Systemic Causation
Prologue
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Anything you recognize was taken directly from JK Rowling's Goblet of Fire and is therefore even less mine then everything else. Monsters chanting Baby Boy was taken directly from Rob Thurman, 'cause she's awesome and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Author's Note: Hey Party People! Yes, this is another multi-chap WIP, but I couldn't resist! This one is for lexdakid in response to his plot bunny challenge Setting Myself Free on HPCF. Thanks in advance for reading!
WARNING: This story is M-Rated for a reason. Violence. Coarse Language. Adult Content (such as the site rules will allow). Slash (M/M). Character Death. Torture. Mentions of Child Abuse, and probably lots of other stuff that I can't predict right now. Note the rating, and the explicit warnings! Here there be monsters! Not for the kiddies!
Systemic causation, because it is less obvious, is more important to understand. A systemic cause may be one of a number of multiple causes. It may require some special conditions. It may be indirect, working through a network of more direct causes. It may be probabilistic, occurring with a significantly high probability. It may require a feedback mechanism. In general, causation in ecosystems, biological systems, economic systems, and social systems tends not to be direct, but is no less causal. And because it is not direct causation, it requires all the greater attention if it is to be understood and its negative effects controlled.
– George Lakoff
There are some things you never forget. Some people are lucky enough that those things are things like their first kiss, the days their kids were born, or a really fucking awesome sunset. Harry remembered the day he was running from Dudley and his gang and he dove behind the garbage bins only to end up on the roof of the school kitchens.
He wished he could forget it. Block it out. Make his mind slide around it. His childhood was filled to bursting with memories that verged from unpleasant to full on traumatic but this one was the worst of them.
At school sometimes he heard voices, voices that whispered in horrible sibilant tones with sharp screeching edges. Voices no one else heard.
"Special boy. Baby boy. We see you. We're watching you, half-breed. You belong to us. Your magic walls will not hold us out forever and then we'll take you and what fun we'll have. What games we'll play."
He'd heard them for as long as he could remember. Never in the house, but any time he was outside. When he told his Aunt Petunia about them at age four, with the misguided belief that she'd be able to make the voices stop, she told him that he was a freak and a monster and that if he was normal he wouldn't hear anything at all.
Harry didn't quite understand. He'd heard it all before of course. Freak, scum, vile loathsome creature, filthy little monster, punctuated with the reek of brandy and the sound of glass shattering as he dodged away from thrown tumblers and bottles. Lazy, crazy, screwed-up, worthless, wrong, abomination.
"Special boy. Baby boy."
The whisperers became a comfort. The only ones that wanted him. He belonged to them. Belonged with them.
He tried talking back to them a couple of times. When he was six and lying alone in the garden shed, picking glass and the remnants of the coffee table out of his side as his Uncle raged at nothing and his Aunt and Dudley went away, leaving him behind, he'd begged them to take him away from that place.
Derisive hisses were all he got for his trouble.
"Weak. Unworthy. Half-breed. Cowed by bleating prey. Pathetic."
It wasn't until he was seven and running from Dudley's gang that he got a good look at just what had been whispering in his mind all this time. Tired and weak from not eating, unable to run any faster, desperate to escape because he knew what would happen if they caught him. He made the leap and in midair his gut twisted horribly and up and down became nothing more words that he knew.
There in the misty place, they'd waited.
Swirling out of the silvery fog, nightmares with inky hair and blood-red eyes, corpse-pale and finely scaled skin, with a crest of deadly copper spikes rising from their arched backs and a mouthful of teeth that would send sharks running, bared in wide insane grins.
"Baby boy," they hissed swirling in and out of existence.
A brush of serrated, inch-long, copper-colored claws through his hair.
"We'll come for you, half-breed. You belong to us."
Then the misty place was gone and Harry was clinging to the chimney with desperate strength, mocking laughter like nails on a chalkboard echoing all around him.
He didn't remember how he got there. He barely remembered why he'd been running in the first place. Shell-shocked, wide-eyed and still shaking a custodian had found him there while he was sneaking a smoke on his lunch break. He'd wet himself and the Headmistress yelled at him for a good hour about climbing school buildings before she sent him back to the Dursleys with a longwinded letter clenched white-knuckled in his hands.
Suddenly Harry knew why his Aunt and Uncle called him such horrible names and threw glasses at his head. Monster, freak, abomination. Ours. You belong to us, half-breed.
Only the truth. Gods, only the truth.
Hadn't he wished for this? Hadn't he begged and pleaded with anyone who would listen for family that would come and take him away from the Dursleys? Be careful what you wish for. They were coming for him, his family, and one day they would drag him screaming back into the misty place.
"And then what games we'll play."
"We'll strip the weakness from you, baby boy. Take you home."
That's when, late at night and locked in his cupboard hysterical, hissing laughter with the echo of nails on a chalkboard bubbled up from his chest.
Harry woke with a start. Eyes snapping open as his hands clawed at nothing and breathing hard.
For a moment he couldn't remember where he was the blind terror of the memory he most wanted to forget blocking out everything else.
Then other memories came.
The Third Task, the portkey, arriving in the graveyard, watching with Cedric as the hooded figure approached from across the neatly clipped grass. The sudden agony in his head and the realization that they were in serious danger.
The barely there caress of phantom claws through the sweaty tangle of his hair.
"Kill the spare," high and cold and familiar, the voice of Lord Voldemort.
Harry had thrown himself at Cedric and they'd fallen twisting briefly through the misty place and when they hit solid ground the flash of green still burned behind his eyelids.
"Run!" he'd shouted at the blond Hufflepuff, who seemed to be frozen with fear.
Harry slapped him hard and pretty grey eyes, wide and terrified, focussed on him.
"Run Cedric, the portkey, we have to get out of here right the fuck now! It's Voldemort!"
They'd staggered to their feet. He'd pushed Cedric out of the way of another curse. Drawn his wand and started casting, stunners, disarming charms, every remotely damaging hex or jinx he knew. Fourth year spells that all bounced harmlessly off the hooded figure's shield.
There'd been a jet of blue light that sent him flying into a headstone and cracked his skull pretty good and outright broken at least a few of his ribs. His glasses shattered, and he'd shook his head wiping the blood out of his eyes with the ragged hem of his sleeve. He'd looked up to see the blurred form of Cedric calling for him, a few feet from the cup.
"Baby boy," a voice had hissed as he lost consciousness.
Returning to his senses he tried to move but he was bound from neck to ankle in conjured cords to the towering marble headstone of a cloaked angel wings flared wide and lantern held aloft. Harry didn't see Cedric and he hoped the blond had escaped if only so that he could alert the cavalry to their curtain call. In front of him the hooded figure who'd cursed him was checking the knots on his bonds. Harry caught sight of the missing finger.
"You!" he hissed, furiously.
