LITTLE MISS MUDBLOOD – ACT 2 : SCENE 1 : CHAPTER 79
⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆
The next ten or so minutes were relatively quiet for Y/N as she navigated her way through the maze, taking as many paths leading northwest as she could. She figured she was far ahead of the other champions, because she hadn't heard a whisper of life since her escape from the angry hippogriff, which unnerved her greatly. Wasn't she supposed to be struggling by now?
But then, as she turned the corner, a high-pitched, twittering song scratched her ears. Throwing her hands to her ears, Y/N dropped to the ground, feeling a looming sense of madness overcoming her, driving her down a path of hysteria as she listened. Looking up, the blurred outline of what she recognized to be a fwooper flapped overhead, its lime green face glaring down at her.
How was she supposed to fight against something like that?
Sucking in a breath, Y/N kept her hands over her ears as she let out her highest, blood-curdling scream. She wouldn't be surprised if the people all the way from the Quidditch Pitch could hear, but she didn't care as she continued to let out her breath, overriding the fwooper's song in her ears and pulling her back to the path of stability. The fwooper in return raised its voice but, running out of air, Y/N stood and pointed her wand at it, taking a breath to shout,
"Silencio!"
At once, all sound stopped, and a hair-raising chill swept over Y/N as dead silence cut the air. The fwooper, now realizing it no longer could sing, glared at Y/N once more before shooting into the hedges, disappearing.
Y/N stumbled about to the end of the path, a loud ringing taking over her ears and stinging her brain. Her throat burned. Turning the corner, the ringing became more and more prominent and, fearing the fwooper had reached its goal to drive her to insanity, Y/N dropped to the ground and clutched her head tightly.
"Get up. Get up, now. Get to the cup. Come back to me."
Draco's voice shattered the ringing in Y/N's ear, and even as his voice faded away, it never returned. Looking up to the sky, his constellation twinkled down at her, and a strong sense of calm washed over her. What was that? How could he talk to her through the maze?
Stumbling hastily about, boredom overcame Y/N as half an hour passed with no more obstacles in her path, which made her period of tranquility very short-lived. Why had she only encountered two things? It was too good to be true. And how could she be bored in a situation like this?
And then — and then she saw the cup, a few meters away from her. Surely it wasn't that easy . . . was it? It couldn't be —
But, ignoring the looming feeling of dread, Y/N found herself reaching out for the base of the cup, only realizing that Harry and Cedric had also grabbed the cup once her feet had left the ground. She, however, could not unclench the hand holding the Triwizard Cup; it was pulling her onward in a howl of wind and swirling color, Harry and Cedric at her sides.
Y/N felt her feet slam into the ground; the sudden weight forced her legs to give way, and she fell on her knees; her hand let go of the Triwizard Cup at last. She raised her head.
"Where are we?" she said, attempting to focus her dizzying eyes on Harry and Cedric.
Cedric shook his head. He got up, pulled Harry and Y/N to their feet, and they looked around.
They had left the Hogwarts grounds completely; they had obviously traveled miles — perhaps hundreds of miles — for even the familiar 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. Y/N could barely make out the outline of a fine old house on the hillside.
Cedric looked down at the Triwizard Cup and then up at Harry and Y/N.
"Did anyone tell you the cup was a Portkey?" he asked.
"Nope," said Harry, while Y/N shook her head. She was looking around the graveyard. It was completely silent and heavily eerie, and a lurking feeling loomed over her. They weren't supposed to be there. "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, and he briefly checked on Y/N before they both pulled out their wands, holding them out defensively before them.
Y/N swallowed a burning that had found her throat, her face losing blood quickly as a sick feeling took over. She had the strange feeling that they were being watched and looked up — the sky was so cloudy, however, that no stars could be found. She felt a tide of uneasiness wash over her greatly.
"Someone's coming," Harry said suddenly.
Y/N squinted tensely through the darkness, watching a figure draw nearer as it walked steadily toward them between the graves. She 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 — Y/N saw that the thing in the person's arm looked like a baby . . . or was it merely a bundle of robes?
Harry glanced at Y/N, who shot him a quizzical look. Cedric was staring suspiciously at the figure. For a second, the three students and the short man simply looked at one another.
And then, without warning, Y/N's blood curdled burningly and painfully. It was extraordinarily worse than at the Quidditch World Cup, and a steady, fast-paced stream of hot tears raced down her cheeks as she collapsed to the ground, Harry doing the same as her. Y/N couldn't see anything at all and shut her eyes tight, clutching herself as the pain worsened.
From far away, above her head, she 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 Y/N's eyelids, and she heard something heavy fall to the ground beside her; the agony racing through her veins reached such a pitch that she gagged, but nothing came out. For a brief period it diminished, and, terrified of what she was about to see, she opened her heavy eyes.
Cedric was laying spread-eagled on the ground beside her. He was dead.
