The Man Who Knew Almost Nothing

Chapter Eight

Hufflepuff heart

The archives, being on the floo network, were quite easily accessible. Larger than the library at Hogwarts and containing a collection of books, scrolls, parchment, and stone tablets spanning approximately sixteen centuries, the Merlin Memorial Library and Archives was among the most impressive sources of wizarding knowledge in the world. Harry had had the opportunity to tour the facility with Hermione during the summer before his seventh year, and it was here that they found spells and charms with which to arm themselves for the coming conflict. Hidden deep within the confines of wizarding London, the interior of the structure, a great dome that protruded from the earth, was lined with unending shelves that were full of the collective knowledge and wisdom of wizarding kind.

“Harry, I dare say, one could get lost in a place like this,” Gilderoy whispered, taking Harry’s proffered hand as they emerged from a large hearth in a back room near the librarian’s desk.

“Can I help you, dears?” asked the librarian, an older woman with little spectacles and a polite smile, as she watched them crane their necks to look around at the marvelous sight.

“Um, yes, I think we could use some help,” said Harry with a nervous smile. “We need to look at the ancestral rolls,” he added.

“Oh, dear, I was hoping you just wanted a book ...” she said, sighing and pinching the bridge of her nose above her glasses.

“Is there a problem?” asked Harry.

“No, I suppose not,” she said, removing a wand from her robes. She pointed it toward the apex of the dome and said, “Accitus origo volumen videre !”

Harry and Gilderoy turned and watched as a gigantic scroll appeared and unrolled itself, hanging from the very top of the great dome to the floor, falling like a papery curtain that was covered over with beautiful script, designs, and family crests. It was a tremendous family tree. Leaves, branches, a trunk that split in hundreds of directions blossomed forth from the parchment. Harry blinked, wondering if his eyes deceived him. As the tremendous scroll gracefully touched the floor, the tree took root. The thing before them became a combination of a document, written upon the large, white leaves of the tree, and a living plant that had sprung from the paper.

“Well, there you are. Have a nice climb, but do be careful. If you are looking for remote ancestors, it could be a nasty fall ...” the librarian warned.

“Thank you very much!” said Harry, tugging Gilderoy toward it by the hand.

“This is very strange,” commented Gilderoy, gazing up through the branches with an open mouth.

“I can’t disagree,” said Harry, touching the bark of the tree. A rope ladder fell down next to him. “I was only expecting a long piece of paper or something.”

“So are we going up?”

“Suppose so,” shrugged Harry, grabbing a rung on the ladder and hoisting himself up. “Try not to look down.”

Afraid of floos was he not, but Gilderoy gulped silently at the thought of climbing the immense magical family tree.

“Why must they be so literal about this family tree business?” he wondered uneasily, following Harry clumsily up the ladder.

Harry was already sitting on one of the lower branches, swinging his legs and waiting patiently when Gilderoy managed, pale faced and sweating, to clamber onto the same branch.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” said Gilderoy, clutching the thick branch with both hands.

“I won’t try to force you, but maybe if you thought of this as an adventure ...” Harry told him, remembering that Professor Lockhart had never been very brave.

“Just let me sit here and rest for a moment. Calm my nerves,” said Gilderoy.

Harry glanced at the limb where they were seated. Written in bright silver against the dark gray color of the bark was the word ‘Longbottom’.

“Fancy that! This must be Neville’s family,” Harry thought, glancing at the names on nearby leaves. Neville. Frank. Helen. Margot. Andrew. Classmate. Parents. Grandparents. Many more names. Harry squinted and realized that he could even tell what houses they had been in: three Gryffindors and two Hufflepuffs.

He looked at the branches overhead, some larger and some smaller than the one upon which they rested, and saw familiar names: Patil, Wood, Weasley, and McGonagall. A tiny shoot from the Weasley branch was marked Granger, its single leaf belonging to Hermione, Ron’s wife. There were unfamiliar names too, though it was easy to see that this side of the tree contained houses that were mostly Gryffindor, a testimony to ties forged during school years. Some of the branches were so intertwined, the fates of families so neatly interwoven, it was difficult to separate them.

Harry craned his neck to look more closely at one such collection of branches. One marked with the name Potter seemed to be the center of the cluster. A strong and hardy branch it was with lithesome limbs reaching out to many a Gryffindor family. Another branch ran closely to it: Black. This branch seemed to split, however, bridging the gap between the Gryffindor and Slytherin clusters. Few limbs grew in this manner, it seemed. A green bough with a few sparse leaves and Evans written upon it grew out from the Potter branch, proving that though of mixed and diluted blood, Lily Evans Potter had not been the only witch in her family.

Harry slowly rose to his feet to get a better look. He could see his parents’ names, if he squinted, and that of his godfather Sirius, who appeared to be a distant relation by marriage as well, and his very own leaf upon the tree, surrounded by others, almost as though protected, by the many other leaves around it: James, Lily, Sirius, and other names he did not know, his paternal grandparents. A long, lithe branch was reaching down, its movement slow, but almost perceptible, toward his own: Lockhart. It was too high to see very clearly and obscured by other branches.

