Notes: And so here we are, the end. Enjoy as best you can.
WARNINGS: Death
45. Barren Rage of Death's Eternal Cold
His memories are a thousand strands tangled in the squalls of time.
He is a boy, scared and lost, staring into the eyes of man he will learn to trust until he finds it isn't trust he's learned.
He is a charming teenager, a Prefect in his house, more adept at magic and manipulation than any of his peers. He uses the lessons he learned when he was less to find ways to become more. He discovers pleasure is an infinite spectrum and that he enjoys the entire gamut. He discerns his blood is special, that he is greater than his peers in ways that ought to matter.
He is nothing at all. Not even air and blood. Trapped in a void with walls that run the course of eternity.
Quite suddenly he becomes again. There is no air in his lungs or blood in his veins, but he is drowning in sentiment—emotion that does not belong to him. He is screaming in agony and then, far worse than the pain, is the violation. The knowledge that he has been used without his consent and he is powerless to stop it.
But he isn't powerless. He never has been.
Even when he is merely a boy, he knows he will be significant. That through sheer force of will, he can become more.
So he uses his power and it stops. The violation and the pain linger, like a sodden cloak about him, but he is no longer impotent.
He is different now. No longer the boy he remembers. The time as an… other has changed him. He searches the depths of his abilities and finds they are vast. He wants to test them, but he wants to protect her more.
He does not love, but this misaligned version of him feels the right cascade of emotion. And he falls. Not once, but twice.
He is a boy in love. He learns the art of sacrifice. He never considered it before, never needed it. Now he drowns in the nuances of it. He becomes a different kind of other.
He is a boy with a choice. He discovers another path to power, beyond force and willpower. He discovers that sacrifice will repay him beyond his wildest desires. And because life without power is no life at all, he bargains away his soul.
And now that he is nothing, he becomes everything.
His memories tangle, knotting beyond recognition. It takes time to pull them apart, thread by thread, moment by moment. He relives the darkness and the light in an infinite loop until he knows himself too well. Until he wants nothing more than to escape the cycle. To be nothing once more.
He sorts his way through the knotted web, propelling himself along the ropes of his past until he stumbles into his present.
He finds his lips on hers.
He blinks.
Time fractures. He explodes, becoming one with its frantic rush forward.
When he breathes again, he has slipped forward.
The girl he remembers as a tender babe in his arms laughs. Her eyes sparkle the darkest cobalt and her long ebony hair flies in the wind. She may have his coloring, but her smile is purely her mother's—vibrant and honest.
He clings to the sight of her, to this part of him he will never know.
The world slips away from him, his power and duty demanding his attention, but in the cracks, he returns.
She shifts from a toddling child, legs just learning to hold steady against the weight of the world, to a self-assured young girl, magic crackling at her fingertips. She leaves her mother and walks the halls they all passed through. She becomes a gorgeous young woman, his dark brows framing her mother's wide almond eyes and delicate cheekbones.
She is powerful. Substantially more so than her classmates. Her abilities surpass her mother and her surrogate father. He isn't surprised. She is a part of him and he is supreme.
As she slips forward, age claiming her every time he blinks, her parents stand still for a while. And then the greys begin to blot out the dark honey curls of her mother. Her father's platinum loses its gloss and his brow remains furrowed long after he's done worrying.
But he—Tom, Death, the other—doesn't change.
He weaves the pieces of himself back together as he watches his daughter and his mortal anchors, the boy and the girl—now the man and the woman. He finds identity where there should be none. And with identity comes tragedy.
He uncovers every sharp edge of his folly.
To watch a loved one age and die—to be apart from all the years that matter—is an agony unlike any other.
Watching Harriet grow is a treasure. Watching Hermione and Draco fade is a curse.
Tom won't risk a single second of their lives to spare himself the misery of being separate. He understands his power now. He understands why his predecessor so easily gave it all away.
He is infinite and he is everything, but because of it, he is also nothing. He is powerless to affect change in the one aspect that matters, his own life.
