The Goblet of Fire Page 2

  ‘I have my reasons for using the boy, as I have already explained to you, and I will use no other. I have waited thirteen years. A few more months will make no difference. As for the protection surrounding the boy, I believe my plan will be effective. All that is needed is a little courage from you, Wormtail – courage you will find, unless you wish to feel the full extent of Lord Voldemort’s wrath –’

  ‘My Lord, I must speak!’ said Wormtail, panic in his voice now. ‘All through our journey I have gone over the plan in my head – my Lord, Bertha Jorkins’s disappearance will not go unnoticed for long, and if we proceed, if I curse –’

  ‘If?’ whispered the second voice. ‘If? If you follow the plan, Wormtail, the Ministry need never know that anyone else has disappeared. You will do it quietly, and without fuss; I only wish that I could do it myself, but in my present condition … come, Wormtail, one more obstacle removed and our path to Harry Potter is clear. I am not asking you to do it alone. By that time, my faithful servant will have rejoined us –’

  ‘I am a faithful servant,’ said Wormtail, the merest trace of sullenness in his voice.

  ‘Wormtail, I need somebody with brains, somebody whose loyalty has never wavered, and you, unfortunately, fulfil neither requirement.’

  ‘I found you,’ said Wormtail, and there was definitely a sulky edge to his voice now. ‘I was the one who found you. I brought you Bertha Jorkins.’

  ‘That is true,’ said the second man, sounding amused. ‘A stroke of brilliance I would not have thought possible from you, Wormtail – though, if truth be told, you were not aware how useful she would be when you caught her, were you?’

  ‘I – I thought she might be useful, my Lord –’

  ‘Liar,’ said the second voice again, the cruel amusement more pronounced than ever. ‘However, I do not deny that her information was invaluable. Without it, I could never have formed our plan, and for that, you will have your reward, Wormtail. I will allow you to perform an essential task for me, one that many of my followers would give their right hands to perform …’

  ‘R-really, my Lord? What –?’ Wormtail sounded terrified again.

  ‘Ah, Wormtail, you don’t want me to spoil the surprise? Your part will come at the very end … but I promise you, you will have the honour of being just as useful as Bertha Jorkins.’

  ‘You … you …’ Wormtail’s voice sounded suddenly hoarse, as though his mouth had gone very dry. ‘You … are going … to kill me, too?’

  ‘Wormtail, Wormtail,’ said the cold voice silkily, ‘why would I kill you? I killed Bertha because I had to. She was fit for nothing after my questioning, quite useless. In any case, awkward questions would have been asked if she had gone back to the Ministry with the news that she had met you on her holidays. Wizards who are supposed to be dead would do well not to run into Ministry of Magic witches at wayside inns …’

  Wormtail muttered something so quietly that Frank could not hear it, but it made the second man laugh – an entirely mirthless laugh, cold as his speech.

  ‘We could have modified her memory? But Memory Charms can be broken by a powerful wizard, as I proved when I questioned her. It would be an insult to her memory not to use the information I extracted from her, Wormtail.’

  Out in the corridor, Frank suddenly became aware that the hand gripping his walking stick was slippery with sweat. The man with the cold voice had killed a woman. He was talking about it without any kind of remorse – with amusement. He was dangerous – a madman. And he was planning more murders – this boy, Harry Potter, whoever he was – was in danger –

  Frank knew what he must do. Now, if ever, was the time to go to the police. He would creep out of the house and head straight for the telephone box in the village … but the cold voice was speaking again, and Frank remained where he was, frozen to the spot, listening with all his might.

  ‘One more curse … my faithful servant at Hogwarts … Harry Potter is as good as mine, Wormtail. It is decided. There will be no more argument. But quiet … I think I hear Nagini …’

  And the second man’s voice changed. He started making noises such as Frank had never heard before; he was hissing and spitting without drawing breath. Frank thought he must be having some sort of fit or seizure.

  And then Frank heard movement behind him in the dark passageway. He turned to look behind him, and found himself paralysed with fright.

