CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
FLESH, BLOOD, AND
BONE
Harry felt his feet slam into the ground; his injured leg gave
way, and he fell forward; his hand let go of the Triwizard Cup at last. He
raised his head.
“Where are we?” he said.
Cedric shook his head. He got
up, pulled Harry to his 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 looked down at the Triwizard Cup and then up at
Harry.
“Did anyone tell you the cup was a Portkey?” he asked.
“Nope,” said
Harry. He was looking around the graveyard. It was completely silent and
slightly eerie. “Is this supposed to be part of the task?”
“I dunno,” said
Cedric. He sounded slightly nervous. “Wands out, d'you reckon?”
“Yeah,” said
Harry, glad that Cedric had made the suggestion rather than him.
They pulled
out their wands. Harry kept looking around him. He had, yet again, the strange
feeling that they were being watched.
“Someone's coming,” he said
suddenly.
Squinting tensely through the darkness, they watched the figure
drawing nearer, walking steadily toward them between the graves. Harry couldn't
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. And—several paces
nearer, the gap between them closing all the time—Harry saw that the thing in
the persons arms looked like a baby ...or was it merely a bundle of
robes?
Harry lowered his wand slightly and glanced sideways at Cedric. Cedric
shot him a quizzical look. They both turned back to watch the approaching
figure.
It stopped beside a towering marble headstone, only six feet from
them. For a second. Harry and Cedric and the short figure simply looked at one
another.
And then, without warning, Harry's scar exploded with pain. It was
agony such as he had never felt in all his life; his wand slipped from his
fingers as he put his hands over his face; his knees buckled; he was on the
ground and he could see nothing at all; his head was about to split
open.
From far away, above his head, he heard a high, cold voice say, “Kill
the spare.”
A swishing noise and a second voice, which screeched the words to
the night: “Avada Kedavra!”
A blast of green light blazed through Harry's
eyelids, and he heard something heavy fall to the ground beside him; the pain in
his scar reached such a pitch that he retched, and then it diminished; terrified
of what he was about to see, he opened his stinging eyes.
Cedric was lying
spread-eagled on the ground beside him. He was dead.
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 looked slightly surprised. And then, before Harry's mind had
accepted what he was seeing, 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. Harry saw the name upon it flickering in the wandlight before he was
forced around and slammed against it.
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. And Harry realized who was under the
hood. It was Wormtail.
“You!” he gasped.
But 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 couldn't move an inch,
Wormtail drew a length of some black material from the inside of his cloak and
stuffed it roughly into Harry's mouth; then, without a word, he turned from
Harry and hurried away. Harry couldn't make a sound, nor could he see where
Wormtail had gone; he couldn't 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 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. 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
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—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
names 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 Wormtail tending the fire. The movements
beneath the robes became more agitated. And Harry heard the high, cold voice
again.
“Hurry!”
The whole surface of the water was alight with sparks now.
It might have been encrusted with diamonds.
“It is ready. Master.”
“Now
...” said the cold voice.
Wormtail pulled open the robes on the ground,
revealing what was inside them, and Harry let out a yell that was strangled in
the wad of material blocking his mouth.
It was as though Wormtail had flipped
over a stone and revealed something ugly, slimy, and blind—but worse, a hundred
times worse. The thing Wormtail 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.
The thing seemed almost helpless; it
raised its thin arms, put them around Wormtail's neck, and Wormtail lifted it.
As he did so, his hood fell back, and Harry saw the look of revulsion on
Wormtail'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. And then Wormtail 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.
Let it
drown, Harry thought, his scar burning almost past endurance, please... let it
drown...
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 wil lrenew 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.
And now 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. “
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 with the dagger too. He heard something fall to the
ground, heard Wormtail's anguished panting, then a sickening splash, as
something was dropped into the cauldron. Harry couldn't stand to look... but the
potion had turned a burning red; the light of it shone through Harry's 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.
“B-blood of the enemy... forcibly taken... you will...
resurrect your foe.”
Harry could do nothing to prevent it, he was tied too
tightly... 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 and 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.
He staggered back to the cauldron with Harrys 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 were
extinguished. A surge of white steam billowed thickly from the cauldron instead,
obliterating everything in front of Harry, so that he couldn't 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...
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
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 had
haunted his nightmares for three years. Whiter than a skull, with wide, livid
scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat as a snakes with slits for
nostrils...
Lord Voldemort had risen again.
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