Disclaimer: I'm black haired, black eyed and still living with my parents. Do you still think I'm J K Rowling?

No need to worry, all the followers of my story Knowing. That one is still going to be the priority but this plotline just wouldn't leave me. It's based on the question of what would happen if Minerva was less inclined to let Albus get away with everything concerned with Harry and decided to take his letter to Harry in person, accompanied by a still unpossessed but aligned with Voldemort Quirrell because he used to be the Muggle Studies and Minerva doesn't really know how to make do in the Muggle World, being more used to finding her way in residential areas and not hotels around cities she isn't aware of, in the search of a boy whose already shifted addresses once before and might again.

So, just read and review please.

Minerva McGonagall looked up from the papers she had been staring at uncomprehendingly at the sound of a knock on the door. For a second, she looked unseeingly at the wooden door to her office before shaking her head clear. Ever since Harry Potter's address had changed after the deluge of letters sent the previous day, none of which had been answered, Minerva had had a sense of deep foreboding. She had only realized that something was the matter when every new student except the Muggleborns who she would be handing out the letters to personally had owled their acceptance. Except Harry Potter.

But that was no reason to ignore her duties. She had taken her worries about the continued lack of any response from the boy to Dumbledore but the man had refused to do anything about it except say that they would wait till Harry's birthday to take any drastic measure. If it seemed like there was going to be no response, he'd send Hagrid along to fetch the boy. Hagrid honestly! She had nothing against the half-giant. He was a very sweet man who would never hurt anyone, but he had a certain lack of delicacy. Not to mention his big physique that might make a child afraid of him, especially if the child had been taught to hate magic, as Minerva was very afraid Harry had. Why else would he not respond, unless it was because he didn't want to have anything to do with them?

Another knock, louder this time, jerked her out of her thoughts. This had been happening with alarming frequency, her relapsing into her own thoughts without thinking about what was going on in the real world. She raised her voice and said in a carefully controlled voice, "Enter."

The door opened slowly, as if to give her time to compose herself, and she took it gratefully.

"Are you busy, Minerva?" Quirinus asked her slowly.

"No, do come in," She replied, ignoring the way the time he took to carefully articulate his words so as to not stutter. She feared that the man would never recover after his disastrous sabbatical. The man had been a wonderful researcher, a fit Ravenclaw if not Gryffindor material. But the encounter with the vampires hadn't done anything for his self-esteem and the way he went around afraid as if someone was going to jump out of the shadows to attack him and the stutter he spoke in unless he was very careful were clear indications that something had gone horribly wrong.

She was proud that he still decided to take the DADA post even if all the Professors of that subject always left in mysterious circumstances. It was why she made sure to never act as if he couldn't do something, gave him the time he required to properly speak and allowed him to interrupt her whenever he wanted to as long as she wasn't very busy, just like now.

"Are you worried about something?" the man asked as he sat down gingerly in the armchair in front of her.

She debated over whether or not to tell him but then decided that it couldn't do any harm. It was already the 29th of July and she had no doubt that when she sent the letter to little Harry, she wouldn't receive any response tomorrow. She looked at Quirinus' face, his purple turban and even though she knew that the Headmaster wanted her to send Hagrid, not even go herself to meet Harry Potter, she had a feeling that she had found a loophole. She knew that she was quite intimidating and had no idea as to what to do when out in the Muggle World. It was why she preferred taking letters to the Muggleborns while they were at home. It wasn't that big a hardship to cast a few notice me not charms, apparate to their doorstep and knock. She had no idea what to do in a place she took to be a sort of Muggle inn.

Minerva knew her speculative looks at Quirinus were making him nervous, he had started fidgeting but she ignored it. Albus had had a free reign in the matter of poor Harry, and look where they were now! The poor dear was running away in order to get away from them, or at least his Uncle and Aunt were. She nodded decisively as she made up her mind. She had an address, a name and hopefully a companion fully able to move around in the Muggle World.

"Quirinus," Minerva asked the man who had started sweating nervously. "Can you dress Muggle enough to pass by unnoticed?"

He both nodded and said nervously, "Y-yes."

"How do you feel like accompanying me to," she took a look at the letter on the top of her desk and then continued, "Ah…Railview Hotel, Cokeworth?"

Quirinus blinked dumbly. Minerva was sure she would be able to get him out of that habit. A bit of positive reinforcement was all that he needed. And what was more ego boosting than knowing that she completely depended on him to collect The Boy Who Lived? After all, who was to say that she hadn't simply felt out of the loop on Muggle things and Quirinus being the previous Muggle Studies teacher hadn't decided to take her out to see the Muggle World? And who was to say that they hadn't coincidentally decided to rest in the same hotel as Harry Potter? They could have simply been there to look at the railway after which the hotel had been named after.

Regardless to say, Quirinus hadn't been too eager to go to some Muggle inn to spend the night at 11o'clock in the night. It was a feeble opposition he put up, especially since every student who' passed out from Hogwarts under her tutelage had learned that when she looked at him like that, it was time to give in. Hagrid had been confused but amenable to give them Harry's vault key when she asked.

