An Earth-Shattering Event - Part 1
Hadrian stood anxiously off to the side of the main ritual as Barty ran around preparing everything for his Lords return. The notes on the ritual in the book had been extensive, and as such, Barty had much to prepare for.
On top of the main ritual, they had to first perform a ritual to remove his Lords remaining soul fragment from Hadrian’s body first. They could just chuck Hadrian in the cauldron but that would mean Hadrian would cease to be, which wasn’t exactly what they were aiming for. So instead, Barty had gone through the painstaking process of researching to find a way to remove a piece of soul from its container.
Turns out, for some reason, many centuries ago, someone had tried inventing a spell that would replicate the abilities of a dementors kiss. Unfortunately for their purposes, they had found that the performer of the spell had to have some kind of magical connection to the persons soul they were trying to remove, otherwise nothing happened. The project had been scrapped but was perfect for what they required.
While the small piece of his Lord’s magic that was imbued in his Dark Mark was not enough to supply the main ritual, it was enough of a connection for Barty to be able to remove his Lords, and only his Lords soul from Hadrian’s body.
Barty finished the last carvings of the ritual circle into the earth around the cauldron. He stood and went to check on the bubbling cauldron, while it smelled foul, it was the correct colour and texture. He walked over to Hadrian who was still standing off to the side, holding blankets and towels for his Lord when he came out of the cauldron.
Hadrian relinquished the items he carried to Barty when he reached for them and watched as he turned and set them down to the side before returning,
“Are you ready?” Barty asked, still sceptical about the success of the ritual with his doubts about Hadrian and his motives.
Hadrian nodded in response, he was determined that this ritual be a success, he knew he did truly regret his killing of Tom and he was ready to do what it takes to being him back and ensure his revenge.
Barty stood in front of him and began waving his hands in complicated patterns and muttering the incantation under his breath, too quiet for Hadrian to hear.
According to Barty, the soul extraction spell was easy enough to perform without a wand and his lack of one wasn’t going to be an issue.
Hadrian felt a faint tugging inside of him, it felt like Barty was extracting a piece of him, not Tom. He restrained himself from trying to hold onto it, letting it go despite the fact it left behind a feeling of absence, as if something important was gone.
Hadrian realised he had closed his eyes at some point without realising and immediately opened them to see a dark grey almost smoke cloud, except with more substance and shape. It was a dark grey struck through with streaks of lighter grey and was in a long drawn out shape.
Hadrian instinctively reached out for it, and as if with a mind of its own, it reached out itself. Upon contact, a bit of the absent feeling disappeared, Hadrian wrapped it around his shoulders like a snake unconsciously seeking further comfort from it.
Barty watched the whole interaction in silence, if he had needed anything further to prove the destiny of his Lords, he now had it. He knew they were meant to be together. Hadrian should have rejected the foreign presence and welcomed its removal, but instead he seemed to be reacting quite the opposite.
With the horcrux now removed they moved to proceed with the main ritual. Thankfully, the potion component apparently did not need to be completed by the killer, only the performance of the ritual, so Hadrian had been saved from the potions. He had not improved in any way shape or form since school and all but abandoned the art.
Barty now collected the blankets and towels and stood off to the side ready to step in when he was needed.
Barty had discovered that Wormtail had added the servants sacrifice to the ritual in return to try and counterbalance all the other changes he had made. Why he had thought this was a viable solution to the many problems he had caused through his many changes, not even Merlin knew. Wormtail’s idiocy aside, Barty was just glad he wasn’t going to be returning to the manor sans-hand by the end of the night.
Hadrian took a deep breath and then began the ritual. Barty had taught him a chant in a language he didn’t know and honestly, he didn’t know what it meant either. All he knew was that apparently it was supposed to activate the potion.
As he finished the chant, he saw the potion flicker briefly before settling on a blueish-grey colour.
With this, he slowly reached for the smoke-like soul around his shoulders. He lightly coerced it into moving from around his shoulders to curl around his forearm. He gently removed it from himself, it seemed reluctant and honestly Hadrian felt the same.
When he finally had it freed from his person, he dropped it in the cauldron.
“Bone of the father, unknowingly taken.” He recited, according to Barty it was to provide extra connection to the physical world. Apparently, the little phrases on the ends were interchangeable, it was just to identify to the magic of the ritual what was happening and ensure it was an honest and true ritual.
“Blood of the enemy, willingly bestowed as recompense for a mistake made.” Hadrian cut a slit in his forearm and let 10 drops of blood fall into the cauldron.
The potion was now supposed to start bubbling and there was supposed to be no further input needed by them, yet nothing was happening. Hadrian went to turn and ask Barty what to do when he felt compelled to continue,
“I, Hadrian Charlus Potter, forgive Tom Marvolo Riddle’s actions upon this world and hope that they will forgive mine in removing them from it.”
At this potion began to bubble as expected and seemed like it would soon overflow, yet when it reached the rim of the cauldron, it continued upwards, making a funnel of sorts above the cauldron of swirling, bubbling potion.
As the swirling increased, it began to resemble a whirlpool. Hadrian could see something forming in the potion through the gaps in the whirlpool provided by the bubbles.
The swirling continued for about a minute before it suddenly froze and discovered gravity again. It all fell, including the development in the centre, back down into the cauldron. The potion mostly sloshed over the sides and onto the grass and revealed Hadrian’s first look at the Dark Lord he had just resurrected.
