“You’re really Salazar Slytherin’sbrother?” Emmaline Vance asks.

Nizar wonders if people will ever stopasking him that question. “I am, and yes, I did actually spend nearly ten centurieslocked in a Preservation Charm embedded in a portrait. I don’t think I wouldrecommend it to anyone else.”

“Which would make you…?” Diggle is liftingan inquiring eyebrow.

“Over a thousand years old,” Nizarreplies. “The 1200s were interesting, and by interesting I mean mostconversations centered around how much they wanted William II of England dead,consumed, and left behind in a privy.”

“That was far more detail than I everwanted to know about any monarch, ever, and I live in Britain,” Hestia Jonessays.

“But he was a Slytherin portrait in aSlytherin Common Room. That’s useful intelligence, considering how manySlytherins are in You-Know-Who’s ranks,” Emmaline Vance notes.

Nizar frowns. “Please use Voldemort’sname. It’s a stupid name, but it sounds less stupid than that nonsense.”

“Emmaline has a point. You did know allthe Slytherins who’d still be alive to be a pain in our backsides,” Alastorsays. “And most of them were of your House, Mister Slytherin.”

“I adore how you make it sound likethis must be some personal failing of mine,” Nizar returns dryly. “Perhapsthose Slytherins felt they had nowhere else to go, Auror Moody. Not all of them,mind—Lucius Malfoy was a prick from the moment he entered the Common Room untilthe day he finally left it for good. Narcissa, though…she always struck me asbeing more intelligent.”

“What about Bellatrix?” Andromeda asks,a bitter smile lurking behind her eyes.

“Someone once read me a book called Alice in Wonderland. To use a referencefrom that: she’s madder than a fucking hatter,” Nizar answers. “I’d hate tothink of how far down that rabbit hole she’s fallen now.”