Chapter Seventy Three - Reborn Horror

Disclaimer: The Harry Potter universe belongs to JK Rowling, Scholastic, Bloomsbury, Warner Bros and some other high falutin' companies. Me, I'm just a PR professional. I don't profess to own - and would never dream of making any money off JKR's wonderful world. However, its her sandbox and she's left the gate unlatched so we can go in and play a bit. Which, I've done.

AN: Prepare yourselves. This is where it gets down and dirty.

Chapter Seventy Three - Reborn Horror

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-==(oIo)==-

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As the group was approaching the stairs into the tribunes, where they'd agreed to meet up with their loved ones, Harry was looking around to see if he could spot them. He expected to see Sirius, the Greengrasses, the Davises, the Abbotts, Amelia Bones, Gran and Xenophilius Lovegood; with the only family missing of their group being the Grangers and Remus. It was a full moon. Harry had also been told that the Delacours would be joining their group as a guest of 'Lord Greengrass and party'.

The third task would soon begin but there was a bottleneck waiting to ascend into the tribunes, anyway. It appeared many other students had the same idea of using the stairs as the place to meet up with loved ones who were lucky enough to be able to acquire seating.

"Damn!" muttered Harry. "I should have brought a broom."

"Anyone seen them?" asked Tracey.

With quite a few more verbal head shakes, the group stood back and scanned with their eyes.

"There they are!" said Hannah, indicating the direction with her raised arm and pointing finger.

Everyone looked in the same direction to see, first, Sirius come striding over with a huge grin on his face. The others tailed along behind.

"Mister Potter," Harry heard someone say from nearby.

He turned and saw Barty Crouch Senior standing there holding something by a covered handle that was under a small black blanket.

Surprised to see the man standing there, Harry said, "Mister Crouch? Aren't you supposed to be..."

While Harry was talking, Crouch raised whatever he was holding and whipped the blanket off it. Harry had only a moment to recognise the Tri-Wizard Cup before it was forcefully shoved into his chest. Instinctively, he raised his hands to grab it.

With the recognisable tug at his bellybutton, Harry disappeared in the swirl of a portkey.

Neville had enough time to exclaim, "What the..."

Crouch raised his wand, pointing it at the sky, and roared, "MORSMORDRE!"

The girls screamed as the Dark Mark was fired into the sky, and began to crouch. Sirius roared and charged the man, who was still standing there with his wand elevated and a blank expression on his face.

Sirius tackled Crouch and pinned him to the ground, immediately and physically disarming the older man.

Changing position to crouch over his target, Sirius looked down into the blank face with its slightly milky eyes of Barty Crouch Senior. Turning to Amelia, who had also come running forward, he snarled, "It's Crouch! He's been Imperiused!"

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-==(oIo)==-

\""/

Harry felt his feet slam into the ground and he fell forward as his hands finally released the Tri-Wizard Cup. Cursing under his breath he raised his head to try and figure out where the portkey had taken him.

'Where am I?' he thought, as he climbed back onto his feet. Instinctively, he popped his wand out of its holster and into his hand.

He had left the Hogwarts grounds completely, that much was clear from the start. Looking around, he realised he'd obviously travelled miles - perhaps, hundreds of miles - for even the mountains surrounding the castle were gone. He was standing, instead, in a dark and overgrown graveyard with the black outline of a small church visible beyond a large yew tree to his right. A hill rose above him to his left. Harry could just make out the outline of a fine old house on the hillside.

'A bloody auto-portkey', thought Harry. 'And one that obviously went right through the Hogwarts wards; so, Flitwick must've created it.' He was looking around the graveyard. It was completely silent and slightly eerie.

Harry kept looking around him. He had the strange feeling he was being watched. Quickly, to get away from where the portkey landed him, Harry ducked down low and scooted through the headstones. He was just thankful a cloud obscured the moon and he had only starlight to guide him. At least it meant it would be very difficult for him to be seen - until the cloud moved out of the way.

