Chapter 18 Rebirth and Death

Harry felt his feet slam into the ground and he fell forward. His hand let go of the Triwizard Cup and Cedric did the same. The cup tumbled down the slope. He raised his head, "Where are we?" Harry said.

Cedric shook his head. He got up, pulled the couple to their feet and they looked around. They had left the Hogwarts grounds completely; they had obviously traveled miles - perhaps hundreds of miles - for even the mountains surrounding the castle were gone. They were standing instead in a dark and overgrown graveyard; the black outline of a small church was visible beyond a large yew tree to their right. A hill rose above them to their left. Harry could just make out the outline of a fine old house on the hillside.

Cedric tore the medal from his chest, taking a small portion of his robes with them, "I'm guessing this isn't a fourth task is it?" He was looking around the graveyard. It was completely silent and slightly eerie. The trio stood with their wands drawn. Harry kept looking around him. He had, yet again, the strange feeling that they were being watched.

"Contact forward!" Hermione said suddenly. A detached part of Harry's mind noted that they'd all started speaking like Goblins.

Squinting tensely through the darkness, they watched the figure drawing nearer, walking steadily toward them between the graves. Harry could not make out a face, but from the way it was walking and holding its arms, he could tell that it was carrying something. Whoever it was, he was short, and wearing a hooded cloak pulled up over his head to obscure his face. Harry saw that the thing in the person's arms looked like a baby… or a bundle of robes.

A sixth sense screamed when the figure stopped. Harry advanced, raising his wand to cast when his scar exploded with pain. He had never felt an agony like this in all his life. His wand slipped from his fingers as he put his hands over his face. His knees buckled, and he hit the ground, unable to see as his head threatened to split open.

"Cover him!" shouted Cedric to Hermione. He went on the offensive.

The figure dodged nimbly to the left of the blasting hex and let his shield absorb the cutting curse and retaliated, "Avada Kedevra!" screamed the short, hunched figure. Paralyzed with pain, Harry could only watch as the bolt of green light leapt from wand tip, on a crash course with Hermione.

Cedric Diggory, prefect of Hufflepuff House, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, was sorted in to the wrong house. The seventeen-year-old wizard grabbed her, spun them round and pushed her back. The blast of green magic caught Cedric square between the shoulder blades, and he went limp. Cedric's dead weight struck Hermione like a sledgehammer and dragged her down, pinning her beneath him.

For a second that contained an eternity, Harry stared into Cedric's face, at his open gray eyes, blank and expressionless as the windows of a deserted house, at his half-open mouth, which had a slight smile, almost as if he knew the price of what he was doing, and didn't mind paying for it. Before Harry's mind had accepted what he was seeing there was a flash of red, a stunning spell and Hermione went limp. Before he could feel anything but numb disbelief, he felt himself being pulled to his feet.

The short man in the cloak had put down his bundle, lit his wand, and was dragging Harry toward the marble headstone. Dazed with pain, Harry could put up no resistance as whoever he was stripped the arm guards and torso sections of the goblin made armor from him. Harry saw the name upon it flickering in the wand light before he was forced around and slammed against the headstone:

TOM RIDDLE

The cloaked man was now conjuring tight cords around Harry, tying him from neck to ankles to the headstone. Harry could hear shallow, fast breathing from the depths of the hood; he struggled, and the man hit him - hit him with a hand that had a finger missing: Wormtail. "You!" he gasped.

However, Wormtail, who had finished conjuring the ropes, did not reply; he was busy checking the tightness of the cords, his fingers trembling uncontrollably, rumbling over the knots. Once sure that Harry was bound so tightly to the headstone that he could not move an inch, Wormtail did the same to Hermione. Then, without a word, he turned from Harry and hurried away. Harry could not see where Wormtail had gone; he could not turn his head to see beyond the headstone; he could see only what was right in front of him.

