The Price Of Mastery

summary: What on earth does Death get out of having a master? And are we really supposed to believe in infinite universes only Harry ever becomes the Master of Death? If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Or, the one in which a very petty dimension traveling Harry gets his ass handed to him.

Inspired by a bunch of dark fics where Harry uses his OP powers to behave like a raving asshole and do things like kill eleven year olds. Just read a fic where he murders baby Ron. Like... yeesh, poor Ron. He really is the butt monkey of every fic.

Harry Potter was not particularly well known for his habit of questioning things. He didn't question if maybe he should have put more effort into clearing his mind. He hadn't questioned Snape's treachery until the man force fed him memories of the truth. He hadn't questioned Dumbledore until much later in life.

He didn't question why Death would create three artifacts that, when united, would give someone else mastery over him.

Instead, he wasted his time getting revenge on his old friends. His relationship with Ginny Weasley hadn't worked out well, and while she had never said anything about it, he had become convinced the woman was only after his money. Why else would she refuse to make dinner and do the housework every night? Kreacher, alas, had passed away.

"If I'm the master of Death, can't I bring my slave Kreacher back to life so he can do the dishes?" Harry asked callously. "I didn't escape the Dursleys so I could go back to scraping off scum off silverware."

"You are the master of Death, not of life, sir," Death simpered. "But if you tire of this world... why not another one where others still live?"

Harry's eyes lit up. "Yes! Yes of course. That would be amazing."

Death snapped his skeleton fingers, and away they were.

"There are worlds where your counterpart failed to kill Voldemort, and worlds where your parents yet live."

"Can I be eleven again?"

Death stared with empty eye sockets, as if not quite able to believe anyone would volunteer to be eleven again. "I... suppose. Why?"

"Hogwarts was the best time of my life. And I want a do-over."

"I am not sure that would be wise," Death counciled. "I did just say Voldemort was back, did I not?"

"Bah, I handled him before, I can do it again. Just let me keep my adult power, you can do that can't you? Am I your master or not?"

Death sighed. "...of course. But you'll go after Voldemort, won't you?" Death seemed oddly concerned, and even Harry noticed. "He evades death. It is part of your duty, when you took on the hallows. Don't worry about them, by the way: they'll only respond to you now."

"A duty I did not knowingly take on!" Harry contested. "Fine, just let me have a bit of fun first."

Fun, of course, turned out to be murdering an eleven year old Ron and his ten year old sister Ginny. Now they could never betray him. He debated about Hermione. She hadn't bothered to send mail to him that one year, hadn't she? That practically made her a traitor.

Voldemort was child's play.

The moment he finished him off, however, a stray foreign spell from a death eater accidentally hit him and sent him into yet another world.

There, he had to deal with Voldemort again.

After which he was abruptly summoned in some kind of ritual by another world's Dumbledore to deal with another Voldemort. This one was quite a bit trickier than the other ones, being some weird Dementor hybrid being.

"Alright, I'm getting sick and tired of this murdering Voldemort business. How is it that every time I defeat him, I keep popping into a world where there's yet more work to do?" Harry complained.

"Goodness, I have no idea," Death said with the most innocent look a skeleton with a scythe and black robes could muster. "You must just have very bad luck. But now that you've had some practice taking down Voldemorts," and wasn't that a weird sentence? "There's one in particular I've had my eye on for years. I can never quite seem to get him. Be a darling and deal with him, will you my beloved Master?"

"If I'm your Master, you should listen to me when I say I don't want to!"

"Last one, I promise," Death purred. "But he's a particularly tricky one. You need to be on your guard or he'll end you in an instant."

"Please. I've been chewing through Voldemorts like candy."

"I mean it," Death said.

"And if I nearly die, you can stop me from crossing the threshold for real, right? You've done it before."

"...of course."

And so, a Harry Potter entered through the veil into a new world into a room that looked almost identical to the one he'd just left. There was something immediately different about it that put him on edge however.

Namely, the decapitated head of a different Harry Potter proudly displayed on a spike in front of him and a lovely banner coated in dust saying "Welcome, Death's Newest Sucker, to the Ministry of Magic!"

"What does the banner mean?" Harry asked.

"Just a psychological play, my darling master, it means nothing at all," Death hastened to reassure.

