Chapter Two
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or A Christmas Carol.
Note: Some parts taken from the books.
Tom woke up when he sensed another presence entering his room. It was probably one o'clock then. He immediately got up and pulled on his robe because there was no reason to be caught unprepared and lounging around in bed, was there?
So it was time for his 'redemption' to begin. Not like he had even done anything that required intervention. Those Mudbloods were all going to be fine.
The ghost this time was easily identifiable due to his strong resemblance to the statue in the Chamber of Secrets. He didn't bare much resemblance to Tom but it had been a thousand years and he already knew of and could prove his lineage.
"Salazar Slytherin," Tom said, unable to help feeling awed by the presence of his august ancestor. He did wonder that the man who had placed the basilisk in Hogwarts in the first place was going to try to talk him out of using it for its intended purpose, however.
"You are my last decedent save one," Slytherin intoned gravely, eyeing Tom critically. "And I think that you are the worthier one despite your obvious shortcomings."
Tom felt a brief flare of resentment at what he could only assume was a slight on his unfortunate parentage. He pushed it aside. "I have a relative?"
Slytherin nodded. "An uncle. Morfin Gaunt. He is…deranged."
The most recent generation of his mother's family continued to disappoint, didn't they?
"What are you here for?" Tom inquired. "You disapprove of me using the basilisk you left behind in the manner that you intended it for?"
"Not…precisely," Slytherin said slowly.
Tom felt his interest in the matter rise.
"Then what is it?" he asked curiously.
"I've seen the future," Slytherin said bluntly. "And I don't like it."
Tom suppressed a sigh. Not this again. "I do hope you can be more forthcoming about this than my mother was."
Slytherin shrugged. "There are three of us coming. I'm here to discuss the past, then there will be a discussion of the present, and finally the future. You'll see once we're done here."
"If the future is really the relevant part then I don't see why we can't just get straight to that," Tom objected.
"I don't understand what's so terribly interesting about the present, perhaps," Slytherin agreed. "But I think that the past will help you to understand. Although you're quite correct, you'll find the future the most interesting."
Tom decided that there was really no getting out of this and so if he wanted to see the future – or one possibility, at least – then he had to tolerate this first. "I am ready to be shown the past."
Slytherin nodded. "Good lad." He reached out and touched the sleeve of Tom's robes and they were gone.
They arrived at a building half-hidden among tree trunks and by the darkness cast by the shadows of the trees. The walls were mossy and the roof was in quite a state of disrepair.
"This place looks quite abandoned," Tom said, puzzled. "What-"
He cut off as an exceedingly dirty man missing several teeth and dressed in rags dropped down from one of the trees right in front of a rather ordinary-looking man that Tom hadn't noticed.
"You're not welcome," the man hissed.
Tom's eyes widened.
"Yes," Slytherin said, nodding. "That is your Uncle Morfin."
"Someone actually lives here?" Tom couldn't believe it. "Your last descendents actually live here?"
Slytherin nodded distastefully. "Yes and they actually believe that I would approve although how they imagine that I cannot say."
The man backed up a little. "Er-good morning. I'm from the Ministry of Magic -"
"You're not welcome," Morfin repeated. He was brandishing a wand in one hand and a bloody knife in the other.
"Er-I'm sorry... " the man said uncomfortably, looking to be on the verge of fleeing. Tom didn't blame him. He rather wanted to hex his uncle personally but seeing as this was just a replaying of past events that would be quite impossible. "I don't understand you."
"He has to know that any other random person he's going to meet won't understand him!" he exclaimed. "And what is he doing being so disrespectful to a member of the Ministry? Doesn't he understand the trouble they can make for him?"
"I rather think the Gaunts are past the point of caring," Slytherin said wryly. "But you're right; it is quite impractical of them."
Tom watched as Morfin attacked the ministry employee and a nasty yellow goo spurted from the man's nose.
"Morfin!" said a loud voice. Tom turned to see an elderly man who looked distinctly related to the ghost beside him although rather stranger-looking and almost deformed run out of the house and up to Tom's cackling uncle.
"Is that my grandfather?" Tom asked, horrified.
"Marvolo Gaunt," Slytherin confirmed.
"I was named for him!" Tom cried out.
"You could have been named for Morfin," Slytherin pointed out.
"Ministry, is it?" Marvolo asked, glancing at the employee.
