Author's Note: First, thank you for reading and reviewing and for all of the PMs. Second, I am sorry for posting and then deleting the chapter. I never should have put something up that I wasn't happy with in the first place. A big thanks to the people that PM'ed me while that chapter was up and noted how it just didn't sound like me. I really appreciated the feedback and want to note that I will always listen to constructive criticism and suggestions. I want to thank you because I went back and am now very happy with how this chapter reads. In fact, I have added more to it and will break it up into two chapters.

Posted 8/24/15

Standard disclaimer about not owning anything; I am so thankful for JKR and all that she did for us. She gave us one of the greatest gifts, and so many people have taken to this site and played brilliantly with her creation. We should have a JKR day and it should be a global holiday!

The wizard formerly known as Tom Riddle was never one to go out of his way unless it was necessary. If there were a shorter path that he could take to achieve his goals then he would take it – as long as the results were the same in the end. The only instance in which he would take a more circuitous route was if he found it necessary to take certain precautions or maintain his public image – whatever that was at the time.

Like when he had had command of the Basilisk at Hogwarts. He didn't have all of the skills yet to go against Dumbledore openly and so he had to do all of his plotting clandestinely at that time. The future Dark Lord wasn't about to jeopardize his standing as a model student by rampaging through the halls of Hogwarts with his servant in tow, and it was very hard to leave her behind after he graduated. But he would go back, in time, and complete the noble work of Salazar Slytherin in removing the mudbloods from the castle. From there he would move to wipe them from Britain.

But, even in the present day, he saw no reason to give the Ministry a reason to make his return known to the general public.

Anyways, even if everyone was aware that he was back – it wasn't like he would have sauntered into the Department of Mysteries during a workday to retrieve the Prophecy. For one thing, he didn't want Dumbledore aware of what he was doing, and preferred to keep that old goat guessing about his movements as much as possible. He also didn't want a repeat of Bertha Jorkins and have a missing Ministry worker that could provide anyone hints at what he was up to this time.

So, here he was at the Department of Mysteries at an hour when the place was deserted. He had been smart and had watched the comings and goings of some of the employees – rather, he had set that mundane task to Bella and Barty - so that he knew the daily schedules of the one he would be impersonating or the various people that said man was bound to run into.

The middle of the night was ideal because Xander, the Unspeakable to be impersonated, was a solitary individual and preferred to do most of his work outside of normal hours. Thus, he would have to interact with fewer people – which was quintessential when dealing with these odd, research types that would be more apt to notice if something was amiss. These perceptive individuals within the Department of Mysteries, no doubt having been Ravenclaw in their youth, where highly used to order and routine and were more likely to notice the multitude of quirks that came with impersonating someone. You couldn't get all of their idiosyncrasies right.

It was also one of the few times in which the Dark Lord wasn't planning on killing anyone.

He had simply detained Xander and would wipe his mind, and body, of any trace that came from Bellatrix Lestrange chaperoning the man's evening while he was busy at the Ministry. This way, no one would suspect that he had been in the Hall of Prophecy because Xander would return the next night and no one would ever suspect that anything had been amiss. And just in case the man was disoriented from having his memories removed – well, the Dark Lord would implant fake memories of something similar to a twenty-four hour stomach flu. In all honesty, he was being kind to the man out of a desire to keep under the radar this early in his second attempt for domination.

At any rate, the work that he assigned Bella and Barty was more to give them something to do, especially since it would help to rehabilitate Bellatrix after more than a decade in Azkaban. It wasn't out of compassion for her well-being that he did so, but he had plans for the future and needed to know that his top lieutenants could handle what he would ask of them.

And it turned out that much of the recognizance had been for naught, because he reached his destination far quicker than he had expected to and hadn't run into anyone. Though, it had taken quite a bit of self-restraint for him not to explore the many trinkets strewn about the place.

There were all sorts of novel and unusual magical devices that just called to his curious mind – but he chose to focus on his mission. He was so close to learning the Prophecy that had eluded him for so long.

However, some things were easier for him to bypass than others. For instance, the Dark Lord had learned in his youth the dangers of messing with time and didn't even dare pick up a Time Turner. It was one of the few things that he considered, and begrudgingly acknowledged, to be beyond his control. Just thinking about that incident produced a rare shiver that ran through his body: under no circumstances should there ever be two of him running around.

He entered the Hall of Prophecy and made his way towards the orb that had consumed his thoughts ever since he had heard about its existence.