Cedric's body was lying some twenty feet away. Some way beyond him, glinting in the starlight, lay the Triwizard Cup. Harry's wand was on the ground at Cedric's feet. The bundle of robes that Harry had thought was a baby was close by, at the foot of the grave. It seemed to be stirring fretfully. Harry watched it, and his scar seared with pain again… and he suddenly knew that he did not want to see what was in those robes… he did not want that bundle opened…

He could hear noises at his feet. He looked down and saw a gigantic snake slithering through the grass, circling around his feet. Wormtail's fast, wheezy breathing was growing louder again. It sounded as though he was forcing something heavy across the ground. Then he came back within Harry's range of vision, and Harry saw him magically moving a stone cauldron to the foot of the grave. It was full of what seemed to be water - Harry could hear it slopping around - and it was larger than any cauldron Harry had ever used; a great stone belly large enough for a full-grown man to sit in.

The thing inside the bundle of robes on the ground was stirring more persistently, as though it was trying to free itself. Now Wormtail was busying himself at the bottom of the cauldron with a wand. Suddenly there were crackling flames beneath it. The large snake slithered away into the darkness. The liquid in the cauldron seemed to heat very fast. The surface began not only to bubble, but also to send out fiery sparks, as though it were on fire. Steam was thickening, blurring the outline of Wormtail tending the fire. The movements beneath the robes became more agitated. Harry heard the high, cold voice again. "Hurry!"

The whole surface of the water was alight with sparks as if encrusted with diamonds. "It is ready Master."

"Now…" said the cold voice.

Wormtail pulled open the robes on the ground and Harry let out a yell.

Wormtail was speaking. His voice shook; he seemed frightened beyond his wits. He raised his wand, closed his eyes, and spoke to the night. "Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!"

The surface of the grave at Harry's feet cracked. Horrified, Harry watched as a fine trickle of dust rose into the air at Wormtail's command and fell softly into the cauldron. The diamond surface of the water broke and hissed; it sent sparks in all directions and turned a vivid, poisonous-looking blue. Wormtail was whimpering. He pulled a long, thin, shining silver dagger from inside his cloak. His voice broke into petrified sobs. "Flesh - of the servant - w-willingly given - you will - revive - your master."

"Peter!" gasped Harry, "Please! You don't have to do this!"

He looked at the two bound teens, and he met Harry's gaze for the first time. Harry could see the emotion, the pain, the hurt, the loss, the sorrow, and loneliness in those empty eyes, "I have no choice," whispered Peter Pettigrew, "Your article in the Quibbler, means that leaving his side will mean I will be hunted forever."

He stretched his right hand out in front of him - the hand with the missing finger. He gripped the dagger very tightly in his left hand and swung it upward. Harry realized what Wormtail was about to do a second before it happened – he closed his eyes as tightly as he could, but he could not block the scream that pierced the night, that went through Harry as though he had been stabbed. He heard something fall to the ground, heard Wormtail's anguished panting, and then a sickening splash, as something was dropped into the cauldron. Harry could not stand to look… but the potion had turned a burning red; the light of it shone through closed eyelids…

Wormtail was gasping and moaning with agony. Not until Harry felt Wormtail's anguished breath on his face did he realize that Wormtail was right in front of him.

"Use the blood from both of them! The blood of the wizard who defied me! And the blood of his love! It will strengthen me even further!" The voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once, but Harry knew whom it belonged to now: Voldemort.

"B-blood of the enemies… forcibly taken… you will… resurrect your foe." Squinting down, struggling hopelessly at the ropes binding him, he saw the shining silver dagger shaking in Wormtails remaining hand. He felt its point penetrate the crook of his right arm between the forearm guard and the cuirass. Blood seeping down the sleeve of his torn robes. Wormtail, still panting with pain, rumbled in his pocket for a glass vial and held it to Harry's cut, so that a dribble of blood fell into it. Hermione awoke with a scream when Wormtail cut her across the forearm and collected a trickle of her blood. He poured it inside. The liquid within turned, instantly, a blinding white. Wormtail, his job done, dropped to his knees beside the cauldron, then slumped sideways and lay on the ground, cradling the bleeding stump of his arm, gasping and sobbing.

