Confessional

Confessional by Falkesbane

Prologue ~ Poppy’s Letter

To:
Chronicler’s Division
The Office of Magical History
Pixiesbell Point
Northumberland

4 May 1999

To whom it may concern:

It has come to my attention via the Daily Prophet that your organization is endeavouring to put together the first history of the rise and fall of Lord Voldemort, and of the two separate wars he began. I have always enjoyed the volumes you put out, and I look forward to this one; however, one aspect of your researching has always bothered me, and that is the fact that you simply fail to put a human turn on events. History is not cold chronology, and I should hope that your rendition of these particular events should breathe life into the persons of Harry Potter, Lord Voldemort, Albus Dumbledore, and all of the others involved – myself counted among them.

You will notice that the owl is carrying a book as well as this letter. It is nothing more than the story of a life – a life which, by your count, must be insignificant when compared to the likes of Potter and Dumbledore. But, as historians, you will know that heroism comes not only in grand, sweeping gestures, but also in thankless work and in iron resolve. You will recognize the name of Minerva McGonagall – vaguely, likely, as one among the scores of dead – and this volume is in her hand. It is hers. And I ask you to take the histories within into consideration when compiling your “official” history of the wars.

The book came into my possession through Albus Dumbledore, who, before he died, bequeathed it to me with this single sentence: It needs to be told. And, after reading it once, twice, then countless times, I must agree with him, even if the writer of the piece herself did not want to tell it to the world. If nothing else, you will concur that it does hold a good deal of historical merit. Admittedly, I do feel a bit guilty giving up a possession belonging to a dearest friend, but, after holding it secret for a little more than a year, I am stilled by the thought that I will someday die and all of this knowledge will die with me, and I pray that she will forgive me for letting out her secrets.

Please. It needs to be told.

Madam Poppy Pomfrey
Head of Infirmary
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

*

One ~ The Term Project

I do not know what possesses a person to want to tell their life story. Certainly we are all not so egotistical as to think that our lives hold some great and mystic import, and I can personally attest to the fact that I do not crave fame, yet I am still compelled to write it all down. Perhaps it is my own way of dealing with age, or my own personal immortality – no, those are wrong, too. If I am going to do this, I might as well be brutally honest, and, consequently, truthfully, this is nothing more than my confessional.

I am not some horrid sinner, but I believe that everyone needs to be cleansed, in a way, and I have always firmly believed in the ability of the written word to transfer guilts and sorrows and half-forgotten memories from the mind to the paper. Call it a primitive sort of Pensieve, if you will, with no magic and no silvery glittering to mask what lies underneath.

Reasoning aside, I have chosen to do this. I am by no means an experienced writer and will probably come off far too teacherly (years of speaking properly have their way with you), and I find I do not know where to begin. The present? I am sitting in my private library, in a hard wooden chair with candles and quills as my companions. There are mirrors here, and I am old – but that won’t do at all, for no one wants to hear about the mundane activities of an old woman, not even the old woman herself.

Nor can I begin at the beginning, proper conventions of that Muggle Dickens aside. It is no great significance. I was born to a Muggle family at a farm in the Scottish highlands. I had two parents and a sister called Kitty. I once, quite by accident, turned a sheep into a riding pony because I dearly wanted to have one, and that was when Mum and Dad started to realize that something was not quite right. Nor can I begin when I got my letter from Hogwarts. I was not an adventurous girl. I spent my time at Hogwarts studying, learning the intricacies of each subject as if each topic were the most fascinating thing in the world – perhaps, they were.

There are times, even now, when I wake up in the morning and expect to see Kitty’s sleeping face across from me in the loft, but instead I see my own hands and remember the magical power that I harbour within my own skin. Sometimes I feel as if I have lived a life in a dream world, and that I will, indeed, wake up one day and find I’ve been late to collect the eggs from the henhouse again.

It seems I shall never finish this if I continue to digress in such a manner. I will begin in the September of my fifth year at Hogwarts, for there truly is nothing to tell about those first four years except that I absorbed all the knowledge that I could, and that I was lonely. In those times, it was uncommon for Muggle-borns such as myself to be admitted into Hogwarts – there were only three others in my year, and only one of them in Gryffindor, a girl called Myrtle Markels. To make it worse, I was known as not only a Muggle-born but also as a studious girl, and anyone who has ever been a student knows that this is a great atrocity. I was slightly shunned in my first year, and it grew steadily worse, until, at the beginning of my fifth year, I felt alone and friendless.

