Chapter 1:

His Only Foil

Harry watched helplessly as the last Death Eater prostrated himself at Voldemort's feet by way of kissing the hems of his robes. He racked his brain for a means of escape while Voldemort's attention was on his followers, but whether due to his exhaustion, injuries or sheer terror, no epiphany came to him.

And now the circle of black-robed and white-masked psychopaths was complete.

"I am sure you are all expecting some grand speech." Voldemort began. "Or at least some well deserved retribution for your abandoning me these last thirteen years, if the stench of your guilt were so obvious."

The circle of followers shuddered as if anticipating a session of cruciatus massages. Harry suspected that's exactly what they could expect.

"But fear not my friends. For I return to you not in rage, but in joy and triumph!" Voldemort went on raising his arms dramatically and letting loose a jet of green sparks like a firework. "I am reborn, stronger than ever before, and lo my forces are dwindled they shall swell soon enough."

His followers imitated their masters' celebratory act and lit the sky with an array of colorful sparks.

"There is so much that has happened. So much to share with you all." Voldemort went on when the cheers died down. "I don't even know where to begin. How I lost my powers that night? How I have returned to you all? Why I set my eyes to kill a worthless half-blood to begin with?"

Finally, the dreaded moment arrived. Voldemort turned his disgusting, monochromatic crimson eyes on Harry.

"Let us start with the last of those first. The first second and the second third." He said as he approached the bound champion.

He stood there as if contemplating him, and Harry gritted his teeth against the pain in his scar. Truth be told, he too was now enthralled by the maniacs speech. His horror at the death of Cedric, disgust at what transpired after and the desperate need to escape all took a back seat to his curiosity. His need for answers so long kept from him was winning the battle over his will.

"Either must die at the hand of the other." Voldemort said, his eyes still locked with Harry's own.

He broke the eye contact and turned back to his followers, who had resorted to glancing at one another in confusion at these words. An oddly patient smile plastered his face.

"This is but one clause of a prophecy made before our young friend here was even born. A prophecy that foretold of one with the power to defeat the dark lord." He said with glee.

The gathered Death Eaters laughed, and Harry supposed the joke was any claim that he was this person. Voldemort didn't seem to share in the joke.

"Do not laugh." He said as his patient smile faded and he slowly waved his wand threateningly over the crowd.

That shut them up.

"You need not know the prophecy in its entirety, but do not doubt me when I say that it does indeed describe young Harry Potter." He went on. "I went in that night half-cocked, ignorant of the latter two-thirds of the prophecy. And I paid the price for my foolishness."

Harry tuned out Voldemort's description of what happened that night. Of how his mother died to save him and the spell backfiring. He already knew this part and how he clung to life as a wraith and returned by means of the ritual just moments before.

The revelation of this prophecy was altogether like a bolt of lightning from the sky. Had anybody else known? Why hadn't they teld him? What was the full phrasing? He needed to know.

"And now here we are." Voldemort's theatrical speech went on. "And so I ask you all, should I kill this boy? My only foil?"

Harry felt the last of his hope leave him as Voldemort turned the ash wand on him. His followers cheered and egged him on, demanding Harry's blood. But death never came.

"I should?" Voldemort asked, doing a good job of raising two confused eyebrows despite having none.

No doubt sensing that they'd given the wrong answer, the Death Eaters whimpered and backed away.

"Either must die at the hand of the other." Voldemort repeated. "In other words, neither can die BUT at the hand of the other. Don't you see? No force on heaven or earth can kill me except him. The reverse is also true."

This revelation filled Harry with equal parts hope and despair. He knew where this was going, and despite the knowledge that his life would be spared, he suspected a worse fate awaited him.

"I tell you this. Were any of you to aim your wand at the boy and utter those two favorite words of mine it would come to naut." Voldemort went on. "Some miracle of fate intervening would save him time and again. It could be as mundane as you tripping as you cast it or Dumbledore's blasted bird appearing in a fountain of flame to spirit him away. And with each encounter he would grow stronger until we faced each other."

"But I ask you this!" He said loud enough to retrieve any waning attention from his audience. "Were I to kill him and fulfill the prophecy, would I remain immune to all other foes? I know that while he lives I am truly invulnerable, but once I kill him will any old Auror be able to get a lucky shot with a blasting curse and take my head off?"

Voldemort turned back to Harry. An almost loving gaze in his eyes. Harry wished he'd eaten earlier that day because he wanted to hurl, and Voldemort's face would have been in the splash zone if he were to do so now.

"The knowledge of the full content of the prophecy and another more interesting revelation." Voldemort paused to examine Harry's scar with a deep fascination, like a beggar being handed an entire vault full of galleons. "Has brought me to an understanding."

He turned back to his followers.

