Author's quests:

-entertain you

-make you laugh

-alter your views

Preface

October 31, 1981

DUMBLEDORE

Dumbledore watched it all go down. One of the measures taken on the Potter home was a special scrying mirror. Until the wards fell it showed nothing, but when they collapsed the mirror that Dumbledore kept in his pocket would ring out and the nothing it previously held would be filled with the images seen from the mirrors within the home. It was by that means that Dumbledore was aware that the death curse had been used on Harry and that Voldemort was no more. Grief struck. Then shock set in as the baby wailed. The mirror tumbled from his fingers, shattering on the floor mere moments before Wormtail and Voldemort's spirit met and schemed.

VOLDEMORT

The wand moved in a zigzag pattern, "Avada Kedavra!"

The man dropped dead.

"Please! Please, no!"

"Avada Kedavra!"

So too did his wife.

"Avada..." But when Voldemort went to speak the death words a third time his own soul rent in two. What there was left of it, in any case.

The half soul, or seventh as it were, floated forth.

"...Kedavra!"

The green light flew at the fragment. The spell, recognizing its master, refused to act properly. Instead of sending the fragment on its way to death, it commatized it and forced it forward, into the skull of a one year old boy.

End of Preface

Voldie's Rough Time

Voldemort had not been having a good time of it. It all began on that distasteful holiday, Halloween. It had started out well enough...discovering the location of his target; extinguishing the life of the dark haired man; and eliminating the obnoxious bint that Severus for some reason had a taste for. But it had all tumbled from the turrets from there.

The sniveling little brat screaming for his mum rankled Voldemort to his core. He detested being reminded of the orphanage, of the mewing of those abandoned by useless parents. Voldemort raised his wand and cast the spell that would irretrievably eliminate the only being capable of stopping his permanent reign of power.

Pain. Instantaneous. Severe.

Magically, he had no explanation. Oh, he knew some claimed the AK had rebounded, but if that were the case, where had his body gone? He had certainly cast enough AK's to know that the spell left the body undamaged. Speaking of which, since the only thing that was found left of him was his robe and wand why did they assume he was gone? Shouldn't they have been out combing the streets for someone running about starkers?

Voldemort almost wished he had been running about in his birthday suit that night rather than what had truly happened. After instructing the rat he left. His soul only made it a very short distance before it needed a vessel. The nearest creature he found available to inhabit was a rabbit. He hopped, hopped, hopped across yards and roads, desperately seeking a more respectable creature to indwell when the most horrible thing imaginable happened. A five year old girl, drssed in a pink princess costume, picked him up and cuddled him to her chest! Cooing, "Awe, aren't you the cutest bunny. Your fur is so soft! Mum, can I have a pet bunny?" Hopmort felt ready to choke. He vacated the vermin and received a much more satisfactory response from the brat that was now screaming at the top of her lungs upon seeing the smoke monster drifting out of her new "pet".

Voldemort's spirit searched desperately, but was unable to find the creatures he sought. He reluctantly took up residence in a turtle. Shellmort tottered across a field. Voldemort detested swimming, but after the hour and a half walk across the 200 foot field he was desperately hoping that Shellmort was better at swimming than he was at walking. "Ah, much better." He thought to himself as he glided through the water. Crunch! "Ow! What was that? There are things here that eat turtles?!"

Voldemort made a speedy escape from being a Shellmort sandwich and took up his new residence inside a frog. He deeply desired to escape the dining creature and so hopped away with great leaps of several feet. Finally, his traveling was going well. The dew on the grass kept his skin moist and he was making great progress forth. Forth to where, who knew? But after an hour or so Frogmort began to brainstorm an idea, which was quite difficult given the grain of rice sized brain he was using. But that was the whole problem, wasn't it? He couldn't think clearly. A memory had popped into his mind as he hopped; a memory of a forest and a tiara that helped you think. If he could just get to it, maybe he could use it to figure out how to get his body back. He couldn't magically travel, given the state he was in. That left muggle travel. He needed to get to the airport. Goal in mind, "Diadem, diadem, diadem..." he continued to hop and flop. Until the sun hit. He couldn't breath and his skin was so dry it felt ready to crack. Sssssss... "What was that sound? I know that sound?" Sssssbreaksssssfastssss. "Ah!" Hop, hop, hop, can't breath, hop. The slithering snake, slashed out and nabbed the frog from the air. "Oh, Merlin, Merlin no!" Voldemort desperately thought as he saw the inside of the mouth closing around him and then the passage of the snakes throat as he was swallowed. "Must get out, must get out!" Voldemort managed to direct his spirit out of the squirming frog and into...the snake.