My only friend was the teacher of Transfiguration, Professor Albus Dumbledore, who saw in me a proficiency for his subject, and, on my very first day back at Hogwarts, during the Sorting Ceremony, he came to me and asked me to see him between sessions on my first day of classes. I was curious. I agreed, but the next morning I had to sit through History of Magic before I could go. Though I loved learning, History of Magic was the class I loved least, for two reasons. One, my professor was an elderly and rather monotonous man named Professor Binns, and I constantly thought that it would not be surprisingly if he simply keeled over one day, mid-lecture. Two, my desk partner was a disagreeable Ravenclaw girl named Olive Hornby, and, to this day, I have no idea how she was sorted in a house known for its academic prowess when all she did was sleep through class every day. True, lectures about the restorative discoveries of Sepulchra the Snub-Nosed back in 1641 certainly aren’t the most compelling listening in the world, but there wasn’t a single class she was able to sit through, and she snored loudly at that.

At lunch that day, I intended to eat as rapidly as possible, but I was accosted by Myrtle Markels. As a prefect, it was my duty to listen to the complaints of the other students in Gryffindor, and Myrtle was a particular fan of complaining. “They’re horrible!” she exclaimed to me as she grabbed a bit of pastry from one of the trays. “Utterly horrible! Can’t something be done?”

“Who is horrible?” I asked. I stared into my shellfish stew and hoped that it would be over quickly; Myrtle loved to whinge about everything from the weather to boys in our year to the unfortunate position of being a Muggle-born witch, and it was because of this she felt we were somewhat kindred. Kindred enough to warrant ceaseless whingeing, at any rate.

“Ghosts!” she said dramatically. “I was walking down the corridors, minding my own business, when that awful Peeves came down the other way and – and whooshed right through me! And then he laughed that horrid cackling laugh of his and called me four-eyed right in front of Emmet Fawcett!”

Emmet Fawcett was a seventh-year Beater on the Hufflepuff Quidditch team and was generally regarded as extremely handsome if not slightly Squibbish. “Now, Myrtle, it can’t have been as bad as all that.” Seeing the look on her face, I quickly added a fib. “I’ll see Headmaster Dippet about it as soon as I can.”

Myrtle nodded fervently. “They really are the most dreadful creatures.” She turned away to comment on the quality of the pastries to Cliona Brocklehurst, and I took that as my cue to exit.

Professor Dumbledore was waiting for me in the Transfiguration classroom when I arrived there. If there is one room in Hogwarts I love, it is the Transfiguration room, and not only because it is the room I teach in. It is beautiful in a desperate understated manner, with its stone walls and floor, its ancient desks and muted tapestries, not dark but not light enough to shed full brilliance on the room. I approached Dumbledore with uncharacteristic excitement.

“Please sit down, Miss McGonagall,” he said quietly.

I did so, atop the desk closest to the teacher’s, and waited for him to continue.

“I’ve summoned you here to ask you if you are interested in conducting a term project in Transfiguration,” he explained.

“A term project?” I asked. Most of the students did them in their seventh years, if they intended to take the NEWTs and go on to university, or wanted a high-end job straight out of Hogwarts, but I had not given my subject any consideration. It was too early by years. But of course it would be in Transfiguration – it was Transfiguration I loved best. “What sort of term project?”

“Have you heard of Animagi?”

My heart about stopped when he said that. “O-Of course I have,” I whispered. “Transforming oneself into an animal – but it’s not like performing an ordinary transformation with a wand. It’s finding the animal that’s within you – if that makes any sense – and being one with it, in a way. Without a wand, even.”

“Yes.” Dumbledore was nodding. “I think you can do it.”

“You – you do?” I felt like a stuttering idiot but also felt that this was forgivable, as something astronomical had just happened. “Think I can become an Animagus, that is to say?”

He chuckled. “I do believe you’ve thought about it, Miss McGonagall.”

“How could you tell that?” I was astonished.

“The manner in which you reacted. It was as though,” and here his eyes were alight with mischief, “I had just given you the greatest gift in the entire world. Greater than sherbet lemons and chocolate sundrops mixed together, I daresay.” When he saw that I was too stunned to say anything, he turned around and picked a small stack of books off of his desk. “I take it you’ll say yes,” he murmured, still laughing goodnaturedly a little. He dropped the books into my arms. “Read these. They will get you started.”

I looked at the top one – Finding the Beast Within: Human-to-Animal Transfigurations and You! – then looked back up at Dumbledore. “I am grateful for this, don’t think otherwise, Professor – but why this? Why offer this to me now? I know I’m a good student, but don’t the teachers usually make it their unofficial policy to let the students choose their final projects without any prodding?” I stumbled over the words.

