"What in the bloody hell is this?!" Johnny heard Hermione yell throughout the Paris apartment on their last day. Johnny winced and finished tying his tie before he walked out of the walk in wardrobe to see Hermione stood in the kitchen, clutching Johnny's pack of cigarettes and a half empty whiskey bottle.

"Mione, my love- holy fuck!" Johnny ducked quickly as Hermione threw the bottle at him, which hit the wall behind Johnny's head. "You're crazy!"

"You've been drinking and smoking!?" Hermione yelled, squishing Johnny's pack of cigarettes in her hand. "How long has this been going on?!"

"Two weeks," Johnny mumbled.

"Johnny, why?" Hermione said in a softer tone, walking towards Johnny who flinched when she went to warp her arms around his neck, causing Hermione's heart to break. "Why would you want to quicken your death?"

"I've been having nightmares," Johnny confessed weakly. "About my time in the graveyard. I died, Hermione!"

"You don't think I don't know that?" Hermione asked sadly. "All I see when I close my eyes is your dead body and your grandfather sending shocks of electricity into your chest. Do you think that doesn't hurt me, Johnny? B-because it bloody well does! Did I turn to smoking and drinking liquor behind my partners back?! No! I spent every moment with you, praying that today wasn't going be our last day together! Reassuring myself that I wasn't going fucking mental and that you was here!"

"P-please, don't yell," Johnny said weakly, his hands covering his ears. Johnny slid down the window, his back facing the street.

"What really happened before Harry found you?" Hermione whispered sadly, sitting down next to Johnny and linking their hands together. "Please, my love, I want to help you. I don't want you to retort to alcohol and cigarettes."

"Crouch captured me that day when Dumbledore told me his suspected Jakob of killing my mother," Johnny began, his breathing becoming heavy and short. "He told me what happened, how my father raped and murdered her, how Wormtail and himself just stood back and watched, even though Jakob said they could touch her, but Crouch and Wormtail didn't."

"I was there the night Evelyn Grindelwald was killed," Crouch grinned sadistically. "We had fun with your mother, she put up a good fight-"

"Did you touch her!?"

"Me? No," Crouch grimaced. "I have never laid with a soul. Wormtail was to much of a sorry arse to even touch her, your father had his way with her though, and so he should, they were married after all."

"She trusted you!" Johnny exclaimed, his voice echoing through the empty hallway. Johnny drew his wand eye level with Crouch. "You were her friend!"

"I had him exactly where I wanted him," Johnny said, letting go of Hermione's hand to twiddle his wand between his fingers. "I had my wand ready to kill him, I so desperately wanted to, but I was scared and to slow. Crouch knocked me out, tied me up, put the disillusionment charm on me and carried me off to the grounds so he could apparate to the graveyard."

It was silence between them. Johnny so desperately wanted to utter the killing curse and get revenge on one of the three men that killed his mother, one of the ones who stood aside and watched his beautiful mother raped and killed.

"You were my favourite student, Grindelwald," Crouch muttered. "Stupefy."

"I was awake when we arrived at the graveyard, that's where I saw my father, Voldemort, Wormtail and Crouch," Johnny muttered disdainfully. "They welcomed Crouch like a legend for kidnapping me. My father hugged him like a brother, Voldemort greeted him like a valued friend, it made me sick."

"Well, well, well," Jakob said enthusiastically as Crouch dropped Johnny to the floor with a loud thud. "You mad bastard, you've done it!"

Jakob and Crouch embraced like brothers, laughing and smiling happily.

"Ah, Barty," Johnny heard a weak, yet cold voice hiss from a bundle of blankets. "Well done, well done. You shall be paid with high rewards for your devoted loyalty to me."

"They wanted me to join their ranks as a high valued Death Eater," Johnny explained, taking a deep breath of air. "Of course, I said no, so they tortured me in many ways. When Harry showed up, I was weakened, Mozart was practically dead from trying to heal me over two days. They starved me, dehydrated me, cursed me, kicked me, nearly every form of torture you could think of. When Harry arrived, Wormtail restrained us and we were forced to watch Voldemort's re-bodying."

