Reason 53: I finally had a proper conversation with Snape
It's been a long time coming, seeing as he's my uncle and all. I don't think he was even aware that I knew until I brought it up. Why did I bring it up, you may ask? Well, Harry, Hermione and Ron have decided that Christmas will be the best time to go ahead with the Polyjuice potion plan. While they accept that I want to go home for Christmas, they still wanted my help to steal the ingredients. Let me tell you, the combined force of their puppy dog eyes is hard to say no to.
I was tasked with distracting Snape while Harry set off one of Fred's fireworks that he gladly gave up when we claimed that we were going to prank Snape. Originally we thought that I could just ask Snape a few questions about my potion and be done with it. But Snape's answers were straight forward and to the point, meaning that he would have turned to Harry just as he was throwing the firework. So I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind. That I wanted to talk about my mother. For the first time, I actually saw Snape loose his composure for a second, obviously shocked about my request.
That was when the firework exploded in Goyle's cauldron.
The majority of the class went crazy with panic. Snape rushed to calm everyone down as Hermione slipped out the back of the classroom. From the desk in front of me, Harry snickered at Draco's swollen face. I turned around to look at who had been affected, only to lock eyes with Daphne. Thankfully she nor Tracey had been splattered, but she did raise an eyebrow in my direction. The message was clear: she had seen everything and I was going to have to explain later.
I had hoped that Snape was distracted enough to forget my comment about my mum. He hadn't even looked at me for the last ten minutes of the lesson! But it wasn't to be. Once the lesson ended, Snape called for me to wait behind. This caused Harry to look at me in panic, having not heard my earlier comment.
The ensuing conversation went better than I had hoped. At first he wanted to know why I wanted to talk about my mother with him of all people, which turned into him cursing Dumbledore for telling me we are related. Snape wasn't pleased to find out that I knew he was my uncle. He even told me not to expect special treatment and not to go spreading it around! It's not as if he treats me better than most Gryffindors anyway and I've had months to tell everyone or anything.
But after the initial annoyance, he did begrudgingly allow me to ask three questions about my mum, which was more than I thought I would get from him. Honestly I thought that he would just find out that I knew we were related and that would be it, so I jumped at the chance to discover more about my biological mother. I knew that he'd want me to stay away from any topics involving my dad, any marauders and probably Lily, so I was very limited in what I could ask. But I did manage to find out more information about my mother's childhood and life at Hogwarts. I never knew that she was actually a Hufflepuff! That makes me really interested as to how my parents started dating, as I always presumed that they were in the same house. Or maybe it's because Mother (Mum?, I really don't know what to call her) was friends with Lily through Snape. I can only guess.
Snape also seemed to be fairly fond of my grandparents. Their names were Nathan and Ruby, and from what stories I was able to get out of Snape, he seemed to spend a lot of time at their house when he was young. While their marriage was arranged (unlike Snape's own mother from what I can remember from the books) they seemed to have genuinely fallen in love with each other at some point during their marriage. They were both Slytherins and were the reason why Snape aspired to be so himself. If they could have left that much of an impression on Snape, I wish that I could have met them.
After I asked my questions, Snape sent me away, reminding me not to tell anyone about us being related. Daphne ambushed me a few corridors down from the potions classroom. She wanted to know why we made a fuss in the lesson. I hesitated to explain but she wouldn't let the topic go, so I started to stutter out an edited version of our reasoning, getting as far as needing ingredients to make a potion but not wanting Snape to know before she stopped me. She claimed that since the whole thing was 'Golden Square' related, that she only wanted to know the basics to be able to actively avoid being drawn into the drama.
Apparently, Harry, Ron, Hermione and I have already built up a reputation for ourselves for getting into trouble. Not the normal type of trouble like Fred and George mind you, but bordering on illegal and life threatening trouble. Daphne says that people started using the term 'Golden Square' after the whole dragon fiasco, of which most people knew bits and pieces about due to Malfoy's continuous ranting about a dragon at the time. People made the connection between the (supposed) dangerous events and the four of us and a nickname developed as it was annoying to always have to say all four of our names.
