Author's Note: I'm finally finished with redoing my first chapter of HP and the SOD. I hope you like it. Please review it, I would love to hear anything you have to say. Enjoy!!
Chapter One
THE GATHERING
It was in the dead of night that Yaxley appeared, wrapped tightly in his black cloak, sheltering himself from the hailing wind and chilling rain. Having just Apparated at the base of the hill, which the Riddle House was perched upon, the Death Eater moved against the torrential storm and trudged up the winding road that led to the abandoned manor, the whole way cursing under his breath. He had been under strict orders not to Apparate into the house, for what reason he hadn't the faintest clue, but nonetheless he abided.
Crossing the threshold, passing a broken gate which had oxidized overtime, Yaxley set his eyes up the Riddle House for the first time. The rain had stopped and dead grass compressed under his leather boots with every step taken. The yard was completely dry.
Bewildered, Yaxley realized, "A curse has been laid upon these grounds."
Whatever curse it may have been, Yaxley was not frightened of it, the house was the real danger. That was what worried him.
The infamous Riddle House loomed before him, casting a dark, elongated shadow across the cursed ground on which it was positioned; barely recognizable as house, more as a tomb. It was once the most beautiful and most luxurious home in all of Little Hangleton, but now the Riddle House rotted, decomposing before the Death Eater's very eyes.
It had not always been so. Besides having housed the richest snobs in the village, the house had been seemingly perfect in everyway.
That was, until the night the Riddles were found.
Pronounced dead of mysterious circumstances and with no other family to inherit the home, the Riddle House was officially condemned. The villagers had deemed the manor too "creepy" for their liking and never ventured there again, but often gossiped about it in the village pub.
It made for a great conversation piece.
Still enthralled within the clutches of the decaying mansion before him, a rather unnerving sensation raced up the nape of Yaxley's neck, causing him to shiver with discomfort as he gazed upon the home in which the Dark Lord Voldemort had murdered his muggle family. Spatting at the ground in disgust, he moved onward, in hopes of locating an entrance into the dominion of hell that eagerly awaited his audience.
The Riddle House had been deserted for over five decades now and its exterior reveled with disdain; the windows had been boarded over with sheets of delicate balsa wood that had begun to disintegrate with age and large tiles from the roof had broken apart, naturally falling to the charred earth below. The face of the house itself was swathed in a thick ivy that had long since died, altering it from a luscious candy apple green to an abysmal black, and from afar it seemed to swallow the manor whole.
Around the house, the Death Eater moved cautiously, he had an eerie feeling that all was not as it appeared. He had received word by owl that they, meaning the remaining followers of the Dark Lord, were to meet "at the place where he washed away his muggle past." This led Yaxley to Little Hangleton and to the Riddle House. But something was out of the ordinary this night, as if being draped in a black cloak, brandishing a magical wand, and calling humans muggles was ordinary, Yaxley moved forward with a heightened sense of danger.
Coming to the back of the house, the Death Eater just barely caught the sight of his own reflection from behind the menacing ivy that consumed the mansion. Moving aside the massive entanglement of dead vines, a door was revealed. Without even checking to see if it was locked or not, Yaxley reached into his robes, pulled forth his wand, eleven and one quarter inch to be exact, and tapped the door knob lightly. A click and clank sounded and the door swung inward, rasping upon rusted hinges. Beyond was a sea of complete darkness just yearning for an oblivious passerby to stumble into its midst, unguarded.
With a flick of the wrist, a bright light shot forth from the tip of Yaxley's wand, sending radiance to every corner of the room ahead. Right foot in first, keeping his other firmly planted behind, the Death Eater carefully surveyed the room. He seemed to have found the back door that led straight into an unnaturally sized kitchen, which was cavernous in dimension. The ceiling reached at least twenty-five feet in height, and the appliances within wreaked of putrid decay. Sensing no immediate danger, Yaxley let his instinct guide him to his final destination, which lead him towards the dining room.
The dining room proved to be nothing different from the remainder of the house; wall paper was torn and hanging off the water damaged walls, a massive chandelier which had dried wax hanging like stalactites from it hung idly over a large antique table with thirteen high-backed chairs gathered around it. Papers, important or not, were strewn across the moldy wooden floor that now housed the likes of rats, spiders, and termites. In other words, the dining room was damp and unsettling, not a place ones family would sit and have a spot of tea, that's for damn sure.
Shedding light upon the room that has not seen the glow of day in decades, Yaxley took a high interest at once in the thirteen high-backed chairs, and on closer examination noticed they did not quite belong with the rest of the muggle furnishings. Ancient, centuries perhaps, the chairs donned jade cushions of velvet, and inanimate serpents slithered along the armrests, legs, and back. These chairs were the unmistakable work of a wizard.
