'Behave, children, or come Christmas stockings filled with coal will be the least of your concerns,' the adults would whisper every year, starting when the temperature began to grow colder and the nights to grow longer. 'Do your chores. Mind your manners. Behave. If you don't, the Winter Devil will get you. He'll steal you from your warm bed and whip you raw with Ruten bundles, shove you into the enchanted basket he carries on his back and spirit you away to his cave in the mountains. If you're lucky you'll be skewered and boiled before he eats you. If you're not he'll eat you alive.'
When Harry had been younger and his parents had still been alive he remembered asking is mother what the Winter Devil's real name was. Why, around town, he was only ever referred to as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named or You-Know-Who and his mother had explained that it was because the Winter Devil was a demon. And to speak a demon's name was to invite it to appear. But fear hadn't been enough to assuage his curiosity and, after forcing him to promise to never sign or even mouth the word, had written the creature's name out on a paper which was promptly burned. He hadn't been the most able at reading at the time, but then five year old Harry Potter had been able to make out the word for what it was.
Voldemort.
Every year after being told that story, little Harry had been certain to behave. Even after his parents had died, leaving him to the cruel mercy of his aunt and uncle who treated him like a slave, the raven never set so much as a toe out of line. Year after year on the night of Christmas misbehaving children would disappear in droves, the cloven hoof prints in the snow all that was left of the Winter Devil's presence there. Year after year Harry lived in misery, tormented by his family and mocked by all in the village for the brokenness within him which forced him to use his hands to speak instead of his voice, but he survived. The beast never came for him or even for his rotten cousin, though at times when the nights grew long he thought that he could sometimes here the jangle of chains outside his bedroom window, but not at fourteen his luck had run out.
Terrified and sick of losing countless children to the beast they'd summoned the monster and struck a deal with him: in return for a yearly offering of a single pure soul, the Winter Devil would leave the rest of the children alone. It could have been anyone, even some one kidnapped from another village, as long as they were below the age of fifteen, but naturally their first choice would be him. The orphaned freak born without a voice who had never caused trouble for anyone.
That was how the raven found himself chained in the woods on the night of the winter solstice, ankle-deep in snow and wearing nothing but the schnapps he'd been soaked in in an effort to make him more appealing to the demon which would soon turn him into dinner. Shivering violently as the teeth of the wintery wind slashed at his exposed flesh, Harry tried his chains again. Solid. They rattled with his movement but didn't give and the sound faded into the distant trees but didn't fall silent.
Blinking furiously at the burn of the fruit liquor which dripped form his black hair, drying sticky across his pale skin, he squinted into the dark. The black was so thick that it was like a solid blanket of nothing but dark trunks and snow, blue tinged beneath the faint glow of the crescent moon. The rattling sound of the creature's chains grew nearer until movement caught his eyes. A figure darker than the night moving between the trees.
Then it stepped into the eldritch silver glow of a shaft of moonlight which slanted down through the trees. Thin and gnarled like the trunk of a birch the Winter Devil towered above him at over ten feet tall. A pair of icy horns, curved into the shape of a backwards S, rose above its hooded head like an imposing crown. Red eyes burned like coals from deep within the shadowed cowl of its black cloak, chains hanging down from the thin wrists of clawed hands and twisted legs ending in razor sharp hooves. It moved with an inhuman speed and utter silence to tower over him, skeletal chest expanding with the dry rasp of breath.
Terrified emerald stared up into smoldering crimson for a moment which seemed to stretch into a small eternity, then it leaned down over him with the snapping pop of a falling tree. Hot breath fanned across his face, smelling of blood and ice.
A forked tongue, prehensile and writhing like a pale snake, emerged from beneath its dark hood. Slithering up the center of his chest, along his neck and over the contour of his jaw. Tasting the liquor and his sweat and his skin and Harry shuddered. Breath escaped him in a soundless huff which, if he'd had a voice, would have been a whimper of terror. The tongue continued its work, a light slimy touch clearing the alcohol away from his face with a delicate precision.
Once it deemed its job presentable enough and still bent in half to reach his eye level the creature hissed at him, the sound more like a foreign language than a feral noise of menace, and rested one spidery hand against his cheek. Running the scaly pad of its thumb, tipped in a curved nail like a steel razor, traced the pink cupid's bow of his upper lip.
Another hiss and then it leaned in further and enveloped him in the darkness of its hood. Pressing the boney ridge of its forehead against his. Its glowing red eyes grew brighter until they were almost blinding and Harry seemed to tumble forward into them. Enveloped in blistering heat. Falling down into hell.
And then everything went black.