Master of Death…

MABalas

Posted: 08/14/2017

Chapter: 3/7

Death was not what Harry expected.

Dumbledore was there, for one.

Voldemort's horcrux was there, for two. It was a shriveled pile of half-formed body with raw looking skin and uncanny proportions.

Harry was torn between kicking the abomination out of pure spite or dry heaving next to the bench. The nauseating aura was apparent even in this not-death place. Stronger even, in this not-death place. It couldn't be death because seeing Dumbledore again brought back too much emotion.

Dumbledore had left that thing to piggyback in his body and on his mind.

Dumbledore who was watching him with tired eyes full of regret. Harry didn't know what to feel. But he did know facts.

"You knew that was in me. You knew and you left it there. Without it I would have died like any other Gifted wizard."

Dumbledore's face was solemn at the cold words Harry threw in his face. Not questions. Facts.

"Your magic is exceptionally strong, Harry. The horcrux was all that could possibly halt the battle of the Gift and your magic. When James and Lily realized what was wrong shortly after your birth they were beside themselves. You were sickly, lethargic, and nothing they or any of the Healers did would help." Harry followed as Dumbledore spoke, moving away from the bench and its dying occupant. "It was Lupin who was able to create a potion that repressed your Gift and made the power struggle tip in the favor of your magic. It was their hope that shoring up your magical core would help stabilize your health." Dumbledore sighed. "It worked, until shortly after your first birthday."

"Voldemort."

Dumbledore nodded as they walked along the station platform.

"That night, in trying to kill you, he gave you what you needed to survive."

"A self-fulfilling prophecy."

Dumbledore hummed in agreement.

They walked in silence some time, before Dumbledore began telling Harry more about his life and his choices. The choices he did not want Harry to repeat.

The wizard's actions had been misguided, but had been made with good intentions.

Harry felt about as much for good intentions as he did for the greater good.

Their conversation drew to a close. Harry didn't forgive Dumbledore the childhood he endured under the Dursleys, but he did at least understand. It was a start.

A train pulled into the station then. They both stopped to watch it.

"Is this it? What happens if I board that train?"

"I imagine it would take you...on."

"And if I don't?"

Dumbledore smiled at something over Harry's shoulder. Harry turned to look, but saw nothing.

Harry met the gaze of the Grand Sorcerer, the Supreme Mugwump, the Chief Warlock. After all of the titles and fame, all Harry saw was an old, tired man full of regrets. Something else, though.

There was something infinitely sad and painfully relieved in those eyes as Dumbledore gazed back at Harry. "I believe someone may have an alternative offer for you."

Harry did not break the gaze as he took a slow step away from the train.

He had accepted his death; that didn't mean he was done fighting.

Dumbledore's eyes lit up with the old twinkle Harry knew. The wizard strolled over to the train and placed one foot in the car. He looked back at Harry.

"I'm proud of you, Harry. My choices regarding your care and raising were not always pure, and not always the best for your well being. I did what I thought was good, not what was right. You may never forgive me, and I understand. I was an old fool still chasing dreams of grandeur, placing my failings on your head. I'm sorry, Harry. I cannot give you back your past, but I can help to give you a future.

"Near the Salazar Slytherin tapestry in the dungeon, tap your wand three times on the third stone in the third row from the top and say 'Bertie's Beans.' Lupin created the potion but Snape has since perfected it at my request. It will help to manage the Gift until you meet your," Dumbledore paused oddly here as if searching for the proper term, "future. You have magic, Harry, but that's only half of who you are. You are Gifted, too, and it's time you were allowed to explore that side of yourself."

Harry stared as the door closed behind his late headmaster. He stared as the train moved forward and faded into the brightness of the station.

He froze when the voice spoke.

"Your choice well made, Harry James Potter. Death did bade and here you are, staid and true. It reflects well on Death and for its new Master too."

It was both the wheezing rattle and the labored gasp of a failing body. It was the breeze over a grave, the creeping sense of your own mortality. It was time lost, final and ephemeral. It wasn't male or female. It was nothing living at all.

Harry turned slowly. Before him stood a woman, or a parody of one. There was simply the sense of the feminine for Harry. She was flesh and bone and disease and decay. Her face was pale beauty and rot all at once, shifting from one moment to the next.

