Chapter 2
A few days later, Minerva found herself walking briskly down a corridor with her arms full of books and her mind full of ideas that had been sparked by a wonderfully thorough essay on the dangers of conjuration that she had just finished reading in Transfiguration Today. Minerva intended to discuss its points with her NEWT students that afternoon, but first had to contend with a busy morning teaching two back-to-back fourth year classes, which she sometimes struggled to find fulfilling because so few pupils at that age possessed the passion and drive for Transfiguration that had always come so naturally to her.
“Some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts,” Professor Dumbledore had cheerfully told an eleven year old Minerva on her own first day of school.
The inspiring and captivating Professor Albus Dumbledore, whom she had been looking up to ever since, had spent that memorable introductory lesson going from student to student and taking requests for the most outlandish and amusing Transfigurations they could think of. Minerva recalled how one boy had called out for a crocodile, and Dumbledore had obliged him for a memorable few seconds of terror before switching the bellowing beast out for a stuffed one.
The results of that practical orientation had been a lot of noise and excitement from the kids crowded around the famous teacher, and Minerva had been completely inspired. Enthralled by all the unending possibilities that Transfiguration seemed to possess, she’d known right then and there that it was to be her specialty. Henceforth thriving under Dumbledore’s tutelage by becoming an animagus in her seventh year, a recipient of ‘Transfiguration Today’s Most Promising Newcomer Award’ upon graduation, and Dumbledore’s successor as head of Transfiguration when he rose to headmaster, though her tolerance for a chaotic classroom would always be shorter than his.
“Potter, Black put that out immediately!” Minerva barked by way of greeting as she stepped into her classroom and spotted the flaming quaffle the pair were hovering in the air, recognizing it would likely have earned little more than a chuckle from Albus Dumbledore.
“Will do, Professor,” James called back with a grin. He extinguished the fire with a spray of water from his wand before following his best friend over to their places behind Peter Pettigrew and Remus Lupin in the last row.
“Miss Evans, to your own seat please,” Minerva urged as she passed by the pretty red-headed girl who was perched on Severus Snape’s chair with him near the door, and taking far longer than was necessary to roll up the magazine they’d been looking over together before she'd arrived.
Minerva dropped the heavy load of books she was carrying onto her desk and opened her planner to the notes she’d prepared ahead for today. She reviewed them quickly as she waited for the final stragglers to make their way to the classroom and by the time the bell rang, everyone was accounted for. Even the troublemakers had learned back in their first year that lateness would not be tolerated by Professor McGonagall.
“Get your homework out,” Minerva instructed once she’d looked back up at the expectant group.
Waving her wand in a half-circle around her head, sheets of parchment began to fly off of the desks and get caught in a wind turbine that gathered them all together and delivered them to her in a tidy pile. She’d asked them to write 3 feet on transfiguring animals and Minerva could tell from a quick scan of the papers in her hand that most of the students had obeyed her instructions, with some writing big in an obvious effort to do less work, and some in noticeably smaller handwriting so that they could include as many details as possible without going over the set length.
Severus Snape was among the latter. Easily one of the best writers in the class, his homework often showcased a knowledgeable and innate understanding for the material that Minerva might have missed otherwise - he so seldom spoke up in class. While continuing to count the essays, Minerva snuck a discreet glance at the pale boy sitting nearest the door, which had been his habit for the four years she’d been teaching him.
It seemed that Severus always needed to have a ready escape and Minerva supposed that wasn’t without reason, considering she had had to rescue him from a snowbank last Saturday. He looked to be in better spirits than he had been then, as Minerva briefly wondered whether or not she might have to take him aside and remind him to write a nice thank you letter to Elphinstone for the much needed coat. It was what a child with a decent upbringing would have the sense to do on their own, though Minerva supposed that a child experiencing a decent upbringing would probably already have had a coat.
“Did you two think completing your assignment was merely a suggestion?” Minerva flashed James and Sirius a scorching look, once she’d verified that theirs were not among the stack she’d placed down on her desk.
“Practice ran late last night, Professor,” James explained.
“That’s not an excuse,” Minerva said coldly, entirely unswayed though that did not deter Sirius Black from opening up his own mouth to argue further.
“Oh c’mon, Professor,” he countered. “You shouldn’t even assign us homework the week before a big match.”
“Then the same should go for us,” interjected Lucinda Talkalot, who played seeker for the Slytherin Quidditch Team. “I did my homework and we’re still going to pulverize you guys on Saturday.”
“The both of you will report to my office straight after dinner tonight,” Minerva said firmly, ignoring all efforts to bring the matter around to Quidditch - a game she enjoyed but did not consider an adequate reason to not submit assignments on time.
She pressed her wand between both her hands as she walked around her desk to face them without a barrier. Staring at Sirius Black’s raised hand with unmistakable exasperation in her eyes, contemplating whether or not to engage. Eventually she acknowledged him with a curt nod.
