Advice gratefully accepted

He held the locket like a dull knife, ready to drive it into his wife's chest. Her breathing had stopped long ago, but he still loomed over her, watching. He himself barely breathed, letting all movement occur in the shaking of his clutching hand.

Morfin did not know what his father waited for. He had come to the doorway because of the noise and now stood transfixed before his father. Opened the locket revealed a portrait of a man, taciturn and aloof, he stared with uncaring eyes upon the dead family member.

His mother had rarely inspired emotion in him. Too pathetic, too weak, he hardly understood his fathers devotion. Now it seemed that his father had thrown away the precious gift their ancestors had left them, and his forefather in the picture was unimpressed.

He was startled by a small cry. He had forgotten why he had entered the room.

She had been born wrinkled, with a thick head of black hair much like his own. As Morfin examined her lying on the blood soaked sheets he considered that this was the real reason for his ancestors disapproving looks towards his father. Not for ignoring the infant, but for producing something so pitiful that was still in his line.

The child was going to be as inadequate as her mother.

But she was of their blood, blood spilt upon the bed, and Morfin had a duty to the blood that ran in his veins, even if he had no affection for it. Decision made he left the shadow of the lintel and approached his parents bed. He preferred to believe that he had never been that small. Even if he had once been, he had never appeared so weak.

Retrieving his sister he left his father still staring at the body of his wife.

({.})

Black haired and solemn, Merope grew up avoiding the attention of any who would give it to her. She had been taught long ago that attention was not something to revel in. Unlike the children of the town she knew that attention meant punishment. Only her brother was occasionally kind to her, throwing food at her as he shoved her out the door to sit in the woods. In the winter he would allow her inside, provided she collected firewood, to try to protect herself from the cold.

The children of the town had little to do with her and less to say. She knew, however, that if their parents ever caught sight of her the children's indifference would turn to aggression and hate. She tended to only interact with the children away from their elders eyes.

Her family had long existed outside the limits of the town and social acceptability. Her family was too strange, too odd, and her clothes were too poor and dirty for the parents in the town not to comment harshly on them to their children. Once that happened their children would see it as permission to open season on her, and she would be as hunted and pursued as the snakes her brother liked to nail to the door.

Snakes fascinated her as well, drawing her interest as she ran through the woods in which her families cottage stood. Part of the woods belonged to her family, part of the woods belonged to the squires family who lived in a large manor next to town. Her brother had cautioned her on where not to trespass once when she was very small, and she obeyed him with the adoration of small child looking at a miracle. At best he could muster was a strong indifference to her well-being. Merope, on the other hand, adored her brother. He fed and clothed her out of a sense of duty, but she listened to him and trusted him with all the strength of one who was shown no consideration from anyone else.

Initially the squire had only owned a small plot of land, just enough to maintain a small farm. The crops he grew went towards feeding his family, but his power in the community came from the pigs he raised. Eventually he had raised and sold enough pigs to buy his childless neighbors farm once he died. The neighbor died weeks after that deal was made, far earlier than the community had expected, but the Riddles were able expand their business. Their dealings caught the eye of the local lord who offered them the opportunity to run his lands while he consorted with others of his peerage. The former commoner accepted his squireship with humility and respect. Privately he raged that the lord was an ignorant fool who had done nothing for his people in years.

Many of the townspeople agreed with the new Squire, but most were skeptical of the squires treatment. Yes their Lord had been neglectful, but many preferred his hands off approach.

Eventually the Squires family became richer and richer and the Lord became poorer. Now the Riddles owned all of the town and most of the farms and woods surrounding. They were eager to eject the Gaunts off of their little hovel, having sold the manor for parts long ago. The small shack reminded them that they had once been just as low and poor, and the current Squire practically salivated at the thought of ridding the area of a man who had not been their Lord in centauries.

Lord Gaunt never acknowledged that there was a current generation of his family still living. When he deigned to talk, he talked he talked about his history. The older then ancestor the more likely he had given multiple soliloquies upon them.

({.})

The teacher in town thought Merope was an idiot. She asked too many questions. Her brother would have agreed with the teacher, if he did not disagree with everything he stood for and was. He attended school for the mandatory two years, enough to know his letters, and then left. Letters and numbers were all Morfin wanted to know, and all he needed to know. Summers he ran their farm, and winters he chopped wood for their house.

Since 1901 all children in England were required to receive schooling until age eleven. Merope hoped to go onto more school. She enjoyed school. The school house was warm in the winter.

Her father never talked about where he had gone to school. He must have gone to school, because his only friend sometimes talked about their school days. His friend, Tabor, sometimes brought her father work. Tabor was an enchanter. A rather good one too, based on how rich it made him. He could create swords that were always sharp, music boxes that played a different song depending on your mood, a riding crop that would leave scorch marks where it hit, ever burning torches, moving pictures, healing cloths, and moving statues.

Although not a pureblood himself, his skills were highly valued by the most powerful community in the wizarding world. Tabor always said, "You could only expect the rich to want something that does what they could do for themselves. Pluebloods have perfected the art of doing nothing."

What Tabor could not do Merope's father could. He just did not want to.

The healing cloth stumped Tabor. Her father refused, calling it a pitiful waste of time, asking Tabor why he felt the need to bother him with something so trivial.

Tabor retorted that, "This cloth needed to heal everything, including dark magic."

Marvelo asked him if he had not only grown fat with the success of his business, but stupid as well. Then Tabor explained that the client was a dueling champion, often needing to fight through his injuries.

"Even someone as ugly and old as you should know that speeding up any healing process was merely a matter of dying the cloth with the powder of a Juniper tree that had been struck by lightning." Tabor then informed her father that this client was part goblin.

Marvelo took that job of course, and many others of it's difficulty. He would always refuse payment, and Tabor would always sneak some money to her brother. Often that money would go towards a new goat or sheep, her brothers only love: his farm. Once her brother bought her a new dress because Tabor commented that such a pretty girl should not be wearing such ugly clothes.

({.})