Natsu Dragneel and the Goblet of Fire

The Death Eaters

Acnologia looked away from Natsu and began examining his own body. His hands were like large, pale spiders; his long black fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cats, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness.

He held up his hands and flexed the fingers, his expression rapt and exultant. He took not the slightest notice of God Serena, who lay twitching and bleeding on the ground, nor of the great snake, which had slithered back into sight and was circling Natsu again, hissing. Acnologia slipped one of those unnaturally long-fingered hands into a deep pocket and drew out a wand. He caressed it gently too; and then he raised it, and pointed it at God Serena, who was lifted off the ground and thrown against the headstone where Natsu was tied; he fell to the foot of it and lay there, crumpled up and crying.

Acnologia turned his scarlet eyes upon Natsu, laughing a high, cold, mirthless laugh.

God Serena's robes were shining with blood now; he had wrapped the stump of his arm in them.

"My Lord..." he choked, "my Lord... you promised... you did promise..."

"Hold out your arm," said Acnologia lazily.

"Oh Master... thank you, Master..."

He extended the bleeding stump, but Acnologia laughed again.

"The other arm, Wormtail."

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

Acnologia bent down and pulled out God Serena's left arm; he forced the sleeve of God Serena's robes up past his elbow, and Natsu saw something upon the skin there, something like a vivid red tattoo - a skull with a snake protruding from its mouth - the image that had appeared in the sky at the Quidditch World Cup: the Dark Mark. Acnologia examined it carefully, ignoring God Serena's uncontrollable weeping.

"It is back," he said softly, "they will all have noticed it... and now, we shall see... now we shall know..."

He pressed his long white forefinger to the brand on God Serena's arm.

The scar on Natsu's forehead seared with a sharp pain again, and God Serena let out a fresh howl; Acnologia removed his fingers from God Serena's mark, and Natsu saw that it had turned jet black.

A look of cruel satisfaction on his face, Acnologia straightened up, threw back his head, and stared around at the dark graveyard.

"How many will be brave enough to return when they feel it?" he whispered, his gleaming red eyes fixed upon the stars. "And how many will be foolish enough to stay away?"

He began to pace up and down before Natsu and God Serena, eyes sweeping the graveyard all the while. After a minute or so, he looked down at Natsu again, a cruel smile twisting his snakelike face.

"You stand, Natsu Dragneel, upon the remains of my late father," he hissed softly. "A Muggle and a fool... very like your own dear father. But they both had their uses, did they not? Your father died to defend you as a child... and I killed my father, and see how useful he has proved himself, in death..."

Acnologia laughed again. Up and down he paced, looking all around him as he walked, and the snake continued to circle in the grass.

"You see that house upon the hillside, Dragneel? My father lived there. My mother, a witch who lived here in this village, fell in love with him. But he abandoned her when she told him what she was... He didn't like magic, my father... He left her and returned to his Muggle parents before I was even born Dragneel, and she died giving birth to me, leaving me to be raised in a Muggle orphanage... but I vowed to find him... I revenged myself upon him, that fool who gave me his name... Tom Riddle..."