The cup screamed.
It wasn't a sound meant for human ears but for stone and marrow, a note that split the night in two. The world folded inside out and spat them onto cold earth.
Alden hit first, one knee driving into damp grass, the other hand steadying the Cup as it clattered beside him. The air was dense, heavy with rot and iron. He drew a slow breath through his nose, testing it the way an alchemist tastes smoke. Behind him Harry landed hard, a choked cry swallowed by mist.
They were somewhere else—somewhere wrong.
The horizon was a wall of white fog. Moonlight seeped through it like water through gauze, silvering crooked stones that jutted from the soil in uneven rows. A wrought-iron gate sagged at the far end, chained shut but rusted thin as bone. Every sound carried—each breath, each movement—a world stripped bare of echo.
Alden rose, silent, scanning. His wand came to hand with practiced ease. "We've been moved," he said. His voice was low, controlled, the calm before analysis. "Not Apparition. A pull—Portkey work."
Harry pushed himself upright, panting. "Wh-what do you mean, moved? Where's—where's the maze? The stands?"
"Gone," Alden said simply. He crouched, brushing his fingers over the ground. When he lifted them, the tips were black with ash. "Someone wanted us here."
Harry's wand trembled in his grip. "Us? You think this was meant for—"
"For you," Alden finished, not unkindly. "But they got me instead of the spare."
Harry blinked at him, unsure whether to feel relieved or horrified. "Where are we?"
Alden turned, eyes narrowing through the fog. A slope rose beyond the graves, crowned by a single dark house with a broken chimney. "England," he said. "Old earth, older magic. Somewhere that remembers death." His gaze flicked to a tall headstone nearby, the name half-erased by weather: Riddle.
Harry's face drained of colour. "I know this place," he whispered. "I've seen it—in my dreams." His voice cracked on the last word. "That's my parents'—no—he—he killed them from up there."
Alden didn't look at him. "Then you were never dreaming," he murmured. "You were remembering."
The silence that followed pressed tight around them. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
A sound broke it: the faintest crunch of gravel.
Harry spun toward it, wand raised. "Someone's coming."
Mist parted in slow coils, revealing a figure moving between the graves—a short man beneath a hooded cloak, arms cradling something small that writhed weakly. The sight made Harry falter. "Is that—a baby?"
Alden's wand lifted a fraction higher. "No," he said. "That's what's left of a man."
They watched as the figure drew closer. The thing in his arms whimpered, a hiss disguised as a breath. The man stopped beside the Riddle headstone, close enough that they could smell the damp wool of his cloak.
For a heartbeat, nothing moved.
Then pain tore through Harry's forehead. He doubled over with a cry, clutching at his scar.
Alden stepped in front of him automatically. "Show yourself," he said.
The hooded man hesitated—and then a voice, shrill and shaking, broke the night. "Avada Ked—"
Alden didn't think. His wand cut through the air. "Transfigura Muro!"
The earth convulsed. A slab of granite shot upward, solid as a wall. Green light struck it and exploded in shards of flame and sound. The blast threw both boys backward. Dirt rained down like ash. When the ringing in Harry's ears faded, he heard Alden's breathing—measured, steady.
"Typical cowardice," Alden said, voice cold enough to mist. "Attack the moment you feel cornered."
Through the smoke, the hooded man stumbled, cursing, his right hand glittering with the gleam of a silver finger. He raised his wand again. Chains burst from the ground, glowing with runes, and wound around Alden's torso before he could finish his counterspell. They hissed against his skin, searing lines of light.
Alden didn't cry out. He stared down at the glowing links, analysing them even as they burned. "Binding sigils," he muttered through his teeth. "Old ones."
"Stay back!" Harry shouted, but the man flicked his wand. The ground surged beneath Harry's feet and slammed him against the Riddle statue. His wrists were bound by conjured ropes, his wand wrenched away. In the brief flash of light, he saw the man's face—pale, sweating, eyes like wet stones. One finger missing.
"Wormtail," Harry breathed.
Wormtail's grin was all terror. "Yes," he said, trembling. "And you'll both stay right where you are."
Alden's voice cut through the darkness. "Someone's been using this ground," he said softly. "For something more than mourning."
Wormtail's wand twitched toward him. "Silence!"
But Alden only smiled—small, blood at the corner of his mouth. "You can't silence what you don't understand."
