-1Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter
1
Harry laid in bed, splay legged, hands behind his head, and thinking about… stuff. Obviously.
For instance, over the past few nights he had been getting strange dreams about, well, anything and everything. Almost as if someone was trying to keep him from having nightmares about his godfather and keep out nighttime visions from Voldemort. Well… it was working.
Last nights dream had been about penguins dancing to rap on the surface of the sun with monkey dance partners. He knew that wasn't normal. And it was stupid to write to Dumbledore about it, so he just left it. Besides, the response would be something like, "Harry, I appreciate your concern in this matter, but I believe that you just making things up to get to grimwauld palace is childish." yatta yatta yatta, blah blah blah, and all that.
Without warning, there was a flash of light, a brief pain, and he was out of it.
When Harry came to, he was lying in a pile of rubble. He sat up and turned his head towards where the living room used to be, right where the charred bodies of Dudley, his Aunt and Uncle were.
Something else was also off. There where people searching the rubble frantically, Dumbledore included, and not one of them noticed him.
"Professor Dumbledore?" Harry asked him, getting up and walking over, intending to set things straight.
Dumbledore continued sifting through the rubble desperately, not even glancing up.
"Okay… since that didn't work… and I'm getting desperate here… DUMBLEDORE, YOU BETTER TELL ME WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON OR I'LL SHOVE THOSE STUPID SHERBERT LEMON CANDIES OF YOURS HALF WAY UP YOUR ASS!!" Harry covered his head in the anticipation of getting whacked, but it never came.
Everyone continued as if nothing had been said. Harry stared at them in disbelief.
He had talked to Dumbledore like that and no one had reprimanded him for it? Something was off…
"Professor Dumbledore, there is no way Harry could have survived this…" Trailed off Kingsley as he walked towards Dumbledore. Dumbledore hesitated, then stopped, tears silently streaming down his face.
"Arrg! What the Hell is going on?! Am I some sort of ghost or something?!" Harry shouted, looking at his hands. They didn't look see-through to him…
"Something like that." replied a slurred lazy voice behind him. Harry spun around to find himself looking at a girl in baggy clothes and dark green hair pulled into a pony tail at the nape of her neck, laying on the remains of a wall.
It didn't take that long to figure out that she knew more than what she seemed to.
"So… what happens now?" Harry asked her. Hey, he might as well know what he was getting into here.
Slowly, she got up, stretched and yawned.
"Well, you've got two choices. 1) because you have so many regrets, you cannot yet make it into heaven, so I leave and you become a ghost. Or option 2) I erase your memory so you have no regrets and ship your ass off to heaven." She explained lazily, ticking them off on her fingers.
Harry shifted uncomfortably. He didn't like either options. He wanted to stay and see the outcome of the war, see and talk to his friends again.
"Isn't there a third choice?" he asked uncomfortably in the silence.
"Yep. Glad you asked." she answered with a smile, "You become a Grim Reaper."
Harry stared at her.
"I take it that's what you are?" he asked, receiving a nod in confirmation. "Well… what exactly does this job entail?" the Grim Reapers grin grew wider.
"Well, since you asked, I am inclined to tell you that you may call me Jev. As for what it entails, it entails you fighting off any demons or angry and vengeful spirits to keep them from causing harm, playing spy, and keeping the balance." Jev explained to him calmly.
Harry considered it for a few moments before asking, "What if I only wanna stick around for a certain amount of time?"
Jev smiled and said, "Here, let me explain things to you. Should you choose to become a Grim Reaper, it would be your duty to try and help maintain the balance between nature and humans. Basically, observe them, report their actions to the big man, and follow your orders. To do this, you will be given a temporary human body to be seen by humans with. This body resembles your human one in almost every way, except old injuries that would normally bother you don't. If your body if destroyed, then you can either, if you have helped enough spirits, go to a place specially reserved for Grim Reapers, get another one if it's safe to, or become a full Grim Reaper. If you choose Grim Reaper now, you will never go to heaven. The rest will be explained to you in a book."
