Happy Winter Solstice everybody! Merry early Christmas and Happy late Hanukkah! I hope you enjoy the chapter. It's not quite what I had hoped it would be when I set out to write it, but hopefully you'll like it just the same. I still don't own Hp or its expanding universe. See you in the new year!

The Fat Friar

Early/Mid September 1993

Fifth Year

"You know who else we could ask if Friar doesn't know or won't answer?" Leili said on their way back to their dorm.

"Who?"

"Hagrid."

"I don't think he'd tell us and I'm not Harry, I don't know how to get people to admit things they'd rather not admit."

"With Hagrid, I don't think that takes any special skill. He opens his mouth and then finds he 'should not have told you that'," the thought was meant kindly enough, as both girls had a great deal of respect and affection for Hagrid. After all who else could hatch a baby dragons and Acromantula and almost get away with it?

As the Leili closed the dorm door behind them, Jo pulled out a sack of bugs from her book bag. "Phoebe," she called softly. No one was supposed to know they had an Occamy, tricky since they shared the room with three other girls who could be fairly nosey. "Phoebe, we brought bugs!"

A trill purred out from beneath Leili's bed as Phoebe responded to the promise of snacks. The Occamy slithered out from the hatbox that was her home. As she wound her way over to her humans she grew to fit the available space. She filled the room. "Smaller, Phoebe! Smaller!" Leili yelped as they ducked. Phoebe obligingly shrank and curled up in Leili's hands, stretching her now tiny wings and chirping her hellos.

"Every time, Phoebs? Really? Do we have to go through this every time?" Phoebe trilled happily at Jo.

"At least she responds to 'smaller' now." It was a command they'd been trying to teach her since the day she hatched and had nearly destroyed Jo's wall safe.

Later, in the dead of night, they crept into the crypt-like restricted section and pulled down a book on Salazar Slytherin and a roll of parchment they'd tucked away for safekeeping. The Friar joined them and whispered chidings on how they should be a-bed and not a-sneaking. Once properly chastised they asked him what he knew of Tom Marvolo Riddle.

"He was a charming boy," Friar said reluctantly. "He charmed his teachers and his friends and anyone he thought he could use. He charmed Rowena's daughter, made her feel special, something she had missed as a child. She had lived in her mother's shadow and died in it. So when Tom plied her with stories of his own and gave her someone she could relate to, she fell for it. There was something wrong with him... He was charming, but diabolical."

"Do you know who his family is?"

"Well, you've got his ancestor right; he was a descendant of Slytherin. His parents, well, he was an orphan."

"I can't believe Slytherin had kids," Leili said more to herself than Jo or Friar.

"Oh yes, at least one. The Gaunt line can be traced to the founder of the American Wizardry School, an Irish witch named Isolt. Her mother and aunt were Gaunts."

"Oh, I've heard of her! My dad went to her school, Ilvermorny. He wears the cloak closure as a tie pin to fancy dinners."

"His father was a muggle," Jo remembered. "He said something about not wanting to keep his muggle father's name. So he's a junior. Tom Marvolo Riddle Jr.,".

"Did you say Marvolo?" Friar asked.

"Yeah, we think it might have been his middle name, why?" Leili asked.

"There was a family, they never attended Hogwarts so you won't find them in any of the 'accepted student' parchment rolls, but the father's name was Marvolo Gaunt. He was sent to Azkaban in 1925 or so."

"Gaunt again. So he's got be related to Marvolo Gaunt."

"Through his daughter. The Gaunts did not have Squib children, excepting Isolt, ofcourse," Friar reminded them.

"He's related to two school founders, Slytherin and Isolt, that's interesting. I wonder if he knows."

"He knows about Slytherin at the very least, but past that, who knows."