A/N: The fourth chapter will appear next week, folks. I figured two nice long chapters was enough to post up for tonight.

And as always,

Enjoy.

Disclaimer: Go back and read the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before this one.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: POINT OF VIEW

(PART THREE)

Harry's mouth dropped open. "A...a child?"

"Oh, it was a grand idea at the time, I thought. But I was a good deal more fanatical then. I saw the whole scheme of things as sort of a grand prophecy in and of itself coming to pass. A Gryffindor and a Slytherin. Direct descendants, no less, of the original founders. What could have been better than if these two, who just happened to come together at this particular time, had a child together? The two rivals would have no choice but to unite under the common bond."

"But you...and my dad?"

Voldemort turned a startled look to Harry. "Your father?" But a sudden look of understanding crossed his face as he laughed softly at the boy before him. "Oh, I see the confusion now. You think your father was Godric Gryffindor's heir?"

"He was."

Voldemort shook his head as he laughed again, finally turning back to Harry. "Try your mother."

Harry looked stunned. "My...my mother?" But abruptly Voldemort's earlier story line came back to him as his face wrinkled up in disgust. "You wanted to have a child with my mother!?"

Voldemort shrugged. "For some reason your father wasn't very keen on the idea."

"Imagine." Harry stated in a flat, level tone.

"Keep in mind, Harry, your parents were not yet married themselves. But still, I realized rather quickly the idea was likely the stupidest I had ever had, knowing of your father's already growing love for your mother. But unfortunately, that thought didn't come to me until after I had suggested it to them both."

"And?"

"Well, your father had a few choice suggestions for me and then I was more or less thrown out."

"No kidding." Harry replied in a flat voice.

"For several years I neither saw nor heard of your parents with the exception of your birth. I was delighted for them. A child was the one thing they wanted more than anything in the world. I suppose in part that was where I got that ludicrous idea to begin with.

But in that time I had continued in my quest on my own. I had gathered followers. Gained power. Made plans. Plans I wanted your father to be a part of again. I wanted my friend back. I needed him. His support. His ideas. His belief in our ideals. I wanted to tell him I had found the real evil in the world. The force that drove all the others. One that I had spent the last few years fighting alone.

That of the Ministry of Magic.

I had seen the way it corrupted people. The lies it told. The secrets it kept. This was the true evil we had always sought to fight against.

I knew I could make your father see that. Bring that spark back to life that we had shared. That ideal of a better way of life for our people. For the wizarding world.

And so I went one night to see him. It was the second worst mistake of my life. I should have stayed away from your father. Realized he had what he wanted. He had a young son. A family that depended on him now. He wasn't some grand revolutionary anymore.

But I went anyway."

"Wait a minute!" Harry put in. "My parents were under a Fedelius Charm. How could you even find them?"

"The same way the ministry says I found them originally."

Harry thought for a second. "Pettigrew."

"Was still their secret keeper. And still a loyal servant to me. But he didn't tell me where they were so that I could go and kill them, Harry. In fact, if anything, I was quite concerned when Pettigrew told me about the Fedelius Charm. And the real reason for it."

Harry gave Voldemort a skeptical look. "And that was?"

"Just what you were always told, Harry. It was to protect you and your parents from me."

Harry gave the man a confused look. "I don't understand. Why did that concern you?"

"You don't understand because you don't know the whole story yet, Harry." Voldemort supplied. "Remember, I told you I had been continuing the fight your father and I had started in school. But I wasn't fighting a faceless enemy anymore. I was fighting what I saw as that one great evil force driving all the others.

I was fighting against the Ministry."

Voldemort paused, seeming to re-gather his thoughts before he continued. "Let me give you some advice, Harry." He said suddenly. "Never challenge people's beliefs. Doesn't matter if you agree with them or not. Just never..., ever, try to change what people believe is right and wrong. It'll get you into a great deal of trouble every time.

The Ministry, at first, saw me as nothing more than a nescience. A lunatic out to stir things up. But for the most part harmless.

That was their mistake.

My mistake was that, while I succeeded in finding my enemy, I seriously underestimated him.

As I began gathering my followers, the Ministry started to realize that, while they may think I was a lunatic, others did not. People were listening to me, Harry. And they were listening a lot.

So the Ministry realized they had a problem on their hands. One that needed a quick but permanent fix.

And they found one."

"To kill you?" Harry ventured.

