"Lift Your Glasses High" (Minerva, Aberforth)

[friendshipmods]

Author: anonymous
Prompt/Prompt Author: "Minerva, Aberforth. They must have known each other, what with Minerva and Albus working so closely. I'd love to see a friendship between these two." -- from therealsnape.
Title: Lift Your Glasses High
Characters: Aberforth Dumbledore, Minerva McGonagall, Elphinstone Urquart
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Word Count: ~4200
Summary: On the night of Albus's funeral, Minerva pays a visit to Aberforth.
Author's Notes: Though there's much about it I dislike, I've borrowed liberally from the Pottermore backstory for Minerva McGonagall. A thousand thanks to my kind beta and to the mods of this fine fest.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He'd known she would come, but it was after midnight before Aberforth finally heard the distinctive sound of her footsteps outside his stable. Staccato-sharp and brisk as always, no matter what the hour or occasion. Ab would have smiled -- if the situation had been different or if he'd been a smiling sort of man.

But since it wasn't and he wasn't, he merely paused in mucking out the goat pens and waited as she opened the door and stepped into the warm, animal-scented space.

"Aberforth," she said.

"Minerva," he answered. The fact that she seemed a little fuzzy and dark reminded him that his spectacles were spotted with hay dust, and he quickly wiped them on his sleeve so that he could see her properly.

Then the reason she'd looked dark became clear: she was still wearing her sweeping, formal black dress robes, even though the day's official ceremonies had been over for hours -- which probably meant that she'd only just now finished dealing with all the codswallop that accompanied a major state funeral held on Hogwarts' grounds.

And not just any funeral: it was Albus Dumbledore's funeral, wasn't it? The fucking Greatest Wizard of Them All. Or so the world would have it.

Aberforth could just imagine the Ministry red tape and the pompous officials Minerva had been facing today, not to mention the hysterical parents and the unruly children and the foreign big-wigs. And centaurs. And merpeople. And Malfoys. Plus an inconsolable Hagrid. No wonder Min hadn't taken time to change.

She must have been exhausted, but she didn't look it, standing there tall and straight in the torchlight, her stern face softening only when Balthazar, the black stallion, nickered a greeting to her. "Hello, old boy," she said.

"He's glad to see you," Ab told her. "It's been a while."

He meant no criticism by the remark, and knew she would hear none. It had been a hell of a past couple of years; she'd had precious little time for visits.

Minerva reached over to scratch Balty's ears and then turned back to Ab. She made no move to hug him or to offer any other support beyond her presence, and he wouldn't have expected her to. Not a demonstrative woman, Minerva, which was one of the things Ab liked about her. Too few people these days had any idea how to keep themselves to themselves. No sense of propriety at all, most of 'em. They'd cry and kiss and hug and tell you their most intimate stories at the drop of a knut.

Not Minerva McGonagall, though. Oh, she'd give you the sharp side of her tongue quick enough if you irritated her; her temper was legendary. But otherwise, she wasn't prone to a lot of emotional display. Even when her beloved husband Elphinstone had died, she'd kept her grief for her private moments.

Albus always said her restraint was due to her Muggle religious upbringing, but Ab didn't buy that. You were what you were, and the rest was just excuses.

Take Albus, for instance -- he'd had a damned high opinion of himself since the day he was born. Everything else came from that: his youthful ambition, his attraction to Grindelwald, his disregard of Ariana, the lot. The events of Albus's life were the result of the way he was, not the cause.

So no, Ab wasn't sold on the idea of Minerva's personality being the result of Muggle religion. As far as he could tell, she was just a sensible woman -- aside from her admiration of Albus -- and like as not, she'd been born that way. Still, if Albus was right, and Muggle religion really did encourage Minerva's sort of reserve, then Ab reckoned Calvinism was probably.a good thing. The world could use more direct, no-nonsense people like Minerva.

Just now, she was giving him that see-right-through-you stare that had struck terror into the hearts of generations of schoolchildren. To Ab, it just meant that she was being serious.

"You came," she said. "To the funeral."

"Aye. Thought about skipping it, but. . ."

She nodded. "But. Quite."

They needed no further words. She understood. Ab had resented Albus -- judged him, was furious with him, often hated him. But. . .

But. They were brothers.

