To live and die and live again,
There must be a price to pay:
A heart that beats again by night,
Just for an hour of every day.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
At the edge of the forest, Harry turns around. Ron and Hermione are holding on to each other's hand. Hermione is carrying one of her ever so useful little flames, Harry had still not learnt to conjure.
"Be careful in there," Ron says and shivers as his gaze wanders towards the trees.
Hermione just seems torn between wanting to hug him or kill him. She goes with a hug in the end. "I promise I'll come back," Harry says to her quietly, not even Ron hears him. Hermione slaps his back, but there is no real anger or force in it. She is just frustrated. Harry lets her go and steps to the edge. He looks back at his friends, then turns ahead.
Lupin walks past him into the forest, carrying a little bag for ingredients. He is talking with someone, who did not die, with Professor Sprout perhaps, or Madam Pomfrey. Harry follows him for a while, but then Remus stops with his companion, and start picking some plants. Harry walks past them and lets instinct take over once again.
He could all but close his eyes, his legs would take him to the clearing right away. Interestingly, the dread is gone from the air. Once the dead take the place of the living, it feels less scary. Death Eaters come and go around him, he finds and loses Remus again, then suddenly, he is at the briar bush again. He climbs through and blood freezes in him as he sees what waits from him in the clearing.
It is the black fox, but it is not a fox anymore. It is Death in the moonlight, wearing a dark cloak. Its face is still nothing more than a mask, and Harry suspects, no one has ever seen the true face of Death, yet this seems truer than the animal, though not much. It is just an empty skull of a fox, eyes not glinting yellow anymore but dull white. They are not like the snow, they do not sparkle in the light of the moon, but are dim and lifeless; dead. At first, Harry thinks there is a hood covering the top of the white bone skull, but as he steps out onto the clearing and moves closer to the motionless shadow, he realizes it is hair, or long black fur, messy and wild, unkept and dry.
"You have nothing to fear," it is not Death who speaks and Harry turns around again, looking at another shadow, a more familiar one, leaning against the elm tree.
"I'm not dead," Harry says. "Me, it can still hurt."
"Not yet," Snape rolls his eyes. "Your time will come, though. There is nothing you can do to avoid it, so why fear it? It won't take you sooner than you are supposed to go, and you will not be able to run away from it, when it does come to take you."
"Like yesterday?" Said Harry stepping closer to the elm tree.
Snape frowns at his advances, but keeps talking. "Yesterday, you were a fool. It is not your pet, nor your friend, nor your enemy. It is not yours to show, to seek out, to hunt, to disturb, whenever you wish. No matter who you are to It."
"Who am I to it?" Asks Harry. "And who are you to it? You are dead, but most echoes don't speak, yet you can. You speak to me, you can see me, you can see it. You're more than a shadow."
"You know, who you are. You know what you are. What I am…" Snape sighs, heavily. "I am more than the dead and less than the living. I am its voice to you."
"And what does it say?"
"To bugger off."
Harry laughs. "Death wants me to bugger off, is that it?"
"Mostly." Snape nods.
Harry turns back towards the shadow that has not moved from the middle of the clearing. "Take back your gift, and I'm out of here." He tells it.
It moves and its eerier than anything that has happened until then. It glides on the snow, there is no wind, yet its black cloak and hair moves gently. Its skull face is a gruesome mimic of the hauntingly beautiful fox it used to be, just white bones and dead white eyes, and as it tilts its head it seems to smile a terrible smile of sharp fangs.
Harry wants to hide and run and get as far away from that nightmare as possible, yet he stands his ground. It stops a couple feet from him, but once again, it is Snape who talks.
"It cannot just take it back, Potter." He says with a wild chuckle when Harry jumps by his voice. "You are his Master. You need to give it back."
"How?" Harry asks from it. He stares at the blind, dead eyes pretending that he is not horrified, that fear has not taken over his heart and does not make it beat a thousand-times faster. The dreadful grin becomes more enunciated, and though Harry knows it is just a sickening game the shadows play on his mind, he fears it can read his mind.
"There are no secrets from it," Snape assures him. "And you know the how."
Harry turns on his heel, as, first time since he ever laid eyes on the black fox, anger takes over fear. "You think I wouldn't have given up this stupid gift already, if I had known how?"
"I do not know, Mr. Potter. I am no more than a puppet after all. And yet, even I can think of a thing or two I could do, would I want to cease to be the Master of Death."
Harry stands there between two people, one who could easily read him since he was eleven, and one no one can hold any secrets from. He cannot deny it, yet far be it from him to agree with Snape. Maybe he has suspected all along, what he needs to do. Maybe, he even tried to look into it about a month ago. And maybe, he gave up because he was not ready to let this gift go as there was one more person, he needed to see.
Snape moves closer, swift as a shadow. He towers over Harry, who lifts his head, almost daring Snape to say it out loud. "Why am I the only one you can hear, Potter? Why is it that I cannot rid myself of you even after I cross to the land of the dead?" There is anger in Snape's voice and the next moment he grabs Harry's throat, long, bony fingers wrapping firmly around his neck.
Harry wrenches himself away from the man. He is dead, his brain keeps telling him, yet Snape's touch on his skin was very real, and even more, it was warm as the touch of the living. "What are you?" He hisses, feigning anger and disgust when it is the last thing he feels.
"I told you," says Snape, sounding irritated. "A shadow of the living, but more alive than the dead. My heart beats," he says grasping Harry's hand and placing it over his heart, "my mind works, I have my own thoughts, needs, desires. Yet, I am bind to Death, I speak what it wants me to say, I appear when it wants me to be seen. I am Death's to command."
Harry can feel the heart pumping under his fingertips. It is faster than he would consider normal, but he adds that up to Death standing near them.
"Is it your master, as I am its?"
The world turns suddenly dark, there is no moonlight anymore, even the stars have died. Snape disappeared but the fear and the terror is almost tangible in the air. Once again, Harry feels the need to run and scream in the maddening fear that cripples him.
Then all change again, the light is back and the fear is gone just as sudden as it appeared and Snape is back, though looking a bit shaken. "I would greatly appreciate it, if you stopped bloody insulting Death, Potter." He snarls, pushing his hair out of his face. "You are either an idiot, or out of your mind if you think for a moment that you can or ever will control Death."
"This afternoon, it stopped because I told it so, didn't it?" Asks Harry carefully. "I mean no offense, just asking." He adds quickly before Snape disappears again. He does not want that.
Snape is slow to answer, as if he would be, like Harry, scared to anger the horrible, growling creature behind them. "It did. It was furious, but it did."
"What would happen, if I told it to let you go?"
There is surprise in Snape's face but the boiling anger from behind is more tangible than ever. "Don't you ever dare tell Death what to do again, Potter," Snape thunders in his strictest of voice. "A master you are like a kitten tied to a dragon. You hold the leash but you have no idea, what power lies on the other end."
"I never wanted this," says Harry sadness in his voice.
"Then destroy the leash," Snape says coldly. "Destroy the Deathly Hallows."