Death lurked in the shadows of the kitchen where the 'Order' had gathered—watching the mortals watch his shell. They all seemed… wary. Death grinned, wondering what his shell had done to earn such watchfulness, and how he should go about rewarding him for it. This was, after all, extremely entertaining for him. It was not often that mortals would overlook his presence to focus on a fellow mortal, after all. Death was not putting much effort into remaining hidden, having not even bothered using his Cloak, and yet only a mutilated mortal with a magical eye had seemed to take any notice of him at all.

Cackling mentally as he switched the positioning of the paranoid mortal's silverware again and watching as the man grew more and more agitated as he failed to locate the reason for the discrepancies, Death kept the majority of his attention on his little shell. He'd positioned himself directly behind his shell's chair near the wall, and was rather looking forward to the expressions the others would wear once they noticed him. Perhaps he should do something extremely noticeable, like transfigure himself into a purple nundu for his own amusement?

Death could tell his shell was getting irritated by all the questions and condescending reprimands being aimed at him by the Order, as if they had any sort of right to interrogate his shell at all. He frowned at this, his displeasure coating the room like hoarfrost. Conversation slowed as all eyes began glancing around warily, and Death made himself known by putting both hands on the shoulders of his shell and staring at the gathered, gossiping mortals, unimpressed.

"Are these mortals bothering you, my shell? Shall I silence them for you?" Death murmured to his shell, not really bothering to lower his voice any, and sized up the unfortunate wizards nearest to his person. He rather hoped his shell let him show these upstart mortals their place, but was aware that was rather wishful thinking on his part. His shell was simply too nice to these interfering busybodies to allow him to mutilate or otherwise traumatize them in such a fashion.

"I'm sure they're finished with the Inquisition now," his shell casually replied, his eyes daring the bristling, affronted Order members to disagree. "I mean, it's not like I've done anything wrong, now have I?" Now his expression was blatantly challenging, and Death matched it with a wide, leering grin.

Death noticed the mortals were far more reluctant to continue their questioning with him noticeably present. He was not entirely sure why—sure they had been mostly questioning his shell about him and his intentions, but it wasn't like he hadn't already been in the room. They just hadn't seen him there.

As the mortals began protesting that of course we weren't interrogating you, Harry and that we only want what is best for you, Harry dear, Death lifted his head and stared at a small window set high up the wall where owls generally came through. Of course, there were 'extensive' owl wards around the property, so the window saw very little use. He said 'extensive' rather mockingly, seeing as how mortal wards were about as potent as cobwebs as far as he was concerned.

As he watched, an unremarkable barn owl with no distinguishing markings or patterns fluttered into the room with an unremarkable roll of parchment tied to its leg. The owl was so entirely boring and uninteresting that Death almost reached up and swatted it out the air for the sole purpose of ensuring it could no longer breed and spread its unremarkableness throughout the owl population of Magical Britain.

Death immediately suppressed his presence utterly, pulling all of his aura and magic into himself and removing any sort of innate warning the owl would have instinctively felt due to his presence. His shell jumped slightly and glanced back at him curiously, and Death made a note that his shell could apparently sense his aura to a greater degree than any other mortal in the room, as no one else had noticed.

Death stared with a raised brow and a growing grin as the owl circled the room a few times, drawing attention to itself in the process, before heading towards the tallest perch available.

That this perch happened to be his shoulder filled Death with an indescribable, vindictive glee. His grin almost reached his ears he was so eager—desperate almost for this horribly uninteresting owl to land upon him and have its soul removed.

His shell jumped to his feet and snatched the owl out of the air before it reached him, sending him a Look that said I know what you were going to do, and while I find it hilarious, my morals won't allow me to let it happen.

Death scowled at his shell, releasing his aura again and making every mortal in the room shudder slightly. His shell was remarkably unaffected by his visible ire, which was enough to flip Death's mood back into amusement as he imagined what the others would have done had he scowled at them.

Had heart attacks and fainted, most likely.

His shell untied the parchment from the now-terrified owl, whose wide eyes were locked onto him as it now felt and understood what it had almost landed on. Death leered at it with a wide, fanged smile and all the owl's feathers fluffed out simultaneously in an almost audible puff of noise. His shell glanced at the extremely puffy owl and snorted aloud before he turned back to the parchment as he began to read, his expression going flat with practiced blankness almost immediately.

