𝐑𝐄𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐒-ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕣𝕪 ℙ𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕣❥

𝐆𝐎𝐅 𝟑𝟎

Voldemort looked away from Harry and began examining his own body.

His hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cats, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness. He held up his hands and flexed the fingers, his expression rapt and exultant. He took not the slightest notice of Wormtail, who lay twitching and bleeding on the ground, nor of the great snake, which had slithered back into sight and was circling Harry again, hissing.

Voldemort slipped one of those unnaturally long-fingered hands into a deep pocket and drew out a wand. He caressed it gently too; and then he raised it, and pointed it at Wormtail, who was lifted off the ground and thrown against the headstone where Harry was tied; he fell to the foot of it and lay there, crumpled up and crying. Voldemort turned his scarlet eyes upon Harry, laughing a high, cold, mirthless laugh.

Wormtail's robes were shining with blood now; he had wrapped the stump of his arm in them.

"My Lord . . ." he choked, "my Lord . . . you promised . . . you did promise ..." "Hold out your arm," said Voldemort lazily.

"Oh Master . . . thank you, Master ..."
He extended the bleeding stump, but Voldemort laughed again.

"The other arm, Wormtail." "Master, please . . .please ..."

Voldemort bent down and pulled out Wormtail's left arm; he forced the sleeve of Wormtail's robes up past his elbow, and Harry saw something upon the skin there, something like a vivid red tattoo - a skull with a snake protruding from its mouth - the image that had appeared in the sky at the Quidditch World Cup: the Dark Mark. Voldemort examined it carefully, ignoring Wormtail's uncontrollable weeping.

"It is back," he said softly, "they will all have noticed it... and now, we shall see ... now we shall know ..."

He pressed his long white forefinger to the brand on Wormtail's arm.

The scar on Harry's forehead seared with a sharp pain again, and Wormtail let out a fresh howl; Voldemort removed his fingers from Wormtail's mark, and Harry saw that it had turned jet black.

A look of cruel satisfaction on his face, Voldemort straightened up, threw back his head, and stared around at the dark graveyard.

Harry looked over and saw Emily stirring, her face paler than he had ever seen it. He had seen her go sick in first year, but this... this was different. Her skin looked almost translucent, like he could see the faint pulse of blood beneath it. Her wide eyes darted around, every muscle in her body taut with fear, yet they kept finding his, seeking some reassurance.

She moved slowly, cautiously, as if the very air around her could betray her. Her steps around the gravestone were deliberate, small, careful, every motion measured to avoid drawing the Dark Lord's attention. Voldemort's gaze lingered in the shadows, cold and unyielding, but it was Harry's eyes that anchored her, the only thing keeping her from freezing entirely in terror.

A shiver ran down her spine as she edged further from the looming figure, her hands trembling slightly, but her eyes never left Harry's. Even in that moment of sheer vulnerability, there was a trace of defiance there—a quiet, desperate determination to survive.

"How many will be brave enough to return when they feel it?" he whispered, his gleaming red eyes fixed upon the stars. "And how many will be foolish enough to stay away?"

He began to pace up and down before Harry and Wormtail, eyes sweeping the graveyard all the while. After a minute or so, he looked down at Harry again, a cruel smile twisting his snakelike face.