Antheia's eyes adjusted to the darkness. Where was she?
Her last memory was rushing up to her dormitory before the third task started. Where she was now didn't look like Hogwarts. She couldn't hear the cheers of the students before the task had started. She was lying in a small dark area of dirt. It occurred to her that her head was ringing.
She got up and looked around. Nothing particularly stood out to her. There were a few headstones and she started to walk over to them when she heard a whirl behind her.
"Where are we?" a voice said. She turned around and saw: Harry? But why was Harry here, and, again, why was she? She narrowed her eyes and realized Cedric was also standing beside him, both of them clutching the gleaming Triwizard Cup. But if this was an obstacle in the Triwizard Tournament, why weren't Fleur and Krum there as well?
"Harry? Cedric?" said Antheia finally. She noticed her voice was quite hoarse and her throat ached when she spoke.
Harry whipped around, holding out his wand. "Antheia? Why are you here? Is this supposed to be part of the task?"
"I don't think so," said Antheia. "If so, why would I even be here? And where's Fleur and Krum? Is that the Triwizard Cup?"
"It's a long story," said Cedric. He sounded slightly nervous. "Wands out, d'you reckon?"
"Yeah," said Harry.
They pulled out their wands. Antheia grasped Harry's hand which, she noticed, was very cold. She had the strange feeling that they were being watched.
"This is not what I meant when I said 'to hell and back'," whispered Antheia to Harry. He held onto her hand even tighter.
"Someone's coming," Harry said suddenly.
Squinting tensely through the darkness, they watched the figure drawing nearer, walking steadily towards them between the graves. Antheia 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 they were, they were short, and wearing a hooded cloak pulled up over their head to obscure their face. And - several paces nearer, the space between them closing all the time - she saw that the thing in the person's arms looked like a baby ... or was it merely a bundle of robes?
Antheia, Harry, and Cedric all shot each other quizzical looks. They turned back to watch the approaching figure.
It stopped beside the towering marble headstone, only six feet from them. For a second, Harry, Cedric, Antheia, and the short figure simply looked at each other.
And then, without warning, Harry's scar exploded with pain. It was agony such as he had never felt in all his life; his wand slipped from his fingers as he put his hands over his face; his knees buckled; he was on the ground and he could see nothing at all, his head was about to split open.
Antheia stood in front of Harry in hopes of shielding him from whatever was approaching. From far away, 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 Antheia's eyelids, and he heard something heavy fall to the ground beside her. She looked to her side right away.
Cedric was lying spread-eagled on the ground beside them. He was dead.
For a second that contained an eternity, Antheia and Harry 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. Antheia simply couldn't believe it. The same Cedric she had seen glowing with excitement and slight worry a few hours earlier was now on the floor beside them, defeated and gone. Before her mind had accepted what she was seeing, before either her or Harry could feel anything but numb disbelief, they felt themselves being pulled to their feet.
The short man in the cloak had put down his bundle, lit his wand, and was dragging them towards the marble headstone. Antheia recognized it from minutes ago and read the name flickering in the wand-light before she was forced around and slammed against it.
TOM RIDDLE
The cloaked man was now conjuring tight cords around Harry and Antheia, tying them from neck to ankles to the headstone. Antheia could hear shallow, fast breathing from the depths of the hood; she kicked around, and the man hit her - hit her with a hand that had a finger missing. And Harry realised who was under the hood. It was Wormtail.
"You!" he gasped.
But Wormtail, 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 they were bound so tightly to the headstone that they couldn't move an inch, Wormtail drew a length of some black material from the inside of his cloak and stuffed it roughly into Harry's mouth, then Antheia's; then, without a word, he turned from them and hurried away. Antheia couldn't make a sound, nor could she see where Wormtail had gone. Neither of them could turn their heads to see beyond the headstone; they could see only what was right in front of them.
Cedric's body was lying some twenty feet away. Some way beyond him, glinting in the starlight, lay the Triwizard Cup. Their wands were on the ground at their feet. The bundle of robes that Antheia had thought was a baby was close by, at the foot of the grave. It seemed to be stirring fretfully. Harry watched it, and his scar seared with pain again ... and he suddenly knew that he didn't want to see what was in those robes ... he didn't want that bundle opened ...
Antheia could hear noises at her feet. She looked down and saw a gigantic snake slithering through the grass, circling the headstone where he was tied. Wormtail'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 Antheia's range of vision, and she saw him pushing a stone cauldron to the foot of the grave. It was full of what seemed to be water - Antheia could hear it slopping around - and it was larger than any cauldron they 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 Wormtail 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 also to send out fiery sparks, as though it was on fire. Steam was thickening, blurring the outline of Wormtail tending to the fire. The movements beneath the cloak became more agitated. And Antheia 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.
Wormtail pulled open the robes on the ground, revealing what was inside them, and Harry let out a yell that was strangled in the wand of material blocking his mouth.
It was as though Wormtail had flipped over a stone, and revealed something ugly, slimy, and blind - but worse, a hundred times worse. The thing Wormtail had been carrying had been the shape of a crouched human child, except that Antheia 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 was flat and snake-like, with gleaming red eyes.
The thing seemed almost helpless; it raised its thin arms, put them around Wormtail's neck, and Wormtail lifted it. As he did so, his hood fell back, and Antheia saw the look of revulsion on Wormtail's weak, pale face in the firelight as he carried the creature to the rim of the cauldron. For one moment, Antheia saw the evil, flat face illuminated in the sparks dancing on the surface of the potion. And then Wormtail lowered the creature into the cauldron; there was a hiss, and it vanished below the surface; Antheia heard its frail body hit the bottom with a soft thud.
Let it drown, Harry thought, his scar burning almost past endurance, please ... let it drown ...
Wormtail 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 Harry and Antheia's feet cracked. Horrified, Harry and Antheia watched as a fine trickle of dust rose into the air at Wormtail'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.
And now Wormtail was whimpering. He pulled a long, thin, shining silver dagger from the inside of his roves. 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 upwards.
Antheia realised what Wormtail was about to do a second before it happened - she and Harry both closed their eyes as tightly as he could, but they could not block the scream that pierced the night, that went through Antheia 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. Antheia couldn't bear to look ... but the potion had turned a burning red, the light of it shone through Harry's closed eyelids ...
Wormtail was gasping and moaning with agony. Not until Harry felt Wormtail's anguished breath on his face did he realise that Wormtail was right in front of him.
"B-blood of the enemy ... forcibly taken ... you will ... resurrect your foe."
Antheia felt Harry struggle and she could do nothing to prevent it, she was tied too tightly. Soon after, Wormtail stepped in front of her as well, and she felt Wormtail's shining silver dagger penetrate the crook of her right arm, and blood seeping down the sleeve of her robes. Her entire body stung with pain as Wormtail, still panting with pain, fumbled in his pocket for a glass phial and held it to her cut, so that a dribble of blood fell into it.
He staggered back to the cauldron with Harry and Antheia's blood. He poured it inside. The light within turned, instantly, a blinding white. Wormtail, 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 shimmering, sending its diamond sparks in all directions, so blindingly bright that it turned all else to velvety blackness. Nothing happened ...
Let it have drowned, Antheia thought, let it have gone wrong ...
And 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 them, so that they couldn't see Wormtail or Cedric or anything but vapour hanging in the air ... it's gone wrong, Antheia thought ... it's drowned ... please ... please let it drown.
But then, through the mist in front of them, she saw, 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 Wormtail, sobbing and moaning, 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 Antheia ... and they stared back into the face that had haunted them for years. Whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes, and a nose that was as flat as a snake's, with slits for nostrils ...
Lord Voldemort had risen again.
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