An Incomplete Potter Collection ch Collection 14
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Asking Questions
Insecurities
Fae Hunt
Towards the Horizon
Masters of Death
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Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
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Story: [Asking Questions]
Summary: He'd never understood, because nobody explained. And perhaps that was the problem all along.
Genre: Spiritual, Drama
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He wants to do it, but nobody ever taught him how.
Everyone else seems to know it already somehow, and he just doesn't understand, but no matter how many times he asks they just tell him big huge words and then nod their heads as if that is how it is, and then wander off.
He tries to learn a lot of words, to try to understand why they're being used to answer his questions, but then everyone starts telling him how clever he is, how intelligent, how talented, and they're so caught up in that that they never explain what everyone else already believes he knows.
They wave and laugh, and chuckle, and tell him that he'll understand, that there's no need to rush things but that somehow everyone understands it all somewhere.
Except he doesn't.
He doesn't understand why when they take things from him, it is right, and when he takes things from them, it is wrong. He doesn't understand why it's alright for everyone else to be loud, but he has to be quiet. He doesn't understand why him not understanding makes him wrong, when everyone refuses to actually explain anything.
He doesn't understand, and for some reason, they hate him for it.
Tom Marvolo Riddle is eight years old, and he doesn't understand what love is.
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Nobody actually takes children away from the orphanage. That's not how it's done. They're being put there to be forgotten about, hidden away so that nobody will accidentally stumble across them.
But there is a man there now, talking to their caretaker.
The other children are hopeful, foolishly believing that he will take them away from here.
Tom knows that it's highly unlikely that he'll pick anyone. He's male, and there's no wife at his side. No, the man is either there with the intent to steal them away with everything except good intentions, or he's there to talk to their caretaker about something completely unrelated.
So when the man's green eyes locks onto Tom, he knows that this will end badly.
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Mr Potter is young, without any gray in his hair, and only the faintest glimpses of wrinkles.
He looks at Tom and asks him about a great many things. Their caretaker seems perturbed, as if she'd rather him ask questions of the other children, as if she's afraid that Tom will somehow bring misfortune down on the 'innocent' young man's head.
Tom answers, sometimes warily, other times easily.
Until finally he asks if Tom has ever had a question that nobody wanted to answer.
Tom's eyes dart to their caretaker, because of course she must've warned him. Warned him that Tom doesn't understand.
But there's something in the man's face, and despite everything, despite how little he trusts this man and his intentions, he answers. And he asks his question one last time.
The man sits there, and he looks older suddenly, but he also looks resigned.
"Love is a great many things." He says, and Tom wants to curse because that's what everyone says, except he continues. "But I think, mostly, it's the reason you still cry at night."
And Tom bristles, because nobody should know that, nobody has any right to know that.
The man looks sad then, sad and tired. "Just like I did, when I was your age."
Tom blinks, and for the first time since as far back as he can remember, he feels hope.
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Story: [Insecurities]
Summary: Killing the Potters was a milestone. It was the moment when Voldemort moved beyond being just a general bumbling Dark Lord and became the Greatest Dark Lord Ever. He just needed to go there, and kill everyone. Simple.
Genre: Humor, Crack
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Voldemort took a deep breath.
He'd decided that he was going to do this, and by Merlin he was going to pull it off. No hesitation allowed.
Too much was riding on this. He needed to be able to do this. It was just the one house, with the one couple of enemies. Pettigrew even assured him that they were home alone with that accursed infant of theirs.
No, this was his moment to shine. His moment to ascend beyond anything that the Wizarding World could throw at him. Beyond the machinations of even Fate itself.
This was going to be his night.
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Of course James was terrified. He didn't even have a wand on him, and Voldemort was on standing on his lawn, mumbling to himself in a way that probably meant that he was about to bring some archaic form of horrific magic down on their heads – even if it looked an awful lot like Padfoot when he was trying to psyche himself up for a particularly big prank, back in their Third Year.
He'd told Lily to take Harry and run, that he would hold him off, but he knew that it was hopeless. There was no way that he could possibly delay the Dark Lord for long enough that it would truly matter.
He didn't want to die. He was barely past twenty. And he didn't want to know that Lily would be following him shortly. He wanted her to be safe. Just like he wanted Harry to be safe.
Voldemort continued to mumble silently to himself out on their lawn, and James found himself desperately wishing for happier times.
Back when Padfoot had been pacing back and forth and mumbling to himself about how he was a great and awesome wizard who could most definitely pull this newest prank off and that nothing in the world could possibly stop his unmatched genius.
