Minerva's Song

The next morning, Minerva woke early. For several minutes she lay still, thinking about the events of the day before. Somehow it seemed more real now, waking up in her four-poster for the first time, seeing the morning sunlight streaming through the gap in the curtains, and knowing that the whole of Hogwarts was there for her to explore. She hugged herself with excitement at the thought, and slipped quietly out of bed, since the others were still asleep.

She dressed quickly, took a bit of parchment and a quill, picked Kosey up and headed down to the Common Room. It was quite in here too, and Minerva took the opportunity to have a good look around before settling down in a chair to write a letter to Jessel, detailing everything that had happened to her so far.

By the time she had filled several inches of parchment with her small, neat handwriting, some of the others had come down.

'Gosh, Minerva, how long have you been up?' asked Mildred, staring incredulously at the long letter.

'A little over an hour, 'said Minerva, 'I'm writing to my sister.'

'Do you want to come down to breakfast in a minute? Helena and Alison are still trying to drag themselves out of bed, but I don't expect it will be much longer.'

'I'd love to,' said Minerva, 'I'll just finish this off...'

She signed the letter and added a dozen kisses before folding it up and tucking it into the pocket of her robe. She could post it after breakfast, once she found out where they kept the post-owls. When Helena and Alison stumbled down the stairs from the dormitory the four of them made their way to breakfast. It was a thrill to nod and say 'good morning' to the painting of the Fat Lady which guarded the entrance to the common room. At home they had only had Muggle furnishings; Minerva's father didn't bother with domestic matters, and her mother generally only had access to Muggle shops. Helena was delighted too - she had never even heard of pictures that could talk and move, being from a Muggle family.

They succeeded in getting to the Great Hall, only getting lost twice, and they all swelled a little with pride as they sat, with studied casualness, at the Gryffindor table. They were almost the only ones there, since it was a Sunday, and only first-years had the enthusiasm to be up so early on a weekend.

Minerva was buttering her third slice of toast when she felt a tug on her plait. She turned around.

'Jamaica!'

'Good morning!' said Jamaica, with a wide smile. 'Did you enjoy your first night?'

'Very much, thank you!' said Minerva. 'Did you?'

'Yes! Isn't it great here? You wouldn't believe how great our Common Room is! Did you enjoy the Sorting? Wasn't the feast good? Mind if I sit here?'

Minerva had a mouthful of toast, so she just nodded at Jamaica's questions, and obligingly shuffled along the bench so there was space for her to sit down. Jamaica grabbed a slice of toast and smiled widely at the other girls. Minerva swallowed her toast and said:

'Everyone, this is Jamaica; she's in Slytherin, we met on the train yesterday. Jamaica, this is Mildred, Helena and Alison.'

They all greeted Jamaica cheerfully, and Alison passed her the water jug and a clean glass.

'Does anyone want to come exploring after breakfast?' Jamaica asked. 'I asked the girls in my House, but they wanted to unpack first.'

'I'd like that,' said Minerva, 'I have to go and find the post-owls to send a letter to Jessel anyway.'

'Oh, I don't know how you got started so early!' said Mildred. 'I was going to go back to the Common Room after breakfast and write to my family; I promised I would.'

Helena and Alison wanted to unpack too, so once they had all finished eating they and Mildred headed back to the Gryffindor Common Room. Minerva and Jamaica shyly approached a Hufflepuff prefect who had just come down to breakfast, to ask the location of the Owlery. They discovered that it was in the West Tower, and set off to post Minerva's letter.

When they arrived, they were a little awed by the huge room. There were hundreds of owls perching from floor to ceiling, and Jamaica let out a cry as she stepped on the remains of a mouse. Several of the owls hooted in irritation at the noise.

'How do we get them to send my letter?' Minerva asked.

'I don't know!' said Jamaica. 'At home there's only ever one at a time, so it's easy...'

At that moment a large barn owl swooped from its perch far up near the roof and settled on the post by the door, holding out its leg for Minerva to attach her letter.

'It looks as though the owls know better than we do,' said Minerva, nodding a thank-you to the owl as it hopped twice then flew out through one of the large, glassless windows.

'Where shall we go next?' asked Jamaica. 'How about the Forbidden Forest?' She suggested with a mischievous grin.

'Well, isn't it forbidden?' said Minerva, smiling.

'Oh, I suppose the name would seem to imply that,' said Jamaica, 'oh well, never mind, eh? Let's go down and look at the lake.'

The two girls spent an instructive morning wandering the grounds, looking at the flower beds, the Quidditch pitch and the greenhouses, before moving back into the castle to investigate the trophy room and armour gallery, the library, the astronomy tower and some of the less frightening dungeons.

'I really don't think it's this way,' said Jamaica, frowning a little as they turned the corner into yet another long, unfamiliar corridor.

