Three ~ A Breakthrough
Next Thursday came with little ceremony. I spent most of that time reading through my books and doing the small bit of homework that always comes in September. In History of Magic, Olive Hornby still slept and ignored me, for which I was grateful; in Potions, Riddle still annoyed me, but I was ever-conscious of Myrtle's mooning eyes towards our table, and I gritted my teeth through this. My stomach was fluttering a little as I climbed the stairs up to the Transfiguration classroom. Again, Professor Dumbledore was there before I arrived.
"I have been thinking, Miss McGonagall," he said, as he emptied packet after packet of sugar into his tea, "that you should be allowed full access to this room if you're to be working in here often. I had a key made for you. I do not think I need to tell you to exercise discretion when you are using it."
He passed me the small silvery key, which I swiftly pocketed. "Thank you," I said, trying to sound appropriately gracious and grown-up and instead sounding like a giddy little girl; the prospect of having the Transfiguration classroom all to myself was an exciting one, and the uses of it would be endless. "Could I practice anytime, then?"
"Anytime within reason – meaning no sitting in here at four in the morning." His eyes twinkled. "I wouldn't have to warn any other student against too much studying, but you, Miss McGonagall—" He made a funny, beseeching gesture. "Would you like some tea?"
"Yes, please. Er – no sugar."
He laughed at that and poured me a cup, then slid it to me over his desk on a saucer. "I saw the little spat in the Great Hall last week," he said casually. "You handled yourself quite expertly. I remember trying to break up a rather heated fight between Aberforth – that's my brother – and the neighbour's cat, and I did not fare nearly as well as you did. I came out with scratches all over my face."
"From the cat," I surmised, squirming in my seat. I didn't really want to talk about this, as I was still a touch annoyed about the entire incident.
"No, from Aberforth." Professor Dumbledore scratched at his beard, looking pensive. "He always was a little off, I'd say." Sensing my anxiety, he took a sip of tea and continued, "Have you had a chance to look at those books?"
"Oh, yes, I read them all already – there're so many things I didn't know about Transfiguration! I think it'll quite help me with my ordinary class homework, too, like all those things about the foundations of Transfiguration and whatnot, those were brilliant."
He smiled. Albus Dumbledore, in spite of his age, has always smiled like a child, with his whole heart and a world of wonder at his fingertips. "So you've read all about the process, then?"
"Yes." There were so many things I wanted to ask, the first of them being why the Ministry was allowing a fifth-year student who didn't even have a bloody Apparition licence to do this, but I held my tongue and asked a tamer question. "I am worried about the incantations. My accent always seems to mangle up the Latin." I looked down at my hands. "But I'm excited to begin."
I raised my eyes after a pause. Professor Dumbledore was watching me with a strangely guarded expression on his face, indescribable, as though he were somehow sad, or afraid.
"Sir, is there something wrong?"
He blinked. "No, no, Miss McGonagall. You may start practicing the incantations at your leisure. I know you'll be vigilant about it. I'm afraid that, if this to count as a graded project, you'll have to write progress reports for me." He wrinkled his nose at this mention of schoolwork.
"I don't mind." I honestly didn't.
"And – remember about the secret."
"Of course," I said, slightly offended that he felt the need to remind me.
It all got to be quite monotonous after that. There was a Quidditch match the next week, and I took a bit of time to watch Gryffindor flatten Hufflepuff – Cora, Myrtle, and I all tucked into the stands with our Gryffindor scarves round our necks. Cliona was up on her broomstick, and she lodged another Bludger at Emmet, then gave a very unashamed thumbs-up to Myrtle (who hid her head in embarrassment). I grinned at her and went back to covertly watching Niall MacDougal. I have always loved watching Quidditch; even now, I adore a good clean fast-paced game. But besides that I didn't do very much – I went to all my classes, ate all my meals, took points off of first-years running in the corridors, and spent most of my free time locked up the Transfiguration room, trying to establish that connection.
I can't know how many times I whispered that incantation, changed the cadence of the words ever-so-slightly in hopes that one correct pronunciation would do it; I read the words over and over to find what I had done wrong. I knew, of course, that the problem wasn't in how I recited the spell. It was because I was not ready. There have been witches and wizards who have said the words for decades and felt nothing, but I still felt like a failure even after a month. Transfiguration was my best subject. I felt I should have been better.
I tried thinking of nothing when I said the words, in that sweet, sibilant Latin, and then I tried thinking of everything and anything, of animals I'd have liked to be, of magic spells I'd half-forgotten, of how to transfigure a quill into an inkbottle. I tried saying them when sitting, when standing, when reclining; I tried whispering and speaking and shouting as much as I dared in the empty room; I tried in morning, at noon, at night. None of it worked, yet I persisted through each night as though possessed by the urge to feel something – anything – as the result of my labours.
