Disclaimer: I own neither Harry Potter nor Death Note.

Harry Potter and the Death Note

Chapter Four - Grim Tidings

"Mum won't even look at you anymore, you know?"

Harry rolled over on his bed and stared at Dudley. "And?" he asked. Was this going anywhere? Was it supposed to have a point?

"You killed Dad, didn't you? That's why she's so afraid of you."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Your father died of a massive heart attack," he said. "How could I have killed him?" Nevermind that he had. The question had Ryuk in stitches, so it was a good thing that Dudley couldn't see him.

"I don't know," Dudley muttered. "Magic?"

Harry gave him a look that made Dudley flinch. "Didn't he die before I started to learn magic, though?"

"I don't know how your stupid magic works!" Dudley shouted. "I just know that you've done… things! You've got Mum so scared she doesn't even make you do any work, and Dad died because of you!" He took a step into the room.

Harry's eyes narrowed. "I wouldn't," Harry said quietly. "You're not in the best of health yourself, Dudders. You might have a heart attack like your father did."

Dudley froze. "So you did do something to him," he said.

"I didn't say that," Harry responded. "Did you hear me say that? All I'm saying is that you're in awful shape and heart attacks happen sometimes out of the blue." He grinned. "But then, with your health, it really wouldn't be out of the blue, would it?"

"I've been on a diet," Dudley protested. "People would think it was weird if I had a heart attack!"

Harry gave him a pitying look. "It really doesn't work like that, Dudders," he said. "You've done all sorts of damage to yourself being the whale that you are. The fact that you're on a diet now doesn't undo that."

"Listen here, you little freak," Dudley said, taking a step into the room.

Harry sighed. He pulled out the Note and wrote Dudley's name on it. It took only seconds for the Note to take effect, and then Dudley was spasming on the ground, crying out in pain. "Aunt Petunia, something's wrong with Dudley!" Harry called.

Aunt Petunia rushed into the room and let out a horrified shriek. "What have you done?" she asked. She dropped to her knees rather than calling an ambulance.

"Shouldn't you call someone?" Harry asked. "He looks like he needs help."

"Then go call someone!" Petunia snapped. "It won't do any good. You've done something to him with your filthy magic," she snarled.

"I didn't do anything to him with my wonderful magic," Harry said. But he hopped off his bed and headed to the phone and called for an ambulance. It wouldn't do any good, of course, but it would look weird if he didn't.

Of course, his plan wound up backfiring ever so slightly. After Dudley died, because of course he did, Petunia refused to keep him in the house anymore. Said that he was cursed, that she'd lost her family to him and she wouldn't put up with it anymore. So the Headmaster came and took him to the Weasleys, where he spent the rest of the summer.

It was awful. The one bright spot was that they were clearly terrified of him, and so they tended to leave him alone. It wasn't much of a bright spot, but it was something. Of course, that bright spot was overshadowed by the awkwardness of the fact that Harry hadn't saved the precious little girl Weasley when he'd gone into the Chamber of Secrets. Molly Weasley tried to ask him how her daughter died, but Harry just shrugged and didn't answer. He didn't care enough to say, and he didn't think it would bring her peace anyway.

They took him to Diagon Alley with him, but left him mostly to his own devices once they were there. That was fine. Harry enjoyed the chance to explore the Alley uninhibited by adults who wanted to monitor things that he bought. For some reason they got so very antsy when they saw him studying certain books…

It wasn't his fault, it was all Ryuk's. The Shinigami was the one who suggested he study certain texts over others. He seemed to think that there was interesting information about the Note in some of them. Harry wasn't so sure about that, given that he'd never actually found any information in the books that Ryuk suggested.

Sometimes, honestly, he wondered if the Shinigami wasn't trying to troll him.

This summer's trip to the Alley was interesting for another reason: Harry learned all about the wizarding prison of Azkaban and the fact that someone had apparently broken out of the fortress. The madman's face stared at him from almost every wall of the Alley, and Harry occasionally found himself staring back at the posters.

If he were to be caught with his book, would he wind up in a place like that? Would he lose his mind the way the prisoner in the pictures clearly had? The question haunted him long after he'd left the Alley for the day, so much so that one night he said to Ryuk, "You have a Note of your own, don't you?"

Ryuk tilted his head at him. "Yes," the Shinigami said, drawing out the word. "But I won't kill someone for you. Not for all the apples in the world."

"I'm not asking you to," Harry said quickly, then reconsidered. "Actually, no, I suppose I am asking you to. Would you kill me if I get caught?"