"Correct!" snapped the man. "And you, I take it, are Mr. Gaunt?"
"'S right," said Marvolo. "Got you in the face, did he?"
"Yes, he did!".
"Should've made your presence known, shouldn't you?" Marvolo said unapologetically. "This is private property. Can't just walk in here and not expect my son to defend himself."
The employee looked incredulous. "Defend himself against what, man?"
"Busybodies. Intruders. Muggles and filth."
Tom almost had a heart attack. "He can't just say things like that in front of just anybody! He's never met this man and has no idea what his position on blood purity is and he's not inclined to look on them favorably as it is! Was my mother's family really this stupid and short-sighted?"
"I'm afraid they were," Slytherin told him. "We'll discuss why in a minute."
The employee fixed his nose while Marvolo hissed at his son to go in the house and Morfin reluctantly did as he was told.
"It's your son I'm here to see, Mr. Gaunt," the employee explained. "That was Morfin, wasn't it?"
"Ar, that was Morfin," Marvolo said apathetically. "Are you pure-blood?"
Tom just shook his head, at a loss for words.
"Hardly the sort of cunning subtlety I was known for," Slytherin said ruefully. "Fortunately their connection to me was not widely known due to their eschewing of wizarding society."
"That's neither here nor there," the man said coldly.
"See! This is what happens when you don't test the waters first!" Tom cried out. "You make a terrible impression! Though my dear grandfather here is just digging the hole deeper at this point."
Marvolo squinted at the employee. "Now I come to think about it, I've seen noses like yours down in the village."
Tom rolled his eyes. "What kind of insult is that? Even if he were an outright Muggleborn there's no reason to think he's from his part of the country!"
"You really should lower your expectations here," Slytherin advised. "It might make this easier to watch."
"There is nothing that will make this easier to watch," Tom said flatly. "I mean, I can't even focus on the intent because no matter how insulting he meant to be he did it very badly indeed."
"I don't doubt it, if your son's been let loose on them," the man sniffed. That was actually a pretty good reply, especially given how inadequate the insult had been.
He requested to come inside, Marvolo acted as if he didn't understand the word and admitted that he had gotten the notice but didn't believe in reading or some other nonsense, and finally agreed to let him inside.
As Tom followed them inside, he saw evidence of three tiny rooms.
"I could have lived here," Tom said, horrified.
"The orphanage is looking a little less of a worst possibility now, isn't it?" Slytherin asked rhetorically.
"There's still the matter of my so-called father," Tom said darkly. "I don't know enough about him."
Morfin was sitting in an armchair playing with a snake. "Hissy, hissy, little snakey, slither on the floor, you be good to Morfin, or he'll nail you to the door."
Tom made a face, remembering the snake already nailed to the door outside. "Lovely."
He caught sight of Merope, looking more defeated and desperate than ever though markedly cleaner than her other relatives, fiddling in the kitchen.
"M'daughter, Merope," Marvolo introduced curtly.
"Good morning," the man said politely.
She cast a frightened glance at her father and returned to what she was doing.
"Well, Mr. Gaunt," the man said, "to get straight to the point, we have reason to believe that your son, Morfin, performed magic in front of a Muggle late last night."
Merope dropped one of the pots loudly on the floor.
"Pick it up!" Marvolo thundered. "That's it, grub on the floor like some filthy Muggle, what's your wand for, you useless sack of muck?"
"Mr. Gaunt, please!" Ogden said, shocked.
Merope flushed and dropped the pot again her before shakily grabbing her wand, pointing it at the pot, and accidentally sent it across the floor away from her, hit the opposite wall, and crack in two.
"She's not very talented, is she?" Tom said, feeling deeply disappointed. Perhaps he shouldn't have been given what he had seen of her and of the Gaunts already but he had rather hoped…well, he had gotten his remarkable powers from somewhereand it certainly hadn't been his Muggle relations.
Morfin cackled wildly.
"Mend it, you pointless lump, mend it!" Marvolo screamed.
"Somehow I don't think the constant shouting will help matters," Slytherin said distastefully.
Merope stumbled across the room but the ministry employee beat her to it and mended the pot for her.
Marvolo jeered at Merope for needing the help before the ministry employee was finally able to bring the subject back to Morfin's hearing. It would have helped if Marvolo had been willing to admit that there was anything at all wrong with Morfin's actions of attacking a muggle or if he had acknowledged ministry authority. It turned out that this employee was the head of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad which really should have made Marvolo sit up and take note. It didn't.
