Author's Note: Hey guys! Sorry for the delay, I recently chatted with someone (you know who you are) about Gandalf and ended up watching Fellowship of the Ring today :/ For those of you who know, it's a pretty big time commitment. Anyway, here is the new chapter. I realise the last three have been pretty long so the next few will be shorties for a change. Enjoy and please review! I will update tomorrow...lots.

Disclaimer: All Harry Potter rights to J.K Rowling. I am simply having fun with my imagination. Thanks!

Dedication: To all my wonderful readers!

CHAPTER 28: ALBANIA

Darkness. That was the first thing he saw when he awoke. He looked around nervously. His heart was beating awfully fast. He could feel sweat on his forehead and in his paws. The cat's heart was beating so fast that Tom was sure it would burst any second. Strange. This must be a side-effect from his possessing the cat for so long. Tom decided to act fast and jumped into the first creature he saw, letting the skeletal cat gasp its last breath before collapsing to death. Had it really been only two weeks?

The new creature was some sort of a grey squirrel. As it walked along the path in the early morning, Tom wondered if its lifespan was greater than that of the cat's. How long would it be before he had to occupy another creature? And why, why did he have to resort to this at all? There it was again…the thought that had been haunting him ever since that night. There was no running away from it now. WHY had it not worked? WHAT had gone wrong? More importantly, WHERE was everybody when he needed them?

He had spent the last two weeks trying to find out what had happened to his Death Eaters. All he knew so far was that the Lestranges and Karkaroff were sent to Azkaban Prison. He did not know if there had been trials or where everybody else was. He tried to get back to Malfoy Manor but couldn't find the way, for some reason. With all his powers stripped from him, he was finding it hard to remember the minor details of his life. He remembered the big things, oh yes. He remembered each and every one of his many conversations with Albus Dumbledore because during each of them, he'd been nearly frightened to death. He remembered who he was and how influential he'd been in the wizarding world. He remembered his main Death Eater group and a few select individuals outside the group. And his Horcruxes…he remembered his Horcruxes. Boy, was he relieved now that he had ever even bothered making them. They were possibly what had stopped him from dying in the first place.

The squirrel jumped from one spot to another, its thoughts colliding with Tom's own. He had to work extra hard to push the stupid animal's thoughts away. He found that the longer he possessed an animal—any animal—the less human he felt. It was all the more challenging to cling to his human thoughts and not resort to animal instincts.

He moved the squirrel over to sit under another bench in the rainy morning streets of Diagon Alley. It waited there for a while, as the sun began to slowly rise. Soon, witches and wizards were moving from one shop to another, happily exchanging morning greetings and passing around copies of the Daily Prophet. Finally, at long last, one wizard let his copy slip to the ground near the bench. Tom had the squirrel retrieve it with its teeth and then set it down right beneath the bench so that he could take a good look. He froze. The headlines, each as worse as the next, read:

THE DARK LORD DEFEATED

THE WAR IS OVER

WHERE IS HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED NOW?

RISE IN AZKABAN INMATE COUNT

BARTY CROUCH: EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

MINISTER FUDGE: EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

ALBUS DUMBLEDORE: THE LASTEST

WHO IS THE BOY WHO LIVED?

It took a while before Tom managed to flip over to the last page. Finally, he managed it and read the words carefully:

The Boy Who Lived.

We have all been clearly plagued by the wraths of this terrible war for 11 years now…some of us for even longer than that. But this last Halloween, all came to a glorious end. Harry James Potter, the one-year-old son of the late James and Lily Potter, managed to survive the tragic events at Godric's Hollow. Unfortunately, no one knows exactly how it happened or why, but there is no denying it: the toddler might have saved the wizarding world forever.

"It's marvelous!" exclaimed Dorris Crockford. "I was beginning to worry that we were doomed for the rest of eternity, but this powerful young boy might have saved us at last!"

Crockford had much more to say on the subject but was quickly sucked into celebrations of victory that took place in Diagon Alley all of last week. Witches and wizards everywhere are celebrating day and night—celebrating the defeat of the dark and powerful He Who Must Not Be Named.