"Albus would have been glad you were there," Minerva said.

Ab shrugged. It didn't really matter to him whether Albus would have been pleased or not. He'd gone because it was the right thing to do. In addition to being brothers, he and Albus had been fighting for a just cause. And when a man was struck down in pursuit of that cause, you went to his funeral. Those were the rules. Minerva knew them as well as anyone.

She was standing with her eyes closed now, and Ab was reminded anew how tired she must be.

"Sit down, girl," he said. "Even tough Gryffindors have to relax the stiff upper lip eventually."

It was a measure of her exhaustion -- or of how thoroughly her world had been upended -- that she didn't rise to this usually infallible bait, but simply nodded again and Transfigured a feed bucket into a straight-backed wooden chair. Not one for coddling herself, Minerva. Not like Albus with his cushiony chintz settees. Ab approved.

Still, he worried about her. She'd be pushing herself too hard, of course. Always did, even with little things, and for something like Albus's death and their world at war. . .well, there was no telling how far she'd drive herself.

"You need a good rest, girl," he said.

She looked up and smiled slightly. "I'm not a girl, Mr Dumbledore, and I'll thank you to remember that."

Ah, that was more like it. Those had been her words the first time he met her, all those years ago, when Albus hired her as the new Transfiguration professor. She'd come to the Hog's Head to harangue Ab about serving students, and he'd taken offense.

"Any underage brat tells you he's been served alcohol at this pub is a liar," he'd told her. "And if they ain't underage, I can serve anybody I please, student or no student. Now you go back up to your poncy school where you belong. I don't need a toffee-nosed girly like you coming in here to tell me how to run my business."

Her eyes had flashed behind her prim spectacles; her temper had been her trademark even then. "When your business involves students, it becomes my business," she'd snapped. "Mine and the headmaster's." She'd drawn herself up proudly as she spoke Albus's title. "I'll come in here if I need to."

She'd turned on her heel and stalked out, pausing at the door to say, "And, Mr Dumbledore? I'm not a girl. I'll thank you to remember that."

Later, after he'd got to know her, they'd turned these words into a long-running joke between them. But at the time, she'd got up his nose something fierce. That's all he needed, Ab had thought then -- some stuck-up protégé of Albus's swanning around like she owned the place.

And when he'd seen her with his brother in Hogsmeade a few weeks later, he'd rolled his eyes at the look of hero-worship on the girl's face as she and Albus walked together down the street. Typical. His damned brother wasn't content just to run one of the most important wizarding institutions in Britain -- no, he had to make everyone love him, too.

Ab had almost felt sorry for Broom-Up-the-Bum Girl (as he had called her in his mind before he managed to remember her name). If she were foolish enough to fall in love with Albus, she'd be in for a rude awakening when she found out what sort of nancy-boy he really was.

Well, it wasn't Ab's problem, of course, but something had moved him to have a word with Albus about it the next time they talked.

"I see you've got yourself a new little dolly-bird to worship you," he'd said, as they had taken their pints into Ab's sitting room one night after last call.

Albus had twinkled at him in that way Ab hated and had shaken his head. "I don't think I follow you, brother," he said.

"That black-haired girl, your new Transfiguration mistress," Ab said. "Seems to think the sun shines out of your arse. More fool she. I saw her walking with you the other day, and if she's not in love with you already, she's close to it."

"Oh, surely not," Albus had said, smiling with his usual maddening smugness.

Though Ab's gut burned -- Merlin, but he hated the cavalier way Albus played with people's feelings -- he forced himself to give a careless shrug. "It's nothing to me, of course," he said. "I daresay that's what you want, anyway, silly little girls getting their knickers in knots over you."

Albus had burst out laughing. "I'm sorry, Aberforth," he'd said finally, wiping his eyes. "But the idea of Minerva McGonagall as a 'silly little girl'. . . " He chuckled again, but looked up to say, quite seriously, "Minerva is as strong a woman as you'll ever meet. Don't underestimate her."

Then the damned twinkle had returned. "You should get to know her; I think you'd like her. She doesn't suffer fools any more than you do."

"She suffers you," Ab had retorted, and Albus had laughed again.

"That she does," he said. "As I say, she's a strong woman."

"Girl," Ab had insisted then, and he said it again now to Minerva.

