A/N: OK...before I begin...
I was going through my files on an older computer and was surprised when I suddenly found this old story which I had started years ago... but I had never finished and I had thought I had lost for good.
I never expected to find it again and I only have about 6-7 chapters of it written. Never the less...while I don't expect to write any chapters of this story for a long time (since I'm concentrating on Paradox)...I thought it would be a shame not to at least post what I have...
Having said that...If you like it I may be influenced to continue this old gem.
SO...without further due...here is the second ever story I ever wrote. (Lord of Light and Darkness was my first)
I started writing this around...or even before I started to write Digital (which I hope to also continue some day)
Anyway...please enjoy...and if possible review.
(I'll be adding a new chapter (6-7 in total I think) every few days or so. (Give you something to read while you wait for the next chapter of Paradox)
Presenting...
Harry the Reaper
One time disclaimer (For the whole story): I do not own the Harry Potter universe. JK Rowling does
'Most' of the stories ideas and references towards 'Grim Reapers' and 'Gravelings' belong to the 'Dead like me' television series and to whoever owns them... the rest are mine.
Story Type: partial Harry Potter/Dead-Like-Me Crossover
Story Category: Alternate Universe, Crossover
Story Information: A Harry as an undead Grim Reaper story.
What happens when Harry dies but comes back as one of deaths personal messengers: A Grim Reaper.
Gifted with the powers of death and immortality and working with the devious Gravelings who's sole purpose is to bring 'death' to mortals at their destined ends, Harry now has to collect souls as a living. What will Hogwarts be like with this new and deathly improved 'undead' Harry.
Rated: T to Mature
Pairings: H/Hr
Time Lines: Hogwarts Era
Warnings: Violence, Coarse language, Suicide, Severe character death. (basically everything to do with death) Story may or may not follow canon.
"Through death there is relief, through relief comes happiness, with happiness you gain a true understanding in the way of things, it is the reapers way."
- Dread Lord Sebelia de Mort, Master Reaper, 'Thumb' of Deaths Hand, Deaths Main Advisor and personal bitch -
Chapter Beta'd by:
RPMcMurphy from 'Perfect Imagination and Herman Tumbleweed
Chapter 1
The-boy-who-was-reaped
It was a normal summer's evening near the end of July.
Somewhere in England near a small park, in a little known place called Little Whinging, Surrey, two people, one a little boy of nearly eleven years, the other, a little girl, a year younger, nearly ten, are about to meet. One of them, the little boy, is running away from a few thugs, trying to save what he is sure is his life, away from the local gang of hooligans, led by his cousin.
The other, the little girl, is a Grim Reaper and is trying to catch up with him…for one reason and one reason alone: To claim his soul before his destined time is up.
The little boy doesn't know it yet, but like many others before him, he is already dead.
It's only a matter of time, before death, the little girl in fact, catches up with him.
Why is that? How can I be so sure about this you ask yourself? Well, no real reason….except one: Early that morning Death itself got up to make its next move in the everlasting game of life and death and decided there and then, that it was his time to die. Simple as that, no questions asked. I tag you…you're it…you're out… dead…gone.
It is the way of things. Nobody ever said life was supposed to be fair, but at least this young boy was soon to find out (sooner than most, but later than others) that life was anything but fair. At the same moment Death made that fateful decision, the young girl set out to find him and to end it all. To end his suffering, to end his life.
Breathing heavily, completely exhausted and at his wit's end, the boy seizes a moment to stop and catch his breath. Slowly, tenderly favoring his battered body, he leans heavily against a near by tree. His eyes wide open, his veins pumping ever dwindling oxygen to his brain at an ever decreasing rate, he takes a moment to frantically scan the immediate park area for any sign of an immediate treat.
Thinking that he has finally lost his 'unwanted escort', those 'part time park ruffians and full time school yard bullies,' led by his dear cousin Dudley, he takes a look at his newest wounds and groans pitifully. It doesn't take him long to realize that he is extremely bruised and bleeding from many cuts all over his tender, malnourished young body.
His blood-soaked clothes, cracked rib, and broken arm, are only partly a testimony to that. For, even now he is feeling himself growing weaker as his predetermined time draws near.
Shaking his head, he sighs. Slowly, stumbling, shifting his weight from foot to foot to minimize his sudden weakness, he slowly starts to walk back home. If he could honestly call it that. Nobody should have to fear their home.
