Insert standard disclaimer. Don't own, don't make money, haven't read all 700 thousand plus fanfics for this fandom.

It was the day before they had to head home on the train and Ron and Hermione had finally managed to sit down at one of the study tables and drag Harry along with them. he seemed to have something on his mind, more than just grief, after what happened in the ministry and they were determined to get the truth out of him. Harry was so tired he didn't even fight them.

'Merlin mate,' Ron exclaimed after Harry had finished filling him and Hermione in on all the complicated bullshit that seemed to be his life; what with prophesies, mortal enemies, and just about everything else that went wrong for him. 'Fate must really hate you.'

'She does, she really, really does,' Harry muttered in agreement, head down on the table hiding his face.

'I mean, did you do something in a past life to piss her off or something?' Ron Joked.

'I turned her down, no one told me how to do it gently.'

'Yeah, I know … Hang on, what?'

'I didn't want to go out with her and was too young to understand that there was a certain finesse to be employed in those kinds of situations. She kind of took offence, not that I blame her, and then she proved she knew how to hold a grudge.'

There was silence, and then, 'good one, Harry, the jokes on us,' Hermione giggled a little nervously. 'For a second I almost believed that you really were in such a situation where you turned down a date with the personification of fate.'

Harry finally looked up then, 'what?'

'Well, the way you were going on about it, it sounded like you meant something similar to the whole ball fiasco again. I assume you're just joking around, or you meant that you somehow managed to go against some other prophecy or preordained event already in your rather short life.' Hermione managed to explain, and felt Ron relax next to her as he realised that Harry was just messing with them, or being overly meta-meta… whatever that ridiculous muggle word was that Hermione used once or twice when talking about novels she really liked.

Harry blinked, and then smiled at them. 'Of course I'm joking, Hermione. Even if it does sound like something I would do, I doubt a mere mortal would ever have the chance to meet fate and cause that kind of situation to occur.'

There was a bit more awkward laughter as Ron and Hermione got over the last of their embarrassment from believing Harry was being literal for even that split second. Soon they are onto the subject of how to survive the coming year and Ron and Hermione agreed to never bring up Fate's hatred of Harry, ever, again.

That night Harry had a visitor. He wasn't really that surprised to see her standing over him with an eyebrow raised, she seemed to have a knack for showing up when she wasn't wanted.

'I hold a grudge, do I?'

Harry's own eye brow rose in response. 'You waited fifty years before condemning me to a mortal life that you then screwed around with and made a living hell for the last fifteen years, that sounds like a grudge to me, as well as disproportionate punishment.

'What were you doing listening in on my conversations for any way.'

Fate gave a delicate shrug, 'I thought you were going to let slip your little secrete, and I couldn't have missed that, could I?'

'Still enjoying any chance you can get to watch me in pain? As I said, disproportionate.'

'I am a deity, and you humiliated me. The first person to dismiss me so cruelly and try to escape my grasp, I had to make sure you were the last.

'It's not that I hate you, I just set you up as an example and found that I enjoyed watching you squirm in my grasp.'

Harry snorted. 'You and my father hate each other to a legendary scale. You took offence at my existence and used that little misunderstanding as an excuse to display your dislike.'

'Misunderstanding? What a gross understatement,' Fate said with a sneer. Harry wondered if she had been giving Snape lessons.

'I was a hundred years old and barely knew what a date was, let alone all the all the unspoken rules. You were constantly arguing and niggling at my father and I had seen the two of you return from so called "dates" before, after which you would joke about becoming my mother. Excuse me if I was abrupt in my dismissal, I had assumed you were just trying to irritate my father was not actually serious.'

'Of course I was just trying to irritate Death, but that's irrelevant.

'The point, dearest Harry, is that not even Death himself would have turned down one of my invitations, no matter how irritated he is at my interference in his work, and yet you had the guts to do it when you were still nothing significant.

'Ignorant in general you might have been, Son of death you might be, but I am a Lady and deserve to be treated as such.'

Harry sighed, there was no arguing with her. While lady was a bit of a stretch in his mind she was most definitely a female, of the canine persuasion.

Not that he was stupid enough to say that out loud, ever. He was already learning that pissing Fate off was the absolute worst thing you could ever do.

'As a Lady, isn't forgiveness divine?'

'Of course it is, and I will forgive you, once you've learned your lesson and served as an appropriate warning to every other entity immortal or otherwise.'

'And that will be when?'

Her smile was predatory. 'When you have managed to survive a mortal life of at least a hundred despite my interference. As much as that may suggest that you have a hope against me at least it should deprive Death of your company for a while.'

And with that she disappeared.

Harry lay back down in his bed, not that he had left it, and sighed heavily. He missed home, and his father as strange as that sounded given that his father was the personification of Death.

Fate really, really, hated him, and his father.