"Wait!" Andrei exclaimed, remembering something else about "the Tom in the diary." The certainty of what he needed to do came to him clear as summer sunlight. "I'll be right back. Whatever you do, don't start without me!"
And the door to the fireplace room swung shut behind him.
"Look at him, giving orders," Lady Black said, with a sniff. "How I endure this impudent man."
"He's gone for the porridge," Sirius laughed. "Or the milk."
The others agreed, though it was odd—Hagrid always kept a small supply of the precious liquid on him. What no one suspected was that it wasn't only the milk he carried: not long ago he'd managed to make an arrangement regarding blood as well, so a small vial of silvery liquid was also always in his pockets—just in case.
Andrei, however, had not gone for the famous antidote to all things Dark. He had suddenly remembered first the Philosopher's Stone, and then another stone—the Resurrection Stone. Flamel would take some finding, and going through Dumbledore was certainly not ideal, but the second stone ought to be lying right where it was—under the floor of the Gaunt shack.
Being a half-giant really is a tremendous advantage, Andrei thought, Apparating to the unremarkable and unpleasant-looking door with the desiccated—or rather, frozen—snake. Thank goodness Snape taught me to Apparate by coordinates as well as address. Should have brought someone for backup, though. Still—who? Walburga? Augusta? Not likely. I've never hidden behind a lady's skirts and I'm not about to start.
He shook himself, frowned, and walked straight toward the shack.
"Poor creature," he sighed, lifted the frozen snake body, laid it on the porch, and reached for the door.
If there was one thing he couldn't stand, it was this kind of mindless, senseless disrespect for life. Which meant he and Dumbledore with his "necessary conscious sacrifices" had no more in common than he and Voldemort with his terrorism.
Something scratched uneasily inside him, as though he were doing something wrong, so Andrei decided to slow down and think for a moment. Then he bent, picked up the snake, and used it to hook the door handle. That opened the door—but the snake crumbled to ash. Andrei tensed. What if even his half-giant hide proved vulnerable to whatever the Gaunts had set up? Who knew how comprehensively they'd protected this place—perhaps against everyone and everything?
He packed a snowball (and cleaned his hands in the process) and threw it directly into the doorway. Silence.
Hmm. What if something is alive in there? Blast, there's not much time—only until dark. I'm not going to chase rabbits around here. Though even if there's nothing edible left, the cellar would be an excellent hiding place.
"Accio mouse!"
From behind the door flew an indignantly squeaking grey body, which, at a flick of his wand, flew straight back in again, still protesting vigorously in its own language. Since nothing worse followed, he could proceed. He stepped carefully over the threshold—if it came to it, he could jump back on one leg. The door frame was too narrow, as was everything else here, so when Hagrid took his step he knocked the lintel slightly sideways and bumped his head on the ceiling, while the flimsy wall cracked and split. His head felt briefly squeezed, then released. He barely had time to register it—other matters required immediate attention, such as catching the already-shifting roof of the ramshackle structure. Reducing someone else's property to rubble merely by entering was somewhat excessive.
So this is what an elephant feels like in a china shop, Andrei thought, sensing an unpleasant prickling somewhere inside his head. No, I refuse to demolish it. I'll just disassemble it rather than unpick it. Although unpicking— he smiled to himself—is definitely not my area of expertise.
He bent down, gripped the slightly protruding top board of the porch, and pulled—it gave easily, bringing a couple of its neighbours with it. Beneath them was a gap, almost exactly the size of his palm. He crouched, got both hands underneath, grunted, and straightened up to a dry crunch of rotten timber. The floor was open. A little more, and he reached the hiding place.
The ring, mercifully, was in a box—but even holding the box was unpleasant at first, purely physically, and then thoughts began crowding in one after another that were so unlike him that— Wait. Are these actually my thoughts? Not in your life. Andrei felt a flash of anger and opened the box, from which the stone gave a well-fed, self-satisfied gleam—as though it had just bared its teeth with satisfaction.
"There, there," Hagrid smiled with an anticipation that, had anyone who knew him seen it, they would not have believed it—and then would have spent a week making the sign of the cross and hiccupping. "I have something for you." And he rummaged in the enormous pockets of the gamekeeper's coat.
A promise delivered in the most honeyed and dishonest version of Hagrid's voice would have put any living creature on guard—but even a sentient artefact had started life as a stone, so—
When the first drop of unicorn blood fell on the cursed ring, it screamed. Sharply, not-quite-human, like an alarm. And silenced just as quickly. Andrei shook his head, poked a finger in his ear (which had gone numb) and looked around. The village was a fair distance away, and no one was likely to come rushing here after that. After half an hour's quiet, if all remained still, one could expect visitors—but for now, no worries. His ears were still ringing, he had nothing left to lose, and he dripped again. Then watched in astonishment as the thing he'd come all this way for crumbled: a thin stream of sand, as the Resurrection Stone shed its ancient shell.
Well, that's a disappointment. Andrei sighed, understanding his hopes would not be realised. Nothing left to lose now, and he pulled out the vial of milk. If he was making a mess of things, he might as well go the whole way—why not add this too? But apparently he was so dismayed he'd stopped tracking his own motor control, his hand slipped, and now the box contained a very considerable quantity of the precious, powerful, magical substance. The ring, at least, was completely submerged.
Good grief, I'm an idiot—wasted all that. He cursed himself, but then strange things began happening in the box. A small whirlpool formed beneath the smooth white surface, and Andrei fell out of reality, pulled into it—whether in fact or in imagination—spinning, turning, finally expelled, finding himself standing exactly where he had been, in exactly the same state. Only breathing as though he'd just sprinted.
