Awakening || Harry & Hermione

Chapter 10.2

"What happened?" Harry didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "What happened is that the Triwizard Cup was a portkey that transported me to the graveyard Voldemort chose as his site of resurrection."

There were gasps in the crowd and Fudge exclaimed: "Preposterous!"

"What happened is that my blood was used to create his new body. Do you know what that means, Headmaster?" Harry asked. "I was tortured with the Cruciatus while his horde of Death Eaters laughed. How did so many of them escape Azkaban, I wonder, Minister?"

"The boy isn't in his right mind, Dumbledore."

Dumbledore was silent. Unmoving.

"It could have all been avoided, you know." Harry stared at the man he had once so respected with red eyes, trembling with resentment and a bone aching sadness. "If one of you had simply decided that putting a fourteen year old boy into a death tournament was wrong. If my life was worth more than being bait. Instead you gave Voldemort everything he wanted on a silver platter. A lamb for slaughter." His voice shook as he remembered lying there, limp on the ground, and Hermione squeezed his hand tightly.

He glanced over at Moody's unconscious form and laughed hysterically. "You don't need to believe me. You'll know soon enough."

And so they did.

The crowd around him grew louder and chaotic as they watched Alastor Moody twitch and convulse and transform into...

"Barty Crouch!" Fudge exclaimed. "What in the world is he doing here?"

Dumbledore stepped forward with fury in his eyes and started barking orders to Professor McGonagall and Snape. The crowd around them had grown even larger, more people wearing the Ministry's insignia surrounding them. Fudge was no longer bumbling about and seemed a bit pressured as his contemporaries, especially a woman with a hawk like nose and silver streaked hair, started questioning him.

All of it was no concern to Harry. His vision was growing blurry again, his head dizzy. The smallest of triggers—a blonde head here, beady little eyes there—brought back the memories of the graveyard and the reality of what he had done. What he had become.

Murderer. The wind of that evening seemed to whisper to him.

Harry let go of Hermione and retched into the grass, emptying his stomach until there was nothing left, but the sickening pit inside him only grew.

He was dirty and bloody and bruised. "I'm filthy," he said, pushing Hermione's hand away as she tried to wipe his face with a handkerchief and patted his back soothingly.

The only response he received was a teary, "Oh, Harry," before he was pulled back into her arms.

He stayed there as Dumbledore, looking more enraged than Harry had ever seen him, questioned Barty Junior under Veritaserum. As the death eater exposed how he had cheated Azkaban, how he had put Harry's name in the Goblet and manipulated events under everyone's noses, and how he had been the pivotal player in bringing about Voldemort's return... Harry was silent, but his anger simmered under the surface.

This was the man directly behind his suffering in the graveyard, the man who had made it possible for Voldemort to return. Seeing him smirk in triumph and boast about his plans succeeding infuriated Harry until all he could see was red, all he could hear was his obnoxious laughter ringing in his ears, and all he could feel was that same mind numbing hatred that had seemed to have found a home rooted deep inside his heart.

"This is madness!" Fudge spluttered. "The man is clearly out of his mind and—and—colluding with whatever cock and bull story Potter devised! We can't take a word of what he's said seriously."

The hawk nosed woman shot Fudge an unimpressed look. "He is under Veritaserum. He is telling us the truth, Minister."

"The truth of a mad man, Amelia!"

"Mad!" Crouch let out an insane laugh. "Mad, am I? We'll see! We'll see who's mad, now that the Dark Lord has returned, with me at his side! I, his most loyal servant. I, who delivered Harry Potter under the nose of the great Albus Dumbledore right to his doorstep! I, who ensured his resurrection! He will place me by his side and grant me the highest of titles, the greatest of rewards!"

"Don't believe me, do you? Proof that the Dark Lord has returned!" He shook his bound hands until the sleeve of one fell down, exposing the dark mark: a snake that was black as night and slithering on his left arm. "The Ministry used this to hunt us down, but it is once again our mark of pride. Our connection to the Dark Lord. Why don't you show them too, Potter? Show them how the Dark Lord has marked you as well, how you carry the sign of his resurrection. We carry twin marks, you and I."

Harry's heart went cold. He had shown no one his wound—even that detail of his suffering had been planned in advance? Was he just a puppet in the end? A doll for others to toss around and carve as they willed?

No one spoke as Harry let go of Hermione and stood up. He walked up to Crouch and slowly lifted his sleeve to reveal the snake that had been carved into his skin with Wormtail's knife.

"Twin marks?" Before anyone could stop him, he had raised his wand and slashed exactly where the inky Dark Mark began on Crouch's proudly exposed arm. "Not quite."

There were gasps in the crowd and people started shouting but they were all drowned out by Crouch's high pitched scream that seemed to echo into the night.

"What—what have you done?" the man half sobbed, half screamed, holding his stump of an arm against his chest.

"Not so different from the rat, now, are you? When your dear Dark Lord comes for you,"— Harry smiled maniacally through the furious tears blinding his eyes—"at least now you'll know what reward to ask for."

The turbulent waves of hatred in his heart settled down—satisfied for now—and Harry finally gave in to the exhaustion rampaging his body, welcoming the blackness to overtake him as he fell over and fainted.