There was a scuffling noise in the corner beside the open window, and Harry realized that there was somebody else in the room, a girl whose ragged gray dress was the exact color of the dirty stone wall behind her. She was standing beside a steaming pot on a grimy black stove, and was fiddling around with the shelf of squalid-looking pots and pans above it. Her hair was lank and dull and she had a plain, pale, rather heavy face. Her eyes, like her brother’s, stared in opposite directions. She looked a little cleaner than the two men, but Harry thought he had never seen a more defeated-looking person.
“M’daughter, Merope,” said Gaunt grudgingly, as Ogden looked inquiringly toward her.
“Good morning,” said Ogden.
She did not answer, but with a frightened glance at her father turned her back on the room and continued shifting the pots on the shelf behind her.
“Well, Mr. Gaunt,” said Ogden, “to get straight to the point, we have reason to believe that your son, Morfin, performed magic in front of a Muggle late last night.”
There was a deafening clang. Merope had dropped one of the pots.
“Pick it up!” Gaunt bellowed at her. “That’s it, grub on the floor like some filthy Muggle, what’s your wand for, you useless sack of muck?”
“Mr. Gaunt, please!” said Ogden in a shocked voice, as Merope, who had already picked up the pot, flushed blotchily scarlet, lost her grip on the pot again, drew her wand shakily from her pocket, pointed it at the pot, and muttered a hasty, inaudible spell that caused the pot to shoot across the floor away from her, hit the opposite wall, and crack in two.
Morfin let out a mad cackle of laughter. Gaunt screamed, “Mend it, you pointless lump, mend it!”
Merope stumbled across the room, but before she had time to raise her wand, Ogden had lifted his own and said firmly, “Reparo.” The pot mended itself instantly.
Gaunt looked for a moment as though he was going to shout at Ogden, but seemed to think better of it: Instead, he jeered at his daughter, “Lucky the nice man from the Ministry’s here, isn’t it? Perhaps he’ll take you off my hands, perhaps he doesn’t mind dirty Squibs. . . .”
Without looking at anybody or thanking Ogden, Merope picked up the pot and returned it, hands trembling, to its shelf. She then stood quite still, her back against the wall between the filthy window and the stove, as though she wished for nothing more than to sink into the stone and vanish.
“Mr. Gaunt,” Ogden began again, “as I’ve said: the reason for my visit —”
“I heard you the first time!” snapped Gaunt. “And so what? Morfin gave a Muggle a bit of what was coming to him — what about it, then?”
“Morfin has broken Wizarding law,” said Ogden sternly.
“‘Morfin has broken Wizarding law.’” Gaunt imitated Ogden’s voice, making it pompous and singsong. Morfin cackled again. “He taught a filthy Muggle a lesson, that’s illegal now, is it?”
“Yes,” said Ogden. “I’m afraid it is.”
He pulled from an inside pocket a small scroll of parchment and unrolled it.
“What’s that, then, his sentence?” said Gaunt, his voice rising angrily.
“It is a summons to the Ministry for a hearing —”
“Summons! Summons? Who do you think you are, summoning my son anywhere?”
“I’m Head of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad,” said Ogden.
“And you think we’re scum, do you?” screamed Gaunt, advancing on Ogden now, with a dirty yellow-nailed finger pointing at his chest. “Scum who’ll come running when the Ministry tells ’em to? Do you know who you’re talking to, you filthy little Mudblood, do you?”
“I was under the impression that I was speaking to Mr. Gaunt,” said Ogden, looking wary, but standing his ground.
“That’s right!” roared Gaunt. For a moment, Harry thought Gaunt was making an obscene hand gesture, but then realized that he was showing Ogden the ugly, black-stoned ring he was wearing on his middle finger, waving it before Ogden’s eyes. “See this? See this? Know what it is? Know where it came from? Centuries it’s been in our family, that’s how far back we go, and pureblood all the way! Know how much I’ve been offered for this, with the Peverell coat of arms engraved on the stone?”
“I’ve really no idea,” said Ogden, blinking as the ring sailed within an inch of his nose, “and it’s quite beside the point, Mr. Gaunt. Your son has committed —”
With a howl of rage, Gaunt ran toward his daughter. For a split second, Harry thought he was going to throttle her as his hand flew to her throat; next moment, he was dragging her toward Ogden by a gold chain around her neck.
“See this?” he bellowed at Ogden, shaking a heavy gold locket at him, while Merope spluttered and gasped for breath.
“I see it, I see it!” said Ogden hastily.
“Slytherin’s!” yelled Gaunt. “Salazar Slytherin’s! We’re his last living descendants, what do you say to that, eh?”
“Mr. Gaunt, your daughter!” said Ogden in alarm, but Gaunt had already released Merope; she staggered away from him, back to her corner, massaging her neck and gulping for air.
“So!” said Gaunt triumphantly, as though he had just proved a complicated point beyond all possible dispute. “Don’t you go talking to us as if we’re dirt on your shoes! Generations of purebloods, wizards all — more than you can say, I don’t doubt!”
And he spat on the floor at Ogden’s feet. Morfin cackled again. Merope, huddled beside the window, her head bowed and her face hidden by her lank hair, said nothing.
“Mr. Gaunt,” said Ogden doggedly, “I am afraid that neither your ancestors nor mine have anything to do with the matter in hand. I am here because of Morfin, Morfin and the Muggle he accosted late last night. Our information” — he glanced down at his scroll of parchment — “is that Morfin performed a jinx or hex on the said Muggle, causing him to erupt in highly painful hives.”