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“Twenty-one,” Morfin declared smugly, throwing his king and ace down on top of Merope’s jack and seven. “Morfin wins again!”
“No fair! You cheated,” Merope complained, folding her arms and adopting a sulky expression.
“Don't be a sore loser, Dopey,” Morfin reproved her, thumping her shoulder. “Cough up.”
With a sigh, Merope flicked a knut at him which he caught deftly, dropping it atop the meagre pile sat in front of him. They weren't really playing for money – they had upturned Father’s coin purse and split the handful of knuts within it between themselves – but she was reluctant to part with her shiny treasures all the same; Mother had been much the same as a girl, or so Granddad Capricious told her.
“I don't want to play anymore,” she complained, clutching her last remaining knut possessively. “It's not fun when I always lose.”
Morfin rolled his eyes, leaning back on his elbows.
“Fine. One more round – you can deal, if you think I'm cheating,” he offered. Merope worried her lip between her teeth as she thought it over before agreeing, taking the deck and shuffling it as best as she was able.
She dealt them each two cards, and struggled to contain her excitement upon seeing she had two queens – with any luck, she would finally have her winning hand!
“Twist,” Morfin said, and she put down a five. “Twist,” he said again, and she put down a three. “Twist.” Ace. “Stick.”
“Stick,” Merope said, and set her two queens down on the dirty floor of the shack.
Morfin flipped his cards over, and Merope looked them over. King. Two. Five. Three. Ace. That totalled…
“Twenty-one,” Morfin said, a cruel smirk on his face. “Five card trick, too – lucky me,” he giggled, leaning over and snatching Merope's last knut.
“I hate you!” she cried, getting up and stamping her foot. “Cheater, cheater, cheater!”
“Keep your voice down!” Morfin hissed, but he was too late – leaves rustled outside as footsteps approached the house, and Grandfather Sigmund barged into the house with a face like thunder.
“What did I tell you about making a racket?!” he bellowed, jowls quivering with rage. “You're in for a hiding, the pair of you!”
“Run!” Morfin hissed, rolling to the side and knocking over his pile of knuts as Grandfather's cane whacked against the floor where he had been lying a moment prior.
He sprung to his feet and ducked under another swipe of Grandfather's cane before rushing for the door, scooping up Merope on his way out and making a break for the forest.
Grandfather followed but was soon reduced to a breathless hobble as the chase continued, with Morfin fast outstripping him; he still did not stop running until he too was wheezing and red-faced, collapsing to the ground with Merope still clutched to his chest.
For a moment, they both lay still on the forest floor, the only movement coming from the heaving rise and fall of Morfin’s chest and the only sound from his heavy breathing. Then-
“How long do we have to stay out here?” Merope asked, her voice small as a mouse – as though she was afraid Grandfather would come charging at them from the brush if she spoke any louder.
“Dunno,” Morfin grunted, raising a hand to wipe the sweat from his brow. “Till night, at least – that wasn't any regular old beating coming our way. He'll need to sleep that one off.”
“Oh,” Merope muttered. Another moment passed where neither of them spoke, before she continued, “I'm still not sorry. You're a dirty, stinking cheat, Morfin – you twisted on twenty! I would’ve let Granddad hit me if it meant he hit you too for being such a cheat!”
Thwack!
Merope gasped as Morfin popped her in the mouth, causing a bright red mark to begin blooming on her cheek almost immediately.
“Watch yourself,” he warned, voice raspy as he drew in another shuddering breath. “I let you deal – no-one likes a sore loser, Dopey. Tell enough fibs and you might find you can’t get them past your lying little lips.”
Merope glared at him, intending to refute his words – which played cruelly off of a nightmare she had had last month of a Fae stitching her lips shut – but found, to her horror, that her lips would not part. Her hands darted upwards of their own volition, attempting to wrench open her mouth to no avail – she tried to scream, but the sound came through as nothing more than a shrill hum from her nose.
Morfin, for his part, seemed equally as distressed as Merope – he swore violently under his breath upon seeing her attempt to prise her lips apart and withdrew his wand, muttering spells under his breath. None of his spells seemed to be having any effect, and Merope’s face began to turn pink as she forgot to breathe through her nose, too wrapped up in trying to regain the ability to speak.
Then, with a pop, Morfin managed to reverse the curse – Merope gasped and drew in a great breath before promptly bursting into tears, burying her face into Morfin’s mangy shirt.
“I’m s-so sorry! I didn’t– I d-didn’t know that– that– “
“Shshshshsh, don’t cry,” Morfin said, wrapping an arm around her scrawny shoulders, wand held aloft in his other hand – his beady black eyes were blown out like a cat’s, scanning the treeline for movement. “You didn’t know – now you do. Don’t tell any more lies and you’ll be alright, won’t you?”
Merope nodded into his chest, sniffling and wiping her nose on his shirt – Morfin resisted the urge to thump her for snotting on his clothes, knowing this was a situation which called for more tact than usual.
He rubbed consoling circles into her back until her hiccoughing sobs subsided, whereupon he withdrew his hand to wipe away the tears still left on her face with his thumb.
“There – alright now, aren’t you?” he asked. She nodded, and Morfin pushed a stray lock of her lank hair behind her ear. “Good. Now, tell me – did I cheat at pontoon, Merope?”
“No,” she mumbled, shamefaced. “Sorry for saying you did.”
Morfin did not do her the courtesy of telling her it was alright – he just grunted, taking her hand in his own.
