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Professor McGonagall is portrayed as an older witch who takes great pains to hide her more sensitive side, perhaps fearing it will be construed as weakness and exploited against her. She is moderately successful at this, to the point that Harry is surprised when she shows him any special consideration. In particular, when Harry is sent to Professor McGonagall as a consequence of his first, disastrous Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson with Professor Umbridge, McGonagall offers him a cookie. Harry apparently considers this so uncharacteristic that he initially refuses. Harry is always surprised when he sees a lapse in her severity.
To a certain extent, McGonagall is a stock character, the "stern but fair" instructor. A staple in fiction of all sorts, but particularly in fiction about schools, this character often is seen as being in direct conflict with the strongly biased instructor who is opposed to the hero; in this series, of course, that biased character would be Severus Snape. The story arc requires that Snape's character be more complex than the stereotype allows, so he does get more time "on stage" than almost any other instructor; this means that Professor McGonagall is somewhat more in the background than usual for her role. Where McGonagall breaks away from the stock character is in her ongoing concern for Harry. We can see that McGonagall is deeply concerned for Harry's wellbeing, but knowing that she should not show favoritism for any student, she tries to conceal it as much as possible. We see it in small things: her warnings to Harry about dealings with Umbridge, and her stated determination to get him into the Auror program, for example. If we examine McGonagall's actions throughout the story, we see that in her public actions, such as grades, detentions, House points awards and penalties, McGonagall is fair almost to a fault. It is in her private actions, her concern for Harry's health after the Dementor episode, her meetings with Harry in ''Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'', and the episode of the Nimbus 2000 in ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', that we see her concern for Harry.
To a very small extent, McGonagall serves as something of a foil for Professor Dumbledore. The only time in the series that we see the two of them interacting directly is in [[Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Books/Philosopher's Stone/Chapter 1|the first chapter of the first book]], where McGonagall protests Dumbledore's choice of a permanent home for the infant Harry. It is interesting there to see the obvious mutual respect between these two characters, despite the fact that they have taken opposite sides of an argument. That respect is also seen in other scenes in the series where Dumbledore and McGonagall are together. Generally, when McGonagall and Dumbledore are on stage together, apart from the instance mentioned above, they are together dealing with another issue which forms the focus of the scene; often, that focus is Harry. Despite this, we can see that there is still some interaction between Dumbledore and McGonagall, with McGonagall being a moderating influence on all parties, while exhibiting staunch loyalty to Dumbledore.
== Questions ==
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