Chapter 1
Heather Potter was having a bad day.
Her breath came out in rapid pants as she slammed into the ground with a force that sent a teeth-shattering pain through her injured leg. Heather’s tired eyes flicked around the oddly family surroundings, but the fog in the air and her dirt smudged glasses obscured her vision.
Sliding them off with shaky hands, she tried to clean them off with the edge of her tattered shirt, flinching as her splinter filled palms made contact with the fabric.
Of course it was a Portkey. Nothing could ever be that simple, not when Heather was involved.
“Did anyone tell you the cup was a Portkey?”
Heather barely registered Cedric’s words as she absently shook her head and finally got a good look at their surroundings. They stood in a dilapidated graveyard that seemed to have been forgotten by time, shrubbery having claimed most of the graves, with the only nearby building being a small church barely visible in the distance. Mostly obscured by the large yew tree to their right, “Of course not, why would anyone think to tell us something as important as that?”
Cedric raised a single eyebrow and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, Heather briefly smiling sheepishly, “Sorry, do you think this is part of the task?”
“I dunno,” Cedric sounded nervous. “Wands out, d’you reckon?”
Heather gave a rapid nod as she clenched onto her holly wand with a strength she was not aware she possessed. Cedric smiled weakly at her, “Don’t tell me you’ve lost that Gryffindor courage?”
“Piss off,” she laughed a little as they moved closer together. The hairs on the back of her neck stood to attention and she suddenly got the familiar feeling that she was being watched, “Wait. Someone else is here.”
In the distance someone approached through the dark. It appeared to be a short, stout figure carrying something as they weaved between headstones. The figure was cloaked, face obscured by night and fabric — bus as they drew closer the thing in the person’s arms appeared to be a baby bundled in robes.
Heather shared a look with Cedric, who lowered his wand slightly so as to not point it at the child. When they looked back the approaching figure was stopped beside a marble headstone.
Staring at them.
Then Heather was on the floor. Her scar burned with such a ferocity, one she had never felt before and never wished to again. Her wand dropped to the ground beside her, useless as her fingers clawed at the skin of her face. The ground was cold beneath her but all she could focus on was the feeling of her skull being peeled open from the inside out.
Vaguely she registered Cedric’s presence beside her, his hand on her back and then a high, cold voice broke through the air, “Kill the spare.”
A swishing noise, a second voice, and two words pierced the air, "Avada Kedavra!"
Green light blazed through her closed eyelids, the pressure on her back was gone and a thump sounded on the ground beside her. Despite the agony of existing in that moment, Heather pried her eyes open and turned her head.
There was Cedric, on the ground beside her.
His gray eyes were open, but empty. His mouth was half-open in what Heather presumed to be surprise. And he was stiff, stiffer than she had ever seen him, his wand still clasped tightly between his fingers.
He was dead.
Heather moved, she wanted to shake him, wake him up, tell him to run. But the second she tried to rise from the ground the pain hit her so blindingly that she retched onto the brown tinged grass beneath her, the burning now in her throat.
She had barely stopped when a hand grasped the back of her shirt, and pulled her unwillingly to her feet. Away from Cedric. The man half-dragged, half-carried her towards the marble headstone; and Heather got one damming glance at the name before she was slammed against it.
Tom Riddle.
It was always him, wasn’t it?
Heather felt foolish for having missed the signs, of course his scorched fingerprints were all over the events of the school year. The dominos he had lined up, how easily she had fallen into his trap. If she had just figured it out sooner, Cedric might not have gotten tangled in her mess..
Cedric. He was right where he had been left on the ground. Her wand was beside him. He was probably cold. Heather could no longer feel the cold, she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
The marble of the statue was rough on her skin as the cloaked man finished tying her to the statue, only then did she get a good look at his face — Wormtail — the rat, “You!”
White-hot rage filled her veins. The traitorous letch ignored her in favour of fretting around before he completely left her sight.
The bundle of robes that Heather had wrongfully presumed to be a baby was close by, at the foot of the grave. It seemed to be stirring fretfully, and as her scar seared with pain Heather had a frightful feeling that she did not want to see that bundle opened.
Hissing filled the air, and Heather bit back a scream as a large snake slithered out of the darkness towards her. Her mouth went dry as images of the basilisk overwhelmed her senses – the searing pain, the pure terror. She had been avoiding snakes ever since that day.
The snake did not slow as it circled the grave, its tongue scenting the air as it seemed to look Heather directly in the eyes and curled around the bottom of her legs. Raising her eyes towards the starless sky, Heather could do nothing but focus on the immense weight that was making its way slowly up her body, “Hatchling.”
Her eyes remained stubbornly on the sky, as she ceased to breathe at all — a rough tongue poking at her neck. All she could hear was hissing, laboured, wheezing breaths, and the sound of something being dragged across the floor.
“Nagini, come.”
And then the weight was gone. The snake was still far too close for comfort, but no longer eyeing Heather up as its next meal.
Wormtail appeared to have dragged over a large cauldron to the foot of the grave. One large enough to fit a fully-grown man inside. It was filled with what seemed to be water, and Heather suddenly got the incredulous thought that perhaps they were going to boil her alive.