The cauldron was simmering, sending its diamond sparks in all directions, so blindingly bright that it turned all else to velvety blackness. Nothing happened…

"Let it have drowned," Harry thought, "let it have gone wrong," And then, suddenly, the sparks emanating from the cauldron winked out. A surge of white steam billowed thickly from the cauldron instead, obliterating everything in front of Harry, so that he could not see Wormtail or Cedric or anything but vapor hanging in the air. "It's gone wrong, he thought… it's drowned… please… please let it be dead."

Through the mist in front of him, he saw, with an icy surge of terror, the dark outline of a man, tall and skeletally thin, rising slowly from inside the cauldron. "Robe me," said the high, cold voice from behind the steam, and Wormtail, sobbing and moaning, still cradling his mutilated arm, scrambled to pick up the black robes from the ground, got to his feet, reached up, and pulled them one handed over his master's head.

The thin man stepped out of the cauldron, staring at Harry… and Harry stared back into the face that would haunted his nightmares. Whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat and snake like with slits for nostrils…

Voldemort looked away from Harry and began examining his own body. His hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cats, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness. He held up his hands and flexed the fingers, his expression rapt and exultant. Voldemort took not the slightest notice of Wormtail, twitching and bleeding on the ground, nor of the great snake, which had slithered back into sight and was circling Harry again, hissing. Voldemort slipped one of those unnaturally long-fingered hands into a deep pocket and drew out a wand. He caressed it gently and Voldemort turned his scarlet eyes upon Harry, laughing a high, cold, mirthless laugh.

Wormtail's robes were shining with blood now; he had wrapped the stump of his arm in them. "My Lord…" he choked, "my Lord… you promised… you did promise…"

"Hold out your arm," said Voldemort lazily. He extended the bleeding stump, but Voldemort laughed again. "The other arm, Wormtail."

"Master, please… please…"

Voldemort bent down and pulled out Wormtail's left arm; he forced the sleeve of Wormtail's robes up past his elbow, and Harry saw something upon the skin there, something like a vivid red tattoo - a skull with a snake protruding from its mouth - the image that had appeared in the sky at the Quidditch World Cup: the Dark Mark. Voldemort examined it carefully, ignoring the uncontrollable weeping.

"It is back," he said softly, "they will all have noticed it… and now, we shall see… now we shall know…"

He pressed his long white forefinger to the brand on Wormtail's arm. The scar on Harry s forehead seared with a sharp pain again, and Wormtail let out a fresh howl; Voldemort removed his fingers from Wormtail's mark, and Harry saw that it had turned jet black. A look of cruel satisfaction on his face, Voldemort straightened up, threw back his head, and stared around at the dark graveyard. "How many will be brave enough to return when they feel it?" he whispered, his gleaming red eyes fixed upon the stars. "And how many will be foolish enough to stay away?"

He began to pace up and down before Harry and Wormtail, eyes sweeping the graveyard all the while. After a minute or so, he looked down at Harry again, a cruel smile twisting his snakelike face. "You stand, Harry Potter, upon the remains of my late father," he hissed softly. "A Muggle and a fool… very like your dear mother. However, they both had their uses, did they not? Your mother died to defend you as a child… and I killed my father, and see how useful he has proved himself, in death…"

Voldemort laughed again. Up and down, he paced, looking all around him as he walked, and the snake continued to circle in the grass. "You see that house upon the hillside, Potter? My father lived there. My mother, a witch who lived here in this village, fell in love with him. However, he abandoned her when she told him what she was… He didn't like magic, my father…"