  Something was slithering towards him along the dark corridor floor, and as it drew nearer to the sliver of firelight, he realised with a thrill of terror that it was a gigantic snake, at least twelve feet long. Horrified, transfixed, Frank stared at it as its undulating body cut a wide, curving track through the thick dust on the floor, coming closer and closer – what was he to do? The only means of escape was into the room where two men sat plotting murder, yet if he stayed where he was the snake would surely kill him –

  But before he had made his decision, the snake was level with him, and then, incredibly, miraculously, it was passing; it was following the spitting, hissing noises made by the cold voice beyond the door, and in seconds, the tip of its diamond-patterned tail had vanished through the gap.

  There was sweat on Frank’s forehead now, and the hand on the walking stick was trembling. Inside the room, the cold voice was continuing to hiss, and Frank was visited by a strange idea, an impossible idea … This man could talk to snakes.

  Frank didn’t understand what was going on. He wanted more than anything to be back in his bed with his hot-water bottle. The problem was that his legs didn’t seem to want to move. As he stood there shaking, and trying to master himself, the cold voice switched abruptly to English again.

  ‘Nagini has interesting news, Wormtail,’ it said.

  ‘In-indeed, my Lord?’ said Wormtail.

  ‘Indeed, yes,’ said the voice. ‘According to Nagini, there is an old Muggle standing right outside this room, listening to every word we say.’

  Frank didn’t have a chance to hide himself. There were footsteps, and then the door of the room was flung wide open.

  A short, balding man with greying hair, a pointed nose and small, watery eyes stood before Frank, a mixture of fear and alarm on his face.

  ‘Invite him inside, Wormtail. Where are your manners?’

  The cold voice was coming from the ancient armchair before the fire, but Frank couldn’t see the speaker. The snake, on the other hand, was curled up on the rotting hearth-rug, like some horrible travesty of a pet dog.

  Wormtail beckoned Frank into the room. Though still deeply shaken, Frank took a firmer grip upon his walking stick, and limped over the threshold.

  The fire was the only source of light in the room; it was casting long, spidery shadows upon the walls. Frank stared at the back of the armchair; the man inside it seemed to be even smaller than his servant, for Frank couldn’t even see the back of his head.

  ‘You heard everything, Muggle?’ said the cold voice.

  ‘What’s that you’re calling me?’ said Frank defiantly, for now that he was inside the room, now that the time had come for some sort of action, he felt braver; it had always been so in the war.

  ‘I am calling you a Muggle,’ said the voice coolly. ‘It means that you are not a wizard.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by wizard,’ said Frank, his voice growing steadier. ‘All I know is I’ve heard enough to interest the police tonight, I have. You’ve done murder and you’re planning more! And I’ll tell you this, too,’ he added, on a sudden inspiration, ‘my wife knows I’m up here, and if I don’t come back –’

  ‘You have no wife,’ said the cold voice, very quietly. ‘Nobody knows you are here. You told nobody that you were coming. Do not lie to Lord Voldemort, Muggle, for he knows … he always knows …’

  ‘Is that right?’ said Frank roughly. ‘Lord, is it? Well, I don’t think much of your manners, my Lord. Turn round and face me like a man, why don’t you?’

  ‘But I am not a man, Muggle,’ said the c
old voice, barely audible now over the crackling of the flames. ‘I am much, much more than a man. However … why not? I will face you … Wormtail, come turn my chair around.’

  The servant gave a whimper.

  ‘You heard me, Wormtail.’

  Slowly, with his face screwed up, as though he would rather have done anything than approach his master and the hearth-rug where the snake lay, the small man walked forwards and began to turn the chair. The snake lifted its ugly triangular head and hissed slightly as the legs of the chair snagged on its rug.

  And then the chair was facing Frank, and he saw what was sitting in it. His walking stick fell to the floor with a clatter. He opened his mouth and let out a scream. He was screaming so loudly that he never heard the words the thing in the chair spoke, as it raised a wand. There was a flash of green light, a rushing sound, and Frank Bryce crumpled. He was dead before he hit the floor.