"The boy who lived must continue to do so." He concluded. "He is my greatest achievement. My most precious weapon. One who must never be used, but instead protected."

His followers could only bow at the brilliance of this revelation. Harry could only gawk at the irony of it, and he suspected there was a second layer of irony he wasn't seeing.

"I haven't decided which of you I will assign this magnificent task to." Voldemort said as he walked among his followers. "Lucius."

One of the taller masked individuals stumbled forward and fell to his knees.

"Yes, my lord?" The familiar voice of Malfoy senior asked.

"You failed me in protecting the other one I entrusted to you. Would you like to make amends?"

Other one? This had happened before? Was there another child of prophecy decades earlier that Voldemort hadn't fallen too? What was going on? So many more questions plagued his mind as Lucius groveled and begged for the honor

"Well too bad. I'm giving the boy to Macnair." Voldemort said with a disgusting grin.

The other Death Eaters roared with laughter at the man's humiliation. All except the man Harry presumed to be the surly executioner himself who stood at attention, pride evident even behind his cloaked and masked visage.

"Walden. In the far East there is a hole in the ground, a tar pit with no bottom whose residents yearn for imprisonment in Azkaban. Do you know of it?"

The resolute man nodded at his masters' attention.

"Good. But before we get to work, let us have some fun."

Voldemort motioned to Wormtail who limped over, his stump of an arm under the opposite armpit. He handed his master a thick folder of what looked like paper scraps.

"How forgetful of me." Voldemort cooed as he took the folder. "Let me fix that for you."

Harry wondered what Voldemort would do to him as a form of entertainment as he blessed Wormtail with a new silver hand. He feared the imperious and cruciatus but what Voldemort held in his hand was far worse.

"The last year has provided me with a girth of information on our young friend, and so I took to making an album of the juiciest Daily Prophet articles." Voldemort paused, a look of absolute horror on his face. "Deer me! Have I become a Potter fangirl?"

The Death Eaters roared with laughter at what was likely a rare display of self-deprecating humor and the laughter never ended. Harry gritted his teeth to the point of cracking as Voldemort read every single Rita Skeeter article about him from the last year. It was Snape reading the Witch Weekly article on Hermione in that classroom all over again.

As Voldemort finished the final article he turned, not to Harry, but to the dead body of Cedric Diggory. With a wave of his wand the Triwizard cup flew to the dead boy's chest and he disappeared with a loud crack, along with any hope of escape for Harry.

"With all of these articles, that for some reason the wizarding public puts stock in, describing your deteriorating mental state in recent months I can only wonder." Voldemort began as he turned his attention back to Harry. "What will the public, your fellow students and your dear friends think when Cedric's dead body returns without you?"

Harry tried to scream, but sometime during Voldemort's speech he had put a silencing spell on him. Memories of how the Hufflepuffs theorized his becoming a dark lord during the Chamber of Secrets fiasco told him exactly what the papers and public would think.

"Especially considering..." A familiar and hateful drawl echoed through the graveyard. "That your fellow champion was placed under the imperious curse and while under it used the cruciatus on your two competitors. One of them to the point of passing out."

A series of cracks echoed through the graveyard as more people appirated into the party. Harry didn't even bother getting his hopes up, and a good thing too because the sight of their new guests would have shattered that hope.

"Severus!" Voldemort greeted the slimy git with outstretched arms, though did not actually hug him. "My friends! Of all my followers our dear Severus here has been the most loyal and ingenious."

He said all of this while ignoring Harry's silenced screams and profanities directed at his former professor. He also ignored the Durmstrang headmaster beside the bat.

"It was he who brought to me all of this information I have shared with you tonight concerning the prophecy, and more still you shall never know." He explained to the other Death Eaters. "It is because of him that Harry's pitiful life will be spared today and forevermore, though I daresay our young friend won't be thanking him anytime soon."

Snape only tilted his head in lieu of a bow, all the while he avoided looking at Harry.

"Oh yes. I daresay news of Harry's turning will be all the more believable when that turn of events, and the death and disappearance of two professors that very same night, come to light.

Harry's mind had gone blank. He could no longer boggle at the tirade of questions flooding his mind and so he surrendered. He fell limp in the arms of that statue.

"And with that pleasant thought, I wish you happy dreams, Harry Potter." Voldemort said as he advanced on him. "Pray you never wake up, for the world will welcome you back not as a hero, but as my second coming. And by then they will be correct."

Everything went black immediately after as be fell into a deep slumber.

He did not have happy dreams.

15 Years Later.

The squad descended the frozen spiral staircase into the depths of the infamous Mongolian prison, Kasyrgan

At their head was a retired warden of the prison being lead from behind by Monika Malfoy, their youngest member, who kept their prisoner deep under the imperius curse. The others, Norberta Weasley, Cedric Wood and Scorpius Malfoy formed a nice line between him and their guide.