Harry felt a sudden lump in his throat as he realized that the reason the Lockhart limb was very slowly bending toward his own was that the tree recognized the bond between Gilderoy and himself. Fresh as it was, the magical tree was already a living record of what they had together. And the tree seemed to indicate that what they had, that their love could or would be a permanent one.

“I think I found it, Gilderoy,” Harry told him, clearing his throat and steadying himself on Gilderoy’s shoulder.

“Where?”

“Up there. Can you see it?”

Gilderoy lifted his head and watched Harry point to the branch, and he smiled as he read its name.

“I see it, Harry! I see it!” he said, clambering to his feet.

“Ready to climb now?”

“Certainly,” he said, breathless and a little unsteady on his feet.

The climb was not an easy one. The tree had many boughs and limbs, some that could Harry’s weight and more, like the sturdy Longbottom and Weasley branches, and some, like the Patil and Wood branches, that Harry was afraid to try. What would happen if, for instance, he snapped a branch off or bruised the bark? It might not be pretty. And neither he nor Gilderoy wanted to think about the fall. The floor below looked so distant, so far away that even Harry, quite accustomed to heights, was thinking about broken necks.

It was a long time before Harry managed to pull himself up onto the Potter branch and even longer before he convinced Gilderoy to accept a hand up. When they finally found themselves seated near the leaf cluster with Harry’s immediate family’s names written upon them, they were both panting for breath and Harry was certain that he had pulled something.

“I don’t even want to think about the climb down,” commented Gilderoy.

“Then think about up some more,” said Harry, turning his attention toward the part of the tree they had come to inspect.

The Lockhart branch, Harry noticed immediately, was very slender, a family of many only children, a family where there was often only a single heir to the name. He traced a few of its trailing branches only to find that Gilderoy appeared to be the last of his line. He looked at the names of his parents: Celeste Diggory and Godfrey Lockhart. Harry felt a stab of pain, of renewed grief and old guilt, at the sight of Gilderoy’s mother’s unmarried name, unconsciously tracing that line until he found the name Cedric. Harry looked at Gilderoy’s features and could see something of the young Hufflepuff in them. He blinked away a few tears before returning his eyes to the Lockhart names. Gilderoy, it seemed, was the descendant of an unlikely combination: a Hufflepuff mother and a Slytherin father. And Gilderoy himself had been a ... Hufflepuff. Harry breathed an audible sigh of relief.

“What does it say, Harry? I’m afraid I can’t quite figure it out,” said Gilderoy.

“You were in Hufflepuff House in school at Hogwarts. So was your mother Celeste. Your father Godfrey was a ... in a different house.”

“And? And? Are they still alive?” Gilderoy questioned excitedly.

Harry squeezed his shoulder as he read the two dates beneath each of their names and said simply, “Sorry, but no.”

“Are any of them alive?” he asked.

Harry studied the few branches, including the one linking the Lockharts and the Diggorys, before answering, “You have a few cousins on your mother’s side. Amos ... Amos Diggory is about your age, I believe. Possibly a little older.”

“Do you know him?”

“I knew ... his son,” said Harry, indicating the leaf with Cedric’s name on it and wiping his eyes.

“Dead?” asked Gilderoy, sensing the grief that had washed over Harry and putting a gentle arm around him.

“Yeah ... because of me,” Harry whispered.

“What happened? What was he like? Or ... or is it something you don’t want to talk about?” It was an innocent, hesitant question.

“He was a great Quidditch player, a hard worker, fair minded, handsome and strong, braver than any Hufflepuff has a right to be. Probably the bravest one ever born. I can’t see why he wasn’t a Gryffindor. Maybe because he was so caring or so patient. I don’t know. Voldemort’s minions ... killed him because of me. He never even had the chance to graduate from Hogwarts ... or marry Cho Chang,” said Harry, tears trickling down his face as Gilderoy held him in his arms.

“Harry, I don’t believe for a moment that it was your fault somebody else killed him,” said Gilderoy, kissing his forehead. “That’s just nonsense.”

Harry looked into his eyes and saw that Gilderoy wasn’t just saying what he thought he wanted to hear. He honestly held Harry blameless. For a moment Harry smiled through his tears. Whatever his father may have been, a Slytherin to be precise, Gilderoy must have lived out that destiny, one of betrayal and scheming, and was, though he did not remember it, a pure, strong, and caring Hufflepuff to his very heart and soul.

“You know, they put you in the right house. Six years ago, I would have had a hard time believing it, but, Gilderoy, the Sorting Hat was certainly right about you,” he sniffed, kissing him softly on the lips.

“If you say so,” he replied with an ingenuous smile. “I suppose you really are my only family, Harry,” he said, looking sadly at their names upon the wizarding family tree. “And my only regrets are that I will never have a chance to know my parents and introduce you to them.”

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