A/N: Finis

"Grandmother?"

Wilhelmina Tuft takes the measure of the two young people standing watch outside the small chamber from which she has emerged. The male is dark, in his mid-thirties, extremely tall, and dressed in traditional robes. If he is the Shacklebolt of this era, he cannot have been in office for long. The one calling her grandmother is female, younger, fair-skinned and sandy-haired, and much too thin. They have both forgotten to confiscate her time-turner. At least, Wilhelmina assumes this is their purpose. It would be were she running this department.

"Am I, dear?" She replies to the witch, "How lovely."

Wilhelmina is prepared for changes in customs and social mores. So the witch's feral whoop of triumph, complex hand-slapping ritual shared with her counterpart, and the words, "I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!" Yelled at top volume do not discomfit her. She pats her hair into place and checks her own clothing for presentability.

The door to this anteroom opens.

"Minister!" Exults her descendant, "Didn't I tell you? I told you! I told you there is no way Wilhelmina Tuft died accidentally of a bloody chocolate allergy!"

"Language, Fiona," the wizard replies, gravely. Then, at the youngster's crestfallen expression, adds, "So you did." His voice is basso profundo. His gaze has remained fixed upon her. Wilhelmina is glad she had a moment to compose herself before his arrival.

1958

There.

Her quill has tattooed the final word of her promised memoir into the parchment. When it is dry, she lays the sheaf before her on the French Provincial desk, closes her eyes and calms her mind.

She stands.

Her hands are out. Her palms are down, hovering over the paper. In her mind's eye, she can see him, even after all these years, an image perfect in every detail. A man perfect in every detail.

Antoine Shacklebolt.

Utterly, completely impossible. She never said a word. No consequence of voicing her desire could be less than disastrous. But, oh, desire it was. From the first moment he strode into the Ministry in 1939, trailing an entourage of young American wizards behind him, he has entirely defined Wilhelmina's understanding of man. Six and a half feet tall, broad shouldered, somehow showing hard muscle even draped in flowing royal blue robes of soft cotton, he was the blackest human being Wilhelmina had ever seen.

She stopped, dumbfounded, halfway across the tiled floor. He walked right up to her and said…something. She has no memory of what it was. She only knows that a lifetime of believing herself indifferent to sex was blown into millions of small pieces.

She lets herself remember how the place between her thighs sent a spike of flame to burn rational thought right out of her head. In that moment, the memoir glows a bright, blinding orange.

Then the light dims as the paper sinks into the surface of the desk. The hard finish of the wood flows back over the rupture like honey flowing over buttered bread. She removes a small glass bead from a chain around her neck and crushes it into the surface, shattering the thin wall of glass with her thumb and mingling her own blood with the drop of his that the bead had contained. It, too, disappears below the surface of the desk.

1998

Kingsley Shacklebolt never laughed so hard in his life. Indeed, in the past few years, he never imagined laughing again, let alone laughing until tears come to his eyes. Oh, my. That is perfect. That is absolutely perfect.

It is love at first sight. The house elves, however, cower in a corner at his outburst, terrified of his laughter and, he realizes with a great sobering stab of anger, terrified after two years of abuse at the hands of the sham government they have been serving.

"Oh, little ones," he says, beaming at them. "Thank you. You have made me so happy. This is exactly what I've always wanted."

The astonished relief in those large, luminous eyes, the shy pleasure – pride – in their bearing as they salute and pop back to their own domain – that is the entire point of power, he believes. Power is for lifting.

And he sits himself down at the tiny French Provincial desk. It is the only piece of office furniture left in Ministry stores that doesn't have some kind of curse or lingering residue of dark magic upon it. In fact, it seems to light up the room. It Isn't until six months after he first sits down that he finds he's had a serious papercut. And something wholly unexpected happens.

Now

He has told himself hundreds of times, over the years, that a few historical photos and one slim volume of memoirs cannot accurately capture the whole truth of a witch. Even if the photos do show a ripe and womanly witch of compelling calm and easy natural authority. Even if the slim volume is the one piece of literature he has read more often and more thoroughly than any other. Even if the blank surprise of finding it gives way to delighted surprise at the gracious, self-deprecating wit of the woman. Even if he wonders at her steely resolve, her relentless sense of personal responsibility, and the knowledge that she has jettisoned the famous public persona and written something specifically, deeply, intimately for him.

