They were almost at the bottom of the stone stairs that wound down to the deep underground bowels of Azkaban. When Death had asked him to spill his blood and trace a weird looking rune on an odd-looking flagstone, he had done so without protest, and a swish and a flick later, a huge chasm had opened up in the ground, with a twisting flight of steps hugging its edges and most likely leading down to the fiery pits of hell, though he hadn't asked.

"You're saying Azkaban was built as a shrine for you?" He now asked instead, trailing behind Death as she led them down the crumbling stones, her willowy backside swinging hither and thither like a hypnotic pendulum. "Wouldn't you have preferred something prettier? I could see the appeal in a statue or a temple, but really, this place?"

"I didn't ask for it." she said, sighing. "One of the earliest Dark Lords of this millennium, Ekrizdis," she lectured, "built me this place as an offering. And I, as the grateful patron that I am, sent him a dementor as the perfectly appropriate gift. Tit for tat, I'd thought. Little did I know he'd end up buggering it and creating a whole horde of little ones."

Harry looked at her as if she'd grown an extra tit, or a third nipple.

"You could always build me something prettier, though. What more could I ask of my master?" She skipped around and batted her eyelashes at him, smirking.

"Ouch," came a cry from behind. Apparently six months of confinement was no cure for clumsiness, as evidenced by his companion's repeated stumbling and cursing. Harry hung back to catch her if she came down tumbling.

"You feeling alright?" he asked her, "got all your limbs in the right place?" he said, snickering seeing her face heat up. During the days of his fifth year and on, he'd come to realize many things, great things, about Nymphadora. Prime among them being that her apparent dislike of her name did not extend to the bed, and secondly, she'd no qualms batting for the fairer sex.

She huffed, and walked past muttering. "You can check with your latest fangirl that later, oh great master."

Harry watched them move away with an uneasy chuckle.

"Where do you think we're headed?" she asked, a few minutes later.

"Hell, I guess. She's death and we've been going down for a while now." He replied, nonchalantly. Fact was, he'd resigned himself to watching and waiting as the dice was cast and rolled. High hopes were a recipe for disappointment. And he didn't want to get caught flat-footed when they come crashing down.

When Death had dangled time travel as a possible alternative to the end of the universe, both he and Tonks had jumped at the opportunity (but guess who landed on her face). It was not a question of why, or why me. For him, then and there, it was a question of when, and how soon.

As she'd unveiled her great scheme, Harry, in the deep dark recesses of his mind had had a brief second of self-contemplation when he admitted to himself that, for a chance to save his friends and family, to see Hermione, Daphne, Tracey, Ron, Theo, and the rest of them alive and whole again, he'd have happily presented her his heart and soul on a silver platter, had she only asked. Thankfully, she hadn't. But being the Master of Death was a no-brainer for a second chance at life.

"We going to get there soon?"

Death glanced back, "Soon. A couple more steps."

"Harry, you feeling that?" Nymphadora asked, hands going to her head.

"Like everything's flipping over?"

She nodded, looking green.

"That's because they are. Open your eyes." He said, an undertone of humor in his tone.

Bemused, Tonks braced the walls and unclenched her eyes, only to see the stairs pointing upward and the highest landing only a few feet away.

"But we were going downward." She exclaimed.

Harry nodded, eyeing death, "Care to explain what happened?"

Death smiled. "Why don't you look around for yourself? She gestured them to follow her to the top, where the ceiling they'd walked through on their journey down was slowly screeching open and letting in a bevy of hot sunlight into their cavernous hole. "Like a phoenix from the ashes. To simplify matters for you helpless little mortals," she said, smiling at their affronted look, "I designed a construct, or more specifically, reappropriated Ekrizdis' little bolt-hole and carefully separated it from your reality, so as to keep you both safe while I and my folk tore down space-time and reweaved it back to a more salvageable state."

"Tore down?"

"In a way to speak. The future you know is gone."

"But the past is still here?" Harry asked.

"Mostly." She shrugged and continued onward.

"What happened to Voldemort and Darthakur?" Nymphadora asked as she climbed out and beheld her surroundings. It was still Azkaban, there wasn't any denying that. She could feel the dementor's chill seeping into the wind from afar. But it was blunted. As if sapped of strength and broadcasting on the wrong wavelength.

"Voldemort's back to being a wraith and flapping around in a forest somewhere in Albania." Death said with a bright curl of her lips which thinned to a grim line as she continued, "and the latter's been booted back to his stink-pit. Both will return, and it is up to you two to stop them."

The grim statement stretched into a grim silence during which Harry and Tonks looked to the rocky, watery distance. The ocean churned against the craigs and sprayed to the sky. The might fortress of Azkaban cast a looming shadow out to the sea, and the setting would've been a nightmare for the uninitiated. But having spent a year and a half locked inside it, with numerous dementors in close-company, they'd become tempered to its ghastly charm.

"By the way," Death remarked, a sly grin tugging at her face "have you looked at each other yet?"

Yo.

~Running out of steam.

DeadDredd: Sex-buddies/companion with Tonks, and sleeping together with everybody else. I guess.