our natural allies ... we
will recall the banished giants ... I shall have all my devoted servants returned to
me, and an army of creatures whom all fear. ..."
He walked on. Some of the Death Eaters he passed in silence, but he paused
before others and spoke to them.
"Macnair . . . destroying dangerous beasts for the Ministry of Magic now,
Wormtail tells me? You shall have better victims than that soon, Macnair. Lord
Voldemort will provide. ..."
"Thank you, Master . . . thank you," murmured Macnair.
"And here" - Voldemort moved on to the two largest hooded figures - "we have
Crabbe . . . you will do better this time, will you not, Crabbe? And you, Goyle?"
They bowed clumsily, muttering dully.
"Yes, Master ..."
"We will, Master...."
"The same goes for you, Nott," said Voldemort quietly as he walked past a
stooped figure in Mr. Goyles shadow.
"My Lord, I prostrate myself before you, I am your most faithful -"
"That will do," said Voldemort.
He had reached the largest gap of all, and he stood surveying it with his blank, red
eyes, as though he could see people standing there.
"And here we have six missing Death Eaters . . . three dead in my service. One,
too cowardly to return ... he will pay. One, who I believe has left me forever ... he
will be killed, of course . . . and one, who remains my most faithful servant, and
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who has already reentered my service."
The Death Eaters stirred, and Harry saw their eyes dart sideways at one another
through their masks.
"He is at Hogwarts, that faithful servant, and it was through his efforts that our
young friend arrived here tonight. . . .
"Yes," said Voldemort, a grin curling his lipless mouth as the eyes of the circle
flashed in Harry's direction. "Harry Potter has kindly joined us for my rebirthing
party. One might go so far as to call him my guest of honor."
There was a silence. Then the Death Eater to the right of Wormtail stepped
forward, and Lucius Malfoy's voice spoke from under the mask.
"Master, we crave to know ... we beg you to tell us ... how you have achieved this .
. . this miracle . . . how you managed to return to us. .. ."
"Ah, what a story it is, Lucius," said Voldemort. "And it begins - and ends - with
my young friend here."
He walked lazily over to stand next to Harry, so that the eyes of the whole circle
were upon the two of them. The snake continued to circle.
"You know, of course, that they have called this boy my downfall?" Voldemort
said softly, his red eyes upon Harry, whose scar began to burn so fiercely that he
almost screamed in agony. "You all know that on the night I lost my powers and
my body, I tried to kill him. His mother died in the attempt to save him - and
unwittingly provided him with a protection I admit I had not foreseen. ... I could
not touch the boy."
Voldemort raised one of his long white fingers and put it very close to Harry's
cheek.
"His mother left upon him the traces other sacrifice. . . . This is old magic, I should
have remembered it, I was foolish to overlook it... but no matter. I can touch him
now."
Harry felt the cold tip of the long white finger touch him, and thought his head
would burst with the pain. Voldemort laughed softly in his ear, then took the
finger away and continued addressing the Death Eaters.
"I miscalculated, my friends, I admit it. My curse was deflected by the woman's
foolish sacrifice, and it rebounded upon myself. Aaah . . . pain beyond pain, my
friends; nothing could have prepared me for it. I was ripped from my body, I was
less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost. . . but still, I was alive. What I was,
even I do not know... I, who have gone further than anybody along the path that
leads to immortality. You know my goal - to conquer death. And now, I was
tested, and it appeared that one or more of my experiments had worked ... for I had
not been killed, though the curse should have done it. Nevertheless, I was as
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powerless as the weakest creature alive, and without the means to help myself...
for I had no body, and every spell that might have helped me required the use of a
wand. . . .
"I remember only forcing myself, sleeplessly, endlessly, second by second, to
exist. ... I settled in a faraway place, in a forest, and I waited. . . . Surely, one of
my faithful Death Eaters would try and find me. . . one of them would come and
perform the magic I could not, to restore me to a body . . , but I waited in vain. ..."
The shiver ran once more around the circle of listening Death Eaters. Voldemort
let the silence spiral horribly before continuing.
"Only one power remained to me. I could possess the bodies of others. But I dared
not go where other humans were plentiful, for I knew that the Aurors were still
abroad and searching for me.
I sometimes inhabited animals - snakes, of course, being my preference - but I was
little better off inside them than as pure spirit, for their bodies were ill adapted to
perform magic . . . and my possession of them shortened their lives; none of them
lasted long. . . .
"Then . . . four years ago . . . the means for my return seemed assured. A wizard -
young, foolish, and gullible - wandered across my path in the forest I had made
my home. Oh, he seemed the very chance I had been dreaming of... for he was a
teacher at Dumbledore's school... he was easy to bend to my will... he brought me
back to this country, and after a while, I took possession of his body, to supervise
him closely as he carried out my orders. But my plan failed. I did not manage to
steal the Sorcerer's Stone. I was not to be assured immortal life. I was thwarted . . .
thwarted, once again, by Harry Potter. ..."
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 then fear 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 the circle moved uncomfortably, but
Voldemort took no notice.
"And then, not even a year ago, when I had almost abandoned hope, it happened at
last... a servant returned to me. Wormtail here, who had faked his own death to
escape justice, was driven out of hiding by those he had once counted friends, and
decided to return to his master. He sought me in the country where it had long
been rumored I was hiding . . . helped, of course, by the rats he met along the way.
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Wormtail has a curious affinity with rats, do you not, Wormtail? His filthy little
friends told him there was a place, deep in an Albanian forest, that they avoided,
where small animals like themselves had met their deaths by a dark shadow that
possessed them. . . .
"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 who should he meet there, but one Bertha
Jorkins, a witch from the Ministry of Magic.
"Now see the way that fate favors Lord Voldemort. This might have been the end
of Wormtail, and of my last hope for regeneration. But Wormtail - displaying a
presence of mind I would never have expected from him - convinced Bertha
Jorkins to accompany him on a nighttime 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 noticed. 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," Voldemorts red eyes fell upon the continually circling
snake, "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 hope of stealing the Sorcerer'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 immortality. I set my sights lower ... I
would settle for my old body back again, and my old strength.
"I knew that to achieve this - it is an old piece of Dark Magic, the potion that
revived me tonight - I would need three powerful ingredients. Well, one of them
was already at hand, was it not, Wormtail? Flesh given by a servant. . . .
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"My father's bone, naturally, meant that we would have to come here, where he
was buried. But the blood of a foe ... Wormtail would have had me use any
wizard, would you not, Wormtai