Aurelia can't find it in her to reply. Her voice is stuck, she is rendered speechless. Her stomach has turned to lead and her courage has abandoned her. With her lack of answer, he looks away from her and begins to examine himself. His pale, long fingers run across his face, his arms, his chest. His eyes gleam further and Aurelia's nausea returns. In front of her, somewhat alive and definitely competent, stands her father. Her very own monster under the bed, the very person she's been running from her entire life, even if she never admitted it.
His fingers flex in front of him. He doesn't take any notice of anything or anyone else for a moment.
"It is not perfect," he admits. "Only your contribution to the potion would have done that. But there was a chance that we couldn't find you, so I made the proper provisions." She can feel the abject horror on her face, but makes no move to change it. He pulls out a wand and, with a wordless wave, he throws Wormtail into the grave by Harry's feet. He laughs— cold, merciless, utterly haunting. Aurelia represses a shudder. The shine of blood on Wormtail's robes makes the sickness increase tenfold.
"My Lord..." he chokes pitifully. "My Lord, you promised... you did promise..."
He looks at him lazily. "Hold out your arm."
"Oh, Master... thank you, Master." He extends the bloodied stump but Voldemort laughs again.
"The other arm, Wormtail."
"Master, please... please," he begs. Voldemort ignores him and pulls out Wormtail's left arm. He pulls the robes up past his elbow and Aurelia's eyes find the mark that has been used so often in relation to her father, the one that had appeared in the sky above the Quidditch World Cup that summer. The Dark Mark, branded and red on Wormtail's skin, is examined by Voldemort's red eyes.
"It is back," he says softly, heard over Wormtail's sobs. "They will all have noticed it... and now, we shall see... now, we shall know..." He presses his finger to the mark, ignoring Wormtail's howl of pain. It turns jet black under his finger, each part of the brand becoming more pronounced with the colour change. "How many will be brave enough to return when they feel it? And how many will be foolish enough to stay away?"
The threat of other people arriving snaps Aurelia out of her horror. She spots her wands on the ground near the cauldron. Harry's wand is heavy in her hand and she'd feel much more confident with the familiar thinness and light weight of her own. As Voldemort begins to pace, turning his back on them momentarily, she waves Harry's wand wordlessly and her wand returns to her. She pushes it into the pocket of her jeans, throwing Harry's close to him and hoping for an opportune moment for the boy to regain his weapon.
He turns back to Harry with a cruel smile. "You stand, Harry Potter, upon the remains of my late father," he hisses. "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." He laughs again before taking up pacing again.
"You see that house upon the hillside, Potter? 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 pauses for a moment. "He left her and returned to his Muggle parents before I was even born, Potter, 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." He continues to pace as his eyes flicker from grave to grave. "Listen to me, reliving my family history... the return of my daughter seems to have made me quite sentimental. But look, Harry! The rest of my true family returns!"
The sounds of swishing cloaks fill the empty graveyard. Between graves, hidden behind a tree, in every shadowed space, witches and wizards appear. All robed, all masked and each moving forward with the utmost caution. Aurelia looks for a place to retreat, but instead she is pulled forward by her father, his fingers digging into her arm.
"Don't be shy," he hisses, pulling her to stand with him. "You are my flesh and blood and you will act accordingly. They are your family too."
With renewed anger, she tears her arm from his grip. "Not a chance," she spits. "They are no family of mine and neither are you!" The glare he provides her with is dangerous, but she matches it with her own venomous scowl. The Death Eaters, seemingly ignoring this exchange, continue to move forward until one drops to his knees and crawls forward, kissing the hems of Voldemort's robes.
"Master... Master," he mutters. The others follow his example, falling to their knees and kissing his robes before standing and finding their place in a small circle that encloses the grave of Tom Riddle, Harry, Wormtail and Aurelia. There are gaps, as though more people should be there, but Voldemort simply places himself between Harry and his daughter, blocking her from aiding him, and begins to speak.
"Welcome, Death Eaters," he says quietly, the velvety nature of his voice unnerving. "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, then! Or are we?" His slit-like nostrils flare. "I smell guilt. There is a stench of guilt upon the air." Each member of the group shudders, as though longing to take a step back. Aurelia finds herself feeling much braver with their inherent fear.
"I see you all, whole and healthy, with your powers intact— such prompt appearances!— and I ask myself... why did this band of enemies never come to the aid of their master, to whom they swore eternal loyalty?" The only sound is Wormtail's shuddery breath and whimpers. "And I anwser myself, 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..."
