JK Rowling Once Revealed Professor McGonagall's Tragic Childhood

Pottermore has opened the window further into the world of Harry Potter, and fans couldn't be happier. The interactive site has given us a way to stay in touch with the beloved series and has even answered questions and shared facts we never even thought of in the books.

While Pottermore explores things in the Wizarding Word, it also gives us many backstories for our beloved characters. One specifically that is very interesting is the background about Professor McGonagall. It turns out, the stern yet lovable Transfiguration professor had a sad past.

McGonagall was the first child of Reverend Robert McGonagall, a Muggle, and Isobel Ross, a witch. But it wasn't until after McGonagall was born did her mother tell her father she was a witch, and when she did tell him, it broke the trust he had in her.

JK Rowling explained on the site:

"Minerva was very close to her Muggle father, whom in temperament she resembled more than her mother. She saw with pain how much he struggled with the family's strange situation. She sensed too, how much of a strain it was on her mother to fit in with the all-Muggle village, and how much she missed the freedom of being with her own kind, and of not exercising her considerable talents. Minerva never forgot how much her mother cried, when the letter of admittance into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry arrived on Minerva's eleventh birthday; she knew that Isobel was sobbing, not only out of pride, but also of envy."

This affected McGonagall's life after she finished school, when she met a Muggle named Dougal McGregor, a "handsome, clever and funny son of a local farmer." They started a romance and eventually got engaged. But then, McGonagall started to doubt their relationship because:

"Dougal did not know what she, Minerva, truly was ... Minerva had witnessed at close quarters the kind of marriage she might have if she wed Dougal. It would be the end of all her ambitions; it would mean a wand locked away, and children taught to lie, perhaps even to their own father. She did not fool herself that Dougal McGregor would accompany her to London, while she went to work every day at the Ministry. He was looking forward to inheriting his father’s farm."

So in the end, she broke off the engagement without telling him why because it would break Wizarding laws. “She left him devastated, and set out for London three days later," Rowling wrote.

As sad as the story is, at least we know why the tight-lipped professor is the way she is, thanks to Rowling's dedication to Pottermore.