James blinked as he realized that Voldemort was now pacing back and forth on the lawn.
Did his spell require him to somehow move around whilst casting it? Or was this merely an attempt to better see through the Fidelius somehow?
James would be the first to admit that he didn't understand half of what the Fidelius was supposed to do, or how it was supposed to work. Lily might've had a better chance at guessing what Voldemort was doing out there.
Taking a steeling breath at the reminder of why exactly his wife wasn't next to him, James hoped with all of his heart that this strange magic that the Dark Lord was going to send their way would be enough of a delay in itself that she might be able to slip out with Harry somehow.
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He was the Great Lord Voldemort! He could do this! No silly little prophecy would stand in his way! He was amazing! Talented beyond measure! The heir of a Founder! Immortal beyond even his own followers' wildest dreams!
Voldemort took a deep breath, eyes darting towards the innocuous-looking little cottage.
A half-strangled sound made its way past his throat, and he snapped his eyes away.
Dammit! He was the Great Lord Voldemort! He was unstoppable! The greatest wizard who'd ever lived! The next coming of Merlin!
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Was he jumping in place? And waving his arms around like trying to work up heat in a blizzard?
James frowned. This was probably an even more obscure branch of Dark Magic than he'd thought to assume at first. And it frightened him to his core, because perhaps this wasn't meant to just wipe out his own family? Maybe this was meant to turn the entire community into a burning crater or something?
There were too many horrible scenarios to count flashing through his mind as he watched the Dark Lord start smacking his cheeks a bit like Wormtail used to do whenever he had to pull himself out of an anxiety attack.
It was eerie to watch such an innocent memory be so horrifically corrupted by this monster's Dark rituals.
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Story: [Fae Hunt]
Summary: One of Voldemort's spells sent him elsewhere, and 'fae' are infamous for a reason.
Genre: Adventure
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Harry crashed through the underbrush, knowing that it was a bad idea to leave a tail, but too interested in keeping up his speed to consider finding a safer path.
He wasn't sure for how long he'd been running. Maybe it'd been an hour, maybe it'd been a day, maybe he'd been running for years. Time didn't flow right here, and all he knew was that he hadn't been running for long enough that he had to worry about starvation. But considering how things worked in this place, he wasn't even entirely sure if he could starve.
A distant part of him remembered the madman who'd decided to 'banish' him away from all places reachable by mortal means. Harry doubted that he'd known what he'd actually been doing, but he would've probably done it anyway if he'd known the kind of torture he was going to end up inflicting on his 'mortal enemy'.
He'd tried to fight back, but his wand wasn't his anymore, whether it had broken or betrayed him, Harry couldn't tell for sure. Not that it mattered.
All that mattered was keeping ahead of the Hunt.
He'd tried setting up traps to delay them, but he didn't know nearly enough about wildlife survival to make the traps lethal enough to make a difference. Instead he'd ended up losing valuable time. Except time didn't really matter, in much the same way that distances here stretched and scrunched together without warning or cause.
He heard horns behind him, followed by the barking of the hounds.
He switched directions. They were probably using that extra noise to try and flank him again, and he knew the terrain would make that more difficult in the direction he was now going.
How long had it taken him to learn these things? Had he perhaps always known it, since back when his cousin had chased him through the streets of Little Whinging for his always-favorite game of 'Harry Hunting'?
It didn't matter. Only staying ahead of the Hunt mattered.
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It'd been a very long time since they'd had proper prey for the Hunt, and it was even turning out to be a bit of a challenge to catch it.
They were pleased by this, even as they admitted to some disappointment in the lack of the prey's lack of ability to fight back. The traps had been inventive, but basic in a way that spoke of just how little the prey knew of trap-making. The inventiveness of a child who'd never made them before.
In that light, the traps had been impressive, but it'd lacked the necessary experience for them to be anything more than a cause for curiosity.
No, more interesting was the way the prey moved.
It was used to being hunted, even before the Hunt, that much was clear. But something about how it moved from places always tended to be just a tiny bit 'off'. An insignificant hiccup in what should be possible, even within the always-changing realm of the fae.
Mortals never understood the flexibility of time, or the changing of space, but even so the prey managed to stay ahead of the hounds. It was fairly entertaining, and it really made them look forward to finally bringing the prey down.
The interesting ones always tasted the best.
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He couldn't fight back, because he didn't have claws. He couldn't fight back, because he didn't have fangs. He couldn't fight back, because he was weak.
