Actually <PERSON> has given us an insight into <PERSON> life through an article on Pottermore titled 'Professor McGonagall'. This article provides a quite comprehensive look into <PERSON>'s life, starting with her childhood and moving on through her schooling years, Ministry career and her marriage. <PERSON> ends the article with her own thoughts on why she decided to name the character <PERSON>.
Excerpts from the article:
* <PERSON> was the first child, and only daughter, of a Scottish Presbyterian minister and a Hogwarts-educated witch
* <PERSON> was revealed to be a <PERSON>. After five and a half minutes, the Sorting Hat, which had been vacillating between the houses of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, placed <PERSON> in the latter.
* <PERSON> was quickly recognised as the most outstanding student of her year, with a particular talent for Transfiguration. As she progressed through the school, she demonstrated that she had inherited both her mother’s talents and her father’s cast-iron moral sense.
* By the end of her education at Hogwarts, <PERSON> had achieved an impressive record: top grades in O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s, Prefect, Head Girl, and winner of the Transfiguration Today Most Promising Newcomer award.
* Under the guidance of her inspirational Transfiguration teacher, <PERSON>, she had managed to become an Animagus; her animal form, with its distinctive markings (tabby cat, square spectacles markings around eyes)
* <PERSON> was also, like her mother, a gifted Quidditch player, although a nasty fall in her final year (a foul during the Gryffindor versus Slytherin game which would decide the Cup winner) left her with concussion, several broken ribs and a lifelong desire to see <PERSON> crushed on the Quidditch pitch.
* Upon graduation from Hogwarts, <PERSON> returned to enjoy one last summer with her family before setting out for London, where she had been offered a position at the Ministry of Magic (Department of Magical Law Enforcement).
* Though a most efficient and gifted employee, and fond of her much older boss, <PERSON>, <PERSON> was unhappy in London, and found that she missed Scotland.
* Through all her early years at Hogwarts, <PERSON> remained on terms of friendship with her old boss at the Ministry, <PERSON>. 899
Shortly after <PERSON>’s first defeat, <PERSON>, now white-haired, proposed during a summertime stroll around the lake in the Hogwarts grounds. <PERSON> accepted. <PERSON>, now retired, was beside himself with joy, and purchased a small cottage in Hogsmeade for the pair of them, whence <PERSON> could travel easily to work every day.
* The accidental death of <PERSON> from a Venomous Tentacula bite, three years into their marriage, was an enormous sorrow to all who knew the couple. <PERSON> could not bear to remain alone in their cottage, but packed her things after <PERSON>’s funeral and returned to her sparse stone-floored bedroom in Hogwarts Castle, accessible through a concealed door in the wall of her first-floor study. Always a very brave and private person, she poured all her energies into her work, and few people - excepting perhaps <PERSON> - ever realised how much she suffered. 573