A Tale of a Tale: Origin Story

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Voldemort looked away from them and began examining his own body. His hands were 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 the great snake, which had slithered back into sight and was encircling them 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 they were bound; 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 robes were shining with blood now; he had wrapped his stump in them.

"My lord," he choked fearfully, "my L-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 Josephine saw something upon the skin there, something like a vivid red tattoo, a skull with a snake protruding from its mouth, the image the had appeared in the sky at the Quidditch World Cup; the Dark Mark.

Josephine's eyes sought Cedric out again. He still laid motionlessly on the ground.

Her eyes stung with tears that threatened to fall once more.

Voldemort examined the Mark 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.

Wormtail let out a fresh howl of mainly Voldemort removed his fingers from Wormtail's marks, and Josephine 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.

"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?"

She hoped all of them would, but she knew better. Every wizard that marched on at the Cup would surely come to Voldemort's summoning.

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

"You stand upon the remains of my late father," he hissed softly. "Your great-grandfather. A muggle and a fool...very much like your dear mother." his eyes were on Harry when he said that. "But they both their uses, did they not? Your mother died to defend you as a child...and I killed my father, and see how useful he has proved himself, in death."

Voldemort laughed again. Up and down, he paced, looking all around him as he walked, and the snake continued to circle in the grass.

"You see that house upon the hillside? My father lived there. My mother, a witch who lived here in this village, fell in love with him. But he abandoned her when she told him what she was. He didn't like magic, my father."

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