It just so happened that the name was very similar to the 'Golden Trio' title, a fact that I very much dislike. Couldn't they have come up with something more original? Although, I suppose it is technically original, as the 'Golden Trio' title doesn't exist here.
Back on to relating my day then, shall we?
Despite Snape's warnings, I did tell one person about the information he had told me.
Harry.
It may seem like I was accidentally rubbing the fact that I knew things about my mother in his face, but he was very eager to hear about her. I suppose learning about anyone connected to his parents brings him a little closer to them. I definitely feel closer to my mother now, despite having no memories of her. Ruth and David are my parents and always will be, but I can't help but feel attached to my supposed birth parents.
Apart from Harry, I haven't told anyone else. George did try and bug me for answers when he heard that Snape had held me back, but stopped when he saw that I was serious in not telling him. Ron and Hermione are slightly put out that I didn't tell them too, but they had to respect that I was only telling Harry because he was family. I had to somewhat respect Snape's privacy after all.
Now, I'm going to go off topic but I need to write this down otherwise I'll forget. I need to write my thoughts about this diary.
The thing is, what I'm writing doesn't feel like 'reasons'. Yeah, sure, I have all of these MS powers, but I'm not writing solely about them anymore. I don't think I have been since the middle of last year. I'm writing just as much about how my day is as how annoying my MS powers are. While I still refuse to call this book a diary, it really is more of a journal than a list of reasons, which is how I was treating it at the start.
Also, it would just feel wrong to treat this as a list. When I started writing in this book, nothing felt truly real to me. But now, I have lived in this world for one and a half years and sometimes I find it hard to imagine a world without magic. Recently, I realised that I can barely remember my old life. I see vague flashes, but never details. I remember having holidays at the beach, but not where they were. I can remember I was born in a town in the UK, but not its name. I know I had siblings, but I don't know how many. I can't remember my parents' faces, only faint blurs.
Worst of all, I can't remember details about who I once was. When I try to picture my face, I see only my current one with brown hair. Even my own name is gone from my memory.
I have no clue how long my memory has been like this. For all I know, it could have been this way since I first woke up here. I've never been able to figure out my actual age after all, although I was just passing that off as never being bothered to do so. Now it seems strange.
The most annoying part is that I can remember the most trivial of details. This one inside joke between myself and a friend (friends?) about a delivery company. All the lyrics to several Horrible Histories songs. The plot of Titanic. The plot of the third Star Wars movie (none of the others though). The plot of Harry Potter.
My identity as Em is really all I have left besides these small parts of my old life. I don't want to reduce my entire life to a simple list, even if it is only so in my head. So from now on, these will be entries. Yes, I'm still a Mary Sue. Yes, I still have these annoying (or occasionally not so annoying) MS powers. Yes, all my friends only started to like me because they had to. But that is my life and I have to make do with what I have. And I will not make my life seem any lesser by reducing it to a list of reasons of why I should hate it.
Entry 54: I really want to know why they put Lockhart in charge of the duelling club
I found out about the duelling club a few weeks ago in one of my lessons with Lockhart. It was meant to be about how to act around those of a higher and lower station than yourself around the Wizarding nobility, but that topic had to be pushed to the next lesson as Lockhart spent the entire time telling me about how Dumbledore had been talking to him about the lack of extracurricular activities surrounding duelling so he had decided to start one himself.
Knowing Dumbledore, he had some sort of reason for mentioning this around Lockhart – he has a reason for everything he does or says – although for the life of me I couldn't figure out why. Professor Flitwick would have been a much better choice.
Yet it was Lockhart who started the club so, of course, he tasked his protégé with generating interest in the club. He said it was practice for promoting events or products and proceeded to give me tips on that very topic. I was very tempted to completely fail at the task, but Harry finding out about being a parselmouth was very important, so I had to encourage enough interest for Draco to show up so that Snape would partner him with Harry and suggest summoning the snake.
