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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"Why are you here with me?"
"Because you argued with me, I suppose. Not many people do."
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5 November 1960
"Stop fidgeting, now, the students will notice," Amelia said, putting her hand on Minerva's to still it.
Minerva folded her hands in her lap. She had been delighted when Malcolm made the Gryffindor Quidditch team, but she hadn't counted on how nervous she would be when he played his first game.
Amelia leant over to whisper to Minerva, "He'll do just fine. The Gryffindor team is very good this year, and Prewett wouldn't have chosen him if he weren't up to it."
Minerva gave her friend a brief smile and tried to relax.
Ninety minutes later, the Gryffindors had beaten the Hufflepuffs one hundred seventy to ten, with Malcolm scoring one of his team's goals. Minerva was elated, but she was very careful not to show any more pride in Malcolm than in any of his teammates when she went to congratulate them for their win, and she admonished them as sternly as ever to keep the noise of the celebratory party in the common room down to a dull roar.
Malcolm seemed to be adjusting well to life at Hogwarts. He had quickly caught up with his classmates in Arithmancy and Defence and seemed to be making friends and fitting in well enough as far as Minerva could see. He was even more gifted at Transfiguration than she had realised, and Minerva had to be careful not to let on in class how proud she was of him. When Albus had asked her one day how the boy was faring in her class, she had suppressed the urge to crow to her mentor over Malcolm's talent, and she told the Headmaster only that her son was doing quite well indeed.
Predictably, it had taken less than a week for someone to spread the word that Malcolm was the Transfiguration mistress's son, but Malcolm had taken the resultant ribbing in apparent stride. He had earned one detention, for a squabble with a seventh-year Slytherin in which the latter had had to appeal to his Head of House to have the Langlock Jinx Malcolm had apparently set on him removed. Professor Slughorn later told Minerva that the boy had confessed that the quarrel had erupted when Malcolm heard Rabastan Lestrange make an obscene remark about her. She said nothing to Malcolm about the incident.
