Chapter 11: The Portkey, the Powder, and the Portal

A howl of wind ripped out, and the cup with the two boys attached to it began to spin. I recognized it immediately as a portkey and looked on in fascination, expecting it to take them to some sort of victory stand outside of the maze, visible to the crowd.

However, when the crowd continued to stay quiet a good minute after they had reached the cup, I realized something must have gone wrong.

I flew up out of the maze and looked down at the stadium—some people edged forward eagerly with binoculars while others fiddled with their cloaks and such, left to their own devices, and more still chatted up their neighbors in the stands, completely oblivious to the tournament at hand. The audience clearly didn't know there was a winner, much less two. Perhaps the portkey had taken them to the wrong place?

I flew to the only people who could give me a real answer.

Outside of the VIP box, I transformed back into my human form before rushing in. "The portkey," I announced but couldn't continue, gasping for breath.

Various ministry officials and other important adults, including the school leaders, looked back at me: some of them annoyed, some of them curious, all in that lazy, authoritative way of theirs, completely lacking the urgency to match my own.

"Marguerite!" Madame called, sounding relieved. "Where were you, mon papillon?"

"The portkey," I repeated, stressing the words, hoping to communicate how seriously wrong things were. "It's gone to the wrong place!"

At least that got a bit more of a rise our of them, though not the reaction I had been hoping for.

"What the devil is she on about—"

"Portkey…?"

"Madame, please control your ward!"

Several pompous voices rang out until the one I had been hoping to hear responded.

"Marguerite, what portkey are you speaking of?" Dumbledore asked. He had risen from his seat the moment I entered the box and was now making his way toward my side.

I had never been so glad to see him. I longed for some of the knowledge he kept hidden behind those all-knowing eyes right now.

"The portkey of the cup—in the center of the maze," I explained. "It's taken them somewhere no one knows they won. Whoever enchanted it must have made an error."

Dumbledore's face paled, and I could practically see his brain working a mile a minute behind those eyes of his. The only adult in the room catching on, he grabbed my shoulders, and leaned down to meet my eye with the utmost urgency. "Marguerite, did you see this firsthand, this portkey?"

I looked around around at the now-curious onlookers, and hesitated for a moment. The last thing I wanted was to be questioned about how I got close enough to see what they couldn't.

"Please, my dear," the headmaster pressed. "You must answer honestly—Harry could be in trouble—"

"Harry and Cedric," I corrected, deciding to disregard the many watching eyes and potential consequences. "I saw them touch the cup together. It doesn't matter how I did, but I was there. When they touched it … I know a portkey when I see one. They disappeared about five minutes ago now."

Dumbledore let go of me and began to conjure up a complicated spell.

"Dumbledore, what's going on?" I asked, growing progressively more nervous.

"What's going on is that Harry and Cedric have been taken," Dumbledore said stonily. "There was never supposed to be a portkey in the cup."

I felt as though I were about to throw up. Even more so when the stuffy ministry officials and rich people in the box began to buzz in a panic to match my own.

"Taken-!" Fudge cried out in protest. The minister had come to stand beside us at some point without me noticing.

That's when Karkaroff began to scream. I jumped back at the shock of the sound—until this point, I had only heard the man deep-voiced and smug, but this was a high-pitched, shrill sound that pierced the little box we were all in.

Before I could even blink, Dumbledore was at his side and had Karkaroff's sleeve rolled down and his arm bared to the minister to reveal a dark ugly mark. Chills ran through me as I recognized that mark. His mark.

"Voldemort," a voice confirmed from behind me.

I turned to see Snape looking more ominous than ever in his dark robes.

"He's summoning us."

I realized then that Karkaroff's screams were not from pain but fear, which made them all the more terrifying.

"How is this possible?" Fudge demanded.

"None of that matters, Cornelius," Dumbledore interrupted him briskly, walking over to Snape with Karkaroff in toe. "All that matters is that Voldemort has somehow resurrected himself, and we need to find Harry and Cedric before they suffer at his hand. My tracking spell is not working. Karkaroff, Severus," he turned to the two men. "Do you think either of you—"

"No!" Karkaroff yelled and broke free from Dumbledore before he could finish. He truned to Snape, eyes wide, veins popping out of his forehead. "You're mad if you go back to him willingly!" he shouted, looking quite mad himself. "The Dark Lord will kill you on sight!"

