Harry Potter and the Silent Siege

Chapter 1

The Burned Down House

The village of Little Whinging, Surrey, only had two real fire engines; one had already been called out when the cook at the Great Palace restaurant had been a little too lavish with the cooking oil for an order of Kung-Pao chicken. Henry Middleton was therefore not terribly happy when, on an unsually balmy night in late August, the claxons sounded again. Little Whinging's fire force was mostly volunteer to begin with and only a smattering a men now crowded around a small TV in the corner, laughing over a comedy about an overbearing housewife, obsessed with the opinions of her neighbors, and her poor lap dog husband. Henry, who saw enough of people like that in real life, threw down the Times crossword, strode over to his men and snapped his fingers angrily in their faces:

"Oy, what's the matter with you lot?"

Most of the men, tired of false alarms and wrong numbers wrought by the ever-increasing proliferation of mobile phones with automatic emergency line dial up, grudgingly got their feet and prepared to man the remaining engine.

"What if there's another call while we're out?" asked Frank Sedgwick, a burly, mustached fireman who seemed to have the end of a cigarette butt forever sticking out of the end of his mouth.

Henry drew himself up to Frank and widened his eyes. "Well, we'll have to make it quick then, won't we?"

Frank responded by turning around and maneuvering his frame up the side of the ladder staircase. Henry drew himself behind the car and Lance and John got into the driver's seat. The engines and sirens roared to life and the Little Whinging fire fighters rode off into the night, narrowly missing Mrs. Winters and her cocker spaniel who had just elected to make a convenience stop on the pavement outside the station.

It took little more than five minutes before the fire engine approached the neighborhood of its destination. Another block in the endless row of identical-looking semi-detached houses that had just been strung up all around the edge of what had once been a village. With all the growth and sprawl in Little Whinging, thought Henry to himself, you'd think we'd at least be able to get another engine. Henry didn't want to think too much about politicians, however: it just made his head spin and blood pressure rise rapidly. Calm down, his wife would say, you've enough to worry about as it is; there's no use going on about what can do absolutely nothing about.

The image of his wife lecturing over her half-moon sunglasses carried Henry through to the entrance to the neighborhood at which the call had been made. This street was normally as respectable as it was banal. House after house: town houses, he supposed they would call them, perhaps that's what the American developer would have preferred, with neatly kept lawns, the obligatory lines of rose bushes neatly cropped outside the wire-cut front windows. Lance took two wrong turnings (Henry struggled to keep his temper in check; after all, it was he who had just been thinking how much they all looked alike) before they finally came upon a neatly kept white and black sign that read: PRIVET DRIVE.

On this evening, this orderly image was disrupted, however, by a flock of neighbors, headed by a crowd of children that had gathered around a house near the corner. Henry had thought it a good sign that they hadn't seen any smoke from the nearby roads. He had doubted whether there had been any fire at all and conjured up the image of a suburban couple, the husband in tweed and polo shorts and the wife with her hair in rollers fretting over a pot roast that had disturbed an overly sensitive fire detector.

He was not prepared for the devastation that met his eye from a fire that had clearly already burnt itself out.

The engine finally stopped along the side of the road. Seeing that this was no false alarm, Lance and John quickly pulled down the fire hose while Frank and Stewart put on their gas helmets and ran towards the front door. It was Henry's job to get as much information as possible and that was clearly not going to be forthcoming from the people inside the house. He approached the silent crowd of neighbors: he was used to this; people always came out to see what was going on. Henry could see couples, dressed much as he had imagined, many with little children running distractedly in circles around their ankles, peering like vultures on the remains of their neighbor's house, lest some minutia of potential gossip escape their attention.

On this occasion, however, in keeping with the level of the devastation that their eyes, the neighbors were unusually quiet. Still, Henry caught bits and pieces of muttered conversation as he walked over.

"'Damndest thing I've ever seen this," croaked one elderly gentleman.

