Dear Blaise. My quill paused and I considered what to write next.

That my father and I were having a wonderful summer? That he had spent the whole holidays obsessively checking for any record of my mother in wizarding history?

I began writing the first thing that came into my mind.

Dear Blaise,

I hope you are alright.

Father says I am a Parselmouth, I keep forgetting to tell you. That is someone who can talk to snakes.

I’m fine here, I suppose, but it is rather boring sometimes. I am so glad school is starting back soon, I don’t think I can stand this much longer!

Father says we will visit Diagon Alley to buy my school things next Tuesday, do you think I might be able to meet you there?

Another thing – have you seen our list of school supplies? It’s ridiculous! Almost all of our required reading is Gilderoy Lockhart books. I suppose our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is a massive fan of Lockhart or – Merlin forbid – Lockhart himself!

Anyway, I do hope it’ll be a good year of school – and a safe one, too, not like last year.

Please write back soon,

Love,

Jade Evans

Satisfied, I rolled up the parchment and handed it to Lily, my Barn Owl that I had unknowingly named after my mother.

“To Blaise,” I told her, opening my window. She soared out.

I lay down on my bed, thinking about the events of the day – which weren’t much. Father had spent the whole day shut up in his room.

I had read books and done some study for the coming year.

Then I just waited for the inevitable call from my father, because he had thought of another place Lily’s name might be.

“Jade!” he called.

Right on cue.

I walked to his room and opened the door. “Yes, Father?”

“I still haven’t found anything, but I have an idea. If you take your Invisibility Cloak and go to the nearest Muggle school, you can use their – their computers to look up Lily’s name and her ancestors. Only do it if you want to, of course, but it would be good to know why the Hat told you she was descended from Slytherins,” he explained.

I had nothing better to do, and besides, I was bored, so I accepted. Anyway, it sounded as if it might work.

And there wouldn’t be any issue with locked doors – Alex and Theo had taught Mimi and me how to pick locks when I was 9.

“Yes, Father. I’ll do it. I’ll leave now. Bye!”

He waved and then shut the door to his room.

Back in my room, I picked up my Invisibility Cloak and my lock-picking essentials, then off I went.

I still didn’t know the streets all that well, so I went to the main road and followed it until I reached a school.

I walked in the gate.

It appeared to have a couple of buildings.

I entered the one with administration and searched for a room filled with computers.

Finally, I found it. I broke in and then sat down at a computer.

There was one account for each student, but I simply found the one called ‘Guest’ and clicked on it. I typed in ‘guest’ as the password.

It worked.

Wow, the school had amazing security.

In case you were wondering, yes, the orphanage did have computers, they were just extremely bad ones.

Anyway, I brought up ‘family tree’ and selected the first site that came up.

At the top of the page it read:

Hello, fellow witches and wizards! Looking for answers about your family tree? We’ve got all witches and wizards recorded here who went to one of the three European magic schools, as well as their ancestors!

Please note that this website has an extremely strong Muggle Repelling Charm on it.

Somehow, I had found a magic website!

When I typed in ‘Lily Evans’ it came up with a whole page of results.

But the top one was ‘Lily Potter, nee Evans’, which was what I wanted.

Her family tree appeared and I chose a branch at random, following it further and further upwards.

Everyone along the line was a Muggle, right up to 800 years ago. And suddenly, there it was.

A Squib.

The Squib had pure-blood parents, and then the whole line was a pure-blood family.

Their family name was ‘Gaunt’. I didn’t know much about the Gaunt family other than the fact that they were a pure-blood family who were exclusively Slytherins.

But, according to a book I had read, they died out around 40 or 50 years ago with Marvolo Gaunt and his children.

So how could I be one of their descendants?

I kept following it up to see if the surname changed.

Finally, I got up to 1000 years ago. I examined the screen to see if there was anything I had missed.

And then I saw it. A small family group up in the top left corner.

Oh Merlin.

I checked to be certain, but the family name was still the same.

Slytherin.

When the Sorting Hat had said my mother was descended from Slytherins, I’d assumed it just meant that her ancestors were in Slytherin House, not that one of her ancestors was the founder of Slytherin House.

Our search was over.

Finally.

I erased the search history on the computer and put the Cloak back on.

I relocked the doors I passed as I exited the building, then ran straight home.

I opened the door and went immediately to my father’s room.

“Slytherin,” I gasped.

My father looked up, frowning. “Excuse me?”

“Slytherin,” I repeated. “My mother was descended from Salazar Slytherin.”

Father just stared at me for a few moments, then a thought appeared to have come to him and he started laughing.

“Uh…what?” I asked in bewilderment.

“Oh, it’s just amusing that there are only two Heirs of Slytherin left and they both have a Gryffindor for a mother. Also, the other is a Gryffindor. Actually, come to think of it, I don’t know if they would count, because they are not in Slytherin,” he explained, but the explanation made no sense.

I frowned. “Am I an Heir of Slytherin? Were you talking aboutHarry and me? And what’s an Heir of Slytherin? Is that just someone directly descended from Salazar Slytherin? Is that something special?”

He smiled faintly. “An Heir of Slytherin is a direct descendant of Slytherin, yes. It is certainly special, but not necessarily in a good way. An Heir of Slytherin must also be a Parselmouth, as you are. So you are an Heir of Slytherin, and if your half-brother is a Parselmouth, he may be too. I am not sure.” His smile vanished. “So, as Slytherin’s Heir, you are expected – by Slytherin himself, no less – to open the Chamber of Secrets.”

Well, it looked like today was Confuse Your Daughter Day, because that ‘explanation’ didn’t make total sense either.

“Right. I’m the Heir of Slytherin because I’m a Parselmouth and descended from Slytherin. I’m guessing the thing that makes his Heirs ‘special but not necessarily a good thing’ is opening this Chamber of Secrets thing…but what is the Chamber of Secrets? And what’s so bad about whatever’s inside it?”

I think my ‘I don’t understand half of this stuff’ vibes finally reached him, because he started explaining things concisely.

“1000 years ago, when Hogwarts and its houses were made, the four founders each had a condition for people to be in their house.Slytherin would only accept pure-bloods into his house. He believed that only pure-bloods deserved to be wizards. He tried to convince the other three of this, but they disagreed.

‘So Slytherin left. But according to legend, he made a Chamber of Secrets and hid it somewhere in the school, so that one day, his Heir – this is you – could open it and release the monster inside it, who would ‘cleanse’ the school of all Muggle-borns. Essentially, the Heir of Slytherin would indirectly kill all Muggle-borns in the school,” he told me.

Oh, great.

It is now my task to kill Muggle-borns.

“Father, I don’t have to open the Chamber of Secrets, do I? I mean, why would I want to kill Muggle-borns?” I asked worriedly.

He smiled in relief. “I’m glad you don’t want to kill Muggle-borns. Of course, I don’t know all that much about the Chamber, but I don’t think you have to open it.”
He frowned.

Well, that was reassuring.

“Oh, and Jade,” he added seriously, “whether you have to open the Chamber or not, please be careful this year.”

And I tried to be careful.

But luck wasn’t with me this year.