To say Minerva McGonagall was shaken would be an understatement. In fact, it would be the understatement of the century. She was pretty certain that the sheer intensity of her current internal turmoil was orders of magnitude above what she had cumulatively endured in her whole life. However, she was a schoolteacher; she considered herself a well balanced, sturdy witch; and above all, she was British.
So, in accordance with her principles, she was sitting with her back properly straight in the elegant armchair she had conjured, and wore the same expression of stern quietness as she would have in class. No one could have told from her expression, but she was pretty annoyed at her right hand: it wouldn't stop shaking despite her best efforts, loudly rattling the spoon in her teacup as she slowly brought it to her mouth. She also tried not to stare, but he had been pacing across from her in silence for a while now, and she could not deny that his existence was an issue to add to the steadily growing pile of difficulties requiring her attention.
"So." She began. It was a good beginning. She would now have to choose between the three incredibly urgent matters which were fighting for her full, undivided attention. She chose the one that seemed the easiest to dispatch and the most distressful to... Mr. Evans: "Don't fear for your friend. Mr. Rosemary is a very capable healer, and it would seem that Dr. Granger is already out of the woods, so to speak. Mr. Rosemary is only being as thorough as possible with his tests."
That seemed to soothe him somewhat, even though the aforementioned healer still looked a bit distressed as he examined Hermione's still – if somewhat twitchy – form. "Now. As much as I would like to discuss the very present trauma of Dr. Granger being struck by l- lightning under our very eyes..." Stuttering wouldn't do, Minerva! She composed herself, Harry finally stopped pacing and sat down. "We have a lot on our figurative plate. Mr... Evans..." She trailed off: Mr. Rosemary's presence would be a problem for her second point, and she needed Dr. Granger awake for her third. "Please, excuse me a moment. Mr. Rosemary? Is all of this really necessary? Didn't you say she was okay now?"
"Well... She's okay... She was in a strangely good condition to begin with, but... Her nervous system is... I... I don't know what it is, I've never seen anything like it. Even her brain–"
"Is there a risk for her? And if so can you fix it?"
"No... to both questions; I think it's just how she was, whatever it is... the lightning couldn't have done anything like that."
"Will she wake up?"
"Yes, probably in a few minutes."
"Then could you please go and assist the other Aurors? I'm sure your medical curiosity can be satisfied at another time."
The Auror medic fumbled embarrassedly, gave her quick a salute, and disappeared with a crack. He must have been feeling quite stupid on the other side of that apparition: who salutes to schoolteachers?
"Now, Mr. Evans... I don't know quite how to address this... Was 'Evans' always your last name?"
Harry gave her a confused look. "No... It used to be Dursley. My... My adoptive family's name."
"Whose name is Evans, then?"
"Well... I'm pretty sure it's one of my real parents'." She kept silent. He seemed to be uncomfortable talking about his family, but if she acted as though he hadn't answered her question, he would be compelled to develop. Again, she was a teacher.
"They never admitted that I wasn't theirs, but... They always made a point to treat me as if I wasn't part of the family." He broke eye contact, reminiscing these painful years "I didn't know why they'd adopt me if they hated me so much, but... One day I wanted to be sure, so I arranged for a paternity test... Well, they never knew about it. In fact, it wasn't entirely legal..." He remembered he was talking to someone he'd just met "Anyway, I found out he definitely wasn't my father, and though she was related to me, we didn't share enough DNA for her to be my mother. She could be my aunt, so I took her maiden name, assuming it would be one of my real parents'."
Lily Evans had a sister? A muggle sister? Who had a kid named Harry? And no one had noticed?
"Have you always had that scar?" He reached to his forehead.
"As far as I can remember, yes. Wait, how did you know?"
"When's your birthday?"
"June the 12th 1980... Are you about to tell me something huge about my identity?"
She paused. June... Someone had faked his death and put him in a muggle home with a fake paper trail to account for his birth before the facts. The 'parents' probably had fake memories of his birth to perfect the lie, but subconsciously rejected the poor child. And of course no one had noticed: who cares about muggles? Nobody, that's who. Dr. Granger had stopped twitching a while ago. She had started to shift slightly instead... She may have already been awake...Well, who cares... Twenty Aurors had seen him. They had seen his scar, which had been shown in the press before his 'death'...
Of course, you can't really survive Voldemort's killing curse. That's what she had thought. That's what everybody had thought. Especially the Dark Lord's eager fan club, in all likelihood... But he looked the spitting image of his father; he had the remarkable eyes of his mother... They were celebrities, she couldn't have been the only one to notice, today... The news would spread now; and he could do with a muggle born friend who'd understand him. Dr. Granger was opening her eyes...
"Yes." Minerva had pondered for so long that he had forgotten his own question. "I'm afraid I have some troubling revelations about your birth. But first, let me explain the contents of the letters: it will make those revelations easier to grasp."
