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femgenficathon2005-08-11 12:17 pm
limyaael.livejournal.com) wrote in femgenficathon2005-08-11 12:17 pm
The Way Out- McGonagall, PG
Title: The Way Out
Author: Limyaael
Rating: PG.
Warnings: Only language.
Prompt: Quote 36. “All the world’s a cage.” Heanne Philips. (A guiding spirit, perhaps, but not used in the story itself).
Summary: McGonagall’s first Animagus transformation is…unexpected. A look at why the Head of Gryffindor might be a cat. Most of the fic is set before the canon begins, just after Grindelwald’s defeat, and it includes an OC.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and magical details mentioned belong to J. K. Rowling, not me.
Thank you very much to my betas,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eisoj5, goldjadeocean, ldymusyc, and nextian!
The Way Out
“Please take your places.”
The words echoed through the room as Minerva walked to the center of it. This room on the second-lowest level of the Ministry of Magic was big enough to contain a Hungarian Horntail—and rumors said it had sometimes needed to, since some of the students had Transfigured themselves into creatures as large or larger. The walls were bare, blank stone, though wrapped in enough Shield Charms to make Minerva’s hair stand on end. Light came from black lanterns draped on enormous chains running from floor to ceiling, and so was dimmed and scattered. The warmest things in sight were actually the rough wooden tables, seven feet long at least, placed an equal distance apart down the middle of the room. The voice spoke from the darkness that began immediately beyond the tables. Only if they passed their examination would the candidates actually be allowed to see who spoke from within the darkness, Minerva knew. She wondered why for a moment.
Then she sniffed. As if I do not know. More drama, more mystery, more involved plots to contain and control those they fear might become dangers to their interests. It is the Ministry all over.
“Please concentrate.”
That, at least, Minerva could do without hesitation. She closed her eyes, and her mind cleared at once. She had practiced this particular Transfiguration for so long, without actually attempting it, that she had stamped it into the patterns of her breathing. Some of the other candidates must have taken longer to achieve the necessary state, however, because it was a long moment after the clearing of her mind when the voice spoke again.
“Please transform.”
Minerva reached out confidently. She knew the form she had come into the Animagus Registry Room to receive. They all did. Actually attempting the transformation before the Ministry administered the exam was heavily frowned on, and so of course she had not done that, but one was allowed to call visions of one’s animal. And she knew what it was: an eagle, dignified and stately.
She reached now for feathers, for not just the vision but the reality. Unspoken spells were easier than this. She stepped out of their territory and left them behind. When she was an Animagus, she could will herself to transform, and the animal shape would settle upon her.
The vision formed in her mind, close enough to touch but not yet tangible. She frowned and pushed harder. Distant as a sound in another room, she heard someone fall over and the voice from the darkness announce something, but she refused to absorb the substance of the words.
This was the land of rocks, of heaviness, of strictness and difficulty. Minerva McGonagall had never had trouble with any of these. She was a stickler for rules, a former Prefect, a former Gryffindor. She had followed all the proper rules for learning the Animagus transformation, even the ones she thought were outdated or silly or that the Ministry would most likely change next year, now that Grindelwald was defeated and the days of paranoia were slowly passing. She pushed forward, steps slowing but never faltering, and called.
The vision of the eagle wavered in her mind.
I will transform.
And then the stones around her shattered, and she felt herself shrink, the rules worked into her breath rising to her call as the animal shape had. Do not panic. Do not attempt to direct your transformation. Your body will know the proper form to take. Hold fast to calm.
She did, and then she opened her eyes as the voice from the darkness announced, in a light, chiming tone, “Please look upon yourselves.”
Minerva turned her head. The first thing she noted was the odd angle of her neck, and then that her sight did not have the clarity she had expected it would from her study of eagles. Of course, both those things were explained when she saw that paws and not talons rested on the floor in front of her.
Her transformation had failed.
Or, no, it did not fail, because I did Transfigure myself her mind chattered in confusion. But what did I do? What did I become? How could I have become anything but what the vision showed me I would?
“Please turn and look in front of you, successful candidates,” said the voice from the darkness.
