AN: Sorry this one has taken such a long time. I've actually had it written for quite a while now but hit a bit of a block on the next one, and I've got about 83k words of a nearly done story too that I'll post Chapter 1 of right after this. It's kind of my version of the horcrux hunt, because my God did JKR make that whole thing boring. I'll try to get that out semi-quickly, but I am currently finishing up my MSc and will be starting a PhD in September so no promises.

Thank you for reading, patience, and support!

Chapter 11

All at once the third task was upon him, though it hadn't crept up on him so much as he had opted to ignore it. It was just a maze, after all; apart from a few navigational charms he'd learnt in an afternoon it would just require a broad range of knowledge, which was something he already had. No, he had better things to do.

Like creating a curse to mimic Astoria's condition. It was taking up a not insignificant amount of time, but Harry was dead set on having it completed before they went home for the holidays. He wanted both her and Daphne to have that hope to hold onto when they were forced to return to their mother, and it would mean he had the whole summer to figure out the cure.

'And,' a part of him said, 'it gives you an excuse to see Daphne over the holidays.'

Not that he needed an excuse, he knew. She was his girlfriend, and didn't just thinking that word still send a fizz up his spine. Not much had changed mind you; they sat a little bit closer and hugged a little bit longer, and they indulged in their staring and held hands from time to time now that they were allowed to. There hadn't been any of the other things that Sirius had said was involved in having a girlfriend – the things that had disgusted him then but now brought a blush to his cheeks – but it wasn't the end of term yet. Anything could still happen, and wasn't that a wonderfully terrifying thought.

"Be careful," she told him in no uncertain terms as she adjusted the collar of the robes he had been given, his heart jumping each time her fingers brushed his neck. "This is the last chance for whoever put your name in the cup to get you."

His mood dipped at the reminder. Try as he might he had been unable to figure out why his name had been entered; maybe they had hoped the tournament would kill him, but when it became clear after the second task that that wouldn't work nothing had happened. No attempts on his life. Either they were pinning their hopes on this final task or there was another purpose which neither him, Tom, nor Dumbledore could figure out.

It made both him and Tom wary. Even Dumbledore had taken him aside to urge caution.

"Don't worry," he said. "It'll be fine. I'll get the cup and be back before the other champions are even in the maze."

She rolled her eyes and pushed him towards the exit of the tent. Karkaroff's scowl went ignored, as did the screaming of the crowd and the disapproval that lined Percy Weasley's face. It was only an extra minute. An extra minute with his girlfriend wasn't going to ruin anything, and even if it did Harry didn't particularly care. This tournament was already his anyway.

Bagman quickly started on his excitable ramble and Harry just as quickly tuned him out. The task had already been explained to the champions anyway before they left the tent, and what an interesting task it was.

The maze stretched both above and below ground and incorporated wards, charms, creatures, and curses of all different types. Spectators would be watching from above and on the same screens as had been used in the second task, but those screens would be shrouded from the champions' view to avoid the other three gaining an advantage while they waited to enter the maze after him.

But, Bagman had insisted, that handicap would by no means put them out thanks to the portkeys that had been scattered throughout the maze. Each was hidden behind a puzzle and would advance them a certain way into the maze. They were warned, however, that some portkeys would advance them less than if they had used the time to continue through the maze themselves or, if they were really unlucky, backwards.

Tom wasn't a fan of that particular aspect.

'It's effectively gambling,' he grumbled. 'One of those idiots could lumber at the back the whole time, stumble onto a relatively simple puzzle, grab the portkey and bypass us.'

'They did say that harder puzzles would generally equate to a better portkey.'

'Yes, emphasis on generally. Besides, I think it is a much better measure of talent to see how we deal with the maze as a whole rather than one little puzzle.'

'We won't use any portkeys then,' Harry said. 'Simple.'

'Don't be stupid, that isn't at all what I said—'

Whatever else Tom was going to say was cut off by the first blast of the canon. Harry caught sight of a nervous looking Sirius in the stands, and no matter how irritating the man had been since Nikolay had revealed his experiments Harry shot him a little nod before he plunged into the maze.

The first thing that he noticed was that the grass was gone to be replaced by uneven rock. Between one step and the next he'd dropped into an underground cavern with four identical passages chiselled out of the wall in front of him, each of them lit by sconces in different styles, and each of those were different to the wrought metal lanterns that were set into the jagged walls of the cavern itself.

'Any preference?' Harry asked. He personally didn't have one; he had no idea what the different lanterns could possibly mean, and it seemed neither did Tom.

'Three is a powerful magical number,' Tom said eventually. 'But from the right or the left?'

Harry hummed; he hadn't thought of that. There were several languages and cultures, both magical and non, that wrote from right to left. With the only things in the cavern itself that might be able to offer a clue were the torches on the wall, Harry wandered over to the nearest one. It was made of aged metal, with complex geometric patterns cut into the lamp and even more intricate designs carved into the fixings and brackets.

'Middle Eastern,' he said, 'so Arabic is likely to have influenced the local language if it isn't the local language itself. Right to left.'

He felt Tom nod in his mind, and only when he was just turning away did he notice the symbols that the shadows made on the wall.

'Clever,' Tom reluctantly admitted.

باب

Door.

