Reaper's Cradle
Haltia's prompt: Harry interacting with Supernatural's Death. Either as Death's master, or becoming one of his reapers and later gaining favored position with him.
(I like the idea that Ignotus Peverell, at the end of his life greeted Death as an old friend; and I like the notion of Death being mastered and master in turn of that family.)
Harry Potter sits on his porch and waits for Death, knowing he will come in his own time. In-between one breath and the next, Death sits at his side with his thin and angular body, his dark eyes and dark suit that forms to fit him. Death looks at the ring about Harry's hand, the wand in his lap and the silver cloak draped about his shoulders like a blanket. He looks tired, but noble, and Death can not help but admire the mortal wizard all over again.
"I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Master." Death's lips twist the word, playing with it, teasing and taunting. They both know that Death isn't Harry Potter's slave, that in the end all Harry Potter can do with that title is live and keep living – or kill on such a scale that to call it a massacre would be too small and localized and to call it genocide would be too kind.
Yet Harry Potter has never had Death kill anyone, Harry has killed – that is true – but not by invoking Death. It is a difference that Death can appreciate. Harry never chose the healers path, knowing Death would tell him who would live and who would die, regardless; Harry Potter had never stopped Death from happening, never asked if they could be spared.
"What will happen to me, after I die?" Death taps his fingers against old wood, not liking Harry's tone and perhaps willing it away with an old saying is childish, but there are truths in all such kinds of things people say.
"You could be a ghost, or go to Heaven; there really are as many possibilities after life as before if perhaps a bit more." Harry looks sideways to Death, who carefully avoids his gaze as he looks to the view of the sunset, its colors crossing the sky like a banner.
"And what if I wanted neither of those… possibilities?" Harry still looks at Death, who bows his head and looks upon his ringed hand, and the suitcase that rests against his knees.
"Hell wouldn't have you, Harry." Death's amusement is a thing that can be seen in the small rare smile that crosses his lips.
"I'm not talking about Hell, or Heaven, nor being a ghost, Death…what about the Reapers?" God has his Angels, and Death has his Reapers, and neither knows which came first or who might be the older between them. They are like, and unlike, brothers who face different sides of the coin of creation. There have been many names that they were called, and have outlasted. Death liked best the Persian's old beliefs about them.
"You, the Master of Death, an heir of Peverell wants to be one of my Reapers?" Death turns such a look upon Harry as the wizard had never seen; it takes him a moment to realize it is surprise. The Peverells have been many things to Death, old friends, rivals and greedy wizards – there is very little middle ground, not that Death blames them, he – in a way – finds himself guilty, he fathered them.
"Is it so surprising?" Harry smiles, remembering the words of his mentor, that Death was the next great adventure.
Upon the darkening horizon the there is a flare of green, like the sun leaving a seed as it sinks out of sight, but on the porch there isn't anyone to see it, the house is empty.