The Inner Workings of a Resurection
Barty and Harry slowly sat down opposite each other with the book laid out between them. How exactly was one expected to handle a situation like this? There wasn’t any book on Awkward Situations with your would-be-murder’s followers for Dummies was there? Barty took a cushy looking armchair that had already been at the table, presumably the one he had been using whilst doing his research in the past year or so. Harry dragged a less cushioned chair from around the other side of the table and sat down.
“So, you say that we have met all the circumstantial parameters, yes?” Harry started. Barty looked like he wanted to again refute Harry’s reasonings but instead just nodded.
“Yes, there is much that went wrong last time, lending to the absolute horrendous results that we got. To prevent that we need to follow the ritual exactly, word for word, and hope to Merlin that it works.”
“Okay,” Harry reasoned “So I would say the best way to do this is to go through what went wrong, ensure we have made some kind of amendment to ensure it does not happen again, then we can focus on procuring the ingredients and materials needed.” Barty nodded along to this statement, slightly surprised as to the educated decision the kid made. From what he remembered from teaching him, he was constantly being belittled by that bushy haired girl for not knowing anything and considering how little he volunteered for answers in class, he had assumed she was right. Barty drew himself out of his thoughts and pulled the book towards him as well as retrieving a piece of parchment from his cloak pocket.
“These are all the discrepancies I could find between the original ritual and the one Wormtail handed me.” Barty said handing over the piece of parchment while he continued to look over the book.
Harry took the parchment from him warily; you could never know what was cursed and what wasn’t. He went through, most were things he’d already seen, the willingness of the murderer to take back their actions, the need for a piece of Voldemort that was still in the land of the living. He had no idea what that homunculus thing was, but it certainly didn’t look like a horcrux, though he supposed it could have passed for Voldemort’s child, when you look like that, the offspring is never going to turn out well. Eww, he can’t believe he was just thinking about Voldemort’s offspring. There were also other things on the list though that he hadn’t picked up or just didn’t make any sense, at one point in the list the word Date was just written as its own point. What did the date have to do with anything? The original ritual didn’t say anything about being performed on a certain date. Did it mean like on a full moon or something?
“What’s this for?” He asked Barty, indicating the word don the parchment.
“Oh, that’s because of the date.” He replied, as if that explained everything. Harry sent his best ‘yeah no shit’ look. The message seemed to get across.
“Like as in the ritual was performed on the 24th of June.” Barty said.
“Yeah and…?” Harry prompted.
“The 24th of June? As in three days after Litha? It could not have been a worse date.”
“I still don’t understand what date had to do with it? What’s the difference? A date’s a date. And also what’s Litha?”
Barty seemed to be extremely annoyed at his response.
“That’s like asking what the difference is between receiving Christmas presents…” the word Christmas seemed to be pronounced with distaste. “on Dxecember 20th rather than December 25th. Dates have meaning. June 21st was the summer solstice, the peak of the suns path through the sky. It’s the strongest day of the solar current and also marks the turning point of the sky. There is no greater day to perform this ritual excepting maybe Samhain, except in this case Litha is better suited as this ritual is all about the turning point, the turning point where someone realises their mistakes and rectifies them. Litha is also gentle and will help ease the transition for my Lord as well as assist in his strength. By performing the ritual on the 24th, three days after, the sun was on the decline, a bad omen to the rituals success. It harmed my Lord more than necessary and meant that the ‘turning point’ was not amplified, instead the decline was, hence the results.”
While Barty’s comparison to Christmas helped, he still didn’t understand why it would matter so much. Yeah, it would be weird to get your Christmas presents on the wrong day, but it wouldn’t really change anything.
There were other points on the list that he hadn’t thought of, mainly because he hadn’t actually got to read the entirety of the ritual instructions and ingredients very well before he was attacked. One of the ingredients in need of replacement was ‘The blood of the enemy, willingly given’. That made more sense given the rituals context than what had actually happened. He supposed the ‘enemy’ referred to the murderer.
While he was thinking about this, on the edge of his consciousness he was registering Barty muttering about kids these days and no one celebrating holidays anymore. He celebrated holidays! Whatever this Litha thing he mentioned was, it certainly wasn’t a holiday he had ever heard of. He knew of some pureblood families that celebrated Yule instead of Christmas. Was it like that? But what holiday would Litha stand in for? There was no holiday even remotely close to June.
Anyway, Harry finished reading through the list, most of the rest of the stuff listed just seemed like Wormtail had just written some of the ingredients wrong, like one note said ‘Replace Eye of Newt with Eye of Acromantula’ That didn’t bode well. How were they going to get the eye of an acromantula? Cause he certainly was going to go get it himself, not after Aragog.
“I think you have everything; I can’t think of anything else.” Harry told Barty, who looked up in surprise before his smile slipped back on.
“Great, thanks precious. I’ll see about getting everything we need; you just work on feeling guilty and regretting killing my Lord and then we’ll be all set.”
“Don’t call me precious or darling or sweetheart or anything else. My name is Harry, use it.”
Barty scoffed in response.
“Your name is not Harry.” He said, looking for all the world like he wasn’t joking.
“I’m pretty sure I would know my own name better than some crazy who was locked up in prison for most of my life and then held under a mind-altering spell for the rest of it.” Hadrian said, he wasn’t going to let Barty play his little games with him, he’d read all about what he did, how he lured muggles into traps with his pretty lies and then slaughtered them all for fun.