One promotional tip Lockhart gave me was to know your audience. Know what methods work in getting information out and getting people interested. There's really only one way to get information to the masses of Hogwarts student: rely on the Hogwarts rumour mill. All I had to do was tell Lavender about the club and make it sound really appealing and the information that a amazing duelling club was starting and that everyone should go had been spread to everyone in the school by the next day.
So many people showed interest that they had to make four sessions for people to attend: first years, second and third years, fourth and fifth years and sixth and seventh years. Not only was I to attend my own session, but Lockhart had me help out with the first years as well, answering general questions about how the club would be run, solving partner issues and sending people to the hospital wing if needed. Originally Lockhart wanted me to help with all the other sessions as well, but Professor McGonagall managed to talk some sense into him that the upper years would not want to go to a second year to ask questions. Thus, a prefect took my position for every other group.
A different teacher was also present to help with different year groups. Professor Sinistra helped with the first years and Snape was there to help with the second and third years.
Each session was to be run back to back in order of age, meaning that I was already in the Great Hall when second and third years started to file into the room. I was stood next to Lockhart, him asking me questions about how I thought the first years found the session before. From what I could see (and what Ginny and her friends told me afterwards) they actually really enjoyed the club, although that was more due to Sinistra's advice rather than Lockhart's.
Being next to Lockhart as people began to wander in meant that I was also next to Lockhart when he loudly called for everyone's attention. It seemed as though all eyes were on me, so I slinked my way towards Harry, Hermione and Ron as the two boys stifled laughs at my startled expression. Why couldn't Lockhart have waited until I moved away? I really don't understand that man.
The demonstration between Snape and Lockhart was far shorter than the one between Lockhart and Professor Sinistra. Sinistra was far more inclined to show off to her audience, demonstrating a range of spells for the first years before finally defeating Lockhart. Snape was far more direct, ending the duel with a single disarming charm.
For my own duel, I was partnered with Marcus Belby, a Ravenclaw from the year above. He looked fairly nervous and it was rather easy to disarm him. With our duel over and done with quickly, I moved over to hand Marcus's wand over to him and we looked over the remaining duels, commenting on them to each other, Marcus slowly overcoming his nerves and talking to me properly.
I was still stood next to Marcus when Malfoy and Harry were called to demonstrate a duel and when the snake was called out. I can't really understand why people thought that Harry was egging the snake on. Even if I hadn't understood what Harry was saying, it's obvious that the snake was going to attack Justin before Harry said anything and suddenly stopped when Harry spoke. The most logical conclusion is that Harry stopped it! I muttered as much under my breath as I moved towards Ron and Hermione who were leading Harry out.
It didn't help Ron's worries when I admitted that I could understand what Harry had been saying, although it did help Harry's. Hermione has a theory that it must be a Shafiq family thing, and has spent all afternoon in the library trying to find information about Shafiqs being parselmouths.
Harry, Hermione and Ron's biggest fear now is that people will claim Harry is descended from Slytherin because of this gift, thus making him Slytherin's Heir. It would have been very difficult to prove that this wasn't the case, if not for the fact that the family trees of the majority of Harry's ancestors are very well documented, being predominantly the Shafiq and Potter family lines. However, it isn't a very well known fact that Lily Potter was related to the Shafiqs and this is also a fact that we don't want to expose right now, so as to not make people suspicious about me being a parselmouth too. We also don't have easy access to any Potter records and it could take weeks for a heritage test from Gringots to arrive, by which point the idea that Harry is the Heir of Slytherin would already be stuck in people's minds. It seems inevitable that some people will draw the wrong conclusions.
For now people have started to avoid being too close to Harry, apart from those we managed to explain the situation to like Dean and Seamus. We are all currently very stressed about the situation, although the others don't know how bad it's going to get. For tomorrow Justin will be petrified and everyone else will take that as proof of Harry's guilt and all we'll be able to do it support Harry through the experience.