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"You lived as a rat for five years?"
"Mostly so. I did stay near wizarding areas, though."
The potion was going to wear off in a moment; Severus had very little of it and had not wanted to waste such an expensive solution. He had one last question before he could no longer be sure that Pettigrew was talking under Veritaserum.
"You stayed near wizarding areas, so you could have heard news and gossip. Do you know of the current political situation regarding my lady, Lord Armand Malfoy, and Rodolphus Lestrange?"
"Yes, I know about it." He blinked, and the dullness in his eyes sharpened as the potion’s effect disappeared. For a moment he looked nervous, but in the next, it passed.
"Very well," Severus said, rising. "I will have suitable clothing procured for you before your presentation to Lady Riddle. I understand that you acted on fear, but you did avoid your duties even while knowing that she lived and ruled here. You must realize that her ladyship may place you on probation, in a sense. You will need to prove your loyalty to her."
"I am ready to do that," Pettigrew replied.
That night, Severus brought Pettigrew before Merope to tell his story and take the oath. He was dressed in ill-fitting brown velvet, but it was still better cloth than the rags he had worn when he was discovered. Merope sat on the high seat, her face serene and solemn, as she accepted his oath of fealty. Hermione stood nearby, observing the wizard’s jittery behavior. When Severus had first brought him into the grand hall, Crookshanks had darted away from her side to try to attack him. Given what Pettigrew had explained to her and Lady Merope about the horrible fate of his mother, Hermione was shocked and deeply embarrassed that this would be part of his reintroduction to the castle, and had confined the cat to her room after that incident. It was understandable that her cat would hunt rats—that, after all, was how she had first found him—but Pettigrew was human, even if Crookshanks apparently could detect his Animagus form even when he was not transformed. At least, she assumed that was why he was acting this way. She would have to train him not to do that again.
Tom was nowhere to be found, and Merope was deeply displeased. "He did not have to be here, in a legal sense," she said after the ceremony, "but it was proper for him to. His friend is already gone. Where could he have gotten to?"
Hermione certainly did not know, and she was wickedly pleased that Tom’s mother was irritated with him. Tom was likely somewhere in the castle, or on the grounds, his nose buried in a book about Salazar Slytherin or Morgana le Fay or the Gaunt family. Hermione would very much enjoy seeing his mother upbraid him for rudeness caused by his obsessions. Those very fixations had all but destroyed her relationship with him, and she wanted him to get his comeuppance for it.
Tom was not, in fact, in the barony at all. He had changed his plans after learning that Peter Pettigrew had appeared. Dealing with that situation would surely occupy all of them, and they would not note his absence at such a time.
He prowled through the villages of the fief, a hooded black cloak concealing his face and fine clothing from the villagers. This was a large barony, which surprised Tom—would such a wealthy Muggle as this place’s lord not want to increase his wealth by supporting a pretender to the throne, rather than remaining neutral?—but then he remembered that Muggles could not influence the course of a war by any but the crudest means, so it would be a gamble. The baron probably assumed he was better off protecting what he had, rather than risk losing all of it—and possibly his life as well—by backing the loser. Hermione’s father had made the same calculation, Tom recalled.
He grew exasperated. He needed to find his blasted father, and this task had proved much more difficult than he had anticipated. He did not want to talk to poor Muggles, but perhaps it was necessary. Surely some of them—the better-educated tradesmen, most likely, rather than the ignorant provincial peasants—would know where to find a knight. He scanned the street, settling upon a Muggle dwelling that stood a little apart from the others and seemed a bit nicer than the rest. It also a bore a sign with no lettering—illiterate Muggles, Tom thought with scorn—but a picture of a robe and a shoe on it. If this was the house of the village tailor and cobbler, perhaps this skilled Muggle had even offered his services to Tom’s father....
In a minute, Tom had exactly the information that he desired. Sir Thomas Riddle and his second wife, Lady Cecilia, lived atop a hill inside the walls surrounding the baron’s castle. Tom craned his head to see it. It was a fine house, to be sure, and a deep resentment simmered inside Tom as he began to approach it. It was not that he wished he lived as a subject of a Muggle baron... but after all, he would not have lived as one indefinitely. If he had grown up with his father, he would have lived like that only until his uncle had died, and then his... parents... would have come to Parselhall and his mother would have assumed her title, just as she had done. That would not have changed, but other things would have.
As he walked, he remembered the winter of his eighth year, when Mother had been unable to afford meat and the two of them had grown tired from weakness of the blood.
He remembered the tiny flat in London that they had lived in, a loft above the potioneer shop where his mother had worked. She had put up animal skins over the windows, obscuring the view, because they could not afford glass and the potionmaker would not pay for it.
