"Nobody could ascend before transfigured."—Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

Before Transfigured

Returning to his study after a leisurely Saturday breakfast of boiled eggs and bacon in the Great Hall, Albus sank into his cushioned desk chair. Since he could hear the chilly November drafts hammering against the window panes, he whipped out his wand. With a casual flick, he pointed it at the fireplace, where a hearty blaze sparked instantly into existence.

Comfortable in the warmth of his office, Albus reclined in his seat, adjusted his glasses so they balanced more sturdily on the bridge of his crooked nose, and began to peruse the copy of Transfiguration Today that a barn owl had delivered to him this morning. The gleaming periodical's cover had promised a fascinating article on Vanishing vertebrae that he was interested in examining in more detail, and the crackling fire would drown out the howling wind to make a soothing background music to his reading.

Humming the school song to an improvised tune, he followed the table of contents on the inside cover of the magazine to what he hoped would be an intriguing article on Vanishing vertebrae. Unfortunately, he had just flipped to the page where this article started when a rap resounded from his study door.

"Come in," he called, placing the periodical on his desk's blotter and wondering which student had a question on which homework assignment.

"Professor Dumbledore!" In a breathless burst, Celeste Warner, a Hufflepuff third year sweet as a Cauldron Cake but nervous as a mouse eternally pursued by a cat, rushed into his office, gasping, "Madam Abbott wants you in the hospital wing immediately."

"Did Madam Abbott mention what was wrong?" Albus asked, as he rose and strode toward the door, because Madam Abbott, the school's new matron, was an excitable soul. It wouldn't surprise him if her definition of an emergency was a stubborn cough resistant to strong dosages of Pepper-Up Potion.

"No, sir." Her blonde pigtails slapping against her rosy cheeks, Celeste shook her head. "I was just walking by the infirmary on my way to the library, and she stuck her head out to ask me to tell you to come to the hospital wing immediately. Whatever it is, she said it was very urgent."

"I see. Thank you for the message, Miss Warner." With a grave nod, Albus bowed Celeste out of his study and then stepped out into the corridor himself. Remembering that Celeste was a student more likely to get points for her cooperative, kind behavior than for her stellar class work, he added, "Ten points to Hufflepuff for being an exceptional courier. Off to the library you trot now."

At the next corner, he and Celeste divided to travel to their separate destinations, and Albus did not begin to worry about what might have prompted Madam Abbott to send for him until he arrived outside the hospital wing at the same time as an obviously winded Horace Slughorn.

"Were you summoned here as well?" inquired Albus, although he already suspected the answer, as he pulled open the door to the infirmary and entered.

"Yes," Horace panted, following Albus into the hospital wing and swiping a handkerchief across his sweaty forehead. "I hope that none of our more promising pupils have been injured by those savage beasts Professor Kettleburn in all his infinite lunacy insists on infesting our grounds with, you know. What would their parents say? Probably enough to get the school closed down if they're well-connected. Why Headmaster Dippet employed Professor Kettleburn in the first place, nonetheless kept him on after all the accidents and incidents, is a mystery beyond my comprehension…"

Before Albus could reply to this rant, Madam Abbott bustled up to them. As she guided them toward a bed encircled by a screen and two figures, she explained, one syllable tripping over the next, "Emma Mulciber has been hexed so she won't stop vomiting and soiling herself. None of my potions or counter curses have helped her. So far, it's all I can do to keep her hydrated."

"Hexed?" repeated a frowning Horace, as they neared the bedside and discovered that the figures outside the screen were Rosemarie Fawcett, a Ravenclaw prefect who had never broken a school rule in all her five years at Hogwarts, and Minerva McGonagall, a Gryffindor first year with a sharp tongue and even sharper mind.

"Yes, sir," Rosemarie piped up, as the professors and nurse arrived around the screen. "Minerva did it after Emma called Grace O'Dowd—"

"A dirty Mudblood," finished Minerva, her rigid spine and clenched fists illustrating more clearly than words could have that she was more defiant than repentant.

"I'm sure this all just a sad misunderstanding." Unfazed by Emma Mulciber's injury because her family's wealth had faded centuries ago along with its sanity and she was widely regarded among the staff as possessing the wits of a pickled toad, Horace patted Minerva's shoulder. Plainly ready to support the witch who was already coming to be defined as the cleverest in her year, he went on, "Isn't that so, Minerva?"

