29.08.1929
Sophia comes out of her apparition a short walk from the Gaunt shack. Her wand is in hand and there is a subtle 'notice-me-not' charm cast upon her dress (periwinkle blue today with the heels enchanted to match) in order to keep prying muggle eyes away. Even with the loud pop of apparition, most will assume it is one of the odd-looking new motorcars that are slowly becoming the norm across the country. Straightening out her skirt, Sophia flicks the tail end of her left braid (a duo of French plaits today) back over one shoulder before she begins making her way to the shack.
It's easy to tell when she crosses over onto Gaunt land; the aged wards wash over her skin, the grass is calf-length and unlikely to be trimmed before the end of the decade and rushed hisses echo out from behind the destitute door that is only just managing to fill the frame. There's a new snake nailed to it too; the blood is fresh. How charming. Instead of knocking herself, Sophia gives a quick swish of her wand, a bell-like chime that imitate a doorbell ringing out from flexible willow. The hissing stops for a beat before picking up, just as quick and just as ominous. Footfalls on the other side of the threshold reach her ears and Sophia takes a moment once again to ensure she is presentable. It cracks open just as she's fixing the lay of her collar.
"Healer," Morfin grunts, one dark eye staring right at her, the other gazing off far into the distance. Unlike her previous visit, his hair is not matted flat to his head with dirt and does in fact look as if he has made an attempt at washing it. It's still thick, tangled and long, but it looks cleaner than it had been previously. She silently adds a point to the 'could be trained into a civil member of society' column. In truth, her report on the man before her is a tally chart of 'can or cannot' with a long list of footnotes beneath it. Needless to say, it's heavily weighted in one direction.
"Good morning, Mr Gaunt. I am here for your second mandatory check-in that all former prisoners of two or more years at Azkaban must attend. May I come in?"
"You a pureblood?"
Sophia does her best not to sigh, instead fixing a polite smile to her face as clasps her hands before her. "I am a Lovegood, Mr Morfin. We descend from Pythia, the Oracle of Apollo. Admittedly, we are branched from the Vablatsky family who can claim a more direct descendent—"
"You're pure, I get it," Morfin grunts, pushing open the door and gesturing for her to follow him inside. Given they had this exact same conservation during her last visit, Sophia doesn't exactly have high hopes that the man before her has made much (if any at all) progress. She's already scrubbed him from her list of potential guardians for baby Voldemort so now it is just a matter of deciding if the man should be added to the Ministry's watch list or not.
"Right then—" Sophia makes for the table and pulls out the same chair that she occupied during her last visit. As soon as Morfin's back is turned so he may better hiss at the snake quivering on the floor, Sophia flicks out a quick cleaning charm before she sits herself down. "—let us start with the basics. How are you feeling at present, Mr Gaunt?"
It continues onwards from that point, the usual questions of well-being, intent for the future, thoughts on current events; it is all standardised questions but the answers she is given are certainly not standardised at all. Sophia's smile becomes more and more fixed upon her face as they progress through the interview, taking a slow sip of her bottle water as they work through her check-sheet. She had come prepared this time, given her last visit Morfin had not once thought to offer her drink. Sophia wouldn't have trusted the water in that runs through these pipes (if there even are any pipes and not just tricky spell-work by a less inbred ancestor) even if he had.
Unfortunately, it would appear that Morfin is not yet done in making her feel as uncomfortable as she has ever been in her life.
When she's making her way to the door, he actually gets up to walk with her to the threshold this time. The floorboards, rotten and mouldy and almost certainly held together by magic alone, creak beneath her slight weight. They outright groan beneath Morfin's. Sophia stops at the doorframe. The copper tang of snake blood is stronger by the exit, a relieving summer's breeze seeping through the many, many cracks in the wood.
"You're pure," Morfin mutters, the words stilted as they leave from between his lips and, in that moment, his eyes try to flick down to her hand (try being the operative word, given they are both incapable of focusing upon the same thing). He's looking at her left hand— her ring finger.
"I'm afraid I must be going," Sophia states, taking a hasty step back and bodily pushing her way out of the shack. "I have other patients to see." Not today; her next shift at the local hospital is tomorrow but what Morfin doesn't know won't hurt him. Her smile no doubt looks pained; it certainly feels it.
.
She doesn't stop walking until she has hit the main road of the town. It is quite lucky that Little Hangleton lies almost directly between York and Hull; it means that the Hull to York line cuts neatly through the field to the southern side of the town and someone had been kind enough to plant a little railway station there (nothing more than a platform in truth). Regardless of their reasoning (though it is quite possible that an ancestor of the Riddle family had thrown the family wealth around for the convivences of having the line run right along the outskirts of his land), it does mean Sophia can enjoy a ride back to Greater Hangleton as opposed to apparition. That is not to say she does not like the instantaneous transport provided by literally teleporting to a different part of the country (especially when one has memories of a life lived as a muggle), but she could do without the queasy stomach when the dinner hour is so close.
The last of the market stalls are starting to pack up for the day but the middle-aged couple at the fruit stall aren't as far along as everyone else; Sophia stops for a particularly red-looking apple, handing over the pennies required to purchase it. That is another thing she has a problem with; the ratio of pounds to shillings to pennies. True, the wizarding world is no better with the knuts, sickles and galleons (if not worse, given their ratios are not a product of ten) but, by god, does Sophia long for the simplicity of a hundred pennies in a pound. Still, she's not incompetent so it is with little difficult that, upon arriving at the station, she purchases a ticket.
