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From the Diaries of Minerva McGonagall, October 30, 1949

Dear Diary,

Tomorrow I begin Animagi study with Professor Dumbledore. I was the only one of our third-year class who elected to do it, after he gave the lecture explaining what was involved. His face got very stern as he warned us all that the process was both long and difficult; that it involved hours of hard work beyond what we were putting into our studies, and that there were many ways for us to permanently harm ourselves if we made even the slightest error along the way.

And then he looked at me, and his eyes twinkled.

I have already gone to the library to read about the process of becoming a registered Animagus. The part that seems the most difficult is the month where you have to hold a mandrake leaf in your mouth—it cannot fall out as you eat or sleep, and you cannot use spells to keep it in place. I want to ask Professor Dumbledore if I can still play Quidditch as I train to become an Animagus. I could tie a piece of cloth over my mouth, to ensure it stayed closed.

The mandrake is very interesting, as a plant. All of its primary magical uses seem to involve transformation. We made a Mandrake Restorative Draught in Herbology last year, so that we could restore people and animals who had been petrified. (We only practiced on animals. Mice, of course. Hogwarts is overrun by mice willing to volunteer themselves for student experiments. If I am able to successfully become an Animagus and transform myself into a cat, I hope I won’t develop a taste for them.)

And yet the mandrake by itself, when not turned into a draught or used to become an Animagus, will kill you. We spent most of our second year Herbology class wearing protective earmuffs, so that we would not hear its deadly cry.

It makes me wonder if death is not also another type of transformation. Certainly the Hogwarts ghosts, or the headmaster portraits in Professor Dumbledore’s office, are not dead in the same way that the people buried under the stones in my father’s parish are dead. Do wizards get to choose if they become a ghost? Is it the sort of thing you’d want to choose? The Hogwarts ghosts seem perfectly happy, but whenever I think about the concept of eternal ghosthood my mind boggles. One of the books I read said that ghosts split their souls, leaving the shallow, shadow parts of themselves on earth. But how can you split a soul? It seems irreducible. You cannot split who you are and still remain yourself.

If the happy parts of the ghosts’ souls remain at Hogwarts, where do the rest of them live? Is the other half of their soul in pain? I’m sorry—I’m thinking a lot about ghosts lately because it is almost Hallowe’en. All month we’ve been practicing the Riddikulus spell in Defense Against the Dark Arts, splitting our fears as if they were ghosts, keeping the ridiculous and sending the terror away. So many of our fears are laughable, when you think about it. Being afraid of getting a bad mark, or spilling soup on your robe, or finding a spider in your bed.

And yet spilling soup on your robe feels like the shallow shadow of a true fear, the kind we are not yet brave enough to say out loud in class. I asked Professor Dumbledore if there was a spell for those fears, and he said there was, and that only the bravest and strongest wizards could manage it.

I said that did not make sense, the idea that only the bravest wizards would be able to make their fears go away, and he said that was the point. “Facing the fear is what matters. If you cannot do that, you will never be able to defeat it.”

I suppose if I want to become an Animagus I will have to face the fear that I could fail in the process. Right now the idea that I could permanently injure myself seems less real than the idea that I might have to give up Quidditch for a month. I could ask Professor Dumbledore about all of the terrible things that might happen to me if I get the spells wrong, but I don’t want to. I feel like it will be easier not to know.

Does that mean I will never be truly brave? If I avoid looking at what frightens me, then maybe I am only putting my happy ghost self out into the world. It’s easy to be happy now, when my life is Hallowe’en parties and Riddikulus spells and Quidditch practice, but someday that could change, and when it does I want to be able to cast that spell that can defeat fear.

I will ask Professor Dumbledore about all of this tomorrow.

Yours faithfully,

Minerva

Previously in The Diaries of Minerva McGonagall

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