POV – Sterling

Otto manages to cajole me into coming to the library when I could be sleeping. I don't know how, but he does. He's surprisingly convincing for someone so unassuming – plain blond hair and brownish eyes, another figure in the crowd. But somehow, he compels me to come on his library expedition at a God-forsaken time in the morning.

Luckily for me, I wasn't the only one who looked out of place. When I showed up, it was just him and Nyssa, the brunette from the train, waiting outside the library. Irritatingly, neither looks in the least bit tired. We wait around a little, and I nearly doze off standing up, but a few minutes later Layla and one of her friends who I hadn't met show up. Layla keeps yawning, and the boy looks mildly subdued, eyes still half-closed. Otto grinned at them. "Tired?"

"Jump off your Ravenclaw tower," Layla grumbles, and he laughs. Layla's companion looks a little more excited, though. He's a grinner, I can tell. I like him already. He's got a camera in front of him and is currently snapping photos of all of us, even if sleep is still dragging at his eyes. When he gets around to putting it away, Nyssa jerks her head towards the library.

"Come on, then."

We troop inside and I watch as Otto and Nyssa approach the librarian, Madam Pince. "Yes?" she asks in a not too friendly but not unfriendly voice.

"Um…" Otto stalls, frowning slightly at the none-too-welcoming attitude.

Nyssa jumps in for him. "We were in History of Magic yesterday and it would be ever so helpful of you, Madam Pince, if you helped us find a book on wizarding genealogy? This library just has so many books in it, it would take us so long to find what we need, and you're the one who would know it best," she says quietly and smoothly.

To my surprise, five minutes later we have two books on wizard genealogy between us as we trot back out of the library. "How did you get her to be so helpful?" Colin asks. "She looked so scary…"

Nyssa shoots him a smirk, just like Otto's but so brief you could miss it by blinking. "When you're like me you pick stuff up… we were never acquainted, were we?"

"He's Colin," Layla pipes up. "A friend of mine. Muggle-born."

Nyssa's face doesn't change much, I notice, just a slightly quirk of the brows. It seems to be a thing of hers, keeping emotions stifled, which is interesting, considering the rest of her house seems intent on sneering or loudly proclaiming superiority. The slightest shadow of a frown. "If this is going where we think it is," she says evenly, "Then there's no such thing."

"Hold up," I say. "I can attest to there being Muggle-borns. I am one."

She surveys me. "That's what I thought, at first. Now, we need somewhere to sit… Otto, your family has been here. Where do we go?"

Otto blinks. "Er. Layla?"

Layla looks curious but provides a spot. "If we duck behind this statue, there's a hidden room you have to crawl to get to. Unused by all, so far as I know. Ought to be full of dust by now."

We agree and all squeeze behind the statue. She's right, the room is full of dust, as if it hasn't been touched in a decade. Otto fixes all that with a flick of his wand, which impresses me. "Basic household spells," he says when he spots me looking. "Picked them up off my mum." I stop looking, and as Layla starts dragging a table at the edge of the room to the centre, I hurry over to help, while the others manage the chairs. Nyssa and Otto then put the books on the table. Colin goes to open one, but Otto puts his hand up for a second. "Not yet. Nyssa, what did you mean back there?"

Nyssa glances up. "First of all, I need all of you to swear that whatever we discover stays between us."

"Swear?" Layla asks.

She's not the only apprehensive one. I frown. "Asking someone to enter a binding contract before they know what they're getting into is usually a little dodgy. No offense." I add the bit at the end rather hurriedly.

Nyssa looks at me. Oh boy, is she a Slytherin. I get the uneasy feeling she could vaporize me. But then, to my genuine pleased amazement, she nods. "It is, a little. Clever of you to point it out. Okay, fine. A little more. We're looking into how the Wizarding Law controls the descent of Houses. We're going to find out our legacies, if we have any."

"What's that?" Colin asks?

Nyssa sighs and Otto picks up the beat. "A legacy is when you have the blood of a certain family. So you're a legacy of House Creevey. But, you could also have legacy of older houses that have died out. Some of them go completely extinct, others just run out of males who bear their name. The idea is, we're going to research if we have powerful families behind us. It would explain a little…"

"Such as the muggle-born conundrum," Nyssa interjects. "You see, muggle-borns shouldn't have magic. It doesn't make sense, unless, they have magical blood somewhere, such as a Squib in their family tree."

"Squib. Like a firecracker," I state.

"No, like a person without magic," Otto says. "Reverse muggle-borns, basically."

"Oh."

"The problem is, Houses command a lot of respect, but also have a lot of meaning. You could uncover curses, powerful heritage, abilities you never knew of… I experienced a lot when I was young."

Layla suddenly seems curious. "Like what? Is it the same where you come from as in Britain?"

Nyssa seems to clam up a little. "Sort of." She doesn't elaborate and there's an awkward silence.

"Anyway," Otto says, "If we all swear to keep any legacies secret we can prevent any problems from being judged or any whacked out powers we might find out about."

I shrug. "Well, I know the terms now. I swear."

Nyssa looks up at me. "Point your wand to the centre."

