Written for MinervaFest 2013. Prompt: Minerva's father teaches her and her brothers about God, religion, heaven, etc- and the understanding that magic is a gift- not a devil given power/ doing sin by doing magic). How McGonagall balance out her religious faith with her magical heritage.
Thanks so much to nnozomi for betaing! I was excited to write this prompt and then intimidated as to how to do it justice. I wound up seeing a lot of my own family in these characters—while I think there are a lot of stories to tell about them, but I decided to narrow in for this story.
Like many young men growing up, I received a great deal of sound advice from my father. Useful, widely-applicable maxims. Such as, "you can tell a lot about a man's character by how he tolerates repetitive bagpipe music."
There were others. "Even if you think you know how to use it, even if you know you know how to use it, if it's likely to hurt whatever it crashes into, don't run when you're holding it, please." And, "you are, as always, the beloved child of your mother and me, as well as of God, whose capacity for forgiveness is infinite, while ours is magnanimous if bounded by the limits of our human condition." There're pithier ways of getting the same message across, of course, but in my case it often was the prelude to a guideline much more specific for whatever I'd messed up, on the day.
If you'd asked me at the time, I would have said of course he'd said much the same to my sister—we grew up together, after all. But in retrospect, I realise, it wasn't quite like that for her.
For starters, for several exciting years of my own misadventures, I was home in Caithness while she was off in school. Even when we were both home, she wasn't as likely to join me. And yet, that first autumn she went off to school, she'd write us owl after owl.
Dear Malcolm and Robbie, How is your school going? Has Mum got a new cat? We are learning lots of things, we need to write on long parchments. Dear Malcolm and Robbie, I'm up early because I can't sleep. There is so much food for breakfast, I can hardly believe it! Dear Malcolm and Robbie, Some of the girls in my dorm are outside at a sport game, I don't know when they're going to finish this silly assignment.
That was my second sign something was wrong—if she worried so much about her assignments, why was she spending so long writing all those parchments to us? The first, of course, was that she wrote at all, and didn't bother with a curt Give my love to the boys on her letters to Mum and Da. Since when had she cared that Robbie had accidentally vanished his hair, or that I'd accidentally-on-purpose chalked up the walls at school more efficiently than a single lunch break could handle? Unless she was telling us off, she'd certainly never approved before.
"I was homesick my first year too," Mum said to Da. They were holding hands, quietly, Mum with Minerva's letter still in her lap. "They all are. She'll be fine."
"Do you know that?" he said, not looking at us.
I don't remember the rest of the conversation, Robbie and I went outside and he half-climbed, half-flew up in a tree. Mum and Da spent a lot of time just sitting quietly, while we were up trees. Either or both of them always got us down. One way or another.
That winter was much milder than the previous one had been, of course—Minerva had been around every day, before, telling Robbie and me off when we threw snowballs at the decrepit old cat—so without her, we had long and tepid hours to enjoy playing around in the slush. Finally, maybe two or three weeks before the term let out, she stopped writing. "It shows she's fitting in," Mum said, "making new friends, she'll have so much to do."
"And how often did you write?" asked Da.
"Not...often," Mum trailed off.
None of us were very close to our maternal grandparents, but then again, we weren't close to our paternal grandparents, either. Whatever their struggles, our parents had at least managed that semblance of balance.
Then came the Christmas holidays, and Minerva came home—sobbing. I kept my distance, uncertain what to make of seeing her so emotional. Robbie tried to be more consoling, hugging her and offering her some of the sweets he had pestered Mum into letting him "help" make. She ate them, warily, not needing anything else to cry over.
"It probably tastes like rubbish," I ventured, "now that you get to eat magical cooking every day..."
"I don't care," she said, stuffing down some more as the crumbs spilled across the table.
"Magical cooking?" Da asked, warily. "Can you tell me about it?"
"I don't know. Every mealtime there's food on the table, it comes and goes just like that, nobody ever brings it out."
"Does it taste good?"
"I don't know—every day, I just—want to go home."
"Oh, Min," said Mum. I could see Minerva glance over at her for a split-second, then down determinedly at Robbie's attempt at cooking. By then Mum knew not to try to hold Robbie or me on her lap for too long, we'd squirm no end, but Minerva seemed to be digging her seat into the floor, convinced that twelve was too old to flee to being held. In spite of herself.
"It's not fair! Why do I have to take the train to silly old London when school is right here? Why can't I go home in the fire, on the weekends? Why—why—why didn't you write back to me?" she sobbed again, abandoning all pretence of indulging Robbie's cooking habit.
