Chapter 2:

In which Professor McGonagall is a teacher, not a doctor!

Hogwarts. For anyone who is not a muggle, the name represents a breathtakingly beautiful castle in the scottish highlands. Hogwarts grounds are well kept, and green rolling moorland surrounds the castle lawns. Large greenhouses, though diminished by the magnificence of the Castle itself, are still impressive. The loch, bright, and glittering in the sunlight, except where the trees in the nearby forest overshadow it, is cool and deep, and is inhabited by a giant squid and a colony of merpeople. The Dark Forest, known to students as the Forbidden Forest, is home to centaurs, unicorns, and all manner of magical creatures, including, it is rumored, Acromantulae.

Of course Hogwarts isn't always pristine—Scotland is famous for its precipitation, and in dreary rain, it is not always possible to see Hogwart's glory through the mists. In winter, a thick blanket of snow often hides the distinctive features of the landscape. But, to a muggle, perhaps a hiker on the moors, Hogwarts is just, well, not Hogwarts. At most, it seems a ruin, but, such a ruin that it is not interesting enough to want to explore. It is less intact than other more famous ruined castles, Castle Urquart for example, on Loch Ness. The wards ancient wizards put on the school to make it seem this way for muggles also suggest that exploring would be unsafe, and 'wasn't there something you were supposed to be doing elsewhere?' A muggle arriving at the edge of the wards would think just that, and leave.

Professor McGonagall wondered whether the same would be true of an injured muggle. Would a muggle on Hogwarts grounds with a broken leg really believe he left the kettle on, and hobble off without a backwards glance? Such a muggle might hobble off to find help perhaps? After all, if Hogwarts appears a ruin to them, muggles wouldn't expect someone who could aid them to be inside. How often did muggles come across Hogwarts by chance? She'd never seen one on Hogwarts grounds in all her years of teaching.

He must be a muggle, this unconscious man lying at the edge of the forest. Unfamiliar to the cats, the man, if he was a wizard, must not have gone to Hogwarts. If he were extremely old, the cat would have mentioned it, extremely young, man would have translated as boy. (Well, kitten-man if you want to be literal, a man so young that if he were a cat he would still be in the care of his mother.) If the man were a werewolf, that would have been obvious to the cats, and the entire situation would have been different. At the very least it would have been mentioned! Cats have a keen sense of smell. Different from a dog's, but a cat still uses his nose to help him interpret the universe around him, and if this unconscious man were anything other than human, the cats would have known. That ruled out animagi as well. Cats immediately knew that she was a cat animagus, and thus ceased their 'Humans are so unobservant' eye blink commentary, when she was present, for they knew she could understand them.

Professor McGonagall realized her thoughts had been taking enough of her attention that her pace had slowed, and the tomcat she was following was almost thirty feet ahead of her down the corridor. She broke into a run to cover the distance, thankful she was in cat form. It would seem unprofessional for students to see her run through the halls. Running in corridors was frowned upon at Hogwarts except for emergencies. Although, she reasoned, if the man was hurt, it was an emergency. The ginger tom barely glanced at her as she reached his side, and continued his saunter with his tail high. She noticed he was a bit bow legged, but that didn't slow him down at all. By the time the two of them reached the Entrance Hall, she was gasping for breath. "I ought to traverse the corridors in my cat form more often" she panted, "I didn't realize I was so out of shape, or that the hall was such a distance from my classroom." The tom looked amused, but declined to comment.

They reached the main entrance, two enormous solid wooden doors, decorated with elaborate carvings. Seeing they were closed, the professor went to transform, but the tom let out a quiet hiss, and lead her to a smaller archway to the right of the main doors. This was made of stone, but when the tom touched it with his nose, he was able to walk through it as if it was air. Her eyes wide with surprise, Professor McGonagall, emulating him, warily approached the archway, and pressed it with her nose. Nothing happened. She attempted to walk through it as he had, and met with a solid wall. If she'd been human, she would have said a few choice words, but she was a cat, and instead, sat down a few paces away, and licked her shoulder nonchalantly until the sting of embarrassment had faded. If she'd been human, she would have used the doors, she thought grumpily.

A ginger paw, claws out stretched, appeared from within the wall. She again attempted the stone doorway, neatly avoiding the grasping claws of her companion, and to her delight, this time it allowed her through. A chill breeze ruffled her fur, bringing with it the scents of the outdoors, and while she could not see anything yet, being somewhere within the wall, she could dimly hear the sound of Hagrid, the half-giant Gamekeeper, whistling to his boarhound. In the half instant where she was marveling as always in her feline abilities, the darkness of the wall changed into the brightness of an early winter afternoon. Blinking, she was able to make the fluffy orange blur beside her resolve itself into the unmistakable image of the tomcat laughing at her. Her eyes narrowed. She turned away from him so that he couldn't see her face, and said in her iciest tone, "I believe we were out here for a reason?"

