AU. Three months after the Dark One's new born son was abducted from Castle Charming he is returned by an unlikely source with the news that he has a destiny binding him to a land where magic's price is ignored the until he has fulfilled a prophecy demanding he either end a nosmically challenged sociopath or be ended by him.
Prologue: Interception
"Stand aside you foolish girl!"
Death stood in the shadows in the corner of the nursery, the mother was doomed but the child would live. The boy was what she was there for- Death needed him completely free of the influence of Albus Dumbledore; needed him better prepared for the job fate had allotted him, and for that there was only one place he could grow up, a place far outside the Dumbledore's reach. This way she could keep her liberty and regain her long stolen possessions.
Tom Riddle stepped cover the body of the woman who now stood at Death's side and prepared to finish the job he had started when he had taken the coward Pettigrew as his servant.
"Not Harry, no..." Lily Potter wept beside her.
"He will survive this night." Death assured the women who had defended a son she would never know was not truly her own. "Go forth and join your husband, he waits for you."
Lily Potter passed beyond the veil of death with a word of heartfelt thanks that she had not died in vain just as Riddle allowed his arrogance to destroy the last of what had once, in Death's humble opinion, been a very fine body. She clenched her fist, drawing the fragment of soul into her possession.
"One down," she remarked to nobody in particular; not that they'd hear her anyway. "Seven to go."
Death stepped into the room and scooped up the little boy. As soon as she touched him, the glamour upon him melted away revealing a handsome dark eyed, dark haired infant. A child whose parents were willing and very able to destroy their world in order to get him back. Death did not have time to deal with another apocalypse this century, she was still dealing with the backlog from Narnia.
"Nearly time to go home little one." Death assured the baby. She waved her hand over the empty cradle and an image of the baby the world expected Harry Potter to be. "There we go little Baelfire, you are free to grow as nature intended. Come, your parents are missing you."
And with that, Death, and the child faded from the room as a batlike figure was pushing the door open to discover the carnage the noseless sociopath had wrought that night.
~V~