Thank you for reading! I don't own any of Harry Potter! Please let me know if you enjoy! Updates every Saturday!
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"What kind of failure are you, anyway?" One Slytherin girl chorused as she and her accomplices chased Mae through the house's common room.
Voices chimed in with her, eager to bash the Minister's daughter.
"You can't even fly! My brother can fly and he's only five!"
"Some Minister's daughter you are! I had heard you were actually talented!"
Mae didn't quite understand what had happened.
Madam Hooch had been working with her while the rest of the class zoomed around on their brooms.
Yet, no matter how hard she had tried, she couldn't seem to call the magical object into her hands.
Her voice was firm.
Her posture had been correct.
For the first time in her life, Mae had been completely and utterly humiliated.
Tears of mortification had streamed down her face while Madam Hooch barked orders intended to be seen as helpful.
Class had at last been dismissed, but it had been then when Mae's true torment started.
Finally finding a weakness in their austere classmate, the Slytherin girls jumped on the chance to berate their least favourite dorm mate and find an outlet for their jealousy.
Rich, prestigious, beautiful, and already much too popular with the boys, Mae Riddle had quickly and easily become the most hated girl in her year.
After the fourth year Slytherin girls had landed, they had chased her off the field and through the castle in such a heckling mob that Mae herself had nearly forgotten who she was by the time they left her huddled in a remote corner, far away from professors' eyes, covered in scratches and bruises.
Mae had never known defeat until that moment.
Left to mend her own broken ego and aching wounds, she drew her knees up to her chest as she wrapped her arms around them and began to weep.
Who would hear?
Who would know?
Content to wallow in self-pity, a stoic voice with an echo of an eerie hiss rudely interrupted her.
"Get up………..silly girl. Is this where my bloodline has led?"
Mae sniffed as she looked up.
She furrowed her brow in confusion as she glanced around the empty corridor and saw absolutely no one nearby.
Without warning, the voice spoke again, "Get up! Or I shall send the Basilisk after you…..Mark my words, girl, I may be dead, but it can still hear my voice and respond!"
Threats always irritated Mae.
She looked over quickly in the direction of the voice and blinked at the large, elegant portrait she saw hanging on the wall.
Anyone else may have struggled, but all of Tom's children had been educated on enough family history to recognize the man in the painting.
"You're Salazar Slytherin." Mae scowled.
"And who are you?" Slytherin snapped, "I see my blood pulsing through your veins, silly girl, but I see not my heart nor my ambition in one who chooses to waste their time weeping in a slumped heap!"
Mae stood to her feet as her tears dried, embarrassed then in an entirely different way.
"My name is Mae Riddle." She said very defiantly, "Son of Tom Riddle, junior. Granddaughter to Merope Gaunt. That is where your lineage has led."
"I do not recognize the name of Riddle." Slytherin sneered, "How is it that you bear my blood? Not a single one of my descendants would have dared disrupt the integrity of our family by breeding with muggles!"
"Perhaps you've been dead a bit too long." Mae chuckled darkly.
Slytherin's portrait narrowed his eyes, "If you are truly, my heir, as you claim…..Then why do you hide here like a coward?"
"I am not hiding anywhere!" Mae spat, "I needed a moment to collect myself, that's all."
"It does not seem as if you have much to collect." Slytherin quipped.
Mae's fantasies about what it would be like to one day meet her ancient ancestor were quickly crushed to dust as she scowled and spat, "You'll have to forgive my shortcomings, but despite my many talents, I am, apparently, unable to fly."
"...On what?" Slytherin asked.
Mae blinked, "...On a broom, what else?"
"I chide you cruelly." Slytherin chuckled as a wicked smirk curled his painted lips, "Tainted bloodline or not, I could feel the power that radiated through these cold stone walls the day you were born, heir to my bloodline. Do not let my slicing tongue fool you, you are the physical embodiment of what magical talent is supposed to be, tainted blood aside."
A bright smile danced across Mae's fair face as she wallowed in the compliment he gave her.
