Minerva McGonagall + The Weird Sisters


The first person who ever asked Minerva McGonagall to dance was Myron Wagtail.

At the time, they were fifth-years. Myron was a good-looking Gryffindor, square-jawed but spotty, whose hair was really rather longer than Minerva thought it should be, although of course she would never deign to tell him her opinion. The most she ever spared for Myron Wagtail was a light 'hmph' in his direction, punctuated by an arch of an eyebrow.

After all, at fifteen, her eyebrows had already developed the peculiar power to make people quail, gulp, and look away. Not Myron, though. He would just grin widely, showing square teeth. "Perfect Prefect," he would call to her in the hall, "love what you've done with your hair. It looks browner than usual."

"You are in my way," she would reply, before striding past him, her chin elevated to the point of looking practically comical.

Pomona insisted, knowingly, that she would end up marrying him. Minerva told her to stop, please, honestly, there are plenty of potions available if you'd like to make me ill.

Privately, on just one occasion, Minerva entertained the notion of going on a date with Myron to Hogsmeade, but she crushed the thought almost instantly. What on earth would they talk about? He fooled around constantly in Transfiguration, and he didn't like Quidditch. He spent half his time holed up in empty classrooms with his dunderhead mates, making ridiculous songs about … well, about broomstick handles and Flobberworms. (Minerva had no taste for poorly veiled metaphors. Besides, Merlin's beard, what an unappealing metaphor. Flobberworms?)

It was early spring of her fifth year when Hogwarts hosted a ball to celebrate the visit of a flock of Flutterbrush Winglets, a migratory species of carnivorous bird that most wizarding ornithologists had presumed extinct. Famous and accomplished wixen of all stripes visited on the evening of the Spring Ball, and the Winglets ornamented the dusk in black, flapping silhouettes.

Myron approached Minerva in the late hours of the evening. "Perfect Prefect!" he crowed, brushing back his stupidly long hair. "A dance?"

"Wagtail," she said loudly, over the swing music that was playing through some sort of green plant overhead. "No."

"May I ask why not?"

"Of course you may ask. That's no guarantee of an answer."

"Why not?" said Wagtail, with that cheeky grin.

Minerva drew herself up, sighing. She turned on her heel.

"Going back to Gryffindor Tower?"

"Yes," she said, and as she left, he followed, his hands in the pockets of his dress robes. He loped along with a bounce.

"You know," he said confidentially, "my mates and I are playing down at Hogsmeade next weekend. We'd love it if there were a Gryffindor contingent in the audience."

Minerva just gave one curt chuckle. "Of course you would, Wagtail." She looked around. "This must be the first time I've seen you without them. They never leave you alone, do they? — the Great Hall, the Library, the eight of you constantly bickering like sisters."

He chuckled. "Really, do stop by. I've been working on my falsetto."

She didn't go to Hogsmeade — of course not — but strangely, after that evening, she felt a strange camaraderie between them. They would pass each other in the hallway, and he would say, "Looks browner than usual, your hair," and she would shoot back, "Your ego looks larger than usual," and that was about the extent of their relationship.

They never had a real conversation. They knew each other at a comfortable, peripheral level, and they continued their careless banter until the end of their Hogwarts career. Wagtail thought it was a shame, privately. He'd thought she was sharp, and funny, and just a bit terrifying, of course. He liked girls when they were terrifying.

The Weird Sisters named themselves six months after graduating from Hogwarts, but it took three years for them to make their splash in the London music scene. After their widely celebrated single, the grungy, guitar-heavy "Slobberworm," they graduated quickly from dingy bars. They knew they'd really made it when Glenda Chittock invited them to record for the Witching Hour live programme.

For the recording, they played a concert in an abandoned barn in the middle of the Scottish countryside, not far from where Hogwarts was (approximately and presumably) located.

At one point, between his falsetto wails, Myron Wagtail looked out in the audience and thought he saw somebody standing at the back, somebody glasses-clad and brown-haired. Somebody in Hogwarts professor's robes. Somebody looking half-amused and half-pleased.

But when he blinked the sweat out of his eyes, all he saw was the tail of a tabby cat disappearing through the slats of the wall.

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fin


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-Speech