Harry had just brought down the Acromantula.
He stood over it, chest heaving, wand still raised. Then he pushed forward.
After watching Kevin's fire tornado tear through the maze like something out of a nightmare, Harry had instinctively taken the right-hand path. It was riddled with traps — but that still beat whatever Kevin had been doing back there.
A few turns later, he was completely lost.
Then he heard footsteps ahead.
He stopped, every nerve pulled taut. The sound came from around the next bend.
Probably another champion, he thought.
Then the Triwizard Cup came into view, its blue glow painting the hedgerow silver.
Harry stared. Here? It was just sitting here?
Before he could think it through, a figure stepped out behind it.
Harry's stomach dropped. The man from his nightmare — Barty Crouch Jr.
He braced for a spell. But the man didn't attack. He just strolled out into the open like he owned the maze, the Cup tucked casually under one arm.
"Hey, Harry Potter~"
Barty Jr. flashed a wide, crooked grin. Then he moved.
Harry snapped back to himself. "Stupefy!"
The red bolt cracked through the air. Barty Jr. sidestepped it with unsettling ease.
Something about that dodge. Something familiar about the way he moved. But there was no time to place it.
Harry flicked his wrist. "Protego!"
An earthen wall erupted from the ground between them.
It never finished rising. Barty Jr. caught it mid-growth, vaulted clean over, and landed three feet from Harry's face.
Harry staggered back. The man was right there. How had he closed that distance so fast?
He raised his wand to fire again. Barty Jr.'s hand shot out and seized his wrist.
Pain exploded up Harry's arm. He yelled — but kept his grip on the wand, forcing the spell out through gritted teeth. "Depulso!"
Barty Jr. simply tilted his head. The banishing charm went wide by inches.
"Too slow."
He said it pleasantly. Then he flicked the glowing Cup, caught it smooth, and the world dissolved.
Back at the maze entrance — where the Cup had stood on its pedestal — Alastor Moody arrived at a near-jog. He studied the empty stand with narrowed eyes.
He'd been tracking Kevin's fire tornado. Watched the boy get swallowed by it.
The plan had been elegant. Hit Kevin with an illusion, buy enough time for Harry to find the Cup alone. If Harry hadn't reached it yet, Moody would've slipped him a false Portkey — one that dropped him somewhere cold and empty and far from help. Stall Kevin. Let Harry face the Dark Lord without his shadow.
But Kevin had wrapped himself in that tornado. No clean angle for the illusion.
So Moody had followed alongside it, waiting.
Then Kevin had turned left. Moody had relaxed.
The relief lasted about four seconds. The tornado winked out.
Kevin was gone.
Moody knew immediately he'd been played. The boy hadn't even been in the tornado.
He'd sprinted back to the Cup's podium.
Gone.
Harry was barely halfway through the maze. So Kevin had taken the Portkey?
Fake Moody ground his teeth until they ached. That interfering little—
Fine. Adjust. Grab Harry instead.
He plunged back into the maze.
Harry was gone too.
Moody stood very still. The feeling crawled up his spine — the distinct, uncomfortable sensation of being watched by something that knew what it was doing.
The Portkey dropped Harry and Barty Jr. into a graveyard wrapped in cold fog.
Harry recognized it. From his nightmare. The stone angel at the center, scythe raised against a starless sky. The old house on the hill — the Riddle house, where Voldemort had first appeared to him in his dream.
It was all real. Every detail of it.
Barty Jr. dragged him forward, shouting at the headstones. "Master! I brought him! Harry Potter — I brought Harry Potter!"
He shoved Harry to the ground and kept laughing, the sound high and broken.
Harry's scar caught fire. The worst it had ever been. He doubled over, pressing his hand to his forehead.
From the shadow of a crumbling shack, Peter Pettigrew shuffled into view. He was cradling something — a grotesque, shriveled infant-shape, raw and pale as a grub.
Voldemort. Whatever was left of him before the ritual gave him flesh.
Pettigrew squinted at Barty Jr. with obvious distaste. "Shouldn't you be at Hogwarts?"
"None of your business." Barty Jr. didn't even look at him. His eyes were fixed on the infant with feverish hunger. "All that matters is that Harry Potter is here."
The infant's eyes — red, flat, ancient — slid toward Harry. "Begin the ritual," it said, voice thin as cracked ice. "Now."