"You'll always be a girl to me, missy." It had been his answer to her these forty years, and he could tell by the way her shoulders finally relaxed that she found their routine as comforting as he did.

They'd developed other routines over the years, too, and he started the next one with a wave of his wand and a muttered, "Accio."

The bottle of Ogden's unearthed itself from the hay bale where Ab had stashed it and floated to his hand. He didn't ask Minerva if she wanted any; that went without saying.

A second Accio brought him two tumblers, a concession Minerva had demanded early in their association -- no drinking out of the bottle for Miss McGonagall. He kept the glasses here in the stable just for her. Her visits might be rare these days, but no matter; she knew she could always count on old Aberforth when she needed a stiff drink. And not the rotgut he served out at the bar, either; this was the good stuff.

"Say when," he grunted, and wasn't surprised when she not only let him pour her a double, but made no comment as he kept the bottle at his side instead of sending it back to its hiding-place.

The last time Ab had seen Minerva drink more than a single shot at one sitting had also been on the night of a funeral -- Elphinstone's.

On that night, they'd been in her Hogsmeade cottage, the one she'd shared with Elph for the three short years of their marriage. The wake had been over, the well-meaning friends had finally gone home -- Minerva'd practically had to push a concerned Pomona Sprout out the door -- but she'd asked Ab to stay.

She'd brought out a bottle of 25-year-old firewhisky then, and Ab had started to say that she needn't waste it on someone like him, a man used to drinking in the Hog's Head, but he stopped himself just in time. The Macallan had been Elphinstone's favorite, and Ab realised that Minerva had wanted him to stay so that they could share a private toast to the man who had meant so much to both of them.

Elph had been Aberforth's best friend in Hogsmeade. They were an unlikely pair, Ab was the first to admit it: the shaggy-bearded, shady barkeep and the dapper, well-spoken old man. But their friendship had been important to Ab.

The first time Elph had appeared in the Hog's Head, Ab had been prepared to give him short shrift; toffs like that ruined the pub's reputation. When Mundungus Fletcher had sidled over to Elph, no doubt to see if he could offload some dodgy merchandise, Ab had pretended not to notice. Might as well let Dung do his work for him and run the posh git out of the place.

But Elphinstone had surprised them. He'd drawn his wand and cast a impediment curse on Fletcher before Ab had even seen him move. The shocked look on Dung's frozen face was priceless; he'd been stopped with his wand outstretched, caught red-handed trying some sort of pick-pocket charm.

"Smooth move," Ab had said appreciatively and then nodded toward Dung. "If you let him loose, I'll throw him out. Robbing the customers is against my rules."

Elphinstone smlied. "One must have standards," he agreed, and flicked his wand to free Mundungus.

After Dung had been tossed out on his sorry arse, Ab had turned to the stranger with the best apology he could think of.

"Have a drink on me," he'd said. "Aberforth Dumbledore. I own the place."

"Elphinstone Urquart," the stranger had replied, offering his hand. "Thank you; it will be a pleasure."

In the next hour, he proved himself to be an entertaining, thoughtful, wickedly witty conversationalist who actually accomplished the unheard-of: he made Ab chuckle at least twice.

And thus their friendship had begun.

That it ended because Elphinstone died from a senseless and preventable accident with a damned venomous tentacula was a kick of fate that Ab took a long time to get over. How hard it had been for Minerva, he could hardly begin to imagine.

But they'd started the painful process together, on the night of Elph's funeral, with a drink to his memory.

"To Elphinstone," Ab had said, raising his Macallan. "The fastest wand in Hogsmeade."

"To Elphinstone," Minerva had echoed, and only then, for the first time since news of his death had reached them, had she begun quietly to weep.

And now here they were once more, Ab and Minerva, together with their firewhisky and their memories of yet another dead man they'd both loved.

For in his cups, Ab could admit it to himself. He had loved Albus. He'd loved him even as he'd hated his arrogance and his twinkling selfishness and his way of coming out on top no matter who went down beneath him.

Yet on those rare occasions when Albus stopped being the Greatest Wizard of All Time and just let himself be Albus, the older brother who'd loved to go pixie-hunting with Ab when they were little. . .well, he was all right then, and, yes, Ab had loved him.

