The Noble and Most Anchient House

The Middle Section

I was a Gaunt. I'd found my heritage easily enough. My grandfather was named Marvolo Gaunt. Moreso I was a direct descendant to Slytherin's line - a parselmouth, which was why I could talk to snakes. It was a rare gift, even in a world full of wizards. At twelve perhaps I was a little old to call myself special, but I was.

I didn't tell anyone this - they didn't deserve to know, as well I had a task to do, a keen way to exact revenge on the people who had been so crule. I had spent all year looking for the chamber of secrets, after finding my true heritage.

Of course there were scarce few clues and I quickly grew frustrated with the task over the year. It was this summer I would be a little relieved to be away from the frustratingly unyeilding halls of Hogwarts. If only to see Victoria.

Visiting her - becasue I could not say I was going home for the summer, Hogwarts was my home - always filled me with dread, for the day I would see her and she was unable to move or had gotten worse, but it hadn't happened yet and when I saw her again this year she seemed the same. At ten, a year older but no weaker.

I found her useful in that she listened to my frustrations about finding the hidden chamber at my school.

"It sounds like something from a fairytale," She muttered. "Slytherin's chamber of secrets." I nodded but paused, looking at her with narrowed eyes.

"Victoria I never mentioned Slytherin."

"Your school house." She muttered, though I'd never told her about the sorting, "I assumed."

She was lying again.

"Don't lie." I said, I woudn't let her lie to me twice. Her eyes went wide, as though she were afraid of me.

"Victoria?" I asked her, she pursed her lips and shook her head. "You know about my school, don't you?" I asked instead and she nodded.

"I do," She said, a cheeky smile split her lips. "I've always known Tom."

It was my turn to be shocked by her secrets, I thought I knew her - had always know her; but I hadn't there were those first four years of her life that she was with her real family.

I knew I could figure this out. There must be the reason she knew it all. All but not everything, I was careful then trying to extract information from her rather than her getting it from me, she knew basic things - like Hogwarts school and the ministry but no real details. She knew the houses, more about Slytheirn than the others. I remember the day I met her and her dark haired parents.

I tried my best to remember the day I met her, when she so casually said she was not allowed to have a name, I remember going into the office with Mrs Cole and I remember the money - lots of it - her parents must have bribed the matron with. I remember being annoyed at Mrs Cole for filling out the paperwork instead of listening to me.

But I remembered the paperwork, the paperwork signed by both of her parents.

The names still evaded me though I knew that was all I needed to confirm my suspicions, and being into the small grey office so often made breaking into it easy work. There was mountains of paperwork, though Mrs Cole had always been a well organised woman and her logical organisation of her documents made Victoria's paperwork easy to locate - and Acturus and Melaina Black's signature's somehow didn't surprise me.

She was not only a witch, but she was a pureblood which meant she'd be getting her Hogwarts letter next year - that thought alone made me so happy, I was excited, to think of all the things magic could do for the girl, to take her with him and raise her away from this place - she wouldn't be weak becasue a witch couldn't be weak - she would be okay again. She no longer needed to worry about her own mortality - for I refused to believe she would die though she thought it was ineviable, I knew I could find a way for the two of us to live forever.

Victoria was born on the 13th September, so I would be at Hogwarts the day she got her letter and wouldn't see her until the next summer. The thought would put me in high spirits during my third year at school as the holidays approached. But I didn't tell her - she never did too well when I brought up her family and past, though I was definately interested in it, as much as my own, in fact. The most I'd gotten from her was her retelling me the tales of Beedle the Bard. She'd told me a few stories that she remembered, like 'the warlock's hairy heart and 'babbity rabbity and her cackling stump' but my favourite was the Tale of the Three Brothers, and knowing there was truth to muggle fairytales - I currently was living in one, it seemed - I thought there may be truth to the gifts given by death as well, a wand to kill people with, a stone to control them and a cloak to hide from them. I wondered.