’t quite make out what it was, but as she arrived at the top of the stairs, the unmistakable sound of music from a gramophone—her gramophone, to be precise, which Minerva always tried to be—swelled to fill the corridor.

She frowned.

Hurrying past the Gryffindor portrait hole, she sped towards her quarters, the sharp clicks of her heels on the stone a warning to any students who might be canoodling in the dark corners of Gryffindor Tower. When she gave the password and her door swung open, the tune clarified itself into the familiar strains of an old favourite, accompanied by the soft patter of rain against the windows.

Slowly, dramatically, soft light arose from a candelabra that sat on a small dining table, filling out the shadows in her sitting room.

Hands coming to her hips, she surveyed the scene in front of her. The table was laid with her mother’s Royal Scotland china and a set of crystal glasses. A silver bucket holding a bottle that she strongly suspected contained champagne sat at the side. The centre of the table held a small cake that explained the sweet scent of chocolate that perfumed the air.

Now, Minerva had no objection to Gershwin, nor to chocolate cake, and certainly not to champagne, but the three in combination skirted the borders of good taste and what’s more, they weren’t the only suspect thing in the room.

Her nose detected another scent above the chocolate. She used her wand to light the wall sconces, revealing its source. An abomination of flowers decorated nearly every flat surface—roses in every hue, including several she knew couldn’t be natural and whose gaudiness could only be attributed to one person.

She withheld the groan that had risen behind her lips and called out, “Albus?”

A large set of hands enveloped her waist and warm breath tickled the hairs at the back of her neck.

“Yes, my love?”

She turned in his arms as he shimmered back into visibility.

“What in the name of Merlin is all this?” she asked.

“It’s a little surprise for you.”

She pulled out of his embrace and glared at him.

“Albus, it’s been an exhausting day. I’ve spent it trying to get dozens of lovesick adolescents to pay bloody attention to their lessons rather than mooning around and sending badly written love notes to one another under their desks. Between Pomona, Horace, Filius, and myself, we’ve foiled seven attempts at surreptitious love-potion poisoning and missed one, requiring me to forcefully restrain Miss Chattergee and Mr Fleming from a completing a highly inappropriate and possibly illegal act on the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall during dinner. Why would you bring all this”—she gestured at the atrocity around her—“madness to my living quarters?”

“It’s a celebration, my dear.” He kissed her nose, and it was only her excellent control of her magic that kept her from transfiguring his lips into a pair of giant slugs.

With a patience that, in a just world, would have earned her at least an Order of Merlin, Third Class, she said, “You know I hate all this St Valentine’s Day nonsense. Really, Albus! Roses?” She huffed in indignation at the idea that he thought her a woman who wanted flowers and the like on what really should have been an ordinary Tuesday in February. They’d only just recovered from Christmas, after all.

He pulled his wand and waved it haphazardly around the room. The roses changed to pots of purple thistles.

“Perhaps this will please my spiky bride a bit better,” he said.

“Hmph.”

“Anyway, we aren’t celebrating St Valentine’s Day.”

Her eyebrows rose.

“Exactly what are we celebrating, then?”

“It is the six hundred and twenty-third anniversary of the Battle of—” he scratched his hairy chin—“something or other.”

“The what?”

“I can’t recall the name, but it was one of many important battles between our respective countries. If I recall correctly, Scotland put up a valiant resistance, but England prevailed in the end.”

“Why would I ever want to celebrate such a thing?”

“Academic purposes. You enjoy history. I thought we could have dessert, some champagne, and then we could reenact England’s invasion of Scotland.”

She couldn’t help the snort of laughter that escaped her at his leer. It really wasn’t his strong suit.

Flowers? Wine? Foolish attempts at double entendre? This was not their sort of foreplay. If he wanted her in the mood for romance, he’d have to do much better.

His grin faltered at her smile.

The next moment found him looking up at her, slobber dripping in stringy stalactites from his overly pronounced jaw.