"What happened? – hrm." Came the feeble voice of Dr. Granger. Her voice was very hoarse; her throat must have been forcibly clenched.
"You've been struck by lightning, my dear. You'll be okay, although your nervous system seemed very interesting to the healer."
"Oh." She sat up slowly, wincing. "Yeah, it's superconducting." They both looked at her like she had grown a third head. And she might as well have for all the medical impossibility... Minerva had come across the concept in an article about muggle levitation, and it did not seem like it should apply to someone's brain. Dr. Granger turned to face them both, recovering her wits "Probably why I got struck... I made the measurement myself, after I tried having an MRI... which did not go well. The good news is, it's really hard to fry a superconducting nervous system. The bad news is when something tries – and some things do tend to do that –, it hurts like hell." There was a dumbfounded pause, before Minerva found her footing – with increasing difficulty, as she noticed.
"As much as I'd like to discuss both the cause and the consequences of such an astounding fact, I have much to tell you both, and little time to do so. Mr. Evans, Dr. Granger, you are both magical. You, young man, are a wizard; you, young lady, are a witch." They didn't protest. Then again, since she didn't have any fire or lightning coming out of her mouth, she could see how it compared to everything that had just happened. "I am also a witch as I demonstrated earlier" She gestured to her conjured chair, and made its shape shift a little for good measure. "Magic is a trait that can either be inherited, or occur spontaneously. It is also a well guarded secret to those who don't possess it. Usually, magical people are detected early, and offered a spot in our school on the day of their eleventh anniversary."
"The Hogwarts so and so." Harry offered.
"Indeed. In both your cases, however, something went wrong. It had never... accidentally happened before, but you both weren't even detected." She took a slow, still pretty rattled sip of her tea and they waited in silence. "Which is a grave matter."
"Why? Hrm..."
"Because when a magical child is denied an education, the magic just builds up unfocused inside him, interferes negatively with his emotions and eventually finds potentially... violent avenues to express itself. It can become so serious as to result in the child's death, and a significant amount of damage to those around him."
"We could explode?" Harry became agitated; she raised a calming hand.
"No. Not as such. Firstly, it wouldn't be an explosion..." it would be much, much worse "and secondly neither of you is in such a grave danger for now: it would seem that you both have thankfully stumbled upon relatively healthier ways of evacuating the accumulated power. However, I'm sure you often experience some... emotion management problems; they would most certainly be cured if you were to receive an actual magical education. Still, I must say: I'm quite impressed with the original uses of magic you both have found to relieve the stress during this unfortunately long wait.
"In fact, I believe that the state of your nervous system is attributable to that, Dr. Granger: you're probably subconsciously doing it to yourself as we speak. As for Mr P–... Evans, As I understand, your extraordinary morning routine and your meditation practices are disguised, fairly structured uses of your magic as well. I'm quite confused as to how you never noticed, though. Even if you mostly kept your eyes closed..."
"I always do... It helps me concentrate..."
"And you've never noticed the ground shifting under you, the air warming around you..."
"I just assumed it was my... well not my imagination per se, but... my meditation influencing my own perceptions."
Dr Granger's throat was getting better: "Excuse-me, I'm confused. Could you not tell that we were doing magic? You seem to have ways of detecting that." That young lady could think on her feet, for someone who could barely stand on them.
"Normally yes, we would have. But... I'm not exactly sure how it came to pass but... Well your... traceability seems to have been tempered with. In other words, you were purposefully hidden from our instruments. Which brings me to my last point: Mr. Pot – I mean Mr. Evans's true identity."
"Let me guess: it starts with 'Pot'." Even his quips sounded like his father's.
"As far as I can tell, your father's name was James Potter, indeed. Your mother's maiden name was Lily Evans. They were both well regarded members of the magical community... Until... I'm sorry there is no polite way of putting this: until they were murdered, 22 years ago." She paused; he visibly would have very much liked to find something to say. Eventually he had to settle for "How do you know?"
"I knew them both personally: I was their teacher; the resemblance doesn't leave any room for doubt. Moreover that particular scar is a remnant of that fateful night: it was shown in the papers at the time.
"As for the culprit... He was a maniac who had been terrorising the magical world for quite some time. In fact, one could say we were at war against his forces. He was very powerful... Many thought him unstoppable, actually. So... for the rest of us, there was a silver lining behind your parents' – and as far as anyone knows, your – tragic demise. It was a... rather obscure bout of magic, which seemed to counteract his spell as he tried to kill you, and killed him instead. You were actually hailed as a hero... They called you the boy-who-lived... For all of one day: your death was announced the morning after. Evidently, the proof was fabricated, and someone went to great lengths to hide you from our world... Presumably to protect you from retaliation from..." Deep breath: he needs to know the names "Lord Voldemort's Death Eaters – that's how the madman called himself and his followers."
