Chapter 20
"Arthur sends his well wishes." Molly's voice interrupted Harry's continued contemplation as lunch neared an end and the time to begin the walk to the pitch arrived. "Charlie too. You have a team rooting for you, Harry. Don't forget that."
Rebecca looked up from across the room, catching Harry's eye. Molly and Bill joined the other families present who remained in the room a moment longer as the champions and other students--Rebecca and Gabrielle, namely--walked on.
"Everything is almost over." Rebecca said, her voice a forced-strong for him. "Things are going to be normal again, okay?"
"Rebecca, I-" Harry grabbed her hand and squeezed it tightly. The castle was disappearing around them and the walk to the maze looming in the distance had never seemed so short. How was he supposed to tell her everything he needed to? "I need to-In case something were to-"
"I don't fucking do goodbyes, Harry!" Rebecca tore her hand from his and her steps paused as she turned her back to him. Taking a slow breath, she faced him only when she was able to keep her face blank. "No goodbyes, I told you before the first event."
"I know." Harry took her hand again as her legs forced one foot after the other. "I know, I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry." Rebecca took her hand from his more gently than she had before, cupping Harry's cheeks as the point where they had to separate met them. Rebecca closed her eyes and put her forehead against his, speaking softly. "You are going to go in there and make good on all that we have trained on, you hear me?"
Harry nodded. "I love you."
"I love you, too." Rebecca pulled him into a tight hug that only ended at his movement, she wasn't going to let go until he was ready. "I walked you here, didn't I?"
"Finally followed through on your promise!" Harry said with a smile that was only partially fake.
The announcer's voice spurred them farther apart. "And, from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Cedric Diggory!" Harry was the last champion yet to be called.
"Rebecca?" Harry called just before Rebecca turned the corner. "Everything is going to be normal again, soon."
"I know." Rebecca nodded once. "I told you that already."
Entirely by accident, Rebecca's usual Rebecca-like answer had Harry feeling lighter than he had been before when he finally faced the hulking walls of plant that had been erected over the pitch in front of the bleachers filled with cheering students.
"Earlier today, Professor Moody placed the Triwizard Cup deep within the maze." Dumbledore's voice bringing the opening remarks silenced the crowd. "Only he knows its exact position."
Fred's knee bounced anxiously, but stilled when Rebecca appeared behind Molly and Bill in the last of their group to join them in the stands. When she took the spot beside him that he had been saving, Fred was able to relax a level more than when she was apart from him.
"Earlier today," Dumbledore's voice quieted everybody in the crowd immediately. "Professor Moody placed the Triwizard Cup deep within the maze. Only he knows its exact position..."
Bill's attention was pulled away from the champions poised at the starting marks by Molly's direction. Fred had entwined his hand with Rebecca's to hide how hers had been shaking with nerves from the others, he knew that she would hate to appear weak or unable to handle the immediacy of the final trial.
"There's something..." Molly shook her head, unable to easily find the words she was looking for.
"I see it to." Bill said, sitting up straighter as the beginning remarks were leading into the official start of the task. "Lasting. There's something lasting." Later, much later, Bill thought that he found what his mother had seen.
"As Mr Diggory-" Amos raised Cedric's hand up above both of their heads at Cedric's name, causing the Hufflepuff students to stand and cheer loudly until Dumbledore had to wait to continue. "And Mr Potter," The Gryffindor students stood now, supporting their champion. "Are tied for first position, they will be the first to enter the maze. They will be followed by Mr Krum and then Miss Delacour."
"The first person to touch the cup will be the winner." Dumbledore's voice continued. "I've instructed the staff to patrol the perimeter. Should, at any point, a contestant wish to withdraw from the task, they only need send up red sparks with their wands." The crowd was left to its own devices as Dumbledore called for the champions to form a circle around him before the event's start.
Fred squeezed Rebecca's hand, certain that she was wondering what they were talking about on the pitch below.