With that, Karkaroff ran out from the box, disappearing into the stadium.

"He's right," Snape said quietly. I wouldn't have been able to hear him if he hadn't been standing so close to me. I was actually directly in between him and Dumbledore, which was the only reason why I was able to hear the whisper that came next. "The game has changed, Dumbledore. I will be no good to them dead."

"No," Dumbledore seemed pained to admit it. "Then we only have one option; we must find the person who cursed the cup in the first place."

"It was an inside job," Snape agreed. "They will be close."

"I'll help."

Both wizards turned toward me.

"I want to help," I asserted. "I deserve to help."

Snape frowned, looking deeply disturbed, while Dumbledore smiled sadly at me. "Marguerite, it is good and kind and brave that you wish to help. You are just like your mother." My heart stuttered a bit because I knew it wasn't my adoptive mother he was speaking about, and I didn't know how to feel about it. "I promise you, there will be a time when your spirit will be invaluable to the battle we must fight. But that time is not now. You have not yet experienced enough; we are dealing with forces you couldn't possibly imagine, and second only to Harry himself, you are the worst person who could fall into Voldemort's hands right now." For some reason, Snape cleared his throat, and I wondered if that was his way of telling Dumbledore to stop talking.

In any case, it worked, since Dumbledore cut straight to the point after that.

"Promise me, you will return to the castle and stay there until the danger passes."

I stared into his blue, earnest eyes, seeing about a million things brewing beneath the surface, and then I looked up at Snape who was staring at me with surprising intensity. A movement caught my eye, and I saw Madame nodding across the room.

"I won't bother lying to you," I said to all three of them, completely matter of fact. "I'm not going to do that."

Dumbledore sighed. "I was afraid you were going to say that." Before I even realized it was in his hand, with a crack and a snap of his wand pointed at my wrist, I felt a weight gather there and all the sudden, I was no longer in the VIP box, or even the stadium.

No, instead I was sitting on a polished floor, surrounded by towering, ornate walls, solid mahogany dining tables, and a ceiling made entirely of stars, except for the ridiculously large chandelier in its center. The Great Hall. And it was entirely empty.

I cursed. How had he done that? I wasn't aware that forced apparition of another person was even possible—or even any apparition within Hogwarts grounds at all. Angrily lifting myself up, I ran to the front entrance of the castle, determined to somehow find Harry on my own. As I reached the entrance, the stadium in sight, I humphed determinedly; Dumbledore would have a hard time apparating me back here if he couldn't find me. I took a step forward and—

Fell flat on my butt.

Eyebrows scrunched, I dusted myself off and tried again but the same thing happened. Dumbledore, I realized. He must have created some sort of barrier.

With equal parts panic and fury rising in me, I backed up and charged the entrance, attempting to run through the invisible wall he must have set up, but a force threw me back, slamming me against the wall. I lied in a heaped, twisted bundle of pain on the floor, struggling to swallow down my tears of frustration. There are still some things you can try, I assured myself.

I lifted my head up as I wiped some blood from my mouth. Struggling to my two feet, I whipped my wand out as I approached the entry once more, and that's when I noticed it… my wrist.

On my wrist was a bracelet: dark gold and thick with an intricate design on it, almost like a series of Celtic knots. It weighed heavily on my wrist, and in a flash, I remembered the feeling of weight that had gathered in that exact area just before Dumbledore had sent me back to the castle.

"You're not a bracelet," I realized, horror slowly dawning on me. "You're a cuff!"

Now the tears freely fell, and there was nothing I could do to stop them. Dumbledore must have used some old magic to keep my tied to the castle, much like a genie was tied to its bottle.

How was I going to help Harry if I couldn't even go outside?

I felt an old enemy creep into my heart, cold and heavy. I felt useless. I felt helpless. Just as much as I did as a child when I was ill. Just as much as when I watched my parents die. That exact feeling had been why I trained so hard, intent on never being its slave again, and yet here I was again, literally and figuratively cuffed, a prisoner to my own weakness.

I threw a sharp reducto at one of the castle walls. And then another. And another. And another. Each blow just made me angrier as I stood there watching the stones and glass crumble around me. I did not stop until I heard an equally as angry voice.

