‘Macnair … destroying dangerous beasts for the Ministry of Magic now, Wormtail tells me? You shall have better victims than that soon, Macnair. Lord Voldemort will provide …’
‘Thank you, master … thank you,’ murmured Macnair.
‘And here,’ Voldemort moved on to the two largest hooded figures, ‘we have Crabbe … you will do better this time, will you not, Crabbe? And you, Goyle?’
They bowed clumsily, muttering dully.
‘Yes, master …’
‘We will, master …’
‘The same goes for you, Nott,’ said Voldemort quietly, as he walked past a stooped figure in Mr Goyle’s shadow.
‘My Lord, I prostrate myself before you, I am your most faithful –’
‘That will do,’ said Voldemort.
He had reached the largest gap of all, and he stood surveying it with his blank, red eyes, as though he could see people standing there.
‘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 for ever … he will be killed, of course … and one, who remains my most faithful servant, and who has already re-entered my service.’
The Death Eaters stirred; Harry saw their eyes dart sideways at each other through their masks.
‘He is at Hogwarts, that faithful servant, and it was through his efforts that our young friend arrived tonight …
‘Yes,’ said Voldemort, a grin curling his lipless mouth, as the eyes of the circle flashed in Harry’s direction. ‘Harry Potter has kindly joined us for my rebirthing party. One might go so far as to call him my guest of honour.’
There was a silence. Then the Death Eater to the right of Wormtail stepped forward, and Lucius Malfoy’s voice spoke from under the mask.
‘Master, we crave to know … we beg you to tell us … how you have achieved this … this miracle … how you managed to return to us …’
‘Ah, what a story it is, Lucius,’ said Voldemort. ‘And it begins – and ends – with my young friend here.’
He walked lazily over to stand next to Harry, so that the eyes of the whole circle were upon the two of them. The snake continued to circle.
‘You know, of course, that they have called this boy my downfall?’ Voldemort said softly, his red eyes upon Harry, whose scar began to burn so fiercely that he almost screamed in agony. ‘You all know that on the night I lost my powers and my body, I tried to kill him. His mother died in the attempt to save him – and unwittingly provided him with a protection I admit I had not foreseen … I could not touch the boy.’
Voldemort raised one of his long white fingers, and put it very close to Harry’s cheek. ‘His mother left upon him the traces of her sacrifice … this is old magic, I should have remembered it, I was foolish to overlook it … but no matter. I can touch him now.’
Harry felt the cold tip of the long white finger touch him, and thought his head would burst with the pain.
Voldemort laughed softly in his ear, then took the finger away, and continued addressing the Death Eaters. ‘I miscalculated, my friends, I admit it. My curse was deflected by the woman’s foolish sacrifice, and it rebounded upon me. Aaah … pain beyond pain, my friends; nothing could have prepared me for it. I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost … but still, I was alive. What I was, even I do not know … I, who have gone further than anybody along the path that leads 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 it. Nevertheless, I was as powerless as the weakest creature alive, and without the means to help myself … for I had no body, and every spell which might have helped me required the use of a wand …
‘I remember only 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 and 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 …’
The 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 Philosopher’s Stone. I was not to be assured immortal life. I was thwarted … thwarted, once again, by Harry Potter …’
Silence once more; nothing was stirring, not even the leaves on the yew tree. The Death Eaters were quite motionless, the glittering eyes in their masks fixed upon Voldemort, and upon Harry.
‘The servant died when I left his body, and I was left as weak as ever I had 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 …’
One or two of the masked wizards in the circle moved 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 faked his own death to escape justice, was driven out of hiding by those he had once counted friends, and decided to return to his master. He sought me in the country where it had long been rumoured 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 – displaying a presence of mind 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 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. She told me that she knew of a faithful Death Eater who would be only too willing to help me, if I could only contact him. She told me many things … but the means I used to break the Memory Charm upon her were powerful, and when I had extracted all useful information from her, her mind and body were both damaged beyond repair. She had now served her purpose. I could not possess her. I disposed of her.’
Voldemort smiled his terrible smile, his red eyes blank and pitiless.
‘Wormtail’s body, of course, was ill-adapted for possession, as all assumed him dead, and would attract far too much attention if seen.