Dumbledore sighed and I knew I had caught him at something. “You are a perceptive girl, Miss McGonagall,” he said slowly. “And I will be honest with you. You must not tell anyone of your term project. If anyone asks, you are to tell them that you and I are working on a particular difficult transfiguration that involves altering the cores of wands.”

“Professor – why?”

“The Ministry has asked me to train an Animagus,” he said plainly. “I do not know why. They presume there is some threat emerging that might require the services of one, and the only other two known of at present are an elephant and a sea-horse, both of which are relatively useless for whatever purposes the Ministry intends. Do know that your training will not preclude you to working for the Ministry – that is and will always be your own choice. But they have asked that it be done in secret.”

“And they did not tell you why?” I whispered. I felt a bit like a mimic or a small child, with the way I kept asking why, but I knew that there was a mystery here, even then.

“No,” he admitted. “They asked that I choose a student both talented enough to pull this off and discreet enough to keep it hidden, and you, Miss McGonagall, are the only one of my pupils to fit this description. If you choose not to do this, if you’ve changed your mind—”

“I haven’t,” I said firmly, not giving him the chance to finish. “I won’t change my mind. I want to do this. You know how much I enjoy Transfiguration and this – well, I suppose this is the ultimate in Transfiguration, isn’t it? I wouldn’t pass up such an opportunity. I couldn’t,” I finished with conviction.

“I thought so.” He smiled, but for a moment he looked slightly sad. I might have imagined it, really, it was only there for a second, a swift and momentary vanishing of the shine that usually stayed in his eyes. “Well,” he said briskly, “you’ll be having a class in a few moments, won’t you?”

“Yes, I’ve got Potions.”

“Never liked Potions myself. Wasn’t very much fun when I took it. Please read the books, Miss McGonagall, and see me after dinner on next Thursday night. In this classroom, of course,” he added.

I said goodbye and went off to the Potions dungeon in something of a haze, the books Professor Dumbledore had given me tucked neatly away in my knapsack. Ordinarily, when I walked through Hogwarts, I tried to look as stern and forbidding as possible so that any wayward students wouldn’t run afoul of my prefect’s badge. But I imagine that I was walking rather oddly that day, lost in something of dream. I wondered what my animal would be; I dearly hoped it would something noble like a lion or a stag, and not something distasteful like a rat, or worse, a snake.

I got into Potions and took my seat. Every year since my first, I’d had Potions with Slytherin House, and every year since my first, my lab partner had been the same person. If Olive Hornby was a mild annoyance with snoring in History of Magic, and Myrtle Markels another with her constant complaining, my Potions partner, Tom Riddle, was a full-blown aggravation in a subject I might have otherwise enjoyed thoroughly. He was another prefect in my year and privately I thought that Dippet ought to look at more than academic grades when choosing future prefects – because Tom Riddle was, for lack of a better term, a complete ass. Certainly I know what became of him, but I wish to treat him in this telling as I knew him at the time – fifteen-year-old Minerva rather than seventy-year-old Minerva. I respect objectivity. And, at the time, I only saw him as a little frightening and very arrogant, and I loathed him.

“You’re different today, McGonagall,” he said simply.

I kept my eyes steadfastly away from his. There was something about his eyes that I found distinctly disturbing, and I made it a point to keep away from them as much as possible. “How so?” I asked, counting out the seven blessroots we’d need for the Prostasia Potion we’d been assigned to brew.

“You’re keeping a secret,” he elaborated. His gaze was down on the long desk, as if he intended to burn through the wood with his eyes. He was measuring bluebottle wings, frighteningly meticulous.

I had to fight to hold my hand steady while I hacked into the blessroots. How had he known? But, then again, it is a rare person who is not keeping some sort of secret at any given point in his or her lifetime. “What makes you say that?” I hated my voice then because it went a little trembly.

“I can tell by the way you’re standing, by the way you’re moving,” he said, still not looking at me. “Let up on those blessroots. Professor Caldecott said to shred them, not to massacre them.”

“They’re fine,” I snapped, even though I did stop slicing quite so hard. I tipped them into the cauldron and watched as it bubbled up and turned a pinkish colour. I consulted the textbook. “Put in the bluebottle wings,” I ordered.

He glared at me sullenly, then did so. Professor Caldecott came hovering over us, clucking in approval. He was a kind and awkward man, infinitely preferable to his acidic successor. “Miss McGonagall, could you explain why it is necessary to add blessroots to the Prostasia Potion?”