He barked as she went to the table and poured herself a glass of champagne.

“While you work out how you’re going to reverse the transfiguration without a wand and opposable thumbs, I’ll just enjoy some of this.” She took a sip of the wine and sat at the table. “Mmm. Wonderful vintage.”

If a bark could ever be said to sound plaintive, his was. He stared over at her, making puppy eyes and emitting pathetic whines.

Winnie is lively, kind, eccentric and mischevous, sweet, smart and curious. She has a soft, melodic voice; she doesn't do small talk, just big talk; she's honest to a fault. She has her mother's auburn hair and her father's pale blue eyes. She loves music, and theatre, and literature. She has a particular interest for all things muggle. No wonder she ends up being Lily Evans' very best friend at Hogwarts. She only looks too happy about the hat screaming "Gryffindor" the second it glazed her hair.

Robert is shy in comparisson, incredibly smart with an unmatched interest for knowledge. He has his father's ginger hair, and his mother's deep green eyes. He shares most of his older sister's interests, and he thinks she's the coolest person to ever live. He's kind and gentle and can twist the truth if that means protecting the other person's feelings. He spends almost five minutes in darkness, as the Sorting Hat tried choosing between Gryffindor and Hufflepuf. A relieved smile tuggs at his lips when he finally sits down next to Winnie. It's almost too obvious that at some point he becomes friends with Regulus Black (though Sirius' little brother would never admit so).

Minerva and Dumbledore were good friends with the Potter family, and it's absolutely no surprise that James and Winnie grew up to be joined at the hip. It was no wonder either that they eventually best friended Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew, and that the five of them became the most mischevous and playful students to ever walk Hogwarts.

No one batted an eye when Winnie and Sirius began dating, nor when James started dating Lily, they expected as much. Just as they expected that they would eventually join the Order of the Phoenix, for that meant fighting against evil and darkness and cruelty.

Few would've expected they would be turned into martyrs, at twenty years old.

Even less would've expected Robert would die, fighting for the cause.

But no one expected Sirius to betray his best friends.

No one expected James and Lily to die but a year after their sweet baby was born.

No one expected they would finally defeat Voldemort, but at what cost.

Out of all the things she had dreamed about, she had never expected she'd ever be left all by herself. Grieving her brother, most of her family, all five of her very best friends.

She'd never expected something to ever feel worse that falling victim to Crucio, yet she would've earnestly taken uninterruped hours of the unforgivable curse if that meant seeing her friends, just maybe once again. For what meaning did life even had without them? Without her sweet brother to laugh at her jokes? Without her darling James to make her giggle? Without her so very dear Lily, to share life with?

Dumbledore should've expected Winnie would try to keep Harry from the Dursley's, to raise herself. Arguing the boy deserved a, broken— yes, yet loving mother. As he should've expected her to attempt the unimaginable when he explained why she couldn't.

Not once in his life, would Dumbledore ever expect he would have to erase his darling daughter's memories, so that she could attempt for a life with peace, though that must not even be an option for her any longer.

Winnie became a Healer, as everyone had expected. During the War she'd become Poppy's most important assistant, she'd always loved Healing, and always had a particular talent for it. She's never loved St. Mungo's mundanity, but she eventually became accustomed to it.

Just as she became accustomed to this young man who would frequent the same bar as her after work. Aiden, his name was. He had gone to school with her, but was a Slytherin student. He had begun working at the Ministry soon as he finished school, and had become a very young member of the Wizengamot.

They eventually married each other, and despite how boring and dull that life was compared to what Winnie had once dreamed, images she could not remember, she was happy. They even became parents to two little children: Beatrice and Maxwell.

Winifred was very grateful for her husband, and absolutely adored her children. She had a job she was content with, a life with seeming no complaints.

She had countless different reasons to be happy, yet countless different theories as to why she was always so sad, so utterly devastated.

Have I been always this hollow?