A/N: Sorry to not be updating as often. School has caught up with me, and I'm only now getting a breather. Please do continue reading and letting me know what you think. Thank you to all my regular readers.
"Lilith! It's okay, Lilith. Now tell us again. Tell us exactly what he said," Abraxas repeated. Richard, Alphard, and Avery all nodded.
"I told you already. I was waiting for him on his bed so I could apologise. He really knows how to straighten his bed out. There were no creases at all. A house- elf couldn't even make it that well..." she trailed off.
"Forget the bed. So he opened the curtains and saw you. Then what?" Richard asked scathingly, losing his patience.
"He opened the curtains. I told him I was sorry. I even smiled! He asked me what I said, and I told him again. 'I said that I'm sorry, Tom' I said."
"And..." one of the boys began.
"And he said 'okay' and then he told me never to call him by that name again."
"Let's start with the first part. He accepted the apology. That means you two can talk to each other again and you don't have to be angry all the time," Abraxas said.
"I'm never angry," she said indignantly, but he just waved her off.
"The second thing, though," Alphard started. "He told you not to call him by that name again. Did he mean Mudblood? You have been letting on he was acting like one for the past month, after all."
"No! He didn't mean Mudblood!" She looked terrified and hurt that she had actually done such a thing as try to slander Tom's name. "I think he meant his name. I don't think he wants to be Tom anymore. I think he just wants to forget that name forever."
"Did he tell you what to call him, then?" This question came from Avery.
"No. He just said never to call him by that name again," she repeated. "He said it was a foul name."
The Slytherin boys sat back, contemplating, unsure what else there was to ask. They all knew that there wasn't much to go on. Abraxas spoke again, breaking the silence.
"If he doesn't want to be Tom, who is he going to be? Merlin? Bernard? Marcus? Ferdinand? Manuel? Gregory? Mar—"
"Marvolo," responded the calm, cool voice of the boy who entered the room. He brushed aside his raven hair, gazing at the five who sat in front of him, mouths agape. None thought he would have come up this early in the morning. There were no visible signs of the boy's mental distress from the day before.
Silently daring any of them to say a thing about his new name, he walked toward them. He looked each of them in the eye, finding the sudden silence to be a nervous one. "You will call me Marvolo from this day forward."
"Sorry, but why?" Avery had the stupid curiosity to ask this question. If looks could kill, the look he received in response would have killed every member of his family.
"We just want to understand your decision, Marvolo," Lilith said, emphasising the new name and hoping that he might answer her.
He looked at her, considering. He would still have to endure being called Tom by professors and unfamiliar students. Total escape from his name wouldn't be available for more than six years. These, his few companions, he could afford to tell the truth. It would be necessary; nobody trusts liars, and he hated the idea that he could not be trusted. He needed a select few to be able to trust him, all the better to take his words as fact and act upon them. The adoption of the new name came with a cold, detached sense of reality, much more so than the boy had ever had in the past, at least.
"Fine, I'll tell you," he began. "Swear to me that you will only call me by Tom if anyone other than the six of us is present or in the general area. Swear to me that nothing I tell you now will ever pass through your lips in the future."
They all swore that this would be the case.
"I started searching for my father in the Daily Prophet shortly after school started. I had figured out what his name was when a few bits and pieces of information I'd gathered came together," he started, adding a slight falsification. Not a lie, he reasoned, only an embellishment. Actually, he noted, it was less an embellishment, really, and much more of a displacement of when it had happened. "I spent until yesterday looking in the newspapers and found nothing. I looked in the trophy room, through the school records. I fell asleep in there last night, holding Quidditch results.
"I found nothing. Then I talked to Professor Merrythought. Anyone young enough to be my father would have been taught by her. He wasn't. It was then that I knew I could not escape it any longer. He was a Muggle."
Abraxas hung his head, his words from the train proven correct. Lilith stared, unsure of what to think. Richard and Avery merely nodded, showing their comprehension.
Alphard was the one to break the silence as his favourite second cousin, Lucretia, entered the common room. "My uncle Marius is a Squib –"
"You'd better not let Walburga hear you talking about him, Al. She'll tell Aunt Irma, and she won't like that at all," she said before heading down the staircase to the third year girls' dormitories.
"Anyway," Alphard continued once she was out of earshot. "Aunt Dorea and Lucretia don't really care, but Walburga and my mum do. And sure, they burned him off the family tree for being a Squib, but it doesn't mean he's not a nice enough guy! I've snuck out to Muggle London to visit him, he lives just a little ways out from Diagon Alley, and –"
"Just stop it, Alphard. I don't want to hear about your Squib uncle. Tom Riddle abandoned my mother. He left a witch to die. He cannot be forgiven."
He had no reason except vain hope to believe that he might find magic on his mother's side of the family. That hope, though, was thin and fleeting. There was no basis for it, and he would learn from past mistakes. He would not place impossible expectations on Marvolo, whoever he was.
"You know, being a half-blood isn't that bad," Abraxas began, thinking it best to turn his friend toward a more positive outlook. "The parents sometimes don't realise what they've done is against nature, but the blame can hardly rest on the kid. It's Muggleborns, though, and the blood traitors who knowingly marry them and Muggles who are the problem. We don't think of you differently, Marvolo. I thought you were a half-blood when we met on the train, and it didn't stop us getting on well since, did it?"
The words rang as truth among the five first years, who all chimed in with similar sentiments, trying to restore their newly rechristened friend to a happier state. All talk stopped when Dorea passed through the common room. She gave them all a small wave that was not returned, her cheerful nature never having really rubbed off on the group of young students. They watched, silently, as she descended the staircase toward her private quarters, something exclusive to Head Boys and Girls.
"Fine, thanks," was all Marvolo could think to say to the others after she disappeared from view. Inwardly, however, vengeance burned in the boy's heart. "If I ever find out that she was a witch," he swore to himself, "I will come for you, Tom. I will kill you."