I'm borrowing two characters from Good Omens. The story is set in the Harry Potter universe. I have taken liberties with heaven/hell/divinity mythologies as it suits me for this particular ficlet.

Inspired by BlueMaple's beautiful world-building in 'East of the Moon, West of the Sun'. This is a giftfic for ex-livreira, who's been amazingly helpful and wonderful all round in organizing this month's daily posting with me.

Hell

Dad always said that Harry was an infinite soul having a human experience.

Well, Harry called him dad, but he wasn't like other people's dads. Most of the people Harry knew called him Death. Harry's snake said he wasn't the paternal type.

"What's for dinner, dad?"

Before he got his plate of stew, Harry'd always get questions to answer in turn. Today it was, "What is the nature of existence, young master?"

Harry thought about it for a while. "Suffering?" he guessed, fishing out the beans to eat first. Dad liked when he gave answers like that. Thinking sombre, Harry called it.

"That's depressing," Harry's snake said from where she was curled around his shoulders. She was always saying those kinds of things. "It's not right for a child to be in such macabre surroundings."

But Harry liked it here. He didn't know anything else. When his snake told him about grass and trees and sunshine, it sounded a bit intimidating. The trees down in hell were nice and skeletal, it made them easier to climb and easier to see through. The sky was always glowing red, so when Harry had to go to bed it was easy to sneak over to the window and read until his dad came and tucked him back in again.

"You must rest, little master," Death always said, covering Harry with a blanket that shimmered like water spun to thread. "When you grow up, you will conquer. How can you conquer the souls of the damned without enough rest, and without eating your vegetables?"

Harry didn't really like vegetables, but he knew what kind of answers his dad liked to hear. "I'll be a terrible conqueror. Promise."

Death's kiss to the lightning scar on his forehead was like plunging into a bucket of ice. Harry snuggled into his blanket and closed his eyes. He thought the scar made him special.

Next to him, Crowley curled up under the blankets, hissing all the while. 'it makes you look disfigured,' Harry knew she'd say, but Harry knew she wouldn't mean it.

Maybe it was a strange childhood, growing up in hell with Death for a father and a snake for a friend, but Harry didn't mind. When he read stories about boys climbing trees with leaves, and girls riding ponies, it didn't sound like that much fun anyway.

.oOo.

"I'm taking you to meet my friend," Crowley hissed.

"I thought I was your friend," Harry said. His snake sometimes turned human-shaped with yellow eyes, with long hair like Harry's.

Harry held onto her hand as they walked through the park, feeling a little bit scared.

"You're eight, Harry. It's about time you saw the real world, isn't it?"

The real world was cold. "I thought the trees were supposed to have leaves." Although, it wouldn't surprise him if his picture books had lied. They'd lied about the grass, too. The park just had dirt paths, grey concrete, and an iced-over pond.

"They'll come out in spring," Crowley said. "Terrible luck with the weather. I was hoping for snow." She took out a brown paper bag and handed it over.

Harry unwrapped the bread and started nibbling on it. It wasn't even stale yet. He didn't want Crowley to be sad, but he didn't want to eat it either.

"Here," Crowley said. "You're supposed to feed it to the ducks."

"Terrible luck with the weather," said a voice. Harry spun, brandishing the paper bag.

It was an angel. Golden hair and blue eyes and everything, just like Death had warned him about.

"Aziraphel," Crowley said. "You came."

"It's been a while, friend." The angel took some of Harry's bread to throw at the ducks. They seemed to like it soft, maybe because they had beaks instead of teeth.

"I'd been hoping for snow," Crowley said again. "This is Harry, by the way."

"How do you do," Harry mumbled, without looking up from the ice. Death had explained snow to him as being a bit like ash raining from the sky. When Harry had tried sticking out his tongue like the children in his books did, he'd decided that snow wasn't like ash at all. It had taken a day to wash the taste away.

Aziraphel and Crowley talked for a bit without making Harry talk back, which was nice. He watched the people in the real world and wondered where all the ponies were.

.oOo.

When they met Aziraphel the next time, it was spring. There were so many green things that it made Harry feel dizzy. The ducks were the same, Harry found them comforting.

After the adults finished talking, Aziraphel smiled and gave Harry a paper bag and a pat on the head. "Be a good lad," he said, and left.

Crowley took them back to the soft red glow of hell, so Harry tucked it away until their next excursion topside to feed to the ducks.

Crowley had said not to tell Death about their little field trips, but Harry wasn't worried. His dad only spoke about damned souls and metaphysical forcefields. He wasn't the paternal type, he was the practical type. Dad had given Harry a ring to call him with if Harry got lost, and a blanket to keep him cool. One day, he'd promised, Harry would be getting a wand.