He remembered the first year he went to Hogwarts, the year before they came into their property and title, the year before he met Hermione. "Filthy half-blood! Blood-traitor whore of a mother! Peasant!" The jeers of his Norman-blooded classmates, the spawn of invaders, rapists, and robbers, bounced through his mind as he ascended that hill.
He remembered a particularly awful scene from his first Hogwarts year, which he had never told Hermione—or even his mother. Someone—he had never found out who, but it had to have been one of the older pupils—had cursed him to tumble down one of the stone staircases of the castle. He had spent that night in the sick room as the healer repaired his broken ribs and ankles. Professor Slughorn had been furious—he at least had seen Tom’s prodigious magical talent and had taken him under his wing—but it had not mattered. Everyone in Slytherin had denied being part of the attack, and Dumbledore had not permitted Slughorn to question them under Veritaserum. Dumbledore never liked me, Tom seethed.
He was a descendant of Salazar Slytherin and Morgana le Fay! Even if this low, disgraceful, cheating Muggle was his father, his magical lineage was impeccable. More than impeccable. He clutched his wand in growing fury.
The grand house was near. Tom stood before it in the shadows, largely concealed by his cloak, the dark night seeming almost to embrace him, as he gathered his thoughts and attempted to cool his temper. He would give his father a chance to explain himself first. Perhaps the male Gaunts had come after him... and perhaps he did not know that Mother still lived.
There was a faint crackle in the air as Tom passed onto the grounds of the knight’s manor, but it was brief, and Tom did not think much of it. He drew his wand surreptitiously and cast sleep spells on the guards that feebly protected the entrance to the manor. Smirking, he cast another spell to cause the double doors to swing open, and—with another deep breath—entered his father’s home.
He put two more guards to sleep, these stationed in the halls, before he located the family parlor where a fire blazed and the Muggle Riddles sat. Pushing the door open, he stood in the threshold, wand in hand, alert and ready. Sure enough, a fire crackled away in the great hearth. The heads of a boar and a stag were mounted on the walls on either side of the outward-projecting flue, and on the other side of the room fluttered the banners of Sir Thomas and, Tom guessed, his Muggle lord.
Sir Thomas Riddle was a man in his early forties. Tom realized, with shock, that the man looked stunningly like himself, just at an older age. Silver strands mixed with his black hair, and lines creased his face. Next to him sat a much younger blonde woman, who Tom noticed with a surge of dismay was very obviously with child.
"You!" Sir Thomas exclaimed, leaping to his feet. He reached for his dagger. Lady Cecilia gasped and shrank back.
Tom flicked his wand, and the hand holding the weapon began to move inexorably toward Sir Thomas’s own neck. The Muggle gasped and tried to force movement in the opposite direction, but he could not fight the magic of a wizard. Tom smirked as the lethally sharp point of the dagger drew ever nearer to Sir Thomas’s carotid artery. Finally, the blade reached skin. Tom instantly stopped the spell, leaving the dagger edge against Sir Thomas’s neck but—barely—not drawing blood. The man gulped.
"You may drop that weapon," Tom said coldly. "If you attempt to do anything else with it, I’ll finish what I started."
Without a moment’s hesitation, the knight released his grip on the dagger. It clattered to the floor. Tom smirked again.
"It seems that you know who I am," he began in deliberately casual tones, entering the room at a leisurely pace like a snake circling slowly around its prey before striking. "I have the right to strike you dead here and now for attempting to kill me, you know."
"No you don’t! You entered my house, you little...." Sir Thomas thought better of his words before completing that sentence. He swallowed again, resentfully. "Thomas, is it?"
"Lord Thomas," Tom corrected. "My mother—your true wife," he added with a contemptuous sneer to Lady Cecilia, "was reinstated in her rightful title three years ago." He gazed at his father again. "You could have shared in our riches, but it’s far too late for that now, of course."
"Your mother was never my true wife, and you are no legitimate son of mine." Spite filled the man’s words.
Tom pointed his wand at Sir Thomas’s nose again. "So claimed King Arthur after he was with the harlot Guinevere, I’m sure. It was false when he said it, and it is false for you to say it."
"What in God’s name are you talking about that story for?"
"His true wife and legitimate son are my ancestors," Tom snarled, advancing. He pressed the tip of his wand against his father’s forehead. "You married my mother. There are records of it. You are a filthy liar."
Sir Thomas sneered back. "Your mother married me under false pretenses. She never told me that she was unnatural. She never said she was one of those Gaunts."