Wormtail struck him across the face with his silver hand. The crack echoed among the tombs. "You'll learn respect before the night ends," he hissed, dragging the twitching bundle toward a waiting cauldron.
Harry's pulse thundered in his ears. The air smelled of smoke and metal; the mist pulsed faintly with light from the cauldron's first spark. Somewhere behind the cloak came a thin, inhuman whisper.
Alden turned his head just enough for Harry to hear him. "Don't speak," he said quietly. "They want fear. Give them silence instead."
Harry swallowed hard, nodding once.
Wormtail bent over the cauldron. The bundle in his arms writhed, a voice whispering through the mist—high and eager.
"Now," it said, faint but unmistakable, "begin."
The fire flared white. Shadows leapt across the graves, and the night itself seemed to hold its breath.
The ropes bit deeper every time Alden shifted. The iron burned where it touched skin, runes pulsing with a rhythm like a second, malignant heartbeat. He had tested them once—just once—and the recoil of dark magic had nearly split his shoulder open. Now he stood motionless, eyes following Wormtail's every movement while the mist thickened around them.
Wormtail had stuffed a gag between Harry's teeth and left him tied against the Riddle headstone. The boy's eyes were wide and darting, his chest jerking with shallow breaths. He tried to twist free once, twice, but the cords held. When he caught Alden's gaze, something in it—something steadier than reason—anchored him. Alden was bleeding, sweat beading along his temple, yet his expression was sharp as a drawn blade.
Wormtail stumbled through the grass, dragging the stone cauldron, the thing in his arms writhing and hissing. He muttered feverishly, voice catching. The stench of iron and mildew clung to him. When he reached the center of the clearing, he dropped the bundle beside the cauldron and lit his wand. The fire sprang blue, then white, shadows leaping like teeth along the graves.
Alden's breath came slow, deliberate, though his eyes had gone unfocused for a moment—drawn inward to a memory. A dusty corridor beneath the Dreyse manor, air thick with the smell of wax and rot. Shelves lined with tomes bound in black leather, wards meant to keep children away. Crix, his old house-elf, was pleading with him not to enter. And still he had gone. He remembered the cracked spines of the books, the jagged handwriting of men who believed they had found a way to steal from death itself. Rituals of reclamation, they had called them. Always ending the same way: in madness, or silence.
Now that same pattern, that same geometry, glowed in the soil around the cauldron.
"This isn't resurrection," he murmured, voice rasping from blood and disbelief. "It's theft."
Harry strained against the ropes. "What—what are they doing?" His voice shook through the gag; he spat it out, trembling. "Alden, what is that thing?"
Alden didn't look at him. "Something that should've stayed a memory." He turned his head just enough that Harry could see the outline of fear beneath the calm. It was the first time Harry had ever seen him unsettled. "If I'm right," Alden whispered, "then nothing good walks out of that fire."
Wormtail wheeled the cauldron fully upright, panting. Its belly was big enough to hold a man. Water—or something pretending to be water—sloshed inside. He raised his wand, and flames licked up from nowhere, feeding on nothing, burning soundless and pure.
The bundle at his feet stirred. A thin hiss coiled out of it.
"Now," came a voice—high, cold, familiar only to nightmares. "Begin."
The cauldron began to glow. Sparks like diamonds burst from the surface and rained down on the earth. Wormtail flinched, whispering, "It is ready, Master."
"Now," the voice said again.
Wormtail peeled back the robes. Harry made a strangled noise, eyes wide with disbelief. Alden's stomach turned even before he saw it.
The thing was not a child. It had limbs, yes, but wrong—too thin, skin like raw ash. The face was a memory of humanity smoothed into serpent lines, red eyes gleaming as if lit from within. The air itself recoiled from it.
"Madness," Alden said under his breath. "A body sculpted from the void."
Wormtail lifted the creature with both arms, shuddering. His hood slipped back, pale face twisted between awe and revulsion. For one heartbeat, the firelight illuminated it fully, and Alden saw—saw the moment the last of humanity left the man's eyes as he lowered the creature into the cauldron.
A hiss. Then silence. The water turned red.
Alden's pulse hammered against the bindings. I've seen this before. The memory of those forbidden pages surged up again—equations written in blood, the notes of wizards who thought themselves gods. Nothing born of such art stays whole.
He began to fight the chains. Frost crawled outward from his wrists, the runes pulsing in protest. The metal hissed and bit deeper, drawing more blood. He barely felt it.
