Chapter 18

It had been two days since the third task and Jack Potter didn't think he had stopped shaking for even a moment.

He hadn't slept but for the blissful hours when he was given a dreamless sleep potion. He hadn't eaten. He hadn't moved from his bed ever since he had been brought back from Hogwarts. He had barely seen anything except that graveyard and the monster's face, as if his eyes had been wrapped in the memory of that night. He had watched Cedric die over and over and over again, the look of horror on his face before the green light hit and the life was ripped from his chest now burned forever into his vision. The look of sadistic glee in cruel red eyes now plagued his nightmares in the rare moments when his body was unable to fight off the call of unconsciousness, only for him to snap awake pale and sweaty soon after.

He had nearly died, and he knew that had Voldemort not decided to play with his food before he ate it then he would have. He knew that thanks to the training he had received from Dumbledore and several other tutors including his father and Mad-Eye Moody he was better than almost anyone else his age, that he could out duel most seventh years and even lower level death eaters if it came to it, but that meant nothing when he had been forced to stare into snakelike eyes and fight for his life. Even when Voldemort did nothing but mock and taunt him it was clear that he was hopelessly outmatched. He was an insect and Voldemort, Voldemort was the raised boot waiting eagerly to grind him into the floor.

The injuries he had sustained in his lucky escape had been mostly healed by spells and potions even if they would forever scar his skin. He was thankful for them, because it was mainly thanks to them that he had been initially believed. Fudge had tried to deny it of course, but the vote on the next minister was due to be taken the day after the task anyway. His blustering protests held little weight. Rufus Scrimgeour had been elected despite the efforts of the Dark families – many of them had been known associates or allies of Nott or Avery, a fact that Wizarding populace had remembered. The revelation that they were Death Eaters had brought a lot more suspicion to the likes of Malfoy and the other darker families of the wizarding world, and made it much harder for them to operate.

Jack had been made to relive that night in a pensieve along with Dumbledore, the Minister, Madam Bones, the Head of the Unspeakables and his parents almost as soon as Scrimgeour reached his new office. Initially both the Minister and Unspeakable Croaker had refused to allow his parents to be there until Dumbledore stepped in and said firmly that they had a right to know what had happened to their son. Few were willing to stand up to Dumbledore even now.

All present had paled when Voldemort rose and had shivered at the sound of his voice, even if Croakers shadowed hood hid his reaction. This was their worst nightmare returned from the dead. Both his parents and Dumbledore had demanded to know how Pettigrew and Crouch Jr had been there if they were supposedly locked up in Azkaban or dead. Apparently Pettigrew had escaped from Azkaban just before the world cup, but Fudge had made sure that it was kept quiet so that both the world cup and the tournament would go on as planned. The best Madam Bones had been able to do was keep an ear out for reported sightings and send small squads when there was one. Not even Dumbledore had been told, and it was safe to say he was livid. Jack had never imagined that the normally mild mannered man could erupt in such a way, but he felt like it was a glimpse of the man that had defeated Grindelwald all those years ago. The power rolling off him was almost tangible.

As for Crouch Jr, well, they had all thought he was dead.

Croaker's tone had shown that he was clearly disappointed that not even Voldemort knew what had happened when he attacked the Potter house as well as surprised that he had admitted it to the death eaters that responded to his summons. He didn't know what the ritual was either but said he would be looking into it. Dumbledore too had no idea but he would also be endeavouring to find out the method of the Dark Lord's rebirth. The Unspeakables operated entirely separate from the Ministry and as such were not actually obliged to help them in any way or share any of their findings. It was unlikely they would refuse to share what they discovered but Dumbledore was taking no chances; he needed to know.

All of that though was unimportant to Jack. The present was often a hazy reality that he fought desperately to reach, but in the moments that he grasped it in his hands he wanted nothing more than to let go and return to the nightmare of the graveyard. He knew that he survived the graveyard at least, but when the tombstones faded away he was reminded that he was expected to kill Voldemort. It was an impossible task. He wasn't powerful enough, skilled enough, fast enough, good enough to beat him. All that training he had been given throughout his life was utterly pointless. He could train for the next decade and still not be enough.

He wanted to deny it, to palm the responsibility off to someone else. Dumbledore was the leader of the light, the only man who Voldemort had ever feared. Surely he could do it? But he knew it had to be him. He didn't know why, no one had ever told him, but his parents and Dumbledore had always been insistent that it had to be him. They had never lied about it to spare his feelings, they had just told him. He had been nine, and at first he had thought them delusional and paranoid. Voldemort was dead. He had killed him when he was a baby, everyone knew that. But he had been mature enough to see the very real fear in his parents' eyes and it dawned on him that they were telling the truth.

His younger self had thought it was cool that it would be him that would defeat the Dark Lord for good. He was already seen as a hero but this time he would be a real one. It had been every little boy's dream to save the day, his included. That illusion had come crashing down after his first few training sessions. His father was more serious than he had ever seen him, Dumbledore was not the patient old man that he had met before. The more he advanced the harder they became until it was almost like a switching spell on the door between two different people, but they were nothing compared to Mad-Eye Moody.

