PRIORI INCANTATEM by Arianna Waters (christmas read aloud TXT) 📕

“Kill the spare!” Harry Potter heard a high, cold voice say.

A swishing noise and a second voice, which screeched the words to the night: “Avada Kedavra!”

(A/N: Cedric is dead, as you’ve all read what happened next, I’m skipping to when the duel between Harry James Potter and Tom Marvolo Riddle A.K.A. Lord Voldemort is going on. My apologies to those who haven’t actually read the books, and call themselves potter-heads solely on the basis of watching the movies.)

Harry crouched behind the headstone and knew that the end had come. There was no hope . . . no help to be had. And as he heard Voldemort draw nearer still, he knew one thing only, and it was beyond fear or reason: He was not going to die crouching here like a child playing hide-and-seek; he was not going to die kneeling at Voldemort’s feet . . . he was going to die upright like his father, and he was going to die trying to defend himself, even if no defense was possible. . .  .

Before Voldemort could stick his snakelike face around the headstone, Harry stood up . . . he gripped his wand tightly in his hand, thrust it out in front of him, and threw himself around the headstone, facing Voldemort.

Voldemort was ready. As Harry shouted “Expelliarmus!” Voldemort cried, “Avada Kedavra!”

(A/N: AND HERE MY STORY BEGINS...)

A jet of green light issued from Voldemort’s wand just as a jet of red light blasted from Harry’s — they met in midair — and suddenly Harry’s wand was vibrating as though an electric charge were surging through it; his hand seized up around it; he couldn’t have released it of he’d wanted to — and a narrow beam of light connected the two wands, neither red not green, but bright, deep gold. Harry, following the beam with his astonished gaze, saw that Voldemort’s long white fingers too were gripping a wand that was shaking and vibrating.

And then — nothing could have prepared Harry for this — he felt his feet lift from the ground. He and Voldemort were both being raised into the air, their wands still connected by the thread of shimmering golden light. They glided away from the tombstone of Voldemort’s father and then same to rest on a patch of ground that was clean and free of graves, where the body of Cedric Diggory lay, along with the Triwizard Cup, long forgotten . . . the Death Eaters were shouting; they were asking Voldemort for instructions; they were closing in, reforming the circle around Harry and Voldemort, the snake slithering at their heels, some of them drawing their wands —

The golden thread connecting Harry and Voldemort splintered; though the wands remained connected, a thousand more beams arced high over Harry and Voldemort, crisscrossing all around them, until they were enclosed — along with Cedric’s body and the Cup — in a golden, dome-shaped web, a cage of light, beyond which the Death Eaters circled like jackals, their cries now muffled, awaiting orders from Voldemort.

“Do nothing!” Voldemort shrieked. “Do nothing unless I command you!” Harry held onto his wand more tightly and fixed his gaze over Cedric’s body, which lay some three feet away from him. I have to do it for Cedric, he thought to himself.

And then an unearthly and beautiful sound filled the air . . . the phoenix song. It was the sound of hope to Harry . . . the most beautiful and welcome thing he had ever heard in his life . . . Along with it came a sound he connected with Dumbledore, and it was almost as though a friend were speaking in his ear. . . .

Don’t break the connection.

I know, Harry told the music. No sooner had he thought it, than the thing became much harder to do. His wand began to vibrate more powerfully than ever . . . and now the beam between him and Voldemort changed too . . . it was as though large beads of light were sliding up and down the thread connecting the wands — Harry felt his wand give a shudder under his hand as the light beads began to slide slowly and steadily his way. . . . The direction of the beam’s movement was now toward him, from Voldemort, and he felt is wand shudder angrily. . . .

As the closest bead of light moved nearer to Harry’s wand tip, the wood beneath his fingers grew so hot he feared it would burst into flame. The closer the bead moved, the harder Harry’s wand vibrated; he was sure his wand would not survive contact with it; it felt as though it was about to shatter under his fingers —

He concentrated every last particle of his mind upon forcing the bead back toward Voldemort, his ears full of phoenix song, his eyes furious, fixed on the bead, and on Cedric’s body — as though drawing motivation from it — and slowly, very slowly, the beads quivered to a halt, and then, just as slowly, they began to move the other way . . . and it was Voldemort’s wand that was vibrating extra-hard now. . . . Voldemort who looked astonished, and almost fearful . . .

