Speaker 1: Athostudios. It is late and the fire is low, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk with you to night about someone
Speaker 1: who has been sitting in my mind for some time now,
Speaker 1: some one who stands at the center of a great
Speaker 1: many stories, and yet somehow remains in the popular imagination
Speaker 1: a bit of a caricature, a stern professor, a stern face,
Speaker 1: a voice like cold stone. And yes, there is truth
Speaker 1: in those impressions. But there is also a great deal more.
Speaker 1: And it is the more that I want to explore
Speaker 1: with you to night. We are going to talk about
Speaker 1: Minerva McGonagall. Now imagine that you have stepped through the
Speaker 1: portrait hole after hours, when the castle has gone quiet,
Speaker 1: and the only light stretches out before you, like a
Speaker 1: book you have been meaning to open for years. Somewhere
Speaker 1: above you, a stare preaks, and the martls with a matter.
Speaker 1: The plumbing still works in its own stubborn way. The
Speaker 1: clock on the mantle chimes the half hour, and you
Speaker 1: realize it is half past ten, and you are exactly
Speaker 1: where you want to be. We are going to spend
Speaker 1: this evening with Professor Minerva McGonagall, and I want to
Speaker 1: start by acknowledging something that might seem obvious but actually
Speaker 1: bears saying out loud. She is one of the most
Speaker 1: enduring presences in the entire film series. She appears in
Speaker 1: seven of the eight movies. She is there for the sorting,
Speaker 1: there for the quidditch matches, there for the battles, there
Speaker 1: for the quiet moments when Harry needs someone to tell
Speaker 1: tell him the truth when the truth is hard to hear.
Speaker 1: She is the stern face at the head of the table,
Speaker 1: the sharp she turns into a cat, and then, more
Speaker 1: often than not, there is a pause and a shrug,
Speaker 1: and the conversation moves on to some one else. Minerva
Speaker 1: Macgonagall is one of the most beloved characters in the
Speaker 1: entire franchise, and I would argue she is also one
Speaker 1: of the most overlooked. We adore her, we quote her,
Speaker 1: we mim her, we dress as her for Halloween, but
Speaker 1: when it comes time to really dig into who she is,
Speaker 1: to understand the weight of her choices, and the depth
Speaker 1: of her history and the full measure of her character,
Speaker 1: we tend to skim the surface and move on. She
Speaker 1: is a character we think we know, but do we
Speaker 1: really What does it mean that we love her so much,
Speaker 1: and yet examine her so little. Is it that she
Speaker 1: is so perfectly drawn that we feel we have nothing
Speaker 1: left to uncover? We adore her, we quote her, we
Speaker 1: meem her, we dress as her for Halloween. But when
Speaker 1: it comes time to really did into who she is,
Speaker 1: to understand the weight of her choices, and the depth
Speaker 1: of her history, and the full measure of her character
Speaker 1: with face value, the way we might accept a stone
Speaker 1: wall without wondering what plies beneath. I do not believe
Speaker 1: it is the former. I do not believe that Minerva
Speaker 1: macgonagall is a character who has given her everything she
Speaker 1: has to offer. Or is it that she is so
Speaker 1: perfectly drawn that we feel we have nothing left to uncover.
Speaker 1: I think shares a character who has been hiding in
Speaker 1: plain sight, a character whose richness is there for anyone
Speaker 1: who is willing to look a little longer. We are
Speaker 1: going to do Cephis. We are going to do depth.
Speaker 1: We are going to read between her lines, examine her history,
Speaker 1: and pull apart the moments that seems simple on the
Speaker 1: outside to see what is really happening underneath. We are
Speaker 1: going to ask why she loves the students she pretends
Speaker 1: not to love why she bends the rooms when she
Speaker 1: bends them, why she stays at a school that has
Speaker 1: asked her to sacrifice so much for so long. We
Speaker 1: are going to find a woman behind the bun, and
Speaker 1: I think we are going to be surprised by what
Speaker 1: we find, so let me pour myself something warm. Let
Speaker 1: me settle deeper into this chair and let the fire
Speaker 1: crackle low while we begin. We are going to find
Speaker 1: the woman behind the bun, and I think we are
Speaker 1: going to be surprised by what we find, So let
Speaker 1: me pour myself something warm. Menorda the Gunnegar is one
Speaker 1: of the most beloved characters in the entire Wizarding World.
