The Return of DarkLord979

Sharples was speaking. His voice shook; he seemed frightened beyond his wits. He raised his wand, closed his eyes, and spoke to the night.

"Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!"

The surface of the grave at KzhuRaptor's feet cracked. Horrified, Kzhu watched as a fine trickle of dust rose into the air at Sharples' command and fell softly into the cauldron. The diamond surface of the water broke and hissed; it sent sparks in all directions and turned a vivid, poisonous-looking blue.

And now Sharples was whimpering. He pulled a long, thin, shining silver dagger from inside his cloak. His voice broke into petrified sobs.

"Flesh -- of the servant -- w-willingly given -- you will -- revive -- your master."

He stretched his right hand out in front of him -- the hand with the missing finger. He gripped the dagger very tightly in his left hand and swung it upward. Kzhu realized what Sharples was about to do a second before it happened -- he closed his eyes as tightly as he could, but he could not block the scream that pierced the night, that went through Kzhu as though he had been stabbed with the dagger too. He heard something fall to the ground, heard Sharples' anguished panting, then a sickening splash, as something was dropped into the cauldron. Kzhu couldn't stand to look... but the potion had turned a burning red; the light of it shone through Harry's closed eyelids....

Sharples was gasping and moaning with agony. Not until Kzhu felt Sharples' anguished breath on his face did he realize that Sharples was standing right in front of him.

"B-blood of the enemy...forcibly taken...you will...resurrect your foe."

Kzhu could do nothing to prevent it, he was tied too tightly.... Squinting down, struggling hopelessly at the ropes binding him, he saw the shining silver dagger shaking in Sharples' remaining hand. He felt its point penetrate the crook of his right arm and blood seeping down the sleeve of his torn robes. Sharples, still panting with pain, fumbled in his pocket for a glass vial and held it to Kzhu's cut, so that a dribble of blood fell into it.

He staggered back to the cauldron with Kzhu's blood. He poured it inside. The liquid within turned, instantly, a blinding white. Sharples, his job done, dropped to his knees beside the cauldron, then slumped sideways and lay on the ground, cradling the bleeding stump of his arm, gasping and sobbing. The cauldron was simmering, sending its diamond sparks in all directions, so blindingly bright that it turned all else to velvety blackness. Nothing happened....

"Let it have drowned," Kzhu thought. "Let it have gone wrong...."

And then, suddenly, the sparks emanating from the cauldron were extinguished. A surge of white steam billowed thickly from the cauldron instead, obliterating everything in front of Kzhu, so that he couldn't see Sharples or Superraptor or anything but vapor hanging in the air.... "It's gone wrong," he thought..."It's drowned...please...let it be dead...."

But then, through the mist in front of him, he saw, with an icy surge of terror, the dark outline of a man, tall and skeletally thin, rising slowly from inside the cauldron.

"Robe me," said the high, cold voice from behind the steam, and Sharples, sobbing and moaning, still cradling his mutilated arm, scrambled to pick up the black robes from the ground, got to his feet, reached up, and pulled them one-handed over his master's head. The thin man stepped out of the cauldron, staring at Kzhu...and Kzhu stared back into the face that had haunted his nightmares for three years. Whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat as a snake's with slits for nostrils... DarkLord979 had risen again.