He is moving with extreme reluctance, knowing full well what to expect once he walks through the door. More trouble…more sorrow…more pain. He really doesn't want to go there, but what else could he do? he asks himself again for what seemed like the umpteenth time.
All attempts to phone or ask for help had long since fallen on deaf ears and failed. All former attempts or reports made by his teachers or indeed from any and all child services or even visits from the police to help him had all mysteriously disappeared, stopped or found themselves misplaced time and time again. But he knew, if he didn't go home, 'things' would only get worse.
Nobody loved him, he knew that by now. It was a fact of his life. You see, Harry, for that is the little boy's name, is not what you and I would call a 'normal person', much to his displeasure I might add, because his greatest wish would have been to be just that: Normal. However, it was not to be. Not for him. Not anymore. Not ever.
Harry, for all of his wishes, is anything but normal. He is what you and I would call a Wizard. A living, breathing, magic using entity.
Unfortunately, for Harry that is, it was because of that very reason why his relatives hated him so much. In fact, they hated everything about him. Anything to do with that dreaded 'M' word…
…Magic.
They hated anything which could in anyway be classified as 'not normal'. They hated him so much that in their opinion he was dirt, less even… and it showed.
Harry's bedroom was an old cupboard under the stairs, just barely enough for him to squeeze into. All he ever owned were the few clothes which he always wore on his back, and even those were nothing but third degree, hand-me-down rags, passed down to him from his cousin, and always several sizes too large.
Toys?
He had none.
Birthday presents?
What was that?
Food? When he could get it, it was usually just a few meager scraps from the dinner table, hardly enough to feed Dudley's three legged, one-eyed pet hamster, and no where enough to feed a growing young boy such as himself.
I wast not like the Dursleys didn't have it.
They had lot of it. Dudley himself got three or four helping for dinner alone, let's not even speak about breakfast and supper; of which Harry had none.
Breakfast ? Supper? No way! Not good enough for a little freak like him, his uncle would say.
Even dinner was not always set in stone. For that he would have to work; do long hours of chores, while his spoiled cousin did nothing but sat in front of the television all day. That was when he wasn't out bullying children in the near by park with his friends. Even then Harry would only eat whenever he was lucky enough to have finished all of his daily chores. Most days he got no food at all.
In short, he was their slave. No less, and definitely no more. Little did Harry know this was all about to change…. all it would take was his death.
Slowly his house, No!...their house…never his, came into view.
All so slowly, all so painfully aware of what was about to happen to him, the moment he stepped inside, Harry stumbled up the street and was just about to re-enter 'Dursktraz,' his own personal prison, his relative's property, when…:
"Hey look… there he is! Get him!" yelled the voice of his dear cousin, Dudley, from the other side of the lane.
Almost immediately, just long enough for the rest to identify their target, six other boys, all larger and stronger looking than Harry charged towards him.
In full panic Harry tried to run the last few steps to the Dursley's driveway and then to his slightly less painful 'freedom' at the hands of his merciless uncle only to stumble and fall. Had Harry been in full health he might have succeeded. However, he was not.
Already severely weakened by his earlier dealings with the same boys he only just manages to stumble past the Dursley's gate before he is grabbed roughly from behind by one of the thugs and pulled back, away from the 'freedom' of his relative's house, right into the depths and darkness of a few nearby bushes.
Since it was already late, none of the neighbors saw anything. Even if one of them had taken just a moment to look out of their windows, all they would have seen would have been the retreating shadows of a few boys, but nothing more.
Harry never even had a chance to shout before his face and therefore his mouth was covered by a cloth held by one of the boys. No help would come that night for the weary and definitely no help for a poor unwanted, unloved and heavily in pain orphan named Harry Potter.
Nobody noticed a young girl watch all of this with sad young eyes from the other side of the road. It was not her job to interfere. Her part had yet to come.
"It's always the young who die the most tragic deaths," she said to herself, sighing before she followed, silently.
Death had come to Little Whinging. It wouldn't be too long now.
Harry never knew how many punches he felt that night. He never knew how many times his cousin and his gang had kicked him. He definitely didn't want to even think about where. It didn't take long for him to pass out from the pain and fall into Morpheus's blissful arms of unconsciousness sleep.
He had already passed out, long before the gang had started to 'finish him off', with sticks and stones only to leave his battered, bloody, bruised, barely alive body behind, turned upside down, headfirst, in the nearest trashcan.
