1
It was said that a witch born at the stroke of midnight would always be prone to ill fortune.
Minerva, born exactly at midnight on the third of October, had never been entirely sure whether this was something that she should believe in. Her Grandmother Ross, her great-grandmother in fact, but somehow that was always forgotten, had always held court on these matters, being an expert in proverb and myth. She dealt in various levels of truth, depending on the day. Some of them she would admit were stories. This one, she vehemently denied was a myth, stating it to be fact.
"Oh, Minerva," she would say, as she attempted to teach her granddaughter the art of knitting, at intervals during her childhood, a gin and tonic at her elbow as her charmed needles clicked and clacked. Minerva had no talent for it. Her needles, held in her hands as she was unable to use magic, were heavy and unwieldy, and the stitches seemed to lose themselves. "When you know of magic what I know, you will understand that some things don't need to be explained. They just are."
Grandmother Ross was a hundred if she was a day, and spoke as if that gave her all the wisdom of the ages.
"You've not got the luck, my poor girl. That much is the fact, that much it is. Lucky you have your reading and your beauty. You'll be needing both, my child."
"A load of rubbish, Grandmother," said Minerva's mother, Isobel. "There is no proof to any of it."
Grandmother Ross would prove to be wrong on many things over the years. Not every witch could master knitting. A good woman did not need give up her job and remain home after marriage, unless she wanted to. Wizards with red hair could be trusted. But she was, in the end, right that some things did defy expectations. Some things just were.
It was those words that Minerva remembered, more than any others, when Tom Riddle finally met his end. She stood over his body, mortal as it had been at the end, and she felt nothing. Certainly nothing that she could explain to any other. His life, their life, did not have any explanation that she understood. It had been, and now it was not.
She walked away.
She was free.
—
Minerva McGonagall was a certainty for Ravenclaw. That's what they all said, when she received her Hogwarts letter. Clever, with a love of books and writing stories, and, besides, the family had been in Ravenclaw for centuries.
Or the magical side of her family, at any rate. Her father, a Muggle, did not know or care what the houses of Hogwarts were or what they stood for. He respected honesty, Godliness, and hard work, and did not understand why she would wish to attend a magical school. A Hufflepuff, Minerva decided.
"Despite the name, you're a Ross," Grandmother Ross said. "If a somewhat unfortunate one."
"Grandmother," said Isobel, sharply. "Don't go filling her head with nonsense."
In Ravenclaw style, Minerva decided to research the topic of luck and witches and midnight births. But the village library was but a few books in the corner of her father's church, and they did not cover it, and neither did the books at her grandmother's house. She'd have to wait for Hogwarts.
At least she had her letter. Her Hogwarts letter. She was going to be a real witch. Even if it did sound more like the fairy stories she had enjoyed when she was small than it did like real life.
Not that she was able to talk of Hogwarts. Her mother told her stories of her time on the Quidditch team, of feasts, of balls, of the things she would learn as a young witch. But outside of her bedroom, she was to remain silent. The other village girls talked of going up to the high school in Ullapool, and Minerva did not.
"I'm to go to boarding school," she said, as she had been taught to say. "In England." Far enough away as for no questions to be asked. The mothers all knew that Isobel had been educated away from the Highlands; Minerva's statement was accepted.
"You will write, won't you?" asked the other girls her age, Ailsa and Joan. Minerva promised she would, but knew that she would struggle. Her world would be so different from theirs, if even half of her mother's stories were true.
They liked her, but they were closer together. Best of friends, and then Minerva. It was just unlucky, her mother told her, that they were closer together than they were to her. These things happened that way. It would be different at Hogwarts.
So she bought the wand (fir and dragon heartstring), the cauldron, the books (and several others, besides), and everything else. She pressed her nose up against the window of Quality Quidditch Supplies, to see the newly-released Comet broomstick. She chose a cat. An owl would have been more useful, perhaps, but there was something about the small, black cat that hung back in the Magical Menagerie, unlike the others that came to see if they would be chosen. The cat was for her.
