The dead prisoner
“Look at that!”, Minerva spluttered and opened a page in the middle of the paper, smoothing it out. Tom curiously glanced at the headline. “Azkaban prisoner Marvolo Gaunt, convicted for attacking a ministry official, found dead in his cell” it read. Under the bold, black letters there was one of those moving wizard photographs. It showed the pale, famished body of an old man in a striped prison robe. His body leaned against a wall, his head, weirdly hanging to the side, was covered in thin, gray hair that danced around him in the wind.
A terrified, wide-eyed grimace distorted his face. His hands lay at his side, as if he had stretched them out to beg for mercy. He looked a lot like an older version of the tramp Morfin Gaunt, who sometimes tried to jump Tom and his family when they went riding. Behind the corpse there was a slim window through which Tom could see the waves crash against the dark gray rock of the prison.
Suddenly Tom Marvolo Riddle felt very sick. This was the place; he was sure of it! The fortress Merope had been in his dream. “That is your... grandfather, right Tom? Marvolo Gaunt... she named you after him, right”, Minerva pulled him out of the panic, closing in on him. He nodded. “Let’s... let’s go to the library. We need to talk about something. Alone”, Tom decided and pulled his two friends along with him. “What? Wait, don’t we want to finish eating first?”, Constance shrieked.
“This is important”, Tom muttered, with wide eyes. As soon as they reached a quiet corner of the library, Tom started to explain his dream. He told Minerva and Constance about the stormy sky with the cloud snake, Merope’s parsel chant and the fortress she had been at. He explained the cell door, and the heavy thing, that had dropped behind it, after Merope had cast her green curse.
Constance was not convinced and thought, that the dream was the result of his fight with the pure-bloods. Minerva was to distracted by the fact, that Tom had punched Malfoy, before she had gotten the chance to fight Augusta Macmillan. “Well, it sounds like the killing curse. That one is green.”, someone suddenly said. They all flinched, as Alphard black stepped out from behind a shelf. “You have interesting dreams, snake boy. So, you are a Gaunt? That explains a lot”, he stated with a grin.
“What are you doing here?”, Minerva snapped. “We were curious, were you three were running so fast”, Lance Prewett answered with a smug grin, and emerged as well. Tom felt the blood leaving his face rapidly. They had heard everything! They were not supposed to hear any of it! This was not fair! They would think he was crazy and laugh at him or make fun of him, of tell Dumbledore, or... “You know, snake boy, your life would be a lot easier, if you just told the other Slytherins, that you are a Gaunt. They are the heirs of Slytherin after all. Even my sister would respect you, if she knew your mother was a Gaunt, and Walburga is a total swamp hag!”, Alphard said with a wide grin.
“Merope is not my mom and hell freezes over, before I call her that!”, Tom spat. Alphard chuckled and raised his hands in mock-surrender. “All right, all right, snake boy. I’m just saying it would help you. You can of course keep running around as a total mudblood, but that’s your decision. If I was in your place, I would cling to every drop of magical blood I have. I mean, you are still a mudblood, but the Gaunt thing would make you at least a bit better then Underground.”, the boy stated grinning.
Minerva got up and pressed the tip of her wand against Alphard’s forehead. “Stop calling him a mudblood, Black!”, she hissed, like an angry cat. The boy stumbled backwards, clearly scared. “Aren’t you the girl that chased McMillian off in the train?”, he choked out. Minerva nodded. Lance watched the two of them with wide eyes. “Listen, he is one? Isn’t he? He has muggle blood. I don’t see the problem; everybody uses that word. It would be better for him to say that he has at least some magical blood in him. Father always says that half-bloods have a better chance in life, even if they have dirty blood.”, Alphard tried to explain.
“It is not all right to use that word, Black! Would you want to be called dirty?”, Minerva hissed and took another step forward, forcing Alphard to back away, if he preferred to keep his eyes. “Well, no, but what else should we call them, huh? Well, I guess you could call the ones with a bit of muggle blood half-bloods, but what about the ones from muggle families?”, the Slytherin stammered. “We call them muggleborns”, Lance answered and shrugged. Black’s thin eyebrows climbed up and hid under his curls. “Really? That actually is a word? I always thought it was some kind of joke...”, he babbled.
“Hey, can we come back to Merope killing Marvolo Gaunt? Because the paper says it was a Grindelwald supporter. Those guys have been wanting to show off their power for months and it looks like they will claim Merope’s little trick for themselves, to show that they can break into Azkaban.”, Constance snapped annoyedly and waved Minerva’s issue of the Daily Prophet around. Lance snorted. “What do you want us to do? Run to Dippet and tell him what exactly? That the half-blood Slytherin, living in the muggle world, who doesn’t get along with Dumbledore had a dream about his evil mother killing Gaunt on his first night in Hogwarts? Nobody will believe that.”
Minerva put her wand away with a grim face. “Well, then we have to collect prove first. We will surely find clues to Merope’s involvement. We have to find out everything about the Gaunts, then we will be successful. Do you know anything already?”, she said strictly. “Well grandpa said, the Gaunts used to beat Merope and mom once told Miss Robin, when she thought I could not hear her, that she believed that Marvolo wanted Merope to marry her brother Morfin. And, well they are poor, inbred and live in their own filth. Morfin once attacked mom and dad, because he hates muggles so much. Oh, and Merope can of course make a working love potion”, Tom summarized.
Constance nodded. “And by now Merope is neck deep in the dark arts. I will write father and ask him, if she was in the shop yesterday.”, she added. Minerva nodded sternly. “Then there is only one more thing...”, Alphard said with a grin. “Books on the Gaunt family!”, Minerva said. “An invisibility cloak”, Constance concluded. “The power of friendship”, Lance called out. “All the pictures from that cell”, Alphard answered his own question, just as Tom decided: “Impressive hero names, like in the Phantom comics!”