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Taylor91 and ComicalEpiphanies: You two are good guessers! But the timing creates a bit of a different dynamic in my story and an opportunity to explore interesting psychological avenues.

[WARNING] This chapter contains violence and disturbing scenes.

Harry Potter and the Blind Seer of Durmstrang

Chapter 11

Lying with his face buried in pine needles, the first thing Harry heard was a snap, and then another, the sound of his cane being broken into pieces. Inwardly, he flinched, as if someone had broken one of his fingers. He felt his heart pounding, a sparrow trapped in the cage of his ribs. He wondered what Wormtail would do with him.

He did not have long to wait. The next moment, Wormtail stooped over him and lifted him with a grunt, staggering a little under his weight. He made off down the forest track bearing Harry's stiff body with him. Eyes open, Harry watched the dark shadows of treetops against the softer dark of the night sky.

For some reason, his thoughts wandered back to that first night on the Astronomy tower when he realized he would never again see the stars. As he stared into the misty darkness of the sky tonight, a particle of that old grief returned to him.

A mere five minutes after Wormtail started, he stopped in an open space. With a sigh of relief, he lowered Harry onto the flat, hard coldness of a stone marker, set like a macabre table a few feet off the ground. Unable to move, Harry lay like a sacrifice on an unlit, frozen pyre.

No sound came from the glade around Harry, save for the mumblings and mutterings of Wormtail as he bustled around doing something not far away, out of range of Harry's sight. A fire flared, warm and bright, in Harry's peripheral vision. Wormtail's muttering increased.

Harry grew colder and colder as the chill from the hard stone seeped into his shoulder blades and hips and heels. His stomach clenched against the paralysis that prevented him from shivering. With growing terror, he listened to Wormtail making his preparations, for what? He did not speak to Harry, nor did he enter Harry's field of vision, fixed as it was upon the sky.

The fire blazed higher now; Harry welcomed its warmth against his side. Wormtail walked past him and out of the glade. Silence descended, and Harry could hear the eerie moaning of the wind in the treetops and the greedy fire devouring the wood.

Wormtail walked back into the glade, again past the spot where Harry lay. This time he walked carefully, carrying something that he deemed precious. Harry tried to follow his progress with his eyes but gave up after an agonized effort. Taking the bundle to the fire, Wormtail made sounds as if he added something to a cauldron.

Harry heard him mutter, "Bone of the father…" and he stirred carefully, his wand tapping the side of the cauldron rhythmically. Then he came over to Harry and stood over him.

Fear rose inside of Harry as Wormtail raised his hand, holding a long, cruel knife. The memory of the details of the knife in his dream rose up over the image of the blurred knife before him and his mind saw the edge in gleaming detail. He wanted to scream, to run, to fight.

Wormtail brought the knife down swiftly… onto his own hand, severing a finger.

"Haha, scared you, didn't I?" he asked, his putrid breath in Harry's face. Harry felt as if he were drowning; the shallow breathing that the body-bind curse allowed him was insufficient for the adrenaline that surged through his body. Wormtail held up his own severed finger in sadistic glee, and then waddled away with it to the cauldron.

All too soon, he was back, holding the knife over Harry again. A new wave of terror washed over him as Wormtail picked up Harry's limp hand, holding it and caressing it with his own bleeding, mangled one. Mentally, Harry balled his hand into a fist, but his muscles did not respond, and Wormtail turned his hand palm-upward, deliberately slashing an ugly cut through the palm. Harry could feel the slice and the trickle of warm blood that followed. His hand fell again to the stone slab and Wormtail again hurried to the cauldron.

Too late, the body-bind curse began to wear off. Harry turned his head slightly to the side, toward the fire and the large cauldron sitting over it. Wormtail stood like the shadow of a strange priest, a dark figure silhouetted against the firelight. As he watched, Harry saw a black, tall figure rise out of the cauldron, and he heard the evil, maniacal laughter from his dream. Lord Voldemort had returned.

"My Lord," sniveled Wormtail, bowing low. Voldemort ignored him, save to take the wand that the trembling servant held up toward his towering, black-robed master.

Voldemort approached Harry where he lay on the stone slab. Harry's hand twitched, but beyond that, he still could not move. He looked steadily toward the menacing figure that walked slowly toward him.

"Harry Potter. You were my undoing; now you have been my salvation. I have returned, more powerful than before, thanks to you. I have you in my power now, and I can do with you what I please. I could kill you," he said, raising his wand to point it straight at Harry. Harry tried not to flinch, still staring at the face he could not see. With the flickering firelight behind him, Voldemort appeared merely a shadow to Harry, lost in misty nothingness. His voice, however, came clearly to Harry, a crisp hiss with sharp edges that sent a shiver up his spine.

Voldemort stood for a long second with his wand raised. Harry waited for the stroke to fall, but instead, Voldemort dropped the wand with a swish of his robes. "I am not going to kill you," he said and Harry let out the breath he had been holding, slowly, like the hiss of escaping steam. "Yet," Voldemort added.

He began walking around Harry's bier. Slowly, with deliberate, measured pace, he circled Harry. At first, Harry tried to follow with his eyes but gave up and stared at the fathomless, inky sky.

