I don't own Harry Potter. Nor am I British… well, I'm 1/8 Welsh, but I'm not sure if that counts…

Anyway, still own nothing.

-Crow


The day at Hogwarts was similar to all others. Harry Potter and his friends Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger walked around discussing Professor Lupin's last lesson on Grindylows.

Despite the very brisk, comfortable autumn day outside, the air was tense from news of Sirius Black and the chill of the dementors was just outside the castle. Students could be heard whispering about the latest Black sighting getting closer and closer to Hogwarts and a few who had their suspicions eyed Harry as they said them. After all, the man killed his parents, the son must have been his unfinished business.

The trio made their way up to the Trelawny's Tower and closed the trapdoor as the bell tolled for the class to begin. With a rush of a bead curtain, the insect-like teacher seemingly drifted about the room "mysteriously" (though, Hermione suspected the "wavy" and unsteady walk was related to the overbearing scent of gin).

"Good morning, class." She murmured. "Today we shall be reading tea leaves in conjunction with smoke from incense sticks. Please light your incense with a match, no wands."

The class rummaged for the box of matches at each table. The purebloods could be seen and heard snapping the matches and scowling. All of the muggleborns and half-bloods had their incense burning in no time, more familiar with matches. Hermione helped Ron light his after he broke his fifth one clean in half.

Pretty soon, everyone had a small stick of incense giving off swirling patterns of smoke (though a great many of the purebloods in the class had their wands hidden and mumbled the incantation under their breaths). Trelawny ignored these and began intoning again.

"Excellent. Now, the ancients used smoke and various herbs in their divination and saw patterns in the smoke that would give visions of what was to come. I want all of you to calm your mind and breathe the smoke slowly." She calmly walked over to a small teapot whistling in the corner over a small bluebell flame.

Harry decided against inhaling the smoke as he saw Ron grinning dopily along with everyone else who blindly followed the instructions. Hermione muttered about 'complete rubbish', 'illegal', and 'drugging the students'. He was brought back by Ron suddenly putting a hand on his shoulder and shaking it.

"Hey, Harry."

"What?"
"Hey, hey, Harry. Harry. No…yeah, Harry."

"What is it, Ron?"

"Oh… uh, I forgot… wait! I remembered now! You're m-my b-best friend, you know that, mate?" Ron started slurring his words as he swayed back and forth.

"Uh, yeah. I guess." Harry was completely out of his comfort zone. What do you say to someone higher than Big Ben?

"No, no. I wanna grow old with you in evr'y way."

He grabbed Harry's robes and pulled him close to whisper. "In every way."

"Ronald," Hermione said firmly. The redhead let go of the stunned Boy-Who-Lived and shifted his gaze blearily to the bushy-haired witch. "If sand is little pieces of rock, does that make rock big pieces of sand?"

"Woah…" The youngest Weasley son sat in dumbfounded thought as his eyes went completely out of focus.

Harry was impressed. "Hermione, where'd you learn that?"

"My cousin once came to our Aunt's house high." She admitted sheepishly. "He went philosophical and was occupied for an hour."

Trelawny soon came back with a steaming pot of loose-leaf tea and poured it into everyone's cups. She beamed at Ron. "There! Look how relaxed and in tune with the Universe he is!"

"Yer right, Mrs. Mantis. I feel all the swirly-whirly timey-whimey stuff of the universe." The high third-year slurred.

"Hmm. You may need more time, dear. The timey-whimey stuff is more wibbly-wobbly, not swirly-whirly." The divination teacher moved on calmly as though she'd just done nothing less common than commenting on the weather.

Harry and Hermione shared a meaningful glance and returned to their cups. Harry absentmindedly swirled his cup and saw blotch after blotch after blotch. Referring to his textbook, none of them seemed to be right. Was the squiggly one death or insanity?

He barely looked into his cup before Trelawny snatched it up and inspected the inside of it. He sighed, expecting the usual ominous death prediction, but was surprised by a calm "hmm."

He waited expectantly as she kept peering deeply into his cup of tea. Hermione eventually let out a large sigh and spoke. "Professor, is it the Grim or not?"

The Divination teacher was brought out of her musings and handed the cup back to Harry. "No, my dear. Actually quite the contrary. Your leaves say you will meet someone old in a new way very soon."

The class (those that weren't tripping out) was startled that Trelawny didn't automatically predict instantaneous death.

"Though it did say you will meet a Hellion."

The class relaxed. Even though it was slightly deviated, the message still carried; you're as good as dead. All was right in the unstable world of Trelawney.

The mantis-like woman peered into the cup and jolted suddenly. Those who caught it heard her mumble. "Oh, God. I'd better hide my sherry."


"Ready Gred?"

"'Course Forge."