"Mind you," added his middle-aged female neighbor, in a toffee-nosed tone not unlike that of the woman on the television program, "they were a bit of an odd lot."

"I dunno," added a man in his thirties, dressed in a green and white Tottenham rugby shirt, and sporting an out-of-place Yorkshire accent, which seemed to make his neighbor wrinkle her nose up further at the very sound. "Seemed 'alright. Was in drills, wasn't he?"

"Never bothered us much," agreed his wife, a woman with curly blond hair and too much make-up for Henry's liking. "Mind you, there was that day a few years back when they had a whole load of barn owls all over their roof and garden; right strange if you ask me."

"Must have put too much bread out, then," replied the husband, "weren't anything."

"There was that nephew of theirs." The toffee-nosed women had re-inserted herself into the conversation. "Bit queer if you ask me. I mean that in the OED sense of the word, of course," she quickly added as several of her neighbors turned their heads, eager to refute any mention of the contrary in this neighborhood. "Straggly, unkempt, glasses always crooked."

"They didn't treat him right if you ask me," the Tottenham rugby shirt replied. "Always wondered if I oughtn't call in the social workers, I did." He suddenly drew himself up to full height, as if very pleased for thinking the idea.

"You's the one that said you thought they was 'alright," replied his wife.

The rugby shirt shrugged.

That was the end of the conversation as far as Henry was concerned; it was then that he came to within walking distance of the crowd. A lanky boy, of about fifteen or sixteen, with dark brown hair met him halfway. He looked as if he had seen a few scrapes and could get a bit mean if he wanted to, but now he was more terrified than anything.

"Please, sir," he said to Henry. "Is there anything I can do? My best mate was in there."

"That's what I'm here to ask," replied Henry, trying to sound confident and in command. Authority always reassured people at a time like this. He tried to sound a bit more like the newsman on the telly. You had to sound the part if you wanted the respect in these parts, his missus would say. "Does anyone know who was in this house at the time of this here... eh," Henry looked back at the carnage, "er... accident?"

"My best mate, sir," offered the boy a second time. "And his parents. And, er," he added, almost as an afterthought. "I think his cousin."

"Four people," said Henry. "What does your mate look like then?"

The boy described a boy slightly shorter than himself and much more heavy-set, with bright blond hair, his father, slightly taller, with a similar frame, and his much shorter mother. Only when prompted by Henry did he describe the cousin as about his own height and build.

"Did you see them in the house at the time of the fire?" asked Henry.

"I don't rightly know, sir, you see..."

"It was right odd, sir," the rugby shirt spoke up again. "The whole place was standing one minute and then it just seemed to smolder from the inside; ain't think I'd ever seen anything like it and I was in the Gulf and all."

"And then these green things shot up into the sky," the boy added quickly, "think they must have been fireworks or something. You can still see them up there."

Henry looked behind him to see the bleeding green remains of what seemed to be an exploded firework hanging in the sky just above the house; he wondered why they had not seen in on their approach from the truck; it must have been behind a tree. He'd never seen fireworks hang like that for so long as if there was something still keeping them up there: and the image they displayed. The green fireworks made a horrible face, like a skull, with a snake-like twisting line stretching out from what would have been the tongue. Henry felt the hairs on the back of his neck prick up as he looked at it.

"Steady yourself, mate," he said to himself. "You've got to show some leadership to these people."

He turned around to look at the boy in the eye, forcing himself to appear calm and in command of the situation. "What's your name, lad?"

"Piers, sir. Piers Polkiss."

"Well, Piers," Henry replied. "We'll find your friend, now don't worry."

Piers nodded weakly.