He was not alone.
Suddenly a shadow moved in the corner of his eye. Quick on his feet, Yaxley spun, casting rays of solid light in every crook of the room. Maybe he was imagining things, or possibly he truly had company. At that moment, he believed his mind had been playing tricks on him, until it happened again. This time it was the scraping of feet across the floor that alerted him. Pointing his wand across the table, in which the noise originated, the Death Eater, once again, found nothing.
"What madness is this?" thought Yaxley, mesmerized by the cold fear creeping steadily up his spine.
"Do not be afraid, Yaxley," echoed a ghostly voice from the darkness behind him.
Shocked, the Death Eater whirled one-hundred and eighty degrees towards the source of the wraithlike sound, his wand emitting luminosity into the sitting room beyond.
"Who goes there?" demanded Yaxley, pale as a ghost with fear.
"I am no enemy, my son," began the voice, "I am merely here to carry on what your master was too ignorant to achieve."
"How dare you…" he cried out angrily, suddenly forgetting his fear, but found he was unable to finish his sentence. Clutching frantically at his throat he realized the specter had cast a silencing charm upon him.
He felt a rush of wind propel from the darkness that almost knocked him down, bitter and sinister, frostbiting his skin, chilling him to the bone. He knew he had angered the apparition.
"If I were you," said the voice, growing deeper by the second, "I would watch what I say, you never know what lurks just beyond the shadows."
The powerful wind ceased and Yaxley felt his blood flow tepid once more. Breathing a heavy sigh of relief, the Death Eater raised his wand, casting rays across the thirteen high-backed chairs. At that moment a creature moved just out of Yaxley's line of vision, travelling with tremendous speed, scraping its sharp talons against a moldy wooden floor, red eyes giving the only indication of its whereabouts within the comfort of darkness. He panicked and attempted to make his escape back through the kitchen, but was caught off guard as he crashed head first into an invisible barrier. Hitting the floor, the Death Eater curled into a ball his back resting against the wall that lay between him and freedom.
Then the light from the end of his wand was extinguished. Frantically he tried to ignite it again, but something was wrong, it wouldn't cast the spell.
Bathed in pitch black darkness, Yaxley became numb with trepidation; with no way out and a useless wand, he was as good as dead. Something moved before him, the familiar tearing of moldy wood sounded as the creature with the glowing red eyes approached him, its breathing heavy against the growing silence surrounding them. Yaxley closed his eyes, preparing for the worst, and was ready for his own demise.
But it never came.
Instead the room was flooded by the light of a thousand floating candles that seemed to have conjured their flames from thin air. Slowly he opened his eyes to the sight, but what caught his eye first was a cloaked man sitting, cross-legged in a chair that had not been in the room previously.
The man was simply majestic, dressed unlike any wizard Yaxley had ever seen before. He was covered from head to toe in an extravagant suit of armor, which was black with magnificent emeralds worked into the metal, forming the shapes of serpents and some other unrecognizable symbols. Around his neck was the flowing black cloak that had first caught Yaxley's attention. With the hood pulled over his head, the man sheltered his masked face, which was also black with inlaid emerald serpents, from the bright candlelight beyond.
In the presence of the man, or whatever he may have been, Yaxley found himself incapable of verbal communication; he was quite sure the silencing charm had been lifted, but he was still unable to produce words and it was all due to the fear that seemed to be devouring him from within. Yes, he had been remarkably afraid of the Dark Lord for decades while under his service, but this was different, he had never felt so helpless before, so frightened, so alone.
"You are not alone, Yaxley," said the cloaked man as he read the Death Eater's mind.
Stroking his masked face with a gloved hand, while the other held a black wand, the man looked intently upon the distraught Death Eater before him, who remained curled into a ball against the barrier, and felt a great sense of pride rush through him.
He was pleased with himself.
"On the contrary, my son. There are many here," he said through his mask, "Many who are eagerly awaiting your presence."
Working up the courage to speak, Yaxley quietly asked, "W-who are you?"
Judging by the anxious tone in his voice, the Death Eater couldn't tell if he had sounded too weak.
"That, my son, is of no importance at this point in time. The main objective is to obtain your loyalty, which is all for the moment. Introductions shall be made in due time."
"Loyalty?" asked Yaxley.
"Yes, loyalty. Something I have been informed recently, you know nothing of. But that, we will change."
Yaxley was astounded, how dare this man, whom he had never met before, accuse him of being un-loyal.