"And then I ask myself, but how could they have believed I would not rise again? They, who knew the steps I took, long ago, to guard myself against mortal death? They, who had seen proofs of the immensity of my power in the times when I was mightier than any wizard living?" The silence is deafening, each member of the circle trying to decide what the best course of action is. "And I answer myself— perhaps they believed a still greater power could exist, one that could vanquish even Lord Voldemort... perhaps, they now pay allegiance to another... perhaps that champion of commoners, of Mudbloods and Muggles, Albus Dumbledore?"
The circle stirs and some mutter and shake their head at the implication.
"It is a disappointment to me," Voldemort continues, ignoring the shuffling. "I confess myself disappointed."
Flinging himself forward, one man breaks the circle. He collapses at the feet of the man monologuing, trembling. "Master! Master, forgive me! Forgive us all!" he cries.
Voldemort laughs, raising his wand. "Crucio." Below him, the Death Eater shrieks and cries, writhing. Harry looks towards the houses, but Aurelia doesn't believe for a second that anyone can hear them, let alone that anyone is coming. The Death Eater is released from the effects of the spell and he lays, panting and gasping, on the floor.
"Get up, Avery," he commands. "Stand up." The man scrambles to his feet, barely holding himself up as he re-joins the circle. "You ask for forgiveness? I do not forgive, 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 looks down at the man for the first time since flinging him against the headstone. "You returned 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," he whimpers. "Please. Master, please..."
"Yet you helped me return to my body, however incompletely." He sends a glare at his daughter. "Worthless and traitorous as you are, you helped me... and Lord Voldemort rewards his helpers." Voldemort raises his wand and members of the circle flinch almost imperceptibly. A streak of molten silver hovers in the wake of Voldemort's wand as he swirls it through the air. It writhes for a second before shaping a replica of a hand. It attaches itself to Wormtail's stump and his whimpering stops immediately. Aurelia locks eyes with Harry, who is still in a state of panic. Miniscule movements of her wand begin untying the ropes in tiny parts as everyone's attention is caught by her father.
"My Lord," he whispers in awe. "Master... it is beautiful... thank you... thank you!" He scarpers forward and kisses the hem of Voldemort's robes.
"May your loyalty never waver again, Wormtail," he says, the threat woven into his words dangerously.
"No, my Lord... never, my Lord." Wormtail stands and takes his place in the circle. Voldemort moves to the man on Wormtail's right. Another tiny flicks from Aurelia and Harry can move his foot slightly.
"Lucius, my slippery friend," he whispers, stopping before him. "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 your energies have been better directed toward finding and aiding your Master?"
"My Lord, I was constantly on the alert." Lucius Malfoy's voice comes easily from beneath the mask. Aurelia recognises it from the times she has visited the British Ministry when organising her time at Beauxbatons. "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?" Malfoy's words are cut short. "Yes, I know all about that, Lucius... you have disappointed me. I expect more faithful service in the future."
"Of course, my Lord, of course... you are merciful, thank you..."
He pauses at the space big enough for two beside Malfoy. "The Lestranges should stand here," he announces, his voice still quiet. "But they are entombed in Azkaban. They were faithful, they went to Azkaban rather than renounce me... when Azkaban is broken open, the Lestranges witll be honoured beyond their dreams. The Dementors will join us, they are our natural allies... we will recall the banished giants. I shall have all my devoted servants returned to me, and an army of creatures whom all will fear..." The mention of Azkaban has Aurelia halting in her tiny movements, cold rushing through her veins at his plans to break open Azkaban.
He sweeps around the circle, passing some people in silence and pausing to speak at others. Watching her father prowl like a predator circling his prey makes her skin crawl.
"Macnair... destroying dangerous beasts for the Ministry of Magic now, Wormtail tells me? You shall have better victims than that soon, Macnair. Lord Voldemort will provide..."
"Thank you, Master, thank you," he murmurs, bowing his head.
"And here... we have Crabbe... you will do better this time, will you not Crabbe? And you, Goyle?" The clumsy figures bow messily.
"Yes, Master."
"We will, Master."
"The same goes for you, Nott."
"My Lord, I prostrate myself before you, I am your most faithful—"
"That will do." The interruption is cold and threatening and is rewarded by Nott's silence. The largest gap is reached and a renewed stillness falls over them.
