...Immortal to Boot (Part II)

MABalas

Posted: 08/21/2017

Chapter: 4b/7

AN: Sorry this took longer to edit than expected. Damn brain had me adding in all kinds of crap between Fury and Harry and Loki and Harry. Enjoy the long chapter, next post won't be until after the first week of September. We're closing on our new house this Friday and are focused on getting our crap moved in and set up accordingly. Thank you to everyone who has favorited, followed, and reviewed! I'm having a blast sharing this with you!

It was a year and a half after the war.

Harry thought he had lost his humanity before.

He knew now it was being chipped away day by day as that well of Death's power took hold.

Over the last year and a half he had to pull on that well of darkness again and again to simply function. His Gift ravaged his magical core, trying to oust the competitor in its body as Harry resisted the need to bond with Fred and George. The more he pulled on Death's power-the more he fought his Gift-the more unhinged he grew.

His glamour was no longer rudimentary intent fueled by the cloak. It was an ancient spell pulled from some of the oldest tomes that most wizards could never hope to decipher, let alone have the power to use. Harry fused the spell with the essence of invisibility afforded him by the Hallow and created something more advanced than either separate part.

Harry hadn't seen his true form in over six months. The illusion was all he knew.

Magicals had grown diluted with their pureblood philosophies, Harry found. He could see it all with Death's power assimilating in his mind. It was her gift to be able to hear, read, and understand any language he came across as he poured across the aged tomes and deconstructed the wizarding history in an attempt to understand what was happening to him.

It'd be a shame for Death or Death's Master to come for someone's soul and have a language barrier. Harry knew from experience.

He had no idea what was happening at first. He'd find himself wandering both magical and mundane London with no memory of ever leaving the Ministry or his flat.

He'd be drawn to catastrophes and atrocities; pile ups on the motorway, row fires, murders, rape, torture. There was plenty to go around if you sought it out. Every word anyone begged, pleaded, or cursed in any language was as clear to him as his own native tongue. And Death was there waiting for Harry at each event.

Death was neutral. It had no claim over the living; it could only judge the dead and send them on their path to peace, purgatory, or hell. Harry was the right hand of Death-the observer and judge.

He was also Death's unifier; her pawn on the board of life.

Death couldn't kill. Death only had dominion over the incorporeal. Harry delivered those who needed judged into her hands.

Harry had to watch it play out, however. Some of the deaths he could stop, some he tried to stop, wanted so badly to stop, and he'd find himself helpless and mute while Death stood placid at his side. Innocent blood was spilt; Harry pleaded, begged, and cursed Death right along with the victims. Harry wasn't sure if that was worse or what came next.

Those who had taken more than their balance of souls, whose hands were too stained with blood, Harry was tasked to execute.

There was a balance in the universe. Darkness to the light. The balance had to be maintained, and it was slipping too far into Death. Too many people were being lost as humanity evolved and drew the notice of outside worlds. Aliens weren't too much of a stretch after mutants, magic, and Death.

Harry's saving people thing was a blessing and a curse. Not everyone was meant to be saved. It was time for some; certain events were fixed in fate, time, whatever you wanted to call it. Some things had to happen for others to slot in place.

It was psychological torture. Worse than legilimency training. Worse than Voldemort's soul piggybacking on his mind.

Harry never knew if he could make a difference or if he had to simply stand and watch; stand helpless as some of the most atrocious acts of humanity played out live only feet away.

The power, the healing, the title of Death's Master in trade for all of the victims' screams and pleas, young and old, would never be worth it. Power-immortality-was never worth the cost of a soul.

It was the hatred of those things, Harry's desperate attempts to cling to humanity, that made Death so pleased. She was a neutral taskmistress who did not bend when Harry begged, who did not blink when Harry struggled and broke under the weight of the lives he couldn't save.

It was Death who often stole into Harry's dark flat late at night to watch him lost in his own mind. It was Death who stood sentry as old and new memories of blood and loss, blood and screams and tears, tracked across vision.

