Minerva McGonagall has an excellent memory. She remembers every student, and every time that student has broken the rules. For James Potter that list extended to great lengths. Minerva McGonagall is more than just an excellent glare and a good memory though she is the mother of Gryffindor students the one who watches out for each and every one of the students that step into the Gryffindor common room. Her colleague Horace Slughorn has a shelf where he displays all of the students who reached fame but McGonagall is subtler than that. She keeps a scrapbook underneath her desk, newspaper clippings about former students and letters of thanks. It's not just the hugely successful students either. She saves the letter of thanks from Samuel Girdth a Gryffindor who wanted nothing more than to become a cook thanking her for getting him a job at the three broomsticks as a chef, and a flyer announcing the opening of a small book shop specializing in muggle books by Ross Sumner who scraped by in every class except muggle studies where he earned the highest grade in his class. She encourages each student to achieve their goals and provides them with a boost when they need help getting there.
When the war starts she adopts a new role, she is the one to softly inform the students that someone they love's life has been claimed, that they won't have a home to travel to this Christmas break. The one she will never forget though is telling James Potter and Sirius Black that the Potters were killed in a raid the night before. She will never forget James sinking to his knees in the middle of her office and the look on Sirius Black's face the child whose face seemed to be permanently set in a smirk's face crumbling as he realized that the people who had given him the love he never had would never complain about his long hair again. She remembered finding James in the owlery tears streaming down his face because the owls refuse to take the letter he wrote to his parents. She remembers finding a bloody Sirius outside of the Slytherin common room barley standing flinging spell after spell at a group of Slythrins known for their connections to Voldemort. She remembers the way his screams echo through the castle as she helped him to the hospital wing, but more than that she remembers the screams turning into sobs as he sunk to his knees steps from the hospital wing. Minerva McGonagall remembers that year's Christmas, she made sure that everyone had presents under the tree that year. She remembers the day that James and Lily got married, she would never tell anybody but there was a reason they were always partners in her class other than the fact that they were two of the brightest minds to pass through Hogwarts. She remembers the birth announcement for Harry James Potter, with his mother's eyes, and the proud James Potter who delivered it. She remembers when they died. She remembers there funeral. She remembers sitting in front of a house on Privet Drive waiting for the foul muggles inside to pick up the boy who lived, the Harry Potter, the boy with his mother's eyes.
When Harry Potter finally arrives at Hogwarts for a moment she thinks that it is James, then she sees Lily's eyes staring back at her. After she sees him shoot passed her window on a school broom, after she sees to it that he is the newest member of the Gryffindor team she orders a nimbus 2000. She makes sure that Harry Potter has the nicest broom you can buy because that's what James would have done. She does it because the way his face lights up makes the world better if just for a moment. When he asks her two years later if she will sign his permission slip she almost does, because Minerva McGonagall believes that every person deserves to have someone who cares about all of those little things.