“Because it counters the effect created by the mixture of the two active ingredients,” I said automatically. “Both bluebottle wings and hazelwort juice give the magic boosting effect that the Potion is known for, but create a deadly poison when combined. The essence of the blessroots, as they dissolve, purifies the poison and renders it harmless.”

“Five points to Gryffindor.” Professor Caldecott was in the habit of circulating around the classroom during each session and springing a question on every student, to give them a chance to earn house points. “Mister Riddle, what other ingredient, besides blessroots, would have the same effect?”

“Unicorn’s blood,” Riddle said dryly.

“I – I beg your pardon?”

Professor Caldecott was staring at him, and, to be honest, so was I. One simply doesn’t mention dark ingredients in everyday classroom activities.

“Unicorn’s blood.” Riddle spoke as if it were the most natural conversation in the world. “Its purity will remove any ill effects from a brewed potion, including those far more severe than the poison developed in this particular Potion. However, since it is both difficult and illegal to obtain, blessroots are the far better option. In this case.”

“Er – yes, quite right. I had been thinking of dryad dust rather than unicorn’s blood, but you are correct nonetheless. Five points to Slytherin.” Professor Caldecott walked off in a hurry.

“Dabbling in the Dark Arts, Riddle?” I said tartly.

He turned and looked at me then, cold and marbled. “What is it to you?”

There was something very sinister in his expression and I moved away quickly, turning my attention to the potion brewing. “It’s done,” I whispered, peering into the cauldron – sure enough, it had turned a bright red-rust, almost the colour of blood.

“You try it,” Riddle said loftily.

I opened my mouth to snap at him, then shut it again. Carefully, I spooned out a bit of the potion. I was always skilled at making potions in school, but, even in my seventh year, I still got a twinge of nervousness in my stomach whenever I had to test something that could be potentially dangerous. I drank the Prostasia Potion and drew out my hand, trying to think of a harmless spell. After a moment, I cried “Orchideous!” and a full bloom of flowers came springing out of the tip of my wand, roses and violets and lilies. They fell all over the desk and onto the floor, coating the area with flowers. “It worked!” I shouted, not caring that Riddle-the-ass was standing right beside me and scowling. “Ordinarily I can only manage about six roses with that spell.”

Before Riddle could make another bored comment, Professor Caldecott came over and exclaimed at our potion-making skills, and then class was dismissed. As was customary, with Potions, I slipped out of there as quickly as possible. Not only did I want away from Riddle, but I wanted to take a good look at the Animagi books Professor Dumbledore had given me.

When I got back up to the Gryffindor common room after dinner in the Great Hall, Myrtle ran to me before I could escape up to the dormitory. “M-M-Minerva!” she shouted, and there were tears running down her face – it was all red and blotchy.

I sighed and wondered if this was what being a prefect would mean for the whole year – constant complaining from overly sensitive Gryffindors. “What is it, Myrtle?”

“That wretched Olive Hornby again!” Her voice, when she was especially hysterical, went all high and reedy. This was one of those times. “She’s – she’s hideous, that’s what she is! She came straight up to me at dinner and told me that I was a great chubby crybaby and that I ought to just throw myself into a river because no boy will ever love me and it’ll just be awful for the rest of my life!”

“Myrtle,” I said crossly, “you and I know both know that Olive Hornby is a great twittering idiot more concerned with pimple-concealment charms than with her schoolwork. How she ever got into Ravenclaw, I’ll never know—” I cut myself off. It was bad form to insult those in other houses, even if they weren’t around to hear me. “Listen, you aren’t any more of a great crybaby than she—” I had to stop again.

“But she teases me all the time! Oh, it makes me so miserable, and you’re a Prefect, you must be able to do something, Minerva.” Myrtle was wiping her nose with the back of her hand in a rather unattractive gesture. “I can’t live like this!” she added with a melodramatic caterwaul.

“All right.” I was suddenly very sorry for her, and I placed my hands over her shoulders, then brought them down to touch her comfortingly. I myself was not a gorgeous girl, but I was not ugly, only plain, and, though it is rude to say it, Myrtle Markels was unattractive, squarely built and too tall and blocky to be considered even remotely feminine. I have seen too many times, both as a student and as a teacher, the pains that girls who are not beautiful endure in school. “I’ll speak to her at lunch, tomorrow.”

Myrtle cheered considerably. “Don’t tell her I sent you.”

“I’ll tell her that there have been complaints, that’s all.”

“There have been complaints,” Myrtle repeated in a whisper. “Oh, that’s clever, Minerva, no wonder they’ve made you a prefect.” She appeared to think at length. “Listen – do you want to come into Hogsmeade with Cliona and Cora and I on Saturday? We’re going to go into Gladrags and look at the new winter robes.”