Down the stone steps, across the lawns, past Hagrid's hut, and the Whomping Willow, the two cats trotted towards the treeline. As they crossed the snowy expanse that separated them from their target, the tabby asked the ginger how long the man had been there. The tomcat twitched his ears, "He wasn't there this morning, and he was discovered when the sun was highest."

Two hours. She felt cold. She'd been grading essays while this man was freezing outside in the snow. No matter that she had instantly left to help him as soon as she knew he was there; she still felt guilty. She was Head of Gryffindor House after all, the house of the brave and bold, protectors of the weak, and defenders of the innocent. And as Deputy Headmistress, she had an obligation to make sure all on Hogwarts grounds were safe in her charge.

A dark shape was crumpled at the roots of a large beech tree at the edge of the forest. Her cat eyes, attuned to movement like the eyes of most hunters, easily picked up the rise and fall of the man's chest as he breathed. There was no reaction to their approach except for a mew'd greeting from the unconscious man's feline guardian. Her nose's ability to pick up scents was slightly dulled by the cold, but she noted the smell of blood the cat had mentioned. It did not smell fresh. She circled the still form on the ground, her whiskers brushing his clothing as she navigated her way towards his face. Gazing at it, she pressed her nose against his cheek.

The man's skin was cool and clammy. He was lying in snow, and it was winter after all! "I'm not a mediwitch!" she thought in a panic, "what am I supposed to do?" Her feline instincts took over. Warmth. "He's too cold. He needs to be warm." In an instant, she transformed, the suddenness of her change from cat to human startling the small tortoiseshell curled on the man's chest. Standing up, her head brushed a snow laden limb, but luckily the resulting snowfall missed both the man on the ground and the two cats curled around him. She raised her wand, and cast a number of warming charms in quick succession. "There. Now Poppy won't have to treat him for frostbite." She was pleased with herself. Being the Mistress of Transfigurations at Hogwarts for so many years, she still hadn't lost her knack for charms. As a human now, she observed her patient. She could see many more visual details from this vantage point than she had as a cat.

Pale skin, too pale, even with her warming charms in place, dark hair, the man, for he was indeed a man and not a boy, could have passed for a distant relative of at least half a dozen pureblood families she could name. His face wasn't extremely memorable in his unconscious state, and his aristocratic features were common in the wizarding world, reminiscent of those that ran in the families of Black, Rookwood, Smith, Nott, LeStrange, Crawford, and Longbottom, just to name a few. If you stop to consider it, it was obvious that the older families shared some genetic heritage. This man could have belonged to any. His clothes supported that assessment. He was a wizard then, wearing dark grey robes that were once well tailored to fit his lean frame. Now though, they looked as if he'd been wearing them for at least a day, and from their state, she could only assume he'd been traipsing through the forest until he collapsed at the edge of it. You could achieve the same effect if you'd hung them on a wall in a room full of bored kittens, for a myriad of small tears and rips marred the otherwise high quality fabric. They bore no distinctive crests or insignia, and the cut was something generic that almost everyone was wearing nowadays. The robes looked like Malkins fall line of the current year, so whoever he was, he kept up with the fashion. Too bad that didn't help her to identify him.

She estimated his age to be somewhere in his late twenties or thirties, but you never know with wizards. Some age better than others. The cats had been right, he wasn't known to her, this mysterious stranger lying on his back on the cold ground at the edge of the forest...Oh. Yes, she needed to do something about that. It wasn't that she was absent minded, nor was she going senile, but the sense of urgency she'd felt when she first laid eyes on the man had faded. She levitated him gently with her wand, prompting the tomcat to growl a disgruntled mrrr at being displaced from his spot in the crook of the man's arm. He'd been lying on the ground, limbs akimbo, for long enough that the robes had begun to show signs of frost in the creases where they'd met the snow, and his clothing had stiffened enough that it didn't dangle as she eased him through the air, keeping him level so as not to disturb him. Even so, he stirred slightly, letting out a faint moan. Something about his voice did seem familiar, but whatever it was could wait until he was somewhere dry and warm. The tiny queen on his chest crouched there, digging her claws into the fabric, tail lashing, as stiff as the clothes, her green eyes glaring her displeasure at the unexpected flight.