The suffocating, leathery smell of ancient parchment already drenches the air as, even after an Unbreakable Vow, the anxious Nott family leads me into their holy archives.

They're well-tempered – presumably to protect the documents from the vagaries of time – although ventilation and at least a bit of daylight might have been appropriate.

But none of that is important now. What I'll have to focus on crushes me like a wave in front of me, in a seemingly endless flood at that. Shelves with loose papers everywhere, files and folders, prophecies and books all around. In between, plenty of ancient paintings – very old sleeping people in portraits – on the stone walls.

This is a mess.

"Here you are – good luck," Mr Nott says in malicious mockery. "I've never been able to make out any structure here ever since I was a kid. My father supposedly had some, but it might just have been a rumour. So if you're as lost in here as me, I guess you do have to stay with us for the entire holidays."

"I'll be gone by dawn", I affirm, even if it seems ridiculous to claim it again.

"Then better start soon."

The Notts leave me to their archives and close the door. But better safe than sorry …

"Imperturbatio!" I guard myself against any attempt to disturb or eavesdrop.

Then I roll up my sleeves and let my head wander from left to right with a noisy crack. I have to start somewhere, so into the fun …

Late afternoon turns into dark evening faster than I'd like to admit. It's also way dustier than I'd expected. And considerably more chaotic …

I've been skimming loose pages and books for hours, starting with the front shelves, though I haven't even seen a fifth of these halls. I can't understand for the life of me how all this paperwork could've been even remotely useful in proving bloodlines of certain families.

I find everything in here but concrete evidence. There are sketches, debt slips, shopping lists, diaries, invoices – but from what was the family tree derived in each case?

To my chagrin, Mr Nott is right.
I, too, do not recognise any structure that could be useful to me. No alphabetical sorting, let alone sorting by numbers within the Twenty-Eight …

Chaos. No more and no less.

I'm likely already holding the seventh photo album in my hand when I let myself sink to the floor by a shelf. I can't bear to glance at one more fake smile. No more adulation of supposedly inherited, pure magic, and certainly no more evidence of shameless inbreeding.

To look into the history of the most respected families of the magical world results in nothing than a look into the ugly face of talentless idiocy.

My whole being wants to give up and let it go for good. And inevitably I have to think of Harper's words again, which also made me sigh in Dippet's office.

What did you expect? That we'd come up here, reach for three or four files, find what we're looking for and then go to sleep?

I'd love to fall asleep with her in my arms right now. Also because I'm dead tired, but mostly because I miss her.

I miss her.

This realisation makes me wonder so much.
Because I've never missed anyone. I have never missed a single soul in my life.
Until now.

And yet this is of no help – the sooner I finish my research and find answers, the earlier I can get to her in Brimington.

So I continue to just flip through the photo book I grabbed last, hoping to find a clue, a record, something … And as a witch winks at me in the picture I'm seeing, it suddenly occurs to me.

I look up – at the wall opposite. To the painting of a sleeping, red-haired man in ancient clothing. Under his picture frame, I can read the name Tertius.

Who was Tertius? A member of one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight?
Perhaps he knows some structure to this flood of parchment scrolls. I don't, so at least it's worth a try …

"Sir," I say as I walk towards the painting, "are you awake?"

Obviously not, but somehow we have to change that after all.
He blinks wearily until he stretches, drawing in a long breath and looking chipper.

"Awake? No, no, boy, I wouldn't call it that …"

"How long have you been here?" I jump straight to my questioning.

"Here?" He grins after extensive yawning. "Quite a while now. Far too long, actually … Basically, I don't belong here anyway, you know?"

I shake my head. "What do you mean?"

"Oh," he groans, "we're just abductees …"

"Sir?"

"Call me Tertius, my boy."

"Tertius," I repeat, "what do you mean, abducted?"

"They stole us," Tertius says. "From our families."

I hesitate, then I look around again. And I count.

"Twenty-eight," I whisper aloud as I let my gaze wander over all the paintings in the room. "Sir, there's a painting of every family in here?"

"Nott and his Junior still don't get that to this day," Tertius laughs. "Robbed we were, some of us centuries ago. Morbid, isn't it?"

"Indeed. What family are you from, Tertius?"

"I'm a Weasley," he proudly says. "Weasley the Third."

"I've heard of Septimus Weasley," I tell him. "He works for the Ministry."

"Septimus means there are already four generations after me," he mumbles, smiling. "What more do you want out of life than a strong, healthy family?"

I give him a mirthless smile. "That's why I'm here … Thank you, Tertius, you've helped me more than you know. Sorry for interrupting your sleep …"

"No trouble, my boy, have a good life!"