"Halt, young witch!"

I whipped around to face scowling portrait of a man wearing green. "Just what do you think you are doing, and just who do you think you are pointing your wand at?"

"You tell me," I snarled, but lowered my wand.

"Show some respect, half-blood," the wizard replied, looking down his nose. He looked oddly familiar with aristocratic features, black hair and dark eyes. "You are speaking to the founder of this great school."

"The founder? I thought there were four…and how do you know I'm a half-blood?"

"Please, like I wouldn't remember you." The self-professed founder rolled his eyes. "It was a large enough ordeal the first time you came here. Quite the headache." I frowned at the portrait, not understanding what he was referring to, though I figured at this point that the man had to be Slytherin—green was his house color after all.

"Explain yourself!" I demanded, but the portrait merely scoffed.

"To you? I'll do nothing of the sort. I never did like you," he said coldly. "Though I must confess, you do come at a rather convenient time this time." He chuckled a bit at that. "Time, time, time! You could never get enough of it."

I still didn't know what he was on about, but that sounded vaguely like a threat so I leaned in close to him and said, "I'm not sure what type of mind game you're trying to play, but I've heard plenty about you: the black sheep, the bigot, the man who's ego was so fragile that he hid behind a giant snake."

He cackled. "My ego, fragile? Ha! What of that pathetic powder you hide yourself behind? Or that boy—well he's all grown up now, and you might not find him as useful to you after you—"

Slytherin's bitter voice broke off as a knife jammed into the stone right next to his portrait. I gasped, turning around, wand pointing in the attacker's direction but saw nothing but cobblestone and shadows.

"Who goes there?" Slytherin demanded. No one answered.

I looked around cautiously. Had Voldemort's followers already found a way to penetrate the castle? Or was it possibly the double agent who planted the illegal portkey in the first place?

Either way, I wouldn't stick around to find out.

"This has been a good talk, portrait," I said sardonically. "But I believe I've gotten as much as you can offer from this conversation."

With a mocking bow, I transformed into my Patronus and flew off to the only destination in this castle that might provide me with a hope of escape: the dungeons. I hadn't been lying; I truly did get the most out of my conversation with the portrait. He had reminded me of the one weapon I had left at my disposal.

The powder.

Arriving in the potion lab Snape had granted me access to, I flew straight up to the table with the powder before transforming back into my human form. With a flick of my wand, I sent all the contents of the powder I had been studying into the original vial from which I had received it from the minister.

I closed the lid before shaking it a bit, spooked at the strange motion of the golden sand, almost eerie in the way it swayed. The golden powder grew even more mysterious the more I studied it.

With its power unidentified, I knew it was risky—no, outright reckless—to attempt to use it, even in an emergency such as this. Fudge had warned me as much.

However, I had lost every other member of my family so far, and I would be damned if I lost the last one before I even got the chance to properly know him.

So before I could talk myself out of it, I opened the vial and pulled out the butterfly-shaped note that had started it all from under a pile of books: The future holds no hope for your brother—only the past. Ask for the powder.

Future and past. I had figured the powder would somehow give me the power to reshape the past, but before today, I hadn't known why I would need it. But now it was clear to me.

All those years ago, Voldemort had been what destroyed my family. Now, all these years later, Voldemort sought to destroy whatever family I had left. The answer was obvious.

I took a miniscule amount of the powder between my two fingertips and prayed this work; I had no idea how to use it, but I was hoping it worked like floo powder, where you threw it and then walked through a portal it opened, ideally to a world in which my wish was granted. Throwing the small amount of powder in the air, while clutching tight to the vial, I cried:

"I wish I could stop Voldemort before he even started!"

I took a step forward through the falling powder just as a voice called out behind me.

"NO!"

I whipped my head around to see Snape, standing by the door, wand out.

"Stupefy!"

But it was too late; my foot touched the floor the moment before the curse hit. I felt my body slip through something as buttery as velvet, smooth as sand, a bright golden light consuming my gaze.

When the light faded, I no longer heard the screams of Snape. Nor did I see the books and molecular equipment strewn across my worktable. Instead, the table contained tidy piles of potions ingredients, a textbook, and something brewing that smelt an awful lot like the potion my father used to make for me daily as a medicine.

