Chapter 11

Summary: Prince Eric becomes a vegetable, maybe, hopefully? Meh, I guess we'll see what the muse decides.

Notes: I hope I get this chapter out in time, and even if I do, it might be quite short, but if not, then it's because I am swamped with work. My boss gave me less than a week to finish painting a backdrop for a concert while also still having all my other duties in place as well as working on my 2nd job, but I think I managed it lol. I don't seem to know how to put it on here either, any suggestions?

Harry

There was just one problem with the bravado of his words, and that was the concussion that he possibly currently had.

Sure, he could try and heal himself, but there was a high risk of him scrambling his own brains instead and that would get him nowhere. For once he wished that becoming the Master of Death had given him a little more than just being unable to die. Sure his wand couldn't be taken from him anymore, leaving one less vulnerability, but super-healing would have been awesome too.

"Harry?"

He looked up to find Sean and Nick looking at him with curious expressions on their faces. For a moment he thought that he had something on his face, but then he noticed that they were looking past him. Over his left shoulder to be exact.

He turned around slowly, not knowing what to expect, but a floating mini-reaper really wasn't it. The being was covered in a cloak and hood, and it had a ninja-like mask that only allowed its eyes to be seen. In a way, it was slightly unnerving, but it was still better than having to imagine a dementor under an empty hood.

He turned back to the men, thinking that it had been a by-product of the concussion and that he really needed to lie down now, but the men were still staring at the same spot, and when he turned back, the mini-reaper was still there, but this time it had its arms crossed.

He fully turned towards it, and it seemed to take that as its cue because it suddenly started ranting in strange clicks and squeaks until it noticed that he seemed to have no idea what it was saying.

The mini-reaper seemed to huff before it swiftly moved forward to touch their foreheads together before moving back once more. It seemed to pick up on where it left off on its rant, and Harry was almost sorry that he could suddenly understand it, "…such a danger magnet prone to trouble! Master Death has been most upset with you!"

Harry's eyes widened, "Wait! Death is an actual being?"

The mini-reaper paused before glancing at him as if he lost his mind, then its gaze moved to the gauze and it shook its head while muttering something before a small scythe suddenly appeared in its hands.

Harry immediately took a step back, but the small being's glare stopped him in his tracks. The glare looked awfully familiar and his eyes widened in realization, but he still had to be sure, "Hermione?"

The mini-reaper froze before it gave a small huff and threw back its hood and pulled down the mask, "Took you long enough! Do you know how long it took me to track you down? Death told me that he told you to stay put once you woke up, but you didn't, and I had to look for you myself because some idiot decided to start a betting pool on how long it would take me to find you!"

A voice cleared to his left, "That idiot, my dear little reaper, would be me.", and Harry turned to find a tall figure standing to his right. He noticed Sean and Nick moving towards him out of the corner of his eye and motioned for them to stand still as he turned to face the being as mini-reaper Hermione seemed to work herself up into actually chewing out Death himself, "I thought it was a dream."

His words cut off Hermione's upcoming rant and the being shook its head, "You were with me for quite a while, though I suspect you forgot about it on purpose once you woke. You never did accept the title in the first place."

Harry's eyes narrowed, "You know why."

The entity sighed and shook its head, well, its hood, "And once again I will explain that you simply cannot see them because they are not in a form that allows you to do so."

Harry looked toward Hermione, who gave him a sad smile, "Harry, what Master Death is trying to say, is that you can only meet those that decide to take on a reaper form. Souls are not meant to stay in one place after death and once they enter the reincarnation cycle, even Death cannot touch them."

Harry looked at Hermione in surprise before he sighed and looked at Death, "Why couldn't you have just explained it like that?"

Death seemed to stand taller, "Because, as the Master of Death, I am obligated to teach you in the way that I was taught, and that does not include making things simpler for you to understand. On the contrary, you are supposed to ponder on the words and wisdom and figure it out yourself!"

