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I sat and listened to this speech with my mouth open.

"By the look on your face, you thought so."

"No, no ..." I shook my head.

"Well, or something similar ..." Walburga dragged on her cigarette a couple of times and, dropping the ashes, released non-aristocratic rings of smoke. "Oh, how I love to break these crazy ideas about the world. Let's start in order?"

Sitting more comfortably in my chair, I prepared to listen carefully. This might be interesting.

"To begin with, I want to upset you. No one is waiting for you here. You were not named by your mother. In infancy, you were not dedicated to the Family Tapestry. For the House, despite the positive reaction from home, you simply do not exist. This can be fixed, but is it necessary? You have been named Maximilian Knight for at least eleven years now, and the name is not an empty phrase. It literally grows together with the soul and body, and even if you are clearly Black by blood and magic, but after all, even the letter came from Hogwarts to what name?"

"Knight."

"Exactly. It's not easy to change. This is a very complex process, back to Lordships and stuff. The Lord is just a status, a beautiful tablet. It won't make you stronger or smarter. But it will oblige to attend the meetings of the Wizengamot and participate in the rest of society. And most important to you, it won't give you any protection against Malfoy. What prevents one Lord from killing another? Nothing! Further. There are no miraculous artifacts and other things. Moreover, the goblins have nothing but money and possibly a couple of dozen not-so-important trinkets. Who would trust them with something like that, given the history? The Ring of the Head does exist, but no one knows where it is."

"How so?"

"How?! The lousy blood traitor Sirius just threw it out somewhere! A piece of bald ..."

For at least a minute, Walburga went broke, scolding Sirius.

I raised my hand like an excellent student in the class. Walburga noticed this, grunted, and nodded her head, giving her permission to ask.

"So my name is not on the Tapestry?"

"Naming and initiation are not carried out in isolation from each other. According to you, it turns out that you were not given a name, which means that you are not on the Malfoy tapestry either. And even if you were there, Lucius probably would have removed you from it."

"Lady Walburga, but.. In theory, If I get on the tapestry, would my name appear on the Malfoy tapestry? Still, Narcissa nee Black, and Lestrange, and many other families ..."

By the eyes of Walburga, I realized that I had said something stupid. historical

"And where are such foolish thoughts in the minds of Muggle-borns came from? Make up all sorts of nonsense... There are no family tapestries associated with the tapestry of another House. Hopefully, there is no need to explain why? Looks like I need to."

Walburga again paid a little attention to the smoldering but not decaying cigarette, and only then she spoke.

"First and foremost, a wizard is not a friend or brother to another wizard. We do not consider individual cases, only the general picture. We have very few material values, but what we have are true relics. The greatest value is information and knowledge. Each House is trying to get the benefits of another, and this is how it happened many hundreds of years ago. It is still relevant now. Imagine that on the tapestry of the once related Houses, but now warring, there is information about children born, marriages, lines of inheritance, and so on. It is unacceptable! Our ancestors, who created tapestries, also understood this. They are not related to each other in any way, and the information itself does not appear on them.

"You said that the most important thing is knowledge and information. But what about the purity of blood?"

"The purity of blood is generally out of the categories of importance. And it is not discussed."

If it is not discussed, then it is not discussed. I will be able to think it over myself somehow.

"But still ... Lady Walburga, what should I do?"

"I already said, young man. Did you not listen to me?" She asked, a little annoyed, casually placing the mouthpiece with a cigarette on a tray on the coffee table. "You need to strike first."

"But what about Narcissa?"

"She is no longer a little girl. She will somehow figure it out."

"They have a son, Draco Malfoy. He'll probably guess that I will kill his father. Another enemy."

"Kill him too then, but not before he gets an heir. Such an old House should not be interrupted because of the stupidity of one of its members."

For several more hours, we talked with Walburga about various issues. As before, I don't want to become any Lord and so on, which I did not fail to report. Walburga, on the other hand, operated on such concepts as the memory of ancestors and so on. It's just immoral - so take and ruin hundreds of years of labor of many generations of wizards, ruin their heritage, influence, and much more. To ruin everything that they got by hard work, sweat, and blood. In the end, we came to the conclusion that I should try to find the Black ring. Without it, all other controversies are meaningless. The house accepted me as one of the Blacks, so I can come here, although I do not have access to many things simply because of the lack of a ring.

Along the way, it became clear what role the house plays in everything. It turned out to be pretty simple. Many generations of Blacks lived here, conjured, created their spells, hung various protections and other tricks. Over time, any such dwelling turns into a kind of artifact, in which all these spells, children's outbursts of magic, and other witchcraft merge into something single, monumental. Now, being able to compare, I can confidently say that there is something similar at Hogwarts, but much more impersonal, or something. This can be compared to "different air" when you come from the city to nature. Only if there really is different air, then in Hogwarts, it is something intangible. In the Black's house, this feeling is very tangible, even if it is extremely difficult to interpret this feeling.

In general, I still couldn't draw any definite conclusions in relation to inheritance. On the other hand, it turned out that no such "Ancestral Magic" exists. There are the knowledge and experience of ancestors recorded in books, scrolls, and folios, there is a heritage - artifacts and so on. And there is a long history of House, with its own set of internal rules and so on.

I did not raise any other topics. Walburga told Kreacher to feed me and give me a room. Kreacher was unhappy with having to serve the "strange relatives of the great lady." However, overall, he showed quite an obvious sanity. As well as the portrait of Walburga. It even seems to me that she prepared her inadequacy purely for one individual and his guest friends.