Work Text:
Father had said then. Over twenty years ago. Under Azkaban's crepuscular shade. Raised! Gaunts don't beg.
Harrowing shadows circled above. On both times, back then and now. Ubiquitous. Shadows desperate to satiate their cravings twenty four hours a day. Each second of that first look had sent a shrill down Morfin’s spine. Stoutness hadn’t come easy as he followed father’s words.
Faint memories blurred that first stay in wretched prison. Often he’d stay hushed, recounting the fifty seven scratched bricks in his cell. Under the guise of detachment, he could pretend he was still unchanged by Dementors. Nothing could break a true Gaunt’s resolve. Deep-rooted endurance was seared in his blood. Eadwulf Gaunt and all of those who’d come after were testament of it. Records of a lineage of the highest order. Same lineage which Morfin had been supposed to perdure.
Merope had broken that possibility. After she left, everything had fallen apart. Spurious affection for a mudblood had destroyed the greatest family name. Caring for filth was the way she’d repaid her noble family. Outdoing everything she’d been taught ever since she was born. Tarnishing the deeds of all the fifty three ancestors Morfin could name… She was supposed to be mine.
Miriam Gaunt had complied back at her time. And so had Juniper Gaunt. Reasonable women who had fulfilled the part that was required of them. A commendable task. Until Merope had decided to burn it all to the ground. Dashing away with that foul Riddle. Earth-eating worm he was. Riches and fifty six yards of garden were worth naught with vile blood like his. So, why had Dopey chosen him?
Dopey had always been an impressionable wench. Inflated lordly mudbloods were just the latest —and most costly—of her mistaken affections. Reason had never been one of his sister’s qualities. Ever since she was little, Dopey had been drawn to stupid, trifling things. Credulity had plagued her judgement from the cradle. There were fifty four different follies that would catch her attention any given day. Innocence had been her undoing— their undoing . On the day he’d given her that pet snake, Morfin hadn’t thought much of it—just a little plaything, he’d thought. Now, however, he could see how foolish he’d been in fomenting her weakness. Sedulousness in reining her naivety would’ve prevented the Gaunt tragedy.
Cold, piercing nights sitting inside his cell had made Morfin wonder. Hidden from all spoken words in the dampness of Azkaban, a speck of guilt had festered. Apodictic revelation. Morfin had realised then the error of his ways. Perhaps he’d been too lenient with her. Indolent when he should’ve been strong-handed. Opalescence from the Moon had snuck into his cell as he came to the conclusion. None of this disaster would’ve happened if he’d only kept Dopey in line. Scratching the wall—the only thing to do in those days—Morfin pushed the count of marked bricks in his cell up to sixty seven.
Days before his release—as he scratched the brick number sixty six—Morfin recalled his childhood. Remembrance was such a deceitful bitch. Always making memories seem less bitter than they truly were. Gaunts shouldn’t be prone to such trickery of the mind—to such brazen fragility of character. Of course, that hadn’t stopped Morfin from remembering. Nibbling through the dark corners of his mind, he remembered that once, his existence had been bearable because of her. She had made his childhood less toneless just by being around.
Quite before arriving at Azkaban, and to those fifty seven scratched bricks, Morfin had had a family. Understanding what a family was supposed to be was difficult for him—what with father’s deep goals and notions of it—but he’d had one nonetheless. In those early years, before he cracked his head open by climbing a tree with Dopey, Morfin had been a different person. Dim playfulness—like the one displayed by other children—had never been part of it. Definitely, happiness wouldn’t be a word he’d use to describe his childhood either. In a sense, he’d been content though. The hunting trips father took him to were hardly child’s play, but they’d brought accomplishment and physical activity. Chasing animals through the woods with a wide smile upon his face had been his definition of fun. Hunting had been his distinct form of playtime before it turned into a necessity—or even an outing for his violent energy, later on. Practically nothing had changed in that regard with his mother’s passing—the woman had been weak and was of little relevance in Morfin's life—though that couldn’t be said about Merope’s birth. Once the whelp arrived, things turned around in the Gaunt shack. Suddenly, they had a new mouth to feed, but also a hope for the future of the family line. Inheritance hadn’t been kind with Dopey, giving her cross-eyes not much different from Morfin’s. To be fair, she’d been a dull kid as well, bird-brained and unremarkable. In a way, she didn’t have anything of value to Morfin aside from a womb to breed. Ordinary to the boot, and with a face gaunt enough to pass as ill-looking, Merope was no one’s dream maiden. Nevertheless, she became Morfin’s only company in those days. She alone—for father never cared—would help Morfin battle the monotony of Little Hangleton.
Expiation wasn’t what Morfin had looked for in the solitude of his cell. Leastways, he’d almost killed her once, and that was hard to forget. Effulgent flames had crackled in the fireplace that new year’s day when he’d left the infant Merope alone. Morfin had grown bored and went out hunting, not knowing the fire would die and his sister would get close to doing so as well. Excruciating punishment came afterwards, when father found out Morfin had almost killed his baby daughter—back when he’d still held hopes for her. Numerous years had passed since, but he remembered father’s strikes upon his back. That week he’d hit him seventy one times, Morfin had counted. She probably never remembered.
Salt invaded Morfin’s nostrils as he walked out of Azkaban that day, admiring the dismal building at his back. Erikzdis—the dark wizard—had been to blame for the Dementors in this bedeviled island according to tales, but the foulness had remained long after his demise. After enduring three years of it, Morfin had thought the worst had passed. Set free from the putrid clutches of Dementors, he’d thought of recovering his life at Little Hangleton. Once there, he’d finally make a woman out of Merope, and continue the noble lineage of the Gaunts. Nevertheless, on his return, he found zero souls in the old shack. She had left, taking with her his legacy, and the illusion he’d once harboured of a family.
The insignificant years followed. With Morfin back home. The minutes became weeks. Abandoned on that shack. Cold rasped his bones. The temperature, minus twelve. Same as in Azkaban. Summers likewise as winters.
The evanescent nature of time hit Morfin on the face like a brick. His life went on, but devoid of anything that could resemble any kind of meaning. His days were monotonous as he turned thirty. Sunlight ephemeral as he buried himself in that old, fetid shack. He remembered hunting when hunger struck, and sleeping when tired. But when or how he did those things was covered in the hazy fabric of stagnation. Morfin acknowledged the passage of time in a state of perpetual torpor. A neglected corpse still alive. A decaying man without a purpose.
Morfin roamed aimlessly in the shack. Hunting evidence of his past life within the rotten wood of those walls. But shambles was all he found. The ulcering memories of all what could have been, and was not. He rummaged aimlessly, as withdrawn with the shack as he’d been with those sixty seven scratched bricks in his cell. The ring was still there. The entire legacy of his family reduced to a single relic. After coming back, the first thing Morfin had done was pluck it off father’s boney fingers —who had died in his absence . Being the last of the Gaunts meant that the ring was rightfully his. That its resplendent shine was all his. That only he could admire it in the seclusion of his moth-infested home. For nothing else remained. If savage doom was to end the days of the mighty Gaunts, then Morfin would have that small mercy. He troth to himself that he’d rejoice in that last relic of his family. If one could call something like it rejoicing . Dopey nicked everything else. The elegant ring of the Gaunts would die with him.