HP: Panem et Circenses

July 2nd, 1995

A whiff of fried bacon lingered in Tristan's nostrils as he made his way down the staircase and into the main hall, passing some ancient pieces of furniture, rich tapestries, and immense paintings that stretched all the way to the thick beams supporting the roof.

Crisping and sizzling, interrupted by occasional giggles, sounded from the kitchen when he entered it through the sunlit living room. He spotted his parents near the cooking stove. His mother attempted to operate the pan while his father stood right behind her, arms circled around his wife's midriff, and brushing her long braid aside to whisper in her ear.

'Great...'

"Uhm, excuse me!?" Tristan cringed and slumped into his seat at the large table, pointedly shielding his eyes to avoid looking at them. "Do you guys mind not doing that over the food?"

They startled and spun on the spot.

"Our son is right, love, this isn't very sanitary..." His mother giggled and gently pushed his father off of her, wiggling the spatula at him playfully. "Now behave or you'll have to cook your bacon yourself."

"You shouldn't feel so embarrassed about seeing your parents like this, Tristan," his father merely chuckled and let go after pressing one last kiss to her cheek: "How do you think you got here, son?"

"Hopefully not because things between you two got heated over the kitchen stove." Valeria chirped from the doorway and bounced into the room in her white slippers.

She slid into the chair opposite Tristan, still wearing her pajamas, and flashed him a grin: "That doesn't sound very romantic, more like a little misstep in the heat of the moment..."

"What was a misstep?" A third voice questioned from the door.

Tristan glanced over his shoulder and spotted his younger brother entering the room. Galahad stifled a yawn before rubbing the last bits of sleep from his eyes, shuffling over the tiles of the kitchen barefoot.

"It's nothing, dear, your sister is just being silly." Tristan's mother smacked her chuckling husband over the head, a slight flush creeping up her neck. "Now then, Dobby will be here any second with fresh milk and eggs, can someone wake up Aurelia, please?"

"I'll make sure she's awake!" Valeria called and jumped off her chair with a huge smirk.

Yet, instead of running back upstairs she merely produced her wand from somewhere within her pajama top and flourished it through the air.

"Expecto Patronum!"

An ethereal white lynx burst from her wand and stretched its back before turning to its conjurer.

"Go wake up my sister!" Valeria giggled and sent it up through the ceiling with a flick of her wand.

His mother sighted from the counter, a small proud smile curling her lips: "I suppose that will do the trick, all though you could've just gone up there yourself. It's not that far..."

"It took me months to master the spell so why shouldn't I use it?" Valeria giggled, tossing her wand from one hand to the other: "And it's not like there are dementors around I could use it against."

"Are we going to pick up mine soon, please?" Galahad longingly watched the piece of wood getting tossed back and forth: "I'm already eleven! Why do we wait any longer?!"

Their parents exchanged a silent glance before his father nodded: "I'll send a letter to Mykew and let him know we're coming by next week."

"Finally!" Galahad cheered, rubbing his hands in excitement and grinning from ear to ear: "I can't wait to do some of the magic Uncle Sirius showed me. None of the other first years will keep up with that."

'Supposedly some silly prank spells he'll make himself even less popular with than he already is.' Tristan stiffened a grin: 'But he'll always be with me and Valeria so it won't matter as much...'

His mother sat down beside her husband, shooting her youngest son a sharp look: "Just because the Ministry's trace doesn't work on our lands won't mean your father and I will let you go rogue with a wand. Right, dear-" She turned to her husband.

"Uhm yes, yes, of course." He nodded quickly: "With a wand comes great responsibility that-"

"-don't ever send that thing for me again!" Something small and blonde entered the kitchen with angry little stomps, glaring up at where Valeria sat on the table.

"Why, where did it catch you?" She choked on her glass of orange juice, breaking out into a fit of giggles.

"In the bathroom!" Aurelia cried, flushing pink and balling her small fists.

