Maggie Smith’s Prof. McGonagall will always be that one teacher in school we misunderstood
Farewell, professor, from your "babbling, bumbling band of baboons!"
It’s the end of September. A new term has begun at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and the school has lost one of its best teachers. Dame Maggie Smith, who played Transfiguration professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter movies, has passed away at the age of 89.
By no means was Professor McGonagall Dame Maggie Smith’s most important performance. The British actress began her expansive and illustrious acting career at the young age of 17 with the Oxford University Dramatic Society, playing Viola in a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at the Oxford Playhouse in 1952.
From then on, she went on to act for seven decades, becoming a prolific name on stage, the big screen, and even on television. Her acting credits include The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Othello, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, A Room With A View, Sister Act, David Copperfield (with a pre-Harry Potter Daniel Radcliffe), Hook (she was Wendy to Robin Williams’ Peter Pan!) and, of course, her iconic roles in Harry Potter as Professor McGonagall and Downton Abbey as Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham. Of her numerous accolades, one can list six Laurence Olivier Awards, five BAFTAs, four Emmys, three Golden Globes, two Academy Awards, and a Tony Award.
But for the Harry Potter generation and those that came after us, Maggie Smith will always and forevermore be Professor McGonagall, who, in the books, is the first witch the reader meets. Of course, she is not in her human form; McGonagall is an animagus—a witch/wizard that can transform into an animal—and her animal form is that of a tabby cat, with square markings around her eyes to mark her spectacles. Harry’s uncle, Vernon Dursley, spots her outside Number 4, Privet Drive reading a map, though he quickly dismisses the strange sight.
In the Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone movie, however, we see the late Richard Harris’ Professor Albus Dumbledore first, who greets the cat he finds sitting outside the Dursley home with a chuckle, saying, “I should have known.” McGonagall is still the first professor that the nervous first-year students meet when they arrive at Hogwarts, as they wait to be led into the Great Hall for the Sorting Hat ceremony, and boy, does she make an impression! It is pretty evident on Harry’s face in the movies, but if you want an inner monologue, the book perfectly sums it up.
“A tall, black-haired witch in emerald-green robes stood there. She had a very stern face and Harry’s first thought was that this was not someone to cross.”
– J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone)
Very astute at 11 years old, Harry! But little did he know that this same professor, a decade ago, had looked upon his scarred baby face and stifled a sob because she was worried how this orphaned little Boy Who Lived would be treated by the horrible relatives that Dumbledore was leaving him with!
And that’s the thing about Professor McGonagall, isn’t it? Something that Maggie Smith was brilliantly able to capture in her performance throughout eight films. McGonagall was a total softie on the inside, and I suspect, she kind of secretly laughed watching the students be so terrified of her! You know that because she was not cruel or a bully like Severus Snape was; she simply talked straight and called you out on your BS. She had that piercing gaze that saw through you. You’d never see her with her hair down. In fact, there’s also a line in the fourth book where McGonagall says the Yule Ball is a time for them all to let their hair down, and Harry instantly wonders what that would be like because the professor never wore hers down!
So when you think about her animagus form, all these characteristics make total sense. Professor McGonagall was such a cat! She was one of the best literary witches—the smartest of her time, I’m assuming—and what I’d always imagined Hermione Granger would grow up to be. She was a sassy cat, too, her face always carrying that look of a resigned sigh.
Remember when she offered to transfigure Ron or Harry into a map so the other could find their way to her classroom in their first year?
Or in The Goblet of Fire movie, when she called the Gryffindors a “babbling, bumbling band of baboons” before she taught them how to waltz for the Yule Ball? Smith’s delivery of that tongue-twister of a line will always be iconic!
And when she asked Harry, Ron, and Hermione the question we’ve all been wondering—“Why is it when something happens, it is always you three?” That’s a meme we are using even now!
The Harry Potter movies were such an integral part of our childhood and for some of us our very first fandom obsession. It’s hard to separate the actors from the beloved characters they brought to life beyond our wildest imaginations on screen. Dame Maggie Smith’s portrayal of Minerva McGonagall is definitely one of those characters. She reminded me of that one teacher we’ve all had in school who used to appear tough, a thorough disciplinarian you didn’t want to get on the bad side of, but who was genuinely sweet and cared for her students like a fiercely protective mom with her heart in the right place. The tough exterior was merely a bad cop routine because someone had to ensure the kids developed a healthy value for discipline and rules for their own safety and benefit.
The more you got to know this teacher, and as you grew older, you saw that softer side of her peek through. She’d become like that favorite aunt who was stern, yet treated you like a grown-up and could make you laugh with her wit. Maggie Smith just had that exact aura. She’s incredibly funny if you watch her in some of her earlier roles, and that shows up in the Harry Potter movies, too.
In the first movie, she makes sure Harry knows that rule-breaking is wrong, even as she excitedly lets him join the Gryffindor Quidditch team in his first year as a Seeker. In the fifth movie, The Order of The Phoenix, Smith’s McGonagall always gets a hoot from me for the scene where she sasses Professor Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) by suggesting she isn’t a competent Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher and later comforts Professor Trelawney (Emma Thompson) when Umbridge publicly fires her. She stays at the school to protect the kids after Dumbledore is gone, and you can’t help but look to her in the scene where the wands are raised to honor him because she is it now for the students. In Deathly Hallows Part 2, she proves that by fighting Snape before he escapes.
But perhaps her sweetest moment arrives when she becomes the new Headmistress of Hogwarts after Snape absconds, and permits Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) to blow up the school. “Boom!” she repeats after him, and you can see Neville’s shock because McGonagall was one of the hard taskmasters he was always a tad scared of, especially after she punished him for losing the passwords to Gryffindor Tower in Prisoner of Azkaban, giving Sirius Black a way in. There’s also the moment when she transfigures the suits of armor to fight in the Battle of Hogwarts against Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) and his Death Eaters, squealing like an excited little girl to a shocked Molly Weasley (Julie Walters), “I’ve always wanted to use that spell!” Oh, Maggie Smith, you were so adorable at that moment!
As much as we might not like J.K. Rowling for her transphobia, we’ll give her credit for the things she did get right. Did you know she requested Maggie Smith for the role of Professor McGonagall? Rowling also put a lot of thought into her characters’ names while creating the world of Harry Potter. I remember reading in The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter by David Colbert why certain names were chosen, and Professor Minerva McGonagall was so aptly named!
The stern professor shares her first name with Minerva, the Roman Goddess of wisdom, the arts, justice, law, and strategic warfare. Her last name, McGonagall, came from a Scottish poet in the 1800s, William McGonagall, who was “known for being awful!” It is said that eventually people loved his work and found him funny, but he didn’t care much about what they thought of him and continued being the person he was! That does sound like McGonagall, doesn’t it?
We’ve lost quite a few of our Hogwarts professors over the years. Snape (Alan Rickman), both our Dumbledores (Richard Harris and Michael Gambon), Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane), and now with Maggie Smith, Professor Minerva McGonagall too. It feels like these are pieces of our childhood that have been lost with them. In the books, as per the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child timeline, Professor McGonagall was retired from the post of Headmistress of Hogwarts because she was “getting on a bit.”
So here’s me picturing the character and the actor we have grown to love and respect so much, resting in peace and enjoying the respite they have earned. Farewell, professor!
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