Then the white surface bloomed into black-purple patches, hissed, faded, and evaporated in a lightly sparkling cloud. Andrei looked at the ring and said, laughing slightly and not quite believing himself:
"And what was that, and more importantly, what is it now? Sunshine stone?" He scratched it with a fingernail, tapped it. "Well, I never. Aventurine." The second name came to his tongue on its own. "How fitting. Interesting."
Right—worth a try. If it doesn't work, it wasn't meant to be. This will be a pure piece of recklessness. But then—what do we have to lose? A chance to negotiate with the basilisk, and we can take the old shed skin—we never planned to flay it anyway. I can break off the fang without any Parseltongue. And there should be moulted skins in the tunnel—rather impressive ones, if I remember. Is there anything else we actually needed from Tom? Well—only that he does not go charging off down his old path again. Though just let him try.
***
When everyone had assembled in the ritual chamber, Andrei had prepared himself for the lady of the house to begin with something long and solemn—ideally in Latin—and expected to see a pentagram, and had even planned on standing on one of its rays. But the process that began—with no chanting, no pentagram, no preamble, though there were some drawings around and between the cauldrons—reminded him much more of making dinner.
Snape and the younger Black were occupied with two cauldrons, apparently adding the last components; Walburga and her niece were methodically applying symbols to the small black diary; Sirius had neatly bled the sacrificial ram and suspended it inverted between the three cauldrons by levitation—as on a proper slaughterhouse hook.
The results, however, were far more interesting. A dark cloud began rising from the blood, slowly coiling into a vortex—into which went first the father's bone, then the "lady's fingers," as the name had attached itself to the pieces of servant flesh procured by Lady Black. Andrei had only just thought that it was fortunate they hadn't used Bellatrix's finger, when Snape levitated a phial of the Headmaster's blood to the vortex and tipped it in.
The dark whirlwind spun faster and faster, and then the diary flew in. Unexpectedly everything stopped, darkness surged upward—and Hagrid's hand cast the ring into it of its own accord.
And nothing happened. No explosion, no shriek, nothing—except that Snape leaped forward and overturned one of the cauldrons, the one with the stabilising potion, which hissed quietly as it evaporated. In the intertwining clouds of steam, divided strangely into dark and pale-near-white, an angular boyish figure began to take shape.
A semi-transparent boy—or rather a teenager—swayed slowly, gaining flesh before their eyes as though developing into reality. The process was clearly painful—he shook so hard his teeth were audible, his fine-featured face was contorted with pain, laboured breathing broke into moans, and then his thin legs buckled and he sank exhausted to the floor. A robe flew toward him at once, catching a cauldron and nearly knocking it over, but the boy grabbed it instantly and pulled it around himself, shivering as if from cold.
The Brothers Black quickly levitated the cauldrons aside, and Snape directed a measure of Restorative straight into the hands of the robe-wrapped figure, who was still breathing hard. The boy looked in astonishment at his hands and what was in them—then upended the potion into his mouth, swallowed with difficulty, and looked around at the assembled company.
"Was I… killed?" The voice of the resurrected Dark Lord was hoarse, unsteady, and entirely a boy's voice. "You've brought me back? Is the war over?"
He saw Snape's nod and exhaled with relief.
"I—" He breathed again, and his shoulders dropped. "Thomas Marvolo Riddle acknowledges a Life Debt to those who restored him to life."
He looked around in bewilderment at the quietly stunned faces. Only Walburga and her niece managed to remain outwardly composed, and he addressed himself to them.
"What must I do for you? And where did this come from?" He held up his hand, on whose index finger glowed the ring.
Everyone glanced at Hagrid.
"Nothing much, lad," he said with a shrug—judiciously refraining from mentioning the accompanying circumstances for now—and ignoring Walburga's scorching gaze at being interrupted. "Just serve as an interpreter."
"In the ancestral home of the Blacks," Walburga said, choosing not to waste her time on the rude individual and addressing Tom as though no one else were present. "Do you recognise no one here?"
"Ma— My lady," Tom bowed. "Meeting you is the greatest honour."
"Walburga Black."
"Wal—" Tom's mouth dropped open inelegantly, and etiquette ceased to matter.
"Nineteen eighty-one," Regulus offered helpfully at last—and the freshly-resurrected Dark Lord's eyes went wide, he said something incoherent, or perhaps sobbed, and swayed.
Andrei barely caught the rather bony body in time, and looked reproachfully at the younger Black—who simply spread his hands.
"Wash him, dress him, feed him," Sirius cut in suddenly. "Put him to bed. The last is already accomplished; the rest can wait."
They all saw plainly that the resurrected boy had been not quite himself from the very first moment. And beyond that—who was he, this new Tom? What sort? That single acknowledgement of a Life Debt spoke volumes.
What kind of Dark Lord is this lad going to be—you'd have to laugh, Andrei thought, and sensed he was not alone in this. I'll need to ask him everything he remembers.
"Our Dark Lord came out a bit on the frail side," Rookwood noted—Andrei had only just noticed him; apparently he'd been standing by as backup.
"Do you need a Dark Lord that badly?" Snape asked him sourly.
"Well… it would be interesting to examine him."
Andrei—forestalling Severus before that line of conversation could develop into attempted bodily harm by all available means—immediately suggested a reconciliation: there was plenty available for examination right now, both who and what. And someone to do the examination. And with that he told them about the Resurrection Stone, handing the still-unconscious Tom over to the house-elves, who immediately bore him off to be washed.
The Black brothers went to select clothes from their own wardrobes—items they could part with "in glory of the Dark Lord," as Sirius laughed again.
"A real one?" Both "mad scientists" stared at Andrei from either side, and he reflected again on how very fortunate it was to be a half-giant.