Hogwarts: Before Voldemort Was Voldemort
A/n: I'm being to lose track of the number of nasty e-mails I've had telling me that McGonagall is way too old for Snape. I personally don't think so, and after all, this is fiction, I can make her as old or as young as I please. But I really don't like getting nasty e-mails. So I decided, if you don't like McGonagall with Snape, why not see how you feel about her and Voldemort?!?!?!?! I promise you, by the end of this series, you'll be begging me to get her back with Snape! (At least I hope so!)
Minerva McGonagall sighed as she climbed into bed. It had been a very long day and all she wanted to do was sleep. 'I don't know what's happening to pupils nowdays' she thought wearily. 'They don't even seem to want to learn anymore.' It was days like today had been that made her wonder why she even bothered. 'All they seem to care about is having fun and falling in love. Not a thought for what they're going to do with their lives.' She wondered vaguely if she had been like that at that age. She didn't think so. But then again, it was becoming rather hard to remember things from back then. Not that she would want to. She had put all memories of her life as a pupil at Hogwarts to the very back at her mind. They weren't something she cared to dwell on on a day to day basis. But then sometimes........sometimes late at night, she felt her mind slipping back to her school days. She always had terrible nightmares afterwards, but they didn't bother her. Sometimes you just had to face up to your past..........
When she had been seventeen, in her final year at Hogwarts, she had been Head Girl. This came as no great surprise to anyone, and neither did the choice for Head Boy, Tom Riddle. Both were very serious and hard working students, and had quite alot in common really. The only major difference being that he was a Slytherin and she was a Gryfinndor. Which wouldn't really have made any difference to anyone until a few years before when the Chamber of Secrets had been opened and had started alot of ill feeling between Gryfinndors and Slytherins. The Headmaster, Professor Dibbs had always tried to keep peace between the houses where it was at all possible, and in all the time the school had been in his control, there had been very little ill feeling between anyone, until the chamber had been opened. After that, he never really recovered from the shock of loosing a pupil, and ill feeling ran rife.
But Minerva had been willing to make an effort to get on with Tom, afterall, Slytherin or not, he had been the one to close the chamber hadn't he? And Tom seemed to want to get on with her as well. They often sat in the grounds, talking about places they wanted to go, things they wanted to do, and how they were going to go about doing them. All things taken into account, she might have gone as far as to say they were friends.
If only she had known that Tom didn't see things quite in the same way, then she could have saved herself a whole lot of heart ache. Because Tom had a plan. He had been studying the Dark Arts for years, but of course, no one except his very closest friends knew that there was anymore to him than he let show. He wanted to rid the world of mudbloods and muggles, and even the purebloods who would never agree with what he was doing. That way, only the very strongest would be left. But he needed help. There was only so much you could get from a text book, and most explainations were full of holes. And that was why he had 'made friends' with Minerva McGonagall. Everyone knew she was the smartest girl in the school. If anyone could help him understand the ancient spells it was her. He just had to make her want to help him first.
So they went through the whole getting to know each other phase. He often wondered how she would react if, during one of their conversations about what they wanted to do with their lives, he was to turn around and say 'I'm going to rid the world of mudbloods, muggles, and anyone else who stands in my way and create a race of super strong pureblood wizards to be my minions.' She'd probably just laugh it off, and tell him to stop being silly. But he wasn't being silly. It was his dream, his goal, his life long ambition. All he needed was a bit of help.
He had serious doubts that she'd ever see things his way, and decided that, when the time was right, he would claim he just had an interest in the Dark Arts. Maybe ask her to teach him a counter curse or two, so that it wouldn't seem so suspicious. And maybe she'd have so much fun helping him understand the more complex spells, she'd realise that the Dark Arts were really 'highly educational' and he wouldn't have to kill her too.
But time would tell. For now, he was stuck getting her to trust him. A process he wished wouldn't take quite so long, after all, there was only a year left of school, he couldn't waste it all sat outside talking!
2nd A/n: There. Don't you see how much better Snape is for her now?!?!?! At least he isn't using her to help him take over the world...........although, yeah, he probably wouldn't have any objections to doing so. I'll continue next week, and I think I'll probably follow this through until either the end of the year at Hogwarts, or until she finds out what he's really up to, which ever comes first. But I'm still carrying on with my Snape and McGonagall fics, so there!