Blood of the Enemy, Forcibly Taken
‘Harry Potter has kindly joined us for my rebirthing party. One might go so far as to call him my guest of honour.’
There was a silence. Then the Death Eater to the right of Wormtail stepped forward, and Lucius Malfoy's voice spoke from under the mask.
‘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 it is, Lucius,’ said Voldemort. ‘And it begins - and ends - with my young friend here.’
He walked lazily over to stand next to Harry, so that the eyes of the whole circle were upon the two of them. The snake continued to circle.
The pleasure Lord Voldemort felt as he watched the boy writhe and scream against the headstone could not be measured. With the tip of his finger alone he had reduced the boy to near madness.
He had returned to his body even stronger than before. Not only the boy’s mindless, instantaneous reaction to his touch, but the surge of his own magical strength coursing through his veins told him this. It was an impressive feat considering that before, at the height of his reign, he had boasted near absolute, unyielding power. That is, until he had turned to kill the boy only to face the protection the boy’s foolish, mudblood mother had unwittingly placed on him with her unnecessary death at his wand.
If his Death Eaters had looked at him in fear and awe before, they would look at him with near god-like reverence now. How many returned from the dead, made whole, as he had done? How many could claim to have cheated death itself? He told them of that night thirteen years ago, of the struggles he had undertaken only to be thwarted time and time again by Harry Potter, and of how with the help of a faithful servant he had brought Harry there that night to complete the ritual.
With a hint of reluctance, Lord Voldemort pulled his hand away. He would have gladly dragged out torturing the boy—Potter well deserved what the Dark Lord had in store for him for all his meddling—had there not been other matters in this little reunion which required his attention.
‘And here he is...the boy you all believed had been my downfall....’
Voldemort moved slowly forward and turned to face Harry. He raised his wand.
‘Crucio!’
Surely Potter’s bones were on fire, his head splitting along his scar as the unforgivable spell pulsed through him, pain beyond imagining. White-hot knives were piercing every inch of his skin, his head was surely going to burst with pain, he was screaming more loudly than he'd ever screamed in his life—
Only he wasn’t. The sweet sound of the boy’s desperate, pleading screams—he had heard them fill the air but a moment ago—were gone, and there was only silence as the boy’s body thrashed furiously against the headstone.
The Death Eaters’ laughter rang short. Lord Voldemort lifted his wand, a mad look of fury in his snake-like eyes. Potter was hanging limply in the ropes binding him to the headstone of Voldemort’s father…
The look of cruel pleasure on the Dark Lord’s face gave way to anger as he stared at the unmoving boy. A parlour trick, that was all. Taught to the boy by Dumbledore to provoke him, no doubt. He would not allow Potter’s farce to continue.
‘Untie him, Wormtail,’ Voldemort said coldly. Wormtail quickly obeyed the Dark Lord’s command, using the dagger to cut through the boy’s bonds only for Potter’s body to collapse into the grass.
Voldemort hit him with the Cruciatus Curse again, inflicting a particular malice into it which he knew the boy could feel at his very core. But again, the boy did not cry out, raving, squirming and convulsing in pain, though his body did twist and turn. A murmur passed through the circle of Death Eaters, as Voldemort curiously took in the boy’s form, caressing his wand in a most terrifying gesture as he did so.
‘Master, it must be a trick—' Lucius Malfoy began.
‘A trick indeed,’ Voldemort said, unamused, ‘and I must say I am tired of Harry Potter’s tricks and Dumbledore’s schemes. Lucius, you will see what the boy has up his sleeve.’
Lucius Malfoy readily took out his wand and approached where the boy lay, crouching low in the grass. He checked the boy over, prodding him with the tip of his wand and then with his fingers, turning the boy this way and that. Potter’s limbs moved without the slightest restraint, almost as if he were a life-sized dummy rather than a flesh and bone wizard, and the Dark Lord saw Lucius pull his hand away in disgust upon touching the boy’s injured arm which was covered in blood from where Wormtail had cut him. Lucius, loyal as he was, had always been too clean in his actions, preferring to get his hands dirty only indirectly in the Dark Lord’s service; this Voldemort himself knew well, as it was perhaps the one trait that both he and Lucius Malfoy overwhelmingly shared.
‘My Lord, Potter appears to have lost consciousness,’ said Lucius after a long moment, to which some of the Death Eaters chortled in response. Nevertheless, the man continued to search the boy.
‘Poor Potter,’ jeered the Dark Lord, ‘it seems my rebirthing party has overwhelmed him. Would you care to rouse the boy, Lucius? I’m sure he would not want to miss the rest of the celebrations.’
A wave of excitement surged throughout the ring of Death Eaters as Lucius pointed his wand at the boy and cried, ‘Enervate!’
Only for nothing to happen.
‘Move aside, Malfoy,’ came a voice, and another Death Eater, Macnair, stepped forward out of the circle and cast the same spell at the boy.
Hushed whispers broke out amongst the Death Eaters.
By all appearances, they seemed to think the Boy Who Lived was dead.
‘My Lord, I assure you, the boy is still breathing,’ said Lucius, disgruntled, and he righted himself and cast a scathing glance at his peers. ‘However, he did have this on his person.’
With that, Lucius held out a small card which had been tucked into the pocket of the boy’s trousers. Taking the card from Lucius in his skeletal fingers, Voldemort read it, his red eyes glowing as he did so. With the wave of his wand, something—a brown, dragon-leather satchel—shot out towards him from the other side of the graveyard, flying through the air and landing on the small patch of overgrown grass between Malfoy and himself.
‘Curious… It appears that Dumbledore has done well keeping secrets about the boy,’ said Voldemort more to Lucius than to the other Death Eaters surrounding him. He flicked his wand at the bag, causing it to shoot up at the blond Death Eater who promptly caught it against his chest. ‘You will discreetly verify the contents and administer the boy what he requires, away from prying eyes.’
‘You are asking me to save the boy?’ Lucius asked, unable to hide the shock in his voice. ‘After all he has done—'
‘Shall I repeat my orders?’
Lucius sighed through clenched teeth, restraining himself. ‘No, my Lord. Pardon, my Lord.’
‘Oh Lucius, I understand what the boy’s death would mean to you, to us all—I know you are almost as eager for it as I am.’ A sinister smirk made its way onto the Dark Lord’s face as he continued, glancing back at the card the pureblood opposite him had taken from Potter and flashing it at him. ‘You are no fool, Lucius, and yet you underestimate the value of this information. Soon you will realise its significance, as shall Dumbledore and the rest of the wizarding world.’
Lucius Malfoy nodded silently, unsure of the meaning behind the Dark Lord’s praise.
‘I feel a change in the air, my friends,’ said Voldemort, his expression unchanging as he turned to face the ring of dark wizards and witches around him. ‘It seems that the blood magic which has rebirthed me tonight has graced my return with a most generous gift, one which I never had anticipated… Although it was my intention to kill Potter before you all here tonight, I understand that now is not yet the time to end the boy.’
And with that Lord Voldemort tilted his head to the side, contemplating Harry Potter’s inert form with a pleased, sanguine expression on his face until the very moment Lucius Malfoy grabbed hold of the boy’s arm and disapparated with him from the graveyard.