But then... 'weakness' was a relative thing.
He ran, he fled, he dodged, he hid, and he kept on running.
A storm was passing through the trees. It might've been there yesterday as well, but it probably hadn't lasted for a week. Definitely not a month. He'd counted two dozen clear sunsets, but perhaps he'd only been running for a day. He'd been running too much, he couldn't have stayed ahead of them for that long, his body would've started to break down.
He knew that he shouldn't eat anything, so he didn't eat, even as he was tempted time and again by the sight of berries, even as his stomach howled in desperation. He couldn't eat anything, that would allow them to catch him.
He was being Hunted, and he refused to be caught. Though he couldn't quite understand anymore why he believed that the berries would betray him.
His shoes had been torn to shreds, or had he ever even owned shoes? Perhaps they'd removed them before they started the Hunt? Had they stripped him of everything he had? He didn't know, couldn't remember.
But he knew what he knew, and so he ran, and he ate nothing.
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Fae were immortal, with no need to comprehend the world in the fixed manner of humans, but flexible though it was, time very much existed. And it'd been an unusually long time since the Hunt had begun.
Still no end in sight, still no signs that their prey had begun to twist and change from the surroundings, still that ever-present impossibility in how it moved from one spot to the next.
The prey was interesting. A challenge, even if it couldn't fight back.
They were pleased. They hadn't had a Hunt like this in centuries.
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In a distant memory Harry remembered that fae were shape-shifters. Not only in how they changed themselves, but in how they changed others. People turning into wolves and hounds and deer and whatever else their confusing minds decided was a fitting punishment for those who angered them.
Harry wasn't sure why that mattered, and pushed it aside.
He needed to run, needed to escape, needed to survive. He didn't have time for thinking about animals and fae and the strange rules that the immortals operated by.
The soles on his feet were thick from use, so he didn't need to worry as much about where he put them down. His eyes had stopped making the world blur endlessly, so he could run without worrying about running into something else.
He still lived, he still breathed. The Hunt continued.
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Story: [Towards the Horizon]
Summary: Hermione is old... and then she isn't. Oops?
Genre: Adventure
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Her life had been more than enough.
She'd done what she'd wanted, and even if she hadn't done it as well as she might've been able to, even if she'd made mistakes, even if things had gone wrong and people had been hurt. She'd been satisfied, in the end.
No, her life had been enough.
It was just that-... One last time, before she died, she wanted to see them all again. As they were, rather than as the people they grew into becoming. A final trip down memory lane before she greeted them in the place beyond.
Harry would've probably disapproved, and Ron might've rolled his eyes about it, but Hermione wanted to see it all again. A reminder of what they'd been, what they'd accomplished, and how they'd grown into the people they'd become.
Perhaps that made her a bit egocentric, maybe a little bit too prideful, but with her eyes constantly fixed on the horizon, she'd never seemed to make any progress at all, even if the ground underneath her feet changed with every step.
Ron didn't really understand that, content as he always seemed with looking where he was placing his feet, always making sure that he wasn't stepping on something or someone that shouldn't be stepped on. A kind and carefully deliberately gentle way of moving through life.
And Harry always got distracted, either too busy talking with Ron to pay attention in which direction he was going, or too reckless to see where he placed his feet. A passionate but always amazingly vibrant way of charging through life.
Together, the three of them became whole. Ron making sure that neither of them squashed something precious underneath their feet, Harry making sure that they all took the time to live their own lives, and Hermione always pointing them towards that same distant horizon.
Had Hermione been a poet, she might've been fascinated by it. But they were her friends, and they'd been her friends for so long that she couldn't help but take their company for granted.
However, friendships or no, Hermione still wanted to see the beginning again, before she moved on. To see with her own eyes how far she'd managed to walk, to finally turn her eyes from that horizon and look back at all the things that they'd made it through in order to get there.
In her final moments of life, Hermione wanted to feel proud of having lived.
So, she'd figured out a way to do exactly that.
Unfortunately, magic could sometimes force a person to be explicitly specific about their desires for it. And 'experience' was such a loose turn of phrase.
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Hermione took a deep breath. She'd missed being able to do that without launching into coughs, and the air felt cleaner even if she logically knew that they'd gone a long way to make it more breathable in the future.
Her first memory. That's the point of time that she'd returned to.
It was just her luck that her first memory had been by herself, reading a book. It would've been awful if she'd returned when in the presence of someone else. They might've reacted rather badly to the sudden panic-attack coming from the four-year old.