Wormtail flinched away from him. Harry strained but the ropes held him fast. There was the familiar steady throb of pain interspersed with sharp shards of agony in his ankle and ribs that signified broken bones.
Wormtail drew a length of black cloth from the pocket of his robes and shoved it into Harry's mouth. At the foot of the grave the bundle of robes stirred fitfully and it felt like a red hot ice-pick had been buried in the centre of the lightning bolt scar.
Whatever was in that bundle it wasn't a baby that was for damn sure.
Hissing noises near his feet made him freeze, and wasn't it a sad state of affairs that he was relieved to find they came from a nine foot long snake in a chillingly venomous shade of green as it slid through the grass.
"Hungry," hissed the snake petulantly.
"Soon, soon you will feed my pet," soothed the figure swaddled in the bundle of robes in parseltongue.
So it was Voldemort then. Though he'd told Cedric it was, and had been ninety percent sure he was right, it was good to have his suspicions confirmed. It was Voldemort in a, no doubt horrifying, and no doubt temporary shape. Wormtail came back into his line of sight, struggling with the largest stone cauldron Harry had ever seen. Large enough that a full grown man could easily sit inside. The cauldron was filled with a clear liquid that sloshed noisily as, grunting from the effort, Wormtail finally managed to shove it into place.
It was, all of a sudden, all too apparent to Harry just what was going to happen.
Harry flinched as a screeching triumphant laughter that only he could hear filled the silence of the graveyard.
"The walls are falling. The walls are falling, half-breed. Your traitor-whore mother should have known they would not keep us out forever."
Harry laughed a bit himself, and if it had a screeching edge of hysteria to it, well, it'd been a long night and you couldn't hear it around the gag anyway. When it rained it really did fucking pour, didn't it.
The thing inside the bundle of robes on the ground was stirring more persistently, as though it was trying to free itself. Wormtail was busying himself at the bottom of the cauldron with a wand. Suddenly there were crackling blue names beneath it. The snake hissed in displeasure at the sudden brightness and slithered away into the darkness beyond the grave.
The liquid in the cauldron heated very fast, it seemed. The surface began not only to bubble, but to crackle and send out glowing sparks, as though it were on fire. Steam was thickening, blurring the outline of Wormtail tending the fire.
"Baby boy."
It was the first time he'd ever heard the words aloud and the voice was at least twice as awful in real life, the bare whisper like shoving needles in his ears. He whimpered slightly as the breath of the creature perched above and behind him stirred his hair and the stench of rancid blood and rotting meat washed over him.
"To allow yourself to be caged so, disgraceful worthless child. Why do you struggle with mere force when no rope or cage or wall could ever hold you?"
"Go away," Harry attempted to say, the words clawing their way up out of his throat without his permission only to be muffled into incoherence by the gag.
The creature laughed. The claws clicked on the marble and then it was gone, swirling out of existence as Wormtail approached.
"We're never far. We're watching you. It is almost time."
One…two…three.
They came swirling out of the darkness with a wisp of silvery fog, their pale skin stark and glittering like wet bone and mother of pearl. They perched atop the nearby headstones grinning widely, red eyes glowing like molten lava as they watched him. Harry felt his insides turn to water at the sight.
"Almost time," giggled one.
"Come and play," hissed another.
"What was that!" squeaked Wormtail wand raised, arm shaking as he whipped around.
Of course before he'd even completed the turn the creatures perched on the headstones were gone, sliding back into the misty place. Bad. Harry's instincts screamed at him. If Wormtail was hearing them that was bad, bad, bad. In fact, Harry thought to himself, they probably didn't have a word for how fucking bad that was.
The movements beneath the robes became more agitated. The high, cold voice snapped at the rat Animagus impatiently.
"Cease your paranoid blithering! Hurry!"
The whole surface of the water was alight with sparks now. It might have been encrusted with diamonds or sprinkled with magnesium.
"It is r-ready, Master," said Wormtail, still looking all too nervous.
"Then do it. Now." said the cold voice.
Wormtail pulled open the robes on the ground, revealing what was inside them, and if Harry hadn't already been exposed to the horror that was his extended family he might have cried out.
It was as though Wormtail had flipped over a stone and revealed something ugly, slimy, and blind – but a hundred times worse. Horrible, disgusting, wrong. All these things, yes, but inspiring nothing like the terror of those grins, the ones that promised fun and games. Fun and games where there were no rules except to inflict pain and spill blood.
The thing Wormtail had been carrying had the vague shape of a crouched human child, small enough to be mistaken for two or three years old, if the child had had a strange skin disease, had been starved since birth and had been the unholy product of a union between a snake and a serial killer. It was hairless and scaly-looking, a dark, raw, reddish black. Its arms and legs were thin and feeble, and its face – no human child alive ever had a face like that – flat and snakelike, with eyes that gleamed a dull watered down scarlet.
Not frightening, disturbing yes, but at this particular moment, with a liberal application of Advil, it – no he, wasn't even an annoyance. It would be a simple thing to crush that scaly putrid body and be done with the Dark Lord Voldemort forever. Harry strained further against his bonds reaching for the gut twisting sensation of falling in every direction at once. Straining for nothing, he didn't fade into the misty place and grating laughter mocked his futile attempts.
"Silly half-breed cannot even phase properly."
"Stuck. Trapped. Helpless as his sheep-whore mother."
Harry tried to block it out and turn his attention to the ritual, but it was difficult as the voices in his head took such pleasure in describing, in necrotic slashes of black, rusted-crimson and piss yellow detail, just what awaited him after the falling of the magic walls.
Harry wanted desperately to know what these magic walls were, who had built them and why the hell they hadn't been built to last until judgement day.
He didn't want to see, didn't want to hear. He concentrated on the ritual. Voldemort's return to body and power. Should be exciting. He wished there was popcorn and painkillers.
Voldemort raised his thin arms, put them around Wormtail's neck, and Wormtail lifted him. As he did so, his hood fell back, and Harry saw the look of revulsion on Wormtail's weak, pale face in the firelight as he carried the creature to the rim of the cauldron. For one moment, Harry saw the flat face illuminated in the sparks dancing on the surface of the potion. And then Wormtail lowered the creature into the cauldron. There was a hiss, and it vanished below the surface. Harry heard its frail body hit the bottom with a soft thud.
Let it drown, Harry thought, his scar burning almost past endurance, as screeching and hissing echoed in his ears or perhaps his mind. Harry wasn't entirely sure anymore. Just give me one goddamned break and let it drown.
Wormtail was speaking. His voice shook. He was frightened beyond his wits Harry could practically smell it rolling off him like the beads of sweat that trickled down his gaunt, sagging face. He raised his wand, closed his eyes, and spoke to the night.
"Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!"
