So that's who you are; I thought the name looked familiar.
Don't know why I did not review this first time I read it, but it's absolutely wonderful.
Loved //The months passed, and there’d been no smirks, no wit, no impatience, no anger, and no mercy.// Brilliant, to put the 'mercy' at the end, falling even heavier because of 'and'.
/She fought with charms and hexes, with fire and furniture, with self-control,/ Great line.

Okay THAT knocked the breath out of me. That was heartbreaking! I can still feel the squeeze at the bottom of my chest. Well done! Beautiful and credible depiction of both Severus and Minerva's characters. But the ending was...QUITE effective. Oh man, well done.

This story was lovely; hauntingly beautiful...

I love NcGonagall / Snape stories, there should be more!
This was especially nice.
Very sad though, poor Minerva, must have broken her heart to have mis-judged one of her 'children' so badly.
Can I poke you for more please?!

Woah! This is so painful! What a wonderful exploration of their relationship. An interesting thought - that his bland violence incites her own. I had also thought that Minerva's use of Imperio on Amycus was somewhat out of character, but this explains her emotions very well. Wonderful. Those last few lines sum the whole thing up perfectly.

Very well done.

Great story, very sad - thank you.

Ah, the absence of anger should have been a hint, Minerva, that something unusual was afoot...

I really enjoyed this! Believable and heartbreaking. It's hard to find good, non-romantic stories these days. Well done!

Very well done indeed. After McGonagall, Snape is my favorite HP character. I've always been sorry that canon doesn't do more to explore his fascinating complexities and ambiguities (ah, well, I suppose that's what fanfiction is for). I see the Snape ~ McGonagall relationship as particularly interesting; it can be made believable as a romance, as antagonism, as a complicated friendship / rivalry, etc.

I tend to see Minerva as more in control of herself than you present her, but your depiction is very convincing and illuminating. If she were going to make "beginner's mistakes" in dueling, it would no doubt be in the sort of situation you so carefully set up here: the end of an intense, long, dangerous, emotion-filled battle that itself comes after months of necessary repression and anxiety. Plus, canon offers a lot of support for a loss of control; Minerva comes close to the edge several times in the books (unable to keep her temper with Umbridge; livid and shouting after the dementor kisses Barty Crouch, Jr, in GoF; furious w/ Draco and Co. for dressing up as dementors at Quidditch, etc.) And I can definitely see her getting carried by her anger into stronger, nastier magic; I'm working on a battle story of my own right now in which I try to explore this idea.

I like your spare prose and your character insights. Some lines/ideas that I particularly enjoyed:

"He’d radiated fury since he was a child, and this stranger didn’t even have his eyes."
--A believable view of his character, past and present

" She fought with charms and hexes, with fire and furniture, with self-control"
--nice rhythm and alliteration; great description

"as though nothing they’d suffered had made any difference"
--great insight; provides an excellent motivation

"when he straightened he looked alive for the first time all year"
--oh, yes, I can see this

"there’d been no smirks, no wit, no impatience, no anger, and no mercy."
--beautiful build-up to that powerful final word

And, of course, the punch of that fine ending.

I do hope you will write more Snape ~ McG stories.

Bitter, haunting, and with a flavouring of useless regret. This piece was beautiful in that angsty way. I generally don't read much canon because I'm still in denial over Severus' death and that epilogue, but this was a very realistic look at a different perspective and I think you captured it exquisitely.

Good ending, but the AU details seem unnecessary to me. I'd have found the ending more powerful without them.

nicely written. poor mcgonagall. poor snape. not really sure what to comment on. it was nicely written. and i like that progression thing, how mcgonagall struggles for control in the end, and how snape was always in so much control that his anger was absent. i like that contrast. and the parting shot, his disappointment. very poignant.

Of course she had to close his eyes--Harry couldn't be bothered. And I'm sure she justified herself somehow. After all, anything that was done against Snape was somehow justified or glossed over all his life. I'm sure she managed to forgive herself fairly quickly, and somehow found a way to blame him for her mistake (and not 'attempted murder' since he wasn't defending himself. But then, he was used to that.).

No doubt Dumbledore told her everything was all right. And so it was.

I wonder how many of the students she ejected from Hogwarts later that night survived?