Sssyumssss! "Ah!" Voldemort hissed back to himself, "I am not yum!" Voldemort was on the verge of hyperventilating. Occupying the thoughts and memories of the creature that had just eaten what had been him moments before was more than he could take.

Luckily, snakes had very good senses for finding other creatures and Voldemort soon found a rat to possess. Voldemort was quite pleased with his new choice for a home. After all, rats ate almost anything, which gave Voldemort many dining choices; they were clever and small, which would help Voldemort sneak rides to the places he needed to go; and rats bred copiously, so there would be many creatures for him to reside in when it came time to switch bodies. He found that he much preferred the cuisine that could be found in human kitchens to that in trash cans, but the dining experience occasionally left something to be desired. Once, while munching on chocolate marshmallows and crunch chocolate cereal in the box he had torn into, he was attacked by a housewife with a broom. Brooms looked like swinging skyscrapers to the eyes of the tiny rodent. Least to say, he had fled. On another occasion, he was sniffing out some cheese, when to his horror, he found a fellow rat that had been murdered by a metal contraption that Ratmort vaguely recalled seeing as a child in the orphanage. Five year old Tom had been fascinated; 85 year old Ratmort was terrified.

Weeks of traveling passed before finally reaching his destination, the airport. He had decided for this last jag of the journey to occupy a snake. He had not anticipated being picked up by a seven year old boy and stuffed inside a suitcase. The boy gleefully waited for the perfect time to terrify his sister. "Sis, could you grab my tape player from my suitcase?" "Get it yourself." "But the bag is under your seat. Please?" "Fine." Snakemort slithered out of the bag and hissed at the girl. In moments, chaos reigned. The girl clambered up to standing on her seat and then climbing over it as she screamed. A cacophony rose of screams of fear, yells of "Clam down!" and "Sit down." and "Hey, watch it!" and worst of all, crying babies. Drinks spilled, personal items tumbled to the floor, and people in turn either tried to catch or smash Snakemort who was slithering from danger as fast as his tail could flick. A small space was located and he curled up and cowered in dark seclusion until the plane landed.

"Must get to the woods. Must get to the woods." Voldemort transferred himself into a rat as soon as he was able. The snake he had been in had not dealt well with the stress of the flight. Now in Albania and in a rat he continued his trek with one word repeating in his head, "Diadem, diadem, diadem." His trip was going well, until he heard the swoop of wings and felt claws latch into his side. What was it with creatures wanting to eat the animals he possessed? Ratmort looked down and saw the land fall away as the owl rose into the air. Voldemort had to force Ratmort not to panic. Falling from this height was not a good plan. But the moment the owl lighted on a branch Voldie squirmed around, bit the offending claw and scurried to safety...he hoped. He looked around. He was in the forest! He started his chant again, "Diadem, diadem, diadem, dia...dumb, dumb, dumb! Merlin's balls! I moved the diadem to Hogwarts. There is no way I am going to put himself through that horrifying traveling experience a second time."

Life in the woods settled down in a routine for Voldemort. Scavenge for food, hide from predators, move to a new residence, and throw the occasional tantrum. Otherwise, not a lot had changed for Voldemort, except for the lack of children. He may have been living in the casings of vermin and snakes, but he was still a Slytherin with plans and ambitions. He missed being a dad. He had been a good parent. Spending his formative years in an orphanage had taught him, via neglect, what a child needed.

They needed someone to sincerely listen to their woes and to offer reassurance that all would be well in the end. People rarely considered the number of tea parties that must be attended, or drinks shared in a bar, or long into the night woeful reminiscences must be held or listened to in order to win people over to your side. You must listen, pat heads, and stroke egos before they are willing to bow and grovel.

Kids also needed to be brought down a peg or two when they are disrespectful, and punished when they outright screw up. Voldemort praised himself at being very good at disciplining his children.

