The Dark Lord's plans had gone well. Quirrell did die from the ritual and the Philosopher's Stone had been dissolved but he was now in his own body with his soul more intact with the diadem absorbed.

He kept the glamor of Quirrell for appearances and to watch over his little horcrux, and watch the drama play out when Dumbledore discovered that the stone in the mirror behind all his traps was merely a fake.

However with growing concern he noticed that as each day passed after Halloween, the girl looked more gaunt and sickly. Large dark circles were showing under her eyes.

So on a day when he had the rest of the day off, and he saw her pass by his classroom he followed suit. She seemed to sway, and had to hold onto walls occasionally before she finally came to the Headmaster's office door. Straightening her spine she seemed to somehow dispel all her fatigue for the moment, her head held high as she spoke the password to the gargoyle guarding the entrance before it stepped aside.

His crimson gaze narrowed upon the door, what did Dumbledore want with her. The girl obviously was trying to hide her signs of distress from him. From their time in Diagon Alley he had seen her anger toward the old Headmaster for his manipulations.

Time went by slowly, and when the gargoyle at last stepped aside once more, Voldemort looked down at his pocket watch and was surprised to see more than an hour had passed. The girl was even worse for wear, and yet she still trudged on and yet this time there seemed an urgency to her steps. He followed once more, and found her entering the Chamber of Secrets.

Her voice was distressed and yet still hissing almost so softly he could barely hear her from the shadows.

~I can't keep doing this nestmother!~

~Have you eaten, little snake?~

The basilisk's large head tilted down to the girl sitting by her pond.

~I had some crackers earlier.~

He couldn't help the scoff that came from him this time, and the large serpent eyes narrowed upon him instantly. He dropped his glamor and stepped from the shadows.

~The same crackers I saw you sneak before class this morning.~

His little horcrux drew up her knees defensively, pulling down her robes over them and set her chin upon them.

~Yes.~

~Anything else?~

If Voldemort didn't know better he would think the Great Potter was pouting.

~I won't having my soulbond dying on me!~

A sharp, very viper-like grin came upon the little girl's face, ~Yes wouldn't want your horcrux destroyed.~

"How did you…?"

Her smile was grim and self deprecating, "How do you think you were able to die the first time? Why do you think I was served up like a martyr?"

Voldemort's sharp nails bit into his skin as his fists clenched, "Dumbledore!" Standing and striding aways from the girl, he fired off a curse at an opposing wall desperate to maim, to kill something.

She sighed and rested her chin back upon her knees, "Yes. It's always him, isn't it?"

The Dark Lord froze in his pacing and pivoted his steps back to his little horcrux, "Why were you in his office today? What did he want?"

She let out another sigh.

"I didn't fill enough loopholes in how I got to Diagon Alley or the Station, that was the first meeting and the first time he tried to poke into my mind. It wasn't that intrusive the first time. Second time he called me to his office, he asked if I wished to re-sorted since he heard rumors that I wasn't getting along with my housemates. I refused. He offered the friendship of the Weasley boy. I refused. His second intrusion was more intrusive. Since the first meeting I had been fortifying my occlumency shields because I knew he'd tried to get in again. This last meeting…" She turned her head and looked Voldemort straight into his crimson gaze, "He knew somehow that I had received my heirship rings so most likely he knew I knew about the compulsions, he was less….kind." She stood on shaky legs and let out a slightly crazed laugh, "So I might have laid one of the cards on the table that I shouldn't have, ok a huge card….like we're talkin a big jumbo card. But I wanted him to know he just messed with the wrong person. I wanted him to know he couldn't manipulate me anymore even if in this timeline he had yet to manipulate me to the fullest yet."

Voldemort's eyes narrowed, "You didn't tell him about the future."

She let out another high pitch laugh, one that caused an odd shiver to run down his spine from the odd familiar ring it had to one of his cruel ones.

"I probably shouldn't tell you this, in fact you are probably the last person I should tell." She sat back on the basilisk's pond edge, "Alas it seems our fates are forever tied, so what can one do." She shrugged, "You spoke earlier about me dying on you, but you want to know a funny little secret." With a hushed sort of voice as if they were in a crowd of people she bent low her hand cupping his ear as she whispered with a giggle upon her lips, "I can't die."

Voldemort's eyes widened and his heartbeat quickened at the thought of her words being true, at the thought of an immortal horcrux. He turned his head toward her, his snake-like eyes looking into hers looking for any sign of falsehoods.

However, she just smiled that bittersweet smile once more, "I'm immortal."

She leaned back her hands on the stone rim of the pond, she hummed underneath her breath. "So as Dumbledore sought to molest my mind, I taunted him with something I knew to be true." She smiled as she showed the wand up one sleeve, but then turned to the other and dropped it into her hand caressing the beautiful wand as Voldemort's eyes narrowed in greed as he recognized the wand. The wand that once upon a time was Dumbledore's and before that had been Grindelwald's...the Elder Wand. "You see in the timeline I had gained ownership of the wand, the cloak from legend was a family heirloom and the ring well…" She seemed to caress her left hand ring finger but he did not see any ring there but he felt it. "Once back in this timeline they were mine once more; of course I do wonder about the ring I'll have to ask him about that."

The pieces were falling into place.

"Him?"

"Yes, he calls me Mistress; which is so weird. I suppose the alternative would be Master but...I don't know I'm not used to titles like you are."

A different sort of chill was running through Voldemort and yet he refused to move from his horcrux's side. He would see this through, for if he truly had an immortal horcrux then his plans would need to change once again.

