Adventures of Harriet Potter

Flesh, Blood and Bone

Harriet felt her feet slam into the ground; het injured leg gave way, and she fell forward; her hand let go of the Triwizard Cup at last. She raised her head. "Where are we?' she said. Cedric shook his head. He got up, pulled Harriet to her 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. Harriet 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 Harriet. "Did anyone tell you the Cup was a Portkey?" he asked. "Nope," said Harriet. She was looking around the graveyard. It was completely silent and slightly eerie. "Is this supposed to be part of the task?" she asked. "I dunno," said Cedric. He sounded slightly nervous. "Wands out, d'you reckon?"
"Yeah," said Harriet, glad that Cedric had made the suggestion rather than her. They pulled out their wands. Harriet kept looking around her. She had, yet again, the strange feeling that they were being watched. "Someone's coming," she said suddenly. Squinting tensely through the darkness, they watched the figure drawing nearer, walking steadily toward them between the graves. Harriet couldn't make out a face, but from the way it was walking and holding its arms, she 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 — Harriet saw that the thing in the person's arms looked like a baby . . . or was it merely a bundle of robes?
Harriet lowered her 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, Harriet and Cedric and the short figure simply looked at one another. And then, without warning, Harriet's scar exploded with pain. It was agony such as she had never felt in all her life; her wand almost slipped from her fingers as she put her hands over her face; her knees buckled; she was on the ground and she could see nothing at all; her head was about to split open.
From far away, above his head, he heard a high, cold voice say, "*Kill the spare.*" Harriet realized she had just seconds to act, fighting the pain in her head and aiming her wand at Cedric she muttered "Nebulus. Petrificus Totalus." Just before there was a swishing noise and a second voice, which screeched the words to the night: "Avada Kedavra!" Thick fog momentarily obscuring the area before the second spell left her wand. A blast of green light blazed through Harriet's eyelids, and she heard something heavy fall to the ground beside her; the pain in her scar reached such a pitch that she retched, and then it diminished; terrified of what she was likely about to see, she opened her stinging eyes.
Cedric was lying board-straight on the ground beside her. He appeared to be dead. Her quick thinking had worked.
For a second that contained an eternity, Harriet stared into Cedric's face, at his open gray eyes, full of fear and worry, as if trying to fight through her spell to help her. As if he felt it was his duty, as the adult wizard of their group, to fight the people who tried to kill him. And then, before Harriet's mind had accepted what she was seeing, before she could feel anything but numb disbelief at how good her quick thinking had worked, she felt herself being pulled to her feet. The short man in the cloak had put down his bundle, lit his wand, and was dragging Harriet toward the marble headstone. Harriet saw the name upon it flickering in the wandlight before she was forced around and slammed against it.

                                                           TOM RIDDLE

The cloaked man was now conjuring tight cords around Harriet, tying her from neck to ankles to the headstone. Harriet could hear shallow, fast breathing from the depths of the hood; she struggled, and the man hit her — hit her with a hand that had a finger missing. And Harriet realized who was under the hood. It was Wormtail. "You!" she 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, fumbling over the knots. Once sure that Harriet was bound so tightly to the headstone that she couldn't move an inch, Wormtail drew a length of some black material from the inside of his cloak and stuffed it roughly into Harriet's mouth; then, without a word, he turned from Harriet and hurried away. Harriet couldn't make a sound, nor could she see where Wormtail had gone; she couldn't turn her head to see beyond the headstone; she could see only what was right in front of her.
Cedric's spell bound body was lying some twenty feet away. Some way beyond him, glinting in the starlight, lay the Triwizard Cup. Harriet's wand was on the ground at Cedric's feet where she dropped it after being grabbed. The bundle of robes that Harriet had thought was a baby was close by, at the foot of the grave. It seemed to be stirring fretfully. Harriet watched it, and her scar seared with pain again . . . and she suddenly knew that she didn't want to see what was in those robes . . . she didn't want that bundle opened. . . .
She could hear noises at her feet. She looked down and saw a gigantic snake slithering through the grass, circling the headstone where she was tied. It's voice spewing apologies to her for having to obey one as evil as Voldemort. 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 Harriet's range of vision, and Harriet saw him pushing a stone cauldron to the foot of the grave. It was full of what seemed to be water — Harriet could hear it slopping around — and it was larger than any cauldron Harriet 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 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 Harriet heard the high, cold voice again.
"Hurry!" said the all too familiar voice. The whole surface of the water was alight with sparks now. It might have been encrusted with diamonds. "It is ready, Master." said Wormtail. "Now . . ." said the cold voice. Wormtail pulled open the robes on the ground, revealing what was inside them, and Harriet let out a yell that was strangled in the wad of material blocking her 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 Harriet 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 Harriet 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, Harriet 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; Harriet heard its frail body hit the bottom with a soft thud.
Let it drown, Harriet thought, her 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 will renew your son!" The surface of the grave at Harriet's feet cracked. Horrified, Harriet 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. Harriet realized what Wormtail was about to do a second before it happened — she closed her eyes as tightly as she could, but she could not block the scream that pierced the night, that went through Harriet as though she had been stabbed with the dagger too. She heard something fall to the ground, heard Wormtail's anguished panting, then a sickening splash, as something was dropped into the cauldron. Harriet couldn't stand to look . . . but the potion had turned a burning red; the light of it shone through Harriet's closed eyelids. . . . Wormtail was gasping and moaning with agony. Not until Harriet felt Wormtail's anguished breath on her face did she realize that Wormtail was right in front of her. "B-blood of the enemy . . . forcibly taken . . . you will . . . resurrect your foe." Harriet could do nothing to prevent it, she was tied too tightly. . . . Squinting down, struggling hopelessly at the ropes binding her, she saw the shining silver dagger shaking in Wormtail's remaining hand. She felt its point penetrate the crook of her right arm and blood seeping down the sleeve of her torn robes. Wormtail, still panting with pain, fumbled in his pocket for a glass vial and held it to Harriet's cut, so that a dribble of blood fell into it.
He staggered back to the cauldron with Harriet's 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, Harriet 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 Harriet, so that she couldn't see Wormtail or Cedric or anything but vapor hanging in the air. . . . It's gone wrong, she thought . . . it's drowned . . . please . . . please let it be dead. . . . But then, through the mist in front of her, she 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 Harriet . . . and Harriet stared back into the face that had haunted her nightmares for three years. Whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat as a snake's with slits for nostrils . . . Lord Voldemort had risen again.