Harry awoke to a blinding headache and an aching body. He groaned and sat up, surprised at the lack of chains. As he opened his eyes, he noticed nothing. Even with his blurry vision, Harry could tell that there was nothing around him. There was no color, no plants, no buildings just…nothingness.
"Where am I?" He muttered as he looked around, wide eyed at the absence of everything. "What happened to me?" He whispered, then grabbed his head in pain as he felt the seams of his mind unravel. "Where am I? What happened? I don't understand, I don't understand, I don't-" Then a thought struck him, in the space that was not space in a moment of time that was indistinguishable from the next. "I'm dead. I died from the ritual and the-" Images flashed through Harry's mind, of shadows and stars and music that broke his mind. He tightened his grip on his head. "I-I'm dead." Harry stated again, tears dripping down his face.
"Yes," a voice agreed with him. Harry stood up in a flash, and crouched in a defensive position, trying not to think too hard on how he was able to stand on nonexistence. He twisted his head back and forth, trying the end the source of the voice.
"Where are you? Who are you?" He asked to the nothing of non-space in front of him. Then, something materialized. It had a vaguely humanoid shape, but Harry couldn't tell where the being ended and where nothing began. He thought he saw the outline of wings, but it only lasted for a moment. And it shifted too, not in shape, but in feeling. The longer Harry looked at the being in from of him, he felt pain, grief, acceptance, sorrow, joy, depression, pain, void- " You're Death." For there was nothing else that could have that presence
"Yes," The being-Death- agreed, not with a voice, but as a presence in the nothingness around Harry.
"So, is this the afterlife then?" Harry asked, somewhat resigned. Death nodded, or at least Harry thought he did.
"Well fuck." Harry let that information sink in, then," Am I allowed to know what happened to my friends? How the war will turn out, or already have turned out? Did they win, or-"
"You were not meant to be here." The entity responded, not answering his question.
"Here?" Harry asked, surprised, "Here as in dead, or here as in the world that-" broke my mind.
"Both" was conveyed through the two were so tired and broken, they drowned the pills at the same time and never woke up again, The mother pleaded for the man to spare her child but he killed them both in the end.
"Where is here?" Harry asked after Death stopped projecting.
"The space between. The Absence."
"Between what?"
"Everything" Harry wanted to groan out loud, but settled for sighed instead.
"What about the other place?"
"The place you were sent to is a dimension that exists above your own. It exists above and between every world, and is not meant to hold creature such as yourself. It contains that which cannot be contained on the mortal plane" Harry was reminded of stars bursting through the eyes of the shadows. And matter that flickered from liquid to gas to solid to something more in an instance.
"So it killed me?"
"Yes"
"How did I end up there?" Harry felt a man looking down at his hands, not knowing about the tumor was building up in his brain. The woman continued to go to work after being shot in the head, ignorant of the fact she was no longer on the plane of the living- and he was getting tired of the alteration between projections of Death and words.
"Great." It was silent in the existence of nothingness as there was nothing there to make sound other than the two non living beings. It was some time, or it was no time at all, for time didn't exist in the place between, before Death communicated again. But Death did not speak human language, So how did Harry understand the words of a supreme entity-
"Death will offer you a deal." Harry looked at Death surprised.
"What? Why?"
"You had a destiny in your world, and with Death too. To compensate for the loss, as the cosmic imbalance will eventually wipe out your race, Death offers you a chance to go back."
"Go back? To my world, to life?" Harry asked, hopeful and purposely ignored the comment about the fucking extinction of his race.
Harry felt two women joined together in death after-
"Yes! He interrupted before he had to experience the essence of Death again, "Yes, I
accept."
"Before you know the conditions?"
"If it will get me back and help save my friends, then yes."
"Acceptable, Death will let you go back to living and your world on two conditions." Harry nodded, ignoring the way shadows had started to fill the non-space of emptiness around them.
"First, you will retrieve my Hallows for Death."
"Hallows? What are they and how would I even find them?" Harry asked, then waited for no time at all before Death answered him.
"The Elder Wand, The Ring of Resurrection and The Cloak of Invisibility, find them and sacrifice them in Death's name, for they shall return to Death if you do. Secondly, Death cannot send you back to your world, as Death does not-" "But I thought you said-" Fighting-blood-carnage-grief-agony-vengeance-helplessness Harry wisely shut his mouth and looked down, (or up?), in embarrassment, for one shouldn't interrupt Death. The shadows behind the supreme being rose even higher.
"Death cannot send you back to your original dimension, but Death can send you back to the dimension you died in, as your soul is trapped in the Place of Absence for eternity if Death does not." What? "But, in order to do so, Death would have to remake you with permission from Life itself. You would be remade into a creature of shadows, broken dreams, magic and Death, held together by force of will, a being able to survive in the Abyss." Harry didn't know what he thought about that revelation, but of it allowed him to return to his friends… "Then, to return to your home, you have to find the heart of the Abyss. Find the center, the beginning of all, and there is where you will have the chance to pass through the Veil of Death's own." Death paused. "So, Harry Potter, man touched by Fate, sculpted by Life and marked by Death, do you accept?"
The shadows behind Death swirled together in a crude representation of a hurricane, but Harry didn't focus on that. He looked straight at literal Death in front of him and gave a wide smile. If becoming a monster was the only way to save his friends, then, "Why the hell not, Yes!" The shadows surged forward, encasing the former wizard. It was strange, Harry thought as the nothingness of the non space disappeared from his vision, it didn't hurt. As Harry's humanity was stripped away, and his physical being faded into the shadows around him, he felt nothing, just a vague sense of blowing away in wind. He took a breath one last time as Harry Potter, the Wizard, the Human, alive or dead, and the shadows disappeared from the Absence.