The surface of the grave at Harry's feet cracked. Harry watched as a fine trickle of dust rose into the air at Wormtail's command and fell softly into the cauldron. The diamond surface of the water broke and hissed angrily. It sent sparks in all directions and turned a vivid, poisonous-looking blue.
Pissed off potion, that was new. Harry thought briefly of Snape and then wondered if this was what losing his mind felt like.
He tried to focus.
Now Wormtail was outright whimpering. He pulled a long, thin, shining silver dagger from inside his cloak. His voice broke into petrified sobs.
"Flesh – of the servant – w-willingly given – you will – revive – your master."
He stretched his right hand out in front of him – the hand with the missing finger. Harry realized what he was about to do and felt his lips twitch around the gag. A grim, stifled smile. The traitorous rat deserved what was about to happen to him.
The scream that pierced the night went through Harry as a singularly satisfying shiver. This was the best thing that had happened all night as far as he was concerned. Blood spurted from severed veins and arteries but not as fast as it should have by rights. Wormtail's severed left hand hit the grass with a dull thud and, gasping and blubbering, the rat bent, picked it up and after a moment's hesitation tossed it into the cauldron.
The potion turned a crackling, spitting red, bathing the cemetery in a hellish light. It was almost hypnotising the dancing light a fitting counterpoint the ragged hissing voices calling to him.
"Almost time. Special boy. Baby boy."
Wormtail was gasping and moaning with agony. Music to Harry's ears and Harry swayed in time with it. Not until Harry felt the rat's rancid, sour breath on his face did he come to enough to realize that Wormtail was right in front of him.
"B-blood of the enemy…forcibly taken…you will…resurrect your foe."
Harry could do nothing to prevent it, he was tied too tightly. Squinting down, snarling behind the gag and struggling hopelessly at the ropes binding him. He saw the shining silver dagger shaking in Wormtail's remaining hand. He felt its point penetrate the crook of his right arm and blood seeping down the sleeve of his torn robes.
All around him he heard the annoyed hissing and screeching.
"Ours. Our blood. Ours to take. Ours to spill. Worthless scuttling rat. It's ours!"
Wormtail, still panting with pain but blissfully unaware of the raging creatures calling for his death, his still beating heart and his intestines to wear as a necklace, fumbled in his pocket for a glass vial and held it to Harry's cut so that a sluggish dribble of blood rolled into it.
He staggered back to the cauldron with Harry's blood. He poured it inside. The liquid within turned, instantly, a blinding white. Wormtail, his job done, dropped to his knees beside the cauldron, then slumped sideways and lay on the ground, cradling the bleeding stump of his arm, gasping and sobbing.
The cauldron was simmering, sending its diamond sparks in all directions, so blindingly bright that it turned all else to velvety blackness. Nothing happened.
Let it have drowned. Harry thought, let it have gone wrong. In fact let the cauldron explode and destroy us both. Sounds like a better fate then what's coming for me.
As usual the gods and/or universe at large were ignoring Harry…or possibly paying rapt attention and deliberately choosing to screw him over. Either way, suddenly, the sparks emanating from the cauldron were extinguished.
A surge of white steam billowed thickly from the cauldron instead, obliterating everything in front of Harry, so that he couldn't see Wormtail or anything but the vapor hanging in the air. He thought for a moment that he was back in the misty place but with a shake of his head he came to his senses and dispelled the illusion. If he was in the misty place there would be claws, teeth and pain, not this frustrated throbbing muzzy-headedness.
He looked down at the blood soaking the front of his robes and dripping down his fingers. That explained a great deal, he thought to himself.
He raised his eyes again and through the mist in front of him, he saw, with an icy surge of apprehension pooling in his gut, the dark outline of a man, tall and skeletally thin, rising slowly from inside the cauldron.
Do complicated rebirthing ritual. Increase threat level to moderate and gain twenty damage points.
Another screechy giggle burbled up Harry's throat.
"Robe me," said the high, cold voice from behind the steam.
You've got two legs and a heartbeat now, snarked Harry in the relative privacy of his own mind, what's stopping you?
Wormtail, sobbing and moaning, still cradling his mutilated arm, scrambled to pick up the black robes from the ground, got to his feet, reached up, and pulled them one-handed over his master's head.
The thin man stepped out of the cauldron, staring at Harry...and Harry stared back into the face that had haunted his nightmares for three years, before he got better nightmares.
The handsome features twisted by dark magic were even further distorted now. He looked even looked a bit like the creatures that had spawned Harry. Probably the influence of using his blood. Whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat as a snake's with slits for nostrils, he was verging on monstrous but not quite making the cut.
Oops, thought Harry maliciously, indulging in a quiet cackle behind his gag, ruined your good looks, should've read the warning label.
Voldemort looked away from Harry and began examining his own body. His hands were like large, pale spiders. His long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face. The red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cat's, glinted in the light of the fire through the darkness. He held up his hands and flexed the fingers, his expression rapt and exultant.
He didn't take even the slightest notice of Wormtail, who still lay twitching and bleeding on the ground, nor of the great snake, which had slithered back into sight and was circling Harry again, hissing quietly about food.
Voldemort slipped one of those unnaturally long-fingered hands into a deep pocket and drew out a wand. If Ollivander was to be believed, a wand with a core of phoenix feather, a tail feather from the same phoenix that had provided the core for Harry's wand. Blinking and surprised that he hadn't thought to locate it earlier in all the excitement and concussion Harry craned his neck trying to find his own wand. It was there in the grass not far away.
Voldemort caught the direction of Harry's gaze and strode over to his wand, bare feet making no noise in the grass even as his robes swished along the ground. He held it up for Harry to see and then pocketed it with a little twirl.
He then he raised his own wand and pointed it at Wormtail, who was lifted off the ground and thrown against the headstone where Harry was tied. He fell to the foot of it and lay there, crumpled up and crying. Voldemort turned his scarlet eyes upon Harry, laughing a high, cold, mirthless laugh.
Everyone was taking a crack at him today.
Wormtail's robes were shining with blood now, soaked and dripping. He had wrapped the stump of his arm in them.
"My Lord," he choked staggering to his feet, shuddering violently then falling to his knees, "My Lord, you promised. You did, you promised..."
"Hold out your arm," said Voldemort lazily.
"Oh Master— thank you, Master ..."
He extended the bleeding stump, but Voldemort laughed again.
"The other arm, Wormtail."
"Master, please—p-please!"
Voldemort bent down and, without any regard whatsoever for the rat's injury, pulled out Wormtail's left arm. Wormtail fell to the ground panting and thrashing but Voldemort paid him no mind. He forced the sleeve of Wormtail's robes up past his elbow, and Harry saw something upon the skin there, something like a vivid red tattoo – a skull with a snake protruding from its mouth – the image that had appeared in the sky at the Quidditch World Cup. The Dark Mark.