Although the prospect of examining new winter robes did little to stir my interest, I was shocked that another girl had actually asked me over to Hogsmeade, even if it was Myrtle Markels. All the times I had been I had gone alone, and there were places I wanted to see but didn’t dare brave by myself, like the Three Broomsticks or Zonko’s, the new joke-shop. “Er – all right then, Myrtle.”

“Great!” Myrtle said. “And you be sure to make that awful Olive squirm tomorrow!”

I bit back a reprimand; it wasn’t my position to make people squirm, but I thought better of saying this to Myrtle. “Yes,” I said distantly as I finally managed to ascend the staircase to the girls’ dormitory. That night, I managed to get through two chapters of Finding the Beast Within – with my curtains drawn around my bed, of course – and I fell asleep with my school clothes still on, and the book pressed into my face.

*

Two ~ A Trip to Hogsmeade

My confrontation with Olive Hornby did not go well, to make a grievous understatement. After coming out of class that morning, I went to lunch hoping that Myrtle Markels would have forgotten about the entire incident, but I had no such good fortune, for Myrtle beamed at me as soon as I strode into the Great Hall, and probably would have yelled if not for the sandwich occupying her mouth. I had a sudden and almost irresistible urge to rip off my prefect’s badge and shove it into my robes, as though this could somehow absolve me of any responsibility.

I nodded at Myrtle – perfunctorily – and made my way over to the Ravenclaw table, where Olive was sitting and moaning to her friends about how fattening junket was and how she’d have to come up with a charm to prevent it from having too much of an ill effect. I stepped up behind her and coughed. She turned around. “Olive, could I have a word with you in private?”

“Minerva, what—” She stopped, and her gaze swung round to where Myrtle was sitting at the Gryffindor table. “You!” she shrieked, pointing one long finger at the other girl. “You little coward, going off to your house Prefect instead of coming to talk to me yourself!” I saw fury flashing in her eyes and instinctively caved back a little as she rose up out of her chair and shrieked a few more choice words at Myrtle; heads from the other tables were beginning to turn.

Myrtle, for her part, was already up on unsteady legs. Her messy, curly hair bobbed around her face as if conscious of her anger. “What did you expect me to do, you – you vile little snipe! All you ever do is make fun of me and say awful things about me to all your friends!” She wasn’t looking at Olive, though; she was looking at the Hufflepuff table where Emmet Fawcett was laughing quite rudely. In that instant I felt completely horrible for her. I didn’t know then, but she must have watched him for a long time, and there he was, laughing at her. I believe he grew up to do administrative duties for the Kwikspell Corporation, though I highly doubt this would have calmed Myrtle if she had known.

Olive had begun ranting at me. “Minerva, you simply don’t understand, she’s just so creepy – she’s always watching my friends and I in the library! I’ll catch her peering round a stack of books and then she’ll whisk off and act like nothing happened!”

“That’s a lie!” Myrtle cried passionately. “It’s a lie you made up to make it look like you aren’t such a – such a horrible bitch!”

A collective gasp rose up from the Great Hall. It may be common for the students of today to swear, but, back then, it was something of a shocking crime. My own heart was beating rapidly; I could feel Headmaster Dippet’s eyes burning into the back of my head, waiting for me to deal with this. But before I could take any points off Myrtle or even open my mouth, Olive had marched right up into Myrtle’s face.

“I will not be insulted in such a manner,” Olive seethed, quietly enough for only herself, Myrtle, and me to hear. “Especially not by a Muggle-born – pardon me, two Muggle-borns,” she amended, looking directly at me.

I blinked. It was time to act. Headmaster Dippet was still watching the argument unfold. “Both of you. Follow me into the corridor.” I yanked on Myrtle’s sleeve rather forcefully and both girls came after me into the hallway – not because of deference to my authority, I suspect, but because both wanted to continue the fight uninterrupted. When we were safely away from the Great Hall and its spectators, I turned to them both and put on my severest expression. “Ten points from each of your houses for causing a disruption and – and for insults unbecoming of proper witches.” My voice shook at little here. “It is my duty to resolve conflicts, but not to police over squalling children.”

“That’s so unfair!” Olive cried.

I did not see how it was unfair – I had taken the same amount of points from both Gryffindor and Ravenclaw – but I did not say this. “Be that as it may, you have conducted yourself badly and you will suffer the repercussions.” My language had an odd habit of going all formal whenever I played the role of Prefect.

“It’s not my fault she’s a whiny cry-baby!”