That was a lot to take in. Which would give her time to sip her tea, and she needed it direly. She watched several emotions come and go on his face as he tried to interiorise what he had been told. Disbelief came back often; so did melancholia. Dr Granger seemed pretty stunned herself. Eventually, he silently stood up, fetched his thermos – as she understood, it was full of a different sort of tea –, opened a cupboard under his sink, extracted a bottle of scotch and started to pour the contents in the tea. He obviously needed a break. She decided to let him breathe and focus on his friend: there was plenty of mystery to go around.
"As for you Dr. Granger... Well the reasons for your untraceability seem less obvious. As far as I know, your parents are muggles – it means non-magical people –, and I can't really find a reason for anyone to either want or even know to keep you from the magical world. To anyone at the time, you would have seemed like a perfectly innocuous muggle baby... So the only explanation would be... But you'd have lived too far... Where did you go to school?"
"Huh? A boarding school named St-Mary-the-Merciful... In – hrm – Surrey. It was full of judgemental nuns but they had a special class for children with high learning potential. It was supposed to be a middle school but I was quite advanced at 9 already, so..."
"What was the closest town?"
"Oh, it was in Little Whinging. A bit south of London."
Harry coughed a bit on his Irish-Jamaican tea. McGonagall took it upon herself to explain.
"Then, the protections on Mr. P–" she hesitated "the protections on Harry's magic could have been strong enough to cover part of the town he lived in, which happens to be Little Whingin in Surrey. It seems whoever wanted to hide him was both capable and determined. Maybe even a bit overzealous." And he would soon find himself on the short end of a stern talking to... She sighed inwardly, suddenly filled with melancholy and regret at the sheer pointlessness of that particular thought.
When she lifted her eyes, Harry was looking into them sharply. "You know exactly who did it, don't you?" Had she been so obvious? She broke eye contact, embarrassed. "I... I have an inkling, yes, but–"
"No... You know exactly who it is. Can we meet him?"
Was he a legilimens? He hadn't even been taught his first spell... How could he know something so complex? His meditation? But with his eyes closed every time, how could he... Well add that to the list. Maybe she had just given it away. She sighed, defeated.
"I know who it is, in any likelihood... But a meeting would be useless: I'm afraid he has put himself in a magically induced coma."
"Oh. Why?"
She sighed again. "Well... He was dying. He had contracted a curse which would certainly kill him..." Just in case, she refrained from looking in Harry's eyes as she remembered his last words to her... That he believed Voldemort would return... To wake him when he did... But as wise as he was, the old man had no proof to offer. As it stood Harry didn't need that can of worms to remain open forever, and in any case he didn't need to know right now. It was time to take her leave.
"I'm sorry. I think we all need to rest now. Can I trust you not to do... whatever it is you were doing on the roof for at least the rest of today? Good. I'll come back tomorrow and give you a tour of magical Britain, before taking you to Hogwarts... If you wish to learn more about magic, of course." They nodded. "Good! You probably won't... integrate with the other first year students, but–"
Dr. Granger gasped "My students! They'll think me buried in a shallow grave!" She grabbed her handbag and ran outside in the pyjamas that the healer had transfigured on her.
Minerva exited soon after. She thought she'd walk a bit before apparating away. Sorting her thoughts would do her good. In the street, she waved to Dr. Granger, who waved back, without interrupting her animated conversation. It sounded way more mundane than what they had just endured. A nice respite from all that... She let the half-conversation follow her footsteps in the silent street, filling her head with more comfortable concepts.
"Yes, – hrm – I know that I wouldn't stay home when I had staphylococcus-aureus-induced endocarditis, but this time... This time I've been struck by lightning. Yes, seriously... No, it's not a throatache, I wouldn't stay home for a throatache, I'm not a six-year-old! – hrm – I know... I have a love-hate relationship with electrons; what can I say... No, don't say it, don't say–... Srivinasa, I'm sorry but you can't laugh at your own joke when it's 'you're too negative'."
She had imitated a stupid voice in an Indian accent, which was hard to pull off without sounding utterly racist, and harder still with a throat condition. Still, she had managed pretty well.
"That's just not funny enough. Plus there were multiple strikes and the first couldn't have lasted for more than 15 microsecond; so if anything I was too positive. Yes there are two kinds of lightning strikes, Srivinasa, how can you not know that? Of course I could tell, who do you think I am... What?... It was very painful, and I have to go lie down, now, if you don't mind. No, not tomorrow, I'll probably take a week–... Srivinasa, don't shout: I am a responsible adult, of sound mind and body – more or less –, master of my fate, captain of my soul and so on, and I have decided to take a week of vacation... No, I am not dying!.."