Archive of Our Own

Her heeled boots click against the stone ground of the hallway, and distantly, she wonders if she should have changed into something more comfortable. Not that she’s uncomfortable; she hasn’t felt physically uncomfortable in days. If there’s a limited amount of pain allotted to each person on the earth and most of hers is frozen in suspension just outside her periphery, there’s just not enough left for such banal issues as sore arches and developing blisters.

The clacking of each step echoes off the suit of armour she passes, and she wonders if it’s strange that she hasn’t run into anyone in the hour she’s been wandering the castle. It’s for the best, really. She’s not on the roster, which in and of itself is ridiculous — she’d told Albus straight out that there was nothing preventing her from completing her duties — but someone else must be. But she wouldn’t know, since Albus didn’t make her privy to that knowledge. You’ve got enough on your plate, he’d said. Well, if that had been the case, she wouldn’t be wandering around the castle at two o’clock in the morning, now would she be.

The moonlight filtering in through the windows is bright enough that she keeps her wand securely in the pocket of her robes. The muttering of the occasional portrait she passes doesn’t distract her from the steady rhythm of her own footsteps, but when she makes a left into a new hallway, she startles, coming face-to-face with the new matron.

“Minerva? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. What are you doing out?”

“Oh, it’s quite alright,” Minnie answers.

Poppy looks at her, eyes wide and a tad unnerving. “Couldn’t sleep?” she asks.

“I’m fine,” Minnie says, realising she never answered her first question. “If you’ll excuse —” she starts to say, but Poppy interrupts her.

“Would you like a cup of tea,” she says, and it isn’t a question. “Come on.”

Minnie follows her, a bit dumbstruck. It’s the middle of the night and she’s shared no more than a handful of polite words with Poppy in the week that school has been in session. It’s preposterous that she’s asked Minnie to tea, and even more so that Minnie just wordlessly followed her.

She hadn’t been paying attention to where she had been walking, but it turns out they’re near enough to the hospital wing. The infirmary is dark and empty, the hangings of each bed open and ghostly white in the moonlight shining through the tall windows. A similar window illuminates Poppy’s office. Two entire walls of it are covered in floor-to-ceiling shelves and glass-doored cabinets. Heavy medical tomes line the shelves; the cabinet doors are neatly labelled, and Minnie can see tiny vials of potions, rolls of gauze, and pots of salve stacked behind them. She quickly looks away.

On the other side of the office is a large wooden desk, and behind it, a door, which she finds leads to Poppy’s living quarters. With a flick of her wand, Poppy lights the myriad of little lamps that surround the small space — some on tables and others on the floor in between the furniture. She tells Minnie to make herself at home while she heads to the kitchenette on the left side of the room.

Though the room isn’t large, Poppy’s style of interior decor makes it feel even smaller; there’s barely room to manoeuvre around the couch and matching yellow armchairs, the tiny side tables and larger coffee tables, an elaborate — but compact — writing desk pushed up against the window, and the pile of large pillows on the rug near the fireplace. Minnie selects one of the armchairs and moves aside the blanket and matching decorative pillow in shades of rosy pink and blushing coral to perch and wait for Poppy, who, if Minnie isn’t imagining things, is singing softly to herself as she gets the tea. Minnie wonders once again at what she’s doing here. It’s a small relief to be off her feet, she’s noticing, but she could very well be doing that in her own rooms.

As Poppy finally bustles over, floating a tray beside her, Minnie’s stomach clenches at what she thinks she spots on it. But it’s just a plate of scones.

“Lemon blueberry,” Poppy says, serving Minnie one. “Baked just this morning.”

“Thank you, Poppy,” Minnie says. And because she feels she must be making a terrible impression, considering how few words she’s said up to this point, she adds, “do you bake often?”

“I try not to, I’ll have you know, especially since it’s not a necessity here,” Poppy says as she pours Minnie some tea. “But I just haven’t been able to stop since I’ve gotten here. Isn’t that strange? Maybe I should pick up another hobby, or I’ll be overflowing in muffins and pies soon enough,” she laughs. “You know, I really enjoy archery, always have, but there’s just something about the idea of students being able to come across me practising in the grounds that I haven’t been able to wrap my mind around. Doesn’t really fit the image of a matron, don’t you think?”

Minnie makes a sound of assent, not knowing quite what to say to all that.

“Do you bake?” Poppy asks.

“No, not much.”

As Poppy leads the conversation in a new direction, Minnie comes to find she doesn’t actually mind Poppy’s chattiness. When she can think of something to say, she does, and Poppy often peppers in a direct question that Minnie can answer. Poppy doesn’t seem put off by Minnie’s short responses. She doesn’t ask again why Minnie was wandering the halls, but doesn’t share why she had been out there either. Instead, she tells Minnie of her healing program, of the terrible food they served while preaching the benefits of a rich and varied diet. She tells Minnie of her roommates from the program, who are both still stationed at St. Mungo’s, working graveyard shifts and assisting more senior healers. “I was so lucky to get this position,” she says. “I didn’t think they’d want me with so few years of experience.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re perfectly qualified,” Minnie says to that.

“Oh, absolutely, I think so too, but you know how it is.”

And Minnie — top of her class, with findings published in Transfiguration Today and distributed across the continent, with her prestigious internships that led to mediocre full-time offers, with most of her to-be mentors less interested in her thoughts than in the recognition they would get when she made new findings — thinks she understands. It’s not that she doesn’t love teaching. She had always considered it as an option, but had thought that she’d do more for the field itself first. Teaching had always been a secondary position in her mind, not practically the first. But when Albus became Headmaster and offered her the job, she had been so disheartened, so tired from the years spent away from the castle, that she had decided to come back to Hogwarts. It’s her third year of teaching now, and she doesn’t regret it. But sometimes, she still thinks what if, what if she had made it out there.

After two cups of tea and a glance at her watch, she stands to go. “Thank you, really, Poppy. But it’s late,” she says.

“I’m usually awake at this time,” Poppy says, walking her back through the office and into the infirmary. “You can come back anytime.”

Minnie doesn’t plan to.

❋

That night is the first time this year she’s slept in her bed. When the alarm rings and she reaches to turn it off, she slams her hand into the nightstand, not expecting to find lacquered wood where the previous nights had been only carpet.

She doesn’t see Poppy at breakfast.

