Death, My Friend
By Rey
I inherited the Invisibility Cloak. I was tricked into accepting the Resurrection Stone. I won the allegiance of the Elder Wand. I, consequently, do not age even a day, frozen as a seventeen-year-old scrawny thing. Just because of three measly trinkets falling into my hand.
I hate it all.
Story tags: Master of Death Harry Potter, Repeated Deaths, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, character introspection, Character Study, Child Abuse
Warnings: Multiple deaths of one person, beginning in early childhood, which are sometimes rather graphic. Canon-typical violence plus-plus. Child abuse.
Author's notes: Well, can I say "Happy holidays" despite the theme of the story? Also, I had a continuation for this, and the first chapter was half-way written already, but… well, it would make for a huge fic, then, and I've got neither the time nor the inclination nor the energy to carry it through. So if you would take it up from here, feel free. Just please tell me, and tell people where you got the idea too so I won't be accused of plagiarising myself. If you'd like to take a peek on what I've written so far, please e-mail me and I'll send it to you. Thank you. - Rey
O-O-O-O
When I was one and a half years old, deep at one autumn night, I felt terribly alone and uncomfortable and cold – oh so cold; laid on something hard and cold, wrapped by something thin, clutching at a tingly paper that didn't feel comforting at all. The Dementors kindly revived all those feelings and sensations for me years later, and it took me a decade after to realise that, bless and curse my subconscious world, I was remembering what happened that night – the night I firstly lost everything.
The first time I died. Because, yes, I did. The Dementors made me remember that part, at last in that day in that decade that I'd finally realised the significance of that dark, cold, petrifying little event. (Such good therapists for reviving old and buried bad memories, Dementors are.) And that day, I relived that first death, like a little anniversary:
A fragile, tiny thing wrapped in a thin but familiar blanket, buffeted occasionally by nightly autumn breezes that made the air felt even colder than before. Tender flesh met with unforgiving, chilly ceramic tiles; young heart battling to circulate warmth that got stolen quicker than the slowing beats; powerful magic battering to escape the failing little body, unfed since the night prior. No Mummy; no Daddy; no Paddy; so alone, lonely, confused why; couldn't scream for attention, for help, for warmth. Mummy and Daddy and Paddy gone; better follow them.
Predawn granted me my wish, as my exhausted magic failed and my tiny body followed suit. Predawn was far colder than night, it turned out, especially with the heavy thunderstorm that blew overhead then. I couldn't even inhale a last breath, with how hard I'd been shivering. I simply slipped away, into something that wasn't so cold, something that felt almost familiar. I stayed there a second; I stayed there an eternity.
And then something else – something from within me, something that didn't belong to me – yanked me back to the world of harsh chill and shivery dampness. Fear desperate fear fear fear, it projected, but not my fear, not my desperation. I'd been content, after all, in that not-so-cold second of eternity.
Neither can live while the other survives. – That bit of that endlessly damned prophecy, it should've mentioned about neither can die, too.
O-O-O-O
When I was four, the obese man I was to call Uncle Vernon accidentally – or maybe purposefully? Semi-purposefully? Chance-takingly? – hit me with his company car, when I was prooning the frontyard garden, when he was about to go to office.
It was the only time in my original childhood that I was willingly brought to hospital for a Dursley-incurred injury by a Dursley.
The doctors and nurses said I was a miracle child.
I'd died for over three minutes, after all. The flat-lined heart monitor didn't lie, they said to Uncle Vernon, quite within My hearing. (Children can't possibly understand what adults say, right? They always think so, at least.) And when I "miraculously came back from the dead," I seemed to suffer no adverse effect.
Well, how rude! I remembered I thought so; and I still agree now, long after that day in that tiny emergency room of whichever hospital it was. After all, the death that those people abhorred so much had been nice, compared to trying to breathe past all the broken ribs and intense agony. It'd been pain-free, Dursley-free, exhaustion-free, and it'd been huge – far huger than the patch of Little Whinging that I knew.
Well, most importantly, it was pain-free.
And whatever that thing that they'd used to jolt me back into the harsh little room, into what they called "life," it'd only intensified my pain from all the broken bones grinding together during the spasm.
Whoever wants to return to pain and call it miracle?
O-O-O-O
When I was seven, I was enrolled at primary school. It was free, after all; compulsory, too.
I didn't know My name. I thought My name was Freak or Boy.
The other children laughed.
My teacher patiently told me: "You are Harry James Potter, boy. You are seven this year, and your birthday is the thirty-first of July. Don't tell me you didn't pay attention to your own name and birthday at home."
She joined in the laughter.
The other children got emboldened. They teased me and mocked me and laughed at me during the break.
Dudley and his new friends went a few steps further, in that regard.
The game Harry Hunting was born that day, as was the boy called Harry James Potter who apparently had the thirty-first of July as his birthday.
It readily claimed the first and only victim, namely me. Well, I was wholely unprepared, after all.
I remember that moment vividly, courtesy of yet another exposure to the Dementors further in my existence. I remember the punches, the kicks, the stones, the bones snapping and ccrunching as Dudley jumped gleefully onto my exposed, unprotected chest.
