Harry Potter and the Aspects of Death
Disclaimer, don't own it, wish I did because then I wouldn't have to work so many hours at my day job.
AN: Wow, it's been more than two months since I updated. I sincerely apologize because I, as a reader of other works, understand how frustrated I get when I get into a story and the author doesn't update it. With that said I have been really enjoying writing Freak of Nature and I have to be in the right mood to write. No excuses are ever good enough for the readers who wait for a chapter, I understand that, but real life and especially work have been kicking my arse and keeping me from getting the time or mood to write this story. I'm trying to make amends for that by picking up the story again.
Warning about the chapter: I think it is only fair to warn the reader that this will not be a happy chapter. Death holds many emotional responses for humans; it's in this chapter that Harry learns those lessons. I in no way want to lessen the blow that is the death of a loved one, or mock the death of a child or innocent, but please note that death is not fair when it comes upon us. Ultimately we are all equal in that we will all eventually die, and it is impossible to live our lives without being touched by death in some way. On that happy note, you've been warned.
/Egyptian/
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Chapter 6: The Many Forms of Death
"To you who have never died, may I say: Welcome to the world!" ~ Clive Barker
Harry stepped through the portal into Death's realm, noticing that once had been an indistinct gray world of swirling mists, twirling shadows, and flitting smoke was now starting to show shadowy features. Claw like trees, hills, and scraggly bushes surrounded Harry as mist still filtered about the ground and obscured vision on the far horizon. In the distance Harry could make out the shadowed presence of a cityscape with its tall sky scrapers chimneys and gothic buttresses and cathedrals disappearing and appearing through the fog.
As Harry walked forward, he realized that his cloak and Egyptian robes seemed to phase right through the bushes around him, and he noticed that his feet did not kick up any sort of dust or dirt from the bare ground upon which he walked.
"Hmmm," Harry said to himself as he ghosted his hand through the trunk of a dead tree, "This is different."
Looking around his surroundings, Harry decided to proceed up the hill before him, hoping to get a better view of the ghostly city that lay in the distance.
As he crested the peak of the steep hill he saw that between him and the distant city was a vast valley, shadowed and dark as if the light was captured by the hills surrounding it, keeping the low lands in darkness.
Beautiful, isn't it? Death's voice wafted on the breeze beside him as the smoke and mists seemed to form a nebulous form next to him.
Harry turned his head to the right and examined the forming mists. Still swirling, growing and shrinking in no understandable pattern was what must have been the humanoid form of death. First tall, then short, first giving hints of masculinity, then femininity, it constantly shifted forms and dimensions; it was as if somebody had tried to make an impressionistic painting of a human made out of shadows, smoke and mist come to life.
Looking out over the valley and away from Death's somewhat transparent form, Harry quirked his head to the side in though.
"It inspires both a strange feeling of both fear and peace," Harry slowly stated as the thoughts formed in his mind. "It has something that draws me to it, yet at the same time it makes me want to stay away from it."
Ha ha ha, I understand…There are many aspects to us… We inspire many different feelings in mortals, not that you are necessarily mortal any more…
Harry merely quirked his eyebrow as he briefly looked at Death in question as to what it meant by that statement.
In turn, Death turned its head towards Harry.
It is impossible to fully explain how I exist or the beauty that is Death…It is time that you join us in our work…Come, we have work to do. Death stated.
With that stated, the form of Death laid a hand on Harry's shoulder and then its form was sucked into the swirling winds that rose out of the valley of the shadow of death.
As the smoke seemed to be drawn away from Harry and towards the valley, he felt a coldness in his body and looked to where Death had touched him. Slowly, bit by bit, particle by particle, the wind dissolved Harry's shoulder into swirling smoke and mist. He only had a chance for his eyes to grow large before the rest of his body blew away on the winds to join the swirls of death.