Da had had enough at that point, crossing the room to embrace her. "We wrote back to every letter," he said.
"No," she choked out, slowly, "n-not the l-last one. I-I sent it t-two weeks ago, you never..."
"Ssh," said Mum. "You're all right. Listen. I bet you recognise already, you're a lot more mature than most of the other students there! It feels like a long time, now, but in a couple years you'll get to go to the village."
"The what?" asked Da.
"The weekends will be more interesting," she went on. "Once you can get out of the castle."
"W-what's in the village?" Minerva whimpered.
"There's a bookshop, you'll like it. And a tea shop, it's not too expensive."
"I reckon there's no kirk."
I blinked. I'd never considered my sister particularly attentive, when Da was preaching—she'd just as soon quietly glance through the psalm book. And yet, it was a part of her routine, just one of the dozens of things that must have thrown her off by the move to a new school. Even as a first-year, she'd been a creature of order.
"There are other students, whom you can meet with," Mum began.
"They're English," said Minerva, as if that explained everything.
Da smiled, stepping back from her. "They'll enjoy the chance to learn from you, too. 'In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek...'"
"...neither Hufflepuff nor Ravenclaw," Mum added.
"What's a raven's claw? Do you put it in your potions?"
"Only the most special ones," she said, giving him a quick kiss.
"Mum, what about the owl?" Minerva pleaded. "What if something went wrong?"
"I'll look into it," said Mum, earning her confused glances from the rest of us, none of whom knew how she'd pull something like that off. Until Robbie made another dive for his sweets.
A few days went by and the rest of us forgot about it, but Minerva kept pestering Mum about it until another owl came. Minerva stared, wide-eyed, through the frosty window—the rest of us were becoming accustomed to getting letters from her, even Da, but she was not used to watching from that angle.
"Here you are," said Mum. "I see. The school's owl was an old one, it took sick when it was delivering the letter, and it collapsed. Nothing to worry about, you're back here now, aren't you?"
"B-but how do they know?"
"Probably there's some magical way of going after it."
"What if it's dead? What if I killed it?"
"It's not dead, the groundskeepers know how to find it."
"What if I did, though?"
"Is this a hypothetical question?" asked Da. "Are you trying to hide something from us?"
"No!" she blurted, stifling a giggle. "I mean, what if I overloaded it too much?"
He shook his head. "Consider the owls of the air..."
"Ravens, Da," said Minerva.
"I can't sneak anything by you, can I." That was Da—talking in quotes, so long as he could get Minerva to grin at them, and pull her out of her shell a bit.
"The other students send lots of owls too," said Mum. "The staff knows how to handle it."
"Not as many as me," said Minerva.
"Do...are you making friends there?"
"I try, but I don't know what to talk about. What if they think I'm slow? Or—or mean or silly or anything?"
"Nobody who knows you could think that. And if they do, maybe they're the silly ones."
"I can't show off how much I've read, it's not nice to the Muggle-borns, and I can't tell them to stop if they make fun of the churches in England, they'll only tease me next if I show them I care, and what ifEngland's different and they're right, I can't, I can't..."
It was no use consoling her, though even then we all knew on some level that—whatever people called her—"slow" was never going to be a worthwhile insult. Never mind that it was the holiday, she lingered in an out-of-the-way corner, by a pile of textbooks stacked high. "C'mon, it's magic!" I said. "You've got to have fun, reading about it."
"It's not fun when I have to have a whole foot written. Over Christmas," she pouted, scribbling notes.
"Of course it's—" Mum began, then broke off. "Remember, lots of students came in knowing nothing about magic. The professors just want you to be all caught up by the end of the year, is all."
"The end of the year is in a couple of weeks," she retorted.
"So it is. Which means it's a very busy time for your father, don't distract him."
"She's not a distraction," Da laughed. "And I'm guessing she's getting more written then I am." He held up the very rough outline of his Christmas sermon, with a pen looking somewhat more modern than Minerva's battered quill.
"What're you writing about?" Minerva asked, carefully inserting a bookmark into her book. The threads hanging from the edge of the bookmark tied themselves in knots, then unwove themselves, as she turned her attention to Da.
"I was thinking about writing about the three Wise Men, but maybe I should wait till Epiphany for that," he smirked, cueing another giggle.
"Or however many there were?"
"Right you are, my little scholar." She giggled, and finally set the book down entirely. "Tell me. Do you learn about the ancient Persians, in school?"
She fidgeted with her plait, thinking. "Not really. We have Astronomy, but that's mostly the stars we can see here. And there's History of Magic, but that's—it's—"
"Is that also focused on Britain?"
