Chapter 56: The Graveyard
24th June 1995, Little Hangleton
(Nathan POV)
He limped over to the cup; he was going to win. He beat Jasmine, his life will finally go back to normal. He looked at the cup in front of him and grasped a handle. Instantly, Nathan felt a jerk behind his navel. He didn’t know that the cup was a portkey. But at least now, he was safe from that nightmare of a maze.
Nathan felt his feet slam into the ground. He landed on his broken leg, and he fell over, letting go of the Triwizard Cup. He raised his head and took a look around.
He had left the Hogwarts grounds completely; he had obviously traveled miles, perhaps hundreds of miles, for even the mountains surrounding the castle were gone. He was standing instead in a dark and overgrown graveyard; the black outline of a small church was visible beyond a large yew tree to his right. A hill rose above them to his left. Nathan could just make out the outline of a fine old house on the hillside.
Something was wrong, he could feel it in his gut. The cup shouldn’t be a portkey. He got up, wincing at the pain in his leg and pulled out his wand. He felt like he was being watched. He looked around to find a figure drawing nearer, walking steadily toward him between the graves.
He couldn’t see the stranger’s 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.
Seeing the figure as a non-threat, Nathan lowered his wand slightly. He regretted it immediately when he saw a flash of red light and he fell unconscious.
Nathan woke up, feeling something around his ankles and arms. He looked up around him, disoriented. He was tied to a marble headstone. The situation would have made him scared enough on its own, but it was the name on the stone that truly made him freeze in fright. The name on the stone was Tom Riddle.
Nathan struggled trying to get out of his restraints, but the hooded man hit him. The effort had made the man’s hood fall off, exposing a familiar face. It was the traitor. His parents told Nathan about him. He was supposed to be in Azkaban. “YOU!” He shouted at him. “Pettigrew, you’re supposed to be in Azkaban.” Nathan snarled at him. The traitorous marauder did not respond, he waved a wand and gagged him, then turned and hurried away.
When he came back, he was pushing a stone cauldron to the foot of the grave. It was larger than any cauldron he had ever seen before. 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 traitor removed the robes he was holding, revealing what he had underneath. It was one of the most disgusting things he had ever seen in his life. It looked like a sickly baby, but there was nothing natural about it. It was hairless and scaly looking, a dark, raw, reddish black. Its arms and legs were thin and feeble, and its face was flat and snakelike, with gleaming red eyes.
The traitor lifted the ugly baby thing and lowered it into to cauldron.
“Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!”
A bone now levitated from the grave in front of him and fell softly into the cauldron. The bone immediately burst into flames and disintegrated into the potion.
Then the former Marauder, trembled for a second and then steeled himself. He took out a silver dagger, a ritual dagger. His mother had shown him a Potter ritual dagger that looked similar to it.
“Flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your master.”
It only lasted barely more than a second, but it was something would haunt him for years. Pettigrew swung the blade downwards and cut off his hand. Nathan tried to block out the screams of agony that pierced the night. The traitor picked up his cut hand and threw it into the potion, panting in pain.
The man must have been in a tremendous amount of pain, but he carried on, “Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe.”
Nathan tried to escape, once more, but he was too tightly bound. The former marauder turned and looked at him, with the ritual dagger in his remaining hand. Nathan knew that he was going to die, he was going to be stabbed to death by the traitorous rat.
He closed his eyes, fully expecting to see the afterlife, only to feel a stinging on the crook of his right arm. He opened his eyes, confused. The man was holding a glass vial to the cut on his arm, filling it with blood.
He staggered back to the cauldron with Nathan’s blood. He poured it inside. The liquid within turned, instantly, a blinding white and started simmering, sending diamond sparks everywhere. It was so bright, he had to avert his eyes to not be blinded by it.
