A/N: Hi everybody. It's been a while (I've been travelling the world for ten months), but finally I've managed to start writing again. Here's the second chapter of The Life of Minerva McGonagall.

Please note that I've corrected some mistakes in the first chapter; I've been going over the grammar and most importantly I've changed the language a little, to make it more typical of the time period. If you can remember everything that happened in chapter one, you don't neccesarily have to read it again, since I haven't made any changes in the plot.

Please R&R.

Chapter two – First year

September 1937

At breakfast the next morning the Heads of House handed out this year's timetables. When Professor Dumbledore approached the Gryffindor table all the Gryffindors fell silent. None of them knew their new Head of House yet, and they were all excited to get to know this famous wizard.

"Good morning, my dear Gryffindors," the elderly Professor said cheerfully and started handing out the schedules. He appeared to know everyone's names already, and he smiled merrily at the students as he walked up and down the long table.

The first-years were the last to get their timetables. As Minerva reached out for the piece of paper that Dumbledore presented her with, she noticed the professor's very blue, sparkling eyes. Dumbledore smiled kindly at her, and she realized she was staring; she cast down her eyes and blushed slightly as she took the timetable.

When Dumbledore had left, Minerva looked excitedly at Rolanda. "Oh my! I cannot wait to see what he is like as a teacher!"

"You will not have to wait too long," Rolanda laughed and pointed at her timetable. "Our third lesson today is Transfiguration."

Minerva smiled and looked down at the paper in her hand. Rolanda was right, but they had History of Magic and Herbology before the Transfiguration class.

"I am looking forward to the Flying lessons," Rolanda said and looked at the timetable again. "But we do not have Flying until Wednesday. Are you a good flyer, Minerva?"

Minerva smiled at the sudden thought of flying high above the ground on a broomstick. "Yes, I believe I am. I love flying and I played a lot of quidditch when I lived in Scotland."

"Is that so?" Rolanda looked surprised. "I thought you were more of a… bookish kind of girl."

Minerva laughed. "I suppose I am a pretty good mixture. I love reading but I also love quidditch. It is too bad they will not let us play until next year."

"Yes it is," Rolanda said. "Which position do you play?"

"Chaser. And you?"

"I am a seeker," Rolanda applied proudly. "Next year you and I should try out for the Gryffindor team!"

"That is a deal," Minerva said. Just then they were interrupted by a loud flutter of hundreds of owls delivering the morning mail. The McGonagalls' family owl, Merlin, landed in front of Minerva.

"Hello, Merlin," she said, and stroked the feathers of the old horned owl as she took the little package that was attached to the leg of the owl.

She opened the package as Merlin started pecking her cornflakes. It contained a small box of sweets and a short letter from her parents:

Dear Minerva.

We hope that you are fine at the school, and we cannot wait to hear what house you are in! (Father's guess is Ravenclaw, mother is not so sure.)

Write us soon, we miss you already.

Love

Mother and father.

Minerva smiled. She did not have time to write a long letter now, but she tore off a piece of the brown wrapping paper from the parcel and found a quill and some ink in her schoolbag. Then she wrote a quick note that she attached to Merlin's leg:

Dear mother and father.

Thank you for the sweets!

Here everything is well. And mother was right, I am not in Ravenclaw, I am in Gryffindor!

I have to go to class, but I will tell you more when I have the time.

Love, Minerva.

Minerva gave Merlin a biscuit from the parcel and followed him with her eyes as he joined the other departing owls. Then she turned to look at Rolanda, who had received five chocolate frogs and a letter from her own parents.

"We must be going so that we will not be late for our first class," she said. Rolanda nodded and the two girls got up and left the Great Hall and went up the stairs from the entrance hall to the first floor, where the History of Magic classroom was supposed to be located.

"Let us see… classroom seventeen…" Minerva looked up from her timetable. "Here it is!"

