Struggling to survive at Hogwarts

Chapter 181 Nightmare Returns

"Thump!" Harry fell to the ground in a very disheveled state.

"This feeling is awful!" Harry scrambled to his feet, grabbing "Cedric" to join in the rant. "You agree, right, Cedric?!"

Harry struggled to say the last two words, as he stared in horror at the pained boy beside him.

"Are you...are you alright?" Harry asked worriedly, trying to help him up, but was pushed away.

Next, Harry watched with a look of utter shock as the "boy" in front of him slowly shed his disguise and transformed into someone he knew very well.

“…Thea? How…how…” Harry looked terrified. The unfamiliar environment finally made him belatedly wary, and he slowly touched his wand.

Thea ignored him for the time being; she was dealing with Cedric's clothes.

"Thea, where are we?" Harry looked around with his wand in hand, feeling that the place looked familiar.

“Potter…” Thea was interrupted by Harry before she could finish speaking. “Thea, could you please stop calling me Potter? How about Harry?”

Thea choked, then turned and walked in a certain direction.

"Hey! Don't be angry! Don't wander around, this place feels dangerous..."

As Thea turned to leave, Harry immediately chased after her, chattering on and on.

"Potter!" Thea finally couldn't hold back anymore. Her face was tense, completely different from her usual gentle self.

Suddenly, a strange movement somewhere made them both look in that direction.

A tall figure, seemingly carrying something, was slowly approaching them.

"Who are you?" Harry raised his wand, trying to intimidate the other person.

But the person didn't stop at all. Harry felt a force shove him and then he crashed straight into a tombstone behind him.

Countless ropes were tied around him, and Harry struggled desperately, but to no avail.

"Thea! Run! Something's wrong here!"

Even at this moment, Harry still hadn't forgotten Thea.

"Why would the little master go with you?" A strange male voice suddenly rang out, but the content of the voice was like a thunderclap that made Harry's whole body tremble.

"What... young master?"

The man looked at Harry, whose face was full of disbelief, with amusement, like a cat toying with a mouse. "Let me introduce you, this is my little master..."

“It’s more appropriate for me to do the self-introduction!” Thea abruptly interrupted Little Barty.

Thea stared directly at Harry, the anger on his face piercing Thea's heart like a sword.

“I am Dorothea Black, my mother is Bellatrix, and my father is…”

Under Harry's increasingly terrified gaze, Thea slowly uttered the name that the entire wizarding world dared not utter directly, "Voldemort."

Perhaps it was the hatred in Harry's eyes that made Voldemort, in Barty's arms, enjoy the show so much. "Gag him, don't let him get in the way."

A spell held Harry's mouth shut, preventing him from uttering a single word.

“Thea, my good daughter,” Voldemort said in a hoarse voice, and Thea bowed respectfully to him.

"Let's get down to business!"

At Voldemort's command, a giant cauldron appeared out of nowhere, struggling to push a huge cauldron over—it was almost big enough for an adult to sit in, and it seemed to be filled with water.

Harry watched as Thea carefully checked the potion ingredients in the cauldron with Barty, and then cautiously approached the cauldron to observe the state of the potion inside.

"Is everything I asked for ready?"

“Everything is ready. I don’t know as much about this potion as you do, so I haven’t added it yet,” Little Barty replied.

“Hmm… it’s good to be cautious…” Thea said, and the bug tail immediately scurried over and presented Thea with a tightly packed box.

Thea, using the insect's tail as a guide, carefully examined the processing progress of the potion ingredients.

"Perfect! This saved me a lot of trouble..."

As she spoke, Thea began to drop the materials into the crucible one by one in a certain order.

She didn't forget to ask Barty for the wand she had used to brew the potion in the first place—Harry saw Barty nod involuntarily, clearly pleased with Thea's carefulness.

As all the potion ingredients were placed into the crucible, Thea began to rotate the potion in the crucible alternately from left to right until it turned a beautiful bright purple.

"Now, only the last step remains."

He watched as Little Barty carefully and slowly placed the strange creature in his arms into the crucible.

Let him drown!

Harry never imagined he could harbor such intense malice towards someone.

Thea watched expressionlessly as her "father" slowly sank into the crucible.

The next second, Harry watched in disbelief as the girl stretched out her smooth arm and then... slashed it hard with her wand!

"A daughter's blood, voluntarily shed, can bring her father back to life!"

Even though the intense pain made Thea tremble uncontrollably, she still tried her best to keep her voice steady, and even her body quickly regained its composure.

Aside from her excessively pale face, no one could tell that she was losing a lot of blood.

Blood gushed from the wound, and Harry forced himself to keep his eyes open as if being tortured.

Time seemed to stretch on endlessly, and all that could be heard was the sound of blood flowing into the crucible.

She didn't know how much time had passed, but the potion turned a faint green before Thea stopped bleeding.

After hastily processing the white daffodil handed to her by the insect tail and administering another bottle of medicine, Thea began her next move.

As Harry watched Thea swallow the potion, a thought suddenly popped into his head—the dose of that potion probably wasn't enough to cure Thea…

Harry quickly suppressed the thought, trying his best to cover up the lingering pity in his heart by using the truth about his parents' deaths.

"The flesh of a servant, offered voluntarily, can make his master powerful!"

As Thea's strange incantation fell, Little Barty didn't hesitate to cut a large chunk of flesh off his own arm!

Judging from Little Barty's posture, if he weren't afraid of ruining the medicine's effects, he might have cut off one of his own hands.

In fact, Harry had guessed the truth.

The insect's tail tried its best to shrink its size.

Madmen! Madmen! They're all a bunch of madmen!

The insect tail kept cursing at the group of lunatics.

"My father's bones were donated unintentionally, serving as an anchor for his wanderer to return home!"

The grave beneath Harry's feet cracked open, and he was horrified to see a wisp of dust slowly float up and eventually land in the cauldron in front of Thea.

That wisp of dust seemed to ignite the entire potion in the crucible like a spark. Thea couldn't dodge in time and got a piece of her clothes burned by the spark, but luckily Little Barty pulled her away.

The flames quickly died down, and a wisp of white smoke rose slowly, gradually transforming into a white mist.

Through the white mist, Harry saw a man's black figure slowly rising from the cauldron.

The man who terrified the entire wizarding world... has been resurrected.