White Demon, Where's Your Selfish Kiss? [A Tom Riddle Romance]

Chapter Seven: The Dog Days Of Summer

“Of course not.” Earnestine’s excitement was brimming at her uncle’s sudden urge to share a secret with her, one that she would understand.

“Well you see, Earnestine,” Her uncle paused carefully, unsure of how to word whatever it was that he was about to confess to her. “I am a squib.”

Earnestine jumped, not realizing that Henry had woken up until he spoke up. “You’re a what!?” Henry seemed just as floored to hear it as she had been.

“A…er…squib,” Their uncle repeated unsurely. “It means that I...er….am a wizard that…can’t….do….magic.”  It seemed that Mr. Monte was choking on each word as it came out, almost difficult to understand.

The twins’ mouths fell straight to the floor. Their uncle was a wizard too. Those just didn’t seem to match up in the same sentence. It seemed impossible to have their uncle also have some sort of relation to them, and to their mother, other than their blood and DNA.

There was a long, shocked silence between the siblings as they simply gaped at their uncle. A squib. Suddenly they had both felt a deep sympathy for him, knowing what it must have been like to have been raised wanting more than anything to be able to use the magic talents they possessed, but simply being unable to do so.

Mr. Monte seemed to echo their thoughts, “It wasn’t easy, you know. Watching your mother go off to Hogwarts each year, becoming captain of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team, and becoming prefect and later head girl. I was always the odd one out. Even my parents were great. Dad was even the Minister of Magic for a spell.”

Earnestine gasped out in both awe and amazement. It was all so incredible to her, finally understanding a tiny bit more of her family’s famous wizarding history. “Our grandfather was the Minister of Magic?!”

Mr. Monte nodded and a nearly invisible smile appeared fleetingly on his chubby face. “Yes. The youngest Minister to ever serve, in fact.”

Henry too seemed to be mulling everything over. “Mum was in Ravenclaw?”

“Yea,” Mr. Monte stumbled over and finally sat down in a metal folding chair towards the opposite wall, still looking at his hands. His eyes were somewhere else now, a different time. “They had said she was the most clever witch of her age, your mother.”

“Excuse me, sir?” Henry asked suddenly, “Do you know anything about our father?”

Mr. Monte sighed a little, “Your father was in Slytherin, real popular bloke. Tall, dark hair, dark eyes. You both look just like him.”

Hearing those words got Earnestine’s mind wandering back to a time when her parents were in Hogwarts, picturing them both from behind her mind’s eye. It was a pleasant feeling that poured through her, knowing now that her and her brother favored after their father in appearances. It somehow made her feel more connected to him. Silently she wondered why in her admiring flashback her parents had looked so similar to her and Tom.

Henry chewed on the inside of his cheek in caution. Unsure if he was really ready to hear the answer to the question he was about to ask, a question that had plagued him and his sister for over ten years now. “W-what happened to them?”

Earnestine turned her brown eyes back to her Uncle who had given a sharp intake of breath at the sudden inquiry. Swallowing hard, he had finally found the voice to answer Henry’s prodding question. “That night, the night they died, you both were out with your father and your mother had stayed back a home for some quiet time. Your father had taken you to visit his friend Phineas Malfoy for the evening, and it was dark by the time he had returned home.”