Lillian 'Anna' Potter || Goblet of Fire

Chapter Forty-Four: Fears Restored

Anna couldn’t help it.

This entire time - from when Moody had sent her to the graveyard to when Voldemort had finally made his grand debut, the nausea had been building up inside her stomach. Rising and rising until it reached its apex and Anna was forced to lurch her head to the side as she vomited pure bile into the grass below.

She heard Harry’s gag and wince, but she could’ve cared less.

For almost 2 years now, she’s been dreading the prophecy - the one that foretold her death by her brother’s hand in order to kill Voldemort once and for all. For all that time, her only saving grace had been that he hadn’t really risen, and so she would have nothing to worry about.

And now the bloody demon himself was standing right in front of her.

“My Lord…” Pettigrew muttered in a mixture of awe and pain.

“Your arm, hold it out for me.” Voldemort hissed - his voice sending shivers down Anna’s spine and pangs of fear through her heart.

Because this was him. The same man who had driven Pettigrew to kill her foster family and now Cedric. The same person who had killed her parents and turned both her and Harry into orphans.

She told herself to keep her chin high and be brave, that she shouldn’t show weakness. But waves of irrational anxiety continued to wash over her, and she blamed the wound on her chest for the reason why she was curled up so tightly.

“Oh Master, thank you Master.” Pettigrew whispered, holding out his bloodied stump.

“The other arm.”

Voldemort took Pettigrew’s opposite arm, touching some sort of tattoo etched into his skin - the same mark Hermione had pointed out at the Quidditch World Cup: The Death Mark.

Anna noticed Harry’s wince, but her attention was drawn away to Pettigrew’s agonized wail as the mark on his arm turned an inky black, all in time with Voldemort’s sadistic laugh.

“How many will be brave enough to return when they feel it? And how many will be foolish enough to stay away?” His eyes were crazed with madness, and Anna couldn’t help but look away.

The atmosphere was suddenly filled with the wind of flowing black wind - obscuring the moon as many cloaked figures appeared before them; surrounding them.

“Master?” One called out - hesitantly. “Is it really you?”

“Welcome, Death Eaters. It has been thirteen years since we’ve last met. Yet you answer my call as though it were yesterday. We are still united as one under the Dark Mark...or are we?”

All the black figures seemed to unanimously flinch at his words.

“I smell guilt - a foul stench leeching the air upon us.” Voldemort sneered. “I see you all, whole and healthy, with your powers intact - such prompt appearances! And I ask myself...why did this band of wizards never come to the aid of their master, to whom they swore eternal loyalty?”

 No one moved a muscle.

“And I answer myself, they must have believed me broken, they thought I was gone. They slipped back among my enemies, and they pleaded innocence, and ignorance, and bewitchment… And then I ask myself but how could they have believed I would not rise again? They, who knew the steps I took, long ago, to guard myself against mortal death? They, who had seen proofs of the immensity of my power in the times when I was mightier than any wizard living?And I answer myself, perhaps they believe a still greater power could exist, one that could vanquish even Lord Voldemort. Perhaps they now pay allegiance to another... or perhaps that champion of the commoners, of Mudbloods and Muggles, Albus Dumbledore?”

A ripple went through the gathered Death Eaters, but he ignored their dissent and continued. “It is a disappointment to me...I confess myself disappointed…”

Anna could only stare.

Was Voldemort...so narcissistic that he believed he could defeat death?

But then her mind began to travel elsewhere. Somewhere much darker.

If Voldemort could cheat death, couldn’t she? A simple spell, a simple incantation could make her immortal? All her fears would suddenly be irrelevant. She could live a long life - get to worry about her future as an adult and what she wanted to be when she was older. There would be no more drama, no more anxiety. She could be normal again.

The stinging of her slash suddenly turned agonizing, and Anna grit her teeth, taking the pain and bearing it as her deserved punishment. How could she ever think that way? How could she ever want to be like him, just to preserve her own life out of greed?

She shook her head.

No. Anna was a lot of things - stubborn, strong, broken. But she wasn't greedy. She would never sacrifice innocent lives to preserve her own.

Suddenly, Harry’s shouts break her out of her stupor, and he’s writhing on the ground. Anna hears someone else screaming, but their voice is shrill and horrified - and it’s hurting her ears.

Stop, She thinks to herself - her eyes burning with regret for ever letting her guard down in the first place, for ever letting Harry go in that tournament and not finding a better way to convince Dumbledore otherwise. Because no place is safe - she realizes that now. Not with her foster family, not with her friends, not at Hogwarts, with all of her professors - nowhere.

And that knowledge is something she will be burdened with for the rest of her life.

It’s only when her throat is burning that she realizes she was the one screaming.

Harry panted in relief as Voldemort finally relieved the spell, and Anna couldn’t stop the angry tears from pouring down her face as the laughs of the Death Eaters rang about around them.

“You see, I think, how foolish it was to suppose that this boy would ever have been stronger than me, but I want there to be no mistake in anybody's mind. Harry Potter escaped me by a lucky chance, and I am now going to prove my power by killing him, here and now, in front of all of you - when there is no Dumbledore to help him, and no mother to die for him. I will give him his chance. He will be allowed to fight, and you will be left in no doubt which of us is the stronger.”

Horror left Anna breathless as Voldemort waved a hand towards her brother.

“Now untie him, Wormtail, and give him back his wand.”