Halloween Treat for raktajinos
Gift for: raktajinos
From: perverse_idyll
Title: Spirituous
Characters: Minerva, Albus, Severus
Rating: G
Summary: Minerva prefers not to drink alone
Notes: Happy Halloween, raktajinos! I suspect this idea may have occurred to someone else already, but I hope you'll enjoy it all the same.
For one of her first acts as headmistress, Minerva shatters the Mirror of Erised.
Thrifty by nature, she stores a piece in her rooms. Every Hallows' Eve, she props it in a chair and faces it across a candleflame. Hearthfire strong enough to melt ice throws phoenix wings of heat at the glass.
She pours two goblets of hot buttered brandy steaming with cinnamon and brown sugar. A blackened hand reaches out of the background, and the reflected drink floats to blood-bearded lips. Minerva mirrors each buttery sip; the sweet fumes thaw her soul.
Gradually the hand unblackens. With curse-free flamboyance, Albus swirls away, his beard scattering starlight behind him.
Next, piping hot cranberry Benedictine punch. Shrouded in fog, a ghastly shape with a gory throat and pitchblack eyes appears. Minerva waits for the peppercorns to tickle that great horn-beak nose, for his obsessive brain to start cataloguing the liqueur's twenty-seven herbs and spices.
Severus raises the vessel of blood-coloured punch and tips it down his throat. The wound smokes and heals, fading. As does he.
Maybe next year the three of them can drink the night away. Forgive, forget. Together. Minerva dries her eyes and toasts the empty mirror.