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Chapter Five- Stolen wands, O.W.L.s and family trees

Harry found Nymphadora Tonks in a cellblock near his own. He was surprised to discover Hermione also in that block.

"I didn't know she was here," said Tonks when Harry asked her about it, "I haven't really been myself since I arrived. I've not really paid much attention to anything… How long have I been here?"

"Three months, give or take," Harry answered, "You were arrested just before the start of term. I think it's almost December now. It's hard to be sure though- I've been here since the middle of October myself. We're going to leave soon though. First we have to get control of this place, of course, but I don't think that should be too difficult."

"Not difficult?" asked Tonks. She pushed her hand through her hair, which at the moment was lank, dull and dishwater brown. Clearly she had not yet completely recovered from her time spent at the hands of the dementors, "How can you say that? We haven't even got wands!"

Harry grinned and handed her one of the wands he'd stolen from the guards he'd locked in his cell, "Sure you do! And I don't need one!" his eyes positively gleamed with that pronouncement.

Tonks looked down at the wand doubtfully, "Where did you get this?"

Harry rocked back on his heels, the picture of self-satisfaction, "I stole it."

She gasped.

He shrugged, "Well, I'm having a rebellion here! I can't have pesky guards waving their wands all over the place! Besides, your wand was destroyed, so I had to find you another one."

"What about you?" asked Hermione. It was the first words she's spoken since she'd been let out of her cell. Harry didn't understand why she seemed quite so subdued. She couldn't have been at Azkaban for long- less time than he'd spent certainly. Also, she seemed worse off than Tonks, and that didn't really make sense. He would have to figure it out later.

"Didn't I say?" he answered her question, "I don't need a wand. I knew it was only a matter of time before I'd be arrested, so I've been practicing wandless magic since the summer. I started right after Lupin got arrested. I'm quite good at it now."

"Oh," Tonks looked quite surprised, "That's very advanced. I don't know many people who know how to do wandless magic. I don't know how."

Harry beamed. This was the best day he'd had in quite a long while, "Let's find some more people to break out."

"Ron," Hermione softly interjected.

"Ron's here too? Wow. Today's full of surprises," Harry shrugged, "We'll fetch him first then. Shall we be off?" Harry did a quick locator spell and then set of in Ron's direction. As they walked, he hummed under his breath.

I'm the King of the Castle…

Ginny and Neville were sitting at a table in the library with spell books spread all around them. The Quibbler issue they'd borrowed from Luna was discretely hidden from site under Neville's school bag. They had each carefully copied out the charms from the issue into their notebooks and were waiting patiently for Luna to return from the opposite side of the Library where she was lecturing a nervous looking first year Hufflepuff on the virtues of the Quibbler. They were eager to return the magazine to her so that they would not have to suffer the indignity of being caught with it themselves.

Ginny absently flipped through the pages of a particularly large and boring book which seemed to consist primarily of spells to lock or hide things away and their counter spells. She wasn't paying particularly close attention to what was on the pages. She was just looking to see if anything would pop out at her. She had come to the conclusion over an hour ago, that unlike Hermione, she was not cut out to be a bookworm and study bug. Neville seemed to be much more engrossed in his reading material than she was.

If I have to read about one more variation on the unlocking charm…

Ginny cut off in mid-thought. Something in the book had caught her attention. There was a loose page of parchment hidden between the pages. Interesting. Ginny unfolded the parchment. It was actually quite large. It appeared to be some sort of genealogy. She had to study it for a moment before figuring out why it had been hidden. At the top, in faded spidery lettering, she made out words which seemed to spell out 'Genealogy of Salazar Slytherin'. Finally, she was able to find Salazar's name near the top. She hadn't spotted it immediately because there were several preceding generations also recorded.

"Neville," she tapped him on the shoulder to catch his attention, "I think I've found something?"

"Did you find the counter to the charm Luna put on our Lunch?" he asked.

"No. Better. I've found a Slytherin genealogy."

Neville's jaw dropped, "I didn't know there was a record!"

"There is. I've got it. I haven't studied it to closely yet- it's enormous, but I can't imagine that it wouldn't be useful for something."

"How up to date is it?"

Ginny shuffled the parchment around a bit until she had the most recent entries in front of her. At least a dozen different styles of handwriting made up the genealogy. Ginny was in awe of it. The parchment must have stayed in the Slytherin family for generations with each successive heir keeping track of their familial connections…

"The last entry is a birth dated at 1927. It's a boy- the son of Pythia Cerastes, and get this," she paused for emphasis, "The boy is named Thomas."

"Thomas? You don't think… could it be?"

"Tom Riddle?" Ginny grinned, "I think so! The dates are about right. That's not even the best part though. Pythia wasn't an only child. She had brothers and sisters and some of them had children of their own!"

Neville caught his breath, "Do you mean..?"

"Yeah, that's right," Ginny's eyes twinkled, "It's entirely possible that our friend Tom Riddle has family still alive today. I'll bet that even he doesn't know about this! We've got to see if we can find out."

"Absolutely," Neville agreed.

Luna chose that moment to return to the table. She looked dreamily from Ginny to Neville taking in their excited expressions and said, "I knew that reading the Quibbler would help you."

Neville coughed to hide a laugh, "Right. Er… yes. I was a great deal of help. We're finished with it now though," he extracted the magazine from it's hiding place under his school bag and handed it back to Luna, "Here you are."

Luna smiled brightly and accepted the magazine.

Ginny re-folded the genealogy and tucked it in her bag. She had a feeling that it would be best if no one else knew about it just yet. She wanted to study it more carefully on her own. Perhaps she would pay a visit to the room of requirement when she had a free moment since her dorm wasn't the most private place imaginable.