Miraculously, even then, he didn't die. His magic wouldn't allow it. Throughout the whole ordeal his magic did its best to heal him. Always just enough to barely keep him alive. Just enough for help to come. But this night it never came.
Then even it was slowly failing, slowly but surely even it was giving up hope. It wouldn't be long now… but not yet. One thing still had to be done.
The next thing Harry knew was an overwhelming pain all over his body as he tried to crawl out of the waste after his trashcan fell over. Moaning pitifully, he next tried his best to stand up but couldn't.
The next he heard the voice of a young girl as she stood before him. Looking up wearily, afraid that she might be a member of Dudley's gang who had come to finish him off, he sees her holding out her hand to him.
"Hey there…let me help you," the girl said kindly, a sad look on her face. It looked like as if she had been crying only mere moments before.
Only too happy to comply, feebly thinking that a crying girl wouldn't do him anymore harm, not caring who she was or indeed who he was talking to, and too weak to get up himself anyway, Harry gratefully accepted her hand. What's the worst that could happen, he thought.
Slowly the two made their way towards the Dursley's front door. Harry never bothered to ask or even wonder how or why she knew where he lived. He simply was in too much pain to ask, or even care.
"This is where I leave you," the girl said kindly. "It won't be too long now, I'll see you soon," she said just before she took a moment to run her hand down his shoulder in a particular pattern, a sort of grabbing motion as if grabbing something away from him.
Little did Harry know that it was his soul.
The next moment she turned around, then before Harry could even thank her, in the blink of an eye, she was gone.
Too weary and consumed with pain to fully comprehend what had really happened to him, Harry tried to quietly open the door, hoping to sneak inside without his uncle or aunt knowing, but found that it was locked. Sighing heavily, steeling himself for the next part of the show of what he felt was surely going to be the last page in the sad story of his life, he reached up and rang the door bell, then he collapsed on the steps of the Dursleys' front door.
Moments later the door opened to reveal the sneer of his uncle's huge, overweight fat and ugly face. But Harry never fully noticed his uncle open the door and scream at him to get his lazy, good for nothing, butt inside. He hardly felt the man grab him and haul him into the house. He didn't hear his uncle swear about the blood…his blood which he was getting all over their expensive carpet.
He slightly felt the sharp pain of his uncles leather belt across his now bare back side, and heard the man screaming at him for 'getting into fights' but by that time he was already too far gone to really care.
His last few moments of this particular part of his life were fleeting images of himself being thrown head first into the small cupboard under the stairs which he called his 'room'. The last few thoughts of his life which swept through his mind were that is was finally over.
He welcomed Death.
Then he died.
Outside the Dursleys' property the young girl smiled.
Her job now done, relieved that the boy's misery was finally over, she turned to walk away. She knew there would be no spiritual entity for her to take care of tonight.
Not this night…not for her…not anymore. Tonight a new Reaper would be born and she would at long last get her long deserved promotion.
Everything which has a beginning must have an end. It is the natural order of things.
A few seconds later there was a flash of bright white light and then she was gone.
Somewhere in Scotland in a castle known by some as Hogwarts, School of Witch Craft and Wizardry, to others as an old ruin in the Scottish highlands, an old man named Dumbledore is sleeping, dreaming a wonderful dream of himself as an all powerful Emperor and God of the world. Suddenly he is roused from his deep sleep as numerous objects of different types and sizes in his office start to scream and whistle, signifying that something was wrong, once again, with his number one 'unwanted, but necessary evil' charge, named Harry Potter.
Knowing full well who they were tied to, the old man grumbles then contemplates whether he could safely ignore them and go back to sleep. After all it wasn't the first time he had heard their sounds. It had been quite often, in fact, nearly everyday. Then again never this loud.
Deciding that he couldn't safely ignore them, the old man curses the boy's name for what felt like a millionth time then somehow, slowly, he wills himself out of bed.
Then it happened. Dumbledore had just managed to force one leg out of his bed, when another, louder alarm went off. It was a high pitched sound …and the only sound having to do with his unwanted charge which Dumbledore actually feared. The shrill sound of death.
Swearing loudly, using words long forbidden by human kind, Dumbledore practically threw the rest of his body out of his bed and ran to his office. Reaching the offending item in record time, he swears again then runs to collect his wand from his bed side table.
Having successfully retrieved said wand he quickly conjures and dons some robes. Then he races back into his office towards the fire. A quick handful of Floo later and he was gone.
AN: And cut... next chapter two days...