Joy, pain, sorrow, and peace were the mix of emotions displayed on the faces of the family members who surrounded the bed of, what Harry assumed, was their patriarch. An old woman sat in a chair holding her dying husband's hand as the machines in the hospital room showed the breathing and heart rate of the old man; his hand spotted and almost skeletal as the diseases he fought had obviously ravaged his once hale body.
"Goodbye my love," whispered the old man as he gazed at his wife.
"Goodbye darling, I'll see you soon." She replied as she leaned forward to kiss his forehead and then his lips, her tears falling to wet his face.
He never felt the water from her eyes, as he was gone. With his passing, Harry and death too moved on.
A child lay broken on the street, the carriage that had run over her chest continued in a rush down the path between the fields, oblivious or uncaring in its inhabitant's actions.
Harry watched as a poor women, smeared with mud from working in the fields screamed as she realized that her daughter's body was broken. Besmudged work torn hands cradled the child and a voice ravaged by constant exposure to the wind and the rain screamed curses at the sky and at the drivers and inhabitants of the carriage, but her cries of agony and for revenge went unheeded.
Harry attempted to reach out for her, but his ghostly hand merely drifted around the woman. It was not her time to meet death, and Harry's touch did not comfort her.
Death brought Harry again to another scene.
An avalanche of mud and toxic fumes flew from the silent expulsion of the volcano and swiftly towards the small village. A village that had no name on any map, but was loved and lived in by families for generation after generation. A village that disappeared that night with a whisper of deadly gases and rumbling mud.
Still Death dragged Harry onwards through its grisly work.
This time it was a murder scene, the victims begging for mercy.
Then an epidemic that came with rats off the ship, killing the wildlife of the island as well as the humans, leaving no mercy for any living inhabitant of the Polynesian isle.
Followed by the starvation of a child…
Then the death of the old, put out into the snow because they weren't of any use for the village.
Death after death spilled before Harry's eyes, faster and faster it went.
Starvation, choking, electrocution, stabbing, blood loss, old age, abuse, neglect, disease, famine, war, and death by pestilence all blurred before his eyes. Those were just the mundane deaths.
Curses of every imaginable kind were used, and life after life was snuffed out. Even spells that were deemed "light" could kill.
Old spells of power, a spell that destroyed only the darkness in a person's soul, but which left a half hearted husk, as no person was fully light.
New spells of darkness, the killing curse and the curse that caused the wounded on the battlefield to explode in a cataclysm of blood and boney shrapnel, wounding and killing those lying around the newly deceased.
Death after death after death flew before his eyes, and Harry found himself weeping.
Deep soulful tears, as any innocence and wonder at life seemed to be sapped from Harry's life, as he saw every imaginable horrible or wonderful death that could come to be, pass before his eyes.
It was a constant blur, and Harry sobbed, deep soul wrenching tears as he cried and cried at the agony he saw, the pain that mankind had created in addition to that which is a natural death.
When he no longer had tears to cry, his tear ducts raw from the passage of salty water, he began to shed blood from his eyes.
Suddenly it was over, Harry found himself in a tower overlooking a city made of tombs, ornate catacomb entrances and the rising smoke of crematoriums, the city of the dead.
Harry looked up at the faceless man dressed in a black Armani suit with sanguine shirt and crimson blood red tie. The black pits that were the faceless man's eyes looked down unmoved by Harry's agony and anguish.
"Why!" Harry gasped out between heart rending sobs, "Why did you do that to me? Why didn't you let me save them, help them, comfort them?" He shakingly pleaded for an answer, trying to draw breath as he kneeled on the ground hunched over, bloody tears falling onto his hands and the floor around him.
"You needed to learn how to kill…" Death said without feeling, without remorse. There was a slight change in death's voice, but Harry couldn't focus on it with the pain of watching so many deaths fly before his memories.
"But their pain? Their agony!" Harry cried out as he gripped the leg of Death's suit, pleading for understanding.
