LIKE LIGHTNING | Harry Potter x Reader Fanfiction

⁕ flesh, blood, and bone ⁕

Harry's POV

I felt my feet slam into the ground; my injured leg gave away, and I fell forward, the Triwizard Cup falling out of my hand. I raised my head, looking around. 

"Where are we?" I asked. Cedric just shook his head unknowingly. We weren't in the Hogwarts grounds and looked to be far from them. We stood in a dark and overgrown graveyard; the black outline of a small church was visible beyond a large yew tree to the right of us. I could just make out an outline of an old house on the hillside. 

Cedric looked down at the Triwizard Cup and then at me.

"Did anyone tell you the Cup was a Portkey?" he asked. 

"Nope." I said. I was looking at the graveyard. It was too silent. Too still, "Is it supposed to be part of the task?" 

"I dunno. Wands out, d'you reckon?"

"Yeah." I said and pulled out my wand. I had this strange feeling that we were being watched. 

"Someone's coming." he said suddenly. 

Squinting tensly through the darkness, I watched a figure draw nearer, walking steadily towards us between the tall headstones. I couldn't make out a face. And- several paces nearer, the gap between us was closing rapidly. There was something in their arms. It looked like a baby? Or some sort of bundle of robes? I lowered my wand slightly and glanced at Cedric. He shot me a glance and we turned back to watch the figure. 

It stopped before a marble headstone, only six feet from us. And for a second, Cedric and I caught eyes of the short figure. My scar burst into pain. I was in agony and my wand slipped out of my hand, my fingers covering my face instead. From far away I heard a cold voice say, "Kill the spare."  I heard a swishing noise and yelled to Cedric, "Cedric GO!" 

A blast of green light blazed through my eyelids and I heard another loud crack before my scar reached a new height and I retched. Then it left as soon as it came. I carefully opened my eyes. Afraid of what I might see. But Cedric was gone and I was being pulled by my feet. The short man slammed me against the tall headstone and I read the name TOM RIDDLE clearly etched into it's surface. 

The cloacked man was breathing shallowly and he hit me as I struggled. Then I realized who it was. It was Wormtail. 

"You!" I gasped. 

But Wormtail was busy tying me up against the headstone. He was muttering to himself frantically, his hands shaking. 

"I must hurry.... alert the others.... the boy escaped." Even in my sitauation, I breathed a sigh of relief. Cedric had gotten away. Maybe he would bring help from Hogwarts. Wormtail drew a length of some black material from his cloak and stuffed it in my mouth. I heard noises at my feet and saw a gigantic snake slithering through the glass, circling the headstone. Wormtail went behind the headstone and began to breath heavier. He was dragging something across the ground. It was a giant stone cauldron. It seemed to be full of water. 

The thing inside the bundle of robes and stirring now and Wormtail busied himself with the bottom of the cauldron. Suddenly, there was crackling flames beneath it and the large snake slithered away. The liquid inside of the cauldron was heating at an incredible pace and the surface began to boil and send out fiery silver sparks. Steam was thickening at the surface and it blurred the outline of everything around it. 

The movements between the robes stopped and I heard the high cold voice again, "Hurry!" 

Wormtail moved quickly and said, "It is ready, Master." 

"Now." said the cold voice.

Wormtail opened the robes on the ground and revealed what was inside them. A strangled scream came out of my mouth; muffled from the piece of fabric. It was as though Wormtail had flipped over a stone and revealed something ugly. Except it was worst. A hundred times worse. It didn't look like any child I had ever seen. It was hairless and scaly looking. A dark reddish black. It's arms and legs with twig like and it had a flat and snakelike face with gleaming red eyes.

The thing seemed almost helpless as it raised its arms and put them around Wormtail's neck. As he did so, his hood fell back and I saw the look of revulsion on Wormtail's weak, pale face in the firelight as he carried the creature to the rim of the cauldron. He lowered it's body into the water and it vanished below the surface. My eyes widened and my face contorted into a grimance as I heard its frail body hit the bottom with a soft thud. 

Let it drown, I thought. My scar was burning almost past endurance. Please let it drown. Wormtail was speaking. His voice shook, and he seemed frightened beyond his wits. He raised his wand, closed his eyes, and spoke to the night.

"Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!"

The surface of the grave at my feet cracked. Horrified, I watched as a fine trickle of dust rose into the air and fell softly into the cauldron. The crystal clear surface of the water broke and sent sparks in all directions and turned a vivid poisonous looking blue.

And now Wormtail was whimpering as he pulled a long thin shining silver dagger from inside his cloak and his voice broke into petrified sobs.

"Flesh - of the servant - willingly given - you will - revive - your master."

He stretched his right hand out in front of him - the hand with the missing finger. Picked up the dagger tightly in his left hand and swung it upward. I realized what he was about to do a second before it happened and closed my eyes as tightly as I could. I was not able to block out the scream that pierced the night; that went through my very soul as Wormtail cut himself with the dagger. I heard something fall to the ground, heard Wormtail's anguished panting, then a stiffening splash, as something was dropped into the cauldron. I couldn't stand to look... but the potion had turned it burning red and the light of it showing through my closed eyelids. Wormtail was gasping and moaning with agony. Not until I felt his anguished breath on my face did I realize that he was right in front of me.

"B - blood of the enemy... forcibly taken... you will... resurrect your foe."

I could do nothing to prevent it. I was tied too tightly. Squinting down I struggled hopelessly at the ropes binding me to Tom Riddle's Snr.'s gravestone. I saw the shining silver dagger shaking in Wormtail's remaining hand. I felt it penetrate the crook of my right arm in the blood sleep down the sleeves of my torn robes. I yelled out in pain but Wormtail, still panting, fumbled in his pocket for a glass vial and held it to my cut, so that a dribble of bright red blood fell into it.

Wormtail staggered back to the cauldron with my blood and poured it inside. The liquid within turned instantly a blinding white. His job done, Wormtail dropped to his knees beside the cauldron fell sideways so that he laid on the ground cradling the bleeding stump of his arm, gasping and sobbing. The cauldron was simmering, sending its bright sparks in all directions, so blindingly bright that it turned all else to a velvety blackness of nothing. 

It was quiet.... let it have drowned, I thought, let it have gone wrong...

And then suddenly the sparks from the cauldron were extinguished and a surge of white steamed billowed from the cauldron instead, obliterating everything in front of me so that I couldn't see Wormtail or the cauldron, or the graveyard, or anything but thick vapor hanging in the air...

It's gone wrong, I thought... It's dead... Please... Please let it be dead...

But then, through the mist in front of me I saw with an icy surge of terror the dark outline of a man, tall and skeletal, rose slowly from inside the cauldron. 

"Robe me." said a high cold voice from behind the steam and Wormtail sobbing and moaning, scrambled to pick up the set of black robes from the ground, got to his feet, reached up and pulled them one handed over his master's head. The thin man stepped out of the cold and stared at me... and I stared back into the face that haunted my nightmares for the past 3 years..

Livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat as a snake with slit for nostrils...Lord Voldemort had risen again.