That night, she’s back to wandering the halls. She doesn’t come across anyone, and before two hours are up, she’s back in her rooms. She takes off her shoes and nothing else. She pours herself a glass of firewhiskey. She drinks it. And then another. She takes the single-use aluminium baking dish out from its paper bag on the counter in her kitchenette, looks at its contents, then puts it away. She drinks one more glass, cleans it out with a swish of her wand, and puts it and the bottle away in the cupboard. Then, after undressing, hanging up her robes in the wardrobe, changing into her nightgown, and taking off her glasses, she looks in the mirror as she brushes her teeth. She looks in the mirror as she lets her hair down from its bun and brushes it and braids it into a loose plait. Her reflection looks back at her — it’s blurry, but it’s about as much as she can manage to face herself at the moment. Then, she places her alarm clock on the ground and curls up as a cat before the dying fire. It’s easier to escape her thoughts this way, and the firewhiskey coursing through her veins helps dampen the cat’s keen hearing. She sleeps.

❋

It’s three days later when she runs into Poppy again. Once again, Minnie doesn’t protest when Poppy invites her over. They eat cinnamon apple oatmeal crumble biscuits while they drink their tea. Poppy talks of the trip she took to the south of France one year. Minnie has never crossed the English Channel.

This happens a few more times, once every few days, until it’s three weeks into term and Minnie’s a glass of firewhiskey in before she decides she doesn’t want to spend the night alone.

❋❋❋❋❋

First visit home - late June

Minnie’s sitting at the kitchen table of her childhood home when her mum tells her. The tablecloth is blue and covered with flowers. The sugar bowl lays open, its lid next to it on the table. The sun shines on the bushes outside the window, shades of shamrock and basil, and Minnie can hear the shouts and giggles of the neighbourhood kids, carried on the wind from two houses over. The doctors are out of treatment options. Her mother’s going to die.

❋❋❋❋❋

If Poppy is surprised by Minnie knocking at her door, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she just ushers Minnie in, informing her that she’s just popped a batch of oat biscuits out of the oven.

“I felt it was improper to come empty-handed, so,” Minnie says, offering Poppy the half-empty bottle of firewhiskey.

There’s a glint in Poppy’s eyes as she says she doesn’t mind washing down the biscuits with the liquor.

Minnie’s just poured herself another glass when she says, “if it’s not impertinent of me to ask, why are you typically awake at this time of night?”

Poppy chuckles. “Minerva, you know that you can ask me anything you want, right?”

Minnie doesn’t know that.

Poppy doesn’t wait for an answer, though. She seems to understand that Minnie isn’t likely to give one. “I have insomnia, have had it all my life.”

“Isn’t there a draught you can take for that?”

“Sure, there is. But I don’t think an over-reliance on a sleeping draught can be healthy in the long-term.”

“Can’t it?” asks Minnie. “If the choice is between not sleeping or sleeping, well…”

“But it’s not as easy as that,” Poppy replies. “There are side effects to any draught or potion. If you take one every so often, these side effects are so minimal you might not even notice them. But they can build up over time. And if you drink the same draught each night, those effects will just build and build until they prove to cause a real issue, perchance even worse than the problem you were originally trying to solve.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Minnie says. It’s kind of like repeat transfiguration. Taking an object and changing its consistency again and again, until it’s barely made of the same atoms it started as, well… At that point, the object can barely hold its last form, so foreign to what it was at its core. “But not being able to sleep is terrible. How do you deal with it, then?”

But Poppy turns the question back around. “How do you?”

“I… I don’t have insomnia.”

“Well, maybe not the same way I do. But you’re awake at two past midnight as often as I am, are you not?” It’s not an accusation, just a fact.

Minnie looks down at the glass in her hand.

“The side effects of alcohol as a sleep aide can build up too,” Poppy says, her tone a hint gentler than before.

“I don’t just drink,” Minnie says. “ I don’t usually start with drinking,” she corrects. “I walk. I try to stay busy. Not easy when Albus has taken away my nighttime patrol duties, I’ll say. And then…” She pauses. It’s not a secret, but it’s also not something she talks about often. “And then I turn into a cat.”

“Oh!” and there’s delight in Poppy’s voice. “You’re an Animagus?”

Minnie nods. She takes a sip of the firewhiskey, then sets it down on a side table. “Would you like to see?”

“Please,” Poppy says. She’s at the edge of her seat, looking keenly at Minnie, her face so open, wide eyes barely blinking, as if not to miss it.

Minnie stands, so when she transforms, she’s on the rug between their armchairs. She sits, blinks up at Poppy, then pads across the rug. She passes so close to Poppy’s feet, she can feel the electricity tugging, the invisible pull between the tips of every hair on her body and the molecules of Poppy’s robes. She’s so close, they’re almost touching. But they’re not. They shouldn’t.

She turns away, leaps into her own armchair, then turns back.

“You make a beautiful cat,” Poppy says, and there’s something in her voice Minnie can’t identify. Something that wasn’t there before.

Not knowing how to reply to that particular statement, she instead says, “it’s easier to fall asleep as a cat. My mind… It doesn’t race in quite the same way.”

“Fascinating…” Poppy says. “Are there other differences?”

“Oh yes, everything is so much louder. That’s where the alcohol helps. And I can see better in low light. But it’s mostly the thoughts that I’ve noticed to affect me most. My mind isn’t slowed per se, but it tends to stick with simpler statements without overly convoluting them. And I find I think much more spatially than causally. I’m not sure that makes sense…”

“I’m not sure that’s your fault,” Poppy says.

“No,” Minnie agrees.

“And how long have you been struggling with your sleep?” Poppy asks.

“Since…” but just as she’s about to say it, she changes her mind. “About a month now.”

“I see…”

“So what do you do to help you sleep?” Minnie tries again. She’s divulged more than she’d planned and she no longer wants to speak of herself. Not at all.

Poppy looks at her for a minute, takes a sip from her own glass. “Mostly, I don’t force myself to sleep if I don’t feel like I’ll be able to. But around dawn, I usually find that I can fall asleep. And in the late afternoons sometimes too.”

“And this doesn’t interfere with your duties?”

“Less so than when I had been at St. Mungo’s,” Poppy says. “Students can of course come in at any time, but I generally see more of them during class-time than after.”

“Wait until Quidditch practices ramp up,” Minnie says. “You’ll be seeing more injuries in the evenings then.”

