The Darkest Riddle

By

Juno Malabre

10/3/05


Chapter One

Something rose today. A great, dark wave which ravaged the town, and brought with it the cold creatures, the ones who turn all to ice, and suck the goodness from your soul. They came today.

I should have understood the signals. The muttered meetings in our house grew more and more frequent. Father barely had time to look at me anymore, not that he pays me much attention at the best of times. Not after I was Sorted. But that is something this family never talks about.

Then after the meetings came the ritual. My 'coming of age' as Father called it. Mother laughed when he said that. She was part of the ritual, holding me down as they drew my blood. My own mother did that.

And still, I did not realise.


Perhaps I should start from the beginning, deluding myself with false hopes that someone will read this, will remember me, and will understand that it was all out of my control.

My name is Morwena Lilith Riddle. I am eighteen years of age, and I am the first Riddle to be Sorted into a house other than Slytherin since my school, Hogwarts School of Wizardry, was founded all those long years ago. I am also the first Riddle girl to be born for at least four centuries. I disappointed my family in more ways than one.

I have two brothers, both older, both Slytherin, and both intent on achieving great evil. Mother used to say that it was natural to feel jealous of older siblings; she even encouraged it, but I am not just jealous. I hate them. I hate them with a fire that consumes my belly and my heart. It is they and my father who are the leaders of all this. My family are always leaders. They can not step away, they can not, will not turn away from a challenge. Power and ambition drive them all, and will drive them to their destruction-


I must not excite myself. I rest for hours, here, in a house which is empty, devoid of any other life. Each noise in this silence echoes, and merely serves to remind me that I am a traitor. A blood traitor. But I will continue to tell my story.

I am approaching the end of my final year of schooling, my final year as a witch. I have already decided to strip myself of my powers once my training is over. This link to my family and the power it creates is more than I can bear.

My child will be a Riddle, but he will be a Riddle without the legacy of the dark magic with which we all seem to be cursed.

Are you surprised that I am with child? I suppose you are not aware that we Pureblood girls must marry and breed young. But no one wanted me. No one, at least no one my family would accept, wanted a Gryffindor bride. I am glad. For if I were married, I would not have met Tom. I would not be having his child. Although my folly with him cost him his life, and almost cost me mine.

I met him last year, around the old festival of Imbolc. The old festivals are always something I take particular pleasure in, not in the least because my family, for all their Pureblood values, refuse to acknowledge them.

So there I was, in my warded clearing in the Manor's forest nigh on midnight, when a young, dark haired man I had seen somewhere before came upon me.

I stayed deathly still, despite the invisibility wards, but it was as if he could sense me. He knew exactly where I was sitting, and his gaze was fixed on my face. I cast a small reductor curse, just to distract him, and as he looked around for the source of the noise I lifted the wards and removed the notice-me-not spell I had placed upon myself. It was with great difficulty that I did not laugh as he started upon seeing me.

"Who are you?" His voice was warm and deep, and tinged with suspicion.

I bristled like a surprised cat.

"Perhaps I should ask who you are, sir." I am ashamed to say I sneered at him. "And what you are doing on the grounds of the greatest family in England,' I remembered myself. "Aside from her good majesty Queen Elizabeth."

He had the audacity to laugh at me. Granted, it was the nicest laugh I had ever heard, but it was directed at me, and no one laughed at a Riddle. Not knowing that this would be the first time of many, I was tempted to curse him.

"I apologise, my good lady. I heard noises and, as the groundskeeper's apprentice, it is my duty to protect the Manor against intruders. I did not expect their youngest daughter to be taking air at midnight."

Damn. I knew I had seen him before.

However, I managed to regain my dignity perfectly, and shot him one of the famous Riddle glares. After all, he was only a muggle groundsman.

He just ignored me.

"If there is nothing else, my good lady," he said in that infuriating way, "I should get on my way." There was a glint in his eye that made me wonder if he knew more than he seemed.

Suddenly afraid, I dismissed him with a nod of my head, and watching him carefully as he melted back into the trees. How much did he know about my family? He never told me. Not even at the very end.