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Gaunt's didn't do things right, Morfin heard. He plugged up his ears and hissed to block it out, and went running to find a warm ringed hand and the blue dress it was attached to.
His head felt full of cotton without it. Everything made even less sense than it already did, and muggles were everywhere, messing up everything. He felt angry, but that hand would make it even the tiniest bit better. With soft caresses and gently tugs at his hair and a light weight resting on his shoulder, it would make even half of the bad things go away.
When Morfin was little, his mother was alive. His mother was very beautiful, at least in her own way. Her hair was very dark, and her face was very thin, and her lips were thick and pouty, and sometimes when she smiled they made it look like a grimace. Her eyes were blue behind her spectacles, and they looked funny in that way that thoughtful people's eyes often do, like she was always pondering her place in life right then. Her hands were small and slender, and the Gaunt ring looked huge on her delicate knuckles. Her magic was smothering and sycophantic and like warm spices, and she was so powerful it writhed around her. It tempted you to love her even if you knew better.
His mother didn't really know how to be a mother, not in the way that all of the other boys mothers were. She didn't teach him manners for all different occasions, but instead how to properly tilt his face up to the rain until he was drenched and cold and sick. She didn't brag about him or tell him how great he'd be. She reminded him that pride was before the downfall, and told him that someone else would always be greater. That was why they tried at all; to become the person who was the greatest. She didn't tell him to go out and play, she came with him and held his hand on walks and told him about different animals in parseltongue. She taught him to duel instead of how to play with other children, and made sure he learned to make the nastiest things happen with nary a word. She poured him mixtures of fruit juice and fire whiskey, not warm sugary tea. She told him the original Grimms Faerie tales as bedtime stories and made sure he had learned something from them before she kissed him goodnight. She helped him with anything he needed, and comforted him by saying that it was okay to be angry at everything. She told him that it was better to be filled by hate than with nothing at all.
And unlike the other mothers, who looked at their husbands with emotion in their eyes, be it love or hate or slightly sweetened neutrality, she looked at his father like he was just another child to care for. Like she was still the big sister instead of the wife, and she would care for him only because that was what she was supposed to do, not because she wanted to.
Once she told him that when they'd been married, she'd kissed his father and only realised that she wouldn't be able to make him set the table anymore.
She gave him the same look sometimes. Like he was simply a responsibilty. It made him feel like mad, like someone had set the cotton of his brain on fire. He desperately needed her, and hated everything for it, because she clearly didn't need him.
Very rarely, she looked at him like he held all the light in the world. Like he was something to be cherished above all else. She also looked like she didn't know how to do that.
Her pouty lips were beautiful. He saw why his father had married her. Even if there had been another girl in the family at the time, he was sure his father would have chosen her. She was just too otherworldly to pass up. She made you want to drag her down and stuff some real emotion into her. She made you want to see if she could even cry anymore.
When she was pregnant once again, Morfin felt like it was a terrible omen, and an even more terrible reminder that some things were poisonous only to remind you that you couldn't have them. Not in any of the ways you wanted. Death camas would kill you either way you cooked them.
Her stomach swelled and she didn't glow from it like expecting mothers were supposed to. Instead, she glowed from the sunlight hitting her skin on their walks. She glowed with shaky smiles as she switched to water instead of fire whiskey. She glowed like a madwoman as her eyes became the frantic glassy dullness of a mother with no more love to give. She clutched her belly as the baby kicked, and told him with a watery voice about the princess who chopped off her hands.
She was all glowed out and starting to disappear. But none of them knew that yet. Morfin thought she had maybe spent a little bit too much time out in the rain. His father thought it was just the baby.
They must have missed a sign.
And then she'd had Merope. And she'd died just after. Exhaustion, one healer said. Stress, said another. The last one just shook his head.
Morfin figured the truth out quickly, though. It was screaming out to him, now that it was too late. It was suddenly obvious that they'd killed her. He wasn't sure how, but they'd all just killed her.
He'd killed her too.
His father didn't appreciate his tears, but he cried them anyways. And then he became angry instead, and looked at his little baby sister, a murderer already, and he loathed her.
He hated her even more as she grew up. She had their mothers dark hair and blue eyes, but her face was chubby and unattractive, and her eyes were full of only girlish foolishness and folly and pitifullness, not thought.
She cried too easily. She didn't like the old Faerie tales. She couldn't stomach fire whiskey. Her magic was weak and tasted like burnt food and sickness in the back of his throat, if it even bothered to appear. It was not smothering and hot and scented like cinnamon spice.
He tried taking her on walks and telling her about animals, but he ended up talking snakes into scaring her instead. Even her tears were big and fat and ugly, and he laughed like mad.
He got the ring. His father insisted that he never lose it. He'd kill Morfin, son or not, if he ever lost the precious family heirloom. Morfin took care that he never would, but it was never because of his father or because it was a heirloom. It was because Merope didn't deserve to ever wear their mother's ring. She was horribly boring, and the ring would only look heavy and natural on her ordinary knuckles if she ever found it and tried it on.
If he couldn't save his mother, the least he could do was keep her memory, and her ring, from being put into the wrong hands.
Gaunt's didn't do things right, Morphin heard. He hissed angrily and watched his little sister fall on a snake. He watched her cry when it was crushed, and laughed.
His heart felt stiff with envy. How she could even cry any more was beyond him. All he wanted to do was raise hell.
He wondered if, when they would inevitably marry just like their parents had, she would even think about the dishes, or if she would instead feel just as crazy as he did.
He wondered if she would ever look as lovely in a blue dress to their son.