Wormtail's voice quavered: "Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!"The ground cracked. Dust rose from the grave and drifted into the cauldron. The sparks flared blue.
"Flesh of the servant, willingly given—"He drew a silver dagger, his sobs turning high and wild. The blade flashed; the scream that followed cut through the mist like steel. Harry flinched; Alden shut his eyes for half a breath.
When he opened them, Wormtail was on his knees, cradling a stump, gasping. Blood hissed as it hit the cauldron and turned the potion crimson. The color of rebirth and ruin.
Alden tried again to wrench free. The magic burned back, searing through his arm. He bit down a shout, tasted copper.
"This is what you wanted to see, Professor," he said hoarsely, half to himself. "What happens when knowledge meets power?"
He could almost hear Moody's voice from every class that year—gravel and mockery."You think your books will save you, Dreyse? All the clever theory in the world means nothing when power walks through the door."And Alden's cold reply, "Then I'll learn to open the door first." But watching Wormtail's mutilation, hearing that inhuman whisper rising from the cauldron, Alden understood what Moody had meant. Power like this didn't walk through doors. It tore them off their hinges.
Wormtail staggered toward Harry, dagger slick with his own blood. "Blood of the enemy," he panted, "forcibly taken…" Harry's shout became a muffled cry as the blade cut his arm. The blood dripped into a glass vial, then into the cauldron. The potion turned white—blinding, burning, a light that erased color from the world.
Wormtail collapsed beside it, sobbing, holding his bleeding stump against his chest. The fire's glow washed over his face, making him look almost holy in his despair.
For a heartbeat, nothing moved. The white light shimmered, silent.
"Let it drown," Alden whispered. "Let it all drown."
Harry's gaze flicked to him, seeing something he'd never seen before: Alden Dreyse, the boy who never flinched, shaking. The knowledge in his eyes had become terror.
Then the light went out. Steam exploded upward, swallowing everything. Through it came a shape, rising from the cauldron like a shadow taking form. The voice that followed was silk dragged over broken glass.
"Lord Voldemort," it said, savoring each word," has returned."
The smoke drifted apart like a curtain of ghosts, and there he stood.
Voldemort's skin was moonlight drawn too thin—translucent, vein-shadowed, alive with something that wasn't quite life. His hands flexed as though relearning sensation, fingers long and jointed like the legs of some pale spider. When he breathed, the air around him seemed to frost and shiver.
He looked down at himself in quiet wonder. Those hands traveled up to his face, tracing the curve of his cheekbone and the slit of his nose. He smiled, slow and terrible. His laughter began low, almost human, before rising—high, sharp, inhuman—a sound that did not belong to flesh.
Alden could only stare. Even shackled, he understood the enormity of what he was seeing. The geometry of the ritual, the stolen blood, the binding sigils—all of it aligning perfectly. He could almost see the threads of magic like veins beneath the earth, pulsing back toward this point.
"This is why," he whispered, voice hoarse with realization. "This is why you were entered, Harry. It wasn't a contest—it was a key."
Harry blinked at him, still tied to the grave, eyes wide, lips trembling. "What—what do you mean?"
Alden looked up at the figure standing amid the smoke. "Resurrection requires lineage and debt. He needed a connection to the curse that killed him. Your blood isn't just power, it's the undoing of his failure."
Voldemort turned toward him at that, amused. The slitted pupils narrowed, gleaming scarlet in the mist. "How curious," he murmured, voice silk and blade at once. "You understand the architecture. Few alive could speak those words and know what they mean."
Alden met his gaze, refusing to look away. "I read what sane men burned."
The Dark Lord's smile deepened. "A Dreyse, then. I had wondered which of that old brood might still remember." He didn't ask how; perhaps he enjoyed the knowing more than the answer.
Wormtail whimpered at his feet, clutching his bleeding stump, forgotten until Voldemort's attention shifted. "My Lord—please—my Lord, you promised—"
"Did I?" Voldemort turned his wand in his fingers as one might turn a dagger, admiring the grain of yew. He raised it lazily and pointed. Wormtail flew backward, crashing against the same headstone that held Harry bound. The impact jarred through the ground, cracking the stone. The man landed in a heap, sobbing.
Voldemort drifted closer to him, expression one of bored delight. "Hold out your arm," he said.
Wormtail obeyed, extending the wrong one. Voldemort's laugh was soft and poisonous. "The other, Wormtail."