Minerva pivoted, this time noting how easily she moved and that only one of the other candidates had managed to transform himself, into a bird of some kind. She felt nothing but sympathy for those who had failed. It was a difficult Transfiguration, and were it not for her strength and dedication to the study, she would have expected to fail it herself.
But you did.
The thought faded as the darkness drew back in front of her enough to show a line of conjured mirrors. Minerva examined the creature staring back at her, and felt a stab of disappointment. She was a cat, and, from the markings, not even a beautiful one, like those her mother had kept for the pleasure of their fur rubbing on her wrists. She was a tabby.
Around her eyes were circles that imitated the spectacles she had worn when she entered the exam.
It was the last touch. It was a mark of whimsy in what should have been the moment of her supreme triumph, the result of years of dedicated study.
In the rush of acute disappointment, Minerva hardly heard the voice announce, “Please leave the room, unsuccessful candidates.” Footsteps shuffled out, and she went on staring into the mirror. That any of the failures would have given much to be in her place did not matter to her. She would have given much to be in one of their places, disappointed but knowing she could try again after more study, rather than confined permanently to an Animagus form that was so…
So undignified.
“Please look up, successful candidates.”
Minerva looked up as the darkness dissipated. She moved too quickly, and her whiskers—she had not noticed she had them—twitched and reported odd messages to her. In trying to decipher them, she hardly realized at first that a white-haired witch stood where the darkness had been, regarding both Minerva and the bird with a serene expression.
“My name is Protea Smith,” she said. “I am one of the current five registered Animagi in Great Britain. You have made it seven. My congratulations.” She turned her head, intent gray eyes lingering for a moment on Minerva before they passed on to the other successful candidate. Minerva observed him for a moment and decided that he was a falcon. “It is uncommon to have this high a rate of success. Many candidates fail multiple times to achieve the transformation and decide to spend their lives doing other things. Many of those professions reward in their own ways, but none, I think, with quite the depth that the Animagus Transfiguration does—whatever else the candidates may spend their lives doing.” Again, her eyes came back to Minerva. “Well done. You may now transform back, and I will accompany you to complete your Animagus Registration forms.”
Changing back was easy enough. Minerva called a vision of her human body to mind and slid it into place over the cat body. She slipped out of that form and into human. Protea Smith gave her a nod of approval.
That glance, and the way that the older witch had looked at her before, gave Minerva the courage to ask the questions she knew she would need to ask. There had been nothing in the books about someone failing her own Animagus Transfiguration by succeeding. Perhaps Protea Smith, who would have to know many things about Animagi simply by virtue of being one, could give her the answers.
*****
“Tea?”
“Of course.” Minerva admired the way her own voice came out—just prim enough. A young woman in her twenties should not sound like a child, and she did not. She had urges to throw a childish temper tantrum, but she had not thrown one since she was two. There was no reason to start now.
Though you have apparently confounded all the accepted laws of Transfiguration?
And that was another thing. If Minerva had heard about the same thing happening to someone else, she would have wanted to spend time with books and records and history until she figured out the true reason behind that breach of law, the true harmony that it shared with the other laws at the deeper levels. Perhaps she would even have sought to write a book on the phenomenon, if it turned out to be an entirely new law.
Yet what she wanted most right now was to wrap herself in an eagle form and seek the skies on her own wings.
“I noticed that you seemed disconcerted when you changed back,” Protea said, handing the tea across her desk. She had brought Minerva to a small, warm room much less intimidating than she would have expected; even the desk separating them was small and made of time-worn wood, and the portraits on the walls were all of family members, most currently dozing. Then she had told Minerva to call her Protea. In some ways, this was more disconcerting than if she had frowned at Minerva and shaken her head with disapproval like Professor Blackbone. “The form was not what you would have expected, was it?”
Minerva sat up so fast that she nearly spilled a drop of tea. She set her cup back on the desk. “You have heard of cases like mine before, then—Protea?” The fact that she did not know what position the witch held in the Ministry, other than that she supervised students’ attempts to become Animagi, helped ease the name off her tongue. No easy resort to “Professor” or “Headmaster” in a situation like this.
