Elkin's TBAY: Minerva McGonagall Is Ever So Evil! ( LONG)

[dumbledore11214]

No: HPFGUIDX 129145

Alla:

Umm, I hope you guys don't mind  me reposting another Elkins' post. 
So, is Minerva secretly evil or is she not? Now, personally I think 
that this is a brilliant piece of subversive reading of the text, 
but of course I cannot really say whether Elkins thinks that Minerva 
is ESE. :-)

Now, I don't really believe that Professor McGonagall is Voldemort's 
servant in disguise, although analysis is so very convicing, but one 
thing did bother me in GoF.

Why did Dumbledore not let Minerva in on Sirius' secret? Now, I do 
understand why he sent away Madame Pomfrey, but Minerva is his 
Deputy, supposedly his trusted second, why didn't Dumbledore make 
her stay?

Doesn't he trust her completely?

And here is Elkins for you. I snipped some, but it is still very 
long.


Elkins
<SNIP>

She (Minerva)wouldn't have *wanted* to ward off Crouch Jr.'s 
dementor if she was a follower of Voldemort's, now, would she?   

You think that little Barty "Oh, how I hate all those Death Eaters 
who walked free" Crouch wouldn't have ratted her out to the 
Ministry, given half a chance? You think that little Barty "No, 
Daddy, please save me, I just can't stand all of these scary 
dementors" Crouch wouldn't have tried to offer the ministry a little 
deal, if he thought that it might cut back his prison sentence by a 
year or two?  
You think that McGonagall was willing to take the chance that the 
next time someone loaded little Barty up with a mouthful of 
veritaserum, they wouldn't think to ask him anything about *her?*  
Hah!

If you ask me, the happiest moment in Minerva McGonagall's *life* 
was the moment that she first realized that Fudge's Dementor was 
going in for the Kiss.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she 
stumbled right *into* Snape, just to make sure that he wouldn't have 
time to do anything to stop what was about to happen.  Even if Snape 
did suspect that she'd done it on purpose, he'd never be able to 
convince Dumbledore of that fact.  Not after that amazing 
impersonation of Flustered Woman Who Can't Keep Her Head In A Crisis 
that McGonagall pulled off, with all of her shrieking and trembling 
and flushing and fist-balling and disarrayed hair and the like.

"Ward off Crouch Jr's dementor."  
> 
> <snort>  
<SNIP>
So let's just take a look at all 
of the canonical evidence stacked up against dear Minerva, shall we?
 
<SNIP>
For one thing, there's her behavior right after the third task.  
Crouch Jr. wasn't the only person at Hogwarts who seemed terribly 
keen to lure Harry out of sight of Albus Dumbledore that night, you 
know.  McGonagall gave it a shot as well.
> 
In fact, she tried to get Harry away from Dumbledore the instant 
that Crouch/Moody had been taken out of the action.  She, Snape and 
Dumbledore barge into Fake!Moody's office.  Fake!Moody is stupefied. 
Dumbledore kicks him onto his back and starts pulling his scary "the 
gloves are coming off now" Do Not Anger The Powerful Wizard 
routine.  Snape stares intriguingly at himself in the Foe-Glass.  
And what does McGonagall do?
 
>From _GoF, Ch. 35:
> 
> "Professor McGonagall went straight to Harry.
> 
'Come along, Potter,' she whispered.  The thin line of her mouth was 
twitching as though she was about to cry.  'Come along...hospital 
wing...'

'No,' said Dumbledore sharply.
 
'Dumbledore, he ought to -- look at him -- he's been through enough 
tonight--'
> 
> 'He will stay, Minerva, because he needs to understand,' said 
> Dumbledore curtly."


Oh well.  At least she gave it her best shot, right?  
She looks as if she's about to cry, eh?  Yeah, no kidding.  I'd look 
as if I were about to cry too, I think, if I'd just had the sort of 
terrible disappointment that Evil!McGonagall just suffered in that 
graveyard, and if Dumbledore wasn't going to allow me to curry my 
Dark Master's favor by delivering Harry up to him myself, and if on 
top of all of that, my idiot colleague was likely to be ratting me 
out to all of my enemies in a matter of only a few minutes.

If she looks as if she's about to cry when Crouch is thwarted, 
though, that's nothing compared to how she looks after they feed him 
the veritaserum.  She looks positively *sick* when that happens.  
And really, who can blame her?
 
Boy, though, what a relief when Dumbledore asked *her,* rather than, 
say, Snape, to be the one to stand guard over Crouch, eh?


>From _GoF,_ Ch. 36:
 
"'Minerva, could I ask you to stand guard here while I take Harry 
upstairs?'
 