“I’m a whiny cry-baby! Listen to you!” Then they were shouting again, right in the middle of the corridor. I didn’t dare stop them; both girls looked about ready to rip the other’s hair out. I could only stand there and stare. I have always been baffled by how women fight. And then there was a hand clamped down on my shoulder, dismissively pushing me out of the way. It was Tom Riddle, as if the situation somehow demanded to get much worse. I glared at his profile. Both Olive and Myrtle quieted instantly.

“What’s going on here?” Riddle asked quietly. There was always a quality to his voice I couldn’t quite describe; the best adjective I can come up with is serpentine and even that doesn’t seem right.

“We were just having a friendly spat, weren’t we, Myrtle?” Olive whispered, staring at Riddle as if he had somehow compelled her to do so.

“Yes, that’s all,” Myrtle said breathily.

“It looked like more.” He moved his gaze from Olive to Myrtle, then back onto me. “Especially with a Prefect standing right here – officiating, is it? McGonagall?”

“I took points from them both,” I snapped at him. “There is nothing more I can do.” Abruptly, I could stand there no longer, so I shouldered my bookbag and set off down the hall to Arithmancy; at that moment, I loathed all three of them. Myrtle Markels, Olive Hornby, and especially Tom Riddle. Myrtle I could sympathize with slightly because only the most horrid of people use parentage as an insult, but she had been the one who’d gotten me into the argument into the first place and so she did not escape my anger. Olive Hornby really was horrid and I knew then that I preferred her asleep on the desk with drool coming from her mouth rather than vitriol – and Riddle, I hated him the most, with the way one cruel gaze could undermine anything I had done. He had no right – absolutely no right – to take away my authority.

“It’s not as though I could do anything more,” I muttered to myself when they were all out of earshot. “I can’t exactly hex the sparring – I should be allowed to hex the sparring. Furnunculus! Take that, Olive Hornby!” This cheered me slightly.

I came out of class still seething a little and, instead of risking more ridiculous drama at dinner, I curled up onto my bed and read. I had hidden a box of Muggle toffees mailed to me by Kitty (for my fifteenth birthday, and I was thankful for sisters because Mum and Dad would never have sent sweets) under my bed, and I ate those. There were so many things about Animagi that I didn’t know. The transformations are often excruciating at first, for example, and takes a great deal of time and practice to be able to transform without crying out. I wondered, briefly, where Professor Dumbledore had come into the possession of such books. I found that I was anticipating the next Thursday with almost painful excitement and I almost didn’t hear the other girls coming into the dormitory. I was barely able to shove the book under my pillow before Cliona Brocklehurst and Cora Turpin pulled the curtains aside.

“We saw what happened in the Great Hall at lunch!” Cora said. “Myrtle said you took house points off that Olive – good on you, she’s such a bully! Of course, you took them off Myrtle, too, but Myrtle’s used to it by now. She never gets any of Professor Caldecott’s questions right.”

Cora was a short fourth-year girl with blonde hair and a wide, unassuming face; rumours around school indicated that she was taking almost all remedial classes, and this seemed true enough, as she was old enough to be in her last year. Her general compatriot, Cliona, was a lanky, athletic fifth-year, the only girl on any of the Quidditch teams, with dark hair and eyes. “Myrtle also said you’re coming to Hogsmeade with us tomorrow – is this true?”

“She asked – er – if you don’t want me to go, that’s perfectly fine.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Minerva,” Cliona said. She leaned in a little, to whisper to me. “I know you think all the girls don’t like you, and you’re right about that, I suppose. They don’t like me either.” She made a face. “I probably stink too much from Quidditch practice for their delicate noses to tolerate.”

“No, no,” Cora said earnestly, “they’re just jealous that you could sneak about in the boys’ changing rooms if you wanted to.”

Cliona wrinkled her nose. “As if I’d want to! What a thought!”

I laughed in spite of myself. “All right then, I’ll go.”

“Brilliant!” Cliona said. “We’ll see you in the morning.”

It seemed like very little, but I lay down and thought about this for a long time after they’d let me alone. Was it only because I had braved confronting Olive Hornby, a girl who had doubtlessly teased each one of them? But that couldn’t have been the reason because I had only being doing my duty as a prefect, nothing more. I never really knew. I suppose they saw in me another lonely girl. Cliona was shunned for her boyishness, Cora for her perceived stupidity, and Myrtle simply for being Myrtle. At that point, I considered Professor Dumbledore my only friend, and even that was foolish because he only treated me in a kind, teacherly manner – the way a professor treats a favourite pupil.