“Oh, I’m sure of it,” Poppy says, a smile spreading across her lips.

❋❋❋❋❋

First visit home - late June

They eat her mother’s honey cake as they drink their tea and Minnie cries, soaking through her handkerchief, drying it out with her wand, then soaking it again. It shouldn’t be a surprise, and it isn’t, not really. But still, Minnie didn’t think this would happen. Whenever she thought absently of what it would be like for her mother to die — and she has thought about it, because it’s the natural turn of events — it was always in the abstract. Not as the very real possibility that the sickness her mother has been battling for the past few years will finally conquer.

She doesn’t even know how many years exactly her mother has been ill. She had told Minnie at some point, but the conversations were devoid of much more than barebone facts. Her mother needed her to know, in part so Minnie could take care of her own health if — or more likely when — the need arose. But she didn’t go into details, and Minnie didn’t ask. Whenever her mum would update her on the latest treatment, it was in the same vein as Mrs. Robertson from a few streets over is going on holiday and has asked me to water her plants and nowhere near as charged as you should drink a cup of chamomile tea before bed to help you sleep.

And now she has to deal with the reality that her mother is dying. When she asks how long the doctors have given her, the answer isn’t exact — it could be a month or it could be a year — they just have to wait and see.

Now, it makes sense why, in her letter, her mother had insisted that Minnie come to visit as soon as school was out. It’s not unusual for her to gently pressure Minnie to come home, but Minnie had thought her insisting on a specific day was because of Minnie’s tendency to otherwise push it off instead of making time to visit right away. It’s not that she dreads visiting. But it’s not like she particularly enjoys it either.

Minnie won’t leave empty-handed; she never does. As much as she would love to be minimalistic, every little item that ends up in her life means too much to her to get rid of. She tries to resist, but her mum presses items into her hands.

First, a pair of cloth napkins. Her mum has a bag full of them, ones she made from spare bits of fabric. Minnie is struck then by just how much her mother does for others. She’s not selfless, but she wants to help; it’s the way she shows that she cares. It makes Minnie’s stomach clench and then ache. Minnie picks the ones in purple and white — one chequered and one floral, not matched but complementary.

As her mother hands them to her and goes to tuck the bag away, back into the closet, she says, “You’ll have to go through all of my things.”

“I know, mum.”

“There’s no one else.”

And there isn’t. Her mother knows the things she’s kept are going to be of no use to Minnie. But she won’t be able to get rid of them herself. As Minnie sits there now, it seems like a manageable task. She might be delusional.

Second, Minnie’s mum finds a pair of shoes she purchased for herself and never wore. They’re slightly too big on Minnie and definitely not her style, but her mum won’t take no for an answer. She takes them, because there’s nothing else for her to do.

Third, as they’re sitting on the couch, just before Minnie is about to leave, her mum offers her one of the honey cakes she made, because of course she made six. This, Minnie is happy to take. As her mum puts the cake, in its aluminium tin, in a paper bag, she offers Minnie one more thing.

“Would you like the recipe?”

And of course Minnie does.

Her mother pulls out her recipe book, smaller than a paperback, with a cover of navy blue leather. It’s only two thirds full though she’s had it since she taught herself to cook in her twenties. Not for a man, mind; for herself. She’s always been an intuitive cook — not one for following precise measurements or someone else’s instructions — so the book contains the few things that require a bit more precision, typically baked goods or recipes she’s learned from friends and jotted down.

She rips out an empty page and copies out the honey cake recipe in her loopy script, a mix of print and cursive, with letters joining up here and there. Some lean to the right, others stand straight. In some places, her pen has left more ink as she hesitated over a curve or checked the original recipe to see what came next.

She walks Minnie through it, explaining her shorthand and preferences for ingredient substitutions. Then, when Minnie has tucked it away in her bag, placing it between the pages of a book so it doesn’t get bent, then placing the book back among the shoes and the cloth napkins and the honey cake itself, she starts to cry again as she’s putting on her shoes.

“I’ll visit again soon,” she says, and her mum is crying too as she hugs her and strokes her hair and sends her on her way.

❋❋❋❋❋

As the first chilled rain of October drums against the dark windows of the headmaster’s office, Minnie assures Albus that she can handle having her nightly patrol duties reinstated. Just as she had tried to a month ago. She doesn’t say that part.

“If you’re sure,” he says, and as she goes to thank him, he asks, “but how are you doing, really?”

Minnie purses her lips and stares into his eyes, unblinking. Her voice is steady when she says, “just fine, like I’ve been telling you.”

“I do find that talking about these things can help,” he says, his voice pleasant and calm.

Minnie finishes the last sip of her tea and goes to stand. “If that’s all, Albus,” she says, “I really must be going.”

“As you wish,” he says, standing to walk her to the door. Mercifully, he doesn’t say anything else.

How preposterous, Minnie thinks, as she descends the spiral staircase and starts walking down the hall away from his office. Though their relationship has spanned more ground than most other students could say of their own relationship with their old Transfiguration professor, she’s never been anything other than professional. And yes, Albus had been with her when she had first transformed, when she had been rejected from a particularly important position, when she’d received the first copy of the journal her work had been published in, when she’d stood at her mother’s grave… She hadn’t asked him to the funeral, but he had come anyway. The only reason he knew was because she couldn’t make the first day of their new school year prep meetings. If only the scheduling had worked out differently, if only everything had happened a day earlier… But that was a terrible thought.

She hadn’t been paying attention to where she was walking, and she finds herself outside the infirmary’s door. She almost knocks, but before her knuckles can rap against the dark wood, she pauses. It’s early yet, well before ten, and she doesn’t know if Poppy is asleep. Outside the occasional times they both attend breakfast, Minnie has only seen Poppy in the middle of the night. So she lets her hand drop and turns away from the door. If she can’t sleep in a few hours, she’ll come back.

❋❋❋❋❋

Second visit home - early July

Minnie doesn’t return home for two weeks. She feels a little guilty as she takes her shoes off in the entryway. It’s sweltering in the kitchen — her mother’s got the oven and the stove going — and there’s no breeze from the open window. Still, they drink tea. Her mother doesn’t look different from the last time she’s seen her, and Minnie uses that to reassure herself that it’s alright that this is the first time she’s back. But when the white bean soup is done and the roast beef is pulled out of the oven and Minnie’s transferred the food to containers and put it in the fridge, her mum leads her to the sofa, sinks into it. It’s only in that moment that Minnie sees that being on her feet had been almost too hard for her. Her mum clicks the remote, then hands it to Minnie. She had never been one to watch the telly during the day before. But now, they sit and watch a silly movie — whatever’s on. Is this really what you want to spend your remaining time doing, Minnie thinks, but wouldn’t dare to say out loud.