'Of course,' said Professor McGonagall.  She looked slighty 
nauseous, 
> as though she had just watched someone being sick.  However, when 
she drew out her wand and pointed it at Barty Crouch, her hand was 
quite steady."
 
 
I'll bet it was.  
 
I'm telling you, Fudge's showing up with that Dementor was the best 
thing that ever happened to McGonagall.  She'd been standing there 
over Crouch racking her brains to try to think of some way to 
ensure his silence that wouldn't cast suspicion right back on her -- 
should she claim that he had tried to escape, perhaps?  No, no, 
Severus would see right through that one.  Well, okay, a memory 
charm perhaps? -- and then along came Fudge with his Dementor and 
solved all of her problems for her.  What a relief!  But a bad 
moment there for a minute as well, I'm sure.  As a general rule, I 
don't think that secret DEs feel at all comfortable with Dementors.  
In fact, she's in quite the state when she tells Dumbledore about 
what happened, isn't she?  You think that's fury?  That's not fury.  
That's terror comingled with profound relief.  That's a post-
adrenaline rush "there but for the grace of God went I" moment, 
which she then Ever So Cleverly exploits to lend credence to her 
whole Flustered Woman act.

Still not convinced that Minerva McGonagall Is Ever So Evil?  No?  
 Not even after all of that?
 
Well, okay.  How about we look at her appearance in the very first 
chapter of the very first book then?
 

First off, McGonagall's very appearance on Privet Drive that morning 
is *highly* suspicious.  Just what precisely is she doing there, 
anyway?  She implies that she has been waiting there for Dumbledore -
- and yet she keeps herself hidden from him, only revealing herself 
once he makes it clear that he knows perfectly well that she is 
there.  She claims that Hagrid was the one who told her that he 
would be there -- but only after Dumbledore himself first suggests 
that possibility to her, and she changes the subject very quickly 
thereafter.  She waits outside of the house on Privet Drive *all day 
long,* even though it seems clear that Hagrid and Dumbledore had 
prearranged to meet there only after nightfall.  Wouldn't Hagrid 
have mentioned that fact to her, if he had really been the one to 
tell her that she could find Dumbledore at 4 Privet Drive?  And when 
Hagrid finally shows up, he says absolutely nothing which supports 
her claim that she had spoken to him earlier that day.  No "Oh, 
Professor McGonagall, found the place all right, then?"  Nothing 
like that.

And when precisely would McGonagall have spoken to Hagrid, anyway?
It wasn't at Godric's Hollow.  She is surprised to learn that Hagrid 
has been entrusted with the infant Harry.
It couldn't have been after Godric's Hollow for the same reason.  
Also, she arrived at Privet Drive early enough in the day for Vernon 
Dursley to see her on his way to work that morning.

And if it were *before* Godric's Hollow, then why on earth wouldn't 
she have spoken to Dumbledore earlier that day?  She is addressed 
as "Professor," so presumably she already works at Hogwarts.  
Couldn't she have spoken to him there, or sought him out wherever he 
spent the rest of the day, rather than hanging some miserable suburb 
all day long just to wait to talk to him?
 
No.  I think that she's lying.  I don't believe that she came to 
Privet Drive because Hagrid told her that she could find Albus 
Dumbledore there.  In fact, I don't believe that she came to Privet 
Drive to speak with Dumbledore at all.
 
For one thing, just witness her response when Dumbledore first 
arrives:

"A man appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appeared so 
suddenly and silently you'd have thought he'd just popped out of the 
ground.  The cat's tail twitched and its eyes narrowed."

Now, I have two cats.  And I have to tell you: tail-twitching and 
eye-narrowing is absolutely *not* how cats express pleasure at 
seeing someone they have been waiting all day to have a nice chat 
with.  When cats twitch their tails and narrow their eyes, that is 
an expression of aggression, anxiety, or predatory intent.  It is 
not friendly cat behavior.

In fact, given that this particular cat is actually a witch in cat 
form, I would go so far as to say that she reacts to Dumbledore's 
appearance with outright *hatred.*
 
And what does she do then?  Does she resume her human form so that 
she can speak with this man she has supposedly been waiting for all 
day long?  Does she greet him, as one might expect?

No.  She does not.  She lurks in the shadows, watching him 
carefully.  She does not reveal herself to him until he leaves her 
no other choice:


"Dumbledore slipped the Put-Outer back inside his cloak and set off 
down the street towards number four, where he sat down on the wall 
next to the cat.  He didn't look at it, but after a moment he spoke 
to it.

'Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall.' 
He turned to smile at the tabby, but it had gone.  Instead he was 
smiling at a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square 
glasses exactly in the shape of the markings the cat had had around 
its eyes.  She, too, was wearing a cloak, an emerald one.  Her black 
hair was drawn into a tight bun.  She looked distinctly ruffled.