“When do we get to start learning human transfiguration?” turned out to be the pressing question.
“Sixth year,” Minerva replied matter-of-factly.
“Why do we have to wait until sixth year to get to the good stuff?” Sirius sighed.
“Because human transfiguration is only something for skilled witches and wizards with talent and discipline to try and attempt,” Minerva told him. “It’s not for fourth years who can’t even be bothered to turn in their homework. So with that being said, would someone who did write their essay kindly tell the rest of us some of the complexities we face when transfiguring an organic being compared to an inanimate object - yes, Lupin?”
“A living thing has its own agency but an inanimate object has none,” Remus Lupin explained, as he lowered his arm back down. “That can work against you.”
“Certainly,” Minerva agreed before directing the friend on Remus Lupin’s right. “So Pettigrew, both a dung beetle and a pigeon are sentient beings - what is one factor that could make one more challenging to transfigure than the other?”
Minerva pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth as she stared down at the lumpish boy who had gone extremely red in the face as he puttered and struggled to come up with a response to the rather simplistic review question. Behind him, James was making a show of yawning loudly and Sirius had dropped his head onto the table. Far too smart for their own good, they could undoubtedly have answered all of her questions even without completing their homework. The cheeky buggers.
“You can’t think of anything?” Minerva asked in sharp disbelief, deciding to let the awkward silence continue as she crossed one ankle over the other under the skirts of her robes and watched Peter looking miserably around the room at anyone who might be willing to give him a clue.
“C’mon Peter,” Sirius finally let out a loud groan. “Size, animal group, brains - did you forget yours today?”
“That wasn’t necessary, Black,” Minerva scolded, though she couldn’t be sure that her response would have been much kinder.
“Sorry Professor,” Sirius shrugged. “But I had to put him out of his misery.”
“Yes, Miss Vanity?” Minerva asked, turning her gaze away from the miscreants at the back to acknowledge the petite Slytherin girl with her hand up.
“I was just curious to know whether there are strong distinctions between magical and non-magic creatures, Professor?” asked Emma Vanity.
“Absolutely,” Minerva nodded. “It will typically be more challenging to transfigure magical creatures, perhaps primarily because their own magic makes it harder to cast a spell that stands for a significant amount of time. It’s not necessarily because magical creatures can resist more. And with that…”
Minerva raised her wand above her head and tapped it into the air, silently conjuring one beautiful owl, then another, and again until there were eight owls flying around the room in search of spots to perch. All of different breeds and colours, the complex magic she’d just demonstrated would not be attempted by these students for a couple more years. The dangers of conjuration still fresh on her mind, it was only last year that a distracted sixth year had attempted to conjure a single barn owl and produced a displaced head instead that had screeched in agony until Minerva set it right.
“Snape, would you classify an owl as a magical or non-magic creature?” Minerva asked suddenly, zeroing in on the boy whose shoulder had become the chosen perch for a snowy white.
“They’re not magical,” Severus said softly. “But they aren’t not magical either.”
Though nothing he’d said was funny, a few giggles emitted from around the room. Minerva looked over her shoulder to glare at the vocalizers and saw what was amusing them. With James, Sirius, and Peter all resting their chins eagerly in their hands and batting their eyelashes and making kissing gestures towards Severus’s back. They stopped when they saw her looking, and Minerva turned back around and moved closer to Severus’s side to block the other boys from view.
“Will you elaborate?” she asked, and Severus took a deep breath to apparently calm his nerves. The snowy owl, who had seemed to take to the boy, nudged him incessantly until Severus absentmindedly began to pet her with a slightly twitching finger.
“Well, they don’t have magical properties themselves,” Severus continued. “Being able to deliver letters without an address shows keen instinct and superior intelligence, but I don’t consider that magic. I do think those are qualities all the best wizards would have, and I don’t think it would be easy to transfigure an owl unless it decided to let you. Obviously not as hard as human transfiguration, but harder than rabbits. Since owls and us…we have an understanding.”
“I like that answer,” Minerva told him with a small smile. “It’s a factor perhaps overlooked by Emeric Switch in our textbook. We need to consider all the different factors that come with making an animal that has its own agency do your bidding.”
Pressing on, Minerva moved back over to her desk at the front of the room. “Now despite Mr Black finding the subject matter too boring to be worth his time. I hope the rest of you appreciate that building blocks are necessary if you ever want to be able to attempt human transfigurations and more complicated spells. And if you ever want to be able to conjure owls from the air as I have done - you begin by learning how to transfigure them first.”
Minerva pointed her wand at a screech owl perched near the window. It flew over by the pull of her summoning charm, never once needing to flap its expanded wings. Landing on her desk, it hopped nervously in place as its head twisted curiously around the room.
