HP: From Failed Art Student to Dark Artist of Hogwarts - 311

Chapter 311: Refining Voldemort! Resurrection Ritual: Wait, Even I Can Get Played Like This??

No one answered Harry’s stunned, frantic questions.

From within the bundle clutched in the arms of that “Defence Against the Dark Arts professor,” a voice rasped out, hoarse as sandpaper, drenched in malice as if it had distilled every hateful thought in the world:

“You’ve finally fallen into my hands, Harry Potter…”

Voldemort?!

Harry recognised it instantly. He snarled and fought harder, straining against the scythe-shaped stone that had him pinned.

Voldemort chuckled, the sound thin and sharp. “Look at you. Without your companion, how miserable you are. How pathetic. How… pitiful.”

Harry’s grief snapped into fury. “You can’t even walk on your own. You have to be carried around!”

“Shut up!” Voldemort shrieked, the words coming out far too fast, far too raw, like he had been stabbed right through the ego.

Then he forced a sneer back into his voice. “Heh. Enjoy your mouth while you still can. Soon, I’ll use you to be reborn… and then I’ll kill you with my own hands.”

Watching Harry trapped there, Voldemort felt a pleasure so intense it was almost dizzying.

Soon, the world would belong to him.

Once he returned, once he reclaimed everything that was his, even “Mr Lamp” would not be able to stand against him.

From within the bundle, Voldemort cast a sidelong look at the masked man standing nearby, smug pride blooming in his chest.

He had never intended to share the world with anyone.

If anyone had to be blamed, it was “Mr Lamp” for being too self-important.

“All right,” Voldemort said at last. “Enough talk. Begin the ritual, Barty.”

And yet, when the order came, Barty Crouch Jr did not move.

Only when Mr Lamp gave a slight, almost lazy nod did Barty begin to tremble forward, step by step, towards the enormous cauldron that had been set up not far away.

Why was Barty Jr, a Death Eater, taking cues from Mr Lamp instead of Voldemort?

Harry’s brow furrowed as he caught the detail. The whole scene felt like it was wrapped in thick fog, everything blurred and wrong, except for one obvious truth.

Someone here was controlling everything.

Harry twisted his head as far as he could, fixing his stare on that pure white mask, trying to read an emotion that was not there.

Splash.

The swaddled bundle containing Voldemort was thrown into the cauldron.

The grey-green liquid inside bubbled violently, as if the pot itself had been fed a favourite piece of flesh. A stench rose, like rubber boiling down to sludge.

The masked man wrinkled his nose in open disgust, but when he looked at Voldemort sinking into the liquid, he smiled.

He did not step back.

He stepped closer.

At last.

He had spent an entire term preparing for this.

It was time to stew old Voldemort in an iron pot.

“Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son…”

Barty recited dully. Under Mr Lamp’s control, he lifted his wand. The soil in front of the grave churned and peeled back, and a long-rotted bone rose out of the earth. Orange-red fire flared over it, and it was tossed into the cauldron.

Gloop.

The liquid boiled again, delighted, swallowing it down.

“Flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your master…”

Barty put his wand away and drew a dagger.

In Harry’s horrified gaze, there came a sickening chop.

Barty cut off his own arm.

Blood poured.

Harry’s eyes went wide. He struggled so hard his throat burned, but all he could do was watch as Barty slowly turned his head, pointing that stupid, dreadful face at him.

“Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe…”

As he spoke, he raised the dripping dagger and walked towards Harry, one step at a time.

In that moment, regret rose inside Harry like bile.

If he had been calmer, if he had not let fury smash all sense out of his head and charge straight into a trap, would it have come to this?

His mind flashed, absurdly, to the wizard chess set Ethan had given him.

Warm blood slid off the blade’s point and spattered onto Harry’s skin, raising gooseflesh.

Two seconds passed.

The cut still did not come.

Harry blinked, confused, and lifted his eyes.

The pure white mask was right there, silent and close as a ghost, crowding his vision.