So he watches from the shadows and spends every minute he is not pulled another direction with the woman and the man he loves and the child he cannot bear to usher beyond the veil one day.
But there is no escape from this prison of power. If he finds another foolish enough to summon him, perhaps he could escape to oblivion, but that would do nothing to save them. To spare them what time demands.
And he still cannot stomach the idea of being truly nothing.
He has no choice but to welcome the ache as the years creep onward, as the day of their reunion draws ever closer.
Draco finds another love, another chance.
But Hermione. Hermione never searches beyond her daughter, never seeks the company of another. She is not unloved, but she forges her path without a partner. She never searches for the shadow for him. She doesn't hold on too tight. She is simply content to be as she is, a mother to an extraordinary daughter.
His heart breaks at her isolation, despite her satisfaction with her choice.
She will never know, not until the end.
But what an end he will give her.
Tom blinks and turns away, caught in the threads of the universe that run through him. When he claws his way back, it is almost too late.
~*~Break~*~
He finds Harriet in a chair beside the bed. She is no longer a fresh-faced youth, but a woman of wisdom, silver streaking her dark hair. He pushes the door open and she looks up. It is the first time she's seen him since the day she was born.
She shouldn't recognize him, but her eyes go wide, her lips parting in clear comprehension. Perhaps it is her own face she sees in his—their eyes are the same luminous blue, their hair the same glossy ebony.
Harriet clenches her fists and rises from the chair, putting herself between her father and her mother. "She needs more time."
He would give her every moment the universe has to offer if it were within his power. He can be anywhere, take any life, but he can't spare them, not when their strand has frayed to nothing but memories and decrepit flesh.
It's been well over a century since he parted from both of them. The magic in their veins gives them time no Muggle ever finds. But more is nothing like infinity and he avoided this moment right up until his dark power demanded it of him.
"I've given her all I can," he whispers, voice a brittle rasp. He has not spoken often since he became this instrument of death. He clears his throat. "I wish I could do more."
Harriet's brilliant eyes narrow and his breath catches. It is like looking at a reflection and seeing only a fragment of oneself. She crosses her arms. "Is it true?"
He has absolutely no idea what she's referring to. "I'm afraid I don't follow."
Full lips—her mother's lips—purse. "Are you my father?"
"What did your mother tell you?"
Harriet takes a step closer. No one has willing approached him. Not since he became this creature of infinite power and duty. "My mother told me my father loved me so much that he sacrificed everything for me. Draco told me my father died for me. They put up a headstone behind the house on the moor. We always went on my birthday, even when we moved to London. Even when Draco moved out. Even when I lived on the continent." She studies him, discerning gaze stripping away what little armor he has. "But you're not dead, are you, father?"
"No, but something very like it," he admits.
"I know," she says with a hollow grin that chills him. He recognizes that look. It means nothing good. "You became Death. It wasn't terribly hard to put the pieces together, not once I was old enough to read."
He doesn't confirm her suspicion. He knows there's no need. She knows the truth. A flinty grin cuts across her lips. "So tell me, dear old dad, was it worth it? To miss my life. To miss my mother's and Draco's?"
He wants nothing more than to say yes, to cement her belief that he is nothing more than a power-hungry monster whose genetic material she happens to share. But she is his daughter and this is likely the only time they will ever speak without the veil hovering just beyond.
So he says, "no. It wasn't worth it. Except that you are here. Alive. Without this bargain, you would never have been born."
Harriet blinks and some of the stone chips away from her façade. "What?"
He realizes she's put together the pieces, but never been told the story. The narrative she believes is full of assumptions and holes. He settles onto the edge of the bed, brushing past Harriet without hesitation. She lets him.
When he turns back, her eyes are clear and curious and he can't help the words that trip over his tongue. He tells her of his life—his true identity as Tom Marvolo Riddle—and his mistakes. He tells of horrors and loves. Of a life not quite lived and a death avoided. He tells her his sacrifice—his soul bound into servitude of the darkest power—made her possible.