Squinting tensely through the darkness, he watched a figure drawing nearer to where he first arrived, walking steadily between the graves. Harry couldn't make out a face from his almost side on view. 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.

Several paces nearer with the gap closing all the time, Harry saw that the thing in the person's arms looked like a baby - or was it merely a bundle of robes?

Harry lowered his wand slightly, trying to get a better look through the headstones.

The figure stopped beside a towering marble headstone of what looked like a winged angel of death with a scythe; a huge headstone Harry had dashed past to get away from the portkey arrival point. For a second, Harry thought he'd been seen, as he and the short figure seemed to simply look at one another. But he wasn't, when the robed man turned back to scan the area of the arrival point.

Harry suddenly felt his communication mirror in his pocket vibrate and turn warm. Startled, he hadn't realised he'd made a slight sound as he ducked down behind the headstone that was his hiding place. Turning his back to the robed man so the light from the mirror wouldn't be seen, he fished the mirror out of his pocket and flipped it open.

He whispered into the mirror, "Padfoot," and quickly held his finger to his lips as the image on the mirror resolved into the worried face of his godfather.

He could see Sirius about to say something but held his tongue at the universal gesture for silence he saw on his alarmed godson's face.

Harry whispered, "Use Daphne's..." when his world suddenly went black.

_‗_

-==(oIo)==-

\""/

Sirius felt a huge sigh of relief when his mirror call to his godson was answered. He was about to demand where Harry thought he was when he saw the gesture of the raised, vertical finger on his godson's face, and held his tongue.

Turning to the others he quickly shushed them before turning back to the mirror.

He watched as Harry moved his mouth close to the mirror. Drawing closer himself, he thought he heard Harry say, "Use Daphne's..." when he saw the red flash of what appeared to be a Stupefying Charm hit him. However, the sheer amount of panicked noise around him made it difficult to hear. At Harry's end the mirror was immediately dropped. The connection was still active; however, Sirius couldn't see a thing.

Keeping the mirror open, Sirius dropped it into his pocket and turned to Aunt Amelia.

"Wherever that portkey took him, Harry's just been hit by a Stunner," he said. "I couldn't get much of anything out of him about where he was before he was hit. All I got was 'use Daphne's'."

He, and the other adults, were all standing apart from the teens. Daphne was crying with the others all standing around in shock at what had happened and were trying to comfort her.

Around them was pandemonium. Amelia had already called her aurors in to support the small contingent present for the task. But, those were already trying to get control of the situation among the near-stampeding spectators.

Thankfully, one of the aurors had already banished the Dark Mark from the skies.

_‗_

-==(oIo)==-

\""/

Harry came around and found himself tied to a solid stone object by Incarcerous ropes. The little fat man was standing in front of him with his hood now drawn back. It was Peter Pettigrew.

"You!" snarled Harry. "Pettigrew, you traitorous fucking arsehole!"

Pettigrew just smirked at him and said, "Now, now, Potter. Special effort was made to get you here. You're here to assist in, and witness the rebirth of, the Dark Lord. You should feel honoured." However, the smirk was wasted by the look of terror in Pettigrew's eyes.

"Fuck you, Pettigrew!" snarled Harry, from within his bonds.

Pettigrew, busy checking the tightness of the cords, did not further respond. Once sure Harry was bound so tightly to the headstone he couldn't move an inch, he turned from Harry and hurried away.

Harry couldn't see where the rat had gone - he couldn't turn his head to see beyond the headstone - he could see only what was right in front of him.

Some way beyond, glinting in the starlight, lay the Tri-Wizard Cup; with the bundle of robes that Harry had thought was a baby was close by, at the foot of the grave. The baby seemed to be stirring fretfully. Harry watched it. Suddenly, he knew that he didn't want to see what was in those robes - he didn't want that bundle opened.

He could hear noises at his feet. He looked down and saw a gigantic snake slithering through the grass, circling the headstone where he was tied.