❋❋❋❋❋

“So Quidditch season has begun,” Poppy greets her when Minnie next visits.

“An injury already?” Minnie asks. “It’s only the first time the pitch has been signed out…” She’s been checking the sign-out sheet daily, but Poppy doesn’t need to know that bit.

“A few, actually,” Poppy says. “Ravenclaw held tryouts. Seemed like a couple of inexperienced hopefuls to me.”

“Oh, well that makes sense then,” Minnie says, sinking into the armchair she’s started to think of as hers. “I hope whoever their new Keeper ends up being is no better than their last one.” When Poppy gives her a look, Minnie adds, “She wasn’t very consistent. And our Chasers don’t miss the mark.”

“Didn’t realise you were competitive.”

“It’s only one of my more prominent qualities. I do try to keep it contained in front of the students.”

“And do you succeed?”

Minnie laughs. “To the best of my abilities.”

They drink their tea and eat generous servings of cranberry tart while Poppy continues to ask about Quidditch. And Minnie doesn’t mind that she’s doing most of the talking tonight.

❋❋❋❋❋

Third visit home - late July

Another two weeks pass. Minnie assures herself that it’s fine. She’s been busy. Her mum was well enough the last time she visited.

The Saturday of her visit is also her mother’s birthday. Minnie, not generally one for gifts, had spent some time going through her photograph collection to find a few favourites, which she compiled into a collage and put in a nice frame she had purchased in Hogsmeade.

Nobody greets Minnie when she comes in to the house. She takes off her shoes, then looks in the kitchen and living room before heading to the bedroom. She finds her mother, in a faded old house dress, lying on top of the blanket with her eyes closed. Minnie pauses in the doorway, not wanting to wake her.

“Minnie?” Her mother opens her eyes a tad, blinks a few times. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Happy birthday, mum,” Minnie says, voice quiet to match the dim room. She walks across the room, gives her mother a kiss on the cheek, hands her the brown paper bag that holds the picture frame.

Her mother takes out the frame, spends a few minutes looking at the collection of pictures. She thanks Minnie, her voice quiet, but honeyed with warmth.

“Is there anything I can do?” Minnie asks her, but her mother says she needs to rest for a bit longer. So Minnie goes to the kitchen, makes herself a cup of tea, drinks it. She makes another and brings it to her mother, places it on the nightstand. She wipes down the kitchen table, reads a book. She casts a reheating charm on her mother’s untouched tea, reorganises the bookshelves in the living room. She makes another cup of tea, then sits in the corner of her mother’s room, reading by the little light coming from the crack in the curtains.

When it gets dark, she stands, walks over to her mother’s side, touches her shoulder with the tips of her fingers until her mother opens her eyes.

“It’s nightfall, so I’m going to get going, let you rest,” Minnie says. “You’ll send an owl if you need anything, won’t you?”

“Of course,” her mum says. “I’m sorry I —”

Minnie cuts her off. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I love you.”

“I love you too, dear.”

As Minnie turns to leave, she notices that her mother has put the picture frame not on the nightstand where Minnie had expected, but on the chair by her bed. If she opens her eyes while she’s lying on her side, she can look right at it.

❋❋❋❋❋

As October turns to November and November slowly creeps towards December, Minnie realises that she’s been reaching towards the firewhiskey less, sleeping more. It’s been gradual, with her still curling up like a cat most nights, just earlier. Falling asleep easier. Visiting Poppy less.

She finds that she misses Poppy’s company, the warmth of her overstuffed room, the smell of cinnamon and sugar in the air no matter what Poppy’s baked that day. A day goes by and it’s fine, but when a few days pass, there’s this empty feeling, this restlessness that’s not unlike what she’s come to call her insomnia. But instead of needing to move to get it out, she itches to talk, or be talked at — to just spend time in Poppy’s presence.

She wonders if Poppy feels the same.

❋❋❋❋❋

Middle of August

Her mother’s neighbour — a middle-aged woman named Marion, who wears her light brown hair, not yet tinged with grey, in a plait down her back and is hardly seen without an apron tied around her waist — writes to her. You should come. That’s all the letter says.

Minnie packs an overnight bag, just a couple of changes of clothing, her toiletries. She’s not sure what she needs.

She doesn’t tell anyone she’s leaving, but she charms the door to her quarters, so that if someone does come looking for her, they’ll know to owl her instead.

Her mother’s asleep when she arrives, so Minnie sets up in the spare room. She finds a blanket and some clean pillowcases, readies the futon on which she’ll sleep. Then she continues with the research she’s been working on all summer. She has hopes of submitting it to Transfiguration Today once it’s done, but that won’t be anytime soon.

It’s late when Minnie hears her mum shuffle to the kitchen. The speed of her dragging footsteps surprises Minnie. They’re fast, but it also sounds like she’s not entirely stable on her feet. Minnie moves from the circle of light around the desk lamp she’s been crouched at, through the dark room, and into the kitchen. There’s her mum, a slice of cold bread and soft cheese on a plate in front of her, an identical sandwich in her hand. She’s in an old nightgown and bare feet.

“Are you ok, mum?”

“Minnie? What are you doing here?”

Minnie doesn’t know how to answer that.

“You’re not here for me, are you? Because you know you don’t need to be here for me.” She sounds almost manic compared to the last time her and Minnie spoke.

“No, I’m just here… to be here,” Minnie says lamely. It doesn’t make sense, but her mum has now moved on.

“Why aren’t you asleep? It’s the middle of the night.” The clock above the stove shows a quarter past one.

“I’ve been working,” Minnie says.

“You should go to sleep.”

It’s not the first time she’s said words like this to Minnie, but it’s the first time they make no impact. It doesn’t matter when Minnie goes to sleep. Her mother can’t do anything about it. Not anymore.

❋

It’s not too different to being at the castle, except for in every way that it is.

Minnie spends most of her time working on her research, reading through the books she’s brought with her and taking notes, scribbling thoughts down on spare scraps of paper when she’s in the middle of making herself a plate to eat — too wary of forgetting the thought in the time it would take to cross the kitchen and living room and enter the room she’s been staying in.

