As she habitually opened the document to check its last sentence and decide how urgently it needed handling, three lines of text caught her eye. Then she froze.
She knew every word, but put together, they made no sense.
After so many years as vice principal at Hogwarts, Professor McGonagall had a plan for every emergency. She could even handle a headmaster as difficult as Dumbledore. What could possibly trouble her?
Hello. This could...
That was what the letter told her.
She had personally designed one of the defenses protecting the Philosopher's Stone. She also knew Dumbledore had recently obtained a Magical Mirror and intended to use it to store the stone.
But this...
She checked the contents again and was stunned all over again.
Less than ten minutes later, a bleary-eyed Dumbledore was hauled out of bed in his pajamas.
"Has something happened to the students?"
That was the first thing Dumbledore asked, instantly concerned.
"The usual. They're hard at work losing their own houses points in the middle of the night."
"Oh." The tension left Dumbledore's face at once. "Then what else requires dragging a poor old man out of bed at this hour?"
She handed him the letter. Dumbledore glanced at it casually, then stared in shock.
"Where did this letter come from, Minerva?"
"It arrived mixed in with the teachers' mail. At first, I thought some prankster had mixed it up while copying things in the office. But it seems to have been sent through the school's internal owl post."
"Find whoever sent it, Minerva."
"Phineas, sorry for the trouble, but please notify Severus. I need his help."
"The back of his head?"
Reading the letter, Snape, who had been summoned in haste, gave a crooked smile. "What a place to hide. We've been looking