Instead, she'd been given almost an hour before she'd seen her parents again for the first time in decades.
Only, this time there hadn't been that wary distance in their eyes, that hurt that had never faded from when she'd recklessly erased their memories during the war, that realization that their daughter could do that to them.
The Granger family had never quite recovered from that, and even if Hermione had kept her surname in marriage... well, that had always been more of a challenge, a way to spit into the face of the purebloods. She was muggleborn, she'd weathered the worst they could throw at her, and she'd emerged victorious.
But the family behind the name, no, that had fallen apart long before that.
In a way, Hermione couldn't help but feel a bit jealous about how the Weasley name had never broken. It'd been dented and bruised, and Molly could at times be a bit overbearing about her obsession to keep them all safe, but they were family.
If it weren't for the way Harry and Ginny had obliviously danced around each other for years before they'd finally managed to figure it out, she would've almost suspected Harry to have married into their family purely to be a part of that. To have family on all sides, and to always have a place to call 'home'.
But now she was back in time, by her own reckless accident, and though she knew that she should try to keep the time-line stable, in the end she also knew that that was hopeless. Time-magic operated by its own rules, and despite the time she'd spent studying time-turners, Hermione was just as confused as everyone else about it.
Harry had always at least seemed weirdly inclined to using time-turners though, somehow having some sort of instinctual grasp of how it worked. Perhaps it was related to having been struck with the Killing Curse, or to being the 'Master of Death' or some other such rot, but it was probably just him being 'Harry'.
Her best friend had always had a weird kind of luck.
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Story: [Masters of Death]
Summary: Because they had never allowed him to walk on his own, when they could be there to walk beside him.
Genre: Friendship, Spiritual
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Harry had walked to his death, because that was the option that was offered. He'd walked to his death, knowing that it would only serve as a stopgap despite the madman's 'promises', because he needed to die. Harry walked to his death, because neither Ron nor Hermione knew that that was what he was doing.
He didn't want to die, he had an awful lot to live for, an awful lot left to experience, he could die a century from now and it still wouldn't have been enough time to experience everything. He could've had family, he could've had a hundred more winters, a hundred more summers, a hundred more years. But he was going to die, because that was the only way they could win. And they'd already lost too much for them to lose now.
Harry walked to his death, because he needed to die.
Ron and Hermione followed him, because they honestly didn't give a shit.
And so as he discarded the Cloak that should've allowed him to slip past his friends unnoticed, they were already at his back, and together they stood against Voldemort. The three of them. Not yet out of their teens, not yet properly graduated from school, not yet adults, against a hoard of rampant murderers.
Hagrid watched, and he cried and he howled and he wept and he sobbed, because he was forced to watch as three bright children were cut down before their time.
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Harry stared at the tiny thing, the misshapen baby-like thing.
This was the reason he'd died. To bring this thing out of this world with him. He'd accepted that. He hadn't been happy, he hadn't been content, but it had been a trade that had needed to be done. His life, for a chance.
But it hadn't been his life, in the end. It'd been his, and Hermione's and Ron's. And that was too much. Far too much.
His two best friends were in love, and even if it'd hurt them to lose him, they'd move on, they'd live long and healthy lives, they'd have kids and grandkids and experience all the things that he'd surrendered in order to give them all one chance at victory.
Except they wouldn't. They were dead too now, because they'd realized what he was going to do, because they'd refused to let him go through with it alone.
This wasn't a trade he was willing to make.
"Sorry sir." He interrupted the old headmaster, the manipulative bastard whom he couldn't help but love as a grandfather of sorts. "I need to derail a train."
Albus Dumbledore – real or imagined, it didn't much matter – stared at him for a long moment, before his eyes started to twinkle. "I suppose I'll be lingering here for a bit longer then, wouldn't want to risk these old bones in a train-crash."
Despite the situation, Harry grinned at him, before turning around to make his way towards the platform.
His two best friends were on that train, and he refused to make that trade.
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The Stone called the souls from their appointed afterlife. It called them despite all of nature's laws to the contrary.
But when it called them from the train, from the in-between, and it called them into the in-between instead of life, there were no rules. They were reunited without the dissonance of death, because they were all in the place where they should be. Except, one of them could walk back out, and the others needed to stay.
It'd been many years since they'd all fit underneath the Cloak together, but the Cloak remembered, so when time and life and death and the in-between tangled together in the most spectacular meta-physical event of the aeon, the Cloak hid them in the chaos.
