HP: The Last Trial Ch.5 (Patreon)

Chapter 5

DAPHNE GREENGRASS

Daphne found herself once more in the dreaded halls of St. Mungo’s. She had spent enough time in these Halls caring for her sister, that a part of her had grown up dreading them. She had promised herself that she wouldn’t step into this accursed place again, yet today she was here to meet someone extremely important about a very sensitive piece of information.

She took out the note from her pocket and rechecked the room number. She was here.

She breathed deeply as she walked forward and slowly knocked on the door. After a short pause, a feminine voice came from inside.

“Come in,” she turned the door handle and walked into the room. It was a standard patient room. On the bed lay a person who had once been her classmate, his blonde hair iconic, making it easy to identify him. Draco Malfoy lay there on the bed, his body pail as several enacted items were hooked to his body, sustaining his life. Besides him sat the person she had come to visit.

The war had done much to dampen the beauty of the Malfoy matriarch. Narcissa Malfoy and Draco Malfoy had avoided getting incriminated, for she had remained bust caring for her injured son, during the whole war. The woman had practically raised, Crovus since the day he had been born and had once loved him like a son. Though she knew that the woman’s feelings about him were conflicted now after all he had been the one who had put Draco in the hospital.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” she said and saw the woman give her a stiff nod.

“As you may know, I am representing Crovus in his defense,” she began and saw the woman’s expression shift slightly, though she quickly replastered the impassive look on her face.

“Yes, I have heard,” she replied as she turned away from her, her hand gently passing through her son’s hair.

“In that regard, there was something I needed to ask you about him. It’s about his parents?”

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PERCY WEASLEY

The proceedings of the court had truly gone differently than what he had imagined. The case against Crovus Lestrange was very strong, with several low-level Death Eaters having given information about Voldemort’s so-called successor to lessen their sentence. The horror stories about the boy’s ruthlessness and skill were tales worthy of storybooks of how he had risen through the ranks while being the youngest person to join the so-called inner circle. The evidence was massive, and there were no lawyers willing to represent him, yet somehow Daphne freaking Greengrass had stepped up in his defense and had sprung a tale about him being a double agent.

Things had never truly settled after that. And for some reason, he could feel things slipping between his fingers with every passing day. And now he was just struck dumb as he stood there stunned and dazed as his sister walked up to the stand as pandemonium broke out behind him. The Hogwarts petrifications had been a scandal for months and had shaken the whole school. The truth behind it had never been made public, with the Headmaster only giving a statement about the resolution of the problem.

And now, he was learning that the person responsible for these petrifications was his own sister. And that very same sister was now taking the stand to defend their brother’s murderer.

Daphne walked towards his sister as the commotion died down, as the Minster banged her gavel twice to bring back order to the courtroom.

“Now, would you please state your full name for the court,” began Daphne politely.

Ginny gulped as she spoke in a small voice, “My name is Ginny Weasley, and I went to Hogwarts and was in the same year as Crovus Lestrange,” she answered, giving the person chained to his seat opposite to her. The murderer of their brother who sat there quietly, his eyes focused on his sister.

“Now, Miss Ginny Weasley, what can you tell us about this diary?” Daphne answered, and she saw Ginny hesitate a bit before she slowly.

“It all began as I took out my luggage during the first night and, while doing so, found a strange diary among the books,” she began slowly.

“The diary was empty and looked pretty old. I thought that it had gotten mixed up in the books because we had…..um, bought….used books,” she said with a gulp.

“And was there something written on it, anything at all?” questioned Daphne, and Ginny shook her head.

“No, but it wasn’t any ordinary diary….”

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Ginny Weasley found herself sitting in her bed, scribbling away in the diary she had found in her stuff, as her roommates around her slept.

‘My first day at Hogwarts was pretty good. I still cannot believe that I am here, at Hogwarts, sorted into the same House as Harry Potter. However, I am a bit worried about him and Ron. For some reason, they thought both of them used their father’s flying car to get to school. And now they are both serving detention, and father is in trouble at work.’

