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BELLA WOULD BET that the hospital wing had never gotten more action than it did in the days following the end of the Triwizard Tournament. The beds were filled with herself, Harry, and the other three champions recovering from their various injuries, so the visitors they had were quite the mixed, eclectic group, but chaotic nonetheless.
She wasn't really in the mood to speak to her friends when they visited. She felt bad about it, because they were all sick with worry and angry at her for being so stupid and not telling them where she was going but mostly just relieved and guilty that they hadn't known she didn't have Spattergroit, and she knew she should be happy to see them after so long of having her only companion be Mad-Eye Moody, but talking about trivial things with teenagers didn't seem important in the wake of all that had happened. Hearing Crouch Junior's tale of his year, followed by Harry's own recount of what happened in the graveyard, right after being released from her prison in the chest... it was enough to make her rethink the importance of some things.
Voldemort was back. Undoubtedly. He had used some sort of ritual with blood magic, Harry's blood, and been carted all over the place by Wormtail, stupid Wormtail who managed to escape them the previous summer and decided he should go find Voldemort and treat him like his own pampered infant. It was so mad she could hardly believe it was real.
And, after he was revived, the first thing he did was summon his followers, because the narcissistic snake just had to know who would still be waiting for him after all this time. And then he killed somebody. He got his body back, and his ability to use magic, and he killed one of his followers, who should've been precious to him considering he didn't seem to have many loyal ones left.
Harry thought it had been somebody named Avery. He was the first to fall to his knees and beg for forgiveness, and Voldemort instead decided to cast the Cruciatus and Killing Curses in succession, to make an example out of him and show that cowardice nor false apologies would be considerable grounds for forgiveness. The sight of a body on the ground seemed to be enough to keep the other Death Eaters in line.
Voldemort, apparently, wasn't a fan of grovelling or arse-kissing. He preferred the much more respectable way of ruthlessly killing others to get to the top. Of course. Who wouldn't see that as the much more reasonable route?
Maybe Fudge had caught wind of this, and that was why he was so staunchly denying that his return was possible. Bella couldn't fathom any other reason for the Minister's stupidity – how was he going to explain away the death of Gaspar Avery, a known Death Eater, or the motive behind any of Crouch Junior's actions over the past year? She had never hated anybody so much as she hated Fudge when he was arguing with all of them in the Hospital Wing, not Pettigrew, not Crouch Junior, not even Voldemort himself, because the only thing worse than a bad guy was an arrogant, supposedly good guy with misguided beliefs and superiority complexes who couldn't tell the difference between truth and tabloids.
She had half a mind to believe he gave Crouch Junior the Dementor's Kiss on purpose, so he wouldn't have to worry about dispelling testimony that claimed Voldemort was back. He would rather sweep it under the rug, knock him off as another lunatic and move on, ignoring the past four years of hers and Harry's lives.