He was facing away from Hadrian, which meant the first thing he saw was potion-covered hair. Hair! Well, they had certainly at least improved on something. It appeared that, while not a skeleton, he did not have much meat on his bones though.
His assessments were interrupted by Barty almost falling over himself to rush forward with the towels and blankets. He dumped the blankets a safe distance from the still splashing potion and came forward with the towels.
“My lord.” was the first thing out of Barty’s mouth. He was astounded it had worked; he had been doubting the rituals success until he had seen his Lord. For the first time in over a year, but even longer since he had seen him like this, whole, human.
The recently resurrected Dark Lord turned to Barty, who immediately reached out a hand.
“Take my hand, my Lord.”
Voldemort did so and Barty helped him step out of the cauldron, he seemed weak on his feet. Barty handed him a towel while he kept one for himself and immediately began towelling his Lord down, trying to remove the excess potion from his body, it truly was a horrible concoction in both scent and texture, no one would want to stand in it for long.
The Dark Lord seemed to be slow at processing and simply held the towel he had been given to his chest. Seeing this Barty reached for it and took it back before putting it over his Lords shoulders to stop his hair dripping potion onto his recently dried body.
Barty flicked the towel up so it was still sitting around his Lords shoulders but also over his head so Barty could retrieve the blankets and wrap them around his Lord, before returning the towel to its original position of over the top of the blankets to still catch the drops still coming from his hair.
Barty ran for the wooden box he had had set to the side before the ritual. He opened it to reveal, vials and vials of wispy white memories. He took out the tray of memories to reveal the tray below. He removed the potion he was looking for and turned back to his Lord.
“Here my Lord, a wit-sharpening potion. This will bring you around quicker. I promise my Lord.”
Even his state of delirium the Dark Lord looked untrustingly at the potion, glancing back at Barty, before reaching for it, uncorking it, and swallowing it in one gulp.
It still took a minute or two but eventually he seemed to recover from his confusion. He looked up at Barty before speaking
“Where are they Barty?” he rasped
“Here my Lord” Barty said handing over the tray of memories.
Hadrian then watched the Dark Lord consumed the memories contained in the vials for the next 10 minutes. Barty had explained that as a contingency plan in the case of him ever being obliviated or for whatever reason having trouble with his memory, his Lord had kept a store of memories of every important event he needed to remember.
Barty had also explained that unlike just viewing a memory, consuming them resulted in them ingraining them in your mind a long side your real memories, it became impossible to differentiate between the consumed memories and experienced memories.
Again, according to Barty, the horcrux retained all memories from before its separation from the main part of the soul, so despite the fact it seemed he was drinking a lot of memories, it could have been a lot more.
The Dark Lord managed to get through all the memories in a minute or so but then spent almost 10 just sitting on the grass staring into space, his facial expressions seeming to change with the winds, a million a minute. Hadrian turned questioningly to Barty who just replied quietly with,
“He needs time to acclimatise to his new memories. The last thing he remembers is casting the killing curse and then blackness, and as you well know they are an eventful few years that he’s just found out about.”
Hadrian nodded in return, he wasn’t impatient, he could wait.
Voldemort seemed to come round again after a few minutes and stood, his legs seeming to shake lightly. Barty rushed forward to help him and started to lead him up to the manor. As they passed Hadrian the Dark Lord stopped to turn and look at him. He didn’t say anything, merely staring, before seeming to have looked his fill and turned back to the path to continue.
Hadrian stayed in the graveyard a while, he vanished the contents of the cauldron and collected Barty’s forgotten box of potions. He levitated the large cauldron behind him as he turned to make his own way up.
As impeded as they were with the apparent weakness of Voldemort’s new body, Hadrian soon could see them as they continued towards the manor further up the path. It was clear they were conversing about something, but he was still too far away to make out what they were saying.
The path back to the manor was long and a good journey for reflection. Hadrian did not regret his actions, but he was beginning to question the power he held in this relationship. With just Barty, he had held the upper hand, Barty had needed him to bring back Voldemort, but with the ritual, there was no longer anything he had over either Barty or Voldemort, they could easily just ditch him or worse send Dumbles after him.
Hadrian needed some leverage and fast, while he was all for most of Voldemort’s plans, that was after all the reason he had brought him back, to reign terror on those who had betrayed him, yet he did have some conditions and he knew they wouldn’t be even considered without anything to make his feelings and positions relevant to the Dark Lord.
Hadrian couldn’t scheme right now though, with all the adrenaline that had been pumping through him for the ritual now dissipating, he was left exhausted. His thoughts turned to his friends. He had decided to reach out to Luna, he needed to know if he still had some friends amongst the Wizarding World. If it proved successful… well Hadrian didn’t want to get his hopes up. Nothing was confirmed until he got a response.
He would send the letter tomorrow he decided, no use in putting it off any longer. He also didn’t feel he would have a lot of free time for a while, with a still questionably sane Dark Lord sharing his place of rest, who knew what was going to happen in the weeks to come.
He caught up to Voldy and Barty when they reached the manor. Barty pushed the front doors open and continued to lead the Dark Lord upstairs. Hadrian stood at the foot of the staircase staring up as they disappeared further into the manor.
He didn’t know what would happen from here. He had taken a major risk, and it could go either which way. All he knew was that he would continue to take risks, reaching out to possible friends or enemies, relying on a Dark Lord and his devoted follower, anything to ensure his vengeance on those who had betrayed and wronged him.