"Well, you know what 'Malfoy' means, right? It's based off of French. 'Bad Faith' is what it loosely translates to. That's the origin of the Malfoy name," I pointed out. "But no Frenchman would appreciate being called that. That's like a British person having a last name of Crapbucket or something along those lines. And as 'eccentric' as the magical world gets with its naming conventions, they aren't there yet."
"Bad Faith? Did the Malfoys do something bad, then?" a curious Luna asked, and I smiled at her. The flighty silver-haired girl had always been a favorite of mine. She also liked the stories I'd used to tell when we were all younger, before I moved out.
"Nope. See, the founder of the Malfoy line was actually a Muggleborn privateer who harassed the French way back in the Anglo-French War of 1557. He got his wealth from plundering French merchants and bought himself a noble title from the English Crown. He'd poise as a merchant himself before attacking and stealing all their stuff. Hence the French name for him. Malfoy. Bad Faith."
"His ancestor was a pirate?!" Ron gawked. "That's… that's so cool!"
The other boys in the group all nodded their heads, even Neville.
"How did they go from that, to, well, that?" Hannah Abbot asked, nose wrinkled up in disgust as she thought about the little ferret and his father.
"Arrogance and poor life choices," I guessed with a shrug. "You want to know the real kicker?"
"What?" Ginny asked eagerly.
"The first Malfoy – some guy called Tiberius – was a Gryffindor," I revealed.
That got a host of wide-eyes and dropped jaws and I cackled at their expressions.
"A Gryffindor? Seriously?" Harry asked skeptically.
"How do you know all this, Mr. Rose?" Hermione wondered.
"I have a bunch of old notebooks and stuff from my family. One of them is a journal of my ancestor, Bartimaeus Hunch, who lived during that time." I replied. "He spent a few pages ranting about Tiberius Malfoy and various other nuevo rich buying lands and titles instead of earning them."
"That's surprising," Dean Thomas muttered. "I haven't really had many interactions with the guy – he prefers to try and pick fights with Harry mostly – but Draco Malfoy doesn't seem like somebody whose ancestor was a pirate."
"To be fair to the Malfoys, that was a long time ago," Rupert Abbot said, Hannah's father playing devil's advocate.
"It's true. The founder of my House was a necromancer who was a Slytherin," Susan spoke up. "Families can change over time."
"Necromancy?" Harry uttered, intrigued, and Susan blushed at the attention she received from him and the others in the group.
"It was a long time ago," she mumbled, embarrassed and perhaps a touch ashamed.
"Don't worry about it. Besides, necromancy wasn't really all that bad centuries ago," I helpfully assured her.
"Really?" Susan asked skeptically.
"Necromancy used to be a magical discipline used by Shamans to commune with the dead and help them pass on," I explained. "It was used to exorcise evil spirits, and let families have one final conversation with the recently deceased. Sort of like a wake."
"Unfortunately, necromancy fell out of favor due to a few bad eggs. Ghosts are just clumps of magic, and unscrupulous mages could use necromancy to bind them and force them to obey, or use the wandering spirits as batteries for foul rituals. And of course you have the Inferni, or corpses reanimated with Dark magic, and anything associated with death, even the helpful aspects, ended up shunned. A bit like Parseltongue, come to think of it."
I then scratched my chin thoughtfully. 'Actually, the lack of necromancers in the modern era would explain why there are so many ghosts hanging around.'
Susan looked intrigued by that, and I had a feeling she'd been looking into her own family's history a bit more after that.
"But isn't Parseltongue a Dark ability?" Lavender Brown asked, and Harry flinched a bit at that/
"No, it just had a couple arses who abused it," I replied. I got a few scandalized gasps from the children, and Luna pointed an accusing finger at me.
"You swore!" she said. The silvery blonde girl then pulled out a mason jar from somewhere, which made me blink. And then I saw the words 'Swear Jar!' crudely scrawled onto the side with a glitter pen.
"Fine, fine," I muttered, pulling out a knut and handing it to her. "Can't believe you still have that. And where were you hiding it?"
"A Pouch of Shrinking," she replied, showing off a little pink purse she'd been carrying. Cheaper than a mokeskin pouch or a bottomless bag, all it did was shrink whatever you put inside it so you could carry more. Things still weighed the same, though, which was the main downside.
"You were saying about Parseltongue being misunderstood, Mr. Rose?" Mrs. Parvati inquired, and I blinked at her, before recalling her heritage.
"Ah. Right, yes… anyways, Parseltongue is just a magical ability, one inherited, though since it's a language it's possible to be taught. But that's besides the point. Just because some bad men used it in the past doesn't mean it's inherently bad. Very few things in life are like that," I said to the children.
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