Protea leaned back in the chair, obviously comfortable on its worn blue cloth, and beamed at her. Her robes were equally worn, Minerva noted, but Protea carried them with none of the embarrassment that Minerva’s mother would have shown had her own clothes looked a tenth as threadbare. “Not exactly, my dear,” she said. “I simply read your thoughts to learn what I wanted.”
Minerva stared at her. Protea went on smiling.
“You are a Legilimens?” Minerva looked again at the tired office. Perhaps this was a trap for spies, then. Very few ordinary witches or wizards needed to learn Legilimency, and Minerva had not even felt the feathery touch on her own thoughts that her Professors had mentioned during the one lesson where they had discussed the art. Who was Protea Smith, that she had needed it?
“Of course,” said Protea. “I was a spy during the War, my dear. A registered Animagus was a valuable thing, especially with my form.”
“May I see it?” Minerva reminded herself that she was not out of line as those mild gray eyes peered at her. She had become an Animagus, though her form was in doubt. Protea would not have answered the question, would not have invited Minerva to her office at all, if she found her impertinent.
“Indeed, I would not have,” said Protea, and put her teacup down. “I don’t see why you cannot view my other shape. The Ministry demanded that I keep my form a secret when having others know of it could have meant my death. The darkness during the exam is a remnant of that. But I am in a room alone with a sister Animagus who certainly intends to complete all the registration forms required by the Ministry, and the War is done with.” She closed her eyes.
The next moment, a pale barn owl fluttered where she had been, and regarded Minerva with large, calm gray eyes. It hooted once, and then slid back into the woman’s form. Protea took her seat, and her tea, and watched Minerva with eyes as serene as the owl’s had been.
Minerva leaned forward. “I can see why that would have been useful,” she whispered. Her mind soared for a moment. Protea could have flown long distances, secure in her Animagus form. She could have spied out the activities of Grindelwald’s followers in the darkness. She would have gone largely unnoticed, thanks to the flood of owls that poured across the wizarding world every day. It was such a service as Minerva might have hoped to have done—
If she had wings. If she were not a cat. She leaned away from Protea and picked up her tea again.
“And this again, my dear,” said Protea. “Really. What have you learned of Animagus forms? Tell me.”
Minerva knew what she meant—the first and most basic law. She recited it in a dull voice. She knew the law, and much good had it done her. “The wizard or witch who becomes an Animagus is always suited to his or her animal form, congruent at every level.”
“Of course we are,” said Protea. “Therefore, my dear, how can you think that you are not suited to being this tabby cat that you are? Of course you are. You even retain the spectacle markings around your eyes. That is rather clever, I think. Such a marking would have been a liability during the War, but thanks to the courage of Albus Dumbledore and others, including myself, we no longer have to worry about that, and will not until the next Dark Lord arises.” She sipped her tea a bit faster than she had before.
Minerva bit her lip.
“You might as well speak your thoughts around me,” Protea reminded her. “All I need to do to hear them is meet your eyes. But Legilimency gives me a headache now. Please speak them aloud.”
“The form I saw during the visions was an eagle,” Minerva whispered. She fought to keep her voice calm and steady. “A noble bird, a dignified bird, the kind of animal I—I have always seen myself as.” It was hard to admit that, but knowing that Protea would only sense the thoughts anyway gave her a certain comfort. “No, more than that, truly. The kind of animal I have always aspired to be. I would have clear sight, the ability to soar, an enjoyment of solitude. And I have always longed to see better, and I love to fly, and I have spent enough time alone among my books to like my own company. I knew I was suited to being an eagle. How could I be a cat?”
“Are you dignified and noble every moment of your life?” Protea asked.
Minerva gave her head a quick shake, almost enough to dislodge her hair from the neat braid she had gathered it in. “Of course not. But if that’s the case, then why isn’t my form a worm, or a hedgehog, or some other weak and crawling creature?” She closed her eyes. She would not cry. She hadn’t cried when her father died at the hands of half a dozen Dark wizards.
“Cats can be dignified,” said Protea, very mildly.