Harry grabbed the surprisingly cool metal of the lamp and pulled. A click, and then a slim door opened up in the wall. He couldn't help but grin as he stepped through into an underground corridor that stretched out to either side, and with no way to know which way was best he shrugged and went right.

Unsurprisingly, the corridor was fraught with various traps, though most of them were nuisances at best. A runic array that would have stuck him where he stood and used any magic used to try to escape as fuel, a huge hand that reached out of a wall to grab him, even a muggle tripwire. All of them were countered, broken or simply sidestepped as he walked silently through the corridor until he came to a wide, open room.

Each of the things inside turned to look at him the moment his foot crossed the threshold, though how they did that he didn't know considering they had no heads; by the looks of things someone had decapitated two monstrous scorpions and then sewn them together. He had no idea what they were, and he also had absolutely no intention of finding out. Whatever they were they looked lethal.

Water erupted from his wand, pushing the creatures back. The water rose, sloshing against an invisible barrier by his feet, until each of the creatures were submerged beneath three feet of water. Hastily he cast a freezing charm to lock them in place, and then transfigured the ice into stone when it became clear that ice wasn't going to hold them. He stood there for a few seconds, waiting, until he deemed it safe enough to clamber onto his new floor and duck under the doorway at the far side.

Next came a red cap that was easily stunned and then a simple confounding ward that he dispelled with an a few simple flicks of his wand. It seemed the organisers had a routine; simple things dotted almost constantly throughout the maze with the more serious tests spread out more sporadically.

He wondered how many he had bypassed just by looking at that lamp.

Eventually he came across a slab of black granite that was completely out of place with the brownish rocks that made up the rest of the corridor. A complicated puzzle of silvery runes had been carved into its surface, but it went ignored after the few seconds it took him to determine it wasn't a trap. A portkey was surely hidden behind the slab, but he didn't need it. He didn't need a lucky portkey taking him further into the maze. No, they were for the other champions. They would certainly need them if they wanted to catch up.

His next obstacle was an inverting charm. One second he was walking on the floor and the next he was walking on the ceiling, and because gravity remained unaffected he was treated to a headrush too. The inverting charm was an uncommon spell but not a useless one; beyond the inane jokes that Sirius would likely use it for, it was a good thing to cast on yourself if you think someone has cursed the floor and, thanks to how difficult it was to detect, something to cast on the floor so that you can curse the ceiling instead.

He cursed himself for not looking for it. It could have very easily cost him.

Now that he was up here, though, he opted to just continue to walk along the ceiling rather than dispelling the charm. If they hadn't cursed the ceiling where someone would appear on their first step he was willing to bet they'd cursed the floor in the hopes that he would dispel the charm for fear they'd cursed the ceiling further along. It was a bit long-winded and really just a guess, but it was what he would do.

And, as he'd thought, there wasn't a single spell on the ceiling. He felt his foot cross the boundary mid step and paused to indulge in the strange feeling, and that was when he noticed the faint shimmer to the ceiling below his foot. From any further away he might have passed it off as damp, but from this close he could see the way the rock itself blurred. An illusion.

'Oh they are clever,' Tom murmured. 'I see Flitwick's hand in this. As clever as that man is he is still as cunning as any goblin.'

Carefully, Harry pushed his leg through the illusion and bent it around the corner onto the vertical wall he found. He took a deep breath and, with a cushioning charm waiting on the tip of his wand, stepped forward. The rock rushed towards his face and then past it, and then he was stood on the wall of a vertical tunnel staring straight up at a faint patch of light.

He laughed.

When he reached the top he stepped easily over the edge to finally stand in the proper orientation, rejoicing in the feeling of blood in his feet. His relief, however, was short-lived.

"Hello," the sphinx said.

Harry cringed. Sphinxes were famously violent unless you answered their riddle correctly, with wicked claws and enough pure strength to rip him in two, and they were magically resistant as well.

And, to make things worse, he had never been much liked riddles.

Maybe he could kill it before it got to him – and that was definitely a maybe – but even if he did he would be on the hitlist of any witch or wizard with a drop of Egyptian blood in them.

'Fiendfyre if necessary. I'd bet the killing curse would work too but we've never cast it, and I don't really want to risk our first attempt going wrong when it could cost us the tournament.'

'Most people would be worried about dying.'

Tom snorted.

The sphinx still hadn't spoken, and after staring at it for a few seconds Harry decided it was probably waiting for some sort of reply.

"Hello," he said.

The sphinx smiled with amusement in her amber eyes and her long curved fangs peeking out from her mouth.

"If you wish to pass, Champion, then answer me this:"

"From birth until death and seed until tree,
Strongest in hardship and weakest in ease,
Yet by hardship I can be made weaker still,
For too much of anything can destroy what is built.

I labour in people and dragons and vines,
Though you would not see me but for the passage of time,
Yet with every fresh moment I am building anew,
Now tell me, Champion: what am I called?"

'…what the fuck?'

Despite himself Harry couldn't help but laugh, though one look at the sphinx's claws washed his amusement away. He ran his fingers across the hedges that ringed the clearing as he wandered around in circles while keeping the sphinx in sight at all times. Thankfully she seemed content to wait, allowing Harry to concentrate on that ridiculous riddle.