"He left her and returned to his Muggle parents before I was even born Potter, and she died giving birth to me, leaving me to be raised in a Muggle orphanage… but I vowed to find him… I revenged myself upon him, that fool who gave me his name… Tom Riddle…" Still he paced, his red eyes darting from grave to grave. "Listen to me, reliving family history…" he said quietly, "why, I am growing quite sentimental… But look, Harry! My true family returns…"

The air was suddenly full of the swishing of cloaks. Between graves, behind the yew tree, in every shadowy space, wizards were Apparating. All of them were hooded and masked. One by one, they moved forward… slowly, cautiously, as though they could hardly believe their eyes Voldemort stood in silence, waiting for them. Then one of the Death Eaters fell to his knees, crawled toward Voldemort and kissed the hem of his black robes. "Master… Master" he murmured.

The Death Eaters behind him did the same; each of them approaching Voldemort on their knees and kissing his robes, before backing away and standing up, forming a silent circle, which enclosed Tom Riddle Senior's grave, Harry, Voldemort, and the sobbing and twitching heap that was Wormtail. Yet they left gaps in the circle, as though waiting for more people. Voldemort, however, did not seem to expect more. He looked around at the hooded faces, and though there was no wind, rustling seemed to run around the circle.

"Welcome, Death Eaters," said Voldemort quietly. "Thirteen years… thirteen years since last we met. Yet you answer my call as though it were yesterday, we remain, still united under the Dark Mark! Or…" He put back his terrible face and sniffed, his slit-like nostrils widening. "I smell guilt," he said. "There is a stench of guilt upon the air." A second shiver ran around the circle, as though each member of it longed, but did not dare to step back from him. "I see you all, whole and healthy, with your powers intact - such prompt appearances! And I ask myself… why did this band of wizards never come to the aid of their master, to whom they swore eternal loyalty?"

No one spoke. No one moved except Wormtail, who was upon the ground, still sobbing over his bleeding arm. "And I answer myself," whispered Voldemort, "they must have believed me broken, they thought I was gone. They slipped back among my enemies, and they pleaded innocence, and ignorance, and bewitchment… Then I ask myself, but how could they have believed I would not rise again? They, who knew the steps I took, long ago, to guard myself against mortal death? They, who had seen proofs of the immensity of my power in the times when I was mightier than any wizard living?"

"And I answer myself, perhaps they believed a still greater power could exist, one that could vanquish even Lord Voldemort… perhaps they now pay allegiance to another… perhaps that champion of commoners, of Mudbloods and Muggles, Albus Dumbledore?" At the mention of Dumbledore's name, the members of the circle stirred, and some muttered and shook their heads. Voldemort ignored them. "It is a disappointment to me… I confess myself disappointed…"

"I require thirteen years of service and begging before I consider forgiveness! Any of you! Wormtail here has paid some of his debt already, have you not, Wormtail?" He looked down at Wormtail, who continued to sob. "You returned to me, not out of loyalty, but out of fear of your old friends. You deserve this pain, Wormtail. You know that, don't you? Yet you helped return me to my body," said Voldemort coolly, watching Wormtail sob on the ground. "Worthless and traitorous as you are, you helped me… and Lord Voldemort rewards those who are in his service and loyal" .Voldemort raised his wand again and whirled it through the air. A streak of what looked like molten silver hung shining in the wand's wake. Momentarily shapeless, it writhed and then formed itself into a gleaming replica of a human hand, bright as moonlight, which soared downward and fixed itself upon Wormtails bleeding wrist.

Wormtail's sobbing stopped abruptly. His breathing harsh and ragged, he raised his head and stared in disbelief at the silver hand, now attached seamlessly to his arm, as though he were wearing a dazzling glove. He flexed the shining fingers, then, trembling, picked up a small twig on the ground and crushed it into powder. "My Lord," he whispered. "Master… it is beautiful… thank you… thank you…" He scrambled forward on his knees and kissed the hem of Voldemort's robes.

"May your loyalty never waver again, Wormtail," said Voldemort.