And then he tells her he loves her more than anything he has ever known. Even Draco. Even her mother.
Harriet drops into her chair with a dull thump, her cheeks flushed and her dark eyes wild. They are silent for too long, but he doesn't care. He exists within his own mind, trapped in the chaotic silence of his thoughts for generations. Being here, sitting upon a bed across from a woman who is part of him, he will gladly sit in silence until the edge of eternity with her.
Eventually, she slants forward, her elbows resting on her knees. "Why did she never tell me?"
He shakes his head. He may have the power of a god now, but he has never looked into the depths of Hermione's soul. It is too sacred a thing to ever tarnish with his darkness.
"To spare you the pain," a raspy whisper cuts between them.
He jolts, turning to face the head of the bed. Hermione's eyes have fluttered open, the luscious warm chocolate of them unblemished by the ravages of time. She smiles, an echo of the curve of her lips he remembers.
"You're as achingly handsome as ever," she observes. "It's entirely unfair that time has taken so much from me and left you entirely unscathed. But I suppose, I never bound my soul to some mythical power, the cost be damned."
"My youth is hardly worth the rest of it," he replies. "I—"
She holds up a trembling hand. "Don't. If you say you wish you'd spent those years with me, I'll never forgive you for wishing Harriet away. And if you say you don't regret a moment of it, I'll never forgive you either. So it's best we let it be."
His jaw clenches, but he gives a reluctant nod. He has known for over a century that Hermione will not forgive him this trespass. He thought he'd accepted it, but he finds now that her rejection stings as sharply as the first time the words passed her lips.
"I'll give you a moment," Harriet says as she rises to her feet.
He all but leaps from the bed, reaching for her. "May I please…" he isn't sure how to ask to hold her, to feel his daughter just one more time in the circle of his arms.
But she gives him a watery attempt at a smile and crushes him to her. She is perfect in his arms. Everything he has imagined as the years slipped beyond his grasp. She rises on her tiptoes and murmurs in his ear, low and soft, "I forgive you. Thank you for this… for a chance to live."
Her warm lips brush his cool cheek and then she is beyond his grasp. He stands there, trembling with the loss until he can weave his pieces tightly enough to turn to Hermione with his eyes clear and his lips turned up.
She is grey and wrinkled and weak and she is still the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. He drops onto the bed and presses his lips to hers. It isn't a kiss of passion, but of the deepest yearning and most vibrant love. It is soft and light and full of everything they have not shared.
Hermione shivers when he pulls away. "Tom…"
He shakes from the effort not to taste her again. "Where is Draco?"
"Downstairs," she answers. He knows already her best friend is not far, but he wonders why the man is not by her side. Hermione gives him a knowing look. "We already said our goodbyes. He suspected you would want a moment alone with me."
"And Harriet?"
"Has too much of her father and her mother in her. There's no telling her what to do."
His lips tug into a rueful smile. He is glad for his daughter's tenacity. It afforded him a meeting and an understanding that would be otherwise impossible to facilitate.
Hermione shifts, pushing feebly upward on her gnarled limbs. "So this is the end."
It isn't a question and he doesn't answer.
"I missed you," he admits, the strangled whisper escaping his throat despite his better judgement.
"Good," she says. "You deserved to miss me."
She is right and he won't deny it. He won't ask about her life either. He was there, on the outside, his heart aching alongside hers. He asks her about Harriet instead and despite her tired body and her flagging spirit, she speaks of their daughter for hours. She knits together all the pieces he observed bringing the scattered scraps together into a coherent tapestry of life.
They laugh and then, when the hours stretch onward, they cry.
It is when her cheeks drip bountifully with evidence of sorrow, of agony and regret, but also joy that he kisses her a final time.
And it is not a kiss of passion or love or yearning.
It is the kiss of Death.
~*~Break~*~
Time tumbles onward and he finds himself beside the boy—the man—he loves. He wishes he was any other being, had any other power.
