First off, I want to apologize for having this up so late in the day. I usually manage to post around 4ish, but I got sidetracked today...having a good round of golf can do that to you. Sorry. ::sheepish grin::
It is time to return to the wonderful world of fanfiction, and this time with a brand new story.
Well, perhaps I shouldn't say brand new, it is a sequel piece after all.
On that note, this is a sequel to What It Costs To Save The World, by Ahn Na Blue. The plot of that story is essential to understanding this one, so I strongly suggest you read it first if you haven't already. That being said, I'm estimating this will be about 9-14 chapters long...not entirely sure, but I do want to have it done by the time I leave for Los Angeles on August 1st. If it's not done by then, I'll try to finish it once I'm all set out in LA, but hopefully that won't be a problem.
So, as of right now, I have nothing else to say, except welcome, welcome, to another story at PK. Brought to you by your ever loving author, TGF2K of course ::wink::.
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Chapter 1: The Third Rise
The soft, low rumble of distant thunder caused the ground to shake slightly. A woman, hooded and cloaked, made her way along a forest path, shivering. She hated nights like this - cold, clouded, dreary, yet where the clouds were not heavy enough to rain. It almost reminded her of something...something she couldn't remember.
It had been many months...years maybe (she had lost track), since something happened and her mind was ripped of something she knew was important to her. Dear to her. Grumbling, she continued to walk, following the path she had taken so many times by heart.
"Bloody tree roots," she grumbled as she tripped and nearly fell over a large, old root sticking out of the ground in the middle of the path. Shaking her head, she continued on and thought about what had made her call the entire Order together.
A few minutes later she arrived at her destination, an old mansion, the very top of which just barely poked out above the forest's canopy. Walking up to the front door, she knocked once, which prompted a small shutter to slide open.
"Password?" a cold male voice asked.
"Snaketongue," she growled. The shutter closed and the door opened, revealing a man with sleek blond hair and cold, silver eyes.
"You're late, Bella," the man said.
"You know as well as any of us that my research takes precedence, Lucius," Bellatrix said, lowering her hood, letting her black hair fall around her shoulders. "Has the meeting started yet?"
"We've been waiting for you to come," Lucius replied, leading her up a flight of stairs. "After all, it's rather tough to have a meeting when your leader isn't present."
"It will have been well worth the wait, I promise you that," she said.
"You found something, then?" Lucius asked.
"You'll be told at the same time as everyone else," Bellatrix replied, allowing for no further discussion.
Bellatrix Lestrange never was one to care for Lucius Malfoy, or his family and their riches. It was only because he was the sole member of the Order who had space large enough for them to meet that she associated with him as much as she did.
They reached the top floor and Lucius opened the large double doors at the end of the hall and walked over the threshold.
Following him into the room, she saw twelve hooded figures assembled. It had taken a long time to gather everyone who was present together, but they had done it, thanks mostly to Lucius. The dozen people in the room were the last ones alive to carry the strange black tattoo on their left forearms: a skull, with a serpent protruding from its mouth like a tongue. Together, the thirteen of them were the Order of the Snake.
"I know I'm late, and I don't want to hear a word about it," Bellatrix growled, addressing the room which quickly fell silent. "There's good reason for it, and it involves our search."
"What is it?" one of the hooded figures asked.
"In going over the enchantment calculations from the full-body scan we did on Rookwood, and in turn everyone else," she began, pulling a large scroll from her cloak and unrolling it, "I discovered an inconsistency involving a very old version of the Protean Charm."
"The alerting enchantment?" another figure asked.
"Yes, only this has been modified," she said. "Along with a warning feature, this modification allowed those alerted to know the location of...someone."
"Who?"
"I don't know," Bellatrix said, shaking her head. "I'm assuming someone who can tell us what's happened. Why we all feel like there's a part of our minds missing. Why we all bear the same skull and serpent on our arms."
"Perhaps a leader of sorts?" Lucius asked.
