Voir un ami pleurer
Response to the second challenge tag on
the messagesboard.
***
~ It took a lot of effort, but she managed it eventually. Three tears slid
down over her cheeks and she caught them carefully. Mixing them through the
potion that was simmering softly in the cauldron, she smiled satisfied. If this
didn’t work, nothing else would. ~
“Albus…Albus…, are you in? Albus…, can you hear me?” Minerva knocked fiercely on the door,
her worry increasing every second. Eventually she took a step back and pointed
her wand at the door. “Emeritas”
she spoke clearly. Immediately the door sprung open.
“Albus?” she called again. A faint sound was heard
from his private living room and she hurried inside.
“Albus..? Oh Merlin!”. The great headmaster of Hogwarts was sitting in an
oversized armchair, crying softly in a handkerchief.
“Albus, what’s the matter with you”.
“I don’t know”, he sobbed helplessly, wiping his eyes.
Mostly on instinct, Minerva kneeled down in front of him and grabbed his hand. “Please
Albus, talk to me”, she urged. “Did something happen…
something that caused you pain?”
“No”, he answered, shaking his head, tears still freely streaming down over his
face. “Nothing happened, I'm just…. I just….”
Reaching out, she cradled his face in her hand. “Just what? You can tell me, Albus”.
He took a shuddering breath and managed to choke out eventually, “I just can’t
seem to stop crying…”
“But why?” she asked, utterly confused.
“I don’t… don’t know”, he answered frustrated. “It started this afte… huh… noon. One minute, I was happily talking to… Fawkes…”, he sobbed a few times, “and all of a sudden… I
was crying… and I can’t stop it…”
“I’ve never heard anything like that”, Minerva said, completely dumbfounded. She
held out her hand and pulled him to his feet. He made a pathetic sight. His
eyes were red and puffy and there were tearstains all over his cheeks.
“Come here you”, she muttered half-mollified. Wrapping her arm around him, she
hugged him. After a few comfortable moments she pulled back a little. “You
should see Poppy”.
***
Poppy too was mystified. After running
test after test she still wasn’t any closer to a solution.
“I don’t know what to do, Albus”, she said eventually.
“Except for confining you to your quarters until I have figured it out”.
“Oh no…”, Minerva muttered and all of a sudden, tears were streaming down over
her face too.
“Minerva, don’t cry”, Albus sobbed, pulling her
closer. “Everything will be alright…”
“I know…”, Minerva hiccuped, “It’s just… I can’t help
it… I have to cry…”
“Oh good Merlin!” Poppy exclaimed exasperated. “Minerva, you’ve got it too!”
“You think?” Minerva wailed, rubbing her cheeks furiously.
“Right”, Poppy said crisply, “that’s it, since this seems to be highly
contagious, I’m putting you both under quarantine. You have fifteen minutes to
gather your things Minerva and to tidy up your office, Albus
and then I’m putting the wards up. Until I’ve determined what this is, you are
not leaving there”.
More tears started to roll down over the faces of Albus
and Minerva. “Is that really necessary, Poppy?” Minerva whispered, sounding
heart-broken.
“Absolutely”, Poppy answered firmly. “You don’t want every person in the castle
to start weeping, do you?”
“Severus would look funny”, Albus
sobbed. Minerva made a sound between a sob and a snort.
“You’re fifteen minutes start now”, Poppy warned.
***
A quarter of an hour later, Albus and Minerva were
settled in his office and Poppy put the wards up. The first day was spend getting comfortable and getting used to hearing the
other cry.
Both of them needed fight the urge to comfort each other constantly, learning
to realise that they weren’t crying out of grief or sadness.
But it was difficult. Looking at the spotted skin of her cheeks, Albus wanted to do nothing more then to pull her in his arms
and make it stop somehow. His own tears didn’t bother him half as much as to
see her cry.
Minerva was going through a similar emotion. Seeing him so sad, although she
knew he wasn’t really feeling like that stirred a feeling deep in her chest. She
had never felt her love for him as clearly as she did now.
During the second day they made various attempt to cheer each other up. Cheering
charms proved to have the opposite effect so Albus
told every joke he had ever heard off and Minerva shared some of her childhood
anecdotes. But still they continued to weep uncontrollably.
In the evening they played the Two Options- game. Albus
had thought it up and although it amused them both highly, they still couldn’t
stop shedding tears.
“Alright, Min..nerva…, Gryfindor colours or… emerald green?”
“Gryfindor colours”, Minerva replied immediately. “Albus, a lion or a *sniff* phoenix?”