And then, suddenly, the sparks emanating from the cauldron were extinguished. A surge of white steam billowed thickly from the cauldron. Nathan hoped that whatever ritual was happening to have failed somehow. 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 hurried and helped him breathe. The thin man stepped out of the cauldron, staring at Nathan. He was whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat as a snake with slits for nostrils. He instinctively knew who that was. Lord Voldemort was back.
While the Dark Lord was admiring his new body, Nathan was petrified in fear. The headmaster had told him that this day will come but Nathan had hoped that it would be in the far future when he would be ready for it. He can’t fight someone like Voldemort before he had even graduated from Hogwarts.
His musing was interrupted by Voldemort’s cold voice, “Hold out your arm,” said Voldemort to Pettigrew.
“Thank you, Master.” Pettigrew extended the bleeding stump, but Voldemort laughed at him.
“The other arm, Wormtail.” The rat looked like he wanted to say something but refrained and just raised his unharmed arm towards his master. Voldemort forced the sleeve of the traitor’s robes up past his elbow, and Nathan saw something upon the skin there, something like a vivid red tattoo, the dark mark.
He pressed his long white forefinger to the brand on Wormtail’s arm, it turned jet black.
With 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?”
Nathan never understood why people would want to follow a man that treated them so horribly. Is their need to be cruel so great that they accept someone like Voldemort as their Master just to be able to hurt others. Or is it perhaps an effect of the dark arts.
Voldemort began to pace up and down before Nathan and Wormtail, eyes sweeping the graveyard all the while. After a minute or so, he looked down at Nathan again, a cruel smile twisting his snakelike face.
“You stand, Nathan Potter, upon the remains of my late father,” he hissed softly. “A Muggle and a fool but even fools have their uses, do they not? I killed my father, and see how useful he has proved himself, in death.” He laughed cruelly and continued pacing.
“Listen to me, reliving family history,” he said quietly, “why, I am growing quite sentimental. But look, Nathan! 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. And one by one they moved forward. They looked a though they could hardly believe their eyes. Voldemort stood in silence, waiting for them. They started to kneel and kissing his robes, before backing away and standing up in a circle.
Voldemort started talking about their loyalty. Nathan could barely think straight, his leg was in agony, and he kept passing out from the pain. He vaguely recognized some screaming; Voldemort was probably punishing his followers. He had to get out of here and get Dumbledore.
“Crucio,” Nathan heard and suddenly, he felt pain. 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. It only lasted a moment, but he was shaking uncontrollably, still bound to the stone. Voldemort had vanished the gag just to hear him scream.
“Nice to have back with us, Nathan Potter.” Voldemort said to him, with a malicious smile on his face.
“It’s sad that people actually think that you defeated me somehow. They called you, my downfall. What happened that night almost fourteen years ago, is not known to even me. But what I do know that whatever was done was ancient magic, very ancient and very powerful and with my demise, my memories of that night are fragmented. Something that no child should be able to power. I’m even more surprised that I chose to cast the killing curse at you. Your sister was far more impressive and held far more potential. Perhaps, I chose to dispose of the waste first and it backfired somehow.”
Nathan could not believe what he was hearing.
“I would have chosen her for my rebirth, had I not wanted to make a statement. You will not leave this place alive, Nathan Potter. And the world will know that what happened that night was a fluke. I fell for a trap, I know not who would be able to create something so elaborate but even then, I am alive, survived death itself and there is nothing that can stop me.”
Nathan screamed at him, “Dumbledore will stop you…”
Voldemort just silenced him with a wave of his wand. The shiver ran once more around the circle of listening Death Eaters. Voldemort let the silence spiral horribly before continuing.
“It truly is a shame about your sister, Nathan. She had a lot of potential, to be able to hold on against Dumbledore being only fourteen years old. Had she survived the encounter, I would have extended her an offer to join our ranks.”
Nathan was gaping at his enemy. Jasmine was dead. Dumbledore killed her. How? The headmaster doesn’t kill. Why would they fight in the task?