And then – I had been sitting on the floor of the classroom sometime in the middle of October, legs crossed, books strewn all about me – my mind spun and I fell back and I wasn't even aware of how my head clunked against the stone because I felt something uncoil itself within my mind, quick and eely, foreign but harmless, as though just coming out to say hello. I gasped and it was gone as suddenly as it had come, and I was abruptly lying flat on my back in the classroom and laughing. It had been painful and incredible and wonderful at once. I couldn't move for a good five minutes, so I just stayed there, half-awed and numb from the shock of it, and then when I found my legs again I sat up and opened one of the books, feverishly finding a set of words I'd read a dozen times before:
The first successful incantation and subsequent connection with the catalogue of beasts, so to speak, is often brief, characterized by a sharp flare of intense pain. Afterwards, the attempts typically become less painful and increasingly longer over time. It is only with vigorous practice that the connection can sustain itself long enough for the recipient to be able to identify the Animagus form to which he or she is bound.
That was enough for me. With my hands pressed to my head (where most of the pain had flared up the first time), I recited the spell again. The intensity of it returned, and I felt the same sensation again, an uncoiling, then a stretching, then the sense of something languid and sinewy moving about in my head. I gaped and the connection broke. I looked at the words again – the catalogue of beasts – and abruptly realized that this was what I had felt, first something snakelike, then something like a great panther waking from sleep in the jungle, then something quite like a lazy, playful, spidery monkey. The animals, for lack of better words, were coming out to assess me.
With every practice after that, it grew better, longer, and each time I could sense new animals emerging from the woodwork. The books said that one would choose me, and I was growing impatient, for all they seemed to do was lie about, taking their turns examining the inside of my head. I spent long hours in that classroom, and my absences from the common room were noticeable enough for Myrtle to comment on.
"Where have you been going all this time?" she asked innocently one day, watching Cora and I play chess after dinner (Cora was laughably bad at it, so I let her win about half the time because I liked to play and neither Cliona nor Myrtle ever agreed to it).
"I've been studying. Studying in the library." I tried to say this as casually as possible, and struck down one of Cora's pawns. She didn't get a chance to reply because Hagrid had just entered the Great Hall carrying a squabbling, irate pixie, which sent Myrtle off on an overblown screaming fit.
"Er, sorry there, Miss Myrtle, I bin tryin' to calm 'im down. Thought maybe I could bring 'em up and sing to him, maybe feed 'im a bit o' bread…" Hagrid trailed off as she went flying out of the room, then shrugged and sat down at the end of the table to coo at the rather rabid-looking pixie, which was trying and failing to get itself out of Hagrid's iron grasp.
"Myrtle thinks you've got a secret beau," Cora whispered after the diversion.
I had to laugh aloud at that. "Tell her she's wrong – unless she counts my running off to hidden passageways with Emmet Fawcett, getting drunk on Firewhiskey," I added jokingly, taking another of Cora's pawns (which squealed in protest). After the first Hogsmeade weekend, poking fun at Emmet was one of our hobbies. "I'm just worried about the OWLs is all. If I do badly, I might not be able to come back."
She raised an eyebrow. "You're worried? This'll be my third go."
The next day, I got a letter from my mum asking if I'd be home for Christmas, and one from Kitty about all the people from the city they had staying at the farm because of the Muggle war. I never got to know much about what happened in the Muggle world, and I didn't think it was nearly so bad, but apparently there were loads of evacuees staying in the cottage and in the farmhouse's extra bedrooms. I wrote back to tell them that I would be coming and that I didn't mind sharing with Kitty, like we did when we little and the crops were big enough to house the hired farmhands who had stayed in the other rooms.
On the first of December, it snowed, and almost all of Gryffindor, as well as a big portion of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw – and even a few brave Slytherins – trekked out on the grounds to have a very large and very disorganized snowball fight. I tried to do my job as a Prefect with Cliona, though I couldn't stop laughing because it was so cold and lovely and my cheeks were red with chill and wonderful exhaustion. "You've got to stop hitting the first-years so hard!" I shouted to her.
"Sorry, Minerva, but they're far too weak to fight back! It's marvellous!" And she lobbed a snowball at Olive Hornby, who cried out with indignation. Cliona came jogging over to me. "That better, oh hallowed Missus Prefect?"
I glanced at Olive, who was looking at us murderously and wiping the snow from her face. "Much. Ten points to Gryffindor for a well-timed hit."
"I wish you were serious," she said cheerfully, and sprinted away to avoid a snowball from Hagrid, round and roughly the size of a boulder. It hit me on the leg and I stumbled backward.
"Sorry there, Miss Minerva!" Hagrid yelled anxiously. "Meant ter get back at Miss Cliona!" He pointed to a red mark on his face that could only have been made by a snowball.
I retaliated by whipping a handful of snow at him, and laughed as I had to dodge another giant-sized snowball. "You're a menace, Hagrid," I taunted, and I had to dive into the ground to avoid yet another hit. I rolled over, half-coated in sticky snow, and spotted a solitary figure over by the Herbology greenhouses. I squinted and wiped the snow from eyes. It was Riddle, with his arms folded neatly over his chest and what looked to be a very priggish, very disapproving expression on his face. I frowned – why didn't he just join in, or leave if he didn't like it?
