Minerva McGonagall sat down after the end of the last week of term.  It was good to know that not everything had gone to pot after she had been left in charge.  Not that she didn't miss Albus, like everyone who knew him, she missed him terribly, but there was a certain professional satisfaction to be gained from knowing that she had steered the strange vessel that was Hogwarts safely into its first port.  Not that she would ever be as a good a headteacher as Albus, but she was trying her best.

 

It hadn't been plain sailing, although luckily, after an inital flurry during the first week, before the students came back, Severus had managed to restrain himself to threatening to resign only once a day.  He did, she agreed, have a point.  It had been more than slightly underhanded not to tell him that she was appointing Sirius Black to be the new Transfigurations teacher.  Of course he should have been able to guess, given the number of casualties of the war, the low number of people wanting to teach at Hogwarts and Black's proficiency for the subject.

 

And then having to tell Severus that yes, she had asked Remus Lupin to return as well, which meant, that yes, he had been passed over for the DADA post again.  She could see why he had had problems accepting it.  Even telling him that he was the only one in the country with the qualities needed to be the Potions master at Hogwarts had had no effect.

 

But he had persevered.

 

People were doing that a lot now, persevering, carrying on because there was nothing they could do except carry on.

 

Because if they stopped, they would be forced to remember all the things that had happened, and nobody wanted to do that.

 

No one except Minerva, that is.  She needed to remember or her head would burst.

 

The pensieve had been Albus's last gift to her.  He had given it to her the day he died, saying that she would need it.

 

She hadn't understood.  She still didn't.  Had he known what would happen?  The man always did seem to have strange powers when it came to sensing future danger.

 

Minerva settled down and started to think.  Thought back over what had happened and putting her thoughts in a logical order, she started at the beginning.

 

Getting the school back up and running had begun a week before the start of term.  This in itself was delayed by the cleaning up after the recent unpleasantness.

 

The Ministry, God save their empty little heads, had decided that in order to prevent any more murderous teachers getting their hands on the Boy who still Lived, not to mention all the other Hogwarts pupils, new teachers would be screened using a truth potion and the Mirror of Erised.  Then, remembering the Quirrel episode, they decided that all the teachers had to be screened, no matter how long they had been teaching at Hogwarts or how much service they had performed against Voldemort.

 

So the screening had begun.

 

Have you ever tried giving truth potion to someone whose life had for many years depended on lying?  Well imagine trying to give the foulest smelling medicine you know to a three year old and you have a pretty good idea what it was like giving Severus Snape a truth serum.

 

And then of course he'd had an allergic reaction to it.

 

Not that the other twos trial had gone any better, but that all three of them were still alive was miracle enough.  Theirs was to have been a golden year, the future of the wizarding world, upholders of all that was good and the founders of a second golden age.

 

Of their entire year, these three were the only ones not dead, imprisoned or incurable.  And it couldn't have happened to three more unlikely men; a werewolf, a spy and an escaped, now pardoned, prisoner. 

 

They were always the three least likely to survive.  They were the ones whose cards were supposed to have been marked by the Almighty.

 

Not James, because James was, well he was James.  Brilliant on the Quidditch pitch, proficient at every subject.  Despite this he was charming, kind natured, he was a joy to teach.

 

Or Lucius Malfoy, may he rot, he had always had all the right connections, even during his time at Hogwarts.  If things had worked out the way you would have expected them to then he shouldn't have been in Azakaban right now.

 

But no, Remus, Severus and Sirius were all that was left.

 

Minerva hoped never to see that mirror again.  It showed your heart's desire and for three men like that there was so much to desire.

 

Severus had imaginary classes that loved the subject, listened attentively and liked him too.  Remus had a normal life and walks near the lake by the light of the full moon.  And Sirius, Sirius's was the most heartbreaking of them all.

 

He wanted things back how they were.  Him and Remus, James and Peter, young again, arm in arm, smiling, laughing, joking.

 

But those times were never coming back.  Neither was Rolanda.  A fall from a broom while being hunted down by Voldemort's minions had seen to that.  While she might recover from the multiple fractures of leg and pelvis, she'd never ride a broom again, and Minerva didn't think Rolanda would ever recover from that.

 

They'd signed Oliver Wood up as a temporary replacement but Minerva hoped to convince Gringotts to let them have Bill Weasley for the year.  Not that Oliver wasn't up to scratch, he was, but she didn't want to completely wreck his chances with Puddlemere United.  If he didn't get into the first team now he never would.

 

And Oliver deserved it after all that had happened.  His innocent love for the sport was one of the few things that kept everyone's spirits up.  Some curmudgeons thought his continual discussion of the finer points of Quidditch were a pointless distraction, but that was it exactly, it helped take people's minds away from what was happening, if only for a couple of minutes a day.

 

The students had been affected of course, how could they not, with barely any of them escaping without someone close to them dying.  They were coping remarkably well.  The littlest ones, the tiny scared first years, clung on to Professor Flitwick.  He was small like them, so, they reasoned, he would understand.

 

Parvati was helped through the loss of Padme by Sybil Trelawney.  Sybil being of any help whatsoever was a shock to Minerva, but help she did.  It probably wasn't enough, but how do you console someone who has lost their twin.

 

Severus was giving extra lessons in everything to Neville and managing to be civil.  Even if he did keep calling the poor lad Peter.  Neville didn't understand, which was a good thing.  Minerva didn't want to believe that Neville had it in him to be another Wormtail, but she could understand why Snape was trying to make certain of it not happening.

 

Remus looked after Gryffindor having been made head of House.  He was a great success, even if a few parents and a certain member of staff complained.

 

Sirius had sought out Draco.  Minerva had been worried when she'd heard; surely even Black wouldn't harm one of the students.  Even he couldn't be that crazy.  She needn't have worried, Sirius had put Draco under his protection, he was determined to save Malfoy from Azkaban.

 

How all three men had changed.

 

She remembered their school days clearly.  Minerva had been made head of Gryffindor the year that they arrived and her first lesson was with her new Gryffindor first years.  That was who Black, Lupin, Pettigrew and Potter were, they were her lovely Gryffindor boys who would finally bring the Cup back to Gryffindor.

 

Her next lesson had been with the Slytherin first years, the standouts being an imperious white figure and a clump of darkest black next to him.

 

Everyone in that year showed such remarkable abilities.  It was usual to have maybe ten pupils who excelled in one or two subjects; it was rarer to have pupils who excelled across the board.  To have a whole year that did was unheard of.

 

She recalled how everyone rejoiced, saying the after-effects of Grindelwald's war were gone.  The only person who didn't was Professor Dumbledore.  He had been worried that it would all go to their heads, that something terrible would happen.

 

How she wished they had listened to him.

 

But they hadn't and everything had been destroyed.

 

This was her chance to stop the pattern being repeated again, to really see the start of the next golden age.

 

The mistakes of the past would be consigned there for ever more.

~~~~