'Well, if we just keep on going, we're bound to run out of castle sooner or later,' said Minerva, 'and lunch hasn't even started yet. We have plenty of time.'

Jamaica brightened at the mention of lunch. 'I suppose you're right,' she said, 'and anyway, I'd much rather be lost at Hogwarts than found somewhere else!'

Minerva agreed wholeheartedly. She was even a little disappointed when they reached the end of the corridor and found that it led out onto a landing they recognised.

'Come on, let's get to the Great Hall in plenty of time for lunch!' said Jamaica, striding ahead. 'I'll see you later!' she called as they entered, going to sit with the other Slytherin first-years, while Minerva went to join Mildred, Helena, Alison, Tully and Bevan at the Gryffindor table.

Suddenly, the weekend was over, and Minerva found herself waking up to her first day of classes. Excited, the Gryffindor first-years arrived at breakfast early again, where their Head of House, Professor Edwards, was handing out timetables.

'We have Potions first,' said Helena, 'In one of the dungeons! That's with the Hufflepuffs. Then Transfiguration with the Slytherins. That'll be nice, Min, you and Jamaica will have a class together.'

Jamaica had evidently realised the same thing, because she was waving her timetable at Minerva from across the Hall. Minerva waved back.

They also had Herbology with the Ravenclaws, Charms with Slytherin again and Defence Against the Dark Arts with Hufflepuff.

They finished breakfast quickly, and they were on the way out as Cerrig, Toby, Bedevere and Persis were coming in. Cerrig saw Minerva and smiled broadly at her.

'Good luck on your first day, Minerva!' he said as they passed by one another.

Potions was with Professor Edwards, a rather scruffy-looking woman who spent most of the lesson giving them a long talk about potion safety. She singled Minerva out especially to warn her of the dangers of long plaits in the Potions lab. A Hufflepuff girl named Tabitha Sherwin was told to be very careful not to let her long, wide sleeves catch in the cauldron fire. It was a little dull, but Professor Edwards promised that they would start on some simple potions in the next lesson.

When they found the Transfiguration classroom, the Slytherins had already arrived, and Jamaica had saved a seat for Minerva.

'Hello, Min, how was Potions?' she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she continued: 'We just had Herbology and it was amazing! You wouldn't believe the things they can do with plants! The greenhouses are full of exotic things; we'll get to try almost everything!'

Minerva was about to reply when Professor Cook came in, slammed the door and glared at the pupils.

'No talking, please,' he said, 'now, Transfiguration is the delicate art of transforming something into something else. It becomes more difficult with the size and complexity of the object to be transformed...'

As Minerva listened, she found that, dry and uninspired as Professor Cook's delivery was, she was hanging on to his every word. She could hardly wait to start the practical part. Even the thought of turning a match into a needle seemed so exciting that it almost eclipsed everything she had done so far.

Like Professor Edwards, Professor Cook spent most of the lesson telling them the rules of his classroom and explaining what the subject involved. In the last few minutes he taught them the incantation they needed for the needle to match spell, and let them all try. Minerva said the incantation again to make sure she had it absolutely perfect, before trying it with her wand too.

'Oh, Jamaica, look!'

Minerva's match had turned into a small, shiny needle, with a perfectly sharp point. There was no eye to thread the cotton through, but Minerva wasn't in the least discouraged, especially when Professor Cook nodded and said:

'An excellent first attempt, Miss McGonagall.'

Jamaica tried again, but her match stubbornly refused to change. Minerva said that she was sure it was a little pointier than it had been, and perhaps it really was. In any event, the bell rang then. Professor Cook asked them to keep trying the spell for their homework, and the first Transfiguration lesson was over.

The first few weeks went past so quickly that Minerva barely had time to realise it, but at the same time, she almost felt that she had been at Hogwarts forever. She had grown so accustomed to the castle that she barely noticed when she walked through the corridor that turned you upside down, and she didn't give the moving, talking paintings a second glance, except to say hello to her particular friends among them. The ghosts were just like anyone else you met in the corridors, only it was nice to be a little more polite to them, because they were dead, after all.

Jessel wrote to her often, and though they were short notes in response to Minerva's own long, detailed letters Minerva didn't mind. Jessel didn't have the patience to sit down and write for long periods, and what she did write was filled with affection. Her mother wrote too, at least once a week. Her father didn't write; but then Minerva hadn't expected him to. Her mother said that Domnall was very busy - the stabbing at the Ministry was still no closer to being solved and there was a great deal of work to do, not only finding the person responsible, but also in making sure that the wizarding community did not overreact to what was surely an isolated incident, perpetrated by a lone madman. Domnall was in charge of the publicity for the case, and liaised with the Daily Prophet regularly. So, on the few occasions that Minerva missed her father, she told herself that he would write, were he not so busy taking care of more important matters.

