'It was Malfoy indeed and I have warned him, I think he will not try anything like this again.' Dumbledore said soberly.
'Wait a minute, Albus. You said Voldemort came out of her body. How was that?' Sirius asked and they listened to Dumbledore's explanation, as he told them the events of the last day and a half. He did not mention his suspicion that it may be a horcrux and Sirius did not catch on to it either.
'How is Ginny Weasley now? It must have been horrible for her. I would also like to see Harry, if you don't mind Albus. Just to see for ourselves, that he is fine.' Sirius told him and stood up, preparing to see Harry, his face a bit more cheerful now. He smiled his thanks to Dumbledore and nodded once to Snape, who did not acknowledge it, and rolling his eyes Sirius, and Remus smiled at Albus and went away.
'Would you have some tea, Severus?' Albus asked him, pouring a cup for himself, when Snape shook his head.
'It was Lucius, Dumbledore. It was he, who placed the diary into the Weasley's girl's cauldron.' Snape hesitated a bit here. He had wanted to talk to Harry before he reported to Albus, but Dumbledore had called him quickly. Snape was in two minds about informing Dumbledore about the horcrux. Dumbledore was waiting patiently for Snape to speak again, and Snape squared his shoulders and looked at Dumbledore.
'The diary apparently was a horcrux.' He said blandly, watching as Dumbledore choked on his tea. It was not every time that he could surprise him, and Snape felt an immense satisfaction.
'What? Who told you that? Lucius?' he asked, his desire to have tea, apparently all gone.
Snape nodded. 'Yes, Dumbledore it was he. This diary kept popping up in his scans and he was worried that if anyone from the Ministry would come, this could not be concealed. So he decided to place it in the Weasley girl's book and hoped that it would get her into a lot of trouble.' Snape shuddered. 'I thank Merlin, that the Dark Lord did not possess her the way he possessed Potter. It would have destroyed her.'
Dumbledore nodded his face very serious. 'Indeed, Severus. We must be thankful for that. So Voldemort has made horcruxes. I have suspected it for sometime now; this proves it.' Dumbledore sighed. 'Poor Harry. He has such a task in front of him. We must make it as simple for him as we can, Severus.'
Snape nodded and stood up when Dumbledore nodded back at him and with a twist of his feet he billowed away to the fireplace and went back to the peace of his dungeons to wait for Harry Potter.
Just after Lucius Malfoy had left, Molly and Arthur Weasley had tackled Harry and had apologized to him, making him feel very embarrassed. He brushed it all off and could not help leaning into Molly's embrace when she tightly hugged him, pouring all her gratitude into the hug. She was still crying terrified at what might have almost happened. Her daughter might have even been kissed or sent to Azkaban for the rest of her life had Harry pressed charges. Instead, it had been this remarkable boy who had spoken so confidently and assuredly for Ginny.
Ginny herself, was crying and looking very frightened. She had had a crush on Harry for as long as she could remember and now, she had almost killed him. She shuddered in self-disgust. Harry, she knew would never look at her even in friendship and he would never talk to her as he did in her dreams. She bent her head down in a gesture of defeat and tried to stop crying and thinking about anything and everything.
Thankfully the bell had rung then and all of them left the elder Weasleys and went to their classes, silently and very subdued. Ginny was excused from her classes and she went with her mother to The Burrow to recover and also to give the other students time to forget. She would return after Christmas.
Sirius and Remus, after their meeting with Dumbledore had walked through the School, searching for Harry until they realized he was probably in his classes. They came to the main doors and decided to wait for classes to get over for the day and meet Harry and only then leave Hogwarts. They sat down on the steps of the main door and whiled away the afternoon, discussing what Dumbledore had told them. As soon as the bell rung for the last class, Sirius called an elf and asked it to call Harry to them.
In a few minutes, Harry came running along with Neville and Hermione, looking very anxious. 'Sirius, Remus, what happened? Are you both fine?' he shouted as he screeched to a halt, panting heavily, looking at both of them deeply.
"Harry, we are okay. We came for you. I got your letter today and we've been here since. I wanted to see you if you were okay, and Remus and I decided to do just that before we left. What happened, yesterday?'
So Harry once more launched into the story of what happened yesterday and answered as many questions as he could and satisfied them finally, with Neville and Hermione helping him.
'Harry, listen to me carefully. I want you to stop your friendship with Malfoy. It was his father who was responsible for the diary and I am afraid his son will be no better.' Sirius told him, his eyes and face not ready to take no for an answer.
'Sirius, if Malfoy even shows a bit of anything bad, I'll simply break off with him. I swear. Please believe me on this one. I won't take any risks and you can ask Neville and Hermione here. He has been very nice Sirius, and I don't want to blame him for the sins of his father and break off with him. Please.' Harry pleaded with him. Half an hour of much pleading and arguing, Sirius sighed at Harry's stubbornness and his refusal to see any sense in Sirius's words.
