Content Warning: The main character of this story is suffering from mental health issues, including anxiety and panic attacks. Her coping mechanisms are also at times about as healthy as one should expect from Voldemort's extended family.

Summer had come all too early. Slytherin had once more won the house cup and most of the House were celebrating their victory and happily anticipating the holidays. Most seventh-years were eagerly discussing their plans of travelling the world. However, others were looking back with bittersweet feelings as they departed the castle for the last time.

For Medea Gaunt, the castle had been the home that the Gaunt Estate had never been. Absentmindedly she listened to her friend Agrippina Fawley's travel plans through the orient.

"The muggles have a new thing called the Orient Express. It's like the Hogwarts Express, except that it takes you all the way to Constantinople. Doesn't that sound much more comfortable than broomsticks?"

"It does, but I'd rather go by thestral carriage or take the enchanted ship from Dover to Athens," Medea said. "You and your muggle contraptions."

"Oh, no doubt magic could do a lot to improve them. But you have to admire what they've done recently. They used to live in the dirt like animals, and now they're building trains and horseless carriages and great steel towers. They have some kind of potion they put in their blood and then they'll never get the pox! Can you believe it? And all of that without magic. I just wish we'd have the same inventiveness. Imagine what we could be if we were as inventive as the muggles. Instead we're resting on the laurels of the greater witches who have come before us."

"Most of them still live in the dirt like animals," Medea answered. "There are places in muggle towns worse than the gutters of Knockturn Alley. Rich muggles are treating poor muggles worse than house-elves."

She was interrupted by the hissing noises of a boy boarding the carriage next to her. Most people around him turned around and gave him irritated looks, but Medea of course understood what he was saying.

"Why can't you side-along apparate me home? I don't want to go on that filthy stinking muggle contraption."

"Because I want to spend a quiet afternoon with my friends," Medea said. "And Agrippina isn't very fond of your company since you made that adder attack her. And will you please speak English when we're in public."

Marvolo scowled.

"It's just one last time. Next year you will be able to apparate on your own."

Down at Hogsmeade station, where most students boarded the train, Medea and Agrippina met their old friend Elsie Harrow. Elsie had grown up in the gutter of Kelpie Lane, and had been barely able to read and write when she started at Hogwarts, and had not owned a single new robe. Yet Medea had always felt herself strangely drawn towards the foul-mouthed redhead with crooked teeth and her lopsided smile. Hanging out with Elsie had been her way to escape the air of faux aristocracy that permeated Slytherin. There, Medea always stuck out like a sore thumb, for due to her mother's untimely passing, no one had ever taught her how to behave in the ladylike manner of upper class witches.

"What are you doing now that Hogwarts is over?" Medea asked Elsie. "If you still need somewhere to stay, well, we still have the little cottage at Little Hangleton. No one has lived there in fifteen years, since great-aunt Medusa died, but once you kick out the doxies it should be fine."

"That's kind of you, but I have already found a flat on Bowtruckle Bridge. It's a dodgy area, but the best you're going to get when you've got no wealth, no family, and no name. I've found a job at Burke's down in Knockturn Alley."

"So you're going into the business of selling Boudicca's swords of doubtful authenticity to gullible rich collectors?"

"I'm not going to be picky about finding a job. I know a true Gaunt isn't supposed to steep as low as working for gold, but not all of us have this luxury."

Medea didn't tell her that the Gaunts had not added a single Knut to the contents of their vault in decades, and that it had grown a bit too empty for her comfort. There was enough gold left to ensure that if she spent it prudently, she would be able to pursue her academic interests without economic constraints, but she certainly couldn't afford the lavish lifestyle of upper class socialites that her classmates aspired for and that by tradition would have been expected from Medea.

The three friends spent one last glorious afternoon together at Hogsmeade. After a walk along the lakeshore, they went to the Red Dragon for a drink. Agrippina ordered a shrivelfig shandy, a weird concoction made of ale and shrivelfig juice, while Medea preferred cider and Elsie drank her usual firewhisky.

"Enjoy your travels," Medea told Agrippina. "And don't forget to write."

