Hello hello hello! And so I started a new story. I know. I'm a heathen. But I couldn't resist TT_TT The plot bunny power is too strong... But yeah! I hope you all enjoy! XD


Violet Potter was tired.

So, so tired.

The crackling sound of the remainder of houses burning all around her broke through the tentative silence. Slowly, there were low murmurs of both joy and grief as the spectators all around them got over their shock and began to react to the outcome.

Violet Potter had triumphed against the Dark Lord Voldemort.

But it had come at a price.

For four long years, both she and Voldemort had hunted each other down, a vicious game of chase that resulted in death all around them. They had been through more duels than she could remember and had almost always come to a stalemate before their comrades had whisked them off by Apparition to tend to their wounds before they succumbed to them.

And when Violet Potter lay on that bed, nearly bleeding to death while her friends rushed all around her, panicked and trying to save her, she slipped into a strange meditative state.

And in that death-like trance, she would always meet him.

Voldemort.

But not actually him.

It was his true self.

She saw the broken, handsome form of a young man that could have been great. Who was corrupted from a young age and forced to endure an existence of loneliness. Who threw himself into the Dark Arts to prove to someone, anyone, that he mattered as well. That his blood status didn't define who he was. That his destitute background didn't determine who he was going to be.

She watched as his desperate ambition became his undoing. With each book on Black Magic he read, his own magic would become that much darker and thicker, more vile. With each dark spell he practiced, without the help of Family Magic to protect him, the more his thoughts grew twisted and corrupt. And with each Horcrux he made, the more his sanity frayed into nothingness.

She saw everything.

And just like her, he saw everything as well.

Just as she saw his true form, he saw hers. The trembling, emaciated form of a little girl, painted in bruises and donning tattered clothing much too large for her, wishing, praying that there was someone out there who loved her.

Just as she viewed his life, he viewed hers.

He saw all that made her her, all of the horrors and hardships that she had gone through, all of the betrayals from all around her, saw her withstanding the scorn of both the public and her close friends. He saw it all, and watched as she rose above it. Witnessed her blood, sweat and tears and she worked to protect all that he wanted to destroy.

Violet didn't know when it occurred, whether it had happened over time or had been there from the very beginning, but both of them realized that their souls were intertwined.

Not in a dark, magical way, no. But fatefully.

They were almost two halves of one entity, light where the other was dark, loving while the other hated. Strength, weakness, sanity, madness, power, subjugation, courage, fear, morality, sin, life and death, they were both two sides of the same coin.

Violet knew him better than she even knew herself.

And she hated it.

Hated what a complete waste it all was.

Hated that what he could have been hadn't come to be, all because fate dealt him a bad hand.

Hated that he had been a hollow, almost soulless shade of his magnificent former self.

Hated that he had been pushed to such an extent that he had to make himself such in his mad quest for power.

Hated that he had ruined so many lives, including hers, in that search.

Hated that even though she understood him, pitied him, she was forced to put him down like a mad dog.

Because that was what he was in the end, she thought, as she stared at his crumpled body in front of her kneeling form. A mad dog that needed to be put down for the sake of not only others, but itself.

As the people around her gained volume, either exclaiming their joy for the war's end or wailing their grief at seeing a lifeless loved one, Violet felt nothing.

She was empty. Void.

Slowly, as she stared down at the man that had once been the great Lord Voldemort, and before that had been Tom Marvolo Riddle, a single tear slid down her cheek.

Why?

What was it all for?

Was it… really worth it?

She felt a sudden, soothing chill surround her, and without even looking up, knew who it was.

There, in all his glory that no one but only she could see, was Death.

His form was ever shifting, his flowing robes around him possessing the same dark silvery fluidity that her own invisibility cloak had. Which, once one thought about it, was obvious, because it had come from him in the first place.

His face was covered by a long hood, and which parts weren't covered were shrouded in shadow that made it impossible for her to distinguish any actual features he possessed. The only thing she did see, however, was his eyes. They were a silver so bright that they appeared white from within the shadows, surrounding his sharp, observing pupils. Eyes that were so striking that one couldn't help but stop and stare as he peered into their very soul.