She spends most of the day in silence. It’s almost eerily quiet, just Minnie’s scratching quill, the rustle of the pages of her books, the way the sounds of the neighbourhood children and buzzing bees seem unable to reach past just inside the open windows. And occasionally, a groan, low and uncontrolled, from her mother’s room.

When her mother gets up to use the restroom, she’s slow to move, leaning against the wall and the doors as she takes wavering steps. She refuses Minnie’s help.

With each day, the purple under her eyes gets darker; her cheeks get hollower; her body gets frailer, shrinking, collapsing in on itself. Minnie worries that this is the way she’ll remember her mum forever now — not how she looked for most of Minnie’s conscious life, but this last, final version.

Marion stops by one afternoon. Minnie makes her tea and makes small talk. The only other person she sees is the nurse who comes to check on her mum every other day. The nurse takes her vitals, evaluates her medications — pain relievers, mostly, and things to help her sleep — and tells Minnie that everything is looking the same as it was last time. She says things like she’s stable and there’s no discernible cause for alarm, and never things like she’s doing well or she’s looking better. Not that Minnie would’ve expected that anyway. The time for that has passed.

❋

One day, Minnie’s mum says she wants to go outside. Minnie brings two chairs out into the small back garden, then helps her mum over the uneven ground. The day is bright as can be, the sun reflecting off the house’s windows and setting the modest garden alight in brilliant verdant hues. Minnie’s blouse is sitting uncomfortably on her perspiring back by the time they’re settled in their chairs, but her mum says she’s cold, so Minnie brings a blanket out and drapes it over her mother’s frame.

They sit in silence, drinking in the sun’s beams and the sounds of the day — insects in the bushes, a bird flying by, the tinny sound of a neighbour’s windchime on the light breeze. If Minnie closes her eyes, she can picture herself at eight years old, in this very same garden, the summer when their family of three became a family of two.

Minnie doesn’t think of her father often, doesn’t know where he is or what he’s doing or how twenty years have aged him. She doesn’t miss him, feels it’s a shame to see the effects of him on her mother’s life — the fact she doesn’t use magic anymore the biggest one. It’s as if by hiding that part of herself she had erased it. Minnie doesn’t understand, doesn’t think she ever will. But she thinks of her father now, on the precipice of losing her mum, wonders what it’ll be like to be an orphan, if only by name, as she doesn’t know if he’s still alive.

It doesn’t matter. No use getting maudlin when she needs to be practical. But even when she opens her eyes, she can practically hear her parents’ last fight and feel the dirt under her fingernails as she clenched her little eight year old hands and tried to forgive her mother for getting them into this situation in the first place.

❋

Two days later, Minnie’s helping the nurse change her mother’s clothes. Her mother, who hasn’t said a word, but had groaned softly as they rolled her from her back to her side, Minnie taking most of her mother’s weight in her hands as the nurse is late into her pregnancy. Minnie is holding her mum’s hand and whispering reassuring things to her, how she loves her, as the nurse moves on to her other tasks. Then, she pauses, and Minnie’s breath hitches as cold iron wraps around her heart. She watches the nurse’s fingers on her mother’s wrist, her palm on her mother’s heart. She watches the nurse turn to the clock on the wall, noting the time. She doesn’t hear what the nurse says because she doesn’t need to. She doesn’t let go of her mum’s hand.

❋

An hour later, Marion, who had let herself in, comes and gently ushers Minnie out of the room, her bony fingers slightly pinching into Minnie’s shoulders. Before that, she had taken those fingers and smoothed them over Minnie’s mum’s unmoving eyelids, closing her eyes for the last time.

Marion puts on tea while Minnie sits at the kitchen table, unmoving. She can still see her mum’s unblinking stare, her eyes, slightly crossed, unseeing. The sunken skin of her cheeks. Her parted lips.

It’s an image she knows she’ll never forget.

❋

The funeral is three days later. Three days during which Minnie arranges for the funeral plot and the casket and lets Marion handle letting people know. Minnie picks out an outfit for her mum to wear — new undergarments she had purchased and never worn, her favourite dress, a necklace she had made, practical shoes. She clears a lot of the house, packing things in boxes and letting Marion take whatever she wants. She arranges for someone to help her sell the rest. She writes a letter to Albus, letting him know she won’t be able to make it back for the first day of meetings, but will be there for the second.

She doesn’t expect to see him at the funeral itself — she hadn’t invited him, not to mention that she thought he’d be busy with the meetings. But he’s there, in a black velvet suit she thinks must have a cooling charm on it, as she’s sweating through the much thinner fabric of her black dress. It’s another bright, sunny day, and they’re in a cemetery.

She’s walking back to her mother’s house as clouds move across the sky, and it rains a little, but she welcomes the raindrops on her skin. By the time she’s at the house, the clouds have moved on and the sun is back out.

She packs up the few belongings she had brought with her — both the ones she had originally packed and the ones she had picked up from Hogwarts two days ago when she returned to get the black dress she had been hoping she wouldn’t need when she had been prompted to the house by Marion’s note. As she stands in the entryway, she looks around to the house she knows she will return to, out of necessity — she hasn’t finished packing everything up; she couldn’t bear to go through the rest of her mother’s clothes — and it still feels like a last time. But she turns around and walks out the door, locking it behind her.

❋❋❋❋❋

The first day of the winter holidays has passed into the first night, and Minnie’s sitting in the armchair by her fire, reading, when she hears a knock on her office door. She doesn’t know who it could be, but her stomach performs the tiniest of flips when she opens the door to see Poppy standing there, a heavy winter cloak in hand.

“Come on,” she says. “Grab your cloak.” And what is Minnie going to do if not obey.

Poppy leads her through the grounds, over trampled snow that the holdover students had used as the site of their snowball fight earlier in the day. Then they wade through the mostly untouched snow at the edge of the forest to a clearing clearly manipulated by magic. The snow underfoot is not very deep here, and it’s beaten down so it doesn’t move as you walk atop it. Poppy uses her wand to send orbs of multi-colored light to float eight feet off the ground around the edges of the space, and with the light, Minnie sees the trunk and target.

“I thought you said you couldn’t do archery here,” she says.