He hadn't been exposed to Moody until after his first year and his encounter with the possessed Quirrell, and Jack almost wished he never had been. The man was vicious and unforgiving. Every miscast spell and every complaint was met with a stinging hex that felt like a hard slap and in every duel Jack ended up sprawled in pain on the floor. Moody showed no mercy and treated him like his least favourite auror recruit, but it had worked. Jack had improved leaps and bounds under his tutelage, far more than he had under either Dumbledore or his father. Moody had wanted to bring along Tonks to help but she had refused outright. Jack understood, his parents said she had been Harry's best friend. And now, completely out of the blue, she wanted to talk to him.

When she entered her hair was her usual pink, her skin its usual pale colour and her eyes their usual brown. At least he assumed it was usual; it was how he remembered her from Hogwarts before she left at least. He had never actually spoken to her before which made him a little uncomfortable for this meeting, but he felt he owed it to Harry's memory to at least speak to his best friend when she asked.

Her expression though was far from the usually cheerful smile he remembered. This was biting anger and open disgust which he at first thought directed at him for some unknown reason until he caught sight of the distinctive red hair he shared with his mother following her. Tonks' fingers were twitching sporadically as if to snap her wand into her palm as his mother bustled into the room, a movement he knew well thanks to Moody.

"Mum can you give us a minute?"

His mother clearly didn't want to but one look at the expression on Tonks' face told her it was the smart decision and she reluctantly left. As soon as the door clicked closed Tonks was casting locking and privacy charms over every inch of the room, paying particular attention to any objects that his mother had been close to. When she turned back around her expression had mostly cleared back to her usual cheerfulness, though it was marred slightly by the ghost of the anger she had worn when she walked in.

"Sorry about that. I don't want anyone else knowing what we talked about and we both know she's probably waiting outside with her ear to the door. I don't have anything against you, but your parents…" she shrugged slightly as she dragged a chair across the room, not wanting to tell him that she wanted nothing more than to curse his parents into oblivion.

"So, what do you need?" Jack asked as he gingerly pushed himself up in his bed, a task made more difficult by the muscle tremors from the cruciatus curse.

"I need the memory of that night."

His eyes seemed to cloud over for a split second as he shivered slightly. He knew she was an auror but had been tentatively hoping that this visit would be totally unrelated to that night, that maybe she wanted to talk about Harry or something. He had expected that that wouldn't be the case, but he had hoped nonetheless.

"I already gave a copy to the Unspeakables and to Dumbledore. The Minister said that no one outside the room gets to see it. Sorry."

"Look," she said with a sigh, "Dumbledore won't figure it out. He is a light wizard and I'd bet my ass that whatever Voldemort used to come back was as dark as magic gets. Dumbledore is an expert in battle magic with masteries in transfiguration and alchemy. He is not an expert in rituals or coming back from the dead. I know someone who is."

"You know an expert in coming back from the dead?"

She smiled mirthlessly yet with a hint of fondness and nodded, and for some insane reason Jack got the feeling that she was telling the truth. How did someone become an expert in that? Technically he wasn't supposed to, but if it helped then surely he should… he didn't really have anything to lose by giving it to her to be fair. If her friend knew then it could be a massive help, and if they didn't then nothing would happen. Tonks wouldn't be asking if the expert couldn't be trusted and he doubted she would associate with anyone dark either.

"Fine." He said as he withdrew his cypress and dragon heartstring wand and pressed it to his temple, again thankful that he had never had to obey the underage sorcery laws. He wondered how many strings Dumbledore had had to pull to do it. He still remembered the look of surprised bewilderment on Dumbledore's face when he had seen his wand, as if he had been expecting something else.

After a few seconds he pulled away the worst night of his life as a silvery tail of flowing light and dropped it into the outstretched vial which Tonks swiftly pocketed.

"You will tell me if you find out how he did it won't you?"

"Sure, that is if the magic isn't too sensitive. There are some types of magic that need to be kept secret so they can't be used by anyone else, you know? And try not to tell your parents or Dumbledore that you gave me the memory. I could do without them breathing down my neck."

"Alright, I'll do my best."

The atmosphere became stilted and awkward for a few seconds, filled with painful history that both knew of but only one had experienced until finally Tonks stood up.

"I'll see you around Jack, hopefully next time you won't be stuck in bed. Thanks for this." She said as she patted her pocket.

With a few flicks of her wand her charms came tumbling down and she left, and sure enough his mother was in his room bare minutes later quizzing him on what they had talked about, but he stuck to his promise and didn't tell her about the memory. Instead he said that she had been asking if they had any pictures of Harry she could have, knowing that the mention of his dead brother would feel like a punch in the gut for his mother. He hated to cause her pain on purpose, but he was a bad liar and he knew it. The mention of Harry would throw her off enough that she wouldn't notice that he was lying. It made him feel guilty but he had promised Tonks, and in keeping his promise he felt like he was pleasing his brother in some way. He had no idea how right he was.

~Scene Change~

"Got it. No problems except that I had to speak to his mother." She said as she walked into Harry's office, taking extra care not to say 'your mother'. Harry wouldn't react to that well.

