The Greatest Weapon, Chapter 2
The rest of the day might as well have been a holiday. Herbology turned into an impromptu party in Greenhouse Two, while Pomona Sprout potted fanged geraniums and looked the other way, and Mcgonagall canceled her lesson plan to teach decorative transfiguration, once it was clear that no one was listening. According to the gossip at lunch, even Snape couldn't keep his classes in line, although Harry personally doubted that one. The twins had smuggled in a cask of Ogden's finest, and the best part of all was, they couldn't go to DADA, even had anyone wanted to, since the twins had trapped the classroom with a few of their best jests, including a foul-smelling portible swamp. Umbridge had to be rescued by the house elves, as none of the staff were willing to go get her.
Harry was smirking all throughout the day, although he had a close call when Hermione commented that he seemed to have already known about the article. He'd admitted his involvement, but not that he'd actually done most of the writing. The rest of the day, he couldn't find a minute to himself long enough to continue his next article, so that evening, with the curtains around his four-poster shut and laiden with his usual silencing charms (handy for obscuring the scratch of a quill as well as the disturbance of a nightmare) he wrote his next article by wandlight, and snuck it into the owlry before anyone else was even awake.
The next evening saw the fireworks- both literal and figurative. Umbridge had been dragged out of the Great Hall during lunch by an incandescent Amelia Bones, right before the afternoon's torture session (hem hem, DADA class).
Not that they could have gotten to the DADA classroom anyway, what with a portable swamp the twins had set up. Lee Jordan, of course, found this a most excellent opportunity to try out a new batch of the twins' fireworks, and even Snape smiled a little at the beautiful flaming dragons and nifflers and such (although he then took thirty points from Gryffindor, and when an amused Mcgonagall commented, fervently denied that he'd found it funny)
Harry grinned happily at the fireworks, glad for anything to take his mind off the growing Voldemort problem, but he was even happier later that evening, when owl after owl dropped their offerings on the long tables at dinner. Rita Skeeter had struck again, and evidently, the editors had turned it into a special edition. On top of it, she'd done her research- better even than Harry could have hoped for, and the details she'd dug up were satisfactorily juicy. Harry pictured Voldemort in a safe house somewhere, reading the Prophet, and giggled .
'You-Know-Who a Halfblood!' screamed the headlines
The greatest Dark Lord since Salazar Slytherin is not only not a pureblood, but a halfblood, of the worst kind: born of a squib and a muggle. The story is both lurid and tragic.
In the town of Little Hangleton lived the last remnants of the Noble and Ancient House Gaunt, Marvolo Gaunt and his mad, sadistic son Morfin, together with the first girl in that family for four generations, the squib Merope, in a little shack. Abused for her lack of magic, and reviled by her wealthier relations, Merope at last turned to cunning, and slipped her handsome, wealthy neighbor Tom Riddle a love potion, to force him to sweep her off her feet and take her away.
They lived together for a year, until Merope got pregnant and stopped giving Riddle the potion, probably thinking he would stay for the baby. He left her. Having no other means of support, and no way of going back, as her father would have killed her for birthing an impure baby, she sold Slytherin family heirlooms for as long as they lasted, until finally dying at an orphanage, living just long enough to name her baby.
You-Know-Who grew up as a muggle, in a muggle orphanage, during a muggle world war which coincided with the rise of Grindelwald. Was it any wonder that he turned into what he would be? With muggle influence, and no Wizarding help, even when he went to Hogwarts (where he was supposedly Head Boy and Star Seeker) and, of course, conceived under the influence of a love potion, could he have turned out differently? Could Albus Dumbledore, then one of his teachers, have stopped him going Dark? We will never know.
How many orphans are being ignored now, when we could help them? How many potentially great wizards are turning dark for lack of support? Is there a new Dark Lord in the making?
Where the other article had filled the Great Hall with cheers and speculation, this one caused a dead silence to fill the hall, save for the Slytherins whispering among themselves, and the Ravenclaws taking notes on leftover parchment. Even the staff were shocked into silence, except for Snape, who looked furious, and Dumbledore, who looked annoyed, under his concerned grandfather persona.
Harry grinned. For possibly the first time, Rita hadn't disappointed. He could get used to this. After having a suitably shocked conversation with Hermione and Ron, he used his Charms essay as an excuse to sneak back into the dorm and start his latest outline for Rita. Lucius Malfoy would be in some very hot water rather soon.