Henry turned his attention back to the remains of the house. He hoped he sounded more confident than he felt at that moment, because there seemed in fact little hope for the lad's portly companion if he had indeed been inside. It was the oddest thing he had seen in almost twenty years of service: the house itself had been burnt almost to a blackened crisp; only small wisps of smoke curled around what remained of the now gutted interior. Yet the garden itself remained untouched, down to the perfectly kept rose bushes in the front lawn. It was if someone had deliberately annihilated, with painstaking accuracy, only the rectangular lot of the one house, which, unbeknownst to Henry, was precisely what had happened. Even more amazing was that the adjacent semi-detached home was itself completely unscathed, down to the perfect red brick wall that had been shared between the two properties: its bewildered occupants were now standing unscratched on their front driveway.

Number 3 Privet Drive was left spotless but there was little left of what had once been Number 4.

* * *

Ginny Weasley was lying in the Chamber of Secrets.

She stared up at the cavernous ceiling of the chamber, its roof extending far into darkness. Somewhere nearby she could hear the death groans of the Basilisk growing ever fainter. Nearer still she could hear the shuffling of feet.

"It makes no difference," said a voice. "I prefer it this way. Just you and me, Harry Potter. Just you and me."

It was Tom Riddle's voice. And the person he was talking to was Harry. Ginny realized that it was she who had made him come down here. It was she who had opened the Chamber of Secrets. And just as Tom had said he would, Harry had come down after her - to rescue her. And had fallen completely into his trap. It had all been Ginny's fault.

Harry didn't respond. But Ginny could hear his feet shuffling, stepping now and then on a wet puddle on the dank floor of the Chamber, now covered with a mixture of water, slime, and Basilisk blood. Harry had killed the Basilisk - the Basilisk that Ginny had unleashed. But now he still had to face Tom, a Tom that was growing stronger as she grew weaker.

Somewhere far in the back of her mind, Ginny knew that something was not quite right. If Tom Riddle was still alive and strong, she shouldn't be conscious at all. But that thought did not have time to fully take form when Ginny heard Tom laugh again.

"So ends the famous Harry Potter. Alone in the Chamber of Secrets, forsaken by his friends, defeated by the Dark Lord he so unwisely challenged. Your dear mudblood mother died to give you only twelve years of borrowed time. What a pathetic waste, and all because of one silly girl!"

"My parents died because you murdered them!" Harry's voice cried out somewhere to Ginny's right, breaking with effort and strain.

Whether it was Voldemort's implication of her or hearing Harry's voice, she did not know, but it was at that moment that Ginny suddenly found the strength to roll over and sit upright. Every muscle in her body seemed weighted down like iron as she moved. Panting and heaving, she finally managed to stand to her feet. Her head immediately felt light and dizzy but she forced herself to shake it off as she lifted her head up to look Tom Riddle in the eye, the boy who had tricked, abused, and manipulated her in order to lure her hero, her crush - dare she say her friend? - to his death.

Except that the face she met was not that of Tom Riddle. It was Lord Voldemort, a fully-grown Voldemort, dressed incongruously in Tom Riddle's Slytherin House robes. Something nagged once again at the back of her mind that this could not be but again that thought was quickly banished with the cold, dark fear that came from looking at Voldemort's revolting green complexion and snake-like red eyes. The bogeyman of her childhood nightmares was now more than a few meters away from her, his wand raised to strike.

Voldemort ignored her. His eyes remained fixed on Harry.

"Haven't you any last words, Harry? Your muggle mother begged and begged me not to take you, not to kill you; and now when you finally face Lord Voldemort, you have nothing to say to him?"

Harry remained silent, an expression of defiance shining brightly in his green eyes.

"So be it, then," Voldemort replied, almost softly.

Voldemort's face twisted and his red eyes seemed to bleed with hatred as he raised his wand and cried the curse that made Ginny and any decent wizard or witch in England freeze to the bone.

"Avada Kedavra!"

A burst of green light shot from the end of Voldemort's wand. Only the light seemed to travel in slow motion in Harry's direction, passing right in front of where Ginny was now standing. Her eyes widened in horror as she saw the light move toward where Harry remained standing, fierce determination hardened in his jaw. The light grew nearer and nearer reflecting the green in Harry's eyes like pools of liquid jade.