Ryuk's eyes narrowed and he obviously considered the question. Finally, slowly, he said, "I think that will cost you an extra apple every day from now until the day you're caught."

Harry smiled. "Deal," he said, and closed his eyes, finally able to get to sleep. He refused to be driven mad as that criminal had been. The thought of it was horrifying, but Ryuk would kill him if he got caught. That meant they couldn't drive him crazy.

ooOOooOOoo

Harry had never been so relieved to get on the train to Hogwarts in his life. The awkward silence with the Weasley family had been stifling, and Harry didn't even like people! He was amused to note that as he boarded the train he could hear Molly Weasley saying, "You know, I don't know that I've ever met a boy who liked apples so much as that one."

Harry abandoned Weasley as soon as he could and went to find Draco, who was settled in a compartment by himself, glaring moodily at the door. He visibly brightened when Harry came through, though. "What's that face for?" Harry asked.

Draco's nose wrinkled. "Parkinson," he said shortly. "She's on about some betrothal contract that my family may have with hers. I keep telling her that there's no way that I'll honor it, but she's not listening."

Harry frowned. "Betrothal contract?" he echoed. "What in the world are those?"

"Exactly what they sound like," Draco said with a sigh. "It's not that important now, but when I'm older it'll be an issue. And I don't like Parkinson," he added in a whine. "She's… she's a pug!"

Harry couldn't contain his snort of amusement, even as the train lurched into motion. "She is, isn't she?" Harry asked agreeably. He settled in next to Draco and switched the subject to something more palatable. "Any bets on how long the new DADA professor will last?"

"Ugh!" Draco rolled his eyes. "Does it matter? He or she probably won't be any good anyway. Look at what we had last year!" Draco shook his head and made a tsking sound. "We'll just have to study on our own to prepare for our OWLs and NEWTs. And speaking of studying, which electives did you sign up for?"

"Divinations and Runes," Harry said. He was curious to see what effect runes had on the Note, if any, not that he was certain he'd be experimenting on said book. He was just… curious. And Divinations? Should be an easy enough class.

Draco nodded. "I thought about doing Care of Magical Creatures, and I almost signed up for it, but my father found out that the half-giant is teaching it this year. He yanked me from the class and had me put in Divinations instead."

"We have a half-giant on staff?" Harry frowned. "Aren't they supposed to be… violent?"

Before Draco could answer, the compartment was swept by what felt like a stiff breeze, followed by an abrupt and vicious temperature drop that had Harry shivering in his seat. He opened his mouth to say something, but then he heard the strangest thing.

Not Harry, please, anything but Harry!

A woman was screaming, and Harry was suddenly quite certain that he would never be happy again. He could hear her screaming and begging and pleading and his heart broke both for her and for his own fears that were rising to conquer his mind.

He snapped out of it suddenly when the carriage door shut with a soft noise. Harry stared at the door that had closed, his eyes wide, shivering with a cold that he didn't think would ever get any better.

"Are you okay?" Draco was asking urgently. He pressed a square of chocolate into Harry's unresponsive hand. "My father said that there would be dementors on the grounds of Hogwarts because of Black's escape, but I didn't think they'd be searching the train. He said that chocolate would help with the worst of the effects. C'mon, Harry, take a bite for me," Draco coaxed, his voice shaking.

Mechanically, Harry lifted the piece of chocolate to his mouth and took a bite. Immediately he felt warmth start to spread throughout his chilled body and he sagged with relief. He crammed another piece of chocolate into his mouth, despite how undignified it was. "Thank you," he said once he'd swallowed.

Draco was eating the other half of the chocolate bar. "It was no problem," Draco said. He shuddered. "No wonder Black wanted to escape Azkaban so badly," he whispered. "If I had to feel those things around me day in and day out, I'd want to escape too."

Harry, who had briefly been contemplating killing Black with the Note for being the cause of the dementors at the school, immediately changed his mind. He couldn't blame the man for wanting to flee those monsters, and besides, if Black died and his body was never found, the dementors might stay at Hogwarts forever. Harry definitely didn't want that.

The rest of the train ride, thankfully, passed quietly, and by the time they arrived back at Hogwarts, Harry was almost back to normal. Some other students hadn't fared so well, and Harry couldn't decide if he was amused or sympathetic when he watched those unfortunate souls being gathered and escorted to a place to recover under Madam Pomfrey's gentle care.

ooOOooOOoo

Most of Harry's classes turned out to be boring that year. Ancient Runes was awful, as it happened, but he was good at it so that was something of a plus in its favor. The classes whose teachers hadn't changed proceeded as normal, which meant that Harry did a fairly decent job with them but otherwise spent most of his time bored, particularly in Binns' class. If only being boring was enough cause for Harry to try killing the ghost…

Lupin wasn't bad as a professor, Harry supposed, even if it was incredibly peculiar to fear the full moon. And even if the professor hadn't let Harry try out fighting the Bogart. That had been most disappointing, as Harry honestly wasn't sure what his worst fear was. Perhaps losing the Note? It didn't matter, he supposed.