A voice spoke, amused and familiar in its cruelty. “Learned your lesson yet? Reckless Gryffindor.”

Harry: “…”

Please, just kill me.

Mr Lamp did not take Harry’s blood at all. He did not complete the ritual as the incantation described.

Instead, humming to himself like a man enjoying a stroll, he reached out and cheerfully yanked a clump of mushrooms off Barty’s neck, then tossed them into the cauldron.

Whoomph.

As if the ritual had been altered halfway through, the grey-green liquid surged upward. A faint, almost inaudible shriek seemed to echo from inside it, and the colour began to bleed into red.

“And next,” Mr Lamp murmured, “a Tier Three, purple epic painting: The Queen of Hearts’ Rose Maze…”

Ignoring Harry’s blank confusion, he dropped into the cauldron a crimson rose that looked like it had been painted into existence with pigment.

Whoomph.

The blood-red spread further, swallowing the grey-green until it was nearly impossible to see any trace of the original colour.

“And then, we infuse it with vigorous Lamp magic.”

He lifted his wand like a conductor raising a baton. Golden magic whirled around the tip, brightening the graveyard until it almost looked… holy.

Harry’s mind could not help itself.

You’re a Dark wizard. How is this kind of radiant, sanctified magic even remotely fair?

That overwhelming sense of familiarity hit again, harder this time. The unhinged logic, the baffling choices, the way reality seemed to bend to suit his mood.

It was too much like a certain boy with the surname Vincent.

Harry narrowed his eyes. A fierce curiosity surged up in him, urgent enough to drown out fear. He wanted to know what face hid behind that mask.

As the golden power poured in, a stranger, more twisted incantation flowed from behind the mask. A black wind rose, sweeping dead leaves and dry grass into a spinning ring around them. The sky darkened further as thick clouds blotted out the moon, like someone had covered the sky’s eyes.

And yet, on the ground, a blood-red eye opened.

Scarlet light erupted from the cauldron, staining the graveyard in crimson, draping every tombstone in a thin veil of red.

Harry stared, eyes stretched wide, so shocked he forgot to breathe.

They had sent Voldemort away, only to welcome something bigger and more vicious?

What did this lunatic “Mr Lamp” actually want?

“At last,” Mr Lamp said softly, “the most critical ingredient… a dark soul.”

In those deep blue eyes, the blood-red glow reflected like a flame. The excitement in them was so intense that it looked almost uncontrollable.

Then he smiled. “But it was already in the cauldron.”

Voldemort, selfless as ever.

A cold, mechanical certainty seemed to settle over the scene.

The ritual conditions had been met.

Refining began.

Boom!

A pillar of fire erupted from the cauldron, ferocious and blinding, like an offering thrown up to the heavens. In that terrifying red light, the night sky was lit up as if it were day.

“Aaaaaaah!”

A scream tore out of the flames, so agonised it scraped at the bones.

Harry’s eyes could not widen any further. He could only stand there, numb, watching the figure inside the fire.

Curled like a newborn.

With an old man’s face.

Its body was coated in slick, bruised-purple flesh.

Under the flame’s roasting heat, that flesh melted and sloughed away, revealing stark white bone beneath.

Just seeing it made Harry shiver. He could not imagine pain like that.

No, he did not need to imagine. The scream said enough.

“What did you do? What did you do to the ritual, Lamp?!”

Inside the fire, Voldemort’s face warped, melted, and twisted with disbelief as he stared at the man outside.

This was not resurrection.

It had been a perfect trap, foolproof, absolute. So what was this? What had happened?

Mr Lamp finally seemed unable to contain himself.

He lifted a hand and blocked Harry’s view of whatever was happening on the other side, as if Harry no longer mattered.

Then, right in front of Voldemort, he removed the mask.

When Voldemort saw the face beneath it, older, more mature, yet still unmistakably familiar, he shuddered.

He froze so hard that, for an instant, he seemed to forget even the pain.

And then, from somewhere deeper than breath, deeper than flesh, he forced out a howl that could make living things tremble.

“Ethan Vincent!!!”