LITTLE MISS MUDBLOOD – ACT 2 : SCENE 1 : CHAPTER 80
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Voldemort looked away from the two training champions 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.
Ignoring Pettigrew, who lay twitching and bleeding on the ground, and the great snake, which had slithered back into sight and was circling harry and Y/N again, hissing, Voldemort slipped on of his unnaturally lanky 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 Pettigrew, who was lifted off the ground and thrown against the headstone where Y/N and Harry were tied; he fell to the foot of it and lay there, crumpled up and crying.
Y/N thought he deserved it.
Voldemort turned his scarlet eyes upon her and Harry, laughing a high, cold, mirthless laugh. Y/N's previously hot blood turned cold and a shiver longed to pass through her, but it was like something had stopped her from making even the slightest of moves. She could only move her eyes, which flicked up to the clouded sky before sinking back to Voldemort, and then to Pettigrew.
His 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 Pettigrew's left arm; he forced the sleeve of his robes up past his elbow, and Y/N 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 Pettigrew'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 Pettigrew's arm.
The veins in Y/N's body erupted with heat again, and Pettigrew let out a fresh howl; Voldemort removed his fingers from Pettigrew's mark, and Y/N 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 Y/N, Harry and Pettigrew, eyes sweeping the graveyard all the while. After a minute or so, he looked down at Y/N and Harry again, a cruel smile twisting his snakelike face.
"You stand, Harry Potter, upon the remains of my late father," he hissed softly. "A Muggle and a fool . . . very like your dear mother. But they both had their uses, did they not? Your mother died to defend you as a child . . . and I killed my father, and see how useful he has proved himself, in death. . . .
"And you, Y/N Grace, you stand upon the remains of the man my sorry excuse of a mother bewitched to love," Voldemort continued, his tone becoming harsher as he paced. "If only your filthy Corvinus Gaunt I had the same views as his wife. Maybe then I wouldn't have to avenge myself and become who I am today — Maybe we would've been friends, dear Y/N."
What was this, his villain monologue?
"You see that house upon the hillside, Potter . . . cousin? My father lived there. My mother, a witch who lived here in this village, fell in love with him. But he abandoned her when she told him what she was. . . . He didn't like magic, my father . . .
"He left her and returned to his Muggle parents before I was even born, Potter . . . cousin, and she died giving birth to me, leaving me to be raised in a Muggle orphanage . . . but I vowed to find him . . . I revenged myself upon him, that fool who gave me his name . . . Tom Riddle. . . ."
By that logic, Y/N should kill Voldemort because she didn't even get to know her real parents before he — his followers — killed them. But she chose not to interrupt, in fear of something happening to her — or Harry.
"Listen to me, reliving family history . . ." he said quietly, "why, I am growing quite sentimental. . . . But look, Harry — my cousin! My true family returns. . . ."
The air was suddenly full of swishing cloaks. Between graves, behind the yew tree, in every shadowy space, wizards were Apparating. All of them were hooded and masked. And one by one they moved forward . . . slowly, cautiously, as though they could hardly believe their eyes. Voldemort stood in silence, waiting for them to kiss his arse. Then one of the Death Eaters fell to his knees, crawled toward Voldemort, and instead of kissing his bum, he kissed the hem of his black robes.
"Master . . . Master . . ." he murmured.
Y/N's face pulled into a scrunch of disgust as the Death Eaters behind him did the same. Didn't they know she was the more — er — powerful heir? She had the world at her fingertips for heaven's sake! She thought Voldemort was a low-life arsehole who had nothing better to do than fight children.
Voldemort looked around at the hooded faces, and thought there was no wind, a rustling seemed to run around the circle, as though it had shivered.
"Welcome, Death Eaters," he said quietly. "Thirteen years . . . thirteen years since we last met. Yet you answer my call as though it were yesterday. . . . We are still united under the Dark Mark, them! Or are we?"
Ooooh, plot twists! Could he get a move on? Y/N honestly had better places to be. Okay, so she was in a life or death situation — so what! She'd been there before, done that already.
Voldemort put back his terrible face and sniffed, his slit-like nostrils widening.
"I smell guilt," he said. "There is a stench of guilt upon the air."
There is a stench of idiocy in the air — and it was coming from him.
Maybe Y/N was being too arrogant. He was, after all, the fearful Voldemort. But, in all honesty, she didn't think of him like that — after much reading of her family history, and examining old articles of him, she saw him more as Tom Riddle than Voldemort, and thought he was more of an annoying cousin than a powerful wizard. Technically, she was more powerful than him — and richer. Also that she was Merlin's heir too . . . probably Salazar's favorite descendant, wherever he was. She wasn't experienced enough to, you know, kill him, but in comparison, she was much smarter than he was.
A second shiver ran around the circle, as though each member of it longed, but did not dare, to step back from him.
"I see you all, whole and healthy, with your powers intact — such prompt appearances! — and I ask myself . . . why did this band of wizards never come to the aid of their master, to whom they swore eternal loyalty?"
