Bone of the Father

Bone of the Father

June 1995, shortly after midnight.

Potter was gone.

Gone with the corpse of the spare, gone because he'd grabbed the Portkey out of the air and escaped, rather than face his destiny. Needlessly prolonging things.... The ghosts--he'd recognised them all, of course. Their spirits must have left some sort of residue in his wand--or perhaps in him.

In him.

He fell to his knees, shutting his eyes against the wave of sickness that threatened to knock him completely to the ground.

Around him, unheeded, the ranks of Death Eaters wavered, parted, one by one stepping back into the shadows, murmuring uncertainly to each other.

He raised his eyes, with great effort, to a level just above the tops of the tall grass. There, off to the right, cowering: Wormtail.

The effort it took to Summon his servant caused another wave of weakness; the ground gave a sickening lurch as Wormtail crept forward and put an arm around his waist, helping him to stand. They made their painful way back inside the old house, leaving the Death Eaters to do as they would. The impossibly tall, thin, shining body seemed to shrink into itself as scores of watchers followed their progress, then turned furtively one at a time, and Disapparated.

*********

In the days that followed, he gauged his physical responses to every situation, noting with avid care the tiniest workings of his new body. He regained physical strength, and with it a measure of confidence. There were a few worrisome details, however, in his magical abilities: minor spells, the sort of spells he used to do almost without thinking, took a bit more concentration. Making fire. Summoning small objects. The Cruciatus, always second nature before, even on the night of his transformation, now took intense concentration before Wormtail could be made to scream satisfyingly. The new body would take some breaking in, it seemed.

He could not Apparate. This troubled him more than anything else: if he could not Apparate, he would be little better than a Muggle, little better than the father who had hated and feared him so. Who had thrown him out. Whose grave he had violated in this last gruesome act. It was to be the perfect revenge: to take a bone from the father who wished him dead, and create life for himself.

If things were taking a bit longer than he'd hoped, no matter. It would come right in the end, he was sure.

Almost sure.

In the meantime, he became even more capriciously cruel to Wormtail--looked for tasks to lay upon him, to keep the weaker man distracted and off-balance, so that he could have no leisure to begin speculating about his master's condition. He sent Wormtail for suddenly needed supplies, into the village, via the tiny underground rat-runs and snake-burrows leading from the house to the outdoors. He demanded complicated or intimately horrifying things to be done, unexpectedly, that always threw Wormtail into a frenzy of terror. He never let the servant see any hint of the weakness that disturbed him, the slowness that persisted and caused a small knot of worry to grow in the darkest secret regions of his mind.

************

In the weeks that followed, however, he slowly withdrew. He did not communicate again with his followers. He communicated less and less with Wormtail, there in the house, except to order him about the various mundane chores involved with meals, shopping, and daily life. He ceased demanding any... physical... contact from Wormtail after noticing, once, the glitter of scales remaining on Wormtail's skin as the man lay quivering on the floor, after.

There were problems: problems he could not hint at to Wormtail or anyone else. The body he had created that night, this incredible, shining, reptilian body, was certainly keeping him alive. It was healthy and strong; he felt its strength as he stalked from room to deserted, empty room in the decaying house. He could see for miles, when he looked out of the windows. His appetite was good and he needed very little sleep to feel rested. He could (and did) crush Wormtail's human hand effortlessly, in one casual squeeze, breaking all the bones.

Repairing the hand afterwards had proved almost impossibly difficult. Wormtail assured him, pathetically, that it was good as new, but he could see Wormtail favouring the hand, cradling it against his chest, when he thought he wasn't being watched.

So, perhaps he should worry a bit: this body, this flesh and blood and bone that were now his, had to be forced to accommodate the mind that had been here all along. This blood, from the stupid boy Potter; this flesh, from the cringing imbecile Wormtail; this bone, from his fearful, hating, ignorant Muggle father, seemed reluctant to form the vessel that would hold his soul. Perhaps, after all, not the ideal sources.

It was like trying to grow a cactus in a rain forest.

He could live, but not flourish. His magic--his unequalled, brilliant, merciless, perfect magic--could not flourish. This thought nearly immobilised him. Worry solidified into fear.

He began to seek out the darkest, least accessible areas of the old house, to hide from the light and from Wormtail, the rat.

Rats' feet over broken glass....

The rat, with his fearful manner and fawning words. His scrabbling hands and scurrying feet. His shabby greyish overcoat--rat's coat--and his lying, stuttering tongue. Wormtail never made a move until told; this alternately pleased him and repulsed him. He often wondered what Wormtail thought of him....

Wondered.

Didn't KNOW.

When had that happened? He'd always known, before.

Speak to me. Why do you never speak.

What are you thinking of? I never know what you are thinking.

He added more and more wards around the house, around the doors and windows, around the garden, around the graveyard itself, making sure. There were small, snake-size, rat-size tunnels underground, from the house to the graveyard, for Wormtail and the snake to use when they went in and out; Wormtail for shopping trips to the village for food, Nagini for hunting. These he left unwarded, nothing else. The only door Wormtail could use was the one opening onto the back garden; to no other entrance was he given the passwords.

