An explosion rocked the tiny village of Godric's Hollow, the epicenter being a small home near its edge. The only sound coming from the ruined house being that of an infant crying.
Tom Marvolo Riddle, better known to the witches and wizards of the world by his nom de guerre Lord Voldemort, lay on the floor slightly dazed. He wondered what had just happened.
As he got to his feet (it was good that he was alone, it would not do for either servants or enemies to see him struggling to rise) he retraced his steps.
He had passed the Fidelius Charm's ward feeling rather smug and blasted down the door. James Potter rushed at him without even having a wand on his person after yelling for his wife and child to run. What fools they were to trust! All magical travel was now locked down – there would be no escape.
One killing curse later the Potter patriarch slumped forward and he stepped over the corpse with practiced ease and made his way to the nursery. A flick of his wand and any charms on it dispelled as it flung open, knocking away physical obstructions as it did so.
Truthfully he wanted to just kill the woman with her child, but Severus desired this mudblood and Lord Voldemort rewarded his faithful. Severus had brought him the prophecy after all – the magical forewarning of this inexplicable threat.
Three times he offered her the chance to stand aside, and three times she defied him, offering herself in place of her son. A lazy flick of his wrist and she was dead as well. His potions master would have to learn to live with disappointment.
The child started crying. It had seen beneath his hood and seen that he was not James playing some new game, although how much the infant understood was debatable. He had always hated it when the others cried at the orphanage.
He raised his wand. He did not know how this tiny thing could ever threaten him, but it would never get the chance.
"Avada Kedavra!"
And that was where Voldemort began carefully examining his memory. The curse struck the child's forehead and then seemingly rebounded along with a great deal of raw magical energy. The rest of his memory was altered and garbled by pain from being struck by all that magic, although he did remember seeing the roof being blasted away.
The Dark Lord was no expert on sacrificial magic, but he had been at the top of his class at Hogwarts, and so he rapidly realized that the Potters must have found some manner of ritual that would protect their son. He smiled evilly. No doubt they had expected him to be destroyed by the magical backlash. And perhaps he would have had he relied only on horcruxes as he'd originally intended.
That thought almost made Voldemort queasy. He'd been hit by a killing curse and the power of some unknown ritual. If all he'd had were horcruxes his body would have been obliterated. How long would he have been trapped as a wraith before his followers could raise him?
Thankfully Tom Marvolo Riddle had been raised as a muggle, though he had been sure to ruthlessly destroy any evidence of that fact. The only one left who knew his origins was Dumbledore and the old fool seemed content to hoard that secret.
Voldemort was thankful for his upbringing for that split second because it had introduced him to his favorite book: The Picture of Dorian Gray. He had been fascinated by the form of immortality the titular character had possessed, so much so that while a job at Borgin and Burkes had been tempting for the purpose of finding dark artifacts he had instead chosen to go into the ministry. There he had been a lowly clerk, but no one paid any mind to a clerk looking through old records, and there he had found what he'd what he'd been looking for.
Dorian Gray had been a real person, and the subject of a poorly executed ministry cover-up. Oscar Wilde had been bewitched into writing the story to convince the muggles that the events had never truly happened and that anyone saying otherwise was simply insane or fanciful. Basil Hallward and the titular character had both been muggles (though Hallward had been uncommonly talented), but the ministry investigation of the matter had determined that Lord Henry Wotton was a hedonistic wizard interested in immortality purely as a means of seeing what pleasures the future might offer him, and who had used Gray as a test subject to find any flaws in his methods.
To the burgeoning Dark Lord's delight the files included the details of the Wotton's spellwork, ostensibly for the purpose of identifying any similar portraits before they could cause problems.
Tom Riddle knew that he was handsome, and that failing that he could be charming. He used both to convince the witch that was his immediate superior that he believed he had found a similar artifact and wanted to take the files home, purely for research of course. No need for the necessary paperwork or to tell anyone else, he was talented enough to solve the problem himself.
The foolish woman had let him get away with it easily, and over the next few days the young Voldemort had completely broken down what Wotton had done wrong. One of the consequences of the spells as he'd done them created a mild urge to act out for the sole purpose of seeing the effects on the portrait. That Gray could not resist such a mild compulsion was testament to his lack of willpower but Tom Riddle was nevertheless ruthlessly efficient about expunging the compulsion from his improved spell. After that it was a simple matter of casting the imperius curse on a reasonably talented artist and making them take his portrait, then casting the new spell on the picture and binding it to himself.
He was now doubly immortal – though he had considered making multiple horcruxes, there was no need to risk destabilizing his soul. He had initially planned to use his diary as his first horcrux when the basilisk had killed Myrtle, but after a moment of thought he had made the basilisk his horcrux instead. The beast underlined his connection with his great ancestor Salazar Slytherin, and having a portion of his soul within it made it that much more intelligent and easy to control. He had been momentarily concerned about the possibility of it dying, but a basilisk's natural lifespan was nine-hundred years, whereas the one in the Chamber of Secrets had been there for a thousand – his ancestor had no doubt bound its life force to the school; as long as Hogwarts stood, so too would the basilisk live.
Now, with the portrait – placed in Bellatrix's vault within a few days of its creation – he was impervious to harm and aging. He had put his immortality to an immediate test: upon returning to Hogwarts under the pretense of visiting the aging Headmaster Dippet, he had opened the chamber and looked into the basilisk's eyes.
The recollection of his overlapping immortality magic brought Voldemort's mind back to the present. The child of prophecy was there and seemingly immune to his magic. Perhaps he would have to kill it the muggle way? He reached for its little neck…
And then he withdrew his hand as it burned. So the child was completely protected from him? Very well. One way or another, Harry Potter would never be a threat to Lord Voldemort.
He conjured a pair of silver gloves to protect his hands and picked up the sobbing infant. He would either figure out how to kill it or he would have Bellatrix raise it to be loyal to him.
He heard loud footsteps. It seemed the old fool had picked Hagrid to investigate. He could kill the half-giant, but he had a mystery to unravel. Let Dumbledore's order puzzle over the missing child's fate. With a wave of his wand he dispelled his own wards and then disapparated.
Author's Note: In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort says that he'd gone further down the path to immortality than anybody. This little story was based on the idea that he truly did, but differently than how he did in canon.
In other news, I'm back to writing! The renovations on the house are done, and I wrote this to celebrate. Yes, I know, it isn't an update to any of the other stories, but hey, writing is supposed to be fun, and it was nice having a break from all of them. Don't worry though. I learned my lesson with my ill-advised Godzilla/Marvel crossover, and every story that remains will eventually be completed.