"So you disagree?" inquired the man after a moment's silence. "If I may ask, how is it that you escaped the Battle of Hogwarts, when so many of your comrades failed to do so?"
Standing up, Yaxley turned red with anger, "If you're suggesting I was not loyal that night, than you can go straight to he…"
He was quickly thrown back to the ground. Meanwhile the man in the chair had not even moved a muscle.
"I managed to cast a disillusionment charm on myself as Potter and the Dark Lord battled," Yaxley whispered in a frightened, child-like voice, as he became conscious of his captors exceptional skill in Legilimency.
Lying was of no use, he already knew everything.
"See was that so hard? A temper will get you nowhere but a one way ticket to the underworld, Death Eater. You would be wise to keep your mouth shut in such situations, unless you would like me to pry out your tongue for extra precaution. Well, now all that is done, let us move on to bigger and better things, shall we?"
As the man in armor stood from his chair, Yaxley felt himself being pulled off of the floor; at first he tried to fight the control, but in the end found he was walking side by side with the black cloaked figure. Taller than he had expected, the Death Eater, who was no shorter than six foot, only reached the shoulder-line of the monstrosity that was dressed in black armor.
As they sauntered towards the long table surrounded by the thirteen magical chairs, the man gazed down upon the wretched weakling he pulled next to him, "We have been waiting for you, my son. The others have wondered what has been taking you so long."
"Others?"
"My servants, former followers of Voldemort."
"Impossible!" thought Yaxley.
The dark figure turned on him and the flames of a thousand candles flickered in between life and death, "Is it? Is it so hard to say good riddance to the man, or shall I say the beast, who tortured and maimed his own servants for mere entertainment?"
Yaxley said nothing.
"IS IT!" roared the figure, his voice now high pitched and terrible.
The next moment Yaxley was being hurled across the room, where he smashed headfirst into an armoire, sending splinters of wood and shards of glass cascading through the air. Crashing brutally to the floor the Death Eater's useless wand left his grasp and rolled just out of his reach. When he rolled over, the black armored man was standing above him, like the bringer of death, ready to consume his soul.
"I do not use my powers against my faithful servants, but when you defy my divine powers, I will punish you beyond any measure of belief," and then stabbing the air with his black wand, he cried, "Crucio!"
Yaxley squirmed and writhed in pain, many times had he suffered under the Cruciatus Curse at the hands of the Dark Lord, but never before had such an agonizing pain coursed through his veins, tearing him apart from the inside.
"Now unlike Voldemort, I possess something he could never attain and that is compassion. Now I will grant you a second chance, Yaxley, serve me and anything that you desire shall be yours. What say you?"
Again Yaxley chose silence.
A second wave of magical razors soared through his veins, sending him rocketing face first onto the floor, convulsing and contorting, spiraling into unconsciousness.
Just as his vision was flooded by shadow, Yaxley heard a voice in the distance, which quickly became loud and clear, as well as persistent and demanding.
"What say you?"
Shrouded by the effects of the spell, the Death Eater stayed in control as long as he could stand the throbbing agony, but rapidly succumbed to the consequences for his defiance.
"Yes!" he bellowed, "Yes! Just stop it! Please!"
As the candles sparkled back to life, lighting the room once more, instant warmth surged through him, breaking the cold death-like grip the Cruciatus Curse had cast upon him.
When he was able to stand, the dark figure held out his hand for assistance. Although Yaxley was hesitant at first, he finally accepted, and was lifted to his feet.
When his new Master spoke again, his voice was no longer deafening, but had resumed its soft human tone once more, "You will find that I am rather generous, my son."
He then clapped his hands, which let out a muffled noise that echoed loudly in the house, and twelve black robed wizards Apparated into twelve of the thirteen high-backed chairs.
"I think you can guess which is yours," said the Master pointing to the only chair available at the table. "As you can see you are joined by your brothers."
Yaxley looked around at the twelve hooded wizards surrounding the table. Though masked, he sensed their eyes staring directly at him, watching his every move, burning holes directly through him.
Taking his rightful place amongst the others, the Death Eater watched as the Master circled the table, looking down upon his disciples, a red glare, piercing and hungry, beneath the shade of his hood.
"Before we get to the introduction, which I know all of you are dying to reach, would every Death Eater be so kind as to roll up the left sleeve of their robes and place that arm out in front of them? It is time to relieve you of your burdens."
Seven of the thirteen wizards exchanged quick and frantic glances, their eyes opening wide beneath their masks, for concealed under their left sleeve was the last strand of their memories as servants to the Dark Lord Voldemort. Any mention of its location brought shivers up their spines and fear into their hearts.
