James stood motionless in the dim bedroom, shadows curling around his boots like whispers. The crib was just ahead, a pale cradle of oak and silk, bathed in moonlight. He took one step forward—and froze.

The child lay still within.

Himself.

Wide-eyed, he stared. Breath shallow. Muscles clenched.

This was it. The moment everything would change.

A slow smile touched his lips, bitter at the edges.

He’d spent months bleeding for this. Hunting Horcruxes. Destroying them. Ripping through dark forests and darker men, dismantling fate with his bare hands. And now, the final piece—this house, this night, this baby.

He reached out.

But something pushed back.

It wasn’t physical. Not wind, not magic. It was resistance—like trying to force two magnets together at the wrong poles. His hand hovered inches above the child’s forehead, trembling.

He drew his hand back, chest heaving. For a moment, he stood still, fighting the ache in his chest.

He wanted to tell the child everything—that he wouldn’t be alone, that he would have a family, that the nightmare was nearly over. But words wouldn’t reach him. Not now. Not safely.

So instead, he reached into the inner pocket of his coat and drew out a small object: a ring.

Worn and dark with age, its surface glimmered faintly in the moonlight, etched with runes so fine they seemed to shift when looked at directly. No other ring like it existed in the world—he’d been assured of that by some of the greatest minds in history. Wizards. Alchemists. Seers driven mad by time. They’d all sworn it would endure, that it would carry memory, identity, truth.

He stared at it for a moment—his legacy, his message—and then, with slow reverence, placed it on the edge of the cradle.

It would wait.

Just as he had.

From downstairs came voices—muffled, urgent.

The alarm spell had tripped.

His smile returned, sharper now. Almost cruel in its certainty. He turned from the crib, long coat whispering against the floorboards, and descended the stairs with calm, lethal purpose.

At the bottom stood James and Lily Potter, framed in the warm glow of the hall, shock and confusion etched across their faces.

“Who the hell are you?” James Potter barked, wand half-raised.

He said nothing—just turned his head, offered a smile far too knowing—and opened the front door.

And there he stood.

Lord Voldemort.

He looked the same—unchanged by time, untouched by consequence. That waxy, serpentine face. The skull-pale bald head gleaming in the moonlight. Narrow, slitted eyes glowing faintly red in the dark. His nose, still grotesquely flattened, flared as he breathed. And in his long, spidery fingers, he held his wand like a needle made for killing.

The air grew colder.

He stepped forward slowly, robes trailing like smoke, stopping just past the threshold.

James stared, unmoving.

He had spent the last decade hunting him—dismantling him. Horcrux after Horcrux, torn from the world like rot from flesh. He’d watched them die—each one a soul fragment, shrieking into nothing. Some burned, some shattered, one had begged. And through it all, James had wondered: did Voldemort feel it? Did he sense the loss when a part of himself was snuffed out? Or did he just continue, hollow and oblivious, like a snake shedding skin it no longer needed?

But now, standing here, facing him in the flesh ... he thought he saw it.

Something buried behind those burning eyes. A flicker. A fracture.

The creature’s gaze narrowed.

“You,” Voldemort hissed, voice slithering out between fangless lips.

They had met once before—briefly, violently. On the battlefield.

James had carved through his Death Eaters like vengeance made flesh. He hadn’t spared them. Not a single one. Not even those who begged. The final scream Bellatrix Lestrange made when he drove his wand through her throat still echoed in his skull like a war drum. He hadn’t mourned her. He’d enjoyed it.

“Me,” James said, voice quiet, resolute.

Voldemort tilted his head, eyes sliding up to the lightning-shaped scar on James’ forehead—no longer red, but scorched into the skin like a brand.

“So it worked,” he murmured, almost reverently.

“Yes.”

“Then why are you here?” Voldemort’s voice was a thread of silk wrapped around a blade.

James smiled. Not kindly. Not cruelly. Just ... cold.

“I think you know.”

Voldemort nodded once. Slowly.

“Our final dance.”

Neither waited. Neither bowed.

They moved.

Green fire exploded in the hallway.

“Avada Kedavra!”

James’ parents screamed—echoes of memory and death crashing against the walls as if the house itself remembered. Wood splintered. Picture frames shattered. The old clock on the mantle burst apart with a shriek of gears.

James dove left, his coat a shadow behind him. The curse missed by inches and scorched a hole through the plaster. He came up hard, wand raised, eyes locked on Voldemort’s.

The spells had collided mid-air. Twin streaks of killing green clashed, not with light, but with sound. The house groaned. The windows blew inward. Time itself seemed to ripple—just slightly—as if reality was trying to look away.

James advanced. One step. Then another.

Voldemort stepped backward, uncertain for the first time.

“You’ve changed,” the Dark Lord spat.

“I’ve remembered,” James growled.

He slashed his wand down.

A jet of searing white tore through the air—not a curse, not quite a spell. Magic older than Hogwarts, older than the founders. Something he’d learned from deep in the forbidden corners of the Department of Mysteries. A tear in light.