Title: With You Always Characters: Minerva McGonagall Rating: G Summary: Minerva attends a Halloween Feast. Notes:nimrod_9 wanted Halloween traditions, pumpkins, graveyards, loneliness. Many thanks to my excellent beta, tetleythesecond.
Oidhche Shamhna = Scottish Gaelic for the Celtic Samhain/New Year's festival.
~*~*~*~
Tonight is Oidhche Shamhna, the sixth since the war's end. Minerva waits until the students, satisfied and sleepy after their Halloween feast, are safely abed; then she leaves the castle for her own celebration. Or vigil--she's not sure what to call it. She knows what he'd call it, though: foolish, sentimental, proof that she's in her dotage at last.
The air is bitter as she crosses the grounds, her way lit by two grinning jack-o'-lanterns from the Feast. They bob alongside her, part beacon, part joke she knows he'll understand. He hates jack-o'-lanterns. "The sort of silliness that will end up laughing on my grave," he'd snarled every year.
She passes Albus's gleaming tomb and reaches the fence that encloses this other resting place, this mound with its small, flat headstone. Casting a warming charm, she sits and unpacks her basket, filling two plates with food and pouring two goblets of wine as she remembers the words her grandmother spoke at every Shamhna: "Set a place for yourself and a place for the dead who are with you always."
Her little feast floats before her. Taking one goblet, Minerva touches it lightly to the other. "SlĂ inte, Severus," she says.