"Alright, no more shouting. Thank you, Dobby." Tristan's mother announced sternly while accepting a basket of eggs and a few bottles of milk from Dobby, who was his usual cheerful self, beaming at the entire family: "Everyone take a seat, and let's have some breakfast."

Tristan didn't need to be told twice and dug in, loading his plate with some bacon while preparing his usual bowl of cereals, oats, and yogurt.

"Tristan, don't you want to tell Mother and Father something?" Valeria said casually. "You know... share the happy news..."

'This blonde little devil.' He sighed and carried on eating. "No, I don't think I have anything of importance, sister."

She shot him a confused, innocent look: "Your first girlfriend surely sounds important..."

"You have a girlfriend?" Aurelia chirped, blue eyes wide: "Are you going to get married?"

"Wh-what?" Tristan stuttered: "No, I won't get married, I only just turned sixteen!"

"Mother and father were only a few years older than that." Valeria trilled. "It's not that uncommon for boyfriend and girlfriend to marry early in our world."

"And who may this young lady be?" His mother placed down her fork and sipped on her juice, eyeing him expectantly. "I very much hope you're treating her with the respect befitting your station, my son..."

"Her name is Adelaide, but she's not my girlfriend!" Tristan repeated firmly, glaring at his grinning sister.

"Adelaide." His father mused: "The oldest Goldstein girl? Doesn't she have a brother in Valeria's year?"

"Yup, that's her." The blonde nodded eagerly, smiling at her parents: "Auburn hair, light green eyes, medium height. She'll be a seventh year now..."

"An older girl?" Galahad frowned and wrinkled his nose: "But why would she-"

"-And if she's not your girlfriend then what exactly are you two-"

"-I hope you guys are being careful-"

"Alright, enough!" Tristan felt his ire rise: "No more questions, I'm not dating anyone. Valeria- " He glared daggers at his sister, tempted to kick her shins under the table: "- is merely trying to stir up drama because she's bored and craves some action like a niffler craves something shiny."

"Sorry, sorry, I didn't expect you to throw such a sissy fit over your girl- nevermind..." Valeria held up her hands innocently, biting her lips with a grin: "But talking about action... Can we please go to the World Cup later this summer?" She turned to their parents: "The Potters, Blacks, and even our cousins are all going as well!"

"Yes, please!" Galahad voiced his support pleadingly: "I want to see Victor Krum and learn to fly like him!"

Tristan watched as his parents exchanged another quick glance, a hint of worry flashing over his father's usually composed features. He let his eyes roam down the table lingering on each of his children, meeting pleading expressions before resting on Tristan. "Do you want to go as well?"

"I wouldn't mind." Tristan shrugged, finishing his oats.

"What do you mean you wouldn't mind?!" Galahad echoed incredulously: "You're the Keeper for your House, I've seen you play at Hogwarts!"

'Because together with Seeker it's the one position I depend on my teammates the least.' Tristan sighed: "Fine, I'd like to see the World Cup as well, happy now?"

"If you all wish to see it then we will make it work." His mother reached out and squeezed her husband's hand, smiling into the round: "I'm sure we can pull some strings to get last-minute tickets."

"Might as well make it the top box with the Potters, Blacks, and our cousins then." Valeria snorted: "It's not like gold is the issue..."

"That's enough Valeria." His father spoke up: "Each of you, finish your breakfast. You might want to keep it light with the juice though." He added, nodding towards Tristan.

"And why's that?" He frowned, placing his cup back down.

"Because I'm taking you out on the grounds for your first apparition lesson today." His father smiled, standing up from the table to take his dishes back to the sink: "And orange juice can leave quite the burn on its way back up."

'Teaching me earlier then?' Tristan scolded his features: 'I suppose you'll have a better gut feeling taking us to the World Cup knowing I'd be able to apparate my siblings should anything happen.'

"Let's hope everything remains where it's supposed to be then." He wiped his mouth with his napkin.

"Can you teach me how to apparate as well, father?"

Tristan could swear that Valeria's green eyes swelled to twice their normal size while she shoved out her bottom lip in an impressive pout.

