Minnie and Harry

Rating: K plus for the moment

Warnings: Occasional bad language, action violence, fluff, spoilers for those who haven't read the books & slightly ooc main characters.

Standard Disclaimer: I'm not JK Rowling and do not own any of the copyrights to any borrowed characters or locations used in this work and this is not written for profit. All other known characters and locations borrowed in this work belong to their respective copyright owners.

Summary: My take on the Fem Harry scenario with a few unique twists and a tribute to one of the greatest stories ever written.

Authors note: I've often wondered what would have happened if Professor McGonagall had defied Dumbledore and snatched Harry on that Halloween. Witowsmp has written quite a good one with "Harry McGonagall" but I thought I'd write the pilot for my own take and add in a few of my own twists.

Chapter 1: The Snatch

The day had begun like any other for Mr and Mrs Dursley of number four Privet Drive, but whispers of strange events had been bugging the mind of the man until he had finally asked his wife for news of her loathed sister. His nephew, Harry, born to people he equally loathed.

He didn't say another word on the subject as they went upstairs to bed. While Mrs. Dursley was in the bathroom, Mr. Dursley crept to the bedroom window and peered down into the front garden. The cat was still there. It was staring down Privet Drive as though it were waiting for something. Was he imagining things? Could all this have anything to do with the Potters? If it did… if it got out that they were related to a pair of, well, he didn't think he could bear it. The Dursleys got into bed. Mrs. Dursley fell asleep quickly but Mr. Dursley lay awake, turning it all over in his mind. His last, comforting thought before he fell asleep was that even if the Potters were involved, there was no reason for them to come near him and Mrs. Dursley. The Potters knew very well what he and Petunia thought about them and their kind… He couldn't see how he and Petunia could get mixed up in anything that might be going on — he yawned and turned over — it couldn't affect them…

Mr. Dursley might have been drifting into an uneasy sleep, but the cat on the wall outside was showing no sign of sleepiness. It was sitting as still as a statue, its eyes fixed unblinkingly on the far corner of Privet Drive. It didn't so much as quiver when a car door slammed on the next street, nor when two owls swooped overhead. In fact, it was nearly midnight before the cat moved at all.

A man appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appeared so suddenly and silently you'd have thought he'd just popped out of the ground. The cat's tail twitched and its eyes narrowed. Nothing like this man had ever been seen on Privet Drive. This man's name was Albus Dumbledore.

Albus Dumbledore didn't seem to realize that he had just arrived in a street where everything from his name to his boots was unwelcome. He was busy rummaging in his cloak, looking for something. But he did seem to realize he was being watched, because he looked up suddenly at the cat, which was still staring at him from the other end of the street. For some reason, the sight of the cat seemed to amuse him. He chuckled and muttered.

'I should have known.'

He found what he was looking for in his inside pocket, it looked like a cigarette lighter and as soon as he clicked it, the closest street lamp went out. Thirteen times, he clicked the Put-Outer, until the only lights left on the whole street were two tiny pinpricks in the distance, which were the eyes of the cat watching him. Anybody looking out from a lit house would now be blind to what was happening outside. Dumbledore put the put outer away and walked down to number for where he sat down next to the cat. He didn't look at it, but after a moment he spoke to it.

'Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall.'

He turned to smile at the tabby, but it had gone. Instead he was smiling at a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square glasses exactly the shape of the markings the cat had had around its eyes. She, too, was wearing a cloak, an emerald one. Her black hair was drawn into a tight bun. She looked distinctly ruffled.

'How did you know it was me?' she asked. 'My dear Professor, I've never seen a cat sit so stiffly,' he replied.

'You'd be stiff if you'd been sitting on a brick wall all day,' said Professor McGonagall.

'All day? When you could have been celebrating? I must have passed a dozen feasts and parties on my way here.' Dumbledore seemed surprised.

Professor McGonagall sniffed angrily. 'Oh yes, everyone's celebrating, all right,' she said impatiently. 'You'd think they'd be a bit more careful, but no, even the Muggles have noticed something's going on. It was on their news.' She jerked her head back at the Dursleys' dark living-room window. 'I heard it. Flocks of owls… shooting stars… Well, they're not completely stupid. They were bound to notice something, shooting stars down in Kent? I'll bet that was Dedalus Diggle, he never had much sense.'

'You can't blame them,' said Dumbledore gently. 'We've had precious little to celebrate for eleven years.'

'I know that,' said Professor McGonagall irritably. 'But that's no reason to lose our heads. People are being downright careless, out on the streets in broad daylight, not even dressed in Muggle clothes, swapping rumours.'