Speaker 1: She is below it for good reason, but beloved characters
Speaker 1: as when her one liners and we do not remember
Speaker 1: the silences. So to night, we are going to do
Speaker 1: something that Minerva herself would approve of. I think we
Speaker 1: are going to be rigorous. We are going to be honest.
Speaker 1: We are going to look at her the way she
Speaker 1: would look at one of her own students if that
Speaker 1: student had handed her an essay that was full of
Speaker 1: feeling but short on evidence, with care, with high standards,
Speaker 1: with a refusal to look away from the truth even
Speaker 1: when the truth is complicated, and I think we will
Speaker 1: find in the end that the truth about Minerva Agnagul
Speaker 1: was born in the Scottish Highlands in the autumn of
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, the eldest of three children in a
Speaker 1: family that was in its own way, as her father
Speaker 1: was a Presbyterian minister, a man named Robert McGonagall, who
Speaker 1: was proud of his daughter's magical ability in the way
Speaker 1: that a man of his generation and his faith might
Speaker 1: be proud of a miracle. He could not quite explain.
Speaker 1: He loved her. I think he was proud of her,
Speaker 1: but he also could not quite understand her, and that
Speaker 1: gap between love and understanding would shape much of Manava's childhood.
Speaker 1: Her mother, however, was a witch. Her name was Isobel,
Speaker 1: and she was fierce and proud, and she had spent
Speaker 1: her own life navigating the strange terign between the muggle
Speaker 1: world and the magical one. Isobel understood what her daughter was,
Speaker 1: and she understood what her daughter could become. And she
Speaker 1: was determined that nothing, not her husband's quiet deday discomfort,
Speaker 1: not the isolation of the harulance, not the cold and
Speaker 1: the stone and the long winters would stand in the
Speaker 1: way of that becoming. And so Minerva grew up in
Speaker 1: a house that was half ministry and half magic, and
Speaker 1: she relearned very early that the world there was tension
Speaker 1: in that house, the kind of tension that does not
Speaker 1: her sow itself in arguments, and to read the weather
Speaker 1: in her father's face, and to read the weather in
Speaker 1: her mother's face, and to know when to speak and
Speaker 1: when to hold very still. She was the eldest child,
Speaker 1: and the most ambitious, and the most aware of the
Speaker 1: stakes of every small moment. Her younger siblings, a brother
Speaker 1: and a sister whose names we never quite learn, looked
Speaker 1: to her, I think in the way that younger siblings do,
Speaker 1: with admiration, with a little bit of fear, with the
Speaker 1: sense that she always knew what she was doing, even
Speaker 1: when she did not. But she was also a child,
Speaker 1: and she was lonely in a particular way that children
Speaker 1: of such complicated households often are. She was brilliant, and
Speaker 1: her brilliance set her apart. And she knew from a
Speaker 1: very young own age that she was different from the
Speaker 1: other children in the village, not better, exactly different. She
Speaker 1: could do things they could not do and see things
Speaker 1: they could not see. And they knew from a very
Speaker 1: young age that she was different from the other children
Speaker 1: in the village, not better, exactly different. She could do
Speaker 1: things they could not do, and see things they could
Speaker 1: not see, and that knowledge sat in her chest like
Speaker 1: a stone that she could not swallow and could not
Speaker 1: spit out the first time she saw We are told
Speaker 1: in the stories that the castle appears to those who
Speaker 1: are coming to it for the first time as though
Speaker 1: it has bent her entire life, feeling as though she
Speaker 1: did not quite fit anywhere. The site of a place
Speaker 1: that was built specifically for people like her must have
Speaker 1: felt like the first full breath after years of breathing shallowly.
Speaker 1: She was sorted into gryffinder, and this is important because
Speaker 1: it is so often presented as though it were inevitable,
Speaker 1: as though Minerva a Gonagul were always going to be
Speaker 1: a gryffinder, as though the sorting hat had no real
Speaker 1: choice to make. But the books tell us, and this
Speaker 1: is a detail that is easy to overlook, that the
Speaker 1: storting hat considered putting her in Ravenclaw, considered it seriously,
Speaker 1: and I think that matters. I think it tells us
Speaker 1: something we should not skip past. Because Minerva Agnacle was
Speaker 1: above all else a woman of the mind. She was brilliant,
Speaker 1: She was precise. She was the kind of student who
Speaker 1: made other students feel inadequate simply by being in the room.