"You cannot see me," began Voldemort in the tone of a lecturer, but a minute later, he broke off and clutched the edge of the stone slab, bending over, his face close to Harry's. "Would you like to?"

Harry's eyes flicked to his face, close enough now that Harry saw pupils like the eyes of a cat staring out of pale, sunken lids. No, not the eyes of a cat, Harry thought, the eyes of a snake. He looked again at the sky.

"I have looked through your eyes," said Voldemort. "I have seen the light you see, the grey nothingness that dances before you." Harry stared resolutely at the starless sky. "Now," said Voldemort with another hiss, "look through mine."

Harry's scar seemed to split apart and his mind screamed in agony. With the force of rape, Voldemort was inside Harry's mind, climbing into Harry's thoughts, shoving him, pushing him. Then Harry opened his eyes.

No longer was he looking at the blurred sky above him. He peered down on himself from above, looking through Voldemort's eyes. He could see absolutely clearly, in brilliant color, sparkling more for having been so long missing from Harry's experience. He saw himself lying on the slab, saw the color of his skin. He saw, too, the red blood of the cut on his palm, and another red. Lying just beyond the stone where he lay, a red pile of silken scarf lying on the ground.

Voldemort swept his gaze upward and Harry gasped as the sweep of stars came into view, with all of the thousands of diamond points of light he remembered. The gaze dropped to the burning embers of the fire, glowing red and orange and yellow. It took in Wormtail, huddled on the ground and the crisp, clear outlines of tombstones, each littered with writing that Harry drank in hungrily, the words flowing into his mind. He saw the texture of tree bark and the jarring discord of a dropped stick on the smooth ground. Then the gaze returned to his own face and Harry saw his own eyes, green, but with a shimmer of red he did not recognize. It mirrored the red he saw reflected in his glasses from Voldemort's serpentine gaze.

With a wrench that made Harry's mind writhe, Voldemort pulled free of his thoughts, leaving him feeling naked and panting, exhausted from the kaleidoscope of colors he'd just witnessed. As he opened his own eyes to the monochrome haze he always saw, he felt a longing to return to the world of crisp color he'd just seen.

"It can be yours, you know," said Voldemort softly, straightening and resuming his pacing around the stone. "I have great power. I have come again into my own, and I reward my faithful followers richly."

Harry felt the longing within him intensify. He tried to open his mouth to speak, but he could not.

"Or perhaps it's not enough?" said Voldemort, almost sweetly. "Perhaps your parents might be persuaded to join you?" His voice held the words in a caress, handing them to Harry like a promise.

Harry looked at the hooded figure, wide-eyed. Could this man bring back the dead? A picture rose in Harry's mind, the memory of the Mirror of Erised, the memory of himself, standing next to his parents, their hands on his shoulders, love in their eyes. They could be a family, a real family, like other kids had. He could have a mother. His hand twitched again.

"Yes, I can do all that for you," intoned Voldemort, reaching once again the spot next to Harry's side where he had first begun speaking. "I can, and I will. All you have to do is swear allegiance to me and take my Mark on your arm. You will become my most powerful ally. I will train you myself, and together we will rule the whole world."

Harry closed his eyes. Dancing in his memory were the silver stars, beautiful and crisp and sparkling. They could be his again. He could share them with his mum and dad, tell them how much more they meant now that they were no longer lost to him.

But the price. The price was taking the Dark Mark. Joining Voldemort. Something he had never in all of his wildest dreams imagined he would do.

Voldemort straightened, and steepled his fingers with the air of an elderly professor who had just given some excellent advice. "Of course it's quite a big decision, and I have plans to make before I could help you with this, err, little issue. I will let you think it over. All that I ask is that you keep my, err, presence… between us for the time being. I'm sure you understand." And with the sudden swiftness of a snake striking, his wand was pointed at Harry again. "Crucio!" he said coldly and Harry writhed, a scream tearing from his lips. With a flick of his wand, Voldemort broke the curse and turned away, leaving Harry gasping for breath.

Voldemort strode to the center of the clearing and raised both arms dramatically. With a flourish, he commanded Wormtail, who pressed the Dark Mark in the center of his forearm. Seconds later, hooded forms began to appear in the clearing, walking in from the woods, appearing from nowhere in front of tilting tombstones.

Harry could not see anything more than black robes, all alike, gathering in a circle around Voldemort. His body ached from the cold and the pain he'd just endured. He watched the summoned Death Eaters encircle their master and he began speaking to them in low tones, so low Harry could not catch the words.

For a long time he spoke to them; once in a while one or another would answer him. Harry shifted his shoulders on the slab, and wiggled his toes. The body-bind curse had begun to fade in earnest now. He fumbled for his wand, which lay uncomfortably underneath him, but he found himself still unable to grasp it.

The enclave of Death Eaters was fragmenting now; one after another they swept past Harry, giving him no notice, and disappeared into the thick, dark wood. Soon, the glade held only the same three figures it had sheltered half an hour before. At last, Harry grasped his wand. Pulling himself into a half-sitting position, he drew it out from behind him. He looked up.

The silent glade was empty.

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