The Cursed Child (Original Plot)

Prologue - The past, present, and future

Along the unruly path across the field of sycamores, a long, billowing black cloak trialled behind an unnaturally tall man. A pearly glow emitted from underneath a hood drawn to cover up a face everybody dreads to catch sight of... a face one might see once but rarely a second time. The sycamores swirled in rhythm with the man's coat, and Voldemort imagined them trembling with fear as people do in front of him: the gesture had always given him a sense of power and control as he fed on their fears.

He pushed the thought aside: imagination is child's play; creativity should only be used in terms of 'persuasion' to extract information from Dumbledore's over discreet pets.

Dumbledore... The name brought snarls and destruction and hatred and distrust and a mixture of pain and childhood that formed into a chill on the Dark Lord's bones. Everything was that old man's fault from the beginning; if it weren't for Dumbledore, the boy, Harry Potter, would have fallen long ago at the end of his wand. But no, the Hogwarts headmaster had to be there, and with a wave of his frail arm, he had ruined everything Voldemort had so carefully planned for.

He pushed the uprising fury all the way down to somewhere he can't feel it anymore. This is the key to occlumency: don't feel, and allow no emotion to exist so none of them could betray you. Ever since the encounter with the boy in the ministry of magic, Voldemort had applied occlumency everywhere he goes, determined to never allow the boy to have access to his thoughts through some mistake-formed channel, not ever again.

A yew wand twirled with the grace of a dancer on the dark lord's spidery fingers. He had long since accepted and agreed to trade his humanity and charisma for something more promising: immortality.

His Horcruxes gifted him immortality, his seven Horcruxes... Hidden somewhere only someone who has known him his whole life knows, and he was confident that he remained the only one that fits the description.

But no, one piece of his soul has been destroyed, has been damaged beyond repair, just because of some trust he placed in one of his followers. This is a mistake he will never forget: it was Lucius Malfoy, his slippery 'friend', who had torn his plan to pieces.

And there was Harry Potter, disastrously alive and all, who had destroyed his diary Horcrux that housed the key to open the chamber of secrets. The diary contained the soul of the heir of the Slytherin.

Heir of the Slytherin, that was one of his many titles, but none had known it other than himself; because he was intelligent enough, even in his youth, to be discreet and operated without attracting suspicion from anyone... Anyone but Albus Dumbledore, who had seen right through his decoy and linked everything straight back to Tom Riddle, the brilliant boy everyone loved; the boy none had ever thought to be Lord Voldemort; the boy who was actually Lord Voldemort.

But how could he open the chamber to unleash the horror within? If his disobedient servant's brat failed to kill Dumbledore and so did Severus, he would never gain control over Hogwarts while the muggle lover was on watch. He had been considerate enough to come up with using his first Horcrux to open the chamber by possessing some future Hogwarts students. But that never happened, or rather never happened under his eyes and his order. Malfoy had made sure of that the moment he threw out his master's Horcrux without permission to fulfil his silly little plan.

A plan which never had the approval of the dark lord.

There were still other Horcruxes of his, guarded with much more care than the protection of pathetic Malfoy; but he cannot risk any of them to open the Chamber of Secrets anymore, not when his immortality was so insecure. The surge of rage was defeated by his skilful occlumency once again. His expression turned from indignant to pensive, and he considered his need to reopen the chamber of secrets should Draco and Severus both fail.

Then there was an idea, but one he never believed he, out of all people, would be considering.

He needed a child, an heir.

Him? Lord Voldemort! Marrying?! The Dark Lord? A father? That thought was even more pathetic than Malfoy! But there was a way, there had to be a way for new descendants of him to come, without any other people participating. He had suffered enough disappointment from others to learn that he can trust no one other than himself. If there's only a spell, a spell to get him a well-chosen child, with bravery, intelligence, disregard of rules and most importantly, a child who had suffered enough to be obedient, a child proud to be of service to the Dark Lord.

Lord Voldemort's knowledge of spells and magic exceeded everyone else's. He alone knows the most unique spells and brands of magic; and with the hours he spent back when he was young, scavenging the library, a spell serving his purpose only came to his mind all too easily.

The blood regeneration curse was a non-verbal spell or a spell in which no incantation was required, which made it unique but nowhere as unique as Lord Voldemort. It places the blood it absorbs and increases from one's body into another's to make the second turn into the first's child, but there was more to identify which child, and that's when he had to have his guts about him to choose the one he wanted. Upon syphoning the blood, he had to tell the curse three requirements for the child to be chosen, so that there was only one, and he only needed one, one heir, one to do the Hogwarts business for him.

"Diffindo," he muttered, making a deep cut on his forearm. He closed his eyes to let the pain wash over him, but that was nothing compared to the pain he had experienced before... when he was ripped from his own body. Even after years that memory burned afresh, a wound that never had time to heal.

He waved his wand hazily in mid-air. A glass vial appeared and his pale fingers clenched instinctively around it. With a careless flick, his crimson blood flew from his wound into the vial until it half-filled. He took a deep breath. Watching part of him leaving him was agonising, but still, he had experienced worse, and that's a reasonable condition of the curse he was about to perform.

Calmly he healed his wound, the feeling from pain to normal was wonderful, yet he had no time to enjoy it. With care, he smoothed his wand around the brim of the vial, performing the curse as instructed by a book a long, long time ago...

"The first fatherless child who calls the Dark Lord by his name, without knowing its meaning, will have my blood running through their veins, and I shall fill the place of my child's missing father."

The vial grew warm in his palm and for a moment he became worried that the spell was nothing but a mischievous joke in a book full of non-existent spells. For two agonising beats, nothing happened, but then the vial cooled down and burned at the same time. He watched as his blood formed a small disturbance in the vial before spinning around the glass wall surrounding it, forming small tornados as they dissolved into the tip of his wand.

And came out through the handle as an untouchable ghost, vanishing into nothingness, into everything-ness, waiting for the dark lord's descendant to come into existence.

At that time he expected a child of a member of the Phoenix people who would be his spy and Slytherin's descendent, but he was wrong.

Because the curse was completed fifteen years after his defeat, on Ronald Weasley's birthday by a nearly seven years old muggle or muggle-born girl by the name of Isabelle Cassidy.