He prays he has read it correctly.

His goddaughter's triumphant voice comes cackling from the other side of the antechamber door. Quickly, he checks his reflection in the shiny black tiles, makes the sudden decision to remove his hat, does the silly grimacing smile that happens when checking the teeth for debris, and deals with his nerves by shaking out his arms and hands. He clears his throat.

He opens the door.

It takes her a few moments to remember to breathe. Then he is bending over her outstretched hand and lightly brushing his full lips over her shaking fingers. After that, she has to remind herself not to breathe quite so hard.

"Madam Tuft," he says, "How I've looked forward to this moment."

"Thank you," she manages.

He is smiling. The descendant is beaming at them both. The wizard next to her remembers to say, "Will Madam Tuft be needing accommodation, Minister?"

"Yes, Thomas," says the Minister for Magic. "She'll be taking over Madam Granger's office, I think."

And in a few months, if all goes well, Madam Granger will be taking over mine.

He offers her an arm, pulls her small hand through to rest on his elbow and covers it with his own large, warm hand. "You'll not get your old desk back, however," he mock-whispers to her as they move together down the black tiled hall, "I love it far too much."

Minerva will never say it aloud to anyone, but the longest wait of her long life is between those moments when Hermione first emerges from her library stacks and the moment Ministry medi-wizards confirm that the metastasized sands of time no longer accelerate the aging of her cells. And that is because, she understands, this is the first time in a long time she hasn't had a preview of the most likely outcome. She is free. Freedom has its price.

So does destiny, of course.

When they are alone at last in their bedroom - the sun streaming over the Bombay chest, Minerva sitting on the thick window ledge enjoying the warmth and quiet, Hermione sitting on the bed, propped up with pillows, clean and with a reasonable suggestion of pink returned to her cheeks - Hermione says, "Well, you may have revealed your last secret, but you're still fascinating."

Not quite all, but close enough for Ministry work, Minerva thinks. She says, "You've acquired enough for both of us, I think."

"I shan't keep them long."

Out on the loch, Minerva's squid is performing a graceful water ballet in broad daylight. There will be some interesting postings on the children's Muggle machines tonight. She stretches the muscles in her neck and shoulders, hoping that the week's knots may work themselves out in a year or two. "How do you feel?" She asks.

There is a significant silence during which a long, slow smile spreads across Hermione's face. Minerva suppresses the grin threatening her own lips and hugs her right knee tighter to her chest. Hermione pats the bed beside her, absently caressing the soft tartan bed cloth in the same motion. "Here," she says.

Minerva uncoils her long limbs and makes the descent from her perch one deliberate step at a time. This sort of thing requires planning at her age. The soft bed feels heavenly when she's finally comfortably arranged upon it. Everything smells new, today. The open windowpane lets the breeze ruffle their clothing and blow grass, sedge, sweet pine and briny water over the room. Birdsong carries long distances on a small island. Wood doves converse in the eaves just outside the window.

They are wrapped around one another in one swift, practiced motion, each knowing where she fits in the familiar joining.

Minerva's slow, deliberate brushing of lips upon lips, her delay of opening to more intimate contact until she knows her body will no longer give her the choice, the gently patient play of her tongue tasting Hermione's, savoring each moment of the velvety texture, the tug-of-war between who's over and who is under, who's in and who's out, the retreat, careful nipping of tender lips, and the going back for more – these things keep confidential the raw, full-body, desperate need possessing Minerva at this moment. It must be, she thinks, the hands that give her away. Because her fingers clutch at Hermione with an almost convulsive will of their own. They grasp and cling at hip and shoulders in ways that must bruise.

There is, in the library downstairs, a book. In that book, there is a room. Book and room are protected by elf magic known only to the blessed. When she is strong enough, Hermione has promised to show that room to Minerva and to tell her of the shelter and belonging she has found there.

There is, in the library at Hogwarts, a book. In that book, there is a pensieve. Book and pensieve are protected by elf magic known only to the blessed. When she is strong enough, Hermione has promised to show that pensieve to Minerva, and to do with those memories what Minerva wills.