"Quickly!" Harry stumbled, trying to move faster than his feet would let him at the headmaster's tone. "In the maze, you'll find not dragons nor creatures of the depths. People change in the maze. Find the cup if you can, but be wary--You could lose yourselves along the way."
Dumbledore stepped back and raised his arms up to the crowd, announcing the start. "Champions! Prepare!"
Harry looked over his shoulder from his spot, finding Rebecca among his greatest supporters. "You can do this!" She mouthed, nodding once firmly. Harry didn't need to hear her voice to know the absolute certainty she had in him.
"One--" Filch let the cannon off too soon, just as he had for every other event. Dumbledore shook his head and waved for the first entrants to begin--Harry and Cedric moved towards the maze.
Rebecca's breath caught as Harry disappeared from her sight, though Fred swore she stopped breathing entirely when the greenery of the maze entwined to close the champions off from the crowd of spectators.
"RJ, it's alright." Fred turned his body towards her. "You've made sure that Harry has every skill he could possibly need in there."
Rebecca gave her greatest fear--that something would happen to him and she wouldn't be there--so quietly only Fred could hear her. The two went back and forth, Rebecca giving more of herself up and Fred catching the walls crumbling around her and setting them down so gently no sound was made.
Molly looked at her son, one of her mischievous, devious twins, and saw someone respectful, kind, feeling and comforting. Molly saw a glimpse of the man taking the place of her boy and had never felt more proud.
"I know the end is so close, it just-" Rebecca put her forehead to Fred's arm, shaking her head slowly. "It's never felt further."
"Well," Hermione leaned forward from where she sat on the other side of Fred. "That's been proven to not just be psychological. Your body ages faster when stuck in a prolonged state of expectation--It's physiological."
Ron narrowed his eyes at Hermione. "Wow. I know exactly who not to go to when I want comforting."
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The first thing Harry had done once the maze had shut him off from the world left behind was cast the four-point directional spell Sirius had recommended. His wand floated in front of him, wavering back and forth before guiding him down whichever direction it thought he was best down.
The leaves rustled and crunched both under his feet and all around him; the maze seemed to be in a constant state of motion. The Blast-Ended Skrewt--the first creature he came across--was easily dealt with after Hagrid's classes.
Harry followed his wand on and on, veering left and right and left and right until he ended up in a circular, pod-like clear with many different arches back into the maze spread around the perimeter. He slowed his jog to a walk and glanced down the exits nearest to him, something spotting and heading towards him from one of the walkways.
"Damn, I've done it now." Harry kicked himself for not being more cautious and raised his wand, the first prickles of fear and desperation reaching him. The dementor glided into the circle all of the paths opened into, searching for the source of life it had sensed.
Harry felt the grass around his trainers harden and freeze as he remembered the memories that filled the space in his heart Rebecca filled. "Expecto patronum!" His stag leapt out of his wand and plowed through the dementor-boggart form, shattering the spectre into too many pieces to be a soon-to-be-dealt with issue.
Harry felt the small smile he couldn't help cross his face--Rebecca still hadn't managed to cast a corporeal patronus and it infuriated her. He wondered, for a moment, if she was holding back so that he could be better at something between the two of them. The thought had merit. Rebecca had proven time and time again that there was nothing she wouldn't do for those she-
A scream ripped Harry away from his thoughts, the pain in the sound taking all his attention. It sounded like Cedric--and it sounded like it was close by.
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The sound of quick and quiet guesses filled the area around the pitch as sparks were sent up into the air, bets as to which champion called out of the trial.
"It's not him." Fred said quietly, not needing anyone except for Rebecca to hear it. "I know it, you know it."
Rebecca took his hand in hers again, holding it tightly. When Fleur eventually was found to be the contestant-no-longer, Rebecca didn't know if she felt relief or disappointment that Harry hadn't. She was having trouble figuring out what she was feeling as a mounting, growing dread settled in her stomach like a weight.