"You say you cannot ride a broom!" Slytherin laughed, "Then I shall ask you, heir to my bloodline, what can you ride instead? Surely there are more things that soar through the air than flimsy sticks of wood and bound twine."
Slytherin gave Mae one last scathing scowl before he turned and walked out of his portrait to leave her to her thoughts.
Mae Riddle was many things, but Mae Riddle was no idiot.
She took Slytherin's suggestion to heart right away.
At first light, as soon as students were allowed out of their rooms, while her classmates caught up with their studies or chatted with each other, Mae ran, breathless and barefoot across the castle grounds until she reached the hill beside Hogsmeade.
Upon the command she had hissed while she laid in bed, disguising the noise as a sound uttered from her ending sleep.
Her scaley, winged friend touched down just in time to meet her close to the entrance of the nearby forest.
"They laugh at me because I cannot fly." She explained to the dragon in the dialect of Parseltongue he understood best, "I can do many things besides command a broom."
"There is no need for a broom as long as I live, my princess." The dragon hissed as it nodded its head, "It will be my honour to fly you wherever you wish to go."
"Do you trust me?" Mae asked.
The dragon responded with a low growl as it raised its eyes to meet hers.
As the sun rose and bathed the field in warm light, the desire for delicious revenge bloomed in Mae's dark heart.
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"What's the matter, Lil?" James asked at breakfast that morning once he noticed the sad frown on his darling's face.
Lily shrugged as she swallowed her mouthful and looked over at James, "You know, it's…..It's weird to think, but I almost feel a bit sorry for your sister."
"Sorry for her?" James scoffed.
"I wasn't there, of course, not with the fourth years, James, but haven't you heard? The whole school's talking about that flying lesson yesterday. I don't think they're going to forget this." Lily frowned, "She'll be mocked until she graduates."
"And what's so bad about that?" James smirked.
"That's not very nice." Lily snapped.
His smirk faded as he frowned and insisted, "Lily, what do you expect? She's delighted in torturing our little brother since he was born! I've never heard her say a kind word to our mother as long as I've lived. My sister is no hero. I have little sympathy to spare for her, in fact, I think it's brilliant she finally got a taste of her own medicine. Now she can see what it's like."
"Thinking that way doesn't make you any better than her, James." Lily scowled.
"Lily, you are nearly perfect." James sighed, "But your heart, it's just….."
"What's the matter with my heart?" She demanded.
"It's just too……good." James said as he clenched his teeth.
He blinked as Lily stood to her feet and stomped out of the Great Hall.
Across the room, Mae smirked to herself at the discord she watched bloom between her brother and his precious, loathsome flower.
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As the children's triplex prepared to open, Tom was nearly beside himself with rage and envy.
Due to their conflicting schedules, he had barely seen Harriet during the past week and a half.
Instead of with him and tending to his needs, she had spent her time with Mark and her friends.
Friends!
What mate of his needed any friends?
Tom scowled to himself while he walked through the bowels of the Ministry library, across the section that contained only the most ancient texts.
He stopped to pause in front of a particular book that caught his eye before he removed it from the shelf and flipped through its pages.
Finding nothing of interest, he huffed as he slammed it shut and shelved it, only to move on to one nearby.
An hour.
Two.
Three.
The Minister for Magic spent the entirety of his evening there, in the hidden section of the vast library, but close to midnight, scrawled on a page by a hand that used ink most living people no longer knew how to make, Tom's eyes widened as he gazed at one particular page.
Flawless.
Exactly what he needed.
Odorless, colourless, tasteless, the formula for the very potent Fertility Potion he intended to make loomed at him like a swinging rope thrown to a drowning person.
Tom snapped the book shut and promptly brought it with him as he exited the library.
He could take no chances.
He needed Harriet to drop the silly nonsense of playing with her friends and abandon the grotesque bond she had developed with Mark.
He smirked as he dreamed of their next cycles.
What better distraction could he provide then by filling her belly again and letting her spend her days lying in her nest with her womb full?