Harry Potter had been through many rude awakenings in his lifetime. His uncle, rapping on the cupboard door for him to get up and cook breakfast already; the pain of his arm mending itself together forcing him back into consciousness in the Hospital Wing; his best friend Hermione, telling him it was his turn to put on the piece of the Dark Lord's soul they were working to kill.

So many rude awakenings, unique in their awfulness… but he'd never had the singularly unpleasant experience of being shocked awake by the Dark Lord Voldemort dousing him with Honeywater.

Five hundred and one different alarm bells rang in Harry's head in that second, Auror instincts telling him to cast first and ask questions later. Ignoring them for the time being, he sat up and gathered his bearings. Just from a cursory inspection of his surroundings, careful to keep his hood up and grateful as ever for its concealing charms, he was able to determine he was in Malfoy Manor.

As if that wasn't bad enough, he was surrounded by a disturbingly alive Voldemort, an odd amalgamation of Death Eaters, and Narcissa Malfoy. Also, he was in the middle of a circle of salt, candles surrounding him, and felt strangely confined within the circle — like if he tried to move, he wouldn't be able to. The ground that he sat on smelled like smoke and Harry wished that he could melt into it when he realized his wand wasn't on him.

He decided that this was one of the worst predicaments he'd ever found himself in.

Assigning blame seemed like the best way to make sense out of this situation. Another person in his position may have blamed the Dark Lord for everything wrong in the present moment, but Harry was unfortunate enough to know better…

Death had done this.

… Now more than ever, Harry regretted the choices that led him to where he was. Ever since the Battle of Hogwarts, he had only ever tried to mind his business, no more Chosen One saving-the-world antics. He just wanted to be a good service to the Auror force, a loyal friend, and a devoted godparent.

Then one fateful night, he lost sight of his priorities and went on a drunken escapade with Luna and Xenophilius Lovegood.

In the moment, he'd only wanted to make Luna happy. Harry felt that he owed her as much for the horrible nights she'd stayed as a captive in this Manor's dungeons. If that meant burying the hatchet with her father who had tried to turn them in to the Death Eaters and getting sloshed on Firewhiskey… well, so be it, he thought. He may have drank a little too much in an effort to brace himself for chatter about Blibbering Humdingers and Nargles, but that wasn't where the conversation went.

Xenophilius was always so enthusiastic about the Hallows and Harry thought to humor him. He was experiencing just the right amount of guilt for all the misery everyone had suffered for him, mixed with just the right level of inebriation, to make a really stupid decision. They went into the Forbidden Forest and dug up the resurrection stone, some kind of intuition screaming out to him that it was in this exact spot, here. From there, it was easy. The cloak was always on him, and he'd kept the Elder Wand locked up safely in Grimmauld Place.

Before Harry knew it, he had all three Hallows on him. It was very anticlimactic, at first. Then Luna complimented him very politely on his new tattoo and he realized he'd made a mistake.

On the palm of Harry's left hand he found the symbol of the Hallows, the very one that Luna's father carried on a chain around his neck and Grindelwald had touted everywhere. Xenophilius looked like a man reborn, vindicated for the years he'd spent insisting on their existence. Harry was only confused and for the next several weeks, found himself zoning out and staring at his palm on a regular basis, the black inscription telling him nothing but stubbornly staying put on his hand.

Whatever he tried, it wouldn't go away. He cast magical tattoo removal charms on himself and, failing that, tried the Muggles' laser technique. Scrubbed his skin raw every time he washed his hands, and yet the symbol still stuck out black as night and proud on his palm.

After he accepted that he'd been permanently marked by some powerful force for the second time in his life, he tried to relinquish the title for good. Both saying out loud and writing down, I'm not interested in being the Master of Death, thank you, didn't seem to do the trick, no matter how many times he gave it a go. He even tried to hold a conversation with Death, with no small amount of fear about just what it was or would manifest as, but his pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears. The Master of Death, and he couldn't even summon the thing…

Harry skived the Hallows off to other people; the cloak to Neville Longbottom, the Elder Wand to Hermione Granger, and the resurrection stone to his cousin Dudley Dursley, the only person he knew who had suffered no losses to tempt him if he did figure out what the artifact functioned as. He had hoped beyond hope that it would work, the Master of Death no more with his three Hallows divided.

Upon waking up and seeing the Hallows laid out on his nightstand the next day, Harry felt strongly disappointed and mildly terrified. There were no terms and conditions made available to him for the role he'd been saddled with, no exit clause that he knew of. He read The Tales of Beedle the Bard again and again, Ron and Hermione trying their best to help him in his search for answers, but it was all in vain.

For a year, nothing more happened. Harry continued to try everything short of sawing his hand off to erase the symbol and Hermione continued to study everything that was available (which is to say, very little) about the Hallows, the Master of Death title and the personification of Death. They felt like they were waiting for the other shoe to drop… and it did, rather unceremoniously.

