Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.
First things first, seen several reviews saying the last two chapters felt a bit rushed/jumpy, so do you guys want me to go back and write the ones that were meant to be in between before continuing?
They would be really, really filler, since I wouldn't have left them out if the majority of important events weren't happening off stage for this period, but I will go back and add a couple of them for you if you prefer. Alternatively I can edit the two before this to fill in a bit of anything you think really should come in between, as long as it doesn't mess with the plan, of course.
Second off, I rewrote the summary a little bit, which means I was finally able to include that last word I wasn't able to fit in at the beginning.
And finally, for those skeptics who thought Krum should dodge and live, he couldn't see Cedric's wand, as he was behind Harry, obviously he would have tried to move, that goes without saying, but he would have been better off staying where was when he rolled to the edge of the path rather than stepping back into the middle. Harry steps to the side from the middle, but Krum, who is already at the edge of the path, can only step into the middle, so their instinctive movements save Harry and kill Krum respectively. Sadly, since you see this through the lens of Harry who's looking the other way, most of it isn't apparent, and all you know is he dies. Hope it make sense :)
Chapter 35
Harry hit the ground hard, bouncing across it, almost losing his grip on the handle of the cup.
The cup is a portkey?
It saved him from having to go all the way back through the maze. Fleur would be helped even quicker. He smiled, abandoned the cup, and pushed himself to his feet to find Madam Pomfrey.
A thin, grey mist curled around his feet, not unlike the patronus spell he had failed to cast, it hung around and over rows of what were clearly tombstones.
This is not Hogwarts.
His stomach plummeted and he immediately tried to apparate away, but nothing happened.
Every year.
He turned around very slowly, realising that the mist was curling around him from behind.
A bright, cheerful looking witch, with curly brown hair smiled at him. There was a very large cauldron behind her, steaming.
'Hiya Harry,' she chattered, 'nice of you to join us.'
'Do I know you?' Harry asked politely, turning his forearm to hide his wand for when he slid it into his palm.
It wasn't there.
'Oh no, Harry, you don't know me,' she giggled, 'nobody really knows me. I'm just the talkative, cheerful witch who listens. My name is Bertha Jorkins.'
'You worked for Crouch,' Harry remembered, his eyes searching every thin spot in the mist nearby for his wand.
'Sorry, Harry,' she smiled, waving the thin piece of ebony in the air. Thick, black ropes leapt from his wand, wrapping about him painfully tightly and pinning him to the nearest headstone.
'For the briefest moment I hoped I was wrong,' he remarked dryly.
'You weren't,' she laughed. 'You see, when I left Hogwarts I wasn't good enough to get where I wanted to go, and I didn't even want that much. Nobody noticed me in the war, though I helped Barty Crouch by keeping an eye on a few suspicious members of the ministry and was responsible for the capture of more than one Death Eater, but not one person ever thanked me for it. I learnt then that knowing secrets and using them for other people's good gains you nothing, not even gratitude. I kept making friends even when things calmed down, I've always been good with people, someone who listens can be invaluable and I learned all sorts of things. One day I came across something very interesting indeed. My oh-so-perfect, principled, head of department Barty Crouch, had snuck his son from Azkaban. I meant to blackmail him, but I needed proof, so I went looking.'
'That was a bad idea,' Harry cut in.
'For you, yes,' she giggled. 'Barty Crouch Junior was not what I was expecting. He was nothing like his father like I expected, instead I found a young wizard driven to madness by Azkaban and the Imperius Curse of his own parent. In the few moments of lucidity he gained he would tell me about his master, the one who recognised his value when his father and the world deemed him worthless.'
'You believed him?'
'Not to begin with,' she admitted, 'the Dark Lord was supposed to be dead, but then, his servant came and found us.'
'He was still alive,' Harry gasped with mock horror, very subtly trying to escape his bindings. They seemed looser than they should be, the more he wanted to escape, the easier it seemed to be to move.
'He was,' Bertha tittered. 'He showed me that I was not so useless with magic as I had come to believe. He taught me that I was simply thinking about things the wrong way. I could always listen to people, get them to trust me, to talk to me, to do what I want. I never guessed I would have such a talent with the Imperius Curse, one that even the Dark Lord respects.'