She threw a sharp, sideways glance at Dumbledore here, as though hoping he was going to tell her something, but he didn't, so she went on. 'A fine thing it would be if, on the very day You-Know-Who seems to have disappeared at last, the Muggles found out about us all. I suppose he really has gone, Dumbledore?'

'It certainly seems so,' said Dumbledore. 'We have much to be thankful for. Would you care for a sherbet lemon?'

'A what?'

'A sherbet lemon. They're a kind of Muggle sweet I'm rather fond of.'

'No, thank you," said Professor McGonagall coldly, as though she didn't think this was the moment for sherbet lemons. 'As I say, even if You-Know-Who has gone.'

'My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call him by his name? All this 'You-Know-Who' nonsense, for eleven years I have been trying to persuade people to call him by his proper name: Voldemort.'

Professor McGonagall flinched, but Dumbledore, who was unsticking two sherbet lemons, seemed not to notice. 'It all gets so confusing if we keep saying 'You-Know-Who.' I have never seen any reason to be frightened of saying Voldemort's name." "I know you haven't," said Professor McGonagall, sounding half exasperated, half admiring. 'But you're different, everyone knows you're the only one you-Know- oh, all right, Voldemort, was frightened of.'

'You flatter me,' said Dumbledore calmly. 'Voldemort had powers I will never have.'

'Only because you're too, well, nobleto use them.'

'It's lucky it's dark. I haven't blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs.'

Professor McGonagall shot a sharp look at Dumbledore and said, 'The owls are nothing next to the rumours that are flying around. You know what they're saying? About why he's disappeared? About what finally stopped him?'

It seemed that Professor McGonagall had reached the point she was most anxious to discuss, the real reason she had been waiting on a cold, hard wall all day, for neither as a cat nor as a woman had, she fixed Dumbledore with such a piercing stare as she did now. It was plain that whatever "everyone" was saying, she was not going to believe it until Dumbledore told her it was true. Dumbledore, however, was choosing another lemon drop and did not answer.

'What they're saying,' she pressed on, 'is that last night Voldemort turned up in Godric's Hollow. He went to find the Potters. The rumour is that Lily and James Potter are, are, that they're, dead.'

Dumbledore bowed his head. Professor McGonagall gasped.

"Lily and James… I can't believe it… I didn't want to believe it… Oh, Albus…'

Dumbledore reached out and patted her on the shoulder. "I know… I know…," he said heavily. Professor McGonagall's voice trembled as she went on. 'That's not all. They're saying he tried to kill the Potter's son, Harry. But he couldn't do it, he couldn't kill that little boy, no one knows why, or how, but they're saying that when he couldn't kill Harry Potter, Voldemort's power somehow broke and that's why he's gone.'

Dumbledore nodded glumly.

'It's, it's true?' faltered Professor McGonagall. 'After all he's done… all the people he's killed… he couldn't kill a little boy? It's just astounding… of all the things to stop him… but how in the name of heaven did Harry survive?'

'We can only guess.' said Dumbledore. 'We may never know.'

Professor McGonagall pulled out a lace handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes beneath her spectacles. Dumbledore gave a great sniff as he took a golden watch from his pocket and examined it. It was a very odd watch. It had twelve hands but no numbers; instead, little planets were moving around the edge. It must have made sense to Dumbledore, though, because he put it back in his pocket and said, 'Hagrid's late. I suppose it was he who told you I'd be here, by the way?'

'Yes,' said Professor McGonagall. 'And I don't suppose you're going to tell me why you're here, of all places?'

'I've come to bring Harry to his aunt and uncle. They're the only family he has left now.'

'You don't mean, you can't mean the people who live here?' cried Professor McGonagall, jumping to her feet and pointing at number four. 'Albus Dumbledore, you can't. I've been watching them all day. You couldn't find two people who are less like us. And they've got this son, I saw him kicking his mother all the way up the street, screaming for sweets. Harry Potter come and live here? You remember the will Albus, you know as well as I do what Lily and James decreed.'

'It's the best place for him," said Dumbledore firmly. 'Her aunt and uncle will be able to explain everything to him when he's older, I've written them a letter.'

'A letter?' repeated Professor McGonagall faintly, sitting back down on the wall. 'Really, Dumbledore, you think you can explain all this in a letter? These people will never understand him! They will never accept him, Petunia loathed Lilly. You know that as well as I, and as for Harry, he needs to be brought up to understand why his parents made the decisions they did. What will I say to him when Charlotte eventually meets him? When he asks why he was never told of their betrothal.

'Enough, the fame would turn any boys head, you know that as much as I do. He needs to be brought up away from it. You will have your chance to nurture the match with your daughter when both of them are ready.'

Minerva McGonagall fumed, but asked, 'how is he getting here?'