The best way Harry found to describe the grim state of affairs was that Death — or some higher power or even the universe itself, he wasn't that sure, but he'd settle on that name — gave him tasks. When something Death-adjacent needed to get done, Harry found himself there, with a sense of purpose in his head and the symbol on his palm burning.

It started out small. He came to in a rundown Muggle house with a corpse in it, an old woman with no friends or family to speak of, and somewhere past the horror of waking up in the same room as a dead body, he knew why he was there. If the cadaver was not found and buried, the woman's soul wouldn't rest; she would always be lonely, abandoned. He felt great pity for the last few days she must have lived all by herself and put in an anonymous tip to the police. After she was buried, he left flowers on the headstone.

Following that ordeal, Harry had to deal with the fact that even though he was the Master of Death, the blasted thing seemed to be in charge of him, and he didn't know how to stop it.

Slowly but surely, it escalated. After he exorcised Professor Binns from the Hogwarts premises, Harry realized just how out of control his life had become. Only, it was clearly even worse than he thought if he was in Malfoy Manor with people who should mostly be dead right at that moment.

There was no sense of purpose in his head this time — no gut feeling about what he had to do. Only a burning symbol on his left palm and his deceased archenemy talking to him.

"Good," Voldemort said, shattering the small hope Harry had let himself foster that maybe this wasn't really the Dark Lord with just one word. The man's voice was so specially awful, full of cold menace that sent shivers up Harry's spine; there was no mistaking it. "You are awake. I presume that you are the Master of Death… my name is Lord Voldemort and I have brought you here to help me bring justice and order to the Wizarding World."

Harry's mind short-circuited for a second as he tried to rationalize Voldemort's words. So, he was brought here not by Death, but intentionally by the Dark Lord… to serve his evil, megalomaniacal purposes… and nobody there seemed to realize that Master of Death or not, he was Harry Potter. They only stared at him like he was some strange, horrifying specimen.

Voldemort looked like he was expecting a reply. Harry just tilted his head, sure that if he opened his mouth to speak or his hood came down, fresh hell would break loose.

"It is unfortunate that we have to meet this way," Voldemort continued. It's unfortunate we have to meet at all, Harry chose not to say out loud. "I have used a ritual to summon you. Through this, you are bound to my will. With our combined powers, I will be a great ruler and you will see your work pay off."

There was a lot to unpack there, and Harry didn't know where to start. It was all just bizarre. Voldemort thought he had mysterious, deathly powers that he could control and use to rule over Magical Britain, perhaps the entire world, and had no clue that he was the bloody Boy-Who-Lived-Twice.

On the subject, HOW WAS VOLDEMORT EVEN ALIVE?

Not just alive, no… he seemed to be in the height of his reign. The group of people there, sans Snape, all lived in Malfoy Manor after Harry's sixth year, when the Death Eaters had control over the Ministry. He theorized that he was somehow a decade in the past. That odd Master-of-Death-intuition agreed with him, but beyond that, Harry was clueless.

There were two possibilities he could think of that would explain the fact he was literally in 1997… either he'd traveled back in time, or he'd gotten thrown in some parallel universe that Hermione had talked about during one of her study bursts, briefly confident that the key to summoning Death was in the secrets of interdimensional travel — until like everything else, it had fallen through.

If it was time travel, everyone was screwed. His hood would come down and Voldemort would torture him until he revealed the truth about the future, then it would all be undone and the universe would collapse in on itself, Harry thought morbidly. But it didn't quite make sense…

This wasn't the past he knew, not exactly. When had Voldemort ever had the opportunity to summon the Master of Death? He hadn't even known about the Hallows, Harry didn't think he'd heard a word of the children's tale they came from… and the Elder Wand that was grasped in his bone-white hand was there too early, as Harry vividly remembered the Dark Lord had grabbed it just before the final battle.

So, there was a very real chance Harry was in another dimension. A parallel, an alternate universe. A different world. Summoned across space and time and what-have-you by another version of the Dark Lord he thought he'd finally gotten rid of.

Harry cracked, then. He was so overcome with the strangeness of it all, the line from terrifying to hilarious so nonexistent in this situation… he might be tortured for his nerve to step foot in the Manor, but it would only be thanks to the Dark Lord dragging him there himself, because he thought Harry would help him win the war.

He put a hand over his mouth to stop himself from laughing raucously, at a loss for what else to do.

"For so long as you prove useful, you will be treated well," Voldemort tried again. "You will stay at this manor and be privy to my strategizing. Many would envy you."

Harry envisioned himself working as the right hand to Voldemort, his consult and housemate, and lost his grip. He snickered out loud, nearly in tears from the hilarity of it all.