Speaker 1: And she was that way not because she tried to
Speaker 1: make them feel inadequate, but because she could not help
Speaker 1: being exactly what she was. Ravenclaw would have made a
Speaker 1: kind of sense for her the life of the intellect,
Speaker 1: the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, the company
Speaker 1: of others who valued wit and wisdom, and the sheer
Speaker 1: pleasure of understanding. It tells us that beneath the intellect,
Speaker 1: beneath the precision and the discipline, there was a courage
Speaker 1: that even she did not fully understand. It tells us
Speaker 1: that beneath the intellect, beneath the precision and the discipline,
Speaker 1: there was a courage that even she did not fully understand.
Speaker 1: A willingness to choose the harder path, a willingness to
Speaker 1: put herself in situations where she could be hurt, where
Speaker 1: she could fail, where she could be proven wrong. Gryffando
Speaker 1: was not the easy fit for her. Gryffando was the
Speaker 1: choice that made her stretch, and I think, if we
Speaker 1: are honest with ourselves, that is exact sac with Minerva
Speaker 1: would have wanted. She was not as we sometimes imagine,
Speaker 1: a stern child who grew into a stern adult. She
Speaker 1: was a child who was learning very carefully how to
Speaker 1: be stern with herself first and then with the world.
Speaker 1: The posture came later, the standards came later. In the beginning,
Speaker 1: I think there was just a girl who wanted very
Speaker 1: badly to be good enough, and who discovered that the
Speaker 1: world was not particularly interested in whether she was good
Speaker 1: enough for Section four war weariness, the woman who had
Speaker 1: time for romance. Her years at the Ministry were conspented
Speaker 1: by work, by the slow climb up the ranks of
Speaker 1: the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. And she was good
Speaker 1: at her job. She was respected, and she was, if
Speaker 1: she was honest with herself, quite lonely in a way
Speaker 1: that she had long since stopped examining. She was good
Speaker 1: at her job, she was respected, and she was, if
Speaker 1: she was honest with herself, crowd lonely in a way
Speaker 1: that she had long since stopped examining. Now, in the
Speaker 1: autumn of her engagement, the offer came again. Dembledore was
Speaker 1: looking for a new transfiguration proferre. He wanted her. Minerva
Speaker 1: was not so sure she had one to her, witting
Speaker 1: quietly in the garden of a small cottage in Devon.
Speaker 1: She had been proud of them, proud of the way
Speaker 1: they had chosen to fight, proud to call them friends.
Speaker 1: Students were punished for the small infractions. They were forced
Speaker 1: to use dark magic on each other. He wanted her
Speaker 1: Mineva was not so sure. She had potentially understand their
Speaker 1: place with a more estatished human Menave watched it happen
Speaker 1: day after day and every part of her tenure here,
Speaker 1: making sure that everyone knows it. Let us move forward
Speaker 1: now to her years at Harcourt's, because this is where
Speaker 1: she became who she became. She was, by all accounts,
Speaker 1: a model student, top grades, perfect marks, the kind of
Speaker 1: academic record that makes other students want to throw their
Speaker 1: books into the nearest lake. She was, by all accounts,
Speaker 1: a model student, top grades, perfect marks, the kind of
Speaker 1: academic record that makes other students want to throw their
Speaker 1: books into the nearest lake. She was, by all accounts,
Speaker 1: a model student, top grades, perfect marks, the kind of
Speaker 1: academic record that makes other students want to throw their
Speaker 1: books into the nearest lake. She was, by all accounts,
Speaker 1: a model student. Top grades to perfect marks, the kind
Speaker 1: of academic record that makes other students want to throw
Speaker 1: their books into the nearest lake. She was, by all accounts,
Speaker 1: a model student, top grades perfect marks, the kind of
Speaker 1: academic record that makes other students want to throw their
Speaker 1: books in to the nearest lake. She was, by all accounts,
Speaker 1: a model student, top grades perfect marks, the kind of
Speaker 1: academic record that makes other students want to throw their
Speaker 1: books to the nearest lake. She was, by all accounts,
Speaker 1: a model student, top grades perfect marks, the kind of
Speaker 1: academic record that makes other students want to throw their
Speaker 1: books into the nearest lake. She was, by all accounts,
Speaker 1: a model student, top grades perfect marks, the kind of
Speaker 1: academic record that makes other students want to throw their
Speaker 1: books into the nearest lake. She saw the warmth beneath
Speaker 1: the frost, She saw the fear beneath the confidence, and
Speaker 1: that defense are not the same as the thing they
Speaker 1: are defending. Their friendship lasted for decades, through school and beyond,
Speaker 1: and I think it is one of the most important
Speaker 1: relationships in Minerva's life, not the most dramatic, certainly not
Speaker 1: the most written about, but the most steady, the most reliable,
Speaker 1: the kind of friendship that does not need to prove
Speaker 1: anything to any one, least of all to itself. She
Speaker 1: was morrow heavily from that method. Later, though, she would
Speaker 1: strip away some of the theatricality and replace it with
Speaker 1: something more direct, more efficient, more hers. But there was
Speaker 1: another side to her hogaut years that we do not
Speaker 1: always talk about, and that is her relationship with quidditch.