It is wonderful, yes. We are all absolutely thrilled. But we are also even more curious—why did this extraordinary young boy survive the night's events? What extraordinary magical powers enabled him to escape the Dark Lord's evil curse? How is it that, for the first time in magical history, the one to overpower the most powerful wizard known to mankind, was only just a baby?

The boy was rescued from the home by the giant Rubeus Hagrid, who is employed at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as gamekeeper. Together, he and Albus Dumbledore brought the boy to a muggle home where he shall reside with his muggle relatives until he is ready to rejoin the wizarding world. Albus Dumbledore was not available for comment, however an inside source tells us that the boy will most likely attend Hogwarts when he reaches the age of eleven, seeing as how both his mother and father attended the school.

There are still so many questions, some of which we may never have the answers for. But there is no denying that Harry Potter, now formally known as the Boy Who Lived, will be a name known to all wizards everywhere, probably for the rest of time.

The grey squirrel spat on the newspaper. Ridiculous. Preposterous. Pathetic. Impossible!

How could this have happened? What had the mudblood done? She had done something. She had performed some kind of strange magic—unknown to Tom—that caused him to shrink to this nothingness that he was now. And that boy…what had happened with that boy? Why had Tom felt himself being literally pulled towards that boy, blocking his thinking and breathing? And why was the boy still alive?

"He's gone!" shouted a shabby-looking wizard who was running down the main streets of Diagon Alley. "HE'S GONE AT LAST! THE DARK LORD IS GONE! POOF! HE'S GOOOOOOONE!"

"WOOOHOOOOO!" several others cheered.

Startled, Tom jumped into another cat he'd spotted and made a run for it. Having been reduced to this was bad enough without the whole world finding out. If they ever knew what he had become… he could see the headlines now.

THE DARK LORD NO LONGER HUMAN

THE DARK LORD WEAK AND VULNERABLE

THE DARK LORD EXPOSED

EXPOSED, EXPOSED, EXPOSED!

He ran as fast as the animal would allow him. And then, he stopped. He'd reached Knockturn Alley wherein he finally saw someone he recognized—Walden Macnair. He was returning some items to Borgin. Pleased, Tom began to approach him.

"I can't help you!" Borgin was saying.

"I'll make you help me!" Macnair growled and he actually pulled out his wand and pointed it at Borgin.

"Ah!" cried Borgin, who waved his hands in surrender. "Alright, alright, no need to get nasty!"

"Do it now!" snarled Macnair.

Borgin handed him a few galleons and Macnair began to count them.

"So what did happen to him?" said Borgin, conversationally.

"I don't know and don't care," said Macnair, who was still counting his coins. "I just want to get the hell out of here. Fast."

"Right," said Borgin, nodding. "Where is everyone else? Those who weren't taken in, I mean."

"Hiding," shrugged Macnair, "Or pretending they were good all along."

He was obviously pleased with the number of coins because he quickly pulled his hood on and stormed out of the shop. He stopped dead once he saw the cat, and then quite suddenly kicked it hard with his foot.

"Shoo!" he cried. "Go on, get!"

The cat meowed and whined in protest but Macnair did not wait and quickly disapparated from the dark alley. Too shocked by what he had just heard, Tom allowed the cat's mind to overtake for the next couple of hours. The cat wandered around streets looking for food while Tom tried to overcome his shock. Walden Macnair had been one of his main Death Eaters. How could it be that he was not trying to find his master and help him? How could it be that he did not care what had become of the Great Lord Voldemort?

Perhaps Lucius or Crouch or maybe Severus would help him. He knew the Lestranges would if they could for, even as they were being dragged away by aurors, they had laughed and shouted "We'll be back!" or "The Dark Lord will return!" Tom knew he could trust them completely, all three of them. But they were not here to help him now. They could not be. From what he'd gathered in the last two weeks, the Dementors had returned to the Ministry and were now the new guards of Azkaban Prison. Security had tightened there and Tom knew perfectly well that, without him, the Death Eaters had no chance at escaping.