"Feel free to visit me at my new flat when you need someone other than Marvolo for company," Elsie said. "It ain't much, but it's mine."

Medea apparated home.

The Gaunt Estate was just as gloomy and silent as Medea remembered it. Light was only burning in her father's study and in Marvolo's room.

The Gaunt Estate had been built for a family many times larger than the three of them, plus a multitude of servants, humans and elves alike. But now only Medea, Marvolo and their father Mortimer inhabited the building, aside from Scraffy, the elderly house elf.

As she approached the door, she hissed at the serpentine door knocker. "Open."

Only at second glance did she recognize that the door knocker had been replaced by a real-life adder which had been bewitched to guard the door. Marvolo's work, no doubt. Medea had once loved her brother, and somewhere in the depth of her heart some of that love endured, but it was obvious that her brother had inherited the family curse, and eventually Medea had to concede that her brother was growing up to become an insane, sadistic sociopath.

"Poor little creature," Medea said to the snake. "I won't hurt you. Let me just find out what he has done to you so that I can set you free."

She drew her wand to cast a few spells to detect the curses Marvolo had placed upon the snake. The beast hissed at her and snapped for her hand. So much for Parseltongue. The ability to speak didn't make most snakes particularly intelligent.

From a safe distance, Medea continued her work, and with a few well-chosen words, the snake was freed from the door and slithered off into the unkempt shrubbery of the Gaunts' gardens.

Medea entered the entrance hall of the estate. It was lightless and it smelt of old tapestries slowly crumbling to dust. Decay, she thought, that's what this house smells like. Her steps sounded muffled in the hall, the unnatural silence of the house swallowing every sound. The portraits of her ancestors scowled down upon her. They all had the same monkey nose that also marred her own face.

"Oh, keep your mouth shut Coriolanus," she snapped. "Your greatest achievement was the invention of a finger-flaying curse the world certainly did not need. I have a greater legacy at the age of eighteen. Had I any artistic skill, I should paint my own likeness over your ugly face."

She wasn't sure if the portrait heard her, as her voice was swallowed by the darkness of the house, a darkness that was more than the mere absence of light, a foul presence that was feeding on her father's sadness and her brother's madness like it had fed on generations of Gaunts before them.

"Marvolo!" Medea shouted. "Why in Morgana's name did you glue a snake to the door?"

"I thought it would be fun."

"Not so much fun for the Snake."

"It's just a snake. You know what they are, dumb beasts, nothing more."

"That doesn't give you the right to torment them for your amusement. Where is father?"

"He is with his ghosts," Marvolo said, and Medea understood.

As long as Medea remembered, her father had been a serious man. She could remember the instances she had heard him laugh on her two hands. However, when she had been young, Mortimer had been an immensely caring husband and father who loved to dote on his wife and children. However, his warm smile had almost faded from her memory.

Ever since her mother had died from the grey plague when she had been eight, a sadness had taken possession of her father. He had never smiled again, and become increasingly withdrawn from his surroundings, spending long hours and even days alone in his study apparently muttering to himself, while leaving the care of his children to Scraffy the house-elf.

"Expecto Patronum," Medea said, and a silvery mockingbird appeared on the corridor. Its silvery light gave her comfort in the darkness of the house. It led her to her own bedchamber. It was the only room in the house that didn't have the look of dilapidated former glory, but nothing helped to expel the smell of decay. The fresh-picked roses from the garden that Scraffy had placed on the windowsill at her command only masked the smell, but it was still there.

Medea never struggled to fall asleep at Hogwarts, where she could see the moon gently shining through the water of the lake and the enchanted ceiling into her dormitory, where she had a soft featherbed that seemed to embrace her. Here, in the Gaunt Estate, the night was a devouring darkness. As a child, Medea had feared a monster under her bed. Now she knew better. The monster was not under her bed. It was all around her. It was in the walls of the manor. It was following her through the eyes of the portraits. It was in the air she breathed. It was in the blood that flowed through her veins. It was in her mind and her soul. The monster had her father and her brother in its claws, and she had watched it claim her grandfather and her grandmother before.