“And they’re cruel,” said Minerva. The image of torture in her head shifted, with disturbing ease, to become an image of a cat torturing a mouse. “And undignified. Have you ever seen one clean itself, Protea? I have no wish to spend the rest of my life with a mouthful of fur.”
“But that is what you have.”
Minerva blinked her eyes open, and then sat back in her chair. Protea was leaning forward across the desk. Her eyes had widened again, as if she had turned her face alone into an owl’s, and her gaze was as fierce as any hooked talon. Minerva swallowed. This woman fought in the War.
“You have become an Animagus,” said Protea, her voice as hard and heavy as the rocks that Minerva had shifted. “That is an honor granted to few. As you will have noted when I spoke to you and Mr. Jones earlier, there are only seven of us—registered—in all of Britain. You had the strength of will to push through the stone to your true form, the form that you were meant to have, not the form you wanted to see. You are a cat. You will learn why you have this form, if you do not know yet. Since I have looked within your mind, it is perfectly visible to me why you have it. You disappoint me, Minerva. I would have thought someone named for the goddess of wisdom would understand herself better.”
Minerva stood. Her face burned. She could not decide whether her shame or her anger was the dominant emotion. She only understood that she wished to be out of Protea Smith’s office and her confusing presence as soon as possible. “May I be excused?”
Protea was smiling again, the picture of kindness. “Of course, my dear.”
Minerva fled, and tried to ignore the image of herself as a cat running from a broom.
*****
“It unscrews the other way.”
When Minerva was sure that Peeves had heard her, she continued walking. She had a full evening ahead of her, including marking student essays, supervising two detentions, and approval of two seventh-year Transfiguration projects. She filled her mind with noble, dignified, altogether strict and orderly thoughts.
She met Dolores on the staircase. The other witch smiled sweetly at her and leaned nearer. Minerva stood her ground. The sickly sweet stench rolling from the toad made her want to hiss. If Dolores had ever mastered the Animagus transformation, Minerva thought, she would have been something small and sticky. In a way, Minerva was sorry that she had not. Surely a prowling cat could not be blamed for chasing something small and sticky, especially when the Ministry had not thought fit to share the truth of the High Inquisitor’s talents with her fellow professors.
“Hem, hem. I meant to ask you, Minerva,” Dolores said, and leaned closer still, as though they were confidants. “Do you not think that the mischief in this school is rather…out of hand? I thought you would have some techniques for dealing with it, as the Weasley twins, after all, were in your House.” She raised shining, toad-like eyes to Minerva’s face.
Minerva restrained herself from hissing. With difficulty. Now is not the time to be undignified. “They were in my House,” she said. “But I never crushed their mischief, as you will note.”
“Yes, hem, hem,” said Dolores, and touched one sheet of parchment in the enormous stack of them she was carrying. “I wonder if you could tell me how they managed to last almost seven years in this school, and in your House, and yet not be better-behaved?”
This is why I need the cat, Minerva thought, and answered. “I suspect that there is something of a kindred spirit between the Weasley twins and myself, Dolores, which led me not to crush their mischief even when I punished them.”
It was almost funny how quickly the other witch jerked away from her, eyes suddenly narrowing with suspicion. Minerva stood looking back at her until Dolores smoothed her robes and said, “You are joking, of course, hem, hem.”
“I am not,” said Minerva. She knew this was dangerous, that she was calling the Ministry’s attention to herself even more firmly, but these were times for doing dangerous things. “I suggest that you watch me closely, Dolores. You never know when I might do something…mischievous.”
She walked the rest of the way up the staircase, without Dolores attempting to follow her, and to her office. Amid Gryffindor reds and golds, she assumed her Animagus form and gave herself a thorough washing before the first of the students arrived for detention.
Protea was right, after all, she mused, as she spread her toes and bit out the small bits of dirt between them. There are times when the only solution is to look as mysterious as the Sphinx, and others when the only solution is to lick one’s own arse.
Author: Limyaael
Rating: PG.
Warnings: Only language.