"Little D!" A voice rang out from his intercom.

The others froze at the sound of his father's voice, which rang like a gong in the cramped space.

Dudley Jr barely managed to cut the long string of promised punishments his father was screaming over the airwaves without misfiring his gun. He glanced between the others as he righted his rifle and shrugged shyly.

"I think our parents know we're gone." He said sheepishly.

"And that we took their stuff." Said Wood, nodding to Dudley's rifle and the device on his own wrist.

Wood turned a dial on said device and a three-dimensional hologram of the prison appeared before them. A little red dot indicated their position and a gold one indicated their target. They had reached the very bottom level of the wizarding prison and beyond this door, according to the map, was a vast expanse like an endless auditorium. At its center was their goal.

"Let's go!" The bushy-haired girl leading them hissed as she made their prisoner open the door.

The sight that greeted them was every bit the nightmare that rumors told of. Row upon row of pits carved into the black stone stretched into the distance. Each one was a properly functioning tower of silence, and each was encircled on all sides by dozens of prisoners laid spread-eagle.

Thick, black tar bubbled as it rolled over them and into the pit, their agonized faces the only thing left untouched.

"Give me dementors any day." Said Norberta with a shudder. Dudley could only nod in agreement with the freckled dragon-rider.

They tightened their formation as they advanced further. It was to the point that they were practically stepping on each-other's feet and doing their best to ignore the stench of filth and burning flesh as they went. None of them dared glance at the prisoners, to the people kept in a state of perpetual near-death experience through the cursed magic of this place.

Dudley fiddled with a dial on the flashlight attachment for the M16. Finding the correctly charged rune he activated the inbuilt magic and bathed his companions in patronus light. It didn't do much for him but he could see the despair of his companions leave them. That alone made him feel marginally better, even if he himself couldn't bask in the same light.

They spotted their destination long before they reached it on account of it being the only distinctive feature in the room. Long, thick chains like those of an aircraft carrier's anchor rose from a single pit filled to the brim with the tar-like substance.

Following the chains with his eyes he saw they passed through rings embedded into the ceiling and connected to a series of leverless cranks on the ground.

Four chains. Four rings. Four cranks. Four wands.

"Alright Dudders, cover us." Scorpius ordered as he, his younger sister, Norberta and Cedric took a crank each.

Dudley canceled the patronus runes and activated a set on the scope attachment. He cycled through thermal, ultraviolet and aura scopes but saw no danger, beyond the horrors of how the prisoners auras looked.

He fought back bile as the quartet of relashios made simultaneous impact.

He turned to see all four cranks raise whatever was at the other end of those chains. He kept an eye out for trouble and activated a seismic detection function on the butt of his rifle as he watched the - sarcophagus? - rise out of the liquid.

Sarcophagus was the best word he had for it. It was made of metal and shaped like an upside-down stepped pyramid, minus the steps. Long, thin blades formed every edge of it and connected the steel plates of its surface. He thought he spied runes on the surface of these plates, but they kept changing like a hologram, the cheap plastic kind not the awesome electronic kind Cedric had.

"No name." Wood observed as he pointed to the description plate dangling from the sarcophagus on a much thinner chain.

Dudley looked through the scope and magnified until he could read the inscription.

"Incarcerated on July 11th, 1995 on charges of murder and use of all three unforgiveables." He read out loud. "TRIAL PENDING!?"

The others shushed him at his incredulous cry as he read those last words.

"Let's see here. We're looking for a guy who vanished in late June 1995. Accused of murder and unforgiveable use and who never got a trial." The Malfoy sister said in her best approximation of sarcasm.

"Unless you count trial by public opinion." The other lady present countered.

The Malfoy princess glared at the redhead before continuing.

"And this person appeared here two weeks later, no name and under the same charges. I think we have our guy." She concluded.

"And if it's not him?" Dudley prodded between glances around the prison.

"Then we stun him, shove him back in and pray are parent don't drag us back here to join him." Wood answered.

Their conviction set, the four Wanded fired a series of spells that Dudley deduced were a combination of unlocking and finite charms. One of them clearly did the trick as moments later steam hissed out of every corners of the metal contraption.

He was nearly blinded when one of the sides opened upwards like a dolorean and bathed them in white light. It was only thanks to the sunglasses setting on his scope that he was able to look inside at the prisoner.

The man was naked and floating in some kind of misty fluid, reminiscent of pensieve memories. He was in the fetal position making it hard to discern his features beyond the shag of long black hair. Fortunately, whatever kind of field he was in - stasis maybe?- made him rotate and when he came to the right angle he saw it.

The scar. The stuff of legend, plain as day and exactly as everyone described it.

"We found him." Dudley Jr told his fellow Marauder Youth. "We've found Harry Potter!"