CH2 - The Sands of Time

There are few details known about Salazar Slytherin's life. Oh sure, if you ask around 'everyone knows' quite a bit of things.

Powerful, pureblood, parselmouth, muggle and muggle-born hater, Hogwarts founder, and most recently, basilisk-breeder. Despite being barely known, Salazar Slytherin is 'known' for many things. In fact, for a man who lived so long ago, the memory of him remains relatively strong.

Of course, Voldemort had done his own fair share of research upon the discovery of his lineage. Upon extensive searching, he managed to scrounge up records detailing Salazar's early life in Great Britain as the scion of a pureblood family, and there were countless accounts regarding Salazar's work at Hogwarts and his subsequent departure.

There was nothing odd there. No, what interested him was what Salazar did in the time between. What magic did he learn that earned him his fearsome reputation? Where did he learn it from? How could Voldemort make it his own?

The only scrap of knowledge Voldemort had found was during his school days when he manipulated and 'befriended' the Grey Lady, Helena Ravenclaw. Even she only knew a simple name.

The Order of Asclepius.

Famed parselmouths renowned for their dark healing and restorative magic, the acolytes of Asclepius were named so for the Greek god of healing, famously depicted with a serpent-entwined staff, the Rod of Asclepius.

In his journey across the wizarding world following graduation from Hogwarts, much of Voldemort's efforts were dedicated to learning about the Order of Asclepius, and any other hints of parseltongue-speaking magical communities.

He was destined for disappointment.

Voldemort discovered parselmouth tribes only in remote regions of India, where the insular tribes had resided for thousands of years.

When negotiations to speak with them failed, Voldemort attacked with brute force. Even after ripping the information from their skulls with legilimency, he discovered nothing of use. The isolation and small numbers of the tribes had stunted the development of the unique brand of magic they possessed. Their learnings amounted to little more than what Voldemort himself had derived from his experiments.

In Eastern Europe on the other hand, all records of the Order of Asclepius had been eradicated, and the exceptional magic they had discovered was lost, never to be recorded in the annals of history.

Why?

Herpo the Foul.

Perhaps the most notorious parselmouth dark wizard of all, Herpo the Foul wreaked terror upon the wizarding world. By creating some of the darkest parseltongue curses, and breeding the first Basilisk in the world, he single-handedly created such a fear of parselmouths that their numbers were hunted down to the point of near extinction, and all their research and knowledge were destroyed.

Needless to say, Voldemort went from admiring Herpo for his work on horcruxes to despising him for the destruction of knowledge that he needed now.

However, all hope was not lost. According to Helena, Salazar was a researcher by heart rather than a warrior, known for writing down and saving every single thing he did, every day without fail. Over the decades, he established piles and piles of notebooks with all his findings.

Notebooks that Voldemort knew existed within the Chamber of Secrets, but could not be accessed without being acknowledged as the rightful Lord of Slytherin House.

Therein lay the problem. The requirements to become Lord Slytherin were stringent, to say the least.

Not only were the criteria specific, but they needed to be fulfilled not only by the lord prospective of Slytherin house, but also the heir prospective of Slytherin house…

Voldemort had long ago ritualistically sacrificed his fertility in exchange for power, so children were not in his future. Even if he had not done so, Voldemort was not trusting enough in nature to be able to rely upon another, let alone a child.

As such, he had discarded all hopes of becoming the true Lord Slytherin.

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Shaking his head clear from reminiscing, Voldemort cracked his neck and let out a groan as he finished triple checking the ritual he had just finished setting up. Voldemort needed a method to return to corporeal form, and he needed it soon, before Dumbledore could make any more advances in further limiting his power. Considering the few recorded feats of the acolytes of Asclepius that Voldemort had discovered, he was confident that the key to his problems lay within Salazar's notebooks.

With fresh eyes considering the problem several decades after he had previously given up, a book named "The Sands of Time" that had been 'liberated' from the Department of Mysteries (DoM) by his spy and follower Augustus Rookwood seemed to provide him with a solution, albeit unintentionally.

The sands of time were the primary energy source for the famed time turners produced by the DoM. However, they were a peculiarity, as the method of their invention was never discovered. Without a magical scan, the grains of the sands of time seemed extremely ordinary. If one were to compare them side by side with sand from the Sahara desert, no muggle would be able to tell them apart.

That was where the similarities ended. Using the grains of the sands of time in conjunction with a rune-laden artifact dubbed a 'time turner,' the user could theoretically travel as far back in time as desired. There were, of course, several problems with this.

Firstly, all discovered methods of time travel followed the Novikov principle. Simply put, any actions taken in the past would not create a paradox, as the past cannot be altered. Secondly, the sands of time were extremely scarce, hence why the DoM had restricted travel in the past to a max of five hours, as the required amount of sand for each hour of time travel grew at an exponential rate.