'He taught you a spell, so you fight for him?' Harry momentarily stopped struggling in shock. It was such a small thing. He'd taught Neville several spells.
'He respected me for the one thing I know I am good at, and that is why I follow him, because nobody else ever did that for me!'
'He's lying to you,' Harry told her sadly. He had no hope of convincing her, she was too lost, like Quirrell, blinded by Voldemort's lies and promises.
'You aren't going to convince me, Harry,' she responded, amused. 'I've come too far to turn back even if I wanted to, and I don't.'
'What have you done?' Harry asked, 'I assume the disappearance of Crouch was you?'
'Yes,' Bertha smirked, 'he was too suspicious, when I vanished and Barty died free of the curse, he began to connect things other people couldn't. I waited as long as possible to make it appear an unrelated event, but he had to die the moment Pettigrew went missing. I assumed, mistakenly in the end, that he had captured Pettigrew, or, if someone else had, Crouch might learn enough to stop us. It took so much planning to get you here, Harry,' she laughed. 'We spent hours devising a plan just to get your name in the goblet. So many complex pieces of magic, all ineffective. Ludo and I struggled terribly. Of course, it hardly helped that I had to keep him under the Imperius the whole time.'
Bagman, Harry realised.
He'd left Fleur somewhere Ludo Bagman could easily reach her, then he remembered the Withering Curse and sighed in relief. If Bagman, or anyone else, even tried to hurt for the next few hours they would die in a most unpleasant manner. The idea cheered up him somewhat.
'So how did you do it?' The first of the ropes fell to the floor behind the tombstone.
'We never put it in,' she laughed. 'Bagman was a surprisingly useful tool, he confunded the goblet before it arrived, knowing that Amos Diggory would never let his son pass up the chance to enter. It selected Diggory believing he was the only applicant under the name of a fourth school, but to everyone watching he appeared a believable Hogwarts champion who nobody ever suspected or checked. When the name of the real champion came out, we used a simple switching spell to replace the parchment with one bearing your name. Nobody was expecting a fourth name, so nobody was watching the goblet and the spell went undetected as we hoped. Dumbledore took the goblet and spent hours checking for irregularities, but your selection as Hogwarts champion was genuine as far as the goblet knew.'
Harry admired the simplicity of the plot for a few moments, before easing himself out of the second rope. He really needed his wand, and Bertha wasn't paying too much attention while she was monologuing.
It really is quite cliché of her.
'And now we come to what we're really doing here waiting for you.'
'We?' Harry asked. He could only see Bertha Jorkins and really hoped that her company was just an imperiused Ludo Bagman.
'We,' a new voice answered. It wasn't Ludo Bagman. Harry recognised the sibilant whisper of Voldemort's shade all too well.
'Hello, Voldemort,' Harry greeted, as politely as he'd greeted Bertha. It was best not to enrage him when Harry couldn't see him and had no idea where he was.
'You've learned some manners,' the wraith whispered. 'No more chatting, Bertha, it is time.'
'Yes, master,' she smiled cheerfully.
The curly-haired witch waved Harry's wand at the cauldron and bright flames sprang up around it, but only for a moment.
The fires guttered out and Bertha stared at Harry's wand, puzzled. Harry was little confused too, the wand had never failed him, if anything it was almost too eager to throw magic at anything he intended.
'Use your own,' Voldemort hissed. 'It will not matter anymore.'
She nodded, tucking Harry's wand into a pocket, and withdrawing her own. It was a short, thick piece of what looked like hazel.
The cauldron fires were relit immediately and this time they stayed burning. Within a matter of moments the surface was sparking, releasing a scatter of glowing orange pinpricks every few seconds. They drifted across the nearby gravestones like fireflies, following the mist that fled from the heat of the fire.
Bertha Jorkins bent to the floor on one side of the cauldron, losing sight of Harry who took the opportunity to squirm on of his arms free behind his back.
She was holding something hideous when she stood back up.