He took a deep swallow of his firewhisky. "Drink of the gods," he said to Minerva. "Funeral would have been better if we'd all had a dram or two."

She smiled. "Don't try to tell me you didn't have your flask with you, for I shan't believe you."

"Aye, well. Needed something to make those Ministry speeches go down a little easier."

"They were a pompous lot, weren't they?"

"Don't know how you do it, girl. Put up with them, I mean."

"One learns to work around them. Albus always says. . ." Her voice wavered for a moment, though Ab affected not to notice. After a sip of firewhisky, she went on, more firmly, "Albus always said that a Minister of Magic never lived who couldn't be got round."

"Albus never believed that any person ever lived who couldn't be got round," Ab said, with more bitterness than he had intended. He didn't want to upset Minerva, not on the very evening of Albus's funeral. She knew Ab's opinion of his brother; she didn't need to hear it again tonight.

He waited for some sort of waspish response, but she surprised him by chuckling. "He couldn't get round Elphinstone, though, could he?"

Ab gave his rare grin. "Nay, that he couldn't."

Albus had not been at all happy when Minerva had decided to move off the Hogwarts grounds and live in Hogsmeade with Elph. The Headmaster had wanted the newlyweds to live in the castle and had pulled out all his manipulative stops to make it happen.

And he'd failed.

"Well, make that, he couldn't get around you and Elph together," Ab amended. "You were pretty fierce yourself, girl."

She grinned back. "I'm not a girl."

"You'll always be a girl to me," Ab said promptly, and as he looked at her in the soft torchlight, with the trace of a smile still on her face, he could see the intense young woman she'd once been.

He had to admit that he'd been surprised all those years ago, when he found out that she was the reason for the many visits that Elphinstone Urquart, a senior Ministry official, made to an obscure pub in Hogsmeade. At first, Ab had assumed that the Ministry was trying to pry into his business, and he'd been suspicious of Elph even as he'd come to like him.

By the fifth time that Elph took what had become his customary seat at the bar, Ab had finally confronted him.

"Just what are you doing here, anyway?" he'd demanded. "A Ministry chap like you, in a down-and-out pub like this? Ain't you got better things to do?"

Elph shook his head. "Nothing better than this," he said. "I've come courting."

Ab snorted. "Sorry to disappoint you, mate, but you've got the wrong Dumbledore. I don't swing that way."

Elphinstone had laughed. "I'm sure you'd make someone very happy, but no. I'm not here for you. Do you know Minerva McGonagall? One of the professors at Hogwarts?"

Ab didn't bother to hide his astonishment. "You're interested in her? Well, best of luck to you. You'll need it. She's married to her job, that one."

"Perhaps," Elph said, smiling. "We'll see. I can be very persistent."

"Worth the trouble, you think?" Ab had asked, curious, and Elph had nodded quite solemnly.

"Yes, indeed," he'd said. "Very much so."

But after several years had passed, and Elph seemed no closer to winning Minerva McGonagall than he had on the night Mundungus Fletcher had tried to rob him, Ab found himself getting a little tired of such fruitless devotion. "Don't be pathetic, man!" he wanted to shout, but he held his tongue. For one thing, Ab didn't fancy himself an Agony Aunt; he didn't want to hear his patrons' troubles. And for another, Elph showed no desire to make Ab a confidant. Best just to say nothing, then.

Finally, though, after Minerva turned down Elph's proposal of marriage for at least the tenth time, Ab had had enough.

"Why do you do it, Urquart?" he asked, shoving Elph's drink towards him angrily. "Put yourself through this shite year after year? She's not going to have you, all right? Face it."

Elph had not been upset. On the contrary. He'd laughed. "Oh, she has me," he'd said. "In fact," -- and here he'd lifted a totally uncharacteristic roguish eyebrow -- "we both have each other regularly. Have done for years."

There wasn't much in the world that shocked Aberforth Dumbledore, but he admitted to having been shocked then. Prim spinster Minerva McGonagall and upright, old-school Elphinstone Urquart had actually been having it off? Regularly? For years?

No. Ab must have misunderstood. He sought clarification.

"What are you saying?" he demanded. "That she puts out for you? Got the hots for you, has she?"