"And here we have six missing Death Eaters... three dead in my service. One too cowardly to return, he will pay. One who I believe has left me forever, he will be killed, of course. And one who remains my most faithful servant and who has already re-entered my service." They stir lightly. "He is at Hogwarts, that faithful servant, and it was through his efforts that our young friends arrived here tonight..." Aurelia's scowl deepens.
"Yes," he muses, mirthless grin curving his lips as he looks at Harry. "Harry Potter has kindly joined us for my rebirthing party. And, of course, my daughter is the guest of honour." A silence falls before Malfoy steps forward.
"Master, we crave to know... we beg you to tell us how you have achieved this... this miracle... how you managed to return to us."
"Ah, what a story, Lucius," he croons. "And it begins— and ends— with my young friend here." He takes a few steps over to Harry and all the eyes in the circle fall upon the two of them. With Voldemort so close and everyone watching so intently, she can do no more to untie him.
"You know, of course, that they have called this boy my downfall?" he says softly, eyes on Harry intently. "You all know that on the night I lost my powers and my body, I tried to kill him. His mother died in the attempt to save him— and unwittingly provided him with a protection I admit I had not foreseen... I could not touch the boy." He raises a finger and it hovers dangerously close to Harry's cheek. He screws his face up in pain and Aurelia has to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from yelling out for him to stop. She can only imagine what he'd do to her, blood or not.
"His mother left upon him the traces of sacrifice. This is old magic, I should have remembered it, I was foolish to overlook it... but no matter. I can touch him now." The end of his long, pale finger comes into contact with Harry's skin and Voldemort laughs mockingly. His finger is taken away and he continues to address his followers.
"I miscalculated, my friends, I admit it. My curse was deflected by the woman's foolish sacrifice and it rebounded upon myself. Ahh, pain beyond pain, my friends; nothing could have prepared me for it. I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost... but still, I was alive. What I was, even I do not know. I, who have gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality. You know my goal— to conquer death. And now, I was tested, and it appeared that one or more of my experiments had worked for I had not been killed, though the curse should have done it. Nevertheless, I was as powerless as the weakest creature alive, and without the means to help myself for I had no body and every spell that might have helped me required a wand." Aurelia listens intently, racking her brains for any type of magic that provides immortality. She assumes by its very nature that it's dark magic, anything else could not do such a thing.
"I remember only forcing myself, sleeplessly, endlessly, second by second, to exist. I settled in a faraway place, in a forest, and I waited. Surely one of my faithful Death Eaters would try and find me... one of them would come and perform the magic I could not, to restore me to a body... but I waited in vain." Another shiver ripples down the waiting group. He lets it stretch excruciatingly before continuing.
"Only one power remained to me; I could possess the bodies of others. But I dared not go where other humans were plentiful, for I knew that the Aurors were still abroad and searching for me. I sometimes inhabited animals— snakes, of course, being my preference— but I was little better off inside them than as pure spirit, for their bodies were ill adapted to perform magic and my possession of them shortened their lives; none of them lasted long." Aurelia notes his lack of concern for other's lives and her eyes darken slightly.
"Then, four years ago, the means for my return seemed assured. A wizard— young, foolish and gullible— wandered across my path in the forest I had made my home. Oh, he seemed the very chance I had been dreaming of for he was a teacher at Dumbledore's school. He was easy to bend to my will, he brought me back to this country and, after a while, I took possession of his body, to supervise him closely as he carried out my orders. But my plan failed. I did not manage to steal the Philisopher's Stone. I was not to be assured immortal life. I was thwarted... thwarted once again by Harry Potter."
Silence and stillness again. Nothing stirs, not the Death Eaters, not the snake, not the leaves on the tree, not even the blades of grass. Everyone's eyes are fixed on Voldemort and Harry as the former tells his lengthy story.
"The servant died when I left his body and I was left as weak as ever I had been. I returned to my hiding place far away and I will not pretend to you that I didn't then fear that I might never regain my powers... Yes, that was perhaps my darkest hour. I could not hope that I would be sent another wizard to possess and I had given up hope, now, that any of my Death Eaters cared what had become of me." Some of the people in the circle shuffle uncomfortably, the blame evidently weighing heavy on their shoulders.
