Vengeance| Harry Potter

twenty. the tale of the jugsons

-CHAPTER TWENTY-
~the tale of the jugsons~

VIOLA JUGSON WAS no stranger to fear. She was used to the overwhelming arms of terror that wrapped themselves around its victims and refused to let them go. Used to the shivers down the spine, the pounding heart, the shaking limbs that came with the emptiness of the brain that wasn't sure how to react to those arms.

But what she wasn't used to was this. The feeling in her heart like she had just missed the bottom stair; that mini heart attack feeling— but multiplied by tenfold and, unlike other times, not going away, not giving her heart any time to calm down. The arms were suffocating her, holding her harder than they had ever held her before, pressing hard against her skin to the point of it being sore.

She was sure she would have already fallen down to the ground, for it felt like her bones were mere jelly now, if it weren't for the fact that she was tied so tightly to the headstone. The arms of fear had trapped her, but wouldn't hold her; if she fell down, she was taking them with her, but not even the impact of hitting the ground would loosen them.

The arms held her tightly as she watched Voldemort begin examining his new body. The man who brought him back was lying on the ground a few feet over, clutching his new stump of an arm. The giant snake was still circling underneath Harry and Viola.

Voldemort reached into the pocket of his robe and pulled out a wand. He pointed it at the man on the ground; he was lifted into the air and thrown against Harry and Viola's headstone. Viola winced as much as she could, tightly tied up, as Voldemort laughed a cold laugh.

"My Lord..." choked the man, "my Lord... you promised... you did promise..."

"Hold out your arm," said Voldemort.

"Oh Master... thank you, Master..." He extended his bleeding stump.

"The other arm, Wormtail," hissed Voldemort.

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

Voldemort bent down and took the man— Wormtail's— left arm. He pulled up his left sleeve and Viola caught a glimpse of a red tattoo, there on Wormtail's arm: a skull with a snake coming out of its mouth. The Dark Mark, like the one that had been in the sky during the Quidditch Cup.

Voldemort examined it closely, ignoring the desperate weeping from Wormtail.

"It is back," said Voldemort softly, "they will all have noticed it... and now, we shall see... now we shall know..." He touched the tattoo and Wormtail screamed. When Voldemort stepped back from him, Viola noticed the tattoo was now black.

Voldemort looked around the graveyard. "How many will be brave enough to return when they feel it?" he proclaimed quietly to the empty space. "And how many will be foolish enough to stay away?"

After a few moments of pacing, he walked over to Harry and Viola's stone. Viola had never known anything to be more terrifying than looking Lord Voldemort dead in the eye. Never in a million years would she have thought it would happen... Still, even as she did, it didn't feel real. They were scarlet, unnervingly like a snake's. There was no warmth— any trace of that had disappeared years ago.