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"Stupefy!" Harry cast at Viktor--who had been Viktor only an hour ago. The older boy had Cedric cornered in between dead ends of the maze and had been casting spell after spell, jinx after jinx, so ferociously that Cedric had only enough time to block.
Fleur had been Viktor's original target and Viktor had succeeded with her, though Cedric found a heartbeat and made sure Harry knew he wasn't a threat before raising his wand. "Periculum." The red sparks that flashed over them marked the end of Fleur's time as a TriWizard champion.
"Cedric?" Harry asked quietly, not wanting to attract the attention of anything else in the maze. "Are you okay?"
"Fine, Harry." Cedric grimaced as he tried to stand on both of his feet, his left ankle already swollen and darkening. "I'm-"
Harry stepped forward so that he was between Cedric and the now-standing Viktor, though there was no need. Viktor stumbled back into the depths of the maze paying no mind to either Hogwarts student--whatever had forced Viktor out of control of his own body remained for the moment.
With Viktor gone, Harry went to Cedric's side without being asked. Cedric put his arm around Harry's shoulders and leaned on him as they walked on, keeping as much weight off his injury as he could.
"Thank you." Cedric said minutes later, when the silence of the maze had become too heavy to continue. "Just...thank you."
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"No one else has called to leave yet, sweets." Molly tried to reassure the worried look on Rebecca's face away. "He's doing well."
"It's not-" Rebecca shook her head, leaning away from Fred as he tried to catch her eyes in his. Fred didn't like how her eyes were flitting from one thing to another, how she was looking at what was in front of them but not seeing it. "Something's off. Something's not right. I don't-I don't know what." She was looking for what she could never see, the source of the chill running through her bones.
"It's worry." Ron tried to quell the waves of anxiety washing off her. "You're only working yourself up over nothing."
"No!" Rebecca shook her head, lowering her eyes further at her outburst. She was beginning to feel the pangs of something building in her head, something imminent. "It's not nothing."
Fred laid his hand gently on Rebecca's knee, speaking with a calm he hoped was contagious. "What do you need? What can I do?" When Rebecca met his eyes, the realisation that whatever this was was entirely real hit Fred harder than a bludger.
"I don't think there's anything we can do."
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Harry stayed by Cedric's side--or, rather the opposite considering Cedric's ankle had only slowed to a dull throb instead of a sharp agony. Their arrangement worked well considering Cedric had better instincts as to which direction they should go next and Harry's preparation had left him better meant to deal with any obstacles that arose.
"Let's take the left fork here." Cedric murmured, feeling as if he were starting to understand the maze's pattern. It wanted you to feel that you had gone a certain way too long before relenting a different way, teasing you. "Oh-"
"Is that..."
Cedric nodded. "It's the cup."
There was a shout and a flash that sent Harry and Cedric in opposite directions. Viktor appeared out of the doorway nearest to them and began to cast spells at them both again. Cedric inched forwards, keeping himself in front of Harry the best he could.
Viktor was determined, violent in his precision. One of his stuns hit Cedric in the chest and lowered the older boy to one knee as his body ignited in prickles of pain.
"Expelliarmus!" Harry cast, jumping into action. Viktor's wand flew back, out of his hand. Cedric flourished his wand from his knee, hitting Viktor with a spell strong enough to stun him into a stupor that would last this time. "Here, it's okay." Harry put his arm around Cedric and tried to help him to his feet.
They were so close, and he wanted to be the son his father always talked about so desperately, Cedric lost control of his actions. He shoved Harry to the ground and grit his teeth as he put weight onto his injured leg. Harry lunged forward, grabbing onto Cedric's shirt and pulling him back a measure to catch up. Harry was not going to be left behind, not when he, his friends, and his sister had worked as hard as they all had to make him as best as he could be.