Prompt: Quote 36. “All the world’s a cage.” Heanne Philips. (A guiding spirit, perhaps, but not used in the story itself).
Summary: McGonagall’s first Animagus transformation is…unexpected. A look at why the Head of Gryffindor might be a cat. Most of the fic is set before the canon begins, just after Grindelwald’s defeat, and it includes an OC.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and magical details mentioned belong to J. K. Rowling, not me.
Thank you very much to my betas,
eisoj5, goldjadeocean, ldymusyc, and nextian!The Way Out
“Please take your places.”
The words echoed through the room as Minerva walked to the center of it. This room on the second-lowest level of the Ministry of Magic was big enough to contain a Hungarian Horntail—and rumors said it had sometimes needed to, since some of the students had Transfigured themselves into creatures as large or larger. The walls were bare, blank stone, though wrapped in enough Shield Charms to make Minerva’s hair stand on end. Light came from black lanterns draped on enormous chains running from floor to ceiling, and so was dimmed and scattered. The warmest things in sight were actually the rough wooden tables, seven feet long at least, placed an equal distance apart down the middle of the room. The voice spoke from the darkness that began immediately beyond the tables. Only if they passed their examination would the candidates actually be allowed to see who spoke from within the darkness, Minerva knew. She wondered why for a moment.
Then she sniffed. As if I do not know. More drama, more mystery, more involved plots to contain and control those they fear might become dangers to their interests. It is the Ministry all over.
“Please concentrate.”
That, at least, Minerva could do without hesitation. She closed her eyes, and her mind cleared at once. She had practiced this particular Transfiguration for so long, without actually attempting it, that she had stamped it into the patterns of her breathing. Some of the other candidates must have taken longer to achieve the necessary state, however, because it was a long moment after the clearing of her mind when the voice spoke again.
“Please transform.”
Minerva reached out confidently. She knew the form she had come into the Animagus Registry Room to receive. They all did. Actually attempting the transformation before the Ministry administered the exam was heavily frowned on, and so of course she had not done that, but one was allowed to call visions of one’s animal. And she knew what it was: an eagle, dignified and stately.
She reached now for feathers, for not just the vision but the reality. Unspoken spells were easier than this. She stepped out of their territory and left them behind. When she was an Animagus, she could will herself to transform, and the animal shape would settle upon her.
The vision formed in her mind, close enough to touch but not yet tangible. She frowned and pushed harder. Distant as a sound in another room, she heard someone fall over and the voice from the darkness announce something, but she refused to absorb the substance of the words.
This was the land of rocks, of heaviness, of strictness and difficulty. Minerva McGonagall had never had trouble with any of these. She was a stickler for rules, a former Prefect, a former Gryffindor. She had followed all the proper rules for learning the Animagus transformation, even the ones she thought were outdated or silly or that the Ministry would most likely change next year, now that Grindelwald was defeated and the days of paranoia were slowly passing. She pushed forward, steps slowing but never faltering, and called.
The vision of the eagle wavered in her mind.
I will transform.
And then the stones around her shattered, and she felt herself shrink, the rules worked into her breath rising to her call as the animal shape had. Do not panic. Do not attempt to direct your transformation. Your body will know the proper form to take. Hold fast to calm.
She did, and then she opened her eyes as the voice from the darkness announced, in a light, chiming tone, “Please look upon yourselves.”
Minerva turned her head. The first thing she noted was the odd angle of her neck, and then that her sight did not have the clarity she had expected it would from her study of eagles. Of course, both those things were explained when she saw that paws and not talons rested on the floor in front of her.
Her transformation had failed.
Or, no, it did not fail, because I did Transfigure myself her mind chattered in confusion. But what did I do? What did I become? How could I have become anything but what the vision showed me I would?
“Please turn and look in front of you, successful candidates,” said the voice from the darkness.
Minerva pivoted, this time noting how easily she moved and that only one of the other candidates had managed to transform himself, into a bird of some kind. She felt nothing but sympathy for those who had failed. It was a difficult Transfiguration, and were it not for her strength and dedication to the study, she would have expected to fail it herself.
But you did.