Death was his only company when he refused what little sleep his new body required. But when those days he pushed himself blurred and bled together and he could no longer go without rest, Death was there and it was Death who stood watch over his nightmares.

Hermione was the one who found him when he was lost.

After Death pulled him to observe and judge and execute, when his task to observe and learn or observe and kill was done, Harry would sometimes forget how to be human again. He'd lose hours at a time staring at nothing physical. He'd forget himself in Death's sight, the psychic plane that made the Gift's abilities look like parlor tricks.

The shimmer and auras and strands would drown out the memories of the bodies. They would count down the years and weeks and minutes these passing strangers had to live in a tangled web of fate, free will, and time. And all of those countdowns were altered every moment of every second by every decision and every choice they all made.

There were fixed events in a life that would always come to pass, but how someone chose to handle them could alter when and how they happened. Harry had barely begun to scratch the surface of this world beyond the world. He was hauntingly fascinated by these new shades of gray he had to learn to read all over again.

The most heartbreaking were the strands. The strands were for the Gifted. Gifted matches, specifically. Harry desperately followed these. He wanted to scream at them some nights. Gifted could pass their perfect match on the street, sometimes share a nod or smile or small talk, and never know the lost chance because the ICG deemed them too weak on paper to ever initiate a bond.

So many little things in life were a single decision from changing a person's world. Too many were blinded by their own acceptance of the supposed order.

Harry tried to explain this between place of life and death to Hermione once. Put words to the shifting time stream, the anchor points of fate, the bond strands and soul auras and the knowledge of a lifespan in a breath.

Hermione had smiled sadly, then kissed his brow and left. What could she say? She wasn't Gifted. There was no possible context in her world for that kind of knowing. A powerful Guide would have trouble putting an idea to such a layered web.

Harry could lose entire afternoons and evenings in that between space of death's sight, following and observing the too-rare Run of Guide and Sentinels, figuring out who fit and who was being forced into the mold by the Center. He would watch the careful balance, the give and take of the bonds, the shifting auras that jarred or flowed...and those strands.

Harry had the strands, two mid-gray ones he knew belonged to the twins, and a third that was nearly transparent. He would call them strings but it wasn't really accurate. Some were thin, some were thick, some were patterned and textured and some were plain. It all seemed to have to do with the age and state of the bond and the power of the Gifted involved. The general rule seemed to be realized bonds were a rich, healthy black in this gray miasma while Initiate or weaker were a midling gray to nearly transparent if not outright sheared.

Those carrying sheared strands never had much time left. Those carrying the rich, healthy strands had Runs that worked like a single body, their auras flowing and blending so effortlessly Harry could only stand and stare.

But Harry couldn't be jealous. Not at all. Can't be jealous of what he'll never have.

Hermione never spoke on those nights she came to find him. She never had to. Harry knew the masculine, heavy silver bracelet Hermione had given him-hollow-eyed, hands shaking, her chill grip as she closed his fingers around the metal too hard-was charmed to track his location and health. She had managed, through some Unspeakable invention for the Gifted she wouldn't reveal, to be able to determine when he ghosted into the between place of death and life. It was an extension of a Gifted's skill.

Harry could always feel her appear, like an anchor in the maelstrom. A bridge to the living and a beacon to call him back from that well of darkness in his core that showed him the lives and deaths of the world and the bonds he could never have.

Hermione was his solid ground. It was in her touch, those times she would take him gently by the arm. A single touch, a gentle reminder he still had something to fight for in the living world.

Harry would blink up at her and his vision would return to the stagnant grays of life, the strands and shimmers would fade until only the shifting auras of the Gift's sight remained.

Hermione would take him home.

She never had to say a thing.

It was nearly two years after the war that SHIELD tried to recruit Harry.

Well, would it more accurately be Shacklebolt's attempted recruiting? Shacklebolt knew Harry was slipping away. The tool was becoming a liability. Harry rejected more and more public appearances and turned away Ministry requests. He shut himself in his flat for days on end until Hermione or Luna forcibly dragged him out.

Always the tool, Harry Potter. Political good will, treaty for peace, and nuclear deterrent in one.