Some other first-years were already crowding around the door to the classroom to get in. Minerva and Rolanda joined them and found themselves a seat in the second row. Just then a bell signalled the start of the first lesson. The last students entered the classroom and sat down.
They were having History of Magic together with the Ravenclaws, and Minerva saw the extremely small boy and the vulture-like girl that she had noticed at the sorting, along with some other people she did not recognize.

After a few minutes the door opened and a professor, who looked like he was at least two hundred years old, entered. He had thin, pearly-grey hair, his skin was incredibly shrivelled and he wore a pair of round glasses with very thick lenses. He walked slowly towards the blackboard. Then he turned to face his class.

"Good morning, young Hufflepuffs," he said. His voice was dry, wheezy and extremely monotonous. "I am Professor Binns, and I am teaching History of Magic, which is… What is it young man?"
Binns stared irritably at a Ravenclaw boy, who had had the cheek to raise his hand in the middle of his introduction.

"I am sorry to interrupt you, Professor, but we are not Hufflepuffs. We are Ravenclaws and Gryffindors."

Professor Binns grunted impatiently and scowled suspiciously at the class, then at the boy, and then back at the class. He stood like that, frowning for a while. Then he seemed to decide that they weren't Hufflepuffs after all. Again he turned to the boy who had interrupted him. "Thank you, Mr…?"

"Johnson, sir."

"Thank you, Mr. Jefferson. Now, what I was about to say was that History of Magic is a very fascinating subject, which is built on many years of tradition. I am sure you will all find a great enrichment from this subject, which is, if one becomes absorbed in it, incredibly intriguing…"

The professor's voice, which just kept droning on and on, was tremendously sleep-inducing; even Minerva, who normally liked history and wanted to do good in her first class was captured by the drowsy atmosphere that spread like wildfire in the classroom. Soon every single student was staring into space, completely unable to pay attention to Professor Binns' monotonous flow of words.

Finally, after what felt like hours, the bell rang and woke the student from the trance. They slowly packed up and left.

Rolanda yawned loudly as they left the classroom. "By Merlin's pants! I have never heard anything that boring in my entire life!"

"Me neither," Minerva said.

"Well at least you managed to raise your hand and say something intelligent now and then. I was so paralytic I could not even lift my arm."

Minerva smiled. "I am sure Herbology will be better."
Just as she said that they heard a girl's voice behind them: "Minerva! Rolanda! Wait up!"
They turned around and saw Pomona and another girl from Hufflepuff hasting towards them. "We are going to have Herbology together!" Pomona said happily when she reached her friends. "This is Augusta Longbottom, by the way." The girl next to Pomona was short and thin with a round face and mousy pageboy hair.

The girls said hello to each other, then they went downstairs and out the large double doors towards the greenhouses that were situated outside on the Hogwarts grounds.

The Herbology lesson went very well, and was a whole lot more fun than the lesson of History of Magic. The students were put in teams of three at each table – Minerva, Pomona and Rolanda were working together – and they were each given a honking daffodil to spread dragon dung around. The teacher, a friendly little wizard called Professor Beery, walked around from table to table and corrected the student who spread too much or too little dung. Pomona turned out to be really good at it; Professor Beery praised her for her good work, and the daffodil uttered small, contented honks.

After the Herbology lesson it was finally time for Transfiguration. Minerva hurried to the classroom five minutes early to get a good seat, dragging a confused Rolanda after her. The classroom was completely empty, and they sat down on the first row to wait.

"Which broom are you flying at home?" Rolanda asked.

"Oh, I just have an old Comet 140," Minerva said and blushed. It was a really old broom. "However, I really want the new Cleansweep three. I think I will wish for it for my birthday."

"I see," Rolanda said. "I like the old models. I have an old Silver Arrow, and it still works like a charm."

Minerva was impressed; The Silver Arrow was a classic, very few people had one of them.

