Professor McGonagall

Our summer holidays started with perfect weather. We went outside right after breakfast and sat on two of the swings. I knew that I was probably too old for this but it was the closest thing to flying I could get.

When Aurora and Andy joined us as well, we started a game of ping-pong. I wasn't completely bad but not very good either. Andy however was brilliant and the two of them won three times in a row. I knew it was only a game but I really didn't like losing all the time.

The fourth game looked better for us though. We might just win this time.

"Mandy, Vivien, Mrs Richards wants you at her office."

Emily, one of the older girls came walking towards us.

I threw the paddle at the table with more force than necessary. Bad moment. That must be a joke. We hadn't done anything wrong and our marks had been good as well. What would she want?

Mandy was thinking the same thing. "Why? We haven't done anything," she said.

Emily shrugged. "I don't think she wants to tell you off. There's a visitor there. Some kind of professor."

I felt a sudden weight in my stomach. What kind of professor? What did he want? Did they want to send us to a psychiatric hospital after all? The counsellor had suggested that back when I had told him about my memories and the strange things that were happening around us. Ms Leakey and Mrs Richards had both disagreed though.

"What does he want? We're not mad," I said.

Mandy gave me a worried look. She too feared that people wouldn't believe us about the things we were seeing sometimes.

Emily shook her head. "You are paranoid, aren't you? As far as I understood, it's about your new school. Some sort of scholarship or something. And the visitor's a she by the way."

Scholarship? Mandy's eyes lit up and I was quite happy about the idea as well. I couldn't really believe it though. Our marks were quite good but that good? Mandy's might be with her math prize but mine? Not really.

We followed Emily towards Mrs Richard's office. I didn't really like going there. She was very strict and often told us off for the things that were happening around us even though we didn't do them on purpose.

The woman who had come to visit reminded me of her right away. Her hair was still dark but she had tied it up as tightly as Mrs Richards did with her own.

"Here you are," Mrs Richards said. "Professor McGonagall, these are Mandy Brocklehurst and Vivien Lestrange. Vivien, Mandy, Professor McGonagall is here to offer you a place at your school."

We shook hands; Professor McGonagall was looking at me very intently. It felt as if she could see far more than just my face. Mandy looked really uncomfortable, when it was her turn.

"Miss Brocklehurst, Miss Lestrange, we've been informed about your extraordinary abilities and we'd like to offer you scholarships at our institution. It's a private boarding school in Scotland which offers an excellent education."

Mandy and I looked at each other. It felt really strange to be called Miss Lestrange, almost like an adult. Would they call me that all the time if I went to this school? I'd certainly get many stares then. I preferred not to mention my last name whenever possible.

"We can really go to this school?" Mandy asked. "A boarding school? We don't have any money or anything though."

"This isn't a problem. The scholarship will provide you with anything you need."

"That's really generous, thank you," I said. I felt proud because I had been selected for something like that but I wasn't really sure if I wanted to go there.

Even at our primary school many people hadn't been too glad about our presence. It would surely be much worse at some fancy boarding school. I didn't like the idea of being some sort of charity case who was pitied and tolerated at best.

"I'd like to discuss a few details with the girls if you don't mind Mrs Richards. Do you have a room we could use?" Professor McGonagall asked.

She didn't want Mrs Richards there, I noticed. This made me suspicious right away. Maybe this entire scholarship thing was some sort of fraud. She hadn't mentioned the name of her school either yet. I shared a look with Mandy. She looked doubtful as well. We'd listen carefully to anything she was telling us and form our own judgement.

"Certainly," Mrs Richards said. "The room right next door. We usually use it for our counselling sessions."

"Very well, thank you," Professor McGonagall said. "Would you two come with me?"

We did and sat down with Professor McGonagall who carefully closed the door behind herself.

I could remember my earlier times here very well. They had believed I was quite mad, I knew that. My discomfort grew worse when I heard Professor McGonagall's question.

"Did you ever experience unusual things happening around you?"

I swallowed hard. Had she lied to us earlier? Was she a psychiatrist after all?

"Yes, there were," Mandy said, looking down at her feet. I tried to give her a look that told her to stop talking but it didn't work. It couldn't when we didn't have eye contact.

