He looked down and admired his new crimson checkered sweatshirt, gray polo shirt, and brand new pair of khaki cargo pants. They had even given him a new pair of sneakers and a new pair of shiny black boots. It felt strange having new clothes, and he didn't want to have them washed for fear that the softness would wear off.

Feeling warm for once in the chilly winter air that often swept through the stone castle, Harry sighed in contentedness as he stood looking out a window towards the snowy Quidditch Pitch. His father had even taken them out to fly on their brooms on Christmas morning, and then they'd eaten lunch together before Harry had gone back to the Gryffindor common room to write in his journal.

‘Thanks for the best Christmas ever,' he had written before pausing in thought as a drip of ink fell onto the page from his quill. He hoped it wouldn't be his only good Christmas... hoped that this high he was feeling would last forever because there would be nothing to ruin it. For the first time he could remember, he was able to squash the uncertain feeling and pretend for just the rest of the day that everything would work out in the end, even if the feeling didn't last forever.

"Well Mr. Potter, what do you have to say for yourself?"

Harry turned, his good mood fading as Dolores Umbridge stood with her arms crossed behind him.

"Professor?"

"I did not expect to see you at the Christmas party held for dignitaries and other important people two nights ago. Forgive me, but was it not by invitation only?"

"I was invited Professor," Harry said, trying to keep his voice void of emotion.

"Ahem." She cleared her throat and smiled. "Surely you do not mean you were invited by Professor Snape, as I know for a fact that he was only given one invitation to hand out, and I saw his son there with him for most of the evening."

Harry narrowed his eyes. "Are you saying he wouldn't invite me?"

She smiled then and said, "I'm only saying that he would invite his son, so why should you have reason to be there?"

Working desperately hard not to clench his fists and fly off the handle, because he didn't want to spend the rest of his holiday nursing a mangled hand, Harry said through gritted teeth, "Actually I was invited by Draco Malfoy. He thought I might like to go see some of my family."

"Family? But what family would you have Mr. Potter? I happen to know that your only living relatives are Muggles." She gave a silly little laugh.

Calm. Calm. Don't give her reason to punish you. She's only mad about the pee candy. "Oh, didn't you know? I'm related to the head Consul to the Elven tribunal, Sylfaen Gandu. He wished to invite me to spend some time with him in the Elven realm. Wanted to teach me some advanced Elven magic."

She threw her hand at him as if he was silly. "Mr. Potter, you do strive to be funny don't you. I know the consul personally and you are not related."

Feeling suddenly as though he had to reach into his pocket, Harry reached his hand in and gripped something smooth and cool, and withdrew it. Surprised at what he found, there was a silver leaf on a silver chain that felt silken almost. He held it up for her to see, trying to keep his astonishment at bay at how it had gotten there in his pocket.

She was taken aback suddenly and asked, "Where did you get that Mr. Potter?"

Feeling like Draco all of a sudden with the upper hand, although he wasn't sure what upper hand he had yet, Harry said smugly, "What, this old thing?"

"That old thing is entrance to the Lightwood Elven kingdom."

Looking at the object curiously now, Harry put it around his neck and lied, "He gave it to me. My cousin Sylfaen, when he invited me to see him."

Umbridge eyed the leaf necklace for a moment more, before she turned her nose up and straightened her blouse. "Good day Mr. Potter." She turned and strode away, and Harry wondered why a woman who hated other races so passionately would leave him alone at the thought that he was part elven. With a thought to ask Draco when he returned next week, or perhaps his father, Harry stuffed the necklace down inside his shirt and moved off, trying to feel bad about lying to her, but being unable to.

Feeling angry that she would just assume that his father wouldn't invite him to the party, Harry felt the need to get out of the castle suddenly and went up to his room to get his broom. Twenty minutes later found him walking through two foot deep snow towards the pitch. Flying was often the only thing that could calm him down if Ginny was absent.

Mounting his broom, Harry shot off into the air and did a few laps around the pitch, letting his mind wander. He flew aimlessly for what felt like hours before his face and hands felt numb and the hood on his hoodie was no longer enough to keep his head warm.

Harry was just about to land when he felt a tingling sensation creeping up his spine. Thinking perhaps that it had to do with the cold, or his back falling asleep somehow, he reached back to scratch, but instead felt something with wings. Grabbing it, he wrenched it from his back, feeling his skin and sweatshirt tearing as he pulled it away. It looked like a red scorpion with wings, and just before Harry had time to wonder what had stung or bitten, or pinched him, he felt dizzy and headed towards the ground before he fell from his broom.

As his feet touched down in the soft snow, Harry's vision began to go dark, and just as he lurched sideways, wondering how he came to be lying in the cold snow, he saw two pairs of feet in shiny black boots just like his approach, and heard a harsh laugh.

"Finally," a deep voice said. "He's ours now."

* * *

Harry never really passed out, but he was weak and felt powerless as two pairs of hands lifted him from the snow and dragged him out of the pitch and towards the edge of the forest. The voices didn't speak again, and Harry felt unable to talk in order to ask where they were taking him, although he thought he knew. These were the same two men who had attacked him near the start of the school year, causing him to apparate into the mountains.

"Over here," one of them grunted, pointing to an X marked with wood on a bare, frozen patch of ground.