Harry only glimpsed a few patches of exposed skin before she placed it gently into the waters. Hairless, scabbed, leprous and slimy skin that sank out of sight into the cauldron. Its unnatural appearance made all the hair stand up down his spine.
He hoped it would drown.
He knew it would not.
'Bone of the father,' Bertha intoned, still cheerful, 'unknowingly given, you will renew your son.' The ground at Harry's feet cracked open, and a stream of white dust, and a single bone flew from within into the cauldron.
It sparked violently, orange specks exploding off it, then turned a poisonous blue almost too bright too look at.
'Flesh of the servant,' her voice was trembling now, 'willingly sacrificed, you will revive your master.' From somewhere in her robes she produced a gleaming silver knife and, placing her left hand on the edge of the cauldron, brought it down upon her wrist.
She screamed and paled, her hand half-severed and hanging over the potion. Harry began to tear frantically at the ropes to get free, this was his chance, while she was distracted. Half of the bindings seemed to have vanished, but the rest were still in the way, and he could not free himself before the witch had managed to steel herself and bring the weapon down once more.
Bertha Jorkins gave a strangled sob of pain that was all but lost in the splash her dismembered hand made as hit the surface of the potion. It rippled a raging red.
Then she turned to Harry, who had really been hoping against all likelihood that he was just going to be a witness.
'Blood of the enemy,' her voice was thin and wavering, 'forcibly taken,' she winced and had to stop speaking. Bertha Jorkins' skin was pale, and, despite whatever enchantment the knife had possessed to cauterise the wound, the stump still oozed nastily.
'Looks painful,' Harry noted, kicking his feet free when she closed her eyes to try and block out the agony.
'You will resurrect your foe,' she finished, stepping next to Harry before he could finish freeing himself and slashing a shallow cut across his cheek.
Bertha Jorkins darted back from him and flicked the blood into the cauldron, Harry glimpsed the end of his wand protruding from the pocket facing him.
He ripped the rest of the ropes away.
The potion flared a blinding, shimmering white, steam pouring off it onto the floor in a thick creeping blanket that quickly rose to obscure anything more than a silhouette.
Something tall stepped towards him in the steam, something that was far too tall, and had far too little curly hair, to be Bertha Jorkins.
Harry hurled himself where Bertha Jorkins had been a moment ago, but only skidded across the dirt.
He turned to find himself looking directly up at Tom Riddle, but the wizard was not how he remembered from the chamber. His skin was pale, translucent and veined, with no hair, misshapen facial features, and slitted, serpentine pupils. Harry had the distinct impression that this ritual was only the most recent he carried out and that Salazar had been quite correct in his assumption that Riddle had made use of many others. He seemed only a little more human than he had as a wraith three years ago.
'Where are you going, Harry?' Voldemort asked, amused.
'Back to Hogwarts?' Harry tried, smiling wryly and pulling himself to his feet. Riddle had all but killed him twice, and that was when he hadn't had a body.
I'm stronger now, he reminded himself.
'I don't think so,' the Dark Lord whispered. 'I can understand why you would want to return there. It feels like home to begin with, a new world, a place where you belong, then that world turns out to be no better than what you thought you'd left behind. You'll see that soon enough, if you haven't already.' Voldemort's lips curled back in a cold grin. 'I didn't just want you here for the ritual, Harry, there were easier ways to get your blood, even if it needed to be taken against your will and still be fresh. No, you're here to bear witness to my return.'
'Bertha,' he commanded smoothly.
'My Lord,' she murmured, appearing from the fading cloud of steam around the cauldron, still clutching at her arm.
'Your arm, Bertha.'
The curly-haired witch proffered her unharmed limb towards her lord. 'Sorry, my lord,' she apologised, when Riddle had to push up her sleeve himself. Harry shot her an incredulous look. Nobody in their right mind would ever believe Bertha Jorkins culpable for that. Even Riddle looked slightly amused.
A black tattoo of a snake entwined within a skull, throbbed painfully upon her upper forearm, bulging half a centimetre from the skin and writhing under its surface.
Voldemort regarded it carefully, then pressed his long, pale forefinger firmly into it. Bertha's fingers curled up into a fist, and she squeezed her eyes tightly shut again.
