Author's Note: So, um… yes, a new story already. When I still haven't completed my two ongoing ones. It's the plot bunnies' fault! This story will regroup several premises I have had simmering in my brain for quite a while now. Which? Now, now, that would be telling.

CHAPTER 1

The Potter House was oddly normal. Those two fools — they had all the magic in the world at their disposal, and they had decided to go with a perfectly normal Muggle home with not even one space-extension charm. In the space this stupid building occupied, the one who called himself Lord Voldemort could have built a true palace. With a shack, he could have made an empire. All it took was power and knowledge. Hogwarts taught basics that didn't seem any less logical than Muggle science, but the truth was that there were no true boundaries to what magic could do. The one limitation scholars had agreed on was the impossibility of achieving true immortality, and he, at age 16, had already defied that notion.

But no. Muggle house. Of course.

Voldemort crossed the street, his dark robes inconspicuous for the muggles on Halloween Night. A child complimented his 'costume', and it was hard to resist getting rid of the muggle pest with a rapid Killing Curse, but the last thing he needed was the ICW on his back for breaking the Statue of Secrecy. This was an assassination, not a battle. Something he would do alone, with no interference on either side — just him and the Potter infant. And he'd just see what 'power' that baby could have that the Dark Lord of the Death Eaters did not.

There were very few defenses on the house; the Potters had gambled it all on their little Fidelius Charm. Well, better not chose an absolute coward as your Secret Keeper next time, eh, Dumbledore? Who knew where that wretched Pettigrew character had gone off now. He'd last seen him scuttling away as a rat after semi-forcibly receiving his Dark Mark. As it were, the door had only a simple locking charm on it. A wordless Alohomora made short work of it, and there stood James and Lily Potter.

The young man shouted at his wife to get their son upstairs while he 'held' Voldemort.

Hold me? thought the snake-man. That is a feat only Dumbledore could achieve, you arrogant peacock. I'll—

Voldemort's train of thought was cut off by something very surprising. James Potter had managed to muster enough hatred to cast an Unforgivable Curse — a Killing Curse, no less — at him. In the confined space of the Potters' house's corridor, there was really no room to dodge. He could have Apparated away, but instead he decided to test an old theory of his. He stood still as the green beam hit him, engulfing him in a bright flash. He felt a surge of searing cold tear at his body, a pain equal to that of splitting one's own soul — but that was something he had felt before, and this time something inside him held. As the light dissipated, he was stunned, yes… but not dead. This had been the ultimate test of his Horcruxes. He could survive the Killing Curse. He was immortal.

Stunned though Voldemort may have been, this was nothing compared to Potter's reaction. He spluttered, still pointing his wand at the deathless sorcerer, as Voldemort raised his own wand, and, a smile on his lips, said Avada Kedavra with the quiet, satisfied precision of a man using his trusted old weapon.

Leaving Potter's corpse on the floor, the Dark Lord glided up the stairs and into the nursery. Lily Potter had just put her son in his crib when her attacker's wordless Expelliarmus snatched her wand from her sleeve. Confident that the woman could not threaten him without it, Voldemort strode towards the crib.

"NO!" shouted a desperate Lily, throwing herself in front of the crib. "No! PLEASE! You can take me — take me instead, but not Harry! Not Harry!"

Oh, Mrs Potter. Why do you make it so difficult?

"Stand aside, foolish woman", said the Dark Lord. "You need not die tonight. I am here for the boy."

Should he mention that she owed this unique chance to her old friend Severus? He had not made up his mind when she answered, still crying incoherently:

"PLEASE! No! HE'S JUST A BABY! No! Please no! TAKE ME INSTEAD!"

Oh, well. "AVADA KEDAVRA!"

And a second corpse sprawled on the floor. There was the crib now, with the 'Chosen One' who'd never be old enough to learn about his fate. It was ironic, really. For the third time, he raised his wand and pronounced the dreadful incantation of the Killing Curse.

"Avada Kedavra!"

The beam hit the boy in the forehead, but the green light did not engulf him. Nor did he absorb it like Voldemort's body had. Instead it was reflected as if on a mirror -

"WHAT?" was all Voldemort managed to say before his world turned to pain. The spell had come back to him in the space of instant, multiplied tenfold and charged with an unknown power that rammed into his soul like Fiendfyre. He fought it back with all the willpower he could muster, throwing all the magic he could against that burning that would not go away — he felt his soul crack under the pressure, a horribly, horribly familiar feeling — the fire was expanding all around him, consuming him in body and soul—

That night, a part of Voldemort flew away from his charred body, mad and desperate. And another part, ever so small, slid down the conduit of the two-way spell he had cast and into the curse scar on little Harry's forehead. This shred of soul only had a very vague awareness of closing in on the baby boy while drowning in an ocean of pain before his thoughts blackened.