Those vicious little kritters fled the crime scene as speedily as they'd ambushed me, on hearing that noise, on hearing my gurgling cry.
Because even children – or maybe especially children – know what usually comes next, after such combination.
Their instincts weren't disappointed, that afternoon.
I was found by a policeman when I nearly suffocated in my own blood. I was brought to a hospital. I underwent even more painful things because of that.
They didn't just let me die. They didn't want me to be pain-free, to have my peace.
I severely dislike hospitals and quite a few medical personnel until now, partly because of that.
O-O-O-O
When I was eleven, I took a life for the first time, and it killed me.
I didn't want to go back, and yet I did.
I didn't want to remember Professor Quirrel's skin burning-raw-blackening under my hands. And I hadn't, for a second of eternity, in that blissful oblivion, before something that was familiar and yet not quite so jerked me back into that memory and I reluctantly opened My eyes to the sight of half-moon spectacles.
I remembered, and I didn't want to. I don't want to, still, despite all the lives I have taken since then, despite the existence I've experienced since then, despite all the myriad other horrible memories I've acquired since then.
Death is peace and innocence, and I lost yet another chance for it that day.
O-O-O-O
I was twelve when a highly potant venom from a sword-like fang coursed through my blood vessels, carrying burning, numbing oblivion with it. The world was so far away, so muffled. If not for the fire scorching my veins and Tom Riddle chattering, it felt just like sleeping.
I wanted to sleep. I dearly wanted it. Twelve-year-olds weren't meant to save people by themselves. Twelve-year-olds weren't meant to face a huge snake with a mouthful of venomous fangs and killing gaze armed with a sword they could barely lift. I was so tired, with everything.
And yet, there came Fawkes the phoenix, crying into my wound, sending ice chasing after the burning heat in my veins, and the harsh reality of Tom Riddle and dying Ginny and the remote Chamber of Secrets came swirling back.
If it weren't for Tom's presence there, I would've cried for the loss of yet another chance for peace.
O-O-O-O
I was thirteen when I met a Dementor for the first time, followed by its brethren not long after.
I was thirteen when I nearly lost My soul to them. It had been so close….
And yet, even after I'd saved myself – and Sirius and Hermione to boot – I still wondered to myself, afterwards: Would losing one's soul to those things feel just like dying, like letting my own soul come into the embrace of that cool, vast, peaceful oblivion?
O-O-O-O
When I was fourteen, I thought I got the answer. I still think I did, and the answer sticks until now.
Barty Crouch Junior was broken and mad, but alive.
And then a Dementor took his soul.
The heart still beat; the lungs still worked; the light of life was still in his eyes.
But there was no life in those eyes. There was no life in that body.
The so-called Dementor's Kiss made a mockery of life and death.
Who would say, it wouldn't also make a mockery of the peace that might be gained either way?
O-O_O_O
Nobody – not even my worst enemy – deserves to die by Dementor's Kiss. I vowed it that moment I looked into the empty-but-not-empty eyes of Barty Crouch Junior.
I never thought I'd act on that vow so soon, during the summer before my fifth year at Hogwarts, in Little Whinging, for Dudley Dursley.
But I did do My best to get rid of the two Dementors trapping me and my bully and thoughtless murderer of a cousin, and I won.
Nobody deserves to receive the Dementor's Kiss, not even the boy who caved my chest in during my first day of school so long ago.
O-O-O-O
When I was seventeen and walking to my death by Dumbledore's order, I asked the shades of my loved ones: "How does dying feel?"
"It feels like falling asleep," they said.
I wondered if the shades weren't actually just my imagination, then; a projection of what I already knew.
Because yes, dying did feel like falling asleep, mostly. I knew that, subconsciously.
I knew that, because death had always been with me, offering me reprieve when life had grown too much to bear.
Death walked with me, then, in that forest path that I trod alone. It was ready to receive me again, for the final time, and I approached its embrace with peace in my heart – an early gift from my beloved friend.
And there, Dumbledore tweaked my sense of responsibility, my sense of guilt….
I went back to the battle fought by teachers and students – children – and mothers and fathers and shopkeepers and pub-goers. I went back to the reality of Fred dead and Remus dead and Tongs dead and so many others dead that I'd gone to school with, that I'd had childish feuds with, that I'd looked up to, that I'd hoped hoped hoped with all My heart had been alive to join me in my reluctantly continued existence.
They were in peace, then. But I was not.
I wanted to curse Dumbledore for nudging me back to torture. But above all, I cursed Myself.
My then life-long mission ended as Voldemort's body thudded softly onto the ruined stone floor of Hogwarts' Great Hall.
He was in peace. I was not.
Master of Death: Does it mean "always alive"? – I remember I thought so, wondered so, asked so. I hated it.
I still do.
Thousands of lives and worlds have passed, and I still do.
I wish for peace, I wish for my dearest friend, and yet it is still the farthest away from me.
But maybe, maybe, maybe, somewhere out there, somewhen in the future….
And maybe, maybe, maybe, meanwhile, I can give peace to others, in life and in death.