"I can't say, Professor, that I misunderstood Emma Mulciber." Minerva's eyes narrowed dangerously, and Albus found himself contemplating why it was always the brightest minds that cast the deepest shadows, and why the darkness of brilliant minds like Grindelwald's and Tom Riddle's always attracted him like black holes. Not that Minerva's brightness shone as vibrantly as Grindelwald's or Tom Riddle's, and not that her darkness rivaled theirs, but Albus would still have to hold himself aloof from her, because the challenge of matching wits with her would stir up his own pride in his intellect and magical prowess. After he had proven himself so unfit to rule, he could not tempt his ambition again. It was safer and wiser by far for him to focus on the pupils who did not have a snowball's chance in the Bahamas of getting twelve O.W.L.s. "Nor can I claim that she, despite her manifold mental limitations, had difficulty comprehending me."

"Well, you must have been acting in the heat of the moment to defend your friend." Looking rather wrong-footed, Horace once again attempted to free Minerva from all blame for the attack on Emma. "I doubt you really meant to hurt anybody."

"I created the hex, sir." Minerva's manner was as cold and hard as a frozen lake in January, and Albus wished that he could hear some form of apology in her impassiveness but his ears did not have that active an imagination. "When I pointed my wand at Emma, I knew exactly what I wanted to inflict upon her."

"This is the poppycock I've had to deal with, Professor Dumbledore," snapped Madam Abbott, as she pounded bicorn horn with her pestle. "Miss McGonagall will proudly admit that she invented a hex to cast on Miss Mulciber, but she won't provide so much as a hint about what counter curse to use to reverse the spell or what ingredients to use in a remedy for its effects. That's why I've brought you here. I'm in charge of healing at this school, not discipline."

Having learned from years of painful experience that student discipline was best handled before as small an audience as possible to reduce the odds of humiliation or a rebellious desire to impress peers with insolence, Albus turned to Rosemarie. "Thank you for your assistance, Miss Fawcett. You may go now."

Once Rosemarie, appearing rather disappointed because watching other pupils get in trouble was the only form of entertainment in her somber existence, had left the hospital wing, Albus addressed Minerva in a stern tone that prompted her to spare him a glance for the first time since his arrival, "Miss McGonagall, you will tell Madam Abbott how to fix the damage you did to Miss Mulciber."

"I devised the hex, Professor." Minerva wasn't about to surrender the battlefield yet. "That doesn't mean I've invented a remedy for it."

"We have a problem here, Miss McGonagall." Steepling his fingers, Albus locked his blueberry eyes on Minerva's ivy ones. "Either you're egregiously underestimating my intelligence, or I'm severely overrating yours, because I have considerable difficulty believing that, even in a fit of rage, you would be foolish enough to cast a spell you had no clue how to reverse. Losing your temper is on a completely different plane than losing your mind."

Minerva's cheeks flamed like bonfires on Guy Fawkes Day, and Albus knew that she would be provoked into revealing her knowledge by the insult to her intelligence. Proving him right, she spun around to inform Madam Abbott in a curt fashion, "I'd recommend blackberry root, dried bilberries, peppermint, and ginger root. All the ground bicorn horn in the world definitely won't do a whit of good for any affliction to the intestines. Even Muggles realize that much."

With an indignant humph that most likely translated into an assertion that during her days at school students would never have ventured to be so impudent, Madam Abbott hurried over to the infirmary's store cupboard to withdraw the ingredients necessary for the remedy.

"Please report to my office, Miss McGonagall," ordered Albus over the sound of Madam Abbott feverishly chopping ginger root. "We'll resume our discussion there."

"Yes, sir." Minerva offered a crisp nod before spinning on her heel and striding out of the hospital wing.

Once his challenging charge had departed, Albus walked over to Madam Abbott, who was still busy slicing the ginger root, and said, "I must continue my conversation with Miss McGonagall, but please send me a message on the efficacy of the potion after you've administered it, because my thoughts are, of course, with Emma at this time."

"Do the same for me, please," added Horace, who had come up behind Albus. "I've essays to grade, so I can't remain here indefinitely."

Suspecting that Horace would not have left Emma's bedside if she were one of his precious favorites, Albus trailed out of the infirmary alongside the Potions master.

"You won't be—" Horace coughed as they exited the hospital wing and stepped into the otherwise empty corridor—"too harsh on our dear Minerva, will you?"