So many questions flurried through his mind as he crept down the row and first saw the small and perfectly blue orb.

'Why did I hear only those three lines? Was Severus honest with me?' were just the beginning of his thoughts.

He was certain that Snape had not lied; he, being the most accomplished Legilimens aside from that old goat, had seen the truth of it in his mind. The man had no other knowledge to speak of and had believed those lines to be truth. He wouldn't have chanced action regarding something so delicate – so integral – without thoroughly examining the evidence.

He still did not understand what had happened that night and why the curse had rebounded on him.

'Am I about to learn what really happened?' he thought in a brief moment of hope. But he didn't trust in hope; he hadn't achieved immortality with such a fickle thing as hope. The Dark Lord was a genius and exceptional with all forms of magic and made his own path in life. And yet, there was this infuriating itch in the back of his mind that just had to know what it said.

He didn't believe in prophecies and he liked to think that he made his own destiny and controlled his own fate. But his weakness, his one, real weakness, would always be the thought that he wasn't the absolute best.

And it drove him mad. He couldn't stand that a prophecy had been made about him and someone else, no matter that he thought divination was a bunch of bollocks.

So against the best logic that he knew, deep down, was only leading to a potential fulfillment by taking stock in what it said, he reached for the orb.

Of course, he had been smart and had already checked for wards that may have sounded intrusion or recorded his presence and had found none.

His long and thin fingers gingerly enveloped the small glass sphere and slowly brought it before him. He stopped breathing for a moment, as the orb brought a rare – and unwanted – memory from his youth. Those damned snow globes had once been very popular in his orphanage, and he had always wanted one and would often stare into the ones that he stole. In those moments, he had wished that his life could have been different.

But that was before he found out he was a wizard.

His memories were interrupted by the rising, shadowy figure of a woman, too faint to make out any details as to who she was.

Suddenly, a silvery mist erupted from the Prophecy - his Prophecy - and a voice, both ominous and captivating, pierced through the silence of the vast hall that he was in.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies..."

The figure retreated and the orb became silent once more.

He stood there, numb, and unable to move. Eventually, he had enough awareness to place the Prophecy back where he had found it.

He didn't know how to feel, and he wasn't sure that he had been expecting to hear that. It made him worry. It gave him so much more to think about.

'Mark him as my equal?' he thought disgustedly.

'What does that even mean!' His red eyes were crimson at the thought that anyone was his equal.

"The scar…" he whispered, suddenly making a terrible connection in his mind.

'I was planning on making a horcrux that night…' his breathing stopped for a moment as he took it all in.

'That was how he survived in the graveyard that night; I could have sworn that he had been hit with the Killing Curse again.'

It helped to explain that unusual connection he had felt with the boy when he had partially possessed Quirrell; how he could almost feel the boy's presence.

His stomach tightened and he had to swallow down the bile that rose in his throat. 'That scar contained my horcrux!' He was livid.

A part of his soul had now been destroyed.

He could only hope that Dumbledore wasn't aware of this and that he would assume the boy's second instance of surviving the killing curse had something to do with Potter and not with him.

But that led him to think about why the boy had survived the curse on that Halloween all those years ago.

"What kind of power could the boy have?" He said to himself. Surely, this would help Dumbledore believe that Potter had something inside of him that caused him to survive and would prevent him from thinking I made a horcrux that lodged inside of him.

'Still though, how did he survive that night? No one possesses that kind of power!' He was truly stumped – but his only recourse was hoping that Dumbledore would have been stumped as well.

The Dark Lord was getting nowhere with these thoughts and focused on the most important part of the Prophecy.

'So, in the end, it will either be me or him?' He didn't know how he felt about that because he didn't see them as equal opponents. And the small voice, deep, deep down inside of him knew that one often met their fate on the road they took to avoid it.

But he disregarded that silly notion. In his mind, the boy would seek revenge for what he had done to him. Besides, the Dark Lord had plans, goals in his life that demanded that he rule all of wizarding Britain. He wasn't going to change his plans, his life, just because there existed some prophecy.

So he would have to take extra precaution in certain things; no matter, he could do that.

'Just because it says that he could defeat me doesn't mean that he will defeat me,' he thought, as a feral smile settled onto his face.

'I am still Lord Voldemort and I still have my horcruxes and I will win in the end.'

His resolve had hardened him even more and he headed out into the night to make sure that what protections he had made where still there.

Much, much happier with that! I know it is shorter but I didn't like combining it with the next chapter. Thoughts?