“No, I remember the day you were born, it was announced in the births section of the Daily Prophet, Hadrian Charlus Potter. I remember it clear as day, Narcissa was so excited to have a new member in the family, even distantly. James had started accepting our invitations to socials again, it seemed like we finally were getting through to him, even with that harpy he called a wife, but then all that mess with the prophecy happened and now here we are. Don’t know why you started using that ridiculous nickname though. It’s just so plebian.”
“What the hell are you talking about you crazy Death Eater! My father was a good man and so was my mother, they would have never joined you scum of the earth!” Hadrian exclaimed standing up and reaching for his wand before he even knew what he was doing.
As soon as he reached his wand though he paused, what the hell was he doing? He needed to calm down. This wasn’t him anymore. He had worked so hard to contain his anger. Gone to so many muggle anger management classes. He needed to remember that he didn’t care that much, sure they were his parents but realistically he barely knew them, only from word of mouth and other’s memories, it wasn’t really enough to make him react that badly to them being insulted. It was just leftovers of Dumbledores manipulations that his therapist had identified. His therapist, sworn to secrecy of course, had thought he seemed to be regurgitating most of his thoughts and didn’t seem to be thinking for himself. That’s when Hadrian had started healing his thought processes away from Dumbledore. It had worked, sort of. Realistically he knew he hadn’t really healed all his anger like he had told his therapist, he’d just transferred it to its rightful place. Directed at Dumbledore.
Barty seemed frozen in his seat, why didn’t he just defend himself already? This was the second time Hadrian had pulled his wand on him and he had yet to defend himself. That’s when Hadrian realised something, he must not have a wand. His would have been seized when he was captured at Hogwarts and Hadrian doubted he would have risked his escape for it . If you didn’t have a wand right now and you couldn’t just buy one for whatever reason, in this case the fact that you were a supposedly deceased criminal, then you were fucked. Ollivander was the only wand maker in all of Britain, and right now all the other countries were freezing out all Brits because they didn’t want to risk the few Death Eaters still at large migrating to their countries after Voldemort’s demise.
Barty was basically all but defenceless. The power Hadrian held over him should have scarred Hadrian, he should have immediately eased his fears and put away his wand, but all he could think about was the fact that he was enjoying this feeling, another being completely at his whim. No, that was wrong, what was he thinking. He wiped a smirk he hadn’t realised he was making off his face, but not before Barty saw, and instead of being afraid like he should be Barty smirked himself.
Oh he was wrong about this one. In his forth year he had been influenced by others around him. Hadrian had been weak, hardly worth noting except for his importance to Barty’s Lord. But oh, this little boy, this little boy could grow into a beautiful lord for him and everyone else, with the right guidance, and assistance form his Lord, Hadrian Potter could turn into someone worthy of his master. A rightful partner, one powerful and dark enough to fulfill his Lords wildest dreams. There was nothing that made him feel better then serving his Lord, it was what he was meant to do, and if he could play this right, he could get two Lords to serve.
“We’ll perform the ritual on this Litha.” Barty said, not letting his inner machinations show. “It will still be June 21st, by then we should have everything we will need. It’s the closest major holiday as well as the previously mentioned auspiciousness of that day for this ritual in particular.”
“Okay, that’s what? A month and 20 days away, that will work.” Said Hadrian thoughtfully, still lost thinking about the ritual and the fact he was actually going to bring Voldy back.
“That’s enough for today though,” Hadrian continued “We will continue with this later tomorrow.” With that Hadrian went upstairs, not waiting for Barty to follow. He remembered one of the bedrooms had seemed more aired out then the others, Barty must be using that room, it was one of the spares.
Hadrian walked straight into the master suite; he hadn’t really gotten a good look at it when he had breezed through earlier. It had a living room looking area as soon as you walked in. It was a round room with cream walls and a fireplace surrounded by some comfy looking chairs and lounges.
There were three doors leading off to what was presumably the bedroom, the bathroom and something else. Hadrian entered the first door on the left and found quite the master bedroom. The colour scheme was a lot brighter than what he would have expected from old Voldy. The walls were the same cream as the previous room, the absolutely massive bed was a four-poster wooden bed that was painted a slightly darker cream than the walls. The duvet was that same green from all the carpets again, if he had to put a name to it, it was probably mint green, the pillows were a matching shade while the sheets looked to be either very light silver or white. Hadrian was exhausted, not that he’d show Barty that, and decided to forgo exploring the bathroom and the mystery room for now just so he could take a nap.
The midday sun was streaming through the huge window that took up most of the outside wall, Merlin it wasn’t even afternoon yet, Hadrian felt like he’d been awake for days. Yet, as beautiful as the sun was, it was too bright to sleep through. Hadrian just waved his hand, too lazy to use his wand that he’d dropped on one of the bedside tables. The curtains quickly closed thanks to his wandless magic, and he was asleep soon after.
Barty, still standing outside the master suite, having followed Hadrian up the stairs was greatly pleased by Hadrian’s immediate entrance and claiming of the master suite without even asking. Hadrian was asserting himself as the lord of the house, that was as good a first step as any, even if it was probably done subconsciously. He would let Hadrian assert himself in his own ways first, assess his natural abilities and if he was truly right for his Lord, and if he was, like he suspected Hadrian was, then then he would begin slowly nudging him in the right directions for a Dark Lord to go. He would ensure that Hadrian was as ready for his Lords resurrection as he could be. He’d make a Dark Lord of him yet.