"And then, not even a year ago, when I had almost abandoned hope, it happened at last! A servant returned to me! Wormtail here, who had faked his own death to escape justice, was driven out of hiding by those he had once counted as friends and decided to return to his master. He sought me in the country where it had long been rumoured I was hiding... helped, of course, by the rats he met along the way. Wormtail has a curious affinity with rats, do you not, Wormtail?" The way Voldemort says it so carefully convinces Aurelia that 'rats' doesn't just mean people who are rats. "His filthy little friends told him there was a place, deep in an Albanian forest, that they avoided, where small animals like themselves had met their deaths by a dark shadow that possessed them. But his journey back to me was not smooth, was it, Wormtail? For, hungry one night, on the edge of the very forest where he had hoped to find me, he foolishly stopped at an inn for some food and who should he meet there but one Bertha Jorkins, a witch from the Ministry of Magic."
Aurelia's eyes find the ground. She'd heard about Bertha Jorkins in the Daily Prophet and the news had even spread to the Nouvelles Magiques de France by August. "Now see the way that fate favours Lord Voldemort. This might have been the end of Wormtail and of my last hope for regeneration. But Wormtail— displaying a presence of mind I would never have expected from him— convinced Bertha Jorkins to accompany him for a night-time stroll. He overpowered her, he brought her to me and Bertha Jorkins, who might have ruined all, proved instead to be a gift beyond my wildest dreams for, with a little persuasion, she became a veritable mine of information."
A Ministry witch would've known that Aurelia goes to Beauxbatons. A Ministry witch also would've known, from at least three years of it, that Aurelia goes home often via Portkey, something strictly regulated by the Ministry to ensure that there's no misuse. And with a sinking feeling in her stomach she realises that any Ministry personnel knows this about her because if there's one thing the British Ministry for Magic is actually good at, it's gossip.
"She told me that the Triwizard Tournament would be played at Hogwarts this year. She told me that she knew of a faithful Death Eater who would be only too willing to help me, if I could only contact him. Most importantly, she told me that my dear Aurelia attended Beauxbatons and that she returned to her very own Muggle orphanage every three weeks using a Portkey. She told me many things, but the means I used to break the Memory Charm upon her were powerful and, when I had extracted all useful information from her, her mind and body were both damaged beyond repair. She had now served her purpose. I could not possess her so I disposed of her." Voldemort smiles, no pity or remorse shown. Aurelia represses yet another shudder at the look in his eyes. He continues without hesitation.
"Wormtail's body, of course, was ill adapted for possession, as all assumed him dead, and he would attract far too much attention if noticed. However, he was the able-bodied servant I needed and, poor wizard though he is, Wormtail was able to follow the instructions I gave him which would return me to a rudimentary weak body of my own, a body I would be able to inhabit while awaiting the essential ingredients for true rebirth. A spell or two of my own creation, a little help from my dear Nagini—" Aurelia's face screws up as he refers to his snake in the same way he did his daughter, "— a potion concocted from unicorn blood and the snake venom Nagini provided... I was soon returned to an almost human form and strong enough to travel."
He continues retelling his story, talking about the Dark Magic he invoked to get to this point. The three, he does note that four would have been preferable with another glare to Aurelia, ingredients needed— his father's bone, the flesh of a servant, blood of a foe, and tears of a daughter— his insistence on taking Harry's blood to allow him the same protection of his mother's sacrifice.
"Dumbledore invoked an ancient magic to ensure the boy's protection as long as he is in his relations' care. Not even I can touch him there. Then, of course, there was the Quidditch World Cup... I thought his protection might be weaker there, away from his relations and Dumbledore, but I was not yet strong enough to attempt kidnap in the midst of a horde of Ministry wizards. And then, the boy would return to Hogwarts, where he is under the crooked nose of that Muggle-loving fool from morning until night. So how could I take him?"
The role of his loyal Death Eater comes to light painstakingly— stationing him at Hogwarts, entering Harry's name into the Goblet of Fire, ensuring he reached the trophy, moving him beyond the protection of Dumbledore, setting Aurelia a new Portkey that would bring her to the graveyard when she chose to go back early to ensure her friend's survival, and making sure that nobody would be any the wiser.
"And here he is, the boy you all believed had been my downfall." He faces Harry and raises his wand. "Crucio!"
Aurelia goes to counter attack, but her wand is quickly snatched from her hand and her arms are held back by another Death Eater. As Harry squirms and writhes, Aurelia fights brutally, but the hands won't let go. The masked wizards laugh at the sight of the boy in excruciating pain, his shouts ringing out across the graveyard. Voldemort releases him, watching him hang from the ropes on the gravestone.
"You all see, I think, how foolish it was to suppose that this boy could ever have been stronger than me," Voldemort assumes. "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, in front of you all, where 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." The snake hisses impatiently. "Just a little longer, Nagini. Now untie him, Wormtail, and give him back his wand."