Rose Weasley had always grown up hearing about the legendary Professor McGonagall and as a child longed for nothing else to someday grow up to be like her. After all, she thought, who else could scare the living daylight out of her parents other than her?
She couldn't think of anything better than when she stepped up on the platform for her first year. Little did she know that everything would change forever that day…
Rose never expected to be pushed off the train until suddenly she was accidently shoved by two oblivious sixth years. She squeezed her eyes closed with all her might and next thing she knew she had landed on her bum on Platform 9 ¾.
She looked around in confusion, seeing no one she recognized but deciding to shrug it off as a fluke as surly her parents must have realized they forgot something and left early. And so, deciding she was still excited she hurried onto the train and searched for her cousins who were already aboard.
She never found them…
When the train came to a stop Rose had already reached the equivalent of having been turned to stone when she had seen a copy of the daily prophet by accident only to see that it was faaaaaaar before her time….. Before the Marauders time even.
She decided that she'd speak to Dumbledore immediately when she could for surely he'd be there and be able to help. He had always been so wise she had been told…
She sat shocked in her new Gryffindor dormitories, shocked by what she had been told by Dumbledore when she had arrived and he had told her that she was now Minerva McGonagall as there was no child by that name, hadn't been…
And so Rose became McGonagall, and though she hadn't told Dumbledore the whole story just as her parents had never told her he knew somehow that she was someone of importance to the future.
It took all of her discipline not to scream for the first year at Hogwarts but then, she adjusted a bit. She stayed there for the breaks. She learned to excel in transfiguration even managed to become an animagus.
She met Severus and the Marauders and Lily and Grams and Gramps Weasley. Things became fun but she had grown good at hiding her emotions but when the day came that things began to fall apart Dumbledore had to remind her to let it fall.
So she watched as the day came as her Uncle Harry was born and Peter Pettigrew was placed as Secret Keeper and he betrayed them all. She watched as he was placed in a household of foul people.
And finally came the day when her parents and Harry came to Hogwarts and oh how funny it was that they didn't know how happy they would someday be…. And how sad that they were so happy when they would someday know such great sorrow.
Her parents failed at keeping secrets, she hoped they knew. It was almost fun to give them the detentions that she knew they would complain about for years to come in good humor.
And then started the second war and again she had to bite her tongue. She fought Severus, activated the suits of armor like she had wanted to since the day she had heard McGonagall had done so.
She watched as the War was won and she watched as people she had watched grow, died, just as she had known they would. But even as she had known she still, like with the rest of the Marauders and everyone else she hadn't been able to save, she hadn't been ready for the pain.
She missed the uncle she never knew and all of her Uncle Harry's marauders who had all been like father save Peter who, in the end had tried to save Harry. She missed them all… So much more than she had ever known…
Finally, she was born and Rose watched in amazement as she grew, and went to Hogwarts as herself and not herself by a different name in a different time.