A/N: So, the beginning of this chapter was inspired by a comment I received from Dixie.f.9 on my last chapter. The comment just resonated so much with me that my muse decided to take it and run with it. I do apologize for the swearing, but, well, in my mind both Tobias and Severus are rather rough souls at heart with a few jagged edges. For those who have read my Tragedy series, you should recognize our dear Fates. :) As always, enjoy.

Fatal Errors

So now on top of everything else in his life, he was expected to be the Master of Death now too? He scoffed and shook his head. He just wanted a normal life for once. He was pretty certain he was owed that after all that he had been through recently. But at least now he knew the answer to how he was apart from the Fates. Not that he liked that answer at all.

Sighing angrily, he considered for half a moment destroying the empty room, ripping every single shred of books and tomes in the library and turning it all into confetti. Though, he knew that wouldn't satisfy his temper in the slightest. So, instead, he just glared out the window, clenching his teeth and fists. Damn them all to hell!

"Guessin' it didn't go well," Tobias drawled behind him as he approached. "Ya know, judgin' by how yer rattlin' all the windows, and, well, I don't see a lass in here with ya so only explanation is that."

Severus's head whipped around. What?!

"So, what'd Diana say to get yer balls in such a knot anyway?" his dad asked, crossing his arms.

Scoffing, Severus rolled his eyes and shook his head. "As always, Dad, your ability to speak so eloquently never ceases to surprise me." Every word dripped with sarcasm.

"Yeah, and yer honey badger routine never gets old either, son. Now, out with it."

Out with it? As if it was that easy.

"Fine," Severus spat, throwing his arms up. "I'm the fucking Master of Death, Dad! Isn't it brilliant? That's why the Fates don't give a flying fuck about me! Because I control fucking Death!"

"Language!"

"Language?" yelled the young man. "You just were talking about my balls, Dad! So, if anyone should watch his fucking language, it's you!"

"Watch yer fuckin' mouth there, Severus."

Unable to stop himself, the twenty-two-year-old took a step towards his dad. "You watch your fucking mouth first, you fucking, no-good-for-nothing, bastard who—"

"Jesus Christ," Tobias scoffed. "Ya seriously think ya can out swear me, son? Well, I'll show ya, ya cock-sucking prat who doesn't know the first thing about a lass let alone that lass of yers. Hell, I bet yer so borin' that missionary is the only—"

The words died on his lips as bubbles suddenly foamed out of his mouth.

Severus, too, found himself in the same situation as his father, as someone had cast a silent Scourgify on both men.

"Now that I have your undivided attention," Eileen stated tersely, sliding her wand back into her sleeve, "perhaps you can both knock it the fuck off before my grandson starts a crescendo of swears that he learned from his idiot father and stupid grandfather. Do we understand each other?" When they both nodded, the spell ended and the bubbles disappeared. "Good. Now, what's this nonsense about you being the Master of Death?"

"Master of Death?" Demetri repeated as she entered the room with little Harrison in her arms. "Whoa. Back the goddamn train up. Who's the Master of Death?"

"Severus," Tobias replied.

"That's a complete load of bullshit," Demetri cried. "You can't be the Master of Death!"

"Will everyone cease in using swearwords around my grandson for Merlin's sake? I'd very much like it if he didn't end up like the rest of us, thank you." Eileen grabbed little Harrison from Demetri.

"Fine. But how in the hell could you be the Master of Death?" Demetri asked, ignoring Eileen's glare directed on her.

"Something to do with the Deathly Hallows. Diana believes that I have all of them and united them or something," Severus answered, shaking his head. "I have Dumbledore's wand and an Invisibility cloak, but that doesn't mean they're either of these Hallow things. I mean, I don't even have this stone thing. If I did, I'd use it to bring Aurora back."

Eileen slapped a hand against her face. "The Resurrection Stone is for dead people. Your pathetic little girl friend isn't dead. She's just with the Fates. So, the stone wouldn't do any good."

"How am I supposed to know that? It's not like you read a lot of Beedle Bards to me, Mum."

"No. Instead I was doing my best making sure you had a roof over your head, you ungrateful little brat!" Eileen snapped.

"All right there. Let's get back on topic, yeah?" Tobias stated with a frown, gently placing a hand on Eileen's arm. When she pulled back from him with a severe frown, he let his hand drop to his side. "So, yer this Master of Death accordin' to Diana. Sounds like it's a sh—bad deal. But maybe ya can use this to yer advantage."

"How so?"

"Well, maybe I'm mistaken, but it sounds like this Master of Death thing is a big deal. Like, not a lot people can say that."

"You're an idiot, Tobias," Eileen said, shaking her head.

"Love ya too, El, but just think about it for a minute. Ya master Death. Death, son."

"It was some stupid children's story, though. Hardly the work of some academic who had actually researched anything. In fact, they were written to teach lessons to unruly brats."