Pettigrew'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 he saw him pushing a stone cauldron to the foot of the grave. It was full of what seemed to be water - Harry could hear it slopping around. It was larger than any cauldron Harry had ever used; a great stone belly large enough for a full-grown man to sit within.

The thing inside the bundle of robes on the ground was stirring more persistently, as though it was trying to free itself. And Pettigrew 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 to send out fiery sparks, as though it were on fire. Steam was thickening, blurring the outline of Pettigrew tending the fire. The movements beneath the robes became more agitated. And Harry heard the high, cold voice again.

"Hurry!" demanded a cold, high pitched voice, emanating from the bundle at the foot of the grave.

The whole surface of the water was alight with sparks now. It might have been encrusted with diamonds.

"It is ready, Master," Pettigrew's voice said, now beginning to sound quite afraid.

"Now..." said the cold voice.

Pettigrew pulled open the robes on the ground, revealing what was inside them, and Harry let out a gasp.

It was as though Pettigrew had flipped over a stone and revealed something ugly, slimy, and blind - but worse; a hundred times worse. The thing Pettigrew had been carrying had the shape of a crouched human child, except that Harry had never seen anything less like a child. It was hairless and scaly-looking, a dark, raw, reddish black. Its arms and legs were thin and feeble, and its face - no child alive ever had a face like that - flat and snakelike, with gleaming red eyes.

_‗_

-==(oIo)==-

\""/

"The rings!" Hermione suddenly exclaimed. "Use Daphne's ring!"

"Hermione?" queried Amelia, looking over at the teens from where she was brainstorming ideas with the adults. "What?"

Hermione hurried over and said, "That's what he was trying to say! Use Daphne's ring!"

"Or, Daphne's Tracking Charm," said Tracey, also calming down enough to remember. "Daphne tagged Harry with a Tracking Charm!"

The adults moved back across to and around the teens.

"Wait, the range of the ring is pretty local," said Cygnus. "It won't work unless he's close by."

"What about the Tracking Charms?" asked Hannah.

"It'll only give us direction," said Sirius.

"Then triangulate!" Hermione said firmly.

"Tri-what?" asked Amelia.

"Triangulate," said Hermione; her brain working out the solution. "We need to get outside the school wards; and I need a map and compass. I need to get to my parent's home! There, I'll have a map and compass we can use to find him."

_‗_

-==(oIo)==-

\""/

The thing in Pettigrew's arms seemed almost helpless. When Pettigrew bent over, it raised its thin arms, put them around the rat's neck, and was lifted. As he did so, Harry saw the look of revulsion on Pettigrew's weak, pale face in the firelight as he carried the creature to the rim of the cauldron.

For one moment, Harry saw the evil, flat face illuminated in the sparks dancing on the surface of the potion. Then Pettigrew lowered the creature into the cauldron. There was a hiss, and it vanished below the surface. Harry heard its frail body hit the bottom with a soft thud.

'Drown, you wanker!' thought Harry.

Pettigrew was speaking. His voice shook; and he now 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 and furious at the same time, Harry watched as a fine trickle of dust rose into the air at Pettigrew'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.

Though half scared out of his wits, Harry carefully listened.

And now Pettigrew 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."

Harry's eyes widened in recognition. It was a ritual - one chanted in English.

Quickly, he made a decision. He drew in some of his magic. Not too much, in case it was seen, but enough to add power to his words. He whispered, "Flesh of the servant, reluctantly given, you will weaken your master."

Pettigrew did not appear to have heard him as 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 Pettigrew 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 with the knife, too.

He heard something fall to the ground, heard Pettigrew's anguished panting, then a sickening splash, as something was dropped into the cauldron. Harry could barely stand to look as the potion turned a burning red.

Pettigrew was gasping and moaning with agony as he moved over to where Harry was firmly tied to the grave monument. Clearly, Harry was about to lose something to the cauldron. He steeled himself for what was to come.

