When Minerva McGonagall joined the staff of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, it created quite the stir. She was the most talented Transfigurist since the great Albus Dumbledore himself taught Transfiguration twenty years back. She was one of only five Animagi registered in that century. She was involved in several major transfiguration projects within the Ministry of Magic, including developing better ways of storing high clearance information within the Ministry. Furthermore, she was also responsible of some of the oddities in the Department of Mysteries, the result, as most other objects in the Department of Mysteries, of experiments gone awry. She was mostly a quiet individual who took her work very seriously, so she had little time for friends and other social interaction. She kept her and her transfiguration experiments to herself.
The stir was caused by the fact that many did not feel she should have gotten the job. Being mostly unknown in the tight-knit magical community would not help anyone, even talented ones, get a such highly desired job. The job was supposed to go to the acclaimed Titus Tittleman who had been written about several times in Transfiguration Today and Science of Spells Monthly. He was indeed acclaimed. He had won the Tolinger Transfiguration Award two years running, the Phyllis Florington Award for his work with magical plants in transfiguration usage, as well as a Noble Wizards Award for Peace. What reason could Albus Dumbledore possibly have for turning away this applicant for this highly desired job and giving it to some unknown witch?
Minerva McGonagall looked up at her apartment building. She paused at the bottom of the stairs to unlock her mailbox and pull out her mail before climbing the stairs to her second story flat. She put her key in the lock and twisted. She sighed, leaning against the door before pushing the door open. She placed her mail on the table, then took off her overcoat and then her hat and brushed down her robe before setting down at the table to sift through her mail with carefully self-manicured fingernails. She looked at them. They were getting so raggedy. No, they were not. She would not let them. She transfigured a hairpin she took out of her hair into a nail file and began filing away at the edges of her nails. What was the point of keeping them so well manicured? She would only wear them ragged the next day with her experiments.
The owl that brought her mail a special delivery owl and that was trained to place the mail discreetly into the mail carrier's pouch. She couldn't stand owls anyway. Large, fat, annoying birds that always took the best prey. She'd been clipped by one while hunting a few years ago and hadn't forgiven it. Ever since then, she'd hired the Wicker Owl Co. who placed muggle stamps on the envelopes and trained their owls to work in muggle residential districts. Magical folk felt comfortable using the owls and muggle folk, as usual, rarely noticed. This of course meant she had to use the office's owls to mail any letters to Wizarding world, but she had such few friends it did not make much of a difference.
What was this? A letter with the Hogwarts seal? Hmm, probably some class reunion or asking for a special donation or something of the sort. Yet her name and address were not printed, but hand written. It might be of some interest to read it. She nonchalantly transfigured her nail file into a letter opener, opened her letter, transfigured it back into a hairpin and placed it once again in her hair.
"Dear Miss Minerva McGonagall," she read aloud. 'Dear'? Who was writing this? She looked to the bottom of the letter. Ah, there it was. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. Of course Professor Dumbledore would sign his full name.
"I am pleased to offer you the position," she continued, "of Professor of Transfiguration?"
She read the last bit in question. What was this? She hadn't sent any application to Hogwarts for any position much less the greatly coveted position of the professor of tranfiguration. She would never aspire to such a position. Would she? She wasn't sure she'd even like being a teacher, being around so many people all the time. She wasn't sure she could handle it. Looked back at the letter.
" 'I eagerly await your application and cannot wait to review and accept it. Signed, etc.' what is this? Why on earth would he offer me the position when I haven't even applied for it? I simply don't understand."
She looked around at her sparse apartment and stretched, sighing deeply. She heard the flap on her door creak and then slam.
"Tom, is that you?"
She got up and went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of cream and placed it on the countertop and got a shallow bowl and poured it into the bowl and replaced it in her refrigerator, which was currently full up with meats and cream.
"Tom?"
A striped orange and blonde cat hopped onto the counter. With one swift movement, she hopped blithely onto the counter too, swishing her tail just in time to miss his face before rounding and lying down in front of him.
"Oh Tom," she meowed.
"Yes, dearest, what is it?" the cat purred.
"Oh Tom, what a day I've had," she mewled back.
