Title: Determination Pairing: Septima Vector/Minerva McGonagall Rating: PG-13 Warnings: age gap, hints of D/s and mild bondage Summary: On Samhain night, it's not just the universe that is disordered. Notes: The prompt asked for "forbidden love, professors, cross-gen, femmeslash, D/s." And I wanted to give you some mathematical/scientific Septima, too, dexstarr; hope you enjoy it! Many thanks to my lovely beta, therealsnape.
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On Samhain night, the Veil of the universe parts, and the truths we think we know dismantle themselves. On Samhain, the dead can become the living, and the living can be reborn. Each change changes another. Samhain is the Uncertainty Principle embodied, the night the universe determinedly proves its indeterminacy.
Septima Vector lives for it.
She lives for universal Samhain because it brings the world to her doorstep; her arithmancer's heart is tied to these ancient rituals that shape and break reality.
And she lives for her particular Samhain because it brings her beloved to her arms; her woman's heart is tied as firmly to the Headmistress as the Headmistress will soon let herself be tied to Septima's bedposts.
They come together rarely, for Headmistress McGonagall is as predictable as Isaac Newton wrongly believed the world to be, and so she worries about the irregularities: about sleeping with someone on her staff, about the forty years that lie between her and her Arithmancy Mistress.
But on Samhain, the immutable laws shift, the Veil folds in upon itself, and the Headmistress becomes Minerva, a woman warm and wanting, her hair disordered, her rules broken, her eternity bound by Septima's determined hands.