  Two hundred miles away, the boy called Harry Potter woke with a start.

  — CHAPTER TWO —

  The Scar

  Harry lay flat on his back, breathing hard as though he had been running. He had awoken from a vivid dream with his hands pressed over his face. The old scar on his forehead, which was shaped like a bolt of lightning, was burning beneath his fingers as though someone had just pressed a white-hot wire to his skin.

  He sat up, one hand still on his scar, the other reaching out in the darkness for his glasses, which were on the bedside table. He put them on and his bedroom came into clearer focus, lit by a faint, misty orange light that was filtering through the curtains from the street lamp outside the window.

  Harry ran his fingers over the scar again. It was still painful. He turned on the lamp beside him, scrambled out of bed, crossed the room, opened his wardrobe and peered into the mirror on the inside of the door. A skinny boy of fourteen looked back at him, his bright green eyes puzzled under his untidy black hair. He examined the lightning-bolt scar of his reflection more closely. It looked normal, but it was still stinging.

  Harry tried to recall what he had been dreaming about before he had awoken. It had seemed so real … there had been two people he knew, and one he didn’t … he concentrated hard, frowning, trying to remember …

  The dim picture of a darkened room came to him … there had been a snake on a hearth-rug … a small man called Peter, nicknamed Wormtail … and a cold, high voice … the voice of Lord Voldemort. Harry felt as though an ice cube had slipped down into his stomach at the very thought …

  He closed his eyes tightly and tried to remember what Voldemort had looked like, but it was impossible … all Harry knew was that at the moment when Voldemort’s chair had swung around, and he, Harry, had seen what was sitting in it, he had felt a spasm of horror which had awoken him … or had that been the pain in his scar?

  And who had the old man been? For there had definitely been an old man; Harry had watched him fall to the ground. It was all becoming confused; Harry put his face into his hands, blocking out his bedroom, trying to hold on to the picture of that dimly lit room, but it was like trying to keep water in his cupped hands; the details were now trickling away as fast as he tried to hold on to them … Voldemort and Wormtail had been talking about someone they had killed, though Harry could not remember the name … and they had been plotting to kill someone else … him …

  Harry took his face out of his hands, opened his eyes and stared around his bedroom as though expecting to see something unusual there. As it happened, there were an extraordinary number of unusual things in this room. A large wooden trunk stood open at the foot of his bed, revealing a cauldron, broomstick, black robes and assorted spellbooks. Rolls of parchment littered that part of his desk that was not taken up by the large, empty cage in which his snowy owl, Hedwig, usually perched. On the floor beside his bed a book lay open; he had been reading it before he fell asleep the previous night. The pictures in this book were all moving. Men in bright orange robes were zooming in and out of sight on broomsticks, throwing a red ball to each other.

  Harry walked over to this book, picked it up and watched one of the wizards score a spectacular goal by putting the ball through a fifty-foot-high hoop. Then he snapped the book shut. Even Quidditch – in Harry’s opinion, the best sport in the world – couldn’t distract him at the moment. He placed Flying with the Cannons on his bedside table, crossed to the window and drew back the curtains to survey the street below.

  Privet Drive looked exactly as a respectable suburban street would be expected to look in the early hours of Saturday morning. All the curtains were closed. As far as Harry could see through the darkness, there wasn’t a living creature in sight, not even a cat.

  And yet … and yet … Harry went restlessly back to his bed and sat down on it, running a finger over his scar again. It wasn’t the pain that bothered him; Harry was no stranger to pain and injury. He had lost all the bones from his right arm once, and had them painfully regrown in a night. The same arm had been pierced by a venomous foot-long fang not long afterwards. Only last year Harry had fallen fifty feet from an airborne broomstick. He was used to bizarre accidents and injuries; they were unavoidable if you attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and had a knack for attracting a lot of trouble.