Barty Jr.'s excitement curdled. He bowed his head and fell silent.
Pettigrew levitated Harry with a flick of his wand and slammed him against the Death statue. The stone scythe swung down across Harry's throat, locking him in place. His wand clattered away.
The great cauldron in the center of the graveyard ignited. Flames roared up from nothing, licking the stone lip as flesh-colored liquid bubbled inside. Pettigrew dropped the infant Voldemort in.
He turned to the grave directly behind Harry. His wand traced a slow arc.
A bone rose from the earth.
"Bone of the father... unwillingly given..."
It dropped into the cauldron. The liquid hissed.
Pettigrew drew a dagger. He looked at his right hand for a long moment — then at Barty Jr., who watched with the particular gleam of someone delighted by another man's pain.
Pettigrew turned away from him. There was no shortcut on this. He had to earn the Dark Lord's trust back. He had to give something.
The blade fell.
"Flesh of the servant... willingly given!"
His scream shook the fog. His severed hand dropped into the cauldron with a dull splash.
Pettigrew steadied himself, chalk-white. He turned to Harry. Raised the dagger again.
"Blood of the enemy... taken by force."
Harry screamed as the blade opened his arm. His blood dripped down, dark against the stone.
The liquid went crimson.
The flames doubled in height, then tripled, swallowing the cauldron entirely.
"The Dark Lord — he rises again!"
Barty Jr. screamed it first, arms thrown wide, half-mad with joy.
Pettigrew shot him a murderous look. That line had been his.
He stepped back.
Black mist poured from the blaze. It thickened, coiled, found a shape — a tall, robed silhouette that hardened as the fire died.
Voldemort stood in the graveyard.
He was exactly as Harry had always imagined him from the stories, and somehow still worse than that. Chalk-pale skin. No nose, just twin slits. Eyes like lit coals in a dead face. He looked down at his hands — new hands, real hands — and smiled.
"Master..."
Barty rushed forward, fawning and breathless.
Pettigrew scrambled after him.
Voldemort looked them both over with the faint contempt of a man surveying tools left out in the rain. Then, calm as speaking about the weather: "Wormtail. Your wand."
Pettigrew yanked it from his belt and bowed low, hands shaking, as he offered it up.
Voldemort turned to Barty Jr. "And the other one. Where is he?"
"Still at Hogwarts." Barty bowed his head. "Things moved faster than expected — I couldn't get him out before—"
The Killing Curse left Voldemort's wand before the sentence ended.
Barty Jr. Disapparated. The green flash obliterated the headstone that had been behind him a half-second earlier. He reappeared near the Death statue — right beside Harry, of all places.
Pettigrew flinched violently. His eyes darted from the smoking stone to the Dark Lord's face.
Harry, who had been yanking at his bonds, went completely still. He didn't understand what had just happened.
Voldemort didn't turn around. His voice was unhurried, almost contemplative. "Kevin. You never could resist making an entrance."
"When did you figure it out?" The voice that answered wasn't Barty Jr.'s — it was a voice Harry knew. Calm. A little wry.
Harry stared. His mind refused the conclusion even as his eyes reached it.
Kevin was standing where Barty Jr. had been.
Voldemort still didn't turn. He reached over without looking and laid his wand tip to the Dark Mark on Pettigrew's arm. The skull-and-serpent tattoo writhed beneath his touch.
He was summoning the Death Eaters.
"Tell me, Kevin," he said pleasantly. "What exactly is it you're after?"
"Nothing complicated." Kevin's smile was bright and cheerful and entirely unnerving. "I just missed you~"
The smile earned him a long, flat look. Voldemort's composure — so carefully restored — developed a hairline crack.
He had known the moment Kevin stepped into the graveyard. He'd let the ritual run because Kevin had clearly wanted it to. And that meant Kevin had a plan. Which meant the smile was a provocation. Which meant Voldemort had to find the plan.
Kevin's face was changing. The Polyjuice wearing off, or just a deliberate reveal — the familiar sharp features, the blue cloak, the entirely too-relaxed posture.
Harry, chained to the Death statue and bleeding, stared at Kevin Croft with an expression that encompassed shock, confusion, relief, betrayal, and a dozen other feelings he had no name for.