"She invented and inflicted upon somebody a cruel hex." Sighing, Albus shook his head. "That's a grave matter whether you wish to acknowledge it or not, Horace."

"Come off it, Albus," blustered Horace, waving a dismissive hand. "Emma is just trash from a family lacking the collective intelligence to set a cauldron right side up, nonetheless brew a potion, and Minerva is a smart witch who is going to travel far down whatever career path she pursues."

"Her lack of cleverness doesn't make Emma any less human than Minerva." Albus felt as if ice were pumping through his veins. "No matter what you may believe on the contrary, intellect and power in themselves are not virtues."

"Minerva is a very charming young lady." Horace scowled. "If you let yourself appreciate her brilliance instead of just focusing all your attention on the dimmer students, you'd see that."

"I see her brilliance." Albus eyed Horace over his spectacles. "I'm just not blinded by it, as some might be."

"Take my words under advisement then," blustered Horace, bustling away from Albus as they parted paths at the next corridor.

Shaking his auburn head in disapproval of his colleague's disciplinary and favoritism policies, Albus made his way to his study and opened the door to find Minerva standing with a spine straight as a soldier on parade but reading his copy of Transfiguration Today.

Her cheeks tinging the pink of sunburn in embarrassment, Minerva handed him the magazine. "My apologies, sir. I know I shouldn't have touched any of your belongings without your permission, but I just got bored and thought I'd read something."

"You just got bored," echoed Albus, accepting the outstretched publication and ruminating that the danger of all great minds was in what terrors they created when they were bored. "Tell me, Miss McGonagall. Were you similarly bored when you invented that spell you deployed against Miss Mulciber?"

Hesitating as if she sensed the truth could condemn her, Minerva offered a slow nod. "Yes, Professor."

"I see." Albus kept his tone level. "Were you also bored when you cursed Miss Mulciber?"

"No, sir." Minerva's fists and face were taut with indignation. "I was so angry that I felt cold as ice. Boredom had nothing to do with it, I assure you."

"You can't hex everyone who crosses you," Albus began, frowning down at her, but she cut him off in a rebellious rush.

"It wasn't about me." Minerva's eyes seethed. "It was about Grace O'Dowd. She didn't deserve to be called a Mudblood, and I wasn't about to stand mutely by, watching a fellow student suffer verbal abuse about her parentage."

"I wasn't implying you do any such thing, Minerva." Albus lifted an eyebrow. "What you should've done was contact a member of the staff to put a halt to the harassment Miss O'Dowd was experiencing rather than become a bully yourself."

"If I reported Emma, she wouldn't have received the punishment she deserved." Minerva's lips were a thin, white line. "I gave her the punishment she deserved."

"It wasn't for you to decide what her punishment should've been," countered Albus, voice and gaze sharpening. "You're a student just like her, subject to the same rules and consequences."

"Rules aren't always right." Minerva's expression was remarkably impervious for someone who, to Albus' knowledge, had never so much as imagined putting a toe out of line. "The law was on Adolf Hitler's side, too, or at least he altered it so that it was. I'd prefer to be killed as the criminal who tried to hide Jewish neighbors in my attic than live as the SS officer who herded them like cattle into the gas chambers."

"I hardly think Professor Dippet is Adolf Hitler and the rest of the Hogwarts staff is the Gestapo," Albus said severely to prove that he read the Muggle newspapers as well. "However, if you're determined to be a martyr, you must be resolved to accept the consequences of your civil disobedience."

"What consequences, Professor?" Minerva's manner was tart as a particularly sour lemon. "A thousand lines? Extra chores?"

"No, not lines or extra chores." Albus kept his tone inscrutable because he realized that mysteries were the only way to establish authority over the brilliant. "You would merely get bored, and then you would devise a whole house of horrors to occupy your mind. Whatever punishment you receive must be one where your brain can't help you escape reflecting upon the consequences of your actions, or else you will not learn anything. Instead of lines, you will have on my desk before breakfast on Monday morning a three thousand word essay on how you could have handled the situation effectively without resorting to hexing Miss Mulciber. Likewise, rather than doing extra chores, you will volunteer for one hour an evening for the next week in the tutoring club Miss Pomona Sprout so generously organizes. That should teach you to use your knowledge in service to others, not to the detriment of your fellow human beings."

