Epithalamium (Harry Potter for grown-ups)

Chapter Eleven

Albus sat in the Great Hall, not really listening as Headmaster Dippet welcomed the students back to Hogwarts for the new term. He was thinking instead of how he might find more time in his already-busy days to see Minerva. He would see her during N.E.W.T. classes—which promised to be a torturous exercise for both of them—and at their semi-weekly Animagus lessons, but he had a sneaking suspicion that these officially sanctioned meetings would not be enough for either of them.

It really was quite unnerving, he thought, how easily he had slipped over the precipice from distraction to obsession. The previous evening, when he had gone straight from Minerva to his meeting with the Headmaster, he had been unable to concentrate on the discussion at hand—how to transition Rubeus Hagrid from disgraced student to apprentice groundskeeper—thanks to the images and memories that kept leaping insistently into his mind.

Armando, who, for all his bonhomie and astute sense for the internecine politics of school governance, was not the most observant of men, had noticed his Deputy's unwonted inattentiveness.

"I say, Albus, are you quite all right?" he had asked the second time Dumbledore had not answered a question put to him.

"I beg your pardon, Armando?"

"You seem to be somewhere else today. Is all well with you? I noticed you weren't at breakfast this morning."

Dippet seemed just touch annoyed.

"I am sorry," said Albus. "I'm afraid I was up rather late last night; I ran into a bit of difficulty in reviewing an article on Elemental Transfiguration and had to reacquaint myself with Gamp's theories."

"Really?" Dippet had asked, not convinced that Albus Dumbledore would have any trouble remembering anything having to do with Hieronymus Gamp, on whose work the Transfiguration master was the author of several book chapters. Too late, Albus realised that it was a stupid, transparent falsehood.

Albus had said, "What was it you asked me when I went so rudely woolgathering, Armando?" hoping to change the subject.

"Just whether you had given any thought to how we might answer the concerns of parents who believe young Hagrid to be a danger."

They had continued the discussion right up until it was time for dinner, and Albus had been careful to keep his mind on the conversation and out of his private quarters.

Now, as he looked out over the sea of newly returned students, he allowed his eyes to rest for just a moment on Minerva, who was seated safely back at the Gryffindor table, far from him, and, Albus noted with relief, even farther from Tom Riddle, who had taken his normal place surrounded by admirers at the Slytherin table. It was a useful exercise, he told himself, to regard her in public without thinking of her in a more private context. He was not entirely successful, however. As she tossed her head back to laugh—unusually—at something one of her tablemates had said, he was unable to prevent the image of her hovering over him, head thrown back in ecstasy, from crowding out everything else for a few moments.

When he returned to his quarters, he considered moving his memories of the past two days to his Pensieve. While it would not remove them entirely from his mind, they would be less available at the surface of his consciousness, and thus less likely to leap into his thoughts unbidden. But he rejected the idea, not quite ready to dispatch them just yet. Truth be told, he enjoyed the tiny frisson of pleasure mixed with guilt that arose in him whenever a memory of making love to Minerva popped into his head.

He thought also about what she had said about having no use for traditional courting. He had no doubt this was so, yet he yearned to do something that would feel normal. Something he might do if their situation were not so impossible. They could not share meals in a public place nor take long strolls around the lake hand in hand. It would need to be something private. The germ of an idea began to form in his head. He crossed to a bookshelf and searched for a few moments before he found the book he wanted and pulled it from the shelf.