"But there's a sort of power that comes with—"

"I don't want power, Dad!"

Severus had learned that lesson long ago. Thirsting for power only brought forth deep pain to one's soul that could not ever be fully healed.

"I know ya don't want it, son, but ya got it. So . . . ya know, use it."

"And just how on Earth is he supposed to use it, Tobias?" Eileen asked dryly.

"Christ, I don't know. Ask Death for a meetin' with the Fates?" he replied with a shrug. "I'm just sayin' that if ya got this power, ya might as well use it for good. Maybe that's why yer, you know, future self set ya on this path. Cause he knew ya would."

"Or maybe he just was a complete and idiot dunderhead who was thinking with his heart and not his brain," Eileen cut in. "After all, Severus isn't even with that girl he's supposed to marry. Is he?"

Sighing, the young man glanced at little Harrison who was innocently staring at him. Or maybe his future self knew that if Severus was the Master of Death, it meant the boy wouldn't be this time and could just be a boy for once. He could have the normal childhood that he had been denied before.

~UP~

A few hours later, Severus lay in bed, staring out a nearby window. Harrison had been put to bed an hour earlier and was fast asleep now. Or at least that was what Severus was assuming as he hadn't heard the little pitter-patter of feet yet. However, the young father found that he himself couldn't be so lucky in finding sleep so easily as his son.

Sighing loudly, he puffed up his pillow for what seemed to be the hundredth time already that night. He couldn't get comfortable, or rather, he couldn't get his mind to shut off in order to be comfortable.

Master of Death? It was absurd, laughable really. Him? He scoffed, shaking his head as he hit the fluffy pillow once more. What good was being the Master of Death when he didn't have Aurora anymore? His frown deepened, and his eyes searched the cloudy skies outside.

He was becoming soft, he recognized. A man with his heart in his hand, vulnerable to attacks. How many men had he seen over the years in the Dark Lord's service be brought to his knees because of his lover? Too many. But Severus had lived a life without love, and he didn't want to return to that after having just a taste of a life with it.

He needed her back.

Idly, he wondered if this was how his future self felt after losing his wife. Lost and broken, searching the stars for answers and praying to see her again just one more time. He'd give anything to see her again. Hell, he'd kiss Black if it meant he'd see her.

Closing his eyes, he turned away and sighed.

He hadn't wanted this, any of this.

Didn't the Fates understand that? Didn't they see the harm they were doing? Didn't they care? Or were they, as he believed, cold and cruel just like Dumbledore and the Dark Lord? Forcing others to play their sick games of chess with others' lives?

"Is that truly what you believe of us?" a voice spoke from the darkness. "That we are nothing more than torturers?"

Severus slowly rolled over to look back where he had heard the voice. His eyes narrowed when he noticed the centaur standing in the middle of his bedroom at Ashmore Manor. It was an illusion, he knew. There was no way he hadn't noticed a centaur before. He then saw three others join the first.

"The pain you feel, I assure you, is nothing," an ashen man with reddish eyes declared coldly.

"You miss her, understandably, but this was her choice, wizard," spoke an auburn-haired woman with amber-colored eyes. "She asked us to pass judgment. Do you deny her that right?"

"I miss her," the twenty-two-year-old admitted with a slight tremor in his voice.

"We know you do, Severus," squeaked the familiar short stature wizard that was part goblin. "But she called on us to pass judgment, so we must do so."

"But she didn't do anything, Filius!" he replied, ignoring the fact that the Fates were likely using images from his mind of people he may have known at one point or another. "I did!"

The pale man half-laughed, his pointy canines glistening in the soft light of the darkness. "You did nothing of the sort."

"My future self came back in time to—"

"To fix what we stood by and watched be broken," the woman in the group declared quietly with a somber look on her face.

"Rowan," the centaur warned, glancing at the woman with a disapproving look.

"No, Bane. He stands apart from us now. And by that alone, he deserves to know the truth." Rowan then glanced towards Filius and the vampire. "Do either of you disagree?" Filius shook his head while the vampire inclined his head to her and motioned for her to continue. Her amber eyes returned to the young wizard. "As I'm sure you've realized by now, Harry Potter was the one who would have become the Master of Death. A boy who had his childhood ripped from him. Thrusted into an adult world for no reason other than a broken prophecy and a madman's quest for immortality and power. He did what was asked of him, defeated the coward who knew nothing of power, regardless of the fact that it should never have been placed on his shoulders to begin with."

"Must you still argue this, Dryad?" Bane cried with a huff. "We agreed."

"And we were wrong, and the boy suffered for it," Rowan stated before she turned back to Severus. "With your future self's interference and his return to the past, to you, he altered the timeline in ways you cannot imagine."

"And it goes much further than what your dear Aurora believes, wizard," the vampire declared. "Much further."