Suddenly they were no longer alone in the graveyard.
How did they apparate in?
Once more Harry attempted to apparate out, picturing the chamber, where he would be safe, within his mind and willing the world to twist him away.
Nothing happened.
'Ah,' Voldemort sighed, 'my family returns, my friends, my so very loyal followers.'
A circle of robed and masked figures surrounded the two of them, Bertha Jorkins stumbled away into one of the many gaps.
'It feels just as it did thirteen years ago,' Riddle smiled, 'only then you had not betrayed me, not abandoned me, not forsaken the oaths you swore to stand beside me.' An ice cold cruelty crept into his tone as he continued.
'Lucius,' he whirled on the nearest Death-Eater, 'you were content to continue following the old ways, having your fun at the World Cup, but never did you search for me.'
Riddle ripped the skull mask from the face of Malfoy.
'Crabbe, Goyle,' he prowled round the circle, 'Nott, all of you have forgotten the words you said when I gave you your marks. You are hale, healthy and enjoying the full comforts of your powers just as you have been for the last decade.'
'Master,' the stooped figure of Nott quailed.
'Silence,' Voldemort hissed. 'These gaps, these are where those who truly stood with me have their place. Those who never renounced me, were never disloyal, those who are in Azkaban, and those who are dead.'
He stalked around the inside of the circle, bare-foot, robes whispering along the floor.
'You have disappointed me, you have all disappointed me gravely…'
A figure stepped out of the circle, trembling, to prostrate themselves before Voldemort. 'Please, master,' he begged piteously, 'forgive me, forgive all of us, we were afraid.'
'Forgive you,' the Dark Lord's voice was very very cold. 'Get up, Avery,' he ordered. 'Stand next to me, like you swore you would.' He reached out and took Avery's chin between his thumb and forefinger. 'You ask for my forgiveness? I do not forget. I do not forgive…'
It struck a very familiar chord with Harry. Riddle's words might as well have been taken from the tip of his tongue for how close they were to his own.
He began to laugh.
'You find their betrayal funny, Harry?' Voldemort's attention snapped back to him and the laughter died instantly as he met his eyes. The slitted pupils bored into him relentlessly, then Riddle turned away. 'I suppose I might find the similarity amusing too,' he whispered, 'were I in your shoes. Harry slammed his occlumency barriers down, clearing his mind of every thought.
Voldemort laughed. 'I will have my repayment from all of you. A second chance to prove you meant the words we spoke together when you took my mark. When you have fulfilled your debt to me we will stand alongside each other once more, and remake this country in our image.'
He moved back to the centre of the circle. 'Perhaps, though, some of you feel that Avery was right, that there is a reason to fear. Dumbledore, that champion of the undeserving rabble, walks in your nightmares, or maybe you even fear Harry Potter.'
The sinking feeling had begun to creep back, driving his stomach further and further down.
'Bertha,' he commanded sibilantly, 'our wands.'
'Of course, my lord.' The witch passed both Harry's wand and another, slightly longer, pale wand to Voldemort. She made to step back into the circle, but Riddle caught her injured stump in one hand.
'You have never asked repayment for the sacrifice you made to restore me to my body,' he said smoothly, 'such devotion is admirable.'
From the tip of his wand a hand of shimmering steel spun, attaching itself to the stump of Bertha's arm.
'Thank you, my lord,' she whispered reverently, flexing her shining fingers.
'Back you go, Bertha,' Voldemort whispered, 'your reward is not for your devotion, but for understanding that no follower of mine need ever beg what they deserve from me. Only those who suffered Azkaban rather than renounce me will be more exalted than you.'
Malfoy looked horrified at the thought, but he'd looked rather unhappy about the return of his master from the very beginning.
'Now.' Riddle turned back to Harry, spinning his ebony wand around his fingers just as he had spun Harry's holly wand in the chamber of secrets. 'I shall prove to you, my friends, that there is nothing to fear, not from Dumbledore, and not from his pawn.'
A shard of ice formed in Harry's chest. He was nobody's pawn.
Stepping across the circle Voldemort extended Harry's wand back to him, a cold smile on his face.