The two redheaded twins exchanged something under their desk all while looking ahead as if still interested in the lesson. McGonagall had her back to them, so it was the perfect time to pull it off. They'd worked for weeks making what looked like a small bicycle horn with feet and a clockwork key. Essentially, it was a loud distraction on the go.

Fred carefully wound the small mechanism and set it on the floor. The gyros started whirring and the device waddled away towards the Slytherins in the group.

They watched out of the corner of their eye as the device started slowing down, prepping for phase II. The bulb on the end inflated slightly as if it were sucking in a breath.

Then-

A horn's bulb kept inflating and deflating and it waddled around wildly, but in complete silence. Confused, the twins watched their invention wind down completely and go still.

They were suddenly aware of the entire class's eyes either on them or-

The troublesome duo felt the hair on the back of their neck stand up. Slowly, they turned around to the piercing gaze of Professor McGonagall. Her wand out and still pointed where the device would have gone off.

"While I do encourage the imaginative innovation you two have, I'm not as keen on having your inventions disrupt my class. Am I understood?" She said.

The twins nodded and she turned away, but flicked her wand at the prank and it rose onto their desks, where they promptly put it away.

Using the patented Weasley Twins Wireless, they "talked" to each other with a series of facial messages perfected over the years.

How do you reckon she knew?

Your guess is as good as mine. Why'd she give it back?

No idea, brother.

They decided to pay attention to the rest of the class. Despite their reputation, they were pretty smart. However, no one noticed until almost five minutes before class that a Slytherin pureblood supremist, Mordecai Chasting, had been silently ranting; hit by the same silencing charm that had silenced the horn.

When Pandora Smite finally noticed her betrothed's arms flailing for her attention, she watched his crude gestures to his mouth and seemingly pantomiming shouting… wait, he was shouting. She raised her hand. "Professor! Professor! Someone's hit Mordecai with a curse!"

The Transfiguration teacher turned and saw the boy red in the face from silently shouting for the past half an hour. "Ah, I apologize Mr. Chasting, I must have hit you as well as the horn with that silencing spell."

She waved her wand and the air was quickly filled with heavy, exasperated panting and dark muttering. The elder witch turned around quickly so no one noticed a small smirk.


The Golden Trio walked onwards to the dungeons. Even though it was difficult going from the top level of a tower to the dungeons of the castle, they knew Snape wouldn't care.

The arrived just as the bell tolled. Snape eyed the group disappointed that he couldn't take off for being late. Still, he had an entire hour to do so. He could wait.

"The instructions are on the board," He flicked his wand and the writing appeared. "The ingredients are in the cupboard," the doors opened, "you have one hour, begin."

The students immediately set out starting the fires beneath their cauldrons and preparing the ingredients. The subtle fumes started making a miniature cloud layer in the dungeon and the rhythmic chopping and scraping of ingredients on cutting boards was the only sound in the entire dungeon. Snape strode around, eagerly waiting for one of the Gryffindors to screw up while calmly making corrections to the Slytherin counterpart.

The course was interrupted as Professor McGonagall walked in, her lips pressed into a line. "Severus! This has to stop! That is the tenth first year student that has come crying to my office this week! And it's Tuesday!"

Snape sneered back at the strict elderly woman. "It's hardly my fault if they cannot brew a proper potion to save their lives."

"It is your fault because you're the one who's supposed to teach them! And you're supposed to do it in a way that does not scare them to quivering collections of catatonia!" She argued back.

The two continued their argument as the potions continued brewing. Snape was so engrossed in the discussion, he neglected that his most accident-prone student, Neville Longbottom, was nervously chopping his Gurdyroots the wrong way and added the crocodile tears at the wrong time. Subsequently, he also missed his godson, Draco, smirking as he tossed a small strip of goat leather into the poor Gryffindor's cauldron.

Neville, continued nervously adding ingredient after ingredient, his worry increasing as the potion started looking less and less like their Amnesia Draught. Instead of a green-blue like the book said, or even somewhere in the region of green-blue as half the class was in, his cauldron's contents were a bright shade of magenta.

He added the ambrosia extract to the bubbling solution and waited for any color changes. He sighed in extreme relief when the solution turned a rich violet like the book described… but frowned as the solution quickly turned to an ectoplasmic green… then backed away as it turned a volatile red.

At the signal of the patented Longbottom-Shout-of-Failure, everyone dropped below their desk to avoid the inevitable. Snape ducked behind the closest desk on reflex which left a poor, confused McGonagall wondering what happened and she turned around just in time for the cauldron to explode and drench her with the potion.

Neville almost fainted at the sight of his Head of House covered in his failed potion, and stammered out apologies before a glare from Snape shut him up. "Minerva, are you quite alright?" He asked. To the absolute shock of the class, it was almost… concerned.

