The Power of Pain

Chapter 5

Minerva shivered as the cold night air whipped around her, she had managed half the trip without feeling so much as a cool breeze, but suddenly the clouds had turned. They rolled and shifted around her forcing her to lower her flight. She had made sure she had placed a concealment charm on the carriage and herself lest any star gazing muggles were about and happened across the strange sight.

The clouds around her twisted and turned almost violently as a thunderstorm brewed within them. She whispered a silent prayer that she would be able to reach her destination before the storm came into full force.

Just a bit longer she told herself, glancing behind her at the carriage that held her once most promising pupil. Her eyes were heavy with sadness as she thought back to that day herself. She steered the thestrals a bit lower when she spotted the outskirts of the village she was aiming for, her mind falling back to that day unhindered.

Explosions erupted everywhere around her, energy crackled beside her as she took down death eater after death eater. Her eyes as wild as her hair as she moved swiftly through each wave. She had saved many student's lives in the process of shielding the staircases only to fall towards the end wounded and disoriented by a very painful modified leg lock curse. She had been sent tumbling down the stairs, blood oozing from her head as she tried to right herself.

He had been there in that moment. His dark black eyes gazing down at her, the tip of his wand glowing with an unspoken spell. She closed her eyes against him waiting for the curse that never came. When she opened her eyes again, she found herself alone, all of her would be attackers taken care of. She had watched for just a moment the man who could have ended everything, walk calmly away to his own doom. He had saved her that night, he had made his alliance known.

Minerva pursed her lips as her mind continued onto the events that followed. How his body had never been recovered, the amount of blood that had been found in his stead. How everyone believed no one could survive such an injury. That someone must have taken the body for their own purposes, or it had simply been destroyed. No one for a moment even considered that a very elaborate plan to grant-this one man his freedom-had been put in place. Even she didn't know of this plan until the portrait in the head office had officially started to speak to her. Albus' insight into the final battle had hit her like a ton of bricks. She couldn't have believed such a plan would have even worked. It was then despite all the chaos that was going on around her, that she knew, she knew she had to find the man that had spared her own life, by risking his own in those final moments. That this selfless man, was indeed valuable for more than his actions, that he was a man to be honored for his character.

Another blast of freezing cold air rolled through her and she shivered more violently this time before having the sense to cast another warming charm about herself. The warmth that filled her was enough to keep her on her task. As the trees started to become less dense the house that had been hidden away from so many started to slowly come into view, or at least, the clearing where the house should have been.

Minerva slowly raised the monocle to her eye watching as the clearing revealed its true nature. She shifted the monocle in place while pulling the thestrals lower. Mindful of the rooftop, she carefully pulled the carriage to a quiet and soft landing in the back garden, though she hadn't seen his vegetable garden in the darkness, and had subsequently smashed two of his tomato plants. Something surely she would hear about later as she stepped down onto the soft ground. The back door opened swiftly enough as a bolt of lightning illuminated their forms against the darkness. A deep roll of thunder all but shook the ground beneath their feet as they stood to look at each other once again.