For a second that contained an eternity, Y/N stared into Cedric's face, at his open grey eyes, blank and expressionless as the windows of a deserted house, at his half-open mouth, which looked slightly surprised. And then, before Y/N's mind had accepted what she was seeing, before she could feel anything but numb disbelief, 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 Harry and Y/N toward the marble headstone. Y/N saw the name upon it flickering in the wandlight before she was forced around and slammed against it, next to Harry.
TOM RIDDLE
The cloaked man was now conjuring tight cords around Harry and Y/N, tying them from neck to ankles to the headstone. Y/N could hear shallow, feast breathing from the depths of the hood; she struggled, and the man hit her — hit her hard with a hand that had a finger missing. He did the same for Harry, who gasped.
"You!" he exclaimed.
But the man, 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 Harry and Y/N were bound so tightly to the headstone that they couldn't move an inch, the man drew two lengths of some black material from the inside of his cloak and stuffed it roughly into each of their mouths; them without a word, he turned from them and hurried away. Y/N 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 body was lying some twenty feet away. Some way beyond him, glinting in the dull moonlight, lay the Triwizard Cup. Y/N's wand was on the ground at Cedric's arm. The bundle of robes that seemed like a baby was close by, at the foot of the grave. It seemed to be stirring fretfully. Y/N watched it, and her blood boiled unhappily once more . . . 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. Glancing towards Harry briefly, she looked down and saw a gigantic snake slithering through the grass, circling the headstone where they were tied. The man'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 Y/N's range of vision, and Y/N saw him pushing a stone cauldron to the front of the grave. It was full of what looked like water — Y/N could hear it slopping around — and it was larger than any cauldron Y/N 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 the short man 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 the man tending the fire and a thick scent agitated Y/N's senses to the point of dizziness. The movements beneath the robes became more agitated. And, blinded, she 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.
The man pulled open the robes on the ground, revealing what was inside them, and Y/N let out a yell that was strangled in the wad of material blocking her mouth.
It was as though the man had flipped over a stone and revealed something ugly, slimy, and blind — but worse, a hundred times worse. The thing the man had been carrying had the shape of a crouched human child, except that Y/N 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 the man's neck, and he lifted it. As he did so, his hood fell back, and Y/N gasped as she saw Peter Pettigrew standing before her and Harry, a look of revulsion on his weak, pale face in the firelight as he carried the creature to the rim of the cauldron. How could it have taken her that long to recognize him? His only defining feature was his missing finger, which he had slapped her with not that long ago!
For one moment, Y/N saw the evil, flat face illuminated in the sparks dancing on the surface of the potion. And then Pettigrew lowered the creature into the cauldron; there was a hiss, and it vanished below the surface; Y/N heard its frail body hit the bottom with a soft thud.
A rather rude sense of wanting it to drown overtook Y/N. What could she say? It was the reason she was in pain right now, her blood boiling even worse with each passing moment. Then it hit her — Cedric was dead, and it was because of the thing.
Pettigrew 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 Y/N and Harry's feet cracked. Horrified, they watched as a fine trickle of dust rose into the air at Pettigrew'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.
Y/N thrashed on the grave as a wave of severe pain crashed over her. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and she longed to cry out, but the bundle of fabric in her mouth muffled her voice, making it useless to voice her pain.
And now Pettigrew 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.
Y/N realized what Pettigrew 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 had pierced the night, that went through Y/N 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. Y/N couldn't stand to look . . . but the potion had turned a burning red; the light of it shone through her closed eyelids. . . .
Pettigrew was gasping and groaning with agony. Not until Y/N felt his horrifying warmth did she peek open her eyes to find him standing directly in front of Harry, his remaining hand shaking uncontrollably.
"B-blood of the enemy . . . forcibly taken . . . you will . . . resurrect your foe."
Y/N looked away as Pettigrew dug the silver dagger into Harry's arm, resisting letting out the bubbling that had formed in her through. She swallowed it down clenching her teeth through the fabric tightly.
"DNA of the kin . . . related by Salazar the Great . . . you will reinstate your rival."
Y/N shrunk backwards as Pettigrew approached, and shut her eyes tightly as he reached out. She felt a small lock of her hair being pulled from her face. With a snip of the dagger, only half remained, and Y/N felt lucky that he hadn't taken anything else.
Opening her eyes, Y/N watched as he staggered back to the cauldron with her hair. He dropped it inside, along with a vial of Harry's blood. The liquid within turned, instantly, a blinding white. Pettigrew, 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 blinding bright that it turned all else to velvety blackness. Nothing happened, and Y/N had the small hope that it had drowned within and Pettigrew had cut off his hand for nothing.
But 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 and Y/N, so that they couldn't see Pettigrew or Cedric or anything but vapor hanging in the air. . . .
The feeling of pins and needles jabbed through Y/N's thigh and she threw her head back, whimpering through the fabric as the pain throughout her body intensified. She wiggled and moved around in the robes, but Harry nudging her in the side alerted her, and she looked forward to see, 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 Pettigrew, sobbing and groaning, 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 Y/N . . . and Y/N stared back into the face that had terrorized her for the past year, the face of her cousin. 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.