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In 1998, September first had arrived quieter than it ever had before. The professors were subdued when they met in the Great Hall for the staff welcoming breakfast. Instead of pleasant, lingering conversations over how they’d all spent their summers, there were low murmurs over coffee, and most made an excuse to leave as soon as Minerva had delivered her first address as Headmistress.
When the Hogwarts Express pulled into the station and the students streamed off, gone was the laughter that had always accompanied them. In its place, the older students quietly nodded to the thestrals pulling their carriages before climbing in and taking a mostly silent ride to the castle. The march into the Great Hall felt like a funeral procession, and as Minerva watched her students take their seats, she noticed far too many of the returning seventh and eighth years looking around the room and back at her with haunted eyes.
Even the first years, usually silent with wide-eyed awe, were unusually somber as they filed in to be sorted. As the hat sang and called out house after house for the impossibly small firsties, there was the requisite polite applause, but she found she missed the cheers and even the inappropriate accolades of praise.
The quiet lingered through the halls for the first few weeks, students and professors alike staying subdued through lessons and meals, often eating quickly before escaping back to their common rooms. Minerva kept a close eye on the seventh and eighth years, watching them as they skirted around certain hallways, moved quickly through specific courtyards, and altogether avoiding some classrooms.
It wasn’t as if she didn’t understand. There were still parts of the castle she found herself unconsciously avoiding, not wanting to come face to face with her memories from the night of the battle. Minerva even felt out of place in her own office, where the faces of dead friends and colleagues silently watched as she finished her paperwork before settling by the fire for a nightcap.
As the days began to get chillier, the atmosphere inside the castle began to warm slightly. The corridors between classes were louder, meals in the great hall were less somber, and she even heard the occasional laugh. She even felt her heart warm in her chest when she walked past the library and saw Hermione Granger, Theodore Nott, and Pansy Parkinson studying healing charms together with quiet, tentative smiles on their faces.
Maybe, just maybe, she thought, her students would be okay.
Concern crept back in when she started noticing her older students coming to class with cuts and bruises peeking out from under rolled shirtsleeves and open collars. First, Dean Thomas showed up to Transfiguration with a swollen black eye, but he brushed it off and blamed a potions mishap when she expressed her concern. And when she passed Seamus Finnigan in the hall, she barely had time to register his busted lip and the blooming bruise on his cheek before he slipped down a side corridor without a backward glance. A thread of worry wound its way through her, twisting and tightening without warning.
Then Susan Bones walked into the Great Hall for dinner with a gash on her cheek and her right arm cradled across her body. But she had a smile on her face brighter than Minerva had seen in months, so she’d stayed in her seat, not wanting to be the reason that smile disappeared. But her concern grew and she watched her students closely.
And just last week, Filius had stopped her in the staff room to express his concern over the various injuries Michael Corner, Anthony Goldstein, and Terry Boot had been sporting during Charms. They’d all pled innocent, placing the blame on a particularly grueling hands-on care of magical creatures class, and he’d let the matter drop.
Minerva had assured him that she was watching the students closely and was willing to step in whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Which, it appeared, it finally had.
Minerva was on her way back from a visit to the kitchens with a plate of Tippi’s famous freshly baked gingerbread in her hands when she heard it. The faint but unmistakable sound of cheering. She followed the sound down a side hallway that had sustained significant damage during the battle. The stone of the walls was still pockmarked from spell damage, and she had to step around the occasional pile of rubble. She came to a stop in front of an unused classroom. The door was closed, and the cheering had subsided, but the doorknob was shiny and free of dust.
She reached out gingerly, grasping the knob and pushing the door in. She stepped over the threshold, and her eyes widened as she took in the room before her.
The classroom was empty of any furniture, making it seem larger than it was. And standing there forming a loose circle around the outer perimeter was almost all of the eighth years and a good number of seventh years, from all four houses. Minerva scanned the crowd, noting several more bruises and cuts among the assembled. Though she was pleased to note, a few of her students were conspicuously absent: Minerva gave a silent thanks that at least Hermione Granger, Theodore Nott, Pansy Parkinson, and Hannah Abbott had the presence of mind not to get swept up in–well, in whatever this was.
Minerva finally let her gaze rest on the two in the middle, looking back at her with slight smiles on their face, and only her many, many years of teaching allowed her to keep her face impassive.
Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood stood in the circle’s center, looking like they had just walked off a battlefield. A description she knew was all too apt.
Neville’s hair was sweat-soaked, and several minor cuts marred his face. When he raised his hand to push his hair back off his face, she had to bite back a gasp at the sight of his bloody knuckles. Next to him, Luna looked poised in comparison; the only visible injury was a bright red welt underneath her left eye. She clasped her hands in front of her, rocked back on her heels, and smiled serenely at Minerva.