A shadow passed quickly across his face as he stood up and called a house elf to set the pensieve up in front of the portraits but it was gone when he looked back up, his expression ever so slightly more open than it had been in recent months.

"Come on."

As they moved towards the stairs Harry felt Sirius portkey into the grounds. He hadn't contacted him to tell him to come so he didn't know they had the memory, and that meant that there was something else. He strode through the doors just as they reached the bottom of the stairs and Harry raised an eyebrow in question.

"I just got a letter from Dumbledore saying that he is restarting the Order and the old man wants me to be a member again. He also not so subtly suggested they use one of my properties like last time, the nosy old bastard. Moody was a member in the last war so I suspect you'll get asked too Dora."

"What exactly is the Order?" Harry asked with slight irritation at not knowing something. Sirius looked momentarily surprised before he started speaking again.

"The Order is a… I guess you could call it a cross between a secret society and a militia. It's actually called the Order of the Phoenix, and as you can guess it was set up by Dumbledore during the first war to oppose Voldemort and his Death Eaters because Merlin knows the Ministry were doing nothing. Honestly if it wasn't for the Order we would have lost.

"Me, Moody, the Longbottoms, the Potters, the Prewetts and a lot of others were all members, and we saved a lot of lives and killed a lot of Death Eaters. Dumbledore didn't like that, even back then he was harping on about not sinking to their level and other such nonsense. Most of the old guard ignored his mercy preaching but most didn't survive the war either. Merlin knows who is going to be in it this time around."

"I want you two to be in it, at the very least one of you needs to be. If Dumbledore knows something I need to know it. If Dumbledore does something, I need to know what."

There was no flexibility in his tone – they had to do it. While neither of them minded all that much they weren't particularly keen to join either, but they did both want to know why it was so important. They understood that Harry wanted Voldemort dead but he was speaking as if the war was his and his alone.

With a slight gesture he turned down the narrow staircase that led to the basement and the other two followed him as Nymphadora filled Sirius in about the memory. Harry wasn't particularly bothered about Dumbledore starting up his club again; they would be an irritant when he revealed himself but up until then they would make a suitable distraction for Riddle. With Sirius and Nymphadora in the fold hopefully their influence towards him could be minimised when the time came.

The portraits were looking at the pensieve perched in front of them with interest when they walked in before their eyes snapped upwards expectedly.

"We have a memory of Riddle's rebirth. I thought your expertise could be useful in working out how he did it."

Tonks and even Sirius had a look of surprised confusion when he had said Riddle. He hadn't expected her to know, but Sirius not knowing? It wasn't as if it was particularly difficult to work out either. Honestly he was a bit disappointed that Sirius had done what all the sheep had done and put Riddle out of his mind as soon as a newspaper said he was dead.

"You didn't really think Voldemort was his real name did you?"

"But Riddle isn't a pureblood name."

"No, it isn't. He's a halfblood, and now you know one of his most closely guarded secrets. He went to great lengths to keep it quiet." Harry said as he tipped the vial into the swirling pensieve and tapped the runes on the side to make it project the memory above the basin as Sirius and Tonks looked at him gormlessly.

The memory started in the maze with an injured Potter arguing with Diggory over who got to take the cup before they settled on taking it at the same time. Harry felt like rolling his eyes and he could almost hear Salazar's scathing mutters about fairness. When they finally grabbed hold of the cup things got interesting.

To give credit where credit was due Potter immediately knew something was wrong and had his wand out and was crouched low on his good leg in a defensive stance almost as soon as his feet touched the ground with a stumble. Sirius and Tonks were both mildly impressed while Harry was wondering why he hadn't left yet. The cup was supposed to portkey them back to the start of the maze so whoever portkeyed them to the graveyard likely just put their charm over the top – all they had to do was grab the cup again and they'd be back at Hogwarts within a few seconds. He couldn't understand that most people's minds just didn't automatically analyse the area for escape routes or hiding spots.

From their viewpoint they could see two figures hidden in the stretching shadows, one with what looked like a bundle of rags in their arms. There was no way either Potter or Diggory would see them though. The distinctive sickly green light of the killing curse sped from the wand of the taller of the hidden figures into Diggory's chest and he fell limply to the floor, and as Potter turned to face the threat he was stunned from behind by the second. The memory went black.

When the memory resumed a split second later Diggory's body was still sprawled lifelessly in the dirt and Potter had been chained tightly to a headstone as a gigantic snake slithered threateningly through the grass, its eyes never once leaving the child being held hostage. In front of the headstone was a stone cauldron the size of dragon's stomach bubbling forebodingly with the two previously hidden figures stood at its side. Harry didn't recognise one of them, a pale skinned man with fair hair and freckles dotted around his face, but the other he did.

Pettigrew.

Harry wanted Pettigrew dead. The betrayer, the man who had led Riddle straight to his doorstep. But he didn't think it would be him that would finally kill the rat. Sirius was growling like a feral dog with his lips twisted in a snarl, his eyes burning with black, brimming hatred. No, Pettigrew's life wasn't his to take.