"You misunderstand; there was no pain and agony in their deaths. By the time We came, the agony was over; there is no pain in death, only release." Death continued unmoved by Harry's countenance.
Harry wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, blood smearing up his forearm as he released Death's suit and sat back on his knees, attempting to bring his breathing under control.
"I don't understand." Harry stated, finally calming and looking up into Death's 'face,' the black orbs staring down at him.
Death continued to look at the shaken form of Harry.
"You were focusing on the agony that is life, specifically the pain that is loss of life or the pain of life right at the end, you need to look beyond at the inception of death, the end of pain" Death explained.
Harry cocked his head to the side in thought, took a big breath halting shuddering breath as he began regaining his composure. Using the palm of his hand, Harry smeared away the snot from his face that had come from crying so hard, smearing the blood trails that had been running down his cheeks.
Death reached down and tapped Harry on middle of his forehead.
"Remember the moment of death, ignore the life."Death commanded, and all of the previous deaths that Harry had played witness to went through his mind again.
Death was still silently looking down at Harry when he returned from his memories of the trip Death had taken him on.
Harry was silent for a moment, and then looked up at the being.
"I understand." Was all Harry related.
"Good, the knowledge will do you well when you leave to travel the world once more, and it has brought you closer to understanding us." Death stated, its voice no longer sounding wispy and far away; now it sounded just slightly ethereal.
Looking up, Harry saw that Death's features were now distinct. Pale, almost white skin, and defined cheekbones were capped by the still black holes where Death's eyes should have been. However the face now held definite lines and a shaggy black head of hair that rested over Death's very human looking ears and covered Death's forehead.
Harry picked himself up, his form looking to be around the age of mid forties to early fifties. He realized that he no longer had to look up at Death, but was able to stand facing the being face to eyeless face.
He'd not mentioned Death's form, or the changes in it, to Death before, but now it was a bit on the creepy side staring into two black abysses rather than eyes.
"So, um, what is going on with your lack of eyes?" Harry asked, a bit uncomfortable at bringing up the topic, but unable to get himself to really look straight into the holes where Death's eyes should have been.
"They are the window to the soul. When you understand what that means, you will be ready to move on to the next step in your… journey." Death stated.
"But more important than my soul, is the changes to yours." Death continued, and then made a flick towards Harry's back.
Black flames leapt from the skin of Harry's back where the tattoo of darkness was there. A bright line of cold dark fire that did not burn the skin flared in a straight line across his back, before shrinking down until the line of fire was shorter, and now touched the pinnacle of the triangle and perfectly bisected the circle.
Harry waved his hand, and two gold rimmed mirrors silently appeared. A flick of his pointer finger on his right hand, a slight upward motion, and the upper part of his Egyptian robes disappeared, clearly showing a circle within a triangle, both bisected by a fiery line.
As the black fire seemed to extinguish itself, Harry looked at his reflection. He noticed that both the circle and the straight line of the tattoo seemed to swallow more light than the outline of the triangle did. Whereas the triangle was merely black and cold to the touch, the circle and line seemed to be equivalent to staring into the black abysses of Death's eye sockets.
Death walked over to stand beside Harry.
"You are almost complete; your apprenticeship is almost over. It is time you learned to form and control your soul. But this is easily rectified by weighing the souls." Death explained. "Come." Was his last direction, before Death lifted his hands and silently glided out of the open windows of the tower and out over the city; gliding in a standing position with Death's hands slightly upraised.
Harry followed Death's direction and he too lifted off, wearing only his Egyptian wrap around his loins, a brief thought about flashing people down below went through his head, clearly showing that there was still a bit of the little boy left inside Harry's being.
Harry followed Death's guidance as the two of them floated out over the city, slightly weaving between the tall chimneys and gothic spires of the city. They eventually found themselves hovering over a great city square, filled with lines of people moving towards a single throne.
On the throne sat Death, even though Death hovered with Harry.