'We could just go back down the tunnel,' he suggested eventually, and it spoke to how lost Tom felt that he even considered it.

'No, we aren't going to run away from a fucking word game no matter how stupid it is. Honestly, what the hell is she on about?'

He continued muttering darkly for several more moments until a triumphant shout echoed through their head.

'Growth! It's growth!'

Harry could kind of see that he supposed, and as he didn't have any better ideas he had nothing to lose either. Apart from maybe his head, but that could be reattached. Probably.

He decided that he would have his wand pointed at the sphinx just in case anyway.

"Growth," he said.

The sphinx looked amused as she stepped aside to reveal a thick wooden door set into the hedge, and Harry was so hasty to get away from there that he almost missed the paralysis curse on the doorhandle.

The sphinx was by the far the most difficult thing he had to face, and Harry didn't think it was a coincidence that that was the only thing he hadn't had to use magic for. What came after was comparatively easy; a complex ward set with seven layers that ranged from nuisance to borderline lethal, then a trio of armoured knights that seemed to be immune to everything but physical blows. That one had been fun, actually, because it gave him a chance to practice his dodging before each of them were dented and defeated by his conjured maces.

Even the troll hadn't been much trouble. It had only taken one spell, albeit quite a powerful one, to relieve it of its knees. He had cast a few spells as he passed to lessen the bleeding until the care team arrived to put it back together, which was quite considerate in his opinion.

And now he was at the cup. Elation rushed through him. He had won the Triwizard tournament!

It was only when he grabbed the cup that he remembered Daphne's warning and just why he was in the tournament in the first place. But it was too late. He felt the stunning spell slink up his arm just as a hook pulled on his navel, and then he felt no more.

Hushed, reverent whispers drifted through his awareness as he woke, too low for him to hear. Cold metal was coiled around his arms, squeezing so tight that he could feel his skin pinch against crushed bone while stone scraped against his back. This was the reason he had been entered into the tournament then – to be captured – but why?

The voices quietened and he felt his body jerk as electricity sparked through his body. His eyes snapped open, and even Tom balked at the sight.

He was surrounded. At a guess there were forty people in the thin crowd that stretched to form a half circle in front of him, each of them perfectly spaced and hidden behind black robes and white masks. In front of them stood four more with faces and forearms proudly bared. The death eaters that had escaped from Azkaban, Harry remembered, but despite the bloodthirsty looks on their faces and the wand that was dangling threateningly from Bellatrix Lestrange's hand his attention was fixed on the gigantic cauldron in front of him.

Seven people were hunched over the edge with their chests seemingly stuck to the metal. Every one of them was a different age; a pensioner, a middle-aged woman with grey just starting to streak her hair, a teenager and then a child that looked even younger than him, her feet writhing in the air. Every one of them was crying and whimpering and begging, their tears dripping from their eyes and into the swirling grey potion below.

For all his interest in the magic that had been labelled dark, Harry struggled to keep a hold of his stomach. Whatever was happening wasn't just dark it was black, and he truly feared for his place in it.

"Now, Wormtail," a high, cold voice commanded.

A snivelling little figure emerged from his hiding place in the shadows of the graveyard with a bundle clutched in his arms. Vague hate blossomed in Harry's chest as he looked at the man that had betrayed the parents that he didn't miss, that he didn't remember. Hate that was more because he felt that he should hate. Hate that was more on Sirius's behalf than his own. But that distant emotion was drowned by horror when he caught sight of the thing that peered out from beneath the folds of the blankets. He had thought it a baby at first, possibly another sacrifice in this twisted ritual, but somehow the truth was worse. Slimy grey skin that seemed to decay further with every second, burning red eyes, the rotten remains of an umbilical cord. Suddenly, Harry knew exactly what was going to happen.

Lord Voldemort was going to return.

Wormtail lowered the thing delicately into the cauldron and the potion instantly began to bubble and spark. Bellatrix Lestrange's eyes gained a truly manic gleam and a weight settled in the air, silent but for the whimpering of those bent over the potion. Their faces twisted in pain and twisted further as white mist was squeezed from their groaning mouths while their bodies shrank and cracked until all that was left was withered husks. The mist just sat there for a moment, a brilliant white against the grey potion below, before it was forced down into the cauldron.

The life force of seven souls absorbed. Seven afterlives destroyed, just like that, and all for one evil man's greed.

"Bone of the father," Wormtail stuttered, "unknowingly given, you will renew your son!"

Harry felt the headstone he was shackled to shake and crack before a thin stream of dust rose into the air and flowed into the cauldron. The potion hissed and bubbled to become a vivid, poisonous blue.

"Flesh of the servant, willingly sacrificed, you will revive your master!"

Wormtail whimpered and shakily withdrew a knife from his robes, and he glanced towards the unmasked death eaters in a silent unanswered plea before he looked up at the burning night and sliced his forearm off with a cry. It fell soundlessly into the potion and floated on the surface, flesh and skin greying until it dissolved and turned the potion a deep shade of crimson.

The moment his arm fell Wormtail dropped to his knees. He sniffled and moaned in pain with his arm clutched to his chest, and Harry found himself watching the blood spurting from the severed limb in absent fascination; he knew from experience that a normal wizard would die inside three minutes without treatment, and no one present looked inclined to give it to him.