"Terribly unlucky, black cats," said the dour shop assistant, the ruby red robes she wore clashing horribly with the ginger of her hair.
"Luck is what you make of life," said Minerva, repeating her father's lines. "We're from Scotland," she continued, as if that wasn't evident from her voice. "To see a black cat on your porch is considered highly fortuitous."
"As you say," said the shop assistant. Minerva didn't think she seemed terribly interested.
The cat was called Rowena. Everyone said Minerva would be a Ravenclaw.
She packed her trunk. She did her hair in the two plaits down her back that she favoured. She chose her nicest dress.
And she entered the platform for the Hogwarts Express on the first of September, 1940 with no small amount of fear. There were trains in Edinburgh, where she had visited with her mother and brothers, but not like this. Not humming with magic, not filled with people in hats and cloaks and robes, clothes she had only seen in books and photographs. A group of teenagers levitated trunks down the platform in a race, chasing them until they were shouted at to stop. Smaller children clung to their mother's robes, some begging to be allowed onto their school train themselves.
"Behave yourself," said Minerva's mother. "I don't want an owl home unless it's you writing."
Minerva had never once had a bad report from her teacher at the village primary. She thought it unlikely Hogwarts would be any different.
"I will, mother."
Her mother crouched down, as Malcolm and Robert, her little brothers, stared longingly at a man selling real, flying toy broomsticks from a suitcase.
"Minerva," she said. "Enjoy yourself, won't you? Hogwarts is magical. You won't have to hide your magic, not there. And it doesn't matter what house you're in. You will do well wherever you are put."
"Grandmother says I'm unlucky." She'd never voiced that concern to her mother before, and she didn't know why it was now that she chose to do it.
"Is that the midnight thing again?" Minerva's mother made a small snort. "Don't believe everything that Grandmother says. Malcolm! You are not sneaking onto that train!"
Minerva didn't know whether to believe her.
"But what if the Sorting Hat doesn't find anywhere for me?"
"It will. It's been sorting students for a thousand years, if not more. It always finds a house. Robert! Come back here, this instant!"
Minerva said her goodbyes. Promises to write to her mother once a week, promises to send something from the castle to her brothers. Her father was not there. He didn't want her to attend. He had not understood why she could not go to the Ullapool High School, with the rest of the children from the village.
There were times when Minerva did not understand that, either.
The train was packed. She pulled her trunk down the aisles, late to get on because her brothers had held up her mother from helping her. Most of the carriages were full. Older students were saving places for their friends, others heading for their first year crowding together in such numbers that there was no more room for Minerva.
Not that she was asking to go in.
It was not until the end of the train that she found somewhere. A carriage with a single girl sat in it, alone, kicking her feet against the underside of the seat. She had dirty blonde hair cut into a bob and wore a darned together dress, her trunk shoved roughly to one side.
"Are you a first year, too?" she asked, when she saw Minerva staring. "You can come in if you like."
"Yes," replied Minerva, moving her trunk into the carriage. The girl stopped kicking and eyed her with curiosity.
"Aren't you going to sit down?" asked the girl. "There's loads of seats. I don't bite."
"My name is Minerva," said Minerva.
"Jo," said the other girl. "You know anything about Hogwarts? I don't. You're the first other magic person I've met, 'sides from that man from the school. Gave my mum a right shock, he did. Terrified. Didn't speak for days."
"My mother is a witch," said Minerva. "My father isn't."
"Wow. So you must know loads."
"Only as much as you. My mother doesn't use magic at home."
"Bloody hell," said the other girl. She said the words that Minerva had been taught were naughty as if she said them every day. "I'd use magic all the time if I could. So you don't know anything?"
"No. Not much."
"We can be idiots together, then," she said. "Do you know anything about Hogwarts? I got a book about it, Mum said I could, but I can't read it. Too many words."
She pulled out a battered, clearly second-hand copy of Hogwarts, a History.