Voldemort laughed cruelly at the expression on his face, “You don’t know, do you? Your precious leader of light attacked your twin with the intention of killing her. He hunted her down to kill her because he wanted an artifact. She fought valiantly; I would admit that she even reminded me of a younger me. What a shame, such potential being stifled so early. What cunning, she displayed. To trick the manipulator himself into revealing his deeds and his plans to the world. She has just benefited us so much without even meaning to. With Dumbledore hunted down like a common criminal, by the light and dark alike, we can easily take over Britain. That girl with just this simple act of revenge, handed us the key to conquer magical Britain.”
Dumbledore had done all this. He tricked him. He killed his sister, his twin. He would never make it up to her. He abandoned his other half and now she was gone. It doesn’t matter, he will probably join her soon in death.
“He even mentioned you, Potter. He was preparing you as a martyr. He wanted to use your death to unite the magical community under his reign. He raised you like a pig to slaughter. You will die knowing that you lived a meaningless life that was always going to end in an early death thanks to the machinations of your mentor. But I will not kill you, yet. I wish to break you first, you’re so close Potter. We only need to wait for him to arrive.”
“Who?” Nathan asked.
“My most faithful servant, and who has already reentered my service, at Hogwarts. He entered your name in the goblet of fire, he made sure that you win, for this moment. He will arrive soon, and he will have someone with him. Someone dear to you, your sister Rose.”
Nathan thrashed at his bindings, “you will not touch a hair on her shoulder.” He shouted at the dark lord.
“Crucio!” He felt the torture curse, once again and screamed in pain.
“To think I believed such a silly prophecy. As high as your potential could be, you are hardly my equal.”
“Prophecy?” Nathan gasped out.
“You don’t know, do you? You truly do not know why I attacked you, all these years ago. I have hated you for so long, Nathan Potter but now I cannot but pity you. But if you want to save your sister, you only have to defeat me. I will allow you to fight, prove to everyone that you’re stronger than me, boy.”
The Death Eaters stood watching.
“Now, untie him Wormtail and give him back his wand.”
Chapter 56: The Graveyard
24th June 1995, Little Hangleton
(Nathan POV)
He limped over to the cup; he was going to win. He beat Jasmine, his life will finally go back to normal. He looked at the cup in front of him and grasped a handle. Instantly, Nathan felt a jerk behind his navel. He didn’t know that the cup was a portkey. But at least now, he was safe from that nightmare of a maze.
Nathan felt his feet slam into the ground. He landed on his broken leg, and he fell over, letting go of the Triwizard Cup. He raised his head and took a look around.
He had left the Hogwarts grounds completely; he had obviously traveled miles, perhaps hundreds of miles, for even the mountains surrounding the castle were gone. He was standing instead in a dark and overgrown graveyard; the black outline of a small church was visible beyond a large yew tree to his right. A hill rose above them to his left. Nathan could just make out the outline of a fine old house on the hillside.
Something was wrong, he could feel it in his gut. The cup shouldn’t be a portkey. He got up, wincing at the pain in his leg and pulled out his wand. He felt like he was being watched. He looked around to find a figure drawing nearer, walking steadily toward him between the graves.
He couldn’t see the stranger’s 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.
Seeing the figure as a non-threat, Nathan lowered his wand slightly. He regretted it immediately when he saw a flash of red light and he fell unconscious.
Nathan woke up, feeling something around his ankles and arms. He looked up around him, disoriented. He was tied to a marble headstone. The situation would have made him scared enough on its own, but it was the name on the stone that truly made him freeze in fright. The name on the stone was Tom Riddle.
Nathan struggled trying to get out of his restraints, but the hooded man hit him. The effort had made the man’s hood fall off, exposing a familiar face. It was the traitor. His parents told Nathan about him. He was supposed to be in Azkaban. “YOU!” He shouted at him. “Pettigrew, you’re supposed to be in Azkaban.” Nathan snarled at him. The traitorous marauder did not respond, he waved a wand and gagged him, then turned and hurried away.