"No, my Lord… never, my Lord…" Wormtail stood up and took his place in the circle, staring at his powerful new hand, his face still shining with tears. Voldemort now approached the man on Wormtail's right.

"Lucius, my slippery friend," he whispered, halting before him. "I am told that you have not renounced the old ways, though to the world you present a respectable face. You are still ready to take the lead in a spot of Muggle-torture, I believe. Yet you never tried to find me, Lucius… Your exploits at the Quidditch World Cup were fun, I daresay… but might not your energies have been better directed toward finding and aiding your master?"

Voldemort made his way round the circle of masked, hooded and cloaked death eaters. Some he ignored, others he addressed, but they were a little too far from Harry to hear much of what was said. Though dizzy from the pain, he struggled through it, determined to hear as much as possible. Bound by his side, Hermione was terrified but stayed quiet, only capable of watching in fear.

The Death Eaters stirred, and Harry saw their eyes dart sideways at one another through their masks. Voldemort stood before Harry, but continued talking as if he had all the time in the world, "…faithful servant, and it was through his efforts that our young friend arrived here tonight…" 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 honor."

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 other sacrifice… This is old magic, I should have remembered it, and 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, filling them in on ten years as "less than the meanest ghost, less than spirit," and then their first face to face encounter: The Philosophers Stone, and then of Wormtail's escape the previous year and his accidental encounter with Bertha Jorkins.

"Now see the way that fate favors Lord Voldemort. This might have been the end of Wormtail, and of my last hope for regeneration. However, Wormtail - displaying a presence of mind I would never have expected from him - convinced Bertha Jorkins to accompany him on a nighttime 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 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 noticed. 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," Voldemorts 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."

"It was 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. However, 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 still do. However, 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 Potters' 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? By using Bertha Jorkins's information. Use my one faithful Death Eater, stationed at Hogwarts, to ensure that the boy's name was entered into the Goblet of Fire. Things did not go according to plan, especially when Harry made his own plans and allied with the Goblins and the befriended the other Champions in the bargain! However, my servant succeeded nonetheless, delivering, Harry Potter to me. 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… 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. 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 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.

Voldemort turned to Harry, "Yes. I will give him his chance, a fair fight, a duel to the death with Lord Voldemort, where he will do the utmost to not only survive, but to kill!" The smile, if that was what it was, more closely resembled the rictus of a man in agony. His wand rose, and the greatest threat to the wizarding world let the spell build, gradually. "I want Harry Potter to feel rage, to feel anger, and to hate. I want him to hear the flow of adrenalin through his veins, to feel pounding beat of his own heart as he fights for the kill." The spell flew from the wand, almost lazily.

It struck its target and her screams rendered the cool night air, "You can make it stop Harry," mocked Voldemort, "You can ask, beg and plead. And when you've suffered enough," he shrugged and his smile had not shifted, "or when she's suffered enough and begs me, I will release her from her pain."

However, she resisted, and resisted for as long as she could. It was not long before she was screaming. Wordless sound of agony. Harry would beg and plead, screaming over her screams and in between them. He himself screamed as Voldemort plied him with the same curse for a few moments, "The night is young, little Harry," said Voldemort conversationally, "And there are more ways to inflict pain than the Cruciatus Curse." Moonlight filtered through the clouds in to the graveyard, "Petrificus Totalus!"

True, there are more ways to inflict pain than just the Cruciatus Curse. That particular curse had earned its place as an unforgivable for its ability to be maintained indefinitely and to cause insanity. Other curses could inflict pain and agony to rival the Cruciatus, but were alone not enough to turn a mind to mush. But Voldemort's Legillimency could. And it was quick to make oh-so-interesting a discovery, one that he gleefully shared with Harry, "She's bound by a number of spells Harry." The Dark Lord smiled, "A combination of little things: A Befuddlement hex, a Compulsion Charm, oh my," whispered Voldemort, "The lingering effects of a long term Imperious…somebody has been having you on Harry. Shall I lift the memory charm?"