Eventually tiredness overcame her and she fell into an all too familiar nightmare.

She awakened at three o'clock, her watch told her. She was certain that no one had heard her screaming in her sleep, such was the magic of these walls.

"They are dead. They can't hurt me," Medea told herself. But in this house, their power still lived on. She opened the window. This was the one thing she missed at Hogwarts, under the lake. Filling her lungs with fresh air helped to calm her racing heart and her anxious mind.

She knew she would have to get some more sleep, tomorrow would be another hard day. But she couldn't endure this house any longer. She pulled a robe over her nightgown and ventured outside into the garden. No one had tended to the garden in ten years, since her mother had died.

Neither had the garden escaped the corrupting magic of this place. Thick thorny brambles had spread all over the place and grindylows dwelt in ponds and fountains. Venomous snakes lay hidden in the shrubberies, the most toxic vipers found in the entirety of Britain, a breed conceived by one of her less than sane ancestors. Even the roses were as poisonous as they were beautiful. And yet, the garden was Medea's favourite place around the Gaunt Estate. Dark and dangerous it was, but the suffocating air of decay that permeated the house was absent here.

On a bench that had fallen into disrepair, she waited for the dawn.

A muggle scientist, Agrippina had told her, had recently proposed the idea that if you assembled sufficient mass in a sufficiently small space, its gravity would become so strong that nothing which entered its immediate surroundings would ever escape, not even light. A preposterous idea only a maddened muggle could come up with, yet the idea equally horrified and fascinated her.

It was a sad thought, the idea that a ray of light could fall into a darkness from where it couldn't escape, and it all too much reminded her of her family. Medea wondered if the Gaunt Estate had accumulated so much dark magic that no one who had come too close to it, no one who had ever called it home, could escape its darkness.

The Gaunt Estate had not always been this way, its walls and furniture told of a more splendid past, and there had been a time when the Gaunts had been renowned witches and sorcerers, especially in the field of potions. Many a concoction used at St. Mungo's until this day had been invented by one of her ancestors. But for the past century, the Gaunts had more often brought forth abominations rather than geniuses. They had dabbled in curses and poisons, necromancy and soul magic. In the past it had been said that every birth of a Gaunt was like the flip of a coin between brilliance and madness, but these days the coin had two identical faces.

And together with the family that lived there, the house had descended into darkness. Once beautiful gardens had become filled with thorny vines and poisonous flowers, had become home to venomous beasts and creatures of darkness. The house had absorbed the madness of its occupants and turned it into dust and darkness and foul air. Or had it been the other way round, and the dark magical artefacts accumulated on the adventures of the Gaunts had poisoned the minds and the souls of their offspring? Over the years, the darkness of the house and the darkness of its owners' hearts had become inseparable.

The sun had already risen when Scraffy the elf found her.

"Mistress Medea, Scraffy has made breakfast for Master and Mistress."

"I'll be there in a minute," Medea said, and with heavy heart returned to the house. In the dining room she found Marvolo who had already started to wolf down sausages and eggs and some weird meat Medea wasn't sure she wanted to identify.

"Good morning, dear brother," Medea said. "Where is our father?"

"Still with his ghosts," Marvolo replied.

"Well, the ghosts must wait, I have urgent business with him."

"Don't," Marvolo said. "Never disturb him when his ghosts haunt him."

The change that came over Marvolo when discussing her father's ghosts was unnerving. It was the only thing that reduced the overconfident, boisterous boy to a frightened mess.

"Ew, the black pudding tastes funny. Scraffy, what's in there?" Medea asked.

"It's pork, nothing but pork, mistress."

"Don't lie to me, Scraffy. You're bad at lying."

The only bad liar in this house, Medea thought.

The poor house elf began banging her head against a wall. "Scraffy is a good elf, but Master Marvolo gave Scraffy one command and Mistress Medea another, and she can't keep one without breaking the other, poor Scraffy, poor Scraffy!"

"Tell me the truth, Marvolo, before that poor elf beats herself into a coma," Medea said.