"I was helping Grace," protested Minerva, managing to look both miffed and wounded. "I cursed Emma Mulciber because she was treating Grace as if she were less than human just like the Nazis in Germany acted toward the Jews, and I wasn't going to watch that happen before my eyes without a fight, Professor."

"The problem is that you treated Miss Mulciber like she was less than human in the process," Albus explained, feeling as if the marrow in his bones ached with weariness since, like Horace, he had his favorites, and Minvera was one even if he had to act as if she was not as bias was all in the action and not in the thought. "You behaved as if she was some hideous, stupid slug you could squash merely because she insulted your friend. What you did was the moral equivalent of putting out a flame with fire: in other words, transforming into the monster you wished to fight and defeat."

"I only did what I had to do, sir." Chin tilted mutinously, Minerva shook her head in fervid disagreement. "You aren't being fair to me if you believe I had wicked motives."

"Did you take any pleasure from what you did, Miss McGonagall?" Albus arched an eyebrow, aware that he at least would not have to warn the bold and unflinching Minerva to speak the truth. She would be as honest as she was smart, but, unfortunately, even with the best of intentions, that wouldn't always equate to her being good.

For a long moment, Minerva bit her lip, contemplating the question, before confessing, "I suppose I did take some vindictive glee in taking power over that idiotic Emma Mulciber, but I didn't really acknowledge those cruel emotions when I was using my magic against her. Mostly I focused on the fact that I was defending Grace. What I did was wrong I guess, but I felt like I was doing the right thing for the appropriate reasons when I acted as I did."

"For the most part, you meant well, and you will do better next time." Albus articulated the second clause as a command rather than a reassurance since he understood that Minerva was the sort of serious pupil who preferred sternness to indulgence. "I have high expectations of your behavior, Minerva, because I know that you can meet them."

"Yes, Professor." Minerva nodded, and then went on, "I have a question about that article on Vanishing I was reading before you arrived."

"Vanishing is O.W.L. level material." Albus allowed his face to soften into a smile that wrinkled the edges of his sky eyes. "I'm surprised that you only have one question for me."

"I think that I understand the practical aspects the article outlined, but there was one piece of theory I stumbled over." Grim as ever, Minerva's expression did not crack into a grin. "The article stated that Vanished objects become nothing when they go into a state of Non-Being, but wouldn't it be more accurate to claim that they enter everything equally with their matter so evenly distributed over all existence as to become invisible? I mean, matter can only be moved and transfigured, but not lost, so is it truly possible for something to become nothing?"

"Non-Being is everything instead of nothing." As he ruminated over this insight, Albus thought that the reason he had become a teacher was the pure magic of moments like this where a malleable young mind showed him a new perspective of the world. The imagination of a child was the only innocent brilliance it was safe for him to admire. "You should write a letter to the editor of Transfiguration Today arguing that premise."

"I wouldn't presume to do such a thing." Black eyes wide, Minerva gasped. "I'm much too young to have my name in a scholarly journal, sir."

"You don't need to reveal your age." Albus' eyes twinkled. "Nor must you reveal your identity. You can invent a clever nomme de plume."

Cocking her head, Minerva murmured, "If I did write such an article, Professor, would you edit it for me before I sent it off to the press?"

"I'd be honored." Gravely, Albus bowed his head in assent. Then, because he knew that Transfiguration, as the most precise branch of magic, was Minerva's favorite subject, and he understood what damage a bored brain could inflict on the world, he added, "Now, I will make a deal with you. If you promise to never again invent a spell that can only be employed to harm another, I will spend an extra hour a week tutoring you in advanced Transfiguation. Does that sound fair and agreeable to you, Miss McGonagall?"

"Definitely, Professor." Minerva was truly eager at the prospect of extra lessons for the foreseeable future. "Thank you."

"Run along now." Albus waved his hand at the door. "I have papers to grade, and you have assignments to finish."

As Minerva sailed out of the office in much better spirits than he had seen her all day, because he had forgiven her and she had forgiven him. Forgiven. The fragile beauty of the absolving word took root in him like a spring flower, and he held onto the delicate seed of hope, keeping it close to his heart. That way he could remember that everybody was a whirlwind of good and evil, light and dark, courage and cowardice, pleasure and pain, cruelty and compassion, selfishness and sacrifice. Each of them was their own chiaroscuro, their own bit of illusion battling to emerge into something solid, something real. They had to forgive themselves and one another for that, because, in all of them, there was an awful lot of gray to work with, and nobody could live in the light all the time without being blinded.