Edited.

Harry struggled to remember the words, forced to start again as he hesitated and stuttered under the crack of a whip. The blood splattered on the stone in unnatural patterns, lines stretching from the dark puddles. Harry sucked in another breath and rasped out the last of the incantation as his eyelids drooped, heavy as the chains on the wrists.

Feathers filled his vision, falling against a background of white void. A monochrome repetition of a simple scene. He had no being here, no body or mind to manipulate the world around. Even so, his voice worked fine, and he said more as it had been recounted in the journal. It had been specified as optional, but Harry wanted nothing left out. One wrong word, or lack of, could spell his death.

"I wish to make a contract," he echoed into the emptiness. "I name mine eye to mark myself for Sebastian Michaelis." A pain flared at the edge of his right eye, as if asking permission.

"If you once reject the faith, you can never pass through the gates of heaven." A low voice sailed through Harry, and he caught a glimpse of a crow. Hungry red power lurked here.

"Would someone who believes in God summon you?"

"I'll ask you again: do you wish to make a contract?" the voice asked, rather unnecessarily, in Harry's opinion.

"Don't be tedious. Just execute the contract and grant my wish!"

"Tell me the details of the contract."

Harry prepared to change the terms to accommodate himself, and spoke the condemning words. "Kill him. Kill the one who killed my parents and left me hated. Kill Voldemort."

Laughter.

"So mote it be." The voice held a tone dripping with mock. Harry tried to grasp the significance of it, but the phrase held nothing for him. The feathers reversed their direction, falling up, and the monochrome world was lost as more and more feathers smothered him.

Harry opened his eyes to find the robed figures of his torturers on the ground, most of the limbs bending at odd angles that couldn't have been comfortable. He heard a gurgling cry, and swiveled his head around to see a man- no, a monster - wretch another person's arm from its socket in a casual manner, putting an abrupt end to the screaming. He tossed the body aside, leaving it to land in a heap like a rag doll, clapping dust from his gloves as he came to Harry. He broke the rope without effort, and ripped the chains off his wrists the same way. Harry allowed himself to be picked up bridal style, too stunned and exhausted to say anything.

Harry lolled his head, fading in and out of consciousness.

He stiffened as something hard and cold touched his aching back, but relaxed when he realized the man set him on a bench in the park. The sun had set long past, and parents had taken children home long ago. By the time his head reached the wood, Harry had fallen asleep.

Harry woke up again to find himself in a large, lavish bedroom. Soft encased him on all sides, and pajamas of an extremely soft and smooth fabric cradled him in heavenly bliss. It all smelled like the small bits of candy nice adults gave him before Dudley took it away, but he recognized a faint tang to it that he had often smelled when taking the laundry out of the dryer.

Harry squirmed out to get a better look at the room, and found himself disoriented by a sudden clarity. His mouth hung open as he took in small details he would have never noticed, and that replaced his amazement of the expensive part of the room. Harry dived down to the carpet, entranced by the individual small bits of string. He found it astounding that each was made up of small threads that had a crumpled texture and jut up at the ends. The amount of detail he could see; how the light reflected off the threads, how the bits of softness had been stitched into an underlying net.

"Young master?"

Harry jerked up to stare at the butler in the doorway. He was the

from the night before, and he wore a slight smirk. The thing set a tray of tea and scones on the table.

Harry scrambled to his feet and balled his fists close to his chest, panic overtaking him.

The butler easily pried the fists away in Harry's frozen state, and to his shock, started undressing him. Once Harry had finished processing this anomaly, the butler was buttoning up the last button on a new shirt. He slid a simple ring on his finger and stepped back to allow Harry to examine his new apparel. It looked Victorian in origin, somewhat ornate, yet ordinary enough for him to be able to pass as the child of a wealthy man.

Harry took a drink of the tea that had somehow appeared in his hand, a light flavor like tasting a light pleasant perfume filling his mouth. A scone passed his lips, and he absently noted the lemon lilt.

The memory of the night before drifted back to him, most of it gruesome shots of dead men and his own blood. And the man without a speck of blood on him lying in wake of the carnage. He accepted that he had summoned a denizen of the abyss. With everything else gone, the lost child only had a soul to lose. The least he could have was revenge. He smirked; the word even sounded satisfying in his head.

"You are my butler. You will stay by my side until the end."

"Yes, my young master."

"Where are we?" Harry asked, looking around the room again. He felt no fear at asking the demon a question, not when he had it under his full control.

Sebastian, the name he had given it, answered smoothly, "Your new estate. You are the sole heir of the Potter inheritance, Lord Potter."

"Lord?"

"I took the liberty of checking what property you own and how much money you have, my lord," he added at Harry's shock, "Your parents did not leave you a pauper."

"Where..?" he trailed off.

"We are on a small island off the coast of England. Only the best anti-muggle wards, and of course I added my own."

"Muggle?"

"Non-magical. My lord, you are a wizard."

Harry took this in stride. After the ordeal with magical captors and summoning a demon, the wizard news didn't hold much in the shock factor department.

All he said was, "Teach me."

"You will attend school in September, two months from now. You won't have much time to learn magic in that span, not with the rest of the wizarding world to learn about and proper etiquette rules to be learnt."

"Etiquette?" Harry frowned. "Why etiquette?"

"You wouldn't want to unintentionally insult someone, would you?" Sebastian smirked.

"It would be best not to get on anyone's bad side," Harry grudgingly commented to himself. "I won't have to purposely sabotage my own work for Dudley, either." He smiled, for the first time since he was captured.

"Young master," Sebastian started. "Would you like to see yourself in a mirror?"

Harry walked over to the full-length mirror. He gasped, spotting the difference immediately. The design he had found in the journal now glowed on the surface of his eye. A dull, soft purple replaced the once emerald green iris. Sebastian entered the reflection, tugging the glove off his own left hand, the back of it emblazoned with the same design.

"It is our contract mark," Sebastian explained in the humming baritone. "You are marked, I am tamed-"

"My soul is not mine," Harry finished in a hollow whisper.

The 'candy' comment: inspired by something in a SE fic. (something about it not actually smelling like candy, but she'd never smelled anything clean.)

Harry's a bit different than canon. He's more like Ciel in this fic, but not as stoic. For one, he actually smiled.