"Calm down, it's just horse," Marvolo said. "That filthy muggle lets his horses graze on our land, and I thought it would teach him a lesson. Only needed the head for the lesson, heh, so why waste the meat?"

"Marvolo," Medea sighed. "You can't keep mistreating our muggle neighbours or the ministry will pay us a visit. And when they come, we'd better burn the house down if we don't want to go for Azkaban for the dark artefacts in our possession."

"They won't go after us, we're the blood of Salazar Slytherin! All the old families own powerful artefacts, and no one has arrested them yet!"

"Blood counts for less and less in the outside world, not just at Hogwarts," Medea said. "Only gold counts these days, and our family has done little to fill our vaults recently."

It was impossible to reason with her brother. Every humiliation he endured at Hogwarts only enforced his belief that the others were merely jealous of his blood and his unique talent. He wouldn't see that parseltongue was considered nothing more than a curiosity these days, and that pure blood was less important than the Galleons that usually came with it. On the Wizengamot the elected seats outnumbered the heritable ones of the old families by two to one already. The world they had been brought up in had been dying even when they were born, and by now it was dead.

She vanished the remains of her breakfast, as the thought of eating Mr Woodcote's favourite horse made her sick, and then climbed the stairs to her father's study.

Even by day, the house was gloomy. Dark velvet wallpapers were peeling from the walls, blackened portraits whispered as she walked past them, and all corridors were decorated with the trinkets her unsavoury ancestors had brought back from their adventures. A troll's leg, a cursed bloody dagger, a stuffed nundu, a lock of rusalka's hair, all these things could be found there. There was a black sword said to make its bearer go mad with bloodlust and a golden tiara that she had foolishly tried on once that made the one wearing it radiate unearthly beauty, but at the same time made her feel empty inside. She went out of her way to avoid the Mirror of Despair that showed the bleakest future one could imagine, even if it meant that she had to pass the gallery of severed goblin-heads on her way to her father's chamber.

She knocked at the door.

No response.

She knocked again.

"Father, are you in there? I need to talk to you."

She heard him shuffling around in the room, but there was no response.

"Father, this is enough! We have returned from Hogwarts yesterday, and you have not spoken as much as a word with me or Marvolo."

Silence.

She turned back from the door and walked down the corridor, eager to escape this house of horror. Worried about her father, she completely forgot about the mirror of despair. As soon as she found herself looking into its grey depths, she could not avert her gaze.

A filthy old man in a filthy old shack.

A mansion burning bright in the night.

A heavily pregnant girl, standing alone in the cold rain on a dark cobbled road at nighttime.

A man with the face of a snake, his eyes burning red with malice.

A boy alone with his ghosts as he walks through a dark forest to meet his doom.

Her heart was racing as she watched the terrifying visions unfold in front of her. Collecting her breath she stepped away from the mirror before it could show her any more scenery of despair. She knew that most visions the mirror showed were malicious constructions playing on her fears, but there had been one image in the past that had come true and haunted her to this day.

"Oh, is the little lady frightened of a creepy old mirror?" one of the portraits taunted her in a mock baby voice.

Normally she would have sent a scathing comment back at the portrait, but she was too shaken by her father's behaviour and the frightening visions.

She had to get out, away from this house filled to the brim with dark magic that emanated into the air to stifle her breath.

She wanted to storm out of the house, but something seemed to paralyze her limbs. Even though she wanted to run away, she sluggishly tumbled through the dark corridors. The whispering of the portraits became a howling storm in her ears. Her mouth felt dry from inhaling the dust of centuries. Water! If only she could get some water. The darkness was swallowing her, the dark corridor was spinning.

Come on, you're a witch! Aguamenti! Ariafresca! Breathe.

She needed to get out. She stumbled downstairs into the dining room. Fortunately Marvolo had left already and wouldn't see her in this state. The smell of the horseflesh that still filled the room made her retch. Come on, just a little further. Only another corridor, then the entrance hall and she would be outside. She heard the portrait of Coriolanus snigger at her as she passed through the entrance hall. The bastard would pay later, for now getting outside was all that mattered. She ripped the front door open and ran outside.

