Mastermind

Clean

Rain came pouring down
When I was drowning, that's when I could finally breathe
And by morning
Gone was any trace of you, I think I am finally clean
Clean by Taylor Swift

22nd of October 1979

Neville Longbottom comes in October, and almost on the same day, the file on Morfin Gaunt arrives. The Gryffindors are all crowding around the new baby upstairs, while Regulus and Dorcas are going through the files. Narcissa sits with them, feeding little Draco.

"This man," Dorcas sighs, "is disgusting. This entire family is revolting."

"Well, you've seen the amount of incest in that family tree," Regulus says lazily, "What did you expect?"

"That wasn't a family tree, that was a family wreath. Worse than yours."

"Our family isn't that incestuous. As far as I've seen we never had actual siblings having children with each other."

"It's horrifying that this is the bar," Dorcas says, pushing her braids over her shoulder and reaching for a cup of tea. "Alone the sentence Our family isn't that incestuous. And then your lot is proud of it, too."

Regulus rolls his eyes and keeps reading a Wizengamot report on Marvolo Gaunt. He was found guilty of obstruction of justice and mistreatment of his daughter.

"From childhood onwards this boy did nothing but terrorize muggle children in his village. Look at this: lists of minor offences and instances of magic in front of muggles – lists, plural."

"Dorcas, there needs to be a report about Morfin and Marvolo Gaunt resisting Ministry officials sometime in the 1920s. He was put into Azkaban for it. I need to know what's behind all that."

Dorcas flips through the pages. She hands him a stack of papers placed quite far back in the file. "There is another one here from 1943."

"You read that one. I take this one."

The reports are written in minute detail in the best bureaucratic English. One of Morfin's attacks on a muggle had been so severe, the Ministry sent someone to talk to him and inform him of a hearing. Morfin is described as unhinged and unstable, refusing to come with the Ministry official and insisting that his actions were justified. Somewhere during the altercation, Marvolo attacked his daughter Merope, and then the Ministry official. The man had to come back with reinforcements to take the men down. The most interesting thing though –

"Dorcas, listen to this: The attack forcing the Misnistry to act and dispatch Mr Ogden to the Residence of the Gaunt Family transpired on the 1st of October 1924 in Little Hangleton, Surrey, England at 6:14 pm. Morfin Gaunt, who has been brought to the Ministry's attention a multitude of times for minor transgressions and violation of the Statue of Secrecy, is accused of having attacked a muggle by the name of Thomas Riddle residing in Little Hangleton, Surrey England, with a jinx slash hex causing the aforementioned muggle to erupt in highly painful hives."

"Thomas Riddle – Tom Riddle. But not Tom Marvolo Riddle, is he?"

"No. But you know how old families are – like Lucius Malfoy, for example – what if Tom Riddle had a child, naming him after himself. He had that child with the daughter of Marvolo Riddle, who gave the child her father's name as middle name."

Narcissa finishes feeding Draco and closes her dress. "That would mean, that Gaunt attacked his future brother-in-law. Possibly because he courted his sister thus ending the pureblood line? It would make sense. Maybe you can't find anything about the girl because her brother killed her for being a blood traitor, ever thought of that?"