'Good,' he thought.

A crazed, cruel smile crossed Antonin Dolohov's face when Wormtail continued to writhe. Rabastan Lestrange's spell yanked him to his feet, and the green glow on the tip of his wand convinced Wormtail to move.

Fear rose in Harry's throat as Wormtail shuffled closer with knife in hand.

"Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe!"

The knife easily cut a jagged line across his bound arm that healed as quickly as it was made before Wormtail turned away, and Harry felt a perverse sense of relief relief sweep through him as Wormtail as allowed his blood to drip from the knife into the potion. Whatever happened now, at least his part in the ritual had not been more involved.

The moment the seventh drop fell into the potion it flared a bright white. Smoke billowed from the cauldron and Harry had almost convinced himself that the ritual had failed when he heard the high voice speak again.

"Robe me, Wormtail."

Wormtail remained where he had fallen on the ground, weak from blood loss. Bellatrix Lestrange rushed forwards but the black bundle in his arms had already been yanked into the smoke by an invisible hand, and by the time the smoke cleared the black fabric was already draped over a pale figure with red eyes.

'He's horrifying.'

Harry could feel Tom's revulsion meshing with his own, drowning out the faint twinge in his scar. This thing wasn't human. The things that he had done, all the tales of the war that Harry had read, all of them suddenly felt more real as he looked upon Lord Voldemort. He had cast off everything that had once made him human. And yes, humanity was a cage, but quite aside from the horrible things required to escape it it was a necessary one. How could you prove your worth when you could not be compared? It was like turning up at a running race in a car and then expecting people to be amazed you'd won.

A reluctant expression flitted over the pale, featureless face when Voldemort stepped out of the cauldron, white feet dyed red with Wormtail's blood as it seeped through his toes.

"Lord Voldemort rewards his faithful servants," he said eventually.

Silver flowed from his wand and twisted to form an arm. It melded itself to Wormtail's amputated one, and Voldemort's lipless mouth quirked in a smile at the awed gasps from his followers. He leaned down and pressed a long, spidery finger to the mark on Wormtail's arm.

"Now we shall see," he murmured.

He paced leisurely around the husks that were still leant over the cauldron while he waited, but all the while Harry could feel his eyes on him. It didn't take long for cracks to echo through the night. The new arrivals fell to their knees and crawled to kiss their masters' robes and Voldemort smiled, enjoying himself, before he eventually waved them back into line with a disinterested hand.

Even from here Harry could smell the stench of fear being mixed with relief.

"My friends," Voldemort said, "I welcome you. I, your Lord, have returned after thirteen long years of exile, felled by a powerful magic that has been all but forgotten. Our enemies claimed it was their victory! And yet you, my Death Eaters, defeated them. You showed the cunning and the power that remains pure within your blood to retain not only your freedom but your influence!"

Bowed shoulders stiffened with pride as a collective breathed seemed to roll out of the prostrated figures. Voldemort's smile grew sharp.

"And yet—" he waved his wand to yank the silver masks of the late arrivals away "—not one of you used that influence to search for your Lord."

Suddenly, Harry felt fear. True, all-encompassing fear, so deep and so cloying that it couldn't possibly be natural. Voldemort's ire wasn't even focused on him and yet still he felt it, billowing out from Voldemort's pale form. He was pacing slowly still, but his red eyes were narrowed to slits and his whispered footfalls boomed in the silence.

"You betrayed Lord Voldemort," he continued in a near hiss. "You became fat and lazy, like all those fools you swore were sullying their blood with their inaction. Perhaps you lost faith? Perhaps you thought me defeated? I, who has travelled further into the mysteries of magic than any before. I who triumphed over Death!"

He stopped, glaring out at the now bare-faced group, and cooled the burning rage in his voice into something icy.

"When my most faithful suffered in captivity you watched and did nothing. When they escaped you offered no aid. You broke your oaths that they, upon finally obtaining their freedom and with nothing but the robes on their back, honoured rather than hiding. They sought me out, and even now one of them sits at Hogwarts as defence professor right under Dumbledore's crooked nose. They showed the faith that I expected from my closest – the very faith that I expected from all of you and that you failed to give. And yet here you stand, responding to my call as if no time has passed when others have already taken the risks of finding me. I find myself… disappointed."

And then the unnatural fear was gone, leaving behind only a stickiness in his mind.

"But Lord Voldemort is a benevolent Lord. I will allow each of you one chance to demonstrate your dedication to our cause."

Relief flooded from the unmasked figures, and then red eyes turned to face him.

"But you Harry," Voldemort said, "you are not a disappointment. No, not at all. So very impressive. The benefits of private tutoring are not to be ignored but still…"

He paused, and Harry felt a featherlight touch across his occlumency shields before Voldemort withdrew with a hum.

"Yes, I see now why you were said to be my downfall."

Murmurs of surprise rose in the crowd but Harry ignored it in favour of his own. Him, Voldemort's downfall? He could do it, he was sure, but who had said it? Was this just something about being the Boy-Who-Lived?

Disappointment and annoyance flared on Voldemort's face.

"You have not been told," he murmured to himself before his eyes sharpened again and he stepped forwards.