Elphinstone's face darkened. "I consider you a friend, Aberforth," he said, "and so I have spoken to you more openly than perhaps I should have. But I will not tolerate any crude comments about Minerva, no matter how much I value your company."

"Sorry," Ab had muttered.

He genuinely was, and Elph must have sensed that, for he spoke again, much less sternly. "Trust me, my friend, I am not the pitiful rejected suitor that you seem to imagine. If Minerva truly didn't want me, do you think I would subject either her or myself to the humiliation of continued pursuit? No, I am not what she resists. It's marriage, the institution, that she doesn't want, and I can't say I blame her. Our wizarding society is hardly a progressive one, and a woman stands to lose much when she marries: her name, her right to sole ownership of property, perhaps even her job."

"If she loves you. . ." Ab had tried, but he knew that argument was stupid even as he made it.

Elphinstone had smiled. "She does love me. And I love her. Which is why I don't really care about marriage, Ab. We don't need it."

"So that's why you keep proposing to her every year, is it?" Ab couldn't resist asking.

"It's more a tradition now than anything else," Elph shrugged and then laughed. "That, and an excuse to buy her flowers and take her out for a fancy dinner. She never lets me fuss over her otherwise. And of course," he went on, more seriously, "it's also a chance for me to remind her that my feelings for her are not changed."

Ab was sceptical. Not about Elph's feelings for Minerva, but about whether this sort of life was enough for either of them. How could it be? The occasional stolen night and a few dinners?

Again, Elph seemed to sense his thoughts. "Of course I would like more time with Minerva, to see her every day and spend every night with her," he said. "And if I thought the Hogwarts Board of Governors would tolerate a Deputy Headmistress who cohabited without marriage, I would set up housekeeping with Minerva in an instant. But that's not the world we live in, and so we must make other plans. Now don't feel sorry for us, Aberforth -- we're certainly not sorry for ourselves."

Actually, Ab was willing to be pleased for them, but he wasn't about to say so outright: he thought he and Elph had both had about as much sentimentality as anyone could stand.

"I think you ought to be feeling sorry for me," he said instead. "I'm a man with his living to make, and there's a yammering bloke sitting at my bar flapping his lips instead of buying drinks."

Elph had roared with laughter and ordered "a bottle of the best firewhisky in the house -- not that I think it will set me back too far, considering what the Hog's Head's 'best' is likely to be."

Though Ab would never have confessed it to a soul, it had been a while after that conversation before he could see either Elph or Minerva without giving at least fleeting thought to them "having each other," as Elph had so delicately put it.

But eventually he'd started thinking of them as a committed couple, and when finally they did marry (apparently the few stolen nights had not been enough after all), Ab had been one of the select few who had been invited to the brief ceremony at the Registry Office of the Ministry and to the celebratory meal afterward.

He hadn't known Minerva well until after she and Elph moved to Hogsmeade, and truth be told, he'd always been a little wary of her, dedicated as she was to Albus's way of thinking. But he soon learnt that she was just as wryly funny as her husband -- and that she had a more balanced understanding of Albus's strengths and weaknesses than Ab would have expected.

Not that Ab still couldn't get her goat with the occasional "Greatest Wizard" sarcasm, something he always enjoyed. But he came to think of her less as "Albus's deputy" than as "Elph's wife," and then, finally, as just "Minerva."

A flash of light from her direction called his attention back to the present, and he saw that she'd finished her drink and in fact was nodding off; the flash had been the torchlight reflecting from her empty glass as it tipped forward in her hand.

Ab touched her arm to shake her gently awake. "Another wee dram?" he asked, brandishing the bottle.

But she shook her head and stood. "I should get back to the school. I've been gone nearly an hour, and no doubt someone will be needing me. I'm surprised I haven't had an owl already."

Meticulous as always, she Transfigured her chair back into a feed bucket, Scourgified her tumbler, and gave Balthazar a final ear-scratch before turning to offer Ab one last, small smile.

"Thank you, Aberforth," she said, and was gone.

Ab stood for a long time, starting after her, until a bleat from the goats recalled him to himself. He realised that he was still holding his empty tumbler and the firewhisky bottle, so he poured himself a hefty measure and lifted his glass in the direction of the door through which Minerva had disappeared.

"Any time, girl," he said.