Title: Favoritism

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and Hogwarts belongs to JKR to do with as she pleases. I'm just borrowing them for an afternoon. It should be obvious that I'm not making any money off of this.

Summary: Even teachers were once students.

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Teachers aren't supposed to have favorite students any more than they were supposed to have least favorite students. He knew that as well as he knew his own name. It was bad for the students, and it ruined the teacher's objectivity. But he defied any transfiguration teacher to not believe that a student like Minerva McGonagall to be something special. From her first class with him, six years ago, as her eyes had widened with awe at his initial demonstrations, Albus Dumbledore had known that she would go far. And if he had also felt some small measure of pride at the fact that the best transfiguration student of the generation was from his house, well, what was that?

That, Dumbledore told himself sternly, was the slippery slope of rationalization which a teacher only indulged himself in when he wanted to convince his conscience that it was acceptable to show favoritism to a bright young woman who was fast outpacing her classmates in learning the most complex forms of transfiguration. After twelve years of teaching, six of which had already involved her, he should know better.

And he did, most of the time. It was just watching her face as she listened to the lecture, utterly open and absorbed in the theory. Behind her eyes he could see the concepts slotting neatly into place as he discussed the morality and practicality of animal to animal transfiguration. I Watch your thoughts and pay attention to the other students /I , he told himself, turning his attention from Minerva's evident understanding to answer one of Augusta Pembroke's questions.

Unusually for him, he turned the lecture into a debate to last until the end of the class. This was the first time that the students would be working with animals with high levels of sentience, and he wanted to be certain they understood the moral ambiguities and responsibilities of changing one form of sentience into another. Only when they understood how precious the lives and minds of these animals really were, would he be willing to teach them the practice of transfiguration on this scale.

Minerva, of course, leapt fully into the debate, her quick wits and acidic temper in full flower as she argued for an understanding of great moral responsibility. He found himself challenging her, playing what a Muggle friend of his had once termed "the devil's advocate," challenging her statements to be certain that she understood what he had been trying to get across to her and her fellow classmates. Her eyes flashed with temper as he proffered arguments against each of her points. This was what he loved the most about classes at this high level. The students started to shed their automatic deference to the teachers, and he could work with them as the adults they would soon become. Minerva McGonagall was fast moving into that maturity, and it showed as she swiftly countered every argument he posed. By the end of the class, it was evident that she at least understood all the moral implications of their actions, and her arguments had swayed most of the other students into agreement.

Perhaps teachers were not meant to have favorite students, but Minerva would have to stand as the exception that proved the rule.