"Seventh Sister," Merope, PG-13 Title: Seventh Sister Author:kethlenda Characters/Pairing: Summary: Merope was fourteen when she learned the meaning of her name. Rating: PG-13 Warning(s): implied incest Originally Written: 9/05 Notes: It always surprises me when people like this ficlet, because I wrote it in this manic burst of typing at work in about fifteen minutes. Most hyper plot bunny ever. Unbetaed.
Merope was fourteen when she learned the meaning of her name. It was in an old book of Greek myths, neglected and moldy on the shelf of the Gaunts' shack. Father had abandoned books for the bottle long since, and Morfin had never set much store by reading, so no one even noticed when Merope pilfered it from the shelf and secreted it away beneath the rickety cot she called a bed.
The dimmest of the Pleiades, the seventh sister, her light dimmed by the shame of marriage to a mortal. Merope wondered why her father had chosen the name for her.
She knew her mother had died giving birth to her. Father ranted about it all the time, how shameful it was for a witch to die in such common fashion, and die birthing such a useless child. Almost a Squib, he said. “At least I’ve got a boy and a girl. That’s enough…”
Intuition gave her the answer, the secret behind her name. One night while Father and Morfin were passed out drunk, Merope crept out into the forest that surrounded their shack, tiptoeing deeper and deeper into the woods until she found it.
Her mother’s gravestone, overgrown by moss and weeds, untended for over a decade. And there—surrounding Mother’s plot, almost hidden in the underbrush, six more stones. Tiny stones, nameless.
Slytherin’s blood not as strong as you thought it was, Father?
She saw her future laid out before her in terrible clarity. He will give me to Morfin. There is no one else left. She would be Morfin’s “bride”, and live out her life here in this shack in the woods, subject still to her brother’s drunken rages. She would die in childbearing like her mother before her, worn out from a decade of tainted children too malformed to survive.
She would not have it. She did not accept it.
I will get out of here as soon as I can, she vowed to herself. I will not burn out like Mother. I will not dim.