Summary: Harry sets out for the next great adventure, and finds the journey there a bit longer than anticipated. Lost and listless, Harry drifts from dream to dream in search of meaning. Along the way he acquires help from unlikely sources. What exactly does it mean to be a Master of Death?
I am writing this primarily because there is a special place in my heart for Hagrid, and I enjoy feel-good stories. So this story will hopefully contain plenty of that.
This is a bit of a prologue. I don't know how long each chapter will end up, since some I have more planned for some than others.
As ever, Harry Potter belongs to J.K., and I profit from neither the creation nor distribution of this fanfiction.
Master — noun.
1.) "A man who has people working for him, especially servants or slaves."
2.) "A skilled practitioner of a particular art or activity."
Harry stood before the train — the same train he'd looked upon after facing Voldemort's wand. Around him stretched King's Cross, empty and white, save for the pained whimpers drifting out from beneath a bench farther along. Harry knew without looking that it was Voldemort's horcrux.
It didn't particularly matter how or why Harry had ended up back at the station, or even how long it had been since his last visit, because he was there now, and there was nothing to be done but board the train and see where it took him. He pulled his cloak tight around him, and Harry was grateful he wasn't nude, even if he was starkers underneath, and strode towards the open doors of the train. The whimpering grew to wails, and the smack of flesh against a hard surface, but Harry refused to turn. It was beyond the help of men.
As he stepped up onto the express, Harry felt something swing into his leg. Reaching into his invisibility cloak, Harry felt a stone and a wand. He didn't bother removing them. As he passed the window on the door of the first compartment, Harry caught the reflection of his floating head. Seventeen, he thought, pausing to examine himself briefly, it was the only age that sounded close enough to how he looked which made any sense.
Harry wandered along the corridor until he found an open compartment. It might have taken a few minutes, or maybe an hour, he was feeling rather apathetic at the moment, really. The next great adventure, Dumbledore had called it, and Harry was curious, nervous, excited, afraid, and everything else he expected one felt after having once again died, but greatest of all, Harry felt adrift. Perhaps, Harry mused, he was in shock.
Regardless, he found an open compartment, walked in, shut the door behind him, sat down, and looked out the white window at the white Platform 9¾. The train gave a shudder, and then with a groan it jumped forward once. A moment later it picked up again and began heading out. Harry watched the unbroken white expanse of the station fall slowly behind, until there was nothing but whiteness left and the glass of the window might have just as easily been a wall panel.
He fiddled with the stone and the wand in his pocket for a while, not removing either from his pocket, but eventually the rocking of the train caused Harry's eyes to droop and his head to nod forward.
It wasn't until he woke that Harry even realized he'd fallen asleep. He looked about for a moment, taking in the white of the compartment, and trying to catch the wisps of a dream that had already slipped away. He stared out the window for a bit, and fiddled with the edge of his invisibility cloak. He wasn't particularly board, indeed Harry had a feeling reminiscent of patiently waiting for something, and he experienced no urge to get up or leave his seat. Days, minutes, hours, weeks, they had no purchase here and the window never grew dark or his stomach empty. He never felt particularly tired either, but with the gentle rocking of the train his only stimulation, Harry soon found himself drifting off once more.
He was washing dishes at the Dursleys. The sink was rather high, and he had to reach up before he could bend his arms down to snag a dirty plate. The water was scalding, and the disinfectant soap was quick to point out the scratches on the heels of his hands. Harry took a moment to look around and take in the colours. It was a bit overwhelming, but certainly not unwelcome. The smells to. And the sounds. Aunt Petunia walked in, looking younger than Harry could remember seeing her outside of photographs. She scowled and snapped something at him that Harry was too distracted to hear. Her scowl deepened, and with what must have been apparition, or perhaps just a jump in his dream, she materialized in front of Harry and smacked him hard over the head. As if she'd hit a switch, Harry's attention snapped into place and her words took form.
"Ungrateful, useless, just like your mother—" And she grabbed a fistful of Harry's hair and turned his face back to the sink. His scalp smarting, Harry picked up the abandoned sponge and reached up and over into the sink to grab the next plate.
He woke from the rhythmic scrubbing of dishes to the rhythmic rocking of the white express and blinked several times to readjust to the bright, scentless, and near-silent compartment. Had he just dreamt of the Dursleys? The memory was quickly fading, but Harry was near-certain he had.
Harry looked at the window for a minute or perhaps a month, then ran his fingers over the white cloth of the compartment bench. He tapped the wood of the wall to hear the sound, and then did the same to the window. He wondered what he was waiting for, but the only answer was the rocking of the train.
He was in the Dursley's lounge. Uncle Vernon stood over him, face purple and mustache twitching. He looked moments away from an explosion. Harry was distracted however, by a light flashing in his peripherals, and turned to find it was the television. When was the last time he saw a tele? Suddenly pain erupted in Harry's side, and he fell to the floor with the force of the blow.
"...Your unnaturalness around my son!" His uncle was yelling, and then he reached down with two meaty hands and grabbed Harry's arms just below the shoulder and shook him. Harry's head snapped backwards, and heat blossomed in his neck from the sudden motion.
"I'm not—" Harry began, but with another shake he bit his tongue and the taste of copper flooded his mouth. Uncle Vernon half-lifted and half-dragged Harry to the cupboard under the stairs and tossed him in. He elbow knocked into the back wall and set his whole lower arm on pins and needles. He heard the click of the lock, and his uncle's heavy footsteps receding.
He sat still until something brushed against his hand, and Harry squinted down to see a small spider crawling across his finders. Taking this as his cue, Harry leaned back against the wall of his cupboard and listened to the sounds of Privet Drive.
When the rumble of cars ceased and the sound of the tele and the refrigerator grew comparatively loud, Aunt Petunia let him out to help make dinner. He sat and peeled potatoes, then chopped and boiled them into his aunt's stew.
"Now you need to stir the potatoes! Do you hear me, boy? Make certain the potatoes are stirred. If you don't stir the potatoes…" Each step she repeated five or six times at the beginning, and then continued to remind him every few minutes to stay on task. Harry couldn't specifically recall another time his aunt had ever been so repetitive in her instructions, and yet he got the sense this was a regular occurrence. It was strange, and Harry played with the notion like He would worry a loose tooth.
Eventually dinner was completed, the table set, and Uncle Vernon and Dudley called to supper. Uncle Vernon was angry with him for some reason or another, so Harry got some cold soup, a trip to the lou, and was sent to his cupboard.
Harry woke with a great deal of disorientation and flailing. Somehow, despite having always slept sitting propped up against the white wall of the compartment, he had expected to wake laying flat. The movement of the train did little to help him catch his balance. Although he didn't feel stiff, Harry took a moment to stretch and pop his neck. He rubbed at it for a moment, idly checking for a crick, then shrugged and turned towards the window to repeat the cycle of waiting and sleeping.
AN: Well there it is — my first chapter! I honestly thought it would take me more words to cover what I needed to, but I felt like I got everything that needed to be there written in, so we'll see. What do you think? There should be less switching between the dreams and the train after the first few chapters, but I hope the way I handled it flowed smoothly.
