It was first night. The scarlet steam engine had pulled into Hogsmeade station only moments before, and now the children were starting to stream out of compartments. Minerva McGonagall sat in the shadows of the station, watching. She could remember so many first nights, over so many years. She watched as Professor Coppersmith, no longer so young as she remembered him, moved through the crowd with quiet elegance. "First years, follow me, please," he said, unfailingly polite.
She remembered her own first year, during the Second World War. Her mother had talked of sending her to Canada, where so many children had been sent to keep them safe, to ensure the survival of families. Instead, she'd come to the safest place in Britain, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Hagrid, still a young man but already huge, had bellowed, "First years, over here, first years!"
She could remember how excited, how scared she had been, on her own first night, as she followed Hagrid. She hadn't known him then, hadn't known about giants except as fairy-tale creatures, hadn't known what the man's size meant. There had been families in those days, too, she recalled. Ian and Eoin Weasley had been popular, funny, and a couple of years older than she was. Heather Madley was in Minerva's year, and her older brother Stephen was three years older. That strange Wooster boy, the Hufflepuff who'd barely managed to get Acceptables in his OWLs their fifth year had a cousin, Yaxley, who didn't seem to be much brighter. Salt of the Earth, though, Wooster and Yaxley.
Minerva watched a girl with an elegant French plait following after Coppersmith, her eyes big as she watched the horde of red-headed Weasleys and Potters pouring out of one train car, saw the girl's double-take as one of the children changed from the ginger-haired norm to blonde so pale it picked up color from the station's slightly blue lights. A Lupin, Minerva thought... the metamorphmagus talent showed up in that family still, from time to time. Minerva felt sympathy for the girl with the plait, on the outskirts of that crowd, not knowing what was to come.
Minerva hummed to herself, a tune that had been popular in the castle a generation before. "There's a girl in Hufflepuff," went the lyrics, "who says that forty-seven ginger-headed Weasleys sounds like heaven to her." There had never been forty-seven Weasleys at the castle at once, of course, but sometimes it had seemed like it.
Minerva noticed a small girl with hair so black it seemed to gleam blue where the light hit it. She was looking around her with what looked like suspicion, wary of everyone and everything. She was also, Minerva noticed, clinging to a long, thin, bundle as if it were a life preserver. "A Snape," Minerva thought, then, noticing the girl's Asiatic features, "or a Chang?"
When Professor Coppersmith came striding along, though, he addressed her with, "Miss Doe, you can leave your luggage on the train; it will be taken care of."
The girl looked at him as if he were trying to steal from her, then answered, "it's not luggage."
Coppersmith raised an eyebrow, and looked as if he were about to object, but Minerva coughed, and he looked over at her. She shook her head, and Coppersmith paused, then nodded. "Very well, Miss Doe," he agreed, "over here with the others, please."
Things would sort themselves out, Minerva thought. She remembered when little Luna Lovegood had shown up at the steps of the castle, her eyes large, suspicious, clutching a stuffed... goodness, Minerva thought with a silent laugh, what /had/ that thing been? Some made-up monster, anyway. The girl had seemed too old for such things, but she'd carried it for most of the year, before deciding on her own that she didn't need it anymore.
"There are things you can change, Professor McGonagall," Dumbledore had said to her, her first year of teaching, "and things you can not. It helps if you can laugh at the things you can not change; it will save you a great deal of weeping."
Whatever Miss Doe was carrying, Minerva thought, it wasn't any worse than what the castle had weathered before. A thousand years, the school had stood, and every one of them had been a first year for someone.