He looked helplessly at Remus and then sighed and shrugged in resignation. 'Be careful Harry. And don't let him get too close.' Sirius warned him. 'Sirius, he's good. He's a very nice guy. He is not like his father and I've already promised you I'll break it off if he becomes like that. Don't you worry, okay?' Harry reassured him and then waved goodbye to a very unsatisfied Sirius and a slightly worried Remus, and turned to see Draco walking out stonily towards Harry.
Harry quickly schooled his expression into blandness, inwardly worried about what Draco had heard and how he took it. 'Can I talk with you for a minute?' he asked.
'Sure Draco.' And Harry walked a little away from Neville and Hermione and Draco too, left his friends who were looking worried and came over to Harry.
'Why did Black and Lupin tell you to avoid me?' he asked his face white and pinched. Harry looked at him for a long minute and then quietly told him what happened. Draco had come there at the end and had been shocked to hear Sirius and Remus tell Harry to stay away from him. He was even more shocked by Harry's response. Harry had told them, he would break it off, if Draco would become like his father. That had made Draco very confused and hurt. He had almost shouted at Harry, but all this time with him, had made Draco realize that Harry was not a person to talk lightly. So he had pushed down his anger and had asked him what the matter was and why suddenly the Malfoys weren't good enough for Harry and his Godfather.
The reason shocked him beyond anything. His father had been responsible for placing a dark artefact that possessed a student and had tried to kill Harry. Had anybody else told Draco negative things about his father, he would have hexed them and become their enemy. But this was Harry; who would never lie to him. He knew that instinctively and he somehow trusted Harry on this. And he did not know what to say. He stared at Harry feeling extremely mortified and wondering why in the name of Merlin he had asked Harry anything at all in the first place. He should have known Harry would have a reason for everything.
'I understand if you'll no longer want to be friends.' Draco told Harry, his voice all strained as he spoke the toughest words that almost broke him.
'Why should I not be friends with you Draco? I told Sirius and Remus that I'll stay away, if I feel you were trying to harm me. Not otherwise. And I know you'll never do that.' Harry told him, looping his arm into Draco's and smiling at him. Draco was stunned. Harry believed that he would not harm him. He was so confident about Draco and was willing to be friends with him, even if his father had tried to kill him. Draco felt very bitter as he thought of his father, but he pushed those thoughts down and decided to think about them later.
'And besides, you warned me, you know. That helped as well. But I could not tell them that, because you told me to keep it a secret. Come on. Let's go down to the dungeons and help Snape. He'll kill us otherwise.' Harry told him and refusing to talk further about what happened with Ginny, Harry led them all down.
It was after these classes that Sirius and Remus had met them and Draco confronted him. After sending them away and talking to Draco, all of them trooped down to the dungeons and knocked at the door. Snape opened it and asked only Harry to come inside and shut and warded the door, disregarding the protests made by a slightly daring Hermione.
Snape after warding the door, waited for Harry to start his work, watching him all the while. Harry took his time, before he came to Snape's desk and sat down in the chair opposite Snape, and softly told him everything. Snape in turn told him what Lucius Malfoy had said, and Snape's own suggestion and then there was only silence.
'Now that all this drama is over, how is the potion coming along? Call Hermione and the others once in a while, Dumbledore will get suspicious otherwise.' Harry told him, and looked in shock, as Snape rolled his eyes, in an entirely human and unSnapeish way.
The next few weeks went by smoothly, with Ron and Draco being extremely subdued and not talking much or even hexing each other. Harry decided, it was a good side effect of a bad event and let it be. Ginny was in the Burrow and Harry enquired after her periodically and Ron always answered with a blush and a hushed whisper that she was fine. If Draco was with Harry, he would glare at him, but as Dumbledore had told all of them, Draco did not know or have a clue about his father's activities, and the fact he was very quiet, made the Weasleys quiet too.
Holidays came upon them and all of them spent it in the School, reading, exchanging gifts and working everyday on the potion. Draco, refused to go home, and wrote his father, saying that he wanted to be here, because of the potion.
The weather was now very cold, and it was snowing almost everyday and a bone chilling January gave way to a very wet February. Harry was breathing a sigh of relief about the normalcy of the days going by and after the nervousness and the tenseness of the first three months, the two months after the diary was destroyed totally opposite and Harry very much enjoyed it.
Ginny was very stilted when she came back scared and a shadow of herself and it was only now, after almost two months that she was settling down into any kind of normalcy that a first year should have had in the first place. February came and went and now there was the suppressed excitement about the potion.
The potion would be ready by the first week of March and all students both purebloods and muggleborns were equally excited at what they would find; the muggleborns to which family they would belong to and the pureblood, hoping their families had not been responsible for squibs. There were fierce arguments on both sides that only increased in intensity as the countdown to the first of March began.
