THE gift From Death Year 4

Chapter 46: Fourth year Part 31

19, August, 1998. 10.30am...

"Where you left off." Harry sighed, "I'll be fine now it's just... You know... Cedric..."

"Harry you dont have to explain." Sirius smiled weakly, he was very pale, "That would terrify anyone."

Harry smiled weakly back.

Voldemort looked away from Harry 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 cats, 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 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 Harry was tied; he fell to the foot of it and lay there, crumpled up and crying. Voldemort turned his scarlet eyes upon Harry, 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 Harry saw something upon the skin there, something like a vivid red tattoo - a skull with a snake protruding from its mouth - the image that had appeared in the sky at the Quidditch World Cup: 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.

"And now Death Eater's are going to come." Regulus groaned, he was rubbing his left arm where his own Mark was, "That's how he summoned his followers."

"By a very painful burning." Snape scowled from his portrait. "That was one of the worst ones." he winced.

"Or it seemed worse because you hadn't felt it for a while." Draco pointed out, "I got that last year, he didn't bother trying to summon me through the school year but at the Final Battle he summoned everyone of his Marked followers."

"It was worse that time because I ignored it." Snape told him, "The longer it was ignored the hotter it would burn."

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