"Tell me about it! I nearly got ran over twice. Damned taxi drivers," Tom yawned.
"Oh, you don't care," she meowed before sitting up and lapping at the cream.
He rubbed up against her, "I'm sorry dear, what was it?"
"Another whole experiment moved to the Department of Mysteries. I can't believe I botched up again," she sighed, blinking. She looked at her tail flip a number of moments before deciding that it wasn't shiny enough and began to lick at it.
"Oh, don't be so hard on yourself. You humans," Tom said, grooming his own long whiskers, "I'll never understand the purpose of this thing you call 'work.' Why not just hunt like the rest of us?"
She looked up, "How else do you think I buy you all that lovely tuna and cream?"
"You buy it for yourself, too, you know," he said between taking laps at the cream.
"Besides, mice and birds give me indigestion. They're fun for a while, but not very filling. Especially when the other half of you is human."
Tom looked affronted.
"I thought I was your other half."
Minerva rolled her eyes.
"You are. But I mean…"
"Minerva, when are you going to give up being human?"
"Whenever you give up being a cat."
It was his turn to roll his eyes.
"I can't become human."
"I've told you before Tom. I worked hard to become a cat. I'll bet with a few months of experiment, you could become human," she said, hopefully.
"No, thank you. Having to wash myself with water and that awful stuff? Going to work? All those other things you humans do? No, thank you. I'll stay a cat. Besides, I'm just a familiar. I'm magical, but I can't actually do magic myself. I'd have to rely on you to change me to my human form and back into being a cat. And then I'd have to learn how to speak! As it is, I have a hard enough time understanding you when you talk in English, except for a few words here and there. I'll stick to feline."
She sighed, "Well, can't say I didn't try. But Tom, it's just so hard loving you the way I do. No one understands."
He grinned and lay down on his paws.
"I don't know why you love me the way you do. You don't have to make them understand. We understand, and that's all that matters. People aren't going to change, and we aren't either. So why try? We don't bother anyone, do we?"
"No," she sighed, "I guess you're right. Guess who I got a letter from?"
"Who did you get a letter from?"
"Albus Dumbledore of Hogwarts."
"No!"
"Yes! And did you know what else? He wants me to be the school's Transfiguration professor!"
"No! You've never taught a day in your life. Why would he want you to be the Transfiguration professor?"
"I know, that's what I was wondering," she nuzzled his glossy fur.
"I was reading that there was some big hullaballoo up at the school about who would be the next Transfiguration professor."
"You? Reading?"
"Well, I have to do something when you're gone."
"Yes, but I thought you said you were more interested in hunting mice than reading and 'all that rot' if I remember it correctly."
"That I did. I can't help it if mice are fun to play with."
"Yes, but what about learning new things? Improving yourself?"
"You know, you might make a good educator with all this 'improving yourself' talk. I know enough. It's taken me a long time to learn what I know. And you've taught me so much about magic and things already. Come to think of it, you might make a great teacher after all. You've taught me so much, I bet I'd pass for a wizard if I could only get the language down. Oh, that and actually do magic. I just help you with all your magic."
"And give up all the things you love about being a cat."
"Yes, that too."
"Well, I have to channel it somewhere," she said, "It isn't my fault that witches and wizards are like that."
"I suppose not. But isn't that why you have wands?"
"Well, yes, but we channel our magic through wands. We use familiars for excess magic."
"It's so nice to feel useful."
"Oh don't be upset about that again. Look, it gives you so many advantages over other cats. You're more intelligent, you can understand other animals, you have better night vision and will certainly live much longer."
"Yes, but you'd never think of all that if you weren't also a cat, at least at home."
They were quiet for a while, purring loudly, half-dozing.
"It isn't so hard, learning to talk."
"Hmm? Oh, I'd sound like a dunce," he yawned and stretched.
"Well, didn't I sound like an idiot the first few months?"
He nodded and began licking her forehead.
"Yes," he said between licks, "I never did hear the like. I wondered where you'd learned your feline."
"You really think I might make a great professor?" she said.
He thought about it for a moment.
"Yes," he said, "I think you might. What do you think the salary would be?"