Cedric's shirt ripped after another yank and Harry had enough of a hold to pull Cedric back and then push him to the ground, leaving him to get up on his own. Vines reached out from the bottom of the hedge wall the maze was built out of, trying to pull Cedric into the dark void underneath.
"Harry!" Cedric cried out, fear heavy in his voice. "Harry, please!"
Harry looked back and saw Cedric. There was a moment--a singular moment--he considered leaving him, but that was it. Just a moment. Maze or not, tournament or not, victory or not. Harry couldn't leave Cedric behind. "Reducto!" The light that shot out of Harry's wand severed the vines that had reached out from the hedge itself and Harry rushed to help Cedric back up before more dared to attack.
Cedric was panting, a scared look in his eyes that was fading with every second Harry didn't decide to leave him after all. "For a moment there, I thought you were going to let it get me."
Harry looked at Cedric and tried to quiet his inner thoughts of how helping Cedric was exactly what Rebecca would have done. "For a moment, so did I." Harry put Cedric's arm around his neck before either boy had the chance to say anything else. They hobbled the last distance to the TriWizard Cup and looked at it a long moment in silence.
The months, the horrible, long months of preparation, had brought them there.
"You saved me," Cedric's voice didn't waver, nor did his resolve. "Take it." A wind picked up behind them and grew in strength.
"No." Harry shook his head. Just as he knew Rebecca wouldn't have left Cedric behind, he knew that she wouldn't let Cedric or how well he had done in the events go unrecognised. "No, we do it together."
Cedric didn't argue as Harry raised his hand and looked at him expectantly to do the same.
"On three, okay?" Harry took a breath and looked into the soft blue light washing off the cup. "One, two, three!"
Both boys' hands grasped the handles of the cup at the exact moment and were immediately swept into a spinning sensation. This feeling, the sickening twisting as if the entire world had been sucked into a vortex, was not a new feeling. Not at all.
Harry and Cedric landed in identical heaps a few feet apart on the cold, damp ground of an unfamiliar place. Harry's heart sank as he scrambled to place their surroundings and found something that sent a shiver down his spine.
Above them, just as Rebecca had described to him when he had demanded to know what he hadn't told her after Harry had called Rebecca to his dreams, was the statue of an angel.
An angel with black wings.
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Rebecca knew-without-knowing the exact moment Harry had been taken out of the maze--The strength of the sharp pain that ripped through her chest forced the breath out of her lungs as she tried to remember how to inhale.
"RJ?" Fred asked loudly, grabbing her leg tightly.
"It's Harry," Rebecca shook her head, trying to shake away the throbbing that was all too similar to that which she felt before the episode at the Quidditch World Cup. "Something's happened to Harry. I don't-I don't know what it...He's hurt or-"
Fred rubbed her back as she put her head down between her knees, trying to fit everything inside of her that had come out of place back into its boxes before she was unable to.
"That's it." Molly said, standing and pulling Rebecca up beside her. "We're going to go down there right this instant." Hermione and Ron moved forwards at Molly's nod, leaving Fred and herself behind them. "What the hell is going on?"
Fred chewed at his cheek before shaking his head. "Mum, I can't possibly know if she doesn't." Fred pulled his mother to walk alongside him faster. Fred didn't like even being this small distance from Rebecca when their uncertainty climbed by the minute.
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"W-where are we?" Cedric groaned, pushing Harry off of his middle so he could breathe once more.
Harry heard Cedric's voice, but he didn't answer him. "I've been here before." The old, rundown house up on the hill...the dilapidated tombstones...everything around him told Harry that he was, in fact, in the location of the dreams he and Rebecca had had and had shared.
"Why would they make the cup a portkey?" Cedric asked as he bent down towards it, eyeing it warily. His confusion--as well as the introduction of a puzzle--had managed to distract him from his pain momentarily.
"The dreams." Harry murmured, turning and freezing as he saw the grave marker across the aisle.
