JayBat: Thank you for your review, it really made my day :) I hope that you and other readers enjoy this chapter.

-EveryJohn

McGonagall saw a large man. His long, muscular arms and angular face were dirt-covered. His tired eyes, which stood out from the dirty face were red rimmed. He coughed couple of times as he walked through the room. He crouched to reach into kitchen cabinet and took out a brown bottle of beer. He sat heavily on a chair, which his son had quickly brought from the other room, and opened the bottle routinely with a bent spoon. The chair was ridiculously small for someone of his size. It had once been azure blue, but the cheap paint had began to peel from several places revealing the pale wood underneath. The man sat legs wide and let his gaze wander lazily in everyone. He sipped from the drink several times. "Even the beer is warm as goat piss", he groaned.

"Why drink if it´s so bad?" Eileen snorted.

"So", the man spoke, "Who´s this woman, Eileen?" His voice was low and soft, surprisingly pleasant for such a rough man.

"She is a professor in the school I once went. I have told you about the place. She came to take your son away", her wife snarkily explained.

"I´m not taking anyone away. I am simply offering magical education, which your son needs", McGonagall corrected annoyed.

The man studied the brown bottle on his palm as if it was something very interesting. The others waited for him to continue.

"And what did the boy say? Do you want to go to her fancy magic school, huh?" the man asked from his quiet son to everyone´s surprise.

The boy looked a bit startled. He blushed and searched for words as his father waited.

"I-I... Lily Evans is going too, so I want to go. I mean, I really want to go, Sir...", the boy mumbled.

"Could have guessed that, you besotted brat", Mr. Snape muttered. McGonagall was almost sure, that she saw a shadow of a crooked smirk on his lips. Then the hard-boiled man, however, leaned forward and swiped the air with his hardened hand to drive away a housefly, which had settled all too comfortably on his large nose. Maybe that smirk had been a wince resulted from the tickling legs of the insect.

"Well, the boy obviously wants to go... And what can we offer him here, Eileen? Or should he follow in his father´s footsteps in coal mines? Spend his life underground, working long and hard days without daylight? Only to crawl into a poverty stricken shag of a house for few hours of sleep? Until his lungs are permanently ruined? Then get fired as unfit to work?" He gave an hollow laugh. "You know as well that it is impossible, Eileen! Our shrimp is far too scrawny for that kind of work and all the other kids hate him. Well except Evans´s younger daughter. Our son would not survive a day down there." He shrugged his huge shoulders. "I see no reason to stop kid from trying his luck with something else. Even if that something is as ridiculous as magic. Sure, I don´t get how is waving a fancy stick supposed to bring food on the table, but as long as it takes him out of this town, you know... The best the boy can do, is to leave this rat hole as soon as possible." He scoffed bitterly for his own words and then spent a while coughing painfully to his fist.

"Did you already forget that you were fired last week, Tobias. How are we going to pay for this?" Eileen mentioned, looking her husband accusingly.

"Is the tuition expensive then?"

"No, the tuition in Hogwarts is free. As are the living expenses of your son. The families, however, need to purchase the study material and some other items themselves. But most of it you can get secondhand and our school library is exemplary", McGonagall hurried to assure.

"So, boy", Mr. Snape talked to his son, who immediately stood straighter. "Do you think that you could study hard in that school? And somehow get yourself a job that pays enough so that you don´t need to starve?"

"Y-yes, sir?"

His father patted him once on his left shoulder. "Good."

He must have noticed his wife´s sulky face. "Let the boy go to the silly school, Eileen. At least we´d get more room in the Spinner´s end. It has been cramped lately. And surely it would pay itself back, if the boy gets fed there. Teenagers eat like horses."

"There are still the yearly supplies, Tobias!"

Eileen´s husband nodded thoughtfully and turned to McGonagall. "As you see my wife is always nagging about money. So, professor... You said that it wouldn´t be too much. How much exactly?"

"We have different currency from yours, but I think that most expensive would be the wand. Almost everything else, you can really purchase second hand."

"You said that you had still some of your old goods packed away, Eileen... Can´t the boy use his mothers stuff?"

"There are no regulations against it, though some of the books may have changed. And it is never recommended to use another person´s wand. Naturally, Eileen will need her wand herself."

Mrs. Snape scoffed. She stood up and took her wand carefully between her fingers as if carrying something utterly disgusting. She stood in front of her son.

"Very well. You all have already decided... And I won´t object. Go and see yourself how great this magic is. At least you will be gone from my eyes. From now on the wooden stick will be all yours, son. It will be all that you get from me so do what you want with it, but remember that I don´t want to see it in my eyes again."

/

Professor McGonagall was on the third floor near the gargoyle-guarded entrance to the Headmaster's Tower, when she heard hurried steps from behind. She was about to turn and reduce house-points for running in a hallway, when she heard a breathless voice call her name.

"Professor... Professor McGonagall, professor McGonagall! We need to get madam Pomfrey. Something... went horribly wrong with the lesson. Professor Kettleburn was bleeding so hard! I needed to get help. The boys were holding it back but... I don´t know how long..." The girl stammered. Fat tears, snot and saliva sullied her red and bloated face. Her hair had partly escaped from the bun she routinely wore and her robe hem had become ruptured. She didn´t look at all like the same prim and proper pure-blood witch, whom McGonagall had seen in her lessons.

"Calm down, Miss Parkins. Take a deep breath and then tell me clearly, what exactly has happened."

"Pr.. Professor Kettleburn... I... I-i-it was a manticore."

"MANTICORE? What in the name of Merlin are you talking about, Paula Parkins!"

"Mr. Kettleburn had it under calming charms and potions. He was showing us how to handle it safely, but then the Gryffindors started a fight with the Slytherins. I think Kettleburn lost his concentration and then..." The girl sobbed. "A Ravenclaw girl fell. Someone must have pushed her accidentally or something... but she got a scrape on her knee! And the manticore... It went crazy, professor!"

"Oh, cursed damnation!" McGonagall rarely swore, least of all in front of her students, but this situation definitely called for it. She swiped her forehead, where pearls of cold sweat were already forming, and closed her eyes for a second. Manticores were man eaters. A drop of fresh blood right under one´s nose... No wonder that the beast had become furious no matter how drugged. They could only hope that no-one was dead yet.

Minerva didn´t hesitate anymore. She cast a patronus spell. The silvery cat that the spell formed listened carefully her instructions and then disappeared to deliver the message to the headmaster, school matron and all the professors that it could reach. McGonagall knew that they would come as soon as they got her message. Well, anyone with any sense could tell that a blood-thirsty manticore on the school grounds was a red alert situation.

The transfiguration professor collected her long robe hems on her hands and began to run with surprising speed and agility considering her age towards the quidditch pitch. The girl, Paula Parkins was left far behind. McGonagall shouted over her shoulder for the girl to go check the infirmary. If Poppy had patients that could not be left without monitoring she could leave them to her care.