Jack looked at the sphere in Voldemort's hand.

"I'm not touching that."

Voldemort shook his head.

"I don't want you to touch it. Your touch won't activate it. Just watch it."

"Why?"

"Just watch it, Jack."

Jack scowled, but he looked at the sphere, and almost immediately saw a muted purplish light come out of the top of it. The light started as a faint swirl, but soon coalesced into a brighter, more concentrated beam, which almost immediately turned into a hologram of sorts. A small woman, with large glasses on her face and archaic looking robes of a brilliant green was suddenly looking at him and Voldemort.

Before Jack could say anything or ask who she was or what was going on, the figure spoke.

"And in the day shall evil rise to great power, casting fear and terror over the entire world with its acts of destruction and spreading chaos wherever its cold hand reaches. Only when it seems to have reached its pinnacle will the evil be cast down, and all will think it to be finished." The little woman raised her hand as if in warning. "Not so! Just as good will think that it has defeated evil, will evil rise once more, greater and more terrible than before, and seemingly unstoppable. But be warned, lord of the darkness, for you are not as powerful as you believe you are. A boy will come and challenge you, and only your own flesh and blood may prove to be your salvation."

As they watched, the figure vanished, and Jack stared at it, waiting for something else to happen. When nothing did, and the little sphere was quiet for a long moment, he looked at Voldemort who was watching him.

"That's it?"

Voldemort nodded.

"That's it."

"What does it mean?"

"Just what it says, Jack. I'm the evil in the prophecy. I've risen, was struck down and have risen once more."

"There are a lot of evils in the world," Jack said, skeptically.

Voldemort nodded his acceptance of that, but gestured to the sphere in his hand.

"You heard her refer to the lord of the darkness?"

"Yeah."

"I'm frequently called the Dark Lord."

"Ah."

He still didn't look convinced, though, and Voldemort could tell.

"If it wasn't me she was referring to, I wouldn't be able to activate the prophecy."

Jack shrugged; he didn't know about prophecy rules and truth be told, he didn't care.

"Fine. So it's you in the prophecy. I still don't know what you want."

Voldemort's expression grew frustrated. It was a look Jack often saw on Daniel's face when he was trying to explain something as well.

"Were you listening to what she said?"

"Yeah. Something about evil and rising and falling and being struck out or something…"

"She said my own flesh and blood will prove to be my salvation."

"Which means?"

"I'm not certain."

Jack snorted.

"Well, that's helpful."

"It obviously refers to you."

"Or maybe your long lost cousin?"

"I don't have any cousins."

Jack scowled.

"She's probably mistaken. If she's even talking about you, there's no way she could have known about me and there's-"

"Her name was Cassandra Trelawny. Notably the greatest seer of all time. She never made mistakes. If she says that my salvation may lie with you, then I'm forced to accept that. And so are you."

It was probably the first and only time Voldemort had ever admitted that he needed something from someone else. But Jack wasn't impressed.

"So what? I'm supposed to save you?"

"Or to help me."

Jack shook his head.

"I'm not going to help you. I don't even like you."

Jack expected a scowl, or even some kind of explosion of temper at the statement, but Voldemort smiled.

"That's the beauty of it, Jack. You might be helping me simply by being here – or maybe by telling me you're not going to help me, which might compel me to do something else that I may not have considered before. It doesn't say how you're my salvation. Just that you are."

"That I might be," Jack corrected with a scowl, proving that he had been paying attention to what the figure had been saying, no matter what he told Voldemort. "I'm probably not." Because if he was, Voldemort was screwed. There was no way Jack would do anything to help him.

"There's one way to find out," Voldemort said smoothly.

"What?"

"There's one way to find out how you're supposed to be my salvation – or if you're really going to be."

"Yeah? How's that?"

He had a feeling that this was what all this was leading up to in the first place. Voldemort proved him right almost immediately.

"Cassandra Trelawney made more than one prophecy. She made hundreds. Some about unimportant things – many of them were – but several about me. And more than one about you. One of these was hidden away, but one of my faithful heard rumors about it, and sought it out for me. He recently found it, and from the writings around it, there is no mistaking that you are the one the prophecy is about."

"So what did it say?" Jack asked, curious despite himself.

Voldemort gave him that frustrated look again.

"You're not paying attention, Jack. I can't make the prophecy work, so I can't hear it. Only you can. I want you to activate the prophecy for me."