Leo didn't finish his mission that day: Madam Pince had got suspicious and chased them out, but he still had careful notes to enable him to carry on later. They'd gone back to the common room and Leo had helped Marisa with her History of Magic essay and got some of his own essay-writing done.

That day between classes, they snuck to the library whenever they had a chance, which wasn't often. Marisa did a freshly-assigned Charms essay while Leo continued working through the geanology books.

At lunch, both of them ate as quickly as they could before returning to their mission. It took them until nearly seven o'clock in the evening before Leo finally threw down The Wizarding Descendants of Henry Gaunt, 1800 – 2000 (Thirty-fourth Edition) and said: "That's it. Dead end."

"What?" asked Marisa. "You mean you haven't found it?"

"No," he said. "I got as far as about 1920,1930, something like that, but then there's no more descendants… or should I say," he went on, "no more registered descendants."

"What do you mean?"

"Well," he said, "plenty of the old-fashioned blood-purist families – "

"Like yours?"

"Yes," he said, shooting Marisa a look. "Like mine. They didn't put it on the tree if a family member had disgraced them. So, they might not register a squib, or someone who married a Muggle."

"So, you're saying all this work finding registered descendants has been for nothing and there's about fifty unregistered ones out there who we have no clue how to find?"

"Sort of. There is still one thing we can try…"

Marisa pounced on the hope that she hadn't just done all of her homework in two days for nothing. "What is it?"

"Well, we could try looking through old Daily Prophets," Leo suggested. "The library has a huge archive of them. They might have records of what happened to these Gaunts."

Marisa nodded. "That could work… it sounds like hard work, though. Oh well, I've done all of my homework by now. What are we looking for?"

They went over to the Daily Prophets section, and Leo told her what she needed to do. "We're looking for any mention of a Morfin, Marvolo or Merope Gaunt, from about 1900 all the way through to now. If you take the first decade, I'll take the second…"

Marisa groaned. This was going to take forever…