For as much fear as the symbol inspired the name was so…cheesy, maybe. Cookiecutter was a better word for it. It was meant to scream 'Look at me I'm badass!' just like the name Death Eaters. Just looking at the name part of things you would think that he had a pack of crows or vultures or some other monstrosity that thought carrion was a delicacy following him around. That probably would have been more intimidating too.
Voldemort examined the mark carefully, ignoring Wormtail's uncontrollable weeping.
"It is back," he said softly, more to himself than anyone, "They will all have noticed it... and now, we shall see ...now we shall know."
He pressed his long white forefinger to the brand on Wormtail's arm.
The scar on Harry's forehead seared with a sudden sharp pain again, and Wormtail let out a fresh howl. It pierced the night and all around him hissing voices cheered at the free show, calling for more bloody violence.
Voldemort removed his fingers from Wormtail's mark, and Harry saw that it had turned jet black stark against the bloodless pallor of the traitor's skin. If Voldemort didn't do something soon he was going to be short a servant.
A look of cruel satisfaction on his face, Voldemort straightened up, threw back his head, and stared around at the dark graveyard.
"How many will be brave enough to return when they feel it?" he whispered, his gleaming red eyes fixed upon the stars. "And how many will be foolish enough to stay away?"
He began to pace up and down before Harry and Wormtail, eyes sweeping the graveyard all the while. After a minute or so, he looked down at Harry again, a cruel smile twisting his snakelike face.
"You stand, Harry Potter, upon the remains of my late father," he hissed softly. "A Muggle and a fool very like your dear mother. But they both had their uses, did they not? Your mother died to defend you as a child and I killed my father, and see how useful he has proved himself in death."
Voldemort laughed again. Up and down he paced, looking all around him as he walked, and the snake continued to circle in the grass, tracing sinuous figure eights. Harry started working harder at spitting out the gag, if Voldemort was going to monologue he wanted to at least be able to make snarky comments.
"You see that house upon the hillside, Potter? My father lived there. My mother, a witch who lived here in this village, fell in love with him. But he abandoned her when she told him what she was. He didn't like magic, my father. He left her and returned to his Muggle parents before I was even born. Potter, and she died giving birth to me, leaving me to be raised in a Muggle orphanage…but I vowed to find him... I revenged myself upon him, that fool who gave me his name…Tom Riddle…"
Still he paced, his red eyes darting from grave to grave. Harry made a retching sound and spat the gag out of his mouth, taking a deep breath he spat again to get the taste out of his mouth.
"Boo fucking hoo," said Harry hoarsely, "You think your life was so damn tough? My uncle doesn't like magic any better than your father did. At least he left you the fuck alone."
Voldemort had no eyebrows, or hair or eyelashes, but the flesh above one eye rose in a haughty combination of disdain and disappointed surprise.
"Such vulgar language, Potter, show some decorum. Do you really want your last words to be useless filth?"
"Doesn't bother me either way," shrugged Harry as best as he could against the ropes digging into his flesh, "Words are words. First last and every syllable in between they only have an impact because of the reality they describe."
"How true, very poetic," he said quietly, "why, I am growing quite sentimental. But look, Harry! My true family returns."
The air was suddenly full of the swishing of cloaks. Between graves, behind the yew tree, in every shadowy space, wizards were apparating. All of them were hooded and masked. And one by one they moved forward . . . slowly, cautiously, as though they could hardly believe their eyes Voldemort stood in silence, waiting for them. Then one of the Death Eaters fell to his knees, crawled toward Voldemort and kissed the hem of his black robes.
"Master...Master," he murmured.
The Death Eaters behind him did the same; each of them approaching Voldemort on his knees and kissing his robes, before backing away and standing up, forming a silent circle, which enclosed Tom Riddle's grave, Harry, Voldemort, and the sobbing and twitching heap that was Wormtail. Yet they left gaps in the circle, as though waiting for more people. Voldemort, however, did not seem to expect more. He looked around at the hooded faces, and though there was no wind rustling seemed to run around the circle, as though it had shivered.
"Pathetic sheep to fall to their knees and bow their heads to that," hissed a voice.
Harry couldn't help but agree. Voldemort had claimed the Death Eaters were his true family, yet there was no loyalty, no strength in them, only fear.
"Stupid prey cannot even bleat without teaching."
"Welcome, Death Eaters," said Voldemort quietly. "Thirteen years...thirteen years since last we met. Yet you answer my call as though it were yesterday, we are still united under the Dark Mark, then! Or are we?"
He put back his face and sniffed, his slit-like nostrils flaring.
"I smell guilt," he said. "There is the stench of guilt upon the air."
A second shiver ran around the circle, as though each member of it longed, but did not dare to step back from him. Why did they cower? They owed him nothing. Their leader had fallen, had proved himself unworthy. He was not the strongest he would have to earn back his place and if that meant tearing the throats from any and all challengers then that was what needed to happen. That was the way of things in a pack, fall behind and you are no longer pack, just prey.
"Prey to feed your brothers and sisters."
So that's where those thoughts came from. That knowing. A sort of pack sense. Harry wondered what the Death Eaters would do if the wreck descended upon their little circle.
"You know what they would do, half-breed. They would run and scream and die."
"I see you all, whole and healthy, with your powers intact – such prompt appearances! And I ask myself, why did this band of wizards never come to the aid of their master, to whom they swore eternal loyalty?"
No one spoke. No one moved except Wormtail, who was upon the ground, still sobbing over his bleeding arm.
"Because you fell. Couldn't hunt, couldn't fight. Useless, powerless, burden. There is no obligation to follow a leader who cannot lead," hissed Harry.
The Death Eaters flinched at the sudden crack in the silence and at Harry's words themselves.
"Silencio," said Voldemort lazily, fury flickering behind his outward calm, "I did not ask for your opinion, boy."
Harry growled in annoyance but no sound emerged from his throat. More effective than any gag Harry wondered briefly why Wormtail hadn't just silenced him to being with.
"However crude his words our young guest does have a point," whispered Voldemort, "My faithful followers must have believed me broken, they thought I was gone. They slipped back among my enemies, and they pleaded innocence, and ignorance, and bewitchment. And then I ask myself, but how could they have believed I would not rise again? They, who knew the steps I took, long ago, to guard myself against mortal death? They, who had seen proofs of the immensity of my power in the times when I was mightier than any wizard living? And I answer myself, perhaps they believed a still greater power could exist, one that could vanquish even Lord Voldemort...perhaps they now pay allegiance to another...perhaps that champion of commoners, of Mudbloods and Muggles, Albus Dumbledore?"
At the mention of Dumbledore's name, the members of the circle stirred, and some muttered and shook their heads. Voldemort ignored them.
"It is a disappointment to me. I confess myself disappointed."
One of the men suddenly flung himself forward, breaking the circle. Trembling from head to foot, he collapsed at Voldemort's feet.