"It's not like I have some sort of moral problem with attacking muggles," Tom said, shaking his head helplessly. "Because, really, I don't. It's just…I do have a problem – moral and otherwise – with people being that stupid and that careless. There is a time and place for attacking other people and a certain protocol for what you do if you are caught and this is not helping."
"I agree but they just don't care," Slytherin replied. "It's almost Gryffindor of him but Godric was never actually stupid."
"And you think we're scum, do you?" screamed Marvolo, apparently taking offence at the man's job. "Scum who'll come running when the Ministry tells 'em to? Do you know who you're talking to, you filthy little Mudblood, do you?"
"That's not a word to be uttered in front of the Ministry!" Tom cried out, not sure why he was even bothering to be surprised anymore. "And he doesn't even know that he's a Mudblood. In fact, given what he's wearing, I'm nearly positive that he's a Pureblood. Even half-bloods usually have more exposure to the Muggle world than this."
Slytherin nodded. "He is, at that. His nephew is currently a member of the Wizengamot and he himself invented Ogden's Old Firewhisky after he retired."
Tom was getting a headache. "To think that he place so much store by blood status and yet remains incapable of detecting it…"
Slytherin nodded. "It does make him look quite foolish."
"I was under the impression that I was speaking to Mr. Gaunt," said Ogden wearily, not moving.
"That's right!" roared Gaunt, thrusting his ring in Ogden's face. "See this? See this? Know what it is? Know where it came from? Centuries it's been in our family, that's how far back we go, and pure-blood all the way! Know how much I've been offered for this, with the Peverell coat of arms engraved on the stone?"
"Is that an heirloom?" Tom asked excitedly. "Does Morfin still have that?"
"He does," Slytherin allowed.
Tom once again amended his summer plans to seek out his father as he added in a trip to reclaim a relic that he deserved far more than that miserable little madman.
"I've really no idea," said Ogden, blinking, "and it's quite beside the point, Mr. Gaunt. Your son has committed-"
Marvolo clearly needed some sort of validation here as he next turned to Merope and dragged her over to Ogden, thrusting the locket she wore into his face.
"She didn't have that when she died," Tom noted. "Or if she did the orphanage matron kept it from me."
"She didn't," Slytherin informed him. "She was forced to sell it for far less than it was worth after your father left her."
Tom thought for a moment. "Borgin and Burkes?"
"Yes though it has been sold since then to the descendents of Helga Hufflepuff," Slytherin said bitterly.
"Hufflepuff?" Tom demanded, outraged. "What do the descendents of Hufflepuff need with my family heirloom?"
"They don't," Slytherin said shortly. "I feel like at this point I should be trying to discourage you but…they really don't. Get it back."
"I will," Tom vowed, making this one of the few promises he had ever made to another that he fully intended to keep.
While they had been talking, Marvolo continued to shout about how he was a descendent of Slytherin (and Slytherin himself had been wincing at his descendant's antics) and nearly throttling Merope while Ogden had tried to get him to let her go.
"So!" Marvolo said triumphantly, spitting at Ogden's feet. "Don't you go talking to us as if we're dirt on your shoes! Generations of pure-bloods, wizards all-more than you can say, I don't doubt!"
"He's just so…ignorant!" Tom lamented.
Ogden was determined to stay on topic and informed Marvolo and Morfin of the details of the crime and the hearing. He stopped as horses and laughter were suddenly heard passing the house. Marvolo looked curious, Merope terrified, and Morfin strangely eager. Was he planning another attack while a ministry employee was right there? Even he couldn't be that stupid, could he?
"My God, what an eyesore!" a girl exclaimed loudly. "Couldn't your father have that hovel cleared away, Tom?"
Tom froze. "Tom? Is that…?"
"It would be a strange coincidence if it were not," Slytherin replied.
"It's not ours," Tom Riddle said. "Everything on the other side of the valley belongs to us, but that cottage belongs to an old tramp called Gaunt, and his children. The son's quite mad, you should hear some of the stories they tell in the village -"
The girl laughed and it was clear that they were coming closer. Morfin made to get up.
"Keep your seat," Marvolo warned him.
"Tom," said the girl's voice again, now so close they were right outside the house, "I might be wrong-but has somebody nailed a snake to that door?"