"Perhaps," Lestrange said. "All of our marks bear the same enchantment with the same modification. Because of the fact that we would all be alerted to the location of this person, I believe there's evidence that we, in fact, may not have found everyone bearing the mark."
"So how do we activate it?" one of the shorter figures asked.
"Wormtail, if I knew that, would we be standing here right now?" Bellatrix asked. "I tried touching mine with my wand, my hand, a drop of my blood...nothing worked."
"But..." the man's hood fell away to reveal Peter Pettigrew, almost completely bald. "I don't see how it couldn't be activated." He pulled up his sleeve with his silver hand (something he still didn't remember ever acquiring) and began to prod at the mark.
"Don't be stupid, Wormtail," Lucius said. "Bella just said there's a way to activate it, we simply haven't figured it..." He suddenly drew a sharp breath and grabbed his right arm convulsively before collapsing to the floor in agony. Quickly thereafter, everyone felt the same searing pain and were mimicking the action. Bellatrix, feeling the intense burning on her arm, pulled up her sleeve and saw the mark had turned a shade of glowing white. Suddenly, she heard a voice in her head.
"Tom's. Reykjavik, Iceland." Grimacing, she looked around the room quickly.
"Did anyone else just hear a voice in their head?" she asked.
"Yes," Lucius growled, getting to his feet. "Somewhere in Iceland."
"Do we have the Draught ready?" she asked.
"I'll go get it," a man said, and quickly got to his feet and sprinted from the room.
"Hurry, Macnair!" Bellatrix shouted after him. "Listen everyone!" she yelled, grasping everyone's attention. "We don't have time to nurse our wounds right now. When Macnair returns, we'll all apparate to this...Tom's...and get our answers once and for all." They all nodded, and a minute later the man came running back into the room carrying a flask of black liquid with him.
"Here it is," he said panting. "Are we leaving now?"
"No, we're going to sit here and do nothing," Bellatrix said sarcastically. "Everyone apparates on my count. Three...two....one."
If anyone had been listening outside the door, they would have heard thirteen distinct pops from the other side.
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Bellatrix was accurate in her latest assumption that they hadn't found everyone bearing the black tattoo on their arm; she had been incorrect in believing beforehand that they had.
Severus Snape sat calmly in his dungeons at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry silently stirring a thick, purple liquid in a cauldron. As a brief image flashed through his mind, he sighed and rubbed his temples.
'My occlumency must not be as strong as it used to be...' he thought to himself.
For two and a half years, Severus had been having memory flashes...at least he thought they were memory flashes...of a man he used to call his master. He knew in his mind that he never truly served this man, but instead fought to bring him down from power. Using his exceptional occulmency skills, he began to block out the images, feeling that these things were better left unknown to himself if he had indeed forgotten them in the first place.
Getting up, he gathered several empty flasks from his office's shelves and lined them up next to the large pewter basin. He grabbed a ladle and had just dipped it into the potion when an almost familiar burning pain tore through his upper left arm. Groaning, he gently lifted up his left sleeve expecting to see the familiar black mark, but instead he saw that it had burned white. His mind shuddered as he heard an ethereal voice in his head, and seconds thereafter he passed out onto the cold stone floor.
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A hundred and fifty miles away in downtown London, large claps of thunder could be heard from overhead, along with the never-ending beating of rain against the cobblestone. Sighing, a boy of nineteen years turned over in bed and lay staring at the ceiling.
As far as he could remember, Harry Potter never had sleep trouble. Of course, he only remembered the past two and a half years of his life. He had been hit by a car while crossing the street (or so he had been told) almost three years ago. After lying in a hospital for a week, trying to figure out why he remembered nothing of his childhood and teenage years, the doctors dismissed him, telling him that he would never recover from his amnesia.
At the time, he was scared to no end. He had no idea who he was. He knew he was in London, and that his name was Harry Potter, but beyond that, he had no recollection of his past. And he had no money. So he sat under a dim streetlamp wondering what to do with his life, when he found five gold coins in his pants pocket. Amazed at his good fortune, he pawned them off to a local shop for a few hundred quid. Since then, he had managed to get himself a flat and a job working as a short-order cook in a local bar. He supposed he must have developed culinary skills sometime before the accident.