The station of Little Hangleton is open to the elements with no cover, not that this is an issue on this fine day. More than one woman is eyeing her footwear with blatant curiosity upon her features; understandable. The stiletto won't be accessible to muggles until some clever clogs comes up with it (that or an entrepreneur squib or muggleborn take it over to the muggle world) and even then, it won't have the comfort charms cast upon it. The weight distribution charms that ensure she doesn't sink the thin heels into the mud are a blessing.
A half hour passes as she waits for the arriving train. The sky is a clear, mirror blue and there's only the slightest hints of a breeze now, the last month of the summer making itself known in the baking sun and the sweet scent of flowers that bloom with it. Usually, if she'd been planning on taking the train anywhere at all, she'd have brought a book along in the little side bag she has thrown over her shoulder. There's always more studying to be done when one is a healer. However, she hadn't thought to do so. Consequently, she does not have her head buried nose first in a book when the train pulls up with a roar of clear white steam. It means she is not engrossed in the written word, lost completely to the world with only a vague grasp of what is occurring around her, when Tom Riddle Sr steps out of a buttercup cream carriage.
It had been uncomfortable, making the journey to York, even if it were to inspect the new horseflesh on sale at the market on Parliament Street. True, he had gone to meet with the best breeders in Yorkshire there once he had turned eighteen but— well, needless to say, it is another thing that wretch had ruined. Today had been the first time he had managed to bring himself to travel. The buckskin stallion that Henry Robson had written to him about had truly been a magnificent purchase, well worth the train journey across a good patch of the countryside. Here he stands upon the less than grand train station of Little Hangleton (well, he has just come from York and its grand station but, given it is a city, he supposes it has to be an impressive building) and there is dread clogging his throat.
The witch is here.
She stands out from the commoners of Little Hangleton, what with her lightly coloured clothes that are of a similar vibrancy to her hair; pastel and pale. The shoes, exactly the same as those he saw her in the previous week barring the petal blue colouring, add near a half foot to her height, which would leave her at near eye level with him, should he be stupid enough to get close to her.
Unfortunately, she seems just as capable of spotting him as he her; Miss Sophia Lovegood (a doctor form Great Hangleton and one of those cursed beings capable of witchcraft) lifts one hand to give him the smallest twitch of a wave he has ever seen from a woman, from anyone ever in fact.
Again, the familiar terror that three years ago had frozen every muscle within his body upon waking from a nightmare grips him tight (a memory of that woman and her mephistophelian ways as she had proclaimed herself in love with him while she stripped every bit of self-awareness he had right down to his very bones). She'd spoken of a love potion, hadn't she? She knows of them, is probably capable of enchanting him just like the Gaunt tramp had done.
Only, this one isn't like the tramp, is she? She has a job, has a genuine house— he knows, he sent Henry (the butler not the horse salesman) to check. The townhouse is reportedly old and a little run down, but the woman lives alone and there is no man on record, not her father or a husband. Admittedly, she is a little young for the latter but how is Tom supposed to know how those kinds of people live? The tramp'd seen no issues with marrying— however young she did. Gods, he still fears she will turn up any day with a marriage certificate in hand and he shall be ruined in the eyes of all, that it will become more than rumours and lessen him for it.
Yet, just because there are differences, that does not detract from what Lovegood is— just as dangerous as Gaunt has proven to be. By God, he cannot get rid of the woman; these people clearly have little care for money (one need only look to the tramp Gaunt to know that) and the doctors of Great Hangleton will just think him slipping into madness if he tries to force them into getting rid of the pretty female doctor with bribes.
"Look; she knows the Riddle Heir." He's not quite sure which woman the whisper comes from, but the snide remark already lingers in his brain, pressing down hard behind his eyes in a way that makes blinking vastly uncomfortable. What should he care what the commoners of the village, of the surrounding villages, think of him? He hadn't before; they had all been beneath him.
The Gaunts had been beneath him— he'd laughed and mocked them. The wretch had ruined his life more thoroughly than anything he could have ever predicted.
"Goodness knows the poor woman should be warned about him— she won't have heard what happened yet, will she?" He can feel the spiderlike fingers upon his chest, can picture the brittle wrists of the woman who had ensnared him with black magic and ruined him for the whole world, who had sunk her claws into his mind viciously enough that it presses hard against the very edges of his skull now. It has been three years and he is getting better; this alone goes to show what a state he had been in upon tearing himself from the tramp's side in order to return home. He hadn't even been fit company for his mother for weeks upon weeks.
"Money talks, Marie. She's supposed to be highly educated; I'm sure she'll know better than to get entangled in the Riddle mess." At this point, Tom finally draws up enough of his weakened courage to look to the two women, tipping his head back to better peer down the aristocratic length of his nose at them. It's an easy gesture, so well worn that it fits across his features as his favourite coat does his shoulders. The two women stiffen, their cheeks flushing upon being caught gossiping as they hurry away.
When he returns his gaze to the iron-wrought bench the woman had been sitting up, Tom's startled to realise she's gone. He turns, panic flaring in his chest to pound against the cage of his ribs, for if he does not know where she is, he cannot— but no. She is climbing aboard the train, the click of her odd heels crisp against the metal grating. Her hair, the colour of champagne, is tied in twin plaited tails, coming to rest just at the bottom of her shoulder blades. Sophia Lovegood boards the train and does not look back to check he is still there.
But he is still there, still watching her until the carriage has pulled out of the station.