Luna sat down next to Neville, "What are you reading?" she asked.

"I'm researching charms," he answered.

"Still? That's what you were doing when I went over to help that nice Hufflepuff girl with her potions homework."

"You were helping someone with their potions homework?" Ginny asked doubtfully. She had visions of the poor little Hufflepuff girl being corrupted into spouting misinformation from the Quibbler in Professor Snape's presence. It wasn't a pretty picture.

Luna nodded enthusiastically, "Potions is my best subject. I scored Outstanding on my O.W.L."

"Oh," Ginny didn't really know what else to say about that. She supposed that she should have guessed that Luna wasn't quite as absentminded as she seemed. There had been clues that she actually did know quite a lot about potions. Somehow, Ginny had just always found it difficult to take anything Luna said seriously. She would have to work on that, "Umm. I didn't know that. Congratulations."

Luna smiled, "Thank you! You're so sweet."

Ginny turn to Neville and gave him a look that said, 'Did you know about this?' His answering shrug suggested that he hadn't.

"Oh look!" cried Luna, oblivious to her companions' state of shock, "It's time for dinner. Shall we go?"

Following dinner, Ginny, Neville and Luna stole away to the room of requirement. Neville had quietly informed Luna of their discovery on the way to the dining hall and all three of them had fidgeted their way impatiently through dinner.

Ginny gasped as she entered the room. It amazed her every time how everything she could possibly need was already there, waiting for her. The room was furnished with a large table and three comfortable chairs. There were also several bookshelves containing everything written about wizarding families. It might take them a while, but with all of the resources available here, they were certain to find something useful.

Luna headed directly across the room to a shelf, which Ginny was surprised to see contained an impressive complement of Quibble back issues.

"Oh, look!" she cried, "All of the issues containing exposes on the oldest wizarding families are here! This is brilliant! I'm missing a lot of these issues- some are from even before I was born!" She reverently selected an issue, "This issue has an article all about the Noctis family. They were rumoured to have strong ties to the Cerastes family."

"Riddle's mother's family?" Neville asked with interest.

"Yes," Luna nodded happily.

Ginny raised her eyebrows. She wasn't sure how much stock she was willing to put in what the Quibbler had to say- it wasn't the most reliable of magazines, but she had only just recently seen firsthand proof that not everything in the publication was false. She was willing to admit that it was at least worth a look.

"Is there an issue that focuses on the Cerastes family?" she asked hopefully. She somehow didn't think that there would be- she'd never heard the name before seeing it on the genealogy, after all. Still, it was worth a shot. The family might have held a higher profile in the Quibbler than in more mainstream news sources such as the Daily Prophet. After all, Ginny had never heard of the Noctis family either. Luna was evidently quite familiar with both names. She was proving to be a constant surprise.

"Of course there is," answered Luna, "It's from seventeen years ago, when the Dark Lord was at his peak. The Quibbler did a feature on his family history. It's quite well written, a classic really. I think the author won a Poison Pen Award for writing it."

"Of course," said Ginny. Why am I even surprised? "Well, what does it have to say then?"

"Hold on a minute," Luna held up a hand, "I've got to find it, now don't I?" she continued conversationally, "You know, there weren't very many copies of this issue printed. The Dark Lord and his minions are responsible, of course. They tried to suppress it. Didn't want the world to know the truth."

"What?" asked Ginny with irony, "That he was only a half-blood wizard?"

"That and other things," Luna answered cryptically.

Neville frowned, "Look, I know it will be interesting learning more about the Dark Lord's family, but will it really help us? I mean, shouldn't we be focussing on rescuing everyone from Azkaban?"

"Well," said Ginny, "In general terms, I agree with you, but the fact of the matter is that we haven't a clue how to go about breaking into Azkaban. We don't even know where it is, let alone how to breach the security…"

"It's on the island of Thera," Luna interjected.

"Right," Ginny continued, "The island of Thera. Even if that is true- and I'm not convinced that it is, no one knows where Thera is located. Like you said, it was supposed to have been destroyed ages ago by a volcanic eruption. It might as well be Atlantis for all the chance we have of finding it!"

"Oh! I know where Atlantis is!" Luna was looking excited again.

"I don't care where it is!" Ginny was quite furious by this point, "Atlantis doesn't matter! We're not talking about Atlantis!"

Neville broke in to try and stem Ginny's eruption, "Look, let's forget about that for now. You're probably both right, but that's not the point," he held up a hand to still Ginny's inevitable protest, "It doesn't matter where Azkaban is. We can't get there. We don't know who the secret keeper person is or even if they exist…"

"Keeper of the spell," Luna corrected, "It's an entirely different thing. An Arnethist cloaking spell has a keeper of the spell, not a secret keeper. They're two entirely different things…"

"Right," Neville continued, "so it doesn't matter where Azkaban is. We can't do anything about Azkaban. Maybe reading up on the Dark Lord's ancestry won't help us just now, but it can't hurt to know about it. Maybe down the road we will be able to use what we learn. That's all we can hope for now. Harry, Ron, Hermione and everyone else at Azkaban will just have to take care of themselves for the time being."

A/N: Lovely. I'm quite glad that there are now at least a few people out there who are enjoying my story. I'm getting to enjoy it quite a bit more myself now that things are beginning to happen.

I would once again like to say thank you to all who have read my story (especially those of you who've added it to your favourites list!)

Also, I would like to thank Khadon for beta-reading for me. He's much more familiar with the details of cannon than I am, and I'm grateful to him for his help keeping them straight.

As you have probably noticed, I've recently begun updating a little more frequently. This is due to my having finished my degree program at the end of December, and as a consequence, having quite a bit more free time on my hands.

That's it for now.