"Did we have to use the scorpionix? He's heavy when we have to drag him through the snow."

"Shut up. Just put him in the circle and get it done with aready."

Suddenly Harry was roughly shoved into the circle, and as soon as he landed on the wooden X, he disappeared, landing with a thud a moment later on hard, dry ground. It was freezing wherever he had been taken, but there was thankfully no snow.

Feeling a marginal amount of strength returning to his limbs, Harry tried to push himself up and managed to get to his knees, though he still swayed slightly. There was a ring of people in black cloaks, with masks over their faces.

"Ah, Harry Potter. We meet again."

A cold voice felt like it was snaking it's way through Harry's brain and anger rose within him at being dragged away and captured for a third time. With a small amount of panic he looked around, and was relieved to find that they were not in the graveyard where Cedric had died and Voldemort had returned, although Voldemort stood before him now.

"I have waited for so long to have you within my grasp, and here you are, kneeling before your Lord. How very pleased I am."

As more strength returned to Harry's body as the strange poison left it, Harry's brain became clearer, and he became aware of the adrenaline coursing through him. Think, think! And then it came to him. Pretending to be Draco had gotten him out of trouble with Umbridge. He didn't know if it would work a second time or not, but he donned a smirk and looked up into Voldemort' slitted eyes.

"Not yet," Harry said, bowing his head so near to the ground that his forehead touched the dirt.

There was silence around him for long moments as he bowed, and finally Voldemort spoke with curiosity obvious in his tone. "Not yet?"

Harry sat up with some difficulty, and took his wand from his pocket, surprised that it had not been taken from him yet. He laid it at Voldemort's feet and looked up at him. "You are not my Lord yet, for I do not bear the mark."

Voldemort narrowed his eyes at Harry, and Harry smirked, trying his best to look like Draco. Draco had to learn it from somewhere, and having a death eater father teaching him, Harry figured Draco must have it right, or at least right enough for Voldemort.

"What? Didn't you know I'm the son of a death eater? Didn't you know I want revenge?"

Harry stared straight into Voldemort's eyes, and as he felt Voldemort trying to invade his mind, he opened his mind up to him and allowed years worth of hatred and upset spill forth. Visions of Severus Snape looking down on him, visions of Kenai pushing him down in the halls, visions of Umbridge punishing him because he claimed to be the son of Severus Snape, visions of Harry scrubbing floors with a toothbrush, visions of Uncle Vernon beating him senseless as Harry thought about how he hated his father for leaving him there with filthy, disgusting Muggles. And then Voldemort backed out of his mind, and stared down at Harry.

"You are not the son of James and Lily Potter."

"I am Harry Severus Snape. When he cheated on my mum she left him and married James."

"And yet you look just like James."

"I look just like my disgusting father," Harry spat out. He breathed heavily for a few moments, trying to look in a rage as his adrenaline kept pulsing through him, and then said, "I'm not stupid. I know you can give me power beyond my wildest dreams. I want them to pay. I want them to suffer." He rolled up his sleeve then and held out his right arm, forearm up. Being branded and escaping was better than being dead, he thought, but Voldemort only stared down at his bare arm.

"You truly wish to serve the man that killed your filthy Muggle mother?"

Harry stared straight into the man's eyes and tried once again to recall his hatred for the Dursleys, hoping it would be enough. "She deserved whatever she got. She was disgusting going from man to man. She was disgusting for disobeying the Dark Lord."

Voldemort withdrew a deep breath and Harry bowed his head, using his left hand to support himself on the dirt as he raised his right arm higher. "I am not the boy meant to destroy you, and I do not wish to try."

"You believe you deserve to escape unscathed when you have fought against me for so long? A boy who is not prophesied about would not have fought me."

"My Lord," Harry said, trying not to sound disgusted with the name, "what young boy does not want eternal glory and fame for destroying the most powerful wizard of all time. I was lucky each time, not skilled. It was by your skill and cunning that you survived each time, and I wish to learn that skill and cunning. I will do whatever you ask of me, if only you will teach me so that I may be just a little more like you, and less like my disgusting parents."

Harry chanced the smallest glance upwards at Voldemort to see that he had built up Voldemort's self esteem then, and then bowed his head again, arm still held high.

"Anything Harry Potter?"

"Anything my Lord."

"You would kill your father before me?"

"I'll run him through with a knife," Harry vowed, looking up with determination and hatred in his eyes.

Voldemort reached down and gripped Harry's arm hard then, touching the tip of his wand to Harry's bare skin, where his skin burned as if it were on fire, and a writing, inky black snake appeared there.

"You are a fledgling death eater Harry Severus Potter. Do not fail me or you will die. Go and do as you have said. Bring your father to me, and kill him before me. I will know if you have lied."

Harry bowed his head. "Yes my Lord." Voldemort touched Harry's shoulder then and Harry disappeared, landing with a thud on the wooden X in the Forbidden Forest once again.

Shivering with the cold, Harry looked down at the snake on his arm again and scowled. He had been branded. He was in the ranks. He was almost a Death Eater.

Getting to his feet with a scowl set in place, Harry yanked his sleeve down and wondered how he could go from feeling so good to feeling so damn rotten in twenty four hours.

Harry trudged through the snow out of the woods and back up to the castle.