Rain gurgled in the slick and slimy gutters of the dark streets of Little Hangleton as Merope sloshed heavily along, her round belly jutting forward. Her steps were heavy and slow, and she could barely lift her feet. She struggled to breathe above the pain of her contractions, and once or twice thought she felt the fierce beating of a heart that was not her own. Ten months pregnant -- was it possible? The Healer at Saint Mungos had been baffled and then furious when he found she'd had no insurance nor any money. "This isn't a free clinic, Madame Crow!" he'd cried and called for security to escourt her out.
Madame Crow was the name she gave every stranger who asked, and always, it seemed, every stranger was calling for security. Once she'd been arrested in the mall for attempting to shoplift shoes. Her own were worn away to nothing, and she dragged along the streets these days barefoot.
Merope's bare feet dragged along the smooth red bricks of the street and finally could bear her weight no longer. Her thin and knobby knees wobbled badly, and she sank down right onto the curb, sobbing hard as the rain plastered her lank and colorless hair to her head. She wouldn't be in this mess if she hadn't been a fool. What was she thinking when she stopped feeding Tom Riddle the love potion?
Merope pulled out her long-abandoned wand and prodded it at her bare and sore feet, trying with all her might to make shoes appear there. She sobbed afresh when nothing happened and jabbed the wand harder. "Delimea! Delimea!" she cried, stabbing the wand at her filthy feet, but nothing happened. She hadn't been able to use her powers since Tom left . . .
"Young lady? Are you alright?"
Merope looked dismally around. A rather tall old woman was frowning down at her fearfully, as if she feared that Merope was ill or mental. Merope was used to those looks; she got them all the time -- especially from Muggles. They all thought she was crazy, and why shouldn't they? A young pregnant girl moping around the street in rags, jabbing a stick at her bare feet, muttering and sobbing to herself?
"I didn't love him," Merope wailed miserably, "but I thought I did! I really did! And I thought I could -- could make him love me!" and she tossed her head back and wailed loudly.
The old woman glanced fearfully about, as if she thought the neighbors would gossip, and then leaned over Merope and said kindly, "Here, child, take my handkerchief and wipe your face. You look like you've been sleeping in the mud!"
"I -- I have!" hiccoughed Merope. She struggled with weak and fumbling fingers to wipe her face, then gasped and dropped the handkerchief all together, clutching her swollen belly.
"Dear me! Are you in labor!" cried the old woman in alarm. "Here! Here! You must get up and walk -- it will help with the pain -- "
The old woman bent to help Merope to her feet, and Merope, still clutching her belly and moaning, attempted a faint and ugly smile of gratitude.
The old woman looked pityingly intothe girl'spale and dull face and said kindly, "You're shaking like a leaf! Come! Come! I shall take you home with me -- " and together, they turned down the street.
The old woman was strangely strong and agile for one such an age, and stopped many times with a patient smile when Merope would bend her back and moan.
"It's trying to be born right here in the street, isn't it?" she said good-naturedly when Merope's knees gave away and she squated there on the pavement. "But come! Come! Let Hilda take care of you!"
Merope leaned on the old woman's arm, and when they arrived at the house at last, she collapsed on the warm flower-scented carpet right at the door. The old woman gave a soft scream and knelt beside Merope to feel the girl's pulse.
"My, my, I thought it had killed you!" she shrilled, and to Merope's amazment, removed a willow branch from the bossom of her blouse and waved it. A stretcher appeared beneath Merope, and she was lifted from the floor and carried to the couch, where she was deposited with great gentility from the stretcher onto a pile of cushions.
"You're -- you're -- " gasped Merope in surprise around the pain of the contractions.
"A witch," said the old woman, and her eyes twinkled. "Didn't think there were any of those in Little Hangleton, did you?" She nodded briskly when she saw Merope's confusion and straightened the cushions, "I keeps to meself."
Mere minutes later, Merope was astonished to find that her contractions had ceased all together. The child in her womb was still, as if listening, and she felt its heartbeat again, this time more softly. The tiny drumming of it echoed, as if mutiplied by the ragged sound of her own breathing: there were two.
"Where -- where are you going?" Merope moaned after the old woman, who had disappeared from her sight beyond the couch into another room. She could hear pots and pans clanging and, a moment later, a kettle whistle.
"Made you some tea, deary, drink up," the old woman said, returning and setting a tray down on the polished wood of the coffee table. She sat opposite Merope in a sofa chair with a pleasant grown. "There now," she said in delight as she watched Merope, "The contractions have stopped, haven't they?"
"Did -- did you . . .?" stammered the girl.
"No," said the old woman at once. "You did it. You don't want that child to be born, do you?" She narrowed her eyes suddenly, and Merope quailed beneath the old witch's stare. "Did something a bit . . . unethical?"
Merope could not meet the old woman's gaze. Instead, she nodded mutely and stared at her cup of tea.
"Well, drink up," the old woman fussed, "and don't look so glum! Is it for me to judge your wrongdoin's? I only wondered, tis all . . ."
But Merope suddenly felt like confessing and, in a rush to get the words out of her mouth, gulped the scalding tea down too fast. It burned her throat like liquid fire, and she gasped more than said, "I gave a man a love potion!"
The old woman tisked. "And that same man got you with child, did he not? Of course he did, " she said harshly, not waiting for Merope to answer. "And now what's happened? You didn't give him his daily dose?"