He can't forget the feeling of Hermione's soul whispering through him into the void beyond. He can't forget the warmth of her body fading until she was as frigid as he is. He can't forget her death despite the countless times he ushers other souls beyond.
Because the faceless, the nameless, he can cast aside. He cares for them deeply in the moment it matters, but then their souls slide through him and he is free. But Hermione will live forever inside him, in the tangled thicket of his agonized memories. In the ghost of her touch across his skin.
The centuries will slip by like a stone across a pond, but he will never escape himself.
Draco lifts his head. He is not in bed as Hermione was. Instead, he stands at the edge of white cliffs that drop to sea. His health isn't failing; he is simply weary.
"It isn't your time," Tom tells him.
Draco lets out a bitter laugh. "To think, all I needed to do was threaten to fling myself off a cliff and you'd come running."
He narrows his eyes at the man before him, stooped with age, but vital still. "I wouldn't be here if you didn't mean to do it."
Draco sighs and takes a step away from the edge. The line of Tom's shoulders relaxes a fraction. "I'm not sure that I do."
He kicks the gravel at the edge over the cliff. It's a pathetic imitation of violence, but makes its point. "How do you do it? Watch them all die?"
Tom does it because he doesn't have a bloody choice in the matter. He is bound to his duty by forces stronger than life itself.
"I don't enjoy it."
"You might have, once."
"I've been a monster more often than I've been a man."
"So I'm just supposed to hold everyone's pieces together, forever? Even when they bloody die on me."
Tom knows exactly what grieves the man before him. His partner—his love—passed only days before. Tom never knew the man, but he saw the depths of love between them. Knows it was far stronger than anything he shared with Draco.
"Harriet still needs you."
Draco gives him a sharp look, like the edge of finely honed blade. "Harriet has too much of her father in her. She doesn't need anyone."
He doesn't know enough about his daughter to argue. Draco hobbles closer, a cane supporting his weight. "I want to go out on my own terms, Tom. You of all people should appreciate that."
Tom supposes it's the sentiment that separates bravery from cowardice. He still doesn't agree. "I can tell you one thing. Life is precious and you shouldn't waste a bloody second of it. Believe me, I've watched myriad lives flash by in the space of a single thought. Every moment of a life is incomparable and worth living."
Draco gives him a hard look. "Do as I say and not as I do, then?"
"Let my mistakes serve you," Tom counters.
"So I'm supposed to let every part of me fail? Let my memory fade to a patchwork quilt of lies and forgotten truths? Forgive me if I want control over how I depart this world."
"Let nature"—let Tom and his unwavering duty—"take its course."
Draco swallows. "Do you determine my destiny?"
"No, I am merely an instrument. If you lacked free will, we wouldn't be standing here."
"Are there beings more powerful than you?"
He has spent a lifetime trying to answer that question. All he knows is that his duty propels him and that although he has the power of life and death, he is not always able to use it as he wishes. He can extend lives, but only if another price is paid. And he has never once accepted an exchange. He knows far too well how cruel consequences can be.
But despite the limitations, he has found no others like him. He slants his gaze toward Draco and says, "perhaps."
The sharp grey eyes Tom will never forget pierce through him. "You owe me this."
He owes the man before him far more than a dignified death. He owes him for the uneven course of his love, for the brutal truth that Tom never chose him, no matter how many opportunities he had. For what he took and did not give in return.
But this is not how Draco Malfoy dies and they both know it.
"I can give you what you want," he allows, "but it must be in the natural progression of the world. Not this."
Draco eyes him with equal parts distain and expectation. Age has made his face softer, smoothing away his hard angles and making them approachable, even kind. But his eyes are still the depths of a winter blizzard, cloudy and forbidden.
Tom can't fault the doubt he finds in their depths. As often as he bared his soul to Draco, he hid it away, building the narrative he needed at the cost of his lover's faith.
Silvery brows raise. Draco's tone is pure skepticism as he says, "You would do that. For me."