During the next couple of days, Tom jumped from one creature to another and kept an eye out for any new headlines in the newspapers. For a long time, it seemed, all that anyone could talk about was the Dark Lord's defeat and how everything was back to normal. The wizarding world was thrilled to be rid of its deadly war and people were now celebrating day and night, always toasting the same thing: Harry Potter.

Finally, after a few more days, something in the Daily Prophet made Tom freeze again. There was a photograph of a weeping woman who looked a lot like Wormtail. The headline read: "Order of Merlin, 1st class: Mother is Proud". He skimmed through the article and sighed heavily. Wormtail had been killed the night that Tom had gone to kill the Potters. According to the article, their friend Sirius Black had gone mental and murdered Wormtail as well as 12 muggle bystanders. All that was left of poor Wormtail was a finger. Black had been sent to Azkaban without a trial, for life imprisonment.

Below that was another short article discussing Lucius Malfoy's already great contributions to the Ministry of Magic. He was doing some extraordinary things apparently and donating a lot of his riches.

"I am very fond of Mr. Malfoy," said the Minister for Magic. "He has shown excellent hard work and dedication these last two weeks. I will certainly be keeping him around for long."

When asked about his association with He Who Must Not Be Named during these last 11 years, Malfoy responded, "I wish to take full responsibility for my actions these last few years but I can't see how one can be genuinely sorry for something that was not their fault to begin with."

"The Imperius Curse is powerful enough on its own, but when performed by the most powerful wizard in the world, it is destructive," he added. "We the Malfoys are Purebloods, yes, but we would never try to eliminate those who are not. I speak for my wife and son when I say that our sole concern has and will always be the welfare of the Ministry of Magic."

When asked about his take on the imprisonments of his distant relatives, Malfoy responded, "Sissy and I are devastated that the Lestranges have turned out to be genuine supporters of the Dark Lord. We will allow their imprisonments to exemplify to our son what happens when people forget to be good. Ourselves, we no longer have anything to do with them, nor do we have anything to do with any of the others who have been convicted of treason and crime."

"LIAR!" Tom tried to shout but the cat merely shrieked, and it was a very ugly sound.

Just below this article however, there was a snippet about Barty Crouch taking a holiday as he was devastated for what had happened with his son, who was now behind bars as well. Feeling devastated himself, Tom decided to take a break from reading the Prophet as he did not think he could handle any more bad news. So his Death Eaters were now betraying him. They were turning their backs on him and trying to live their lives as best as they could, without even looking for him or helping him. First Macnair, then the Malfoys. At least it was good to hear that the Lestranges and Crouch had turned out to be loyal until the very end. Poor Wormtail was dead but at least he'd been loyal too. And from what Tom had gathered, Snape remained at Hogwarts, under Dumbledore's orders. Tom decided that he could not blame him for that. When the time would come, he would be grateful that he had a spy on the inside all this time.

Finally, on November 28, Tom decided that he was done with Diagon Alley. He jumped into another cat, having killed off over a dozen in the last month, and set off. The journey was long and tiring. He had to stop several times and had to possess hundreds and hundreds of creatures just to get there. Finally, sometime in December he'd gathered (for it was already starting to snow), he reached his destination: Albania.

He trotted along the snowy forest as a skeletal cat, looking left and right and back to make sure no one was following him. It felt as though it were only yesterday that he'd travelled to those exact woods to retrieve Rowena Ravenclaw's then-lost diadem. But knowing that it was safe in the Room of Requirement all this time was the most comforting thought he'd had in a month. Now, all was left was to wait. Wait for what, he did not know yet. He hoped that one of these days, preferably sometime soon, one of the hundreds of followers he'd gathered would show up and help him restore his powers. Then, he would be able to finish where he'd started. But first, oh yes, the very first thing that he would do is kill that filthy half blood. He would destroy him—rip him to pieces—tear him for all that he is worth. Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived. The boy who stopped the Dark Lord.

He would destroy him and let the world know that no one, especially not some baby, could truly stop Lord Voldemort.

Poor Tommy. What has he been reduced to?

Anyway readers, I'd like to hear from you! Tell me, who is your favourite Death Eater?