thanatoswrath asked: Minerva McGonagall
Lol. I feel bad. I mean Minerva McGonagall for the prompt thing of yours. Sorry for not clarifying
I got you, my buddy. HBIC Minerva McGonagall, coming right up.
A: what I think realistically
McGonagall is widely hailed as The One That Got Away through every Auror’s department in the world, in much the same way that Dumbledore is hailed as The One That Got Away regarding the Minister of Magic. Stories get around to the tune of “wow, did you hear, Minerva McGonagall took a dozen Stunners straight to the chest and they think she’s going to recover fully” and “wow, did you hear, Minerva McGonagall animated every statue in Hogwarts” and “wow, did you hear, Minerva McGonagall tortured a Death Eater in Ravenclaw Tower.” (This last is not true, and McGonagall puffs up in a combination of fierce pride and genuine offense whenever she hears it. How dare you but also my House, goddamnit, he belongs in MY House.) And the older Aurors are like “Goddamn right, she’s Minerva Fucking McGonagall, she could have run this place if she didn’t like teaching so much.”
B: what I think is fucking hilarious
It was definitely Minerva McGonagall’s idea to, A, make James Potter Head Boy, and, B, drown the Dursleys in letters.
The thing about James Potter is that he wasn’t a prefect. Remus was a prefect. Remus, however, was also reliably flat on his back the two days around the full moon, and Somewhat Indisposed that one night a month, and so someone had to cover his duties. The first time McGonagall found James doing Remus’ patrol (and look suspiciously exhausted about it too) she almost gave him detention for life. But…
“One chance, Mister Potter,” she says stiffly. “If I hear you’ve been abusing this, I’ll take it straight to the Headmaster.”
“You got it Minn–I mean, um, yes, Professor.” James offers her a smile that makes the circles under his eyes stand out. McGonagall does some mental math–the full moon was last night, what does James have to look so tired about? With Remus out of commission, they’re hardly getting up to elaborate shenanigans without him.
James Potter, for three nights a month, is beyond reproach. Impeccable, in fact. McGonagall half recommends him because she thinks he’s genuinely improving with the weight of responsibility and half because…come on, she just has to. She has to. No one is more horrified than James Potter himself when he gets the letter.
The thing about the Dursleys…they’re terrible and Minerva dislikes them supremely and she COULD go herself but she suspects that it won’t get them any further. So she enchants two dozen quills to write identical copies of Harry’s letter and comes up with every terrible idea she can to make their lives miserable. Because fuck them, that’s why.
C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends awful just awful I’m sorry
McGonagall has a list of students that she never meant to start keeping. It started years ago, by accident, when she opened the Daily Prophet and saw a name on the front page–little Jacob Hanover, a Muggleborn fourth year who was murdered in the street when the Death Eaters first started to rise. He was a sweet boy, with a wicked sense of humor and an eye for Charms that was downright ingenious. He had tried to defend himself, a Gryffindor at the end even though his House had been something of a quiet mystery, but it hadn’t helped. The list is long, grows by the day, but then…oh, then it stops, with four names inscribed at the bottom on the same date–James Potter, Lily Evans Potter, Peter Pettigrew, and Sirius Black.
(The boy she remembers, the boy who had three times been given detention for calling her ‘Minnie’ to her face, the boy who had once sent every Black in Slytherin an identical Howler full of insults, the boy who had laughed at his best friend’s wedding and danced the bride around in circles until they were both dizzy–he’s dead, she decides the second she gets the news. He’s dead, and he died when he betrayed his friends. She has no idea that the boy wishes the same thing, with all his heart.)
The book containing the list leaves the corner of her desk where she’s kept it all this time, and she puts it on a bookshelf with every intent of never opening it again. The war is over and she will not lose more students to that monster’s mania. Minerva McGonagall will not raise another generation of children to march into battle.
Thirteen years later, she opens a book from her bookshelf and very sternly does not cry as she adds another name. Cedric Diggory. Flipping through the remaining pages, Minerva has a terrible premonition–there will be a lot more names before this is done.
Alternatively: Minerva McGonagall attends Lily and James’ funeral. The child reaching into the coffins, calling in confused distress for Mama and Daddy is bad enough, but she has never seen anything more heartbreaking than Remus Lupin, standing alone in the front row and clutching blindly at the photograph in his hands–the whole lot of them, the Marauders and Lily, at the wedding all those years ago. They’re smiling in the picture. Remus, three of his best friends murdered at the behest of the fourth, looks like he’ll never smile again. That’s what breaks Minerva, finally, and sets her sobbing into her hands.
Eleven years later, Harry Potter looks her in the eye (he looks so much like his parents) and says that he and Ron miss Hermione, so much, please, they just want to see her, even if she can’t hear them. Even if she’s Petrified.
McGonagall knows when she’s being played, she does, but right then…pale and desperate and a little griefstricken, Harry doesn’t look like James, or Lily, or even wild and proud Sirius. He looks like Remus, looking for friends who are far outside his reach. She lets him and Ron go.
D: what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway
MCGONAGALL HAS A WIFE, SHE’S CHARMING, CANON CAN SUCK A DICK.