For a long moment, Harry simply stared at Voldemort. He had something would go wrong with the ritual, but an insane Voldemort was not the way he had hoped the ritual would go wrong. Hermione screamed a long note of agony that rocked Harry to the core of his soul, and then she went limp in her bindings, "Dumbledore… Dumbledore… hospital wing…before first task…" whispered Voldemort, it was as if he was cooing with pleasure.

"See Harry?" chuckled Voldemort, "Every your vaunted headmaster and servant of the light is no better than me… but perhaps I could go so far as to say that I AM better than him. Although I have tried to kill you, and I did kill your parents, I have been shall we say straight forward in my motivation, without manipulating friends and family. Can you say the same for your precious headmaster?"

Hermione looked at Harry and her eyes said it all. That everything Voldemort said was true.

After that, it continued. There was no telling how long it lasted, but when it finally came. Harry loathed admitting it, a part of him was grateful for it, "Time to say good bye, Harry," drawled Voldemort lifting the full body bind. He had seen it often enough in his Dementor fueled nightmares of the previous year of his parents and that sickly, diseased green glow. "Mione," he whispered, her cheeks were marred with tears, and blood. Blood dripped from her mouth when she first bitten her lip against the agony, and then bitten her tongue in the throes of the Cruciatus curse. There was no real fear left in her. There seemed to be no real sign of life in her weak, almost limp body, still tied to the headstone next to his. She was barely able to meet his eyes, but then, Voldemort had taken her ability to see, "Mione…"

"Hermione!" he whispered, desperately, pleading, she finally raised her head in his direction. No help had come. In all probability, no one knew where to look, or even where to start looking. Her hands, trembled, her wrists and ankles bled where they had chaffed against the ropes until her blood had dyed the ropes. Through it all, she had screamed until her voice broke but never once had she asked Voldemort for anything. Not pity. Not Mercy. Not even the right to die.

Harry knew when she mouthed the words, the three words that in all their time together, Harry had never once said. It was almost as if Voldemort was waiting for her to say it and to cut Harry off before he could reply, "Avada Kedevra." Not a shout or a scream but a malfoy-esuqe drawl. Tied to the headstone, Harry could do nothing but watch. The killing curse landed lightly upon her chest. It rippled outwards, slowly like the waves of the ocean striking shore at low tide. The green glow spreading out until outlined her fully. There was no scream, no cry of pain. Just a simple exhale of her last, pain filled breath.

"No," whispered Harry. It might have been a shout, but his voice was a ruin, "No."

It was filled with pain, and disbelief, and denial. He knew what he saw was true. A lone tear slid down his cheek, cutting through the dirt.

Someone slashed the bloody ropes that bound her. A laughter filled with bone chilling malice echoed and surrounded him as she began her descent to the ground with surreal grace. She fell in slow motion. Every second taking minutes, every detail of her face, her disheveled hair, the blood specks. The way her robes fluttered in the still night air, the way the grass seemed to crumple and crackle beneath her weight. "I love you," he whispered. The words seemed so pointless. Empty and meaningless as he stared in to her deep chocolate brown eyes, vacant, as if snuffed out like a candle in the wind. Harry Potter let out a howl of heart-wrenching agony.

"We will give him a minute to mourn," instructed Voldemort as the Death Eaters erupted in laughter. A wave of his wand and Harry fell to the ground. He half crawled, half scrabbled over to her, and cradled her in his arms, fresh tears falling from his eyes, in to her hair like rough uncut diamonds. Hermione Jane Granger was dead. He held her and cried, behind closed eyes he saw everything that their relation had been, and felt his heart break, at what would have, should have, and could have been. He tightened his hold, even though she would never hold him back. The memories flooded through his mind, and all he saw were the highlights of his relationship, less than one school year together, but he had known happiness, and known love, like nothing he'd ever had before. Now he had nothing left.

"I want to look in to his eyes, when he dies. Now, Wormtail, give him back his wand."