Curious, Death stepped forward and glanced down at the letter over the shoulder not occupied by a fluffed-up owl. There was a spell on the parchment that prevented anyone but his shell from reading it, but Death ignored it as if wasn't even there and flicked his eyes down to the signature, wondering who was writing to his shell with such a horrible owl.

LV.

Death blinked. Twice. Then he threw back his head and howled in laughter. Several snooping Order members shrieked in alarm at the sound and threw themselves backwards, tripping over each other as they tried to flee from his apparent glee. The owl screeched, flapping rapidly as it launched itself away but seemed to forget how to use its wings properly, and simply flopped to the ground where it flailed for a moment before going still, apparently taking its chances at playing dead.

Death chortled to himself, even as his shell continued staring rather blankly at his letter. This was fantastic. He hadn't had such a good laugh in eons! Death plucked the letter from his shell's frozen hands, leaving his shell to stare numbly at where the parchment had just been as Death glanced down at his prize.

Potter,

It has come to my attention that you have recently gained a rather powerful ally due to a certain bumbling old fool's interference—he does so like to interfere, doesn't he?—and I found it prudent to address the situation before any impulsive moves were made on your part.

No, don't argue with me. I have been receiving reports on your annual school-year 'adventures' since the Tournament, and never have I seen such a textbook example of a foolish Gryffindor. Challenging my basilisk, Harry? With a sword and a hat? Tut tut. What do they teach at Hogwarts these days?

Regardless, the purpose of this letter is not to mock you (no matter how you deserve it), but rather to come to an agreement that both of us can find suitably satisfactory.

You do not want me to hunt down and kill your friends and family.

I do not want you to sick your new attack dog on me.

Taking into account that there is simply no feasible way that a teenager like yourself could prove to be such an annoyance without some measure of intelligence to your name, I am sure we can come to a reasonable compromise on these points.

Do not take this letter as proof of how I'm 'changing my ways' or 'putting the past behind me.' I hate you. I loathe the very reality of your existence. I dream of ways with which to dispose of you so utterly that the infamy of your death would outweigh the fame your miserable excuse for a life has brought you. Before you work up too much of a fuss over the truths I have spoken, do recall that I do not lie, Potter. I find the act itself the mark of a weakling, a coward; and I am neither weak nor cowardly.

As a… peace offering, of sorts, I am willing to negotiate the unconditional surrender of two of my Death Eaters, both of which share a personal history with you. Should you agree to draw a truce, I shall turn Bellatrix Lestrange and the remains of Peter Pettigrew over to you. I do apologize for the state of poor Peter. He was a worthless, spineless excuse for a wizard, but I am sure you'd have rather executed him yourself. Revenge is something I understand very well, Potter. Perhaps, if you ask nicely, your new friend could resurrect him for you?

And for Merlin's sake, boy, don't reply with that blasted white owl of yours. She's incredibly conspicuous, and the last thing either of us needs is for some pesky busybody to follow her to one of us.

I expect your response, Potter.

-LV

Death thought the letter was, overall, rather straightforward and polite considering who had written it and to whom it was written. He would be having words with Voldemort, however, on the proper way to respect his shell. He grinned at the thought, wondering if he should go force some manners into the man before his shell had to reply to his unexpected offer.

Noticing how his shell was still in shock, Death draped an arm around his shoulders and pulled them through the Void for a brief moment until they reemerged in the room his shell had been using. Knowing their abrupt departure would have likely sent the Order into a panic, Death chuckled again, stirring his shell into life.

"Is this genuine?" his shell asked, bewildered and more than a little horrified.

Death paused, reaching a sliver of his power out across Time and probed at the emotions surrounding Voldemort at the time this was written. Fear, wariness, determination, anger, and a rather grudging respect. Nothing that suggested a plot being plotted or a scheme being woven, in the very least. Returning to the 'present'—the concept of now is, of course, meaningless to Death—he glanced at his shell, who was staring at the letter still held in his hand.

"Yes, little shell," Death murmured, amusement coloring his voice. "Voldemort has run from me and the mere thought of what I represent since he was six years old. Once he was made aware of my presence here, his first thought was how to ensure his own survival. He is not a fool, my shell; he knows that it would take but a single thought for me to erase him from existence, and he seeks to avoid this fate in any way that he can."