"I brought you here as a tool to be used, Harry," Voldemort said so softly that no one else could hear, "but there is no reason that that is all you can be. I see myself in you, you know. Orphans with an incredible talent for magic, both aware of how cruel muggles can be in the face of that which they do not understand. Both with ancestors who performed wonderous feats of magic; the blood of Salazar Slytherin runs in my veins, and in yours is that of woman who defied the greatest wizard to ever live to block an unblockable spell."

Rage flashed across his snakelike face, but more prominent was grudging respect.

"Lily Potter used magic even I was not aware of, perhaps even created it. You have done the same already during your short life, and that deserves a respect that few have earned. Join me, Harry. Prevent what was done to you from ever happening again by putting the muggles in their rightful place at our feet. I will give you access to magic the likes of which you could not imagine. I will make you great."

Images flashed across his mind. Not of Sirius or Dumbledore, who he knew would never forgive him if he accepted, but of the things they had told him. The things Voldemort and his followers had done during the last war. The way the Great Hall stopped when screams rang up from Hogsmeade, and the way everyone sucked in a breath each morning when the newspaper brought news of more attacks. Of more death. The muggle buildings, businesses and bridges burnt to ash and those left behind, clawing for answers they would never get.

"I'm already great," he said, and Voldemort's civil mask broke under the weight of his fury.

Voldemort stood still for just a moment before he turned to face his followers, his seething glare replaced by a smile.

"I brought young Harry here as a tool," he said, his voice carrying across the graveyard and silencing all other whispers, "but that is not all he is. He is a lesson. A lesson to what the muggles are truly capable of, and to the weakness that our enemies profess as strength."

A cruel smirk cut across his lipless face that made Tom shake angrily in the back of his mind.

"You see, my friends, Harry Potter was tortured by his Muggle relatives. Truly tortured, with a brutality only muggles are capable of summoning. Bella, I hear you struck up a friendship of sorts with them during your time in Azkaban?"

Bellatrix nodded eagerly. Glee clashed against revulsion on her face; her love of inflicting pain versus her hatred of muggles.

"I tell you this not simply to show how repugnant and inhuman the muggles are," Voldemort continued, "but to show how weak Harry Potter is. He allowed them to torture him. Why? He has magic. And yet, instead of defending himself from the filthy vermin, instead of fighting back, Harry Potter sat there and let it happen. His magic saw fit to heal the damage rather than prevent it in the first place because, even at his very core, Harry Potter is weak, and he is a coward."

A wordless shriek of rage echoed through Harry's mind.

'How dare he,' Tom hissed. 'We are not weak! We are stronger than every one of those inbred cunts that lick his feet like dogs, and we are stronger than him too! We are capable of magic few can imagine and we have created magic others have failed to dream of!'

'I know that Tom,' Harry tried. 'And who cares what they think or what they believe?'

Tom continued raving as if he hadn't heard. He was so deep in anger that Harry wasn't sure he had.

'We were smart! We stayed and we grew and we scared them into leaving us alone, even if it was only for that one year before Hogwarts. We allowed nothing! We are not weak, and we are certainly not a coward! A coward is someone who kidnaps children and who slinks around at night, attacking only those weaker than them and only when they have superior numbers!'

Tom's anger was clouding his mind so Harry concentrated, trying to get Tom's attention through the haze if not shut him up completely. The rage tightened and pulled back, now under control, and Harry relaxed slightly into his chains. He needed to be in control of himself if he was to escape this.

Voldemort frowned briefly before he swept forwards.

"And now we shall see how weak he truly is," he said as circled the tombstone before pausing next to Harry.

"You should have joined me, Harry," Voldemort said, quietly enough that no one else would hear. "Maybe then I would have left Daphne Greengrass alone."

The chains rattled as Harry lunged for him but tightened before he could reach. Voldemort laughed and commanded Wormtail to release him from his bonds, and all Harry could think about was that if the chains had constricted just a second slower than he'd have ripped Voldemort's throat out with his teeth. How dare he. How dare he threaten Daphne. He was not fit to breathe the same air as her, never mind use that air to speak her name. He was going to kill him. Rip him apart and stuff those red eyes down his throat until he choked on them. Rot the organs in his chest and burn the nerves from inside out. Shatter his mind and tear away every shred of knowledge he had and then rip apart the rest until he wasn't even a shell of a person. Until a dementor would turn their fucking nose up—

'Harry!' Tom's voice said, as if from very far away. 'He's trying to make you angry. He's scared of us and wants us off balance.'

'You think I don't know that?' Harry snarled. 'It's fucking working and I don't care. He wants a fight he'll fucking well get one.'

Tom sighed but gave in easily. He was angry too, after all, just about something else.

The chains dropped him to the floor and he scrambled to grab his wand from where it had been dropped. Its warmth gave much needed comfort while the grain of the wood against his palm grounded him, but neither did anything for the poisonous anger that was hissing in his gut.

"You have been taught to duel, Harry?" Voldemort asked with a smirk.

"Fuck you."

The crowd gasped but Harry continued to stare viciously at Voldemort, whose expression had now twisted to match. The imperius curse that came was so much stronger than Nikolay's had ever been but bounced off all the same, the alien calmness burned away before it could form.