Myrtle woke me up in the morning, predictably enough. “Minerva! That – that hairy boy has brought his creatures up into the common room again! Bowtruckles, the hugest ones I ever saw!”

One of the most unpleasant things to wake up to is certainly the image of Myrtle’s eyes, large and swimmy behind her spectacles, pushed up near your face. “There’s nothing I can do about Hagrid, Myrtle. He’s got special permission to work with his – animals – up here as long as they’re not harmful ones and as long as he cleans up after them.”

“Oh.”

“Hagrid’s harmless, anyhow. He knows how to control those beasts better than any of us could.”

Myrtle goggled. “I know, but it shouldn’t be allowed,” she said sulkily. Then, after a pause: “Well, get dressed then, we want to get to Hogsmeade early.” She sprang away, presumably to get her own autumn coat on.

For the first time in my life, I wondered what to wear. Ordinarily, I had no problem with the utilitarian Hogwarts uniform, or my robes, but neither seemed very appropriate for Hogsmeade. I put on my school blouse and a tartan skirt Mum had sent me from home; Mum was born a MacDuff and had a great deal of pride in their clan tartan, and made me wear it even though I was born a McGonagall. I had a navy duffel coat that had belonged to Mum as well; I took this, too.

Three hours later, I was simply amazed at how much time Myrtle and Cora could spend in Gladrags. Cliona and I were sitting boredly in the chairs usually reserved for exhausted beaus and husbands while Cora tried on a set of yellow summer robes. “I know I can’t wear them for a year at least,” Cora confessed, “but aren’t they just lovely?”

“They’re on half price, too, Cora,” Myrtle said, awed. “I think you ought to buy them. And take a look at this – Beautiful Skin Potion. I wonder if it really works?”

Cliona looked about ready to tear her hair out. “Who cares?” she moaned. “Buy the robes! Buy the potion! They’ve got a shipment of new broomsticks in Dervish and Banges and I don’t want to be the only one on the team who hasn’t seen that new Cleansweep model! I’ll look like a raging idiot if they all go off chatting about it and I just stand there gap-mouthed!”

“Oh, fine,” Cora said, and she went to the counter to purchase the summer robes.

After a visit to Dervish and Banges that took an hour long, with all Cliona’s fawning over a high-quality servicing kit, we went to Honeydukes, where Myrtle bought fudge and we split in it in fours, and then to Zonko’s where Cliona bought a pad of Emergency Exploding Notepaper (“For when Cora passes me notes about Emmet Fawcett in Astronomy,” Cliona chuckled, to which Cora shouted an indignant “I do no such thing!”) and four Pepper Imps, which we ate on the way out. We emerged from the store shrieking with delighted agony – I had never done such a thing, squealed in such a girlish way, and, surprisingly, it was not unpleasant. When Myrtle bent double and coughed a spray of fire onto the concrete, Cora suggested, mid-wheeze, that we ought to get something to drink.

I couldn’t reply for fear of breathing fire all over her, so I just followed along.

The Three Broomsticks was another place I’d never been, and it was warm and inviting, rustic with its green-brown walls and its wooden floors and tables. We found a table near where the fire was blazing, took off our autumn coats and looped them around the chairs. A pretty witch came over to take our order – four butterbeers, of course – and Cora leaned forward conspiratorially. “Look over there, Myrtle, it’s Emmet Fawcett with the rest of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team.”

I chanced a glance at Emmet; he seemed to be trying to convince the witch serving drinks that he was old enough for a bottle of Ogden’s Old. Niall MacDougal, the Hufflepuff Seeker, was looking on hopefully. I watched for a second longer than necessary; while I didn’t care much for Emmet, Niall was very handsome.

Cliona snorted. “I don’t understand you. Either of you. I whacked that great babyish lunk in the arm with a Bludger last year and he acted like I’d broken it. Truthfully, I’d only fractured the wretched thing – I wonder how he’d have reacted if I’d injured his precious face instead?”

“Really, what does that matter?” Cora argued. “I’d take care of his injured arm for him, anyway.” The witch came with our butterbeers; I took a sip and marvelled at the pleasant warm fizziness uncurling in my stomach. “You shouldn’t have hit him, anyway.”

“Like hell I shouldn’t have; it’s part of the ruddy game!”

Cora frowned. “Don’t curse,” she admonished softly. She faced Myrtle, who was looking quite dismal as she stared into her mug of butterbeer. “You agree with me, don’t you, Myrtle?”

“He laughed at me,” she whispered. Even when she was speaking in hushed tones, her voice never lost its ghostly, airy quality.