"Come." Death stated from his position next to Harry, no looking to see if Harry followed as the floating figure of Death moved towards his counterpart on the throne.
As the two figures of Death drew close to each other, they dissolved into black mist for a second, before completely reforming into one being that sat on the throne.
Harry glided down and floated to Death's right hand side, wondering what was going on.
"What do we do now?" Harry asked as he looked out over the crowd.
Looking at the people in the square, tall ones, short ones, old and young, of every race creed and nationality, even a few different races of beings, Harry saw that he could partially see right through them.
"Now we look, and we weigh their soul." Death stated unemotionally, giving a crook of his finger and causing the first figure in line to move before Death.
The ghostly visage of an old man looked into Death's eye sockets for a second, before death pointed to a chimney to the right.
The ghost, or what Harry guessed was the soul, of the old man smiled briefly and went towards the fire. Stepping into the fireplace, there was a brief flash of green floo flames, and the soul was gone.
"A floo? Where are they going and why a floo?" Harry asked.
"To his reward and to his family who are waiting for him in paradise." Death stated, "And as for why a floo, well you didn't really think that the Wizards designed the original did you? Let's just say that Merlin had a near Death experience and we will leave it at that." Death stated, the merest hint of a smile creeping across Death's face before he turned and ushered for the next soul to come forward.
This soul looked to be wringing its hands and attempting to look anywhere but in Death's eyes. It wasn't until Death snatched out his hand and grabbed the soul by the chin that the dead man's soul gazed into the abyss of Death's sockets.
If a ghost could be said to pale, then this would have qualified as the soul held in Death's hands began to quake in fear as Death gazed into the deceased beings eyes.
Death leaned back, but did not release the soul's chin; rather Death's hand moved to quickly grab the soul by the neck and picked the soul up. To Death's left a catacomb opened up, and the sounds of screaming and gnashing of teeth could be heard to usher from the dark of the tomb.
Death casually flung the soul of the man in his grasp through the open doors; the sound of the man's scream was cut off abruptly as the doors to the tomb closed behind him.
Death turned his visage towards Harry.
"It is now your turn, come, take my seat and bear judgment on those who enter my realm." Death commanded.
Leaving his seat, Death calmly ushered Harry to assume Death's former position of judgment.
"Um, so I just look into their eyes?" Harry asked, looking at Death for guidance as an old lady moved forward towards Harry and the throne.
"No. You are gazing into their soul, learning their form, what makes them and guides them. By learning their form you will gain the ability to mold your own form, for we, just as the living, grow and change ourselves by our experiences and the lessons we learn mark our souls." Death attempted to explain.
Harry nodded, thinking that he understood what Death was telling him, Harry turned his attention towards the old woman before him, and gazed into her eyes.
Her life was there before him, from birth to death. Every action, every inaction, every belief, thought and movement; even down to the number of breathes and heartbeats that she had experienced in her life. Harry realized that he knew her life so well, that he could have assumed her visage if he so choose; the understanding of his new powers stated so in the back of his brain.
Smiling, Harry sat back from his soul gaze, and ushered the woman to the right. She smiled at him and bobbed a curtsy before disappearing into the floo with a wash of green flames.
The soul of a teenager confidently strolled before Harry and looked Harry in the eye, challenging Harry to judge him, and judge him Harry did.
Harry saw the boy grow up in a good home, but change as he became more selfish and self centered. He saw the young scion of wealth and privilege, take what he wanted and throw away the leftovers; whether that be food, toys, or people. Harry saw the boy defile the souls of others, beating and bullying, even raping those he cared nothing for whether they be servant or peer of nobility.
Harry saw that this boy was evil. Yes, the boy was a lesser evil than some out there, but still evil.
Snatching out his hand Harry grabbed the boy by the throat and lifted him off the ground, the strength of the one who controlled Death was in Harry's limbs.
