Chapter 25
Professor McGonagall's office, as well as a desk buried underneath mountains of paperwork, also had a small table in front of the fire, flanked by armchairs. One of the hard chairs that normally sat on the other side of the professor's desk was missing, and the second armchair looked newer than the first. She was the Transfiguration professor, Harry supposed. The table held a teapot with teacosy, cups and saucers, three different kinds of biscuit, two kinds of cake, a pork pie cut into slices, and some rather fancy sandwiches.
"Come in, Mr Potter," she said drily, rising from the desk. "Sit down. The elves have gone a little overboard with the tea, but I never met a teenager who minded that."
"It looks lovely," said Harry. "Thank you for having me." They exchanged pleasantries, and poured tea. Professor McGonagall came to the point.
"You mentioned concerns with the Headmaster's decisions regarding you."
"Yes!" said Harry. "I mean, he's a great wizard, and he's always been very nice to me personally. And he's very wise in general. But."
"But?"
"He left me with the Dursleys," said Harry. "He didn't give anyone a choice. He just left me. And Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon - they are horrible people. They hate magic. They hate everything that isn't normal. And they hated me, hated having to raise me with their precious perfect Diddykins."
"Oh Merlin," said Professor McGonagall. "I'm so sorry."
"They called me 'freak' and 'boy' more often than my name," said Harry. "I slept in a cupboard until my first Hogwarts letter arrived, apart from a few months when the babies were little and I slept on a rug on the nursery floor so I could be there when they woke up and cried at night. I had lots of chores, and when I couldn't do them, they would hit me, or deprive me of food, or lock me in my cupboard. They didn't like me doing accidental magic, either, not that they told me what it was, or that I was a wizard. Just that weird freaky stuff happened around me sometimes, and I would get punished for it. Even when I wasn't being punished, I didn't get much to eat, not nearly as much as Dudley. They made a point of it. He was always stuffing his face, and I was always hungry. I didn't get proper medical treatment when I was ill or hurt. They begrudged me every toothbrush, and I had to wear each one out before I got a new one. Dudley used to beat me up, and they laughed and encouraged him. They thought it was funny when Vernon's sister Marge set her dog on me. They only sent me to primary school because they'd get in trouble with the law if they didn't. I started a year later than Dudley. And then I started doing better than him, and I got punished for it. I had to do badly on purpose, and pretend to be stupider than him. I never had new clothes, just Dudley's cast-offs, and he was a different shape from me, and did his best to wear the clothes out before I got them. I was in rags. When the twins were born, when I was ten, that was the first experience I had of anyone in that house actually liking me, actually finding my presence a good thing. I had no friends at school, because Dudley made sure of that. Petunia and Vernon told my teachers, and all the neighbours, I was a nasty little liar and a cheat. Any suspicious injuries, I'd done it myself for attention. The same for my clothes. Everything." He breathed in and out for a moment. "They begrudged every penny they spent on me, and they didn't spend much. Even more than the money, though, they just didn't want me to have anything good. I found out later that glasses were free on the NHS for children - I could have had glasses that were the right prescription, but instead Aunt Petunia got me reading glasses from a charity shop, and they would have been cheap, but not free. She just didn't want me seeing a medical professional. The doctor would have been free, too, but I never went. Not even when I had broken bones, or really bad burns from cooking. I heal a lot faster than normal people, but even so. When I got to see a wizarding healer, she had to do some repair work." He breathed again, trying to calm the rage that had sprung up as he talked, as he relived the years he didn't like to think about. "The Dursleys were bad guardians, horrible guardians, and Albus Dumbledore sent me there."
"I'm so, so, sorry," said the professor, with tears in her eyes. "I owe you so many apologies. I was there when he dropped you off. He sent me there in advance, to see what the family was like. I knew they were the worst kind of muggles. I told him so. I told him it was a bad idea, leaving you with them, but he... I let him overrule me. I set warming charms, charms to make sure nothing could hurt you overnight and you wouldn't wake up and wander away, and I left." She paused for a moment. Harry didn't know what to say. "It was the three of us, Albus, Hagrid and I. Neither Hagrid nor I was happy about it, but we let him persuade us it was for the best. Whenever I asked Albus about you, he said you were safe and happy; that he had someone in the area to watch over you; that you were with your family, and well-cared-for." Harry snorted. He told her about the blood-wards, about Dumbledore's mistakes setting them up. About how the power of his mother's sacrifice, and Harry's own magical strength, had mostly gone to making sure the neighbours and school-teachers believed the lies Petunia and Vernon told about Harry, making sure Harry was disliked and disregarded. About how the twins' birth would never have happened under Dumbledore's original plan.
