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When Professor Minerva McGonagall became a teacher, she swore to protect all of her students with her life. Even if it meant breaking her own rules.
So when she saw her students (those poor, poor kids who had too little time to grow up and too much time to fight against evil) come to her classes run-down and tired, she said nothing.
She said nothing when other teachers, like the Carrows, asked her if there was anything suspicious going on in the middle of the night that would make those students that exhausted.
Of course she knew something was going on; she watched her kids fly in the air in the middle of the night.
Minerva watched them bloom in the middle of the night, faces full of smiles and lips drawn out in rare laughter. If breaking rules were the only way that her students could be happy again, then so be it.
And sometimes she would be trapped in a trance- instead of seeing Lee Jordan whispering the scores and commentary out in hushed murmurs, she heard Lee's loud, cheery voice once again. She could see Ginny Weasley, shouting and screaming for the Quaffle, as well as Draco Malfoy with his platinum blond hair sneering and showing off his new broom.
She reveled in voices screaming "GRYFFINDOR", "no, SLYTHERIN!", the sun beating down her old back, "ARE YOU KIDDING, HUFFLEPUFF AND RAVENCLAW AREN'T EVEN PLAYING THIS ROUND", "come on, harry, you can do it!", cold wind whipping against her face, the sneer on Severus's face when Gryffindor scored, the frothy sweet of butter beer on her tongue, yanking Lee Jordan back from the mic while unsuccessfully hiding her smiles, Harry-
But when she blinked, she was back in her dingy room staring at the quiet students outside her barred windows, almost invisible against the dark of the night. Her heart went out to Draco, who drank polyjuice potions nightly to experience the same, fleeting feeling in his fingertips.
She said nothing when they forced her to drink Veritasium: she would rather die than tell them the truth about the midnight rendezvous.
If dying was the only way to protect her students, then so be it.