The thought faded as the darkness drew back in front of her enough to show a line of conjured mirrors. Minerva examined the creature staring back at her, and felt a stab of disappointment. She was a cat, and, from the markings, not even a beautiful one, like those her mother had kept for the pleasure of their fur rubbing on her wrists. She was a tabby.
Around her eyes were circles that imitated the spectacles she had worn when she entered the exam.
It was the last touch. It was a mark of whimsy in what should have been the moment of her supreme triumph, the result of years of dedicated study.
In the rush of acute disappointment, Minerva hardly heard the voice announce, “Please leave the room, unsuccessful candidates.” Footsteps shuffled out, and she went on staring into the mirror. That any of the failures would have given much to be in her place did not matter to her. She would have given much to be in one of their places, disappointed but knowing she could try again after more study, rather than confined permanently to an Animagus form that was so…
So undignified.
“Please look up, successful candidates.”
Minerva looked up as the darkness dissipated. She moved too quickly, and her whiskers—she had not noticed she had them—twitched and reported odd messages to her. In trying to decipher them, she hardly realized at first that a white-haired witch stood where the darkness had been, regarding both Minerva and the bird with a serene expression.
“My name is Protea Smith,” she said. “I am one of the current five registered Animagi in Great Britain. You have made it seven. My congratulations.” She turned her head, intent gray eyes lingering for a moment on Minerva before they passed on to the other successful candidate. Minerva observed him for a moment and decided that he was a falcon. “It is uncommon to have this high a rate of success. Many candidates fail multiple times to achieve the transformation and decide to spend their lives doing other things. Many of those professions reward in their own ways, but none, I think, with quite the depth that the Animagus Transfiguration does—whatever else the candidates may spend their lives doing.” Again, her eyes came back to Minerva. “Well done. You may now transform back, and I will accompany you to complete your Animagus Registration forms.”
Changing back was easy enough. Minerva called a vision of her human body to mind and slid it into place over the cat body. She slipped out of that form and into human. Protea Smith gave her a nod of approval.
That glance, and the way that the older witch had looked at her before, gave Minerva the courage to ask the questions she knew she would need to ask. There had been nothing in the books about someone failing her own Animagus Transfiguration by succeeding. Perhaps Protea Smith, who would have to know many things about Animagi simply by virtue of being one, could give her the answers.
*****
“Tea?”
“Of course.” Minerva admired the way her own voice came out—just prim enough. A young woman in her twenties should not sound like a child, and she did not. She had urges to throw a childish temper tantrum, but she had not thrown one since she was two. There was no reason to start now.
Though you have apparently confounded all the accepted laws of Transfiguration?
And that was another thing. If Minerva had heard about the same thing happening to someone else, she would have wanted to spend time with books and records and history until she figured out the true reason behind that breach of law, the true harmony that it shared with the other laws at the deeper levels. Perhaps she would even have sought to write a book on the phenomenon, if it turned out to be an entirely new law.
Yet what she wanted most right now was to wrap herself in an eagle form and seek the skies on her own wings.
“I noticed that you seemed disconcerted when you changed back,” Protea said, handing the tea across her desk. She had brought Minerva to a small, warm room much less intimidating than she would have expected; even the desk separating them was small and made of time-worn wood, and the portraits on the walls were all of family members, most currently dozing. Then she had told Minerva to call her Protea. In some ways, this was more disconcerting than if she had frowned at Minerva and shaken her head with disapproval like Professor Blackbone. “The form was not what you would have expected, was it?”
Minerva sat up so fast that she nearly spilled a drop of tea. She set her cup back on the desk. “You have heard of cases like mine before, then—Protea?” The fact that she did not know what position the witch held in the Ministry, other than that she supervised students’ attempts to become Animagi, helped ease the name off her tongue. No easy resort to “Professor” or “Headmaster” in a situation like this.
Protea leaned back in the chair, obviously comfortable on its worn blue cloth, and beamed at her. Her robes were equally worn, Minerva noted, but Protea carried them with none of the embarrassment that Minerva’s mother would have shown had her own clothes looked a tenth as threadbare. “Not exactly, my dear,” she said. “I simply read your thoughts to learn what I wanted.”