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

The surface of the grave at Harry's and Johnny's feet cracked. Horrified, they  watched as a fine trickle of dust rose into the air at Wormtail's 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 Wormtail 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.

"This is your finest moment, Wormtail!" Jakob yelled excitedly.

Wormtail was gasping and moaning with agony.

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

J0hnny 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 Wormtail's remaining hand. He felt its point penetrate the crook of his right arm and blood seeping down the sleeve of his torn robes. Wormtail, still panting with pain, rumbled in his pocket for a glass vial and held it to Johnny's cut, so that a dribble of blood fell into it. He proceeded to do the same with Harry, who let out a strangled yell.

He staggered back to the cauldron with Harry and Johnny's blood. He poured them inside. The liquid within turned, instantly, a blinding white. Wormtail, 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.

"Get up you, weakling!" Jakob yelled.

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. Johnny 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 the boys, so that they couldn't see Wormtail or Jakob or anything but vapor hanging in the air.... It's gone wrong, Johnny thought... it's drowned ...please...please let it be dead....

But then, through the mist in front of them, they 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 Wormtail, 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.

"Voldemort gave some high and mighty speech when all the other Death Eaters arrived," Johnny continued on, looking into Hermione's for the first time that evening. "He told them how Aunt Lily put a protection spell around Harry and I so that he couldn't harm us in anyway, and now that he shared our blood, he shared our protection spell, which meant he could touch us now."

"You know, of course, that they have called this boy my downfall?" Voldemort said softly, his red eyes upon Harry. "You all know that on the night I lost my powers and my body, I tried to kill him. His mother died in the attempt to save him - and unwittingly provided him and Johnathan with a protection I admit I had not foreseen.... I could not touch the boys, and even though Johnny had long been put up for adoption with the Muggles since then, the same protection extended to him."

Voldemort raised two of his long white fingers and put it very close to Harry and Johnny's cheeks.

"Harry's mother and Johnathan's aunt left upon them the traces other sacrifice... This is old magic, I should have remembered it, I was foolish to overlook it... but no matter. I can touch them now."

Harry and Johnny felt the cold tip of the long white fingers touch them, and Johnny thought his head would burst with the pain. Voldemort laughed softly in their ears, then took the finger away and continued addressing the Death Eaters.

"I miscalculated, my friends, I admit it. My curse was deflected by the woman's foolish sacrifice, and it rebounded upon myself. Aaah... pain beyond pain, my friends; nothing could have prepared me for it. I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost... but still, I was alive. What I was, even I do not know... I, who have gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality. You know my goal - to conquer death. And now, I was tested, and it appeared that one or more of my experiments had worked... for I had not been killed, though the curse should have done it. Nevertheless, I was as powerless as the weakest creature alive, and without the means to help myself... for I had no body, and every spell that might have helped me required the use of a wand..."

"That's when he let us down from where we were restrained..."Johnny took a deep breath, retaking Hermione's hand. "He wanted Harry to duel him, but I stepped in instead. He shit the killing curse at me, it hit me right in the chest..."

"Then how-?" Hermione asked, but Johnny cut her off.

"It killed Mozart," Johnny whimpered, his head falling onto Hermione's shoulder. "If he had hit me with the Killing Curse again, I would've been dead."

"Really?" Voldemort hissed, sarcasm dripping through his voice. "I thought you would be useful to our cause, Johnathan, but I see now, you're not. Avada Kedavra!"

Harry watched in horror as the green light hit his best friend square in the chest, his ocean blue eyes fading into a dull grey. What would he tell Hermione? Harry wasn't good at consoling grieving people.

"Wormtail, give Harry his wand," Voldemort said once again, his patience deteriorating.

"Quite obviously, I lived," Johnny said sarcastically, motioning towards himself. "I woke up to Voldemort talking to Harry, who had just been put under the Cruciatus Curse. I pulled Harry behind the grave, took his wand and I duelled Voldemort. That's when the Reverse Spell happened."

