CHAPTER 1
Harry Potter, Master of Hallows finally ended the war that had run twelve years before he was born and peaked in the last three years with a mad wizard's it was not an end he had anticipated or wished for.
As he stood before the red-eyed madman, almost detached-ly observing his reptilian features and vile, bloodshot eyes, all he felt was an impending relief that it was finally the end for him. No more pain, no more fear, no more hunger or betrayals. No more watching his loved ones die and no more endless black miasma of grief to cloud all his senses. He had lived Seventeen years with pain as a constant and loyal shadow. Now it was time to die.
All in all, he was ready to embrace Death as an old friend, he mused. Harry stood in the clearing inside the Forbidden Forest, and finally understood with a startling clarity how Ignotus Peverell could have given up the marvelous cloak and embraced Death. If life sucked this much, Death was certainly vound to appear far more attractive in comparison. Besides, he could do with a friend right about now.
All his friends were either gone already or betrayed or on the brink of an end. None of them were truly a fair match for the violent efficiency of the death eaters. He had already watched Hermione die at the hands of someone who had already betrayed him more times than had been acceptable, yet the arse had been a close friend.
Ron Weasley had as good as killed Hermione in a fit of anger when Hermione rejected his advances in the chamber of secrets and raced after Harry. And in a morose sense, her death had been morbidly funny and sad and heartbreaking and maddening and infuriating all at once.
Hearing her calling to him, Harry had turned, only to watch in horror as Hermione was cursed from four sides. The blasted cowards! Ginny, that vapid, vindictive little piglet, had taken his disinterest out on her with a dark cutting curse thrown at her torso, before she sneaked off, probably hoping no one had seen her use dark magic to kill.
But Ginny Weasley wasn't the only one. Lavender Brown had screamed incoherently and thrown an unrecognized asphixiation curse at the stunned, bleeding Hermione, only to be mowed down herself, by a rabid Fenrir Greyback. But Ron.. that bastard took the cake. He had stabbed her with a discarded basilisk tooth and taken off, grinning madly at Harry.
Harry had been too shocked to act in time, and yet, he could not afford to stop; he had to stab the Ravenclaw tiara with the tooth that Hermione had appropriated and thrown at him before she was so ruthlessly cut down. Harry desperately wanted to freeze time simply to wrap his head around the concept of a world without his Mione in it.
But it was not the time, Dumbledore's insidious voice kept whispering in his mind. War soldiers were rarely accorded any breaks to grieve or react while the war raged around them all. What cut deeper on the raw grief of losing Hermione was listening to Ron in mute horror while he bragged to Harry and defected from the battle. And Harry had shoved down all his grief and turned to the task at hand.
Heartbroken, with nothing left to lose, Harry had stumbled on to Neville and quickly told Neville to kill the snake and then not hesitate a minute more to chop off the blasted Voldie's moldy, hairless head. As briefly as he could, he explained how he had spent months on the run, hunting and eliminating Horcruxes. Nagini and Tom left.
Harry was going to surrender so they'd get a respite from the battle and it was up to Neville to carry on and protect them all. At this point, there was not a single soul he trusted more than Neville. Poor Neville, bruised, battered, bleeding, and almost glowing with suppressed rage and power had looked shell shocked but gravely promised Harry everything if only he promised to return to them all, intact.
Harry knew that Neville sought the impossible; he shook his head with a sad, wry smile and waved him off, wrapping his father's cloak around him. He kept remembering Snape's dying moments, the tear tracts trailing his memories, the look of relief and love in his eyes as he passed on, looking deep into Harry's green eyes.
The moment of grief and pain when he discovered the truth about Snape. The portrait of Dumbledore encouraging, no, goading him to take the stone and the cloak and sacrifice his life for the Wizarding world. Harry was a little past any more shock or anger or fear, or any jarring emotion other than relief.
All he knew was that without Hermione, he was better off dead, and walking into the forbidden forest to face Voldie was much easier than fighting to live and love. Even now, the reptilian creature that was Voldie was on a rant and a monologue, with futile attempts to taunt him.
But Harry had already passed the point of caring. Voldemort seemed infuriated to not gain any reaction from the young man, kicked him hard enough to drop him to his knees, and then flung out the AK. Harry Potter dies, looking up at the blood-red eyes gloating, the bone-white wand nearly touching his scar.
Dying was virtually painless, was his only thought as his world darkened and faded out of existence.
Dying was a pain in the eardrum. Seriously... It was annoying.
Like he had once watched in an old movie, trapped in Durskaban; he distinctly remembered a scene of a character's death. There was a static sound to the act of dying. If he could react, he would have winced and covered his ears; it was the sound of nails scraping over glass or chalkboard in his muggle school once upon a different lifetime.
He let out a breath and slowly opened his eyes. He was still on the floor. But it wasn't the forest floor with dried out pine needles and dead leaves anymore. It was a vast nothingness of white in all directions. He could not see a beginning or an end to the place he had ended up in. And he was naked as a newborn baby, although it was neither too hot nor too cold, nor was it too hard or too soft. It just was.
He was just beginning to think how utterly relaxing just dying and then lying quietly here in this vast nothingness when footsteps ambled closer. The garish purple and yellow robe with shooting stars and floating moons WAS not on his wishlist. Dumbledore was definitely not. That odious old goat was the last one he would have expected in the reception committee unless he was in hell. There was no other viable explanation, he internally fumed.