If the Weasleys are still characterised by this friendly cosiness, they are a truly pleasant family …

I pass through the rows, representative by representative.

Bulstrode, Shacklebolt, Ollivander, Macmillan. Slughorn – I'm certainly not starting a conversation here … Carrow, Black, Flint, Yaxley, Malfoy. Longbottom, Burke, Crouch …

Until there can be no more doubt once I see her.

Dark green eyes, sallow skin, an alert, lurking gaze and a familiar looking pendant around her thin neck that suddenly seems tiny next to the huge puff sleeves of her black dress.

Beneath her painting, I see the name Gormlaith, and she's already watching me from afar.

No, evil never rests. Insomnia must plague this family to death, and beyond.

"The House of Gaunt," I gravely say as I step even closer.

Her sombre look is on me, so piercing and cold that it could easily be my own.

"Who desires to know that?"

"An interested student," I reply.

"Of which school?"

"Hogwarts."

She immediately screws up her face. "Defiled, since time immemorial! As well as Ilvermorny! What do you wish to know?" She eyes me as though she's about to come out of the painting to rip my soul apart. "I can teach you the darkest of arts, from the upheaval of the Middle Ages to modern times."

"You're from the Renaissance?" I ask.

She nods with a sinister smile. "I can conjure fires so terrible that they even consume sisters! To crumble to dust at death, for all the misdeeds in life, may well be the price, but forsooth – no one can hide from the House of Gaunt! We will find them."

"Who?"

"All of them!" she mutters. "All those wretched blood traitors! Without dignity! True heirs, yet soiling themselves with half-breeds and mud! Fie!"

I feel a shudder. "Heirs?"

"Of the master of all serpents," she whispers. And promptly she's taken aback. "You have heard my words, and you understood …"

I nod, just as the certainty thickens that I'm on the trail of something impossibly improbable.

"Only a true heir is capable of understanding Parsel," she says, dumbfounded.

So that was Parsel?
Bloody hell, I really need to practise distinguishing when Parsel is being spoken to me and when it's not …

"Who are you?" she urges.

"Where are the Gaunt family records?" I merely ask a counter question.

She presses her lips together angrily as though she would never say another word, so I add in Parsel, "I need to know, that's the only reason I'm here."

She stares at me, it's almost wistful. "How long has it been since I heard a split tongue speak? How many centuries have I longed to hear Parsel one last time?"

"Where do I need to look?" I repeat.

"Don't speak like the unworthy!" she hisses. "And tell me who you are!"

"That's what I want to find out. Where do I have to look?"

Unsatisfied, she glares at me, right into the depths of my soul. "Immortality, ambition, cunning – that's what we are made of. The key to all of it dwells within ourselves and our heritage!"

I give her a dull look. "That doesn't exactly help."

"Think," she whispers, "or go your ways as an unworthy!"

Her fanaticism is remarkable.
It's a worldview shaped by the 16th century, in the midst of the darkest ages for our world, to which she still clings. Times of persecution and slander, of fire, betrayal and mistrust.

I guess history indwells us, all of us, across tides and centuries.
Dwelling within us …

I look up at Gormlaith. "Behind the paintings, right?"

She smiles darkly intent. "See for yourself. But be careful!"

I reach around the heavy frame of her painting to move it aside.
And indeed. Behind it I can already see the first scrolls of parchment and plenty of books in a big recess in the wall.

"Excuse me," I tell Gormlaith for the sake of form as I set her down on the floor to deal with the documents without her disturbing.

And then I read. And read and read.
Because that's precisely what I was looking for. Profound clues on the Gaunts, concrete facts, proven connections.

Even if at first I only find unsorted things yet again …

I read about Gormlaith and her sister Rionach, among others. The latter married a William Sayre, and from this marriage Isolt was born in 1603.

"Why does the record from Ireland end with your niece?" I ask Gormlaith, she has been staring at me the whole time anyway. Paper and parchment all around me, and to top it all off, her and her wolf-chant …

"She fled from me to America. But for nothing! We find them all!"

"You did mention that, yes," I sigh. "Why America?"

"I suppose it runs in the family – she founded a school, with her filthy Muggle …"

"A school?" I look up in surprise. "Ilvermorny was the name of her childhood home, wasn't it? It was here somewhere, but I thought it was a coincidence."

"Coincidence," she laughs. "Up in flames it went, the family home, that hatchery of treasonous thought! Do you think that was a coincidence?"

"Interesting." I find myself unconcerned nevertheless. Until it hits me. "What do you mean by 'it runs in the family'? Regarding founding schools?"