"Good lord, you're right!" Tom Riddle said. "That'll be the son, I told you he's not right in the head. Don't look at it, Cecilia, darling."
"'Darling,'" Morfin whispered. "'Darling, he called her. So he wouldn't have you anyway."
Merope appeared to be on the verge of fainting.
"What's that?" Marvolo demanded. "What did you say, Morfin?"
"She likes looking at that Muggle," Morfin said viciously. "Always in the garden when he passes, peering through the hedge at him, isn't she? And last night-"
Merope shook her head jerkily, imploringly, but Morfin went on ruthlessly, "Hanging out of the window waiting for him to ride home, wasn't she?"
"Hanging out of the window to look at a Muggle?" Marvolo asked dangerously.
"Is it true?" Marvolo asked, looking like he very well might kill somebody and stalking threateningly towards his daughter. "My daughter-pure-blooded descendant of Salazar Slytherin-hankering after a filthy, dirt-veined Muggle?"
Merope shook her head frantically, pressing herself into the wall, apparently unable to speak.
"But I got him, Father!" cackled Morfin. "I got him as he went by and he didn't look so pretty with hives all over him, did he, Merope?"
"You disgusting little Squib, you filthy little blood traitor!" roared Marvolo, putting his hands around Merope's throat and starting to squeeze.
Ogden cast a spell to release her and, angrily, Marvolo turned on him, forcing Ogden to flee from the house.
"He comes back with reinforcements," Slytherin said placidly. "And both Morfin and Marvolo resist and do time in Azkaban."
"They resist Ministry employees?" Tom couldn't believe it. "They're not nearly powerful enough for that and they didn't even leave!"
"I wanted you to see this particular scene for a reason," Slytherin informed him. "I could have shown you the twisted circumstances of your conception or your mother dying hoping you would look like your father or even your own early years. None of it, however, I feel would be as effective as this scene right here."
"Why?" Tom asked curiously.
"Your uncle is perhaps the most Pureblood wizard alive," Slytherin informed him. "I came from a long line of wizards and my descendants have not married anyone that is not a Pureblood themselves. That's the problem with being Pureblooded, you see. Technically, all you need to be is a third generation wizard on both sides so you can have a muggle couple who produce a wizard child who has a Half-blood child who has a Pureblood child. Most people who care about blood status want a little more than that, though."
"None of the Purebloods in Slytherin would ever admit to being any less of a Pureblood than Morfin," Tom told him.
"They are, though," Slytherin assured him. "Maybe they haven't mingled with someone three generations removed from a muggle in four hundred years but it is in their blood somewhere closer than in that of the Gaunts."
"It's rather sad that he is the biggest Pureblood around given what a raving lunatic he is," Tom said, disgusted.
"Ah, but don't you see that that's the point?" Slytherin asked him.
Tom frowned, reluctant to admit that he did not, in fact, see what Slytherin was trying to tell him.
After a moment, Slytherin continued with, "I do not know if you're aware of this yet but all of the ancient and proud Pureblood families who need much more than four wizarding grandparents before they will consider somebody a pureblood have difficulty conceiving and their children are more likely to be weak if not outright squibs. And then there's the added instability that comes from marrying someone too closely related to yourself and having children with them."
"That runs counter to everything I've ever heard," Tom said, blinking.
"Take yourself as an example," Slytherin suggested. "Look at your maternal family. Your mother can barely use a wand and your uncle and grandfather were violent and unstable. And yet look at you. Introduce some new blood – even if it is muggle blood – and suddenly you're quite sane and brilliant and have more magical power than you know what to do with. What do you have to say about that?"
"Perhaps looking a little further down the family tree before marriage might be a good idea," Tom conceded. "But not muggles."
"I can agree with that," Slytherin said, satisfied. "It just creates a mess. Do you know why I was against Muggleborns in the first place?"
It surprised Tom a little that Slytherin called them 'Muggleborns.' On the other hand, maybe the term 'Mudblood' hadn't been around at the time.
"Because they're inferior to wizards?" Tom hazarded a guess.
"As far as I know," Slytherin said, looking annoyed. "There is nothing to prove that magical talent has anything to do with blood purity unless you count those idiots who won't stop marrying their first cousins over and over and over again until they're little more than squibs."
That was rather surprising. "Then why?"