And so they walked, together, underneath the Cloak. They walked and they walked back up along the rails, all the way back into the station, and then they climbed back on top of the platform, and then they decided – as one – to wake up.
Master of Death was a silly title, an attempt to put unspoken things into words, an attempt to make sense of the indecipherable. It was power, and it was weakness. But trying to make sense of the details beyond that they existed would've been foolish.
Three people opened their eyes, and Understood.
There could only ever exist one Master of Death, but they were three sides of a coin, and they were one.
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A wind blew through the station, rattling windows heavily.
"It appears as if you just missed them." Albus said, eyes still twinkling merrily.
The wind hissed and twisted voicelessly at his words.
"Oh yes, they were never very good with rules." Albus agreed with a fond expression.
The windows rattled, and the building groaned underneath the weight of the wind.
"Well, most governments work with some form of democracy nowadays." Albus pointed out.
The wind retreated in a huff of disapproval.
Albus smiled. "Perhaps so, but perhaps even such things are meant to change in time."
A rattling sound traveled along the rails, causing both Albus and the wind to pause.
"I do hope that train was insured." Albus mused.
The wind pulled at the windows making the concrete groan as it tried to express its voiceless frustration at the chaos that the trio had already managed to cause in its orderly existence.
Albus most carefully did not laugh at the sound of it.
The next great adventure, indeed.
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XXX Omakes XXX
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Crossover: (Soul Eater)
Genre: Humor
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Maka had been expecting Death to say a great many things, but she hadn't been expecting what actually emerged from his mouth. Especially not with the tone he ended up using.
"Oh, it's you three." The Shinigami said, a mixture of exasperated resignation and frustrated disgust. "What are you doing here?"
"We were called?" The redheaded man said, still quite blatantly looking the Shinigami up and down, as if trying to take in his outfit. The other two were at least trying to be subtle about it.
The Shinigami sighed. "Of course you were. Where?"
"Couple of miles that way." The black-haired man with glasses said, pointing somewhere west-ward.
"Who called?" The Shinigami asked.
"Some lady who was a snake, or something." The redhead shrugged. "It was kind of creepy, what with her possessing some innocent kid and all."
"Ah. Was her name Medusa, perhaps?" The Shinigami wondered.
The black-haired man nodded. "Though she didn't turn any of us to stone."
"She wouldn't have." The Shinigami absently assured them. "And why did you decide to come here?"
"We thought it'd be rude not to drop by and say hello, since we were in the neighborhood." The woman answered.
"And Merlin-forbid we're ever rude." The redhead muttered to himself.
Maka was then treated to a bizarre scene where Death accused the trio of "blowing up his train", and the trio excused themselves with "getting him a new and more modern one in return", followed by him accusing them of forcing him to "catch up on back-logging for months" where they responded that it "wasn't their fault he couldn't schedule his way out of a wet paper bag".
It was very strange to realize that there were actually people around whose relationship with Death was the opposite of everyone else's relationship with Death. Namely, there were people out there who annoyed Death, just as much as Death enjoyed annoying everyone else.
Maka wasn't sure if she felt vindicated in vengeance for all the frustration she'd suffered through at the Shinigami's hands, or if she was outright blatantly horrified that there were people out there who were actually worse.
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Crossover: (Zero no Tsukaima)
Genre: Friendship
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Louise coughed, squinting into the smoke of her most recent explosion, hoping – praying – that something had appeared within it. That she'd managed to summon a familiar.
"Ugh, elbow!" Came a groan from within the smoke.
"Bloody hell!" Answered a second voice.
"Language!" Hissed a third voice in reproach.
The smoke cleared.
Three people. Young, probably barely out of their teens, if that. One female, two males, all three piled on top of each other in a very uncomfortable-looking way.
"Bloody hell." The first voice agreed, belonging to the male with black hair.
"Language!" The second one huffed a laugh, proving itself to belong to the male with red hair.
"Oh, shut up." The owner of the third voice frowned at them in exasperation.
Which was when the mocking from Louise's classmates began.
She wasn't entirely sure what they were saying, she was guessing it was some variation of 'the Zero summoned commoners', but it was kind of a background noise to her own desperation and confusion.
A wind picked up, causing the windows to rattle, and the grass to bend and writhe in an almost unnatural way. And suddenly there was silence.
"Oh? So what, you threw us out?" The black-haired one asked, face scrunching up in thought. "I'm pretty sure that's against some kind of employment laws, you know."
