The witches and wizards on Palau celebrated an unorthodox Imbolc by having a barbecue on the beach. They cleansed themselves with salt and water, and brought light to the darkness with bonfires. Fresh fish, taro and sweet potato served as the feast. It was a joyous first day of spring for the temporary exiles.
The Strategy Committee, all introverts, had retreated collectively to the study tent when the festivities became raucous. Alun had procured a pitcher of the banana slush that was a favourite on the island and in the spirit of the holiday, they toasted Brigid out of coconuts while collating family trees.
"I have another lost cousin from the Rowles." Theo underlined the name on the whiteboard. "Though I would not put much hope in finding any of them. Thorfinn Rowle was very free with the Killing Curse. If he knew of any Squibs in his family tree, I would not put it past him to prune."
"We could try the cadet branch that married into the Urquarts. Professor McGonagall would know about the family. Her husband was an Urquart." Hermione was working on the extended Travers - Doge - Burke pedigree. It was not quite as bad as the Hapsburgs but only because it was illegal in Britain to marry your own niece.
"I think I have an Avery. One of the daughters was sent to France in the Sixties, in disgrace but was not disowned. If it was the usual reason then we may have two." Leota flicked her wand and the lineage scribbled itself onto the whiteboard.
"The usual reason being pregnant?" Hermione asked, making a note of Machtilde Avery in the contacts section of her notebook. They had a lot of people to track down.
"To a married man, yes." Leota was too well-raised to make a face but her mouth tightened fractionally. "Otherwise she would have been married off. But no one would waste a fertile woman so she would be packed away until she was useful."
"She'd never be received again at Avery Manor. Grandfather Avery was rather particular on legitimacy. He was born six months after his parents were married, and woe betide anyone who mentioned that." Theo had no fond memories of his maternal grandfather. "But if she had a boy, he have might been acknowledged privately."
"If you're related, can you sit on both the Avery and Nott seats?" She was learning a great deal about arcane governance, and all of it was getting right up her nose. Hermione was seriously considering emigration.
"Unfortunately not. When the Gore family tried to monopolise the Daubney and Eckers seats, a statute was passed to prevent simultaneous sitting. Heirs or manorial spouses only." That was one of the first things she had checked, as they had several people who could qualify for multiple seats. Leota frowned then assayed a suggestion. "Theo, if you married, your wife could sit for Avery. We could nominate your cousin for the Grebe seat."
"My father's elder sister's only son does not much care for wizards." The Nott heir made his relationship to his Squib cousin painfully precise. Theo weathered a glare from Hermione. "He's in his fifties, married to a Canadian woman. I only know that much because my father married late and was not certain of having an heir. If I had not been born, Nott Manor would have gone to that man."
"Honestly, we have someone we can actually find rather than chasing maybes and you're standing on your dignity?" Hermione put her fountain pen down to avoid throwing it at Theo. "Invite him home. Apologise for your bloody father. Explain the situation. He might actually give a damn if you don't treat him like shit."
"Can Squibs sit on the Wizengamot?" Theo asked Leota while glaring at Hermione, the old schoolyard rivalry flaring.
"If he can recite an oath on his lineage and cast the Hereditas Charm, yes. We will need to do the latter for any of the candidates regardless, to ensure we do not look like fools for nominating the wrong person." The advocate had checked that too.
"How difficult is the Hereditas?" It did not surprise her she had not heard of that specific spell. There was book after book of heritage charms, consanguinity charms, fidelity charms and other such baggage attendant on being a pure-blood. Hermione had tried a few for the novelty of it, confirming both that her parents were sufficiently unrelated to legally marry in Wizarding Britain and that she was their biological child.
"It is fiddly but not hard." Alun spoke up at this point, mostly to dilute the tension between Theo and Hermione. "I cast it after a bit of practice. You need to have a copy of the sigil of the family from which you wish to claim descent."
"That is easy enough. The old families slap their sigil on absolutely everything." Hermione recalled the Black family crockery, linen, curtains, carpets and cutlery. The Blacks had been keen to show everyone what was theirs.
"I have a list here." Leota shuffled parchments until she found it. "We can teach everyone in Melekerai the Charm then have them work through the list. Fate might smile upon us."
Fate did smile, albeit crookedly.
Alun went first to demonstrate the charm. He touched the Rosier sigil then cast. The wizard glowed brightly, a crisp blue than indicated direct legitimate descent. To show the variations, he performed the charm again while touching the Prince sigil. This time he shone much less intensely and with a tint of red, indicating descent through the female line. His maternal grandmother had been a Prince.
"The Hereditas is strongest through patrilineal or matrilineal descent." Alun touched the extinct Wiblin sigil and got a hazy response that was a muddy mulberry colour. "Those being the traditional lines of inheritance. We could use other charms to prove kinship but the Wizengamot uses this one as it is the most conservative."
"Why does that not surprise me?" Hermione rolled her eyes. But she cast the charm and touched the Granger sigil. Nothing happened, which did not surprise her as she had looked into the ancestry of Hector Dagworth-Granger. The famous potion-maker's father had married a French heiress, whose family had insisted he hyphenate his name. It would have been nice to be related but 'granger' meant 'farm bailiff' so the surname would have been quite common at one time.
She touched a few sigils at random just to check if she was doing the Hereditas correctly. The Radford mark yielded a faint reddish-purple, somewhat more maternal than the mixed colour Alun had generated. Hermione tried the Wiblin sigil and received mulberry too. So did Justin after he strolled in with a tray of fish kebabs.
"The Wiblins went extinct in the male line at the end of the fifteenth century after Samson Wiblin vowed to have no wife but Alberta Toothill." Theo showed a youthful enthusiasm for Chocolate Frog cards. "The wizards of that family were quite rampant outside marriage. Quite possibly most of the magical population of England is related to them somehow."
"Not particularly helpful." Justin tried the charm, choosing the families with the most recorded links to Muggle nobility as his own family were high born. He got quite a few instances of mulberry, confirming the general assumption that Muggle-borns were descended from Squibs somewhere.
"We'll test everyone and cherry-pick the best results, with priority to the families who have gone into abeyance most recently." Hermione shrugged, moving her left hand down the list as she cast with her right. Nothing, mulberry, mulberry and mulberry. "Were the old families so chronically inbred that if you're related to one, you're related to most?"
"I believe so, and one of the signs a House is failing is the increased numbers of Squibs." Alun watched in frank surprise as Justin and Hermione got that muddy not red, not blue colour for far more sigils than he would have expected. "Why so many?" He wondered aloud then answered his own question. "Squibs are healthier than Muggles. Wizards rarely get mundane diseases. They might not have much magic, but that little bit evidently counts."
"Survival of the fittest. Disease resistance is less of a factor since the invention of antiseptic and antibacterial drugs but I imagine it would have been a significant asset even only a hundred years ago." Hermione remarked on Alun's observation as she flicked her wand. "I wonder if we drew the sigils on the sand, had everyone stand around them and cast, if we could get this done faster? We'd be better able to judge the intensity of the results too. We could make it a bit of a game."
"I expect everyone has been enjoying the daiquiris enough by now that any excuse to play around on the beach would seem entertaining." Leota smirked, hearing quite a bit of laughter drifting up from the party. "May Brigid bless our attempts to create new kin."