October 21st, 1941,
I’ve told Sophie and Marcella about what I saw yesterday....
---
"I heard Tom call them that word," she whispered the next day as she and her friends sat in the library, finishing the History of Magic homework they’d been assigned that day.
"What word?" Marcella asked eagerly.
Miriam looked around the room, then whispered "Mudblood."
The girls gasped and exchanged surprised looks with one another.
"And the thing is..." Miriam began, slowly trailing off as she watched her brother come within sudden earshot, "... is that Henry already asked me to the Christmastide celebration."
Her friends raised their eyebrows at this sudden change of topic.
"Look behind you," she mouthed to them. They slowly and discreetly turned around and saw the reason why she had quickly changed the subject on them. Tom had spotted them at the table and was coming over.
"What are you three up too?" he asked, observing their slightly surprised expressions.
"Oh! Uh, we're just talking... doing our homework."
"Yeah," Sophie interjected. "We’re just talking about school, homework, and... girl things as well, you know. Things that you wouldn’t be interested in."
"You know: boys, dates for the Christmastide celebration, and that time of the month," Marcella added, raising her eyebrows.
"Ugh! That's more than I wanted to know!" Tom exclaimed, scrunching up his face in disgust. He walked away from the table, leaving the girls laughing behind him.
After the laughter had subsided, Miriam had forgotten all about the other thing she had planned to tell her friends.
November 1st, 1941,
Yesterday was my fourteenth birthday. Nothing spectacular took place, except for the small party Sophie and Marcella threw for me. Tom completely forgot about it altogether, and I don’t think he even realizes it. I'll bet he’s too busy wrapped up in that foolish "Junior Knights" business.
---
“Tom forgot?!” Sophie asked, offended.
“Obviously,” Miriam answered dully.
“It’s not like him to forget it, is it?” Marcella asked.
“No. It’s really not like him at all.”
Miriam and her friends looked perplexed. They were sitting around the desolate common room around midnight as Miriam told them about Tom’s sudden fling with forgetfulness.
“It could be that he just merely forgot. Loads of people forget things,” Marcella finally spoke up after a minute of complete muteness from the three of them.
“Really! How could someone forget their sister’s birthday? Let alone their own birthday?” Miriam exclaimed, leaping up out her seat by the fireplace. After she realized that she was screaming at her friends, she quickly restrained herself. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have burst out like that.”
“It’s all right,” Marcella said.
Forgetting their birthday was definitely out of Tom’s character. Miriam remembered how every year at the orphanage, Tom got excited when their birthdays rolled around. To them, it was just one year less until their eighteenth birthday.
No, something really isn’t right with Tom, she thought that night as she got ready to go to bed. He’s a Junior Knight, he forgot our birthday, he seems to be more outspoken, he’s obsessed with finding the Chamber of Secrets, and on top of it, he thinks he’s the heir of Slytherin. I'd hate to ask what else is going to happen, she wondered. Is he gonna change his name to something weird and become Grindelwald's successor?
Closing her eyes, she took three deep breaths to calm herself down. Soon she was in a deep and heavy sleep.
Slurp. Slurp.
Miriam awoke with a start. Sitting up in her bed, she touched her face and felt something disgusting... something slimy.
“Eww, what the hell?” she called out. Looking down on her bed, she saw a small wolf puppy sitting on her blanket. It’s small and furry round head turned around and looked at Miriam confusedly.
“Where did you come from?” she asked as the puppy let out a small yelp. No sooner had it done so, the other girls in her dormitory began screaming as well. Miriam threw open her curtains and looked out onto the ensuing pandemonium.
One of the girls who screamed was her friend Marcella. “Wolf! Wolf!” she cried.
Miriam looked at the little pup sitting on her bed and gave a small chuckle. “Look at the bedlam your little friends are causing,” she whispered to it.
She picked it up and asked the other girls to try and grab their puppies and bring them down to the common room.
“They won’t... bite, will they?” a girl with sandy-blond hair asked.
“Not if you’re easy with them they shouldn’t.”
The four girls grabbed the baby wolves and followed Miriam down into the darkened common room.
“Quietly now,” she ordered them. “We don’t want to wake up the others.”