"Worse." Voldemort replied. "They worked to discredit me. And I gave them all the tools they needed to do that. I was challenging people's beliefs. Long held, age old beliefs. Some people listened. Most did not. And that was my failing that the Ministry exploited.

Plain and simple, they labeled me a raving lunatic before the whole wizarding community. They called my ideas dangerous and said I was out to destroy the world.

Your father, sadly, was one of the people who listened to them. He hadn't seen or heard from me in years. So to him, I'm sure I came off sounding exactly like what the Ministry painted me as to the rest of the world. Your father did not see the Ministry as the evil it was. But then again, it didn't hurt one bit that he was working for them at the time either. So he was being spoon fed their logic for a long time.

My mistakes, Harry, and I made quite a few, believe me, were that over and over again I underestimated my opponent. I didn't consider that the Ministry had been playing this game for a lot longer than I had, and they knew the tricks much better than I, and how to use them.

They knew about your father's and my association in school. And they knew your father had once believed in my cause. That, they saw, as a serious problem. They saw your father as a possible weapon I could use against them. And so they devised a plan that would solve all their problems for them.

The Ministry went to your father and told him that he was being targeted by me, and, being his friends, they wanted to protect him by placing a Fidelius charm on him to keep me from finding him. But what the charm was for and what they told your father were two different things."

"Different?"

"Oh, it served one purpose, Harry. But what each person wanted out of it were very different. Your father believed he needed the protection of the charm to keep him safe from Lord Voldemort, an insane wizard bent on destroying the wizarding community. The Ministry just wanted a sure-fire way of keeping me from ever finding your father, not because of what I might do, but because they didn't want me talking to him. They knew I could dispel their lies easily enough and then they would lose control of your father. So you see, one charm, one purpose, two very different reasons.

But the Ministry had no idea Pettigrew was already in my camp, so-to-speak. And the fact that your father made him his secretkeeper was just pure luck on my part. All I had to do was bide my time and let the Ministry grow over-confident that their plan to keep your father and I separated had worked.

But eventually I told Pettigrew I wanted to see your father. Even if your father turned me down, I told myself, it would still be good to see him once more.

What I didn't realize was that the Ministry was a greater evil than I had imagined. And I had woefully underestimated them. Your father reacted much as I imagined he would. My first task was to get him to believe I wasn't there to kill him. My second was to just get him to listen to me and not see me as the insane, raving lunatic the Ministry had told him I was. But I managed both in the end. First by handing over my own wand as a good faith gesture, and then by simply laying the fact out before your father to see for himself. He was initially intrigued, but the responsibility of his family held him back. I told him I understood, and I prepared to leave. Another time. Another day. I was willing to wait. Your father, I was sure, would eventually see the Ministry for what they really were, and realize, as I had, that they had to be stopped.

But that was when everything went so terribly wrong."
"What happened?"

"The Ministry had followed me to your father's house. And they ambushed me there. You see, I had made quite a name for myself with the Ministry of magic. And I had done some of the things they said of me before the murder of your parents. But those acts were against them. But they used them, distorted them in the public eye, and turned them against me. They told people I was killing those of unpure bloodlines, but it was them...their people, their agents I was attacking. I wasn't choosing people randomly. Or killing people because they were married to muggles or any of that other nonsense. I was fighting against the Ministry.

But they laid their trap and they laid it very well. Your father and I tried to protect you and your mother. But there were simply too many Ministry Aurors. Your father's concern was for you and your mother. He saw two Aurors running after her as she ran up the stairs with you. He told me to go after them, To protect you and your mother while he tried to hold the others off downstairs. Above all else, he told me to get you and your mother out of the house by whatever means was necessary.

Your mother had taken you upstairs to try and hide. I saw the two heading up the stairs and I went after them. One of them turned back as I came up the stairs and attacked me. He took me by surprise and managed to get me off balance. As I fell back, he grabbed my wand and pulled it from my hand. As soon as I regained my footing, I shot up the stairs. My one goal was that not one of them got to the room where your mother was. But I was simply too late."

"But my scar." Harry stated. "I got that scar from you. I know that's true."

Voldemort gave a deep sigh. "Unfortunately, yes it is, Harry. But, again, you didn't get that scar the way your were told. Didn't you ever wonder how you survived the killing curse? Why you of all people survived?"

"It was because of my mother. Because of a charm she put on me."

