Minerva and Myrtle?

[Stacy Stroud]

No: HPFGUIDX 32755

There's a scene in CoS (sorry, been borrowing the books sequentially, so I 
don't have it here to provide a chapter or page number) where McGonagall 
seems to have a rather personal reaction to the idea of students losing 
friends to the monster.

Is it possible that McGonagall was at Hogwarts at the same time as Hagrid, 
Tom, and Myrtle, and that she was personally affected by Myrtle's 
death?  That's the only other time someone was killed by the Basilisk.

McGonagall is supposed to be 70.  If that's a rounded-off age, or even an 
"as of book 4" age, she would be just about the right age to be a 
seventh-year when Riddle is a sixth-year and Hagrid a third-year.  And of 
course, even if she's older, she might have attended for part of their time 
at the school.  It certainly doesn't seem impossible that she knew Myrtle.

Of course, Myrtle doesn't acknowledge ever having any friends, and it 
doesn't seem that McGonagall spends any time with her ghost now.  It's 
possible that the young Minerva was one of the girls who teased Myrtle, and 
she now feels guilty for that just as she does for getting angry at Peter 
Pettigrew when he was her student.  In that case, though, you'd think that 
she would have made some effort to make amends to the ghost by now; she 
doesn't seem to be a Snape-type who would let her childhood insecurities 
affect her as an adult.  And Myrtle could still get at Minerva to haunt 
her, but doesn't.  Hmm, perhaps this doesn't work out as well as I thought.

Anyone else have this thought upon reading that bit in CoS?


Stacy Stroud (deadstop at gte.net)
Hex Entertainment, Inc. (http://www.hexgames.com)