"Finite Incantatem!" cried Harry, his wand held straight out in front of him. A beam of red light shot out and met Voldemort's just as it was creeping along to Harry. The beams locked and, for a time, Voldemort's green light seemed to move back toward them, but then its direction reversed to move once again toward Harry, while the red light emanating from Harry's wand moved slowly back. Ginny could see that, in a few moments, it would reach Harry himself.

Ginny watched as sweat formed in rivulets all over Harry's face. The veins in his forehead bulged with the strain of willing his curse forward. But it was no use. Ginny saw Harry trembling as the light moved closer to him. In a few moments, the light would reach Harry's body.

Ginny suddenly took a step forward. It was a great effort just as sitting up had been but she managed. She was even closer to the green light now and she could feel its intensity vibrating throughout her body, just as her first broomstick had felt when she'd mounted it, or the jolt she had suffered from the lamp in her father's garage when he had been teaching her about eckeltricity. She didn't dare move any further.

"Ginny!" Harry suddenly cried. "Help me! I can't hold out much longer!" Harry spoke the words through clenched teeth, his eyes never leaving the light of his wand and the connection with Voldemort.

Ginny tried to step forward again but she couldn't quite bring herself to do it. She seemed frozen to the spot, mesmerized by the light. She felt in the pocket of her robes for her wand, but then she realized that Tom would never have let her take it into the Chamber with her. It was still lying harmlessly in the first floor bathroom, where he had told her to leave it. There was nothing she could do now.

"What's the matter, Ginny?" Ginny froze as she heard Voldemort's revoltingly high-pitched voice, like a snake trying to speak a second language. She forced herself to look at his disgusting face which was now staring directly at her. It seemed that, unlike Harry, Voldemort was unconcerned about taking his attention away from the link of their wands, and Ginny immediately saw that the distraction had done nothing to prevent the continuing advance of the deadly green beam. The green light now lit up Harry's robes; it seemed almost on top of him.

"Can't you save your friend?"

Ginny stared back at Voldemort but felt powerless to respond. She took a step back involuntarily.

"Ginny, help, I need you!" cried Harry.

Ginny felt as if her heart would explode out of her chest at his words. It was the very thing she had dreamed he would say but now she feared that those words would be his last. She desperately considered flinging herself into the wand's path. It was what Harry would have done for her, was doing for her.

But she couldn't bring herself to move forward any further. The light was now fairly crackling with energy and she imagined the pain that would seer through her body when it touched her. She turned her head to Harry just in time to see the light slam into his chest. Harry let out a scream of agony as the light consumed him.

The Boy Who Lived had breathed his last.

Worse even than Harry's death throes was another even more chilling sound, like the cries of a hundred Dementors joined in an unholy chorus. Voldemort's chilling laugh of delight echoed throughout the chamber and Ginny forced herself to turn and look at the manic glee spreading across his face. The laughter grew in volume. Ginny stuck her fingers in her ears but the sound continued unrelenting - louder and louder still, until...

Ginny woke up. Her arms flailed about desperately as she searched for her wand, but succeeded only in knocking the goblet of water she had placed by her bedside crashing to the floor.

Her heart was still pounding in her chest. She forced herself to look up to the high ceiling of her room, still enchanted to look like the ripples of water from the small pond in the back garden of the Burrow, a spell her father had cast her for her ninth birthday, when the family could afford to buy little else.

The ceiling of her room. That meant she was in her bed, in her home. And then the memories came flooding back to her. Ginny blinked away the tears of relief in her eyes as she realized that Tom Riddle's plan had not succeeded; the diary had been destroyed; and Harry Potter had been just as great, no, greater, than she herself had told Tom.

The shock of the nightmare and the excitement of the relief she felt from its passing slowly ebbed away and Ginny felt her thundering heart finally begin to slow down. It wasn't until then that she realized that her nightgown and her top and bottom sheets were soaked through with sweat. She could feel the moisture continuing to seep through the thick red hair that she had last year let grow below her shoulders and enchanted into long curls. She dug around on the floor for her wand and finally found it stuck under a pile of old socks where it must have rolled when she had knocked over her goblet.