Children needed to learn to protect themselves. He had taught his children how to stand on their own two feet and fight for what they believed in.

Parents were also supposed to protect their children, and at times deceive them (i.e. special holiday guest). He had his Death Eaters convinced that mudbloods and halfbloods needed to be eradicated because pure bloods were superior. But that was just the deception. Voldemort feared muggles. "Stupid Deputy Dumbledore, sending me back to the orphanage in the midst of The Great War," he'd snarked to himself. Purebloods, with their wards and lives sheltered from the muggle world knew nothing of bombs dropped from the sky and would think it a myth if you explained that non-magicals were capable of collapsing skyscrapers and killing millions with a single explosion. They'd probably ask why anyone would need to scrape the sky! But he had lived through the muggle air raids and had seen the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on a TV in a store front window. Voldemort experienced the orphanage burst at the seams with the children of dead soldiers and refugee Jews. The sniveling brats told horror stories of the concentration camps.

Muggles were the dangerous ones, and in the past, when the muggles had been aware of magical beings, muggles had been the predators and magicals the prey. All the while White Beard the Flamboyant was inviting more of these dangerous beings into their community! The infestation of those of muggle blood needed to stop, else-wise, the secret of magicals would surely escape and wizards would be the next muggle target and the wizards may not survive the conflict.

So he had done what all good parents do, he taught and praised his children, increased their self-worth, then sent them out with propaganda on their lips about superiority and the need to destroy tainted blood. Voldemort's goals were to rule the magical world and keep it safe from muggles. This meant they needed to eradicate everyone from their community that was not pure, for the un-pure presented a danger. Information is the greatest threat anyone can present. Muggles informed of magicals was a threat Voldemort couldn't abide by. To dispose of them, he had needed to deceive his children into believing themselves superior, for they would have been less supportive of Voldemort's goals if he had said, "We need to take the muggles out before they destroy us," he would have been laughed at and ignored. It is by far easier to influence change by playing on a person's ego and pre-formed beliefs than to rally them behind a cause that is foreign to their experiences and comprehension.

Though not a pure blood, he himself was not a threat, as he had no family and no one at the orphanage knew of the magical world. Snape was not a threat as his muggle father drank himself to death.

Their group had been doing so well at eliminating the muggle threat, then that blasted baby had ruined it all.

Someday, sometime, he would have to obtain a human form, but for now he was a creature of the forest. He was still a Slytherin with ambitions and plans. Being a leader and having followers was the essences of who he was. As he was a parselmouth, being a leader of the forest snakes was the obvious choice. Or so Voldemort thought at first. He was Slytherin to the core and had had it ground into him since he was 11 that snakes were ambitious and cunning. After many months of frustration and failure at organizing The Snake Force he wished for a time devise that would allow him to go back and get Salazar in a stranglehold and demand to know why he had chosen such a lazy creature to represent their house. All the snakes wanted to do was laze in the sun or curl up in their den. About once a week they harnessed enough ambition to seek a meal. And of course they had the natural ambition to avoid becoming owl pelets, but that required little long time planning, just a place to slither away to when danger presented itself. Voldesnake was fuming. There was no cause he could seem to unite the serpents behind.

Voldesnake: If we work together we can destroy the owls that prey on us.

Fellow snakes: We slither. They fly. We can't stop them.

Voldesnake: We can work together to create dens where we can safely hide.

Fellow snakes: We have no paws or claws. The four legged ones make the dens. We just evict them from them.

One snake: Belch! 'scuse me. Just evicted a mole. I have a nice new set of tunnels to explore.

Voldesnake: Let's work together to create traps that will ensnare all the rats we could eat and more! Then we won't need to hunt and we can eat tons of tasty rats!

Fellow snakes: Eeew! More than we can eat! You mean they'd sit there and rot? Why would you want to smell up the place?

One snake: I ate 3 rats in a day once. I was so fat I could barley move. A boar tried to eat me! I went to escape into a mole hole but my belly was so big that by the time I squeezed through the boar had eaten the end of my tail. Do you know how, horrifying it is to be eaten alive? No. I'll never go through that again.