But the crowning jewel of Harry's classes at Hogwarts actually turned out to be Divinations. Not because he learned anything of substance, of course. The class was utter hogwash, and Harry was mostly amused by it more than fascinated. No, the best part about Divinations was dear, sweet Professor Trelawney.

The woman had breezed into the classroom, started some spiel that Harry had barely been paying attention to, only to cut off with a squeak when she got a look at Harry. It was the most hilarious response Harry had ever gotten from a professor, and even more hilarious was the fact that Trelawney refused to speak to him.

Every time Harry attempted to speak to her, she just went incredibly pale and said something about her inner eye obviously being clouded when in the presence of such darkness.

Harry would have been more concerned, but only two of her students seemed to take her seriously. The rest, like Draco, seemed more amused than not by her constant proclamations.

Her avoidance of Harry had another effect, other than being terribly amusing. Harry was currently pulling one hundred percent in that class because Trelawney refused to speak to him long enough to assess him and was apparently too afraid of him to fail him. That was fine. Harry could use a few easy grades.

ooOOooOOoo

A month into the school year, which was incredibly uneventful in spite of the dementors roaming the grounds, Harry decided to test out the Note on Binns. Boredom wasn't really enough of a reason to justify using the Note, but this was no ordinary boredom. This was a boredom truly worthy of murder.

Unfortunately, the results of using the Note on a ghost turned out to be less than spectacular. Binns still showed up for class every day, but was now entirely transparent and couldn't be heard. He didn't seem to realize that, though, and continued to lecture as though the students were actually listening. Harry found that he was thoroughly disappointed in both the results of using the Note and his own giving into temptation in the first place.

"Did you know that was all it would do?" he asked Ryuk once he was alone with the Shinigami on the day he'd done it.

Ryuk shook his head. "Nope," the being said, popping the end of the word obnoxiously. "Makes sense, though. Can't kill something that's already dead."

Harry groaned and rubbed at his forehead. "Since I already used the Note once this year…" He paused. The dementors really hadn't been that much of a problem. Did he want to kill some criminal on the run just because of a minor inconvenience? He'd killed others for less, certainly, but…

"You could do it, you know. Just kill him! Then the dementors would go away and you wouldn't have to worry about running into them!" Ryuk bounced in front of him and Harry's eyes narrowed.

"You're far too eager for me to kill him," Harry said, and put the Note away. "I don't trust you, or your eagerness."

That Ryuk pouted at him for the rest of the day only made Harry more certain that he'd made the right decision.

ooOOooOOoo

A conversation overheard in the library towards the end of the school year made things briefly more interesting for Harry, who had spent the year wishing for something exciting to happen.

"I'm telling you, George, the map can't be right!"

"And I'm telling you that it has to be, because it's never been wrong before!"

"Oh yeah? What about that weird invisible 'Ryuk' that's allegedly following Potter around? We've never seen him or her, so how can they exist?"

Harry went very still and tried not to breathe very hard. The Weasley twins knew about Ryuk? That didn't make any sense. Why wouldn't they have said something to someone about him? Unless… they said they'd never seen him, so how did they know?

"Look, it should be easy enough to figure out. We've seen Black headed to the Whomping Willow, and Pettigrew is somewhere near there too! If we can just find them, then we can turn him over to the Aurors. And if the map is wrong, then we'll know that it's just a useless scrap of parchment."

"It's not a useless scrap of parchment and you know it!"

Harry had heard enough of the conversation. Clearly they couldn't decide if whatever map they had was reliable or not, and Harry didn't honestly care much about the outcome of that conversation. However… Ryuk had seemed awfully eager for him to kill Black, and if the convict was really hiding out near the Whomping Willow…

Harry almost couldn't help himself, not that he tried very hard. He headed out of the castle and in the direction of the Willow, and was almost entirely unsurprised to be grabbed around the arm by a big black dog, who used his teeth to drag Harry in the direction that he chose. Harry didn't protest, and allowed himself to be pulled under the Willow and into a tunnel he'd never before noticed. The tunnel emerged into what could only be the Shrieking Shack, which looked even more awful on the inside.