"Lumos."

A small light emerged from the tip of Ginny's wand, enough so that she could see the disheveled blankets, half fallen onto the floor. She got out of bed, feeling the cold, damp wet of the soaked nightgown against her body and pointed her wand at the sheets, absent-mindedly flicking her wand. The sheets and blankets neatly folded themselves into order and the top sheet tucked itself down. She next turned her attention to her sheets and clothes which, with another spell, magically dried themselves. She climbed back into bed, feeling the reassuring comfort of the soft bedclothes which she had earlier enchanted to let off a very slight smell of lavender whenever she pressed against them.

Ginny's head felt heavy and she wanted to fall back to sleep but as with any bad dream, she forced herself to stay awake long enough not to relive the nightmare. Despite the warmth of the sheets and the summer breeze blowing in through her open window, she felt an involuntary shudder. She decided she needed a distraction. She still held her wand tightly in her left hand and raised it again:

"Accio Mr. Sunshine."

Mr. Sunshine was a muggle child's toy that her father had come across in his work at the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office and given to Ginny for her fifth birthday. Mr. Sunshine was originally a large bright yellow plastic head, with rays of sun shining out of the side, and two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Somewhere along the line Mr. Sunshine had developed a habit of floating over the bed of its owner, drawing the attention of Mr. Weasley's office and a memory charm for the frightened muggle child and his parents. Mr. Weasley had taken a liking to the toy. Not for the first and last time, rather than returning it to its original unenchanted state, he had bewitched it further to light up and chatter in a persistently perky tone, fitting to its name. Mr. Sunshine had terrified a younger Ginny who had pulled her bed covers over her face in fright the first time she had heard it. This misfortune had earned Mr. Weasley a harsh reprisal from Ginny's mother. Over the years, however, Ginny had grown used to Mr. Sunshine even now he looked rather worse for wear. Mr. Sunshine also knew things about Ginny few people knew, such as the temper tantrums in which she indulged herself when no one else was around. Mr. Sunshine's constantly happy manner often times had a way of getting on her nerves but on this night she was grateful of his familiarity.

"Yes, Virginia?" The yellow orb wandered over.

"Mr. Sunshine, why am I having these dreams? Is it because of him?"

"Who, Virginia?"

Ginny thought for a moment. She wasn't sure whom she had meant - Harry or Tom Riddle?

"Harry Potter," she decided.

"I couldn't say," replied Mr. Sunshine. "You must ask yourself that question."

Mr. Sunshine didn't really have a mind of his own and could say only a very few things, most of which consisted of throwing Ginny's questions back for her to ponder. Her father had deliberately enchanted him this way. He had often explained to her that most questions were those one could answer oneself with a little thought, but it was good to wonder out loud, anyway. Ginny admitted that for one with so few words, there was a lot Mr. Sunshine had taught her.

"I see. Good night, Mr. Sunshine."

"Good night, Virginia, and I must say it is a little past your bed time."

Mr. Sunshine would have to be up-up-maded, or whatever it was Muggles did with their eckeltronic machines, Ginny reflected as she waved her wand and watched him float into the corner of her room, his light slowly fading.

Ginny looked at the tip of her wand and its tiny light. She remembered how, as a child, she and her brother Ron had first learned to make their wands give off light and spend night after summer night chasing each other around the trees of their garden playing lightning tag. She tried to focus on that happy memory as she flicked her wand once more to make the light go out and fell immediately into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

Ginny would not have slept so easily had she known that at that very moment the vision from her nightmare was nary a few hundred meters from the outside of her house.