But still the rat was clutching a ragged bundle to his chest like a mother to her infant and Harry had the dreadful idea that somehow it was Riddle that he was cradling. But how? What monstrosity could possibly be swaddled beneath the blankets?

"Now, Wormtail." a cold voice hissed that made even Harry fight the urge to flinch.

Pettigrew pulled apart the blankets to reveal a… thing. Harry couldn't describe it. It was an abomination, a creature so utterly inhuman that it made his blood run cold. Its shape was similar to that of a small child, but that was where the similarities ended. Its hairless skin was slimy and as white as winter snow, with blood red eyes glaring out cruelly from its scaled face, its head thin and reptilian with slits in place of a nose.

It wrapped its feeble arms around Pettigrew's neck as he carried it towards the cauldron with a look of revulsion on his face and lowered it delicately into the sparking potion. His companion had only a look of crazed anticipation.

Now that Harry had a chance to look more closely at the cauldron he could see innumerable tiny runes etched painstakingly into the stone. He recognised many of them but he did not recognise the ritual at all; it was far from the rebirth rituals he knew of. The runic complexes were more comparable to those used in healing rituals.

"Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!" Pettigrew cried shakily with his wand held aloft.

The grave to which Potter was shackled shook and cracked and the boy watched with clear terror as a stream of dust rose into the air and dropped softly into the cauldron. The previously water like potion hissed and bubbled until it became a vivid, poisonous blue.

Pettigrew whimpered as he pulled a silver dagger out of his robes and held his hand above the cauldron with the dagger pressed against the wrist. When he spoke it was in a pathetic, broken voice that reeked of fear.

"Flesh of the servant, w-willingly given, you will revive your master!"

With a single movement he cut off his hand and it fell into the cauldron with a soft sploosh as he screamed in agony. He looked like he might pass out as the potion glowed a burning red and illuminated his pale face but he stumbled across the graveyard towards Potter, whose eyes were closed tightly and only opened when he felt the cold metal of the dagger glide down his arm.

"B-blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe."

As soon as the blood was added to the cauldron the potion became a blinding white and Pettigrew fell sobbing to the floor while his companion looked eagerly onwards. The potion was bubbling and sparking, sending flashes of light every which way that were so bright that Harry could see them dancing across his retinas even as the potion became a cyclone of billowing mist so dense that the cauldron was obscured into nothingness.

"Robe me." The cold voice said again, and the second man rushed to pull a set of robes reverently over the skeletal figure that was just visible through the rapidly fading white.

When finally the air cleared and the figure turned to face them Tonks gasped and Sirius' fists clenched but Harry, Harry simply stared as Voldemort examined his new body. Because that was who he was, Harry realised. This was not Tom Riddle, the boy who killed his father's family and traumatised orphans in caves. He had died long ago to be replaced by this creature. Calling him Tom Riddle only humanised him, and human was one thing that Voldemort was not.

"Your arm, Barty."

Eagerly the second men pulled his sleeve up to expose the mark that now slithered and squirmed as if alive. Voldemort pressed his long white finger to it and the mark hissed as it darkened to deepest black as the man grimaced in pain.

"Now we shall see… now we shall know…" he murmured softly, "who will remain faithful and who will be foolish enough to flee?"

He glanced towards Potter and laughed a cold, cruel laugh, completely devoid of any humour. The air was suddenly filled with the cracks of apparition and the swishing of cloaks as Death Eaters flooded in, all of them hooded and masked as they approached. Almost as one they dropped to their knees and crawled like animals towards their master and kissed the hem of his robes, dogs grovelling before their owner. Voldemort remained silent as they backed away and formed a circle around him, Potter and the still sobbing Pettigrew with gaps left sporadically, as if waiting for others. The second man, Barty, stayed where he was as he stared in disgust at those who had just arrived.

Voldemort let the silence drag for several moments before he began to speak. He had a charisma about him as he whispered into the night, a magic beyond spells and charms in his voice that bewitched and ensnared all those who watched. But there was also a venom, an undercurrent of promised pain that struck fear into the hearts of the men who had sworn their eternal loyalty to him. Harry didn't particularly care about his rambling monologue but even he found himself spellbound and, despite himself, impressed at the sheer control he held using nothing but mere words.

All throughout Voldemort's speech Pettigrew continued to sob pathetically over his bleeding arm that he had now wrapped in his robes until, eventually, Voldemort's wand twirled and molten silver spouted from its tip. The metal seemed to hang in mid-air before it writhed and twisted into the shape of a human hand and lowered itself onto Pettigrew's wrist, gleaming as brightly as the moonlight that peeked through the passing clouds. His rat like face was filled with abject wonder as he flexed his new fingers and twisted his arm this way and that like a child examining their new toy.

Harry knew that it was effectively a publicity stunt on Voldemort's part. It was thanks to Pettigrew that he had been reborn and despite the fact that he had done so not out of loyalty but out of fear Voldemort had to look like a master who rewarded their followers. The rat's usefulness was limited to his animagus ability and the fact that he was utterly disposable and hence suitable for more risky tasks, assuming of course that they were also simple.