Trembling, the man rolled back his sleeve, revealing the red skull tattoo burning faintly upon his skin. Voldemort studied it as though examining a relic. "It is back," he said, a whisper of ecstasy. "They will all have felt it." He pressed a long white finger to the mark.
Harry flinched, pain lancing through his scar. Wormtail screamed as the brand turned black, the veins of his arm searing like molten ink.
Alden's jaw tightened. The pulse of dark magic was ancient, crawling beneath his skin. He could feel Hogwarts itself in the distance stirring uneasily.
Voldemort straightened, spreading his arms slightly, addressing no one and everyone. "How many, I wonder," he mused, "will be brave enough to return when they feel the call? And how many will stay away and hope that silence saves them?"
His red eyes lifted to the sky, gleaming wetly. "The weak always hide behind the absent. But absence," he said softly, "is an illusion."
He turned back toward Harry, pacing slowly, serpentlike. "You stand, Harry Potter, upon the remains of my late father. A fool, like your mother—both useful, in their way. My mother gave me blood, my father gave me his name, and both gave me motive."
His tone was almost nostalgic. The great snake slithered past his feet, circling Harry with a hiss that sounded almost affectionate.
Alden's voice cut the air like a blade. "You're proud of murder?"
Voldemort's head tilted. "Pride is for the uncertain. I am only acknowledging the inevitability of power."
"Power isn't inevitable," Alden said. "It's a consequence."
For the first time, the red eyes flicked toward him fully. A faint, pleased smile. "And you would know, little scholar? Tell me—what do you call this consequence you witnessed tonight?"
Alden hesitated only a breath. "A mistake that thinks itself divine."
Harry jerked his head toward him in disbelief. "Alden—don't—"
"Silence, Potter," Voldemort said almost gently, as though correcting a child. He began pacing again, slow steps tracing a circle around them both. "You should listen, not speak. Few have seen the making of a god and lived to recount it."
Alden strained against the bindings, but the runes only glowed brighter, feeding off his resistance. He tasted blood where he'd bitten the inside of his cheek. "Don't listen to him, Harry! Whatever he says—it's meant to break you."
But Harry was staring at Voldemort, terror and fascination fighting in his face. This was the man from every nightmare, every whisper under Dumbledore's breath. The one who had killed his parents. And now he was alive, breathing, smiling.
Voldemort's voice fell to a whisper, and yet it filled the graveyard. "You see, Potter, my father's house lies there upon the hill. A place that once denied me." He gestured lazily. "He fled from magic. He fled from me. I returned to him as death, and even in his bones he serves me still."
He gestured down to the grave beneath Harry's feet. "There lies Tom Riddle Senior. Useful at last."
Harry's breath caught, his body trembling. "You killed him," he said, his voice cracking.
Voldemort's smile widened, sharp and gleaming. "Oh, Harry. I kill what denies its purpose." His gaze slid toward Alden again. "Tell me, young Dreyse—do you think yourself immune to purpose?"
Alden's reply was quiet. "No one is."
For a moment—just a moment—Voldemort's eyes softened, the expression nearly human. "Good," he said. "Then you may yet serve it."
Harry's bindings creaked as he tried to pull away. "Stop—just stop talking to him!"
Voldemort ignored him. His attention had returned to Alden fully now. "You understood the ritual. You grasped what even my most loyal followers could not. And yet you speak of mistakes. Tell me—do you fear what you might become if you stopped pretending to be better?"
Alden's breath was ragged; the frost beneath his feet was spreading again. "No," he said finally. "I fear what happens when no one does."
For the first time, Voldemort's laughter carried warmth. He tilted his head, studying him like a specimen preserved in glass. "Perhaps you are wasted at Hogwarts."
Then he turned back to the sky, eyes glowing as faint pops of Apparition began to echo around them—one after another, dark figures emerging from the mist, masked and silent. The Death Eaters. The old world, answering its master's call.
Alden felt the pulse of magic in the earth shudder again, like the world itself exhaling. He met Harry's eyes across the dark.
"Now," he said quietly, "we're in deeper than we were ever meant to be."
Harry swallowed hard, whispering back, "We were never meant to be here at all."
And from across the clearing, Voldemort spread his arms wide, welcoming the shadows that had come to kneel.
"Come, my friends," he said softly. "Come, see the resurrection of truth."
The night shivered with their answering whispers, and the graveyard filled with the rustle of cloaks and the scent of cold earth.
The air cracked like breaking glass.