“When was this?”

“Yesterday morning, when Minerva went to talk to Olive, and Olive started shouting at me. I looked over at Emmet and he was laughing at me like I was some sort of funny little creature.” She frowned and I could see tears starting to form in her eyes. I watched with a strange sort of fascination; I wasn’t much of a crier myself and feminine weeping wasn’t all that familiar to me. Mum once told me, when I fell off a horse, that sitting and crying about my bruised arse wasn’t going to de-bruise it.

Cliona was clapping Myrtle on the back, comforting her. “He’s a bad Beater anyhow.”

Cora seemed unconvinced. “Maybe was laughing at Olive Hornby, Myrtle, and not at you. Olive did get rather red in the face; she looked like an overstuffed tomato. I would have laughed at her myself if she weren’t so vicious.”

“No, I could tell,” Myrtle said with finality. “I don’t like him anymore. I’m done with him.” Her fingers curled around the handle of her mug and tapped against the glass for a minute, and she looked down at her shoes on the rough wooden floor. “It’s foolish, really, that I should watch him all the time. And besides – oh, no, never mind.”

“Ah, but you can’t do that!” Cora said. “And besides?” she prodded.

“And besides – well, I like someone else.” Myrtle had gone very red in the face, and she took off glasses to dab at the lenses, even though they were perfectly clean.

“Who?” Cliona was trying her best to seem disinterested. I was content to sit and sip my drink and listen to the conversation float around me; I was rarely privy to this sort of girl talk.

“I can’t tell you, you’ll just make jokes about it,” Myrtle said stubbornly.

“We’re your friends, Myrtle,” Cora said dramatically, pounding her mug down on the table for effect. “Your friends! You’ve just got to tell us; you can’t go on keeping secrets from us because everyone knows that keeping secrets’ll just eat you up in the end.” She finished with a satisfied smirk.

“Oh, fine,” Myrtle said. “It’s – it’s Tom Riddle.”

I choked on my butterbeer and nearly spat all over the table. “Tom Riddle?” I repeated, incredulous. “Tom Riddle! The Slytherin? The same one I’ve got Potions with? You’ve gone mad, Myrtle, he’s the worst ass I’ve ever met!”

“But look how he got Olive and I to stop fighting,” she persisted. “A few words and that was that. It was so very – powerful.” She gave a little shiver. “And he does have the most lovely eyes.”

I stared at her, feeling cold. “They’re – they’re unsettling.”

Myrtle shook her head. “Well, I think you’re wrong, Minerva,” she said airily. “I think he’s wonderful, so much better than Emmet. And you don’t see him sitting in the Three Broomsticks and bothering the waitwitches – I just bet he’s in the library, studying for his OWLs.”

“How dreadfully boring of him,” Cliona said dryly.

“I’ll say,” Cora agreed. “Minerva, I’ve always wanted to pick your brain a bit – maybe it’ll rub off on me,” she said sheepishly, expertly changing the subject – probably because of the miserable look on Myrtle’s face. “Where were you born? Where did you grow up? Were your parents flabbergasted at the Hogwarts letter?”

So I put Riddle into the back of my mind and told them everything about me, how I was born on the farm and my father had given a chicken to the midwife as payment, how Kitty came along shortly after, how I’d had to wake up early to do my chores before school – they were particularly fascinated with my Muggle school, which only had five other children besides Kitty and I – and everything else. It was strangely relieving, explaining at all like that, as if the fact that my family were all Muggles didn’t matter. Of course, Myrtle’s were all Muggles, too.

I thought about Myrtle’s fixation with Riddle long after; I was so preoccupied and exhausted from the day that I didn’t even consider getting back at my term project that night. It is difficult for me to remember how I felt about it then, knowing what I know at present, because I did not know it then. I believe I was more pitying of Myrtle than anything else; she was destined to choose objects of affection that looked on her as if she were an insect or something equally worthless. I think I wanted for Myrtle to have someone to love her for all her faults and indiscretions, but I know that never happened, and I grieve for that even more than I grieve for her – but I get ahead of myself.

It is lonely here in my rooms now. The candles are burning down and suddenly I miss them, all three of them, Cliona Brocklehurst, Cora Turpin, and Myrtle Markels. From that day onward, we were friends of a sort – a coterie of outcasts that Hogwarts didn’t quite know what to make of. I was not close as most friends are, as it was very necessary to isolate myself in that year, yet there were so many times I laughed with them – Hogsmeade weekends, games of Gobstones in the common room, and even after that year I laughed with them, albeit halfheartedly, when there were only three of us left.