"Sometimes, things just catch fire around me. Once, in gym class, the teacher told me off because I wasn't jumping far enough. Next time I jumped, I ended up at the other side of the room and didn't know how this had happened."

I could remember this very well. Our teacher had been furious because she believed that Mandy had tried to cheat. She had been forced to run five rounds for punishment; no one had believed that she didn't know how it had happened.

"When we had this awful spinach for lunch and Mrs Richards told me that I had to eat it, the spinach simply ended up on Vivi's plate and no one knew how."

"I love spinach," I said, so Professor McGonagall wouldn't think Mandy was forcing me to eat something I didn't want to. I liked all green vegetables. They reminded me of the garden in my memory.

The teacher or whatever she was seemed genuinely interested, it wasn't the kind of look you gave mad people. It did feel quite good to talk about all this for once.

"When I let my plate fall down once, it was whole again when I went to pick up the shards. And I had seen it was broken before. No one believed this of course. They thought I had just been lucky," Mandy continued.

Professor McGonagall nodded. "Thank you, Miss Brocklehurst. What about you Miss Lestrange? Has anything like this ever happened to you as well?"

I took a deep breath. I didn't really want to talk about it. I had this feeling that she wouldn't like it. But I probably should tell her. She seemed to be familiar with this stuff, the first person who had ever believed that it was real.

"Not quite like this," I said. "But there have been other unusual things." I needed to explain this properly. "We're living in an orphanage you know. There are people who are bigger and stronger than us here and the care givers can't be always there. Some of the other kids at school don't want us around and try to hurt us."

"This must have been quite hard for you," Professor McGonagall said.

"Yes. We need to defend ourselves and others somehow. If someone has a headache, it stops when I touch his forehead. And if someone has cut himself or if someone has scraped his knee, the wounds sometimes close when I look at them. Sometimes, people who try to harm me or my friends suddenly feel pain in the body part I'm looking at though. It's quite eerie. There's never any wound, just pain. I really don't know why that happens but it's probably me causing this as well, isn't it?"

"Probably," Professor McGonagall said. I swallowed again. I had always told myself that it was nothing but coincidence.

"Did you ever experience other strange things? Like those Mandy has been talking about?"

I shook my head.

Her expression was quite serious. I wasn't too surprised. She believed I had the power to cause pain to other people by simply looking at them; of course she'd be disturbed. A few times, parents of other children had said I had the evil eye. Maybe they did have a point.

"I see," Professor McGonagall said. "Thank you for being so open to me, both of you. Now it's time for me to tell you why I'm really here."

Both of us looked at her curiously. So we had been right, she had lied when she had talked about the scholarship. At this point, I thought that getting professional help might not be the worst thing for me though.

"I'm really here to offer you a place at school," Professor McGonagall told us. "It's not an ordinary private school though. Hogwarts is a school of magic."

Both of us stared at her in disbelief. All my life, I had hoped that something like this would happen. Now that it did, I couldn't really believe it. Neither could Mandy.

"You must be joking. Magic isn't real," she said.

"I can understand that it's hard for you to believe Miss Brocklehurst but magic is real. Why do you think you can do all those things you have done? It's because you're magical. You're witches, both of you."

Oh, I wanted to believe her so much.

"I'm a witch?" It was still spoken as a question. Was this the reason why I had always been so drawn to anything magical? "A witch like Morgan LeFay?"

Professor McGonagall gave me a curious look. "She's called Morgana in our world and yes she was a witch."

"Was?" I asked. "So she's not alive anymore? She's not-"I stopped in mid sentence. I had wanted to ask if she was my mother but it would sound stupid, childish.

"She lived many centuries ago, Miss Lestrange. We live longer than ordinary people do but not that long. How did you learn about her?"

"There are many stories about her," I said. "I've always liked to read them. I thought that I might have come from a magical world as a child. And now you're telling me it's true."

"Now, wait a moment," Mandy said. "Vivien doesn't know where she came from but I do. And my parents were perfectly ordinary people. They had nothing to do with any strange things. My mother was an office assistant; she definitely was not a witch."