The Director of SHIELD wanted to talk about a muggle initiative for world protection. Harry laughed humorlessly to himself. His hero days were gone. Death owned him now.

A department worker crossing the hall glanced at him nervously and darted into a nearby office.

They had been doing that more this year. It could have been the migraine he had a month or so ago as he fought his Gift. It needed to finish the bond with the twins...in the middle of a meeting with some of the top Aurors.

The fallout when Harry inevitably won the battle of will shattered the solid oak table in the conference room and cracked every ward and charm in a hundred foot radius. Or did that happen last week?

The days blurred and bled together. Any pretense of regular sleep was impossible. Hermione fussed and worried like a mother hen. Harry transfigured her into a mother hen-but that might have only been in his head. He remembered a nasty curse being tossed his way for something he did that involved a chicken and Hermione, though. Maybe that had been her control specimen in her study on the duration of animal transfigurations for something or other Ajah had tried to eat?

It didn't matter.

The fickle wizarding media had once again turned Harry into a power hungry recluse with the intent to become another Dark Lord and take over the world.

It would be a lot more amusing if the potential wasn't actually there.

Harry had the power to do it. No wizard, mutant, or hero alive could hope to match him if he wanted to reorder all of the magical and muggle world. If someone did get off a lucky shot and kill him he'd only come back again and again like the roach Bellatrix had accused him of being.

It was Shacklebolt that made a point to present Harry to the Director of SHIELD as a token peace offering.

Or had Harry volunteered for this whole farce? He talked with Hermione about a muggle superhero something…sometime….he thought?

With all of the mutants and superheroes and science experiments popping up the Statute of Secrecy was getting more lenient as magic could be passed off as something or other.

The wizarding world could never go completely public. The Ministry and SHIELD knew that. The lack of limits on magic in comparison to the other groups was too dangerous to reveal.

Harry heard from Luna and Hermione-not through any official channel-some of the Hit Wizards and Unspeakables had been trading skills, assets, and information with SHIELD operatives and scientists for some time.

And so it was almost two years after the war that Harry met the man named Nicholas Fury.

It went downhill from hearing the Director's name.

Harry stared at the Director as he shook his hand.

"You taking the piss with that?"

The man glared at him and his grip tightened.

It was a very good glare, being one-eyed and all. Harry may have said that out loud.

The Director dropped his hand abruptly and Kingsley gave a full body sigh Harry had grown familiar with as they all sat in the overstuffed chairs of Kingsley's Ministry office.

"Harry, please, just mind us for the next 10 minutes."

Harry smirked at the Minister. It made the Director shift slightly straighter in his chair.

Harry noticed that happened a lot more with people now. Even Hermione couldn't always stop a flinch.

Hindbrain warning. Instinctive. Humans hadn't always been top of the food chain, after all. When you were the spy of the spies worldwide those instincts were more developed than most.

When the Director stared at Harry-who tipped his head back to count the tiles on the ceiling for all he cared about the Director's glare-Shacklebolt took up the meeting agenda.

"Harry, I've invited Director Fury here as an extension of our good will. His agency has been aware of the Wizarding World since the Muggle World War II and our own First Wizarding War with Grindelwald. As SHIELD grew in power and influence after the war they have met with the various Ministries who have agreed to cooperate with them for the mutually beneficial purpose of concealing the wizarding world and ensuring there is not mass hysteria due to the existence of magic.

"This has been largely successful, even through recent events, due in large part to the mutant and superhero population coming to light."

He paused, probably waiting for Harry to acknowledge him, but he was more interested in a crack that kind of looked like the sorting hat.

Kingsley sighed again, but continued, "After the Second Wizarding War it became clear that something more would be needed to ensure a third war did not happen. There was too much fallout to contain when the muggles became involved. The Director has reached out to every other Ministry and they have all subsequently turned him down or provided ill-fitting candidates."

At the word "candidate" Harry sat up to look at the Minister.