There was a Hogsmeade trip the weekend before the winter exams, presumably for students to alleviate stress, and I allowed myself to be dragged along in spite of wanting to study because I wanted to buy Christmas gifts. I slipped away from the other girls long enough to buy them each a gift. I got more Exploding Notepaper for Cora, as she kept nicking Cliona's; for Cliona herself, I bought a book on famous Beater techniques and tricks. Myrtle was the most difficult, and, after an hour of searching, I turned up with a box of miscellaneous beauty potions, of which Myrtle was an avid consumer.
I met back up with them in Honeydukes and bought wizarding sweets for my family; Kitty had an endless fascination with them, so I always gave her different kinds every time I visited home. Her particular favourite were sugar quills, and she had more than once expressed her annoyance that they did not come in plain, unobtrusive pencil form for her to use in her school.
Myrtle went up to the counter with me, with boxes of things for her Muggle siblings, who were just as enthusiastic about our sweets as Kitty was. Cliona was looking at her selections slyly. "Myrtle, you've only got three brothers and one sister. Why've you got five boxes of Chocoballs?"
Myrtle went a brilliant shade of red. "You – er – you noticed. Er – um – one is for…" The rest of the sentence was mumbled incoherently into the sleeve of her robes.
"For who?"
Her large, bespectacled eyes darted around, to make sure no one else was listening but Cliona and myself; Cora was off sorting through the large barrels of Fizzing Whizzbees to pick out only the bumbleberry ones. "It's for Tom Riddle. Don't you laugh at me – everyone knows he grew up in an orphanage because his mum died, he must never get Christmas presents. And I'm not going to put my name on it," she added hastily.
I cut off whatever rude thing Cliona was going to say by jabbing her in the ribs with my elbow and effectively shutting her mouth. "Myrtle," I said carefully, "I'm not sure if he is going to appreciate it as much as you think he might."
"Why wouldn't he?" she asked petulantly. "Why, I certainly would be overjoyed if I got a gift from a secret admirer, especially if there wasn't anyone else around to send me things for Christmas. He stays at Hogwarts every year, did you know that? Every holiday!"
Cliona was aghast. "Oh, no, Myrtle, you're not going to write that it's from a secret admirer, are you? That's so horribly soppy."
"It is not – it's a kind gesture."
"It's soppy," Cliona repeated.
Cora came over with a bag full of bumbleberry Whizzbees. "What's going on?"
"Nothing," I said firmly, urging Myrtle towards the counter and giving Cliona a warning look. I didn't know why, but I wanted to let the subject drop. Myrtle shot me a grateful glance; she, too, was embarrassed by the conversation.
In the next Potions class Riddle and I had a joint exam to complete – a Pepper-Up Potion, a Deflating Draught, and an Elixir of Circe all in one period. We had to work quickly, so we said nearly nothing to each other – which was not so different from any other class – but I watched him from the corner of my eye, wondering if it had been the Muggle orphanage that had given him such a vile personality. But I knew of other wizards who had grown up without the care of their magical parents, and none were so acidic; Riddle was an enigma.
"You're working slowly, McGonagall," he whispered to me.
This angered me; I was good at Potions, better than most of the class, and he knew it just as well as I did. "Would you rather I switch partners?" I hissed back, through gritted teeth. He didn't say anything back and I went back to stirring up the Deflating Draught, feeling instantly sorry for even bothering to wonder about him.
At any rate, I was glad of my mum and dad, and I was quite anxious to get home for the holidays. A part of me missed living as a Muggle, putting out biscuits for Father Christmas and listening for reindeer on the roof of the house with Kitty snuggled next to me. We never did hear them, but both of us always swore up and down that we had when the other had been asleep. And then waking up Christmas morning and opening gifts, us in our pajamas and Dad in his ratty old plaid robe, then going to Muggle church and singing to the hymns, then feeding the horses apples for holiday treats.
I packed up some of my clothes and the gifts for my family the night before I was to take the train home, and then I exchanged presents in the common room. All three girls were delighted with what I gave them. I'd never received gifts from housemates any other year, but Cliona gave me a new Gryffindor scarf to replace the one I'd had since first year ("I've got to have my fans looking sharp," she joked), and Cora gave me a book of very complicated spells ("Perhaps you could teach them to me after you learn them," she said hopefully). Myrtle presented me with a very large package of sweets (which were later annihilated by Kitty and I and two of the evacuated children).
The professors and a few of the students were singing carols down in the Great Hall, and we went down to join them, adding four very off-key voices to an ever-growing chorus. Hagrid was there, and, in a fit of mischieviousness, I caught him under the mistletoe and kissed him on the cheek, then chuckled as he'd stuttered with embarrassment. I'd grown to know him better over the term, since I'd been sent by my housemates more than once to ask him to keep his more violent or repulsive beasts away from the other students.
Winter has always been my favourite time of year. I love snow, and how amusing everyone looks all bundled up in winter robes, and the warmth of fires inside while the wind rages outside. And that winter was no exception; in fact, it was probably the best winter I'd had since coming to Hogwarts. I went home to the farmhouse feeling full and contented.