"I… I don't know," she said, "I imagine it might be higher than the one that I have now."
Tom snorted, "I'd say. How long have you been getting the same pay without a raise?"
"Five years. But I don't need a whole lot. We're never having kits, you know. And what with practically being single, because you don't eat a whole lot and even as a human, I eat practically next to nothing. Then with the rent, this apartment is small and fairly cheap. I don't spend money on much else. I mean, there's my clothes. And work pays for all my experiments. We never go out, for obvious reasons, not much anyway. We don't need too much, so I don't mind."
"It doesn't matter that they actually pay you more so much as they should pay you more. You're worth so much more. The Ministry would be up a creek without a paddle for all the things you do around there. You've made their storage system so much more efficient and discovered several things for them, but you never get any credit for the work you do. They take such advantage of you there."
She looked at her paws sheepishly, "I… I don't mind much. I'm happy."
"Are you? You come home to me every night, and only me. Not that I mind, but you don't talk to many other people, cat or human. You go to work every day and work in your little lab at a thankless job where people tell you what to research and you research and do their dirty work. They publish the results and get all the credit and you do all the work. If I were really good, I would become a human just to give them what for."
She put her paws on his back.
"You could, you know."
"I'm not that good."
"No," she said, " I don't imagine you are. I can't help it if I don't have a life."
"Oh, yes you can. My life might only consist of hunting for mice and chattering at birds, but at least I cross streets sometimes, just for the thrill of it. My life at least has some hint of danger."
"Mine does too, " she said indignantly, "I've been in more scrapes than you can imagine. You know that project St. Mungo's approached me with a few months back?"
"Didn't that have something to do with transforming brains or something?" he said.
"It was mostly with spinal chords attached to brains actually," she said, "They wanted to see if there could be some way to use the principles of transfiguration to reanimate dead and severed nerves. You know, that's where a lot of damage goes on that they can't seem to figure out how to repair except by invasive muggle methods, and their methods aren't even all that much of an improvement. Anyway, the result was not good. We reanimated them alright, but I suspect it required a certain amount of dark magic, though."
"Yeah? What happened?"
She shook her head, "I'm not quite sure. My poor assistant may be in St. Mungo's for a few weeks while they set him straight. They turned into—I don't know—mind altering squid things. We had to send the whole project to the Department of Mysteries to have it all sorted out. A whole three months of research down the chute. That's the last time I'm ever going to work with reanimating nerve tissue. It just never works out right," she yawned, "I think we're just going to start afresh and reassign the whole project to the Charms Department and see if they can do anything with it."
"You know, I think I could fancy some tuna fish about now. Think you could use those opposable thumbs of yours to get us some supper?" he said, "One thing I'm glad you're a human also is you can work can openers."
"You sure you want canned? Or did you want fresh?" she said before getting up and hopping off the counter.
"Oh, I don't much care. It's just I'm hungry and hunting was bad today. Mice are too time consuming to catch," he said.
She opened the refrigerator and peered in. No, she'd just work the can opener. She got out a can of tuna and a can opener from one of the drawers, cranked open the can, set it in front of the cat she considered her mate in life and began petting him. It was odd to be a human in love with a cat, but not, she reasoned, when you actually were a cat also.
"I wish you wouldn't cross the street," she said, "The motorcars won't bat an eye about running over a cat."
"But then, my dear," he meowed, "How would I ever know what was on the other side?"
She nodded. She, too, had an itching curiosity. She, too, wanted to know how everything worked and why. She, too, wanted to know what was on the other side. Maybe there was something more out there than that tiny lab she made her cell. It did seem like such a nightmare being in there, doing the same complicated tasks day after day, sometimes with dastardly results. And when she did get good results, well, Tom was right, she never got any of the credit for her work. She was mostly content in allowing others the glory. She didn't particularly want to be in the spotlights. Even with her many accomplishments in Transfiguration, she was not one to blow her own horn and so did not make much of a fuss when she discovered something new and her employers got all the credit. This did mean, however, that she never got a raise in her pay or a promotion.
Maybe she would apply for that job… after all, she thought, looking at the letter, it would seem she already had it.