Voldemort looked at Kevin's face for the first time in three years and allowed himself a thin smile. "That face of yours. So much more pleasing to look at."
A pause.
"I think I'll kill you now."
"Imperius!"
The curse hit Kevin like a wall. His body locked — invisible ropes yanking his limbs wide, pulling him off the ground as he floated toward Voldemort like a paper doll in a gale.
"Kevin!" Harry shouted.
"Oh, yes. I forgot about you." Voldemort didn't look at Harry. "Don't worry. Your turn will come."
He took Kevin's throat in one hand and looked into his eyes. When Voldemort closed his own — when the memory-tasting began — Kevin's face was twisted in apparent agony.
Right up until the moment he grinned.
"Enjoy the memories I put together for you?"
The crowbar came down on Voldemort's skull like a thunderclap.
The sound of it was horrible. Voldemort flew backward through three headstones, taking them apart on impact.
Kevin dropped to the ground, landing easy. The Imperius Curse he could have broken at any time — he'd let Voldemort pull him close on purpose. While Voldemort had been sifting through his thoughts like a man searching a desk, Kevin had fed him Occlumency-crafted fakes. The real memories were buried and locked.
The crowbar had been a pebble he'd palmed minutes ago and transfigured on the spot.
Kevin turned to look at Pettigrew.
Pettigrew's mind had gone blank somewhere around the moment Voldemort tried to kill Barty Jr. He had been standing very still, cycling through a series of questions that led nowhere. Why had the Master attacked Barty? Was Barty Kevin? Why had Kevin helped resurrect him? Why hadn't the Imperius held?
"Long time no see, Peter."
Kevin walked over, hand extended, smiling like they were old friends at a reunion.
Pettigrew's brain went offline. He took the hand before he even realized he'd moved.
The pain was immediate and crushing.
"Aaaaah! Kevin!" He wrenched his remaining hand free, cradling it against his chest. The bones felt like powder. "You again!"
The clarity hit him then — Kevin in disguise, Kevin helping Voldemort resurrect, Kevin ambushing the Master, Kevin now standing here breaking his hand—
A green light came screaming from the rubble where Voldemort had landed.
Kevin Disapparated. The Killing Curse missed him by two feet and struck Pettigrew squarely in the chest.
Pettigrew was dead before he hit the ground.
Voldemort rose from the wreckage of three headstones. Half his face was caved in. In one hand his wand; the other pressed against the crushed side of his skull, already beginning to heal itself.
He had spent years reconstructing this body. One blow from Kevin's crowbar had wrecked it.
Worse — far worse — he had been ambushed again by the same child. In his own ritual. In his moment of triumph.
Voldemort had, apparently, forgotten that he himself had just attempted to ambush Kevin with an unannounced Imperius Curse. It did not occur to him that this was relevant.
"Kevin," he said, in a voice that promised things beyond pain. "You will beg for death."
"Crucio!"
Kevin Disapparated again. The curse vaporized the headstone where he'd been standing.
He reappeared twenty feet to the left. "Don't get so worked up, Tom. We've done this before."
Voldemort saw Kevin popping around the graveyard with infuriating ease and waved his wand in a wide, deliberate arc. The air changed — a thick, invisible weight settled over the graveyard.
Kevin felt it immediately. The Apparition Reversal Charm. The whole area locked down.
He'd need to get much further out to jump now.
The spell hit the approaching Death Eaters too — they'd been mid-Apparition, chaining jumps across the distance, and they slammed to a halt a quarter-mile out. Close, but stuck.
Voldemort didn't wait for them. He slashed his wand downward.
Fiendfyre exploded from the tip. A massive serpent made entirely of devouring fire came screaming across the graveyard toward Kevin — and it was nothing like the lava fire, nothing like anything Kevin had faced before. Raw, elemental, and hungry in a way that felt almost alive.
Voldemort was freshly resurrected, yes. He was not at full strength, yes. And still — this was Voldemort. The pressure of it was enough to make your knees want to buckle.
Kevin raised his wand anyway.
The fire serpent stopped.
Voldemort's control over it slipped — simply went, like a rope cut. The Fiendfyre shrank, reshaped, and condensed into a flaming spear that reversed direction and went straight back at its caster.
Voldemort pointed. The spear detonated midair.
The explosion swallowed the graveyard whole.