He would tilt the wheel of fate toward another axis entirely if he could. But grand sentiments like that will mean nothing right now. He settles for the closest thing to the truth. "I can alter the world in small ways and bigger ones if there is a bargain. To ensure dignity until you pass is no small thing, but neither does it require an agreement. I am not extending your life or repairing your health, I am merely letting you see through clear eyes until your final moment."
"A final moment I will share with you."
Tom can't help but flinch. "Yes, but only if you wish it. I am entirely capable of delivering you without interacting directly."
"What did you do for her?"
The sharp agony of memory slices through him, robbing him of breath he does not require. Despite his constant presence on the doorstep of the void, he does not know what lies beyond. Perhaps with more experience he will learn to put together the clues, the absence and presence of signs from the void, but now he is as ignorant as any of the souls he guides.
So he doesn't know what became of Hermione Granger. He doesn't know if the last sensation her soul ever experienced was the brush of his lips upon hers or if there is more. If she is somewhere surrounded by joy and books and friends who have gone before. Or if she is somewhere far worse.
His power exists only in the gateway and within the souls who will cross over. And as hard as he has tried, he does not have faith. He expects he ushers them into nothingness at best and torment at worst.
Tom knows too much of the world to believe bliss awaits anyone.
He clears his throat and looks anywhere but Draco's shrewd eyes. "I gave her peace, as best I could."
Draco sinks slowly to the ground, leaning heavily upon his cane. He shifts until his legs dangle over the edge of the cliff. He's far too close to the edge for Tom's comfort, but Tom no longer feels the desperate tug that drew him here.
"She never wanted anything but Harriet," the elderly man whispers, the words nearly swallowed by the gentle roar of the sea below.
"I know."
Draco taps a rhythm in the dirt with the head of his cane. "You gave her the ability to have other children. To create a family if she wanted. But she didn't. She never even tried. And she was happy for it, but that can't have been what was best for her."
He sighs, cane stilling. "But how could anyone else ever compare to you? You were in her bloody head, Tom. You knew exactly what she endured and you found a way to help her heal. The only problem is, she healed with you as a part of her. Like when doctors use metal pins and screws to heal a Muggle's broken bone. They're never meant to be removed."
"Neither of us regret Harriet."
"Of course you don't," Draco says. "Who would regret their own child? But I'm telling you, as an outside observer, you made a terrible choice."
Tom stares steadfastly at the seam between the brilliant blue sky and the glittering sea. "What should I have done then, Draco? What would have been so much better?"
"Swallowing your bloody pride and living like a Muggle," he answers without hesitation. "You might not have fixed her body, but you would have given her the love she lost when you disappeared. When you decided you were more important than her."
Trembling fingers dig into Tom's jaw as Draco forces him to look into the depths of his icy stare. "You helped me rise above being a coward, but in the end, that's all you bloody were. Scared."
He wants to shove the old man and his ugly truths off the bloody cliff. He doesn't have to listen to this drivel. But he doesn't move. He lets Draco's weathered fingers dig deeper into his skin.
"Was it worth it, Tom? Was leaving her alone worth your power?"
He doesn't know the answer. He only knows he no longer fears Death. That he has achieved all he ever dreamt of becoming. He never wanted love. Never expected it to matter in the course of his existence.
But he has to live with the twisted consequences of it—of learning to be more man than monster.
"There were only bad choices," he tells Draco, wrenching himself free and rising to his feet. "I made a choice. And it doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't bloody matter what I think. It was made and now I live with it."
Draco glowers up at him. "I hope you live with it for bloody ever."
The ties that bound them clearly no longer exist. It's a stark contrast to the affection he shared with Hermione in her last moments. He won't go back on his word—he will give Draco the clarity he desires—but he will not hover at the edges of the man's life any longer.
"I never wished you harm," he says despite the urge for cruelty that twists through him. Tom may no longer be loved by the man before him, but he still harbors his own variety of love for Draco. "And I apologize for my choices and how they affected you. I love you, but it is clear, it was never enough. Never what you needed from me."