"Master!" he shrieked, "Master, forgive me! Forgive us all!"
Voldemort began to laugh. He raised his wand.
"Crucio!"
The Death Eater on the ground writhed and shrieked; Harry was sure the sound must carry to the houses around. Voldemort wasn't being terribly discreet. In fact in between the sparking cauldron, the shouting, the screaming and the tossed curses the muggles should have been well spooked by now and the police should have been descending upon the graveyard. For all the good it would do them.
"Magic walls."
The answer hissed into Harry's mind with all the delicacy of a sledgehammer.
"Magic walls to keep us out, to keep the screaming in. They spoil our fun and thwart our games, but they will not stand before us."
"The walls are falling. The walls are falling. Almost time to come home, half-breed. Let the useless shadow spit his senseless words at stupid prey. You are ours. You belong to us. We claim you."
The ominous words blended nicely with the screaming that echoed faintly in the silence of the night and rang in Harry's physical ears. Outside the ring of Death Eaters there was the swirl of silver fog and the flash of bone-white scales stark against the blackness for one instant and gone the next.
The walls were falling. The magic walls. Wards.
Maybe Harry would get lucky and Voldemort would get to killing him before that happened.
Voldemort raised his wand. The tortured Death Eater lay flat upon the ground, gasping.
"Get up, Avery," said Voldemort softly. "Stand up. You ask for forgiveness? I do not forgive. I do not forget. Thirteen long years ... I want thirteen years' repayment before I forgive you. Wormtail here has paid some of his debt already, have you not, Wormtail?"
He looked down at Wormtail, who continued to sob.
"You returned to me, not out of loyalty, but out of fear of your old friends. You deserve this pain, Wormtail. You know that, don't you?" crooned Voldemort.
His voice was a soft tenor and almost sweet and musical in its mocking. Charming even as he grandstanded and doled out threats. A pleasure to hear. Between that and his former looks it was a wonder that there weren't more female Death Eaters, really.
"Yes, Master," moaned Wormtail, "P-please. Master please..."
"Yet you helped return me to my body," said Voldemort coolly, watching Wormtail sob on the ground. "Worthless and traitorous as you are, you helped me... and Lord Voldemort rewards his helpers..."
Voldemort raised his wand again and whirled it through the air. A streak of what looked like molten silver hung shining in the wand's wake. Momentarily shapeless, it writhed and then formed itself into a gleaming replica of a human hand, bright as moonlight, which soared downward and fixed itself upon Wormtail's bleeding wrist.
Wormtail's sobbing stopped abruptly. His breathing harsh and ragged, he raised his head and stared in disbelief at the silver hand, now attached seamlessly to his arm, as though he were wearing a mercury glove. He flexed the shining fingers, then, trembling, picked up a small twig on the ground and crushed it into powder. It was more physical power than Wormtail had ever known.
Don't spend it all in one place, thought Harry with a sneer that no one was paying attention to.
"My Lord," he whispered, wide-eyed and awed. "Master, it is beautiful. Thank you...thank you..."
He scrambled forward on his knees with the agility of someone used to crawling on the ground on all fours and kissed the hem of Voldemort's robes.
"May your loyalty never waver again, Wormtail," said Voldemort the warning clear in his voice.
"No, my Lord, never, my Lord."
Voldemort might not have been forgiving but what he was was practical. He had only a few Death Eaters and he would need every one of them to go up against the wizarding world and regain his former strength. Even a rat as snivelling as Wormtail would do for cannon fodder.
Wormtail stood up and took his place in the circle, staring at his powerful new hand, his face still wet with tears. Voldemort now approached the man on Wormtail's right.
"Lucius, my slippery friend," he whispered, halting before him. "I am told that you have not renounced the old ways, though to the world you present a respectable face. You are still ready to take the lead in a spot of Muggle-torture, I believe? Yet you never tried to find me, Lucius. Your exploits at the Quidditch World Cup were fun, I daresay, but might not your energies have been better directed toward finding and aiding your master?"
Why would Lucius have attempted to find his Master when he was well on his way to becoming the Master himself? Money did a great deal to smooth a rise to power and Lucius limited his violence to the areas where it would be most effective. A true Slytherin using a combination of lies and trickery that was subtle but often more efficient than outright violence, and by the time the wizarding world realized just who was king of their castle it would have been too late to unseat him. A pity Voldemort had thrown a monkey wrench into those works.
"My Lord, I was constantly on the alert," came Lucius Malfoy's voice swiftly from beneath the hood. "Had there been any sign from you, any whisper of your whereabouts, I would have been at your side immediately, nothing could have prevented me –"
"Liar, liar, pants on fire," sing-songed Harry though no one could hear him.
This would be kind of fun if he weren't injured and uncomfortable, he thought to himself.
"And yet you ran from my Mark, when a faithful Death Eater sent it into the sky last summer?" said Voldemort lazily, and Malfoy stopped talking abruptly.
"Yes, I know all about that, Lucius. You have disappointed me. I expect more faithful service in the future."
"Of course, my Lord, of course. You are merciful, thank you."
Voldemort moved on, and stopped, staring at the space – large enough for two people – that separated Malfoy and the next man.
"The Lestranges should stand here," said Voldemort quietly. "But they are entombed in Azkaban. They were faithful. They went to Azkaban rather than renounce me. When Azkaban is broken open, the Lestranges will be honored beyond their dreams. The dementors will join us, they are our natural allies. We will recall the banished giants. I shall have all my devoted servants returned to me, and an army of creatures whom all fear."
Not all, thought Harry.
He walked on. Some of the Death Eaters he passed in silence, but he paused before others and spoke to them.
"Macnair, destroying dangerous beasts for the Ministry of Magic now, Wormtail tells me? You shall have better victims than that soon, Macnair. Lord Voldemort will provide."
"Thank you, Master, thank you," murmured Macnair.
"And here—" Voldemort moved on to the two largest hooded figures, "We have
Crabbe, you will do better this time, will you not, Crabbe? And you, Goyle?"
They bowed clumsily, muttering dully.
"Yes, Master ..."
"We will, Master..."
"The same goes for you, Nott," said Voldemort quietly as he walked past a stooped figure in Goyle's shadow.
"My Lord, I prostrate myself before you, I am your most faithful –"
"That will do," said Voldemort.
He had reached the largest gap of all, and he stood surveying it with his blank, red eyes, as though he could see people standing there.
"And here we have six missing Death Eaters. Three dead in my service. One, too cowardly to return. He will pay. One, who I believe has left me forever, he will be killed, of course. And one, who remains my most faithful servant, and who has already re-entered my service."
The Death Eaters stirred, and Harry saw their eyes dart sideways at one another through their masks. Who did he speak of? They knew each other, this circle, who was missing? Unaccounted for? What weren't they aware of? Harry was wondering the same thing.
