AN: Harry Potter is not mine, nor are the characters, the setting the enviroment. It all belongs to Rowling.

Chapter 1: The Capture

The castle was magnificent. It had turrets and towers and all kinds of medieval defensive fortifications added onto it. Had the visitor not known that those defenses were more than cosmetic, he would have stopped to admire the ominous beauty of the building in the cool evening hours. As it was he swiftly crossed the threshold an mentally prepared himself for what was to come.

The shadow paused as he began to shift through the inner set of wards. The outer wards had been navigated about an hour ago, an ingenious set of complicated layers woven over each other, created to make life horrible for whatever wizard, muggle, or magical creature was stupid enough to attempt a crossing. Another set of migrating wards moved casually throughout the grounds sneaking up on intruders and giving chills to anyone wandering within its range of influence, those took some intricate dodging and mental begging skills to pass. That combined with the inner wards that promised a painful death to anyone with out the passkey, made this castle one of the most heavily warded and protected buildings in this part of the world.

The shadow moved past the inner wards slowly trying not to trigger the alarms, if his quarry had even the slightest warning it could take months before he was able return and leave his gift. Fortunately, the thought of moving the location of the base would most likely be shot down immediately. The sheer amount of money involved, both in creating the castle and buying the island, would put a stop to any immediate evacuation plans. It takes a lot of time and effort to create a place like this and have it completely legit, especially, when you are trying to overthrow the current government.

The thought of actually being caught and subjected to various tortures did not phase the man. He had already been tortured many times by others. In his opinion there was little that could be done that had not already been done to him. Finally slinking through one of the upper floor windows, that some individual had thoughtfully left open, he crouched down behind a nice chair and hid from view. Happy that he did not have to force an entrance, and at the same time thinking the lord of this castle will have a fun time chastising the one who left such a thing open for the night, he used all his senses to check the room thoroughly for threats.

He slipped his hand into a hidden pocket of his dark combat pants and removed a heavily enchanted piece of parchment. Muttering the engagement phrase in parseltongue, the intruder scanned the parchment searching thoroughly for the targets.

His primary target appeared to be in his main apartments on the fourth floor pacing in his private library. Looking for any others that could cause problems, the shadow immediately found the snake wandering down in the first floor hallway. The rat did not appear to be in attendance tonight, which was a good thing. Although, he was not much of a wizard, the rat knew enough dirty tricks to be a problem. Casting a vibrating alert charm on the map in case any of the guards interspersed throughout the main floor and courtyards came within spell range, the shadow headed down two staircases in search of the Dark Lord's personal bodyguard.

Staying far enough away to prevent the vibration of his presence from alerting the animal, Harry pulled a large black rodent from his expandable pouches. Canceling the spell on the creature with a silent wave of his hand, he set the now struggling animal on the floor sending a light stinging hex to its tail.

The rat startled at feeling its painful posterior ran straight down the hallway and came face to face with the roaming monster. Swerving away at the last minute, it tried and failed to escape the unexpected presence.

Instincts awoke and the snake immediately snapped at the now scrambling rodent twisting it in her coils. She watched it dispassionately for a few moments as the morsel succumbed to the venom injected into its body. Finally, once the struggling was over and the creature almost dead, the snake unhinged her jaws and began swallowing the animal head first.

Harry seeing his work here was done for the moment slowly extracted himself from the hidden alcove he was crouched in, and he crept away on silent feet. The next objective was still far ahead and he needed to secure it quickly.

Taking another glance at the map he breathed a little easier noticing that his primary quarry was still agitated in the library. This next part of the plan would take some real close maneuvering and he was a bit on edge.