"So, have I found Sirius Black?" Harry asked, staring at the dog curiously. He knew that McGonagall could turn into a cat, so perhaps Black could turn into a dog?

Sure enough, the dog transformed and a man, gaunt and greasy and tired, stared back at him. "You have," the man said. "Harry," Black added, and stepped forward slowly. "You're looking well."

Harry took a step back, not even remotely willing to let the escaped prisoner touch him. "And you're not," he said. "Was it the dementors? Is that why you escaped?"

Black shook his head, then shrugged. "Partially," he said. "I wanted to find the man that framed me, Pettigrew, and I wanted to kill him. I've already served the time for it, so I thought I would at least make it worthwhile. And I wanted to see you, but when I went to your house, you were gone."

That was, perhaps, the first thing to genuinely surprise Harry all night. "To see me?" he echoed, incredulous. "Why would you want to do that?"

Black smiled, the expression pained and fragile. "You're my godson," he said. "And I haven't had the chance to do right by you. I thought that if I could see you, make sure that you were doing okay, I could kill Pettigrew and go back to Azkaban with a clear conscience."

Harry scowled. "That," he said severely, "Is a stupid plan." Killing Pettigrew just to go back to that awful prison with the terrible dementors? No, that was the worst plan that Harry had ever heard.

Black looked almost offended. "Well, if you've got a better one," he started.

"I do," Harry said. He pulled the Death Note out and stared down at it, then shrugged and opened it up. "I'll get your name cleared, and get Pettigrew dead, all at the same time. But just know that if you try to tell anyone about this, I'll kill you."

Black blinked at him. "Why are you helping me?" he asked, sounding confused. "You've only just met me, and you're being rather trusting, don't you think?"

Harry glanced up at him, then back down at the list of commands he was writing for Pettigrew to follow before he died. "You're my godfather, you said," he said with a shrug. That certainly explained Ryuk's joy at Harry's potentially killing the man. "If your name is cleared, I won't have to go back to Petunia or the Weasley's again. I can just stay with you. And if you ever tell anyone what I'm doing right now, even if they do believe you, I can just kill you and everyone you've told with the stroke of a pen."

"That's… alarming," Black said. He stared down at the book. "I don't know how I feel about you," he said slowly, stretching the words out.

"That's fine," Harry said. "I don't know how I feel about you. Or why I'm trusting you. But I am, so I expect that you won't be foolish enough to abuse my trust." He finished his instructions for Pettigrew went to write the man's name, but realized he didn't actually know it. "Sorry, what's Pettigrew's first name?"

"Peter," Black said, staring at Harry like he was some kind of alien.

That was okay. Harry was doing his good deed for the year. He wrote Peter Pettigrew with a small flourish, then closed the book with a snap. "Now it's just a waiting game," he told the dumbfounded Black.

He stood and left the shack, and returned to the Slytherin dorm before he could be missed. Draco took one look at him and shook his head. "I don't want to know," the blonde said, his lips twitching into a smile.

Harry frowned. "Don't want to know what?" he asked, mildly irritated.

"Who's going to die, of course," Draco said, and left the room with a spring in his step.

Harry stared after him, his eyes wide with surprise. He hadn't thought Draco would have figured it out… And also, did that mean he had a certain look about him after he'd killed someone?

"Ryuk?" he asked the Shinigami in a soft, barely there whisper, who just cackled at him in response.

Right. His life, he supposed. He only had himself to blame.

ooOOooOOoo

A week later, the Daily Prophet announced Black's innocence, and Harry received a letter from the Ministry informing him that he would be under the care of his godfather. "Better than Petunia," Harry muttered, packing the letter away in his things.

"Sorry?" Draco asked, glancing at him sideways.

"Black. My godfather. I'll take him over Petunia any day."

Draco's eyes narrowed. "But you haven't met Black yet," he pointed out, the words coming slowly. "Unless…" His brow furrowed. "Did you…" He stopped and shook his head. "Never mind. That's too convoluted, even for you."

"Is it?" Harry asked, a small grin coming to his lips.

His… friend, and yes, he was confident using that word now, in spite of how little interest he'd initially had in their friendship, just shook his head. "You'll never tell me," Draco pointed out. He finished his drink and stood. "Ready for potions?"

"Of course," Harry said, and followed Draco to class.

Summer was going to be interesting, Harry thought. Perhaps this would be his first summer since obtaining the book that he truly wasn't tempted to kill anyone. He found, oddly enough, that he was almost excited for such a summer.

Ryuk would be disappointed, though. That was fine. Harry would just have to feed him more apples.