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Dear Diary,<\/p>\nDear Diary,<\/p>\n
It’s the end of the first week of term, and the beginning of my fifteenth year as a Hogwarts teacher. I’ll turn thirty-five in less than a month. I don’t feel old \u00a0at all<\/em>, but I do feel older, especially when I look at my students. \u00a0It was hard to realize that I was growing apart from them, culturally; that their childhoods are now so different from mine that I could no longer address them from a place of shared experience.<\/p>\n Some parts \u00a0of wizarding culture, like \u00a0The Tales of Beedle the Bard<\/em>, will always be part of wizard childhoods, but my students now come into the classroom having read books I’ve never heard of \u00a0and listened to musicians whose names I don’t know. Plus television, of course, if they’re students \u00a0from Muggle families. We didn’t own a television when I was growing up; almost nobody did. Now everybody does, and my \u00a0students from Muggle families talk constantly about \u00a0Doctor Who<\/em>.<\/p>\n They also talk about this mysterious person\u2014or group of people, I’m not quite sure\u2014who keeps killing Muggles. The students from wizarding families have read about it in the papers, and the students from Muggle families have read about it in \u00a0their<\/em> papers, and the talk in the Great Hall at dinner is that it must be the same person. Or group of people. They leave a sign behind them; a skull on top of a snake.<\/p>\n Some of the students are frightened, especially the younger ones. They want to know if the murderer can get inside Hogwarts, or\u2014if they have Muggle parents\u2014if their families will be safe while they’re away. I came across a \u00a0fifth-year Slytherin trying to scare a first-year Ravenclaw, telling some story about the murderer being a former Hogwarts student who wants revenge, and I found myself standing up very straight in my robes, looking strictly down on the older student, and declaring that no murderer could get through Hogwarts’ protective spells. The older student flinched, ashamed at having been caught by a teacher. I deducted ten \u00a0points from Slytherin as punishment, and gave five points to the Ravenclaw student for being brave. He wasn’t being particularly brave at the moment, but I’ve learned that if you tell students they can be brave\u2014or clever, or talented\u2014they’ll believe it of themselves as well.<\/p>\n So yes, most \u00a0of the talk this first week of term has been about these unusual murders. \u00a0Professor Dumbledore has asked me if I would join him at a meeting tonight to discuss this situation \u00a0in more detail. \u00a0I’m imagining he’s going to tell the faculty how to address students’ fears, or how to reassure their parents that they’ll be safe at Hogwarts. I hope the people behind all of this will be caught soon, so that life can go back to normal.<\/p>\n Yours faithfully,<\/p>\n Minerva<\/p>\n Previously in The Diaries of Minerva McGonagall<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Diary, It’s the end of the first week of term, and the beginning of my fifteenth year as a Hogwarts teacher. I’ll turn thirty-five in less than a month. I don’t feel old \u00a0at continue reading<\/span>