Voldemort's apartments had another set of wards attached, specifically geared to disintegrate anyone who was foolish enough to try to enter without leave. It is the reason why Nagini was searching for food down on the lower levels, the wards did not distinguish between a person, a bug, or a spying rat. This gave the leader of the Dark Side one place to have peace and quiet without irritating Death Eaters bothering him all hours of the day. Only two ways to get into the Dark Lord's rooms, one was if you had permission, and the second was if you were keyed to the wards. Unfortunately, the only ones keyed to the wards were the Dark Lord or his familiar. All others would die a long drawn out death ending with their body finally turning to ashes.

Sneaking past the wards with the ease of one who has done it before, Harry paused briefly to examine for traps and triggers before putting the plan into motion. Seeing nothing different from the other two times he snuck into here, he swiftly went to work. A number of different scenarios filtered through his mind as he placed all the items and spells. Anything could happen at this point, anything could go wrong, but he pushed it all aside in the vague hope that he was allowing his overactive imagination to get away from him. The parchment in his pocket started vibrating its warning and with a wave of his hand he finished setting the trap, silenced the paper, and hid himself completely.

Voldemort yanked open the door a few seconds later and slammed it close again. Striding purposefully over to his desk, which was partially hidden from view by the multitude of reports and papers scattered across it, he began a mental rant on the incompetence of his people. Not one to talk to himself even in a cloud of anger, he went to the hidden mini-bar behind his desk and poured himself a finger full of scotch.

Harry did a mental dance as he saw his target down the harsh liquid. His plan was coming along well, now to wait for the potion to take affect. In reality, he had spiked almost all of the well used bottles. He couldn't get them all, of course, some of them would have reacted badly with the potion and he did not want unexpected complications. The fact that Voldemort took one of the spiked bottles instead of one of the many others helped greatly in getting the plan together. He had fall back plans incase the man took something else or, Merlin forbid, did not drink anything before bed. But those plans did not work nearly as well as the simple potion in the alcohol he is currently drinking. Settling back onto his heels, Harry waited patiently. The potion was slow acting, anything faster would have had his quarry stuffing himself full of antidotes and summoning potion masters. The Dark Lord was not a fool, and he would immediately notice any form of poison, assuming that any poison would work on him at all. With his past history of drinking venom and other non-identifiable stuff in his pursuit for immortality it is a wonder if any poison would even slow him down. No, the long view has to be taken to get this done. Discovery was not an option. If that happened the plan would have to be scrapped, and he would need a hasty escape. Given how difficult it was to enter the castle in the first place hasty is extremely relative. To prevent that calamity from occurring, all details had to be safely analyzed and controlled.

The Dark Lord wound his way through some paper work making annotations as he read. He flipped through reports quickly searching for the meat and ignoring the tripe. He imbibed twice more from the bottle after reading a report from his potion's master. Not understanding why he was supposed to care about mutinous teenagers who can't hold their wands properly, he made a few harsh remarks and promised a good dose of crucio to the idiot who was wasting his time with prepubescent children.

He really needed a trustworthy lieutenant to deal with all this mess, he thought resentfully. The younger Malfoy was supposed to be intelligent, but he was not sure he wanted to hand so much power over to someone so young and inexperienced. Doing so would also be recognized as a weakness to most of his followers, and that is something he cannot allow. It was hard enough to get them all marching in a straight line as it was, after all they each had their own agendas and dreams. He could not allow minor issues of paperwork to distract from keeping them on the right path.

Voldemort sighed in frustration. So few of his followers had the intelligence and will to understand the true goals of the Dark Side, and that does not even delve into the issue of magical power. Most who joined only heard what they wanted to hear, or joined to allow their more dubious natures free reign. Then there are the ones who have been hurt badly by the so called 'Light' side or the MOM. A solid number of his people were wanted 'criminals' of the state. Of course only a few of those ever had a trial, the case of Sirius Black was not in a minority in magical Britain.

Finally, the potion, the reading, the annoying death eaters, and the long hard day of work overwhelmed him, and he turned away from his desk intent on completing his nightly cleaning ritual before snuggling into bed. The last thought of the night was an idle one of where his familiar got to.