“How do you think they got in to begin with?” Marcella asked.
“I don’t know.”
They got to the bottom of the steps when Miriam walked into something large and hard. Whatever she ran into made an “umph” sound.
“Who’s there?” she quietly asked.
“It’s me, ‘agrid.”
“Hagrid! What are you doing down here?” Miriam asked incredulously.
“Lookin’ fer somethin’.”
Somebody in Miriam’s group lit her wand tip, and the sandy-haired girl asked aggressively, “You wouldn’t happen to be looking for these, now would you?”
“What a mean trick to play on us!” Marcella shouted.
“I - I swear, I didn’ do anythin’!” Hagrid pleaded as he looked out onto the faces of four furious girls in their pajamas.
“You said you were looking for these!” another girl yelled.
Miriam watched as the three other girls agreed. These girls obviously forgot something very crucial here....
“Hagrid couldn’t have done it,” Miriam finally spoke up. “The stairs have an enchantment on them to prevent boys from entering the girls dormitories.”
“See!” Hagrid exclaimed. “It wasn’ me!”
“Still, you’re partly responsible!” Marcella yelled. She gently thrust the puppy into his arms as did the other girls. Miriam was the last to hand Hagrid her puppy.
“Hagrid,” she whispered, once the other girls had left, “you know that raising something like this is against school regulations.”
“I know,” he replied solemnly. “But they los’ their mother! I couldn’ jus’ leave ‘em!”
“I know Hagrid, I know, but you can’t keep them.”
“I - I - I...” Hagrid was having a slight problem holding five wiggly puppies in his arm. One had squirmed its way loose and as Miriam dove to catch it, she lost her footing and went crashing toward the ground. The liberated puppy made a mad dash across the common room and into a nearby bookcase.
“After it!” Miriam yelled.
Hagrid sprinted after the freed wolf, his large lumbering feet noisily running across the common room. Miriam got up and joined him in the pursuit.
The wolf had managed to squeeze itself into a small opening in the bottom of the bookcase. Hagrid kneeled down and shoved his hand into the opening.
“I - I can’t reach it!”
Miriam got down next to him and tried to reach her smaller hand inside. She couldn’t reach it either.
Hagrid got up and lifted the bookcase. Its contents began spilling over, and Miriam covered her head as the massive books went falling violently around her.
“Hagrid!” she yelled. “Stop it!” More books went crashing around her.
He set the bookcase down and proudly displayed the puppy. “I got it!”
“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure everyone down in the Slytherin common room heard you do it as well!” she screamed.
“Sorry ‘bout that!”
At that moment, the portrait of the fat lady swung open and impending doom swelled up inside her as Professor Dumbledore walked into the common room, his blue eyes ablaze with fury. “What in Merlin’s beard is going on in here?”
Miriam stood up, but she didn’t look into Dumbledore’s face.
“Would one of you care to explain?” he asked again, looking between Miriam and Hagrid.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Miriam replied. “But “"
"“ but Miriam didn' do anythin'!” Hagrid blurted out. “It was me!”
“How so?” Dumbledore enquired, raising his eyebrows.
“I was... was raisin’ some wolf cubs under me bed an’... an’ some of them had gotten loose and went into the girls’ dormitories.”
Dumbledore opened his mouth to speak until Hagrid continued on. “Please sir, they didn’ have a mother! I couldn’ jus’ leave ‘em ta die!”
“Mr. Hagrid, would you please come to my office at once?”
Hagrid gulped and then reluctantly complied.
“Please bring the cubs with you.”
Poor Hagrid, she thought, as Dumbledore led Hagrid out of the common room and down to his office.
November 12th, 1941,
Poor Hagrid lost his pet wolf cubs. They were given to the groundskeeper to look after. Dumbledore punished him for keeping them in his dorm. He has been reporting to detention every day since the 2nd.
Tonight is Marcella’s first Quidditch game, just so happens that it’s against Slytherin, of all houses. She was a nervous wreck this morning at breakfast....
---
“Marcella, relax,” Miriam said, trying to sooth her friends anxiousness.
“I’ve never played before! How can I relax? Especially when it’s Slytherin we’re playing!”
