'And now I have to head off to the ninth ring of Hell, I suppose,' said the wizard. 'The frozen lake.'

DO YOU? asked Death. WHY?

'Because that's where traitors belong,' said the wizard. 'According to the legend, traitors to their party are buried in ice up to their heads, and traitors to their lords or benefactors are fully encased in ice and get chewed up by Satan. I don't know what the traditional punishment is for double agents who betrayed both sides, but I expect I'll find out shortly.'

I SEE. Death was not an expert on the afterlife. In the past, he had generally assumed that people went to whatever eternity they were expecting, or thought they deserved. But, the more people he met, the more he wondered how that could work. It wasn't as though people got what they expected when they were alive, after all. Most of them hadn't been expecting to die when they did, for a start.

But they wrote stories, all the same…

YOU ARE BASING YOUR VIEW OF THE AFTERLIFE ON A FANTASY NOVEL YOU READ AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-TWO?

'Well?' Severus snapped defensively. He was aware that, put like that, it sounded pretty stupid, and that if there was one thing worse than being called a coward, it was being called stupid. But – well, it wasn't as if fantasy fiction was any less likely to be right than tracts handed out by people claiming to have the divinely ordained answers. And in the time after Lily's death, after he'd been released from Azkaban, but before the autumn term had started and he could take up his new job, he had spent much of his time reading obsessively – wizard books; Muggle books bought from the Oxfam shop or borrowed from the council library; fiction or alleged fact. And one day, he had come across the story of a man, lost in a dark forest, who meets a ghost bringing a message from his lost love that she isn't happy about the way he's been wasting his life since she died and was no longer there to be a good influence on him…

He'd read it with barely a pause. And bought the two sequels. And kept them in his room to re-read again and again, because there are some books that seize your imagination so hard that you don't want to let go of them. As time went on, he had come to identify less with the hero, escaping Hell and climbing a mountain on the far side of the world to be reunited with the heroine, and more with the old ghost who had been assigned the task of being the hero's teacher and protector until they reached the gates of Heaven. Admittedly, the ghostly mentor had a much easier task than Severus and the other teachers at Hogwarts – he might have to fight demons and hell-hounds, negotiate rides on the backs of centaurs and wyverns, and risk meeting fans who might recognise him and ask for his autograph, but at least he had only one pupil, who liked and respected him, even loved him, and was keen to learn, instead of classes of dozens of lazy, insolent, ham-handed teenagers. But even so – when he had been a loyal friend to the hero all this time, and walked through fire with him (which was evidently painful even for ghosts, in the story), and then been allowed a brief sight of Heaven before having to return to Hell because the story didn't need him any more and he wasn't the sort of person happy endings happened to, ever…

Well, life wasn't fair, so why should stories have to be?

HUMANS DO NOT ALWAYS BELIEVE WHAT THEY THINK THEY BELIEVE, Death mused. YOU KNOW THAT LIFE IS NOT FAIR, AND THAT DEATH IS NOT FAIR, BUT DEEP DOWN, YOU FEEL THAT WHAT COMES AFTER DEATH SHOULD BE FAIR. AND YOU DO NOT BELIEVE THAT 'FAIR' MEANS INFLICTING ETERNAL TORTURE ON EVERYONE WHO FALLS SHORT OF PERFECTION. YOU ARE A TEACHER, AFTER ALL. YOU KNOW THAT THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GIVING A PUPIL DETENTION FOR WILFUL MISBEHAVIOUR, AND EXPELLING ANYONE WHO FAILS TO SCORE 100% ON EVERY TEST.

'I never wanted to be a teacher in the first place! I only took this job because, because there was someone I had to protect, except that it turned out that it was all a lie and we were just keeping him to die at the right moment "For The Greater Good," and, and he said I was disgusting, Dumbledore I mean, and he was right, and I, I wanted to learn how to be a decent person.'

Severus was aware that if he had been alive, he would have been mortified at the sound of his voice babbling away as if it had been marinated in Veritaserum. But at this stage, there was no point trying to be calm and dignified and sinister. You couldn't out-sinister Death. It would be like a blue-tit fluffing itself up to try to make itself look bigger than a cat.

Death thought that it was like the year he'd put in a shift as – someone else. Except that at least, if you were dressed in a red coat and cotton-wool beard and you sat children down on your knee and asked, HAVE YOU BEEN A GOOD BOY/GIRL/INDETERMINATE THIS YEAR? they knew enough to lie if they wanted to get any presents. Dealing with an adult who had been required to lie and pretend to be a much worse person than he really was, for years and years, and who was relieved that it was all over and now he could say exactly what he thought, however incriminating it was, was much harder.

And, of course, there had been some children who weren't destined to get any presents, and certainly weren't destined to have any future…

DO YOU STILL WISH TO BE GOOD? Death asked.

'Yes!'

THEN I DO NOT THINK HELL WOULD ACCEPT YOU. I THINK YOU KNOW WHERE YOU BELONG.

