Harry Potter 06 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

mopped the last of the pus from the front of his coat. ‘That was Morfin, wasn’t it?’
    ‘Ar, that was Morfin,’ said the old man indifferently. ‘Are you pure-blood?’ he asked, suddenly aggressive.
    ‘That’s neither here nor there,’ said Ogden coldly, and Harry felt his respect for Ogden rise.
    Apparently Gaunt felt rather differently. He squinted into Ogden’s face and muttered, in what was clearly supposed to be an offensive tone, ‘Now I come to think about it, I’ve seen noses like yours down in the village.’
    ‘I don’t doubt it, if your son’s been let loose on them,’ said Ogden. ‘Perhaps we could continue this discussion inside?’
    ‘Inside?’
    ‘Yes, Mr Gaunt. I’ve already told you. I’m here about Morfin. We sent an owl –’
    ‘I’ve no use for owls,’ said Gaunt. ‘I don’t open letters.’
    ‘Then you can hardly complain that you get no warning of visitors,’ said Ogden tartly. ‘I am here following a serious breach of wizarding law which occurred here in the early hours of this morning –’
    ‘All right, all right, all right!’ bellowed Gaunt. ‘Come in the bleeding house, then, and much good it’ll do you!’
    The house seemed to contain three tiny rooms. Two doors led off the main room, which served as kitchen and living room combined. Morfin was sitting in a filthy armchair beside the smoking fire, twisting a live adder between his thick fingers and crooning softly at it in Parseltongue:
     
    ‘Hissy hissy, little snakey,
    Slither on the floor
    You be good to Morfin
    Or he’ll nail you to the door.’
     
    There was a scuffling noise in the corner beside the open window and Harry realised that there was somebody else in the room, a girl whose ragged grey dress was the exact colour 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 enquiringly towards 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