I've known it for some time. Deep down, I already know the answer. Why my eyes aren't all black, but dark green. Why I can talk to snakes. Why I can hear his basilisk …
But I need to read it. See evidence. Somewhere.

"Just keep reading!" she hisses, as if in joyful anticipation of my immanent discoveries.

I soon see the name of Corvinus, too. "Did you know him? He lived a century later, didn't he?"

"Never heard of him," she's hesitant to admit.

"He knew about the entrance," I say to test her reaction. "Just like you …"

"What entrance?"

We look at each other for a while, then I just shake my head. "Not that important."

I keep digging, and though I can't find any clues about places of residence, I instead see another surname makes me wonder.

Peverell …

"What did the Peverells have to do with the Gaunts? Who were they?"

"What are you asking a painting?" Gormlaith scolds me. "Find the family tree!"

"There is one?"

"Of course," she whispers, "every painting guards a family tree!"

"Good to know," I grumble. "Thank you for mentioning it after an hour."

I make my way through more dust, cobwebs and crumbling plaster – with the odd smell of ancient documents in my nose – when I finally spot a particularly thick roll of parchment.

And when I pull it out and roll it up, at first glance it turns out to be the very document that reaches across the ages with all its ramifications and branches.

The family tree.

My tired mind is suddenly anything but that. I look at the beginning of the rolled-up parchment again, where at the very bottom names appear that are already well known to me.

And yet my heart makes a strange pause when, after all this time, I finally read her name.

Merope Gaunt, 1907.

Ever since I was a child, I've wondered who she was. I wondered what her name was, how old she was – and here it is.
Black on white, in almost calligraphic letters.

It can only be her. Next to her is Morfin Gaunt, above her Marvolo …

1907, until my birth, 1926.
She died when she was only 19.
As if I had only three years left.
As if Harper were dead in three years …

According to school records, neither her brother nor her father had particularly good qualities to them. To live her short life mainly in their presence could hardly have been blissful. So as much as I hate the woman who left me alone – her life likely wasn't easy.

And is her name Merope an omen as my own name has always been?
If so, it's truly ironic clarity with which my whole life suddenly unfolds before me. I'm only guessing, but that's enough to send a shiver down my spine.

Greek mythology has been with me ever since I can remember – and Merope, as the shameful daughter of a dragon who got herself into a dishonourable marriage with a mortal, was the mother of a figure who went down in history as a demon. A demon who fed racehorses with human flesh and in the end fell prey to those very animals.

How promising …
So what's to become of me?
I'm not very good at dealing with thestrals already.

"What were your secrets, Merope?" I quietly ask, likely into the universe. "What were you running from?"

"The parchment won't tell you," Gormlaith reminds me, ever the cynic.

I simply ignore her and continue to unroll the document. Again and again it's been extended by another piece with glue, so the lowest entries aren't that old, but the further I go, the more delicate the material becomes.

Corvinus Gaunt – there he is again.
He knew about the chamber. He must have known about it. After all, without him there would hardly be a snake engraved on one of the marble basins in the girls' lavatory …

By the time I reach the 15th century, I find Gormlaith's family, alongside countless names before and after – until, after a good hour more, I'm getting closer and closer to the end of the parchment scroll.

It's a strange kind of excitement.
I know it. I just know it, even without reading it, but I'll have to see it in writing …
I need clarity. So I take heart and go a bit further – the last bit. Behind me, there's already masses of parchment, but it's probably only now that things get really interesting.

Again I read Cadmus Peverell – but where have I heard this name before?

Wasn't there some fairytale with which that family was sometimes associated? I just can't think of it anymore. It really comes back to haunt me that I was never read stories as a child. Quite cruel irony of fate …

I'm sure there will be a reference to this in the Hogwarts library through. But for now, I have to check the origin of the family tree.

I take a deep breath and I'm ready.
I roll the last section of the parchment up – and I see the family name with its descendants.

So be it. If Merope really was my mother, Marvolo my grandfather – then it is true. Then Salazar Slytherin's blood runs through my veins.

I stare at his name for a while, in a rough mixture of disbelief and eventual certainty.

"You don't seem surprised," Gormlaith states. "You knew."

I nod. "I had a feeling."

"This," she says, pointing proudly to her locket, "was his. It's been in the family for a millennium."

I take a closer look.
And now I also see that she's lying.

It's the exact locket that Hepzibah Smith wore around her neck around Christmas at Borgin and Burkes.
And so it's no longer in the family.

But perhaps it's time to put that right.

Gormlaith smiles like a maniac. Probably because I do, too.