When Hermione is asked to update the National Dictionary of Wizarding Biography, she sets out to discover the mystery of what happened to Minerva McGonagall after the war. Along the way, she discovers some surprising things about herself and about h...
Minerva put her hands over her ears, but it was no use. They could probably hear her father as far away as Wick.
"I'll not have it, Aurelia! The child needs an education."
Minerva couldn't make out her mother's murmured reply, but her father's booming voice continued to carry as he said, "What, from that lackwit who gave you your letters and numbers? No, thank you."
She gave up covering her ears and sat on her bed, opening her clandestine copy of The Time Machine to where she'd left off. Squinting hard, she stared at the page, hoping that the extra effort would somehow transform the lines and arcs into something she could decipher.
Defeated, she took the hated specs from her pocket and put them on. Someday she was going to invent a spell that would cure astigmatism.
She couldn't hear her mother's soft voice, but she could guess what she was saying well enough. It was always the same argument. Mother didn't think Minerva should be at a Muggle school, and Father thought a tutor a waste of money.
While Minerva privately agreed with her father's opinion of her mother's education, she couldn't help hoping her mother would prevail so she could leave Moorehead. The other girls were stupid and coarse, and Mary Gordon had been merciless ever since Minerva had got her spectacles.
Mary had got what she deserved, though.
Minerva smiled a little when she remembered the stupid, shocked look on Mary's face when the skipping rope she'd been holding turned into a hissing snake. The other girls had scattered, screaming, while Mary had seemed unable to move. Minerva had had to knock the snake out of Mary's hands before it bit the girl.
Still, a pang of guilt shot through her. The incident had caused trouble for her parents, even though she'd overheard the Obliviator the Ministry sent tell her mother that it had been an impressive bit of Transfiguration, especially for unintentional magic.
The row downstairs was apparently not over. "If Muggles are such a terrible influence, you shouldn't have married one!" her father shouted.
Minerva looked back at her book, the pleasure of Wells's words filling her and gradually crowding out everything else.
Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future.
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