Ink and Parchment ~ blood and bone

53

Eliza was sadly right. She had barely been back at Hogwarts before she received another letter from Dumbledore requesting her presence. Feeling particularly vindictive Eliza set the message on fire the second after she had received it. Theo had looked somewhat disappointed but Theo didn’t have to deal with Dumbledore on a constant basis either so he could shut up.

Sighing heavily Eliza continued her trek up to the headmaster’s office leaving Draco and Daphne in charge of welcoming back all the Slytherins after Yule Break. The corridors were empty and Eliza let out another long suffering sigh when she arrived at the gargoyle statue.

“Acid pops” Eliza said bitterly and began to climb the stairs.

Dumbledore was sat behind his desk as always, old aged eyes meeting Eliza’s the second she walked in the room. He smiled, slightly pityingly, when she took the seat across from him.

“I believe you’ve had a very busy Christmas my girl” Dumbledore said and pointed to an old edition of the prophet, open to the page of her and Tom at the Malfoy Yule Ball and Eliza scowled.

“He cornered me while I was there, threatened to cause trouble if I didn’t share a dance with him” she muttered, glaring at the wall above Dumbledore’s head “He said he had a message for you and when I told him I wasn’t a bloody owl he said he’d massacre the whole room”

Dumbledore looked at her curiously, raising his thin eyebrows in question “And what was the message?”

Eliza let out a scoff “It wasn’t even anything important, schoolyard taunting really. He said that ‘you were getting on in your old age’ and that ‘you best hurry if you ever wanted to catch up’

Dumbledore let out a heavy sigh, a resigned look on his face “I suspected as much” he said quietly as if such a vague and useless taunt actually made sense somehow before shoving the pensieve forward.

“Which just makes the memories I plan on showing you tonight all the more important”

Eliza stood so she was peering over the pensieve next to Dumbledore “And what is the first memory we’ll be seeing sir?” she asked with an inward grimace.

She really rather despised these lessons.

“In the summer of Tom Riddle’s sixteenth year he left the orphanage to track down his wizarding family, the Gaunt’s” Dumbledore explained and poured the memories into the pensieve “And it is Morfin Gaunt who we will be revisiting”

Eliza ducked into the memory after Dumbledore, landing on her feet in the middle of a run down grimy old shack – the Gaunt house, next to Dumbledore. An old grizzled man sat in an armchair, with a beard so large Eliza could barely make out his face, and when there was a knock at the door he stirred with a start.

The door swung open, and there stood Tom. Pale, dark and handsome with an almost disconcerting blank look on his face. There was no disgust in his eyes as he conversed with Morfin, no appraisal or vindication or even a glimmer of anger.

“Riddle came back?” Tom was asking and Eliza didn’t need to see the memory to know what would happen next.

I tracked them down and when I stood in front of their house, this giant, massive house I couldn’t help but wonder-

Morfin was shouting about the locket, his missing heirloom when the memory suddenly went dark as Tom moved forward and Eliza was jolted back into the present, still stood by the pensieve, Dumbledore by her side.

“When Morfin awoke next morning, he was lying on the floor, quite alone. Marvolo’s ring had gone”

Eliza stubbornly resisted the urge to run her thumb over the said ring that still sat invisibly on her hand.