She felt the heaviness leave her body, but the anxiety remained. She ran and ran and ran until she was beginning to feel calmer.

She was no stranger to such bouts of panic. She had even experiences them at Hogwarts, mostly during her OWL year. But it was getting worse. Now it had driven her from her own house for the second time in two days. No, not her own house. That wasn't her own house. She might live there, but it belonged to the ghosts.

She apparated to Diagon Alley. There, she aimlessly wandered the winding street to calm herself down, explored the little lanes that branched off to the left and right and wound back to the main street in impossible geometries. She dreamt the impossible dream of renting one of those flats for herself, before returning to Diagon Alley to gaze at shop windows displaying treasures she couldn't afford in good conscience, knowing the emptiness of the family vault. When evening drew closer, she did not feel ready to return home for another night.

Elsie's flat was in one of the side-streets. 13 Bowtruckle Bridge was the address. It was not one of the nicer areas, but the threats here were brawling drunkards and ill-tempered hags, not arcane dark magic that drove you insane. She rang the bell, and soon the familiar freckled face with the lopsided grin appeared.

"Hey Medea, come in. Oh my, you look like shite. Want some Firewhisky?"

"Thank you."

"I'm warning you, it's not Odgen's," Elsie said as she led her into the flat. The furniture was old and worn, the wallpapers somewhat grimy. But yet it was so unlike the Gaunt Estate. Elsie had done everything to make the flat her home. She had conjured tacky flowery patterns over the spots of grime, and the old furniture gave off a cosy vibe rather than the air of abandonment of the Gaunts' home. There were no whispering portraits at the walls but clumsy paintings showing Elsie's hometown of Edinburgh. At least Medea presumed so, but with Elsie's painting skills, they might as well show Durham or York.

Elsie placed two glasses on the table and cleaned them with a quick "Tergeo!" before pouring the amber liquid in.

"Well then, cheers," Elsie said.

Medea gulped down the Firewhisky. She grimaced as the burning sensation spread through her throat.

"Tastes like Kelpie piss, right?" Elsie asked.

Medea laughed. It felt so relieving to be here with Elsie.

"How's that mad brother of yours? Attacked any muggles yet?"

"Only killed my neighbour's horse," Medea answered. "And served it for breakfast!"

"I've eaten worse," Elsie said. "Complain when you've had rat."

Elsie refilled their glasses and they drank again.

"This stuff tastes foul!" Medea said. "I want more of it."

Soon she was too drunk to apparate and Elsie offered to let her stay for the night. Not risking any magic in their intoxicated state, Medea decided to sleep on the tattered chaise longue. The next morning Medea woke up with a terrible headache, but to her relief it was a mundane headache, not induced by any sort of dark magic except that found in a bottle of booze.

"You're looking a lot better than yesterday," Elsie said cheerfully. "Take this for the headache."

She tossed a little vial of purple-coloured potion over to Medea. She greedily gulped it down.

"Tastes almost as bad as your whisky," Medea said.

"What did you expect? Pumpkin juice? Stuff that has crocodile bile and dried beetles in it usually tastes shite. Anyways, once your headache has cleared, you can help me with the breakfast. I take it you won't want any black pudding?"

"Indeed."

"Pansy."

Elsie was making a full breakfast for the two of them. It was very greasy and of questionable quality like everything in Elsie's household.

"You're welcome to stay here as long as you need," Elsie said.

"You know I can't," Medea said.

"Why not?" Elsie asked. "I know it would break with convention, but honestly, the people who would condemn you for leaving aren't worth your time anyway. I mean, your home isn't exactly Longbottom Gardens."

"It's more than that, you don't understand, of course you can't."

"Then tell me."

"I need answers. I want to know what my father's ghosts are. Why he was never able to move on after my mother died. I want to know what's driving Marvolo insane. I want to find out why that house drives me mad."

"Family histories are like a cheap meat pie from Kelpie Lane," Elsie said. "You ask yourself what's in it, and if you find out, you wish you had never asked."

"Is there a story I need to know?"

"Oh, nothing too grisly. I merely discovered by accident that squirrel makes for great gravy."