"B-blood of the enemy - forcibly taken - you will - resurrect your foe."

Harry could do nothing to prevent it as he was tied too tightly. 'Forcibly taken?' he thought.

He saw the shining silver dagger shaking in Pettigrew's remaining hand as it was raised. A quick slashing motion and Harry's sleeve was cut open at the elbow.

He watched as the point of the knife was brought up again. While cradling the stump of his right hand, Pettigrew continued to moan.

Steeling himself Harry willed the knife cut and whispered, "Blood of the enemy, willingly given, you will weaken your foe."

He felt the knife point penetrate the crook of his right arm and blood seeping down the sleeve of his torn robes. Pettigrew, 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.

Feeling better safe than sorry, Harry whispered the incantation once more, adding as much power into it as could and hoping Pettigrew didn't notice.

Pettigrew staggered back to the cauldron with Harry's blood. He poured it inside. The liquid within turned, instantly, a blinding white.

Pettigrew, 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.'

_‗_

-==(oIo)==-

\""/

The floo in the Leaky Cauldron roared to life. Out stepped Hermione, followed by Amelia.

Hermione quickly moved over to one of the tables and unfolded a map of the British Isles she picked up from her parent's place.

Amelia watched as Hermione quickly oriented the map using the compass. "Magnetic North is..." quickly finding it, she pointed the finger of her off hand. "That way."

Turning to look over her shoulder, Amelia called, "Daphne!"

Daphne came forward, her face still blotchy from crying, but she now had a look of strength and determination on her face.

Looking at the girl, Amelia kindly said, "We need a direction, love."

_‗_

-==(oIo)==-

\""/

Back in the graveyard, suddenly, the sparks emanating from the cauldron were extinguished. A surge of white steam billowed thickly from the cauldron, obliterating everything in front of Harry, so that he couldn't see Pettigrew or anything but vapour hanging in the air. 'It's gone wrong,' he thought. 'It's drowned. We got all the horcruxes. Please - please - let it be dead.'

But then, 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 Pettigrew, sobbing and moaning - still cradling his mutilated arm - scrambled to pick up the black bundle from the ground. They were robes. He 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 had haunted his nightmares for years. Whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat as a snakes with slits for nostrils.

Voldemort - Tom Riddle - had risen again.

_‗_

-==(oIo)==-

\""/

"Up and inland from Newcastle!" exclaimed Amelia. Spinning about she looked over the crowded room and called, "Quickly! Who here knows of a wizarding place west of Newcastle!"

One of the aurors called back, "I do!" He came walking forward. "There's a pub - favourite of mine - near there."

"Create a portkey for us all," Amelia commanded. Indicating the point on the map where the two lines intersected, she said, "The closer we can get to that point, the better."

_‗_

-==(oIo)==-

\""/

Riddle - 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, and his face. The red eyes - whose pupils were slits, like a cat's - gleamed still more brightly through the darkness. He held up his hands and flexed the fingers, his expression rapt and exultant. He took not the slightest notice of Pettigrew, who laid twitching and bleeding on the ground, nor of the great snake, which had slithered back into sight and was circling Harry again, hissing.

Riddle slipped one of those unnaturally long-fingered hands into a deep pocket and drew out a wand. He caressed it gently too; and then he raised it. He pointed it at Pettigrew, who was lifted off the ground and thrown against the headstone where Harry was tied. He fell to the foot of it and lay there, crumpled up and crying. Riddle turned his scarlet eyes back upon Harry; laughing a high, cold, mirthless laugh.

Harry glared back.

Pettigrew'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 Riddle lazily.

"Oh Master - thank you, Master..."

He extended the bleeding stump, but Riddle laughed again. "The other arm, Wormtail."

"Master, please - please..."

Riddle bent down and pulled out Pettigrew's left arm, and forced the sleeve of the rat's robes up past his elbow.

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.

Riddle examined it carefully, ignoring Pettigrew's 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 mark on Pettigrew's arm, and the rat let out a fresh howl. Riddle removed his fingers from Pettigrew's mark, and Harry saw it had turned jet black.