Death had several more appointments, but it wasn't too long before there was a lull. He was not, strictly speaking, the Death, but only a Death. His full job title was Death by Narrative Imperative, and this meant that he was responsible for all those deaths which were important enough to a story to be worth describing. Which wasn't to say that all of them were key to the plot. He was just as likely to have to attend personally on the death of someone's pet owl, or of a random Muggle who had been unlucky enough to walk into Lord Voldemort. But they were described because the author had a reason to include them.

If the author had time, even walk-on characters might be given enough backstory for readers to understand that the old Muggle gardener was not only a lonely, misunderstood man whose life had been ruined by being framed for murder, but also a brave man who had gone forward to confront the villains, and to care about his death. But even when there wasn't time for that, even if there was merely a radio report that a family of five had been murdered, Death's library contained five books, one to tell the life story of each of them.

He wasn't overworked compared to most of his colleagues, he knew. Most of the 'Giant Frog' deaths (sat on by, choking on, poisoned by licking, etc) had been rationalised into Death by Giant Frog, who now had a very busy schedule indeed – extremely busy, when you remembered that most of his clients were flies, from whose point of view all frogs were giants.

Nevertheless, Death by Narrative Imperative had a busy shift tonight. When it was finished, he reported back to the Head Death, who was seated, as always, at his desk on the Infinite Featureless Plain of Death. Well, Featureless apart from the Head Death's desk, obviously. And a phone. And sometimes it had a door and walls. And the original slippery wood flooring had been replaced with something decently grey and a bit easier for feet to grip on. But – it was pretty bare, all the same.

YOU HAVE COMPLETED YOUR ASSIGNMENT? asked the Head Death. (He would have been speaking in a different colour speech bubble, if this site had colours. Or a larger font size, if it had different sizes. But on FictionPress, even small caps don't show up. Frankly, you're lucky if you can get the italics to work.)

YES, LORD.

I COULDN'T HELP NOTICING THAT YOU WERE… NUDGING ONE OF THE SOULS AS TO HIS CHOICE OF AFTERLIFE.

DID I TELL HIM WHERE TO GO? Death by Narrative Imperative tried not to grin. It wasn't easy.

YOU HAVE TOLD ME IN THE PAST THAT JUSTICE WAS NOT YOUR CONCERN. THAT PEOPLE GO WHEREVER THEY BELIEVE THEY ARE GOING. HAVE YOU GROWN TO CARE FOR HUMANS, AFTER ALL?

OF COURSE NOT! I SERVE ONLY TO COLLECT THEIR SOULS, AS AN UNDERTAKER DISPOSES OF THEIR BODIES.

The Head Death adjusted the folds of his blue cloak. HOW IS SARAH THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL DOING?

SHE WAS ADOPTED BY A COUPLE OF WATCHMEN. THEY HAD BEEN LIVING TOGETHER FOR YEARS, BUT WERE UNABLE TO HAVE CHILDREN.

WELL, IF THEY WERE BOTH WATCHMEN…

A FIGURE OF SPEECH, MY LORD.

I SEE.

ONE IS A TROLL, THE OTHER A DWARF. It hadn't been in Britain, needless to say. It was likely to be a while yet before the Aurors' Office round here tried to recruit centaurs, goblins, and house-elves – in spite of the fact that house-elves, as nobody paid attention to them, were the ideal undercover agents. Perhaps when exchange schemes started seconding trainee Aurors to Ankh-Morpork, that might change.

And yes, Death by Narrative Imperative knew he wasn't supposed to save her life, but – well, he hadn't been doing his regular job, the night when she was supposed to die from a combination of hypothermia, malnutrition and tuberculosis. And the same applied to young Sal, the one he'd given sand from his own lifetimer to save, while he had briefly been sacked from his job and living as a mortal. As for his adopted daughter and her husband – no, all right, he didn't have any excuses there.

ALL WHO WERE ON MY LIST TONIGHT, DIED TONIGHT, he said. AND THAT INCLUDED MY HAVING YET ANOTHER NEAR-HARRY EXPERIENCE.

BUT YOU DID NOT STOP TO ARGUE WITH HARRY POTTER, the Head Death pointed out. NOR WITH VOLDEMORT, OTHER THAN CONVINCING HIM THAT HE REALLY WAS DEAD. YOU SPENT FAR LONGER WITH THIS OTHER ONE. WHY?

BECAUSE HE KNEW, DEEP DOWN, THAT HE WAS NOT A MONSTER, said Death by Narrative Imperative. I NEEDED TIME TO MAKE SURE THAT HE REALISED THAT HE KNEW.

I SEE.

MAY I GO HOME NOW? MY GRANDDAUGHTER WILL BE VISITING, NOW THAT TERM IS OVER. AND HER YOUNG MAN, OF COURSE.

OF COURSE.

The Head Death watched his subordinate go. Really, he thought, a Death who has room for concepts in his skull like 'home' and 'granddaughter'? It was no wonder he'd got round to 'justice' and 'mercy'. Definitely gone native.

The Head Death resolved never to tell the fellow, to his skull, just how proud he was of him.

Author's note – this started off as a Harry Potter/Discworld fanfic, but now seems to have crossed over a few more things. Readers have probably worked out (other than ExcessivelyPerky, who already knows) what the fantasy trilogy Snape had been reading was. But do you know which comic strip introduced the Head Death?