Merope hung her head, "I felt so bad! I -- I started to realize that -- that he didn't really love me for -- for me. . . . "
"At least you realized it at all," said the old woman, and her voice was less harsh. "Most people never do. So then what, might I ask? He wised up and ran off?" Merope nodded mutely and the old woman gave a harsh laugh, "He was a wise one."
Stung, Merope glowered at her tea and said nothing. At least, in the end, she had done the right thing. She'd been very young when she'd given Tom the love potion, in desperate need of love and adventure and romance. She'd spent her entire life in that sad little hovel known as "the nutter's place" in the Little Hangleton. Was it so wrong that she'd wanted someone to love her?
"It isn't wrong to want to be loved," answered the old woman, as if Merope had spoken outloud. "If I'm not mistaken, you're that Guant girl -- the one everyone thought deaf and dumb. Merope, isn't it?"
Again, Merope nodded mutely.
"Well, Merope, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be loved. But when you force someone to love you, when you take away their free will . . . do you see what I'm saying? And don't nod," she added sharply before the girl could carry on mutely.
Merope lifted her head and stared at the old woman with her colorless, crossed eyes, "Yes, madame, I understand. I know now that what I felt wasn't -- it wasn't love. And what he felt was only -- "
"Infatuation," finished the old woman, and Merope bowed her head. "But it seems to me, Merope, that a child so friendless as you should want to let her child be born, don't you think?"
"No," Merope sobbed. "I can't raise it and let it grow up thinking -- what if one day it asked me who its father was? What will I tell it?"
"The truth," said the old woman, narrowing her eyes.
"But what if my son or daughter hated me? I couldn't -- I couldn't live . . ."
"You speak as if you wanted to die!"
"I do!" sobbed Merope to her lap, clenching her pale little fists. "I do! I do!"
"Be still, child!" rasped the old woman in disgust. "How selfish, how thoughtless, how -- " she stopped, seeing Merope's astonishment, and her voice grew softer. "You can't stop this child's life because you made a few mistakes in your own," she said gently. "This child is your chance to know love. Don't you want that, Merope?"
Merope shook her head, staring at her empty tea cup, "Not . . . not any more."
"Then what do you want?" demanded the old woman. "Will you give up on life so easily? Answer me!"
Merope looked around again in astonishment, wondering why the old witch was so concerned.
"I -- I don't know what I want anymore, madame, only that . . ." her eyes wandered to her lap again and she muttered, ". . . that I want to die."
"Disgusting," spat the old witch. "Young people today! I should have left you on the street like everyone else. Perhaps that child there in your womb should die too -- I see bad things growing out if because of your weakness."
Merope's head jerked up. "Bad things?" she whispered, her voice trembling, and her thin, gray hand absently carressed her womb. "What bad things?"
"Well, a bitter person can make a lot of bad things happen, don't you imagine?" snapped the old woman, as if Merope's question was stupid. "And that child will be a bitter person -- think about it! If you let yourself die, he'll grow up somewhere wondering why his father left him and why his mother died, wondering why no one cared enough to stay around and care for him . . . Now granted, that's not always the case . . . but then, there's a darkness rising from your eyes that makes me shudder . . ." and her voice ended on a low, trembling note.
"What are you suggesting?" Merope whispered, her voice steel. "That I kill my own child!" she shrieked.
The old witch stared at her incredulously, "Now I've seen it all! First you confess to me about drugging a man with a love potion, then about wanting to commit suicide and abandon your own son, and now you would berate me for trying to rid the world of a great evil -- " the old woman caught herself and stopped, not meeting Merope's eye.
"How do you know my child is male?" Merope demanded, her pale eyes glittering with the dull blue fire one sees at the center of a flame. Now it was her turn to yell, "Answer me!"
The old witch slowly raised her eyes, and Merope did not like her hard, cruel smile, "True Seers are very rare in this world, and I am one of them. I have Seen what those children would become if they were to live -- and all at your doing!"
"You knew I'd be on that corner . . .!" Merope said slowly. "You knew where I'd be, and you took me in to insure the destruction of my child!" she accused, rising to her feet.
"Your children," corrected the old witch with a frightening sharktooth smile. "You needn't glare at me, you who would so recklessly abandon your own children! I'm trying to help the world in destroying them, but you're bringing down an age of war -- just by letting yourself die!"
Merope stifled the sob rising in her throat and swallowed, "That's nonsense! How can one child bring about an age of war? You're just some crazy old woman who's lonely and likes to frighten poeple -- "
"Merope . . ." scolded the old witch, smiling her frightening smile, " . . . do you really believe that?"
In all honesty, Merope really believed that the old woman was a Seer, that indeed she had brought Merope to her home with the intention of killing her unborn child because of some hairbrained prophetsy . . . but her fate would not be ruled by some old witch! Her crossed eyes traveled slowly to her empty tea cup, and she clutched her womb with a low, frightened moan.
"One is dead already," said the old woman, still smiling. "At least I succeededin ridding the world of one Dark Prince -- good luck to whoever has to rid the world of the other!" she called after Merope as the girl dashed from the house. "And come back if you change your mind!"
Merope waddled into the street, her panicked breathing overriding her thoughts. She was muddled and sleeply, and she knew suddenly that the drugged tea was having its effect on her as well. Would it kill her as it had one of her children? No, the old woman had wanted to keep her alive to rid the world of the supposed Dark Prince see kept even now in her womb . . . certainly she wouldn't die . . .
"Mother," Merope sobbed, the rain plastering her lanky hair to her face once more as she paused on the curve, moaning and crying in childlike confusion. "I want my mother . . ." she cried, and sank down on the pavement and into darkness.