His shell thought this over, absently taking the letter from him and reading it again, looking troubled. "But… this is Voldemort. How can he possibly think I'd agree to a… a truce with him? He killed my parents! He all but killed Cedric! And… and hundreds—thousands!—of other people! I can't just… ignore that!"

His shell seemed to be panicking. Death wondered how he should go about fixing that. "Technically, the mortal known as Lord Voldemort has only personally killed fifty-seven people. He has been indirectly responsible for the deaths of six hundred and twenty-four," Death offered helpfully.

His shell stared at him, and Death felt a bit chagrined that he didn't seem to be helping quite as much as he'd like to be. He was so terribly out of practice at this. It had been, what, thirty-four thousand years since he'd last tried to calm someone down? He was usually the one causing people to panic, after all. Calming them down afterwards was incredibly counterproductive.

Apparently deciding to pretend he hadn't heard what Death said, his shell started up again. "He's been trying to kill me since I was a baby!"

"Because of a prophecy Dumbledore was told in a highly-public, unwarded room in a popular pub," Death pointed out, trying to be helpful again.

"He's trying to subjugate the entire world, Death!"

"Actually, he's only really trying to overthrow the Magical Government of Britain. I doubt he's made any plans at all for the rest of Earth."

"Voldemort plans to kill all the muggleborns and the muggles. Tell me that's not something I should be upset about."

"His goal, if that were the case, is entirely impossible. There are almost six billion people currently in existence, 97% of whom are muggles or muggleborns. Taking into account the fact that, even should Voldemort attain True Immortality and kill a hundred muggles a day for the rest of his unnatural life, there would still be almost 350,000 others born for every hundred he killed." Death really thought he was getting somewhere with this, now. Mortals liked to debate things that bothered them, right?

"Well he's… he's… he's evil, ok? I just don't…" his shell sighed, seemingly entirely distressed and frustrated now, but it was better than his previous panic. Death grinned at his success at having calmed his shell down. And he'd thought he'd be rusty at this…

"Is he?" Death wondered, purely for the sake of wondering. Death had, after all, done things exponentially worse than anything a mortal like Voldemort could even dream of, and he didn't consider himself evil.

His shell threw his hands into the air, scowling. "Whose side are you on, anyway?"

Death paused, a bit confused at the sudden accusation. It must have shown on his face, because his shell just sighed and ran a hand across his eyes.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you," his shell apologized, looking sheepish. Death was bewildered, but accepted it regardless. He rather doubted his shell had done anything worth apologizing over recently, but since so few people apologized to him at all, he figured he'd just take it while he could. "It's just… pretty much everyone has always told me that it's my destiny to kill Voldemort, and now here he is: offering a truce. I'm not sure what I should do."

"Well," Death began, not entirely certain why this decision was apparently so difficult, "what do you want to do?" It wasn't like it was 'everyone's business whether or not his shell agreed to a ceasefire. It was his shell's life, after all, and Death rather thought the rest of the world was unimportant in comparison to that.

His shell froze, eyes wide as he stared at Death. Death froze with him, incredibly unsure what had made his shell react like that, and wondering if it was fixable. He seemed to be making more conversational blunders than usual, today. Perhaps he should practice in front of a mirror?

"What I want to do?" his shell repeated, quietly. Then he laughed, a short, bitter thing. "No one's ever asked me what I wanted to do before."

Ah. And Death understood. His poor little shell, so mistreated by these foolish mortals. Death wondered if his shell would protest should he suddenly grab him and bundle him inside his Cloak where he could keep him safe. Not that he couldn't keep him safe anywhere else, but he'd always sort of wanted to wrap someone in blankets and see if that actually provided any sort of tangible protection from harm.

"It is your choice, my little shell. Agree to a truce, refuse one, make unreasonable conditions on his half of the compromise, give me the word to go and rip out what remains of his soul… decisions, decisions…"

Death grinned when his shell smiled weakly. Reaching over, he plucked the crumpled letter from his shell's hand and skimmed it again—even though he had memorized it the first time, it was nice to look at the physical copy.

"You do have the upper hand here. If you but asked it of me, I would fetch this Bellatrix myself, removing the need to bargain with Voldemort entirely. I could also simply devour his soul and its fragments, removing the threat to begin with."

His shell took a moment to think on that before refocusing. "…what do you think I should do, Death?" At Death's questioning frown, he hurried on. "I'd appreciate your opinion."