However, he was the able-bodied servant I needed, and, poor wizard though he is, Wormtail was able to follow the instructions I gave him, which would return me to a rudimentary, weak body of my own, a body I would be able to inhabit while awaiting the essential ingredients for true rebirth … a spell or two of my own invention … a little help from my dear Nagini’ – Voldemort’s red eyes fell upon the continually circling snake – ‘a potion concocted from unicorn blood, and the snake venom Nagini provided … I was soon returned to an almost human form, and strong enough to travel.
‘There was no hope of stealing the Philosopher’s Stone any more, for I knew that Dumbledore would have seen to it that it was destroyed. But I was willing to embrace mortal life again, before chasing immortal. I set my sights lower … I would settle for my old body back again, and my old strength.
‘I knew that to achieve this – it is an old piece of Dark Magic, the potion that revived me tonight – I would need three powerful ingredients. Well, one of them was already at hand, was it not, Wormtail? Flesh given by a servant …
‘My father’s bone, naturally, meant that we would have to come here, where he was buried. But the blood of a foe … Wormtail would have had me use any wizard, would you not, Wormtail? Any wizard who had hated me … as so many of them still do. But I knew the one I must use, if I was to rise again, more powerful than I had been when I had fallen. I wanted Harry Potter’s blood. I wanted the blood of the one who had stripped me of power thirteen years ago, for the lingering protection his mother once gave him, would then reside in my veins, too …
‘But how to get at Harry Potter? For he has been better protected than I think even he knows, protected in ways devised by Dumbledore long ago, when it fell to him to arrange the boy’s future. Dumbledore invoked an ancient magic, to ensure the boy’s protection as long as he is in his relations’ care. Not even I can touch him there … then, of course, there was the Quidditch World Cup … I thought his protection might be weaker there, away from his relations and Dumbledore, but I was not yet strong enough to attempt kidnap in the midst of a horde of Ministry wizards. And then, the boy would return to Hogwarts, where he is under the crooked nose of that Muggle-loving fool from morning until night. So how could I take him?
‘Why … by using Bertha Jorkins’s information, of course. Use my one faithful Death Eater, stationed at Hogwarts, to ensure that the boy’s name was entered into the Goblet of Fire. Use my Death Eater to ensure that the boy won the Tournament – that he touched the Triwizard Cup first – the Cup which my Death Eater had turned into a Portkey, which would bring him here, beyond the reach of Dumbledore’s help and protection, and into my waiting arms. And here he is … the boy you all believed had been my downfall …’
Voldemort moved slowly forward, and turned to face Harry. He raised his wand. ‘Crucio!’
It was pain beyond anything Harry had ever experienced; his very bones were on fire; his head was surely splitting along his scar; his eyes were rolling madly in his head; he wanted it to end … to black out … to die …
And then it was gone. He was hanging limply in the ropes binding him to the headstone of Voldemort’s father, looking up into those bright red eyes through a kind of mist. The night was ringing with the sound of the Death Eaters’ laughter.
‘You see, I think, how foolish it was to suppose that this boy could ever have been stronger than me,’ said Voldemort. ‘But I want there to be no mistake in anybody’s mind. Harry Potter escaped me by a lucky chance. And I am now going to prove my power by killing him, here and now, in front of you all, when there is no Dumbledore to help him, and no mother to die for him. I will give him his chance. He will be allowed to fight, and you will be left in no doubt which of us is the stronger. Just a little longer, Nagini,’ he whispered, and the snake glided away through the grass, to where the Death Eaters stood watching.
‘Now untie him, Wormtail, and give him back his wand.’
— CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR —
Priori Incantatem
Wormtail approached Harry, who scrambled to find his feet, to support his own weight before the ropes were untied. Wormtail raised his new silver hand, pulled out the wad of material gagging Harry and then, with one swipe, cut through the bonds tying Harry to the gravestone.
There was a split second, perhaps, when Harry might have considered running for it, but his injured leg shook under him as he stood on the overgrown grave, as the Death Eaters closed ranks, forming a tighter circle around him and Voldemort, so that the gaps where the missing Death Eaters should have stood were filled. Wormtail walked out of the circle to the place where Cedric’s body lay, and returned with Harry’s wand, which he thrust roughly into Harry’s hand without looking at him. Then Wormtail resumed his place in the circle of watching Death Eaters.
‘You have been taught how to duel, Harry Potter?’ said Voldemort softly, his red eyes glinting through the darkness.