"O-kay."

She glances around at the others, eyes slightly narrowed. Challenging them. They all yield and point the wands inwards. She closes her eyes. "This is something I learned as a child." She takes a Knut, and places it where the wand-tips meet. "Okay. Each of you needs to swear in turn." We do, and eventually it cycles back to her. She swears, then takes a breath and says a single word that doesn't even seem magical – "Deno."

The Knut seems to melt, going soft and shimmery, the insignia vanishing, the metal beginning to droop across the wands, and then, suddenly, the motion changes; now the metal splits into five parts and twists its way up our wands, clearly molten now, but to my surprise, as it trickles onto my fingertips, it feels cool and dry. The metal winds itself around my wrist, and then it's gone.

"What was that? It was so amazing and weird!" Colin exclaims, going full fangirl.

Nyssa's face twitches but she doesn't quite smile. "Metal magic, I guess. That's what we called it. I used bronze, which is the weakest of the coinage metals. You'll be able to break the oath to save yourself from immediate danger. Which I think is generous. Silver would mean you could only break it to save yourself from death. That would need a sickle."

"What about a Galleon?" Layla asks.

Nyssa simply looks at Layla until she understands. Which takes a while. But she eventually realises and looks slightly freaked after that. "I'm glad we didn't do that."

"It doesn't pay to bind your allies so harshly. A welt leads to infection, infection leads to death." Nyssa takes a book before we can process this. "Now. Let's start with Excitable, shall we?"

I'm surprised she makes the effort for Colin, who gets overly bouncy at this. Most of the other Slytherins aren't nearly as friendly, not that she's overly welcoming. Colin bounces around and peeps over her shoulder while Otto opens the second book. "What's the difference between them?" I ask.

"Mine is on extant branches, so, when a Squib has a child. The other is on families whose surname has gone extinct." Otto flicks through the book. "What's your surname, Colin?"

"Creevey," Colin squeaks.

Otto and Nyssa both flick through the books while Layla and I exchange curious glances. Every so often Otto makes a noise of recognition as he sees a family he knows. Eventually, he stops about halfway through. "Nyssa, did you find anything?"

She glances up. "Nothing as yet. The extant might help."

"Oh, yeah, it would," Otto says, slightly sheepish. "Okay, Colin, so your magic comes from a Squib called Parthenope Greengrass."

At the mention of the name, Nyssa starts flicking through the book at a furious pace, until she finally stops. She seems a little disappointed. "Well…"

"What is it?" Layla asks.

"I couldn't find much. You're an heir to House Greengrass, which means you may have the remains of a curse that will kill you in your thirties. You're also strongly tied to House Redcrest."

"What does that mean?" Colin asks.

Nyssa makes an odd face. "I'm not from Britain."

"Well, I don't know either and Layla doesn't even pick up books if she can help it," Otto says, sounding slightly put out. "We can look up the meanings of the families later, I guess."

Nyssa nods in approval, before they begin to research the rest of us. I learn that Layla is not just from house Trask but also a descendant of the male-line-extinct House Burr, as is Otto, also of House Apted. He also comes from House Holywood, which is extinct in the male line as well. Nyssa is of House Thalassa, on her mother's side, and also one of the last of House Siderokaria. But when they go to look at me, Otto stops dead.

"Sterling, you're a Nash, right?"

"Mm."

"Your parents?"

"Christopher and Anne Kelly."

Layla gives me a weird look. "How are you a Nash, then? Even I know that's not how families work."

I think. "Oh. Well. I was kind of adopted."

The silence is broken by Nyssa. "Yay… so you kept the name of your parents but were adopted?"

"My parents were muggles, though," I say.

Otto shakes his head. "The thing is, you don't know that. They could have been wizards in hiding."

They try to look me up, but it's almost impossible. Otto eventually finds a name. "Nash!"

"Finally!" Layla groans.

Otto checks the branch, but then his face falls. "Oh. But…"

"Do you know your biological mother's name?" Nyssa asks. She seems very curious now.

"Yes, Gisele."

Otto puts the book down. "Well. You're not a muggle born. She was a half-blood, at least."

"And dad? Me?" I ask.

Nyssa looks up at me. Oh, the Slytherin look is back. Yay. "We couldn't find him," she says. "Your mother was of House June, and it shows she married into your lineage. But your father isn't even listed, and as for you, there's nothing."

"No-one named Leister?"

"No-one," Otto says simply.

POV – Albus

Those new kids are weird. Looking up genealogy of all things. Still it wasn't a problem for most of them. Nash, however, was another story.

He was a muggle-born, yes, but only on a technicality. Leister and Gisele Nash were killed ages ago and he was raised by muggles. Gisele had the smarts to erase herself from records before she left to be with Leister, hence Sterling would be classified as a muggle-born. Leister was a muggle, after all, or at least the son of a line that had only produced Squibs.

I was glad I had removed Leister Morganson-Nash from the records in the Ministry. Letting Sterling know he was part Caligonymphus would be far too dangerous. Getting him out of the frame quicker isn't worth the power he would wield.

No. He wouldn't find out. I had made sure of that.