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hphalloween_mod (hphalloween_mod) wrote in hp_halloween, @ 2017-10-31 09:25:00

Halloween Gift for Mctabby

Gift for: mctabby



From: magnetic_pole


Title: Glimpse of a Black Cat

Pairing: Minerva McGonagall, Albus Dumbledore

Rating: G

Summary: Albus told her to wait.

Notes: Thanks to mctabby for several inspiring and creepy prompts, to this community for continuing to scare us, and to the mods for keeping it all fun nevertheless.







The privet hedges lurk—shadowy, mysterious. She treads on dead autumn leaves that crackle under her paws.

She shivers. It’s dawn. The veil is still thin. Recent deaths hang, palpable. Inexplicably, she catches an echo of Lily’s voice in the street. Her whiskers twitch, her ears rotate, tracking the faint sound.

This is it: 4, Privet Drive.

She jumps on the garden wall. Stretches, front paws extended, tail in the air. She settles on her haunches.

To wait.

As Albus instructed.

Minerva McGonagall is not superstitious. Her cat form does not compromise her ability to think clearly—if anything, she’s more perceptive.

But this morning Privet Drive bristles with menace. Voldemort is dead, Albus said so—but across the street a black cat slips through the hedge.

Hours pass. She tracks each Muggle who passes, wary.

Inside the house, the toddler is wailing. The mother purrs into its ear, sickly sweet. Something is wrong here—yet just down in the high street, wizards are celebrating.

The crack of apparition startles her near midnight. She transforms.

It’s Albus, baby in arms, smiling, serene.

Oh.

Oh.

That’s the danger she senses: one final sacrifice.

The war is not yet over. Not quite.