The group of snakes slithered off, making rude comments about the deranged snake that wanted them to do lots of extra work that was either impossible or would likely lead to their deaths or at least lead to less than ideal living conditions. A trap packed full of rotting dead rats! Disgusting.

Voldemort persisted in his ambition for several months before finally cursing all the idiots who had for the past millennium claimed snakes had ambition. Laziness was the only major ambition of wild snakes. Fed up with the whole species, Voldemort decided to inhabit other species for awhile. Flitting through the sky as a bat was satisfying, but the feel of a fluttering moth in his mouth was distasteful and sleeping upside down gave him a headache. On the other hand, bats were quite social, so when he needed the company of others the caves were a potential hangout.

The years passed. One day Voldemort was taking a spin at being Frogmort. Drifting through the water was quite peaceful. Or at least it had been until the net wrapped around him and he was dropped in an aquarium. An hour later he was croaking in the clear glass structure, looking out at the world from a science classroom. Information was power, so he didn't attempt to escape. Besides, this was his first time he had been around humans in...? Frogmort stamped his foot in frustration. He didn't even know what year it was! For weeks on end he was cared for by the teens and he learned much, including what had potentially happened to his missing body. Oh, he was still just as clueless as to the magical cause, but scientifically he had an idea. That fusion and fission stuff that the sun did and the bombs in Japan did could cause matter to either join or split and resulted in the release of large amounts of energy, which explained both his missing body and the explosion that had destroyed a great deal of the house. But then one day the class had moved on to a new topic: biology. "Tomorrow we will be euthanizing the frogs so you can dissect them. Please take out your diagrams so that you may..."

It was at this point that Frogmort regained his croak which had evaded him at the word euthanize. Voldemort's spirit fled the frog. Students scrambled from chairs, hid under desk, or ran from the room in hysterics as a maniacal black mist took form in the classroom and roared at them, "How dare you threaten to dissect Lord Voldemort! I will destroy you all and all your ken! None can escape the power and destruction that is Lord Voldemort!" Voldemort fled the building. He found poisonous snakes to live in and chased down many of those that had threatened to harm him, biting them and their ken on the ankles.

It rankled him that after these events non of his children (DEs) had come to his rescue. He had grudgingly understood before that they may not know where to locate him, but surely tales of his spirit attacking a school, followed by numerous deaths from poisonous snakes would have been enough to let some of the DEs know where he was and that he could use some help getting a body back. But, no, they ignored the tales and no one came to his rescue.

The evil humans found a way to drive him (as poisonous Snakemort) back to the woods: they poisoned the food supply. Not even he, Voldemort, had done that to humans when he had been dolling out violence. He was more discerning, he picked his victims. Long ago, when he had applied for the defense position he had duplicated the self updating book that told who the witches and wizards were. The families he had the DE kill were muggles with magical children, for they were the danger to his society. He actually punished his children when they were idiotic enough to go outside of his directions and attack muggles unconnected to his cause. His goal was to protect (and control) the magical world, not bring attention and weapons down to bear on it. Muggles had no such restriction on their violence. If even just a small faction pisses off a muggle, the muggles would fire back with full force without care of the damage to the innocent. So the tainting of the food supply, meant to deter a few poisonous snakes took out not only the creatures humans found distasteful, like snakes and rats, but also the cute ones like rabbits and squirrels, and the helpful ones, like the bats and birds. With several predators out of the way, the insects filled the neglected niche and feasted on humans. Which of course led to the humans poisoning the air. Sometime would pass before the humans realized that their actions had tainted their own fruits, vegetables, grains and meats with their need to destroy all potential threats. Voldemort did feel somewhat vindicated that this would also eventually lead to economic issues for the community. Unlike the children at the school he had recently resided in, he paid attention to the lessons, and applied them to life, and had the years of experience needed to understand cause and effect. Many humans seemed disinclined to pay attention to their teachers, and applying the lessons to daily life would sound like a fitting script for a horror film rather than something they should actually do.

So, Voldemort retreated to the forest, where he continued to live until... Quirrell. Quirrell, it turned out, was a parselmouth, but one with enough brains to not spout that fact to the paranoid public. Quirrell had been seeking a vampire to turn him, so he would be immortal. Voldemort promised a better immortality, one that allowed a person to roam in day light. Quirrell agreed and took in the spirit. Together, they returned to England.

