Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Either the ten-year old version, or the older one. I am using this chapter, which is from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling.
This story is written in response to a challenge given by Winged Quill, about the characters reading one chapter from the Harry Potter books. This is my idea.
Harry was running away.
It seemed like he always was running away. It wasn't that he was a coward, but when you have five boys, all bigger than you, which intend to make you quite aquainted with the pavement, courtesy of their their meaty fists, you are rather inclined to be elsewhere. It was because of this that a young Harry Potter was running as fast as he could behind his school kitchen. It was time for Break, and Dudley had decided that he was bored.
Dudley was Harry's whale of a cousin. Rather large and rather stupid, his favorite game that he couldn't play on a computer was Harry Hunting. It used to be simply Harry Hitting, however, Harry had gotten quite good at running and avoiding, and more and more frequently Dudley and his gang would give up before they could catch him.
"There he is. I'll get him." A rather high, reedy voice called out. Harry let out a groan as he stopped. Piers had seen him.
Out of all of Dudley's minions, Piers was the smallest, which also meant that he was the quickest. He was the one who most often caught Harry. Luckily, there was a small alleyway between the kitchen and the next building. If he could get through there and around to the front door, he might be able to get inside before they caught him. They couldn't whale on him with a teacher present.
Harry dashed down the alleyway, hearing the sounds of the others behind him.
"Trapped him now!" Harry's breath caught as Gordon, one of Dudley's larger buddies, steped in front of the other end of the alley. Without thinking, harry threw himself behind the dumpsters beside the kitchen door.
CRACK
All Harry could see was stars. Dazedly, Harry lay there and waited for the pain to begin. His head throbed from where he had hit the wall, or dumpster, or whatever it was that had rang his head like a bell.
Nothing happened. The ringing in his head began to fade, and Harry realized that he could hear another bell. Break was over. Dazedly, Harry chanced a glance around. He didn't recognize where he was. He was laying on a sheet of white pavement, encloed by a short brick wall. A stack of bricks was next to him with...smoke...coming out of the top.
Harry stood and swayed on the spot. He was still very dizzy from hiting his head. He walked over to the birck wall, intending to step over, but caught himself just in time. Harry stared down into the alley he had been running through just moments before. Dudley and his gang were looking around stupidly, trying to figure out where he had gone to, and were slowly making their way towards the front doors to return to class.
Harry turned and collapsed next to the stack, er, chimney. How had he gotten onto the roof? He couldn't have jumped. Maybe...the wind was kiind of strong in the alley. Maybe it had picked him up. But wouldn't Dudley and his gang have seen him fly?
A hard gust of wind broke Harry's train of thought. He shuddered, the wind certainly felt strong enough to blow him away.
Harry had no idea how to get down. It looked like he would be stuck up here until someone came for him.
Idly, Harry watched the wind dance bits and pieces of paper and junk across the roof. Several sheets blew over next to him, and Harry jumped as he read what was written in the corner.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry stared at the sheets. They started to pick up in the wind, but Harry quickly snatched them and examined them. They looked like they had been torn out of a book. One of the edges was all ragged, and what he supposed were page numbers lined the bottom of the sheet. But, who would write a book about him? One with apparently 400 pages.
'Its probably about some other Harry Potter.' He thought glumly. Though, he didn't know how many Harry Potters there could be in the world. Surely not that many.
Having little else to do, Harry decided to read the pages and see what he could find out about this other Harry.
Chapter 34: Flesh, Blood, and Bone
Harry shuddered after reading the Chapter Heading. A picture was beneath it of a man with what looked like a knife in front of a massive bubbling bowl. All in all, not a friendly image. Obviously he was starting in the middle of whatever story was being told.
Harry felt his feet slam into the ground; his injured leg gave way, and he fell forward; his hand let go of the Triwizard Cup at last. He raised his head.
'Triwizard?' Harry flinched instinctively. If Uncle Vernon knew that he was reading about wizards...Uncle Vernon despised anything that wasn't perfectly normal. Wizards and magic were firmly in that category. The only time Harry had seen Uncle Vernon get mad at Dudley was when Dudley had wanted to get a computer game about wizards. Uncle Vernon had actually grounded Dudley when he had complained and continued to ask for it. Harry glanced around and continued. At least he knew this story wasn't about him.
"Where are we?" he said.
Cedric shook his head. He got up, pulled Harry to his feet, and they looked around. They had left the Hogwarts grounds completely; they had obviously traveled miles - perhaps hundreds of miles - for even the mountains surrounding the castle were gone. They were standing instead in a dark and overgrown graveyard; the black outline of a small church was visible beyond a large yew tree to their right. A hill rose above them to their left. Harry could just make out the outline of a fine old house on the hillside.
Cedric looked down at the Triwizard Cup and then up at Harry.
"Did anyone tell you the cup was a Portkey?" he asked.
Harry frowned at the unfamiliar words. Hogwarts? Portkey? Despite the oddness of what he was reading, Harry felt a growing sense that it was true, and that it was an important warning for him. Of what, he couldn't be sure.
"Nope," said Harry. He was looking around the graveyard. It was completely silent and slightly eerie. "Is this supposed to be part of the task?"