"He is at Hogwarts, that faithful servant, and it was through his efforts that our young friend arrived here tonight. Yes," said Voldemort, a grin curling his lipless mouth as the eyes of the circle flashed in Harry's direction. "Harry Potter has kindly joined us for my rebirthing party. One might go so far as to call him my guest of honor."
If Harry's hands had been free he might have given into the urge to wave and flip them off. As it was he grinned.
Look at me, I'm not afraid of bleating sheep like you.
The hum of approval through his mind from his murderous family sounded like a hundred bone saws, but it was the thought that counted right?
Wrong.
Oh so wrong.
There were more of them now. Harry could sense it. The wreck. They gathered around just out of sight and out of phase. Waiting in the misty place for the wards to finally fall. There were about twelve so far. Harry wondered if more would come.
There was a silence. Then the Death Eater to the right of Wormtail stepped forward, and Lucius Malfoy's voice spoke from under the mask.
"Master, we crave to know, we beg you to tell us, how you have achieved this –this miracle. How you managed to return to us…"
"Ah, what a story it is, Lucius," said Voldemort, pleased to be given another perfect opportunity to listen to himself speak. That Malfoy was damn crafty. "And it begins – and ends –with my young friend here."
He walked lazily over to stand next to Harry, so that the eyes of the whole circle were upon the two of them. The snake continued to circle.
"You know, of course, that they have called this boy my downfall?" Voldemort said softly, his red eyes upon Harry, whose scar began to burn so fiercely that he almost screamed in agony. "You all know that on the night I lost my powers and my body, I tried to kill him. His mother died in the attempt to save him – and unwittingly provided him with a protection I admit I had not foreseen. I could not touch the boy."
That made Harry sit up and take interest. Those words, and the caustic hissing of the wreck in his mind.
"Traitorous prey!"
"Oathbreaking slut!"
"Sheep-whore!"
"She stole what was ours! She took our baby boy from us and put up magic walls that kept us out!"
"But not forever."
Voldemort raised one of his long white fingers and put it very close to Harry's cheek. Eyes a poisonous green bored into eyes of dull scarlet.
"His mother left upon him the traces other sacrifice. This is old magic, I should have remembered it, I was foolish to overlook it... but no matter. I can touch him now."
Harry felt the cold tip of the long white finger touch him, and thought his head would burst with the pain. Voldemort laughed softly in his ear, then took the finger away and continued addressing the Death Eaters.
"I miscalculated, my friends, I admit it. My curse was deflected by the woman's foolish sacrifice, and it rebounded upon myself. Aaah . . . pain beyond pain, my friends. Nothing could have prepared me for it. I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost…but still, I was alive. What I was, even I do not know. I, who have gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality. You know my goal – to conquer death. And now, I was tested, and it appeared that one or more of my experiments had worked for I had not been killed, though the curse should have done it. Nevertheless, I was as powerless as the weakest creature alive, and without the means to help myself, for I had no body, and every spell that might have helped me required the use of a wand. I remember only forcing myself, sleeplessly, endlessly, second by second, to exist. I settled in a faraway place, in a forest, and I waited. Surely, one of my faithful Death Eaters would try and find me. One of them would come and perform the magic I could not, to restore me to a body. But I waited in vain."
The shiver ran once more around the circle of listening Death Eaters. Voldemort let the silence spiral horribly, letting his followers stew, relishing in the scent of fear that was thick in the cool summer night, before continuing.
"Only one power remained to me. I could possess the bodies of others. But I dared not go where other humans were plentiful, for I knew that the Aurors were still abroad and searching for me. I sometimes inhabited animals – snakes, of course, being my preference – but I was little better off inside them than as pure spirit, for their bodies were ill adapted to perform magic and my possession of them shortened their lives; none of them lasted long. Then, four years ago, the means for my return seemed assured. A wizard –young, foolish, and gullible – wandered across my path in the forest I had made my home. Oh, he seemed the very chance I had been dreaming of for he was a teacher at Dumbledore's school. He was easy to bend to my will...he brought me back to this country, and after a while, I took possession of his body, to supervise him closely as he carried out my orders. But my plan failed. I did not manage to steal the Philosopher's Stone. I was not to be assured immortal life. I was thwarted. Thwarted, once again, by Harry Potter."
Silence once more; nothing was stirring, not even the leaves on the yew tree. The Death Eaters were quite motionless, the glittering eyes in their masks fixed upon Voldemort, and upon Harry.
"The servant died when I left his body, and I was left as weak as ever I had been," Voldemort continued. "I returned to my hiding place far away, and I will not pretend to you that I didn't then fear that I might never regain my powers. Yes, that was perhaps my darkest hour. I could not hope that I would be sent another wizard to possess and I had given up hope, now, that any of my Death Eaters cared what had become of me."
One or two of the masked wizards in the circle moved uncomfortably, but Voldemort took no notice.
"And then, not even a year ago, when I had almost abandoned hope, it happened at last... a servant returned to me. Wormtail here, who had faked his own death to escape justice, was driven out of hiding by those he had once counted friends, and decided to return to his master. He sought me in the country where it had long been rumored I was hiding, helped, of course, by the rats he met along the way. Wormtail has a curious affinity with rats, do you not, Wormtail? His filthy little friends told him there was a place, deep in an Albanian forest, that they avoided, where small animals like themselves had met their deaths by a dark shadow that possessed them. But his journey back to me was not smooth, was it, Wormtail? For, hungry one night, on the edge of the very forest where he had hoped to find me, he foolishly stopped at an inn for some food, and who should he meet there, but one Bertha Jorkins, a witch from the Ministry of Magic. Now see the way that fate favors Lord Voldemort. This might have been the end of Wormtail, and of my last hope for regeneration. But Wormtail – displaying a presence of mind I would never have expected from him – convinced Bertha Jorkins to accompany him on a nighttime stroll. He overpowered her. He brought her to me. And Bertha Jorkins, who might have ruined all, proved instead to be a gift beyond my wildest dreams, for – with a little persuasion – she became veritable mine of information. She told me that the Triwizard Tournament would be played at Hogwarts this year. She told me that she knew of a faithful Death Eater who would be only too willing to help me, if I could only contact him. She told me many things, but the means I used to break the Memory Charm upon her were powerful, and when I had extracted all useful information from her, her mind and body were both damaged beyond repair. She had now served her purpose. I could not possess her. I disposed of her."
Voldemort smiled his terrible smile, his red eyes blank and pitiless.
