Before she was Professor McGonagall, she was Minerva Macnair. After an arranged marriage forces her into an impossible situation, Minerva does what she must to survive. When she makes a new life for herself, her secrets follow and threaten everythin...
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"You're dead."
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25 August 1994
The silvery cat shot off into the night sky.
Minerva hoped it would find Albus; she wasn't certain how far the charm would carry, but she doubted it would reach the Continent, if that's where he was.
Thank goodness she'd found Arthur. She'd been sick with dread when she'd seen the Dark Mark hanging in the sky above the stadium, certain it had something to do with Harry Potter. But he and the other children were safe with Arthur, and Arthur had agreed to allow extra security around the Burrow until Potter was safely back at Hogwarts. Although if last term's events were any indication, even Hogwarts wasn't safe for the Boy Who Lived. While Albus publicly projected his usual air of avuncular wisdom and competence, in private, with Minerva, he worried about the mistakes he was making.
"I'm afraid I'm past it," he'd said after Potter and company's near miss with a werewolf and the Dementors.
"Nonsense. You're just tired."
"It's more than that, Minerva. I'm missing things I should have foreseen."
"So you're a Seer now, are you?"
He ignored her comment. "The last war should never have happened."
"That can hardly be laid at your door, Albus."
"I should have been able to stop it. I didn't act soon enough, decisively enough."
"You did everything anyone could have expected, and more."
"And yet it was not I who ended it."
Minerva had remonstrated with him, tried to buck him up, but there was some truth to what he was saying. There was another war coming, and she was afraid they were all too old and tired to fight it. And Albus's conviction that Potter would once again be the key ... it seemed madness. He was a boy. A good-hearted, moderately talented boy, but even younger and greener than anyone in the original Order had been, and so many of them had died of their inexperience. Potter had been lucky once, protected by some obscure magic she could only begin to guess at, but sending him against one of the most powerful Dark wizards of all time would be tantamount to murder. She prayed to all the gods that Albus had something up his spangled sleeve that he hadn't shared with her. His insecurity added a layer of unease to the general anxiety she'd felt since he'd told her, during their initial argument about leaving Harry on the doorstep of that horrible family, that Tom Riddle wasn't quite as gone as everyone hoped.