"This is no laughing matter," Voldemort snapped and oh, Harry disagreed. "You must do what I say. Face me, Master of Death."

Well, that was new. A force not unlike the Imperius, but disturbingly more powerful, willed him to obey Voldemort's command. He couldn't break it, couldn't negotiate with his body as it started to move against his wishes.

Harry stopped laughing. It wasn't funny anymore.

Standing up, he just had a moment to brace himself before he was compelled to bring his hood down and reveal his face. If he was really at the mercy of Voldemort's whims, Harry didn't know what he would do…

His hands slowly brought the hood down even as he put all his force into resisting it. He was powerless, his will literally bound to the Dark Lord… what kind of twisted ritual had he done…?

Gasps surrounded him, but Harry would only meet the stare of the one trustworthy person in this group. He owed plenty to Severus Snape, but the man was so secretive and frustrating Harry doubted he had any hope of working with him through this situation. Narcissa Malfoy had saved his life, too, but she would have killed him just as easily if it meant ensuring the safety of her son, Draco… the boy who represented a lifeline to Harry right now.

"That's Harry Potter," Draco said dumbly, eyes darting back and forth from meeting Harry's to staring at his scar. Harry felt that there was going to be a learning curve here, but Draco still represented his best chance at an ally.

"Hello, Draco," he smiled, forcing his inner fear down under the surface to put up a brave front. "How's your summer been?"

As the boy's mouth fell open, utterly lost for words, the others found it within them to take action. Lucius, Narcissa, Bellatrix, Rodolphus, Rabastan and Severus… they all raised their wands at him. Where the others were confused, Severus looked genuinely afraid, wand hand trembling. Not for his own wellbeing, Harry understood; he was worried for Harry's safety.

"Relax," Voldemort said unexpectedly, raising his hand only to motion the others' wands down.

Harry turned to look him in the eyes and regretted it quite immediately. The sight of them, crimson-red and piercing,raised goosebumps all over Harry's body. The Dark Lord's attention was focused so heavily on him that he found it hard to breathe. Voldemort's skin creased at the brow bone; Harry realized that if he had eyebrows, they would have been furrowed at that moment.

It only took seconds for Harry to feel stripped down and debased by Voldemort's stare. The Dark Lord outright inspected him, from every inch of his face (with special attention to the scar he was responsible for) to the rest of Harry, looking for something. He settled on his left hand.

Harry could have sworn his palm burned a little more the instant Voldemort laid eyes on it. The whole room seemed to heat up, in fact, as he became hyper-aware of the distance between himself and the Dark Lord. They had never before stood so close to each other without a Killing Curse at the tip of one of their tongues.

"Master of Death… and a shape-shifter," Voldemort sneered once the others had followed his instructions and put their wands down, with the exception of Draco who was still gaping and had never had the presence of mind to arm himself in the first place. "Let this be your first and last warning… I do not take kindly to taunts."

Shape-shifter. Right. So, Voldemort refused to believe that he was Harry Potter and rationalized a different explanation out of what he saw. Merlin, did Harry wish he could do the same.

He could go along with it, let Voldemort think this wasn't his actual form, but the man had said it was his only warning — likely a signal that copious amounts of torture were to follow. He couldn't exactly fake being a Metamorphagus so the truth was going to come out one way or another, Harry realized.

"With all due respect," Harry started, lying straight out of his ass because he could not hold any less respect for this man… "You've come to the wrong conclusion. I understand how you got there, mind, makes perfect sense… I, er, wish it was true…"

"The wrong conclusion?" Voldemort repeated sardonically, and Harry didn't miss the way his wand twitched in his hand. He wondered absentmindedly if the Elder Wand would even work against him now — if he could snap his fingers and summon it to his side…

Harry took a deep breath and told himself to stop losing his nerve. Voldemort terrified him like nothing else, but he was stuck talking to him for the time being. "Yes. I am the Master of Death — possessor of all three Hallows, see —" Harry raised his marked palm up to them briefly, "— but I am also Harry Potter. Just not the one you know."

"Harry Potter is not the Master of Death," Voldemort snapped, sibilant in his rage. He must have thought he was being played for a fool. "Potter is an arrogant schoolboy who spends more time playing Quidditch than he does having a brain, and has only survived this long out of sheer, dumb luck. I command you to tell me the truth."

Harry felt slightly offended at the man's words but didn't linger on it. The compulsion to obey came and he rode it out this time, understanding that there was likely very little point to resisting. He thought bitterly that Voldemort had finally found a way to cast the Imperius on him.

"I am telling you the truth. My name is Harry James Potter and I'm the Chosen One, the Boy-Who-Lived-Twice, and all that fodder. I've also been the Master of Death for seven years now. I think you pulled me from another universe into this one, a sort of parallel one where everything is a decade behind and you found out about the Hallows… and I really would love nothing more than to save us both from this unpleasant coincidence and go back home."