Ajah felt his spike of temper. It was enough to wake her from her usual afternoon doze around his shoulders. She crawled out from under the neck of his robes to sit up on his shoulder. The bond had grown as Hermione had theorized and they could go hours being physically separated now; she was just clingy and overprotective.

"Candidate implies a choice in their participation, and a high bar for a passing mark. I'm not exactly getting a choice, am I? And we both know I'll far exceed anything they can possibly imagine to throw at me."

It wasn't bragging if it was a fact.

"You do have a choice, Harry. You know that. But you're also the only choice we have for this initiative. There are threats the Muggle world is not equipped to handle, planet-wide threats to humanity as a whole. All of the previous witches and wizards failed to meet SHIELD's needs either due to magical power, personal compatibility, or mental fortitude."

Harry laughed outright at that. Even to him it sounded sharp and bitter.

"Mental fortitude? I'm the least mentally stable person you could possibly find. Even Luna has been giving me looks, Kingsley. If that's a requirement save yourself the breath. I'm going home."

Harry stood up, running a finger gently against Ajah's neck to soothe her back to sleep. She latched herself back around his shoulders but stayed outside his robe for now.

He turned for the door.

"Mr. Potter," Fury said.

Harry glanced back at him, a hand on Ajah's tail to hold her in place, but didn't turn from the door.

"Our requirement is mental fortitude. Not mental stability. This initiative is unique. It is my understanding you are unique as well, Mr. Potter. You've twice survived a magical curse that has before killed every recipient. As a youth you were able to survive countless attempts on your life, including dueling a terrorist who had decades of training more than yourself. You helped orchestrate and were key in the hunt for the artifacts necessary to end that terrorist's life. You followed through on the mission until Tom Riddle was eliminated by your own hand. You're also a Gifted wizard, unprecedented outside the rare twin set. If that isn't mental fortitude, I'm not sure how you would define it."

The words hung in the air. Harry turned to Director Fury fully. A Director so secretive Hermione and Luna had never seen a picture of him, only heard his name in the most obscure of the Unspeakable rooms.

"I survived the first killing curse because my mother sacrificed her own life for mine, Director I was a year and a half old. I survived the second killing curse because of an obscure turn of...family luck. I was seventeen years old. My Gift, as you noted, has left me more than half mad as it fights my magic's claim every day. I'm an impossible statistic; whether I'm damned or blessed to have survived this long is your own call. I'll make myself clear, because Kingsley already knows this: I'm not your weapon, toy, or science project. My Gift, my magic, and my life is my own. I choose who to help. I choose the when and why. I can as easily watch a man die as I can ensure he lives. You don't need to understand me, Director. I already know everything about you."

The Director steepled his fingers as he observed Harry.

"You know nothing of SHIELD or our purpose, Mr. Potter. Even you, the 'Savior,' don't have clearance for that. And the loss of life is the reality of war; there's nothing that will change that. What I'm hoping to do is position a team that can mitigate that loss."

Harry had to hold in his temper. He let the anger and bitterness wash over him and then out. Raw emotion and a lack of thinking had led to too much death already in his life. A break in control, a step too far into the madness, and he could easily demolish the entire Ministry right on top of them all.

When his initial wave of anger passed he met the Director's heavy gaze and steepled fingers without flinching.

Then he looked past the physical to the truth.

He took in Fury's neutral aura spreading darker, the grayer hints in his soul, the sparks of brightness-clever, persuasive, underhanded, and protective. Active Guide, barely D class, enough to judge a situation and character, aside from Harry who was so beyond an S class at this point it was almost funny.

All in all, Director Fury was a consummate leader who wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty for the greater good, who would defend his team with his own life if necessary despite the prickly exterior, and who would not back down from recruiting Harry. Unfortunately.

Abruptly Harry was tired. He was too tired for this horse shite.

"Active Guide, barely Class D," he recited flatly. "One Sentinel Run, Initiate, a match of convenience not compatibility to improve your standing as Director to whatever board of hidden faces you report to. Clever, a born strategist, and willing to make the ruthless plays for the greater good, even at the cost of personal and professional relationships or morals. You skirt insubordination if it's the right thing to do, even if it's not the good thing. That, at least, I can respect."

