Ermalene Talon and the Hall of Ancestors - Book One

The True Heir to Slytherin

The True Heir to Slytherin

"Please! Please, don't hurt me." The muggle man struggled against the mysterious shining ropes that bound him. He hung three feet from the ground, upside down, his face going pink from the blood that rushed to his head. "Please. I have a family - a wife and children." His tears streamed over his forehead, into the line of his hair and dripped to the ground.

The woman moved swift around him, not much more than a blur. She moved close to him so that her eyes looked directly into his, so near there was no looking away from the dark, violet eyes. "You think that I care at all about little muggle children not having their daddy?" she hissed. "Trespasser. Should have thought about those precious ones before you stepped foot into my realm." The woman swept away, and the man swung from the velocity of the movement.

"I didn't know --" he wailed.

"Lies," she whispered, her voice heavy and coming from somewhere behind him. "Everyone in the village knows about this forest. You don't go into the forest if you plan to come out, that's what they say."

"We needed food," the man cried.

"Then go to the market," she hissed.

"I haven't got the money for the market," he explained. "Please. I didn't mean to trespass. I won't tell a soul of what's happened here tonight. I give you my word."

The eyes were suddenly there, staring into his once more. "I am very well aware that you shan't be telling a soul," she said, "The dead do not speak. At least not usually, that is." She backed away and for the first time, he got a good look at her. She was tall with wide hips and a sneering, horrible face that would have been beautiful if only she didn't hold it the way she did. Her hair hung in thick curls that rested upon her shoulders, moving slightly in the wind, he supposed. She held what looked like a stick, which she aimed at him, staring down at him, a bit of a nasty laugh caught on her lips. She leaned closer to him. "Avada kedavra," she whispered, and green light shot forward, blasting the man to the chest and he cried out, the breath leaving him as he died.

She cackled and loosed the ropes she'd produced with her wand, watching his lifeless body fall to the dirt in a crumpled heap, his neck breaking as he landed. "Such a pity," she muttered sarcastically, "That you won't be able to feed your little brats... but you'll do quite well for my pets." She waved her wand as she walked away, and the body levitated behind her, his limbs hanging limply as she walked through the forest, stepping over fallen logs and raised roots, until she'd arrived in a tiny clearing where, over a little bridge, there was a ramshackled old cottage, nestled among mossy overgrowth and hanging vines.

She stomped through the door into the cottage, letting the man's body drop to the floor and she hissed in Parseltongue - the language of snakes, "Dinner, my pets." And from the ceiling and the corners of the floors came the slithering hoard. Dozens of them, snakes so many that as they clustered around the meat of the man, he was completely buried beneath their slithering, writhing bodies. "Yes," she hissed, "Yes, enjoy your dinner. Trespassers shan't be tolerated." She watched in cruel fascination as the snakes devoured the man completely, leaving nothing but bone upon the floor when they were done.

Medusa Peverell Gaunt magicked the bones into the trees outside that lined the little clearing, adding them to the many others that hung among the branches, giving the circle of trees a menacing look.

Back inside the little house, she let her fingers slide over the length of one of the snakes that lay across the heavy wood table that filled most of the room, and sat at the head of it, leaning over a thick book that she'd left at the sound of the caterwauling charm she'd cast upon the mouth of the path that led to the village announcing the trespasser. She slid her fingers along the words, her claw-like nail slipping beneath the sentences until she found the place she had been. The snake slid itself onto her lap, coiling loops around her and her chair, resting it's head upon her palm, which she held up for it. She rubbed the chin of the snake as it's black tongue slid in and out of its mouth around it's long, poisonous fangs.