“No, I said I didn’t want the students to find out that I do,” Poppy answers, a smile on her lips and a glint in her eyes. “I set this up earlier.” The smile disappears. “I thought I could teach you? If you wanted to…”

Minnie bites her lip. She’s never been very coordinated, to her own chagrin. Always in the stands, not the one in the Quidditch pitch. And a bow and arrow, well, that could be dangerous…

“I can’t,” she says, and the look on Poppy’s face makes her distressed, as she knows she’s the cause. “I’m scared I’ll hurt something. I’m terribly clumsy.”

“You won’t hurt me. Or anything else. I promise,” Poppy says, her eyes wide and earnest now.

“You can’t promise that.”

“I do,” Poppy says, and she touches Minnie’s hand between her own gloved fingers, squeezes.

And Minnie doesn’t want to keep disappointing her, can tell her reluctance is causing Poppy discomfort, so she turns her hand to grip Poppy’s palm right back. “Ok, ok. I’ll do it. For you.”

The way Poppy’s face softens immediately brings a rush of warmth to Minnie’s chest. She’s said the right thing.

Poppy sets up the target at one edge of the clearing, then procures the bow and a quiver of arrows from inside the trunk. She guides Minnie to the side of the clearing opposite the target and demonstrates a shot, her arrow hitting the target, not in the very centre, but close enough.

“Do you want to try?” Poppy asks, and Minnie doesn’t know how to say that she’d like to watch Poppy do it again. She’d watch Poppy do it a hundred more times — the look of concentration in her eyes, her body precise, one arm in front with the other pulled back, so assured in her stance.

But she lets Poppy guide her into position. At Poppy’s insistence, she takes off her gloves and holds her hands out for Poppy to cast a warming charm on them. Poppy’s looking at her fingers, but Minnie’s looking at her face; at the way her lips curve around the spell; at the small, satisfied way she presses them tight when she knows it worked. It’s been a while since Minnie has allowed someone to take care of her like this and hasn’t felt obliged to them for it, the way she did that summer, the way she knows she needs to look Marion in the eye and thank her but can’t bring herself to make an opportunity to do so.

Poppy gives her the bow and explains how to hold it — both wrists straight and shoulders down and back, engaging her muscles, whatever that means, as she pulls the string back towards her chin. Minnie tries a few times without an arrow, just standing there and pulling on the string, feeling silly, until Poppy stands behind her and adjusts her position. She’s shorter than Minnie is, and Minnie can feel her breath just graze the sliver of her neck left exposed above the collar of her cloak.

“Ok,” Poppy says, her arms wrapped around Minnie’s, her hands lightly touching Minnie’s wrists. “Relax your shoulders, all the way. Good. Now roll them back and keep them taut. Just like that. Now, this arm a bit higher, there you go. Perfect. Now pull back in one steady motion, don’t bend your wrist, there, and release.”

When Poppy steps away and prompts Minnie to try again on her own, Minnie’s not sure she can replicate any of it. But she seems to do a sufficient enough job of it, as Poppy says she’s ready to try with an arrow this time. Minnie’s mind is still spinning with the feeling of Poppy’s body pressed against her back, the warmth of her exhale. She wants to focus on the placement of her shoulders, the feel of the string beneath her fingers, but her mind is reeling.

Somehow, somehow, she manages to grip the arrow, align it just so, pull back the string, and release. To no one’s surprise, the arrow goes flying past the target, landing in a bank of snow just outside the perimeter of coloured lights.

“Oh, that was terrible,” Minnie says, heat flooding her cheeks as she comes back into herself, registers how unfocused she had been. At once, her mind is clear and she knows she might’ve aimed at any random place, so thank Merlin it was at least in the vicinity of the target.

But Poppy’s voice is warm as she says, “it wasn’t bad for your first try, I promise.” Then, offering her another arrow, “here, try again.”

Minnie tries a second time, her mind on the bow and the arrow and the placement of her wrists, and not on the way Poppy’s cheeks are tinged pink from the frosty air. This second try does not go much better than her first. But after a handful more, she’s at least hitting the target. The very edge of the target, but at least it’s something.

They trade off a few times, Poppy’s arrows hitting precisely each time, a satisfying sound as the speed of the release plunges the arrow directly into the wood. Minnie’s results are less impressive, less consistent, with her arrows flying to the side more times than not, but she finds she doesn’t mind.

After a while, Poppy puts away the bow and quiver and pulls a large blanket out from the trunk, spreading it on the ground. She also retrieves a large lidded pitcher of hot chocolate and two mugs. They sit on the blanket, side by side, sipping at the sweet drink, still steaming due to the heat-preserving spell Poppy had placed upon it hours prior.

Once the drink is gone, they lie back and look towards the night sky. It’s cloudy out so they can’t see the stars, but the colourful lights are beautiful in their own regard, casting red and green and purple against the grey-blue clouds above. Minnie hasn’t put her gloves back on, and at one point she feels Poppy’s fingers lightly touch against hers, then pull away. She wants to stretch her own fingers back out, search for Poppy’s hand and grasp it tight, but she doesn’t. Instead, she lies perfectly still, staring straight ahead at the night sky and wishing Poppy would extend her own fingers again, this time without pulling back.

❋

It becomes a routine for them that winter holiday, going out to shoot each night. Sometimes Poppy comes to Minnie’s door, and other times she comes to Poppy’s. It’s unspoken, the way they know it’ll happen. It’s unspoken, the way Minnie finally brings up the courage to pull Poppy’s fingers into her own as they’re lying on the blanket afterwards, staring at the night sky. On the night following Christmas Day, Poppy brings decorated sugar cookies out to enjoy afterwards — with tea this time. On the last night before the students return for their spring term, Minnie grasps Poppy’s fingers tighter, holds on longer. Still, they break apart, as they must, and head back to their rooms at the end of the night. It’s unspoken, the way this can’t continue past this night.

And it doesn’t. The students return, and term begins, with renewed academic vigour for Minnie’s classes and with Quidditch injuries and magical accidents and general malaises for Poppy to attend to. Surprisingly, Minnie sleeps quite well, doesn’t find herself wandering the halls in the moonlight unless on assignment. It’s more than halfway through February when she’s walking through the shadowed corridors on the way to the infirmary. She stands at the doors of Poppy’s office, knocking every so often, for ten minutes, maybe twenty. There’s no answer, but something tells her Poppy is definitively in there and not asleep. Still, she has no choice but to turn on her heel and leave.