"Unnatural?" Tom breathed, fury spiking through his system. He flicked his wand, and the man doubled over in pain. "We are as natural as the air you breathe! We have always been here, and we used to rule your kind! Perhaps someday we shall again," he added. He glared. "My mother was not obliged to tell you about her family or her ability. It was a real marriage."
"She lied to me."
"And why might that be?" Tom mocked. "Perhaps because you held her in contempt for her inborn ability—you, a pathetic Muggle, of all the presumption? She told you her name. It’s hardly her fault if you were too stupid to guess that she might have been one of the Gaunts from Hangleton."
"Her family—your family—was depraved!" he roared. "They would have fed me to a snake! Everyone knows about how they hiss like snakes, and where it came from—fucking snakes for centuries, no doubt, when they weren’t in bed with their own mothers and fathers!"
Tom’s blood boiled. "How dare you, you ignorant lout of a Muggle! You don’t know what you are talking about. I guess this is the kind of rot that your kind think up. This is what you really think of us!" He cursed Sir Thomas again, making him reel.
Lady Cecilia cried out in despair. "Please stop!"
"Stay out of it," he said coldly. "I have no quarrel with you, and you would be wise to keep it that way."
She shrank back in terror. Her husband glanced at her. "Don’t provoke him further."
"Yes, sir," she said meekly, looking down at her large belly.
Tom scoffed in disgust. "How pathetic. That’s probably why you divorced my mother. As a witch, she knew that she did not have to do as you told her!" He paused for a moment. "And, by the way, if you think the marriage was invalid, why did you get a civil divorce instead of an annulment?"
"The priest wouldn’t do it!" he exclaimed, hatred in his eyes. "Some rubbish about how your mother had sworn her vows "as a witch’ and so he couldn’t invalidate that."
"What priest? There are no wizard priests," Tom snapped, but suddenly he was not so sure.
"I just bet there are," said Sir Thomas resentfully. "You people have probably infiltrated everything. This one was named... Father Alfred Black, I think. Or Alphard."
Tom was thunderstruck. If this priest was a wizarding Black, he was a member of the family that Tom had never heard of. Lord Regulus’s brother Sirius had been disowned. Had someone else, too? Tom had never known a wizard or witch who openly followed the old religions of the Celts or the Vikings... they had all converted to Christianity centuries ago, including his own family... well, a century and a half ago, he thought... and for all of Tom’s interest in Celtic ritual magic, he did not believe he was actually invoking their deities. His conviction was that the ancient druids had been practicing their own magic all along and that the Muggles had attributed it to their gods. But casually observing the important Christian holidays, and changing from believing in multiple deities to believing in one, was a very different matter to actually becoming a priest in the church. The Fat Friar of Hufflepuff was the only wizard who he thought had any part of it.
Tom quickly made a mental note to look into this, but he had more business with his father first. "So anyone that you think might be magical, you see no reason to believe or respect—even a priest. You hate magic that much, and that is why you abandoned my mother and me to poverty and near-starvation for thirteen years!"
Sir Thomas was unmoved. "Your serpent-spawn whore of a mother deceived me, bastard." The way he said the word made it perfectly clear that he meant it by its literal definition rather than as a generic insult. "Both of you got what you deserved—except for the fact that she didn’t starve before you could be born!"
At that, Tom snapped. With a snarl, he swished his wand through the air, opening a wound on Sir Thomas’s forehead from which blood immediately streamed. The man cried out and tried to put his fingers to it to staunch the flow, but in the next moment, Tom immobilized him with another spell. He leaned forward and locked his gaze with his father’s, forcing his way into the man’s mind and memories.
"You are one of those Gaunts?" he cried in disbelief. "The serpent-talkers? The heathens? The torturers, the ones who practice sorcery?"
Merope clutched her burgeoning belly. "I ran away from them! I know what they are, and that is why I escaped!"
"You used me to escape?"
"I care about you!"
He strode forward, glaring hatefully at her and the stick of wood in her hand. He reached for it as if to snap it. She jerked her hand away, keeping the wand from him, her eyes wide with terror. "Please don’t! I need this. I never used magic against you, Thomas—I love you!"
His hand bore a gauntlet of metal, a piece of his knightly suit of armor and mail.
His hand was sheathed in metal.
His hand was sheathed in metal, with sharp edges around each joint of each of his fingers, and he reached out and struck her across the face.
She recoiled, dropping her wand as she reached instinctively for the cheek from which blood now streamed.
He struck her again across the other cheek. "Get out of my sight, sorceress!" He gazed at the wand and picked it up.