His father kissed her on the forehead and ruffled her blonde curls until she squeaked: "Maybe next year I will, Princess."

"But-"

"-No buts, young lady." Her mother chided: "Come help me in the kitchen."

Tristan stood up as well, unable to resist shooting a quick wink at his sister.

"I don't need anything but my wand do I?" Some excitement slipped into his voice as he approached his father.

"No, just your wand." He affirmed, leading the way out of the kitchen and back into the main entrance hall: "Apparition without a wand takes an amount of skill very few wizards and witches possess."

"But Mother and you do?" Tristan asked.

"Indeed we do." His father grinned.

He opened the door with a flick of his wand and strode out onto the sunlight gravel path leading from the manor, past the hedges of the gardens toward the tall iron fence. "But it took each of us a few years to truly master it."

"Who taught you how to apparate?" Tristan questioned as they made their way through the high grass, ascending the gentle slope leading out of the valley.

"Mostly I'm self-taught, but I did briefly attend lessons from an official instructor who taught me the very basics." He chuckled: "They call them the three Ds of apparition. Perhaps you've heard of them already?"

"Destination, determination, deliberation." Tristan recited, remembering stumbling over the terms in a few books on the subject.

"A mere simplification, more of a guideline for those who struggle to steer their magic with pure intent." His father nodded, coming to a halt underneath a large willow. "You're my son, a Peverell, we're more fine-tuned to such delicate aspects of magic, which is why I will teach you a different approach."

Tristan nodded, excitement jolting through his veins. "So what do I do?"

"Focus and clearly concentrate on your destination, blend out everything else." His father instructed and took a step back: "You have to literally will yourself there."

A small breeze bent the blades of grass as he faded away, reappearing a few meters to the right, without making any sound.

"How come there's a difference in the noise level?" Tristan asked. "Mother and you do it silently, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone else do that."

"Any and all noise is just a small sign of inefficiency." He explained and reappeared right in front of Tristan, his form coiling together like smoke on the wind: "Make sure you're focused and your will is strong, don't let your magic break free."

Tristan tried to turn the words over in his head, but so far they didn't make much sense.

He shrugged: "I suppose I will have to give it a try to fully understand it."

"A clear target might help." His father curled his fingers, separating a few of the long leaves from the willow tree and twisting them into a tight loop that he hovered to the ground. "Try it like this."

Tristan took a deep breath and pictured the inside of the loop, attempting to will himself right in its middle.

His stomach lurched and his vision swam, black spots invading it brutally.

"Good Salazar." He collapsed to one knee and swallowed his breakfast back down, already feeling the orange juice charring the depths of his throat: "That felt bloody awful."

A hand patted his back and another steadied him and helped him back up: "Rest for a bit and give it another try once you're ready."

Tristan held his breath until his stomach settled. "Any more tips?"

"From here on it's only a matter of practice." His father chuckled and let go of him: "As stupid as it sounds, try to just appear in the space. You don't actually want to be the one moving. Instead, some greater, perhaps even unexplainable force twists the world past you, far enough for you to end up standing exactly where you pictured."

Tristan granted himself another minute to absorb the words and took a few deep breaths. Again, he pictured the middle of the leaf-woven loop, only that this time his position was fixed. In his imagination the blades of grass, the bark of the willow, even the clouds in the sky wrenched back past him.

His magic twisted and a loud crack echoed over the clearing.

He threw his eyes back open, shocked to see him standing within the middle of the loop. Suddenly pain flashed through him, washing away the euphoria as he clutched his hand and shouted in agony.

Where once his fingernails sat, was now raw, weeping flesh, crimson dripping from it onto his shoes.

"No worries, no worries." His father emerged from behind him. Through the tears and pain clouding his vision Tristan caught bits of crimson floating over his open palm.

"Vulnera sanentur."

The pain stopped abruptly, and his nails fused back underneath his skin.

"I figured this might happen so I brought this." He popped off the lid of a small can, showing the pasty balm inside: "Some dittany and you'll be good as new."