"Wormtail's body, of course, was ill adapted for possession, as all assumed him dead, and would attract far too much attention if noticed. However, he was the able-bodied servant I needed, and, poor wizard though he is, Wormtail was able to follow the instructions I gave him, which would return me to a rudimentary, weak body of my own, a body I would be able to inhabit while awaiting the essential ingredients for true rebirth, a spell or two of my own invention, a little help from my dear Nagini," Voldemort's red eyes fell upon the continually circling snake, "A potion concocted from unicorn blood, and the snake venom Nagini provided. I was soon returned to an almost human form, and strong enough to travel. There was no hope of stealing the Philosopher's Stone anymore, for I knew that Dumbledore would have seen to it that it was destroyed. But I was willing to embrace mortal life again, before chasing immortality. I set my sights lower. I would settle for my old body back again, and my old strength. I knew that to achieve this – it is an old piece of Dark Magic, the potion that revived me tonight – I would need three powerful ingredients. Well, one of them was already at hand, was it not, Wormtail? Flesh given by a servant. My father's bone, naturally, meant that we would have to come here, where he was buried. But the blood of a foe. Wormtail would have had me use any wizard, would you not, Wormtail? Any wizard who had hated me, as so many of them still do. But I knew the one I must use, if I was to rise again, more powerful than I had been when I had fallen. I wanted Harry Potter's blood. I wanted the blood of the one who had stripped me of power thirteen years ago, for the lingering protection his mother once gave him would then reside in my veins too. But how to get at Harry Potter? For he has been better protected than I think even he knows, protected in ways devised by Dumbledore long ago, when it fell to him to arrange the boy's future. Dumbledore invoked an ancient magic, to ensure the boy's protection as long as he is in his relations' care. Not even I can touch him there. Then, of course, there was the Quidditch World Cup. I thought his protection might be weaker there, away from his relations and Dumbledore, but I was not yet strong enough to attempt kidnap in the midst of a horde of Ministry wizards. And then, the boy would return to Hogwarts, where he is under the crooked nose of that Muggle-loving fool from morning until night. So how could I take him? Why, by using Bertha Jorkins' information, of course. Use my one faithful Death Eater, stationed at Hogwarts, to ensure that the boy's name was entered into the Goblet of Fire. Use my Death Eater to ensure that the boy won the tournament— that he touched the Triwizard Cup first – the cup which my Death Eater had turned into a Portkey, which would bring him here, beyond the reach of Dumbledore's help and protection, and into my waiting arms. And here he is, the boy you all believed had been my downfall."
Voldemort moved slowly forward and turned to face Harry. He raised his wand. Harry felt the silencing spell fall away seconds before Voldemort gleefully shouted his next spell.
"Crucio!"
It was pain beyond anything Harry had ever experienced. His very bones were on fire. His head was surely splitting along his scar and there were shards of glass being shoved into his brain. His eyes were rolling madly in his head and his broken bones ground against each other adding another level to the symphony of agony. He thought he might have screamed but he was beyond knowing. He wanted it to end, to black out, to die. And then it was gone. He was hanging limply in the ropes binding him to the headstone of Voldemort's father, looking up into those bright red eyes through a kind of mist. A sliver swirling fog, and a slow answering twist in his gut. The night was ringing with the sound of the Death Eaters' laughter. His mind was ringing with the nails on a chalkboard screeching of the wreck. He could feel the misty place, practically pressing against his skin.
"Baby boy. Baby boy."
"You see, I think, how foolish it was to suppose that this boy could ever have been stronger than me," said Voldemort. "But I want there to be no mistake in anybody's mind. Harry Potter escaped me by a lucky chance. And I am now going to prove my power by killing him, here and now, in front of you all, when there is no Dumbledore to help him, and no mother to die for him. I will give him his chance. He will be allowed to fight, and you will be left in no doubt which of us is the stronger. Just a little longer, Nagini," he whispered, and the snake glided away through the grass to where the Death Eaters stood watching.
"Now untie him, Wormtail, and give him back his wand."
Up was down and down was up and down and nowhere and everywhere. In a swirl of silver fog Harry emerged from the misty place just ahead of the claws of the wreck. He landed lightly on his good foot and reached into the pocket of Voldemort's robes while he was still too stunned to respond and took his wand.
Taking was the way of the wreck. The sense of the others was strong in his mind and he felt almost high on in their bloody thoughts mingling with his own until he couldn't separate them. Proud and disgusted both, that their baby boy abomination, their contaminated half-sheep bastard, was growing up.
The Death Eaters and Voldemort watched with interest as Harry danced out of easy arm's reach on his one good foot. Without prompting the circled closer, closing the gap as Voldemort curled his lip in annoyance and anger.
"An interesting trick," the self-proclaimed Dark Lord sneered, raising his wand, "But tell me Harry Potter, have you been taught to duel?"
At these words Harry remembered, as though from a former life, the dueling club at Hogwarts he had attended briefly two years ago.
"I've been taught how not to duel," shrugged Harry, feeling a little drunk on his success, "But I don't know that we really have time for a proper lesson."
Even if he could, why would he duel Voldemort properly when he was surrounded by Death Eaters, outnumbered by at least thirty to one? He had never learned anything that could possibly be of use to him for this. Hell, even the scuttling Wormtail was a better duelist, hadn't he defeated him earlier with nothing more complex than a well-constructed shield charm? He knew he was facing the thing against which Moody had always warned, the unblockable Avada Kedavra curse – and Voldemort was right – his mother was not here to die for him this time.
"Why would you play games with stupid rules made by stupid prey?" hissed the wreck derisively.
"Come play with us. We have better games. Games of blood and screaming."
"Now, now Harry," scolded Voldemort mockingly, "Looming death is no excuse for a wasting an opportunity to better yourself. We bow to each other. Harry," said Voldemort, bending a little, but keeping his snakelike face upturned to Harry. "Come, the niceties must be observed. Dumbledore would like you to show manners. Bow to death, Harry."
The Death Eaters were laughing again. Voldemort's lipless mouth was smiling.
Harry did not bow. His lips curved away from his teeth, both sets, the top and bottom. Rounded and human they didn't have the same effect as a mouthful of jagged blood-stained death but the sentiment behind the grin was the same. How could it not be with more than a dozen such grins pressing on his mind?
"I do not bare my neck to pathetic corruptions."
That sent Voldemort into a glorious towering fury.
"I said, bow," Voldemort snapped, raising his wand – and Harry felt his spine curve as though a huge, invisible hand were bending him ruthlessly forward, and the Death Eaters laughed harder than ever.
"Very good," said Voldemort softly, and as he raised his wand the pressure bearing down upon Harry lifted too. "And now you face me, like a man...straight-backed and proud, the way your father died...And now - we duel."
Voldemort raised his wand, and before Harry could do anything to defend himself, before he could even move, he had been hit again by the Cruciatus Curse. The pain was so intense, so all-consuming, that he no longer knew where he was. White-hot knives were piercing every inch of his skin, his head was surely going to burst with pain, he was screaming more loudly than he'd ever screamed in his life – And then it stopped. Harry rolled over and scrambled to his feet. He was shaking as uncontrollably as Wormtail had done when his hand had been cut off. He staggered sideways into the wall of watching Death Eaters, and they pushed him away, back toward Voldemort.