Once Pettigrew stumbled into his place in the circle Voldemort began to walk slowly around, pausing to talk to certain Death Eaters as he did so. Their conversation was too quiet for Potter and therefore them to hear but each of the Death Eaters stiffened as soon as Voldemort stepped in front of them and only relaxed once he had moved on. He stopped at the largest gap of all and stood staring at it with blank red eyes for several seconds before he finally spoke.

"And here we have six missing Death Eaters … three dead in my service. One, too cowardly to return… he will pay. One, who I believe has left me forever… he will be killed, of course… and one, who remains my most faithful servant, and who has already re-entered my service."

With that he gestured to the man who had stood removed from the gathered Death Eaters and beckoned him closer with a pale, spider like hand.

"Come, Barty. I know of your hatred of those who abandoned me, of those who plead their innocence and slipped back amongst my enemies while you were entombed in Azkaban, unwilling to renounce me… you will be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams for your loyalty. But until then, my faithful servant, you must put aside those feelings for the good of Lord Voldemort."

"Yes, master…" he muttered with a low bow as he took his place in the circle.

One of the Death Eaters stepped forwards and an oily voice spoke from behind the mask.

"Master, we crave to know… we beg you to tell us… how you have achieved this… this miracle… how you have returned to us…"

"Ah, what a story it is, and it begins – and ends – with my young friend here." He said as he walked lazily towards Potter.

"You all know that they call this boy my downfall?" he said softly. "You all know that on the night I lost my powers and my body, I tried to kill him? I have nothing but vague recollections from that night beyond stepping over the threshold… and yet there were no spells present that would cause such a thing. I believe it to be an old magic, a magic that not even I could foretell. I remember the flash of the Killing Curse and then pain, pain beyond pain, my friends; nothing could have prepared me for it. I was ripped from my body, less then spirit, less than the meanest of ghosts… but still, I was alive.

"What I was even I do not know… I, who have gone further than anybody along the path to immortality. You know my goal – to conquer death. And now, I was tested, and it appeared that one or more of my experiments had worked for I had not been killed, though the curse should have done so. Nevertheless, I was as powerless as the weakest of creatures and I only remember forcing myself, sleeplessly, endlessly, second by second to exist… I settled in a faraway place, in a forest, and I waited… surely, one of my faithful Death Eaters would try to find me… one of them would come and perform the magic I could not to restore me to a body… but I waited in vain…"

A shiver ran once more around the circle of listening Death Eaters. Voldemort let the silence spiral horribly before continuing.

"Only one power remained to me. I could possess the bodies of others. But I dared not go where other humans were plentiful, for I knew that the Aurors were still abroad and searching for me. I sometimes inhabited animals – snakes, of course, being my preference – but I was little better off inside them than as pure spirit, for their bodies were ill-adapted to perform magic… and my possession of them shortened their lives; none of them lasted long…

"Then… four years ago… the means for my return seemed assured. A wizard – young, foolish and gullible – wandered across my path in the forest I had made my home. Oh, he seemed the very chance I had been dreaming of… for he was a teacher at Dumbledore's school… he was easy to bend to my will... he brought me back to this country and, after a while, I took possession of his body, to supervise him closely as he carried out my orders. But my plan failed. I did not manage to steal the Philosophers Stone. I was not to be assured immortal life. I had been thwarted by Jack Potter once more. He delayed me until the old fool arrived to save him… I was forced to flee…

"The servant died when I left his body, and I was left as weak as I had ever been," Voldemort continued, "I returned to my hiding place far away, and I will not pretend to you that I didn't then fear that I might never regain my powers… yes, that was perhaps my darkest hour… I could not hope that I would be sent another wizard to possess… and I had given up hope, now, that any of my Death Eaters cared what had become of me…"

Several of the masked wizards shifted uncomfortably, but Voldemort took no notice.

"And then, not even a year ago, when I had almost abandoned hope, it happened at last… a servant returned to me: Wormtail here, who had betrayed his friends in my service, had escaped from Azkaban to avoid justice, decided to return to his master. He sought me in the country where it had long been rumoured that I was hiding… helped, of course, by the rats he met along the way. Wormtail has a curious affinity with rats, do you not, Wormtail? His filthy little friends told him there was a place, deep in an Albanian forest, that they avoided, where small animals like themselves had met their deaths by a dark shadow that possessed them…

"But his journey back to me was not smooth, was it, Wormtail? For hungry one night, on the edge of the very forest where he had hoped to find me, he foolishly stopped at an inn for some food… and whom should he meet there but one Bertha Jorkins, a witch from the Ministry of Magic?

"Now see the way that fate favours Lord Voldemort. This might have been the end of Wormtail, and of my last hope for regeneration. But Wormtail – showing a presence of mind that I would never have expected of him – convinced Bertha Jorkins to accompany him on a night-time stroll. He overpowered her… he brought her to me. And Bertha Jorkins, who might have ruined it all, proved instead to be a gift beyond my wildest dreams… for – with a little persuasion – she became a veritable mine of information.

"She told me that the Triwizard Tournament would be played at Hogwarts this year…"

Harry stopped listening to the madman's ramblings at that point. He trusted that either Sirius or Nymphadora would catch anything else of importance and instead went back to examining the cauldron in an attempt to work out why it was giving him a tingling feeling in the back of his mind, as if he had read about it before. But no matter how much he stared he just couldn't figure it out. It was infuriating.