The saying that the eyes were the window to the soul came from him, after all. It was how he knew whether it was a person's time or not, by looking into their eyes to see into their very soul.

But Violet Potter had seen him so many times that she was no longer afraid of him. In fact, she trusted him, even more than she trusted her own friends and comrades.

Ron and Hermione were precious to her, but they didn't know the real her. Sure, she's told them all about her, about her childhood and all of her experiences, but, there was always a… dissonance. No matter how close they were, no matter how willing to shed blood for each other and no matter how much they loved each other, they still put her, however small, on a pedestal.

She was Violet Potter, the Girl Who Lived. She survived everything that old kook Dumbledore had thrown at her and had survived every curveball that Fate sent her way. She was The Chosen One, the person who would lead them to victory, so strong that she killed a Basilisk at the tender age of 12, cast a Patronus at 13, emerged victor of the Triwizard Tournament at 14 and led an entire rebellion at 15.

No matter how much Violet wished for her friends to accept her as her, they just… couldn't. They were simply unable to. She had done such staggering feats one after the other that they simply couldn't treat her as one of them even if they tried.

Violet didn't resent them for it. She knew it was beyond their control. Hell, if it had been any other person, she herself would be just as star struck no matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise.

But Death. He was her one constant. Even in the beginning stages of the war, where the public had turned on her once again for the large-scale destruction that her battles with Voldemort would leave in their wake, Death never wavered. He remained at her side, just as he had at Voldemort's.

Of course, Violet knew that Voldemort hadn't found Death's presence nearly as comforting as she had. He had been absolutely petrified of the entity. He felt as if it was a reminder of his own mortality. Even though he had made a number of Horcruxes and had the knowledge and magical power of a god, Death still hovered around him.

Violet sighed, closing her eyes. Death never let anyone escape. It was a fact of life that one couldn't escape for long. Of course, one could try to run, but eventually, Death always found them. Even with pseudo-immortality, like Horcruxes or the Elixir of Life, Death would inevitably come for them in the end.

"Tell me, Death. You see everything, do you not?"

Her breathing shallowed as she opened her sharp green eyes to look at the former Dark Lord's body. His pale, serpentine face still displayed the terror he felt as he sensed death descend upon him.

"Yes, Mistress."

Death had taken to calling her 'Mistress' ever since she had disarmed Voldemort in one of their earlier duels. When one day, after a long, bloody day filled with the demise of a good fraction of the original Order of the Phoenix, she asked him why, and he replied simply with, "You are my Mistress, the only one who can seek my council. Earned by collecting my tokens, you have proven to be my champion."

He never elaborated. When she asked him again, he replied the same, never one word changing from his usual response.

"Then tell me. Show me. What could he have been, had he not have fallen into corruption? Would he have been mediocre, like he accused us all of being? Or," Violet looked up into the dark, moonless sky, barely illuminated by the light of a few stars, "Like I suspect, would he have been Great? A god among men…"

Death's silence was all the answer she needed.

She laughed, a quiet, broken sound. "Would we have met?" She met his glowing white eyes, her own glistening with emotion. "What did Fate have in store for us? What could we have been, had they not insisted on ending our connection before it even began?"

Death stared blankly at her, offering no answer.

Violet's lithe, gaunt form trembled slightly. "Tell me. Would we have been strangers? Friends? Could he have been my rival? My teacher? My mentor? My lover? Tell me!"

She trembled in emotion for a moment before all the energy left her and she slumped bonelessly into the muddy ground, scattered with gouges and stained with blood.

"I… I'm just so tired, Death… so tired. What is the point of all of this? This victory? No, I can't call it that. This is no victory. No victory should feel this hollow." She emptily intoned.

"No… this is a mercy killing. This is me putting him out of his misery, the shell of a man that had once had the potential to be magnificent."