The wizard who had once been Tom Marvolo Riddle stood at the edge of a small enchanted forest that kept the Burrow hidden from the curious eyes of any wandering Muggles. Lord Voldemort watched as the distant light in a window near the roof of the Weasley's ramshackle estate was slowly extinguished. He kept his face hidden beneath billowing black robes. He had stood in the same way on this very spot for the past several hours. The most feared creature in the wizarding world had chosen this night to stand and merely watch the household of one of the oldest wizarding families, a family whose senior members had spent most of their lives resisting his inexorable conquest, a family whose younger generation had been fed a steady diet of warnings concerning his wicked crimes and miraculous demise, and had accepted the call to arms to prevent his return at a time when most witches and wizards still slept easily in the false security of his apparent downfall.

Voldemort allowed himself the luxury of a smile. It was pleasing to know that the most powerful resistance to his rule came from a family so wretchedly impoverished as the Weasleys, a family that struggled to keep their enchanted house from imminent collapse, a family that had an ever-decreasing circle of friends and supporters. There was nothing and no one protecting the Weasleys tonight while they slept, save for Voldemort's own practiced patience. Voldemort had learned in the days when he had not yet shed his dirty Muggle father's name that real power came only with patience and control. Even without the support of his Death Eaters, Voldemort knew that a flick of his wand could bring the Weasley's pathetic little world to a crashing end, but this was not the time. He would wait, wait until the entire wizarding world once again shuddered at the sound of his name, when every last token of resistance had been quelled, either through violence or fear, and the Weasleys were the only ones left to resist, and then he would crush them and enjoy the sweetness of complete power.

For now, Voldemort was satisfied in knowing that the Weasleys had an important role to play in his ever-expanding plans. He would use their own pathetic courage and loyalty against them. He listened to an owl in the background, hooting an insistent and growingly anxious warning to all of the sleeping animals in the forest that they were in the presence of unspeakable evil. Voldemort considered striking it down; indeed, part of him very much wanted to do so, but this, too, was a lesson in patience. It might be satisfying to kill the one dissident voice in a largely blissful and ignorant forest, but it was infinitely more pleasing to reflect on how isolated that voice was. It reminded him of the insistent calls of the Weasleys, and that pathetic muggle-loving fool Dumbledore, never loud enough to awake the sleeping wizarding world.

Not at least until it would be much too late.

No, there was no one who would bother Voldemort tonight. The Weasleys themselves had no idea what stood at the foot of their back garden. For all of the school awards and trophies plied on them by Dumbeldore, none of them were possessed with the insight to perceive his presence. Unlike Harry Potter, they had no scar that would alert them whenever he was near.

None, that was, except for one.

Voldemort reached into the folds of his robes and pulled out an extremely old, cloth-covered volume. It had tears and holes from when it had once been destroyed, until Voldemort had re-enchanted it and discovered the secrets it contained. Voldemort opened it up to the first page and read the faded, blotched lettering:

T.M. RIDDLE

He paused ruefully as he considered the sixteen-year-old prefect at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry who had long ago purchased this diary, enchanted it, and trapped a memory of himself in its pages. He had been talented, very talented, and already very powerful, but he had never been blessed with the lessons of failure from which an older Voldemort now benefited. He inwardly cursed the arrogance of Tom Marvolo Riddle and the stupidity of Lucius Malfoy, who had brought him back to life. It was a threat to his plans, to be sure, but it was a threat that Voldemort himself was determined to turn to his advantage.

Voldemort felt a pleasant slither of movement around his ankles. An enormously long snake curled around his feet, its tongue flickering as it brushed its head in a horrible comedy of affection against the side of Voldemort's robes.

"Yes, Nagini," he said aloud, his own voice high-pitched and snake-like, but still in English rather than Parseltongue; he would not be giving the snake any commands yet. "We will be leaving soon. But first I must hear whether tonight's victory is yet complete."

It tried even the practiced patience of Voldemort that he must sit here on this night of all nights while he waited for others to carry out the more urgent aspects of his plan. But it was the only way he had been able to break the power of the old magic to which that great fool Dumbledore had always been devoted. He imagined the defeated look in the old man's eyes when he realized what Voldemort had finally achieved. Perhaps it would even be the burden that would finally finish him.