Minerva fell into an easy, satisfying routine. She and Jamaica would take turns to breakfast at one another's tables - she met Jamaica's Slytherin friends, Emmy and Karen, and liked them. Then classes would begin. In Transfiguration and Charms, she sat with Jamaica. In her other classes she sat with Helena, or sometimes Alison or Mildred. At dinner she often talked to Cerrig and his friends, and in the evenings she would play her violin in the dormitory, or curl up in her customary chair in the Common Room, doing her homework, throwing paper balls for Kosey to catch and listening contentedly to the conversations around her.

She was sitting like this, one Saturday evening in early autumn, listening to Persis and Toby explaining to Tully and Mildred why third-years were allowed to visit Hogsmeade, and first-years weren't. Tully was making the point that, Toby, however old he was, still couldn't be relied upon not to bring back things from the joke shop which he would later set off in the Common Room to scare the first-years. It was Tully's opinion that he himself would never exhibit this kind of behaviour when he was a third-year.

'Oh, just wait and see!' said Toby. 'Your whole life changes in third year; it's impossible to predict what you'll be like then.'

And suddenly Minerva realised that a whole month had gone by since she had arrived at Hogwarts, and that tomorrow would be her birthday! She had been so busy that it had crept up on her. She picked up Kosey and looked seriously into his face.

'It's my birthday tomorrow, Kosey,' she said sternly, 'and I hope you have bought me a present. Although I'm sure I don't know how you would manage to wrap it.' The kitten sneezed at her.

'It's your birthday?' asked Cerrig. He was standing behind the chair, and looking down at her. 'You didn't tell anyone!'

'I just forgot,' she explained, looking up at him, 'there's been such a lot happening that I didn't notice that we were in October already.'

'But now I'll have to get you a present!' Cerrig said. 'What would you like?'

'Oh, there's no need to get me anything, I don't mind,' said Minerva, 'it isn't very important.'

All the same, she was rather pleased when Cerrig hushed Tully and Toby, to tell everyone about her birthday.

'Oh, but we must have a cake!' said Helena. 'Birthdays are nothing without cake.'

'Why stop at a cake?' asked Tully. 'Min, do you realise that you are the first one of us to have a birthday at Hogwarts? I think this calls for an entire party; not just a cake!'

Minerva blushed with pleasure, and watched with growing excitement as her friends discussed what they would do for the party.

'We'll go down to the kitchens for some party food,' said Bedevere.

'Are we allowed to do that?' asked Mildred.

'Well, not really,' Bedevere replied, 'but the house-elves never tell.'

'Oh, this is so exciting!' said Alison. 'Our first ever party at Hogwarts! I'm so glad it's your birthday, Min!'

Minerva slept a little late on Sunday morning, then came downstairs into the Common Room to find a small pile of presents waiting for her.

'It wasn't easy at such short notice!' said Cerrig. 'But Persis and I went to Hogsmeade this morning to get you something.'

'Oh, Cerrig, you shouldn't break the rules just for me!' Minerva protested.

But she was happy enough to receive her present from him - it was a little glass dome, containing a perfect miniature of Hogwarts Castle, including tiny owls flying about the towers, and a tiny squid swimming the lake. When Minerva shook it, a little snowstorm fell, settled gently on the ground, and disappeared after a few moments. When she shook it again, it rained inside the dome, and she thought she saw a flash of lighting.

Her other presents were almost as exciting. Persis had bought her sweets, Toby and Bedevere gave her a new ribbon for her hair, Alison and Mildred gave her a box of Chocolate Frogs and Helena gave her a picture frame. As she was opening these, an owl arrived and brought her present from her parents and sister - a new book of sheet music for her violin, a box of biscuits and a handmade card from Jessel. When they went down to breakfast, Jamaica hugged her warmly and gave her a book about Animagi, people who could Transfigure themselves into animals.

Since it was warm and sunny for October, Minerva, Jamaica, Helena and a Hufflepuff girl, Andromeda Smith, spent most of the day sitting on the grass by the lake, doing their homework. Andromeda, or Rommie as she was called, was Helena's particular friend. Minerva liked her; she loved cats too and always spoiled Kosey terribly when she saw him.

Once the homework was done, they headed back to the castle, in time for dinner in the Great Hall. Jamaica sat at the Gryffindor table, and as usual she piled her plate high with everything. Minerva and Helena, knowing they had the party to look forward to, ate only a little, and smiled with anticipation. They chattered happily over the meal, and they had just begun the pudding when the Headmaster, Professor Dippett, came in and took his place at the centre of the staff table.