"I mean, I don't like Aunt Petunia, and I'm not exactly getting angry on her behalf," said Harry. "But that was a dreadful thing for him to do to her. If things had gone to plan, and the wards hadn't fallen until I was seventeen, she would have been forty by then. She might well have been too old to have any more children. When the lady two doors down had a baby at forty-two, Aunt Petunia sniffed and said she was lucky it didn't kill her. And she really wanted the twins; she was really happy to be expecting them, and she doted on them when they were small, before they showed signs of magic. Taking away someone's ability to have more children, without asking them what they wanted - that's a cruel thing to do. Not that I think Aunt Petunia is actually a good person to be around children. She spoiled Dudley rotten, and she totally rejected the twins once their magic came. But that doesn't make it right, what he did." Professor McGonagall shook her head.
"I daresay he didn't know," she said. "Witches have far longer than muggle women. But it was reprehensible of him not to find out; and arrogant of him to over-estimate his own abilities to the extent that your warding team say he did." She sighed. "Albus is my dearest friend and my mentor. But I can't deny he's made mistakes."
"He could have messed up my life even more, if I'd let him," said Harry, and described his visit to Andromeda Tonks in his first year, and all the consequences that had arisen. "There could have been serious long-term health consequences if she hadn't stepped in, and it was pure chance that I got to meet her. I wouldn't have known how important it was to get food for my trunk so I didn't go hungry over the summer; I probably wouldn't have had a trunk that could shrink. And Hagrid said Dumbledore had said I shouldn't buy anything that wasn't on my list. I might have come to Hogwarts dressed in rags, and I would have been so ignorant about the magical world without all those Muggleborn orientation leaflets Healer Tonks let me know to ask for. It's a pity I never got one for Gringotts until this summer. And I wouldn't have known - she kept saying "any decent parent would" - I wouldn't have known those were things I deserved to have, things I could have. I might not have started looking out for myself in the same way, started believing it was what my parents would have wanted."
"Yes, Lily and James would have wanted you to take care of your health," she said shakily. "I knew them. I taught them, and then I was in the Order with them: I can assure you of that."
"I'd like to hear more about that at some point," Harry said. "What they would have wanted for me. How they might have raised me. What decent parents do. What they would have thought about how I'm doing now, what they would have felt I should be working on."
"They would be proud of you," she said immediately. "I know that." Then she paused. "Do you know, I think I've had the wrong impression of you, up to now. A lot of the rulebreaking wasn't arrogance, like James. It's that you hadn't learned how to rely on adults. You weren't devil-may-care; you simply had peculiar notions about acceptable risk, because nobody had taught you to value your own safety and well-being. And that dragon incident - it wasn't a prank, was it?"
"No," said Harry. "I don't want to go into detail in case it gets someone else into trouble, but there really was a dragon."
"And you've spent the last two years coasting on your schoolwork, like James, rather than really applying yourself as Lily did, but for very different reasons. You look like him, but your temperaments are completely different. Which I suppose makes sense. He was a much-loved only child, his parents' miracle baby, whom they'd had late in life, after giving up all hope of a child."
"So he was spoiled, and lazy, and he liked playing jokes that were a bit cruel sometimes?" asked Harry, feeling hurt.
"He was a good man, a brave man," she replied. "And even as a boy, he had his faults, but he had a generous soul, and he was a loyal friend. He buckled down to work a bit once his OWL year arrived, so he could get the grades he needed to be an Auror. He was always clever and talented. His best subject was Transfiguration, and he was an excellent quidditch player. He was a prankster, much like the Weasley twins, and his jokes only went too far occasionally. He had rather a bias against Slytherins, even before the war really heated up. He was human. He wasn't perfect, but don't let that stop you honouring his memory."
"And my mother?" said Harry. "She wasn't perfect, either, was she?"
"She had a brilliant mind, and she worked very hard," said the professor, fondly. "She had the best overall OWL and NEWT results in her year, and she was always doing extra-curricular study projects for fun. She was a very good prefect from the start, looking out for the younger students, and she did well as Head Girl. She was pretty, and popular. Her faults were less obvious. She had quite a temper. She could be headstrong and stubborn. She held grudges. She might have been a little too fond of being well-liked, but then many teenagers are. She was a lovely girl, and she grew into a wonderful woman."
"What were her favourite subjects?" asked Harry.
"Charms and Ancient Runes," replied Professor McGonagall promptly, "though she was also very fond of Potions and Arithmancy. She liked all her subjects, really. Even History of Magic - she found Professor Binns frustrating, but she would read history books for fun. She had an endless curiosity about magic, how it worked and what could be done with it. James was more goal-oriented, but Lily was endlessly exploring everything."