Years passed, and the Voldemort in the Scar slept in agony. He could not move, could not think, lest he come into contact with the burning walls of his tiny, tiny prison. Sometimes he was disturbed by a sharper pain — a familiar pulling of another him nearby that tried to drive him out of the scar, but only succeeded in ramming him over and over into the burning wall, sending wave after wave of pain.

And in a last surge of Kedavra-induced agony, he felt himself fading.

It was a long, long time before he woke up in that shiny white limbo that Harry Potter's subconscious had shaped into King Cross's Station. He was woken up by a gentle hissing.

{Tommy, Tommy, Tommy boy…}

Who dared calling him that? And in Parseltongue? What was going on? What had he been - where was he - he felt all weird. In a glance, he realized he was a mangled, barely human creature lying on an unnaturally white floor. Crouched beside him was a black-haired woman wearing a white dress, whose features were oddly familiar to him. He'd never seen that woman, not truly, but he felt as though he'd always known her.

"Mother?"

The words had escaped his mouth before he could eve think properly. The strange woman appeared delighted.

"You know me! Oh, Tom, Tom…"

"What… What happened? Am I… dead?"

"Not… really", Merope said in just the oddest voice. "You… you are not whole."

"No… I'm not. I created… Horcruxes." Damn it. He shouldn't have been surrendering his information to a stranger — or a person he'd have called a stranger if he'd been in his right mind. And yet, he went on: "Do they tether me to the land of the living still? Did it work?"

Merope had tears in her eyes.

"No", she said softly, "Tom. You are the Horcrux. Or rather, the part of your soul inside the Horcrux. It's… complicated. You see, when you… when you tried to kill Harry Potter, you create an accidental Horcrux, of sorts. Now it's been destroyed, and here you are. But your other self, the Master self, still walks the Earth."

Riddle was aghast. The possibility that the soul pieces inside Horcruxes might be intelligent — that they might have their own sense of self — had simply never occurred to him. He thought cutting off a bit of soul would be analogous to cutting off an unessential body part. He'd confusedly read the piece of soul in a Horcrux could not Move On, but what of it? What did he care if some old shed skin of his lingered in limbo? Being that bit of old shed skin rather changed his perspective.

"Mother… What's going to happen to me now?"

Merope seemed like she was about to break down crying, but she held back. She answered:

"If I hadn't come here? Then you'd simply have stayed here forever. But I have been watching you, Tom. I knew this would happen one day, and I prepared."

Only one phrase could answer this. It was so alien to him that Voldemort felt weird and awkward as soon as it escaped his mouth, but he couldn't help it:

"Oh, Mother… Thank you! Thank you… ever so much."

The woman in white bent down and took him in his harm, cradling him.

"So you will take me with you?" he asked, hopeful. "On? Tell me… How is it?

"Tom… I'm sorry. But I can't. He says that there is a Prophecy about you. That only you can bring down your other self — either to make him renounce his ways, or to send him here where he can do no more harm."

"Renounce his ways? My ways? But Mother…!"

Voldemort cut himself off mid-sentence. The silliness of his whole situation had just struck him. He, a wretched hybrid of a baby and his corrupted adult self, had just been about to whine for his Mommy to let him gleefully murder a while longer. That… wouldn't do.

"Tom… You need to understand… Please understand. You cannot go on like you used to."

"Why not? There is only power, and those too weak to seek it. I reached for that power every way I could. I tried to build a future for myself, as glorious as I could make it. To show them. To show myself. To… to show you. I did great things, things no wizard dreamt of before!"

"And for good reason." she shushed him. "Tom, there is good in this world, and evil, though you loathe to admit it."

"Pah!" he said out of instinct. "Nobody ever showed me any love!"

Merope didn't answer her son. She just stared down at him.

"…Oh."

"Please, Tom. Do it for me. Even at your very worst, I watched you, and still I loved you and hoped… hoped against hope… Please, please don't disappoint me."

There was a moment of silence.

"What must I do?"

"I have studied old magic, magic the living have forgotten. I can restore your soul and make a body for you."

"And?"

"You will be sent back to the living world. I don't know what you must do. But your goal is to stop your other self from winning this war, and save people as many as you can until them. Can you do that for me?"

The Voldemort in the Scar, who was coming to the distinct realization that he was not Voldemort anymore, but rather Tom Riddle once again, nodded.

Merope smiled wistfully at him. She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead, and she said:

"Good luck, sweetheart."

An explosion of warmth engulfed him as he drifted into a sleep that was unlike anything he'd known for fifteen years.