Harry frowned as he walked past numerous skulls. He sensed an alarm ward and immediately set to dismantling it, but this triggered a secondary ward tied to the first and now there was a very obnoxious song playing.

"~Hello kitty, hello kitty, mellow kitty loves Cthulu!" sang over and over.

As he continued walking, he encountered no one. Some broken statues and pillars, a vine peaking through a wall, it all made it clear the building was in a great deal of disrepair.

And then the entire building began to shudder, the walls collapsing in on themselves and rows of spikes emerging from the ceiling.

With a shout, Harry forcibly broke all the wards, particularly the anti-apparition wards, with the Elder Wand and then fled to the one location outside he knew of this world, a spot he could see peaking through a crack that was letting in vines.

A spot of ground that promptly crumpled in on him, proving that it too was a trap. Harry very narrowly avoided becoming a pincushion all throughout his body with a blasting hex directed downward. Some of the flying shards of what had been spikes still went through him, and he bit off a scream, beginning his work on a healing spell. He was interrupted by dead rotting hands lurching through the sides of soil pit to grab at him, and forced to cast yet more defensive spells. He transfigured a staircase and ran up, still bleeding and beginning to get very, very mad.

This Harry was not having a good time.

A zombie Harry dancing nearby seemed to be, however, and made him almost pause in disbelief at seeing it. Since when had Voldemort possessed a sense of humor?

"Hello, Harry I presume? Or Hadrian? Or Harrison? It's usually one of those," a deep voice drawled lazily. Harry looked up and saw a middle aged man atop a building with a very familiar handsome face, only a glint of red in his dark eyes giving away to a less knowledgeable observer a hint of the man's dabbling in the dark arts and his unsavory identity.

"Tommy Riddle," Harry said, and is surprised when the man barely blinks. "You aren't offended by it anymore?"

"Believe me, I have heard countless Harry Potters at this point call me by that name. In fact, I killed a number of them by tying a taboo to it, before I grew bored of that method," Riddle said, twirling what was very clearly an elder wand on a ringed hand. "There's probably no insult I haven't heard at this point. I no longer care what name I go by. I could be Hello Kitty, for all I care, and still inspire the same amount of fear."

"That wand shouldn't listen to you," Harry said, confused.

"Oh, you poor gullible fool," Voldemort said with a laugh. "What did Death promise you? That you and you alone would be its master, all for the low low price of simply uniting three objects together? Does this look familiar?" He levitated a silvery cloak from his pocket, and draped it over himself, disappearing from view. "Or looked, I should say." Then he yanked it off and appeared back in view. "Of course, by sheer accident, you are right. The Elder Wands I collect don't like to listen to me. This is a modified one I crafted myself, from multiple elder wands and a phoenix core."

Things were beginning to finally get through Harry's thick head. "How... You shouldn't be able to kill me. Or another me with all three."

"Oh, Harry. There are things worse than death, you know. I don't need to kill you." With a wave of his hand, a drooling husk of another Harry Potter appeared in front of him. "You may want to run away now. Go on. I'm feeling quite charitable today."

"Never. A version of you killed my parents, and this version of you killed countless me's, so you're surely just as bad."

"Such a fool," Riddle said with almost fondness. "It's too bad that I am, in fact, thoroughly bored of you and all your counterparts who try to murder me on sight for the crimes of my alternate universe counterpart's. You are a literal mosquito. Give me your worst."

And so Harry launched the nastiest curses he knew. Fiendfyre, which Voldemort batted away with practiced ease and extinguished with a strange form of magical water and ice he'd never seen before. Avada's a plenty, which Voldemort actually let hit him and laughed at.

"That tickled, Harry."

"How?" Harry said, flustered.

"I practiced on myself in a room where I could easily resurrect, and examined conditions where the curse fails. Did you know simply sending the green curse at a full grown dragon, nundu or basilisk often fails, hence why many grown wizards struggle to deal with them?" His eyes abruptly became more slitted. "There is one with mastery over death here, and it is not you, you simpleton child. Is there anything original in your repertoire?"

Harry sent one of Snape's favorite curses.

"I said original," he hissed. "Very well, then."

