Work Text:
Saturday, August 1st, 2015
"You know...we could get married."
"We could."
“Minnie, I—”
“Poppy, please. Not this again.”
“But, we said we would get married when it was legal in the muggle world and it has been in England for over a year and Scotland for nearly a year. Both of our home countries, and many others, what else do you want?”
Minerva rubbed her face. “It’s just too hard.”
“We just have to sign a couple papers, Minnie. It’s never even been illegal in the magical world, and it’s less looked down upon in both worlds than it used to be.”
“It’s more than a couple papers.”
“We’ve been together for sixty-five years, since we were fifteen, love. Isn’t that long enough? Can’t we finally make it legal, I mean we’ve basically been married for decades.”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me what you’re worried about. I’ll help.” Poppy insisted, knowing how anxious her girlfriend could get, even though she wouldn’t admit it to most people.
“Isn’t eighty a little old to get married?”
“Many muggles live longer than eighty, and wixen live even longer. But, even if I were to die the day after we got married, I would be grateful for that one day. And I would feel more than lucky for the six-and-a-half decades we had together.”
“But, won’t it get confusing if the school healer and headmistress had the same last name? And I don’t think either of us would be able to get used to being called something else. But, I also don’t want to have a different last name than you, it feels wrong…I mean if we were married.”
“We can hyphenate and keep going by our original last names at school for convenience, but legally have the same last name.”
“Won’t it be too long, though?”
“I think Minerva Isobel Pomfrey-McGonagall is a beautiful name….Poppy Delia Pomfrey-McGonagall is nice too….Or we could do McGonagall-Pomfrey if you prefer, I like both.”
“....I like Pomfrey-McGonagall….But, what if the students don’t like it? Or the parents withdraw their kids?"
“We’re government funded, love, it doesn’t matter how many students we have, we get the same amount of money.”
“Not enough.” Minerva muttered under her breath. “I still don’t want to lose students.”
“I don’t either, but we can't decrease our relationship just because some people are still bigoted.”
“But….”
“Any other worries?”
“One.” She didn’t seem to want to admit it.
“What, love?” Poppy gently stroked her hair in a way that was meant to be comforting, but didn’t really help much.
“I can’t say…I don’t want to anger you.”
“Nothing you say will make me angry at you, Min, I never could be.”
“I just—” She took a deep breath as Poppy was always reminding her too when anxious. “I'm worried that if we get married you’ll realize you don’t actually like me very much and we’ll get divorced and break up and….I don’t want to lose you.”
“Oh, honey.” Poppy gently kissed her forehead. “I promise that won’t happen….Nothing will even change really, except maybe we’ll have a slightly different last name.”
“I want to marry you, I’m just…scared.”
“That’s okay, you don’t have to be ready yet….We don’t have to ever get married if you’re not comfortable with it. Who needs a paper saying you're together anyway?”
“I’m sorry.” She gave a bittersweet smile.
“Don’t be.” Poppy gently assured. “What we have here is way better than any dumb paper from the Ministry.”