He had to make plans. He had to organise his loyal (were they loyal?) Death Eaters for the assault on the Muggle world and on the misguided Muggle-loving minions of that fool Dumbledore.

He had to think.

Sometimes at night, he left the house to walk through the graveyard, stalking silently among the headstones, pausing among the skeletons of dead trees here and there, to stroke a grave marker, to gaze at a name he remembered. He seemed to feel more at ease here, among the stones. This was a climate more friendly to his soul, it seemed, than his own body, (his new body) could ever be. Here, where his father's grave lay violated, he could smile, savouring the satisfaction of that revenge--this quiet place where dead men lost their bones....

The dead land--the cactus land.

Here, the stone images are raised, here they receive the supplication of a dead man's hand....

Thoughts came slowly, however.

The brain in this body--was not the MIND.

He was troubled: more and more often, he could not... decide... what to do. What to say. What to command. They were waiting, he knew. His Death Eaters, Wormtail assured him over and over, would come gladly at his first call.

Of course they would.

They would, or he... he didn't need to think of what he would do to them just yet; he was alive, and he had all the time in the world. Life is very long.

And indeed there will be time. He stood under a leafless tree, resting his hand on a tombstone, and looked about his kingdom.

And when he walked away, a few shiny scales remained on the stone's edge.

***********

In the months that followed, more and more scales seemed to be rubbing off his skin, leaving dry, white, wrinkled patches. To slow down this rubbing away, he stopped wearing his robes, even though the weather grew colder. The wind whipped viciously around the old house. Wormtail never came into his presence any more, unless Summoned, and more often than not, the Summoning was more difficult than he was willing to attempt. He found that he could go indefinitely without eating, but that his powers diminished even more alarmingly when he did this for more than a day.

He tried, also, never to touch his face or his arms any more.

Many ideas and memories had simply vanished over recent weeks; he told himself that he was dismissing trivial things from his consciousness in order to focus on the essentials. There were so many things he didn't really need to know: the time of day, the month, the year, the names of his followers... his own name....

He stared from the upstairs room, out from the broken window with its few grimy shards of glass still stuck in the frame, bemusedly watching Wormtail wandering aimlessly around the back garden in a swirl of snowflakes, shivering in his threadbare overcoat. The wind carried a few snowflakes in to land on his face; he blinked his eyes against them.

He watched as the servant stopped suddenly in the path as if surprised, saw the fear in his eyes as he turned and ran clumsily back into the house, tripping over a dead branch in the path. Perhaps he should question Wormtail about his strange behaviour; it certainly seemed that something had alarmed him.

Or perhaps not. He would have to Summon him, after all, and... he was not sure he could do it. He caught a fleeting glimpse of his own face in a bit of glass but did not linger to see it more clearly.

It was undoubtedly a trick of the light that the face seemed so old.

He turned away from the window, back to the dark room, his decayed house.

An old man in a draughty house....

He left the room, his feet crunching on broken glass.

*****

At some point the snake, Nagini, had disappeared.

Perhaps it was hibernating; the weather was cold, after all, and his Nagini, that perfectly constructed animal, was a creature of the tropics.

Perhaps it had died. Perhaps it was too cold and sluggish to hunt, or perhaps there were no more rats or other creatures abroad in the tunnels, for it to eat.

Except for the one rat, except for Wormtail.

But Wormtail wasn't always a rat; Wormtail was an... Anima... sometimes a human. Named....

Never mind. Wormtail had forfeited the right to a human name, always cringing and scurrying and hiding....

At some point, Wormtail disappeared.

There had been times when he could sense Wormtail's eyes, fearful, waiting for a command, or a blow or worse, peering out at him from some dark doorway or corner.

He could no longer sense this. There are no eyes here.

He had to be sure, first, that this absence was not his own doing. What had he told Wormtail to do, the last time he'd seen him? Had he sent him on an errand? Had he hurt him--more than usual, that is?

Was Wormtail dead?

He called. He formed the name Wormtail with his mouth, lips, tongue, vocal cords, producing not the silky, whispering sibilant sounds he favoured, but a raucous, ragged screech, the like of which he'd never produced before--the like he'd never had to make before.

He continued making this sound, this call, as he strode through the dark rooms, stepping distractedly over odds and ends of the wreckage of ancient, decayed household objects--this house had once been well cared-for--until he knew, finally, that he was absolutely alone.

This was not to be borne. Wormtail had left--left without telling him--disappeared.

Escaped?

Not if he had anything to say about it. If Wormtail were not already dead, he should die. Now.

He knew that this thought, this murderous thought, was one of the essential ones he'd been saving himself for. No-one could escape--no-one could just... leave his service.

He summoned a picture of Wormtail, his mind searching through time and space, until he was satisfied: there he was, the weak, fawning creature, on his knees, fittingly enough, inexplicably kneeling in the midst of a litter of papers, each closely covered with Wormtail's tiny script. He knelt quietly, with a quill and ink bottle nearby, in a bare room-- a prison cell, the bars covered with a coarse mesh screen, ratproof. He was writing, and writing, and writing....

