Minerva McGonagall awoke with a start. It was almost autumn, and she hadn't even begun the two rolls of parchment Professor Dumbledor had assigned on transmogrification! As her heart slowed, the years between then and now came rushing back to her, and she laughed. Eighty years and more it had been since she'd done homework for Dumbledore, but the oldest dreams didn't let go. She laughed again at the thought that she would have let a transfiguration assignment sit undone at until the last minute.
McGonagall pulled up the heavy quilt around her shoulders, and thought back to her early days as a student at Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft. She'd come to Hogwarts with mixed feelings... fear over the war, fear for her parents, grief for her brother's death. But mixed in had been hope that school would be different; that here was a place where she could just be. Two great discoveries had fed that hope, her first year.
The first had been the Great Hall; more specifically, the food in the Great Hall. The School, she realized, was willing to house her and feed her... and all they asked in return was that she study. That requirement was made easier by her second discovery: magic could change things!
McGonagall had needed change; the world had needed change. The handsome, charming Transfiguration professor hadn't hurt her desire to study that subject. She'd dived in, learned all she could. Later, she'd participated in the Witches for Peace project, in Africa, and she'd realized that change on a real level... not the change of a rat into a goblet, or a raven into a writing desk, but real, substantial change... was slow.
The old witch rolled in bed, and looked at her window, at the moonlight coming into her room. In the wan, pale light, she could see the picture she'd painted of Hogwarts. The moon was up over the castle, just as it was out the window. She watched the castle in the picture. Someone was awake, she saw, as a light moved among the windows of the north wing. McGonagall's eyes traveled over the castle, seeing the core of the old Saxon fort, and the additions of later centuries. She smiled. Change, she thought.
Her first discovery had not been entirely accurate. In later years, as Headmaster at Hogwarts, her perspective had changed as she managed the school's finances. She knew what the school charged, how provisions were made for poor families, and donations solicited from old students who had no children of their own at the school. She had worked hard to ensure that current students had no more idea of those details than she had. It was part of the school's magic.
McGonagall's eyelids drooped. Change, she thought. How many generations had she taught, she wondered. How many minds had she changed? How much change had she wrought? Had she made a difference?
