You look mighty like that Muggle
Chapter 2: Morfin Gaunt
It was high summer so he hadn't lit the fire, and he didn't have much appetite in the warmer weather, either, so he hadn't bothered with food – and who needs food anyway when there's a full bottle somewhere in the litter around his armchair? But he'd lit a candle so that he wasn't sitting in the dark, and he'd dimly noticed that the place was a bit of a mess, household spells are witches' magic, Merope's job since their mother died, not that she was any kind of a witch, the useless bitch could hardly mend a broken pot - but Merope has been gone for years, how long he can't tell, time has blurred since he got back from Azkaban and found out that his father had been dead for months.
Everything has been a bit blurred since he got out of Azkaban, and he's had no one to talk to but the snakes for years now, but the snakes tell him things, lots of things - when he doesn't cut their heads off. The snakes tell him that the Muggles are at war with foreign Muggles across the water, not that he'd paid any attention to the Muggles' war except for that night when the Muggle flying machines passed overhead, dozens of them, but the Muggles talk of nothing else but their war and the shortage of this and the shortage of that. The snakes say that the Muggles are always hungry now, they've ploughed up half the Dales to grow corn, but Tom Riddle in his big house won't be going hungry, no, whatever happens to the rest of the Muggles, rich, handsome Tom Riddle won't go hungry.
And the filthy Muggle had best never ride past the Gaunt house again because he'll hex Riddle as soon as look at him, give Riddle a bit of what was coming to him, never mind the Ministry, he's not afraid of the Ministry - and even if he didn't go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, he knows plenty of hexes. No Gaunt has attended Hogwarts since the Ministry decided to let in Mudblood scum, but he knows plenty of hexes, and he'd promised himself, as he tipped the contents of the bottle down his throat, that it will be something stronger than hives if Tom Riddle ever shows his face on this side of the valley again. He'd finished the bottle and then he'd nodded off, and when he'd woken, he'd thought it was Tom Riddle standing at the open door. He'd raised wand and knife and charged at the apparition - he'd kill the filthy dirt-veined Muggle this time - but the intruder had spoken in his own language, in Parseltongue, and he'd been so shocked that he'd skidded into the table.
He'd stared at the boy – because the stranger was only a boy - through the fog of Firewhisky, and he'd tried to work out who he could be, because only the Gaunts and the Peverells are Parselmouths. And then the boy had asked after Marvolo, had asked who he was, but he couldn't think beyond the boy's resemblance to Riddle, and so he'd whispered, "I thought you was that Muggle, you look mighty like that Muggle."
"What Muggle?" the boy had asked, sharply, and he'd explained, "That Muggle what my sister took a fancy to, that Muggle what lives in the big house over the way."
He'd spat on the floor, to show what he thought of Muggles, and to show what he thought of Merope, the slut, hankering after a filthy Muggle ... and he'd puzzled away at the mystery, the boy looked like Riddle, looked like the very image of Riddle, but the boy was a wizard, and there was something else that didn't fit, something that didn't add up - and he'd been thinking aloud when he said, "You look right like him. Riddle. But he's older now, i'n 'e? He's older'n you, now I think on it ..."
He'd struggled to remember how old Riddle must be now, of how many years it's been since Azkaban, but it was an effort to think clearly and he'd clutched at the edge of the table, Merope and Tom Riddle ran away together but Riddle had come back to Little Hangleton alone, Riddle had been back at the big house on the other side of the valley for a couple of years by the time he came home from Azkaban - according to the gossip around the village Tom Riddle had come back talking of being hoodwinked, of being tricked into a marriage ...
And now the boy is stepping closer and asking, "Riddle came back?"
He answers, "Ar, he left her, and serve her right, marrying filth!" and spits on the floor again, thinking of the thing that really rankles, what did it really matter if the dirty little Squib ran off with a Muggle, but she'd taken the locket, a more precious heirloom even than the ring, the locket that proves their descent from the great Slytherin himself - and now it comes bursting out, "Robbed us, mind, before she ran off! Where's the locket, eh, where's Slytherin's locket?"
The sneaking little bitch, she'd robbed them and she'd dishonoured them, she'd mated with a Muggle and she'd stolen the locket, it's worth tens of thousands of Galleons. She'd sold it of course, but he'll never sell the ring with the Peverell coat of arms engraved on the stone, he'll never sell it, he'll never part with it, because how many times has his father told him that ring has been in the family for generations, dozens of generations of pure-blood wizards ... and now he's brandishing the knife and shouting with fury, because who is this boy who's come prying and poking into family secrets? Who is this boy who's come here, asking questions, because it's all over innit, it's all over - he knows in his bones that his sister is dead and that he's the last of the pure-blood House of Gaunt, the last living descendant of Salazar Slytherin.