Once applied he indeed felt completely fine, still, the shock lingered in his bones.

"We can take a break for today and try again tomorrow." His father suggested without any hint of disappointment.

"No." Tristan shook his head determinedly and vanished the blood off of his shoes: "I can do better this time. I know I can."

"As you wish." He chuckled. "I've got plenty of dittany left, just in case."

"I won't need it again." Tristan stepped out of the loop, walked a few steps away, and turned on the spot.

Specks of his blood decorated the blades of grass within the center of the loop. He focused on them, waited until his breath evened out, and wrenched the world past.

Another crack echoed over the grounds, startling the birds up high in the willow.

Tristan blinked his eyes open and stared down at the blood-stained grass at his feet.

"Well done!" His father called from behind him: "Anything missing?"

He raised his hands before patting himself down, wiggling each of his toes in his boots.

'All there.'

"I did it!" Tristan smiled in grim satisfaction, balling his fists: "I apparated."

"I'm very proud of you, son." His father appeared next to him, cloak rustling over the grass: "That was much quicker than I've managed, same for your mother, just don't tell her I said so."

"Should I try it a few more times?" Tristan glanced up to the branches of the willow, eying a particularly thick one.

"Go ahead. Just don't let your concentration falter and keep the distance-"

Tristan wrenched the world past him, clinging to the bark of the tree to steady himself.

'Easy as that.'

A wave of nausea and dizziness struck him, his vision spun and he slipped from the branch, falling freely.

"-horizontal."

An amused chuckle sounded below. His fall slowed until he gently touched the ground.

"Distances in height are usually more difficult for beginners." His father laughed: "Still, that was really impressive."

Tristan turned on his belly with a groan, attempting to heave himself back up. The nausea struck again and he doubled over, hurling his stomach onto the ground. A bitter taste flooded his mouth, the orange juice burnt his throat.

"Oh no, not your Mother's immaculate cooking."

A strange tingle ran up his spine. The bitter taste left his mouth and the burning faded as well.

"Thanks." He gasped.

"No worries, you'll get used to the feeling soon."

"I'd bloody hope so." Tristan growled and wiped his lips, vanishing the contents of his stomach from his robes and the ground.

"Enough for today or do you want to have another go?"

"A few more." He flexed his fingers: "No vertical distance though."

"Go ahead."

Tristan visualized the center of the loop once again and reappeared there, though he still staggered, and fell to his knees as the nausea struck.

'At least my stomach is empty now.' He pulled himself back up and took a deep breath.

It took more than a dozen further attempts before he could manage to remain upright and an additional five for him to do it without swaying or staggering all over the place like a drunk.

"That will do for today, don't you think?" His father called from where he was seated up in the willow, watching him with a mixture of amusement and pride.

"Yeah, I think I'm good for now." Tristan agreed. He leaned back against the trunk and took a few deep breaths, massaging his aching limbs.

"Do you have any more questions about it?" His father jumped off the branch, cloak rustling through the air as magic decelerated his graceful fall.

"I do. How come we can apparate within our wards, but no one else can?" Tristan frowned: "Actually, how can wards as strong as these even allow apparition altogether? The only places coming close power-wise are the wards at Hogwarts, Gringotts, and the Ministry but it's impossible to apparate there."

"Our wards are keyed specifically to our family. As a full-blooded member of it, you have pretty much all the freedoms you could imagine, while still enjoying the protections." His father's gaze traveled down into the valley and to their home: "It makes them unlike anything you'll find in Magical Britain. There's one small exception at Hogwarts, but that's for another time..."

'Hogwarts?' Tristan frowned, waiting for him to continue. 'The wards at Hogwarts, at least those I encountered so far, are nothing like what ours feel.'

"Even though your mother and I cast these rather recently in the grand scheme of things, the magic that powers them is of the oldest, most elemental kind." His father said, leading the way back down into the valley.

"You mean it's obscure magic, like your Cloak when you told me to scatter my blood over it." Tristan mused, though he still had his doubts: "But all the blood in yours and Mother's veins combined wouldn't have been enough to erect something of this magnitude..."