The woman who had come down to the reception to give them their keys hadn't been too pleased, neither was the boy who had been woken up to take their luggage, two small overnight cases though it was. It was with some horror that she realized that the small rickety room type thing with metal bars on the front was something they were supposed to enter. It wasn't their room was it, because she had asked for two separate rooms, and had certainly expected a bed at least. Her horror must have been clearly visible, since the boy pulled at his cap and said disgruntledly, "No need to puke up all over me shoes. It works just fine."

"I'm s-sure it d-does," Quirinus interceded. "B-but my aunt d-doesn't like elav-vators."

"As you say Guv'nor," the boy said while pulling the bars open to one side. The ride was one of her worst memories, she was sure that any moment, the elev-thing would fall down and she'd be crushed. She was sure that had her arms and legs been visible in the jacket-skirt combination she was wearing, her hair standing on end would have been quite visible. As it was, she nearly scampered out of the death chamber the moment the boy pulled the bars aside again after the thing stopped, her stomach roiling and skin clammy.

Quirinus also looked shaky when he came within her line of sight as she resolutely refused to look at THAT THING again but not as much as she did. They both stayed silent as the boy showed them their rooms and went on his way. It took her a few tries with her hand as shaky as they were but she finally managed to get her door opened and motioned for Quirinus to enter as well.

"N-Now will you t-tell me what's g-going on?" he asked the moment the door was closed.

Minerva felt a little guilty about having brought the man down to stuttering in her presence but she wasn't sure that they wouldn't have encountered Albus before leaving and she had no confidence in Quirinus' Occlumency shields. She also had no faith that Albus wouldn't try to get inside Quirinus Quirrell's head, even if only for his own good.

But there was no reason to not tell him anything now, and so she told him what she had decided in her office. "Harry Potter hasn't been replying to the letters we have been sending him. The Muggles he was sent to live were one of the worst kind that I have ever met and I am afraid that something bad may have happened. Albus refuses to listen to me, which is why we are here right now. I wish to get to Mr. Potter without drawing any undue attention, from the Muggles, from Albus or the supporters of You Know Who."

"He is h-here right n-now?" Quirinus stammered out.

Minerva gave him a short nod. He deserved to know at least this much. He had been a great help, transfiguring their clothes into something that wouldn't be too conspicuous, finding out where this place was by using some of the maps of Britain that he had, finding their way from where the Knight Bus had dropped them since it didn't drop them in front of the hotel, just in the city, when the hotel was on the very outskirts of it. She wasn't sure she would have made it this far without him and Minerva had always been one to give credit where it was due.

"Will I have to do much?" Quirinus asked slowly with a thoughtful expression on his face.

She shook her head as she said, "I don't want you to get in trouble with Albus, much better if I handle most of it. I am used to giving the news to the Muggleborns in a manner that they become eager to learn magic."

Quirinus nodded before saying politely, "I'll be retiring then."

"Yes, of course," she agreed. "We will need an early start tomorrow to find out where Potter is since I don't know what his uncle's name is. Best to get a good night's sleep."

Quirinus arched an eyebrow as if to say that it would be impossible I they went to bed so late and hoped to get up early the next morning. She ignored it and proceeded to shoo him out. She just hoped that Quirinus wasn't a deep sleeper. She wasn't going to wait for him to complete his beauty sleep to start searching for the child of two of her Lions. She didn't even feel guilty of having lied to Quirinus about not knowing where Harry was. She knew his room number but since she didn't want to make a bad impression by waking the boy up in the middle of the night, she didn't feel it was the right thing to divulge his location to anyone else, even a fellow Hogwarts Professor.

Harry wasn't having a nice day, or even a nice week. Someone had been desperately sending him letters that he hadn't been able to answer. He only hoped that they hadn't given up and there would be another letter for him today, one that he might be able to catch. He started eating his toast with cold tinned tomatoes, deciding to leave the stale cornflakes for last. He had never liked cornflakes and so had always looked upon it as a good thing that he was rarely given any, but he was too hungry to refuse food, even if it was something he didn't like. He just hoped that his stomach felt full before he had to eat them, futile though it was.

He looked up when two people who somehow looked out of place in the small room that acted as the hotel's dining room entered through the door. One was a pale young man in a brown suit and thick brown hair and the other was a strict looking woman with her black hair tightly tied back in a bun and wearing spectacles. The woman seemed to be searching for something while the man looked as if he would rather be anywhere else. He quickly looked away as the woman looked at him but not before she caught a good look at him.

It was with some degree of surprise that he saw her make her way towards the table he was eating with at with his Aunt and Uncle and cousin. He refused to call them his family. However, it was with complete shock that he saw the woman stop right in front of him, the man hurrying after belatedly, and ask in crisp tones, "Mr. Harry Potter?"

Harry just nodded mutely. He hadn't done anything strange since the snake incident so it couldn't be that he's accidentally gotten into trouble, and even if he had, it would have been in the presence of only the Dursleys since he hadn't met anyone else the previous day. Even though he racked his brain hurriedly, he couldn't come up with any reason why the stern looking woman and the scared looking man would be looking for him.

He didn't have to wait for long. She continued in extremely formal tones, her voice easily rising over Uncle Vernon's blustering remarks about nosy busybodies, "I am Professor Minerva McGonagall, Transfiguration Professor and Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

Harry stared at her incredulously, she was joking. Right?

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