Minerva stared at her. Protea went on smiling.
“You are a Legilimens?” Minerva looked again at the tired office. Perhaps this was a trap for spies, then. Very few ordinary witches or wizards needed to learn Legilimency, and Minerva had not even felt the feathery touch on her own thoughts that her Professors had mentioned during the one lesson where they had discussed the art. Who was Protea Smith, that she had needed it?
“Of course,” said Protea. “I was a spy during the War, my dear. A registered Animagus was a valuable thing, especially with my form.”
“May I see it?” Minerva reminded herself that she was not out of line as those mild gray eyes peered at her. She had become an Animagus, though her form was in doubt. Protea would not have answered the question, would not have invited Minerva to her office at all, if she found her impertinent.
“Indeed, I would not have,” said Protea, and put her teacup down. “I don’t see why you cannot view my other shape. The Ministry demanded that I keep my form a secret when having others know of it could have meant my death. The darkness during the exam is a remnant of that. But I am in a room alone with a sister Animagus who certainly intends to complete all the registration forms required by the Ministry, and the War is done with.” She closed her eyes.
The next moment, a pale barn owl fluttered where she had been, and regarded Minerva with large, calm gray eyes. It hooted once, and then slid back into the woman’s form. Protea took her seat, and her tea, and watched Minerva with eyes as serene as the owl’s had been.
Minerva leaned forward. “I can see why that would have been useful,” she whispered. Her mind soared for a moment. Protea could have flown long distances, secure in her Animagus form. She could have spied out the activities of Grindelwald’s followers in the darkness. She would have gone largely unnoticed, thanks to the flood of owls that poured across the wizarding world every day. It was such a service as Minerva might have hoped to have done—
If she had wings. If she were not a cat. She leaned away from Protea and picked up her tea again.
“And this again, my dear,” said Protea. “Really. What have you learned of Animagus forms? Tell me.”
Minerva knew what she meant—the first and most basic law. She recited it in a dull voice. She knew the law, and much good had it done her. “The wizard or witch who becomes an Animagus is always suited to his or her animal form, congruent at every level.”
“Of course we are,” said Protea. “Therefore, my dear, how can you think that you are not suited to being this tabby cat that you are? Of course you are. You even retain the spectacle markings around your eyes. That is rather clever, I think. Such a marking would have been a liability during the War, but thanks to the courage of Albus Dumbledore and others, including myself, we no longer have to worry about that, and will not until the next Dark Lord arises.” She sipped her tea a bit faster than she had before.
Minerva bit her lip.
“You might as well speak your thoughts around me,” Protea reminded her. “All I need to do to hear them is meet your eyes. But Legilimency gives me a headache now. Please speak them aloud.”
“The form I saw during the visions was an eagle,” Minerva whispered. She fought to keep her voice calm and steady. “A noble bird, a dignified bird, the kind of animal I—I have always seen myself as.” It was hard to admit that, but knowing that Protea would only sense the thoughts anyway gave her a certain comfort. “No, more than that, truly. The kind of animal I have always aspired to be. I would have clear sight, the ability to soar, an enjoyment of solitude. And I have always longed to see better, and I love to fly, and I have spent enough time alone among my books to like my own company. I knew I was suited to being an eagle. How could I be a cat?”
“Are you dignified and noble every moment of your life?” Protea asked.
Minerva gave her head a quick shake, almost enough to dislodge her hair from the neat braid she had gathered it in. “Of course not. But if that’s the case, then why isn’t my form a worm, or a hedgehog, or some other weak and crawling creature?” She closed her eyes. She would not cry. She hadn’t cried when her father died at the hands of half a dozen Dark wizards.
“Cats can be dignified,” said Protea, very mildly.
“And they’re cruel,” said Minerva. The image of torture in her head shifted, with disturbing ease, to become an image of a cat torturing a mouse. “And undignified. Have you ever seen one clean itself, Protea? I have no wish to spend the rest of my life with a mouthful of fur.”
“But that is what you have.”