She stopped after those, thinking whether she should write more. There were many things to write about. The train ride had been quite exciting, and she had thought that she had made a friend when she had met Astoria, but had only found out later that she was a Slytherin, and was best friends with Crovus Lestrange.

And as she was lost in thought, she stilled suddenly as she saw her words vanish into the pages, becoming invisible only for a beautiful cursive script to take their place.

~Hello, Ginny~

~It is nice to see that your first day at Hogwarts was exciting. I am Tom~

And she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, the diary was writing back somehow. And a part of her was alarmed, but she was also very intrigued and excited by it. And despite the strangeness of the whole ordeal, she picked up her quill once again.

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“And so, I wrote into it, for days and nights. Pouring my very soul into it,” continued Ginny, and Percy frowned as she continued.

“At first, nothing felt wrong, but then it all changed with the attack on MR. Filch’s cat,” she finished, and Daphne nodded at this and asked.

“What exactly changed?” at this, Ginny chewed her lips as she answered.

“Everything, I began to have lucid intervals. I could feel myself losing track of time, and as attacks continued, I found myself more and more convinced that it was I carrying out these attacks,” she answered.

“And then one day I found him,” at this, she pointed towards Crovus,

“Following me. I began to grow even more anxious and wrote about him in the diary, and was surprised by the reaction I received,” answered Ginny, and the crowd stirred at those words.

“And what reaction was that?” questioned Daphne.

“Intrigue. Tom was intrigued by Crovus and asked me various questions about him, and then, as my anxiety grew, I began to realize the dangerous nature of the object I had been pouring my heart and soul into. I decided to get rid of it,” she answered.

“And then one day, I flushed it down the girls' toilets on the second floor, just like he said earlier,” concluded Ginny, and he saw Daphne nod as she turned to face the Minister.

“And that was the end of the Hogwarts petrifications, at least for the public. For there would be one more attack. The last attack, an attack that would happen near the end of term, and the person responsible for that attack was the same person who had used Miss Ginny Weasley for the earlier attacks,” said Daphne, and he saw Crovus’s expression change as she had mentioned the last attack.

He tried to recall hearing about such an attack and stilled as he recalled how one student had suddenly pulled out from the school that year. A young first-year Slytherin girl, and his head snapped towards Daphne, for that person was her sister.

Astoria Greengrass. He quickly wrote that name on the page in front of him, planning to explore that line of investigation

“The enchanted diary which Miss Ginny and my client encountered was created by a Hogwarts alumni who called himself ‘Tom.’ The diary was a kind of remnant that had been enchanted by this person to control and influence those who stumbled upon it,” began Daphne as she reached for a document from her file before she gave it to the Minister.

“The full name of this so-called ‘Tom’ was Tom Marvolo Riddle, or as we all know him today,” and Percy gulped as he had a very good idea about what the next words were going to be.

“Voldemort!” and the court stilled at those words. While Voldemort’s true identity had always been known among certain circles, this was the first time it was being made public officially.

And as soon as the implication behind those words became clear, the courtroom descended into full-blown mayhem.

“SILENCE, SILENCE! We shall have a short recess!” came the order from the Minister as he glanced closer to his deputy council and his partner Penelope.

“I want you to look into Astoria Greengrass and find out what happened to her. I have a suspicion she is somehow connected to all this,” and Penelope nodded.

“Alright. I will see what I can find.”

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ASTORIA GREENGRASS

Astoria frowned as she sat in the Main Hall waiting on the table for Crovus, and much like the last couple of weeks, he didn’t show up again.

Astoria had grown up with Crovus, they had known each other since childhood. They had practically grown up together and knew each other very well. Even after coming to Hogwarts, they had stuck to each other, and though she was close with a number of other girls from their year, but none could ever take Crovus’s place in her life.

