Severus had Death's cloak on, having just been sworn into the office of the Grim Reaper. At least that he could understand. He looked at the mirror and almost fainted: he had no face, but a skull beneath that hood. He looked at the boots – there were skeletal legs and skeletal hands.
He looked like a freaking cartoon.
Then the door opened again. Severus was relieved, thinking it was Fate back, perhaps with new instructions, but it was not.
It was Dumbledore.
The old wizard took one look at the floor, located all the blood and gore, and his face fell. 'Severus,' he whispered.
Severus, now Death, was frozen at the floor. Dumbledore looked like he hadn't seen him. Could he really be invisible? Even to Dumbledore, the most powerful wizard of those times?
'Oh, my boy, I had so many plans for you,' murmured Dumbledore, as if in pain, grief-stricken and looking his real age. 'I hoped in time you would heal.'
Severus let out a snort. Impossible as it seemed, Dumbledore heard it.
'Who is it?'
In time, Severus would learn that his invisibility was not total. Fate had told him this, but it would seem that in addition to the special cases, people could see him if they knew where to look. And Dumbledore surely knew.
'Ah, it is you, Death,' he recognized it, and Severus wondered how this could be possible. 'I trust you are not here for me. Pity you took the boy.'
'Do you pity him?' Severus couldn't help asking, facing the man.
'Pity? Well I wouldn't say that -' Dumbledore halted at once, recognizing him. 'Oh, by all magical things!… Severus?' He couldn't hide his surprise. 'What happened to you?'
Acidly, Severus answered. 'Take a guess.'
The old man looked astonished. 'Now you are Death? That is remarkable. Imagine what you can accomplish- '
'I can accomplish nothing, because apparently I have an office to hold', Severus interrupted him.
'Outstanding, Severus,' said Dumbledore cheerfully. 'I suppose you now can visit Lily. In the other world, I mean.'
That made Severus stop. He genuinely had not considered that possibility.
Then the watch on his wrist began flashing. It had an arrow pointing at the door. The luminous arrow was flashing in alternative mode to a chronometer. Severus realized. 'I have to go.'
Dumbledore must have said something, but Severus shut him off and followed the luminous arrow out of the house. Once outside, Severus realized the arrow was pointed at a pale limousine parked near his house. Its lights were blinking. Normally a limo parked in that neighborhood would raise attention but somehow nobody was interested in that car. It was just sitting there, as if waiting. Then Severus read the name plate of its license.
It read "Mort".
So that was Mort. And it was waiting for him. According to the watch, they had two minutes.
Severus went in the car. 'Er... Hello.'
If he had expected the car to answer, the disappointment would have been great. But he hardly had any chance to ponder on that, given that the vehicle took off as soon as he hit the driver's seat.
Seeing that Death's car was self-driven, Severus took the opportunity to take a look at the vehicle. The panel was quite ordinary, with all normal buttons and functions one expects to find in a car. It was an old model, of course. The main goal was to not raise attention.
Since it made virtually no distinctive noise, it should be a hell of an engine, thought Severus, imagining if he had just made a pun. And it rode fast, too, unhindered by traffic jams, traffic lights, traffic laws. It made sense: no mundane aspects of life should interfere with the Grim Reaper.
Severus decided he didn't like the epithet. Death was a much more dignified title. Dumbledore was right: it was remarkable. That old coot just knew he was Death? Was he so powerful that he had seen Severus's fate? Could Severus really be able to visit Lily? It was not so far-fetched. She was in the other side. Severus's job was to collect souls and send them to eternity, and he had two minutes to collect his first one.
His first soul.
All thoughts of Dumbledore and Lily faded away as he realized he was on his way to his first reap. The watch was blinking. He had one minute now.
Mort stopped suddenly but smoothly. Severus was outside a big building, with signs written in a foreign language. Nonetheless, Severus knew it was a hospital.
This made him less nervous. A hospital probably meant a terminally ill person, not some suicidal bloke or murder case. Reaping this soul should be easy, and very befitting for a newbie Death. Right?
In theory, yes. But reality was hardly this accommodating.
Afterwards Severus would remember that as one of the most embarrassing reaps of his career as Death. He had no idea how a soul should be collected, and it resulted in a simple operation taking much more time than necessary. Fate had to intervene, and she was furious at him for "torturing the poor soul". Severus was so aggravated and agitated that he almost quit the office right there.
In the end, the poor old sod could finally rest, his soul was collected and taken to a pouch, and Fate apologized to Severus about the harsh way she treated him. Mort took them back to Spinner's End, now cleared from both Aurors and the Muggle police.
Severus calmed his nerves from the fiasco at the hospital with the rest of his elfish wine, which he partook with Fate. Funny that this was still his home.
And everything was strange and then it got stranger.
'If you take this place as Death's abode,' said Fate, 'the world will forget about it.'
'What do you mean?'
'The house will be as invisible as you are. The world will not remember it ever existed, the mortgage or deed will be lost until you need it.' Severus stared at her, pausing in the way he carefully sipped his wine. 'Well, think about it. You will need a place to stay, to eat and sleep, and you can't do your job inside Mort.'
'My job?'
She explained, 'Death is firstly and foremost a psychopomp. It guides souls to their final destiny. You balance their souls to decide which ones go up and which ones... don't. You will need a place for that. Why not here?'
'I don't have a garage for Mort.'
'Let him take his stallion form. He is a rather fetchy horse.'
Severus was surprised. 'He can be a horse?'
