AN: While I can appreciate the thought of the Master of Death never Dying (for the irony) sometimes I just wanna say "Is it because he's already dead?
Harry decided to stick around, really. That's the best way he could put it. Rather than take the easy, and possibly best option for him he took the Right way and thus the hardest way. Returning form Death was never a menial affair. Something always had to be given up. Most often, as in the case of vampire, it was quite a bit just for the soul to animate the body with an unnatural need to feed on the essence of the living via their blood.
In other cases, much less was given up. Like with the Mummies, who went through cycles of death and rebirth for centuries at a time in either side of the scale, over their long lives eventually balancing out. Their only loss was their ability to simply let go of the world and die on a permanent basis.
In Harry's case, unfortunately, there was only one way to escape Death. He had three items, whether they were in his possession or not, they all recognized him as their owner in the end, intimately connected with Death, or at least a version of the anthropomorphized concept of Death. The Cloak, which allowed one to escape even the notice of Death itself, which explained in many ways how Harry had managed to survive for so long much better than some cockamamie prophesy, the Resurrection stone, which allowed one to summon the shades of the dead so that they can speak with the living, but only the holder of the stone.
And finally the Deathstick, Deaths own Wand. The only thing identifiable about it was that it was made of Elder wood. The core was assumed to be Thestral hair, for the nature of the creature is that it cannot be seen without first witnessing death, but in the end no one knew precisely what was in there, legends being what they are.
All of these Items had a bit of the power of Death itself in them, a decaying and almost virulent poison on life. All of them made life for their holders interesting to say the least, as though they tangled the strands of fate around their holders simply by their presence.
Now imagine what would happen if someone were to hold all three, use all three, and be considered, in the eyes of the world, as their "owner."
When harry was hit by the vitriolic green light of the Killing Curse from Voldemort's wand, he found himself in a train station.
In another world, it would be Dumbledore there to explain the facts of what was going on. What had happened to Harry in that moment wherein he had breached the shroud of life separating the lands of the Dead. Instead, there was a child there, standing in darkened armor with skeletal wings made of a black metal. Bits of white placed around the structure of the wings gave the impression of bones beneath the metal, but not enough to think that they made up the innards of the wings. The young boy looked no older than 14 with eyes that expressed one thing while his face expressed something almost entirely different. His face showed only sadness and pain while his eyes showed anger and an iron will to continue, despite any pain.
"You're not who I was expecting." Were the short first words spoken in the train station, eerily similar to the station which allowed students travel to and from Hogwarts.
"Am I dead, then?" Harry asked the young boy.
"My name is He Who Fell in Tears. You have one choice in front of you. Take the train into the "next great adventure" as you beloved Headmaster put it, or you can go back. Going back isn't free, though." The young boy didn't seem to care that Harry had said anything, simply talking as though rehearsed thoroughly beforehand.
"What do you mean that it isn't free?" Harry asked, reasonably curious as saying such things usually implies a cost, and Harry was leery of anything this particularly creepy child would demand.
"It's actually very simple. You'll just have to be an intermediary between the Underworld and the lands of the living… Well, that and rectify the issues with people trying to escape Death." The child seemed completely sure of this, and gave no indication of lying that Harry could perceive, but it still rang wrong to Harry's ears.
"What more? I Doubt that can be it, or that it's really that simple."
"Look," the child began, "You don't really have the time to complain, nor to ask that many questions. Just know that you've been touched by Death since you survived the Killing Curse. You've been marked as great since before you were born but ultimately that all means dick if you die here and now. Voldemort will continue his rampage, your friends will die and the world will suffer. None of this particularly bothers me, or those whose interests I represent, but I'm sure it would bother you. So you've got to make a choice. Be a Hero, albeit one with a night-job, or be a corpse." The childe finished his tirade with a shrug before pulling his hood down over his eyes and turning away.
"Fine!" Harry called out, looking at the Train and knowing where it inevitably would lead. "Fine. I'll do it."
The boy didn't turn around, he turned into a skull surrounded by a miasma of swirling necrotic energy and flew right into Harry's chest.
When Harry woke up, his breath came in short gasps, he reached for his wand and found all but one of the Hallows, the Elder Wand, but that was hardly important now. In his mind he could hear the whispers. The sounds of being far more ancient than even the oldest of man's histories. He could hear them, but couldn't make out precisely what they were saying. He felt them skittering along the very precipice of his perceptions, flitting through his mind with thoughts of annihilation, insights into the mechanics of interacting with the Lands of the Dead as one of its Masters. He could barely make out the voices of beings long dead-but-not infecting his thoughts in minor ways, very minor, but still there in a horrifying volume.
When Harry killed Voldemort, it was not with a spell cast form the Elder Wand, for now, with its power being used for its original purpose it was just a stick with a bit of Soulsteel in the core. It was with a spell cast by Harrys own hand, sans wand, which ripped the skeleton out of the supposed Dark Lord's body and made it dance before seemingly dissolving into dust.
There was a celebration that followed the demise of Voldemort, But Harry could not help but feel detached form it all. He even forgot to answer to his own name a couple of times…
Months later, when he had been fully introduced to his new…. "occupation" he realized why. He was no longer Harry Potter. That man had died. What returned was a new chance to be someone on his own merits. A new person without that bloody scar to make his life miserable.
Traveler who Walks through Death would now walk through the lands of the living… But that's a tale for another night.
AN: Because I could. That's way. I'll probably redux this a couple of times with different thoughts, but meh. It's kind of a preliminary format right now. Gotta work on it hardcore. Total word count: 1,221. Yay me.
So, I've gotten a couple of followers, yay me, and this story is in people's favorites list, yay for this story… but I have yet to receive much feedback. I need feedback. I need to know what I'm doing right/wrong, if you have ideas or thoughts, *please* tell me. Otherwise I'm kind of floundering in the dark here.
Ah well. Please leave a review on your way out and see you next chapter, whatever it is that my deranged mind can come up with…