Hogwarts' New Apprentices
by gyhardin

Disclaimer: I don't own YYH and Harry Potter. We all know who own them. Mine is just the story plot.

Chapter 3: Lord Meets Servant

In an abandoned building a few miles from Hogsmeade, on the second floor of the dilapidated warehouse, a man in tattered clothes was writhing on the floor. His body was twisted in pain, arching and bowing his back as hexes were hurled at him. The fingers on his left hand were clenched in a tight fist, nails digging into his palms, and blood dripping. His stumped right arm, where a silver hand once graced it, was pounding on the floor as he belted out an agonized scream. His wand, a foot away from his body, was lying on the floor, useless against the onslaught of curses lobbed at him by a hooded man standing a meter far from his struggling person.

"How dare you! How dare you, you pathetic weakling! You dare to steal my things from me while I was unconscious? Did you really believe that you'd be safe in this crumbling warehouse? Did you hope that I won't be able to follow you and exact vengeance?" roared the man as he flung back the hood of his cloak and his eyes glowing red in the dark as he glared at the cowering man in front of him.

"Stop, please! I beg you, master!" the vagrant pleaded, panting and moaning in pain. "Forgive me! Have mercy, master! I didn't know you were still alive. I thought you were already dead. You were not breathing, master!" he hurriedly explained in a whimper.

"Dead?" was the incredulous exclamation. "Do I look dead to you, huh!" He came closer to the man. His face was illuminated by moonlight from the window in front of them. He had long red hair with an alabaster skin. His eyes were slanted and on the center of his face was a purple spider-like tattoo branching from the bridge of his nose.

The cursed man could now see that the stranger's eyes were pale brown not red like he thought it was, red like those of the dark lord. But this man standing over him looked more menacing than Tom Riddle. Even though the man's voice is high-pitched, it still carried a certain timbre in it that made his skin crawl.

"I looked for a pulse, master, but there was none." The beggar continued on his spiel. "Moreover, you don't look like you have been around these parts before." From the frown on the stranger's face, he knew that he needed to derail that line of thought and say something else. "You look really powerful, master. I think even more powerful than He-who-must-not-be-named-but-finally-dead, my former lord. You were able to cast the cruciatus curse on me over and over again without even a use of wand." Like the sycophant that he is, he laid it on thick to make the man spare his life. "I can show you around the country. I'll be your servant and be utterly loyal to you like I did with the Dark Lord before."

"And you will serve me again, Wormtail." The red-haired man stated a matter-of-factly. The disheveled man gave a loud gasp of surprise at this. "Ah yes, Pettigrew. It is indeed I, your Lord Voldemort. As you can see, I am still very much alive," Voldemort, who looked nothing like his former self, declared with a derisive grin. "Well, basically I am Lord Voldemort, just in a borrowed body. Borrowed permanently, that is." He laughed maniacally at this. He could feel Rando's will struggle violently when he divulged his plan on taking up permanent residence. He could not hide his mirth at the demon's panic and cackled at this. "Ah, but for now you can refer to me as Rando," he told Peter Pettigrew; inwardly he was mocking the demon by taking even his name.

Peter relaxed a bit and gave a silent sigh of relief when the stranger, who claimed to be the Dark Lord, relented his curses. He could feel painful spasms running throughout his body. He winced at the throbbing ache in his palm when he unclenched his fist. He propped himself up with his stumped arm and looked around trying to locate his wand while his resurrected Lord was busy laughing. 'He seemed to be amused at himself,' Peter thought through the haze of pain. While 'Rando' was distracted, Peter slowly crawled to where he had espied his wand and retrieved it.

"I hope you are not thinking of sneaking in a curse at me, are you Wormtail?" Voldemort asked Peter when he noticed the man cradling his wand in his bleeding hand. "I really don't want to slay you, Wormtail," he calmly warned Peter. "I do still have a need of you. You have proven yourself useful to me in the past and you will do so again."

"Oh no, my Lord. I was just retrieving my wand. I do have to clean myself up if I am to become your loyal henchman once again." Pettigrew groveled at Voldemort's feet.