They had seen each other transiently this month and a half — the occasional meals they’d both attend, a casual passing of one another in the halls — but Minnie had found it hard to catch Poppy’s eye. Poppy seemed to look just past her, or turn away at Minnie’s glance. When had that started happening? Just after term began, or days, weeks later? Minnie isn’t sure, but now that she’s recognised it, categorised it, she can’t forget it.

She tries to see Poppy several more times, knocks at her door at varying hours of the evening and night, to no response. She even goes out to the archery clearing, just to find an empty space, the charms removed so the ground is covered with fresh, uneven snow, as if it’s any other expanse of the grounds.

Minnie goes back to her room after that, her heart in the pit of her stomach, her fists clenched. She tries to recount every little moment of the last time Poppy and her had been together, looking for the moment where it all went wrong. But she can’t identify it. Sure, she had grasped Poppy’s fingers in hers and stared into her eyes without blinking, but Poppy was right there doing the same. Poppy’s gaze hadn’t wavered. Her grip hadn’t loosened. Minnie sits there and gulps down her firewhiskey, the burn of it down her throat a stark contrast to the damp fabric of her skirt she hadn’t dried off upon returning inside. After emptying two glasses in quick succession, she stands. She doesn’t have to take this.

Five minutes later, she’s knocking at Poppy’s door again, more urgent this time, louder. Unsurprisingly, there’s no answer, but she’s not going to be deterred.

“Look, Poppy, this is ridiculous. You can’t even talk to me? You can’t even look me in the eye? I know you can hear me, and I don’t know what you think I did wrong, but why not tell me? Ignoring me like this, that’s a coward’s move.” She pauses, catches her breath. The next bit is quieter. “And I didn’t take you for a coward.”

There’s a moment where she thinks Poppy will ignore that too. But then, the door opens.

“Come in, Minerva,” Poppy says, her gaze on the floor.

Minnie strides into the room and takes her usual armchair, back rod-straight and arms on either armrest. Poppy brings over tea, but no baked goods. In fact, the air in the room lacks its usual aroma of cinnamon sugar, which Minnie finds disconcerting. She doesn’t say anything, though. She’d said all she had to say on the other side of the door. Now, it’s Poppy’s turn, and Minnie will wait as long as she has to.

Poppy drinks her tea, fiddles with the spoon on her saucer, doesn’t look at Minnie. Minnie doesn’t take her own gaze away. When Poppy’s finished with her tea, she finally goes to speak, in a voice that’s hushed, slow, so uncharacteristic.

“I’m sorry I shut myself away. I just… thought that would be easier.”

“Easier for you? Or easier for me?” Minnie asks. She keeps her voice cold and curt.

“Look, we were toeing at something that… It’s just better that we didn’t go there.”

“And that’s a decision for you to make?”

Poppy doesn’t reply. She’s toying with her spoon still, tracing her fingertips along the edge of her cup. She looks pained. Minnie remains motionless despite the desire to go to her, to subdue Poppy’s fingers with the touch of her own, to wipe that look off her face.

Then Poppy stands, goes to the kitchenette. She returns a minute later, carrying two plates, and on the plates is something that looks just close enough to Minnie’s mum’s honey cake.

The sight of it makes Minnie’s chest constrict, like iron chains against her rib cage. She has to leave, can’t be around Poppy or anyone, she has to be alone. She thinks that she excuses herself, but she can’t actually recall whether her lips formed around the words or she just imagined that they did. She doesn’t know if Poppy tried to stop her. She does know she makes it back to her rooms, starts pacing through them, willing herself to breathe. It shouldn’t matter, it should be meaningless and silly and terribly, utterly inconsequential, but yet she’s jittery all over and letting out short, puffed breaths and feeling like she’s burning up. She can’t stop the tears. She doesn’t even try.

It’s hit her before, but not by something so direct. Usually, it’s a passing thought, a cruelty of her brain to show her an image of her mum, with her unblinking stare — the image she seared into her memory even though it hurts. It felt important, usually feels important, to remember her like this, to have a Wednesday afternoon darkened by the reminder. For some reason, it’s worse to be forced into the memory by something physical, something outside of herself. She has no control over it. She’s helpless to it.

She hears a knock on her door, then Poppy’s voice calling her name. She doesn’t want to answer, doesn’t want Poppy to see her like this, but she won’t stoop to Poppy’s level.

Poppy’s face is stricken as she stands in the doorway, her brows knit together as she notices Minnie’s tears, but Minnie just turns away, walks back through the office and into her living quarters.

Poppy follows, quiet. It’s so unusual for her to be so silent, so careful with her words when usually they just flow out of her, free and simple, and this image of Poppy hurts her once again. The pain of seeing her like this is too much on top of everything else. It’s ill-advised, but she doesn’t stop to think it through any longer, she can’t. She transforms.

Poppy seems surprised by the transformation — and Minnie doesn’t blame her — but she doesn’t say a word. Instead, she allows Minnie to wind around her feet and herd her towards the armchair by the fire. When Poppy sits, Minnie jumps up into her lap, curls up, nudges her little cat forehead against Poppy’s arm until Poppy pets her. Minnie feels warm, and calm, and safe.

After the last tendrils of tension have seeped out of the room and Minnie has melted into the relief of the touch she had so desperately craved but hadn’t allowed herself to vocalise, she jumps off of Poppy’s lap and turns human once more, kneeling on the rug. She looks up at Poppy, afraid she’ll find that foreign look on her face again. But she doesn’t. Poppy still looks a little sad, but the harrowing silence is gone from her expression.

“Are you alright?” she asks, and then doesn’t let Minnie reply. “That’s a stupid thing to say, I’m sorry. Why did you leave? I mean, I could understand why you’d leave, but it didn’t seem like you were going to, and then when you did, it was so abrupt —”

“Poppy,” Minnie says, putting her hand on Poppy’s knee. “I’m… I’ll be ok.” Then she gets up and walks over to her kitchenette, where the paper bag still sits on the counter, practically untouched for eight months. She had eaten some of the cake back in June, but at one point, she had stopped, started to savour it, which means she didn’t dare eat more. She would look in the bag every so often — no mould, no sign of death, as if by magic.

Her back is turned to Poppy, which makes it easier to say, “My mum passed away. In August. Right before the start of term.” She hears Poppy make a sound, but she goes on. “She would make this honey cake… I thought you had made it too.”