The fury on Voldemort's face deepened and Harry bared his teeth in a smile. They hadn't even started and he had already landed a hit.

'Where is the biggest threat?' Tom asked as they began to circle one another.

'Him,' Harry replied, staring viciously at Voldemort.

'No, it is the forty others. Forty wands, forty voices, forty pairs of eyes. We cannot escape with all of them standing in our way.'

'Who said anything about escaping? I'm going to kill that snake faced freak, and then I'll kill everyone else here too.'

'You can't,' Tom said again, though from the hiss in his voice he dearly wished otherwise. 'Even if we could defeat Voldemort in a duel, we couldn't defeat everyone else as well. It is futile. We would die.'

Harry wasn't much in the mood to listen to Tom's lack of faith. He could do it. He would do it. Voldemort's lifeless body would fall to the floor, and his head would do the same thirty feet away.

'Harry,' Tom said in a quiet voice, 'are you truly willing to leave everyone just for the chance to kill him? To leave Daphne? For her to watch our corpse being paraded around, and then to be made an example of for fraternising with the enemy?'

Harry's eyes broke away from Voldemort's own to sweep across the stationary crowd, and that was answer enough.

'You know what to do.'

A thick pink gash split the air, wider than a man was tall, and Voldemort flicked his pale wand lazily to conjure a silvery dome in front of him. An extremely strong shield charm, Harry noted, able to stop this particular curse with little effort.

It wasn't necessary.

His curse cut across the scant few feet between him and the crowd before anyone could hope to react. Five men in the front row were sliced clean through, and three behind them were cut deeply enough that everyone could tell they were beyond saving.

It happened so quickly that they took their last breaths without knowing it.

The graveyard was silent as Harry watched bodies slide apart and tattered chests take their final breaths, ignorant to the hot blood that had splashed against his cheeks. Rabastan Lestrange's head rolled across the lawn and then shields sprung up, bronze and yellow and red and colourless blurring into each other to form a patchwork of magic to protect them from him.

A flash of green came and he sidestepped on instinct, but before another could come Voldemort spoke.

"Rodolphus," Voldemort said warningly, "he is mine. You will see him suffer, this I promise you."

A thick, pale-skinned man bared his rotten teeth in a snarl but nonetheless stepped back into the crowd, conjuring a tall shield of blue magic as he did so.

It was a shame they had all used different shield charms; it meant that he couldn't just use spells that that one shield didn't protect against. Nonetheless he watched the crowd in his periphery, noticing those whose magic was dull and whose wands shook. A diverted spell here and a transfiguration there and they'd be dealt with, and after that… rip out enough fabric and the whole patchwork falls apart.

But first he had to survive Voldemort.

That unnatural fear came back again and Voldemort smiled. It froze his joints and muddied his mind, stronger than before yet somehow less. His anger burned at it but still… he was not as scared as he had expected to be when he had the entirety of that horrible fear bearing down on him.

But he still felt it. Could still feel his heart beating in his ears and the slight shake to his fingers. He couldn't fight Voldemort toe to toe. Not like this. Not with these numbers. And the longer he held out the harder it would become as he tired and Voldemort angered or, perhaps worse, became wary. All that was currently stopping the crowd from overwhelming him with sheer numbers was one madman's ego. He had to make sure he escaped quickly.

The first spell was a bulging sphere of yellow that Harry sidestepped, allowing it to strike the crowd behind him. Shields wavered but held, but Harry saw the way that one stumbled.

Weakpoint found.

Voldemort's next spell – a thin blade of blue – was smacked directly at the stumbling death eater, blurring with one of Harry's own. The man's shield shattered and Voldemort's diverted spell crashed into his sternum, sending him flying backwards with his chest caved in. Harry's own spell slipped through the gap and detonated, throwing corpse, limb and loam raining through the crowd.

Their united front broke as easily as any other held together by fear and greed and Harry waved his wand to bring the graveyard to life. Headstones lunged at legs while statues leapt from their plinths, swinging for death eater and dark lord alike. Ivy coiled around ankles and pulled, toppling people to the greying grass that now gleamed silver and sharp. Earthen fists erupted from the ground to strike at unprotected backs, and all the while Harry dodged and diverted Voldemort's furious spells towards his own men while continuing to replace the transfigured distractions that were constantly being destroyed.

Purposefully going on the defensive against an opponent like Voldemort was nigh on suicidal, he knew, but like Tom had said, Voldemort wasn't the biggest obstacle. With the crowd distracted he was able to pepper Voldemort with spells and transfigurations, from brain-swelling curses to tickling charms to rotted flowers turned into snakes, and it allowed him to back towards what had previously been behind them, discarded: the Triwizard cup.

As he got closer and closer he thought that he might just make it out uninjured.

And then a haze of air exploded outwards and every one of his transfigurations collapsed lifelessly. The fear, which had faded away the moment that Voldemort had been forced to concentrate, surged back into his lungs. Blood was dripping from tears in Voldemort's robes, so dark that it was closer to black than red, but the red of his eyes burned brighter than ever.

A ball of crimson rocketed from his wand and right past Harry to turn the Triwizard cup to splinters. Harry's hope became splinters too.

And then Voldemort started attacking in earnest.