Tom Riddle
1905-1943
"What are you talking about, Harry?" Cedric wondered if Harry had hit his head while they were transported. "Do you know what year it is, mate?"
Harry's answer was delayed as light poured out into the depths of the graveyard from a door to a nearby mausoleum opening. A familiar, round body stepped into the darkness and Harry's scar ignited.
The pain blinded him, sending him to the ground as the agony sent his limbs spasming. Cedric dropped to his knee instantly, trying to understand what was happening. "We've...we've got to get to the cup." Harry groaned between waves of the worst of it.
Wormtail fully exited the room of death he had been housed in for too long, a bundle in his arms filled with a skeletal infant's form inside.
Cedric put himself in front of Harry and raised his wand. "Who are you? What do you want?"
"Kill the spare." A voice rapsed venemously out of the black bundle in Wormtail's arms and the instruction was carried out without hesitation.
"Avada Kedavra!"
"No, Cedric!" Harry made his way to his knees, trying to crawl to where Cedric's body had been propelled away and lie still.
Wormtail closed the distance between he and Harry quickly, charming the winged-statue from Rebecca's dream to wrap the scythe it had been carved holding in front of Harry to trap him.
"Do it!" The bundle rapsed again. "Now!" The voice coming from the wrapping had to be Voldemort, Harry put together. This fact was made only more clear as Wormtail dropped the strange little body into the large black cauldron that settled in the dirt in front of Harry from the mausoleum.
Peter Pettigrew took a slow breath before, just as he had years earlier, making his choice. "The bone of the father, unwillingly given." Wormtail chanted, levitating a bone off of Tom Riddle's grave and dropping it into the bubbling mixture that had filled the cauldron. "Flesh of the servant, willingly sacrificed." A slight quiver entered his voice as he raised the knife hidden in his coat, hesitating momentarily before slicing his hand off with a horrible scream.
Taking a moment to cradle his bleeding stump of a wrist, Wormtail eventually continued with the ritual. He walked in front of Harry, looking at the ghost of his greatest betrayal. "Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken." Wormtail dug the knife down Harry's arm and left a gash behind, dabbing the knife's end over the cauldron so that droplets of Harry's blood dribbled in. "The Dark Lord...shall rise again."
The cauldron let out a burst of steam; the contents simmered and changed slowly from a white that grew clearer and clearer before giving way to a boiling dark red that looked like blood. Igniting entirely, the brightness of the burning cauldron forced Harry's eyes away.
When the cauldron disappeared and the flames extinguished themselves, the infantile shape that had been put into the cauldron began to morph and shift from the form of a child to that of a man.
Voldemort's new body floated to the ground, settling gently. He raised his hands up and traced them lightly over the top of his head, taking a deep, slow breath and opening his eyes as himself once more. A low chuckle escaped him as he stalked forward. "My wand, Wormtail."
Wormtail lowered his head as Voldemort approached him, holding his master's wand up over his head.
Voldemort felt a wash of power go over him at the return of his wand. "Hold out your arm."
Wormtail held his stump out, hoping for relief from the unfading agony. "T-thank you, master."
"Your other arm!" Harry watched how Wormtail flinched at the sudden change in Voldemort's tone. What had been joyous was instantly furious. "Yes, that one!"
Voldemort shoved Wormtail's dirty sleeve up over his elbow, admiring the mark he had put on his servant's arm over a decade earlier. He tapped his arm to the Dark Mark and it darkened and shimmered in Wormtail's flesh. Harry watched in horror as the same mark from the World Cup appeared in the clouds above them as masked and hooded figures began to appear in the clearing around Voldemort.
Voldemort looked over the leaders of his previous forces. "Welcome, my friends. Thirteen years it's been and yet, you stand before me as though it were only yesterday." Voldemort walked around the circle the Death Eaters made slowly. "I confess myself...disappointed. Not one of you tried to find me: Crabbe, Macnair, Goyle!" Voldemort gestured to each name in turn, stopping in front of one in particular. "Not even you, Lucius."
