Stay - Mattheo Riddle

Family of The Dark Lord

"But I can never forgive you," she finally spat, shaking her head with teary eyes, "and I'll kill you for everything you've done. Everything you've taken from me. You took everything from me. And when I kill you, I will feel nothing... because you are not Tom Riddle."

Voldemort's heart pounded heavy in his chest. The last few remnants of whatever had remained of Tom Riddle slowly fading away. He looked away from Kirra and began examining his own body. His hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, 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 Wormtail, who lay twitching and bleeding on the ground, nor of the great snake, which had slithered back into sight and was circling Kirra and Harry again, hissing. 

Voldemort 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, and pointed it at Wormtail, who was lifted off the ground and thrown against the headstone where Kirra and Harry were tied; he fell to the foot of it and lay there, crumpled up and crying.

Peter looked up at her, almost pleading her to help him... to help him like she had always done in school. Her face crumpled as she looked down at him, "you deserve this. You deserve everything that is coming for you Peter," she choked out, her bottom lip trembling as she looked at him. 

Voldemort turned his scarlet eyes upon Harry and Kirra, laughing a high, cold, mirthless laugh.

Wormtail'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 Voldemort lazily.

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

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

"Master, please . . . please . . ."

Voldemort bent down and pulled out Wormtail's left arm; he forced the sleeve of Wormtail's robes up past his elbow, and Kirra saw something upon the skin there, instantly recognising it.  It was a vivid red tattoo — a skull with a snake protruding from its mouth — the same image that had appeared in the sky at the Quidditch World Cup... the same tattoo that Regulus, Barty and Evan each had: the Dark Mark. Voldemort examined it carefully, ignoring Wormtail'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 brand on Wormtail's arm.

The scars on Kirra and Harry's foreheads seared with a sharp pain again, and Wormtail let out a fresh howl; Voldemort removed his fingers from Wormtail's mark, and Kirra saw that it had turned jet black.

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?"

He began to pace up and down before Kirra, Harry and Wormtail, eyes sweeping the graveyard all the while. After a minute or so, he looked down at Kirra and Harry again, a cruel smile twisting his snakelike face.

"Wormtail, cover the foolish girls mouth again," Voldemort snapped. Wormtail walked up to her and struggled to put it back on as she thrashed her head around, growling profanities at the boy.