Harry sighed again as another clap of thunder sounded. Since his recovery, he hadn't really dreamt of unnerving things. Usually, his dreams were about flying on a broomstick like in the movies, or about an old castle that strangely felt like home. His favorite, by far though, were the ones he would occasionally get about a beautiful woman with bushy brown hair. She seemed so...familiar...so loving.
But lately, nightmares had been plaguing his mind. Nightmares of a strange symbol made of emerald green stars, and two red, glowing eyes. Although he hadn't really paid much attention to it, the thin, lightning-shaped scar on his forehead was tingling constantly. If he really thought about it, he supposed it felt like a warning.
Looking over to his bedside clock, he saw that it read 4:45 AM. Deciding that there was no point in trying to get back to sleep, he swung his legs over his bed and stretched, wondering what to do during his day off. He was about to stand up and go to his bathroom when a pain unlike any other he ever felt before flared up inside his head, centered around his scar. Groaning, he fell backwards onto his bed and closed his eyes, trying to alleviate some of the pain. Before he could do so much as bring a hand to his forehead, he blacked out.
=====
"Who...who are you?" a thin man asked, standing wide-eyed behind a bar. He was facing thirteen hooded figures, the foremost holding a long piece of wood at arm's length pointed at him.
"We bear the same mark that you do," a woman's voice spoke from underneath the hood of the leader.
"What mark?" the main asked, his dark brown eyes shining with more curiosity than fear.
"This mark," the woman said, pulling up the sleeve of her cloak, revealing a black tattoo of a skull with a snake coming out of it's mouth. Eyes wide, the man looked to his own left arm and the matching tattoo that was there.
"I don't know where I got this," the man said. "My friends told me I got pissed one night and hit my head. I don't remember anything before a few years back." The woman grinned sadistically and produced a flask containing a thick, black liquid.
"Drink this," she offered. "And you'll remember everything."
"How can I trust you?" the man asked in a steadfast voice after a moment of consideration.
"We all have the same mark on our arms," she said, looking at the dozen or so cloaked figures behind her. "You are a part of our group. Perhaps even our leader. We need to know who you are as much as you do."
Warily, the man reached out and took the flask, swirling the contents around inside of it.
"What's in this?" he asked.
"Phoenix tears, unicorn and dragon's blood, and snake venom," the woman said simply. "There are other things too, but those are the main ingredients."
"Those creatures don't exist," the man scoffed. "Well, snakes do, but - "
"I'm not a very patient person and I don't have all the time in the world," the woman said in a tiresome voice. "Are you going to drink that or not?" Giving one last look at the liquid, the man shrugged and downed the contents. The thirteen people looked on in anticipation as his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Suddenly, a immense pain crackled in their minds, as if a spell was being broken. It lasted for only a few seconds, and when the pain dissipated, they looked back at the man who had fallen down and was laying on the floor of the pub, breathing in soft but menacing breaths. Sitting up, he flexed his hand and went into concentration before a long piece of wood like the one the woman was holding materialized in his hand.
"You have done well, Bella," the man said, though his voice was now cold as ice.
"Master...you've returned to us," the woman said, dropping to her knees.
"Indeed I have," the man said, looking at her with glowing, red eyes. "And so begins the third rise of Lord Voldemort."
Harry woke with a start, breathing heavily. Somehow...some way, through some strange twist of fate, Lord Voldemort hadn't died as people supposed. And Harry remembered everything.
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I know it's short, but it's supposed to leave you aching for more ::laughs evily::.
A quick note before I go: I don't know whether I'll be able to update next week or not. I'm taking a short
vacation in Philadelphia, which will be my last break before I move for good to LA. If I do update, it will be on
Wednesday. Seeing as how I already have chapter 2 written, you may not mind that. Just keep in mind that the wait will
be a little longer between 2 and 3. Adios!