"No," she whimpered. "I mean, yes, but, Da, the professor's a ghost."
Da blinked. He took off his glasses, set them down, and scratched at his bald spot—he had the same gesture Min did, reaching for her plait when she was nervous, except that she had hair. "Is it, now. Has it...lived through most of the history? A firsthand source?"
"I don't know. He just stands there and talks at us, and makes us write long essays, but Da, what if—what if—"
At that point she started crying again, and while Da set down his notes to go hug her, I recognised it would probably be a good idea to slip out of the room.
Whatever happened, it was worth bringing up again, though. Because Da sat us down, a couple days later, for a reading exercise.
"Robbie," he said, "Mum has told me that when you grow up and go to school like your sister—" Robbie perked up obligingly. He was still at that stage when anything Minerva did was very mature and exciting, even if the mention of her having to leave home again made her shiver from behind her thick winter layers. "–you're going to have learned to read, and you'll get to read the names of all sorts of...interesting people. Malcolm, can you read these?"
He handed me Minerva's book, and I squinted down, trying to sound them out. "Male...malecrit? Daisy Dode...Dodderidge, Emmy...Emeric the Evil...Paracle..."
"Paracelsus," Minerva interrupted. So she could enjoy her textbooks, if only to show off how much she knew and we didn't!
"And can you read," Da went on, "how long the people on this page lived for?"
I glanced down. "When they have the two numbers, with the little line in between 'em, you subtract the one on the left from the one on the right? I think I could do it. But I'd have to write it down."
"You can do it in your head," said Minerva, "if you round a little bit, then add it back in at the end."
"I'm sure you can," said Da. "But that's all right, you'll have enough of that to be doing at school. Here, now, Malcolm, try these names on for size."
He passed me the family Bible, and I stared—this was certainly not the Christmas story. Still, I tried my best to pronounce names that were just as difficult—and lifespans that were far more exorbitant—than the wizards and witches I'd just skimmed through. "Do you think they were all wizards, too?"
"I don't know any wizards who've lived to be nine hundred," said Min.
"And how old is this professor of yours?"
She paused. "I don't know. Really. But...ghosts can't have children, I don't think..."
"Whether or not they were ghosts," said Da, "they were not like us. I don't know much about ghosts, but I believe there's no one who can hide away from God forever. Magic or no."
"S-so even Binns might go to heaven, someday?"
"Bins in heaven? Perhaps there will be no rubbish to chuck in bins, but I suppose..."
"The professor," she said, but it was in her cleverer-than-thou voice rather than the fearful stammers of the weeks before.
"In heaven will there be magic wands?" asked Robbie.
Da paused, carefully closing the Bible. "God spoke through lights and new stars in the sky—and in heaven, they need neither lamp nor sun. God says it is good to live together and make new families—" He turned away, reshelving the book. "—and in heaven, they neither marry nor are given in marriage. I don't know, I've never been," he laughed. "But there will be power and goodness. Like you'll learn, here on Earth."
From then on, Minerva didn't seem so tense about school—and we, too, gradually learned to discount some of her overblown fears of failure in her letters home. By the time I started at Hogwarts, a few years later, the teachers greeted me with various versions of "oh, you must be Minerva's brother!" I can't always say I lived up to their expectations, exactly.
But that was all right, because I had plenty to do outside of class. Watching Quidditch. Throwing snowballs at owls. And, yes, joining her at the Wednesday night candlelight services she and some of the "English" students helped organise. It turns out, denominational differences don't matter all that much when your real concern is whether the magical candle floating in your face is going to explode before you get to the end of the reading.
For the record, it didn't. Ever. Even that one night, the winter of Minerva's seventh year, when the wick was completely spent and the flames dropped from the ceiling, onto the Bible that one of our classmates was reading out of. Before he had time to panic, Minerva had waved her wand and vanished the book entirely—no, not vanished it, replaced it with a small octagonal basin, about the size of a baptismal font and half-full with water. The fire splashed down and immediately turned to smoke that rose through the quiet classroom for a moment before, with a shrug, she replaced the book.
"Was that really necessary?" I teased her, as we were walking back to the dorms.
"Probably not," she shrugged. "But, you do know what today is."
Not having completely memorised the liturgical calendar, I paused. But it was Robbie, in his first year, who groaned before answering, "The Feast of the Transfiguration?"
I rolled my eyes. "Ever the celebrant, our Min is."
"It runs in the family," pointed out Robbie. And at last, Minerva smiled.