Afterlife

A new day, a new repeat of this corporate slavery hell.

In a small, dingy office, a blonde woman sat in a chair. She had attractive features, no doubt; she had full pink lips, pale, flawless skin, and sharp blue eyes. She had a figure that many would envy and had a good sense of fashion that complemented it. Of course, these features were greatly diminished due to her stress. She didn't have bags under her eyes, or premature wrinkles, or smell bad, mostly due to the fact that she was completely and utterly dead.

The office itself was tight, the shitty metal desk likely produced in Afterlife China taking up a majority of the space. She was sitting in an office chair with wheels, perhaps the only decently-priced piece of furniture in this office. On the other side of the desk were two more chairs, those crappy plastic ones that public schools utilized. Scratched, stained, and generally unappealing. In one corner of the room was a large, refrigerator-sized machine that was painted a cheery sky-blue and had the letters 'SIN-O-METER' printed along the top and illuminated in mostly-broken neon lights.

She glanced at the wall clock, the face of it covered in cellophane tape and one of her old Chinese takeout chopsticks replacing the minute hand, which had fallen off several hundred years ago. Her break would end in five minutes, and her shift would resume. Her sixteen-hour-day shift. It was at least a blessing that, being rather dead, she had no desire to use the restroom.

She stepped outside of her office, pushing past the wailing rows of souls awaiting redemption (or significantly more likely, judgment) and into the employee break room. It was the size of four offices stuck together, and had a small kitchenette in the corner. She was fairly certain that the cornflakes had been sitting on the counter before she even began working here. Tattered couches, covered in cigarette ashes and patched up with a lot of mismatching cloth, sat on the opposite end. One wall was dominated by a Albus Dumbledore Charity Bikini Calendar and someone had decided it couldn't possibly be bad enough already, and added godawful motivational quotes to it.

Her personal favorite was the one where someone different had mockingly wrote 'Don't Forget: You're Here Forever' just because of how honest it was. Of course, just because she liked it the most didn't mean she liked it. She fucking hated it. Just like she hated everything else here.

On the bright side, she wasn't here forever; she only had just over a hundred years to go. She was a pretty shitty person in life, but there were plenty of those. And being a spoiled princess was hardly comparable to murderers or rapists. She was fairly lucky to have been stuck in Mandos Inc. for a mere six hundred years, instead of spending a few million years in the truly deepest pits of the Seven Thousand Hells, the kind of places where people like Hitler or people who take up three parking spaces at a supermarket went.

Mandos Inc. was a fairly decent employer, too. Despite the sweatshop conditions, it could've been significantly worse. In any company party that he showed up to, she was fairly certain that Mandos was stoned out of his mind, and company policy reflected his laid-back attitude. She could've been working in YHWH Ltd. which she had not heard pleasant rumors about. One, the CEO of that afterlife services company was supposed to be a complete hardass, and two, he was allergic to like, all the shellfish, and apparently he decided if he couldn't have them, nobody else could, either.

She looked at the coffee machine, and refilled her plain white mug for the sixteenth time in the past three hours. She frowned as the device only managed to fill three quarters of her mug. Must have run out. She glanced around, checking if anybody had taken notice. Nobody was there. So, after a minute of just staring at the coffee machine, she shrugged and walked away. The next loser to show could fill it up for themselves.

She returned to her office one minute before her break ended. She sighed, burying her face in her hands, and got a good thirty seconds of sobbing out. As the second hand reached the 9 o'clock mark, she immediately stopped crying and returned to a completely neutral, completely unassuming expression. She smoothed out her crumpled suit jacket and waited for her next client to enter.

The door opened and she plastered on her customary smile. "Hi there, how can I help you today?" she asked, in an impressively monotone voice.

Two people. One was a redheaded giant of a man, with a neat, trimmed beard. Look at those muscles. She felt her mind wander to the stack of pornographic magazines she'd hidden in the second drawer of her desk. The other was a woman, with straight black hair that reached down to the shoulders. She frowned. They looked sort of familiar…

"Weasley?" she exclaimed, shocked.

"Greengrass?" Weasley frowned. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Daphne stared at him. "I died."

"Oh, of course! How could I have been so silly!" Weasley cried, and Daphne's left eye twitched violently. "I guessed as much, you daft bint. I'm asking why you're taking a rather Mugglish desk job."

"It's my punishment," Daphne replied in a hollow tone. "For being spoiled."

"I feel like that's your parents' fault more than yours," Karen Bell - yes, that must be her name - said.

"Thank you for your support," Daphne said flatly. "Now, how may I help you today?"

"Oh, come on, don't be a stranger," Weasley grinned. "How'd you die?"

"I don't see how that's relevant."

"I died as a result of being turned into a squib after burning out fighting a fire demon about a dozen millennia old," Bell piped up. Daphne stared at her. She hoped that Bell understood that whenever she lied, additional years were put onto her sentence.