Minerva blinked her eyes open, and then sat back in her chair. Protea was leaning forward across the desk. Her eyes had widened again, as if she had turned her face alone into an owl’s, and her gaze was as fierce as any hooked talon. Minerva swallowed. This woman fought in the War.
“You have become an Animagus,” said Protea, her voice as hard and heavy as the rocks that Minerva had shifted. “That is an honor granted to few. As you will have noted when I spoke to you and Mr. Jones earlier, there are only seven of us—registered—in all of Britain. You had the strength of will to push through the stone to your true form, the form that you were meant to have, not the form you wanted to see. You are a cat. You will learn why you have this form, if you do not know yet. Since I have looked within your mind, it is perfectly visible to me why you have it. You disappoint me, Minerva. I would have thought someone named for the goddess of wisdom would understand herself better.”
Minerva stood. Her face burned. She could not decide whether her shame or her anger was the dominant emotion. She only understood that she wished to be out of Protea Smith’s office and her confusing presence as soon as possible. “May I be excused?”
Protea was smiling again, the picture of kindness. “Of course, my dear.”
Minerva fled, and tried to ignore the image of herself as a cat running from a broom.
*****
“It unscrews the other way.”
When Minerva was sure that Peeves had heard her, she continued walking. She had a full evening ahead of her, including marking student essays, supervising two detentions, and approval of two seventh-year Transfiguration projects. She filled her mind with noble, dignified, altogether strict and orderly thoughts.
She met Dolores on the staircase. The other witch smiled sweetly at her and leaned nearer. Minerva stood her ground. The sickly sweet stench rolling from the toad made her want to hiss. If Dolores had ever mastered the Animagus transformation, Minerva thought, she would have been something small and sticky. In a way, Minerva was sorry that she had not. Surely a prowling cat could not be blamed for chasing something small and sticky, especially when the Ministry had not thought fit to share the truth of the High Inquisitor’s talents with her fellow professors.
“Hem, hem. I meant to ask you, Minerva,” Dolores said, and leaned closer still, as though they were confidants. “Do you not think that the mischief in this school is rather…out of hand? I thought you would have some techniques for dealing with it, as the Weasley twins, after all, were in your House.” She raised shining, toad-like eyes to Minerva’s face.
Minerva restrained herself from hissing. With difficulty. Now is not the time to be undignified. “They were in my House,” she said. “But I never crushed their mischief, as you will note.”
“Yes, hem, hem,” said Dolores, and touched one sheet of parchment in the enormous stack of them she was carrying. “I wonder if you could tell me how they managed to last almost seven years in this school, and in your House, and yet not be better-behaved?”
This is why I need the cat, Minerva thought, and answered. “I suspect that there is something of a kindred spirit between the Weasley twins and myself, Dolores, which led me not to crush their mischief even when I punished them.”
It was almost funny how quickly the other witch jerked away from her, eyes suddenly narrowing with suspicion. Minerva stood looking back at her until Dolores smoothed her robes and said, “You are joking, of course, hem, hem.”
“I am not,” said Minerva. She knew this was dangerous, that she was calling the Ministry’s attention to herself even more firmly, but these were times for doing dangerous things. “I suggest that you watch me closely, Dolores. You never know when I might do something…mischievous.”
She walked the rest of the way up the staircase, without Dolores attempting to follow her, and to her office. Amid Gryffindor reds and golds, she assumed her Animagus form and gave herself a thorough washing before the first of the students arrived for detention.
Protea was right, after all, she mused, as she spread her toes and bit out the small bits of dirt between them. There are times when the only solution is to look as mysterious as the Sphinx, and others when the only solution is to lick one’s own arse.
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Thank you!
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Most of the Minerva characterizations I see in fics- even ones where she's a child or it's long after the War- are completely stern, unbending, and right (sometimes to the point of being self-righteous). I thought the woman who told Peeves how to make mischief and so obviously disliked Umbridge deserved more of a mention.
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I'm not that good at JKR-ish names, so I went with something safe. :) And the last line is a favorite of mine, too.
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And what a spectacular last line. It should be embroidered and framed, and hung in Minerva's classroom.