Snape had brewed the two potions perfectly and in the last month, he pestered Harry to tell him about Harry's mother. 'I really do not understand your childishness in hiding this. I am going to find out anyway. Why can you not tell me now?' he had demanded rather petulantly of Harry, who had grinned at him, but had refused to say a word. Snape had been furious, but could not do anything at all.
'Is she… are you related to Malfoy, the Dark Lord or Lestrange?' he had asked, 'or Merlin! Black?' he had asked his arms folded tightly across his chest and Harry had grinned. 'Okay, I'll not tell you.' He had said and Snape had sat down abruptly. 'What?' he had asked faintly, 'Lily is related to the Dark Lord?'
Harry had laughed aloud and had shaken his head, and had watched gleefully as Snape, got up and wiped his face. 'Then perhaps, she is related to Potter himself?' he asked Harry, raising one eyebrow, making Harry feel very envious of that ability. Much as he had tried, Harry could not do it as perfectly as Snape did, or so effortlessly.
'No, no, no Snape, I am not telling you. I want to watch your face when you find out. That will be my Patronus moment from then on. And if you get Dumbledore there as well, I'll even be able to get two to three Patronus with one spell.'
That had made Snape even more curious and he had almost begged. Almost, before he realized what he had almost done and had stormed off. From then onwards, Snape did not ask Harry about the potions at all, preferring to work in silence than lower his dignity in front of a boy who would not say a word.
The first week of March came by and everyone was excited and anxious and worried. Most of the Gryffindors who were muggleborns hoped they would not be related to the Slytherins, who in turn were hoping that no muggleborn would be related to them.
Lucius Malfoy and other pureblood Slytherins and a few Ravenclaws had already written to Snape and Dumbledore, asking him to call for a parents meeting and announce the results before them. The Ministry came to know through The Daily Prophet. The paper had received an anonymous letter from Harry and Snape, who had written a brief note on the first of March informing The Daily Prophet of the potion that was being brewed by the Head of Slytherin House and Potions Master Severus Snape, so that there would be no false reports of just which muggleborn would be related to which pureblood family.
The way Snape and Harry had worded it, made those at The Daily Prophet feel that it was from a Slytherin family, who was anxious to have The Daily Prophet also on the job, so that the Headmaster or anybody else would not tamper with the potion. From there it went to the Ministry who also came to Dumbledore and asked him to announce the results publicly for everyone to know.
By the end of the first week of March, everyone was talking only of this and Snape and Harry had chosen that Friday to test the students and let Dumbledore announce the results on Saturday.
On Friday morning, all the muggleborn students assembled in the Great Hall, and looked at the staff table eagerly. Snape was already there, with 2 huge cauldrons (having made all the three potions but having mixed them and placed them into two cauldrons) and many vials. Dumbledore was there and so were all the professors who also looked pretty excited as much as the students.
The professors decided to go in alphabetical order and started with Allen, Charles, a seventh year half blood. His father had been a muggle born wizard. He came up nervously and swallowed the potion and went to a large table where two large parchments were placed side by side. He pricked his finger and let one drops fall into each parchment. For a second nothing happened then, slowly the names started appearing to the fascination of the entire staff and Charles Allen. They started from his name and slowly went upwards, showing his parents, grandparents and so on.
His father was apparently descended from a wizarding family called Crestar, whose daughter had been a squib some two centuries ago and she had married a muggle and settled far away from the Wizarding World. Charles Allen was overwhelmed as he received his parchment and went back to his seat, where he was besieged by friends who wanted to know all about his wizarding roots.
Slowly all the muggleborns started going up to the staff table one by one and got their family ancestry chart and were proved that they too were only witches and wizards from sometimes known and sometimes unknown wizarding families and almost all of them moved to the muggle world because their ancestor was a squib.
Hermione's turn came and she went up, shaking with nerves and drank the potion and placed two drops of her blood on the two pieces of paper. The names started forming and some six generations earlier, was one Celina Black who had been born a squib and had married a muggle Evan Granger. It was from her genes, that Hermione's magic had come. She looked at Snape, who had seen the name of Black and was now sneering at her, and Dumbledore and McGonagall, who were smiling at her and Hermione felt all her emotions burst just like so many of those who had come before her, and she started crying, as Dumbledore, rolled the now dry parchment and gave it to her.
She stumbled and turned and ran to Harry and threw herself on him, sobbing in her excitement and a bit of fear that she had had thinking she may be related to evil wizarding families. Now that was not so, she was crying on Harry's shoulders in utter relief that she belonged to Harry's Godfather's family.
Then came Harry's turn. He smiled as his name was called out and walked smartly towards the staff table. He knew whose family his mother came from and he was neither excited or anything. He was watching Snape very closely, though.
A second after Harry's blood fell on both the parchments, the names started appearing. They went on quite a few generations back. And then Harry looked at Snape and Dumbledore as the wizarding name began to appear on the paper. Morgana Prince.