Although frightened, the seven wizards complied and rolled up the left sleeve of their robes revealing a scar of what was once a vivid red tattoo of a skull and a serpent. It had been the death of the Dark Lord that had caused the Dark Mark to sear and bubble into an unrecognizable scar, defacing its owner's forearm for the rest of their lives.
Now with their scarred arms placed in front of them on the table, their new master raised his wand and began to twirl it in a series of odd paths, which produced red trails of light that glittered and sparkled in pursuit of the caster. Without warning he launched them forward where they coiled like pythons around the arms of the seven Death Eaters.
Howls of pain immediately filled the Riddle House as seven wizards cried out in sheer torment. Quaking uncontrollably, they were bonded, by magic, to their chairs, powerless against the will of their new master, and the longer it transpired the crueler the shrieks became until the entire house was overflowing with the shrill and earsplitting clamor.
Eventually the pain died away, leaving only a slight soreness amongst the arms of the seven former Death Eaters. No longer under the enchantment binding them to their chairs, the seven wizards marveled at the vacant place, which for so long had played host to the mark of Lord Voldemort. It was when the wound healed before their very eyes that the Death Eaters knew they were rid of Voldemort's tyranny at last.
If it was a good or bad thing, they were not yet sure. But Yaxley couldn't help but feel something was dreadfully wrong with the whole situation. Who was this man they called master and what was his true intentions in reforming the Death Eaters?
Rubbing their aggrieved forearms, the ex-Death Eaters removed their masks with a touch of their wands and finally revealed their true identities.
Augustus Rookwood, Thorfinn Rowle, Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange, Walden Macnair, and Selwyn sat unmasked all in line, the recent pain they had endured showing quite clearly in their dark features. Yaxley himself felt the pain as well, but hid his misery behind his own artificial mask. He was not about to show weakness amongst the other servants of this new Dark Lord.
Yaxley had no intentions, whatsoever, of seeming weak.
When it came time to listen, the Dark Lord, who had magically reproduced his chair at the head of the table, clapped his hands three times; much like a teacher would do in grade school, and waited for his audience's full attention. He then raised his arms above his head and began to speak.
"Welcome my sons, to a new age. You have been under the rule of Lord Voldemort for too long now and this has prevented you from reaching your full potential. All of you are brilliant wizards, passionate, skillful, and true. For too long now, we Pure-bloods have sat back and watched the filthy blood-traitors destroy our good name. For too long we have hidden ourselves from the eyes of the world beyond our borders. Muggles run our streets rampant, mating with our kin, sending their hellish offspring into our midst. The Ministry of Magic does nothing to avert this. They endorse integration, allowing these filthy half-breeds to even work high-level jobs in the Ministry itself. The time has come to strike true fear into the hearts of Muggles. Every man, woman, and child will die. We will no longer hide in fear of the discovery of our kind, let us embrace our power. Weare the superior beings. We are the future, and if we can't make our own see this inevitability, then they too will suffer. Nothing will stand in our way, nothing."
"What about Potter?" asked one of the masked wizards.
"Potter? Hmmm, though an admirable foe, I see no threat in the boy who lived, all I see in him is weakness."
"But M-master, he defeated the most powerful dark wizard of the age, Lord Vol…"
"Voldemort was weak!" he roared, striking his fists onto the tabletop.
The room fell silent at the outburst from the Dark Lord, and the flames of the candles danced sporadically once more. When the light was restored to the room, the Dark Lord abruptly stood up and began to pace around the table again and again, dwelling within his own world of thought.
Stopping suddenly, he brought one gloved hand to his masked chin, stroked it thoughtfully and as if speaking only to himself sighed, "Though the boy is of no immediate threat, he has proven himself a nuisance. He must be dealt with accordingly."
He paused, looked down the table and brought his fiery gaze upon one of the remaining masked wizards. "You will do perfectly. Stand up, my son."
The wizard stood without hesitation.
"This will not be an easy task. Your objective has demonstrated a rather keen sense for survival. All the same I have a feeling you are comprised of what it takes to get the job done. Do you disagree?"
"No, Master. I am ready for anything."
"Excellent."
Spinning around happily, black cloak billowing about him, the Dark Lord cackled, his laughter echoing off of the walls, "Gentlemen, take a good look at this man. He will be the last thing Harry Potter ever lays his filthy half-blood eyes upon. Please son, unmask yourself, you are among family now."
At first the wizard wavered, hesitating to reveal his identity. Even so he eventually raised his wand to his mask, which disappeared at its touch, and looked around the table, watching as every person began to realize who he was. Gasps of shock and awe filled the room as they fully recognized the red headed boy with the missing ear.