"You're right. Our blood merely served as a medium in the creation of these wards, to make sure the sacrifice is linked to us and our children and any that follow..."

"Sacrifice?" Tristan whispered. "What did you sacrifice?"

"The lingering echo of the great man who taught me everything I needed to survive." His father nodded slowly, opening the tall iron gates with a wave of his hand: "His dream of seeing his house and descendants prosper was enough to create all of this."

"Lingering echo... So he wasn't alive at that point?" Tristan asked confused: "Or he wasn't human?"

His father hesitated. "I will tell you more about him when the time is right."

'Which probably means never.' Tristan bit back his retort and glanced down at the watch on his wrist: "Well, thank you for taking the timeto teach me, though I should probably get going now. I promised Arcturus to drop by today."

"Of course, son, our lessons only just began after all." His father smiled, walking next to him as they ascended the stairs to the entrance: "Next I'll teach you how to apparate in tight situations, when it actually matters and, if you have a talentfor it, even how to do it silently."

"Reckon I can make it from here to Grimmauld Place already?" Tristan grinned.

"I'd strongly advise against it, Icarus." He laughed, pushing open the doors. "Your mother would make me collect your splichend pieces from here, over Wales, and all the way to London. But do make sure to extend my regards to Arcturus and Melania."

"I will." Tristan nodded and turned to the living room. 'The floo it is then.'

"12 Grimmauld Place!"

Roaring green flames swallowed him and spat him back out of a large marble fireplace. He brushed some ash off his shoulders and ran a hand through his hair.

An old, gray-haired witch, looked up from the lender she leaned over and placed her quill back down.

"Tristan, my dear, welcome."

She stood up and walked around the table, embracing him warmly.

"Hello Melania." He smiled.

"Let me take a better look at you." Her brown eyes softened after scrutinizing him from head to toe: "I see the Hogwarts kitchens have done you well. At least you've grown a fair bit since last I saw you."

"In height only I hope." He grinned and walked back to the table with her, his eyes briefly dipping to the columns and arrays of ink numbers she had worked on: "I see Uncle Sirius managed to dodge checking the accounts himself once again."

She sighed: "My dear husband has taught him well and he's been a good Lord of the House ever since Archie stepped down. However, bookkeeping will always be something he'll avoid if possible."

"How is Arcturus doing?" He asked.

"Still bound to his bed." Melania's expression fell: "His mind is as sharp as ever, but the healers say there's little hope his body will make a full recovery."

"I don't suppose he took the news well?"

She snorted: "He didn't feel reluctant to share where exactly the healers can put their 'professional' opinion."

"No worries, I shall cheer him up a bit." Tristan grinned.

"Off you go." Melania rolled her eyes: "Just don't antagonize my poor husband too much."

"I won't make any promises." Tristan chuckled.

He left the study and strolled down the dimly lit corridor to the main staircases leading up to the private quarters of the former Lord Black.

"Who bloody is it now?!" A familiar, harsh voice barked when he knocked.

"Your favorite great-grandchild." Tristan entered with a grin: "Who else would visit your wrinkled arse up here?"

"You're no great-grandson of mine!" Cold gray eyes glared at him from the large bed by the window.

"Dementia must've finally gotten to you then." Tristan sighed, summoning a chair from the corner: "I shall ignore your harsh words, no matter how deeply they tear at my soul."

"Hah!" Arcturus growled: "You Peverell sods don't have a soul to begin with. Give me my wand and I'll curse your pimpled arse back to where you crept from."

"You couldn't even hurt a fly and I doubt you'd manage a simple levitation charm." Tristan smirked: "Now, don't exhaust yourself shouting, Archie, you know what the healers said..."

"Oh, you just crossed a line, boy!" Steel gray eyes almost vanished underneath thick eyebrows, so deep was the scowl: "Only my wife gets to call me that!"

"I apologize." Tristan inclined his head.

"And I reject it." He barked: "Now why did you come here today? Trying to snoop around my library and steal my family's last secrets?"

