The Potions Master's Daughter Part 2

CHAPTER 3 Ollivander's Secret

When she woke up the next day, Alice could still feel the sour aftertaste of yesterday's evening. The look on Daphne's face in the dark study room danced before her eyes as she looked up at the white ceiling of her bedroom. Daphne's words echoed in her head: 'You never explained why your parents never pick you up at King's Cross... Let's not discuss our families and their secrets...'

She sighed. She hoped their friendship wouldn't suffer after the visit at the Malfoy Manor. She hoped desperately that when they see each other on the Hogwart's Express, Daphne would beam at her, say one of her usual jokes, and forget all about it. Then, they'd sit in their compartment with Blaise and make him tell them everything about his summer; they'd eat heaps of chocolate frogs and everything would be back to normal.

Meanwhile, August seemed to drag on forever, and Alice impatiently awaited the day when she'd finally get to go to Diagon Alley with Aunt Honora. For some reason her aunt always seemed to have something more important to do, and kept delaying their trip anytime Alice suggested that they go. It was now halfway through August, and Aunt Honora still insisted that she didn't have time to go to London with her.

Alice was especially annoyed because she hadn't actually been to the Diagon Alley for the past two years. Before her second year, Snape had bought everything for her 'while he was in town', and dropped it off in Honington one evening, without even asking Alice if she would've wanted to go there herself. Last year, on the other hand, he forbade her upfront, saying that with Sirius Black on the loose he wouldn't want to risk her getting killed by the notorious criminal.

This year, Alice desperately wanted to go. She missed the happy, busy Diagon Alley, full of magic and commotion. She couldn't wait to get her hands on new books, and she was even thinking of purchasing a small owl (Uncle Ernest had been encouraging, Aunt Honora not so much). But there was one more thing on Alice's mind. It had to do with a strange occurrence on one cold Christmas night. It had to do with what she found in Aunt Honora's bedroom three years ago.

It was about the red wand; she was going to ask Ollivander whom it belonged to.

Why? Alice didn't know. Or perhaps she did but hadn't had the courage to allow the thought of it to crystalise in her head. The memories of her first year were becoming vaguer with time, but there were things she remembered so clearly, it felt like it was only yesterday that they happened. She would even dream about them sometimes, that's how well-imprinted in her memory they were.

When asked about the red wand, Snape said it belonged to his late mother. But when he told her that, Alice did something she had not done in all of her childhood.

She questioned his words.

Why? There were a couple of reasons, all of which she had written about extensively in her journal. For one, she was absolutely, undoubtedly, one hundred per cent certain, that if Snape was to keep his mother's wand, he would've kept it in his house at Spinner's End. It was his childhood home; a place he grew up in; a place where he kept all of his most precious possessions, his books, rare potion ingredients, and delicate magical artefacts. Alice had visited Spinner's End quite a lot over the years but had never felt at home in the murky, sombre town of Cokeworth, where Snape's eerie (it really was rather eerie) domicile was located.

It was crystal clear for her: if Snape had ever decided to hold on to his mother's wand, he would've kept it in a safe spot in his own bedroom, not Aunt Honora's. Unless, of course, Aunt Honora was more attached to Eileen Prince than Snape was. Alice had considered, although rejected that possibility. She strongly believed that even though neither Snape nor Aunt Honora mentioned Eileen Prince very often, a bond of a son and his mother was stronger than a bond of two sisters. Especially considering the fact that when the two sisters were born, Honora Prince turned out to be nothing more than a disappointing little Squib. Keeping her sister's wand in her bedroom would have undoubtedly been a pitiful reminder of all that Aunt Honora wasn't , and all that her sister, Eileen Prince, was . Alice was sure that if she was born into a magical family, in which she was the only one devoid of magical abilities, she would do everything in her power to forget that kind of humiliation; not to keep a constant reminder of it in a drawer of her own vanity.