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Dear Diary,<\/p>\nDear Diary,<\/p>\n
I am on the train back from my holiday in Scotland. Trains are always good spots for diary-writing; they put me in a \u00a0contemplative 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 \u00a0newspaper, so I have plenty of space for my own thoughts.<\/p>\n
I’m thinking about the Hogwarts Express, and how it used to feel like this \u00a0passage I took from the person I used to be to the person \u00a0I wanted to become. We would always start the trip loud, everyone saying hello and sharing the sweets we purchased from the cart, but \u00a0we’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.<\/p>\n
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\u2014and if it isn’t, what she is going to do instead\u2014and who knows how to talk \u00a0to 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 \u00a0as often as it should be. I wonder if it is my job to speak to the elves about that.)<\/p>\n
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 \u00a0until the actual moment of transformation?<\/em> I will be a cat until the end of my days, and I will also be Minerva\u2014but I assume Minerva will become someone cleverer and wiser at some point, simply because I always have, every year, until now.<\/p>\n I want to tell you about the school, though. While I was in Scotland, I met a woman \u00a0who was two \u00a0years above me at \u00a0Hogwarts and who now teaches at the local school. She has a Muggle father, like I do, and she explained \u00a0that a lot of children in the village have both Muggle and wizarding \u00a0parents, which means a lot of owls circle their houses. Even the children \u00a0with two Muggle parents may still get owls \u00a0on their eleventh birthdays, because some great-aunt or grandfather went to Hogwarts.<\/p>\n 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 \u00a0that 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\u2014and 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 \u00a0and continue learning.<\/p>\n 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\u2014she was always of those chatty compartment-mates, and so I never sat with her\u2014but now I find myself both liking and respecting her, and in many \u00a0ways envying her. She seems to have found the one thing that only she can do. She also seems happy.<\/p>\n 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 \u00a0thought from a \u00a0younger version of \u00a0Minerva 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.<\/p>\n But what part of teaching is the part \u00a0that only I can do? \u00a0I don’t know. Perhaps if I stare out of this train window a bit longer, it will come to me.<\/p>\n Yours faithfully,<\/p>\n Minerva<\/p>\n Previously in The Diaries of Minerva McGonagall<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Why, why do we not get to ride the Hogwarts Express? What would your version of the H.E. be?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 \u00a0contemplative mood that is only spoiled if I’m stuck with continue reading<\/span>