Wouldn’t that be something? The girl-who-lived made into stew. She almost started laughing – or crying – when the thing inside the bundle of robes on the ground started stirring more persistently as if trying to free itself.
Please no.
Wormtail pointed his wand at the bottom of the cauldron and suddenly there were crackling flames lighting the air as the liquid in the cauldron began to bubble and send out fiery sparks.
“Hurry!” There it was again, that voice — high, cold and hauntingly familiar.
The whole surface of the water was now alight with sparks, “It is ready, Master.”
“Now..”
Wormtail pulled open the robes on the ground, and Heather let out a sound halfway between a sob and a yell that got stuck in her throat.
Heather could not find the words to describe the thing that was almost shaped like a human child. It was wrong, it was so wrong — hairless, scaled, its skin if it could be called that appeared raw and ravaged. Its arms and legs were skeletal, and its face — flat and snakelike, with gleaming red eyes – was one that had haunted her dreams since her first year at Hogwarts.
There wasn’t enough air in her lungs, and her vision began to blur, but the image of that thing was painted even behind her closed eyelids.
When she reopened her eyes Wormtail was bent over the cauldron, lowering the thing in with a hiss, before it vanished below the surface, the sound of its fragile body hitting the bottom echoing through the night.
Let it drown, Heather pleaded to every deity above and below, her scar searing far past the point of endurance… let it drown…
Desperately she clawed at the rope binding her in place, only managing to chafe her wrists in the effort as she felt slick blood begin to drip down her palms.
“Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!”
A great crack sounded, and Heather watched in muted horror as a fine trickle of dust rose from the grave at Wormtail's command and fell softly into the cauldron. It hissed, and sent sparks in all directions, the liquid now a poisonous-looking blue.
Wormtail let out a feeble whimper as he pulled a long, thin, silver dagger from within his cloak. His words were muffled by the petrified sobs he let out, and had she not been so terrified she might have felt some vindication at his snivelling, “Flesh – of the servant – w-willingly given – you will – revive – your master.”
He stretched his right hand in front of him – the hand with the missing finger. He gripped the dagger tightly and swung upwards quickly severing flesh and bone. A sound Heather didn’t think she would ever be able to forget, a scream of anguish escaping him as a sickening splash filled the air and the potion turned a burning red.
Before she realised what was happening, Wormtail, still moaning in agony, was standing before her – so close she could feel the warmth of his putrid breath on her face. “B-blood of the enemy . . . forcibly taken . . . you will . . . resurrect your foe.”
Heather spied the shining silver dagger in his palm, and with a burst of resistance, she managed to slide one hand free of her bindings, her skin slick with blood. Rearing her hand back she threw her fist straight into Wormtail’s face with a resounding crack.
He bent at the waist, wheezing and holding his face in agony as she made quick work of the rest of the shoddily tied ropes. But she barely made it a step away when the stone scythe of the headstone locked around her body, crushing her ribs and leaving her feet barely touching the ground as it locked around her neck.
Wheezing painfully, her fingers dug into the stone in desperation, nails cracking from the pressure, but it was pointless she could not move. She could not stop Wormtail slicing into the crook of her left arm with a pointed viciousness, blood pooling out and dripping down the sleeve of her torn robes.
She did not scream, though she wanted to. Instead she stared, directly at the traitor with as much hate as she could muster. If she was going to die, she would not do so crying and whimpering at a coward’s feet. He collected her blood in a glass vial, remaining hand shaking while he did it, and not once did her eyes leave his face.
You disgust me. Those green eyes screamed at him from behind familiar round glasses.
Wormtail staggered his way to the cauldron with her blood in hand. He paused for a moment, and glanced at Heather over his shoulder, blank and unreadable before he turned his back to her and poured it inside. The liquid instantaneously turned a blinding white.
The traitor dropped to the floor, his job done and began sobbing holding the stump that had been his hand. The cauldron was so bright now, everything else around it faded to inky blackness as sparks shot out in every direction.
And then… nothing… Let it have drowned, Heather pleaded, let it have gone wrong…
Suddenly everything was still, the sparks emitting from the cauldron extinguished. After a moment of stillness a billow of white steam emerged from the cauldron, smouldering the air in a thick cloud that hid everything from Heather’s sight.
It has to have gone wrong, she thought… it’s drowned… please… please let it be dead…
Heather had always joked about the Potter luck, and how nothing ever went her way. As the smoke cleared into a thin mist, her heart dropped and she could no longer hear anything beyond a terrible ringing in her ears.
The Potter luck strikes again.
The outline of a man, tall and rail-thin, was rising slowly from inside the cauldron.
“Robe me,” the high, cold voice hissed from beyond the steam, the voice sounded more real – more grounded – than it had ever sounded before. And Wormtail, sobbing and cradling his mutilated arm, scrambled to pick up the black robes from the ground and pulled them one-armed over his master’s head.
The skeletal figure stepped out of the cauldron, never taking his eyes off of Heather. And Heather stared straight back, hoping the hate in her eyes took president over the wobbling of her chin, as she finally saw that face that had haunted her nightmares for years. Judging by the slight tug at the corner of his mouth, she had failed.
That face, bone-white, with wide, livid crimson eyes and a nose that was as flat as a snake’s with slits for nostrils.
Lord Voldemort had risen once more.