"Name's Hades, Lord of the Dead. Hi, how ya doin'?" greeted the tall, grey-skinned person with the pointy yellow teeth, blue fire in place of hair, and black robe that ended in curling smoke where feet should have been.
Harry blinked. "Not so good, I think," he offered, a little stunned.
Hades smirked. With a chuckle, he slung a large, muscular arm that ended in a hand with very long fingers over Harry's shoulders.
"You'd think," he agreed amiably as he steered Harry through the Underworld. "But see, here we have a bit of an issue. Normally, a mortal dies, the soul just passes through – like that one," he said, and pointed to a stretched out, washed out, ghost-like thing that wailed and dived through a gate, causing a counter to tick over. "- and then becomes part of the river of the dead until they've lost all their features and are effectively a blank soul again, ready to be re-used in the world of the living."
Harry worked his jaw silently for a moment as he absorbed that, and then asked the obvious question. "So, why didn't I just do that?"
"That would be because we didn't cut your thread," a harsh, female voice snapped.
A voice which drew Harry's attention to three somewhat grotesque women who only had one eye between the three of them. The tallest had a nose that really qualified as a beak, the shortest had the eye, and the one in the middle, height wise, had green skin.
"Harry Potter, meet the Fates," Hades presented. "They don't cut your thread, you're not dead."
"And you, Mister Potter, are early," stated the shortest of the Fates with a frown and a pointing, poking finger that was jabbed firmly at his person.
"We're not supposed to reveal the future," reminded the tallest of them, just a little snootily.
"This is a case of revealing the present as it should have been though," pointed out the green-skinned Fate. "He hasn't even figured out his soul mate!"
"I have a -?" Harry stuttered weakly.
"Be fair, sister. He's only twelve and he's only known the girl for coming up on two years," the shortest Fate quipped with a wicked grin.
The tallest Fate thumped the shortest on the head, causing the eyeball to pop free and land in one of her own eye sockets.
Harry wasn't sure if he was going to faint or throw up.
"Soul mates come as a sort of compensation for a shit life," Hades explained lightly, even as he steered Harry away from the Fates and into another part of the Underworld. "The Fates really don't have much else to do, so when they notice a particularly shit life, then they'll throw a bunch of options in the way, pick one out, and bada-bing bada-boom, you've got a soul mate. You following me so far Harry?"
"Uh... You're the Lord of the Dead, but I'm not dead, because the Fates didn't cut my thread, and because I had a shit life, I have a soul mate," Harry summarised.
Hades nodded and patted Harry on the back companionably. "Good. You're keeping up. We can move on," he declared, satisfied. "What do you see here?" he asked, and waved his hand at a table in the room they'd just entered.
Harry stepped up to the table. "That's Tom Riddle's diary," he said, recognising the item he'd just recently put a basilisk fang through.
"That," Hades said, a sneer on his face as he came up beside Harry, "is a piece of soul."
"A piece?" Harry repeated weakly.
Hades nodded. "Tommy boy figured out that if his soul was in pieces, it wouldn't come down here quite so easily," he explained. "And as such, he'd hang around topside for longer. Thanks to you, I've now got two pieces of that soul."
"Two?" Harry asked, and then he saw the sheet of white paper next to the diary. A sheet of white paper with a red mark on it. A red mark that looked exactly like Harry's scar. His eyes widened as the implication sunk in.
"Sorry kid, but you had a bit too," Hades confirmed. "But like I said, thanks to you, I've got two bits of his soul. Unfortunately for you kid, I can't just let you walk out of here, even if the Fates haven't cut your thread. You still kinda died, after all."
Harry was pretty sure he was getting closer to throwing up at that.
"But I like making deals, so here's one for you," Hades said with a smile as he set one hand on each of Harry's shoulders and bent down to look Harry in the eye. "You work for me for the next five years. You'll be topside, you can get your schmooze on and find that soul mate the Fates mentioned, and when the five years are up, you'll just keep living your life until the Fates do cut your thread."
Harry bit his lip in thought. "I'm twelve Sir," Harry said. "What sort of work would I do?"
Hades smile stretched out into a lazy, pleased grin. "Mostly cleaning up the mortal realm, just, you know, as you go. Sending down things that shouldn't be top side," Hades explained. "We got a deal?"
"You're asking me to kill things... that should be dead anyway, right?" Harry checked. He'd already killed something – the diary, the basilisk, and, now that he thought of it, he'd killed Quirrel as well – but that didn't mean it was something he really wanted to do.
"Bingo," Hades agreed. "Just things that should be dead anyway. More things like this -" he gestured to the diary, "- and you'll be sending down ghosts, ghouls, phantoms, spectres and the like. The dead should all be here, not there."
"How would I kill a ghost?" Harry nearly yelped.
Hades grinned again and straightened up. "You agree to do the job then?"
"Yeah," Harry agreed. "I guess so. Don't really have a whole lot of choice, do I?"
"You always have a choice, kiddo," Hades assured Harry. "But you've made one already, so, shake on it -" he held out one grey, long-fingered hand to Harry, "- and since you've got a magic wand, I'll teach you a spell that will kill dead things, every time, guaranteed, rather than forking out a dangerous mystical weapon. Only dead things though. Won't work on anything else, understand?"
Harry nodded, gingerly placed his hand into Hades, and they shook on it.
"Okay, you're gonna have to pay attention now Harry. There's no particular way you wave your wand for this, just point it at the thing, or if there's a lot of them, and sometimes there are, then you sweep your wand across them, kinda like pointing at a group, okay?" Hades explained.
Harry nodded.
"Right, incantation! νεκρό πράγμα είναι νεκρός," Hades recited carefully.
"Necro pragma einai necros," Harry repeated the words, just as carefully.
Hades nodded. "Close enough that it'll work," he approved. "Teach that to whoever you want to as well, by the way, should get topside cleaned up even faster. Alright, time for you to get back there, get to work," Hades smirked. "And of course, get your schmooze on."
~The End~