No one spoke. No one moved except Pettigrew, who was upon the ground, still sobbing over his bleeding arm.
Oh, get a grip.
"And I answer myself," whispered Voldemort, "they must have believed me broken, they thought I was gone. They slipped back among my enemies, and they pleaded innocence, and ignorance, and bewitchment. . . ."
Monologue.
Monologue.
Monologue.
"Master!" one finally screeched after a long speech, "Master, forgive me! Forgive us all!"
Voldemort began to laugh. He raised his wand.
"Crucio!"
Yikes.
"Get up, Avery," said Voldemort softly to the writhing figure on the ground. "Stand up. You ask for forgiveness? I do not forget. Thirteen long years . . . I want thirteen years' repayment before I forgive you. Wormtail here has paid some of his debt already, have you not, Wormtail?"
He looked down at Pettigrew, who continued to sob, as Y/N thought that she wanted to go to sleep.
"You return to me, not out of loyalty, but out of fear of your old friends. You deserve this pain, Wormtail. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes, Master," cried Pettigrew, "please, Master . . . please . . ."
Uh . . .
"Yet you helped me return to my body," said Voldemort coolly, watching Pettigrew sob on the ground. "Worthless and traitorous as you are, you helped me . . . and Lord Voldemort rewards his helpers. . . ."
Voldemort raised his wand again and whirled it through the air. A streak of what looked like molten silver hung shining in the wand's wake. Momentarily shapeless, it writhed and then formed itself into a gleaming replica of a human hand, bright as moonlight, which soared downward and fixed itself upon Pettigrew's bleeding wrist.
His sobbing stopped abruptly. His breathing harsh and ragged, he raised his head and stared in disbelief at the silver hand, now attached seamlessly to his arm, as though he were wearing a dazzling glove. He flexed the shining fingers, then, trembling, picked up a small twig on the ground and crushed it into powder.
Wouldn't that be useful for Potions.
"My Lord," he whispered. "Master . . . it is beautiful . . . thank you . . . thank you. . . ."
He scrambled forward on his knees and kissed the hem of Voldemort's robes.
"May your loyalty never waver again, Wormtail," said Voldemort.
"No, my Lord . . . never, my Lord . . ."
Pettigrew stood up and took his place in the circle, staring at his powerful new hand, his face still shining with tears. Voldemort now approached the man on Pettigrew's right.
"Lucius, my slippery friend," he whispered, halting before him. Y/N froze. "I am told that you have not renounced the old ways, though to the world you present a respectable face. You are still ready to take the lead in a spot of Muggle-torture, I believe? Yet you never tried to find me, Lucius. . . Your exploits at the Quidditch World Cup were fun, I daresay . . . but might not your energies have been better directed toward finding and aiding your master?"
"My Lord, I was constantly on the alert," came Lucius Malfoy's voice swiftly from beneath the hood. "Had there been any sign from you, any whisper of your whereabouts, I would have been at your side immediately, nothing could have prevented me —"
"And yet you ran from my Mark, when a faithful Death Eater sent it into the sky last summer?" said Voldemort lazily, and Mr. Malfoy stopped talking abruptly. "Yes, I know all about that, Lucius. . . . You have disappointed me. . . . I expect more faithful service in the future."
Voldemort continued down the circle of Death Eaters, stating which ones were loyal, which ones should've been there, and which ones had to do better. And to Y/N's surprise, Theodore's father was there, standing next to Goyle's father. She knew a lot of Slytherin families followed Voldemort, but the Nott's too? She didn't blame them — never, how could she? — but it was surprising.
And then Voldemort explained what happened the Halloween night of his downfall, and the thirteen years in between. He explained how Pettigrew helped bring him back to power, how he killed innocent Bertha Jorkins, how he found the dark magic to regain his former body. He told them how he needed his father's bones . . . flesh of the servant . . . blood of a foe . . . and the DNA of the kin . . .
And then, before any of them could react, Voldemort raised his wand to Harry, enchanting:
"Crucio!"
Y/N's heart dropped as Harry writhed next to her, desperately trying to cry out but holding it back. His eyes rolled back to his head and sweat dribbled down his forehead — and then he fell limp in the ropes that bound them to the headstone of Voldemort's father. The night rang with the Death Eater's laughter.
"You see, I think, how foolish it was to suppose that this boy could ever have been stronger than me, or this girl ever more powerful," said Voldemort coldly. "But I want there to be no mistake in anybody's mind. Harry Potter escaped me by a lucky chance. And I am now going to prove my power by killing him, here and now, the boy first, in front of you all, when there is no Dumbledore to help him, and no mother to die for him. I will give him his chance. He will be allowed to fight, and you will be left in no doubt which of us is the stronger. Just a little longer, Nagini," he whispered, and the snake glided away through the grass to where the Death Eaters stood watching. "And then after I kill Harry Potter, I'll keep Y/N Grace as my servant, so that everyone knows who is the more powerful heir of the great Salazar Slytherin."
"Now untie him, Wormtail, and give him back his wand."