ship_manifesto | Albus Dumbledore/Minerva McGonagall (Harry Potter)

emeraldharpy.livejournal.com posting in

Title: Ginger Newts and Sherbet Lemons
Author:

emeraldharpy
Spoilers: through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Disclaimer: The following are my opinions and insights only, and do not necessarily reflect those of the majority of AD/MM shippers.

Initially, I was rather surprised not to see the Albus/Minerva ship here, since it has been listed as a “common” ship on some of the more popular HP websites. However, I have since learned that while the AD/MM vessel has been sailing for some time, it is a mere yacht compared to some of the other cruise ships out there in the HP Fandom ocean. This essay is my attempt to explain why we venture forth into such crowded waters, and to invite any interested parties to come aboard.

Albus Dumbledore
At first glance, Professor Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, is your basic wise, old, twinkly grandfather type. He is kindly, eccentric, has a penchant for sweets, refers to himself as a “barmy old codger”, comes complete with long silvery-white hair and beard, and can always be relied upon to dispense sage advice to the hero. However, it soon becomes obvious that he is considerably more than he appears. Widely considered to be the greatest wizard of the age, he has already defeated one great dark wizard, and is now the only wizard whom Voldemort, the arch villain of the series, fears. Since the political leader of the Wizarding world, Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge, is grossly incompetent at best and dangerously misguided at worst, the task of watching for Voldemort’s return, and organizing the resistance when that return comes, falls to Professor Dumbledore. To protect Wizard and Muggle alike, he must operate in secret, until he is forced to openly defy the Ministry. Most of the time he seems omniscient, but there are moments when he has appeared curiously uninformed and, in the fifth book, as fallible and human as the rest of us. Mentor, rebel, sage, genius - there is much we still do not know about Albus Dumbledore. He remains a fascinating mystery.

Minerva McGonagall
At first glance, Professor Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress and Professor of Transfiguration at Hogwarts, is your basic stiff, uptight, spinster type. She is stern, bespectacled, a stickler for the rules, wears her hair in a tight bun, and can always be relied upon to be absolutely fair – which isn’t always good news for the hero. However, it soon becomes obvious that she too is considerably more than she appears. Well-known as an extremely powerful witch, she is one of only seven registered animagi (witches or wizards who can become an animal at will) in the twentieth century. She is a member, and most likely second in command, of the Order of the Phoenix, Albus Dumbledore’s underground resistance group. She has a softer side as well. Her passion for Quidditch, the Wizarding world’s sport, is one of the few things that can cause her to lose control or even bend (slightly) the rules. Another thing that causes her to lose control is threats to her friends; in fact she nearly gets herself killed defending one such comrade. There are several moments in the series when she gets teary-eyed, and the author herself has referred to the character as “…an old softy.” She, like Dumbledore, is also a rebel when circumstances dictate, as evidenced in the many scenes of humorous passive resistance in the fifth book. Indeed, the fifth book brought out many facets of her character, and it will be very interesting to see what the author has in store for Minerva McGonagall.

Albus/Minerva
There are many scenes in the series that point to a very close relationship between these two professors. The way they speak to each other in the very first chapter of book one, for example, indicates that they are close longtime friends, and it’s very easy to read a bit of flirtation between the lines. Then there is the “hot chocolate inconsistency” many shippers point to, in which Albus and Minerva give the school nurse a slightly confusing account of how they ended up carrying a petrified student to the Infirmary late one evening, wearing only their nightclothes. Minerva is, I believe, the only person who calls Albus by his first name. Throughout the series, she demonstrates deep loyalty to and admiration for him, telling him he’s “too noble” too use dark magic, for example, or insisting that he did not make a mistake enchanting the Goblet of Fire. Her loyalty also places her in open defiance of the Ministry in book five. He, for his part, trusts her implicitly, as evidenced by the autonomy with which she generally operates and, in particular, the scene in his office in book 5, when he is forced to flee.

Now, I can hear some of you saying, “But they’re so old!” or “Isn’t he, like, eighty years older than she is?” While J. K. Rowling hasn’t elaborated upon age in the Wizarding world other than to say that witches and wizards have a much greater life expectancy than muggles, one can extrapolate, based upon the fact that Albus’ hair was only beginning to turn white when he was around one hundred, and that he can easily duel with Voldemort fifty years later, that magical ability seems to slow the ageing process considerably. From there it’s not too far a jump to figure that Minerva, at age seventy, would look the Muggle equivalent of around forty, while Albus would appear a Muggle seventy-something. But even if it turns out that magic merely extends the elder years, and they look as old as their Muggle equivalents, it doesn’t matter. The saying “Snow on the roof, fire in the furnace,” applies here regardless of appearance. Love and desire do not disappear once one passes the age of thirty, despite what Hollywood would have us believe.

Writing Albus/Minerva is not an easy task. Unlike Severus/Hermione, which lends itself quite easily to the Regency romance genre, from which fanfiction authors can draw inspiration, there are virtually no romances about older couples in bookstores or libraries. Some authors get around this problem by setting their stories fifty years before the series, writing a young, feisty Minerva and an older troubled-by-Grindelwald Albus, effectively shoe-horning the characters into the Regency romance mold. However, those who like to write or read stories that are canonically plausible feel that Minerva and Albus could not have been a couple until after the first chapter of the first book – there was just too much she didn’t know at that point. This means writing them as they are presented in the books – a middle-aged woman and an elderly man. There are no literary patterns to follow for a writer who chooses this route, yet the very best examples of fanfiction written with this pairing have bravely ventured into this new territory with beautiful results. These stories are about adults with many years of life experience behind them, complete with baggage, whose discovery of one another is all the more poignant because they know what’s at stake.

The Fandom
For reasons that I have yet to identify, the vast majority of Albus/Minerva shippers fall between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, although there has been a recent influx of writers over thirty. Furthermore, it is my impression that many, though not all, of the more active and vocal shippers seem to be quite religious. While this makes for a polite, supportive, and cozy group of fans, for the most part it also makes for a certain narrowness of vision, a decidedly small sampling of erotic writing, and, with the very young writers, a higher-than-average number of grammar and spelling errors for the reader to wade through. There are, however, some very good Albus/Minerva stories, which I have listed below:

alchemine - Evening Post

angharad04, Lady Angharad on ff.net, and Angharad everywhere else - Subtle Communication, The Professors’ New Clothes, Traditional Socks, and Taking Up The Gage
Catwoman99 - Why is it Always Me?

dicere - After The Battle, Wild Lavendar
Ginger Newts - How Is That Possible?

jestana - Addiction

maexle - The Comedy of Errors (Note: This author is German, and while the complete version of this story is on her lj, it is the non beta read version. The link is to the beta read version, which most readers will find easier to read.)

mascaret - Unchain My Love, Bevy
Uber Grasshopper - A Tabby and her Kit (AU, but well done)

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