Never Cries
Merope is born in a sea of blood, a mewing little thing. But she doesn't cry. She never cries.
The cot is stained red as her father lifts her from his fatigued wife. She is as silent as her brother was loud, bawling, and lewd – Marvolo wonders if she is even his own as he fingers the little tuft of hair sprouting from her head. The dim light from the candles in the air shadows her blinking eyes. Marvolo looks from the moist baby skin to the sweat-stained face of the baby's mother. There is no doubting where the girl got her looks.
"Give her to me, husband," she says to him in the ancient tongue. "Let me see her."
She holds the child's quiet form upon her chest. "Her name?" Marvolo asks.
"Merope. The dimmest star, but the most beautiful."
He nods in response, though his brow furrowed, and dims the candles and lets them sleep.
Two weeks later, a mound of raised earth sits behind the cottage, petals of lilac purple sprinkled over the sanctified ground. Marvolo stands alone, his hands clutched behind his back. He sees the naked girl stirring on the sheets, the sheets that are still crimson from her inception into the world.
When Marvolo opens the door and presents himself in his domain, his fiefdom, the universe snaps to salute before his manic glare and broad knuckles. He advances on the makeshift crib, his grasp half releasing a golden weight that swings, swings, swings from its golden chain. Leaning in, he surveys her, his eyes following the infant fingers pulling on the invisible strands of air.
"You," comes the deadly Parseltongue whisper. "You killed her." To this charge, Merope has no answer. Marvolo brandishes the locket and drops it. It rolls out of her inquisitive reach. "What will I do with you, Merope, hmm, now that your mother is gone? Hmm?"
He brushes his hand past her soft baby bottom, spanking her once, twice. Merope looks up and then down. But she doesn't cry. She never cries.