With a look of cruel satisfaction on his face, Riddle 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 Pettigrew; eyes sweeping the graveyard all the while.

_‗_

-==(oIo)==-

\""/

With no table around at the location they'd just portkeyed to, Hermione dug out the map she was using. Using the compass, once more, she quickly oriented it to Magnetic North.

"Daphne!" she called.

"Here!" replied Daphne, quickly moving forward. The blonde quickly accessed her end of the Tracking Charm and indicated the direction. "That way!"

Hermione stepped forward and got the bearing.

She returned to the map and drew a new line. "Hangleton!" she cried out. "It's within the Kielder Forest Park area."

The same auror as before stepped forward and said, "That's only a few miles north-east of here."

Amelia said, "Right! It's getting dark enough. Unless anyone knows the - Hangleton - area, I want a couple of people skilled in line of sight apparation. Go ridge line to ridge line." Turning to Hermione and Daphne she asked, "Are you two up to rapid but short apparation hops?"

"We have to be," replied Daphne, to which Hermione nodded.

_‗_

-==(oIo)==-

\""/

After a minute or so, Riddle 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. But, they both had their uses, did they not? Your mother died to defend you as a child - and I killed my father. See how useful he has proved himself, in death..."

"Well, seeing as Pettigrew said something about the 'bones of the father', I kind of figured that out for myself," sneered Harry, ignoring the comment about his mother.

Riddle 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. But 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."

"He didn't, actually," said Harry. "It was your mother who gave you that name. It's likely he didn't even know you were born."

Still Riddle paced; his red eyes darting from grave to grave.

"Listen to me, reliving family history..." he said quietly, ignoring Harry's comment. "Why, I'm growing quite sentimental."

The air was suddenly full of the swishing of cloaks.

"But look, Harry! My true family returns..."

Between graves, behind the yew tree, in every shadowy space, wizards were Apparating. All of them were hooded and masked. And one by one they moved forward - slowly, cautiously, as though they could hardly believe their eyes.

Riddle stood in silence, waiting for them. Then one of the masked morons fell to his knees, crawled toward Riddle, and kissed the hem of his black robes.

"Master - Master," he murmured.

If Harry wasn't so scared near out of his wits, he'd laugh.

The masked morons behind him did the same; each of them approaching Riddle on his knees and kissing his robes, before backing away and standing up, forming a silent circle. A circle which enclosed Tom Riddle's grave, Harry, Riddle, and the sobbing and twitching heap that was Pettigrew. Yet, they left gaps in the circle, as though waiting for more people.

Riddle, however, did not seem to expect more. He looked around at the masked morons; and, though, there was no wind, a rustling seemed to run around the circle, as though it had shivered.

"Welcome, Death Eaters," said Riddle quietly. "Thirteen years - thirteen years since last we met. Yet, you answer my call as though it were yesterday. We are still united under the Dark Mark, then! Or are we?"

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.

_‗_

-==(oIo)==-

\""/

They'd found him!

Looking down upon the scene before them, the collection of adults - plus, Hermione and Daphne - could see Harry tied to a grave marker with his arms out as if crucified. A winged angel of death with its scythe over his head.

But the important point was that he was still alive. They could see him talking to - Riddle. Voldemort had been resurrected.

Daphne heard the gasps of the aurors and other adults as they looked down up the scene only a few hundred yards from them. Voldemort had somehow been resurrected. And he was surrounded by what appeared to be his faithful - Death Eaters.

"We can't move on them until we can get Harry free," said Sirius. "If we move too soon, they'll kill him, immediately."

"They won't kill him," said Cygnus. "Voldemort will want to do it himself; by his own hand. He's still following the prophecy."

"Yet, we can still move into place," said Amelia. "And I can call in reinforcements." She pulled out her badge and tapped it, thrice.

_‗_

-==(oIo)==-

\""/