Chapter Text
In the end, it was laughably simple to find Harry Potter’s muggle address. One well-timed tracking spell by Lucius Malfoy on a departing Misuse of Magic department owl and they had him.
I hope that spell was worth it, Potter. It will be your last, he gloated silently, before strolling casually out of the bustling Atrium and disapparating with an exuberant crack. His Lord would soon see who was his most loyal.
~
They waited for nightfall the following day, giddy with anticipation for the first important raid since their Master's return. Baiting muggles at the World Cup was fun for old time's sake, but after over a decade they had a Purpose again.
Their Master walked among them, his magic curling in intoxicating shadows around his soldiers, flickering tongues over their Marks and setting their blood aflame. It had been a scant few weeks since his return, and they were long out of practice on the battlefield, but no matter. They did not expect any serious resistance.
"Lucius, it is time," Voldemort hissed, blood red eyes gleaming. "Go, and bring us to him."
Lucius bowed, glorying in the attention of his peers, and turned on his heel, thinking of the mundane suburban address he had learned. A moment of darkness, pressure, and he was standing in the middle of a wide street; boxy, identical brick houses and regimented lawns stretching endlessly around him.
The air was suffocating and dead, not a speck of magic in it, except for a few listless tendrils around the house before him. Wards, or at least the pathetic remains of whatever protection had once been there.
Lucius raised his wand and cast a veil of silence around the house. It wouldn't do for nosy neighbours to interfere too soon. When all was ready he pressed the wand gleefully against the black skull on his forearm, broadcasting his location. Number 4, Privet Drive had guests.
The street was quiet for a moment, disturbed only by the blaring of late-night TV inside the house and the rumble of distant traffic, then a symphony of cracks split the night.
The Death Eaters landed in loose formation around their Lord, wands at the ready, and visibly relaxed when no one met them with violence.
Voldemort breathed deeply of the stale, polluted air and laughed.
"See, my faithful, how little care Dumbledore takes of his toys." He gestured expansively at the house, his bone-white wand sketching a detection spell that lit up the ragged grey wards.
"No alarm, no dark mark detector, not even a vague boundary line. Pathetic," he sneered, cancelling his spell with a flick.
"Dumbledore put all his faith in the mudblood's sacrifice, and failed to see that this place snuffed it out long ago. Perhaps he should have tried a fidelius ; it worked so well for the brat's parents, after all."
The Death Eaters chuckled at the barb, enjoying the mocking anger of their Lord, safely directed away from them for the moment.
"Shall we knock?" Voldemort asked theatrically, and then smiled cruelly and pointed at the roof of the house. " Fiendfyre! " he snapped, and a gout of living flame came clawing out of his wand, digging impossibly into the tiled roof.
The fire roared, great serpents coiling in and out of the eaves, shattering the tiles at a touch. Snarling wolves snapped and bit at the walls, already reaching out for the bedroom windows below. Even from the road, the heat was immense, the muggy summer night turned instantly into something more akin to an oven. A fire alarm on the front of the house blared out for a moment before a fiery jackal pounced on the plastic box and it cut off with a shriek of melted wires.
"Catch them, don't kill them." Voldemort snapped as the front door slammed open and figures tumbled out.
"Impedimenta!"
"Stupify!"
"Incarcerous!"
The three escapees were captured before they even stepped off the driveway, stunned and bound and helpless. But it was clear at a glance that none of them was the Boy-Who-Lived.
"Lucius, where is the brat?" Voldemort demanded, his voice low and threatening.
"This is his home, my Lord, I swear it," the proud man said quickly. "Rennervate!"
The family woke and struggled fruitlessly against their conjured bonds, eyes wide and rolling in terror. The skinny woman was gaping senselessly at the magical fire consuming her house, while the corpulent man was twisting and growling up at the cloaked and masked Death Eaters, his ruddy face turning purple.
"Where is Potter?" Lucius demanded.
"POTTER!" the fat man roared. "The little freak did this, did he? Set the house on fire and called for the freak fire brigade? Well, get on with it then!"
The Death Eaters paused, briefly stumped by this interpretation of events, before a ripple of laughter went up at the muggle's ignorance.
"There are no freaks here but you," Voldemort snarled. " Crucio!"
The fat man bellowed like a stuck bull, jerking and shuddering, rolling on the road in a cocoon of conjured rope.
"Dad!" the only-slightly smaller boy cried. "Stop it! Stop hurting him!"
The Dark Lord laughed and jerked his wand up, letting the man sag into his bonds. "As you wish. Perhaps you'd like a taste instead? Crucio!"
The boy screamed, spittle flying from slack lips and a stench of urine rising as he lost all control of his muscles.
The Death Eaters jeered and stepped back from the spreading puddle, laughing and mocking the squirming teen.
"Not my Dudders! Don't you touch my son!" the woman shrilled, loud enough to overcome even the boy's screams.
"Where is Potter?" Lucius demanded again, kicking her away as she tried to worm her way towards her son.
"Locked away!" the man roared, still heaving for breath from his turn under the curse. "Locked up like he deserves for doing his unnaturalness to our boy!"