"That is good to hear." Voldemort looked around the building, "this place is a bit shabby but I think we can make use of it. What do you think, Wormtail?" He turned to Peter and inquired. "Harry Potter and that blasted meddling Dumbledore would never know that their nemesis is just around the corner, still alive and even more powerful than ever." He had a satisfied smirk on his face when he said this. "Clean up this mess, Wormtail!" he commanded.

"Uhm, my Lord, I'm not really good with charms. I might botch it and make this place look worse than better. Are we going to use this place as our base of operations, my Lord?" he queried cautiously.

Voldemort let out an exasperated groan. "Do I have to do everything myself around here?" he whined unbecomingly. "Well, don't just sit there, get up and do something. Anything! Just do what you can and I'll provide the rest." Some of the real Rando's childish personality seeped through his bluster unconsciously.

"Of course, my Lord. It will be my pleasure to do your bidding, Lord Voldemort Rando, sir." He scampered on his feet and bowed low. He was a bit doubled-over from agony, his body still riddled (no pun intended) with spasms. Moans of pain could be heard escaping from his lips as he moved about, casting cleaning charms on himself and around the place.

"Once we have a livable domicile, I want you to tell me what had transpired during my so-called demise. I want you to tell me who among my loyal Death Eaters are still alive and have evaded capture. I need to know everything that has happened here so I can commence planning on our campaign to rule the wizarding world," thundered Voldemort. 'After that, we will conquer the Muggle World, Reikai and then Makai!' he chortled in obvious delight as he taunted the demon imprisoned by his will.

oo

Back in Japan at midnight, two of the tantei were attempting sleep in their respective homes.

Yuusuke, wearing his light blue jammies, tossed and turned on his bed as he pondered on how to break the news to Keiko. He knew she would not be happy about this mission. But then Keiko had mellowed a bit. She had stopped being a nag, now that she knew that he had a concrete direction in life. She finally had accepted that her fiancé was the Toushin and the leader of the investigative team of Reikai and so was bound to do missions for the prince. 'Basically, it's the distance that will anger Keiko. I will just have to promise her that I will keep in touch and that Koenma will keep her posted on our progress,' he reasoned to himself. He went through this thought over and found himself satisfied with the solution. He relaxed and finally went to sleep.

Kurama's conundrum right now was his mother. How would he broach this subject to Shiori? His mom was already aware that he was both human and demon and that he worked for Reikai as a tantei. Although for the most part, he had spared her from the knowledge that the majority of their missions were dangerous and he was doing this to serve his sentence as punishment for stealing one of the royal family's dark treasures. 'I guess I'll just have to call her tomorrow and tell her some truth. I'll let her know that I will be gone for a month or so on a mission for Koenma and that I'll be investigating Britain in this but spare her the details,' he thought this explanation would have to tide things over for the moment. He nodded to himself, got up from the couch to turn off the TV, went up the stairs to his bedroom and laid down on the bed to get some much needed sleep.

After a night of passion, Hiei and Mukuro were snuggled in bed deep in slumber with limbs entangled. Mukuro had waylaid Hiei as soon as he got back from Reikai. She clung to him and was even more passionate than before, knowing it would be quite some time for Hiei to come back to her.

Kuwabara talked to Shizuru about the mission when he got home that afternoon and she was all for it. Kuwabara being who he was, had no problems in getting his forty winks that night. He had his panda-colored tubby cat, Eikichi, snuggled on his side. 'We will just have to cope with tomorrow as it comes,' he mumbled to himself in his sleep.

To be continued…

A.N. — Your reviews inspire me. Please be patient. I will be updating the story as soon as I finish a chapter. (6/29/2k4) The next chapter will be out within the week. My laptop crashed down on me, especially the LCD so it took me quite awhile to get it working aside from reformatting the hard drive. After that, my cable modem was the next one to die down. At first I thought it was just the cable connection, it turned out it was actually the modem that no longer worked. Anyway, it almost took a month before I got an internet access again. So it was a couple of misfortunes that struck me. But I'm back and will continue on with this story.