When he came back, he was pushing a stone cauldron to the foot of the grave. It was larger than any cauldron he had ever seen before. 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 traitor removed the robes he was holding, revealing what he had underneath. It was one of the most disgusting things he had ever seen in his life. It looked like a sickly baby, but there was nothing natural about it. It was hairless and scaly looking, a dark, raw, reddish black. Its arms and legs were thin and feeble, and its face was flat and snakelike, with gleaming red eyes.
The traitor lifted the ugly baby thing and lowered it into to cauldron.
“Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!”
A bone now levitated from the grave in front of him and fell softly into the cauldron. The bone immediately burst into flames and disintegrated into the potion.
Then the former Marauder, trembled for a second and then steeled himself. He took out a silver dagger, a ritual dagger. His mother had shown him a Potter ritual dagger that looked similar to it.
“Flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your master.”
It only lasted barely more than a second, but it was something would haunt him for years. Pettigrew swung the blade downwards and cut off his hand. Nathan tried to block out the screams of agony that pierced the night. The traitor picked up his cut hand and threw it into the potion, panting in pain.
The man must have been in a tremendous amount of pain, but he carried on, “Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe.”
Nathan tried to escape, once more, but he was too tightly bound. The former marauder turned and looked at him, with the ritual dagger in his remaining hand. Nathan knew that he was going to die, he was going to be stabbed to death by the traitorous rat.
He closed his eyes, fully expecting to see the afterlife, only to feel a stinging on the crook of his right arm. He opened his eyes, confused. The man was holding a glass vial to the cut on his arm, filling it with blood.
He staggered back to the cauldron with Nathan’s blood. He poured it inside. The liquid within turned, instantly, a blinding white and started simmering, sending diamond sparks everywhere. It was so bright, he had to avert his eyes to not be blinded by it.
And then, suddenly, the sparks emanating from the cauldron were extinguished. A surge of white steam billowed thickly from the cauldron. Nathan hoped that whatever ritual was happening to have failed somehow. 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 hurried and helped him breathe. The thin man stepped out of the cauldron, staring at Nathan. He was whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat as a snake with slits for nostrils. He instinctively knew who that was. Lord Voldemort was back.
While the Dark Lord was admiring his new body, Nathan was petrified in fear. The headmaster had told him that this day will come but Nathan had hoped that it would be in the far future when he would be ready for it. He can’t fight someone like Voldemort before he had even graduated from Hogwarts.
His musing was interrupted by Voldemort’s cold voice, “Hold out your arm,” said Voldemort to Pettigrew.
“Thank you, Master.” Pettigrew extended the bleeding stump, but Voldemort laughed at him.
“The other arm, Wormtail.” The rat looked like he wanted to say something but refrained and just raised his unharmed arm towards his master. Voldemort forced the sleeve of the traitor’s robes up past his elbow, and Nathan saw something upon the skin there, something like a vivid red tattoo, the dark mark.
He pressed his long white forefinger to the brand on Wormtail’s arm, it turned jet black.
With 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?”
Nathan never understood why people would want to follow a man that treated them so horribly. Is their need to be cruel so great that they accept someone like Voldemort as their Master just to be able to hurt others. Or is it perhaps an effect of the dark arts.
Voldemort began to pace up and down before Nathan and Wormtail, eyes sweeping the graveyard all the while. After a minute or so, he looked down at Nathan again, a cruel smile twisting his snakelike face.
“You stand, Nathan Potter, upon the remains of my late father,” he hissed softly. “A Muggle and a fool but even fools have their uses, do they not? I killed my father, and see how useful he has proved himself, in death.” He laughed cruelly and continued pacing.
“Listen to me, reliving family history,” he said quietly, “why, I am growing quite sentimental. But look, Nathan! 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. And one by one they moved forward. They looked a though they could hardly believe their eyes. Voldemort stood in silence, waiting for them. They started to kneel and kissing his robes, before backing away and standing up in a circle.
