The Bear and Barnacle

Minerva's brewing a cup of tea in the kitchen, as is usual for her in the morning, listening absently to the beginnings of morning traffic. She likes this place better in the less crowded winter, she must admit. She taps the kettle with her wand to make steam hiss from the spout, pours the boiling water over the tea strainer, adds milk and sugar and turns to go to the desk she's finally moved into her decidedly Spartan lounge, since Severus was apparently suffering for not being able to cook around her books.

And barely retains her hold on the teacup when she falls gasping against the counter. It feels quite literally like her heart misses a beat.

A small girl wearing a Gryffindor scarf over a slightly-too-small flannel nightgown is curled up in one of the kitchen chairs, her knees tucked to her chest, her carrot-red hair falling around her shoulders, her brown eyes enormous in a pale, freckled face.

I always said Weasleys would be the death of me, she thinks in a distant cynical part of her brain as she tries to get herself breathing again, and more dimly yet, one day I'll have to admit I'm going to someday be too old for all this. Breathing. Setting down her teacup. More breathing. It's slowly becoming possible again. Now work on blinking. Pulse will take care of itself.

She still sounds strained and frightened when she speaks, but it's under control. "Ginny? Ginny Weasley?"

The girl looks as frightened as Minerva feels. "Professor McGonagall?"

Minerva nods, and sets down the teacup before she crushes it. She's already cracked the handle with the force of her clutching hand, she notices, and she's bleeding a little. "Yes, Miss Weasley. Don't worry; everything is fine." It's not fine, and it may show; comfort does not come naturally to Minerva. Ginny is small, young. Eleven, isn't she? Of course, yes, bloody well eleven. And the scarf and socks with the nightgown, it must have been winter. "One moment and then we'll sort things out."

She returns to the sink to wash away the trickle of blood. She'll call Victoire -- no, Victoire is heavily pregnant and might still be resting at such an early hour. She's the only direct family Ginny has here, but with the baby -- well, Ginny can spend a few nights with Dora until they work something out. Minerva will sort matters somehow.

But when she turns around once more, bloody hand pressed into a folded cloth, Ginny is off the chair and standing huddled in the mote-filled beam of morning sunlight that streams through the kitchen window. And the dust that dances in the light dances through her. The brilliant red of her hair, the bold stripes of the scarf, the pale rose of the nightgown and even the charcoal gray of falling-down knee socks are clearly apparent, but Ginny is transparent as any ghost, bisected by the warm light.

She raises her head, and her eyes appear curiously pale and blank. She smiles sweetly. "Dear Tom says hello too," she tells Minerva.

Minerva tries very hard not to faint dead away.

The usual disaster area of journals, yearly catalogues, parcels of ingredients, and work orders comes, today, with a grubby, much-handled, once cream-white envelope that makes Severus want to burn it away, starting with the stupid, ornate seal and ending at the hands of the senders, using just the ice-hot daggers from his eyes which he keeps especially to shoot at people. Who deserve it. Like whoever sent him an official envelope. Even the people who can't transfigure one should know how to make an ordinary one from paper and glue, and have access to both. It is to snarl, yea, and possibly bite heads off in the return post if they bleeding well manage to deserve a reply.

Because why would he (that is to say, Veris P. Braendon-Clayborn) be getting letters from Hogwarts? He was home-schooled. He has no connections there except for Slughorn, through his late cousin Severus, who had made Slughorn promise to use the official Slytherin stationary on all harmless outgoing mail, that people might begin to dread it less again (best not to ask when this promise was required of him, mind), and the occasional owl from Poppy--again, on the infirmary's stationary--ordering potions. Neither of them would send such fingerprinted mail, and the occasional idle note from Filius or Pomona is, at his request, on unmarked paper, in unaffiliated envelopes.

( So, clearly someone needs to die. It's obvious. One or two someones. )

"I'm still considering, you lantern-eyed, infinitesimally elephantine piece of irritatingly obsequious misery," he snarls at the first letter in frustration. Although it's tempting to put it up on the wall for a dartboard, he leaves it out for Minerva to see. The two questions it raises do rather invite her input, and this is as good an excuse to bring them up as any. Not to mention potentially finding out out whether she knew the elves all call her Mistress Queen (Mrs. Norris not qualifying for the title, having been long since spayed).

"What a cozy little triumvirate of house-elves, Snivvy!"

His face doesn't twitch a single muscle, but there's nothing he can do about the color going out of it. He was never going to have to hear that loud, jovial, smirk of a voice again. Black--Sirius--had shown him that he wouldn't. There are not expletives foul enough. He will not turn.

It jolts him upright when he hears it- the quiet tinkling of a metal windchime. Yet another damn windchime. And he knows just where it's coming from too. The neighbors to the south of them, an elderly couple named Fitzwilliam, have some damn fetish for the things. Perhaps it's their age that has prevented them from taking the hint that the only acceptable windchime is a wooden one, all hollow clunks. That one still hangs in their back garden in the arbor over their breakfast table. The others have all disappeared. Not that Zel has any idea how, of course.

But there it is again and Zel's back goes ramrod-straight. It's just too damn close to the sound of Rezo's walking staff, metal rings clinking to tell others that a blind man was approaching, metal rings that had rung far too often against the side of Zel's head or across his back. If he was lucky that would be the only thing the sound of the staff heralded, but if not....

Zel still heard that staff in his nightmares, his body tensing with every remembered or imagined ring. He'd be damned if he had to listen to it (or anything even remotely close to it) when he was awake too. Growling under his breath, he waited until the couple went out in their shuffling steps on their evening walk then he levitated over the fence between the two properties and took the cheery bronze sun and its dangling accompaniment of clouds and vindictively melted it in his hand. The twisted but finally silent mass of metal was then tossed with a quiet word of offering into the ocean. Deep-Sea Dolphin should at least appreciate the way it sparkles.