"Don't tell Marvolo," Medea joked.

"I won't."

She paused.

"Medea, I'm not going to lie. I have a very bad feeling about you going back to that place. I hate seeing you as you were yesterday."

"I have a bad feeling too," Medea said as she hugged her friend goodbye. "But I'm not running away."

"I understand I can't stop you. Be careful, and remember, I'm always there for you."

A sense of foreboding filled Medea as she returned to the Gaunt Estate.

"Number one rule of cursebreaking: Never venture into a dungeon alone."

Cursebreakers had that strange habit of calling everything from abandoned crypts to haunted castles a dungeon. As for going alone, that couldn't be helped. This was her battle, and no one else's.

The east wing had been abandoned for close to a century. Whatever dark presence had been allowed to fester there was going to be unpleasant.

"Lumos!" Medea muttered.

She barely made it to the sealed door before Marvolo appeared, his hands and robes spattered with blood.

"Marvolo, what in Morgana's name have you done now?" Medea asked.

"Is it forbidden to butcher some chickens now?"

"Scraffy is more than capable of slaughtering chickens for food. You've been doing wacky rituals again, haven't you?"

Medea observed the guilty look on Marvolo's face and knew she was right.

"I read about a ritual to ward off banshees. It requires a sheep to be slaughtered around the full moon."

She knew her brother was still lying. Marvolo didn't read. He had been almost of Hogwarts age when he had learnt the letters of the alphabet, and anything more complex than a shopping list exceeded his ability. And neither was Medea aware of such a ritual as Marvolo had described. More likely than not, the voices in his head had instructed Marvolo what to do.

"Marvolo, there are no banshees here in Shropshire. Not since our dear great-aunt died, that is. Now go take a bath and get some fresh robes. And give me that knife."

Only now had she spotted the bronze knife at his belt. She recognized the blade from her grandfathers' study. More likely than not, the thing was cursed, and using it wouldn't do any favours to Marvolo's delicate mental health.

"No."

"Don't be silly, Marvolo. Remember what I taught you about rituals? They always take a bit of your self. Grandfather used them so much, there was little left of him before he died. Give me that knife."

"No, it's mine."

Medea knew it was impossible to lecture Marvolo, to appeal to his wisdom.

"Expelliarmus!" Medea cried, and the bronze knife was ripped from his belt, and soared into Medea's hand.

"Now it's mine."

She studied the runes on the hilt and the blade. Her Old Norse was not perfect, but from what she could make out, the blade had been intended for more nefarious purposes than slaughtering sheep. How it ended up in the hands of her ancestors she didn't know. She only knew that it had to end. That she had to end it.

As she turned to enter the sealed off east wing, Marvolo's anger at her for taking the knife quickly faded, replaced by fear.

"Don't go in there."

"Why not? Do you know anything about what's in there?"

"Just don't. I feel it."

"I feel it too," Medea said. "But we can't run from our fears forever. At least I can't. I'm a fully trained witch. I can deal with whatever is in there."

Marvolo shook his head sadly.

"Hogwarts doesn't prepare us for those things."

This was Marvolo at his scariest. Medea could deal with mad Marvolo, with his hallucinations, his fits of rage. It was these moments of clarity when she realized that he was nothing but a tormented, terrified sixteen year old boy, abandoned by his father and left in the care of house-elves, in this horrible house. Medea knew he was right. Defence classes at Hogwarts taught them how to duel dark sorcerers or how to deal with pests like Grindylows. They did not teach them how to face not just their own demons, but those of generations of Gaunts.

"I'm sorry," Medea said, while nonverbally casting the petrification hex. She commanded Scraffy the house-elf to take Marvolo to his room.

Then she turned to the sealed door. In her wand's pale light the runes fluoresced in a silver shine. But there were not just Norse runes etched into the door. There were Latin and Greek letters and something that looked like it might be Sanskrit. Whoever had sealed that door had put a lot of effort into it. Was Marvolo, for once, right? Her courage almost left Medea. But she could not return to living in the shadows that haunted this house. Whatever awaited her behind the door could not be more frightening than what remained unseen.

