This new room was pitch-dark, leaving Oleandra to wonder if Harry and the others had even come through here to begin with. But just as she was about to turn to leave, a spotlight suddenly shone down from the ceiling, illuminating a pedestal placed in the centre of the room, upon which an open book rested.
Not especially keen to experience a repeat from the Love Room, Oleandra turned off her Mystic Eyes, but not before realizing that the book possessed an aura that was nearly identical to Harry's Marauder's Map.
"The Magic of Names," Oleandra murmured to herself, as she warily approached the book.
It was only upon taking a closer look that Oleandra noticed the flurry of activity surrounding the book. Every so often, a quill that had been laid alongside the book would jump up and dip itself in a pot of black ink, before leaping on its own to the book's pages to inscribe a few lines.
"Walker, Christopher, 24 April 1996," Astoria read out loud, as she stood on the tip of her toes to peek over Oleandra's shoulders. "Hall, Megan, 24 April 1996… that's today, isn't it?"
"I don't recognize any of these names," said Tracey, joining Astoria to peek over Oleandra's shoulders.
And that's when a man's voice that Oleandra did not recognize rang out.
"I wouldn't expect you to— they're the names of newborns."
Bright light suddenly flooded the room, but there was no time to admire their surroundings; Oleandra, Astoria, Tracey and Theo sharply spun on their heels to face this fifth party, who appeared to have been waiting for them in a corner of the previously dark room all this time.
"I just want a word," said the man, raising his hands in the air— the four teenagers had just pointed their wands at him. "Though I didn't expect to be seeing you here, godson."
It was only now that Oleandra recognized the man's bearded, somewhat haggard face; she had seen it in the newspapers, as well as on the wanted posters that had been put up everywhere in Hogsmeade.
"Rookwood," Theo replied calmly, lowering his wand. "You're looking better than the sorry figure you cut, the last time you came to visit."
The Daily Prophet had reported on the Azkaban breakout on the first day of school following the Christmas vacations, but the breakout had actually happened the day before that!
"Theo?" said Oleandra slightly nervously.
"Rookwood's my old man's best mate," said Theo, his eyes fixed on the man standing before them. "Unlike some of the other Death Eaters who've come to visit, he's actually got more than just meat between his ears— it would probably be wise to hear him out."
A chilling thought suddenly occurred to Oleandra; every single piece of information about the Department of Mysteries that she had learned from Theo had originally come from Augustus Rookwood. Had Voldemort somehow predicted that Theo would be accompanying her here? And that she would be entering this room in particular? From the very beginning…?
"You're too kind, Theodore," said Rookwood, laughing sardonically. "Indeed, the Dark Lord does not suffer fools kindly— his true inner circle obviously does not include the idiotically fanatic— they are merely pawns to be moved at our pleasure."
Oleandra stared back at the man, wondering how such a supposedly smart man could fail to notice the cognitive dissonance between his behaviour and his beliefs.
"At any rate, it is my pleasure to formally welcome you to the Room of Blood," said Rookwood, splaying his arms wide. "Although, I suspect that you ought to be more than familiar with the name of the work that is done here: the Heliopaths Initiative."
"Wait, those are real?" Astoria blurted out.
Oleandra and Tracey looked at Astoria in surprise, who shrugged.
"After you did your interview for The Quibbler, I asked Luna to lend me some of the past issues," she said. "I read somewhere in there that the Ministry was creating an army of Heliopaths."
Rookwood coughed lightly.
"Long ago, in Ancient Egypt, the first modern Witches and Wizards were born, so to speak. They were respected and feared as the children of gods," explained Rookwood. "At some point, discontent with the rule of Muggle pharaohs, a group of Wizards under the pharaoh Akhenaton decided to take power, as was their right— inventing a new deity, the Sun Disk Aten— and decreeing all of Wizardkind to be children of the sun, the rightful rulers of Egypt."
"And let me guess," said Oleandra lackadaisically, "the work you used to do here had something to do with tracing your bloodlines back to these first Wizards?"
But to her surprise, Rookwood shook his head slightly.
"That is impossible— there have been Wizards and Witches for as long as there have been men and women," he said. "No, the name refers to new first-generation Wizards, who, just like Aten, had spontaneously appeared out of thin air— the Muggleborn."
Oleandra frowned; weren't all Muggleborn descended from Wizards? It was just a matter of going far up enough through their genealogic trees, and at some point, you'd usually find a Squib, or some horny Wizard who just couldn't keep his pants on around buxom Muggle women…
"There are, of course, some Muggleborn who are descendants of Squibs, but that does not account for all of them," said Rookwood aloofly. "Those whose parents do not possess a single ounce of magical blood running through their veins, and yet, are born with uncommonly powerful powers— does that ring a bell, perhaps?"
One name immediately came to Oleandra's mind— Hermione Granger's.
"What exactly do you suppose," said Rookwood completely out of the blue, "happens to Muggleborn children born to undesirable parents? The religious zealots, the criminals, the very scum of the earth…?"
"They're never told about magic?" said Tracey hesitantly. "Or, maybe, the Ministry erases the parents' memories and the children are raised in Wizard orphanages…?"
"That's no good; those who are forced to repress their own magic will inevitably transform into Obscurial; beings whose uncontrollable magic is a danger to themselves, to others, and to the Statute of Secrecy itself," answered Rookwood, shaking his head. "As for your other solution, young girl, just think about it: what happens to uncommonly powerful children?"
The answer was quite obvious.
"They grow up into uncommonly powerful adults," murmured Oleandra. "Who begin asking difficult questions…"
"Why was I raised in an orphanage? Who are my parents?" said Rookwood, nodding appreciatively. "Why was I separated from my family? Who is to blame for my suffering? Why are there so many of us?"
Society was to blame; the Ministry of Magic was to blame, of course!
"More and more of these first generation Muggleborn continued to be born," Rookwood continued, shaking his head in mock sorrow. "So much so, in fact, that the influx of Muggleborn began to threaten the very fabric of Magical Society— they kept dragging their Muggle values into our world, where they had no place existing. And so, in the name of maintaining the Statute of Secrecy, it was decided fifty years ago that the children of undesirables would be secretly imprisoned here."
"So where are they now?" said Oleandra, swivelling her head to look at her surroundings. "This room, these vats, they're all completely empty…"
But instead of answering her question, Rookwood simply looked at Astoria and grinned…