Speaker 1: We learn in the later books that Minerva McGonagall was
Speaker 1: once a fierce quiddage player, a chaser, with a reputation
Speaker 1: for being ruthless on the pitch. But I think it matters.
Speaker 1: I think it matters a great deal because quidditch is
Speaker 1: not just a sport in the wizarding world. It is
Speaker 1: a demonstration of courage, of reflexes, of the willingness to
Speaker 1: put your body at risk in pursuit of a goal.
Speaker 1: It is, in other words, deeply griffinder, and the fact
Speaker 1: that Minerva played it and played it well tells her
Speaker 1: something about who she was when no one was watching.
Speaker 1: She was not just the bookish student who sat in
Speaker 1: the front row and took perfect notes she was some
Speaker 1: one who understood on a gut level what it meant
Speaker 1: to take a risk, what it meant to fly, what
Speaker 1: it meant to want something badly enough to let yourself.
Speaker 1: The process of becoming and an abigas is notoriously difficult
Speaker 1: and notoriously dangerous. You have to be able to look
Speaker 1: at your own magical core and bend it to your
Speaker 1: will in ways that field at times like violence. For
Speaker 1: section three, Courtship with Elphinstone break decision to become teacher.
Speaker 1: But something had been growing in her quietly for months,
Speaker 1: a restlessness, a sense that the ministry work, however competent
Speaker 1: she was at, it was not the work she was
Speaker 1: meant to do. She had been offered a teaching position
Speaker 1: at Hogwarts before, in her early twenties, and she had
Speaker 1: turned it down. The timing had not been right. She
Speaker 1: had wanted more experience, more certainty. Lily had been in
Speaker 1: grim Fronder a few years behind Minerva, and even then
Speaker 1: there had been, to put it charitably, an enormous prap
Speaker 1: during their school years. But he had grown into a
Speaker 1: good man, a brave man, a man who loved with
Speaker 1: his whole heart. She was not his godmother. She was
Speaker 1: not his family, but she was his professor, and that
Speaker 1: meant she would protect him with everything she had. She
Speaker 1: had lived through one war already, she had buried friends
Speaker 1: and colleagues and students. She had seen the worst that
Speaker 1: wizards could do to each other. But nothing had prepared
Speaker 1: her for the slow, grinding cruelty of the Carrow regime,
Speaker 1: for the way they systematically dismantled everything that made Hogwarts Hogwarts.
Speaker 1: She had never trusted him, she had never forgiven him
Speaker 1: for what he had done, for the cruelty. There is
Speaker 1: a particular kind of loneliness that comes from being able
Speaker 1: to transform yourself that no one else will ever see.
Speaker 1: That you carry a secret so deep that it has
Speaker 1: become indistinguishable from your own skin. She was seventeen years
Speaker 1: old when she completed the transformation. She was, by any measure, extraordinary,
Speaker 1: and she was underneath all of that extraordinary, And she
Speaker 1: was underneath all of that extraordinary, and she could have
Speaker 1: done anything. She could have gone into research, she could
Speaker 1: have joined the ministry, She could have pursued a dozen
Speaker 1: different paths that would have been easier and safer, and perhaps,
Speaker 1: in my respect, otherness estragingly so he could have done anything.
Speaker 1: She could have underneath the quest. She chose to teach.