One of the beads of light was quivering, inches from the tip of Voldemort’s wand. Harry didn’t understand why he was doing it, didn’t know what it might achieve . . . but he now concentrated as he had never done in his life on forcing that bead of light right back into Voldemort’s wand . . . and slowly . . . very slowly . . . it moved along the thread . . . it trembled for a moment . . . and then it connected. . . .

Right in front of Harry’s eyes, Cedric’s body vanished, as if it had never been there. Voldemort’s wand began to emit echoing screams of pain — the screams of Death Eaters when Cruciatus Curse was used on them. Then — Voldemort’s eyes widened with shock — a hand flew out of the tip and fell onto the ground with a clunk — the hand he had made for Wormtail . . . more shouts of pain —Harry’s screams . . . and then something large began to blossom from Voldemort’s wand tip, a head . . . now a chest and arms . . . the torso of Cedric Diggory.

Harry held on to his wand tightly, the thread of golden light remain unbroken. Cedric emerged in his entirety from the end of Voldemort’s wand, as though he was squeezing himself out of a very narrow tunnel . . . and Cedric stood up, very much alive, and looked up and down the golden thread of light, and spoke.

“Hold on, Harry,” he said.

Harry looked at Voldemort . . . his wide red eyes were still shocked . . . he had no more expected this than Harry had . . . after all, no one had expected the dead to return to life.

More screams of pain . . . and then something, or rather someone else emerged from the wand tip . . . a second head, quickly followed by the arms and torso . . . the old man Harry had seen in his dream was now pushing himself out of the wand just as Cedric had done . . . and surveyed Harry and Voldemort, and the golden web, and the connected wands, with mild surprise, leaning on his walking stick. . . .

“He was a real wizard, then?” the old man said, his eyes resting on Voldemort. “Killed me . . . that one did. . . . You fight him, boy. . . .”

Yet another head was emerging, one of a woman . . . Bertha Jorkins surveyed the battle with wide eyes.

“Don’t let go, now!” she cried. “Don’t let him get you, Harry — don’t let go!”

And now another head was emerging from the tip of Voldemort’s wand . . . and Harry knew when he saw who it would be . . . he knew, as though he had expected it from the moment when Cedric had appeared from the wand . . . knew, because the woman was one he’d thought of more than any other tonight . . .

A young woman with long dark-red hair fell to the ground as Bertha had done, straightened up, and looked at him . . . and Harry, his arms shaking madly now, looked back into the face of his mother, who had died fourteen years back, and now stood very much alive in front of him.

“Harry!” she whispered. “Your father’s coming . . . Hold on for your father . . . it will be alright . . . hold on . . .”

And he came . . . first his head, then his body . . . tall and untidy-haired like Harry, James Potter blossomed from the end of Voldemort’s wand, fell to the ground, and straightened like his wife.

He grinned at him, and Harry felt a sudden boost of energy into him. “That’s my boy!” his father said. “When the connection is broken,” he told Harry and the others who had woken up from dead, “we must grab the Portkey. It will return us to Hogwarts . . . do you understand, Harry?”

“Yes,” Harry gasped, fighting now to keep a hold on this wand, which was slipping and sliding beneath his fingers.

Meanwhile, James, Lily and Cedric threw hexes the Death Eaters around them, and Bertha explained the working of a portkey to the muggle.

“On three Harry, you’ll break the bond, and I’ll accio the Portkey!” his father yelled.

All of them gathered around Harry. “One — Two — Three ­—­ NOW!”

Harry pulled his wand upward with an almighty wrench, and the golden thread broke; the cage of light vanished, the phoenix song died.

“ACCIO!” his father yelled, pointing his wand at the Triwizard Cup.

It flew into the air and soared toward them. Everyone grasped it —

Harry heard Voldemort’s scream of fury at the same moment he felt the jerk behind his navel that meant the Portkey had worked ­— it was speeding them away in a whirl of wind and color . . . They were going back.

 Harry felt himself slam into the ground; his face was pressed into the grass; the small of it filled its nostrils. He kept his eyes closed. He did not move. All the breath seemed to been knocked out of him; his head was swimming so badly he felt as though the ground beneath him were swaying like a deck of a ship.

He felt a soft hand on his shoulder, his mother’s hand. He shut his eyes even more tightly, as though on opening them he would find his parents and Cedric gone.

A torrent of sound deafened and confused him; there were voices everywhere, footsteps. . . .

“Harry! Harry!” It was Hermione. “Harry, why are there two of you?”

“Hello Professor Dumbledore.