Chapter 5
Marvolo Gaunt is a wretched creature undeserving of the title 'Father'. More often than not he broods by his fireplace, scowl so deeply set into his features, Merope is sure he's done something irreparablely stupid, just like her once-aunt warned when she was little.
Well, she's still little, only now she's constantly worked. Rare is this young woman idle, for what use is a daughter who does not housekeep to a wretched creature like Marvolo?
Marvolo has no use for her wit, smarts, or memories. That man hardly has use for his own prick, let alone someone else's autonomy.
Morfin Gaunt is his father made miniature.
The boy, older than her by quite a few years, though Merope can't be bothered to ask, she remembers is to be just about seven years in gap. Mayhap ten in this world, where so many cards match and the rest lament pair-less, lost to either the sands of time, or Morfin's own cackling glee as he mimics a man he once saw down at the local pub, flicking half a deck all at once by simply bending them in one hand.
A rudimentary trick, Merope had seen better mimicry of magic in the past.
Even twisted, true Magic is far superior.
Rotted, grotesque things are all she witnesses in the Gaunt Shack. Sickly yellows, like phlegm. No matter the spell cast by Marvolo; whether it be levitation or torture, it's ugly.
She remembers it's always been this way, even before she could remember, this is what Marvolo's magic has looked like. It pools around his lungs, hesitant to flow as it should. Instead, it clings and chokes. He is weak, and yet ever so strong. He relishes this strength, and the shows of force he can enact upon his spawn.
A right he exercises often, uncontested it would be, even if the muggle court he so disdains knew of it. Corporal punishment is still common in this time.
Morfin, she knows, likely learned to fall in line far before Merope was planned.
She was planned, at the very least. Both times.
This she knows, now, with sight far clearer than it would have been at four years of age.
How could she not have been? Who better for a Speaker than another of their kind?
Ugly thoughts.
Merope was planned, and plotted, and stolen. She was nurtured, and loved so briefly, in her mother's final moments of clarity, just before he struck.
Marvolo is a cruel creature. All not of his own blood are inferior. Merope is lesser, in the house of Gaunt. For she is not fully Gaunt. Her mother was Gaunt, and yet she was Lucia first, before she was She-Without-Love. Stolen from her was the right, just as Merope's Tom was chained.
Despicable.
She knows this now.
In the thick of it, ensnaring Her Tom had seemed Right. It was tradition, was it not? How could it not be, if that pink potion wasn't so readily available amongst her father's precious liquor? Was she not entitled to her love? Was she not a dutiful daughter? Had she not earned this one freedom?
Morfin had not wanted her, not as he did now.
Did not stare with covetous eyes, grab and leave bruises with greedy fingers.
He hated her. Her hair, her eyes, her face.
Her everything.
Why not now?
Morfin must have learned to fall in line quite young. What want does a man have to destroy his own reflection, when Narcissus loved himself most, why should he tear himself asunder?
And so Morfin became Narcissus. Became Father.
Marvolo Gaunt was worth less than a singular wriggling maggot crushed under shoes that should have been thrown out ages ago.
Merope sneers behind moth-chewed curtains as she shifts out of sight of the two bumbling brutes shambling drunken down the dirt path.
"Girl!" Marvolo belches, slamming their poor door against battered stone wall. "Fetch my pack!" He stumbles to his chair. Pristine leather. Carefully conditioned whenever his flat arse isn't perched upon his worthless throne.
Silently, Merope slithers to his side, tin of cheap cigars in hand. Matches in her pocket, in case the man's magic rebels, refusing to light his beloved death logs.
Ugly things, those cigars. It's truly a wonder she came to love their one window, isn't it? Truly.
Without needing to be told she has man and teen's dinners ready. She ate her share, while they were gone, as she often does. Snuck, without their knowing any better. How does one who has never cooked know that the end product was not the intended whole? Soup is rather easy to skim. Pies, not so much, but what use has she for the bland dough her Father prefers?
She knows better, how to make it. But idiots often make stupid choices, far be it from Merope to inform someone she has come to loathe of a better option.
Here in this leather chair he'll smoke himself to sleep. Morfin will have tucked himself into bed after his own dinner, dropping wooden bowl and spoon on the floor carelessly for the maid to retrieve. Merope will do so. Mop up any spills. She has no parties to attend, no princes to wish upon a star with, no need to kick up a fuss about a years-long game of Cinderella.
Not yet.
Merope will slip outside, breathe fresh air, tend to the small struggling vegetable garden behind the house. Maybe sleep there, if the weather permits. Truthfully if she's sleeping on the floor anyway she might as well do it where the smell is pleasant.
It's not like the men folk ever noticed.
Why would they, when all they want is handled before they can so much as breathe their first breath of the day?