Then one had to add the creep factor of Harry being essentially nude and ogled by a creepy older man who had already spent a lifetime with an unhealthy interest in him since he was born. Being naked in front of the same old coot was hard to tolerate.
The thought barely finished forming in his head when he found himself decked in the comfiest pair of jeans, a faded blue hoodie, and thick, warm socks that Dobby would have adored. When facing the biggest of his tormentors in the realm of afterlife crossroads, he was glad for comfortable clothing. It seemed an adequate place to begin.
The odd nasal thrumming had ebbed and faded away and he was able to hear again. Not that he really cared what the vile old man was pontificating over. Dumbledore was nearly nose to nose and already preaching an unhealthy pile of dragon dung and twinkling away like Disney's Tinkerbell. Harry was done listening to him; he had already had enough of the old man to last him a million lifetimes.
He gathered all the magic he could summon to himself and whipped a sharp, angry tornado that whipped all around them, ripping most unforgivingly at the old coot like an angry congregation of birds. He proclaimed his complete rejection of Dumbledore as formally as he could think of saying, calling upon the very magic of the realm.
Unseen winds howl and whir like entranced dervishes and at the center of it all, completely in control, stands the shade of an angry young wizard, demanding justice, forthright righteousness and honor be satisfied; he stands firm, fuming and fierce, and demands to speak to Death.
The old man's shock, his wily eyes, and then the falling off of his genial, grandfatherly mask, to reveal the arrogant man easily prone to posturing, rage, and immature self-righteous judgmentalism. Apparently, even death, afterlife and hell had failed to cure the old goat off his delusions.
Harry had literally nothing to say to the man who had ruined his life on the drunk ramblings of a delusional witch. He threw out all the ambient magic he could access, frustrated beyond measure; he condemned Dumbledore's nefarious designs as an act of war against all he had thought about it back when he had lived, he vehemently declared that he would have considered Dumbledore as the dark lord he needed to vanquish the heck out of.
Harry declared Dumbledore an evil mastermind, right to his face, relishing the older man's shock and outrage, and pointed out the fact that it was the old bastard's piss-poor, biased choices that lead Tom Riddle Jr to the path of darkness. Harry himself had to fight constantly against the lure of darkness with the life the old man had willfully condemned him to. There was no viable excuse for the man's crimes against him and all of his fellow countrymen.
He determined that even Death wouldn't condone Dumbledore's dark choices, winning or losing the war at this point would be meaningless. Things have only deteriorated. There was only one outcome, no matter who won; only the annihilation of magic itself awaited them all in the near future. And it was all because Dumbledore was an incredibly hubrid, stupid, and a woefully biased arse.
He deserved not a moment of Harry's time or interest, especially not here once he was actually done with surviving. Even in death, Harry would not, ...he could not forgive the old coot. It was a grave injustice to even spare a second in the odious man's presence; he wanted to neither hear his justifications nor see his stupid wrinkly arse.
He would speak to Death or speak to none, he vehemently declared.
Hearing this, Death appeared like an apparition, fading right in the middle of two outraged and dead heroes of Wizarding England. The tall, hooded Spectre of End, the Grey Shadows, and new Beginnings stretched out his scythe and banished Dumbledore from the white vastness.
Death puts all things in perspective, and most of all, frank, transparent conversations. And no one was more appreciative of this than one recently deceased Harry Potter.
Death was in a curious mood this fine summer nooning, and He had come to examine why Dumbledore was at the crossroads when he had no business being there. Arriving to catch the argument between the two, Harry's angry rant had caught his attention and interest. The dark Spectre then turned onward and conversed frankly with Harry. To the young, disilusioned wizard, that very simple choice was immensely refreshing. Certainly more comforting that the entity's appearance.
Death shimmered in the edges, his form and features hard to pin down or humanize. He began to explain the true history and origins of magic and the role of entities like Death, Life, Fates, Magick, Luck, Strife, and Mischief. Across time, across all cultures and species, they existed in the sentient belief system in various names, roles, and identities. Each of them had a very specific role to play and none were more important than any other.
Death declared that He exists only to maintain balance, not simply claim lives. Harry was steadily getting angrier than ever; he had spent an entire lifetime as a child soldier, fighting a never-ending war. There was not even a hint of any sort of balance in there. He pointed out that this war has surely harassed the muggle world so much that those in the know would soon reach the limits of their tolerance and decide that magic itself was at fault.
With their advanced technology, nuclear weapons, and enraged species that are far too used to wars; next on the agenda would not be a balance but the end of the world. No magical anywhere could hope to outlive that. There was no single war in any part of the history of any sentient being on earth, that could justify a war with an act of balance.
Where was even a hint of balance when even entities like Death had lost any semblance of common sense?
Death had been out of the loop so long he had failed to notice the world going off-kilter? How could that happen? He looked inward for the truth and answers and was shocked by what he found. This young wizard was right. The way things were headed, Apocalypse wasn't a myth but a storm looming on the horizon, threatening all life and existence on the Earthly plane. This was not in the script. This could not happen.
Death turned to examine the angry young man standing defiantly in front of him, as the infinite mind explored avenues. If this boy was being held back in the crossroads, then it was no coincidence.
The universe was rarely ever so lazy.
A/N: As recommended by my faithful friends following this story, I've rectified certain changes and edited and proofread where necessary, as far as I know. Let me know if this revised version works for you? All reviews are welcome, but I'd appreciate it more if it was kind, even if it was criticism. Critiquing is healthy; trolling and harrassment isn't. Don't you all agree? Anyways, I wait eagerly to hear from you.