"Doesn't make sense. Look." She rifled through, finding a page about Hogwarts in the 1700s. "See. I don't know what half these words mean, and they ain't in the dictionary."
"Not a Muggle one, perhaps," said Minerva. "Can you read?"
"Yeah. 'Course. I went to school, and I wasn't the bottom of the class. I just can't do it very well. I'm good at needlework. Do they do needlework?"
"I don't think so," said Minerva. "Mother never said they did."
"Ah, well, being bottom of the class isn't awful. My brother was, they used to let him play football instead of doing arithmetic sometimes. Now he works in a factory."
"Where are you from?" Nobody worked in a factory that Minerva knew of.
"London. The East End. Whitechapel. Can't you tell from the accent? You're Scottish, I can tell. We had a man from Inverness living downstairs."
"Downstairs?"
"Yeah. Don't you have flats in Scotland?"
"They do in Edinburgh. Not where I live."
"Alright. What do you know about Hogwarts?"
Minerva had heard enough stories to give Jo the bare basics, at least, and it was an easy thing to talk about. She'd worried she wouldn't have much to say to another real, live witch. But Jo was keen to find out everything that Minerva knew, and the conversation carried them out of London and well into the countryside.
It was as they were crossing the border back into Scotland that the door to their carriage opened again.
"We are coming around to check on you all," said the girl standing in front of them. She wore her dark hair pinned back from her face, her school robes already on and immaculate. "Who do we have here? I do not recognise you, so you cannot be from a very good family."
"Minerva McGonagall," said Minerva, holding out her hand the way she'd been taught by her father.
The other girl sniffed and made as if to wipe her hand on her robes.
"That's a Muggle name," she said. "I have never heard of any wizarding McGonagalls."
"My father is a Muggle," said Minerva. She didn't understand why the girl was saying it like that, with such distaste.
"And you?" asked the girl, to Jo.
"Jo Wright."
"I have never heard of that surname either."
"What's your name?" asked Jo. "And why does it matter what our surnames are?"
"My name," said the girl, puffing herself up as if she were the Queen, "is Walburga Black. And your surname tells me an awful lot about you, do you not know? I suppose that of course you would not. Your fathers are both clearly Muggles. Is your mother at least a witch?"
"Course not," said Jo. "Why would she be?"
"Yes," said Minerva, and somehow felt like she was letting Jo down by saying this.
"You I suppose might be acceptable," said Walburga. "What's your mother's family name? It cannot be a good one, else they would not have let her marry your father. Unless she was disowned." She didn't wait for an answer, but turned to Jo. "I do not think your sort should be allowed into Hogwarts, and neither does my father. But Dippet keeps letting you in. Father's on the board. He wants you all thrown out."
"Not even got there yet," grumbled Jo. "Hope he doesn't succeed before the train arrives."
"My father always gets what he wants." Walburga puffed up her chest again, displaying a shiny Prefect badge in silver and green. Those were the colours of Slytherin House. Minerva hadn't minded the idea of Slytherin, or any house, but she didn't much want to share a common room with this girl.
"That means he's spoilt," said Jo. "Or that's what my mum says."
"Your mother is a Muggle," said Walburga, as if that meant her opinions didn't matter.
"Are you arguing again, Walburga? Mother said not to argue on the train."
"Mother says a lot of things," said Walburga, dismissively. "Be quiet, Cygnus. Where did you leave Orion?"
"He is with Lucretia and Riddle," said the boy pushing his way into the carriage from behind Walburga. "Who are you arguing with?"
"They are inconsequential," said Walburga. "Mudbloods."
"What's that mean?" asked Jo.
"It means you have got dirty blood," said Cygnus. He was a few inches shorter than Minerva was, she guessed, with a nose that curved upwards at the end and a shock of short dark hair. He seemed curious, though, rather than the disgusted expression his sister wore. "Are you really Mudbloods? I have never met one before."
"We do not talk to Mudbloods. That is why."
