Harry Potter and the Blind Seer of Durmstrang

Chapter 11

Lying with his face buried in pine needles, the first thing Harry heard was a snap, and then another, the sound of his cane being broken into pieces. Inwardly, he flinched, as if someone had broken one of his fingers. He felt his heart pounding, a sparrow trapped in the cage of his ribs. He wondered what Wormtail would do with him.

He did not have long to wait. The next moment, Wormtail stooped over him and lifted him with a grunt, staggering a little under his weight. He made off down the forest track bearing Harry's stiff body with him. Eyes open, Harry watched the dark shadows of treetops against the softer dark of the night sky.

For some reason, his thoughts wandered back to that first night on the Astronomy tower when he realized he would never again see the stars. As he stared into the misty darkness of the sky tonight, a particle of that old grief returned to him.

A mere five minutes after Wormtail started, he stopped in an open space. With a sigh of relief, he lowered Harry onto the flat, hard coldness of a stone marker, set like a macabre table a few feet off the ground. Unable to move, Harry lay like a sacrifice on an unlit, frozen pyre.

No sound came from the glade around Harry, save for the mumblings and mutterings of Wormtail as he bustled around doing something not far away, out of range of Harry's sight. A fire flared, warm and bright, in Harry's peripheral vision. Wormtail's muttering increased.

Harry grew colder and colder as the chill from the hard stone seeped into his shoulder blades and hips and heels. His stomach clenched against the paralysis that prevented him from shivering. With growing terror, he listened to Wormtail making his preparations, for what? He did not speak to Harry, nor did he enter Harry's field of vision, fixed as it was upon the sky.

The fire blazed higher now; Harry welcomed its warmth against his side. Wormtail walked past him and out of the glade. Silence descended, and Harry could hear the eerie moaning of the wind in the treetops and the greedy fire devouring the wood.

Wormtail walked back into the glade, again past the spot where Harry lay. This time he walked carefully, carrying something that he deemed precious. Harry tried to follow his progress with his eyes but gave up after an agonized effort. Taking the bundle to the fire, Wormtail made sounds as if he added something to a cauldron.

Harry heard him mutter, "Bone of the father..." and he stirred carefully, his wand tapping the side of the cauldron rhythmically. Then he came over to Harry and stood over him.

Fear rose inside of Harry as Wormtail raised his hand, holding a long, cruel knife. The memory of the details of the knife in his dream rose up over the image of the blurred knife before him and his mind saw the edge in gleaming detail. He wanted to scream, to run, to fight.

Wormtail brought the knife down swiftly... onto his own hand, severing a finger.

"Haha, scared you, didn't I?" he asked, his putrid breath in Harry's face. Harry felt as if he were drowning; the shallow breathing that the body-bind curse allowed him was insufficient for the adrenaline that surged through his body. Wormtail held up his own severed finger in sadistic glee, and then waddled away with it to the cauldron.

All too soon, he was back, holding the knife over Harry again. A new wave of terror washed over him as Wormtail picked up Harry's limp hand, holding it and caressing it with his own bleeding, mangled one. Mentally, Harry balled his hand into a fist, but his muscles did not respond, and Wormtail turned his hand palm-upward, deliberately slashing an ugly cut through the palm. Harry could feel the slice and the trickle of warm blood that followed. His hand fell again to the stone slab and Wormtail again hurried to the cauldron.

Too late, the body-bind curse began to wear off. Harry turned his head slightly to the side, toward the fire and the large cauldron sitting over it. Wormtail stood like the shadow of a strange priest, a dark figure silhouetted against the firelight. As he watched, Harry saw a black, tall figure rise out of the cauldron, and he heard the evil, maniacal laughter from his dream. Lord Voldemort had returned.