  No, the thing that was bothering Harry was that the last time his scar had hurt him, it had been because Voldemort had been close by … but Voldemort couldn’t be here, now … the idea of Voldemort lurking in Privet Drive was absurd, impossible …

  Harry listened closely to the silence around him. Was he half expecting to hear the creak of a stair, or the swish of a cloak? And then he jumped slightly as he heard his cousin Dudley give a tremendous grunting snore from the next room.

  Harry shook himself mentally; he was being stupid; there was no one in the house with him except Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and Dudley, and they were plainly still asleep, their dreams untroubled and painless.

  Asleep was the way Harry liked the Dursleys best; it wasn’t as though they were ever any help to him awake. Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and Dudley were Harry’s only living relatives. They were Muggles (non-magic people) who hated and despised magic in any form, which meant that Harry was about as welcome in their house as dry rot. They had explained away Harry’s long absences at Hogwarts over the last three years by telling everyone that he went to St Brutus’s Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys. They knew perfectly well that, as an underage wizard, Harry wasn’t allowed to use magic outside Hogwarts, but were still apt to blame him for anything that went wrong about the house. Harry had never been able to confide in them, or tell them anything about his life in the wizarding world. The very idea of going to them when they awoke, and telling them about his scar hurting him, and about his worries about Voldemort, was laughable.

  And yet it was because of Voldemort that Harry had come to live with the Dursleys in the first place. If it hadn’t been for Voldemort, Harry would not have had the lightning scar on his forehead. If it hadn’t been for Voldemort, Harry would still have had parents …

  Harry had been a year old the night that Voldemort – the most powerful Dark wizard for a century, a wizard who had been gaining power steadily for eleven years – arrived at his house and killed his father and mother. Voldemort had then turned his wand on Harry; he had performed the curse that had disposed of many full-grown witches and wizards in his steady rise to power – and, incredibly, it had not worked. Instead of killing the small boy, the curse had rebounded upon Voldemort. Harry had survived with nothing but a lightning-shaped cut on his forehead, and Voldemort had been reduced to something barely alive. His powers gone, his life almost extinguished, Voldemort had fled; the terror in which the secret community of witches and wizards had lived for so long had lifted, Voldemort’s followers had disbanded, and Harry Potter had become famous.

  It had been enough of a shock for Harry to discover, on his eleventh birthday, that he was a wizard; it had been even more disconcerting to find out that everyone in
the hidden wizarding world knew his name. Harry had arrived at Hogwarts to find that heads turned and whispers followed him wherever he went. But he was used to it now: at the end of this summer, he would be starting his fourth year at Hogwarts; and he was already counting the days until he would be back at the castle again.

  But there was still a fortnight to go before he went back to school. He looked hopelessly around his room again, and his eye paused on the birthday cards his two best friends had sent him at the end of July. What would they say if he wrote to them and told them about his scar hurting?

  At once, Hermione Granger’s voice filled his head, shrill and panicky.

  ‘Your scar hurt? Harry, that’s really serious … Write to Professor Dumbledore! And I’ll go and check Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions … Maybe there’s something in there about curse scars …’

  Yes, that would be Hermione’s advice: go straight to the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and in the meantime, consult a book. Harry stared out of the window at the inky, blue-black sky. He doubted very much whether a book could help him now. As far as he knew, he was the only living person to have survived a curse like Voldemort’s; it was highly unlikely, therefore, that he would find his symptoms listed in Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions. As for informing the Headmaster, Harry had no idea where Dumbledore went during the summer holidays. He amused himself for a moment, picturing Dumbledore, with his long silver beard, full-length wizard’s robes and pointed hat, stretched out on a beach somewhere, rubbing suntan lotion into his long crooked nose. Wherever Dumbledore was, though, Harry was sure that Hedwig would be able to find him; Harry’s owl had never yet failed to deliver a letter to anyone, even without an address. But what would he write?

  Dear Professor Dumbledore, Sorry to bother you, but my scar hurt this morning. Yours sincerely, Harry Potter.