“C’mon – don’t know if Granddad’s still looking for us, but I don’t want to be a sitting duck if he is.”
He led her further into the forest, and the issue of Morfin’s cheating was forever settled from that day onwards.
. . .
“Fuck!” Morfin hissed as Father’s ring slipped off of his finger, clattering against the floor and rolling away from him. “Stupid, useless– c’mere, you little bastard!” he snarled, leaning out of his seat to snatch at the ring.
Unable to reach, he was forced to slip out of his armchair, crawling along the floor after the ring – bottles clinked and rolled about the floor as he knocked into them, before his burly hand closed around his quarry.
“Gotcha,” he breathed, standing up to examine the last remaining bequeath left to him by his noble lineage – every last one of the other heirlooms his family once possessed had been lost to time, with Merope spiriting away with the locket just last year.
Or was it three?
Morfin gritted his teeth because he could not remember – his mind swam with drink, and he could not for the life of him recall whether it had been a day or a decade since he came home to find his sister gone and his father withered away in his armchair, nothing but a decaying corpse with two rings trapped on his bloated digits.
Two rings… What had he done with Father’s wedding band?
He shook his head like a great elephant bothered by flies, attempting to dispel these frivolous thoughts from his mind – what did it matter what he had done with Father’s ring, or when exactly Merope had left? They were gone – it was all gone.
There was nothing left to the Gaunt name except for him, his ring and his shitty shambles of a shack.
“The little lamb to save us will be a Gaunt,” Morfin muttered to himself, turning the ring over in his palm with his thumb. This mantra, which had been passed down through his family for generations now, did not bring him its usual comfort – troubled, he turned the ring over again, as if trying to convince himself that this last heirloom made his last name into one worth having.
“Show me your secrets,” he whispered, turning the ring over for the final time.
Whoosh!
Morfin gasped as a grey gas began emanating from the ring’s capstone, coalescing into a formless cloud in front of him – as he reached towards it, the cloud arranged itself into a more familiar shape.
“Merope?” he asked, moth agog. He snatched his hand back as though it had been shocked, taking a step away from her. She smiled thinly at him, creasing her beady black eyes.
“Hello, Morfin,” she replied, a sibilant hiss to her voice; Morfin could not remember the last time she had partaken in the gift of their Tongue.
“Are you real?” he asked, eyes never leaving hers. Without waiting for an answer, he leaned in and attempted to grab her forearm – his hand phased right through, sending a chilling sensation up his spine.
“No,” Merope confirmed, the statement marked with an indelible air of sadness. “Not real. Tommy killed me – I’ve not been real for quite some time now.”
Morfin did not swell with pride at being proven right about Riddle as he might have expected – in fact, he felt nothing at all besides a small pang in his heart, like a tiny part of him had died. He raised his hand and played at the phantom copy of Slytherin’s locket around her neck – which was all the proof he ever needed that this was a mirage; his wisp of a sister would not have survived Muggle London with that chunk of gold hanging off her neck, looking like a walking robbery – and found himself feeling oddly morose.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
Morfin’s mouth opened and closed, unable to find an answer. For their lineage, perhaps – knowing that Merope was dead was the final nail in the coffin for the Gaunt name. Yet, it felt hollow to say – as though he were apologising for the wrong thing.
“Dunno,” he muttered. Merope simply continued to stare at him, and Morfin fished for something to say. “Uhhh… I’m sorry for cheating at pontoon.”
Merope’s eyes widened, as though she truly had not known – Morfin ignored the small tug which that innocence caused on his heartstrings.
“Why?”
“Because it was easy – because I wanted to win, and it was fun to watch you cry. Shutting your lips was accidental magic, but how could you ever lie to me again if I let you believe it was a Fae?” he rambled, slurring his words as he spoke. “Because I felt like it. There; that’s what I’m sorry for.”
The apparition of Merope shed a tear – Morfin swayed drunkenly on his feet, a surge of nausea swelling up in his gut.
“I used to love you, Morfin – I thought you were the best brother in the world. Did you ever love me?”
Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Morfin heaved, staggering to the side – his head pounded to the beat of a thunderous drum and a trickle of vomit dripped out of the corner of his mouth as he heaved again.
“Yes,” he breathed, feeling a wave of clarity wash over him at the admission. “Yes, I did. I don’t know why I ever stopped.”
And he didn’t. What had it ever gained him, besides Merope running away and his entire legacy crashing down around him? He had had the whole world in his hands, with Merope offering her childish adoration up to him freely, and he had thrown it all away.
Morfin opened his mouth to speak, but the bile in his throat was faster to emerge – he hurled up the contents of his stomach all over the floor, getting it on his shirt and shoes in the process.
Suddenly light-headed, he dropped the ring before keeling over in his own vomit, the edges of his vision dulling as the oxygen flowed away from his brain. The dulling effect worsened, until his vision was engulfed in blackness and Morfin’s reality was blotted out into nothingness.
He awoke in the morning with a killer headache, the afterimage of some strange nightmare involving Merope burned into his mind’s eye – he groaned and hauled himself to his feet, marching off to the river outside to wash off the scum he was caked in.
By the time he returned and noticed his ring sitting on the floor, the image of his sister’s betrayed face in his head was already half-forgotten. He slipped the ring back onto his finger and unscrewed another bottle of whisky, taking a sip to dull his pounding headache.
He did not consider how close he had come to drowning in his own vomit that night, and he never again discovered the secret which lay within the capstone of the ring he so treasured.