"Prior Incantato," Hermione whispered, her clutch on Johnny's hand tightening ever so slightly.

"That's correct," Johnny smiled. It was a small smile, but a smile as Johnny tapped her nose. "Voldemort's last spell was the Killing Curse. There I saw an old man, Bertha Jorkins and-"

"Y0ur aunt and uncle," Hermione finished for him.

"They told me how proud they were of me, and thanked me for looking after Harry," a fresh tear rolled down Johnny's cheek, causing Hermione to wipe it away with her thumb. "It was the first time I've ever seen my aunt and uncle, the first time I've ever spoken to them. My aunt was so beautiful, Hermione."

At once, Voldemort's wand began to emit echoing screams of pain... then - Voldemort's red eyes widened with shock - a dense, smoky hand flew out of the tip of it and vanished... the ghost of the hand he had made Wormtail... more screams of pain from the wand... and then something else emerged from its tip... the dense shadow of a second head, quickly followed by arms and torso... an old man was now pushing himself out of the end of the wand just as the hand had done... and his ghost, or his shadow, or whatever it was, fell, and surveyed Johnny 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 on Voldemort. "Killed me, that one did... You fight him, boy..."

But already, yet another head was emerging... and this head, gray as a smoky statue, was a woman's...

Johnny, both arms shaking now as he fought to keep Harry's wand still, saw her drop to the ground and straighten up like the others, staring....

The shadow of Bertha Jorkins surveyed the battle before her with wide eyes.

"Don't let go, now!" she cried, and her voice echoed like the old man's as though from very far away. "Don't let him get you, Johnny - don't let go!"

She and the other shadowy figure began to pace around the inner walls of the golden web, while the Death Eaters flitted around the outside of it... and Voldemort's dead victims whispered as they circled the duelers, whispered words of encouragement to Johnny, and hissed words Johnny couldn't hear to Voldemort.

And now another head was emerging from the tip of Voldemort's wand... and Johnny knew when he saw it who it would be... he knew, as though he had expected it from the moment when the old man appeared had appeared from the wand... the smoky shadow of a tall man with untidy hair fell to the ground as Bertha had done, straightened up, and looked at him... and Johnny, his arms shaking madly now, looked back into the ghostly face of his uncle.

"Hey bud, your aunt's coming..." he said quietly. "She wants to see you... it will be all right... hold on..."

And she came... first her head, then her body... a young woman with long hair, the smoky, shadowy form of Lily Potter blossomed from the end of Voldemort's wand, fell to the ground, and straightened like her husband. She walked close to Johnny, looking down at him, and she spoke in the same distant, echoing voice as the others, but quietly, so that Voldemort, his face now livid with fear as his victims prowled around him, could not hear...

"When the connection is broken, we will linger for only moments... but we will give you time... you must get to Harry and the Portkey, it will return you to Hogwarts... do you understand, Johnny?"

"Yes," Johnny gasped, a tear rolling down his cheek as he kept fighting now to keep a hold on his wand, which was slipping and sliding beneath his fingers.

"James and I want to thank you for looking after Harry," Lily whispered. "We're so proud to call you are nephew."

"Do it now," whispered his uncle's voice, "be ready to run... do it now..."

"And I broke the connection, I sprinted to Harry, dragged him by the collar and we left, then you know what happens from there..." Johnny's voice trailed off.

"I'm so sorry for shouting at you," Hermione whispered, straddling Johnny's hips. She placed her forehead on Johnny's and pecked his lips lightly. "But promise you won't smoke again."

"I promise."

"Am I interrupting something?" Said a cheerful voice from the doorway. There stood a cheerful Mr. Weasley, who waved his wand and the shards of glass from the whiskey bottle disappeared.

"Mr. Weasley, what's the matter?" Johnny asked, him and Hermione standing to their feet.

"Sorry to ruin the last day of your anniversary trip," Mr. Weasley said in a sullen tone. "But it's Harry, he's broke the Statute of Secrecy and underage wizardry, he's got a trial..."