“It was panettone, left over from the holidays. I haven’t baked since… I’m so sorry about your mum.”

Minnie goes back to her spot on the rug, kneels by the fire again, by the armchair Poppy is in. “You don’t have to be sorry,” she says. “She was sick a long time; I knew it was coming.” She doesn’t say how knowing it was coming almost made it worse. She doesn’t say how many times she’d wished for a sudden, unexpected death rather than the horribly prolonged goodbye she had to go through. It’s a cruel thought each time it crosses her mind, so she doesn’t share it.

“I knew something had happened,” Poppy says. “Before, I mean. I didn’t know what, you didn’t say anything, but your sleepless nights, your drinking… That’s why I wouldn’t answer the door.”

This takes Minnie by surprise. “What? But that was months ago. You only started ignoring me after the holidays.”

Poppy brings a hand through her hair until her fingers hit the bun at the back of her head. She drops her hand. “I… I was developing feelings for you. But I thought you were just using me to forget your troubles.”

“Using you?” Minnie puts her hand back on Poppy’s knee. “Are you daft, dear?” Poppy makes a startled noise, but Minnie goes on. “I was developing feelings for you too.”

Poppy looks up at that, and her fingers find Minnie’s. She strokes the back of Minnie’s hand, then grips it tight in her own. “You’re not just saying that?” she asks.

“I don’t make a habit of lying,” Minnie says.

Then Poppy is sinking down to her knees too, on the rug across from Minnie, and her second hand finds Minnie’s, so they’re clutching one another, and Poppy’s fingers are curling into the back of Minnie’s hands, and Minnie’s caressing Poppy’s thumbs with her own, and they’re looking into each other’s eyes. And if this is where they had stayed, unmoving, for the rest of the night, Minnie wouldn’t have minded. Because this, here, would be enough. But Poppy is leaning in, and she’s blinking as if to ask if this is ok, and Minnie is giving the smallest of nods, not because she’s unsure, but because she’s more sure than she’s ever been and that scares her a bit. And then Poppy’s lips meet hers and her eyes close and she’s pressing her lips back into Poppy’s soft embrace and she’s losing herself in this moment. Her hands find Poppy’s hair, her cheeks, her neck, and Poppy’s hands are on her shoulders, and then Poppy brings her mouth to Minnie’s chin, her jaw. She’s trailing kisses down to the collar of Minnie’s robes and Minnie is turning her head to give her space. And then she’s bringing Poppy’s face back up to meet hers, and she’s losing her mind, but that’s alright.

❋❋❋❋❋

It’s been a year. The August sun outside the windows of the castle is bright, the air languid with heat. Even the bees seem to buzz slower. But Minnie and Poppy are inside, a cooling charm in the air above Poppy’s kitchenette. Sitting there, watching Poppy gather ingredients and spread them out on the workbench, Minnie feels a little flutter in her chest. It’s not unusual, triggered by the way Poppy will talk to herself under her breath, the way small locks of hair will escape her bun and rest against her neck — the same neck Minnie had breathed little kisses on just that morning as she curled around Poppy’s sleeping form. It’s been six months of that — six months of twining their lives together, of sharing childhood stories and daily sorrows and quiet moments, of touching one another in more ways than one.

In some ways, Minnie feels fundamentally different. There are so many things her mum will never know. That Minnie’s paper made it into Transfiguration Today. That she’d been offered an opportunity to collaborate with a German witch who had been doing similar research of her own. That she’d made it across the Channel and spent a month in Essen — work during the day and wandering the city hand in hand with Poppy at night. At the end of the month, they had rented bikes and made a day of riding through the countryside, unhurried, crossing the border and reaching Venlo by the time the setting sun was painting the sky in shades of appleblossom and saffron and wine. Minnie’s mum will never know that Minnie’s heart still skips a beat when she sees Poppy’s broad, open smile that she only uses with Minnie. But maybe that’s ok. Because despite the new experiences, Minnie is still the same woman her mother last knew. It’s only been a year, and there will be so many more.

“You know how I told you, that first time we talked, that I didn’t bake much?” Minnie asks, coming up to Poppy from behind and looping her arms around Poppy’s waist, resting her chin on Poppy’s shoulder, turning to nestle her forehead against Poppy’s ear. “I lied. I haven’t baked since I was five.”

“Minnie!” Poppy exclaims, and Minnie thrills the way she always does at the way her name — her chosen name, which she’d asked Poppy to use that night they’d confessed their feelings to one another for the first time — sounds on Poppy’s tongue. “I thought you didn’t make a habit of lying.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Minnie laughs. “I needed to fess up before you realised how useless I am.”

“Lucky for you, I don’t think there’s any way for you to mess up this recipe,” Poppy says. “It doesn’t even have a method.”

And it’s true; the sheet from Minnie’s mum’s notebook with the copied out recipe lists only the ingredients, the temperature at which to bake, and an approximate bake time. So Minnie and Poppy set to work, combining everything into a large bowl. Minnie refuses to crack the eggs, but she scoops the flour, getting it all over the bench and her apron and somehow her chin in the process, and Poppy wipes the white residue off and chides her, jokingly, for the mess she makes. Poppy measures out four tablespoons of honey, then offers the spoon to Minnie, placing it into her mouth for Minnie to suck the remaining nectar off. At one point, as Poppy is mixing everything together with a wooden spoon — always foregoing her wand when it comes to baking — Minnie feels a sudden tightness in her chest. It’s been a year. The last of her mum’s honey cake had been thrown away months ago; it still hadn’t turned mouldy, but it had been time. And now, here they are, making it again, and what if it comes out different? What if it doesn’t taste like it did when she was sitting in her mum’s kitchen and drying her soaked handkerchief with her wand and drinking her mum’s tea and having one of the last days with her mum where her mum seemed normal, before the vicious illness inside her blood had corrupted the person she used to be, made itself undeniably known in the frailty of her mum’s body, the sunkenness of her cheeks?

Poppy turns to her, wipes the tears off Minnie’s face with the back of her hand. She smiles a small, sad smile, and Minnie returns it through her tears.

Two hours later, when the kitchenette has been cleaned and fresh tea has been brewed and the cake has been sufficiently cooled, Poppy offers Minnie the knife, and she slides into the top of the tawny confection. Inside, it looks just like it’s supposed to — dense yet crumbly, golden and studded with walnuts and dried cranberries. And when she bites in, it tastes like home.