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Minerva McGonagall had dealt with many young people in her time as a Professor at Hogwarts, seeing each of them through their childhoods.
She viewed each child as hers, never able to have any truly her own, and felt the same pride at their achievements and sadness at their failures that any parent would.
But, none had evoked that maternal fire as strongly as Sirius Black.
He was a cheeky boy, and an even cheekier teenager. He was one of the sweetest children that he had ever met- especially considering his upbringing, but Minerva never thought too long about the Black Family through fear of doing something rather nasty to them.
Sirius Black had considerable potential, he could be Head Auror one day, and Minerva wanted to do all she could, without crossing any boundaries, to make sure that he got there.
If there was any student of hers that she had the strongest maternal connection to, it was Sirius Black.
It was on an uncharacteristically rainy July evening that the fire deep within her heart was ignited to the strongest that it had ever been.
Despite the rain, it was still swelteringly hot and Minerva longed for the reprieve of a cool, crisp autumn evening. Although, she still had a long time to wait for that.
As she moved into the kitchen to retrieve a glass of ice-cold water, a knock sounded at her door and she startled, glancing up at the clock. It was a quarter past ten in the evening.
“Whoever is knocking at this time of the evening,” she hissed, moving towards the front of her home, “better have a damn good reason.”
As she reached the front door, tugging on the ornate handle to open it, she cursed loudly and startled.
Sirius Black was standing on her doorstep, trunk trailing behind him, beaten bloody. He was leaning against the support post for her porch roof, smiling a broken, bloody smile through missing teeth. His eye was blackened and swollen, like he’d been struck rather hard across the face. He was shivering slightly and Minerva knew that it wasn’t due to the temperature, but exposure to too many spells.
“Dear Merlin,” she whispered, hand flying to her mouth as she gasped in shock.
“I’m sorry,” Sirius croaked, voice sounding just as broken as he looked, “I didn’t realise where I was going until I landed here. I was supposed to go to James’. But, I guess I wanted to be here.”
Minerva made a soft shushing noise and guided him towards the house with a gentle, motherly grip. “Come in, dear.”
She spelled the door shut behind him and gestured towards the kitchen, the kettle upon the stove beginning to boil. She ushered him towards the lounge, settling him onto the comfiest chair in the house- a threadbare, horribly-coloured, dusty old armchair that her grandmother owned.
Wordlessly, she moved into the kitchen, pouring the now-hot water from the kettle into a bowl, and fetched a cloth and soap from the cupboard beneath the sink. Minerva turned on her heel and glided back into the living room, where Sirius was still sitting, staring blankly into the fireplace.
She knelt on the floor in front of him and placed a gentle hand on his wrist to draw his attention back to her. “Are you still with me, dear?”
Sirius nodded weakly and gave a half-hearted smile, nowhere near his normal, cocksure grin. Minerva found herself with the burning urge to hurt the woman that did this to her boy.
“I’m going to clean away the blood, okay?” She whispered reassuringly, making sure that Sirius knew every step that she was taking.
She would have done this with magic, but she had the feeling that Sirius wouldn’t react well to the sight of a wand in that moment.
When he nodded, Minerva dipped her cloth into the water and swiped it over the bar of soap before lifting it to Sirius’ face. With careful, gentle movement, she cleaned away the dried blood, dabbing softly over the cuts on his face as well. He winced occasionally, but never pulled away, just sat like an obedient dog.
Her heart clenched painfully at the sight, wanting her boy back, but she knew it would be a while before he was comfortable enough to be that person again.
When she’d cleaned away all the blood, she realised that the cuts on his face weren’t as bad as she originally thought. They would still need to be healed, but she would wait until Sirius was okay before she tried to heal them magically.
“Do you have any other injuries?”
Sirius shook his head and Minerva ignored how badly his hands were shaking. He may never recover from the curse damage, but she was going to do her damnedest to make sure that he healed from his mental injuries.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, voice small and scared, and Minerva made a noise of protest, gently squeezing his wrist.
“Don’t apologise, dear. You have nothing to be sorry for,” she assured.
“I’ve made such a mess of things,” Sirius’ bottom lip quivered and Minerva’s heart broke a little more at the sight.
“You’ve done no such thing,” she murmured, leaving no room for argument.
“I needed to get out of there,” he cried, tears tumbling past the near-impenetrable barrier that Sirius kept carefully erected. “I couldn’t stay there anymore. I couldn’t do it, Minnie.”
He covered his face and sobbed openly into his hands, shoulders shaking with the force of his cries. Minerva found that she had tears in her eyes too, just at the amount of pain in Sirius’ wails. She reached up to him, gently guiding him into her lap, and rocked him gently when he buried his head in her chest, and cried into her shirt, wetting the fabric.
“You did so well,” she soothed, her heart’s fire burning hotter with every passing moment. “You lasted longer than a lot of people. You did the right thing. You’re safe now. You’re safe. They can’t hurt you.”
She stayed on the floor, rocking Sirius as he cried, until the boy wore himself out and fell asleep. As he slept, face finally free of the pain that he had been feeling, brow no longer crinkled, Minerva promised that she would protect him until her dying breath; she would be the mother that he never had and she would do a damn good job of it.
Minerva McGonagall had dealt with many young people in her time as a Professor at Hogwarts, seeing each of them through their childhoods.
She viewed each child as hers, never able to have any truly her own, and felt the same pride at their achievements and sadness at their failures that any parent would.
But, none had evoked that maternal fire as strongly as Sirius Black.