He did not sit down and begin to eat, however. He remained standing, and when he called for silence it was in such a strange voice that a hush fell over the Hall at once and every eye turned to him.

'I must inform you that... there has been another stabbing,' he said, a little shakily, 'The Minister for Magic was attacked in his home earlier today. He and his wife are dead, and their little girl lies at St Mungo's in a grave condition. I didn't feel that it was proper to tell you about this, particularly the younger students. However, the Deputy Minister for Magic has insisted that the students here be kept well-informed of these events which have rocked the magical community.'

With that he sat down heavily. There was silence for a moment, then a hum of conversation with became louder every second, as the speculation began. Who would want to kill the Minister for Magic? Who would do it in such a primitive, horrifying, Muggle-ish way, when every student knew that there were spells which could kill quickly and cleanly? Was there blood, someone wanted to know? What had happened to the little girl?

Minerva felt sick at the thought of it. She dropped her spoon and pushed her bowl of jam pudding away. The others did the same. Jamaica squeezed her hand under the table, then nodded a goodbye to the others and went followed the other Slytherin first-years, who were already leaving the Hall. After a few moments, Minerva and her friends got up from their seats and left for the Gryffindor Common Room.

When they arrived, the room was strung with streamers, and the table at the side of the room was covered with cakes and biscuits and all manner of wonderful food. Minerva had all but forgotten about the party. The first-years looked at one another, knowing that they couldn't celebrate tonight.

They took the streamers down and covered the food up, then sat to do their homework, which much less chatter than usual. The other Gryffindors drifted in soon after. Nobody seemed to want to stay up late, and soon people began to leave for the dormitories. Minerva sat and watched everyone go, gently stroking Kosey, who was dozing in her lap.

'I'm sorry that this ruined your birthday, Min,' Cerrig said, from where he was writing an essay on the floor by the fire.

'It doesn't matter,' she replied, 'I'll have other birthdays. But that poor little girl! It's so awful. Who would do such a thing, Cerrig?'

'I don't know. But don't be sad, Min, I hate to see you upset.'

She managed a brief smile.

Will you let me try to cheer you up?' he asked.

'Alright,' said Minerva.

'Come with me, then.'

He stood up and moved towards the exit.

'Are you coming?' he asked, when Minerva hesitated.

She shrugged and followed him.

'Won't we get in trouble for being out at night?' she asked.

'It's not very late yet; not even ten o clock. And anyway, we won't get caught.'

They made their way down the stairs and into the Entrance Hall, hiding from the caretaker only once. Then Cerrig led the way as they slipped out of the great oak doors and into the bright moonlight. It was chilly, and Minerva tucked her hands into her robe to keep them warm. She realised where they were going as Cerrig headed west, towards the Quidditch pitch. When they arrived, he silently entered the broomshed, brought out a broom and handed it to Minerva.

'You've never flown, have you,' he said.

Minerva shook her head.

'Well, you're going to now. Come on.'

They walked onto the empty Quidditch pitch. Minerva felt a little nervous; she wasn't sure she had ever actually broken a rule before, but she was more anxious about flying. What if she couldn't do it?

'Don't worry,' said Cerrig, seeming to know what she was thinking, 'I'm sure you'll be fine. Just lay the broom on the ground, move your hand on it, and say "up".'

'Up!' said Minerva, and to her delight, the broom leapt into her hand immediately, quivering gently.

She climbed on, and Cerrig showed her how to grip the handle properly, and how to give the broom commands.

'Now, just kick off from the ground,' he said, 'and see what you can do. No need to go very high or fast just yet.'

Minerva pushed away gently, and suddenly she was in the air, and soaring! It was easier than she had expected, and she moved a little higher and made a few experimental circles of the Quidditch pitch, getting quicker every time. This was bliss! She could feel the wind blowing about her, and it almost seemed as though it was helping her along, pushing her in the right direction. She tried a few quick turns, remembering what Cerrig had taught her about changing direction, and after a few attempts, she could manage it smoothly. She laughed, briefly letting go with one hand to wave at Cerrig, who was watching from the ground, looking as small as one of the inhabitants of Jessel's dollhouse. He waved back, smiling.

Eventually, she slowed the broom and glided down to earth, landing with a small bump.

'That was wonderful!' she gasped.

'I thought you might enjoy it,' smiled Cerrig, 'now, it really is late, and if we get caught, we really will be in trouble now. Come on, let's go.'

They returned to the castle and the Gryffindor dormitory. Cerrig watched out carefully for any teachers who might be on the prowl, but Minerva couldn't stop thinking about how it had felt to fly, actually fly, like a bird. She was in a daze all the way back to the Common Room. When they got there, she flung her arms around Cerrig to hug him.

'Thank you!' she said, 'That was wonderful! It was the best birthday present I could have wished for!'