The big grandfather clock struck midnight. The Gryffindor common room laid in darkness, deserted, all but for a brown-haired girl in the far corner. A lone candle stood amidst parchment and books covering the table in front of her, creating a small circle of light. She was bent over one of her textbooks, completely absorbed in her studies. Every now and then, her quill scratched the parchment when she looked up from her textbook to take some notes. Not even the sound of approaching footsteps broke her concentration. The small circle of light around her seemed to be creating a barrier to the real world: a small bubble where nothing could get to her.
“Miss McGonagall! What are you doing at this time of the night? Shouldn’t you be in bed, resting for your exams tomorrow?” Startled, she looked up. Professor Dumbledore, the Head of Gryffindor House, was walking towards her, carrying a candle. Despite his words, he hadn’t sounded surprised at all, almost as if he had expected to find her here.
“I’m just going over my notes again, sir. Making sure that I’m prepared.”
“Don’t overwork yourself, Minerva. It won’t do you any good to fall asleep during your exam, because you studied the whole night.” Dumbledore peered at her over the top of his half-moon spectacles. The sparkle that was everpresent in his eyes seemed to be subdued, as if he was worried.
“I know, sir,” Minerva sighed. “I don’t want to disappoint my father. He’s so sure I will get an Outstanding in every subject…” Minerva shuddered. Her father would be more than disappointed if she didn’t achieve what he wanted her to. He would probably pretend she wasn’t even there and just leave her to herself all summer. Since her mother had died a year ago, her father had changed. Gone was the caring, supportive father she had known all her life. In his place was a harsh man who seemed to only value her grades, and not herself. Deep down, Minerva knew that her father wanted to motivate her to work harder. He didn’t want to treat her badly, but it still hurt when he wouldn’t talk to her.
She had cried herself to sleep more than once over the last year. At night she dreamed that her mother was still alive “ that she would get up in the morning and her mother would be there in her green apron with the white fluffy sheep on it, cooking scrambled eggs for breakfast while her father read The Daily Prophet and commented loudly on the various headlines and articles. She missed her mother terribly, but her worst nightmare was losing her father as well. So she studied night and day, turned her friends down time and time again until they didn’t ask her to spend time with them anymore, but her father was never satisfied. He always wanted her to do better, wanted her to go past her limits.
“Who are you studying for, Minerva? You or you father?” Dumbledore’s simple question cut through her self-pitying thoughts like a knife. Who did she study for? Her first impulse was to say ‘For me, of course!’ But was it true? Did she really study for herself, or did she just study to please her father?
Dumbledore stood up and silently made his way back across the room. Once he reached the portrait hole, he turned around and adressed her again. “We are who we choose to be, Minerva. Don’t live a dream that isn’t yours. Goodnight!” And then he was gone.
Minerva sat in her seat for a while, simply staring at the spot he had stood in. When she finally tried to get back to her studies, she couldn’t concentrate. After half an hour she gave up and went to bed, Dumbledore’s words still echoing through her mind.
The next week passed by quickly for Minerva. Between sitting exams and studying for the next ones she had hardly any time left to think about Dumbledore’s words. There was one drastic change in her behaviour though, there were no more late night studying sessions. Minerva went to bed with everyone else, confident that she would not fail her exams if she didn’t study the whole night. Lying in her bed before she fell asleep, Dumbledore’s words echoed through her head every night. She had come to the conclusion that she might be living someone else’s dream, her father’s dream to be exact, but she wasn’t sure how she could go back to living her own dream again. She wasn’t even sure what her own dream was anymore. For a whole year she had done everything she could to please her father, going back now was the hardest thing she had ever had to do.
Friday afternoon, while she was on her way to the great hall for dinner, she heard a commotion further down the corridor. Before she knew what was happening, three boys and two girls were racing around a corner. She regocnized them immediately; they were fellow Gryffindors, all of them seventh years like Minerva. She opened her mouth to ask them what was going on, but they had already taken the next corner and disappered.
Minerva shook her head and carried on walking. Whatever her classmates had done, she would hear about it later either during dinner or afterwards in the common room. She hadn’t taken more than four steps though, before Apollyon Pringle, the caretraker of Hogwarts, ran around the corner. He came to a stop right in front of her, panting and pointing an accusing finger at her. “You! You saw them! Where did they go?”
“Where did who go?” Minerva tried to look confused, when in reality she wanted to burst out laughing. Seeing Pringle worked up, red-faced and obviously very angry was very unusual. Whatever the five troublemakers had done, it must have been big. Pringle was considered to be too lazy to get angry by most of the student body and so far she had never seen an indication that this wasn’t true.
“Don’t you dare lie to me! I know they came through this corridor and I know you saw them. I’m only asking one more time: Where did they go?”
Pringle’s usually endless patience ran thin, his head looked about ready to explode. “Oh, you mean the five students that ran this way a few minutes ago? I didn’t see them.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t see them? I wouldn’t cover for them if I were you, it will only get you into detention. Who are they? What house are they in? And where did they go?”
“I was reading, sir.” Minerva held up a book she had been carrying with her. “I didn’t see them, I just felt a rush of air pass by.”
“You’re a filthy little liar! Of course you saw them! How else would you know that there were five of them?” Minerva opened her mouth to answer, but Pringle didn’t let her. “That’s enough insolence out of you. Detention with me, NOW “ instead of dinner you can clean the Trophy Room. How does that sound?”
Minerva shrugged. She wasn’t really hungry anyway, so what if she missed dinner? It wasn’t as if she had any friends left who would miss her.
By now, a small crowd had gathered around them. People were staring at her and whispering behind their hands as she followed Pringle to his office to collect the cleaning equipment.
Four hours later, Minerva climbed up the stairs to the common room. Cleaning the Trophy Room had taken longer than she had thought it would. She didn’t even have the energy left to go down to the kitchen and get something to eat, although her stomach was growling loudly. Thank Merlin, it was a Friday and there wouldn’t be any classes the next day.
Minerva reached the portrait hole and entered the common room with her eyes focused on her feet. A loud cheer welcomed her and made her eyes shoot upwards. Every Gryffindor was there, laughing and clapping. Everyone seemed to know that she had covered for her five classmates. Said five stepped forward and hugged her, murmuring their thanks in her ear.
Minerva was overwhelmed. She wasn’t sure if she deserved to be treated like some kind of heroine after she had been such a horrible friend to her classmates, but she was happy nonetheless. A reluctant smile spread across her face. All of a sudden she didn’t feel as tired anymore.
We are Who we Choose to Be by LadyAlesha
Chapter Notes: Thanks to Megan (PansyParkinson) for being such a lovely beta and to Bethany for pointing out my canon error.
Apollyon Pringle is said to be caretaker during Molly Weasley's time at Hogwarts on the staff page of the hp-lexicon. He isn't mentioned at all in the alphabetical list of characters so I took the liberty to say that he already had this post twenty years earlier during Minerva's student years at Hogwarts.
~°~°~