My heart throbbed and tears came unbidden to my eyes. I stepped toward it.

"Step away from my Amortentia, please," a male voice definitely not Snape's suddenly said from behind me.

Blinking, I jumped and spun around, wand out.

Much to my bewilderment, Snape was gone and in his place was a raven-haired Hogwarts boy in a Slytherin uniform pointing a wand directly at my face. The boy was a bit taller than me - unsurprising for my height - but he was probably around my age. He had wavy black hair that was neatly styled, just like everything else about him: from his tie to his socks, all was meticulously straight and even, they symmetry broken only by a small scar next to his left eye. I was certain I had never met him before, because if I had, I definitely wouldn't have forgotten him. He had high cheekbones, a nice enough facial structure, and dark, intelligent eyes, strangely familiar.

If only I had met him before the Yule Ball, I thought sardonically, my defensive position not dropping.

"Where's my research?" I demanded.

"Research?" he asked, raising a brow. "Who are you? I have never seen you before."

I blinked, somewhat affronted. "You don't know who I am?" At this point, anyone who had been staying at Hogwarts during the length of the tournament knew who I was. Hermione and Fleur had told me as much. Between being Madame's ward and Harry Potter's…whatever… I had gained a lot of attention in the media and around the school.

The boys eyes flickered in surprise, and he laughed. "You think highly of yourself, no?" he mocked.

I scoffed. "It's not like that," I said, beginning to defend myself, then my brain caught up to my emotions, and I rolled my eyes. "You know what? Never mind. More importantly, who are you and what have you done with all my books and supplies?"

Judging by the sudden crease between his brows, now it was his turn to be offended.

"You intend for me to believe that you do not know who I am?" he asked in disbelief.

I barked out a laugh. "Well now who's sounding vain."

He paused for a moment, glaring at me—and I must confess it was an impressive glare indeed. I suddenly had a strong interest to know exactly who this boy was and just why he so adamantly felt he should be known. I had to remind myself that none of that mattered right now though. No matter how interesting I found him, my priority was Harry and figuring out how I could save him from Voldemort if the powder hadn't worked.

First things first, I would check if my plan was successful, which would be easy to do.

Abruptly shifting topics, I asked, "Does Voldemort have Harry?"

The boy's face fell inscrutably blank. "Excuse me?"

"Voldemort? Is he back?" I insisted.

"Voldemort…? I'm afraid I do not know who you are talking about," the boy replied slowly.

A smile cracked open my face as an intense joy cut through all my pent-up stress and anxiety that had been building over the past few hours. That meant it must have worked; Voldemort had never even existed!

"Lovely," I said, relieved and eager to find my brother. "I really must be off then. Nice meeting you."

I attempted to walk past him, intending to find Dumbledore and make him take this ridiculous cuff off me, but the boy grabbed my arm before I could go.

"Wait," he said. He pointed toward my head. "You are bleeding."

"Oh, am I? I'm sure it's fine." I struggled a bit against his grip, but he held fast.

"Well, I am not so sure," he replied firmly. "Your head is gushing blood."

I touched my head and sure enough it felt wet and warm. I looked at the dark red blood covering my fingertips. A wave of nausea ripped through me. I stumbled a bit, and he caught me.

"Merci," I murmured, my words a bit slurred as I slipped back into my native tongue. "What did you say your name was again?"

Suddenly I was grateful for his hand on my arm, because it was the only thing keeping me stable when the boy replied:

"I did not. My name is Tom Riddle."

Tom…

…Riddle…

Memories from the Chamber of Secrets came rushing back to me, and just as soon as they did, I looked up into the boy's dark eyes in terror. The sight of them triggered something in me—phantom memories, almost. Was that why he seemed so familiar? I felt a certain weight as I continued to stare petrified into his eyes - perhaps it was the weight of something that had already passed or that would be…or maybe both. After all, time did unique things to memories, and if the powder had done what I suspected…

I needed to confirm. And so, even though my heart ached at the possible answer I might receive, I asked, "What year is it?"

Tom gave me a strange look before answering "You must be concussed. It's 1940."

At that, the room spun viciously, and everything turned to black.