Disclaimer: Don't own HP.

AN: I had this bunny form overnight. And because of it – and the three pages in my Global Studies notebook I've used on ideas, all other stories are on hiatus until this is fully completed.

Prologue

Armando Dippet

Love is a mysterious thing; every single human being knows its feelings. It can be the love of a parent. The love of a sibling. Love from your friends. Or love from the one you choose to spend your life with.

I knew love, many kinds, being Headmaster of Hogwarts; I saw almost every type of love in the world. Parents writing weekly letters to their children, asking about their life and how they were doing. An older sibling helping a younger sibling around the school on their first day of classes. A friend comforting another after a sad letter from home or a break-up with their boyfriend. Even the occasional love between two students, between classes, wrapped in each other's arms, sharing a moment in their own world.

I married Kathleen James, a witch only a few years younger than me, but twice as wise as I ever felt I could be. We married soon after graduating and had a daughter, Camille Elizabeth Dippet, about six years after we graduated. When Camille was nineteen, she married Joseph McGonagall – a man four years her senior. It wasn't that Kathleen and I didn't approve of the marriage, but more of the timeline in which it took place. In May of 1924, she and Joseph had met when spoke at Hogwarts about jobs in Gringotts. That summer, she became his assistant and he mentored her, teaching her the quickest ways around the bank and which vaults had the highest security on them. That October, he asked her to marry him and she said yes. At the time, neither Kathleen nor I knew she had been romantically involved with anyone.

Immediately, Kathleen and I took a liking to Joseph when he and Camille were married in early January of the following year. He offered, as soon as the marriage papers were signed, to buy Kathleen and I tickets to a weeklong exploration trip in southern France, which, we agreed to happily. That June, I left Hogwarts for an early summer break and returned three days before the start of the 1925-1926 term, to find that Camille was expecting a child.

At first, we were shocked when we learned of it, and Kathleen asked Camille why she and Joseph wanted a child when she had only turned twenty that summer. She replied by saying that they were "ready". Neither Kathleen nor I believed her. But never the less, we offered to run errands for her and Joseph for the first few months of the baby's life.

When their baby was born, Kathleen owled me right away, insisting that I drop everything and return home, something was up. Kathleen knew not to owl me during the week and insist that I come home, but never the less, I did, leaving Albus in charge for the rest of the week while I returned home. I didn't expect what I found then.

Apparently, as Kathleen had started her story, Joseph was "using" our family. She told me that the amount in Camille's vault at Gringotts had gone down substantially, and there was no record of where it was going, except that Joseph's vault had being increasing steadily since his and Camille's engagement a year ago. Worried, I insisted that we see our granddaughter, which Camille had given birth to earlier that day. Although, when hearing Joseph's request that Camille had relayed to Kathleen, I became more frightened of the safety of our daughter and granddaughter.

Camille brought her daughter to us over the Christmas holidays, because Joseph was supposedly going out of town. She had deep green eyes with lighter hazel flecks in them, and her hair was a dark brown color. Sadly, those were the most distinguishing characteristics of her, and no one on our side of the family had green eyes or brown hair. When Camille came in that evening, she dropped her bags at the door, hurried to us and thrust the wrapped bundle in our faces, beaming happily.

Our granddaughter's name was Minerva Mae McGonagall, or Mina for short. Camille told us that she had picked out the name after rereading Greek mythology and becoming bored of looking at lists of common baby names. She had wanted something unique, and having the initials "MMM" was certainly unique in Camille's mind.

Something that day told me that Minerva was to play an important role in the Wizarding World's power years later, but I could never figure it out. Not until the spring of 1945 did I finally understand exactly what she would amount to.