"You were."
"I am a Prefect. I have the responsibility for order on this train, which includes keeping undesirables in line."
"Not sure I want to be on this train much longer," said Jo. Minerva didn't think she did, either.
"Come along, Cynus," said Walburga. "I do not wish to be in this carriage any longer."
They left, much to Minerva's relief. Jo pulled out her wand from her trunk.
"I'd have used this on them, if it'd have done any good," she said. "I don't suppose pointing it and looking angry gets you much?" She tried it. Red sparks shot out the end, disappearing into nothingness without doing much of anything at all. "Fat lot of use I'll be as a witch," she said. She chucked the wand aside onto the seat next to her. "Maybe I'll see if there's a station they can let me off at."
"Don't," said Minerva. "You deserve to be here as much as they do."
"D'you really think that?"
"Yes."
—
Hogwarts was as beautiful as Minerva had imagined it. The castle loomed over them as she squashed into a tiny boat with Jo, a girl called Myrtle and a boy with glasses who was shaking too much for her to understand his name. She stared up at it, hoping that she could remember every moment of this trip. It was magical, and she hadn't even seen anyone use a wand yet.
Jo said several rude words that Minerva had only ever heard old Jock Mac use when his sheep had escaped again.
"It's like nothing I've ever seen," she said, when she was done saying the rude words.
They were hurried from there into the castle, into a small room off the entranceway. Minerva found herself sandwiched between Jo and Cygnus, the boy from the train. He tried to look haughty and unconcerned, but Minerva saw him steal repeated glances at the two of them, and, more nervously, at the door to the room.
"Nervous?" she asked.
"My sister says I am not to talk to you," he replied. "Sorry."
"Cygnus!" The boy next to him needled him in the side with his elbow. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Are they the Mudbloods?"
"So she says," said Jo, eyeing the wand she now carried in her hand.
"My mother was a witch," said Minerva, as confidently as she could manage. "But it doesn't make any difference."
"It does," said the other boy. "It makes all the difference." She couldn't tell if his confidence was faked, but she was sure that it wasn't.
She swung her plaits over her shoulder and tried to fix him with the glare her mother used when one of the children was misbehaving. Not that Minerva was really such a child, any more.
"Does not."
They were called through at that moment, and Minerva was spared further argument with the pair of boys. Cygnus looked at them almost longingly as he followed the other boy off. Jo reached for Minerva's hand, and gave her a soft squeeze as they went through the door, back into the entranceway, then out into the Great Hall.
If the view of the castle had been magical, then this was even more so. The ceiling shone with stars, and the room was packed as full as it could be with witches and wizards, more than Minerva had thought possible. Beside her, Jo was starstruck, her eyes widening as she took in the features of the room. Minerva felt like she looked.
"First-years!" came the voice that had summoned them into the Great Hall, a tall, ginger-haired man in what looked like a velvet cloak. "Welcome! My name is Professor Dumbledore, Deputy Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry! Line up along the side of the Hall, please. When your name is called, come up to be sorted!" He looked as though he was enjoying himself; a contrast with the faces around Minerva.
In turn each first-year walked up to the stool, put on the hat, and waited. A girl was first, her face twisted up in nerves as she was sent off to Hufflepuff. Cygnus, the young boy from the train ,wandered off to the Slytherin table, to the cheers of Walburga Black and the others from their table.
"Black, Orion!" came next. The hat shouted "Slytherin!" almost before it has touched his head. He sauntered off, receiving more congratulations. Minerva supposed they must be brothers. There was a similarity to their look, anyway, and they shared a surname. It would be logical.
There had to be a hundred students waiting, and with McGonagall falling firmly in the middle of the register, Minerva had plenty of time to watch the progress. After a while, however hard she tried to remember the names of the students being Sorted, she could not keep up with the progress. Hagrid, Rubeus was sorted into Gryffindor, and he was memorable by his sheer size, towering over all the other students at double the height of the next tallest one. Hornby, Olive flounced down the aisle to the Ravenclaw table as if she owned the place.