"My lord, had I detected any signs of your whereabouts-"
"There were signs, my slippery friend."
Harry struggled in his confines, trying to get out from underneath the stone that held him in place and failing.
"I returned." Wormtail offered petulantly. If there was one thing Peter Pettigrew hated, it was feeling as if he had been left out.
"Out of fear, not loyalty." Voldemort corrected before reconsidering. "Still, you have proved yourself useful." Voldemort flourished his wand over Wormtail's stump, creating a silver hand where flesh had been before.
"Thank you, master. I thank you-" Wormtail blubbered his thanks and flexed his new addition while Voldemort left his servant for the far more interesting subject before them.
Voldemort used his foot to push Cedric's face to the side, inspecting the loss with only a shrug. "Such a handsome boy."
"Don't touch him!" Harry shouted, his scar ebbing and flowing with a burning-heat like a dragon's breath. "Don't-"
"Harry!" Voldemort gasped. "I'd almost forgotten you were here." He looked around the graveyard, not finding what he was looking for. "And where is your mirror image--Rebecca?"
"Far from here!" Harry pushed harder against the stone. "Out of your reach, where she'll stay!"
Voldemort sneered and walked closer to Harry. "Ah, brotherly love. You'll find..." He stepped forward and put his face next to Harry's. "Nothing is out of my reach."
A Death Eater behind Voldemort coughed, reminding the newly-risen Dark Lord that he was on display once more. "The Children Who Lived." Voldemort announced as he turned back. "How lies have fed your legend. Shall I reveal what really happened that night thirteen years ago? Shall I divulge how I truly lost my powers?"
Harry felt a blossom of panic, he had no plan. He wasn't the one who was good in situations like this. It was Rebecca who noticed all the little details, who made the plan. It dawned on Harry that if he was going to get out of this, he was going to have to stay calm. He was going to have to be his own Rebecca.
"It was love." Voldemort explained. "When dear, sweet Lily and James gave their lives for their children, they provided the ultimate protection--I could not touch them. It was...old magic. Something I should have foreseen. No matter, no matter. Things have changed." Voldemort smiled before turning towards Harry and rushing back in front of him, holding a hand up above his head with one finger extended towards Harry.
"I can touch you now." Voldemort lay his finger against the lightning bolt of his own creation and sent Harry's scream out into the night.
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In the tent off the champions' entrances to the maze, the tension had only risen. Rebecca continued to feel an emptiness in her chest that she couldn't explain, that worried her tremendously. But, worse than that, her scar had begun to hurt horribly.
Fred had yet to leave her side, and he only barely caught her from falling off the seat beside him when she went limp. "Rebecca?" Fred called loudly, turning her face to the light before turning her onto her side. "Mum!"
Rebecca began to jerk and writhe, her body spasming violently. She pounded her fist into the ground, breaking the skin without noticing. Her other hand held her scar tightly, trying to quell the fire that had gone off behind her eyes. Through the pain, she began to see things that made sense only in the depths of her consciousness.
As quickly as it began, she stopped.
Molly gasped as Rebecca's eyes opened and stared at the tent's ceiling, the words Rebecca said filling the room with fear. "It's him. Voldemort. He's back."
Fred moved where indecision and stillness took the others, moving his hands from Rebecca's shoulders where he'd tried to keep her from slamming her head in her fit to cupping her cheeks and running thumbs over her skin softly. He leaned down and whispered calmness, trying to gauge whether that had been a result of something from Harry or a premonition.
"He's back." Rebecca said intermittently, usually right after her scar hurt worse a moment or a strange flash of emotion shot through her--emotion that wasn't hers. "He's back, Fred. Voldemort's back."
"How do you know, love?" Fred whispered. He got no answer, Rebecca hadn't heard him.
As if someone were talking to her from another room, or from very, very far away, Rebecca heard bits and pieces of the conversation in the graveyard.
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