Harry couldn't keep up. Curses blurred together as if fired from a machine gun. Dodging was almost impossible, but when the alternative was getting stuck behind a shield it was nonetheless preferable. So he ducked, dodged, weaved, and hurled himself around the graveyard, hiding behind tombstones and yanking rubble into the air to block spells, but they came so quickly that the reprieve wasn't even there. A bone breaking curse struck but healed before his next step, and it was only that that was saving him. Were it not for his ability he'd be dead.

He saw a chance in the familiar crimson of the blood boiling curse. He stopped suddenly and allowed it to hit while Voldemort's stream of curses followed where he would have been, and he used that chance to cast his modified curse.

Voldemort used the very same shield charm that Nikolay had – the one that any wizard worth their salt would use – and, like Nikolay, Voldemort tried to duck when the curse passed through his shield without resistance. Nikolay had managed to dodge it completely then, but this time Harry had aimed properly.

It cut deeply into Voldemort's ribs and he howled in pain, and Harry turned away with his eyes squeezed tightly shut before flicking his wand behind him. More screams joined Voldemort's as light flared painfully above their heads, so bright that even looking away the light seared through Harry's clenched eyelids. But he forced his eyes open and ran between the fuzzy afterimages of tombstones, intent on reaching the edge of whatever wards that stood between him and his escape.

He should have known that something as little as blindness and severe injury wouldn't stop Lord Voldemort.

The sensation of losing a limb was almost familiar by now, but never before had it come so unexpectedly. One second his arms were pumping as he ran and the next he only had one. The light was still burning his eyes so he simply threw himself to the floor, flicking his wand blindly to transfigure the nearest tombstone into a thick stone wall and again to cancel his lighting spell. Clearly, blindness was more of a disadvantage for him than his opponent.

His eyes found his severed arm quickly, as if already aware of where it was. Already half of it was little more than grey sludge sliding off bone and the rest just blood and pus and rotting meat, unable to fight against whatever had been tied into the cutting curse that had severed it and that still tried to rot through what remained of his shoulder. Blood streamed from bubbling flesh but his magic held the curse in place, and Harry watched the blackened blood fizz against the earth where it fell.

It went unsaid that there would be no reattaching it.

His transfigured wall exploded, throwing him bodily through the air until he smacked into a tombstone. The wind driven out of him, he hastily pulled up a patch of earth bare inches from his face to intercept the bright green of the killing curse and scrambled to his feet, weaving through the tombstones and transfiguring, conjuring and summoning to his absolute limit as curses shot towards him from all sides.

Voldemort had dispensed with his ego now, finally more focussed on making sure his target wouldn't escape. From his scattered glances Harry knew that a good proportion of the gathered death eaters were dead or otherwise incapacitated but there were still more than enough of them to cause problems. Their spells forced him to defend and to veer back towards where he was trying to escape from, and their eyes made it almost impossible to disappear.

He ducked behind a large war memorial and cast a disillusionment charm before carefully tracing his wand through the air. A haze flowed from his wand, twisting and darkening until another him rushed off. Spells shot for his illusion, but with the advantage of distance Harry was able to make the other him avoid them and lead them ever further away.

Thank God for all the research he'd done on illusions while making Daphne's spell.

The reprieve wouldn't last long. Eventually a spell would hit and go straight through, or someone would get close enough to notice the smudged edges to the other him or the way that the blood dripped but never hit the floor.

'We can't just sit here,' Tom said, but like Harry he also knew that they couldn't simply run either. The hazy, chameleon-like form given by the disillusionment charm was a long way from true invisibility. Fine when he was still, but the moment he started running he would be an obvious blur lit up by the setting sun.

He needed a distraction, but he didn't have the power to both transfigure and animate enough to distract such large numbers, and doing so would give his position away as surely as casting sparks into the sky. No, wand magic wasn't enough, and he didn't have enough time for a ritual or anything stronger. Soul, sacrifice, time, space, blood…

His eyes darted to the pool of blood that was now seeping into the dirt beside him then back the way he had come, veins of red that glistened in the dying sun, coating grass and tombstone alike.

"It's a little like creating life in truth," Dumbledore had said. Well, his life was already there. Splattered across their tombstones and running down to the ground, crawling through the earth until it reached their coffins. They were already alive with him; he just hadn't woken them up yet.

"An illusion!" a voice cried, and Harry forcibly shut down the fear that shot up his spine. He needed to concentrate.

Unknowingly his eyes drifted closed and he focussed, focussed entirely on his spell. On the little alterations he would have to make to the base wand movements to account for his targets and the rhythmic breathing that Dumbledore said helped breathe life into them, but above all on his one simple command.

Don't let them curse me.

All around him the ground began to bubble. A grey, rotten hand pushed from the ground next to him, so close that his robe snagged on the gnawed-sharp bone of a fingertip, and pulled itself out of the dirt. What came out may have once been handsome, with its slicked back hair and strong jaw, were it not for the meat that hung through insect-bitten fabric. The flesh of its feet had been eaten away to expose bones that were a stark white next to the darkness of the disturbed earth, and it looked at him with maggot-filled eyes before it turned to run towards the now screaming death eaters.