"Thanks," said Harry. "I think I have more of a sense of what they were like, now, which I didn't before. People say over and over again I look like my father, but with my mother's eyes. But not what they were like as people."
"And then we expect you to be just like them, and especially like James," said his professor ruefully. "Well. If you truly want advice, I would say you should stop coasting academically. Put some more work in. Be more active about mastering what you're being taught. Perhaps go over your work from the previous two years, make sure you have a solid foundation. I can see why you might have been inclined to slack, if those muggles punished you for doing well at primary school. It's hard to break habits. But you should persevere." Harry nodded, deciding that his completed summer homework should be classified as first drafts. "What electives did you pick, and why?"
"Divination and Care of Magical Creatures," he said promptly. "Because Ron was doing them. Um. I didn't really know what to pick, because I didn't know anything about the subjects. So I thought at least that way, I'd have a friend with me in my classes. And Ron said they were easy Os. Percy did try to advise me, but he kept saying I should play to my strengths, and I'm only really good at Quidditch." Professor McGonagall rolled her eyes.
"Mr Potter, you are an intelligent young man, and you have a personality of your own. If you haven't worked out where your academic strengths and weaknesses lie, you haven't been paying enough attention. You should start rectifying this before school starts. It may also interest you to know that, while we ask you to make preliminary choices for your third year options at the end of the Easter holidays, these are not finalised until the beginning of term, when your timetables are handed out. So you have the summer to consider the matter, if you wish to change your mind; even after that, students have the option, throughout their third year, of dropping classes, so long as that leaves them with no fewer than two of the new classes; and of adding them, as long as it can be scheduled, and they have proven they have done the work to catch up to where the rest of the class is, and it leaves them with no more than three new classes total." She sighed. "We do not hold careers counselling until OWL year; however, it is generally known that certain careers require a NEWT in Runes, Arithmancy or both. You should be reasonably confident you have no interest in such, before rejecting either option. Likewise, many Ministry careers require at least an OWL, if not a NEWT, in Muggle Studies, and it is considered highly desirable for others; though of course, Muggle-raised students may well consider themselves sufficiently conversant in Muggle matters, and may instead decide to arrange to study independently for some Muggle qualifications, registering themselves with Muggle authorities as home-schooled students. Care of Magical Creatures is a must if you have ever considered a career working with animals, whether training them, breeding them, raising them for potions ingredients or participating in the conservation of vulnerable species; if you enjoy being outdoors and would dislike the kind of job where you stay in an office all day, it is generally advisable. Divination is not a subject I care for personally, though of course if one has the gift, it is best to train it. For those who do not, it will do them very little good. And in my personal experience as an educator, there is no such thing as an 'easy O'." She spoke the last words as if handling them with callipers.
"My mother used Divination to choose Muggle investments," said Harry. "I found out this summer, when I was able to visit my family vault."
"It is not wholly a useless subject," the professor conceded, "and that is indeed a useful application of it; if you have the talent, and wish to involve yourself personally in your investments rather than leaving it to Gringotts, it may serve you well." She pointed her wand at a particular pile of paper, summoned one sheet, duplicated and returned it; she wrote two additional lines on the paper before handing it over. "These are the books for all the third year options; I have also included two books on wizarding careers. Choose wisely, as I can only hope your year-mates have done."
"Um. I know somebody who picked their subjects at random by dabbing with their wand?" said Harry nervously.
"In that case, you would be best advised to owl them, and pass on the information you have learned today," said Professor McGonagall, "in the event that you do not wish to share that person's name with me." He shook his head, nervously.
"Very well," said the professor, "let us turn to other matters. The small children who accompanied you to the Chamber of Secrets. Are these the Dursley twins that you mentioned?"
"Yes, Professor," Harry said nervously. "Only they're not just Dursleys. They're - um - Heiress Apparent Gaunt and Scion Gaunt, heiress presumptive to the heiress apparent. And they're wards of House Potter." She sighed.
"Making you Regent Gaunt, I suppose? And technically of age, bar the seventeen-specific restrictions?" she asked. "I am capable of putting two and two together, you know. You said you were fond of your young cousins, and they of you, and that their mother had rejected them due to their magic. I know you well enough to say you wouldn't leave anyone you were fond of in an abusive home." She sighed. "I hope you're looking into suitable fosterage arrangements."
"Yes, Professor," he squeaked. "Um. Are you going to tell Dumbledore? He won't like it."
