Hi! Like the summary says, this is the tale of Minerva McGonagall's student years at Hogwarts. I don't have a Pottermore account, so I made up my own headcanon about her family, which turns out to be completely wrong. Oops. I'm going to try to keep this mostly in-universe, though—she's not going to defeat Voldemort or anything like that. The only other thing I'm changing is the age of some of the other characters—I wanted all of her friends to be characters we know from the books, to cut down on the number of OCs. The only major OC is Minerva's sister, and you don't need to like her. ;)

Enjoy!

Venus McGonagall named her new toad Troy; her sister, Minerva, in a fit of pique, named her owl Mycenae. Their parents sighed.

Minerva was starting her first term at Hogwarts tomorrow and wanted to be excited, really, but instead she was in a sulk. Venus was a fifth year, very pretty, got the best marks in the school, and was Ravenclaw's Seeker; Minerva was Venus' little sister. That's who she'd been her whole life, and she didn't see how following Venus to Hogwarts would change anything. She'd be a Ravenclaw, of course, just like every other McGonagall for two hundred years, and if her marks were good they'd only be what the teachers expected from her. If she made the house Quidditch team in her second year, it'd be because Venus was team captain by then, and Venus could be ever so kind. Maybe she'd be a prefect by the time Venus became Head Girl. That was always the way things went.

Minerva scowled and threw another wadded pair of tartan socks into her trunk.

Her parents hadn't even let her have a cat! Minerva loved cats, partly because they made Venus sneeze. A cat would have made Minerva feel a bit less lonely—after all, no one was going to send her post except for her family, and they had owls of their own. Mycenae was a poker-faced barn owl with uncanny red eyes, not much of a friend in himself.

On the bright side, the trip to Diagon Alley had been fun. While Venus wandered off with some school friends, Minerva had lost herself inside Flourish and Blott's, so now she had an alarmingly large stack of books to pack. ("There's a library, you know," Venus had said.) Quidditch Through the Ages went on the bottom; Hogwarts, A History down the side; Great Animagi inside her cloak; and The Rise and Fall of Grindelwald on top, along with the books from her school list. Minerva was especially eager to get to the part of Rise and Fall that described Albus Dumbledore's heroic defeat of the dark wizard. Tricky Transfiguration, the last book Minerva had bought, still lay open on her pillow—she was determined to be as prepared as possible for her hero's class.

There was a knock. "Are you finished packing, Minerva?" Came her mother's voice through the bedroom door.

"Yes, mum." Everything she owned but the book and her toothbrush was in the trunk. It was a big trunk, but when she put it like that..."everything" seemed so small.

"That's good. Now, don't stay up too late reading, dear; we need to get an early start tomorrow."

"Yes, mum."

"And don't be nervous, Minerva, love—you will start making friends as soon as you get on the train."

"Yes, mum."

Minerva heard her mother sigh. "Good night then, dear."

As her mother walked away, Minerva began blowing out the candles, all but the one by her bed. She wasn't ready to sleep quite yet—she wanted to finish the book before her first Transfiguration class. Professor Dumbledore would have to be impressed.

The next chapter is written—I'll post it in a day or two. In the meantime, please review? See you soon! *heart*