Belle Meets Professor McGonagall

After pulling on what looked to be robes of some kind that Ginny had handed her, Belle followed Ginny down a flight of stairs and into a great circular room full of armchairs. A few people milled about in the room and waved to them. Ginny nodded at them but didn't stop to chat as she led Belle to the opposite wall. When she stopped in front of a hole in the wall and climbed into it, Belle was puzzled. Why was Ginny climbing into a hole? Then Belle saw Ginny push something on the other side and climb through.

Belle realized that it led into a hallway. Feeling rather clumsy, Belle followed Ginny through the hole. Once in the hall, Belle realized that Ginny had pushed open a portrait that covered the hole. It was a portrait of a rather large woman wearing pink. The woman in the portrait yawned. Belle was shocked. The portrait moved? She'd never seen anything like it. And then she realized that she'd seen furniture and household items sing and dance the night before so, all in all, she really had seen something like that before.

"And what are you looking at?" asked the woman in the portrait with an imperious voice. "You're looking at me like you haven't seen me before."

"I-I'm sorry," stammered Belle.

"Let's go," Ginny said, taking Belle's arm, pulling her away. The complaints of the woman after them echoed throughout the hall, "Ungrateful children. Can't even bother themselves to answer a simple question."

Belle looked at Ginny wonderingly. Ginny smiled a little and said, "Don't mind the Fat Lady. She loves stirring up trouble. She and her friend Violet are the hugest gossips. I didn't want to give her anything else to talk about."

Belle thought that made some sense, but also left her with more questions than answers. Before she could get to any though, Ginny was leading her down a flight of stairs. And then another flight. And another. Before long, Belle was completely lost. She knew she'd have no idea how to find her way back to where they had just come from.

"This place is a maze," she commented to Ginny.

"This is my 7th year here," Ginny replied. "And I still feel like I learn about a new location or pathway sometimes. You learn the most common pathways early on, like to the Great Hall for meals and to the classrooms you need to go to, but it takes time to feel like you know your way around."

At long last, they stopped in front of a stone gargoyle. Ginny told it, "I need to see the headmistress."

"What's the password?" the gargoyle asked in a sing-songy voice.

Ginny sighed. "I don't know. She didn't tell me."

"No password, no entry," the gargoyle said.

"How does that make any sense?" Ginny cried. "It's an emergency. Surely, not everyone who needs to see the headmistress needs to know the password. Sometimes things come up!"

"Oh, it's an emergency," the gargoyle said in a mocking voice. "If I had a knut for every time I heard that, I would be rich enough to retire."

"Can gargoyles even retire?" Ginny asked. "It seems like you have a pretty good position here since you're not outside getting rained on all day. Plus, you have people to terrorize."

"You make good points," the gargoyle admitted with grudging respect. "All right, I think I like you. I'll let you in." The gargoyle stepped aside and admitted Ginny and Belle to the spiral staircase behind him.

"Sometimes you just have to reason with people," Ginny commented. "I learned that from Hermione."

Ginny stopped before a door and knocked. Hard.

"Come in," came a female, brusque, no-nonsense sort of voice.

Ginny opened the door to a large office space. It was full of wonderous items. Belle immediately thought her father would love it in here. Even though it was full of items, it was very neat and orderly.

"Ah, Ginny and Hermione," said a tall, thin woman seated behind a large, tidy desk. "What brings you here today? Shouldn't you be in class?" Her brow furrowed in concern. "This isn't like either of you."

"Professor McGonagall, we have a problem," Ginny said. "It seems that Hermione has managed to cast an enchantment that caused her to switch places with someone else."

"Switch places? What on Earth do you mean?" Professor McGonagall asked. "Hermione is standing right here in front of me."

"Yes, that's what it looks like, but this is not Hermione. This is someone else named Belle," Ginny said.

"What kind of nonsense are you going on about, Ginny?" Professor McGonagall said. "I would have expected this from your brothers, but not you." She looked over at Belle. "And Hermione, this is most unlike you to try to prank your headmistress."

Belle felt very uncomfortable under the harsh gaze of this strict woman. But she stood her ground.

"Ginny is right, I am not Hermione," Belle said in her slightly-accented English.

At her words, Professor McGonagall took another look at Belle. She studied her closely.

Belle tried not to fidget under the scrutiny.

"Now that I look closer, you're carrying yourself differently than how I normally see Hermione. You're standing up much straighter than Hermione, who has that hunched posture of academics who read all the time," Professor McGonagall extended her hand towards the two chairs in front of her desk. "Please sit down." She pulled out a tin from a drawer. "Have a biscuit."