"I'm aware of that, Miss Brocklehurst," Professor McGonagall said. "This kind of thing isn't unusual. Quite a few of our students are Muggle-born. Muggle is our word for people without magic. Some of them are among the most talented people who have ever been to Hogwarts."

This was really fascinating. "You can't make up all this stuff, can you?" I said.

"I'm not making anything up, Miss Lestrange," Professor McGonagall said. "You've both been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I have you acceptance letters with me by the way. Do you want to have a look?"

Of course we did. Professor McGonagall handed each of us two pieces of parchment. The first one of mine said that I had been admitted at Hogwarts, a school under a Headmaster called Albus Dumbledore who seemed to have many titles I had never heard of before.

The second piece of parchment was much more fascinating. It contained a shopping list full of wonderful things I had only read about in stories before. Books about spells and potions, a wand, a cauldron, potions ingredients and much more. They really couldn't have made all this up, could they?

Deep down, I knew that they had not. It was real. I had always known that I was different from the others that both Mandy and I were different from the others and now we knew why.

Mandy had a more practical question. "Okay, if we believe that this is true, where do we get all this stuff? We don't know where to find it and we don't have any money."

"This won't be a problem, Miss Brocklehurst," Professor McGonagall said. "As I've told you before, the school will provide for anything you need. If you choose to come, I'm going to accompany you to Diagon Alley where you can buy everything on this list. It's in London."

I had noticed something else on the shopping list. "Parents are reminded that first-years aren't allowed their own broomsticks."

"So witches do really ride on broomsticks?" I asked. "Like in those stories?"

A smile flickered over Professor McGonagall's face. "Yes, we do, Miss Lestrange. You'll have flying lessons in your first year."

"Wow," there was nothing else I could say about that. I was going to have flying lessons. My dream might finally come true if not in the company of my young uncle.

"So you do believe me now, Miss Lestrange?" Professor McGonagall asked.

I nodded. "Yes, I've always believed that there might be something like that. It, it just feels right."

"You want to go to Hogwarts then?"

"Yes, of course."

"And what about you Miss Brocklehurst?"

"Well, we're going to know soon, aren't we," Mandy said. "If this Diagon Alley really exists and if we can really buy all this stuff, we know it's true."

Professor McGonagall smiled slightly again. "You will see it soon. I'll come back tomorrow morning at 10 am if Mrs Richards doesn't mind. You can think about it over night and tell me what you want to do tomorrow."

"Alright, thank you," we said but I didn't need the night to decide what I wanted. Of course I wanted to go to Hogwarts and learn about magic.

"There's something else. The Muggles don't know that magic really exists," Professor McGonagall said. "And our government, the Ministry of Magic wishes that it remains this way. That's why you mustn't tell anyone that you're really going to a school for magic. Tell them that you've earned a scholarship to an ordinary boarding school. This is very important."

I felt a little twinge of unease again, Mandy looked uncomfortable as well. We still promised it though.

Mandy had another question. "Hogwarts really is a boarding school? We'll live there from now on."

"Yes, during term you're going to live there. There are holidays three times a year, at Christmas, at Easter and during the summer. In summer, you have to return here, during the other holidays you can choose if you wish to remain at school or come here."

"We want to come here. Aurora and Andy are going to miss us," Mandy said and I agreed completely. Our uneasy feeling was gone. We'd come back here, at least during the holidays.

I was keen to find out more, but Professor McGonagall said: "Alright, that's all for today. I'll see you again tomorrow."

I had never felt so excited in my entire life. I was going to a school for magic, a school for magic! It was all real, I was a witch and Mandy was as well. We'd go there together. We'd stay with other witches and learn how to use our powers. I'd learn to fly. Mandy kept smiling as well. No matter what she had said, she obviously did believe it as well now.

We both would have liked to tell the others, but we weren't allowed to do that. When we told them that we had received a scholarship, they believed that this was enough reason for us to be so happy.

We won our next round of ping-pong but we couldn't be sure if there might have been magic involved of course. I didn't really think so however. We had never used our magic for this kind of thing anyway.

I was looking forward to the next morning so much, a wand, a cauldron, spell books. I wanted to hold them in my hands as soon as possible.