She took a deep breath and sent a quick prayer to Godric, Merlin, and Morgana before she hardened her gaze and addressed the assembled students.
“My office, now. All of you.”
She held the door open as the students filed through. Most of them keep their gazes down to avoid eye contact, but a few, like Michael Corner and Seamus Finnigan, gave her a jaunty salute as they slipped past. Susan was the last one out the door, and Minerva locked and warded the door behind her with a muttered spell.
It was a strange procession that marched down the corridors and up the stairs of Hogwarts that night before finally coming to a stop in front of the ancient gargoyle that had guarded the head office for centuries.
Minerva stepped forward and said crisply, “Sassenach.” She ignored the titter of giggles behind her and inclined her head towards the statue. The gargoyle nodded once before sliding aside to reveal the staircase behind. “Up you go.”
It was a tight squeeze, getting everyone into her office, but they managed. She stood behind her desk, turning her stern glare on the young women and men spread out before her. Every single one of them showed some sign of injury. A cut here, a bruise there. Quite a few students cradled an arm protectively or stood in such a manner that kept their full weight off of one of their legs.
They all looked like they’d been through a battle. She’d know. She watched most of these children stumble back into the Great Hall not even seven months earlier with visible injuries and a defeated look on their faces.
This time, though, their faces weren’t defeated. Minerva dared to think they were more animated, more alive than they’d been all term. As she studied each face, she noted the fire in Ginny Weasley’s eyes, the steely determination in Padma and Parvati Patil’s, and the amusement that danced in Blaise Zabini’s and Millicent Bulstrode’s.
“Would anyone like to go first?” Minerva asked calmly but with an undercurrent of steel. She saw a few flinches, and she felt a slight flick of accomplishment. By Jove, she still had it.
That feeling of accomplishment dissipated as the moments ticked by, and still, no one volunteered.
“If someone doesn’t speak up, everyone will have detention from now until the end of term.” More rumblings and whispers made their way through the room. “And you’ll serve it in the Forbidden Forest with Filch.”
Susan sucked in an audible gasp, but before she could raise her hand, a warning nod and a sharp jab from Tracey Davis’ elbow cut her off.
“It’s just a club professor,” Dean Thomas finally said. The students around him broke into vigorous nods.
“A club?” She echoed faintly. “And just what sort of club leaves you looking like this?” Minerva conjured up a mirror, twisting it around so they could all see the damage that had been inflicted on them.
There was some scuffling, shifting, and even a few minor skirmishes among the students, but no one came forward to volunteer an answer.
They sat in silence, the moments stretching out between them until a movement to her right caught Minerva’s attention.
“Well, you see, Professor, we know how much you love rules, yeah?” Seamus piped up from his spot on her brocade sofa. “And the first rule is, we can’t talk about it.”
“You can’t, or you won’t?” Minerva raised a single brow, refusing to break eye contact with the teens as she stared them down.
“Do the rules really matter if one of our rules is ‘fuck the rules’?” Minerva heard someone mutter under their breath, but when she skated her eyes over to that side of the room, everyone was sitting ramrod straight and watching the scenario play out.
Another silence fell over the room, but this one felt defiant. It felt charged and electric in a way Minerva had thought had disappeared from Hogwarts completely. The passion and energy that radiated off her students in waves were beautiful to witness, and she waged an internal battle with herself over whether she wanted to snuff out the light they so desperately needed.
Her gaze finally settled on Neville and Luna, the two of them standing side by side in front of her bookshelf. Luna looked directly at Minerva, but Neville was looking at Luna in that same besotted “teenager in love” way she’d witnessed a hundred times before. And she felt her steely resolve crack just a bit more.
“Oh, go on now, all of you.” She threw her hands up in defeat, and the students just looked at her, dumbfounded. “But if I catch any of you in places you shouldn’t be again, mind you, that you’ll have detention for the rest of the year.”
A chorus of “yes ma’ams” rang out through her office, and there was a mad scramble for the door. She winced at the deafening sound of teenagers stampeding down the small spiral staircase, and she called out, “Slow down!”
Seamus and Neville were the last to leave her office, and as they descended the staircase, Minerva heard Seamus whisper, “Reckon we can convince Hermione and Parkinson to practice their healing spells on us next time so’s we won’t get caught?”
Minerva waited until the door closed behind them before she summoned her best bottle of scotch whisky, taking a swig directly from the bottle, and contemplated her retirement.
At the very least they were developing inter-house unity.