Voldemort started talking about their loyalty. Nathan could barely think straight, his leg was in agony, and he kept passing out from the pain. He vaguely recognized some screaming; Voldemort was probably punishing his followers. He had to get out of here and get Dumbledore.
“Crucio,” Nathan heard and suddenly, he felt pain. 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. It only lasted a moment, but he was shaking uncontrollably, still bound to the stone. Voldemort had vanished the gag just to hear him scream.
“Nice to have back with us, Nathan Potter.” Voldemort said to him, with a malicious smile on his face.
“It’s sad that people actually think that you defeated me somehow. They called you, my downfall. What happened that night almost fourteen years ago, is not known to even me. But what I do know that whatever was done was ancient magic, very ancient and very powerful and with my demise, my memories of that night are fragmented. Something that no child should be able to power. I’m even more surprised that I chose to cast the killing curse at you. Your sister was far more impressive and held far more potential. Perhaps, I chose to dispose of the waste first and it backfired somehow.”
Nathan could not believe what he was hearing.
“I would have chosen her for my rebirth, had I not wanted to make a statement. You will not leave this place alive, Nathan Potter. And the world will know that what happened that night was a fluke. I fell for a trap, I know not who would be able to create something so elaborate but even then, I am alive, survived death itself and there is nothing that can stop me.”
Nathan screamed at him, “Dumbledore will stop you…”
Voldemort just silenced him with a wave of his wand. The shiver ran once more around the circle of listening Death Eaters. Voldemort let the silence spiral horribly before continuing.
“It truly is a shame about your sister, Nathan. She had a lot of potential, to be able to hold on against Dumbledore being only fourteen years old. Had she survived the encounter, I would have extended her an offer to join our ranks.”
Nathan was gaping at his enemy. Jasmine was dead. Dumbledore killed her. How? The headmaster doesn’t kill. Why would they fight in the task?
Voldemort laughed cruelly at the expression on his face, “You don’t know, do you? Your precious leader of light attacked your twin with the intention of killing her. He hunted her down to kill her because he wanted an artifact. She fought valiantly; I would admit that she even reminded me of a younger me. What a shame, such potential being stifled so early. What cunning, she displayed. To trick the manipulator himself into revealing his deeds and his plans to the world. She has just benefited us so much without even meaning to. With Dumbledore hunted down like a common criminal, by the light and dark alike, we can easily take over Britain. That girl with just this simple act of revenge, handed us the key to conquer magical Britain.”
Dumbledore had done all this. He tricked him. He killed his sister, his twin. He would never make it up to her. He abandoned his other half and now she was gone. It doesn’t matter, he will probably join her soon in death.
“He even mentioned you, Potter. He was preparing you as a martyr. He wanted to use your death to unite the magical community under his reign. He raised you like a pig to slaughter. You will die knowing that you lived a meaningless life that was always going to end in an early death thanks to the machinations of your mentor. But I will not kill you, yet. I wish to break you first, you’re so close Potter. We only need to wait for him to arrive.”
“Who?” Nathan asked.
“My most faithful servant, and who has already reentered my service, at Hogwarts. He entered your name in the goblet of fire, he made sure that you win, for this moment. He will arrive soon, and he will have someone with him. Someone dear to you, your sister Rose.”
Nathan thrashed at his bindings, “you will not touch a hair on her shoulder.” He shouted at the dark lord.
“Crucio!” He felt the torture curse, once again and screamed in pain.
“To think I believed such a silly prophecy. As high as your potential could be, you are hardly my equal.”
“Prophecy?” Nathan gasped out.
“You don’t know, do you? You truly do not know why I attacked you, all these years ago. I have hated you for so long, Nathan Potter but now I cannot but pity you. But if you want to save your sister, you only have to defeat me. I will allow you to fight, prove to everyone that you’re stronger than me, boy.”
The Death Eaters stood watching.
“Now, untie him Wormtail and give him back his wand.”
