From the Diaries of Minerva McGonagall: August 28, 1955

Dear Diary,

How does a person know if they’ve chosen the right career? Over the past month, I’ve been more and more certain that I’ve made a mistake—and it’s the kind of mistake you have to visit every day, and dress up for, and be nice to when it asks if you enjoyed your weekend.

My father always knew that he wanted to be a minister. Dougal always knew that he wanted to be a farmer. My mother always said, “there weren’t as many opportunities for women when I was your age,” which makes me feel sad. She says she has the life that she wanted, but she gave up so much of herself for it. She put her wand in a box under the bed and kept it there for years.

My wand is on the bed next to me and I still feel like there’s something of me that’s stuffed inside a box, and I can’t figure out what it is. I do everything I’m supposed to. I go to work. I do my job. After work I read, or tidy my flat, or play a game of pick-up Quidditch with some of the other Ministry workers. Sometimes I become a cat and go exploring.

The Ministry’s even taken me off filing—after a year—and now I’m doing more interesting research and analysis. I have the job I wanted, I’m moving up, they’ve got me writing summaries of ancient Wizarding documents for higher-level Ministry staff… and yet I feel, every day, that it isn’t right.

I should love this. It’s reading, and writing, and helping to shape Wizarding policy, and playing Quidditch in the evenings. It’s everything I thought I wanted.

Things have changed with Elphinstone as well. I never told him what Professor Dumbledore told me, but he knew instantly. Our friendship is gone. He is polite and I am polite and neither of us admit what we both know, which is that he fancies himself in love with me—ridiculous! impossible! he’s my boss!—and because of that we can no longer say anything besides what everyone else says at work. Weekends and weather.

There are only a few Sunday hours left before it’s time to cook myself dinner and put myself to bed and get myself up so I can go to this job again. Sunday is like taking breaths of ever-thinning air. It’s worse than Monday even because on Monday I know exactly what I have to do, and on Sunday I have everything I want to do all at once and I can only pick two or three things, and one of them has to be cleaning or shopping.

Maybe I need a holiday, but I don’t know where to go. I’ve been to three places in my life: here, and home, and Hogwarts. I’d love to spend some time exploring Scotland. I should ask Elphinstone if I can take a week to travel. I haven’t a holiday yet, except a few days at Christmas—and I should think he’d be glad for a week without me.

Yours faithfully,

Minerva

Previously in The Diaries of Minerva McGonagall

Don’t put your wand in a box! Follow your dreams!