Tabula Rasa

"The pure-blood families are all interrelated," said Sirius.

"There is a room in the Department of Mysteries," interrupted Dumbledore, "that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than the forces of nature.... It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all.... In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you."

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Prologue - Malachi Ashlan

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I keep on forgetting when the name of my family first appeared within the history of this country. It could have been in the time of the Romans, or in the Middle Ages, or perhaps it was even earlier than that. But to me this small and forgotten information in such a large family history is not important at all. The only thing I know is that we have been around for ages.

Other parents tell their children stories about princes and princesses, dragons and unicorns, castles and kingdoms. My parents told me the history of our family before I went to sleep. They did not take heed of the fact that some of the events in that history were not suitable for a little child's ears at all. I remember that I sometimes woke up in the middle of the night screaming my lungs out... and that nobody came to offer me some comfort.

This is the way it was and the way it will always be. It is a survival quest in this family, you know, and I just had the bad luck to be born into the worst branch of it. We differ from the rest of the family because we have a different surname and a different way of thinking. The whole family is called Nimuera, but my grandfather said that every son he would conceive should bear the name Ashlan. And naturally, everyone went along with it because if you didn't you would be disowned. That is why my name is Malachi Ashlan. Malachi means "my messenger, angel". (I don't know if my dad was drunk when he gave me the name. Knowing him, he probably was...)

The Ashlan way of thinking is different from the Nimuera one, as I have already said before, and that is also thanks to my grandfather. My whole family - not just the Ashlan branch but also the Nimuera one - is buried neck-deep into the Dark Arts, true, but nobody was as devoted to those as my grandfather was. In his time there lived a Dark Wizard called Grindelwald and - naturally - my grandfather became one of his most loyal servants. We Ashlans became rich through serving Grindelwald, you might say now, but we have lost many things at the same time. The ability to love, for instance, is something Ashlans will never have again. I don't think that we are made to love others. Even our marriages consist of money and status.

I fear that other people will never completely understand the way our family works. Even I, who has been raised with the Dark Arts, see that our family is more twisted and complicated than any other pureblooded one as I write this all down. There is no chance of us ever getting out of the grasp of the Dark Arts. And still I hope every day again that one person in the family will see what I see and shall change everything. But there is no chance of that any more. They have all become Death Eaters, servants of the one who calls himself Lord Voldemort. They have lowered themselves into the service of a half blood. And, oh yes, we are so pure...

I laugh as I write this. My family would die for Voldemort. They think that he has all the right ideas about killing Mudbloods, Muggles, Muggle-lovers, and impure wizards. Funnily enough I never saw those people as a threat, and that is why I can't care less about them all. This whole war is useless anyway. There is no point in all of this. And I beg for someone to see what I see, but it is difficult to find people who agree with me on a planet where almost everyone I know is into the Dark Arts grandly.

I cannot turn to the Nimuera part of the family anymore either, for they have broken all form of contact with us. The only help I have got from the Ashlans is my sister Mirja and my cousin Baruch and even they do not always see what is going on. Inside other pure-blood families where exactly the same thing is going on we only receive support from Snow Liwellan and Draco Malfoy. And yet I believe that we can truly make a difference. We shall resist against the Dark Arts and rebel against our Death Eater families for it seems as if everyone has become blind. They don't know what they're doing anymore. I fear for our future... but we shall fight.

Even if that means death.

So now I dare you to turn the pages in this book. So now I dare you to discover the hidden truths of the ancient pure-blood families. So now I dare you to put all prejudices against us aside. So now I dare you to open your eyes for the first time in order to see who we truly are. So now I dare you... to become a Slytherin.

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