{"id":1396212,"date":"2017-02-16T14:00:46","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T19:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/community.sparknotes.com\/?p=1396212"},"modified":"2017-05-01T13:08:52","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T17:08:52","slug":"from-the-diaries-of-minerva-mcgonagall-november-2-1981","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/blog\/from-the-diaries-of-minerva-mcgonagall-november-2-1981\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Diaries of Minerva McGonagall: November 2, 1981"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/img.sparknotes.com\/content\/sparklife\/sparktalk\/minervapink_LargeWide.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"701\" height=\"394\" \/>Dear Diary,<\/p>\n<p>I have had so many emotions in the past 48 hours that I don&#8217;t know how to write them in order\u2014or how to feel them. They&#8217;ve all blended together into one giant lump around my heart: Hope. Grief. Fear. Sorrow. Anger. Trust.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose I&#8217;ll start there, because we trusted Peter Pettigrew when we shouldn&#8217;t have, and because of that, James and Lily Potter are dead. But also: Lord Voldemort is dead. He aimed the Killing Curse at the infant child Harry and somehow Lord Voldemort \u00a0was killed instead. I&#8217;m not sure how it happened. It&#8217;s never happened before.<\/p>\n<p>Professor Dumbledore knew right away, the way he knows everything, and left Hogwarts in the middle of the night. The rest of us learned later. I got a letter from Alice Longbottom, flown in by owl, more eloquent than anything I can write tonight. Her joy. The war was over. She could raise her son in peace. She wrote, at the end of the letter, that she didn&#8217;t know who was taking care of Harry. That she could, since there weren&#8217;t any other Potters. That she would write Professor Dumbledore right away.<\/p>\n<p>Except she didn&#8217;t. I don&#8217;t think the owl knew; his eyes looked calm, when he delivered my letter. But it must not have been long after he left when the Death Eaters arrived.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the part I still don&#8217;t understand. They lost. Their leader was killed. But they took and tortured Frank and Alice just because they \u00a0<em>could<\/em>. Because the war was only over when they said it was\u2014or, as it turned out, when the Aurors arrived.<\/p>\n<p>It seems as if our wars are like the Muggle ones after all; they&#8217;re settled not by a single spell but slowly, on paper and in the courts. The Death Eaters will go to trial. The Longbottoms are at St. Mungo&#8217;s, unlikely to recover. Their baby is with his grandmother. I do not know where Harry Potter is.<\/p>\n<p>But Professor Dumbledore does, and we must trust him. He told me that someday I would know everything that happened at Godric&#8217;s Hollow\u2014and, in time, \u00a0meet Harry myself.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You might have to do it as a cat, though,&#8221; he said, and then he smiled. As if there were enough space in his heart, amidst everything else he must have been feeling, to find room for a smile. I know there isn&#8217;t yet any space in mine.<\/p>\n<p>Yours faithfully,<\/p>\n<p>Minerva<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Diary, I have had so many emotions in the past 48 hours that I don&#8217;t know how to write them in order\u2014or how to feel them. They&#8217;ve all blended together into one giant lump   <a class=\"continue-reading\" href=\"#\"><span class=\"continue-text\">continue reading<\/span><svg class=\"continue-icon\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"24\" height=\"24\" alt=\"\">\n    <path fill=\"#007acd\" fill-rule=\"nonzero\" d=\"M13.442 5.558L19.885 12l-6.443 6.442-.884-.884 4.934-4.934L4 12.625v-1.25l13.492-.001-4.934-4.932.884-.884z\"><\/path>\n  <\/svg><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":333,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[278],"tags":[32,19845,21332],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396212"}],"collection":[{"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/333"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1396212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1396212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1396212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1396212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}