His horcrux tapped her lips with her finger tips, "I wonder now if I could have just called him with my mind and had him protect my mind from the very beginning or at the very least the last time since it was painful. But then would that given some sort of large glaring Deathly Hallows sign upon my occlumency walls that the Headmaster would have immediately have recognized or at the very least...hmmm." Jumping from her seat and nearly teetering over into the pond if it weren't for the basilisk's head stopping her fall. ~Thank you, nestmother.~

~Be careful, little snake.~

His horcrux nodded before standing straight in the center of the room, her spine straight before she opened her mouth to call out, "Death!"

"No need to shout, Mistress."

The shiver of dread went down Voldemort's spine as he saw the figure of his nightmare's standing behind his horcrux. He was clad in a dark cloak but with no silver scythe in his hands, his face was pale like bone and his eyes milky white. He stood tall, thin and waif-like; but there was no doubt that he was lethal with the sharpness of his gaze as he looked at his surroundings until they laid upon Voldemort himself. Death's features were expressionless and yet something about his posturing as he turned back to the young girl showed his displeasure.

"Do you think it wise to let a splitter know?"

Death spoke of him as if he were a thing rather than a person. Death turned his head back towards him.

"You are just a thing, you will never fully be whole again. You have broken yourself into pieces. You once had the chance to be my master, but lost it as soon as you lost yourself."

"Death, I was wondering about that. Is his ring still a horcrux?"

Death looked down upon the girl's ring finger, the first look of emotion coming upon his features of disgust.

"Yes. The two merged from both timelines, at the point of your arrival back here."

The girl turned toward Voldemort and showed him her finger the glamor falling from it to show the Gaunt ring.

"How was I not cursed?"

"The soulbond." Death replied.

The girl nodded.

"Was that all you wished for, Mistress?"

"Um, no...actually, I was wondering if there's a way to better protect me from Dumbledore."

Death tilted his head to the side, his face roaming her features. From her unkempt hair, to the bags under her eyes, to the fact she was swaying on her feet. Quickly he stepped forward and lifted her into his arms, before conjuring a velveteen couch and fireplace on the far wall of the chamber. Striding forward he then set his precious charge on the couch, sitting on the edge and perusing her mind for himself not liking what he saw.

Voldemort strode forward and stood on the other side of the couch looking down upon his horcrux who was resting her eyes. He didn't like that Death had held her, which was ridiculous as soon as he thought it he dismissed it. However, there was the thought that she was his. She had said that fate sought to always entwign them, like they were meant to always cross paths. He used to not believe in such things. Of course, he used to not believe in prophecies and yet Death was right in how torn his soul had become that even that…

He spoke up, "She hasn't been taking care of herself."

Death did not look up, "She never was good at taking care of herself. The stubborn little girl."

Voldemort was still curious, "What did she say to Dumbledore?"

Death chuckled it sounded like bones rattling, "She said, 'It must have been such a disappointment when your wand crumbled to dust in your hands.'"

She definitely laid a large card upon the table. For her to know his wand crumbled to dust when he first used it when she came back into this timeline, would bring much suspicion regarding the Deathly Hallows upon her.

"He won't let this go." Voldemort looked upon his horcrux, withholding himself from the oddest desire to stroke her hair.

Death sighed, the sound like a howling wind on a cold winter's night. "No, he won't."

"She needs to be protected."

"She doesn't like people talking about her like she's not here." Her voice was garbled and slower than normal.

"How would you like to have a fellow Slytherin friend?"

Her Avada Kedavra eyes narrowed, "You mean you would come to school with me?"

Death nodded, "You need taking care of, you need to be reminded of the basics and also protected from manipulative Headmasters."

"A transfer student is going to be suspicious and the boys of slytherin are…"

"Who said I was going to be a boy?"

"What?"

Voldemort watched as his little horcrux gaped at Death, and Death grinned with glinting sharpened teeth.

"If I'm a boy, I can't keep as close watch on you as I need to. I need to make sure you are sleeping, eating well and taking care of yourself. The best way I can do that is if I go as a girl."

Voldemort couldn't help the small satisfaction he had in seeing someone else have a visceral reaction to Death as a visible shiver went down the girl's spine.

"Isn't that too intrusive?"

"Until I know you are taking care of yourself, I will remain by your side."

His little horcrux let out a long suffering sigh, before she looked up at Death.

"Ok, show me what you are going to look like."

After numerous attempts that "freaked her out" his horcrux's words, not his, she threw her hands up in the air before she turned on her heel and smiled back at death, almost with mischievousness.

"Could you look like you were the little sister of Christine from the Sanctuary? Or like the child version of Christine? But don't act like her, that would be creepy. Just be yourself. I just miss her face."

Death nodded and soon turned into a beautiful eleven year old girl with long curly golden locks and large blue eyes but the same dead expression that he always had. She was dressed in black lace dress and black lace bow adorned her hair.

"Still kinda creepy which I expected but I kinda like it, in a weird sort of way. It's kind of Addams Family-esque. Ok." She clapped her hands together. "I can't introduce you, but maybe I could have Hermione? Say that she had a penpal for a while that had mentioned…"

Death set a hand on her shoulder, "I have already created the background for this identity: 'Christine Mortis'."

Voldemort watched his little horcrux shake her head with laughter as she said, "Mortis? You just couldn't help yourself, could you?"

Death gave a grim smile.

"Won't it be too obvious?"

Death and Voldemort made eye contact both of the same mind, "He's counting on it."