There was an almost imperceptible shuffling of fabric to Voldemort's immediate right. Another wizard appeared, dressed in the same plain black as the Dark Lord, his face hidden beneath the folds of his hood. Voldemort said nothing as the wizard turned to face him. He fell down his knees at Voldemort's feet and opened his robes to reveal a black mark, etched into his skin just above the forearm. Had Henry Middleton been present, he would have recognized it as the same sign that had been shot into the sky over Number 4 Privet Drive.

It was the Dark Mark. The sign that marked the wizard's loyalty to the Dark Lord. The sign that marked him as a Death Eater.

Nagini immediately uncurled himself from the Dark Lord's ankles and coiled his head at the sight of this newcomer. The wizard flinched as the snake bared its fangs and hissed angrily at his head. He imagined he feel the curiously cold spray of its deadly venom.

Voldemort opened his mouth slowly and breathed several high-pitched sounds of an ancient-sounding language that seemed to mirror the slithering motion of the snake. Immediately, Nagini closed his mouth and returned meekly to the feet of his master like a pet dog that had just been ordered to heal.

"Rise," Voldemort ordered.

The wizard obeyed.

"Does Nagini frighten you?"

"No, no, of course not, my lord." The wizard took a small step back.

Voldemort curled his lips in a chilling smile. "Do not lie to Lord Voldemort, Harrell, for he always knows."

Harrell stood up but did not respond. From underneath his cloak, Voldemort could see the man's eyes darting back and forth in a mixture of anticipation, excitement and fear.

"I sense you have something to report."

"Indeed, my lord." Harrell's excitement seemed barely contained. Voldemort hoped the information had been worth the wait.

"Were you successful?"

"Indeed, my lord."

Voldemort drew in a small breath. He moved hesitantly toward Harrell who took a much larger step back.

"Are you sure; are you very sure?"

"Yes, my lord. The Death Eaters carried out the plan as you instructed. We were not seen by the Muggles. The house was completely destroyed."

"And the boy?"

"After the others had moved in, I moved in personally to check, my lord. There can be no mistake."

"And the Dark Mark?"

"We shot it into the sky just as you instructed, my lord. The Muggles saw it at once but they did not know what it meant; in fact, they thought that it was some of kind of rocket, fire- fire- "

"A firework, Harrell."

"Yes, my Lord. I had forgotten - " His voice immediately trailed off.

"That I was raised by Muggles?" Voldemort's jaw set much more firmly.

"No, of course not, my Lord." A look of fright came over Harrell's features. "I merely meant that I - I - that your gift for knowledge is so much greater, so much broader than - "

"Liar!" spat Voldemort. Beside him, Nagini hissed as if on cue. "However," he continued, his expression softening slightly. "I have no interest in your memory, Harrell. Pray continue with your account."

"We did not set off the full mark, my Lord, as you instructed. Otherwise, the Muggles would have grown suspicious. The sign has already faded."

"And you were not seen?"

"No, my Lord. That is why it has taken so long for me to come into your presence. We changed into Muggle clothing and blended into the crowd. We watched the Muggle fire engine and then the Muggle police come and go. Finally, when it was safe, we returned."

"And the ministry?"

"No sign."

Voldemort smiled more broadly. Of course, it would never occur to them to doubt the abilities of the great Albus Dumbledore. They would arrive the next morning to collect the boy for school, and discover.... Voldemort imagined the shock and fear that would ensue throughout the wizarding world. He basked in its sensation as one might the warm sun on a rare English summer day.

"Very well, we will leave any memory charms to the Ministry. You have done well, Harrell," Voldemort said, watching Harrell exhale a sigh of relief he himself had not realized he was holding. "And Lord Voldemort always rewards those who please him. But please consider, consider carefully, whether there is anything, any small fact, which you may have overlooked."