'How did you know it was me?' she asked."
Note the Slytherin green outfit.

Note also that McGonagall is apparently surprised to learn that 
Dumbledore can recognize her in her animagus form.  But the specific 
forms of registered animagi are a matter of public record! Hermione 
looks them up in _PoA._  So are we meant to understand that 
McGonagall was not, in fact, even *registered* at this point in 
time?  Was her animaga status her own little secret? Does McGonagall 
have a criminal past?

 
 
Nearly the entire wizarding world has been celebrating Voldemort's 
downfall all day long. People are ecstatic about what has happened.  
But McGonagall isn't.  She is *furious,* although she tries to mask 
her fury as irritation with the celebrants' lack of prudence:
  
"'When could you have been celebrating?  I must have passed a dozen 
feasts and parties on my way here.'
 
Professor McGonagall sniffed angrily.

'Oh yes, everyone's celebrating all right,' she said impatiently."
"Angrily."  Yeah, I'll bet she's angry.  
 
McGonagall is disdainful to the point of contempt when it comes to 
Muggles:
 
"'You'd think they'd be a bit more careful, but no -- even the 
Muggles have noticed something's going on.  It was on their news.'  
She jerked her head back at the Dursleys' dark living-room 
window.  'I heard it.  Flocks of owls...shooting stars...Well, 
they're not completely stupid.'"
 
 
 
Her agenda once she is speaking to Dumbledore is to pump him for 
information about Voldemort's rumored fall.  She seems particularly 
desperate to learn whether it is really true that Voldemort has been 
vanquished:

 
"'People are being downright careless, out on the streets in broad 
daylight, not even dressed in Muggle clothes, swapping rumours.'
 
She threw a sharp, sideways glance at Dumbledore here, as though 
hoping he was going to tell her something, but he didn't, so she 
went on: 'A fine thing it would be if, on the very day You-Know-WHo 
seems to have disappeared at last, the Muggles found out about us 
all.  I suppose he really *has* gone, Dumbledore?'"
 
<SNIP>
"Professor McGonagall shot a sharp look at Dumbledore and said, 'The 
owls are nothing to the *rumours* that are flying around.  You know 
what everyone's saying?  About why he's disappeared?  About what 
finally stopped him?'
 
It seemed that Professor McGonagall had reached the point she was 
most anxious to discuss, the real reason she had been waiting on a 
cold hard wall all day, for neither as a cat nor as a woman had she 
fixed Dumbledore with such a piercing stare as she did now."
 
Boy.  Jo sure didn't want us to miss that, huh?  It's *important* to 
the author that the reader understand how very anxious McGonagall is 
to learn the truth of this matter, as well as to note that she goes 
about trying to get this information out of Dumbledore in an oddly 
indirect fashion.  It is absolutely essential that the reader 
understand this.


Although she affects shock and grief when she learns that the 
Potters are dead, McGonagall's voice only actually begins to 
*tremble* when she approaches the possibility that voldemort may 
truly have been unable to kill Harry, and that his powers have now 
been broken.  It is only when she gains confirmation of this fact 
that she actually"falters:"

"'It's--it's *true?*' faltered Professor McGonagall.  'After all 
he's done...all the people he's killed...he couldn't kill a little 
boy?  It's just astounding...of all the things to stop him...but how 
in the name of heaven did Harry survive?'"
 
 Notice how quickly she corrects herself from her initial estimation 
of Voldemort's power ("after all he's done") to one more in keeping 
with a position of emnity towards Voldemort's cause ("all the people 
he's killed").
 
It is only after she is assured that indeed, it is true that 
Voldemort is gone that McGonagall actually begins to weep.
 
<SNIP> 
I also find myself wondering about all of that "too noble to use all 
the powers at your disposal" stuff.  Just how long has McGonagall 
been feeding Dumbledore that line, anyway?  From the very start, 
perhaps?  Might that not in fact have been one of her *jobs?*  
To try to ensure that no matter how ugly the conflict might become, 
Dumbledore would continue to place limits on his own actions?  To 
try to subvert and weaken the enemy? 


And you think that *Snape* is the likely Big Shock Betrayer of this 
series?
 
Nah.  Snape betraying Dumbledore wouldn't be a shocker.  McGonagall, 
though? Now, wouldn't that be something.  Not Dumbledore's left-
hand, but his right-hand. Not the head of House Slytherin, but the 
head of House Gryffindor.  Not the Designated Red Herring, but 
instead the very first member of the wizarding world that the reader 
ever *met?*

Now *that* would be a shocker.  *That* would be betrayal.  And not 
just for Dumbledore himself, but for everyone: Harry, Snape, all of 
House Gryffindor. And particularly for Hermione, of course.  
Hermione, who has that protege/mentor thing going with our dear 
Minerva.
<SNIP>