Draco doesn't say anything until he's clambered to his feet, waving away Tom's offered help. "I always knew you were hers. I just thought you'd love her enough to become the man she needed."
"I'm far more imperfect than I like to admit."
The older man shakes his head, brushing wisps of thin white hair from his brow. "We're only human." He lets out a brittle laugh, eyes flashing with something darker than mirth. "Or, at least, we were."
"You'll get the end you want," Tom says. "But this is goodbye."
"Good. I don't want you to be the last thing I ever see."
Hearing those words hurts more than Tom expects. But they are hardly a surprise considering the course of their conversation. He swallows down the bitter tang of regret and pulls the man into his arms. Draco is stiff, relaxingly only partially into the embrace. He ignores the raw twist of his gut at the lukewarm reaction.
He is Death. He doesn't require affection.
Nevertheless, he brushes his lips across Draco's wrinkled cheek. The skin is leathery and rough compared to his memory. He squeezes his eyes shut and cuts off the churn of emotion vibrating within the depths of his bound soul.
"I love you," he says, stoic because anything more will rend him apart and he will not give Draco the satisfaction.
The older man says nothing until Tom pulls away. Then he sighs and murmurs, "I loved you very much once. I hope it was worth something to you."
He wants to say it was worth everything, but clearly it wasn't. "It was worth enough," he says instead.
Draco squares his shoulders and lifts his chin. "So this is goodbye."
"Yes."
"Don't be a coward, Tom. If you have a choice, don't let fear decide. The world will thank you for it."
Draco extends his hand and Tom takes it. The handshake is slow and deliberate, the weight of their history clinging to Tom's skin like an iron glove.
The barest hint of a smile cracks across Draco's haggard features. It is nothing like the brilliance Tom remembers, but it far better than the brutal chill of his scowls. "It's been one hell of an adventure, Tom Marvolo Riddle."
"So it has," Tom agrees.
As their hands separate, he lets his power flood through him, a golden sweep of light that devours him. The silver mirrors of Draco's eyes reflect the golden flame for a moment and then Tom is gone and the moment is swallowed.
He reaches for his next soul.
~*~Break~*~
He trips forward, souls slipping through him like water through a spigot. He gives Draco what he wants and then, later, Harriet. The faces become entirely unfamiliar as he continues, the memories of his life flimsier.
Harriet's children ground him for a time, but then they too slip through him into nothing. He tries to follow the branches of their families, his grandchildren and great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. But they are foreign to him, known only through cold observation and never human interaction.
All they know of him is a portrait on their wall. He is nothing but paint and shadows, not even a story.
He forgets why he needs to remember. Why anything but the golden flames dancing across his fingers matter.
He starts to make bargains. He takes more than his fair share and rejoices in his bounties.
He stops visiting the headstone in the heather. He is immortal. What need does he have for a grave?
His power pulses stronger, pushing against the edge of something he almost recalls. He digs deeper into his mind and finds love—romantic, familial, platonic. He hears the echo of a voice warning him against fear.
But he isn't afraid of anything.
He wraps the memories into a tiny kernel and buries them in the depths of his consciousness. He has no need for human memories. He can feel the thoughts of every mortal. He knows every emotion, every feeling. He contains multitudes.
He is Death and he is infinite.
His eyes burn like the heart of a sun as his lips pull into a wicked grin. He descends upon the world like a blazing comet and devours its host of souls.
His hunger is never sated.
He is always searching, seeking that which is just beyond his grasp. That which he can no longer recall. That which he can never escape. That which reaches for him from the infinite depths of eternity.
He does not choose to remember, but neither can he entirely forget.
He spirals into the darkness of Death's eternal cold with the faintest trail of light clinging to him.
Time trips forward and Death rules supreme.
~*~ fin ~*~
Notes: And thus we conclude. I think the next time I write something, it will be original fiction. Perhaps a short story or two, but I'm feeling done with this whole fanfiction thing. I want to create something that is truly mine. Thank you to those of you who have supported me along this journey. I truly appreciate you.