'Now, Harry, we duel, and you die, just as you would have done thirteen years ago, had your mother's magic not interfered.'
I don't want to die. I refuse.
Voldemort stepped back to the circle edge and Harry warily mirrored him. He knew that etiquette demanded they bow to each other before the duel began; it was the only thing Gilderoy Lockhart had actually taught him.
Riddle inclined his head, folding gracefully at the waist.
Harry reciprocated, copying the inhuman looking wizard. If he was going to die, he would leave an impression. He shot a glance at the Triwizard Trophy that had brought him here. It was still faintly glowing. He very much hoped it was still a portkey, because the first opportunity he got he was leaving.
'Crucio,' came Voldemort's cold whisper.
Harry threw himself to one side, and then back when a second red curse hissed through the air where he had been. He wasn't as fast as Harry expected.
I can survive. I can escape.
His wand burst into warmth, the heat flooding up his arm. 'Osassula,' he retaliated, sending the curse flying back at Voldemort who batted it aside casually, but seemed a little shocked at the spell.
'Such dark magic, Harry,' he remarked, circling around the edge, deflecting every bone-splintering curse and hex into the ground around him. 'What would that old fool Dumbledore, say?'
'There is no such thing as dark or light,' Harry quipped.
'There is only power,' Voldemort finished, amused again. 'I did not expect you to listen, Harry, when I told you that three years ago.'
'I didn't listen,' Harry dismissed, unleashing every powerful spell he knew, keeping Riddle on the back foot was essential to his escape plan, all he needed was a moment of distraction.
'There is only intent,' he told Voldemort, steeling himself for the drain of the spell, then bathing the circle of Death Eaters in fiendfyre. The cloaked figures scrambled out of the way as tombstones, grass and even the cauldron were consumed.
Riddle's serpentine eyes studied him curiously though the hungry, red flames, even as the fiendfyre twisted back around Voldemort's wand at Harry, swirling into a serpent's maw.
Harry's wand flared red at the tip and the fiendfyre roiled down into the ground, billowing out of existence in a wave of searing heat.
'Perhaps,' Riddle murmured, 'there was something to that prophecy after all.'
Prophecy?
That was certainly something to investigate.
'If you were anyone else, save that old fool Dumbledore, I would offer you a place within my inner circle, Harry,' he said smoothly, gesturing to the ring of Death Eaters now reforming around them. Some, to Harry's pride, looked slightly scorched.
'I'm already within your inner circle,' Harry replied dryly, gesturing to the ring himself.
'Indeed you are,' Riddle's lips curled in amusement.
The pale wand flashed up impossibly fast and the graveyard around him dissolved into a hail of curses. Voldemort had been playing with him, testing him and toying with him, but the games were over now.
His shield charm shattered only moments after the tombstones disintegrated, and the first red beam of light hit him.
Searing pain wracked his body, and he crumpled into a ball. Voldemort's Cruciatus Curse was far beyond Cedric's, there was no space for thought or anything but the pain.
'A taste of the pain I endured that night at Godric's Hollow, Harry,' Riddle announced cruelly, ending his torture so Harry could hear him.
Harry rolled himself over and pushed himself to his feet, unwilling to die on the floor at Voldemort's feet, not when there was still a chance of escape and survival.
'Again, Harry?' Riddle asked coldly. 'For the pain I suffered at your hands when you killed my servant Quirrell, perhaps.'
The yew wand came up, but this time Harry was ready for how unnaturally fast Riddle had become.
'Papilionis,' he cried, and Voldemort's Cruciatus Curses burst harmlessly into wisps of black smoke around him.
'Avada Kedavra,' Riddle hissed, furious at how successful Harry's shield had proved against his torture curses.
There was another wisp of black smoke and an expression of utter outrage crossed the face of the Dark Lord. Harry would have laughed if he were not close to death, but it would take only seconds for Riddle to figure it out and use something as simple as the blasting curse to break his defence.
He flicked his wand, transfiguring a single butterfly into a steel spike, and sending it flying across the circle at Voldemort.
Riddle side-stepped, sneering and the steel fragment hissed past him.
