#mcgonagall

So, in The Prisoner of Azkaban, when remembering Pettigrew, Minerva cries and says that she was too strict with the poor boy who struggled with his studies — oh, how she regrets it now.

Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop her from treating Neville the exact same way, even though he is, to put it mildly, much nicer than the young Pettigrew, and there’s plenty to feel sorry for him about. Surely McGonagall knows what happened to Neville’s parents, so why not be a bit gentler with the boy? At the very least, she could not humiliate him.

"Longbottom, kindly do not reveal that you can't even perform a simple Switching Spell in front of anyone from Durmstrang!" Professor McGonagall barked at the end of one particularly difficult lesson, during which Neville had accidentally transplanted his own ears onto a cactus.

I think she’s a character with unexploited potential who ultimately ends up as a side character and could have shone a lot more. Personally, I like authoritative and strict female figures, because I don’t recognize authority in male superiors, but I do in female ones, and I find that quite comforting because it gives me a sense of security.

I think McGonagall wasn’t an entirely responsible teacher, but then again, no teacher at Hogwarts really was. She’s also often labeled as fair, but she clearly had her favorites — she just at least tried to hide them. As a female character, there isn’t that much to say either, because while she doesn’t fall into clearly misogynistic stereotypes like others do, she also doesn’t have that much relevance within the plot. Still, at least it’s appreciated that she isn’t particularly problematic.

I really like Minerva, probably because I tend to enjoy strict, serious female characters who are portrayed positively by the narrative. I think she was a deeply principled woman who ended up having to deal with a lot of crap because the men around her (looking at you, Dumbledore and Severus) were off playing political chess without telling her anything—and she still handled it all with so much grace.

Sure, she had moments where she was a bit lenient with the Gryffindors, but I’m not going to blame her for that—all the teachers were dysfunctional in their own ways, so honestly, it’s just part of the setting.