“Gryffindor’s beat Slytherin loads of times,” Sophie added, waving her hand dismissively.
“Yeah, but that was with Abby and the others!” Marcella howled.
“I was scared my first game, and I made it through okay," Miriam commented. “Besides, what’s so special about Slytherin anyway?”
Marcella opened her mouth to speak, but the voice that emitted wasn’t hers... it was Tom’s.
“Good-luck today at the game,” he said, a devious and obviously cheesy smile plastered all over his face. “You’ll definitely need it. At least my house team isn’t made up of a bunch of whiney, sniveling girls.”
“Tom, shut-up!” Miriam yelled. “You’re just jealous that Gryffindor beat your crummy team so many times before!”
“We’re just lulling you into a false sense of security, that’s all!”
Miriam snickered and Sophie rolled her eyes. “Shoo, Tom,” she retorted sneeringly.
“Fine. We’ll see who has egg on their face after the game,” Tom replied nonchalantly. He walked away, his head held high in the air. Miriam and Sophie were trying hard not to laugh at the words of her brother.
“Well,” Miriam said, quite appalled, ”it would seem my brother has become a bit arrogant as of late.”
“Hormones. It’s really not agreeing with him,” Sophie commented, shaking her head in disbelief. “Well, Marcella... are you... Marcella? Where is she?”
Miriam looked around and noticed their friend was gone. “Tom probably frightened her off.”
“Uh, look over there,” Sophie replied, pointing to a blurry figure dashing out of the Great Hall.
“Let’s go after her,” Miriam sighed.
~*~
“I swear, I can’t go through with it!” Marcella cried, in between vomiting in the girls’ bathroom.
Miriam and Sophie were standing beside the stall door trying to calm their friend down.
“Don’t listen to Tom... he’s just being a pompous arse!” Miriam said. “You’ll do fine! Trust me!”
“Please Marcella, listen to Miriam. We believe in you. We know you’ll do a really smashing job,” Sophie imparted.
Reluctantly, the door to the stall opened and Marcella tentatively stepped out, looking very pale in the process.
“Let’s go,” she said weakly, a feeble smile appearing on her face.
~*~
"This should prove to be an interesting Quidditch match, most definitely," Patrick Jones announced to the crowded arena. "Both Gryffindor and Slytherin have rebuilt their teams after the graduation of a few of their key players and captains. Will these two teams still be as successful with their new players? Only time and a well-played match will tell."
A sea of red- and green-appareled players marched out onto the field as cheers went up through the stadium.
"This year, the Gryffindor team is being led by Fourth year Chaser, Miriam Riddle. Returning to the Slytherin team is Markus Goyle as Quidditch captain for his house team.”
"Let's have a friendly game," ordered Professor Luchtig, as the two captains shook hands. As Markus held Miriam’s hand, he forced her close and whispered with slight harshness dripping in his voice, "May the best team win."
"Oh, we will. Thank you for asking," Miriam replied with the same amount of roughness in her own voice. They stepped back and waited for Professor Luchtig to release the balls. In this brief moment, Miriam looked toward the Slytherin team. Some of the players were team regulars, but there were a few new faces on there. Unfortunately, one of those new faces belonged to Carrey Malfoy. His sneering, arrogant face glared out at the Gryffindor team.
Professor Luchtig raised her whistle as the players mounted their brooms and soared upwards into the air just as the Quaffle and Bludgers were discharged. The first match of the new season was on.
November 13th, 1941,
Egg. It’s great scrambled, between two pieces of bread... and now... decorating Tom’s face. Gryffindor VANQUISHED Slytherin three-hundred and seventy-five to... (get this)... one-hundred and fifty. It was one of their worst losses in house history.
I really don’t know how Tom can even show his face in school now. But more important, however, Marcella has an innate talent for Quidditch. She scored five times, and now she absolutely can’t wait until our next game.
---
That day, Miriam strolled into the Great Hall feeling pretty good about herself. She and the Gryffindor team creamed Slytherin, but what made this victory even sweeter for her was the fact that everyone in Slytherin was green (literally) with envy.
