Part I

"Shit," the pale, dark-robed man muttered under his breath. "Shit shit SHIT. Potter and his friends have scrambled. How am I supposed to find them now?"

The man's name was Tom Riddle, but he was better known to most of the wizarding world as Voldemort. The Dark Lord. He Who Must Not Be Named. They claim he is a dark wizard. They say he wants to overthrow wizard society. They say he hates Dumbledore and the Ministry of Magic. They say he is a pureblood supremacist. And they say he is insane.

They would be right, except for the last two parts.

Voldemort may practice what some wizards would call dark magic. He may wish to overthrow wizarding society. He is, however, quite the opposite of a pureblood supremacist, and he is emphatically NOT insane. In fact, he is among the few wizards alive who knows the truth. His pureblood supremacist trappings are nothing but an act, part of what Muggles would call a "long con." Voldemort's "Death Eaters," much misunderstood by the wizarding world at large, are a death cult, based not upon some absurd concept of "pureblood supremacy," but instead upon the wholesale elimination of magic from the Earth. Many of them work against magic from within wizarding society, sabotaging the Ministry's dark experiments and trying their best to shut down or disrupt the operation of the indoctrination facilities which the Ministry has the gall to call "schools." All these and more are the goals of the man the wizarding world knows and fears as Lord Voldemort.

More immediately, however, his goal was to track down the scion of the New Aeon. Most know him as Harry Potter.

Years ago, Voldemort tried to break the spell of protection placed upon the young scion by his Ministry stooge parents. His intention was to eliminate the scion before that protective magic became a problem. He was only partially successful: he'd managed to weaken Harry's protective ward, but at the cost of his own physical form, and despite his prodigious power, he was only one jagged forehead scar closer to the scion's death. Languishing in the horrid semi-undeath of astral projection, he'd managed to make contact with a follower of his by the name of Quirrel, and through him return at least partially to life. Through Quirrel, he made yet another attempt to kill Harry, but was thwarted yet again by Lily Potter's insidious protective charm (which that demented old fool Dumbledore had always claimed was the "power of love" or some other such insipid nonsense, when in all actuality it was, as any dark wizard worth his salt could tell you, simple blood magic). Once again forced into his astral form, Voldemort made several more successive attacks (once even resorting to possessing an old diary of his he'd enchanted as practice whilst still attending Hogwarts), before finally managing to return himself to life with the help of Peter Pettigrew. Picked on and given the role of designated punching bag by his so-called "friends" at Hogwarts, kindly, quiet Peter was at heart a humanist, and among the loyalest servants the Dark Lord ever had. Voldemort came to love Peter as a son, and deeply regretted that he could not save his Animagus friend from having to spend years as a common house pet. To Peter, as to all Death Eaters, he revealed the horrible, alien truth behind wizardkind, and Peter came to hate himself and the threat that wizards posed to those who truly deserved to be the masters of this planet, the Muggles. Returning to life, Voldemort once again tried to kill Potter, and though he'd come close, the scion once again managed to escape with his life. Reminiscing on his repeated failure, Voldemort finally decided upon a new course of action: if he could not kill young Harry, he would reveal to him the truth. This was made all the more difficult by the fact that a splinter group of Death Eaters had recently taken clandestine control of the Ministry and was actively working against him.

So here I am, thought Voldemort, the most powerful dark wizard since Grindelwald, with clairvoyance enough to match even Sybil Trelawney, and I'm reduced to searching the forests ON FOOT to find the teenage scion and his oh-so-loyal cadre of friends. Yeah, some Dark Lord I am. How the hell am I going to find these brats? If only there were some way to-

"That's it." Voldemort said aloud. "Nagini. That's it! I sent her to Godric's Hollow weeks ago. Perhaps the Potter party has passed through there recently."

Voldemort closed his eyes, focusing upon the thought of Nagini. Astral energy gathered in his mind before exploding skywards. In a split second, Voldemort had gone from the middle of the Forest of Dean to a rather comfortable house in Godric's Hollow. Voldemort opened his eyes again.

He was face-to-face with Harry Potter.

Before he even had time to react, a frizzy-haired girl emerged from the stairs behind Harry and blasted Nagini against a wall. Recoiling with pain, Voldemort was thrust back into his own body. Without taking time even to think, Voldemort retrieved his wand from an inner pocket of his cloak, waved it in the air, and disappeared.