"Y-yes, Severus… I- I think I… I…" The class gasped as the elderly Transfiguration teacher fainted and Snape caught her in his arms. The potions master quickly conjured a stretcher and levitated it with Professor McGonagall to the infirmary. He instructed an early let-out and gave several detentions to a still-upset Neville.


Within the hour, the entire school was buzzing about the news. Some speculated that McGonagall was poisoned by the faulty potion while several Slytherins jeered that she died which did nothing to help Neville's nerves.

In the Hospital Wing, Professor McGonagall was laid on a bed as Madame Pomfrey ran her wand to diagnose what had happened. Snape stood up anxiously when she put her wand away.

"Well?" He demanded.

"The potion doesn't seem to be lethal. She's in no danger that I can tell, but that potion is working on something. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it will do. We'll just have to wait it out and see what happens."

The potions master sighed in partial relief at the news that one of the better teachers at Hogwarts hadn't met her untimely demise in his classroom. He quickly left the Infirmary with Madame Pomfrey in tow to Professor Dumbledore's Office.

The aged Headmaster rushed to the infirmary after hearing the report from Poppy and Severus. He hoped the effects wouldn't be too terrible on Minerva. She was a very loyal Deputy and a great help when it came to the day-to-day running of the school.

"Now, you're sure she's alright?" He asked for the fifth time.

"Yes, though I still want to have an observation around her for the next few hours to see if anything happens." Poppy confirmed.

Dumbledore sighed in exhaustion. He had been around at Hogwarts for decades now. Even though the Headmastership was just in the past 50 years, he had been the Transfiguration Professor for 30 years prior after he'd settled down from research and exploration. In his time, he could remember almost every student that passed under the Sorting Hat. From Mr. Potter to Tom Riddle to Severus Snape. He could remember every single one, though Minerva McGonagall stuck out above the rest. For some reason, he could almost swear he heard…

He stopped just at the stairwells. He was hearing something. He located the source quickly and peered up the long staircase at a figure riding the rail. He jolted as a sudden Post-Traumatic Flashback shook him to his core.

But that was… wasn't it… no… He frantically thought. His normally-brilliant mind short-circuiting wildly.

His thoughts were cut off as a blur of fiery red hair flew past shouting "WOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"


The Great Hall sat calmly at lunch, the murmurings of the day mostly about Professor McGonagall and any news. All conversations stopped shortly after a large BANG! was heard outside the door, followed by several thumps and a loud cat screech (several students later found out that was Mrs. Norris).

The doors flew open and revealed a young, 16 year old witch with bright red hair that almost put the Weasley family to shame. Her emerald robes fit rather snugly against her and a matching pointed hat was tilted on her head. She twirled her wand in her hand as she strode in.

But the mysterious girl stopped suddenly and looked around in confusion. She spoke with a faint Scottish brogue. "Who the bloody f*ck are you people?"

Several students were taken aback at her language and the Professors at the Head Table were almost ready to take off points… except they had no idea who she was let alone what house she was in.

Her arrival was shortly followed by a flushed Albus Dumbledore, a confused Poppy, and a poker-faced Snape. The girl turned around and smiled at Dumbledore. "Holy Hell, Professor, how'd you get so old?"

The winded Headmaster didn't get to reply before Snape angrily spoke. "That is no way to talk to a Headmaster, young lady. Even then, I can't imagine how many points you've lost your house; riding on stair rails, causing massive school property damage, endangering the life of a cat-!"

"Oi! I skidded so I missed the beastie!" The hotheaded witch retorted, the accent becoming more pronounced.

"Have you any respect for the school rules?" He replied.

"Nope." She popped the "p" very deliberately.

An incensed potions master looked ready to kill the girl, but Professor Sprout quickly decended from the Head table to intervene. "Now Severus, I'm sure we can deal with everything later, at the moment, we still have no idea who our mysterious guest is. My dear, would you care to introduce yourself?"

The redhead grinned. "Allow me to oblige, ma'am. I am the Queen of Chaos! The Madame of Mischief! The Redheaded Rebel! For all your rule-breaking needs;

Mad Minnie McGonagall, at your service!"


AN: Yes, that was a Dr. Who reference. 'Blink' was one of Tenant's best, in my opinion. The "rock and sand" thing was from a philosoraptor meme.

Also, the "in every way" was supposed to be from D*ck Figures if anyone caught it.

I know McGonagall is supposed to have black hair, but for some reason, I just see the younger version of McGonagall (at least my version) as having bright red hair, or at least reddish-brown hair (think Pixar's Brave, but with less curls… oh, I think I found where this Scottish, rule-breaking redheaded McGonagall came from). I got inspired for it from a deviantart picture for a young Minerva McGonagall.

I hope you enjoyed.

Until next time.

-Crow