Yet, for some reason, he had been growing a bit distant over the last months. He had always been pale and thin, yet over the last weeks, he had become paler and thinner, his mood becoming erratic and irritable, and he began to isolate himself, often vanishing for hours and hours.

“He didn’t come for dinner again, today?” questioned her sister from the side, and Astoria nodded, turning to look at Daphne, who was also looking towards the door with a frown.

“Yes, this is the second time this week. I don’t know but something is wrong with him,” she told Daphne who nodded at her complaint.

“I will talk to Professor Snape, he might be able to help us with this,” replied Daphne and that was a good approach. Professor Snape was their head of House and was also the person who provided Crovus with his potions, for his ailment.

“Yeah, you should. I will also try and talk to him.”

But their inquiry would go unattended, and Crovus would become more and more distant as the year would pass, prompting Astoria to try and follow him to see what was going on with him.

The year would end, with the exams taking place. The whole school had by then forgotten about the petrifications and the whole heir of Slytherin debacle, with the attacks just stopping suddenly.

The mandrake juice had been bought and the petrified students had been cured, all of them had been unable to provide the teachers with the identity of the attacker, and had claimed to see only a pair of yellow orbs.

She felt her heart race as she saw Crovus turn the corner, as he moved towards the abandoned girl's bathrooms on the Second Floor. She waited for some time but soon moved to follow him.

She opened the door and just as she entered the bathrooms, she could barely react as she heard a whisper.

“STUPEFY!” and the last thing she saw before the darkness enveloped her was a pair of red eyes, red that was much darker and ominous than Crovus’s eyes.

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Percy sat in the room pacing as he waited for Penelope to show up. The trial was set to resume any minute now, and she had yet to return. If she was unable to find anything about Astoria Greengrass, then he would have to ask the court for more time, given that the defense had called Ginny without giving the prosecution any time to prepare. It would incline the Minister to give him the continuation.

Yet suddenly, the doors to the room swung open and Penelope rushed in while huffing for breath, and he knew that they just might not need that continuation after all.

“You won’t believe what I found out about Astoria,” she said as she handed him a file. There was the logo of St. Mungo’s on the file and he opened it and found himself staring at Astoria Greengrass’s medical record.

“I tried to look for Astoria Greengrass and found nothing at first, and then I remembered that she had been attacked, so I had one of my friends at St. Mungo’s see if they could get me her file and then I found out the real reason why none has heard about her for sim uh time…..”

“Because she is dead!” he finished her sentence as he read through the file, and according to the report he held in his hands, she had died within the past year.

“Yes, and more importantly, look at the cause of her death,” said Penelope as she walked to his side, and pointed at a certain part of the report.

“Astoria had been born with a congenital disease. The Greengrasses searched high and low for a cure yet made no progress. The healers thought that she might not make it past her twenties, yet look at her admission date in this report,” she pointed at the date.

“It’s the end of her first year,” he said as the dates matched, meaning that his hunch had been right and it all clicked into place.

“The attacks didn’t stop. And Since Crovus had the diary, he became the attacker, and she was the last victim,” he said as he placed down the file.

“Yes, and the attack was bad. It wasn’t like the previous petrifications, and Astoria was said to be on her deathbed. Her condition was critical, and according to one of the healers, the only thing that could prolong her life was….”

“Blood from a phoenix!” he finished, and the words hung in the air, for there was only one phoenix in the British Isles, and they both knew to whom it belonged.

And if this file was accurate then there was a great implication. The implication that involved one of the greatest heroes of their world.

“Don’t speak about this to anyone yet,” he said to Penelope, picked up the file, and began to walk out of the room.

“Where are you going, Percy?” came the question from Penelope.

“I am going to find out why the hell is Daphne Greengrass representing the person who was responsible for killing her sister?” he remarked as he rushed out of the room and began to head towards the Defense attorney’s room, intending to get some much-needed answers.

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