Speaker 1: She chose to stay at Hogwarts with top honors, and
Speaker 1: she could have done anything. She could have gone into research,
Speaker 1: she could have joined the ministry. She could have pursued
Speaker 1: at a dozen different paths that would have been easier
Speaker 1: and safer, and perhaps even more prestigious than the one
Speaker 1: she chose. But she chose to teach. She chose to
Speaker 1: stay at Hogwarts, in the very building where she had
Speaker 1: spent seven years learning who she was then November. It
Speaker 1: is the kind of love that looks at a student
Speaker 1: who is struggling and does not give up on them,
Speaker 1: even when the student has given up on themselves. Minerva
Speaker 1: McGonagall became a teacher because she believed that what happened
Speaker 1: in that castle mattered, that the young people who walked
Speaker 1: through its doors were worth investing in, that the world
Speaker 1: could be made better, one student at a time if
Speaker 1: you were willing to put in the work. And she
Speaker 1: chose transfiguration because it was the subject she understood best,
Speaker 1: and because it demanded the thing she valued most, which
Speaker 1: is precision, the ability to look at something and see
Speaker 1: what it could become. The ability to take a piece
Speaker 1: of matter and through skill and will and concentration, make
Speaker 1: it into something else. That is what transfiguration is at
Speaker 1: its core. It is the art of seeing potential and
Speaker 1: making it real. And if that sounds like a metaphor
Speaker 1: for teaching, well I think it is. She began teaching
Speaker 1: at Hogwarts in the early nineteen sixties, and she was,
Speaker 1: by all accounts exactly what we would expect. Stern demanding.
Speaker 1: If that sounds like a metaphor for teaching, well, I
Speaker 1: think it is. She began teaching at Hogwarts in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen sixties, and she was, by all accounts exactly
Speaker 1: what we would expect. But this was also the period
Speaker 1: in which her personal life took a turn that would
Speaker 1: shape a rear the professor and forget that she was
Speaker 1: also a woman who wanted very badly to be loved.
Speaker 1: She met a wizard named Elphinstone Urkertat, and she fell
Speaker 1: in love with him. And he was, by all accounts,
Speaker 1: a good man, a kind man, a man who loved
Speaker 1: her and who was willing to marry her, and who
Speaker 1: made her feel, for a brief time as though the
Speaker 1: loneliness that had been her constant companion might quietly be lifting.
Speaker 1: They became engagement in the early nineteen seventies, and she
Speaker 1: read her sims, who had a mugger father and a
Speaker 1: witch mother and a family history that could not be
Speaker 1: reduced to a simple label. And Elphinstone, who was a
Speaker 1: good man, accepted it, though we are told that he
Speaker 1: never married. We could say that she was being practical.
Speaker 1: We could say that she was being cowardly. We could
Speaker 1: say that she was being cowardly. We could say that
Speaker 1: she was prioritizing the war over her own happiness, and
Speaker 1: that would be true, but it would also be incomplete.
Speaker 1: I think the truth is simpler and more painful than
Speaker 1: any of those explanations. I think she was afraid not
Speaker 1: of the death eaters, not of the war, not of
Speaker 1: the danger. She was afraid of being a burden. She
Speaker 1: was afraid that had married witch with a husband who
Speaker 1: could not defend himself against the kinds of magic that
Speaker 1: had been her home since she was eleven years old.
Speaker 1: She simply continued, day after day, year after year, being
Speaker 1: exactly who she was, which was a woman who had
Speaker 1: chosen duty of a Cawkwortz. His name was Robert, and
Speaker 1: he was everything. She was not, unstudied, unimpressive, the kind
Speaker 1: of man who might easily be overlooked in a room
Speaker 1: full of witches and wizards. And yet there was I think,
Speaker 1: a quiet pride in her relationship with him, not the
Speaker 1: kind of pride that announces itself, the kind that simply is.
Speaker 1: She knew what he was worth. She knew that the
Speaker 1: work he did mattered, even if no one else seemed
Speaker 1: to notice. When he died, whither told that she was
Speaker 1: grief stricken, though she showed it to no one, said,
Speaker 1: perhaps the portraits on the wall, who were always listening.