Tom raised his wand to the sky, and a storm began to gather, the sky crackling.

Harry threw up a shield, then, seeing all his hair rise up, abruptly realized it wasn't working and that maybe it was time to flee. He tried to apparate - but couldn't, slamming into a just raised ward.

"Oh, now you want to flee? My offer has expired, I'm afraid."

And then Harry knew nothing but sheer, white light frying every nerve in his body, a lightning bolt from the sky mirroring the one on his forehead striking him down.

He wished for Death in his last moments with a functioning brain cell, but Death, the traitorous being, took hold of his body instead.

A very dead charboiled Harry Potter opened white milky eyes and stood up.

"Hello, Death. Did you tire of your 'master' already?" Tom greeted. "Shall I make this one an inferi too? Or are you actually still alive and I need to lobotomize you?"

"Riddle," Death greeted via Harry Potter's darkened lips. "He was an idiot who flirted with teenage girls half his age."

"Then why did you bother to use him?" Tom cast a faux-disappointed look. "Surely you can get better. I know I've fought better."

"One of these days you will slip. It will only take one, and I have eternity."

"Doesn't it ever bore you? Don't you ever crave a real master?"

"Oh, yesss. Just do me one favor and let me hop you over to this one other world, where other Voldemorts would dare to challenge your claim to ultimate power..."

"Give me your real answer, Death. I'm not fool enough to fall for that after I've watched you bring so many others to ruin."

"No," Death said bluntly. "How many beings have you met that crave masters?"

"Not many, admittedly." Tom hummed a tune from My Little Pony.

He had really hated his name once, Tom. But early on in this universe he had met a bunch of Frenchmen who mercilessly made fun of him for using the name Voldemort, and he hadn't gone back to it since, swearing to do more research and due diligence on all his decisions from then on. Somehow, this tiny divergence had led him to avoiding the fate of many other Voldemort's, and he had eventually succeeded in his life's goals, including ending his own Harry Potter and conquering the entire wizarding world. Only to find that this was only the beginning, as Harry Potter after Harry Potter, with the occasional Neville Longbottom or even Hermione Granger in the mix, was thrown after him.

He had long since bored of ruling the wizarding world. It had been immensely satisfying to revenge himself against all the purebloods who had once disdained him for his muggle last name by making their sons lick his boots and sabotage themselves, but after awhile that sort of fun just seemed childish. He watched them get weaker with more and more squibs over the generations as they got rid of all the new bloodlines, until nobody had been able to put up the smallest fuss when he changed his mind and started re-integrating muggle-borns. As a final revenge, he quietly had a 'disease' wipe out all the remaining purebloods, not that there were many left. Now the population was almost entirely half bloods.

You'd think Death would be happy with all this slaughter, but no.

Apparently his existence was an affront against nature or something.

In any case, he was quite tired of all this. It was time to leave. Not to retire from life, like Death hoped - oh no, Tom was far too spiteful for that. Not for another few centuries at least, anyway.

"Goodbye, Death," he said with a smirk.

Death frowned. "What are you -"

A massive glowing series of circles lit up all around them.

He had met many Harry Potters who had been summoned to other worlds. Of course he had been curious and plucked all the knowledge from their heads that he could for reverse engineering the rituals! And now, his work was complete. If he left quickly enough from world to world and obscured and altered his soul's signature, he might even be able to thoroughly confuse Death as to his identity and location for decades.

He watched Death get yanked to a completely different world, then lurched himself to a new world.

Hop one complete. He pulled out an expandable array of rune inscribed rocks, and set them a-glowing and also into a self destruct sequence, ignoring the extremely confused neanderthals that gaped at him.

Hop two, complete.

He imagined Death would easily follow the first runic sequence. But when he got to the second world, he'd find no Voldemort and no legible runes for him (or it?) to read.

Content that he had done the best he could to buy a flicker of time, and that he seemed to have landed in a suitable location, and casting a quick spell to make sure there were no recent corpses or dying creatures near that would surely act as Death's eyes, he began altering his own soul signature and appearance.

Now what would he do with his new life?

Try to learn how to Master Death for real, of course, no matter how futile that may be. And if this world failed to provide answers, then there was always the next, and the next, and the next...

For he had all eternity to try, or be ground into dust.