There was a small gasp of pain behind Voldemort and Bertha Jorkins collapsed holding her neck. Bright, crimson blood spurted out past her shining, silver fingers as she blinked desperately.
'Master,' she pleaded, her entire left side soaked in blood, 'master, please.'
Riddle never even turned around to look at her as she died.
'I told you,' Harry reminded her, smiling coldly. He had no sympathy for Bertha Jorkins, she had earned her fate.
The curly-haired witch giggled slightly hysterically, paling rapidly as her blood pooled across the ground, then she blinked one last time and slumped still.
She's the third person I have killed.
Harry felt no guilt for any of them, he'd never felt much to begin with, only worried about what being capable of the act made him.
'Now,' Voldemort's cruel smile returned, 'you are no different from us, Harry.'
The ice spread across his chest in fury, Riddle had no right to compare him to any of them, not after everything he had done. The glowing red eyes of the Harry the boggart had become gleamed in memory. Something stirred in the ice.
'Now,' he responded icily. 'She is the third servant of yours I have ended, Voldemort. I felt no pity for her and I will feel no pity for you.' His wand snapped up, summoning the portkey cup to him. He caught it in his left hand, but there was no jerk, no magic.
'I would have to have very foolish followers to leave such an obvious avenue of escape open,' Voldemort laughed in his unnatural, high way.
'Avada Kedavra.' This time the bright flash of green came from Harry's wand.
It missed Voldemort by inches, hissing though one of the gaps in the circle behind him when he apparated away, and spattering harmlessly against one of the stubs of the tombstones.
He apparated.
Something had changed, the wards that kept him here were gone. All he needed was a moment.
'So you do have the desire to kill,' he hissed, surprised. 'Who then of my followers have you killed, for whom else's sake shall I kill you?'
'Barty Crouch,' Harry told him, feeling nothing but pride, 'and revenge against Peter Pettigrew.'
It was foolish of him to declare it before all the Death Eaters and he knew it, but he couldn't reign in his pride and anger enough to stop himself. It was not like they could do anything with it, not hearing it under these circumstances for someone supposedly dead thirteen years and a madman killed in the chaos of the World Cup.
'Pettigrew, perhaps,' Voldemort considered, deflecting Harry's bone splintering curse with a shining silver shield composed of thousands of tiny serpents. 'He was a poor wizard, useful, but pathetic. Barty Crouch, on the other hand was talented, no fourteen year old could have beaten him in a duel, how do you claim to?'
Harry's lips twitched, a dreadful temptation overwhelming him. He couldn't resist, and he could always apparate immediately afterwards.
'Like this,' he smirked, and slashed his wand across his chest towards Riddle. There was a shimmer in the air between him and Riddle, a hazy basilisk maw of nothing that slammed into and shattered Voldemort's shield like it was glass, sending him staggering backwards and down to his knees.
The conjuration took almost everything Harry still had to spend, but he managed to remain on his feet, swaying as Voldemort picked himself up from the floor, raising his wand.
The incantation was already on the lipless mouth of the dark wizard, so Harry dragged whatever magic he could imagine from within him, and pictured where he wanted to be most, with the girl he had left behind.
'Legilimens,' Voldemort spat, as Harry twisted.
His apparition was too slow and even as the world swirled back past him he felt Riddle's mind crash into his own, tearing the intent and emotion of the spell he had cast from him. He struggled to clear his mind and force Voldemort out, but no matter how much he tried to empty his head he couldn't push the dark wizard from it. Riddle followed the thought pattern back. There were glimpses of his childhood, eleven years of memories with the Dursleys stolen in seconds, but alongside them he gleaned others, moments Riddle could not disassociate from Harry's recollections. An orphanage, with sneering children who hated him because he was different, disdainful peers who abhorred him because he was a muggleborn, a nobody, and then the pain ended.
I was nothing once too.
The thought was not Harry's.
The connection broke, and the voice of Riddle, the real voice, the one of the young man from the chamber, was torn away. Harry saw a flash of silver before his eyes, then he hit something very hard and the world swirled to a halt, bursting into darkness with an explosion of bright, white sparks.
AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does.