"I dunno," said Cedric. He sounded slightly nervous. "Wands out, d'you reckon?"
"Yeah," said Harry, glad that Cedric had made the suggestion rather than him.
They pulled out their wands. Harry kept looking around him. He had, yet again, the strange feeling that they were being watched.
"Someone's coming," he said suddenly.
Squinting tensely through the darkness, they watched the figure drawing nearer, walking steadily toward them between the graves. Harry couldn't make out a face, but from the way it was walking and holding its arms, he could tell that it was carrying something. Whoever it was, he was short, and wearing a hooded cloak pulled up over his head to obscure his face. And - several paces nearer, the gap between them closing all the time - Harry saw that the thing in the persons arms looked like a baby… or was it merely a bundle of robes?
Harry lowered his wand slightly and glanced sideways at Cedric. Cedric shot him a quizzical look. They both turned back to watch the approaching figure. It stopped beside a towering marble headstone, only six feet from them. For a second Harry and Cedric and the short figure simply looked at one another.
And then, without warning, Harry's scar exploded with pain.
Harry froze. He stared at the sheet in his hand, and then reached up to touch the lightning-bolt scar that was just barely concealed beneath his bangs. It was the one thing about him that he liked, because it was something different. Something that set him apart from the Dursleys. Maybe... harry shook his head, then continued to read.
And then, without warning, Harry's scar exploded with pain. It was agony such as he had never felt in all his life; his wand slipped from his fingers as he put his hands over his face; his knees buckled; he was on the ground and he could see nothing at all; his head was about to split open.
This Harry's scar was on his head too.
From far away, above his head, he heard a high, cold voice say, "Kill the spare."
A swishing noise and a second voice, which screeched the words to the night:
"Avada Kedavra!"
A blast of green light blazed through Harry's eyelids, and he heard something heavy fall to the ground beside him; the pain in his scar reached such a pitch that he retched, and then it diminished; terrified of what he was about to see, he opened his stinging eyes.
Cedric was lying spread-eagled on the ground beside him. He was dead.
Harry dropped the sheets. He blinked heavily. In those few short paragraphs, he had seen what the book described. He could see a tall hansome boy, dressed in black and, oddly enough, yellow, laying on the ground, staring at him. He could feel it.
For many long seconds, Harry simply sat there. Slowly, oh so slowly, he picked up the pages to read again.
For a second that contained an eternity, Harry stared into Cedric's face, at his open gray eyes, blank and expressionless as the windows of a deserted house, at his half-open mouth, which looked slightly surprised. And then, before Harry's mind had accepted what he was seeing, before he could feel anything but numb disbelief, he felt himself being pulled to his feet.
The short man in the cloak had put down his bundle, lit his wand, and was dragging Harry toward the marble headstone. Harry saw the name upon it flickering in the wand light before he was forced around and slammed against it.
TOM RIDDLE
The cloaked man was now conjuring tight cords around Harry, tying him from neck to ankles to the headstone. Harry could hear shallow, fast breathing from the depths of the hood; he struggled, and the man hit him - hit him with a hand that had a finger missing.
And Harry realized who was under the hood. It was Wormtail.
That name caused him to squirm as well. Harry didn't know what was going on, but he felt like he was living the events of the pages. He rubbed at his arms, where he could almost feel the cords digging in. Harry shuddered, and then he plowed ahead. He knew he wouldn't rest until he finished now. He had never wanted to read something so much as he wanted to read these few sheets of paper.
"You!" he gasped.
But Wormtail, who had finished conjuring the ropes, did not reply; he was busy checking the tightness of the cords, his fingers trembling uncontrollably, fumbling over the knots. Once sure that Harry was bound so tightly to the headstone that he couldn't move an inch, Wormtail drew a length of some black material from the inside of his cloak and stuffed it roughly into Harry's mouth; then, without a word, he turned from Harry and hurried away. Harry couldn't make a sound, nor could he see where Wormtail had gone; he couldn't turn his head to see beyond the headstone; he could see only what was right in front of him.
Cedric's body was lying some twenty feet away. Some way beyond him, glinting in the starlight, lay the Triwizard Cup. Harry's wand was on the ground at Cedric's feet. The bundle of robes that Harry had thought was a baby was close by, at the foot of the grave. It seemed to be stirring fretfully. Harry watched it, and his scar seared with pain again… and he suddenly knew that he didn't want to see what was in those robes… he didn't want that bundle opened…
Harry didn't either. His own scar was beginning to itch, and he as he scratched it, he felt a growing sense of dread.
He could hear noises at his feet. He looked down and saw a gigantic snake slithering through the grass, circling the headstone where he was tied. Wormtail's fast, wheezy breathing was growing louder again. It sounded as though he was forcing something heavy across the ground. Then he came back within Harry's range of vision, and Harry saw him pushing a stone cauldron to the foot of the grave. It was full of what seemed to be water -
Harry could hear it slopping around - and it was larger than any cauldron Harry had ever used; a great stone belly large enough for a full-grown man to sit in.
'That must be what the bowl was from the picture.' Harry thought, then, 'But what about the knife?'