Harry couldn't settle on any features. His eyes could barely follow her form as her cloak and hair moved in liquid waves of living shadow, hiding and revealing her face in ripples. The shadow should have been impossible in the white of the station, but it didn't stop it from devouring the brightness around them as she walked closer like a blackhole, living where its wielder wished.

"Master is confused. A child is Master yet but a child will do. Children speak the truth of a matter and point out the rot. Death needs a child to poke and prod, not a tired sheep who can only bleat to speak and drop their heavy head to nod."

The reed thin words echoed like a gong in his mind. They beat in his chest and were carried in his blood as they ghosted through the air.

Death kept getting closer, and it never occurred to Harry to run. Call it Gryffindor courage, shock, curiosity, or plain stupidity.

"Courage is as they call it. Shock as well. Curiosity, stupidity," she gave Harry a Glasgow smile, "they are words. Only heard. Acceptance of the end as you walk to that which has stolen all you hold dear? It is the action of the word, not the sound to the ear."

Harry gaped as Death pressed a single finger-flesh-bone to where Harry knew his scar to be.

"This is a burden you no longer bear, Master." Harry's forehead heated and burned, before abruptly going icy numb. "Death cleans the slate. No need to stare."

Yes, Harry was staring, wasn't he? That was rather rude.

"Rude, yes. But Death understands."

She seemed to reach into the light-eating darkness of her cloak and pulled out three items Harry was all too familiar with. Harry didn't even try to hide his flinch.

"Yes, Master knows. Death crafted three to see the unseen, to find a King to Death's Queen."

"Wh-what?" Harry sputtered.

Death's amusement colored the air like the dead fish and rotting wood stench of a forgotten ocean dock.

"Death seeks no mate or earthly passions. Death plays chess, and sought to find a Master who would fit it best. Death needs a watcher, warrior and executioner in one. Someone to see the soul and decide their aid and keep the balance for this trade."

"Trade?"

The question is out before Harry realizes it.

"Always a trade, Master. Always a choice. Life and Death are balance, and Death's Master you will be in exchange for all eternity."

Harry closed his eyes as the words struck home. The Potter luck, always the Merlin damned Potter luck. He looked at Death, patiently waiting for his decision.

"And if I say no?"

"You will pass as you were meant, and Death will have no Master. The Hallows Death has made and given and they cannot choose again. With no Master the game Death cannot win. The world will halt in its time and the balance will be lost. The Titan will have his way at all life's cost."

"Of course there's some bloody titan," Harry muttered.

"Your choice now, Master," Death intoned, the Hallows hovering between them, "and the Hallows Death will give or take."

"It's not much choice at all, is it?" Harry said bitterly.

Death wasn't moved. He hadn't expected her to be.

"Life is choice, just as Death. There is always a choice in each breath."

Harry didn't much see how, but he had already stepped away from the train. He had sacrificed too much, lost too much, to let it end now.

"Yes."

Death grinned, rotten teeth and red tongue and pink lips.

The three Hallows converged on Harry. The ring settled forcibly on his finger, the wand shattered and sparked against his skin. The cloak enveloped him completely with the other two items inside, catching and holding him in cloying folds.

The pain was indescribable.

Harry had no sense of time; he only knew the pain. Wild, raw magic, pure power, shoved its way through his body and into his core. It ripped through every shield and barrier he had built. Everything that was fundamentally Harry Potter was ripped apart and remade something new and not Harry.

At some point a voice made it through the haze of the remaking. It was a cool wind against his burning skin and a numbing poison in his core.

"Now, Master, Death will teach you the game. Until you know the same. Until the day the feral is tamed. When the feral is tame and the Run is made..."

Harry could feel the glee as the words trailed off. It was the pop and crunch of insect shells beneath your feet, the death-dance jerk of maggots in flesh. Through the pain the smile was not seen; it was felt. Something watching from the darkness, forever outside of sight. It sent a primal chill down his spine.

"Then, my Master, your name you will claim."

Harry felt a single bone-flesh-finger push against his mind.

Harry was falling through the air. Flailing in the nothing place.

He was numb. He burned. He felt nothing as his nerves raced and his heart burst and his lungs shriveled.

He was folding. Twisting. He was turned outside in and inside out again and again.

Wrong. Fixed. Off. Right.

Different.

The remaking before was nothing to this falling.

That was the first time Harry Potter met Death. It would be far from the last.