Another one of those broken laughs escaped her, lips pulled into a cruel, sardonic smile.

"But they don't understand that, do they? No, to them, this is the ultimate victory. The good triumphing over evil. In a few decades, he will simply be written off as just a madman who took pleasure in killing others, just as Grindewald was."

She sighed. "And me? What is waiting for me? Another empty existence of being gazed upon in awe, standing miles above anybody else? Being praised by the masses one moment and detested by them the next? Being expected to solve every problem for them simply because they were too lazy or cowardly to do it themselves? They sent a 16-year-old girl to fight their battle, Death. A child. I have made my peace with that fact, but what if they do it to somebody else? Nobody deserves such a fate."

Slowly she reached up and gently gripped the edge of his silvery cloak.

"Take me with you, Death. Please. I have nothing here. Nothing to live for. My friends will move on. Nobody will really miss me. I'll be heralded as a martyr. Just… please. I'm tired, Death. So tired. I want warmth. I want love. I want a family. I wanted… to save him. I… have nothing here. Take me with you. I'll be able to find happiness there."

Death gazed at the broken form of Violet Potter, his cloak ever-shifting, hiding his true form. His piercing white eyes regarded her as he processed her request.

"My Mistress… I cannot take you."

Violet Potter shut her eyes in pain.

"But… I can offer you this."

She froze, not daring herself to hope.

"Your wishes for warmth, love, family… and to redeem the soul of Tom Marvolo Riddle… I can offer that to you."

Violet was still, not even trusting herself to breathe.

"There is an opportunity of another life that I can offer you, but be warned, your identity as Violet Lillianna Potter will be lost if you so choose to take it. Although you will carry reminders of this life, you will be bound to that Identity. Depending on your choices, you will see through another's eyes as the Violet Lillianna Potter which Could Have Been grows and lives. She will have everything you have not had. A family, affection, stability. And you… you will watch on in envy as she receives all that you ever desired without lifting a finger. You will never again be her, nor she you. What say you, Mistress? Are you willing to live, for no one but yourself?"

Violet gazed at the shadowy form of Death, unable to think in light of the magnitude of what had been offered to her. Just one thought came out.

"But… why? Why me?"

It was impossible tell for sure, but the shadows shifted around his face for a split second and she was able to glimpse what looked like a sad, pitying smile.

"You are my Mistress, my champion, my favorite human, and yet you offer yourself to me. I have watched you from whence you were but a babe, from the moment you survived the encounter with Tom Marvolo Riddle. It was not your time, and yet, I watched. You overcame all your obstacles with grace and accepted your fate without a word of complaint. Only now, when you ask me to take you with me, do you question your lot in life. I have chosen my Mistress well, and so I deem to offer her what she wants."

Piercing white eyes met teary green. "And so I ask of you again, Mistress, what say you? Will you leave behind your identity of Violet Lillianna Potter and don the skin of a new identity, with nothing more than your memories and knowledge? Or will you continue your existence in this body until it is your time, where I welcome you into my domain? What say you?"

Violet looked at him, really looked, the same as she had done the first time he had appeared before her.

"Will you accompany me, Death, my eternal, everlasting friend?"

"I will, my Mistress."

Violet Potter slowly stood. She turned and looked at the people behind her, all scrambling to salvage what could be salvaged. Everybody, witches and wizards alike were in their own little worlds, savoring the defeat of Voldemort with their friends and families. Not once did a person glance at her.

And she was absolutely fine with that, because looking at all these people who had what she didn't, she had her answer.

She turned to Death, who, ever patiently, waited by her side. Her lips turned up into the tiniest of smiles, almost blindingly bright, and she raised her head and squared her shoulders.

"Yes, Death. I'm ready. Take me to my next great adventure. I'll live my life how I was supposed to have lived it."


Aaaaannnndddd that's a wrap! Thank you all for reading! I'll probably update pretty soon because the Plot Bunny power is too strong...

But yeah! I hope you all have an absolutely amazingly fantabulous day! XD Until next time!