"Headmaster Dumbledore, Potter," she said. "And no, I shan't go out of my way to do so. It is already past the point where he could do anything about it, and he and you both have plenty of other things to do this summer, without butting heads with each other on the matter. As you point out, he will disapprove very strongly. He has his reasons, feeling, not altogether wrongly, that the prevalence of family magic in our social and legal system is archaic."
"I daresay it is," Harry said, "but it got me out of an abusive home years before I had expected to be able to, so I'm not complaining."
"Indeed," she said drily. "Incidentally, the Prophet ran a feature this morning on the Gaunts and their history, speculating on the identity of Heir and Regent Gaunt. You were not named. But you should be made aware." He swallowed. "Does that mean somebody noticed I named Tom Riddle a Wolfshead? And do they know who he really is?"
"Indeed, and no. Dumbledore feels the latter piece of information is best not bruited too widely."
"Mmm," said Harry. "Hopefully, before too long, it won't matter, anyway."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, he's a wraith now," said Harry. "Neither dead nor alive. But, um, certain parties know what's keeping him not-quite-dead. Not just the Headmaster. And those certain parties are working with me to fix it."
"Fix it?" she gasped.
"Make him all-the-way dead," said Harry, firmly. "He killed my parents, one of whom was his closest living magical relation, though neither of them knew it at the time. He tried to kill me - and he had another few goes during my first year. Then there was the thing with the separate shade of him attached to the diary last year. There are other things like the diary out there. There's one in my scar, but the other parties know how to get it out. We're - well technically, I am, but they're the ones who know what they're doing - we're going to get rid of him for good, before I'm done with my duties as Regent. I'm not having Daisy take over as Head of House when it's still tainted by him. I'm not having him anywhere near either of them."
"What do you mean he 'had a few goes' during your first year?" She was aghast.
"Didn't the Headmaster tell you?" asked Harry. Then he explained. She was shocked, especially when he got to the discussion with the Headmaster in the hospital wing, and his own belief that the Headmaster 'sort of wanted to give Harry a chance' to confront Voldemort, that he had known what was happening and chosen not to stop it, instead teaching Harry and his friends 'enough to help.' That Harry thought the Headmaster thought Harry "sort of had a right" to face Voldemort if he could. "At the time, I thought it was brilliant. That he was brilliant. But now - I know I'm not that much older, but now, I wouldn't want a firstie like Colin or Ginny anywhere near that monster. And I'd expect a proper adult to feel even more strongly."
"Quite," she said faintly.
"And I think he knew, about my scar. He actually told me I had a bit of that monster in me, though he thinks that's why I speak Parseltongue. Which is nonsense, obviously. But he was right about me having the thing in me. And he wanted me just to leave it there. I mean, clearly he's got a plan. But I'm not following it. And I'm not even telling him I'm not following it. I'll just wait and see how long it takes before he notices I'm not being a good little pawn any more."
"I can't fault you, Potter," she said. "I wish I could, but I can't. I can only assure you that Albus means well. He isn't evil. He's just so focused on the big picture that he can overlook details at times."
"I don't know if I can forgive him yet," said Harry. "I'm really quite cross with him about everything. But maybe one day." He thought for a moment. "And, for what it's worth, I forgive you. You were maybe a bit complicit, but you were working from bad information, and you did your best to keep me safe and on the right track."
"Thank you," she said. "One more thing. How are we related, exactly? I don't really keep track of wizarding genealogies." Harry explained that his great-grandmother, Juliana McKinnon nee Ross, mother of Euphemia Potter nee McKinnon, had been first cousin to Professor McGonagall's mother Isobel Ross; and that Euphemia's sister had also been Neville Longbottom's great-grandmother. "So you're my second cousin twice removed, Professor, and Neville's second cousin three times removed. He and I are second cousins once removed."
"I see," she said. "So he has dozens of wizarding relatives closer than you or me; but I very much doubt the same applies to you."
"No," said Harry, "but there are a few closer, besides my wards. I just - I used to think I didn't have anybody. So even having distant family means a lot to me." She smiled.
"Very well," she said. "If you wish, outside academic contexts, you may address me as Cousin Minerva, though I expect you to remain appropriately respectful in class and in front of other students. And I shall call you Harry, then, if I may."
"Yes, please, Cousin Minerva," he said shyly.
"You're welcome, Harry," she said. "And if you do happen to need my assistance with this mysterious plan that will put an end to the monster, do ask. It was why I joined the Order, after all. Though I suspect you'd need to give my name to those mysterious allies of yours in order to obtain permission to bring me on board; confidentiality agreements can be quite taxing. And you may also consult me regarding the work of the Basilisk Foundation, should you so desire."
"Thanks, Professor. Erm, Cousin."