The door to the catacombs opened once again, and the wails of the damned issued up into the air. With a mighty throw, Harry tossed the unrepentant soul of the teenager in to join them.
The doors to the tomb clanged shut, and Harry shook his head to refocus himself before moving on to weight the soul of the next person in line.
Harry continued to weigh and judge the souls for a long but indeterminate period of time. Harry lost all sense of time as he performed the services of Death, for time has no meaning to the dead.
It wasn't until Death laid his hand on Harry's shoulder that he realized that he had judged the souls of what must have been millions or billions of dead beings.
"Come." Death ushered, Death's form splitting in two as one flew up into the air towards the tower, and the other one assuming Death's throne as Harry flew up to follow the departing figure.
Harry found himself again gazing into the mirrors that stood in the tallest tower of the city of Death.
"Gaze into the mirror, you know the forms of the souls, you know their makeup, what made them different and unique and what made them similar in form and function." Death explained.
"Now I want you to remember the old men and old women, find those experiences and the effects of the passage of time and assume those within your being." Death continued to command.
Harry gazed himself in the mirror, shirtless and still wrapped in the Egyptian weave around his loins; he cocked his head to the side and thought back to the countless souls of the old that he had examined. Finding the similarities in their life's experiences, Harry innately knew what he needed to do.
Slowly, and then with increasing speed, Harry saw the reflection of his body begin to age and stoop. Rather than growing upwards, he saw himself shrink and begin to hunch. His skin lost its tone and firmness, and spots appeared from weathering. His eyes did not cease to gleam their unholy green killing curse color, but there was a sense of age that could be seen in the reflections gaze.
Looking down, Harry examined his hands and saw that they had aged until he looked like he was in his eighties or nineties. Looking back at his reflection, Death continued.
"Now remember the woman, remember her differences and similarities." Death commanded.
The image of Harry changed to that of female, something that felt a bit intrinsically wrong to Harry since he knew he was male, and which caused him to only hold the form and examine it for a few minutes before reverting to his form of a fifty year old male.
"Good, now just two more steps." Death's voice commanded from out of Harry's sight lines.
"First form your body to the age of eleven." Death stated.
Harry followed the letter of the task; his body grew hale and healthy and then shrank. A bit of baby fat appeared on his body and a certain ungainliness of youth, yet an ever present vigor stared back at him. Harry smiled at returning to a youthful form, for the forms of old age held certain pains and aches inherent to them.
"Now for the fun of it," A bit of humor coming through Death's voice, "Become a goblin, and then a centaur, then a werewolf, then a house elf, and then turn into something that nobody has really ever seen." Death's voice commanded with the clear hints of a smile in it.
Harry smirked at his reflection in the mirror before following Death's commands.
First a goblin, then a centaur, then a werewolf, a little floppy eared house elf, and then a small cuddly creature with a big snout and a curly-q shaped crumpled sharp horn on its head.
Then Harry stood in his adult form again, his reflection that of a man in his 40's. Harry quirked his head to the side before waving his hand at his reflection.
Harry's wrap liquefied before covering his body, changing into a black suit, shirt, shoes, and blood red tie. Harry smiled at his new clothing before turning to face death.
Harry turned away from the mirrors, faced Death, and looked into his duplicate image. For where Death's once hollow eyes were, shown two killing curse green orbs and a duplicate smirk to that of Harry's.
Harry felt a flaring of black fire be contained on his back as Death addressed him.
"There, much better. I'm glad we finally understand each other." Death stated with a smile as he looked back at his twin, the master of death, Harry Potter.
AN: OK, the lessons of Death are done and it's on to the real world to deal with Dumbledore Voldemort and the Wizarding World. Sorry for the wait, but I really had writer's block on what I wanted to put into this chapter. I have to say that I think it came out a lot better than my original plans for it, and I hope you enjoyed it. I will try and not wait so long for the next chapter. Now that we are in the wizarding world it should be much easier to write; at least I hope so.