The competing champions

Chapter 4.30 (The web of light)

Silence once more. Nothing was stirring, not even the leaves on the yew tree. The Death Eaters were quite motionless, the glittering eyes in their masks fixed upon Voldemort, and upon Harry.

"The servant died when I left his body, and I was left as weak as ever I had been." Voldemort continued. "I returned to my hiding place far away, and I will not pretend to you that I didn't feat that I might never regain my powers...yes, that was perhaps my darkest hour...I could not hope that I would be sent another wizard to possess...and I had given up hope, now, that any of my Death Eaters cared what had become of me..."

One or two of the masked wizards in thr circle moved uncomfortably, but Voldemort took no notice.

"And then, two years ago, came the sun back into my life...My Adeline had found me...she told me what happened that night and why she did what she did...she told me about the power her daughter possessed, her qualities...her friendship with Harry Potter..."

Voldemort walked over to Aurora's body, who was still staring up at the sky with fathomless silver eyes.

"Pretty girl, is she not? A replica of her mother, this one. Aurora Adeline Lilith Analie Black...Such potential."

Harry struggled against his bounds again. He was going to lose it if Voldemort touched her.

The young Death Eater beside Aurora's body rose and stepped between her and Voldemort, challenging him with his eyes. After staring at each other for a few silent minutes, Voldemort was the first to turn away.

The young Death Eater took off his shoe, muttered a spell and a second later, he and Aurora's body had disappeared.

"Adeline told me about one of my servants trying to return to me. She went to pick him up and help him along. But his journey back to me was not smooth, was it, Wormtail? For, hungry one night, on the edge of the very forest where he had hoped to find me, he foolishly stopped at an inn for some food...and whom should he meet there, but one Bertha Jorkins, a witch from the Ministry of Magic?

"Now see the day that rat favours Lord Voldemort. This might have been the end of Wormtail, and my last hope for regeneration. But Wormtail - displaying a presence of mind I would never have expected of him - convinced Bertha Jorkins to accompany him on a night-time stroll. He overpowered her...he brought her to me. And Bertha Jorkins, who might have ruined all, proved instead to be a gift beyond my wildest dreams....for - with a little persuasion - she became a veritable mine of information.

"She told me that the Triwizard Tournament would be played at Hogwarts this year. She told me that she knew of a faithful Death Eater who would be only too willing to help me, if I could only contact him. She told me many things...but the means I used to break the Memory Charm upon her were powerful, and when I had extracted all useful information from her, her mind and body were both damaged beyond repair. She had now served her purpose. I could not possess her. I disposed of her."

Voldemort smiled his terrible smile, his red eyes blank and pitiless.

"Wormtail's body, of course, was ill-adapted for possession, as all assumed him dead, and would attract far too much attention if seen. However, he was the able-bodied servant I needed, and, poor wizard though he is, Wormtail was able to follow the instructions I gave him, which would return me to a rudimentary, weak body of my own, a body I would be able to inhabit while awaiting the essential ingredients for true rebirth...a spell or two of my own invention...a little help from my dear Nagini and my sweet Adeline - a potion concocted from unicorn blood, and the snake venom Nagini provided...I was soon returned to an almost human form, and strong enough to travel.

"There was no hole of stealing the Philosopher's Stone anymore, for I knew that Dumbledore would have seen to it that it was destroyed. But I was willing to embrace mortal life again, before chasing immortal. I set my sights lower.. I would settle for my old body back, and my old strength.