"Don’t do that—" she began to say, but the object sparked in his hands, heating the metal dangerously. He let out an unmasculine shriek and dropped it like a hot coal. With a kick of his booted foot, he sent it toward the far wall and advanced on her. "Get out of my sight and never return! You put my life at risk! Your mad family—" He gazed at her belly. "Get out before I do worse, sorceress."
Tom had seen quite enough. He jerked his mental presence out of Sir Thomas’s mind and gazed at him with hatred etched in every line of his young face.
"You struck her," he said. "You struck her across the face, with armor over your hands, and you threatened to kill me before I was born." He clutched his wand and shot another disdainful look at Lady Cecilia. "Does she know what you are?" He gazed into her eyes. "Did you hear what your "husband’ did to another woman? Does he do it to you too, I wonder?"
She would not look at either of them. "I know my duty as a wife."
Tom snorted derisively. "How contemptible. How can you hold yourself in such low regard, Muggle? This man is not your superior. I am, of course, but it’s because I can do magic." He rose from his knees and freed Sir Thomas. "As for you, I challenge you for myself and my mother. I call you out for your lies and insults about her, your attacks on her, and your betrayal and abandonment of your family." He flicked his wand and summoned Sir Thomas’s dagger from across the room. With a dark smile on his face, he passed it to the man, who sat on the chair, barely moving, even though he was no longer confined by magic. "Get up and duel me, Father."
Sir Thomas glared hatefully at Tom. "As if I stand a chance."
"That’s hardly my problem." Tom was enjoying himself. "Bow to me, Father. I will observe the niceties, since we’re both titled." He smiled again. "I’ll even spare this woman. I can’t say I like the idea of having a Muggle half-sibling, but unlike you, I do not harm women who have done nothing to me." He felt proud of himself for that. It seemed so magnanimous.
Sir Thomas rose, wobbling on his feet and clutching the dagger, aware that his death was likely at hand. Father and son bowed, Tom keeping one eye trained on the man in case he tried anything treacherous—
—Which he did. While Tom’s head was bowed, Sir Thomas lunged for the back of his neck. Tom flicked his wand, sending him reeling backward, dagger flailing around in the air.
Tom stood upright and faced Sir Thomas with contempt in his eyes. "Some knight you are," he said coldly. "You can’t even fight honorably."
"You don’t deserve an honorable duel from me," hissed Sir Thomas. "Your kind have never done anything honorably."
Without another word, Tom flicked his wand. The dagger once again was attached to Sir Thomas’s hand, and the arm itself began to move toward the man’s neck. "Aren’t you going to do it painlessly?" he exclaimed.
Tom paused the spell. "I could," he said, "but you made my mother suffer. Why should I show mercy to you?" He resumed the spell, slowing it down, so the man’s torment of watching that gleaming dagger edge approach his neck was even greater. Beads of sweat poured down his face.
Lady Cecilia got up. "Please don’t do this!" she cried. "Please, I beg you!"
Tom turned aside and flung her away, toward the cushioned chair, with another spell. "He is going to die," he said. "You had better accept that. If you don’t want to watch it, then get out of this room."
"Thomas—" she exclaimed to her husband.
With despair in her pretty face, she fled. Tom considered for a moment before freezing her in place in the hall so she could not escape the house and alert anyone. Then he returned to his father. The dagger was again pressed against his neck, and this time, a bead of blood had appeared.
"I want you to know something," he said through clenched teeth. "I have the legal right to kill you for abandoning us, and for what you said about my mother—and did to her—but before I do, I want you to know, my mother is a witch and a lady, and you were never anything but a dispossessed Muggle. Yes, I know that your family used to rule this fief," he added maliciously. "The filthy Normans took it away from you. You could have been living in our castle in great honor and wealth if you hadn’t decided to be an oathbreaker."
Sir Thomas glared back defiantly. In the next moment, Tom swished his wand again. The dagger cut deep, sending a gush of bright red blood through the air, nearly spattering Tom. With a sneer on his face, he drew back as the man bled out his life. He turned and stalked out of the room. Before he left the manor, he made sure to modify Lady Cecilia’s memories. Let her think that the guards betrayed him. He felt that he had shown all the mercy he cared to for one night. He could have used the Cruciatus Curse, after all....
Tom emerged again into the dark night, feeling strangely cold despite the fact that it was summer. His thoughts were oddly disjointed, almost as if someone else had just done that—had just committed that killing.
It was a duel, he told himself. Even if he never stood a chance against me, I did observe the rules of dueling. Not all duels are between equals. It was not murder. It wasn’t. And he deserved it even if it was.
He shook his head, trying to reorder his thoughts. This was odd indeed. He supposed that taking a life was momentous, no matter the circumstances, and that was why he felt this sense of vague disconnection in his own thoughts. I just avenged my mother, he thought. She lied to me, all these years, and I will have some words with her about that as well, but he hurt her and abandoned us, and I have avenged her.