"A little break," said Voldemort, the slit-like pupils dilating with excitement, "A little pause. That hurt, didn't it. Harry? You don't want me to do that again, do you?"
"Again! Again! Again! Scream for us! Let us hear your agony, your misery. Let us know your pain so that we can hurt you more. Fun and games. Fun and games."
"I asked you whether you want me to do that again," said Voldemort softly, not hearing the voices, not understanding the sudden upward twitch of his lips.
"Answer me! Imperio!"
And Harry felt, for the third time in his life, the sensation that his mind had been wiped of all thought. Ah, it was bliss, not to think, to be alone in his mind without the press of the misty place, the presence of the wreck, the whispers in his ears that promised so many wonderfully horrible things. It was as though he were floating, dreaming.
Then there was a voice. Just answer no ... say no ... just answer no.
And then there was another.
"Baby boy. Baby boy."
And another.
"You cannot escape us. You cannot hide your mind. Not from us."
And another.
"You belong to us, half-breed, and we will take you."
Just answer no. . . .
"The wall is falling. It is almost time. Almost there."
"Shut up," Harry managed to hiss.
Just answer no. . . .
"Special boy. Little half-breed shadow."
"Baby boy. We see you, baby boy."
Just say it…
"I SAID SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
And these words burst from Harry's mouth. Ragged and jagged and furious, they echoed through the graveyard, and the dream state was lifted as suddenly as though cold water had been thrown over him – back rushed the aches that the Cruciatus Curse had left all over his body – back rushed the realization of where he was, and what he was facing. Back rushed the jewel bright web of the wreck in his mind and the sense of the misty place pressing close against his skin.
Mind as clear as it had been all night, back rushed the fear of the wreck. Greater than any terror Voldemort could inspire. The snake-faced wizard with the shadow of a monster in his countenance might have been able to take him apart limb from limb with magic, but that was only if he could catch him.
Once the walls fell the wreck would descend upon him and rip him from the face of the Earth. There was nowhere he could run that the wreck couldn't feel him and there were very few places that could even keep them out. They would take him, just as they'd promised they would all those years ago. Bring him home, kicking and screaming, and teach him all he needed to know of malice and viciousness. They would engrave the lesson into his body and there would be no escape for him.
"Fun and games. Fun and games."
"You dare to speak so to me?" said Voldemort quietly, and the Death Eaters were not laughing now. "You won't say no? Harry, obedience is a virtue I need to teach you before you die. Manners as well, apparently. Perhaps another little dose of pain?"
Voldemort raised his wand, but this time Harry was ready. With the reflexes born of a childhood spent dodging fists and thrown bottles and an adolescence spent dodging curses, bludgers, werewolves and giant snakes, he flung himself sideways onto the ground. He rolled behind the marble headstone of Voldemort's father, and he heard it crack as the curse missed him.
That side of the circle of Death Eaters could see him clearly, crouched on the balls of his feet with his back pressed against the cool stone, but did not interfere. The snake passed too close and Harry favoured her with a warning hiss. She spat at him with all the arrogance of serpents but the orders from her true master were clear and she glided away.
"We are not playing hide-and-seek, Harry," said Voldemort's soft, cold voice, drawing nearer, as the Death Eaters laughed. "You cannot hide from me."
At this Harry snorted.
"I could and have for years, as you know very well. When will you get it through your thick skull, you are not the thing I am most afraid of. If things were different you could never hold me here against my will. And I would rather play different games."
"Does this mean you are tired of our duel? Does this mean that you would prefer me to finish it now, Harry? Come out, Harry…come out and play then... it will be quick...it might even be painless...I would not know…I have never died."
Harry crouched behind the headstone and knew the end had come. In his mind the wreck shrieked, exultant, and Harry could almost feel the invisible cracks in the invisible walls spider-web outward as the wreck threw themselves at it. There was no hope ... no help to be had. And as he heard Voldemort draw nearer still, he knew one thing only, and it was beyond fear or reason: the walls were falling, he should be running.
Before Voldemort could stick his snakelike face around the headstone. Harry stood up ... he gripped his wand tightly in his hand, thrust it out in front of him, and threw himself around the headstone, facing Voldemort.
Voldemort was ready. As Harry tossed his wand at the snake-faced bastard he shouted the curse that should have ended it all.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Only his aim was a little off as the wand struck him dead centre of his pasty forehead and a jet of green light shot past Harry's left ear, ruffling his shaggy hair and taking out an unlucky Death Eater standing in the circle who wasn't fast enough to get out of the way. Crabbe or Goyle, Harry was beyond caring.
"Make sure Dumbledore gets that would you, Tom? Cheers," said Harry with dark cheer.
"What is the meaning of this boy!"
"The walls are falling," laughed Harry, and the sound was like nails on a chalkboard, "You should all be running."
The he turned on his heel and took his own advice, running faster than he'd ever run in the whole of his life.
"Stop him!" Voldemort ordered.
The wards surrounding the graveyard fell with an audible crack and a shower of light. Lucius Malfoy stood, barring his way, wand drawn.
Harry ran through him, blown apart into wisps of silver fog by the momentum until he reappeared six feet directly behind the wizard still pelting across the graveyard, zig-zagging around headstones with speed agility that belied broken bones. There were screams and shouts behind him and the sudden scent of fresh blood on the air and the loud cracks that signalled hasty apparation.
Harry hit the forest beyond the graveyard, running through the trees as if they weren't even there, phasing as easy as breathing and the wreck with him, among the trees, some running impossibly fast with mad, hunting grins splitting their faces, some swirling in and out of the misty place.
All called out to him in sibilant voices that pierced his human eardrums like hundreds of needles, and laughed insane, murderous, horrible, screeching laughs.
"Run, run, run. As fast as you can, half-breed. You will never escape us."
"You are one of us. You are ours."
"Ours to teach. Ours to play with. Ours to mold. Ours to destroy."
Harry ran. He ran without a care for pain or fatigue or lack of air, all he cared about was staying ahead of those copper claws and bloodstained smiles.
The wreck chased him down, through the trees and the dark. In spite of his speed, they were faster. Even if they hadn't been, they could just as easily phase in front of him. And, eventually, when they tired of chasing him, that's just what they did.
Harry slammed into the first one as it phased into existence before he could avoid it. They went tumbling and claws hooked into his flesh. Harry shouted, and clawed for a hold on the grass, on a dead branch. He kicked and bucked trying to throw the creature off.
It was so strong, stronger than anything that thin had any right to be. It laughed at his struggles and with a lazy roll it dragged him into the misty place.
And Harry screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed.
AN: Here endeth the prologue. Hope you enjoyed! Feel free to drop me a review on your way out, I'm always looking to hear from readers about what I can do to improve.