“A phoenix”, Albus answered after a second.
“Traitor”, Minerva sniffled.
During the third day the situation became worse. Their faces started to feel
tender because of the constant salt tears that were running down their cheeks
and their throats hurt.
Poppy magically send sweet drinks, cough drops and
lotion to ease their pain.
When Minerva complained about a headache, late afternoon, Albus
gestured to the couch. He conjured up a pillow and placed it on the armrest. “Lie
down with your head on this”, he told her softly, his voice hoarse.
Minerva did as he told. When he stroked her hair away from her forehead she
closed her eyes contentedly.
“You’re warm”, he told her as he began to rub her temples.
“Hmmmm”, came the somewhat drowsy reply. While he
massaged her headache away a few tears trickled down over her face, but they
were far less than before. Half an hour later she had drifted off to a deep
sleep. Albus picked her up and carried her to the
settee she had transfigured in a bed.
They spend the best part of the fourth day in bed, sleeping, as they were both
exhausted.
On the fifth day, Minerva had had it. “I can’t… can’t take this anymore, Albu..hus…”, she cried. “I’m so..s..sick
of crying all the time…”. She was weeping harder then ever.
“I know…”, Albus said
quietly, tears streaming into his beard. “If only we knew how to stop this…”
Evening came and they ate a few bites. Because of the sore throat, eating had
become very difficult. And besides that, the food was absolutely tasteless.
Then all of a sudden a window appeared in the wall and Poppy’ s face showed
behind the glass. But when she began to talk they could hear her perfectly.
“I’ve talked with some of my colleagues from St. Mungo’s”, Poppy told them. “And
I think I know what is wrong with you”.
“Thank Merlin!” both Albus and Minerva exclaimed.
“You’re suffering from the Pleurerites. It causes you
to cry for no apparent reason”.
“We know that, Poppy”, Albus said warily.
“Is there a remedy?” Minerva asked eagerly.
“There is”, Poppy nodded. “In order to stop crying you need to experience the
thing that makes you most happy”.
“Is it too much to ask for a simple solution?”,
Minerva wailed angrily.
“Well”, Poppy said, a ghost of a smile playing around the corners of her mouth,
“I want you to think about this, you might be surprised by what you come up
with”.
***
Later that evening the both of them were sitting on the couch, staring into the
fire, holding a handkerchief.
“Albus, what would make you most happy?” Minerva
asked tentatively.
Through his tears, Albus smiled wishfully, a dreamy
expression in his eyes. “What would make me most happy is to hold the woman of
my dreams in my arms. To finally tell her how much I love her and to hear her
say it back to me. That would be the happiest moment of my life”.
During his declaration, Minerva’s face fell. For the first time in five days
she really felt like crying. “Who is this woman, Albus?”
she asked in a soft voice, trying to keep the hurt and desperation out of it.
He didn’t answer immediately but continued to stare in the fire. Just when she
thought he wasn’t going to answer her, he replied in a barely audible voice:
“you”.
He heard her gasp of surprise, but still stared into the flames, feeling oddly
calm and resigned.
“You love me?” she whispered unbelievingly.
Finally he looked up in her eyes and noticed instantly that her eyes were dry. They
were still somewhat gazed over, but she wasn’t crying anymore.
“I love you, Minerva”, he said simply, wanting to say it to her at least once.
Next moment she had landed in his arms, kissing him soundly. For a moment he
was too shocked to react, but then he gathered her in his arms and deepened the
kiss.
When they pulled back he realised that he too had stopped crying. He stared
into her shining eyes. “Your most happy experience…?”, he asked.
“I just had it”, she answered, a happy smile spreading over her face. Wrapping
her arms around his neck she snuggled closer to him, practically sitting in his
lap. “And I intend to experience it over and over again”.
***
A small, intimate restaurant. A man and a woman having dinner.
“You did what?” the man asked shocked, his magical eye spinning madly.
The woman smiled a little. “You should have seen their faces. I swear, brewing
that potion was a lot of work, but it was completely worth it.
“And you put it in Albus chocolate and in
Minerva’s…?” the man started.
“And in Minerva her tea”, the woman finished.
“And the name of that disease?” the man asked incredulously.
“I made it up”, the woman answered smugly.
Suddenly the man smiled and leaned over the table to press a kiss on the
woman’s lips.
She in return caressed his face. “Something had to be done. They were both
suffering from complete idiocy, my love”.
He kissed her again, a little longer this time. “There’s
nothing you can’t cure, dearest”.
]*sob*