Wormtail looked up, straight into his eyes. Somehow, the servant knew he was watching: his eyes rounded, showing the whites. His mouth hung open, stupidly. He jerked convulsively, spilling the ink, dropping the quill, shoving the sheets of paper away, scrabbling backwards until he was backed into the farthest corner of the tiny room.

"No," he said.

NO.

Wormtail closed his mouth, licked his lips and spoke again, softly. "You can't make me come back. I can't Apparate; this cell is warded. And... stop looking at me ...."

Wormtail, trembling uncontrollably, shut his eyes tight and then, without raising his head, slowly opened them, looking down at his lap, at his hands in his lap. The rat took a deep breath, gazing in wonder at... his own hand.

Silver hand.

The hand he himself had created for this servant. More sleek, and beautiful, and POWERFUL, than anything else about Wormtail. A hand that could do anything.

Wormtail smiled. He raised his hand. Slowly, the hand lifted from his lap, slowly slid up to wrap incredibly powerful, inescapable fingers around his own throat. The fingers slowly and almost lovingly, closed.

Tighter and tighter.

Inexcusable; Wormtail had no permission to just--leave his service like that.

*************

"Commander Moody?"

"Aye, lad--what've you got?"

"Mac and the other jarveys are in, Sir--they say the tunnels are empty, that there's been nobody in them for some time, not since they killed that snake and dragged it out. They say it all smells cold, and there's only one being in the house. They say he smells like a Muggle, Sir--d'you reckon Voldemort's given us the slip? D'you think when Pettigrew came to the village, that day, he could have been a whatchacallit--a decoy?"

"Couldn't have been, I don't think--with all the scrying glasses in place and people watching night and day." Moody stood up and gave a gruff nod, tightening his lips and blowing air out his nostrils. "I think it's time we found out just what's in there. Go back to Headquarters and tell Shacklebolt that we're going in. Tell him to try and have everybody in the Greater Hangleton rooms by six tomorrow morning."

*********

It took hours of spell-breaking, careful probing by a three-man team who worked silently, communicating with nods and lifted eyebrows as they detected and lifted wards from the grounds. At one point there was a silent explosion, throwing one of the team members back into the ditch twenty feet away and knocking him unconscious. A mediwitch, alerted by the Seers, Apparated from the Greater Hangleton hotel room and carried him to safety.

The Protected area shrank slowly, however, until by nightfall the last wards had been cleared, up to the house itself. It could be seen clearly at last: broken windows and peeling paint, unlit, to all appearances empty.

But they knew it was not empty.

"I don't think we can risk waiting till daylight," Moody announced. "I want people at all the doors and windows, and people on broomsticks watching the windows higher up. And the chimney. We'll just take the wards off the front door, but that doesn't mean he won't have passwords to one of the others and make a run for it.

"Oh, and get Dumbledore."

The last wards came off the front entrance to the house surprisingly easily. "This smells like a trick," Moody growled softly. "Stay with your partners, remember procedures, keep wands out. Gwen, you come with me; I want your nose. We're looking for whoever's alive in this barn. Shacklebolt, you and your team give us a count of fifty, and then follow."

******

He heard them; he listened with mild interest as the footsteps moved through each room, stealthily, cautiously, scraping gently on the bare wood or occasionally crunching a bit of glass or other debris.

No doubt it would be Wormtail returning from a trip into the village, bringing food. Or perhaps it was one of his loyal followers, returning to do his bidding. Abominably late--where had they all been when he needed them?

Or perhaps--he was standing in the dark, in the room he had spent so much time in, as a boy. His bedroom. "Go straight up to your room and stay there until I decide what to do with you--freakish, unnatural brat!" Perhaps the footsteps belonged to his father, pacing, pacing, deciding to send him--TOM--away.

But it couldn't be his father; his father was dead, wasn't he.

He smiled in the dark; no, it couldn't be his father.

Lights, dimly seen through the open doorway.

A woman's voice: "I can smell a person in the room down at that end, Moody. Male. I don't feel any magic; maybe he's a prisoner."

And then, more light, from two wands. He squinted and then shut his eyes against the brightness, taking a step backwards.

The man's voice, softly incredulous. "Merlin. Merlin, look at him. Gwen, go down and get Dumbledore--tell him we've found something... unbelievable."

Dumbledore.

Was he at school?

More footsteps. He opened his eyes.

"Professor...?"

"Good evening, Tom. Here, I've brought you a cloak. You seem to be up rather late; what are you doing?"

Always lie to Dumbledore.

"Reading. A book. A book, about... birth and death. It was interesting."

I had seen birth and death, but had thought they were different. I should be glad of another death.

"I see. Well, I believe it's rather cold here; perhaps you won't mind going with us to a... different room? Kingsley, I think the Constraining Cloak will be all that's needed; I don't believe there is as much cause for concern as we feared, here."

And what you thought you came for is only a shell, a husk of meaning.

He barely noticed the hands on his arms, leading him out of the house.

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