Fairly short chapter today but it just kind of turned out like that. Later ones will be quite a bit longer so I suppose it all balances out.
As before – if you're reading this please let me know!
AN UNHAPPY PAIRING
Merope was fifteen when she received the gold chained locket. It was a birthday present. At least, her father seemed to think it was her birthday – each year it seemed to be a different day, sometimes even a different month.
She woke from the crate in the corner of the room to see Marvolo looking down at her. She flinched involuntarily, her muscles remembering the times her father had come home in a drunken rage and kicked her into the wall, mumbling things about his dead wife. This time, however, he sat beside her, tenderly drew out a package of brown paper and handed it to her.
She had never received a birthday present before, and so half expected it to contain some nastiness that would burn her, but was too afraid to refuse to open it. Fingers trembling, she undid the grubby string that kept it all together and carefully pulled the paper away, revealing the locket. She looked up at her father in puzzlement. He smiled encouragingly back, so she touched it, somwhat gingerly.
It was cold metal, nothing more, and as soon as she knew this Merope suddenly saw how beautiful it was. She stroked its metallic surface, smiling.
Her father reached to her hands and gently opened the locket, and Merope saw the engraved snake symbol inside.
"Slytherin's." Marvolo said quietly. "I'm trusting you with this. I hope you won't let me down."
Merope nodded, hardly believing that her father trusted her with such a beautiful and precious thing. "Thankyou." she whispered in Parseltongue. "I will not let you down."
She loved the locket more that anything and wore it around her neck all the time. Sometimes when her father and brother were out of the house she would stand in front of the cracked mirror, comb her dirty, unevenly cut hair from her face and admire her reflection. She could be almost beautiful, she thought, the beautiful heir of Slytherin, with the precious locket to prove it. She could stand for almost an hour, gazing at her reflection before she heard her father or brother coming up the path, and had to lurch away, quickly tucking the locket back inside her clothes and getting into position at the stove as if she had been doing nothing else.
Her father was searching for a suitable husband for her. Of course, there was no question of it being anyone with any – she shuddered at the very thought – Muggle blood. Marvolo had been trying to meet with Syonis Black to discuss the possible marriage of his son Rigel to Merope.
One night, as the three of them sat around the table eating boiled mutton, made by Merope, Marvolo cleared his throat. He looked uncomfortable. "Merope, I have met with Black. He… he isn't interested in marrying his son to you. Rigel is apparently courting one of the Melliflua girls. They are engaged."
Merope said nothing, holding a piece of mutton in her mouth.
"Morfin. Malfoy is similarly uninterested in giving you his daughter."
"I didn't want the dirty slut anyway!" Morfin hissed violently. Marvolo smiled grimly.
"As you both know, the continuation of our exquisite bloodline is more important than anything. I've decided you will marry each other."
Merope choked on her meat. She would never have admitted it to Marvolo or Mofin, but she had been hoping on the marriage to Rigel Black with all her heart. She had been wishing on every star, had been praying to her locket in the hope that Slytherin would hear her and answer her prayers. She had never met Rigel, but had heard that the house of Black was full of finery and beauty. That they had house elves to do their every whim, that they slept in huge, soft beds with velvet covers. She had been dreaming of being Merope Black, of leaving the hovel where she lived. But it seemed that she would never leave. "Very well." she said, once she had swallowed. "I understand."
Morfin took the news less well. "She is hideous.You promised me Ilianna Malfoy and now you expect me to take my own sister?"
"Crucio." Marvolo said, his wand pointed at his son. He kept the wand pointing at Morfin for only a fraction of a second before lifting it, but it was a clear message. Morfin fell silent, albeit sulkily. "Ilianna Malfoy has poison blood in comparison with your sister. The Malfoys hide it well but if you go back far enough there's pollutants. You should be glad you aren't going to have her. This way the Slytherin bloodline stays pure. Which is what matters over everything."
Morfin glared at his father with loathing, then spat on the floor, wordlessly expressing his disapproval. Merope was staring glassy-eyed into space. A lifetime spent in the hovel, a lifetime spent cooking for and cleaning up after her unappreciative family, a lifetime with her brother, bearing her brother's children…
"I do not think thirteen is old enough for a man to be married, myself." Marvolo said. Merope could hear the tinges of amusement in his voice. "I want Morfin to have at least three more years of happy bachelorhood before he is enslaved."
So Marvolo decided that his children would marry on Morfin's sixteenth birthday, at the beginning of spring. Merope would be eighteen; eighteen and a half, to be exact. Neither bride nor groom was happy about it; Morfin was openly angry about it, throwing his father and sister looks of death. He started to go Muggle-baiting alone, shunning Marvolo's company. Merope internally despaired, clutching onto her locket every night, huddling as far away from Morfin as she could, praying and wishing and praying that somehow Slytherin would see her plight and rescue her in some way. Any way.