Harry took a few moments to let all of this soak in.
"Can they see you right now?" he asked Jev after a few moments, motioning towards the broken order.
"Nope. Because I don't feel like being seen right now, and not to mention that I am higher ranking, therefore I don't have a temporary body." Jev reasoned for him.
"I choose Reaper." Harry decided. As soon as the words left his mouth a jolt of pain seared through his body, and he opened his eyes to a light so bright he had to close his eyes.
When he could open them again, Jev was standing there with one eyebrow raised.
"New look looks good on you. And this is how you will work without getting noticed by friends or family, it is your 'true form.' You will look like your old self all of the other times that you aren't fighting or in spirit form." she calmly explained to him, pulling out a mirror and pushing something on it to make it full length.
As Harry got up, he realized that he was holding a large scythe that seemed as if it should weigh twice as much as he did, but it only seemed to weigh about 10 pounds, its two blades were made out of a shiny black metal and a skull was perched on top. The handle which he guessed he was supposed to carry it with was wrapped in white cloth bandages.
He wore black cargo pants, steel toed work boots, and a grey t-shirt with the sleeves seemingly ripped off.
His hair was white and his skin a practically brown tan, his eyes had become a sort of transparent red. He looked like a anorexic drow without pointed ears.
"Your Godfather and father picked out your shirt. They destroyed it themselves. Your mother was smart and let them only choose the shirt and scythe. The rest is her idea." Jev calmly explained.
Harry nodded. It only made sense, after all. Right now he was dead.
"Okay, lets walk a ways down the street. You aren't gonna have a body to be visible by humans until I give it to you, so to pass the time, what's your story gonna be?" Jev casually asked him as she shrunk the mirror once again and began to walk down the road.
Harry hummed as he thought, large scythe slung over his shoulder, and came up with it.
"Jev, hit me in the eye when I get a body." he told her, pointing at her as he did so. She looked at him with one eyebrow raised.
"Did your death rattle your brains, if you had any to begin with?" she asked him calmly, looking foreword again.
"No! If you give me a black eye, I can say that my Uncle hit me and I got ticked so I crawled out the window and ended up falling asleep in the park! An explosion woke me up so I hid in the woods!" he told her, just as they were outside the park.
Jev turned to him and snapped her fingers, then promptly pulled back her fist and hit him so hard that he fell backwards.
"You will get a spirit companion who helps Reapers with information." she told him as he sat up holding his eye, "More information will be found in this book. Humans can't read it, it looks like a journal."
And with that, she was gone.
Harry sat up, dazed, still holding his eye. He pulled a strand of hair in front of his eyes, and seeing that it was black, breathed in relief.
The order had apparated by the time he got back to the house, well, most of them had. Remus was still sifting through the remains of the house, his hands bloody with the effort. Harry grimaced, knowing what he had to do.
"Remus, what are you doing?" he asked, walking over the rubble. Remus looked up, his face full of confusion, then saw Harry and his face became full of surprise.
"H-Harry… but how…?" he stuttered, eyes tearing up.
Harry grinned like the idiot he was and pointed at his black eye. Which was really starting to annoy.
"Uncle Vernon hit me and I ended up falling asleep in the park. Heard an explosion and woke up, went straight into the woods." he explained shortly. Remus gave him a strange look.
"Harry… the explosion didn't make a sound… that's why the muggle cops aren't around…" Remus explained, reaching up to feel Harry's forehead as he did so.
Harry froze, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jev laughing her ass off at the far side of the ruins.
"And this black eye looks recent…" Remus trailed.
Harry sighed. Screw it! He was gonna tell them the truth without revealing the truth!
"Dammit, your persistent. Okay, look, I was caught in the explosion, and by means in which I cannot tell you, I pretty much made a deal with the devil, and here I am now. Happy?" Harry explained, using his hands to emphasize what he was saying.
Apparently, Remus wasn't, because he blacked out.