Harry Potter 04 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

them, and Harry let out a yell that was strangled in the wad of material blocking his mouth.
    It was as though Wormtail had flipped over a stone, and revealed something ugly, slimy and blind – but worse, a hundred times worse. The thing Wormtail had been carrying had the shape of a crouched human child, except that Harry had never seen anything less like a child. It was hairless and scaly-looking, a dark, raw, reddish black. Its arms and legs were thin and feeble, and its face – no child alive ever had a face like that – was flat and snake-like, with gleaming red eyes.
    The thing seemed almost helpless; it raised its thin arms, put them around Wormtail’s neck, and Wormtail lifted it. As he did so, his hood fell back, and Harry 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. For one moment, Harry saw the evil, flat face illuminated in the sparks dancing on the surface of the potion. And then Wormtail lowered the creature into the cauldron; there was a hiss, and it vanished below the surface; Harry heard its frail body hit the bottom with a soft thud.
    Let it drown, Harry thought, his scar burning almost past endurance, please … let it drown …
    Wormtail was speaking. His voice shook, 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 Harry’s feet cracked. Horrified, Harry watched as a fine trickle of dust rose into the air at Wormtail’s command, and fell softly into the cauldron. The diamond surface of the water broke and hissed; it sent sparks in all directions, and turned a vivid, poisonous-looking blue.
    And now Wormtail was whimpering. He pulled a long, thin, shining silver dagger from inside his robes. His voice broke into petrified sobs. ‘Flesh – of the servant – w-willingly given – you will – revive – your master.’
    He stretched his right hand out in front of him – the hand with the missing finger. He gripped the dagger very tightly in his left hand, and swung it upwards.
    Harry realised what Wormtail was about to do a second before it happened – he closed his eyes as tightly as he could, but he could not block the scream that pierced the night, that went through Harry as though he had been stabbed with the dagger too. He heard something fall to the ground, heard Wormtail’s anguished panting, then a sickening splash, as something was dropped into the cauldron. Harry couldn’t bear to look … but the potion had turned a burning red, the light of it shone through Harry’s closed eyelids …
    Wormtail was gasping and moaning with agony. Not until Harry felt Wormtail’s anguished breath on his face did he realise that Wormtail was right in front of him.
    ‘B-blood of the enemy … forcibly taken … you will … resurrect your foe.’
    Harry could do nothing to prevent it, he was tied too tightly … squinting down, struggling hopelessly at the ropes binding him, he saw the shining silver dagger shaking in Wormtail’s remaining hand. He felt its point penetrate the crook of his right arm, and blood seeping down the sleeve of his torn robes. Wormtail, still panting with pain, fumbled in his pocket for a glass phial and held it to Harry’s cut, so that a dribble of blood fell into it.
    He staggered back to the cauldron with Harry’s blood. He poured it inside. The liquid within turned, instantly, a blinding white. Wormtail, his job done, dropped to his knees beside the cauldron, then slumped sideways and lay on the ground, cradling the bleeding stump of his arm, gasping and sobbing.
    The cauldron was simmering, sending its diamond sparks in all directions, so blindingly bright that it turned all else to velvety blackness. Nothing happened …
    Let it have drowned, Harry thought, let it have gone wrong …
    And then, suddenly, the sparks emanating from the cauldron were extinguished. A surge of white steam billowed thickly from the cauldron instead, obliterating everything in front of Harry, so that he couldn’t see Wormtail or Cedric or anything but vapour hanging in the air … it’s gone wrong, he thought … it’s drowned … please … please let it be dead ….
    But then, through the mist in front of him, he saw, with an icy surge of terror, the dark outline of a man, tall and skeletally thin, rising slowly from inside the cauldron.
    ‘Robe