A flash of crimson light followed by an ear-splitting scream that seemed to pierce straight through his chest pulled him away from the cauldron and he had to watch as Voldemort held the cruciatuson a child for nearly thirty seconds as sick, twisted enjoyment danced in his red eyes and the masked wizards laughed and jeered as if it were sport.

When finally the curse was lifted Potter slumped limply into his chains with shaking limbs and gasping breaths as Voldemort stood in front of him, preaching about how using the cruciatuson a defenceless teenager somehow proved how powerful he was.

"Now untie him, Wormtail, and give him his wand."

Pettigrew scurried across the circle and vanished the chains with a few careful flicks of his wand, causing Potter to drop painfully to the floor. The rat dropped the boy's wand a few feet from where he was sprawled without even looking at him before he retreated back to his place as the masked men shifted inwards as one until the gaps had disappeared. Potter had nowhere to run.

Potter pushed himself onto his feet with some effort and picked up his wand before turning to face his opponent. Stood there, favouring his left leg with pale skin and wide eyes, it was hard to imagine how Potter would survive.

"You have been taught how to duel, Jack Potter?" Voldemort said softly.

He nodded simply in response and Voldemort smiled a terrible, lipless smile.

"We bow to each other, Jack," said Voldemort, bending a little but keeping his snake-like face upturned. "Come now, the niceties must be observed. Your parents have surely taught you about manners… bow to me, Jack…" he said, but Potter remained motionless and the laughing Death Eaters stilled slightly.

"I said, bow." Voldemort said as he raised his wand, and Potter's spine curved as if forced by an invisible hand.

"Very good. And now you face me like a man, straight backed and proud, the way many men have died before you… and now – we duel."

Before Potter had even moved another jet of crimson slammed into his side and another scream pierced the air and, again, Death Eaters laughed. After a few seconds Voldemort released the curse and Potter scrambled shakily to his feet and then started firing back. Blasting curses, piercing hexes and cutting curses, all of which were lazily shielded, but nothing truly lethal, nothing that had been designed to kill. He been trained, clearly, but those witches and wizards who called themselves light might as well have signed his death warrant. They were training him to kill one of the most dangerous men in recent history, yet they had not taught him a single spell that was designed to do such a thing.

From behind his shield Voldemort's eyes dilated in excitement as he started to cast his own spells, but like Potter he did not use anything lethal. Unlike Potter it was not because he did not know any, it was simply because he was having too much fun playing with the boy to kill him just yet – a child wanting to pull the legs off an insect while it was still alive.

He used curses that would hurt but not enough to debilitate him – cutting curses to the arms and back, bone breaking curses to the ribs, asphyxiation curses that he would remove after a few seconds each time. He wanted Potter to know just how inferior, how small he really was. He wanted to show his Death Eaters that the boy who was said to have defeated him once was nothing compared to him.

Potter was launched through the air by a low powered blasting curse to the stomach as several Death Eaters ducked to avoid his body and rolled to a stop in the grass. He threw himself behind a headstone to laughs and jeers as Voldemort walked slowly towards it with an amused smile on his face.

"We are not playing hide-and-seek, Jack," Voldemort said softly, "you cannot hide from me. Does this mean you are tired of our duel? Does this mean that you would prefer me to finish it now? Come out… come out and play… your death will be quick… it may even be painless… I would not know… I have never died…"

The boy had his eyes clenched tightly shut, a small child desperately telling themselves that if they cannot see the monster then the monster cannot see them. And then he opened his eyes and they were filled with resolution, the terror faded from his face to be replaced by firm determination and he moved to stand and face his death courageously and unafraid. But then his head jerked as if noticing something from the corner of his eye and he raised his wand as his lips moved in silent words, and suddenly the cup was zooming through the air into his outstretched palm.

Voldemort screamed an insane, rage filled scream as Potter disappeared in a swirl of indescribable colour, and then the memory faded into nothingness and Harry found himself back in the present.

The room was silent for several long moments until finally it was broken.

"What was that?" Tonks whispered. "What is he?"

"An abomination, my dear girl." Henry said from his portrait, "He is, truly, what I would call a monster."

"But what was the ritual? I don't recognise it and it is far from the rebirth rituals that I have read about." Harry asked.

"That, is because it is not a rebirth ritual, it is a healing ritual. Oh, he has defiled and corrupted it beyond description, but it is still recognisable." Edgar said.

"I saw it performed once when I was young on my older brother. You see, this is a ritual originating from western Africa where myself and my family visited on our travels. When we were visiting and learning from the elders the tribe was attacked, I would assume by another tribe but I never found out, and my father, my mother and my brother all went out to help while I was left hidden inside. I was too young to be of any use.

"My brother was gravely injured protecting the villagers – bitten in the leg by a runespoor being controlled by a Parselmouth. To stop the venom spreading we were forced to remove his leg. We had no antidote; it was the only way to prevent him from dying. The elders spent several hours discussing between themselves until they offered to perform the ritual on him, a ritual secret to their tribe. They said he was a warrior who had been injured protecting them and as such he deserved it. Because that is who the ritual was intended for: warriors who were injured protecting their people.