'Hagrid's bringing him.'

'You think it, wise, to trust Hagrid with something as important as this?'

'I would trust Hagrid with my life,' said Dumbledore.

'I'm not saying his heart isn't in the right place,' said Professor McGonagall grudgingly, 'but you can't pretend he's not careless, he does tend to, what was that?'

A low rumbling sound had broken the silence around them. It grew steadily louder as they looked up and down the street for some sign of a headlight; it swelled to a roar as they both looked up at the sky, and a huge motorcycle fell out of the air and landed on the road in front of them. If the motorcycle was huge, it was nothing to the man sitting astride it. He was almost twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. He looked simply too big to be allowed, and so wild , long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid most of his face, he had hands the size of dustbin lids, and his feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins. In his vast, muscular arms, he was holding a bundle of blankets.

'Hagrid,' said Dumbledore, sounding relieved. 'At last. And where did you get that motorcycle?'

'Borrowed it, Professor Dumbledore, sir,' said the giant, climbing carefully off the motorcycle as he spoke. 'Young Sirius Black lent it to me; I've got her, sir.'

'No problems, were there?'

'No, sir , house was almost destroyed, but I got him out all right before the Muggles started swarmin' around, he fell asleep as we was flyin' over Bristol.'

Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall bent forward over the bundle of blankets. Inside, just visible, was a baby boy, fast asleep. Under a tuft of dark hair over his forehead, they could see a curiously shaped cut, like a bolt of lightning.

'Is that where? 'Whispered Professor McGonagall.

'Yes,' said Dumbledore. 'He'll have that scar forever.'

'Couldn't you do something about it, Dumbledore?'

'Even if I could, I wouldn't. Scars can come in handy. I have one myself above my left knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground. Well, give him here, Hagrid we'd better get this over with.'

Dumbledore took Harry in his arms and turned toward the Dursleys' house.

'Could I, could I say good-bye to him, sir?' asked Hagrid. He bent his great, shaggy head over Harry and gave her what must have been a very scratchy, whiskery kiss. Then, suddenly, Hagrid let out a howl like a wounded dog.

'Shhh!' hissed Professor McGonagall, 'You'll wake the Muggles!'

'S-s-sorry,' sobbed Hagrid, taking out a large, spotted handkerchief and burying his face in it. 'But I c-c-can't stand it, Lily an' James dead, an' poor little Harry off ter live with Muggles.'

'Yes, yes, it's all very sad, but get a grip on yourself, Hagrid, or we'll be found,'

Professor McGonagall whispered, patting Hagrid gingerly on the arm as Dumbledore stepped over the low garden wall and walked to the front door. He laid Harry gently on the doorstep, took a letter out of his cloak, tucked it inside Harry's blankets, and then came back to the other two. For a full minute, the three of them stood and looked at the little bundle; Hagrid's shoulders shook, Professor McGonagall blinked furiously, and the twinkling light that usually shone from Dumbledore's eyes seemed to have gone out.

'Well,' said Dumbledore finally, 'that's that. We've no business staying here. We may as well go and join the celebrations.'

'Yeah,' said Hagrid in a very muffled voice, 'I best get this bike away. G'night, Professor McGonagall, Professor Dumbledore, sir.'

Wiping his streaming eyes on his jacket sleeve, Hagrid swung himself onto the motorcycle and kicked the engine into life; with a roar it rose into the air and off into the night.

'I shall see you soon, I expect, Professor McGonagall,' said Dumbledore, nodding to her. Professor McGonagall blew her nose and said, 'Yes, I must return to Charlotte and Maria, Hector's watching them.'

Dumbledore smiled at her and turned and walked back down the street, releasing the lights before he dissaparated, watching the tabby cat slink away.

'Good luck, Harry Potter,' he murmured. He turned on his heel and with a swish of his cloak and a pop, he was gone.

Minerva McGonagall, had not left the area however and quickly waited until he had gone before turning back into herself and quickly cast a few spells to mask her continued presence.

'I refuse to leave you with these people. I promised your mother to watch out for you and I intend to keep my word. You, my dear boy, are coming with me.'

Minerva knew the nature of the blood wards Albus had cast and how to trick them, and so quickly searched around and found a stone before she transfigured it to the right shape before etching a series of runes around its faces. Picking up the small bundle on the front steps of the doorway to the house, she closed the tiny fingers gently around the stone and quietly whispered the spell.

'Magica phantasia praesentia.'

The stone began to glow a bright scarlet and Minerva smiled before she hastily used her wand to bury the stone deep amidst the flower garden at the front of the house. Her job done, Minerva quickly left the area to return to her home and fulfil her duty to the memory of her favourite students.