'Oh, you are such a newbie. I can't explain everything to you. Being three, I have quite a busy schedule myself. So it is nice to stop by and have a glass of wine. Or three glasses by the way.'
Severus rose an eyebrow, intrigued. 'I don't think you ever told me about your job. What does Fate do? Why do you say you are three?'
The lady explained patiently, 'Fate has three aspects: Clotho, the younger one, spins the thread of life. You are in the presence of Lachesis, the middle aged weaver, the one who sets the thread on the tapestry of life. The older one is Atropos, the one with the scissors to cut the thread and end the life.'
Another glass of wine was filled and Severus asked, 'So you are the one who actually kills them.'
Fate's features clouded ominously. 'I am as much as a killer as you are, Death. Or as Time is. Or War. Or Nature. We do our jobs the best we can. The clients make their choices, and we just fulfill the bill.'
'I meant no disrespect,' he assured her, trying to amend his faux-pas. 'Upsetting a gorgeous lady like yourself is the last thing I wanted to do.'
She smiled. 'What a nice thing to say, thank you, Severus. Had you practiced better manners whilst alive, perhaps people might have treated you better.'
He smiled sadly, wondering if maybe that would have helped with Lily. Then something went sharply into focus and he turned to her. 'How do you know my name? I never told you.'
Fate seemed disconcerted for a second. 'Well, I deal with threads of life. Surely your name must have shown...'
Severus could spot a lie a mile away while alive. Why would he fail to do so when he was half-dead? He raised an eyebrow and said, 'Indeed. Yet you don't look as if you are telling me the truth.'
She sighed and admitted, 'Yes, I lied. Sort of. We've not really met before, but you met another aspect of Fate. Both of you were alive back then. Maybe you can recognize Clotho.'
Suddenly Severus saw a young blonde woman before him, a beauty in her twenties. He saw that familiar face, and the name came to his lips after a few seconds. 'Marlene McKinnon...?'
Marlene McKinnon was a member of the Order of the Phoenix, a group Albus Dumbledore put together to fight the rise of the Dark Lord. Severus himself had been briefly a member of the group.
She nodded. 'Declared dead along with her entire family after a vicious attack from Death Eaters. And now I am here.'
Severus said sincerely, 'Sorry about your death. I am really sorry.'
'Not your fault,' she said. 'And this is all water under the bridge anyway. Which reminds me that I need to go back to my duties - and so do you, Death. Next time remember I won't be around to help you. Good luck.'
Marlene, now the personification of Fate, turned around and left Spinner's End. Severus had no time to ponder on everything he had learned, for the watch was bilking, the arrow was pointing, and he had two minutes to get to his client.
From then on, a bizarre routine was established, in which he collected and weighed souls. In time, he learned many things.
He learned that Chronos, the personification of Time, was a nice chum who lived his life backwards, which was both confusing and annoying. He learned Nature was a green angry mother with a fierce sense of protection. He learned War was a frustrated, depressed fellow who had tremendous difficulty to relate to people outside the battlefield. He learned that Satan was a very easy-going guy (although a bit sly) and that God never granted personal audiences, even to Death. But he had pleasant assistants.
And sadly Severus learned that Death was not allowed to visit the afterlife. No matter what he did or whom he pleaded or what he promised: the afterlife was not his domain. Lily was out of his reach.
But not all was lost. Dumbledore, the meddling man, had actually given Severus something quite nifty. It was a magical device that looked like a small mat, but it acted as a portable window. Once it was placed in a wall, it allowed full view of the inside. It was also tuned to find Lily in the places Severus was not allowed.
'Why are you doing this?' asked Severus, watching the old wizard explain how the device worked.
'Oh, don't look so suspicious,' said Dumbledore shrugging. 'I am just trying to help a former student. Think of it as a token of appreciation. I could ask, however, for a favor in return.'
That was something Severus could believe. 'Which favor?'
'Oh, all in good time. Don't worry about it for now. I'll let you know. But I'd be most grateful if you'd be kind enough to inform me if Lord Voldemort made the passing.'
Severus frowned. 'Could there be any doubt of that?'
'Oh, I have no doubt that he has successfully avoided his own demise. But I'd believe the contrary if told me by a certified source such as yourself.'
Dumbledore was calm and serious, in that annoyingly cheerful attitude of his. All Severus could think of replying was, 'I will let you know if something comes up.'
And that was how Dumbledore managed to have Death itself owe him a favor. Because Severus would never admit it to the old man, but his token of appreciation was more useful than anything his peers ever offered him. He used it a lot and often, because with it he could actually watch Lily without being watched.
The bittersweet sensation of his peeping activities in the afterlife at first created a backlog of deaths that merited a visit from both Fate and Time. Severus was quite vexed from the chastisement from his peers, but did not give up on watching the woman of his dreams.
In a few years, though, the feelings were not that intense anymore. Marlene had warned him about it. He defied Fate for years until he realized the facts that he was so desperately trying to deny. Lily remained what she has always been to Severus: perfect, beautiful and unattainable. Even more so, because when his time came to live in the Great Beyond, it would never be in the place she was. It took him years, but Severus was quite aware of that. These views of Lily were his goodbye to the love of his life.
Eternally unrequited love was itself a very special kind of hell, wasn't it?
Severus was still in the process of struggling with these realizations when Dumbledore called him about Lily's son. The brat was going to Hogwarts. That was proof that ten years had passed. The bittersweet feelings returned, but somehow transformed. Protecting the boy could be a way of honoring his feelings for Lily.
But how could he do that?