"And I gave my magic away to Harry because in what world would I abandon Katie?" Weasley said fondly. Daphne resisted the urge to snap her fingers - so that was the girl's name. "Anyway, spill. You gotta tell us how you died."

"I-"

"Know my God-given rights, I tell ya!" A loud voice came from the next booth over, and Daphne winced. "I want my lawyer yesterday, and I'm gonna sit right here say shit until they show up!"

Katie and Ron exchanged glances. Daphne sighed. "Americans," she said, by way of explanation. Comprehension dawned on both their faces and they nodded. If Daphne had a penny for every time she had to deal with those obnoxious fake-English speaking assholes going on about their so-called 'rights', then she'd have enough money to pull that shitty country out of debt.

"Anyway…" Weasley stretched the word out.

"I…" Daphne sighed. Those stupid rules about lying… "I died when a fire extinguisher fell from an eleventh floor and hit me on the head."

Weasley and Bell burst into laughter, while Daphne herself ground her teeth. Stupid Gryffindor assholes. This was why the rest of the school never liked them. They took a minute to calm down, after which Weasley snorted again and gave a few chuckles before he visibly forced himself to be quiet.

Daphne shuffled the papers on her desk, a ceremonial gesture. "Now, shall we proceed?"

"Alright, what do I do?"

"Mandos Inc. is the finest firm in the Afterlife regarding Reincarnation processes," Daphne said dully. "We guarantee the fastest Reincarnations and the most loopholes exploited to provide you with the best next life experience you can get."

"Fascinating," Weasley mocked. Her eye twitched again.

"Ron, stop torturing the poor girl," Katie murmured to him. At least she wasn't a complete bitch.

"Allow me to explain how the process generally works," Daphne said. "The Afterlife is where your sins are processed. Depending on how shitty of a person you were, you may be directed straight into the body of a recent sentient newborn or be pushed into one Hell or another for some time. Your sin is measured by the SIN-O-METER to my left, which judges the severity of your crimes."

"I didn't know sin was a measurable quantity," Weasley flapped his fat trap.

"I don't know how it works and frankly I don't care. Who would like to be Judged first?"

"Ooh, pick me!" Bell said excitedly. Daphne stood up and plonked a helmet that looked like a colander with Christmas lights wrapped around it onto Katie Bell's head.

"Are you ready?" Daphne monotoned.

"Yeah!"

Daphne pressed the green button on the SIN-O-METER. Goodness, she was an actual girl scout, it seemed, because only the first digit ticked over, and even then, very slowly. Daphne was impressed. Not many people went straight to reincarnation (or Heaven, if they preferred) but Katie Bell definitely met the threshold. After twenty seconds, the big blue lamp on the device flashed, signaling that Judgment was complete.

"Congratulations. You are hereby admitted to Heaven, or go straight to Reincarnation," Daphne said, her monotone covering her burning hatred and jealousy. "Now, Mr. Weasley."

Weasley grabbed the colander and put it on his head. Daphne pressed the green button. Then the machine rumbled, and the digits began to whirl. Ten, hundred, thousand… it kept whirling. Daphne blinked even as Bell was clutching her sides, laughing. How the He-ck had Bell managed to be such a goody-two-shoes while still associating with this fucker?

"Well," Daphne said awkwardly. "You're certainly a bad boy, aren't you?"

Weasley smirked at her.

The machine began to rattle slightly as the numbers crawled into the 'hundreds of thousands'. After a tense minute, it rolled into the millions. The dirty incandescent lamp hanging from the ceiling began to sway dangerously. Daphne's knuckles were white as she gripped the edge of her desk on a deathgrip, even as her pencils rolled and fell to the floor with a clatter. The lights in the room, including the still-functioning neon lights on the SIN-O-METER itself, began to flicker, as if approaching the end of its warranty.

Daphne gaped as the previous record for the greatest Sin Value she'd ever seen, a '22,304,586' set by one Ebony Darkness… something something was shattered by Weasley's whirling dials. It hit fifty million. Then a hundred million.

"D-did you participate in a little genocide, perhaps?" Daphne asked weakly. Weasley shrugged.

Daphne's eyes were glued to the machine, and the lights suddenly fizzled out. In the absolute darkness of the room, Daphne coughed as she smelled smoke. Bell helpfully opened up the door that they came in from to air out the room. The light from outside illuminated the SIN-O-METER to reveal the value '999,999,999'.

"Merlin's saggy bollocks," Daphne uttered.

"Is this going to be a problem?" Weasley wondered.

"Um, yes. Maybe a little," Daphne said, demonstrating just how little a problem it was by throwing her arms to the side. "You're going to be the most sinful member in a circle of Hell so obscure that there are probably only five people in it, and the others are probably going to be galactic dictators or sentient diseases or corporate lobbyists."