He glanced at Hermione and she shrugged, "What he actually means is that he doesn't know how to explain it in an easy way because he had to figure everything out himself…or he forgot most of it already, now let's heal that wound for you, shall we?"

Harry watched as Hermione completely ignored, what looked to be, a flabbergasted Death, and he resisted the need to take a step back as she removed her scythe once more.

This time he allowed her to get close to him and he winced when she pulled the patch off. He was relieved when there was only a tingling feeling instead of a feeling of pain as she healed the wound and he had to fight to not jerk away his head when a thought occurred to him, "What about the others? Did they also stay on as reapers?"

There was a pause before he heard a small sigh as she continued to heal the wound, "Not everyone gets to make that choice, and not everyone that receives the choice accepts it. The few of us that did, well, we knew what we were giving up when we decided to stay on, and we knew how much you had unknowingly sacrificed even after everything you had been through."

Harry frowned, "What do you-"

But she cut him off with a sad, yet playful tug of his hair, "They are on assignments at the moment so you might get to see them later. For now, though…" The shadow that crossed her face made him want to shiver, "…I suggest you make that princeling wish he was never born. I would do it if I could, but apparently being a reaper means you cannot harm living beings."

Hermione seemed to fade into the shadows, along with a sulking Death that Harry really wasn't going to try and think of at the moment. Apparently, Hermione hadn't changed at all, and he found it kinda hard to accept that even Death couldn't get her to change her ways.

He smiled fondly and turned, only to catch sight of two men staring at him as if he'd grown three extra heads, "Eh, I don't know how much of that you saw…or understood."

Sean raised an unimpressed brow, but Harry could see that the encounter had shaken both of them. Nick hesitantly stepped forward as Sean's words echoed through the cell, "Which one? That you are on a first-name basis with the entity of Death, that he has mini-reapers, or that you know one, or more, of said mini-reapers?"

Harry flinched and Nick turned to glare at Sean as he came to a standstill in front of Harry before he turned back to face him, "Does this have something to do with why we can't find any information on you?"

Harry froze and turned to fully look at Nick, "You did a background check on me?"

The man suddenly looked very uncomfortable and Sean stepped forward, "It was on my orders when we heard that you were taken, but now is not the time to get into that. It seems that Eric is on his way back."

Harry tilted his head and looked at Sean for a moment as a part of him wondered which part of the man's personality was a mask, and which one was the real one. But for now, he noted that the man seemed to become colder whenever his stepbrother came into the picture.

For some reason, this didn't sit well with him, and given that Eric was the reason for his previous concussion and numerous other casualties within the Wesen world, well, it seemed he was the only one who could do something about it.

A thought occurred to him as he heard arrogant footsteps making their way toward their cell. It seemed that what Princeling Eric held most dear, was the power he had over people given his name. So the worst punishment Harry could give, was for him to cast a reverse obliviate.

Harry grinned a feral grin that seemed to set both Nick and Sean on edge even as they glanced at the door as it opened. The moment Eric appeared, Harry called out, "Little Prince, has your father never taught you that playing with fire gets you burned?"

Harry's words were barely out as Eric's attention zeroed in on him, but it was too late as Harry cast the spell with the feral grin still firmly plastered on his face.

The flash disappeared and, for a moment, Sean and Nick didn't know what was going on, but then Eric looked between them as the guards came in behind him. Sean and Nick readied themselves for a fight, but then the guards promptly looked between the four men and courteously escorted the three out before fully pushing Eric into the cell and slamming the door shut.

Sean requested an escort back home and they were immediately obliged, but it didn't take long for Nick and Sean to drag Harry into a private conversation as Nick seemed to pull him closer out of frustration, "What the hell did you do?"

Harry simply shrugged, "He liked being prince too much, so I made everyone forget him."

Both men froze at his sentence before Nick shook his head out of the daze it had fallen into, "How?"

Harry smirked, "With magic."