Harrell seemed to hesitate.

"You should tell Lord Voldemort," Voldemort cooed softly. "It is much better to say it now than later."

"There was perhaps one small thing."

Voldemort leaned closer to Harrell but kept his expression neutral. Fear had its time and place. As with everything else, it was a question of patience and timing. And his plan could only succeed if Harrell felt the proper mixture of fear and comfort.

"Yes?"

"There was a dog, my Lord. A large black dog. It appeared in front of the house shortly before the other Death Eaters struck. I - I suppose.... It was probably just a Muggle pet, perhaps the boy's...."

Voldemort considered this information for a moment, before his face broke into a half smile. "Perhaps not a pet, I think. Still, I imagine it is of no consequence, so long, Harrell, as you are sure - "

"My Lord, I swear it."

"I expect no less. You may go now. I will call for you later."

"My Lord." Harrell bowed and then disapparated.

Voldemort stared once more at the now dark and silent house. It was just as well that his plan tonight had succeeded. The Weasley girl had been too frightened, as usual, too timid, to put her precious little head in harm's way. But this time, there was something that had made Voldemort more uneasy, the sense that she was growing somehow stronger, more resistant, more -. Voldemort struggled with the emphemerality of Ginny Weasley's confused emotional state. There was something there he had not been able to grasp, and it worried him.

Voldemort dismissed these worries from his mind. They weren't important now and he of all people knew how important it was not to dwell on the ghosts of the past, especially when it concerned worries that had long since proven unfounded. Still, he allowed himself a smile again; it had been almost a pity that things had gone so well to plan for if they had not, his next trap would have been even more cunning, more intricate, more slowly pleasurable, to spring.

With that last thought, Voldemort slowly unfolded his arms, and disapparated.

Nagini hissed for a moment on the now empty ground and turned back into the forest to find the new trail of his master.

And almost immediately the forest quieted again. Even the owl stopped hooting, and a deceptive calm stretched over the sleeping inhabitants of the Burrow.

* * *

Henry Middleton lay awake in bed listening to his wife breathing in and out beside him.

He envied her.

It wasn't the first time he had seen death in a career of more than twenty years and it probably would not be the last. Knowing this did not make him feel any easier. He remembered the face of the neighbors as they brought the bodies out, especially that tall, skinny boy. The boy had still held out hope, of course, for his best mate had still not been found. That had been strange, thought Henry. In fact, nothing about the whole thing had made sense. What was that program his wife was always watching on the telly? The two American agents: the skinny guy and his red head partner. Seemed more like something he'd seen on there. He just could not get his head around how the one house had imploded while the other side was unscathed. And that firework that seemed to stay up in the sky: Henry didn't like to think.

He needn't have worried, of course. The following day he would be visited at the fire station by a short, scruffy looking man dressed in very odd clothing. The following night he would sleep peacefully, remembering nothing of what he had seen the previous day.

And of course there had been the bodies. That had been the part Henry could never forget any day. He knew as soon as he turned around and tried to sound brave to that skinny lad that he would find them there. The bodies had been blackened, charred, hardly recognizable and very much dead. All three of them looked like they had been crouched under the kitchen table with their hands stretched out over their cowering bodies. If Henry had not known that they had died from the fire, he would have been sure they had gone from pure fright. It was those expressions that he could not put out of his mind, try as he might. He remembered the middle-aged man, portly, with a great thick moustache, and nary the remains of a neck on his head and the woman, his wife obviously, her hair still in plastic curls that had melted on the top of her head in the flames and smoke, a simpering look of horror etched forever on her face.

And then there was the boy: the nephew, wasn't it? He had looked different from the others: tall, skinny, with what once must have bright green eyes, as nearer as Henry could tell. And then there was that scar on his forehead, shaped like a bolt of lightning, the scar none of the neighbors could explain though all them could remember.

The boy the police would later identify as Harry Potter.