“Potter,” Minerva called, beckoning James over impatiently. “Come here. We’ll do you first.”
James did not hesitate to get to his feet and turned to look back behind him at Sirius while he strutted up to the front of the classroom to stand beside her. Giving James the spotlight had nothing to do with satisfying his need for constant attention but was because Minerva considered him to be the student most likely to successfully demonstrate this spell for the others. Because both James Potter and Sirius Black had been blessed with the particular proclivity for Transfiguration that Minerva so rarely saw in her students. And it drove her half-mad to watch them lazily skive off homework and vehemently resent her focus on theory when they could potentially match her in skill someday if they cared to put in the effort.
“What do you want me to do, Professor?” James asked eagerly, tossing his wand from one hand to the other.
“I’d like you to attempt to transfigure this owl into a pair of opera glasses,” Minerva replied.
"Okay, what's the spell?" asked James unapologetically, but with the usual confidence that made him unafraid to fail and meant he rarely did.
“Miss Evans,” Minerva called, still looking a James disapprovingly. “Please tell Potter the incantation that he should already know.”
“It’s Strigiforma,” Lily giggled from her seat right in front of the teacher’s desk.
“Thank you,” said Minerva. “And can you also tell us - does this incantation change anything you cast it at into a pair of opera glasses?”
“No, because it’s referring to the owl, not opera glasses,” Lily answered automatically.
“That’s right,” Minerva nodded at her. “Good. So now Potter, how do you suppose this owl can become a pair of opera glasses if the spell itself doesn’t specify?”
“Because I can make it do whatever I want it to?” James shrugged.
“Essentially,” Minerva replied. “The better your concentration the more precise the Transfiguration will be. Give it a go.”
James didn’t rush through the spell. He crouched down to be level with the owl on her desk. Eye to eye they stared at one another while James flicked his wand a few times as though loosening his wrist. But when he called out the spell, the tranquil moment was interrupted. The screech owl jumped into flight and was halfway across the room before James had even looked up. Squeezing itself between two others perched near the window, it stared back at James reproachfully, as though offended by such betrayal. The understanding between wizards and owls that Severus had so cleverly pointed out, had been broken.
“That was a good first attempt, Potter,” Minerva said generously, summoning one of the tawnys over for him to try again. “Though your takeoff was too abrupt and aggressive. Consider your visualization more and swish your wand less jerkily this time so you don't scare her off.”
“That’s what she said,” Sirius called out from the back of the classroom, but converted his barking laugh into a rather exaggerated fake cough at the look on Professor McGonagall’s face.
“Honestly, Professor, I don’t know how you put up with him,” James jested, turning away from his new owl to grin at Sirius . “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”
“Focus,” Minerva scolded, tapping James hard on the back of the head with her wand.
“Ow,” James complained, reaching a hand up to ruffle his hair where she had rapped him.
“Light wand movements and a clear picture in your mind of what you want this owl to become,” Minerva instructed, watching James swish his wand through the air with a wonderful balance of agility and force. His brown eyes were connecting with the owl’s again and Minerva believed he was concentrating sufficiently. “Now accentuate your voice -”
“Strigiforma,” James said clearly, and this time something happened.
Minerva watched with the rest of the class as the owl changed right before them. Shrinking and metamorphing within a blink of an eye. The inquisitive eyes, the beating heart, the proud feathers were all no more. Into non-being, into everything, the owl became and in its place was a long stemmed single red rose. Not the opera glasses that she had requested but the look on James Potter’s face told her that the spell had worked exactly as he intended.
“Evans, will you take this rose -” James teased, picking up the flower as loud cheers from the Gryffindor side of the room erupted, led by Sirius who was wolf-whistling enthusiastically.
“Oh come off it,” Lily rolled her eyes, her hands folded tightly in her lap as James waved the rose in front of her face. Though he sulked for only about half a second at her refusal before dramatically rushing over to present the rose to Sirius instead.
“For me? You shouldn’t have,” Sirius batted his eyes expressively.
“Alright, Potter, that’s enough showing off for one day,” Minerva interceded, pointing her wand at the rose in Sirius’s hand to make it become an owl again. Its talons pierced into Sirius’s hand upon contact and he yelped as he shook it off.
“But you can have ten points to Gryffindor for a rather impressive Transfiguration,” she smiled. “I’d like you all to break into pairs now and attempt the spell for yourselves. Owl into a pair of opera glasses - unless you’d prefer to go freestyle in your attempt like Mr Potter.”
There was a deafening scrape of chairs as everyone seemed to move at once. Leaving the other girls from her house behind, Lily hopped up from her chair and moved back to where Severus sat waiting with the snowy white owl. Remus and Peter had both turned completely around to work as a foursome with James and Sirius. And everyone in the room was focused on choosing an owl that looked agreeable enough. Since most of them weren’t yet familiar with the Summoning Charm, they opted instead for approaching individual owls and convincing them to land on their arms.