Voldemort gave him a small, sad smile. "A very lovely, heartwarming story, Harry. But it isn't true. You see, when I got to the room, the Aurors were already there. I attacked one of them and in the fight, got hold of his wand. But the other one, the one who had taken my wand, had it raised and pointed at your mother and spoke the killing curse. I attempted to deflect it with the wand I had at my disposal. But trying to use someone else's wand is haphazard at best. I couldn't stop the spell. All I could do was deflect it. And the spell...hit you instead. The reason you survived was because the spell had already been partly defused by my counterspell. But it had enough power left in it to leave you with that scar."

"So what happened then?"

"They must have thought the spell killed you, because they never bothered looking at you again. The first man, the one with my wand, pointed it again at your mother and fired off another curse and kill her. I wasn't able that time to even try and deflect it. I was still fighting with the other man, who had managed to knock me back on the floor. I was sure it was the end for me as well. Surely they would finish what they came to do.

But the Aurors suddenly just...stopped. One by one they apparated away. Leaving me alone. I was sure you and your mother were both dead. I went in search of your father, and found him downstairs, also dead. I found my wand left behind as well near your father's body. Apparently they had used it to kill him as well before they left.

I tried to think of what to do. The people I had tried to protect had been killed by the very evil I sought to warn them against.

But before I could sort things out, or even think what to do, I heard an engine. Someone was coming. And I knew exactly how things would look to anyone coming upon the scene at the moment. No one was going to listen to me, I was sure of that. And so I did the only thing I thought I could think to do at that moment. I ran.

Before I even made it back to my home the Ministry had half of the wizarding world believing that I had attacked and killed your parents. The fact you had survived with a scar delivered in part by my own wand was just icing on their cake."

Q&A

MasterLupin:

Ya, the government uses accounting practices that would make Enron look financially stable to say that daylight savings time saves energy, it doesn't; it costs more energy make all the adjustments to software so that it understands a foolish concept, then savings time supposedly just saved.
As for the story, I knew Harry would be separated with someone else from the party but wasn't sure when. I see Voldemort as wise choice, to defeat Harry use the enemy of my enemy. But to add a nice twist that is sure to keep a young mind stuck in a thought loop, have the enemy be someone who he could never kill.

Point well taken, Dear. But I never said Harry was the wizard's enemy. He has, in fact, up until now treated him as everything but, giving Harry the benefit of the doubt and blaming the others for his actions.

Also, who ever said Voldemort was someone Harry couldn't kill? The way I read the books was that Harry was the only one who could kill Voldemort. He just had to be willing to die in the process as well.

But I will say this. There is a lot more going on here than you don't know. And to be fair, there is no way you could know unless you hacked into my computer and stole my files. Which would be a good trick in and of itself, seeing as I have no internet connection to my primary computer where all my story files are stored.

But these chapters do open up a tremendous amount of information if you look for it, as will the next few chapters.

CelticHeiressFiona:

Awesome chapter! Roland's an interesting addition, but I'm slightly wary of him. He's an odd little fellow and he's been acting rather strangely. Hmm.

Gee, and everyone else is just running around saying how cute he is!

I'll give you credit though, and point out I never said where Roland's allegiances lie or if he was to be trusted. For all anyone knows at this point, Voldemort may be perfectly correct in calling him a scaly little opportunist.

Skahducky:

Well, Roland already got them to some stairs they probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise. I guess he never realized the particlar ward that split the group up was there because either the wizard in the north just put it up or he's always been alone.
If the wizard thinks Harry and Voldemort are the two keys to the lock, then how come he didn't split them up? Even if he was hoping the rest of the group would give up, wouldn't he be able to stop the search altogether just by splitting up Harry and Voldemort?

Anyway, this is a great chapter. Please update soon!

You're making an awful lot of assumptions about Roland that have yet to be proven right or wrong, Dear. (See above answer.)

But we'll go with the stair thing. Roland has, after all, been in the castle for three years. It is perfectly possible he knew where the stairs were and how to find them.

Whether or not the rest of that statement was correct or not remains to be seen.

Very good and very valid points, Dear. But you're playing with fire here, and I'm doing so even more to even try to answer you. There is absolutely nothing I can say here that won't just give the whole thing away, so I'm afraid I have to just stay quiet on this one.

Enjoy the next chapter. It should answer a lot of your questions.

All reviews are as of 03/18/2007.

And remember;

You know you've been in animal rescue too long when not only are animals allowed on your furniture, but people visiting have to sit on the floor because the dog has 'territorial issues'.