One after another, shapes tore themselves out of the darkness—hooded, masked, cloaked in the whisper of old magic. Apparitions flared in the mist like sparks before being swallowed by it. The graveyard, moments ago a place of rot and ruin, was now full of breathing shadows.
Alden felt the pressure change first—the hum of so many dark auras colliding, pushing at the limits of his mind like too many voices speaking at once. His throat went dry. Even Harry, shaking and wide-eyed beside the tomb, sensed the power that had returned to its master.
The Death Eaters formed a loose circle around them. None dared speak. Then, slowly, as though waking from a dream, the first of them fell to his knees and crawled forward. His voice cracked through the cold like the rustle of paper.
"Master… Master…"
Voldemort stood motionless, the fog wreathing his pale face like a crown. One by one they followed the first, kissing the hem of his robes, retreating to their places, until the circle was complete—though not full. Gaps remained, empty spaces waiting for the absent or the dead.
Alden watched in silence, bound by the glowing sigils that had already drawn blood across his wrists. He was too still for a boy; the only movement was in his eyes, charting each masked face, trying to match features to whispers he had overheard in Slytherin corridors.
Theo's father was among them.
He recognized him by posture—the same spine, the same thinness of frame, the way his hands trembled when clasped behind his back. The realization struck without warning, a quiet shattering somewhere beneath his ribs. Of course. The evasions, the silences when conversation touched home, the way Theo flinched at loud voices. It had never been shyness. It was survival.
Theo had grown up listening to this voice—that voice—commanding men to kneel.
Voldemort's red eyes drifted over the circle, the slitted pupils widening slightly as if drinking them in. He spoke softly, almost conversationally.
"Welcome… my friends. Thirteen years since the last time we met, and yet you come as though summoned yesterday. United still, under the Mark."
He inhaled through those serpentine slits, and the sound was like a sigh of smoke. "But I smell guilt," he murmured. "A stench of cowardice hangs here."
The circle trembled. Cloaks rustled, though no wind touched them. No one dared speak.
"I see you whole," Voldemort went on, "healthy, alive. With magic still strong in your veins. And I ask myself—why did such loyal wizards not seek their master when he was lost?"
The silence was unbearable, broken only by Wormtail's wet sobs.
Voldemort's voice turned colder, a whisper lined with amusement. "Did you believe me gone? Broken? Did you crawl back into your homes and plead ignorance to Dumbledore's pets? Did you whisper to yourselves that perhaps a greater power had risen—a kinder world?"
No one answered. Alden could feel Harry's trembling beside him, the small sound of his breath loud against the hush.
A figure broke the circle at last. He threw himself forward, sliding to his knees, hands outstretched. "Master—please! Forgive us—"
The word ended in a scream.
"Crucio."
The air hissed. The man convulsed, writhing in the dirt, fingers clawing at nothing. Alden's stomach clenched. The sound—it was too raw, too human. He closed his eyes, but it didn't help. The world was still screaming.
When the noise finally stopped, Voldemort regarded the man with mild curiosity. "Get up, Avery. You ask forgiveness?" His tone was silken, patient. "I do not forgive. I do not forget. Thirteen years, and you will pay thirteen years before I decide if you have paid enough."
He turned, gesturing toward Wormtail. "This one has begun to repay his debt."
Wormtail lifted his head weakly, bloodied and weeping. "Yes, Master—yes…"
"You returned not from loyalty but fear," Voldemort said. "Yet fear serves as loyalty, of a sort." He waved his wand. A streak of liquid silver spun from its tip, coalescing in the air before plunging down. When the light faded, Wormtail's arm gleamed like moonlight, each finger perfect, inhumanly smooth.
Wormtail gasped, staring at it in disbelief. "It's—beautiful," he whispered, his voice trembling like a prayer.
Alden looked away. The beauty of dark magic was always the worst part—the way it disguised itself as order.
Voldemort smiled faintly. "May your loyalty never waver again, Wormtail."
Then he moved down the line, the hem of his robes whispering through the grass, stopping before a tall figure with perfect posture. Alden recognized him instantly, even through the mask: Lucius Malfoy.
"Lucius," Voldemort purred. "My slippery friend. The world speaks of your respectability, your careful neutrality. You still find time for the old entertainments, yes? The sport of Muggle-baiting?"
Lucius' voice came tight, forced calm. "My Lord, I never renounced you—never. Had I known where to find you—had there been any sign—"
"Yet you ran," Voldemort interrupted softly, "when my Mark was cast above the World Cup."