Harry ran the other way, weaving between tombstones and sprinting corpses. Most of them ran past him but some matched him stride for stride, leaping in front of sizzling curses or even yanking him bodily out of the way with fleshless fingers. The moment he felt the tingle of wards crossing his skin those few turned and sprinted back towards the death eaters, and Harry turned to look, just for a second, at the flashes of light that were drowned out by the crowd of animated dead.

Red eyes met his and Harry bared his teeth. Until next time.

He disapparated and appeared at the gates of Hogwarts. He concentrated, focussing on Daphne's face, her voice, her smile, and a second later a silvery raven swooped from his wand and perched on its tip.

"Moody is an imposter," he told it. "The graveyard of Voldemort's father. Him and around forty death eaters present. Some dead or otherwise incapacitated. I'm at the gates."

The raven nodded and flew through the gates towards the quidditch pitch, and only then did Harry feel the adrenaline finally leave him as he fell into a hastily conjured chair. The sheer amount of magic he'd had to use to transfigure, conjure and curse was significant, never mind the amount required to keep the as yet unknown curse at bay. He looked down and cringed; in the light of the Hogwarts lanterns it looked even worse. His skin was black and the exposed flesh blacker, seeming to melt and ooze before his eyes as thick, coagulated blood dribbled from the end.

With any luck Dumbledore would know the countercurse, and if not he was sure it would be fine eventually. At the very least the curse hadn't moved any further up his shoulder.

'We don't even know if we can regrow whole limbs yet,' Tom pointed out.

Harry had rather forgotten that part.

The grating of the gate opening pulled him from his haze. He forced his eyes open and allowed the rudimentary concealment charms he had cast to fade, their gasps muffled sounding as if coming through a closed door. Blurrily, he saw Sirius stutter in his step and Daphne's hand shoot up to cover her mouth while Tracey squeezed her other so tightly the skin had gone white.

"Are you okay?" Sirius asked.

Harry looked at him with heavy eyes and shrugged his empty shoulder.

"Some sort of withering curse mixed into a cutting curse," he said. "Do you know it?"

Sirius shook his head without looking from the stump.

"Come on," he said when he finally pulled his eyes away.

A stiff arm gently wrapped around him as Sirius led him across the grounds. In truth Harry was surprised that Sirius was even here; he'd have thought that he would have gone with Dumbledore.

He could feel Daphne's eyes on him. Could feel them burning across his skin but the moment he turned to her she would look away to stare stubbornly forwards, still squeezing Tracey's hand as if she thought she'd float away if she let go.

The rumble of the crowd grew and grew and grew, and then it died the moment Sirius led him into the stadium. Sirius paid them no mind, instead walking straight towards the small crowd beneath the Judges box.

Fudge was there, blustering like a fool, as was Percy Weasley. McGonagall stared them down without blinking with Flitwick by her side, somehow even more intimidating than her despite his stature, and Snape was stood beside him with his wand trained on the bound form of Alastor Moody. Blaise was there too with his wand in hand and seeming to dare anyone to move him. Harry smiled at him, and the other boy almost smiled back.

"Snape," Sirius said, cutting off whatever Fudge was about to say and plunging the entire stadium into silence, "can you counter it?"

Snape paled but nonetheless stepped forwards to wave his wand over the stump.

"On its own or in conjunction with a cutting curse?" he asked quietly.

"Cutting curse."

Snape nodded.

"It was the Dark Lord?

"Yes."

"Now see here," Fudge tried to say, but Harry looked at him and his voice died in his throat.

Snape actually smiled.

"This will hu—"

He stopped himself mid-sentence and raised his wand without looking at Harry, chanting under his breath in a language Harry had rarely seen used. He was so tired that he could barely stand but he could still feel Tom memorising the counterspell.

He smiled despite himself.

The black rot stopped writhing on his skin and Harry felt the drain lessen.

"Thank you professor," he said quietly, and Snape inclined his head.

The popping of joints pulled their attention back to the imposter. The fake eye bounced away as it was pushed from its socket and then the fake leg followed until a slim, sandy haired man was lying unconscious before them with the dark mark glaring out from behind the too wide, too short clothes of Alastor Moody.

"Barty Crouch Junior!" a voice in the crowd gasped, and Dumbledore chose that moment to appear in a burst of flames.

He looked around, first at the imposter and then at Fudge, who was already quivering and frothing at the mouth, and spoke into the silence.

"We do not yet have all the facts," he said, his voice carrying easily through the night, "but I feel it important for you all to know the truth that we do have. Lord Voldemort has returned."

Gasps shook the stands, and Fudge struggled silently at the charm McGonagall had cast.

"You all heard the message delivered to me by young Harry. When I arrived at the scene alongside Madam Amelia Bones and the auror contingent stationed here, we appeared in the aftermath of a great battle. Over a dozen death eaters were present and fighting, all of which have now been apprehended or killed in the skirmish. As for Lord Voldemort..." he paused, looking every bit his age with his torn robes and saddened face, "we duelled. And even as injured as he was courtesy of Harry, he remains as able and fearsome as he was some fifteen years ago."

The low murmur threatened to flare into an uproar, but Dumbledore spoke before it could.

"I'm afraid, ladies and gentlemen, that we are once again at war with the terrorist organisation known as the death eaters, and their leader the Dark Lord Voldemort."