Harry Potter and the Serpent Slayer

Chapter 17: Voldemort

Wounded, half-blind and nauseous from the pain, Harry could barely register anything happening around him. Voldemort and Wormtail's voices were muffled as he tried to get a grasp on his situation. Voldemort was returned to full strength, Cedric was dead, Harry's eye was probably missing and he was trapped with no way to escape.

He was vaguely aware of Voldemort's presence, how he swept across the graveyard with his black robes billowing behind him. "You stand... Harry Potter, above the remains of my father," said Voldemort. "A Muggle and a fool, just like your mother. But they both had 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 proven himself in death."

Harry gritted his teeth and clenched his muscles, trying to force his way out of the binding spell he was trapped in but without success. Voldemort laughed.

"You see that house on the hill, Potter?" he continued. "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- "

"Am I... supposed to care about your stupid story?" Harry hissed out with a gasp.

"Ah but you see, you will come to find that you and I are not so different," said Voldemort.

"We're nothing alike," snarled Harry.

Voldemort laughed again. "Oh Harry, you still have so much to learn about me- and by extension, yourself," he said condescendingly. "You and I are both half-bloods, orphans who have never felt love. Destiny has made us into what we are. No family, no friends- but ah! My true family returns!"

The air was full of the sound of swishing cloaks and small popping sounds of other Apparating into the graveyard. Hooded and masked figures appeared, dozens of them from what Harry could see. They stalked forward until they surrounded Harry and Voldemort. Voldemort waited silently; his red eyes gleaming like a viper's as it watched its prey approach them. One of the Death Eaters walked forward, falling to his knees and kissed the hem of Voldemort's robes. "My Master..." he whispered.

One by one, the other Death Eaters followed the first's example before returning to their places. Voldemort looked pleased by the display of reverence from his followers, though Harry simply rolled his one good eye in annoyance.

"Welcome... Death Eaters..." said Voldemort proudly. "Thirteen years... thirteen years it has been and yet you answer my call as if it was only yesterday. We are still united under the Dark Mark after all! Or are we?"

"I smell guilt," he continued, "there is a stench of guilt in the air."

Harry again drowned out Voldemort's monologuing as he tried to use his enemy's distracted state to try and free himself again. Come on Harry, you can do this, he thought to himself angrily. His body tensed again as he tried to will himself to move. His right arm twitched a little, then his leg. Harry let out a silent snarl, prompting some of the Death Eaters to look his way for only a second before their attention returned to their master again. Harry had to get out of here. If he stayed, he was going to be as dead as Cedric. I won't get to see Cho again, he thought.

That thought was what motivated Harry to keep trying, and he jerked his right arm free. It flailed in the air for a moment, but he'd unfortunately caught Voldemort's attention again.

"Such determination," he said, as if he were a proud parent. "I know what you are all thinking. 'How did the Dark Lord return?' Well, it begins and ends with my honoured guest here, the famous Harry Potter."

"You all know that on the night I lost my powers and my body, I tried to kill him. His mother died in the attempt to save him- and unwittingly provided him protection that I admittedly had not foreseen... I could not touch the boy."