Lucius froze. The tremor in his voice betrayed him. "My Lord, I—"
"You disappoint me," Voldemort said, almost sadly. "But disappointment can be mended with service."
Lucius fell to one knee, bowing his head so low the mask touched dirt. "You have it, my Lord. Always."
Alden watched him, something twisting coldly inside. He remembered Lucius as he had first seen him on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters—impeccable, proud, a hand on Draco's shoulder, curiosity in his eyes as he studied Alden like one appraising a promising investment. A father, a man of control and breeding. That Lucius had seemed unshakeable.
This one was a ghost of himself—rigid, terrified, his words spilling like blood from a wound. Fear had peeled back the veneer, and beneath it was nothing but obedience.
Alden wondered what Draco would think if he could see his father now—bent like a supplicant before the very creature that once murdered children. The thought left a taste of iron in his mouth.
Voldemort moved on, his gaze passing over the next figure—tall, thin, silent. "Theodorus Nott," he said, his voice a purr. "Ah. You, at least, have not changed."
The man lifted his chin slightly, enough that the torchlight kissed his mask. "My loyalty has never faltered, my Lord."
"Indeed," Voldemort said. "Your counsel was wise in the old days. You were among the few who understood what needed to be done."
He leaned closer, and Alden could almost feel the chill of his breath across the graveyard. "Your son is at Hogwarts, I hear. Promise in him. He keeps fine company."
Alden froze.
Voldemort's eyes flicked toward him for the briefest moment, amusement flickering across that white face. "Yes," he murmured, "that one."
Theo's father bowed lower, the gesture too fast, too desperate. "He knows nothing of this, my Lord. He—he will not shame our name."
Voldemort smiled—a thin, venomous thing. "He will honor it, or he will not live to bear it. Blood has memory."
The man's shoulders stiffened, but he didn't answer.
Alden couldn't breathe. His mind replayed every conversation, every time Theo had changed the subject when home was mentioned, every look that had passed between him and Draco when the talk turned to their parents. He's been living under this his whole life. The revelation sat in his chest like a stone—rage and pity in equal measure.
Voldemort's voice rose again, carrying through the mist. "You see, my faithful, how easily the world forgets its debts. But I—" his hand swept the air, elegant as a conductor's "—I remember. I remember everything."
The Death Eaters murmured their assent, a hiss that rippled through the air like the movement of serpents.
Alden stood among them, blood drying on his wrists, the chains biting deeper. He watched the man who had murdered his family and the men who had raised his friends kneel before him—and for the first time since entering the maze, he truly understood what darkness meant.
It wasn't anger. It wasn't even cruelty. It was familiarity. It was watching a father kneel, and knowing a son would one day be asked to do the same.
The mist still clung low to the graves, shivering in the pulse of dark magic. Voldemort's voice had only just fallen silent when the sound of a chain shifting cut through the air.
Alden's wrists bled against the runes, frost crawling from the wounds like veins of light. He had been still all this time, silent—an uninvited ghost among the faithful—but when he saw Theodorus Nott Sr. lower his masked head before the creature that called itself Lord, something in him cracked.
He didn't think. He didn't weigh consequence or survival. The words came like steel ripped from its sheath.
"You miserable piece of filth," Alden spat, voice low but ringing. The circle froze. The whisper of cloaks died.
Nott Sr. stiffened, half-turned. "What—?"
Alden's eyes were fever-bright under the pale light. "Don't you dare call yourself a father. You bow and scrape for this thing, and you think your son won't see it? You think he won't learn what it means to kneel?" His voice rose, each word sharpening. "If you ever try to make Theo bow as you do, I'll kill you myself."
Gasps rippled through the Death Eaters. Even Harry flinched. Nott Sr. looked stunned for half a breath, then furious—mask trembling as he turned fully toward the boy chained in frost and blood.
"How dare—"
"Enough."
Voldemort's voice cut across them both. He turned slowly, the folds of his robes whispering against the grass. For a moment, he only regarded Alden with detached amusement, as though examining a curious insect that had dared to bite.
"I had almost forgotten," he murmured. "The spare."
His red eyes flicked to Lucius. "Explain."
Lucius hesitated, every movement measured. "My Lord… the boy is a student. Slytherin House. Fourth year. His name is Alden Dreyse."