At that point the students were starting to fill the classroom and soon after everyone was seated Professor Dumbledore made his entry. He smiled welcomingly at all his new students, and Minerva liked him at once.
"Welcome to Transfiguration, Gryffindors. Transfiguration is an incredibly interesting but also unimaginably dangerous kind of magic. Imagine accidentally turning your grandmother into a longcase clock, and not being able to turn her back to normal again!" Dumbledore looked serious, but there was a humorous twinkle in his bright blue eyes, and some of the students laughed uncertainly. Dumbledore smiled.

"But fear not!" he said and clapped his hands. "I will teach you everything you need to know. All I require from you is that you listen carefully, and that you take good care in my classes, and then I am certain we will have a splendid time!" Then the Professor turned his hat into a toucan and back again which made all the students utter impressed gasps.

They spent the lesson trying to turn a shoelace into a worm. No one succeeded one hundred percent, most only managed to make the shoelace turn pink and wriggle a little. Minerva, however, was very close, her worm just had brass aglets in both ends, and Dumbledore said that he was sure she would be able to do it the next time.

The months passed by with what seemed to be impossible speed. Minerva was doing well in all of her classes, but especially in Transfiguration which quickly became her favourite class.

On October 4 Minerva turned twelve. She did not receive the broomstick that she had wished for, since her parents thought it was unnecessary now that she could not bring it to Hogwarts anyway. Instead her parents gave her two books: "Quidditch Through the Ages" and "An Introduction to Advanced Transfiguration", both of which she read with great interest.

As Christmas came closer the amount of homework slowly increased and the classes became harder and harder. All the students began looking forward to the Christmas break.

December 1937

"Mother!" Minerva ran as fast as she could with her heavy trunk on a trolley, through the crowd at platform 9¾. Her mother turned around and when her eyes found Minerva she smiled and walked swiftly towards her daughter. The two of them hugged each other tightly.

"How have you been? Your father and I simply cannot wait to hear everything," her mother said when she let go of Minerva. She quickly inspected her daughter. "And how you have grown! Soon you will be as tall as I am."

Minerva laughed. Just then a voice called her name, and a moment later Rolanda and Pomona appeared at her side.

"We did not even have the time to say goodbye to you before you vanished from the compartment!" Rolanda said with a humorous smile.

Minerva blushed slightly. "I am sorry; I just saw my mother and had to get to her before she disappeared in the crowd."

Rolanda and Pomona laughed.

"Mother, this is Rolanda Hooch and Pomona Sprout. They are my best friends at school."

Mrs. McGonagall greeted the girls and they chitchatted for a while, until Pomona's mother found them and Pomona had to go. Rolanda said that she had to go look for her father as well, and they all said goodbye.

It was a wonderful Christmas. Minerva was glad to be with her parents again, and they both listened patiently as she told them everything about Hogwarts. They seemed pleased that everything was going so well for her, and her father praised her for her good work in class.

As lovely as the Christmas break had been, Minerva could not wait to go back to Hogwarts, and when she was once again leaning out the window of the Hogwarts Express waving at her parents with Pomona and Rolanda at her side on January 2nd she could not be any happier.

In school everything kept going well for her. Minerva constantly improved in every class, and especially Professor Dumbledore was very impressed by her skills.

The rest of the year did not vary much from the ordinary. The students went to classes, did their homework in the library or in the house common rooms, and once in a while they went to see a quidditch match. Pomona and Rolanda did not do as well in all the classes as Minerva, but on the other hand they did not seem to mind. Rolanda indeed proved to be an excellent flyer and Pomona kept doing well in Herbology class. Minerva still loved Transfiguration more than any other class, and History of Magic just kept getting more and more boring.

In June Minerva did well in all of her exams, but she was most excited about the Outstanding she got in her Transfiguration exam.

The third week in June Minerva returned to her parents for the holidays. She was happy to see them, and Pomona and Rolanda came to visit several times, and she visited them as well.

Being home was wonderful, however, just as after the Christmas break, she couldn't wait to return to Hogwarts.

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