Death bared his fangs in a hungry grin. "I think you should gather up his remaining horcruxes and feed them to me so that I might ascertain if they all taste like coconuts." He paused for a moment before his face eased out into a more serious expression. "Truthfully, my shell, you and he are Fated Opposites. You have been since the prophecy was set into motion by a conniving old bastard and a paranoid Dark Lord. Even should you agree to a truce with him, you will never agree with his practices or his policies. You would be discontented with the way things would go, with being unable to act against him when he inevitably finds loopholes in your compromise and toes the line of what could constitute a Breach of Contract. You would not be satisfied with neutrality. It would eat at you, at your conscience, at your soul, until your morality forced you to act against some perceived malevolent plot, and then you would be right back where you began, as enemies." Death stared down at his silent, contemplative shell solemnly. "I can offer you only advice, dear shell. And my advice is not to leave an enemy at your back."

His shell nodded slowly, taking a fortifying breath. "Thank you. I appreciate your honesty, Death," his shell smiled, and Death grinned back, pleased. His shell's expression shifted to amusement. "I better write him a reply, then. And if I wasn't so sure he'd kill her out of spite, I'd send it with Hedwig just to be difficult."

Death's grin slowly widened as an idea spawned, making his shell eye him nervously while he hunted for parchment and a quill. "No," Death purred, "allow me to deliver it for you, my shell. I shall make it… memorable."

His shell snorted as he finished up his—extremely short—reply and rolled it up, handing it over to a gleeful Death. "I don't doubt that." He eyed Death warily. "Do I want to know?"

"No," Death smiled. It was all teeth, fangs sharpening as his eyes bled black. "No, I rather think you do not."

Lord Voldemort was pacing in his office, his mind tumbling over the possible courses of action he'd have to take depending on the answer from the Potter brat. He cursed the loss of their emotional link; he'd have quite happily slaughtered a small family for an insight into what the brat was thinking right now.

Would he agree? Would he refuse? Would he ignore his warning and send that blasted, highly-noticeable snowy owl of his? He'd kill the thing on principle if he had.

Voldemort was a realist. He always had been. He knew it was highly unlikely the boy would consent to a truce, no matter how he sweetened the pot with promises of revenge. He had already scoured through his library—and the libraries of his followers with manors not yet confiscated by the Ministry—for anything he could use to protect himself should the worst occur.

He'd found next to nothing. There was a brief mention of something called 'the Deathly Hallows,' which were supposed to make one the 'Master of Death' once collected, but all of them were lost to time, and it would take far too long to track them down and earn any sort of protection they offered. There were also legends in ancient scrolls of men who'd 'dealt' with Death—he was assuming this was in the gambling sense, and not the murdering one—selling their souls or bargaining the souls of others for their lives. He had put thought into that possibility, wondering how many souls he could get away with trading to Death in return for his own. Surely the souls of his Death Eaters would be enough in recompense for his own, tattered one? Their consent didn't matter to him. They were branded by his magic, and were by all rights his chattel. He could sell them to the devil if he so wanted and there was nothing they could do about it.

This was, of course, all based on the theory that he would actually have a chance to interact with Death at all if it came for him. There were no limits to what the being's powers could be; for all Voldemort knew, the entity could likely kill him from anywhere in the world, regardless of wards or distance.

He did some quick calculations in his head. He had one hundred and forty marked Death Eaters in his service. The unmarked ones he, sadly, did not have a magical right to, but the others were fair game. If he handed over his Death Eaters in return for his life, maybe—

"How presumptuous of you, mortal," a voice suddenly cracked through the silence of his study like the Voice of God, making Voldemort stumble back into a wall, his pale yew wand appearing instantly in his hand, "to title your followers connoisseurs of Death."

There was no doubt in his mind who had just spoken to him. It was in the deep, hoarse, rasping timbre of its voice, in the way reality seemed to be fragmenting like glass in the air around him, and in the way every shadow in the room had just converged to the middle of the floor and was now hanging there like an oppressive, vaguely-humanoid silhouette.

The power hanging around that figure was unfathomable. It licked at the air like tongues of black flame, creeping across the ground in veins of silver hoarfrost, as it weighed down the very world until Voldemort found himself forced to his knees under the enormity of it.

"'Bow to death,' you told him," the voice rumbled, the sound vaguely menacing in its apparent humor. "Fitting, then, that you should bow to me in the end."