While this was a poorly concealed secret, the knowledge as to where the DoM was getting more grains of the sands of time was conversely highly regulated. In truth, all known locations of the sands of time on Earth had already been discovered centuries ago. So how were time turners still commonplace, rather than the priceless artifacts they should have been?

As it turns out, the sands of time were not only temporal wonders but spatial ones as well. Using the sands of time, the Unspeakables devised a complex ritual to open tiny temporary gateways to other alternate realities, robbing them of their sands of time centuries before the Unspeakables of those realities recognized their worth.

It was strongly theorized that perhaps this is what occurred in Voldemort's current reality as well; It would explain the extreme scarcity of the priceless resource to some extent. Unknown to most of the world, Unspeakables from countless universes were involved in an interdimensional resource war that would never end.

Of course, greed motivated the Unspeakables to try to use these alternate realities as free resource banks not just for the sands of time, but anything else they desired as well. Curiously, no other substance survived the universal jump, burning up and being lost to the void.

Hypothetically, a shield of sorts could be devised around the desired substance from the alternate universe with a strong enough energy source. Unfortunately, the Unspeakables knew of neither any energy source strong enough, nor did they have any material they desired enough that it would be worth it to sacrifice such an energy source. And so, the project was shelved.

Voldemort, however, had both something he desired to such an extreme extent, and the world's largest energy source in the form of the Philosopher's stone. With a plan in mind, he had begun stockpiling the elixir of life as much as he could. Overuse of the stone was a real danger, since the stone was only meant to make enough elixir each day to prolong life for that one day. Still, pushing the stone to its limits, Voldemort had stored away enough elixir to last him five years by the time the summer of 1993 rolled around.

Initially, Voldemort had considered stealing Salazar's notebooks themselves from an alternate reality. Sadly, he did not know exactly where they were kept before the Chamber of Secrets was built, and he could not risk the slim chance that Salazar had not put the protections on the books before placing them in the Chamber. If that happened, he would have lost the Philosopher's stone for another inaccessible copy of Slytherin's notebooks.

Next, he looked into the possibility of stealing away the body of an alternate Voldemort. The problem with this was twofold; Voldemort had no assurances he would be able to beat his alternate self in his weakened form, and even if he did, the mangled remains of his soul might not be compatible with his new body.

That had led him to the idea he was proceeding with now: Kidnapping an alternate Voldemort back when he was still Tom Riddle Jr., back when he was still weak enough to be subdued by any ordinary wand-wielding wizard. Voldemort remembered his eleventh birthday clear as day, and he knew exactly where he was at any given minute of the day.

Locating Tom would be simple, it would fulfill his requirement of a trustworthy heir that could be moulded as he desired, and it would allow him to use his younger self to access the Chamber of Secrets without drawing Dumbledore's attention by attempting to break into Hogwarts himself. Regaining a seat in the Wizengamot that the dark could rally behind would also be a boon.

'No point second guessing myself now,' Voldemort thought as he activated the ritual without hesitation. 'Gambling on myself has always been the safest bet,' he comforted himself as the circle of chalk began to glow.

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December 31, 1937

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Tom Riddle Jr. was having an ordinary day. At least as ordinary as one could be for him. He woke at 6:00 AM, making his bed and room before tidying up for breakfast. He sat down just as Mrs. Cole began to pray before breakfast began. Getting there early had become essential, especially with the decreasing rations over the years due to the economic bust earlier in the decade.

'Gruel again,' he thought with irritation that he couldn't quite keep off his face.

Still huffing with displeasure as he returned to his room, Tom was startled by an insistent tapping noise on his window.

'Is that an owl,' he thought bewilderedly, standing up to open his window.

Before his hand could reach the latch, he felt a sucking sensation roaring into being inside his very center. His eyes widened comically before he simply popped out of existence.

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When his eyes opened next, Tom found himself in darkness. Darkness so total and complete that he could see absolutely nothing. He only began to feel a sudden lurch in his stomach associated with high speeds of travel, before his eyes closed on their own.

'I don't believe I will be surviving this. And to think my last meal was fucking gruel,' were his last delirious thoughts before Tom Riddle Jr.'s soul disconnected from his body, forever destined to float in an endless nothingness.

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A soul had been drifting aimlessly in the void for time unknown, and it would have continued to do so for eternity if something very odd had not happened.

The body of a pre-pubescent boy came hurtling across the void, coincidentally colliding with the stray soul. An infinitesimal moment later, a portal opened, swallowing both the body and the soul now residing within it, leaving no trace behind as it closed immediately afterwards.