"Voldemort used the bone of his father, unknowingly taken, the flesh of his servant, willingly given, and the blood of his enemy, forcibly taken. The true ritual uses bone of the father, flesh of the mother and blood of the self, all willingly given.

"Most magic and indeed the most common magics require no specific emotion to cast. They are strengthened by emotion, no doubt, but they can be cast without as well. But it is said that there are spells whose casting depends entirely on every emotion that it is possible to feel. The killing curse requires hate, the patronus charm requires positivity, happiness, and the cruciatus curse requires the desire to cause pain, for example. In its original form the ritual he used to create a new body requires love, selflessness, the desire to make someone whole once more. Voldemort used fear – the fear his father felt before he killed him, the fear his servant felt as he cut off his own hand, the fear the young Potter felt as he was forced to watch. Voldemort created the antithesis of what the ritual truly is, and yet, somehow, it worked. For that I must give him credit; modifying rituals, especially complex ones, is an extremely dangerous and extremely intricate art. It is certainly less of a risk than creating a ritual himself, however. That is an art that died long ago.

"My parents each lost a finger, but my brother went into the cauldron with one leg, and he came out with two. The ritual created a new leg, the same in every way as the one that he had had before down to the mole on his shin. The same blood, the same bone. It restores the self based on what the subject believes they are. My brother saw himself just as he had been, and so that is what he was made once more.

"Had Voldemort used a rebirth ritual he would have regained his body, yes, but it would be as it was supposed to be. All the enhancements and the rituals he had performed to make him more than a simple wizard would have been lost, but this way they are not. He may even have gotten stronger. Voldemort does, after all, believe himself more than a wizard, a god almost."

Sirius blanched at the prospect of Voldemort being even more powerful than he had been before and Harry finally remembered when he had read about the ritual. It was in an old family book that had been continuously added to over the centuries, filled with rituals and spells intended to just about anything. This ritual had interested him and he thought it could be tremendously useful if ever he was badly injured, only to be disappointed when he read beyond its effects. It required parents, something he didn't have.

"But how did he even survive the killing curse in the first place? It's all well and good knowing how he got his body back, but how about how he was still alive to do it? What if we manage to kill him but he just comes back again?"

All the portraits glanced at Harry for a split second before looking back towards Sirius but it was more than enough for him and Tonks to catch.

"You know how he survived?"

"Yes," he sighed, "but before I tell you I'm going to need another oath."

"We already swore one!"

"But that one was about me, not this. The more specific the oath the stronger it is. I don't want anyone finding out that I'm still alive, but I can deal with it if it happens. This absolutely cannot get out. If it did it would be catastrophic."

The deadly seriousness in Harry's voice seemed to make them grasp the gravity of the situation, but they wouldn't be able to fully understand it until they knew. If Voldemort found out that someone knew that he had made horcruxes he would check, and when he found out that three had been lost he would move those that remained and they would never be found. He really would be immortal. He could check on them now and everything would unravel to give the same result. Harry was only relying on his ego and his arrogance that made him believe that no one would ever find out what he had done, the same arrogance and ego that made it possible to find his horcruxes at all.

They gave the oath as Harry dictated it to them and Harry took a deep breath before he spoke.

"He made horcruxes."

Sirius sucked in sharply while Tonks just looked as confused as Harry had expected her to. There was no way she would know what they were.

"A horcrux is an object to which a witch or wizard tethers a part of their soul. As long as the object remains and their soul therefore bound to the living plane, they cannot die. The act of cold blooded murder causes the soul to splinter and crack, even if it later re-forms, and to make a horcrux a potion made using the victim's blood is used alongside a complex necromantic ritual to tear a fragment away and encase it in an object. Horcruxes themselves are near indestructible and can only be destroyed by two things: basilisk venom and Fiendfyre. They are among the blackest and most foul magics ever created, something not even the darkest of Dark Lords would even consider; to rip apart your very soul is an act against nature itself."

"You said horcruxes, plural. He made more than one?" Tonks asked, horrified.

"Yes, I suspect he made six to make a total of seven soul fragments including the one still in his body. I've already destroyed three."

"The locket." Sirius breathed.

"That was one of them. Another was a ring and the other a diary that had possessed a girl to open the Chamber of Secrets. He made the diary and the ring when he was sixteen."

"Sixteen? How did you manage to find them? If he was smart he would have thrown them in the sea or dug holes in random forests and buried them."

"Come on, Sirius, think about it. This is Voldemort, he would never do that; to him pieces of his soul deserve better than that. There is always something special, even sentimental about them.

"The diary was incredibly personal to him and he likely used the murder of Myrtle Warren to make it, his first kill. The ring was his grandfather's family heirloom and he used the murder of his muggle father who left him to rot in an orphanage, and he left it in the house where he had killed what remained of his maternal family. The locket once belonged to Salazar Slytherin," Harry said with a slight gesture to the scowling portrait, "his ancestor to whom he prized his relation to above almost everything, and then he hid it in a cave where he tortured two muggle children on a trip with his orphanage before he came to Hogwarts."