Voldemort stared, transfixed and horrified, as the figure in the center of the room abruptly warped, skeletal limbs draped in void-black cloth twisting out of the darkness as eyes the color of death speared him with all the careless malice of a child nailing an insect to the ground with a pin. Its maw opened in a hideous parody of a grin, jaws full of long, nightmarish fangs as the hair upon its crown writhed like living shadow. Its form lengthened unnaturally until it loomed over him, long-fingered hands clasped at its back as it smiled at him in the manner a wolf smiles at the deer that doesn't know it's dead yet.

The being leaned closer, making Voldemort press back into the wall in an aborted effort to maintain distance, and its killing curse eyes bled black like oil spreading across the water. It inhaled deeply, making Voldemort twitch with the realization that it was smelling him.

"Can you feel it, mortal?" it asked him, fangs bared in a Glasgow grin. "Can you feel the fragment of your soul screaming for you?"

Voldemort froze. He could feel it, he realized with numb horror. A sort of frantic, desperate pull deep in his chest, leading straight to the entity leaning over him. He had assumed his horcrux had been merely destroyed when the link was severed. It seems he had been… slightly mistaken.

He recoiled slightly when suddenly one long, skeletal hand was pressed to the wall beside his head, uncomfortably close. There was a bone-deep chill radiating from that hand, almost like the concentrated presence of a pod of dementors. He did not like the implications this brought.

"Oh how it begged me, mortal," the being—Death—crooned. "It thrashed and it struggled, and it writhes still." Voldemort could almost hear a shrill voice screaming, but was unsure if it was in his head or not. He shivered all the same. Death leaned even closer, until he could feel the aching cold of its breath on his face. "I wonder…" Death purred, "if it would care for some company?"

Voldemort understood the intention a mere heartbeat before the entity acted. The hand not resting on the wall behind him suddenly shot forward, burying itself to the wrist in his chest as if it were entirely intangible. But Voldemort felt it. He felt that hand grip onto something deep inside him, something weak and broken and desperate, and he gasped for breath, clawing at the arm impaling him through the torso.

No! Voldemort thought, terrified. I cannot die like this! I am Lord Voldemort!

Death laughed, mocking him, its voice an amalgamation of rasping, hoarse screams that scraped across his mind like shards of broken glass. "Die?" Death queried, its grin widening impossibly as an inhuman black tongue ran over its teeth. "No, mortal. You shall not die. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not in a thousand years. But oh… oh how you'll wish you had…"

With a grin and a hungry flash of abyssal eyes, Death jerked his hand free, and with it came pain. Agony. Voldemort felt, for the briefest moment, stretched in four separate directions before the other threads that had brought him comfort of I am not alone snapped abruptly, leaving him screaming in a voice that no longer existed as his body dissolved into ash behind him. The fingers tightened around him—he was a mass of sensation without a physical form, but those fingers were so cold they ached—and dragged him closer to the grinning, cackling form of the one entity he feared above all else.

Death slowed its laughter, still grinning, as it peered at the trembling, terrified soul of Lord Voldemort. Heaving a satisfied sigh, Death leered at its captive as it brought the soul closer to its face, ignoring how it struggled. "Little mortal," it cooed, fangs clicking shut a hair's breadth from his form as it grinned, "I have a message for you…" Death waved his free hand and a rolled-up parchment appeared there, seemingly written on the back of part of a Potions essay. Slowly, leisurely, Death unrolled the parchment and turned it so the shuddering soul could see what was written there.

Give my regards to Pettigrew in Hell.

Death threw back its head and cackled with laughter as the soul of Lord Voldemort struggled to free itself, just as all others had done before him. Still laughing, Voldemort felt himself lifted until he hovered over the wide, grinning fangs of Death. Petrified, he could do nothing but stare as the jaws opened and bared the black Void within for him to see.

"I would say goodbye, Tom Riddle," the whisper-voice of Death crept through his mind despite the entity not speaking aloud, instead releasing his fingers and ignoring the shrieks as Voldemort fell into the maw of Death, "but it shall be Eternity before I let you die."

The last thing the soul of Lord Voldemort heard was chilling, rasping laughter.

AN: So. The death of Lord Voldemort was entirely unplanned. It simply happened that way.

I had honestly intended Harry to take the truce, but then I started writing and this is what happened. *shrug*

And I do so love Creepy Death.