Right now, Hermione has neither strength nor will for anything but this.

The hands on her body are sending Hermione messages that Minerva is too frightened to tell. No, that isn't quite right. Hermione takes control of the kiss, forces her tongue into Minerva's open mouth, rolls Minerva back into the pillows and lifts herself up enough to pin Minerva beneath her with one bent knee. There is token resistance. But the moan Minerva breathes into Hermione's hungry mouth says everything.

It isn't that Minerva is too frightened to tell. Fear is the message itself.

Fear, and the need that is Minerva at her most elemental. Hermione pulls away from the kiss just far enough to focus on the face of the woman beneath her.

"Hey," Hermione says, "I know you."

Minerva swallows. Hermione sees in her eyes the words trying to form, and then falling away upon discovery that they are not up to this task. Minerva moves her center against Hermione's insistent thigh. Hermione increases the pressure and attaches her lips to the soft flesh at juncture of shoulder and neck, licking and sucking and biting in the way that pushes Minerva's pain threshold well beyond its workaday limit, the way that turns a sting into intense, exquisite pleasure.

Minerva whimpers.

Hermione pauses, drops a light kiss on the mark she has made, and makes Minerva see her once again. "Say it," she tells her. "Stop holding back."

"Jane," Minerva whispers.

"Yes," Hermione says, and rewards her with another kiss at the base of the neck, there on the other side. She tastes the salty sweat as she draws patterns in the skin with the tip of her tongue. She feels the racing pulse as her lips close around a thrumming vein. When she lets her teeth scrape the soft skin and sink in, not quite enough to break the flesh, she feels Minerva shiver along the entire length of her body. "And?"

"Hermione," Minerva says. Her voice is dry and rasping as her breathing becomes a kind of pant when Hermione pushes a hipbone rhythmically against the spot where Minerva's clitoris lies straining against layers of encumbering cloth.

"Yes," Hermione says. "Put your hands above your head and hold onto the headboard."

"I want to touch you," Minerva husks.

"You want me," Hermione tells her, pausing in her thorough tasting of one earlobe, "To take you."

Minerva does not answer. She closes her eyes and strokes Hermione's back.

"Tell me," Hermione whispers into her ear.

There is a war being fought in the body of the woman under her.

"You know you can," Hermione tells her.

And there is, after some few moments of rigid anxiety, a great exhalation of held breath and a relaxation of tension almost liquid, warm and flowing, as Minerva McGonagall softens and spreads beneath her. "I know," Minerva sighs. She moves her hands above her head and wraps long fingers around the rail of a headboard, "Take me," she says.

The sudden, ragged intake of breath shakes Minerva's body like a small earthquake. It seems that Minerva did not know it was coming, nor the brief cloudburst of tears that immediately follows.

Hermione, however, is prepared.

"That's my girl," she says. In the next moment, Minerva's clothing is elsewhere, and Hermione is looking at the full, glorious length of her, her long legs spread against the tartan coverlet, her breasts soft and heavy, falling away from the livid starbursts of scar tissue on her chest. Her throat is exposed, her chin held back, her normally thin lips full and puffy from hard kisses, slightly parted and drawn back from her teeth in a hiss of pleasure at the cool breeze on her suddenly exposed body. Her nipples harden and darken against the milk-white skin.

It is the most beautiful sight Hermione has ever seen. It always is, somehow, every time. She lets Minerva live in this moment long enough to feel it in her bones, stretched naked beneath her, utterly surrendered, safe, giving herself away.

It ends, as these things almost always do, far from where they thought it would.

Minerva comes keening, muscles clamped hard around Hermione's four fingers, clutched close, mouth full of softly swollen nipple. There is much holding, then, and rocking, followed by a washup, then a cup of tea and some Battenberg cake. And when Minerva feels herself all put to rights, she lights a fire in the little stove at the corner of the room, spreads Hermione out on the bed, and worships her sex with mouth and tongue and lips and teeth through an orgasm that draws itself out over so many successive crests that Hermione finally declares she never wants to see another orgasm as long as she lives and is there any good stew to be had in this wretched heap of stones.

Neither one knows what will happen next, but they've enough to be getting on with.