"Fawley, Augusta!"
"Gryffindor!"
The line was thinning slightly, as more nervous students shuffled up to the hat in turn.
"Lupin, Lyall!"
"Ravenclaw!"
If tomorrow someone had lined up each student and asked her to pinpoint their house, Minerva wouldn't have known, however much attention she was paying. Some of them lasted seconds on the stool, others minutes.
"McGonagall, Minerva!"
She swept her plaits back once more, and stepped forward. The stool was higher than it had looked from her place in the line, but she made it on without embarrassing herself in front of the room of people. The hat was placed onto her head by Professor Dumbledore, and she waited.
"You're an unusual one, you are."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you do have a thirst for knowledge. You're demonstrating that now. But there's something else there, too. Perhaps not Hufflepuff. You've got loyalty, but it wouldn't suit you. It wouldn't push you."
"My family are Ravenclaws."
"A Ross. I can tell."
"My name is Minerva McGonagall." She remembered her courtesy. "Pleased to make your acquaintance."
"Very polite. I like the polite children. Not the ones who demand for where they end up."
"I am not a child."
"I am several centuries old. After a certain point, you all seem like children to an old hat."
Minerva conceded the point.
"Besides, just because I often sort family into the same houses, doesn't mean it's the right thing. Hmmm. I don't think you suit Ravenclaw as much as you might think you do. What do you think?"
"I don't know."
"You've got enough bravery in you for Gryffindor. You stand up to people, don't you, if you don't think they're right. But you're not reckless like some of them."
Minerva waited. It seemed to go on forever. None of the others had taken this long, she was sure of it. The two Blacks had taken seconds, and most of the rest of them not much longer.
"Alright, Miss Minerva. I'm hedging my bets with you. You'll have to prove me right. Gryffindor!"
The hat shouted the last bit out loud, and the hat was swept from her head, and Minerva made the walk down to the Gryffindor table in a tumult of applause and cheers.
It was as she did so that she felt something, something that she struggled to put any kind of name to. If it had not been so strong, the pull, or whatever it was, she would have assumed it was nerves or that she had imagined it. But her eyes met those of a boy, maybe two, three years older than she was. And there was something. Something that seemed to draw the two of them together.
She blinked once, twice, three times. He looked away, at Nowell, Ruby walking up for her sorting, and it was nothing had ever happened.
She sat next to the large boy, Hagrid, as the Sorting continued, but couldn't resist stealing glances over to the Slytherin table and the boy who had seemed like he was drawing her in. He was tall and handsome, classically so like the hero in a fairy tale. He sat in a nest of boys his own age, all of whom looked to him whether to make a noise each time that somebody else was sorted.
And still there was something that seemed to connect them. It had been stronger when he was looking at her, but the draw was still there. Pulling her towards him. She couldn't do anything, and she didn't want to, either.
Something about him put her off, too.
"Warren, Myrtle!"
"Ravenclaw!"
"Wright, Jo!"
She turned her attention back to the Sorting. Jo was determined as she stalked up to the stool, dark eyes focused on it.
"Gryffindor!" the hat proclaimed.
"Least I know someone," she said, flopping herself down into a seat next to Minerva's.
"I'm glad you're with me," Minerva said in response.
—
They walked up to Gryffindor Tower together, at the back of a huddle of nervous first-years following a Prefect whose name Minerva had not managed to catch. There were so many twists and turns, she had little idea how she would manage to get back to the Great Hall in the morning, let alone find anywhere else in the castle that she needed to go.
"Bagsy the best bed," Jo whispered. "I want to sleep by the window."
They were to share with eight other girls, with a group more in a room on the opposite side of the stairwell. It was improbable, because the room was round, as was the stairwell, and presumably the room opposite. And there were boys rooms on the other side of the Tower. There was either a lot of wasted space in this Tower, or something was manipulating the space.