Originally, Voldemort had intended to work his way into full possession of Quirrell, but that hadn't worked out. His face had somehow ended up on the back of Quirrell's head! Oh, joy of joys, he also reeked of rotting dead rats. He would know. His rat trap, that no snake would help him with so they didn't get to partake, had become too full and all too soon he'd had to find a new den away from rotting rats. So then he and Quirrell had gone on a hat hunting expedition. The ball cap and cowboy ten gallon were too muggle and too rediculus. The top hat to austere. The 1930's Ascot cap was too small. The garlic had a tendency to tumble from the Ghutrah. So finally, they settled on the turban.

Since full possession hadn't worked out, Voldemort reverted to an old idea of his, steal the Philosopher's Stone. Quirrellmort headed into Gringots, imperioed a guard and rode the cart down to the empty bank vault. As punishment for his poor timing, Voldemort forced Quirrell to eat ten jumbo ice creams, resulting in the worse ice cream headache of all time! Well, at least up until that day. Quirrell had many more punishments to surfer through in the coming year.

Then Dumbledore brought the stone to Hogwarts! He was so excited he was tempted to make Quirrell's body jump for joy! Somehow, he had refrained. Perhaps the refraining was due to finding out that he was the last of many teachers to be asked to contribute protection for the rock. Mr. Twinkles had asked him to go hunting for a troll and bring it into the school to add as a protection! "Deranged geezers should not be running schools," he'd grumbled to Quirrell. Then he continued his rant on his trek to and through the Forbidden Forest, "I got that talking spider of Hagrid's out of the castle. That thing was a danger. My snakes darrent harm anyone other than when I directed them to, so they were fine. But a troll? He wants me to bring a mindless troll into a building full of pureblood children. I'm tempted to let Rita know so she can do an exposé, get the muggle lover tossed out on his bum. But then the Stone will go who knows where!" Quirrellmort lured a troll from the forest to the castle with cornbeef sandwiches and haggas. Weird diets, trolls.

Being Professor Quirrellmort was NOT fun. He was stuck each day facing that damn brat that kicked him out of his body. Day after day of ice cream headache pain. Pain that he actually felt. When he forced Quirrell to get that kind of headache only Quirrell experienced it. He dearly wanted to crucio the cause of these headaches, but that would reveal him or if nothing else get him removed from the teaching job and tossed in Azkaban.

Being removed from the teaching job sounded like a blessing. Day after day of mewling teens making up absurd excuse for unfinished homework and dunderheaded idiots who needed a spell demonstrated twenty times before they could come remotely close to casting it would get on anyones nerves. After one particularly stressful day, Voldemort forced Quirrell to stand on a chair near the door, then climb upon it and gouge out the runes above the door; the ones that years before Voldemort had put there cursing the position to be only a one year position. After actually experiencing being a teacher Voldemort had discovered that the true curse was making it possible for the job to be long term rather than giving them the relief of leaving this horrid job.

Voldemort paced in Quirrell's body one night, reflecting on the homework excuses. They were all absurd... that was until Quirrellmort suffered similar consequences.

~~~~~~~Memories~~~~~~drifted in...~~~~

"I swear Professor, a cerberus ate my homework!"

Quirrell let the door creak open. One hand and foot slipped their way through the thin space. Snap! Snarl! Dripping drool. Quirrell snatched his limbs back to safety.

~~~m~~~

"Professor, I did the assignment on shielding while casting, but a dragon burned it to ash!"

"If if if you d-d- did the essay then pre- pre- presumably you would know know know how to to sh- shield yourself."

"I did Professor. That's why my homework's burned, but I'm not."

