Voldemort's journey of fourteen years

'Master, we crave to know... we beg you to tell us... how you have achieved this... this miracle... how you managed to return to us...'
'Ah, what a story it is, Lucius,' said Voldemort. 'And it begins - and ends - with my young friend here.'
'You know, of course, that they have called this boy my downfall? 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 with a protection I admit I had not foreseen... I could not touch the boy. His mother left upon him the traces of her sacrifice... this is old magic, I should have remembered it, I was foolish to overlook it... but no matter. I can touch him now.'

'I miscalculated, my friends, I admit it. My curse was deflected by the woman's foolish sacrifice, and it rebounded upon me. 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 which might have helped me required the use of a wand...

'I remember only forcing myself, sleeplessly, endlessly, second by second, to exist... I settled in a faraway place, in a forest, and I waited... surely, one of my faithful Death Eaters would try and find me... one of them would come and perform the magic I could not, to restore me to a body... but I waited in vain...

Only one power remained to me. I could possess the bodies of others. But I dared not go where other humans were plentiful, for I knew that the Aurors ere still abroad and searching for me. I sometimes inhabited animals - snakes, of course, being my preference - but I was little better off inside them than as pure spirit, for their bodies were ill-adapted to perform magic... and my possession of them shortened their lives; none of them lasted long...


Then... four years ago... the means for my return seemed assured. A wizard - young, foolish and gullible - wandered across my path in the forest I had made my home. Oh, he seemed the very chance I had been dreaming of... for he was a teacher at Dumbledore's school... he was easy to bend to my will... he brought me back to this country, and after a while, I took possession of his body, to supervise him closely as he carried out my orders. But my plan failed. I did not manage to steal the Philosopher's Stone. I was not to be assured immortal life. I was thwarted... thwarted, once again, by Harry Potter...'
'The servant died when I left his body, and I was left as weak as ever I had been. I returned to my hiding place far away, and I will not pretend to you that I didn't then fear that I might never regain my powers... yes, that was perhaps my darkest hour... I could not hope that I would be sent another wizard to possess... and I had given up hope, now, that any of my Death Eaters cared what had become of me...'

'And then, not even a year ago, when I had almost abandoned hope, it happened at last... a servant returned to me: Wormatil here, who had faked his own death to escape justice, was driven out of hiding by those he had once counted friends, and decided to return to his master. he sought me in the country where it had long been rumored I was hiding... helped, of course, by the rats he met along the way. Wormtail has a curious affinity with rats, do you not, Wormtail? His filthy little friends told him there was a place, deep in an Albanian forest, that they avoided, where small animals like themselves had met their deaths by a dark shadow that possessed them...

'But his journey back to me was not smooth, was it, Wormtail? For, hungry one night, on the edge of the very forest where he had hoped to find me, he foolishly stopped at an inn for some food... and whom should he meet there, but one Bertha Jorkins, a witch from the Ministry of Magic? Now see the way that fate favors Lord Voldemort. This might have been the end of Wormtail, and of my last hope for regeneration. But Wormtail - displaying a presence of mind I would never have expected of him - convinced Bertha Jorkins to accompany him on a night-time stroll. He overpowered her... he brought her to me. And Bertha Jorkins, who might have ruined all, proved instead to be a gift beyond my wildest dreams... for - with a little persuasion - she became a veritable mine of information.
She told me that the Triwizard Tournament would be played at Hogwarts this year. She told me that she knew of a faithful Death Eater who would be only too willing to help me, if I could only contact him. She told me many things... but the means I used to break the Memory Charm upon her were powerful, and when I had extracted all useful information from her, her mind and body were both damaged beyond repair. She had now served her purpose. I could not possess her. I disposed of her.'

'Wormtail's body, of course, was ill-adapted for possession, as ll assumed him dead, and would attract far too much attention if seen. However, he was the able-bodied servant I needed, and, poor wizard though he is, Wormtail was able to follow the instructions I gave him which would return me to a rudimentary, weak body of my own, a body I would be able to inhabit while awaiting the essential ingredients for true rebirth... a spell or two of my own invention... a little help from my dear Nagini' - a potion concocted from unicorn blood, and the snake venom Nagini provided... I was soon returned to an almost human form, and strong enough to travel.
I set my sights lower... I would settle for my old body back again, and my old strength.

I knew that to achieve this - it is an old piece of Dark Magic, the potion that revived me tonight - I would need three powerful ingredients. Well, one of them was already at hand, was it not, Wormtail? Flesh given by a servant... My father's bone, naturally, meant that we would have to come here, where he was buried. But the blood of a foe... Wormtail would have had me use any wizard, would you not, Wormtail? But I knew the one I must use, if I was to rise again, more powerful than I had been when I had fallen. I wanted Harry Potter's blood.

I wanted the blood of the one who had stripped me of power thirteen years ago, for the lingering protection his mother one gave him, would then reside in my veins, too...

'But how to get at Harry Potter? For he has been better protected than I think even he knows, protected in ways devised by Dumbledore long ago, when it fell to him to arrange the boy's future. Dumbledore invoked an ancient magic, to ensure the boy's protection as long as he is in his relations' care. Not even I can touch him there.

THE DEATH EATERS - Pg 552