"You know me too well." Tristan snorted: "But I tried putting my mind at ease by coming up here first and entertaining you for a bit."

"You're only entertaining yourself, boy." Arcturus rolled his eyes: "Fine, I'll bloody let you in there one more time, but first I have something exciting to show you! Kreacher!"

"Master Black called Kreacher." The old Black family elf appeared with a snap, bowing deeply until his nose almost touched the wooden floorboard, once for Arcturus and once for Tristan.

"Bring me the genealogy, Kreacher, the one recently added!"

"Right away, Master Black." The elf vanished with a snap.

"Another lesson in bigotry?" Tristan raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, shut your trap and just listen to me for once," Arcturus growled. "Do you know why that bloody old elf shows you more respect than most of my own children and grandchildren?"

"No." Tristan frowned. 'But now that you mention it, he does the same for my father and my siblings.'

"It's because, as he's said himself multiple times, you have 'the magic of the Blacks' in you," Arcturus said.

"Not very likely." Tristan snorted: "It's been at least seven generations since someone on my mother's side married a Black and with my father's family migrating to the continent centuries ago it can't come from him either."

Kreacher popped back into the chamber, carrying a heavy, leathery tome over his head.

"Well, that's the funny thing then, isn't it?" Arcturus held out his hand and accepted the tome, placing it over the covers on his lap. "Your father was in quite a tight spot when I confronted him and forced him to explain himself all those years ago."

"So what did he tell you?" Tristan asked curiously, his gaze dipping to the tome.

"He told me that your family's magic is able to absorb that of other families."

'That's ridiculous,' Tristan bit back a snort and held his tongue. "And what do you think?"

"Obviously I had my doubts about that explanation, even after his attempt to prove it to me by displaying a skill that can only be attributed to one very specific family." Arcturus looked up at him critically.

"Parselmagic?" Tristan frowned: "My father told you he was a parselmouth before the entire world knew it?"

"Aye, that he did." Arcturus barked and stroked a finger over the hardcover: "I suppose the only person who knew before me was that mother of yours, back then she was his betrothed."

"And what does that have to do with this tome?" Tristan questioned.

"You see this crest right here, boy?" Arcturus flipped the hardcover and pointed at the top of the glossary: "It's the crest of House Selwyn, one of the older British pureblood families, but fallen from grace a long time ago. Their gold is spent, and their reputation is tarnished due to the sides they chose in the conflicts of the latest century. All that is left is obsessive pride in their ancestry, but pride doesn't feed hungry mouths so they eventually sold what they held most dear: ancestral records, reaching back even farther than those of the Ministry."

"And with their rather poor position during negotiations, you probably didn't even need to pay a fortune for it." Tristan grinned.

"I see some of my teachings finally penetrated that thick skull of yours, about bloody time." Arcturus chuckled coldly while he flipped the first few pages: "Recognize that crest up here, boy?"

"Of course I do." Tristan pulled on the slim silver chain around his neck and held up the dark amulet swaying at its bottom. He compared the strange assembly of lines and circles scratched in the black gemstone to what he saw on the page. 'I just wish I finally knew what they meant…'

"These are the entries for your family, looks like you lot just excel making a mess wherever you go..."

Complete and utter chaos awaited on the page dedicated to the Peverells. Links were drawn from left to right, up and down, and diagonally over the two yellowed pages.

'And all that's left is us six now.' Tristan grimaced: "How does one even study this?"

"Well, when you're bound to a bed with nothing else to do you tend to accept even the most hideous of tasks to spend your time," Arcturus growled.

Tristan searched for somewhere to begin and found it all the way at the top.

"Marcellus Augustus Peverell." He whispered, pointing at the name: "From Rome, the eternal city."

"The first Peverell who was ever recorded on British soil, although no doubt the Italian Ministry of Magic will have records that go back even further." Arcturus hummed, tapping at the page: "But what really caught my attention were two strange unions I stumbled over..."

Tristan followed his pale, bony finger, tracking down the line until he reached three brothers, roughly at the center of the page.

"Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus." Arcturus said: "That last name should ring a bell and now guess what family his descendants married into?"

Tristan followed the line down to a woman named Iolanthe: "The Potters..." He whispered. 'And it was a woman carrying my sister's middle name. Hardly a coincidence...'

"Aye." Arcturus nodded: "Scared the living shit out of my dear sister when your father showed up at their doorstep one day and Charlus' bloody elf stated he had the Potter magic."

"I can imagine Dorea wasn't too amused." Tristan mused, tracing the line back to Ignotus: "But my father can't have absorbed the Potter magic via that link, can he? For that, a son of Iolanthe would've had to adopt her maiden name..."

"Not necessarily. It all comes back to whether his family magic was capable of what he claimed or not." Arcturus said: "If your magic can truly absorb traits from other families, then those might be granted to all descendants who carry the name Peverell, not just the direct one from that branch."

Tristan shook his head: "How could something like that even be possible? The magic has to be passed down by blood. How could it be transferred to some distant cousin via other means?"

"I thought it impossible as well, but it's the only thing that explains your talent to speak parseltongue." Arcturus hummed: "Take a look at the other union I mentioned."

This time they started at Ignotus' older brother, Cadmus, and his first of four children until they stumbled over a weird arrangement of lines.

"What does it say?" Tristan squinted his eyes together, trying to read the name of the family that had given their daughter in exchange for a daughter from the Peverells.

"The Gaunts," Arcturus growled.

"Voldemort's family." Tristan sucked in a breath. "Although it's a pity that's all people will remember them by now. They were the last living direct descendants of Salazar Slytherin."

"And they're also proof that skills absorbed in the magic of one family can be passed on to a completely different branch of the Peverells." Arcturus nodded, now someone excitedly as he began flipping a few pages forward.

"These are the entries of the Gaunts. You'll see how there is less of a mess toward recent centuries, which is mainly because at one point they decided to marry their cousins, thereby keeping their blood as pure as magically possible."

"Didn't do them much good." Tristan snorted.

"Pay some bloody attention, boy." Arcturus growled: "Because before they started this questionable tradition, they still married into other families, as was custom of the time." He pointed to the many unions at the top of the page, finger tracing over names like Bones, Smith, Crouch, Black, and a few others Tristan immediately recognized. "Now, can you explain to me how there's never been a single recorded parselmouth among the offspring of any of those unions?"

Tristan frowned, his thoughts racing until they aligned. "There must be something in the Slytherin magic that prevented the ability from getting passed on, probably to prevent someone from abducting a child and 'stealing' the ability for his own offspring. The only exception is when the main branch is threatened to go extinct, otherwise, the Gaunts would've never inherited it in the first place."

"And there you have it!" Arcturus closed the tome and smacked the hard cover with his open palm: "I had my doubts about your father's explanation until I stumbled over those links. No matter what branch of the Peverells you lot descended from, there was little chance it could've been one that passed on the magic of the Blacks, Potters, and Gaunts by blood itself."

"And so the only other option was that the magic truly gets absorbed and shared with everyone that carries the name Peverell, no matter how distantly related." Tristan finished.

'But then why do I have the feeling that there's still something fishy going on here?'

"Anyway, that's all I wanted to share with you today." Arcturus placed the tome on the nightstand next to his bed. "And as always, my attempts to fill that empty head of yours with some useful knowledge leave me quite exhausted."

"I appreciate the lessons in genealogy, even if I missed the subtle bigoted jabs." Tristan chuckled and stood from his chair, levitating it back into the corner with a flick of his wand. "Not once have you mentioned my muggle-born grandmother in over 30 minutes. That's definitely a new record."

"Oh, piss off already, you ungrateful slob, and finally grant me some peace and quiet." Arcturus glared at him.

"I'll be on my way then." Tristan grinned and headed to the door. "I'm just going to check out some books on mind magic in your library. And don't you worry too much, I won't ever attempt to use legilimency to peek into that fragile mind of yours."