Speaker 1: This is the period that I find most moving. Let
Speaker 1: us move forward now to the First War itself, because
Speaker 1: this is a version of the truth that has been
Speaker 1: polished smooth by retelling. Vollemort rose to power in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies, and Hogwarts was not immune. The castle,
Speaker 1: which had always been a sanctuary, became a battle ground
Speaker 1: in ways that were not always visible. There were students
Speaker 1: in the school whose families were death eaters. There were
Speaker 1: students who were half blood or muggle born, and who
Speaker 1: lived in fear of what might happen to them if
Speaker 1: the wrong person found out. And menever a gonegul taught
Speaker 1: them all. She taught the children of the people who
Speaker 1: were murdering her friends. She taught the children who would
Speaker 1: in a few years pick up wands and cast curses
Speaker 1: and do things that she could not forgive, even as
Speaker 1: she sat across from them at the grading table and
Speaker 1: marked their gal scores with the same pench she taught
Speaker 1: everyone who sat in her class room, and she held
Speaker 1: them to the same standards. That is not neutrality, that
Speaker 1: is something else, That is a kind of courage that
Speaker 1: does not get enough credit. And then came the night
Speaker 1: that changed everything, the night that the Potters were killed.
Speaker 1: We are not told in the books where Minerva was
Speaker 1: when she heard the news. We are not told in
Speaker 1: the books where Minerva was when she heard the news.
Speaker 1: We are not told that the next morning she was
Speaker 1: at the borough, and that she was holding baby Harry,
Speaker 1: and that she looked at her him and knew exactly
Speaker 1: what had been asked of him, what had been asked
Speaker 1: of all of them, the burden that had been placed
Speaker 1: on his small shoulders before he had even learned to walk,
Speaker 1: and who would need someone to stand between him and
Speaker 1: the world that was going to use him up. She
Speaker 1: did not spoil him. She did not make excuses for him.
Speaker 1: She had him to the same standards she had any
Speaker 1: one else. She gave him the dignity of being treated
Speaker 1: like any one else, and that his future would require
Speaker 1: him to be brave, and that she would not lower
Speaker 1: the bars simply because the bars was high. The decade
Speaker 1: that followed was a long one, a slow war, a
Speaker 1: war of attrition fought not on battlefields, but in the
Speaker 1: corridors of power in the world. The decade that followed
Speaker 1: was a long one, a slow war, a war of attrition,
Speaker 1: fought not on battlefields, but in the corridors of power.
Speaker 1: And the castle became in that she learned a truth
Speaker 1: in Dunbar's office. I think there was a terrible kind
Speaker 1: of relief because the uncertainty was over, The waiting was over.
Speaker 1: The years of wondering whether she had made the right choice,
Speaker 1: whether she should have left, whether there was more she
Speaker 1: could have done. Those years were over. The fight was here,
Speaker 1: and she knew exactly where she stood. She joined the
Speaker 1: Order of the Phoenix, and she did the work that
Speaker 1: needed to be done. The missions, the secrecy, the endless,
Speaker 1: grinding effort of fighting a war that could not de
Speaker 1: bry A hide. And then Harry arrived at the Gurrow
Speaker 1: for the first time, and she greeted him with that
Speaker 1: stern warmth that was so uniquely hers. She was not effusive,
Speaker 1: she was not sentimental, but she was present. She was there,
Speaker 1: and I think that is what Harry needed more than
Speaker 1: anything else in those years. Not someone who would tell
Speaker 1: him he was special, someone who would look at him
Speaker 1: and see the same person she had always seen, which
Speaker 1: was a boy who was trying his best and who
Speaker 1: needed to try harder. The year under the Currows was
Speaker 1: bounced of her life. The school was of the students
Speaker 1: were being tortured, The people she had dedicated her life
Speaker 1: to protecting were being hurt in ways that she could
Speaker 1: not prevent. She was injured, she was exhausted, She was
Speaker 1: I think close to breaking. There is a moment in
Speaker 1: the books where she considers leaving, and we feel the
Speaker 1: weight of that moment, the sheer impossibility of staying. But
Speaker 1: she stayed. She stayed because she understood, in a way
Speaker 1: that perhaps only a teacher can understand, that Harmer. She
Speaker 1: had to take him. She had hated him for nearly
Speaker 1: two decades, and she had made that hatred into a
Speaker 1: kind of armor, a way of protecting herself from the
Speaker 1: pain of having been wrong about someone she had trusted.
Speaker 1: And then in a single moment, that armor was shattered,
Speaker 1: and she had to reckon with the truth that the
Speaker 1: man she had despised was the man who had protected
Speaker 1: her students or along. We are not told what she
Speaker 1: said to his portrait in the years that followed. We
Speaker 1: are not told to admit she had been wrong. She
Speaker 1: was not too proud to admit she had been wrong.