"Corporate lobbyists," Weasley repeated, his voice full of disgust.

"Precisely. And you'll probably never see the light of day again. Not that I'm complaining, I don't want to be in the same room as some guy with a Sin Value like that."

Weasley and Bell shared glances, then stared at Daphne for a bit.

"What?" Daphne demanded.

"How long have you been stuck in here?" Weasley asked.

"Four hundred, ninety-eight years, eleven months and twelve days," Daphne recited. "I was supposed to get out in just over a year. Then guess what? It got extended by one hundred fucking years. That annoying piece of shit SysAdmin wouldn't take the fucking hint and tried to grab my ass so I bitch-slapped the living shit out of him. That got me an extra ten years."

"And the other ninety?" Bell asked.

"I got fucking pissed off by that extra ten years to I just killed the little shit."

"Ah, that makes sense."

"It's fucking bullshit. It's not as if you can be killed down here for a second time, but they still ruled murder," Daphne moaned. "I fucking hate this place. I died from a goddamn fire extinguisher, I was still twenty-one years old! I was still cute! I didn't have nearly enough clothes and sugar daddies and I haven't got smashed at a party nearly enough times. I want to fucking live."

Weasley and Bell glanced at each other again. "Well, why don't you come with us?" Bell asked kindly.

Daphne stared. "What? But you're already going to Heaven. Why risk it?"

Bell snorted and jabbed a thumb at Weasley. "I'm not gonna leave him stuck in hell for all eternity. I'm already gonna smuggle him out, you may as well come with."

Daphne hesitated. If she were obedient for another one hundred years, she was guaranteed to get out of this bureaucratic hellhole. But she'd likely tack on an extra couple of decades onto her sentence if she failed to report Bell's smuggling operation to her superiors. Meanwhile, Bell was risking her own safety, freedom and happiness to help her evil fucker of a husband and had offered her on the ride as well.

"Alright," Daphne said. She allowed herself the first smile in five hundred years. "I'll come with you." Weasley and Bell grinned matching diabolical grins. Being near such an evil dude was terrifying, but against the Angelic Enforcers, the more evil the better.

They ran.

A/N: Here's a short omake that I didn't quite finish last night when I put up the previous chapter. You can assume this is non-canon, because I'm fairly certain Mandos' Hall doesn't operate the way it is depicted here. Besides, death only leads to nothingness, a cold, neverending plane of featureless void, where your soul will be torn into fragments smaller than their constituent atoms and all memory of your existence will be utterly and completely erased forever...

Or, you know, get redirected to King's Cross Afterlife Co. after you get Harry Potter's signed and stamped MoD Express Pass.

Also taking this opportunity to answer a few questions asked in the reviews (may edit later):

- Ron and Katie don't actually remember exactly how old they are at this point, they've lost track and they can't be bothered to count. But they've all lived an average of one hundred years in a total of 33 different Earths, switching for whatever reason - at first, to reset their age, but later, if they just got bored or turned the planet into an uninhabitable nuclear wasteland. Then they lived about 650 years in Middle earth, for a grand total of around 4,000 years.

- The Ring is indeed still out there. You might recall Harry and Tom Riddle playing chess together; this was done in the same area that Deagol and Smeagol were beating each other up like Hobbit WWE for possession of the Ring. Tom coveted the Ring because the Ring appealed to the possibility of his freedom of Harry; Harry stopped Tom from stealing the Ring for himself. Harry got spooked and decided to skedaddle before he got tempted himself.

- But yes, Sauron's temporary stronghold, Dol Guldur, has been turned into a crater. In canon, Dol Guldur is destroyed during the War of the Ring by Lady Galadriel who smote it down with her full power. That should tell you how powerful Lady Galadriel is - even if she didn't have to directly face Sauron at the time, she was capable of tearing down Sauron's likely many-layered defenses that he'd built up on the fortress over the course of hundreds of years.

- Daisy is not a Took. Honestly, I'm very bad at coming up with names so I picked what might be a fairly common name for a female Hobbit. I haven't confirmed her family mostly because I haven't thought that far. But yes, Bilbo's mother, Belladonna Took, is supposed to be a fairly Tookish Took and where Bilbo got his adventurous side from. I'm not sure about the wolves part? It's possible, I suppose, given Belladonna was alive during the Fell Winter, but she didn't die during the event.

- I had thought about killing of Katie and Fleur instead, but you just saw Ron willingly give up his own magic to age with Katie. Harry would probably do the same, and... yeah. I also thought, maybe the next protagonist can be one of their kids instead? But I decided that it would probably be more in-character for them to not want kids, if only not to outlive them. They've had children before, and it's probably a very traumatic experience to have to bury them yourself, or abandon them as you hop to a fresh new world.