“You're muffling your words, Rosier,” Minerva observed several minutes later while making her rounds up and down the aisles. Pausing next to the Slytherin boy who didn’t seem to be making any progress with the spell. “Mulciber, you go. I haven’t seen you try yet.”
Minerva was occupied with helping Marlene McKinnon keep her owl still long enough to even cast the spell when a lull seemed to fall over the classroom as the volume of even the owls suddenly seemed to dissipate. “Professor McGonagall, might I have a word?”
And Minerva looked up to see that it was Albus Dumbledore’s arrival in the doorway that had silenced the curious students. She thought he was looking particularly grave as a shiver of foreboding crawled down her spine. Something else must have happened for Dumbledore to seek her out when she was teaching. Something particularly horrifying, because the Daily Prophet was always full of depressing news these days and Dumbledore ordinarily just left her a note when he needed her to hold down the fort while he rushed to the Ministry to deal with things.
“There’s been another attack,” he explained, as soon as Minerva had joined him out in the corridor and the door was firmly shut behind them. “Fifteen dead and it happened in broad daylight this time. I didn’t want you to find out about it from someone else -”
“Why?” Minerva asked slowly, already suspecting what the answer was but that still not preparing her for the horror of having it confirmed seconds later.
“The Death Eaters were in Caithness this morning,” Dumbledore explained, naming the muggle village where Minerva had grown up and where her parents and youngest brother, Robert junior, still lived with his wife and three daughters.
“Your family is alright,” Dumbledore added quickly, while Minerva could do little more than stare at him unblinkingly while she bit down hard on her tongue and felt her mouth pool with blood. “I am told by my contacts at the Ministry that Robert fought bravely to protect as many of his muggle neighbours as he could. He’s been assisting the obliviators all morning and the Department for Magical Catastrophes is working on repairing the church.”
“They destroyed the church?” Minerva finally found her voice, though it sounded nothing like it usually did.
Her heart felt very constricted in her chest as she thought of her poor father, powerless against the Dark Arts of witchcraft and wizardry that could target him and the parish he joyfully served, even when his wife and children made efforts to respectfully conceal their own magic from him. And the Death Eaters had been so close to Reverend McGonagall - to both of Minerva’s parents - they lived in the pastor’s house just next door to the church itself. That they’d survived this Death Eater raid was only short of a miracle.
“I think you should go home,” Dumbledore suggested gently. “Take a few days at least. The amount of death and destruction means that the Ministry won’t be able to cover all this up from the muggles - just the who and how.”
“And you said there were fifteen people killed?” Minerva clarified, a sinking sensation in her stomach when Dumbledore nodded his head. The small population of Caithness guaranteed that she knew at least most of the victims, but the sympathy radiating in Dumbledore’s bright blue eyes suggested that this was even more personal than that.
“I am so sorry, Minerva,” Dumbledore said, reaching into the pocket of his velvet blue robe to pull out a rolled up piece of parchment.
She unraveled it quickly and ran her index finger down the list of names, spotting quickly the one she already knew to expect. For Dumbledore to pull her out of class and for it to not be a member of her family meant that it could only be one other person - and it was. Written in slightly smudged black ink, the name of ‘Dougal McGregor’ and Minerva felt her finger suddenly freeze four lines down. A flush rising through her body as she leaned against the wall for fear she would faint.
“How can this be?” Minerva asked.
An impossible question that could receive no adequate answer. For it shouldn’t be and yet was. Needless, senseless deaths. It was in all the newspapers. You Know Who and his followers were coming out of the shadows and not even attempting to hide what they were doing and where they were going. Only near Dumbledore was safe and yet Dumbledore could not be everywhere. And it all hit even harder when it happened to someone that you loved.
“Albus…” Minerva’s voice halted in her throat before she could say more, but he came closer to her anyway. Entrusted with her story and standing supportively at her side while she looked back down at the list and the other discoveries still to be made.
Underneath Dougal’s name was a woman called Monica McGregor - and beneath her were several other McGregors - John, Samuel, Fiona, Rory, and Blair. A whole family swiped off the earth because of hate and cruelty. Her finger slid back up the parchment and rested on Dougal’s name once more as her eyes filled with tears.
Five children. There were five little or - not so little anymore - McGregors on the farm by then. Ages, names - Minerva had always deliberately glossed over those particular news tidbits in her mother's gossipy letters because the existence of each one of them had been like a hypothetical stab to the heart. She hadn’t known until this moment that anything could hurt worse than that and now it did. The life that could have been hers and the deaths that might not have happened - it was all Minerva could think about as she walked slowly down the corridor alone to her office and left Dumbledore behind to go in and dismiss her class.