Prologue

Author Note: Just to let you know, the first part of this prologue is taken directly from Goblet of Fire – that's why it is so familiar to us all. I wanted to include it as it is directly from part of the chapter is where my own ideas start to I wanted you to be led into it.

It starts from when Wormtail has just completed the rebirth ritual and the cauldron is starting to simmer...

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. . . 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 vapour hanging in the air. ... It's gone wrong, he thought. . . it's drowned. .. please . . . please let it be dead. ... 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.

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 cats, gleamed still bore brightly through the darkness. He held up his hands and flexed the fingers, his expression rapt and exultant. He took not the slightest notice of Wormtail, who lay twitching and bleeding on the ground, nor of the great snake, which had slithered back into sight and was circling Harry again, hissing. Voldemort slipped one of those unnaturally long-fingered hands into a deep pocket and drew out a wand. He caressed it gently too; and then he raised it, 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. Wormtail's robes were shining with blood now; he had wrapped the stump of his arm in them.

"My Lord . . ." he choked, "my Lord . . . you promised . . . you did promise ..."

"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 . . .please ..."

Voldemort bent down and pulled out Wormtail's left arm; 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. Voldemort examined it carefully, ignoring Wormtail's uncontrollable weeping.

"It is back," he said softly, "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 sharp pain again, and Wormtail let out a fresh howl; Voldemort removed his fingers from Wormtail's mark, and Harry saw that it had turned jet black.

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.

"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.

"Listen to me, reliving family history . . ." 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.

"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 terrible face and sniffed, his slit-like nostrils widening.

"I smell guilt," he said. "There is a stench or 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.

"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.

"And I answer myself," whispered Voldemort, "they 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. . . ."

Voldemort stopped in his grandiose speech and lifted up his nose, sniffing the air. His brow slowly creased in concentration, trying to figure out what was happening. He sniffed again, moving his disfigured nose slowly through the air, brow furrowed in concentration.

Harry and all of the Death Eaters stared Voldemort, wondering what was happening... wondering why he had stopped with the theatrics that everyone knew that he loved.

After several minutes of silence, Voldemort spoke up.

"Everyone Apparate away from here. Now," Voldemort said quickly. Harry didn't know why. He couldn't see what the problem was.

That was until he saw a group dark figures quickly approach silently. Voldemort and the Death Eaters Apparated away rather quickly when they were spotted, leaving Harry tied to the headstone that he had been tied to by Wormtail.

Harry watched on in absolute terror as the silent figures approached. Harry could not see any of their features as they were wearing black cloaks that covered their faces. Harry knew that they were not Death Eaters but that didn't mean that they were not dark.

The group slowly stopped in front of Harry and their leader stepped forward.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here? A free meal all tied up and waiting for us? I never thought a catch would be this easy," The unnamed leader said.

Harry felt himself pale and begin to tremble uncontrollably while looking at the man who had spoken, wondering what was going to happen and what the man had meant.

Harry tried to find his voice as the rest of the group organised themselves behind their obvious leader.

"Who are you?" Harry asked, voice quivering with sheer terror.

Harry saw a shadow of a smirk on the man's covered face. "I am your worst nightmare. I am Count Krius Dreadcurse, leader of the Vampires in Britain," Dreadcurse replied, enjoying watching the terror increase on the young boy's face. "And now we are going to feast."

Barely a second later, Dreadcurse had closed the distance between himself and Harry and had sunk his fangs into his neck, drawing delicious blood from his victim.

Harry nearly screamed in pain at what was happening. Harry's concious mind closed down and his primal instincts took over. All he wanted was for this vampire to stop and to get away from him. His mind focused on that thought and after several seconds, there was a tingling through Harry's body and there was a flash of white light and the vampire was flying through the air, landing roughly on the floor at the feet of his comrades.

Harry's mind, still in its primal instincts, then focused on Cedric's body and the portkey that had brought him and Cedric there and Harry saw them both fly towards him. As they both approached, Harry somehow vanished the ropes that were binding him and summoned his wand to himself before catching Cedric and the cup at the same time, causing all of them to vanish.

Harry, Cedric and the cup landed in the middle of the lawn at Hogwarts in full view of the spectators. Harry fell to the floor with Cedric's dead body and Harry quickly passed out with exhaustion not hearing all of the screams of the crowd...