"With no Harry Potter in this time, there was no hope. No faith. No belief."

"Darkness was able to take root. Corrupt and destabilize the line further than before."

"Until you accepted your destiny, your fate, Severus."

Filius then stepped forward. "Rowan is right. We should not have left it all on young Harry's shoulders. He was just a boy, but we believed in Albus Dumbledore, believed in his goodness."

"One by one, we watched in silence as the line was broken, as the thread of destiny unraveled. Life ceased, and Death ruled. We said nothing. We did nothing."

"As we are supposed to do," the vampire cut in.

"And Harry, oh young Harry, suffered as a result. He wasn't the only one, though." Rowan held Severus's eyes. "We turned our backs on you. You were Death's, not ours, we believed."

"The moment you chose darkness in a brief moment of defeat, we left, believing in error that if you had been chosen to master Death as was foretold, you would allow Death to lay waste to all, to give in to the anger inside you. We chose the boy then. He had a good heart, strong as well, able to take all that was thrown at him and not break. Little by little, we watched as our mistake grew, as he broke more and more, piece by piece, until there was very little left of him. When it was over, he chose not to become Death's master, tossing aside Death's gifts and favoring his own. He had grown sick of the darkness, of death itself. It was then we saw the error of our ways."

"That we had failed."

"Hogwarts tried to correct our mistake for us, though. Correct a mistake it had made because of our beliefs concerning you. It saved you. It defied Death."

"We couldn't understand why it had interfered when it had never done so before."

"And then we realized it. That the Horcrux in Hogwarts, the darkness that had festered for decades, that had given Death a hold on our world, had been destroyed. Hogwarts saved you because it saw what we did not. What we could not see. It saw the goodness in your heart, the strength in your resolve, the love you would finally possess."

"We were glad to see you shed off the darkness finally, Severus," Filius stated with a sad smile.

"But we were too late. Our errors were too great. So, we failed, and Death won."

Severus looked at each of them, trying to comprehend what they were saying. He had been right, as he had feared. Harry would have been Death's Master had it not been for his future self's interference. But it seemed as if the boy hadn't wanted it, just as Severus himself felt now.

"Oh, there was peace for a while. Death waited as long as it could, but then it realized we knew we had been mistaken. That it should have always been you and not Harry."

"Aurora knew this in the end," Filius said quietly. "She knew you would stop at nothing to return to her, to be with her again. That you would throw out every rule in the book. That you would defy Death again."

"And so you did," Rowan cried. "And Death lost his hold."

"Your future self, when he returned, he was the one who won the Elder Wand's favor and became its master."

"Grief-stricken by what your future self showed him, Albus knew that the man he had seen in his office could only be the one to unite the Hallows for good. So, he sent the cloak and the wand to you."

"But this stone," the younger wizard interrupted. "I don't have it!"

"You do. You just don't realize it."

"I don't want this! I . . ." He glanced at each of them in stunned silence for a moment. "Don't you understand? I just want a normal life for once."

"And you can, Severus," Rowan said with a warm smile.

"Being Death's Master doesn't mean you have to fight Death. It's not so literal after all, wizard."

"Then what?"

"It means you accept death is inevitable and that there are things out there in the universe that are much worse than death."

"Immortality," the vampire grinned, "is just an added bonus really if you want it."

"I don't want immortality, though. I want Aurora." The young twenty-two-year-old noticed the dryad Rowan glance towards the centaur named Bane almost immediately. "Do you hear me? I don't give a damn about immortality, power, any of that nonsense. I only want Aurora back."

"We're aware."

"Then give her back!" Severus growled, feeling his frustration roll off him in waves. "Now!"

"She asked us to pass judgment—" Rowan started to say.

"I don't give a damn what she asked of you. I'm telling you to give her back to me now!"

"We do not serve you, wizard! Nor are we at your beck-and-call either. We are—"

"Cowards who are no better than Dumbledore and the Dark Lord," he snarled.

The four then vanished from his room suddenly, leaving him alone again. Clenching his jaw, Severus glared at the darkness where they had been standing. He stood by his words even more then. Only cowards ran as they had.

Did he accept that death was inevitable? Of course, he did. Only a fool would not. Everyone died eventually. It was a fact of life. Hell, Voldemort himself eventually died, after having spent decades trying to escape its cold clutches.

And were there things out there worse than death? Severus scoffed again. A sick child in his father's helpless arms came to mind. A young man whose only true friends were the darkness within and loneliness were also on his list. A son unable to help his mother escape her abuser was another. He had a long list of things that were worse than death that he had learned over the years. But anyone who had ever experienced loss, heartbreak, betrayal, and desertion would know that. Surely, he wasn't that special. He never had been before.

Deep, amused chuckles, his own he recognized a moment later, echoed around the silent room. "As I said, Mister Potter, you owe me."