I’ve avenged my ancestor too. Arthur disowned his son—his only son, his legitimate son—because that son was a wizard. He abandoned the Lady Morgana and went to a Muggle woman. I have avenged Mordred as well. I have reversed the original evil, in a way... this is important... this is significant, even prophetic, I think. This is another sign that I will achieve what I seek.
An unwelcome thought intruded. After that disgusting sight, Tom was almost ashamed of being named for that Muggle. Why had his mother done it? He had hit her. What had she been thinking? She did name me that, and I will respect her wishes... but when I get my crown at last, my royal name will not be Thomas. I will be crowned as Mordred II Serpent-Tongue. Smiling smugly to himself, he turned to Apparate home.
Shortly after Pettigrew had taken the oath, been escorted into a room in the guest wing until his family home could be made ready for him, and Merope had expressed her irritation with Tom’s absence, yet another guest had come to the castle, further distracting everyone from Tom’s whereabouts. Regulus Black was there, his face ghastly and drawn.
"We had best have this discussion in a completely private room," Severus said in a hush as he ushered the cloaked, hooded wizard into a dark corridor. Merope took the lead and brought them into her office, which she locked and silenced.
Severus considered for a moment before casting a diagnostic spell at each of the four walls. He breathed a sigh of relief when nothing untoward happened. Merope raised her eyebrows questioningly at him.
"I know that Pettigrew took the oath," he said, "but you’ll forgive me if I don’t entirely trust him. I certainly don’t want him to know that Regulus is here."
"The doors to the guest wing are locked," Merope said. "He won’t be going anywhere else in this castle." She turned to Regulus. "I do have a bottle of red wine in this room, my lord, if you would like some. Forgive me, but you look unwell."
Regulus nodded. "Thank you, I think I will." As she summoned the bottle of wine—and Severus stepped in to decant and serve it—Regulus took a deep breath, as if to calm his nerves, and began to speak.
"My house-elf Kreacher came to me, distraught, telling me that our source in Malfoy Manor was worried sick about something," he said without preamble. Severus passed him the glass of wine, then poured additional ones for Merope and himself. Regulus sipped it and sighed deeply. "The Malfoy elf had overheard Lestrange talking to Malfoy about your son, your husband, and Caractacus Burke. Another wizard was there, pleading for his life, swearing that he had "done his part,’ that he had even used his own family for their purposes, and now he wanted his reward—and then Malfoy murdered him, stating that this was the "reward.’ They celebrated after that." Regulus took another sip and gazed at Merope. "My lady... pardon me for asking, but does your son know that your Muggle husband is alive?"
Merope was startled. "I admit I have kept the information from him," she said. "We parted on very bad terms. I did not want to tell Tom as a young child that his own father abandoned him. He is not a child now, of course, but the right time for the truth never came."
Regulus sighed deeply. "That makes sense, but I fear that your son has been betrayed—that somehow, Lestrange and Malfoy have passed the information to him. Where is he right now?"
Merope’s eyes widened. "I don’t know," she breathed. "We were unable to find him for an important event earlier this evening...." Something else occurred to her. "He had a friend as a guest who just left this afternoon. The Wilkes lad. Do you think that it was his father—the one that Malfoy murdered?"
"I don’t know," he said frankly, "but apparently it was the father of someone your son knows. I would be prepared for the likelihood, Lady Merope, and consider counter-measures at once. Based on what my elf’s friend heard, they mean to act quickly... and I fear that they no longer intend to let any of you live if they get their way with this Burke marriage." He paused briefly to catch his breath. "I have come here to propose an additional form of alliance between us. My family is under threat too since Malfoy murdered my grandfather. My parents are safe, and my wife’s father Cygnus has left Lucius Malfoy’s home and returned to his own, which is just as secure... but Bellatrix cannot be trusted, and we are still unsure about Lucius and Narcissa. Lestrange and Malfoy have done what they meant to do, and divided the pack." He scowled grimly.
"The pack?" Merope repeated.
"My family’s symbol is the dog," he explained briefly. "As for my alliance proposal... my mother is still somewhat resistant. Blood purity is... very important to her. My father is close to being persuaded, though."
Merope thought she understood. She gazed evenly at Regulus, her eyebrows narrowing. "My lord Regulus, I... thank you for the compliment... but you cannot expect that I would throw off Hermione. She has been fostered at this castle for three years. She may not officially be family yet, but I see her as such. And my son loves her." She glanced quickly at Severus, who would not meet her eyes after that statement.

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