Harry closed his eyes and tried to take deep breaths. He'd gotten worked up during that explanation and knew the last thing he wanted to do was test out the limits of the Dark Lord's patience, if it wasn't already too late. For a few seconds, there was silence around him — he could only hear his own heartbeat.

He chanced a look and felt a jolt in his stomach when he saw that the Dark Lord was utterly incensed. The situation seemed to have gotten away from him, and Harry could tell he didn't like that one bit… Voldemort stared at him in a mixture of anger, disgust, and fascination, wand raised his way. Harry was sure the man knew there was a good chance any spell wouldn't work, but felt afraid nonetheless. He backed away as far as he could in the weird circle of salt he was in, which was not very far at all.

"So you mean to tell me, Potter, not only that parallel universes exist, I pulled you from one, and you united the three Hallows seven years ago," Voldemort trailed on slowly, in a quiet kind of rage. It was building up, Harry thought… and to what, he didn't know… "But that our universe is a decade behind yours. Meaning, at this rate of progression, Harry Potter will become the Master of Death."

"Maybe?" Harry chanced, willing Voldemort to understand that he didn't have all (or any) of the answers here. The message didn't seem to sink in — Voldemort looked more homicidal by the second. The others in the room backed away from them both. "Like I said, you didn't know about the Hallows in my universe, so that might throw a wrench into things. I'm also not sure how it works across universes, how many Masters there can even be…"

"Explain this to me," Voldemort ordered, sending that frustrating compulsion back to Harry. "Just what happened in between today, the summer of 1997, and the day you became the Master of Death? How did this… sequence of eventsunfold?"

Ah. There it was… Voldemort was going to spill over the precipice at this, and Harry had no way of stopping it. He steeled himself the best that he could before Voldemort's will forced the words out of him. There had to be some way to get past this, to circumvent the order… if Voldemort wanted an explanation, then perhaps Harry could get away with explaining very little.

"I found the stone and the cloak, both entirely on accident, and then during what should've been my seventh year, we dueled. Your curse rebounded on your own self, and you died. I united the Hallows shortly after."

One of the Malfoy Manor's chandeliers fell and Narcissa shrieked. Severus had the presence of mind to shield them off from the shrapnel, but kept his wary eyes on the Dark Lord even while he cast. The man was seething, eyes storming after Harry's revelation.

"The Boy-Who-Lived-Twice, you called yourself…" Voldemort murmured, looking very much like he was contemplating giving it a third try. Harry tried his hardest not to cower as the Dark Lord advanced further, on the edge of the salt…

Voldemort spread his hands out, clenched them into fists, and just as Harry flinched in fear, the chandelier Vanished. Harry blinked as Voldemort's tumultuous anger disappeared, a smirk in its wake. This was, somehow, more terrifying.

"Fate has smiled down upon me, Harry Potter," Voldemort's smirk grew into a bloodthirsty grin, and Harry felt just a little bit sick at the sight. "I have full control over the Master of Death, his powers and his mind."

Harry reeled as he tried to understand just why Voldemort was so satisfied all of a sudden. Whatever powers Harry had as the Master of Death, he had hardly any idea how to use them. But his mind, the man had said… Harry had very little knowledge in his head that he imagined a Dark Lord could glean anything valuable from. Except, no… Voldemort had said it himself, this universe was meant to unfold the same exact way that his own did…

"The past you know so intimately is my future," Voldemort said with twisted delight, confirming Harry's theory. "I am going to cross destiny and live forever, Harry, and after I kill your counterpart, you alone will bear witness to my glory."

Bloody hell, no. He was right. Harry knew where the Dark Lord had overstepped, knew the mistakes he had made and with his knowledge, Voldemort could make sure he took out the only person who stood a chance against him — an innocent, sixteen-year-old boy who didn't know he harbored a piece of the Dark Lord's soul within him. And who knew what would happen to him if Voldemort did find out, an end worse than death…

Harry had no idea what to do, but he felt like he stood on the edge of something. Something that was all at once great and dangerous, a divergence from fate's set course, into the cold unknown.

His fight or flight instinct kicked in, then. There was no way to fight… he wasn't even armed. He could try and summon the Elder Wand from Voldemort's grip, but against seven others, he wouldn't make it out… the cloak wouldn't help him here, either, because he was trapped in this bloody circle.

While he was glancing around in abject terror, Severus Snape locked eyes with him for a brief moment. Just long enough for the man to look pointedly down to the salt. The grains had been separated the slightest bit, surrounding the thinnest line of empty floor.

Whatever hold that circle had on Harry, he felt it disappear. Without a second thought, he ran.