McGonagall Gives it a Shot by DSDragon

Author's Note: This was part of an application I made for the Role-Playing game, Inflecto, which can be found on the live journal at .

Disclaimer: Nothing you might recognize from the Harry Potter universe belongs to me. That's all J.K. Rowling and anybody else she's given the rights to. The only bit of this story that is remotely mine is little Samuel Smithe, and even that is dubious.

McGonagall Gives it a Shot

Well, that was certainly an interesting discussion, Minerva McGonagall pondered on her way to the Great Hall for dinner after her last class of the day.

One of her first-year Ravenclaws, after successfully changing his matchstick into a needle for the first time, had curiously posed a rather redundant question. Or rather, a question that, to any Wizarding-born child, would have been redundant.

As it was, young Samuel Smithe was Muggle-born, so the question was rather new, and judging by the look that had been in Mister Smithe's face, it was also quite pressing.

"Professor McGonagall?" the boy had looked up to ask as she turned to evaluate the next student's progress.

"Yes, Mr. Smithe?" she answered.

"I was just wondering, and I tried asking other people, but they just looked at me like I was nutters, and I really want to know . . ."

"Yes, Mr. Smithe?" Minerva wondered why the youngest, the most inquisitive--and therefore the most likely students other than Fred and George Weasley to try her patience--were always the last ones she saw during the day.

"Well, why does everyone say 'You-Know-Who' instead of 'Voldemort?' I mean, that's his name, is it not? And if everyone's so afraid to say it, why isn't Professor Dumbledore? And how come--"

Minerva had held up a hand at that point, to forestall Samuel's litany.

Reigning in the annoyance she felt at being asked a question that had nothing to do with Transfiguration, since the boy had said, after all, that he'd not been able to get answers at more appropriate times, Minerva spoke gently.

"Mr. Smithe," she began. "Those who were alive and active parts of the wizarding world during the last war fear You-Know-Who. He did many terrible and unspeakable things, and a few in the beginning believed that speaking his name gave him power, that one who named him aloud would draw his attention.

Of course, this is ridiculous; no one can know all the times someone calls them by name. But fear is a powerful emotion, Mr. Smithe. Eventually, the trend spread throughout the wizarding world, and no one--save Professor Dumbledore and a select few to include Harry Potter--has spoken his name since."

Wide-eyed, Samuel had pressed on.

"But why don't they call him 'You-Know-Who?'" he asked. "Aren't they afraid of him too?"

Minerva stayed quiet for a moment, thinking of how best to answer. When she spoke, her voice seemed to come from farther away than the few feet between she and her student.

"In a sense, Mr. Smithe, they are afraid," she said. "But they are not afraid of him directly. Rather, Professor Dumbledore, and even Mr. Potter, are more afraid of what You-Know-Who will do to the rest of us if he is allowed free reign over Wizard-kind."

She remembered something then.

"And even if that is not the case, Mr. Smithe," she glanced briefly around the room, taking in the wide-eyed, captive audience of eleven-year-old Ravenclaws. "Professor Dumbledore has told me many times that 'fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.'"

"But then," Samuel prodded, "why don't you say his name? Isn't bravery the trademark of Gryffindor, like intelligence is the trademark of Ravenclaw?"

Minerva recalled her shock at the question, although she shouldn't have been surprised; it was bound to happen sooner or later. Never in the last fifteen years that she had been asked about the name, had any one of the askers called her on the one contradiction she made to the Gryffindor ideal. As she reached the teachers' entrance to the Great Hall and sat down at the Head Table, a tiny smile curved her lips.

She gulped and swallowed her fear, a plan forming in her mind. She'd done it in a classroom full of Ravenclaws, surely just one wizened old man couldn't be any more difficult an audience? Turning to the Headmaster, who had just sat down to his own evening meal, Minerva spoke.

"Albus," she whispered as to avoid un-wanted eavesdroppers, voice carefully controlled to sound like she merely wanted the time of day, "has the Order recieved any news about Voldemort I might pass on to Mr. Potter? He has been quite restless lately, and I fear he may do something even more rash than usual unless he is kept up with the times."

There. She'd done it. She'd said the name twice now, and even managed to slip it into a complete sentence without stuttering like Longbottom used to stutter over almost anything.

The Headmaster merely shook his head, but his eyes smiled.

Ironic, Minerva thought, that an eleven-year-old boy could accomplish, on the first try, a task that someone more than ten times his age had been trying--and failing--to do for far longer.