Belle realized that she was rather hungry, so she took one of Professor McGonagall's proffered biscuits. Ginny did not take one.

"Tell me what you know," Professor McGonagall said.

Ginny started, "Ever since Professor Dumbledore gave Hermione that ancient copy of the Tales of Beedle the Bard, Hermione has been interested in reading fairy tales. She's been locating original versions of them and reading them." Ginny cleared her throat. "She, erm, told me that she thought she could enchant herself into one of them. That she'd found a way to do that." Ginny slumped back in her seat. "I'm not sure I entirely believed her, even though I know Hermione doesn't joke around like that or lie. I just couldn't consider it as a possibility." Ginny's eyes began to water. "I didn't think she'd seriously leave."

"Did she seem unhappy to you?" Professor McGonagall asked, not unkindly.

"She hasn't been herself for a long while, but who has?" Ginny said. "The war changed us all."

Professor McGonagall nodded. "That it has. It's been a difficult time for all of us." Professor McGongall looked thoughtful. "Did you notice anything besides that?"

Ginny hesitated. "I'm really not sure. I feel like she misses Ron and Harry being around. And things are just not the same with Professor Dumbledore gone. She wasn't here the year of the Carrows, so maybe the changes bother her."

Professor McGonagall looked over to a portrait across the room of an old man with a long white beard and half-moon spectacles. He nodded at her but said nothing.

"It has been different without Albus. We all miss him still," Professor McGonagall said. "All right, enough speculation. We're now guessing at what emotions she might have had. Whatever the case may be, it seems like we must go along with your assertion that she cast some kind of enchantment until we find out otherwise." Professor McGonagall looked over at Belle. "Now, Belle, was it? Please tell me a bit more about yourself."

Belle, who hadn't really been able to grasp the full meaning of the conversation, said, "My name is Belle. I was born in Paris during the year 1740 but now live in a village in the countryside with my father," Belle stopped as she noticed Ginny and the professor give each other sharp looks. "What is it?"

"Did you say that you were born in the year 1740?" Ginny asked.

"Yes, that's right," Belle said. Ginny looked positively started by this. "What is it?" Belle asked again.

"Well, this is the year 1997," Ginny said.

Now it was Belle's turn to be startled. She could hardly even fathom a time so far ahead as 1997, much less wrap her mind around the fact that she was supposedly in the year 1997.

"This gets more mysterious the more we learn," Professor McGonagall commented. "Please continue with your story, Belle."

Belle took a deep breath. "Well, as I told Ginny earlier, my father was imprisoned by a monstrous beast in an enchanted castle. I switched places with him. Last night, I fell asleep in the room he gave me in his castle. Today, I'm here. And I still don't know where here is."

"You're at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," said Professor McGonagall, a note of pride entering her voice as she said the name. "And you're certainly not in France any longer. You're now in the United Kingdom. I suppose I can tell you that we're in Scotland, to be precise."

Belle felt awed by this. She was at a school of magic? When she was a child, she often dreamed about learning how to do magic. Clearly, this Hermione they had been talking about was a powerful enchantress, but Belle hadn't realized until this moment that these other two women here might be as well.

Silence passed through the room as each woman seemed to be lost in her own thoughts.

"Ah, the tale of Beauty and the Beast," said a man's voice, breaking the silence. It came from the portrait of the old man Professor McGonagall had looked at before. "A classic story, full of magic, and the lesson to not judge a person by their appearance."

Professor McGonagall stood up and briskly walked over to the portrait. "What did you say, Albus?" Ginny and then Belle followed closely behind the professor. The man in the portrait Professor McGonagall had called Albus said, "Judging by this woman's tale, she's describing the classic French, and Muggle, fairy tale called Beauty and the Beast."

There was that term again, a fairy tale. Belle had been told tales of fairies all her life. The superstitious villagers had all sorts of practices to protect themselves from fairies. Belle had read some tales herself. But she had never heard of one called "Beauty and the Beast."

Clearly, Ginny and Professor McGonagall had never heard of it either as they both looked confused.

"Professor Dumbledore," Ginny began. "Do you know of any way to bring Hermione back?"

Albus Dumbledore fixed his piercing blue gaze on Ginny now. "Only Hermione and this brave young woman here can undo what has been done. It is an enchantment of such complexity and can only be undone by the ones involved with it. The best thing you can do for Belle here is to help make her life here as comfortable as possible until she can find the way herself."