Death didn't think about things like birthdays or Yule. Where Harry spent his time talking to whom wouldn't interest him.

.oOo.

Harry had been expecting the bread to be nice and stale after a month. He got it out of his jacket pocket, excited to finally have something good to offer the ducks.

The thing he pulled out was a golden walnut with wings. Harry tested if it was real by biting it, like he'd seen Charon do with his coins.

Harry held it in his hand and examined it, deciding he'd ask Charon what it meant when the gold fluttered.

"Oh, you brought your snitch," Aziraphel said. Harry blinked up at him. The walnut tried to fly away, he caught it without looking.

"Your father asked me to bring it to you. Shall I pass along that you like it?" Aziraphel continued.

Harry looked back at the ball, the golden snitch. It was twitching in his hand. He couldn't imagine his dad giving him something so useless. "What does it do?" he asked.

"Well, in a Quidditch game, catching it ends the game," Aziraphel said.

"I've already told him about Quidditch," Crowley said. He threw a bit of bread so that it bonked one of the ducks on the head.

Harry giggled. He couldn't picture his dad flying on a broomstick.

"Anyway, your mother asked me to pass this along to you," Aziraphel said. "She wants you to know she loves you very much."

It was a real, live lily. Harry was scared to touch it, but he took it anyway. "I have a mum?"

"Oh dear," said Aziraphel. "Oh goodness."

.oOo.

"Dad," Harry said, sitting down at the dinner table like usual. "Is it true that I had a mum and a dad before you?"

"Where did you think babies came from?" Death asked, handing over a piece of stale bread and a bowl of hot stew. He didn't have a proper face, but he still managed to look puzzled.

"You said I was born from the abyss."

"Metaphorically." Death grinned. "Your birth parents died for you, but they asked me to bless you. There was a genetic precedence for my interference, so the neatest solution was to claim you as my master. Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived, Master of Death."

Harry thought about it while he ate his vegetables. "I'm alive?" he asked. It seemed like a good idea to check. Most of the people he talked to were dead.

"Yes, and growing swiftly. I believe you'll be getting your letter any year now. I must haved Crowley take you topside, the last owl we got had to die to deliver. It's all very vibrant and green, you mustn't let it intimidate you."

Harry didn't say Crowley had already been taking him to feed ducks. "Alright," he said. He thought about what the children in his books might say. "I'll miss you."

Death ruffled his hair. It felt like spiders scuttling across his head. "You grow big and strong, young master. The souls of the damned are waiting."

.oOo.

They moved into a house that had a bit of the roof missing. Harry loved the way it felt like home from the very first moment. Crowley spent most of his time as a human-shape now, and Aziraphel came over every day to teach Harry his lessons.

Writing with a quill was much harder than with a stylus in soft wax. It was messy and permanent, but Aziraphel told Harry that good essay-writing was the foundation of expression and rhetoric.

Crowley taught Harry how to do magic spells. He wasn't great at it, mostly because Crowley didn't get that his snake magic and Aziraphel's angel magic were different from Harry's death magic. Still, Harry held onto the willow wand that Crowley found in a kitchen drawer and practised wishing really hard for his feather to float.

His book showed a little pictuutre of how he was supposed to wave his wand and say 'Wingardium Leviosa', but that seemed very silly compared to all the other magic Harry had seen.

Aziraphel helped Harry grow things in the garden. Together they planted beds of all sorts of different lilies. When the leaves on the trees started to turn blood red and fall off, Harry thought it might be the apocalypse, but Aziraphel said they'd come back in the spring.

"Topside, it's all about ebb and flow, give and take, life and death," Crowley said, helping Harry pick the prettiest flowers in the garden. The three of them walked hand in hand through their little village to the church graveyard, passing through the rows of tombstones until they stopped before a big bit of white marble with familiar names on it.

"Hi mum, hi dad," Harry said, setting down the wreath. "Aziraphel told me you're doing alright. Dad, I liked your story about the tree that tried to murder you, it reminded me of the oak I liked to climb back in hell."

Once Harry had finished catching his parents up on the week's events, Aziraphel went back to heaven and Crowley walked Harry back to the cottage on Coleford Road with the hole in the roof and the feeling of home.

Harry was only nine, but he knew he had to eat his vegetables and do well in his lessons. One day, he was going to make his Death-dad, his mum, and his other dad proud.

Day 13 of a post every day this December. This fic is already almost completely written at around 7 chapters/15k words and will be going up over the next months.

Find Chapter 2 on ao3 if you're one for immediate gratification. Thank you for reading.