Voldemort grumbled about the outlandish idea of a dragon being on the grounds. That was until he was out for a pint of unicorn blood and nearly had his turban singed off by Hagrid's "pet" flying on a leash. "You won't tell, will ya, Profess'r," worried Hagrid.

~~~m~~~

Then there was the third year boy that swore on the sanctity of chocolate frogs that his homework had been trampled into the ground by centaur hooves during his detention in the Forbidden Forest. Voldemort knew Quirrell was playing his fearful stuttering part well, but did that truly translate into the teens think he was an idiot? Who would possibly believe the teachers of this school would be stupid enough to assign students detention in the Forbidden Forest?

Then Quirrell discovered the staff truly was that dumb as two 11 year old boys screamed in horror at his blood smeared face and he took a hoof to the bum from a centaur before he managed to flee.

Why professors would assign detentions that force the students to break rules was beyond him. Even he didn't use rule breaking as a means of punishment for his Death Eaters. What sense would there be in punishing one of his brood by forcing them to break one of his own rules? Perhaps teaching for decades on end generated insanity.

After a trying, stressful year and being constantly hidden in garlic laden cloth, he was going to be free. Free to live. Free to seek his children (thankfully all adults). Free of teens! He truly yearned to be free of teens.

The end of the year finally came and his prize awaited. Then the lying little snot stole his loot and burned his host face off. The wimp Quirrell died instead of strangling the murdering 11 year old, leaving Voldemort bodiless again! Vapormort scowled and fled the castle to once again live in a forest.

This time his trip to the mainland continent was completely unintentional. Vapormort had found a young, hand sized acromantula to reside in as he took time to recover and plot. Then the duplicate red head menaces captured him while he was snacking on flies. Mantulamort was pissed when he came to the realization that the flies had been tainted with potion and he had been placed in a cage! Oh, how he wished he was a teacher again so he could give them fifty detentions each. How dare they trap him! Turns out that he was the main event for a prank during a family vacation to a dragon reserve! "Were these parents teachers at the school?" he pondered. "If not, what drove them to the insanity of vacationing at a dragon reserve!" When he had been released to crawl over a dozing Ron it had started a series of minor calamities, screams, toppled chairs, spilled drinks and had ended with a roaring belching flame from a dragon who didn't care to have his sleep disturbed.

And so it was he spent the next several years, swooping, scuttling and slithering through Slavic woods. Then one wispy spring morning, he heard a small call. It started out soft, then proceeded to loft. "Voldemort. VOLDemort. Lord Voldemort! LORD VOLDemort! LORD VOLDEMORT!" Someone was calling him! For a brief moment he imagined himself leaping into the body of a puppy and wagging his tail gratefully that finally someone wanted him! Was calling for HIM! He extinguished that absurd idea in 0.03 seconds, then slithered to the idiot calling his name.

McDermott. Voldisnake felt like slamming his tiny skull into a tree stump. Why of all followers did it have to be the Hufflepuff that found him! Voldiesnake hissed, "Loyal. Hard working. Loyal. Hard working. You can put up with a lack of common sense for loyalty and hardwork." It was an old uderence; one repeated with frequency.

Voldemort's spirit rose into the air and snarled, "Quiet! You fool!"

Voldiespirit set McDermott on the task of brewing a potion to regrow Voldemort's body. The big downfalls of this potion was that he had to regrow from nearly naught to full being at only a slightly faster rate than a normal human. This meant he had to traverse the helpless stages: bottle fed venom, cloth nappies, nap time on an extraordinarily small bed and vocal cords that could do little more than cry! The loyal fool had the nerve to try to rock him to sleep and sing lullabies to him when he got fussy! Voldieinfant had to restrain himself from snatching McDermott's wand and AK-ing him. He deeply desired to kill the man, particularly after the comforting techniques actually worked! But, Voldiebabe reminded himself that he currently needed a caretaker and there was absolutely no way he would allow anymore of his children to see him in this sad state. He'd just have to wait until he was in full form and then either obliviate or kill the man.

Voldiebabe grew into Voldietot and now no longer required nappies, but had to suffer the indignity of setting his bum on a red and blue training pot that sang when he piddled or plunked in it. This had led to many tantrums in the McDermott-Voldemort household. Sadly, the object seemed resistant to spell work and tantrums led to more cooing, rocking and singing from the inane Hufflepuff.

Despite his lack of desire to be seen in the sorry child-like state two other Death Eaters returned to his side and worked diligently to bring him back to his full power and being. One had recently been discovered, but had been knocked into a coma. The plan was secret, safe.

His vocal cords had developed, but he still struggled to walk long distances; hence he was carried to the site of his father's grave. After he had his real, adult size body he would get to punish McDermott for the lullabies by denying him a new hand for several minutes and perhaps a good crucio or two.

Did the author succeed at their quest?