At these words Harry remembered, as though from a former life, the Duelling Club at Hogwarts he had attended briefly two years ago … all he had learnt there was the Disarming spell, ‘Expelliarmus’ … and what use would it be, even if he could, to deprive Voldemort of his wand, when he was surrounded by Death Eaters, outnumbered by at least thirty to one? He had never learnt anything that could possibly fit him for this. He knew he was facing the thing against which Moody had always warned … the unblockable Avada Kedavra curse – and Voldemort was right – his mother was not here to die for him this time … he was quite unprotected …
‘We bow to each other, Harry,’ said Voldemort, bending a little, but keeping his snake-like face upturned to Harry. ‘Come, the niceties must be observed … Dumbledore would like you to show manners … bow to death, Harry …’
The Death Eaters were laughing again. Voldemort’s lipless mouth was smiling. Harry did not bow. He was not going to let Voldemort play with him before killing him … he was not going to give him that satisfaction …
‘I said, bow,’ Voldemort said, raising his wand – and Harry felt his spine curve as though a huge, invisible hand was bending him ruthlessly forwards, and the Death Eaters laughed harder than ever.
‘Very good,’ said Voldemort softly, and as he raised his wand, the pressure bearing down upon Harry lifted too. ‘And now you face me, like a man … straight backed and proud, the way your father died …
‘And now – we duel.’
Voldemort raised his wand, and before Harry could do anything to defend himself, before he could even move, he had been hit again by the Cruciatus Curse. The pain was so intense, so all-consuming, that he no longer knew where he was … white-hot knives were piercing every inch of his skin, his head was surely going to burst with pain; he was screaming more loudly than he’d ever screamed in his life –
And then it stopped. Harry rolled over and scrambled to his feet; he was shaking as uncontrollably as Wormtail had done when his hand had been cut off; he staggered sideways into the wall of watching Death Eaters, and they pushed him away, back towards Voldemort.
‘A little break,’ said Voldemort, the slit-like nostrils dilating with excitement, ‘a little pause … that hurt, didn’t it, Harry? You don’t want me to do that again, do you?’
Harry didn’t answer. He was going to die like Cedric, those pitiless red eyes were telling him so … he was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it … but he wasn’t going to play along. He wasn’t going to obey Voldemort … he wasn’t going to beg …
‘I asked you whether you want me to do that again?’ said Voldemort softly. ‘Answer me! Imperio!’
And Harry felt, for the third time in his life, the sensation that his mind had been wiped of all thought … ah, it was bliss, not to think, it was as though he was floating, dreaming … just answer ‘no’ … say ‘no’ … just answer ‘no’ …
I will not, said a stronger voice, in the back of his head, I won’t answer …
Just answer ‘no’ …
I won’t do it, I won’t s
ay it …
Just answer ‘no’ …
‘I WON’T!’
And these words burst from Harry’s mouth; they echoed through the graveyard, and the dream state was lifted as suddenly as though cold water had been thrown over him – back rushed the aches that the Cruciatus Curse had left all over his body – back rushed the realisation of where he was, and what he was facing …
‘You won’t?’ said Voldemort quietly, and the Death Eaters were not laughing now. ‘You won’t say “no”? Harry, obedience is a virtue I need to teach you before you die … perhaps another little dose of pain?’
Voldemort raised his wand, but this time Harry was ready; with the reflexes born of his Quidditch training, he flung himself sideways onto the ground; he rolled behind the marble headstone of Voldemort’s father, and he heard it crack as the curse missed him.
‘We are not playing hide-and-seek, Harry,’ said Voldemort’s soft, cold voice, drawing nearer, as the Death Eaters laughed. ‘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, Harry? Come out, Harry … come out and play, then … it will be quick … it might even be painless … I would not know … I have never died …’
Harry crouched behind the headstone, and knew the end had come. There was no hope … no help to be had. And as he heard Voldemort draw nearer still, he knew one thing only, and it was beyond fear or reason – he was not going to die crouching here like a child playing hide-and-seek; he was not going to die kneeling at Voldemort’s feet … he was going to die upright like his father, and he was going to die trying to defend himself, even if no defence was possible …
Before Voldemort could stick his snake-like face around the headstone, Harry had stood up … he gripped his wand tightly in his hand, thrust it out in front of him, and threw himself around the headstone, facing Voldemort.
Voldemort was ready. As Harry shouted ‘Expelliarmus!’, Voldemort cried, ‘Avada Kedavra!’
The Goblet of Fire Page 56