"My Lord, look!" McNair shouted, pointing at the house.
A small window at the left hand corner of the house was open, and a snow white owl was taking flight, wings beating furiously to get away from the reaching flames.
A massive dragon head of orange flame snapped after the bird, curling the ends of its tail feathers, and the Death Eaters watched transfixed as the owl swooped like a seeker to escape. The fire fell back, roaring its frustration, and the white owl zoomed low and fast over the garden fences and vanished into the night.
All eyes returned to the window, and the small, thin shape that stood watching their cruel show.
"Harry Potter," Voldemort breathed, his eyes gleaming. He stepped towards the house, his wand trained on the boy who had so recently eluded him. "I have to say, I thought you would care more about your family, Potter," he shouted. "Where's your Gryffindor spirit? Shouldn't you be begging me to let them go? Won't you take their place, little hero?"
Potter looked torn for a moment, gazing down at the huddled shapes of his relatives, then shoved at the window, opening it as far as it would go.
"I can't get out!" the boy shouted back, panic edging the words. "Not that it matters, you'll kill them anyway!"
Voldemort threw his head back and cackled. "So jaded, so distrusting. But they don't seem to like you much, do they? Perhaps I'm just doing what you've always wished for…"
He swept his wand in a wide arc, pausing briefly over each prisoner, contemplating, before his gaze snapped to the great, purple-faced walrus of a man.
"Avada kedavra," he whispered, soft voice lost beneath the crackling flames. The words were unimportant, Potter of all people would recognise the spell on sight.
A poisonous green light splashed against the massive muggle's chest, and he slumped lifeless on the road.
"Vernon!" the woman screamed, hysterical, thrashing on the ground. "What have you done?"
Voldemort looked up to the boy in the burning house, cruel smile on his lips, and basked in the screams.
"Get down here Potter, and maybe I'll make all your deaths so painless!"
Potter shoved helplessly at the window again, battering his knuckles raw against the frame. The glass was shattered, the plastic frame warping with the heat, but it still was not wide enough for him to escape.
"It must be getting roasty toasty in there," Crabbe called up, chortling moronically. "Did someone order the Pot roast?"
The Death Eaters hooted with laughter, watching the trapped teen grow more desperate. The fire was clearly visible inside the house, eating through the bedroom door and flaring up at Potter's back.
"I am a merciful Lord, Harry Potter. Fire is a terrible death, even for you." Voldemort pointed up at the little window. " Reducto!"
The frame blew out of the wall, showering Potter with shards of brick that cut his face to ribbons.
The hole in the wall was big enough, he could escape the creeping flames, but still the boy hesitated.
"Jump, Potter!" Goyle shouted. "We promise we'll catch you!"
"Scared of heights, seeker?" Lucius mocked. "Did your family lock your broom away too?"
Potter's eyes narrowed at the elder Malfoy, and it seemed for a moment that he hated the man more than Voldemort himself.
"I guess Draco will have a chance at catching a snitch this year!" Potter shouted, his bloody face twisted into a gallows grin.
"Oooooh!" hooted the Death Eaters, perfectly willing to pile mockery on one of their own.
Lucius snarled, but even his Lord seemed amused.
"Spirited little brat," Voldemort murmured, then raised his voice. "My patience is short, Potter, and my fire won't wait. Jump, and die at the end of my wand like a true wizard!"
"Boy!" the woman laying in the road screamed, furious at his hesitation. "Get down here! How dare you risk our lives making jokes, you ungrateful, worthless, no good-!" Lucius kicked her in the ribs and the shrill tirade cut off.
Potter stood frozen for a few seconds, staring down at his so-called family and the gleeful circle of waiting Death Eaters. Jumping into a pool of sharks, bloodied as he was, would still have been a better option.
Slowly, the boy shook his head. He took a step backwards, his face set.
"Don't be a fool, boy!" Lucius demanded.
Potter turned at once and ran, back into his prison, back into the inferno. The cursed fire came roaring to meet him.
There was a cry of agony, mercifully short, and the Boy-Who-Lived was gone.
The Death Eaters stood in shocked silence.
"My Lord, I…" Lucius began, at a loss. The boy was dead, but it felt like a small victory.
"Morsmordre Aurum!" Voldemort hissed, aiming his wand to the sky. A vast golden skull and snake burst from his wand and lit the night, brighter and more lurid than the deadly flames below, a version of the Dark Mark never before seen. It was a strangely fitting tribute to their enemy.
"He chose to burn. May all of you die so bravely," Voldemort cautioned his stunned followers.
There was a general shuffling of feet, an uncomfortable sense of being lesser than the child they had just watched die.
Voldemort smirked and stalked away, his Death Eaters trailing uncertainly in his wake.
"M-my Lord, w-what about the muggles?" Wormtail asked, cringing.
Voldemort waved an idle hand. "Leave them there, perhaps the fire will spread. Or perhaps they'll survive to tell Dumbledore and his Fools of their defeat when they finally arrive. Our task is done."
The Dark Lord turned and vanished, leaving ruin behind.