Speaker 1: She was not too proud to grieve for someone she
Speaker 1: had misjudged. And that, more than any of her battles,
Speaker 1: more than any of her duels, more than any of
Speaker 1: her perfect test scores, is the thing I admire most
Speaker 1: about her, the battle itself. The night of the final fight,
Speaker 1: she was there in the castle at the center of
Speaker 1: the storm, and she was fighting not just with magic,
Speaker 1: but with everything she had. She lost colleagues that night,
Speaker 1: she lost students. She watched the place she had given
Speaker 1: her entire life to burn, and she kept going, because
Speaker 1: that is the thing we must remember. Against everything, against
Speaker 1: all odds, against the weight of everything that was thrown
Speaker 1: at them, the light held, and Nerva Magonagon was there
Speaker 1: at the end to see it. Let me continue writing
Speaker 1: the remaining sections. The courtship unfolded. Even though he was
Speaker 1: passionate with her, passion, with her reserve, and her insistence
Speaker 1: on maintaining separate residences, he made her laugh, which no
Speaker 1: one had done in a very long time. He made
Speaker 1: her feel seen. I have loved being your colleague, he said. Finally,
Speaker 1: I will always love you, but I will not be
Speaker 1: the reason you do not become who you are meant
Speaker 1: to be. She watched colleague's change. She watched friends grow afraid.
Speaker 1: She watched the slow erosion of the world she had known,
Speaker 1: the world where magic was a joy and a wonder,
Speaker 1: and instead it became a thing to be feared, a
Speaker 1: weapon to be wielded. In the night, she remembered the
Speaker 1: morning she heard. She was in her office at Hogroot's,
Speaker 1: already deep in the work of the new term, when
Speaker 1: Dumbledore came to find her his face. She knew the
Speaker 1: castle better than anyone alive, including the portraits and headmistresses
Speaker 1: we are told were difficult, not because they disagreed with her,
Speaker 1: but because they had opinions, and they had been giving
Speaker 1: opinions for centuries, and they were not about to stop
Speaker 1: simply because a new person was in charge. She had
Speaker 1: to navigate that. She had to find her own way
Speaker 1: of leading a school that had been led in one
Speaker 1: way or another for a thousand years. And she did.
Speaker 1: She rebuilt the curriculum, she hired new teachers. She refused
Speaker 1: to let the trauma of the war define the school
Speaker 1: that would come after it. She was firm, and she
Speaker 1: was fair, and she was exactly what Hogwarts needed in
Speaker 1: those years of recovery. They came to her with the
Speaker 1: same questions every child asks, and she had never forgotten that.
Speaker 1: She had never let the years, or the battles, or
Speaker 1: the losses take that from her. This is what I
Speaker 1: want to leave you with to night, as the fire
Speaker 1: burns lower and the hour grows late. Minerva McGonagall was
Speaker 1: not a saint. She was not a hero in the
Speaker 1: way that word is sometimes used. She was a woman
Speaker 1: who made choices, and who lived with the consequences of
Speaker 1: those choices, and who refused to let the way to
Speaker 1: them crush her. She was a woman who made choices,
Speaker 1: and who lived with the consequences of those choices, and
Speaker 1: who refused to let the weight of them crush her.
Speaker 1: She was lonely, and she was brave, and she was
Speaker 1: sometimes wrong, and she was willing to admit it when
Speaker 1: she was She did not give a speech, she did
Speaker 1: not make a grand gesture. She simply stood there and
Speaker 1: she was present. And real care. People who will not
Speaker 1: lower the bars simply because it is convenient. People who
Speaker 1: will tell you the truth even when it hurts, because
Speaker 1: they believe that you are worth the pain of hearing it.
Speaker 1: The nerver A Gonagual was one of those people. And
Speaker 1: if you were lucky enough to have some one like
Speaker 1: that in your life, then you know exactly what I
Speaker 1: mean when I say that you are better for having
Speaker 1: been seen by them. The fire is very low now,
Speaker 1: and the air is very late, and I think it
Speaker 1: is time for us to rest. But I hope when
Speaker 1: you close your eyes to night, you will think of her,
Speaker 1: not the caricature, not the stern face from the movie.
Speaker 1: The woman, the real one, the one who was afraid
Speaker 1: and who kept to going anyway, the one who was
Speaker 1: applayed and who kept going anyway, the one who was
Speaker 1: afraid and who kept going anyway, the one who was
Speaker 1: afraid and who kept doing anyway.