From the Diaries of Minerva McGonagall: September 20, 1955
Dear Diary,
I am on the train back from my holiday in Scotland. Trains are always good spots for diary-writing; they put me in a contemplative mood that is only spoiled if I’m stuck with a chatty compartment-mate. Today I am across from an elderly couple who are busy falling asleep while sharing sections of the newspaper, so I have plenty of space for my own thoughts.
I’m thinking about the Hogwarts Express, and how it used to feel like this passage I took from the person I used to be to the person I wanted to become. We would always start the trip loud, everyone saying hello and sharing the sweets we purchased from the cart, but we’d get quieter as the sun set and we got closer to Hogwarts, and I remember staring out the window and seeing my own reflection in front of the dark sky, imagining all the wonderful things that could happen this year and how I would get to learn Transfiguration or play Quidditch or do something new.
I feel a bit like that now; like this train could be taking me towards a new and better Minerva, one who knows for certain whether working at the Ministry is the right career—and if it isn’t, what she is going to do instead—and who knows how to talk to her boss without both of them staring awkwardly at the floor between them. (I have learned, in the past month, that Elphinstone’s office is not swept as often as it should be. I wonder if it is my job to speak to the elves about that.)
But I also wonder how often we get these opportunities, as adults, to change; do we lock ourselves into our personalities the way an Animagus can in theory become any animal in the world until the actual moment of transformation? I will be a cat until the end of my days, and I will also be Minerva—but I assume Minerva will become someone cleverer and wiser at some point, simply because I always have, every year, until now.
I want to tell you about the school, though. While I was in Scotland, I met a woman who was two years above me at Hogwarts and who now teaches at the local school. She has a Muggle father, like I do, and she explained that a lot of children in the village have both Muggle and wizarding parents, which means a lot of owls circle their houses. Even the children with two Muggle parents may still get owls on their eleventh birthdays, because some great-aunt or grandfather went to Hogwarts.
So she teaches Muggle and magical children when they are young, and is there both for the students who receive their Hogwarts letters and the ones who are left behind. She told me that every year, students ask why they were chosen and why they were not chosen, and she always tells them that there’s something special about each of them, something that only they can do—and some of them can only do it if they go to this school that’s far away, and others of them can only do it if they stay in the village and continue learning.
I said, “You don’t really think that every person has something that only they can do?” and she said, “Of course I do!” It’s funny because she and I were never friends, at school—she was always of those chatty compartment-mates, and so I never sat with her—but now I find myself both liking and respecting her, and in many ways envying her. She seems to have found the one thing that only she can do. She also seems happy.
I wonder if I should teach. I always used to enjoy tutoring. I thought that I’d want to do something “important” instead, but that’s clearly a thought from a younger version of Minerva who is less clever and wise than the current one! Teaching is important. It’s certainly more important than half the work I do at the Ministry.
But what part of teaching is the part that only I can do? I don’t know. Perhaps if I stare out of this train window a bit longer, it will come to me.
Yours faithfully,
Minerva
Previously in The Diaries of Minerva McGonagall
Why, why do we not get to ride the Hogwarts Express? What would your version of the H.E. be?