She supposed the castle was magical. She had seen staircases move with her very own eyes, and if the building could do that, then it could manage this.
The rest of the girls had split into groups, claiming beds in clumps, leaving Jo and Minerva to a bed beside the only girl who sat on her own. She had long, dark curls down her back and oversized eyes, her robes embroidered around the edges with silver. Jo eyed her suspiciously.
"Hello," said Minerva, holding out her hand. "I'm Minerva. What's your name?"
"Augusta."
"You're on your own. Do you want to be friends?" asked Minerva. She wouldn't want to be the only one in here without a friend.
"As long as you're not going to call me Mudblood," said Jo. "You can bog off if you are."
—
Adjusting to the castle was almost as difficult as Minerva had assumed that it would be. It was one of those mornings where she had managed to lose Jo and Augusta, and so had little idea where she was heading, that she ran into the boy from the Sorting again.
"Sorry!" was the first word out of her mouth, as she almost ran into him as she was trying to work out which of the corridors she was facing led to the Transfiguration classrooms.
"Watch it!" he snapped. He looked up from the parchment he was holding, and their eyes met.
She had almost led herself to believe that the pull she had felt towards him was entirely imaginary, brought on by nerves and tiredness and excitement. But here it was again. It was as if her entire body was trying to move itself towards him. Her brain could think of little else except finding out who he was, and why exactly it would feel this way.
Even Minerva could see that he was handsome, and she had never been interested in whispering about boys the way that Jean and Ailsa from the village school had been. He had what her mother would have described as a pleasing face; pale, long and beautiful. His eyes were dark, his hair too. His robes were worn but neat, with a cloak-pin of green and silver.
"Tom Riddle," he said, holding out a hand.
"Minerva McGonagall."
"Who are you?" he asked. "I do not know the name McGonagall."
Minerva, tired of hearing people talk about her surname like that, snapped back at him.
"I have told you that I am Minerva McGonagall, half-blood daughter of Isobel Ross and Robert McGonagall. I'm proud of my parents, and I don't care what anybody else has to say about it."
"Well, I can certainly see why you were sorted into Gryffindor," he said. His eyes roamed as if he was assessing her for something. "Quite the bravery."
She stayed silent, not having anything to say. Her silence seemed to disconcert him. He looked her up and down once more, and sniffed. He checked to see if anyone was nearby, and when they weren't, he lent in towards her.
"Do you feel it too?" he asked.
"Feel what?" She knew what he meant, it she thought she did.
"The way we are pulled together. As if there is something binding us to one another."
"Yes."
"When?" The tone of his voice was one that was very much used to getting his answer. To getting his own way, she would go as far as to say.
"Since the first night here. I saw you at the Sorting."
"I'm disappointed you're a Gryffindor."
"I like my house."
"Yes. Well. I'm determined to find out what this is that is going on between us, Minerva. Shall I contact you when I know?"
"How?" she asked. "Do you have an owl?"
"If I wish to talk with someone, they will know about it," he said. "Don't worry. There is something special about the two of us, I know there is."
Minerva had not worried, not particularly, not until he said that. Something about the way he said it, though, sent a chill through to her bones. There had been no particular malice in his voice, no words used that would terrify her in any normal circumstance. But it did scare her.
Gryffindor, she reminded herself. The house of the brave and the daring.
"I look forward to it," she said, pleasantly, just as she had been taught to be polite.
"Good." He stalked off down the corridors, not pausing to say a goodbye.
If this was what Hogwarts was like for everybody, it was a strange place, Minerva decided. So many students seemed to look for house colours or the purity of someone's blood to decide their worth, rather than any of the means to find friends Minerva knew from the village. She was glad she'd found Jo and Augusta. For all Augusta's primness and Jo's disorganisation, they didn't seem to judge each other on anything so stupid.
As she watched his back disappear, dodging through the slowly thinning crowds of people, she realised she had forgotten where in the castle she was.
She should have asked him the way to Transfiguration.