"As you may be aware," Slytherin began dryly, "back when I was alive Muggles had this annoying habit of attempting to burn us at the stake. It rarely worked, of course, as the wizard in question usually either managed to keep their wand with them or another wizard heard about the problem and cast the flame-freezing charm so really it was just a bunch of muggles killing each other. But sometimes it did work and there was always the risk. Even if their hunting was largely ineffectual, I did not appreciate having to hide from people who could never hope to match me."
Tom nodded; it made sense to him.
"Muggleborns were raised by their magic-hating families until they were old enough to catch someone's attention as a wizard and as such they had years of magic-hating to soak up. They might be magical themselves but was that really enough to erase an upbringing that portrayed us as evil? There were some devoutly religious and self-hating Muggleborns who thought that their God was testing them and they had to kill their fellows in order to prove worthy," Slytherin said contemptuously. "And despite the great sin that suicide was believed to be, we had quite a few of those as well from Muggleborns who simply could not handle their magic. And then there were those who requested that we erase their memory and bind their magic."
Tom shook his head wonderingly. "I can't believe so many people were so ungrateful for this wonderful gift they were bestowed. When I thought I was a Muggleborn…I wasn't anything but thrilled for the opportunity to escape my fate."
"As you should be," Slytherin said approvingly. "And the idea might sound quite ridiculous to you now but there was a legitimate threat of spies. Godric knew this, Rowena knew this, and Helga knew this. They pitied the spies and to some extent I can understand why. It wasn't their fault that their minds were poisoned against their own kind even if that pity could not be allowed to let us grow soft and let them destroy us. Given how many wizards I honestly believed were fine with their magic until one day they revealed their true colors and turned on us, I did not believe it was worth the risk."
"You make it sound like they were massacres waiting to happen," Tom said thoughtfully.
"Many of them were," Slytherin confirmed. "But the other three didn't agree with me that the best solution was to just exclude anyone without at least one magical parent from Hogwarts. It was safer, they could not deny that, but they did not feel that that was fair and thought it might even make things worse if these lost Muggleborn children had nowhere else to look for guidance than their fear-stricken and magical-hating communities. And these untrained Muggleborns would have no defense against the flame, either."
Even if they were only Mudbloods, Tom felt a little sick imagining a wizard actually burned alive at the stake. He had had a few nightmares about that himself once he had first found out that he was a wizard up until he realized that he could rescue himself from such a predicament if the need ever arose. It seemed highly unlikely that the need would ever arise but it was better to be prepared and never need it than to one day find himself facing the fire and not know what to do.
"And what about now?" Tom inquired. "We've pretty much moved past that so there's less of a security risk with the Muggleborns. They might still tell people about magic but no one believes in magic anymore and if they tried to prove it we've got an entire department at the Ministry for fixing these things up."
"It is safer to have them around, yes," Slytherin conceded. "And so it is less odious to me that they are at Hogwarts."
"You're still not happy with it, though," Tom pressed.
"How can I be?" Slytherin demanded. "Muggleborns might as well be from a different country. In fact, they are even more foreign than fellow magic-raised wizards from foreign countries! They have a different way of doing things and, like everyone, believes that their way is correct. In the muggle world they can do things their way but if they must be a part of the wizarding world then they need to make some cultural concessions and stop trying to free the house elves and befriend giants and adopting muggle technology. We do not need their paper and pens and whatever else they want to introduce. They always want to change everything and while some changes are necessary to keep us moving forward, they want to change everything until we are a mirror of their muggle world and that is what I find insupportable."
"The muggle world isn't that great," Tom said bluntly. "I wouldn't want to live in a wizarding world closer to it than it already is."
"And just look at you!" Slytherin continued. "You might as well be a Muggleborn for all your magical upbringing but you're not trying to muggle-ize the wizarding world and take great pains to fit in to your new world. If more Muggleborns were like you then we could just completely put the whole thing to rest."
"There aren't many people who are like me," Tom said quietly.
Slytherin grunted. "And more's the pity for it." He leaned over to touch Tom again and then they were back in his common room. "Do promise me that you'll think on what I said about how there can be too much of a good thing and we've reached that point with blood purity."
Tom, who as a Half-blood who had once thought himself Muggleborn had never been half as attached to the idea of blood purity as his fellow Slytherins, nodded easily. "I will. You've given me much to think about."
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