The thing inside the bundle of robes on the ground was stirring more persistently, as though it was trying to free itself. Now Wormtail was busying himself at the bottom of the cauldron with a wand. Suddenly there were crackling flames beneath it. The large snake slithered away into the darkness. The liquid in the cauldron seemed to heat very fast. The surface began not only to bubble, but to send out fiery sparks, as though it were on fire. Steam was thickening, blurring the outline of Wormtail tending the fire. The movements beneath the robes became more agitated. And Harry heard the high, cold voice again.
"Hurry!"
Harry shuddered.
The whole surface of the water was alight with sparks now. It might have been encrusted with diamonds.
"It is ready Master."
"Now…" said the cold voice.
Wormtail pulled open the robes on the ground, revealing what was inside them, and Harry let out a yell that was strangled in the wad of material blocking his mouth.
It was as though Wormtail had flipped over a stone and revealed something ugly, slimy, and blind - but worse, a hundred times worse. The thing Wormtail had been carrying had the shape of a crouched human child, except that Harry had never seen anything less like a child. It was hairless and scaly-looking, a dark, raw, reddish black. Its arms and legs were thin and feeble, and its face - no child alive ever had a face like that - flat and snakelike, with gleaming red eyes.
Harry retched. He could see, as clear as day, the twisted form that was described. A pair of red eyes in a baby's face, glaring at him, staring, piercing. Harry turned, stumbled around the chimney, and heaved.
Walking back from the remnants of his lunch, Harry stared at the paper's in front of him. He didn't like what he was reading, he didn't want to see or feel anymore, but he knew, somehow he just knew, that he needed to keep reading. He would need to know what was on those pieces of paper.
The thing seemed almost helpless; it raised its thin arms, put them around Wormtail's neck, and Wormtail lifted it. 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 evil, 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, please… let it drown…
Harry echoed the chant. 'Please drown. Please drown.'
Wormtail was speaking. His voice shook; he seemed frightened beyond his wits. 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. Horrified, 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; it sent sparks in all directions and turned a vivid, poisonous-looking blue.
And now Wormtail was 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. He gripped the dagger very tightly in his left hand and swung it upward.
Harry realized what Wormtail was about to do a second before it happened – he closed his eyes as tightly as he could, but he could not block the scream that pierced the night, that went through Harry as though he had been stabbed with the dagger too. He heard something fall to the ground, heard Wormtail's anguished panting, then a sickening splash, as something was dropped into the cauldron.
Harry felt the bile rise in his throat again. Though the Harry in the story closed his eyes, Harry could still picture the hand, falling, and the knife... He read on.
Harry couldn't stand to look… but the potion had turned a burning red; the light of it shone through Harry's closed eyelids…
Wormtail was gasping and moaning with agony. Not until Harry felt Wormtail's anguished breath on his face did he 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, struggling hopelessly at the ropes binding him, he saw the shining silver dagger shaking in Wormtails remaining hand. He felt its point penetrate the crook of his right arm and blood seeping down the sleeve of his torn robes. Wormtail, still panting with pain, rumbled in his pocket for a glass vial and held it to Harry's cut, so that a dribble of blood fell into it.
He staggered back to the cauldron with Harrys 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…
'Please drown. Don't be alive.'
And then, 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 Cedric or anything but vapor hanging in the air… It's gone wrong, he thought… it's drowned… please… please let it be dead…
'Be dead. Please have drowned.'
But then, through the mist in front of him, he saw, with an icy surge of terror, the dark outline of a man, tall and skeletally thin, rising slowly from inside the cauldron.
"Robe me," said the high, cold voice from behind the steam, and 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. Whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat as a snakes with slits for nostrils…
Lord Voldemort had risen again.
It was the end. There were no more sheets. Harry checked through, making sure that he hadn't missed any, and then, when he came back to the final page, he gaped at the writing that was appearing beneath that terrifying phrase.
Remember this Harry. Remember when He shall rise. Remember these words.
The area around the paper was darkening, smoldering. Harry leapt up with a shout as the papers burst into flame. He dropped them to the roof, where they quickly flared up, burning away to ash.
A second shout mingled with his own. Harry spun, to see a man standing on the roof next to him. He was dressed as a janitor.
"Oi. Whaddya think ya doin'?" The man ran over and leapt across the gap over the narrow alley, and started to stomp out the fires.
"What are ya goin' on abou'? Light'n fires on the school roof?"
Harry struggled to figure out how to explain that the papers just caught fire. Perhaps if he had been a better liar, he would have mentioned something coming out of the chimney, but as it was, he could just stare at the now blackened sheets and the irate janitor standing in front of him.
"Not gonna say nuffin', eh? Alrigh', I'll be takin' ya to the head then." he pulled Harry over to the locked roof doors of the kitchen. Harry followed. He knew that he would be in trouble, likely locked away in his cupboard for a month, but all he could think about were those strange sheets, and the message that had been meant for him.
This piece is just a one shot. I may add a follow-up chapter to deal with how that night actually goes, but for now, enjoy a non-wizard Harry reading about his wizard self.
Please review.