"But how do you know?"

"Like I said, the diary possessed a girl to open the Chamber of Secrets. She just happened to drop by when I was there, and I stunned her, took the diary and destroyed it. As for how I knew he made more than one, the diary was acting as a weapon. A horcrux contains an… echo, an imprint of who the person was when they made it. Had Tom Riddle planned to make only one then he would have made the girl hide the diary somewhere no one would find it, not use her as a vessel through which to attack muggleborns."

"Er, right." Tonks said, still disgusted at the idea of ripping your soul apart on purpose. "So, what are the others? Where are they?"

"If I knew that they would already be destroyed, obviously." He drawled, and she blushed slightly in embarrassment.

"I just have guesses as to what objects he used and very little idea as to where he would have hidden them. You have to understand, every horcrux and every hiding place has a meaning. As far as the objects go I think he would use an artefact that belonged to Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw and Godric Gryffindor – namely the cup, the diadem and the sword. He feels that Hogwarts belongs to him and he has already used an artefact of one founder, it would make sense for him to try to complete the set. The only problem is that no one has seen either the sword or the diadem in centuries. The cup was rumoured to be in the collection of a rich pureblood witch who died, apparently poisoned by her own elf. That was almost undoubtedly the work of the young Tom Riddle which would seem to confirm my theory, for the cup at least.

"Hiding places is where it gets harder. I've found no other meaningful locations from before he started Hogwarts so that just leaves his time after. I had thought that maybe he would have hidden one at Hogwarts – being an orphan he likely saw it as the first place he fit in, his first home – but I found nothing when I searched the chamber. He wouldn't just leave it on a shelf and the chamber would be the only place he could almost guarantee no one would find it. That's all I've got."

"We never found any secret rooms at Hogwarts; secret passages yes, but they were mostly common knowledge and we never saw a cup, sword or diadem in any of them. There was nothing else either, unless he used a rock." Sirius said as he scoured his memories for any sign, for a glint of metal in their wandlight or a crack in the passage wall that just didn't look right.

"What do we do now?"

"Nothing." Harry said with a sigh. "There really isn't much we can do until he reveals himself. Until he comes out of the shadows there won't be any attacks, nothing obvious anyway, and the public won't truly believe he is back until it slaps them in the face. All we can do is keep an eye on his known followers and hope one of them slips up, but I suspect the Ministry will be doing that. I can attack werewolves or giants but it will ultimately make little difference other than to make him more careful – all it would achieve is telling him that there is another player against him who doesn't have Dumbledore's misplaced mercy and give him a chance to try and trick me into a trap, something I would rather avoid."

Both Tonks and Sirius looked frustrated that they couldn't do anything despite knowing that Voldemort was alive and still had questions buzzing around their heads. Just as Sirius opened his mouth to ask why Harry had even been able to recognise what a horcrux was in the first place Harry's face seemed to a still and they both left quietly with slight reminiscent smiles, knowing that when he was deep in thought everything else faded away. It was one of the few things he had retained from when he was a child.

Harry hadn't expected them to know anything but he couldn't help the slight feeling of disappointment as he was still stuck without a clue as to where to look. Irritated, he shoved the issue of horcruxes aside for the moment as he instead thought about Voldemort himself. He had meant it when he said that they could do nothing for the time being, but that didn't mean he couldn't do anything. He still had debts to call in, even if he was hesitant to do so. It would mean both his personas were high up Voldemort's hit list but the impact it would have on his army was too good to ignore. It would take away a chunk of his funding and, hopefully, when he dropped Bulstrode or Selwyn from his inner circle as soon as their money was gone it would sow discord within the Death Eater ranks. That could potentially be as detrimental as the loss of gold itself considering Malfoy funded most of it anyway.

He just had to decide when to do it. It would be best to do it soon so that there was less gold to be put to use bribing officials to turn a blind eye but that would also mean he was a target sooner. The more he thought about it the less of an issue that became; his manor was near impossible to find and if it was then it was just as hard to breach. Anaïs was in no way linked to the Nightshade family beyond the fact she lived in the manor, something that could not be found in any record, and no one knew but him, Tonks and Sirius. The people at Beauxbatons had seen him with her in his natural form so as long as looked different when he was in public as Lord Nightshade then no one would know. Maybe he could even cause some trouble in the Wizengamot when he was at it. He was actually rather looking forward to it now, grinning slightly at the thought of their faces when he sat down in his seat, Dumbledore especially.

The actual politics of the Wizengamot with the various alliances would be tiresome and he knew that more than a few people would be approaching him to join their power block, but he figured as long as he stayed fairly central with a slight skew towards the 'light' side no one would make an enemy out of him for his voting alone. He doubted anyone would be willing to make an enemy out of him at all, assuming they were blessed with common sense that is.

AN: The italics is mostly copied from GoF with a few changes to things to fit. Obviously I take absolutely no credit for that. Not massively sure about this one but not a whole lot of massive importance happened so its not so important. Cheers for reading and, as always, reviews are appreciated.