Voldemort's face stilled. The silence that followed was total—thick, electric. Even the serpents in the grass seemed to stop their slithering.
"Dreyse," he repeated softly, savoring the syllables like an old memory. "That name should not exist."
He began to circle Alden, slow and deliberate. "I ordered your line's extinction. Long ago."
Alden met his gaze without lowering his head. "Then I suppose incompetence runs deeper than blood."
A hiss ran through the circle—shock, horror, the sound of grown men remembering fear. Voldemort stopped behind him, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.
"Incompetence?" he said lightly. "You think yourself clever because you can still mouth defiance? Do you know who I am, boy?"
"Yes," Alden said. "A mistake that refused to stay buried."
For a heartbeat, even Voldemort's expression faltered. Then the amusement curdled into ire. The wind picked up, sudden and cold. The chain bindings shuddered under the pressure of his presence.
"You speak like old blood," Voldemort hissed. "And yet your family is not of our sacred twenty-eight. You are mongrels, dressed in relics."
Alden's voice was steady, clear. "Of course not. We were pure long before Britain's nobles learned to forge family trees. You chase old money." He tilted his chin up. "We are old blood."
A low murmur spread through the Death Eaters—disbelief and unease mingling like smoke. Voldemort stepped closer, until the hem of his robes brushed the frost beneath Alden's feet. One long, pallid hand rose, two fingers sliding under the boy's chin, forcing him to meet those terrible, red eyes.
"Yes," Voldemort whispered, almost to himself. "The eyes. Not green… grey. Stormlight." He studied him in silence for a long moment, expression shifting from curiosity to recognition. His voice dropped to something near reverence. "Grindelwald."
The name hit the air like a spell.
Gasps broke around the circle. Nott Sr. jerked upright, and Lucius staggered a half-step back. Crabbe and Goyle's fathers exchanged glances through their masks, Avery's breath catching audibly. Even the serpent coiled tighter on itself, sensing the change.
Harry froze, the name stabbing through his confusion and fear. He didn't understand the bloodlines, but he knew that name—the first dark wizard, the one Dumbledore had defeated. He turned wide eyes toward Alden, disbelief written plain.
Alden didn't look away. "That's right," he said softly. "You recognize what you tried to erase."
Voldemort's grip tightened, his voice low and cold. "You dare to carry his blood?"
"I didn't choose my name," Alden said, "but I choose what to do with it."
Lucius couldn't help himself. The words slipped out as a breath. "That explains the rumors," he whispered. "The next Dark Lord…"
Voldemort's head snapped toward him, the air thrumming with sudden violence. "Silence." The command cracked like a whip. Lucius dropped to his knees instantly, head bowed so low the grass brushed his mask.
Voldemort turned back to Alden, eyes blazing. "Grindelwald's kin," he murmured. "I should kill you where you stand… or perhaps I should teach you what true power looks like."
Alden smiled—a small, defiant curve of his lips that only deepened the quiet around them. "You can't teach what you don't understand."
The frost around his feet pulsed faintly, silver light flickering like breath. A wisp of inverted magic coiled up the chains, hissing where it touched Voldemort's robe. He drew back slightly, studying it.
"Interesting," he said. "Very interesting."
Nott Sr. broke the silence, his voice trembling. "My Lord—he's a child—he doesn't know what he says—"
"Enough!" Voldemort's shout split the air, and the bindings at Alden's wrists flared white-hot. He flinched, but refused to cry out.
The Dark Lord leaned close enough that his breath brushed Alden's ear. "You think lineage makes you special, little heir? You think blood is power? I am the proof that blood is nothing but a cage."
Alden turned his head just enough to meet the red eyes again. "Then why do you still care whose veins you spill?"
For a moment—just one, fleeting moment—Voldemort's expression changed. A flicker of something between rage and reluctant admiration crossed his face. The corner of his mouth curved upward.
"I may yet enjoy breaking you," he whispered.
He straightened, addressing the circle again. "Remember this, boy," he said softly. "Remember the name Dreyse. Grindelwald's blood still flows—and tonight, it kneels before me."
Alden lifted his head, eyes hard, voice steady. "Not yet."
The frost beneath his feet cracked like a heartbeat. Every man in the circle felt the chill spread, creeping up through their boots, through the soil itself, until the graveyard seemed to breathe.
Harry stared at him—terrified, but unable to look away. Voldemort's smile widened, cold and bright as steel. The air thickened with the promise of violence.
The night held its breath.