“Look at her,” grumbled Carrey, “she thinks she’s the bloody Queen of Quidditch!”
“Don’t worry,” Tom replied encouragingly. “You still have the rest of the season to go to put her back in her place.”
November 18th, 1941,
I've learned many things this week, like the Cheering Charm in Professor Ambley’s Charms class, or the properties of moonstones for Professor Panes’ Potions class, or how decipher runes in Artihmancy. Yet today, I learned about something else... something quite appalling to say the least....
---
It was a chilly November night, and since there were no Quidditch matches that evening, Miriam spent most of her time plowing over her homework. Between the demands of being a Quidditch captain and her schoolwork, she had gotten quite far behind.
The Gryffindor common room was quite busy that evening, but she was too absorbed in her homework to even notice. Nor did she even notice something familiarly cold and slithery by her ankles; she just chalked up the feeling to a cold draft. As the feeling left, something jumped onto her papers and nearly scared the living daylights out of her.
"Vipera!" Miriam exclaimed. "What are you doing all the way up here? "
"I was-s-s-s merely s-s-s-tretching my legs-s-s-s."
After taking a few breaths and regaining her nervous system, which she had temporary lost after quite a scare, she whispered back to the snake. "But you don't have legs," she said while trying to force out her homework from under the snake. "So how could you do that exactly?"
"It was-s-s-s jus-s-s-st a figure of s-s-s-peech."
Miriam opened her mouth when somebody came up beside her and shrieked in horror. The entire common room looked around, but after a moment, went back to whatever they were doing.
Ugh, there goes my nervous system again, she thought. Sophie had come up behind her and nearly scaring the living daylights out of her once more.
"I didn't know you were a... a...”
Miriam looked at her friend while she desperately tried to spit out the rest of her sentence
““a Parselmouth!" Sophie hissed.
Miriam turned to face her friend with a raised eyebrow and asked, "A what?"
"A - A Parselmouth! It means that you can talk to snakes!" Sophie blurted, her eyes wide with fear.
"What's so bad about it? Tom talks to Vipera here all the time."
"Having that... ability... is often associated with dark wizards! That's what's bad about it!"
Miriam looked at Vipera. Its yellowish eyes looked back at her without expression as it quietly hissed to itself.
"A Parselmouth," Sophie began, "was a trait connected with none other than Salazar Slytherin himself. Just so happens that he was also the founder “"
"“ of the house Tom's in," Miriam said quietly.
"Exactly."
Feeling rather disturbed by this bit of information, Miriam got up from the table and briskly walked out of the common room, leaving her homework and a very dumbfounded Sophie behind. Miriam’s boggled mind needed to clear and sort through these thoughts, and a calming walk through the castle could provide just that, she figured.
She was so deep in her thoughts that she was completely unaware of where her feet were taking her.
Even the sight of her brother standing in a long, vacant hallway didn't snap her out of her reverie.
Tom looked up in slight surprise to see his sister walking by without even acknowledging him.
"Snake got your tongue?" he brusquely asked, the sound of his voice giving the impression that Miriam had deliberately ruined a perfectly quiet evening to himself.
As a flabbergasted Miriam looked up into her brother's scornful face, she recognized what part of the castle her feet had led her to. Her brother, unexpectedly, was standing in front of the girl's bathroom.
"The term is 'cat got your tongue,' and no, my tongue is just fine. I just needed a little... walk to clear my head. What about you?" she asked, narrowing her eyes. "What are you doing standing in front of the girls' bathroom? The boys' bathroom is further down the hall that way." She pointed toward the direction in which she hadn't traveled yet.
"That's none of your concern!" he replied aggressively, folding his arms across his chest.
"Funny, but if someone were to see you here, they would, with out a doubt, think something rather peculiar was up!"
"Like I give a damn what other people think!" he spat.
"You can be such a huge prat at times, Tom!" she screamed.
“I aim to please!”
"Is there a problem here?" a third voice, strange, but oh so familiar called out. Turning around, they both looked up into Dumbledore’s electric blue eyes.
“No, everything’s fine,” Miriam answered darkly. She walked off, heading back in the direction she came from, glowering harshly at Tom as she stormed off.