"I, Medea Gaunt, Heiress of Slytherin, command you to open," Medea hissed in parseltongue. The door swung open. Medea didn't catch a glimpse of the room beyond before everything went black. Absolute darkness was around her.

"Lumos Solens!" she said. The tip of her want burst into light, but even an arm's length from her face, the light was only dimly visible, unable to penetrate the darkness beyond.

"Darkness is more than the absence of light," she remembered. Light alone would not get her anywhere. She remembered the nights spent on top of the Astronomy tower, tried to imagine the feeling of the cold wind breezing through her hair and the scent of the crisp air of the Scottish Highlands, the night sky above her opening up into the infinity of space.

"Expecto Patronum!"

A mockingbird emerged from the tip of her wand, and even though its silvery light was faint it filled the entire room with its silvery glow. She was standing in some sort of entrance hall. There was no dust on the floor, which unsettled Medea. This room had been abandoned for over a century, why was it as tidy as if a house-elf had just finished cleaning it?

Medea knew what happened to abandoned rooms of magical houses, they would attract doxies and boggarts and ghouls. But here, there was nothing but darkness. The walls were adorned with portraits displaying the familiar monkey-like face that ran in her family. But these portraits didn't whisper to her. They were silent. Couldn't they speak? Or didn't they want to?

Who are you?

It sounded like the hisses of a hundred snakes when the portraits finally spoke.

"I am Medea Gaunt, heiress of Salazar Slytherin," she said.

Are you?

"His blood flows through my veins," Medea said. "And I possess his gift as well as his curse."

You have the blood, but your heart has betrayed us.

The portraits speaking in a choir was really unsettling. She focused on the portrait of an ancient warlock with a wart on his forehead and pretended she was only speaking to him.

"What have I done to warrant that accusation?" Medea asked.

Don't try to fool us. You call us your curse. You wish to be rid of us. You deny us. You deny yourself.

How did they know? They were just paintings. The ones at Hogwarts were nothing but shallow impressions of the people they depicted.

You cannot run from yourself. We have seen others try and fail.

"You think I'm still trying to run?"

Yes, you are.

"That's where you're wrong then."

What is it then you are doing now?

"I'm looking for answers."

We don't have them. The answers to your questions lie behind you, not ahead.

"There is one thing I must know. Have you spoken to Marvolo?"

We have. The boy understands better than you.

"He was terrified of me going here."

We deemed him worthy to go beyond. Maybe we were mistaken in our confidence in him.

"Give me a chance to do better than him," Medea said.

You're not ready.

There was a strong gust of wind that toppled Medea over. She tumbled and rolled out of the room back into the entrance hall.

"Back already?" Marvolo asked, still lying on the floor petrified. Medea quickly cast the counter-spell.

"Already?" Medea asked. "I spent at least an hour in there."

"You were gone for barely a minute," said Marvolo.

"Time works weird in there," Medea answered. "They told me you were in there as well. What did you see beyond the halls with the paintings?"

Marvolo shook his head. "I'm not telling. Terrible things… I tried to stop you but you wouldn't listen."

"Why did they let you pass but not me?" Medea asked.

"Because you're not one of us," Marvolo said.

What was he trying to say? If she were not truly their father's daughter, she wouldn't be able to speak Parseltongue, would she? Marvolo seemed to understand what she was thinking and quickly corrected himself, perhaps fearing to be petrified again.

"No, I didn't mean it that way. Of course you're father's daughter. His blood is in your veins. But you're not at all like me or like him."

"How can you say such a thing?" Medea asked.

Marvolo mustered her in disbelief.

"I thought it would be obvious to you. After all you're the one who pretends she's all that smart."

"Apparently I'm not. Enlighten me then."

"You don't belong here. You're just like our mother. Do you really think of this house as your home? Don't think you can fool me. You would gladly switch places with a beggar in Knockturn Alley to rid yourself of your heritage. And you wonder why they distrust you?"

Medea couldn't deny the truth in Marvolo's rude words. She thought of Elsie in her little grimy flat, and of how much happier her friend was in spite of her material poverty.