The wind pulled on people's clothing, whirling around them.
"Is this because we blew up the train?" The red-haired one asked. "Because I distinctly remember apologizing for that."
"I didn't." The black-haired one muttered to himself.
"Harry, we're not paid, so we're not technically employed." The female said to the black-haired one, before turning to the red-haired one. "And we replaced the train with an upgraded model, so there really shouldn't be any grudges about that, Ron."
"Then why are we here?" Ron asked.
The wind whipped around the trio, swirling and twisting in a way that was starting to make both Louise and her classmates suspicious about the nature of it.
"Ah. We were called?" Harry turned his attention towards the surrounding students. No, towards Louise. "Now, why in the world would we need to be called?"
Louise felt a shiver travel down her spine. The man's eyes were green. Really green, hidden though they might be by his glasses. And they reminded her a lot of her mother's eyes. The eyes of someone powerful.
"Probably an accident." Ron mused. "I mean, there aren't even anyone around who's trying to sacrifice people to dark gods or something. Those nutcases are usually the only ones who try to call for us."
"Ron! You can't just assume that." The female scolded. "And maybe we were finally called to do something decent for once."
"I don't know, Hermione." Ron said doubtfully. "Knowing our luck?"
Hermione puffed up, looking ready to argue the point, before suddenly deflating. "It somehow managed to get even worse after the train-incident, didn't it?" She sighed in defeat.
The wind chose that moment to begin moving again, shifting almost as if in annoyance and causing the windows to rattle once more. Louise had the strangest impression that the wind was blaming a particularly bad day on the trio, and thought that they very much had a string of bad luck coming to them.
"One for all, and all for one." Harry agreed, eyes softening a bit as he turned to his companions.
Somehow the other two both seemed to straighten at that, sobering in a way that left Louise wondering, and yet still somehow softening around the edges. Those words were important to the trio, important on a level that Louise didn't quite understand.
The wind huffed along the grass.
"Now, back to the question of the hour." Ron turned his own intense gaze towards Louise. "Why have you summoned the Masters of Death?"
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It'd taken them years to get used to their shared title.
Partially because it didn't really mean anything at all, and partially because it meant too much.
Death was death, the End was the End. Nobody could bring back the dead. The dead were dead, and would forever remain such, no matter how anyone tried to defy it. That hadn't changed a bit, even after they'd walked straight back into being alive after having most definitely been dead.
But people turned to them for answers, and even the insubstantial and voiceless existence that was 'death' had tasks of sorts to ask of them. Harry didn't know why some died when they deserved to live, or why some lived who by all sensibilities should deserve to die. Hermione didn't understand why they couldn't do more. And Ron had to sit there and refuse his own brother from ever seeing his twin again, because they'd all known that the sight of it would've broken him beyond repair.
They'd all made decisions they weren't happy with. They'd all made mistakes, in those first few years. But they'd stuck together. In part because they didn't really understand what it was like to stay away from each other, and perhaps in part because their new title convinced them to grow even closer. It was hard to tell, they'd already been well on their way into finishing each other's sentences as it'd been.
They were happy. If a bit more awkward around 'normal' people than they'd thought they'd be.
Harry's relationship with Ginny kept slipping apart, until they finally decided that perhaps they should call it quits and try to move on. Hermione never really reconnected with her family at all, even after their memories were restored. And Ron bounced more awkwardly along the edges of the Weasley family reunions than Percy – which was saying something.
They had each other, and they had the sudden wind rattling their windows to wake them up to go do things that it really felt that it was necessary for them to do at four-in-the-goddamn-morning.
It'd taken them about a month to realize that sleeping together in a huge pile seemed to make the wind more reluctant to try and wake them quite so early. So obviously, they'd gotten used to having elbows smacked into their throats and knees kicked into their kidneys, because there was very much something like an 'ungodly hour' and none of them had any interest whatsoever to make it a habit to spend such a time-of-day awake.
Life had been weird, until the wind had started 'transferring calls' back to them from other people. Then life had gotten a lot weirder. And generally perhaps a bit more unpleasant, but these things and the people who called them needed to be dealt with by someone, and they'd all grown more-or-less used to the idea that they would never really have peaceful lives.
Then they'd received a call, that hadn't quite been a call, from a young girl who should be able to do magic.
Harry shrugged, Ron snickered, Hermione huffed, and the wind moaned pitifully in the background at being ignored by its Masters.
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