Disclaimer: I own nothing. I'm just playing in J.K. Rowling's sandbox.

Reviews: Feedback is the only salary I get for writing fanfiction, so please be generous. At the outset of a longer story like this one, reviews are especially useful in helping me gauge what an audience enjoys and whether people would be interested in reading more of the work.

Author's Note: Some of Minerva McGonagall's backstory came from Pottermore, so if you don't want to be spoiled, just regard it all as fanfiction, and I won't be telling you which parts I made up and which parts J.K. Rowling did…

Prologue: Age of Heroes

Dear Catriona,

What is faith? It is a question I, as a minister's daughter, have asked myself many times over the years, dear niece, and I am no closer finding the complete answer today than I was when my hair was black like a raven's wing, not the pale silver of moonlight it is today.

I write this for you because I am dying, and I want someone to be able to learn from my story. You are skilled with words, and perhaps you will, if you feel there is gold to be made in telling the life story of another Hogwarts headmistress, convert my memories into a biography that contains more truth than Rita Skeeter's books about Dumbledore and Dippet combined. (Of course, it would not be difficult to write a more truthful biography than Skeeter's account of Dumbledore's life, because, from all I ever learned about Dumbledore—and I learned far more about Dumbeldore than many people—I can safely say that I agree with Elphias Doge's assertion that Skeeter's biography contained less truth than a Chocolate Frog Card.)

I do not complain about dying, for there have been, I confess, many times over the long years of my life when I wished I were dead, or, better yet, had never been born. Even now, my heart looks at trees, whose lives consist of no more than dreams of sun and memories of rain, and I envy them. There are times when I wish I were one of the rocks that line Scotland's rugged hills, ignored and forgotten by those who tread upon them.

You will protest, I am sure. How could I, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, commit the sacrilege of wanting myself dead? How could I, a respected teacher famous for fighting in two wars against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, wish to trade in my glorious memories for the sleep of the deaf and dumb rocks of the earth?

That is the tricky thing about memories, Catriona. They are like the wind. They come when they will, carrying both the hope of life and the danger of death. We cannot master them. They are our masters. They rejoice in their capriciousness, as they drag our hearts wherever they desire.

Now, the memories have taken me to this moment, where I sit writing this story. There is much I do not want to recall, but the memories scream to be recorded so that they can live in the minds and hearts of others when I am gone, I pray, to heaven like dust in the wind.

I shall start at the beginning, during a worldwide depression when one world was dying and another was about to be born. There is much glory in my tale, much wonder, and a great deal of sorrow. The bearer of my tale must shoulder a weighty burden before man, and, of all those who dwell on this earth, I trust none more than you. I have loved you as much as I could have loved any daughter of my flesh. I look upon your smiling face and see all that I have gained and lost as the price of my destiny—a fate that was written in ink in God's book before I was born.

Even as a child, I had to become used to the cruel whispers of gossipmongers, who thought that my mother was a freak and insane, though they never would have dared to say as much to my father directly, and were always hunting for abnormalities in my brothers and me. It was I who devised cover stories for any accidental displays of magic that my younger brothers, one of them your father, made. In the end, that turned out to be useful preparation for my later life, because more than most women, I have been subjected to the hidden daggers of jealousy and rumor. Perhaps that is to be expected. A price I had to pay to be a close friend and ally of one of the most revered and reviled men the world has ever known.

Tell them, Catriona, that I loved Albus Dumbledore, may God's blessings and peace be upon his soul, and that he loved me, for all I proved unworthy of his affection, though not in the same way and to the same degree that I loved my husband, Elphinstone Urquart. Of all the twists and turns that make up the geography of my life, there are none that I treasure more than the ones I navigated with Elphinstone. Indeed, there were many times, especially during the second war against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, when I wished that I had died with him in our garden that day, and that I could have left this valley of tears for others to conquer, but that was not my destiny.

My fate was to be a mother of generations of children passing through a House, even though my womb never bore a child of its own. A House motivated to change the world and destroy inequity, even as it was forever tempted to succumb to it. A House with a soul, like mine, filled with passion and violence. A House that, like my life, stands for victory and justice, yet, like me, can never hide its own frailties and cruelties against a terrible judgment. For decades, I was the harbinger of its joy and anger, the queen of its love and jealousy, and the bearer of its knowledge as well as its ultimate fool. My story, then, isn't just mine—it is a whole House's.

It is a story of love and loss, brotherhood and betrayal, courage and sacrifice, and the death of dreams. It is a story of the blurred line between our best and our worst. A strange thing about stories: though this all happened a long time ago, it is also happening right now, as you read these words. By the end of it, you might conclude that heroes never existed, and that, even if they did, they could never be trusted,since even the noblest of people could suddenly just…snap. On the other hand, you might argue, as I would, that though I lived during the end of the age of heroes, time saved its best heroes—people like Potter and Dumbeldore—for last. You might even believe that heroes can really exist and aren't just created through the careful fact manipulation of the Daily Prophet. Maybe that belief in heroes is all that faith is.