ROTBTD: Hogwarts

Chapter Fourteen: The Death Eaters

The other three were in shock. Merida had just jumped forward and been carried away. Where had she gone? What would she meet? Would Harry be okay? Cedric? How had Merida known? Why would Moody turn the Triwizard Cup into a Portkey?

"We have to tell someone," said Hiccup with a dry mouth.

"And explain that we broke into the maze?" squeaked Rapunzel.

"I'd rather us expelled than Merida dead," said Jack grimly.

"Let's go," said Hiccup. Toothless led the way. The footsteps behind him suddenly became faint, then vanished. Hiccup turned. The others were gone. "Great," he groaned.

Toothless led him outside the maze, but he didn't want to go tell the professors about Merida without them. Rapunzel was lost. She had glanced away when Toothless took them past a crucial turn, and missed where the other two went. Jack had followed them, but backtracked to find Rapunzel, only to discover that she had wandered off.

This was going to take a while.

Voldemort took his eyes off Harry, then examined how own body and his wand. To test his wand, he threw Wormtail into the headstone that Harry was tied to and that Merida hid behind. Merida's mind was racing. Now that Voldemort had a body, could she fire a well-aimed arrow and save Harry? Something told her it wouldn't be that easy.

"My Lord..." Wormtail choked, "my Lord... you promised... you did promise..."

"Hold out your arm," said Voldemort carelessly.

"Oh, Master... thank you, Master..."

Voldemort laughed as Wormtail offered his right arm.

"The other arm, Wormtail."

"Master, please... please..."

Voldemort grabbed Pettigrew's left arm, twisted it over, and forced up the sleeve. Merida noticed a mark on Wormtail's arm, a picture of a skull with a snake in its mouth. Merida recognized it from something Rapunzel had said: the Dark Mark, the symbol of Voldemort, who whispered, "It is back. They will all have noticed it... and now, we shall see ... now we shall know..."

He pressed his finger to the mark, which burned. Wormtail howled, and Harry cried out. Merida was petrified. With a look of satisfation, Voldemort straighted and looked around the graveyard. "How many will be brave enought to return when they feel it?" he said quietly. "And how many will be foolish enough to stay away?"

Merida suddenly realized what was happening. She dropped her bow close to the stone and drew her robes to cover herself. The black of the robes would hide her in the shadow of the headstone. She heard Voldemort say, "You stand, Harry potter, upon the remains of my late father. A Muggle and a fool... very like your dear mother."

Merida felt a surge of anger. Her own mother was a Muggle, as was her father. Her grandmother had been a witch, and that was why she was half-blood instead of Muggle-born.

"But they both had their uses, did they not?" continued Voldemort. "Your mother died to defend you as a child... and I killed my father, and see how useful he has proved himself in death..."

He laughed again, then continued, "You see that house upon the hillside, Potter? 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...

"He left her and returned to his Muggle parents before I was even born, Potter, and she died giving birth to me, leaving me to be raised in a Muggle orphanage... but I vowed to find him... I revenged myself upon him, that fool who gave me his name... Tom Riddle...