The Director's slowly raising eyebrow was the only tell to Harry's accuracy.

"Please, correct me if I'm wrong," Harry had to add.

The Director eyed Harry before sitting further forward to rest both elbows on his knees and his hands in his lap. It was a classic tactic to seem sympathetic and approachable. If Harry hadn't been hyper-aware of body language growing up with the Dursleys that might have actually helped the Director's cause.

Harry felt the Director reach out nearly invisible feelers to his shields; the Director was good. He played his weak Gift to his own devices, the touch so light there were very few who would have detected it.

It pissed Harry off.

"Very impressive, Mr. Potter. On par with some of my best agents. For the record, you would be a valuable member of the Initiative. Your skills and opinions would be taken into account at all times; you're not a tool we point at the latest mishap. You would be able to do good for the world, not just the Wizarding community."

Harry sneered at him. "Don't insult my intelligence. And don't ever," Ajah dropped from Harry's shoulders to the floor, growing to fill the room in response to Harry's barely leashed temper, "try that again, Director."

The occamy curled around and over him possessively, her head coming over one shoulder to snap at Fury while her wings flared and fluttered in warning around him.

There was true shock on the Director's face, or as much as the man was willing to reveal when he twitched for the gun Harry was sure was hidden on his person.

"If you ever try to touch my shields again I will retaliate. You won't like the results."

Harry patted Ajah's beak and she shrunk abruptly to fit into the palm of his hand. He settled her into the breast pocket of the robes he wore for an undisturbed nap now that their point had been made.

"I'm not a hero, Director Fury. Don't try to pretend I am. And for the record, I hate the greater good."

Harry turned and left the room.

He ignored Kingsley calling his name as the door shut behind him.

Harry wasn't sure how it happened.

He took a walk to brush off the failure of his meeting with SHIELD's Director. On the roundabout way back to his office, as he ran a finger soothingly against Ajah's head and chin in his pocket, a blinding light engulfed him.

He was shocked enough it took him a few seconds to see the shifting shades of gray. A rainbow light?

The world sparked and shattered around him as his magic lashed out against the vortex, ripping through the wards in a way Harry had been carefully avoiding. It was one thing for Shacklebolt to be aware of his power when he destroyed furniture or a few pieces of charmed Auror jewelry. It was quite another to shatter centuries-old Ministry failsafes.

Harry was as shocked by the turn of events as he was not. He was a Potter; fate would always have it out for him.

The power of the vortex was raw and wild in a way Harry had only felt in himself before-in that black hole of Death's power.

There was a twitch of unfamiliar muscles in his face. He spun slowly to take in the solidifying vortex. Harry's magic had stalled it for a moment; now it was doubling its efforts.

He spun far enough then to see Hermione's frightened face run towards him down the ministry hallway. Others were peeking out of offices and from down the hall. No one else moved to help.

Harry's eyes met Hermione's. The Brightest Witch of her Age in more than the obvious.

She stumbled to a stop. The wand clutched in her hand, raised to cast, fell to her side.

Harry grinned at her. He had forgotten what a true smile felt like.

His last sight was Hermione mouthing his name as the light pulled him out of existence.

Harry remembered little of the journey through the light. Nothing but tumbling, rushing wind as he was sucked through the tunnel the light had crafted.

He lost his breath more than once. He could feel his lungs burn and shrivel and his heart stutter and his vision turn cloudy and black before his healing kicked them back into repair and it started the process from the top.

Over and over and over again.

He couldn't scream.

You needed air for that.

Harry was spat out of the light onto his arse in the middle of a darkened room. It took a few blinks for him to realize there was the low, flickering glow of candles scattered at the edges of the room.

A few more disoriented blinks and gasping breaths and he observed the rough hewn furniture around the wood tables holding the candles. The walls were stone and the air was chilly enough to make him shiver violently. He was dressed for late summer, not deep winter.

He ran a hand over the front of his robes and found Ajah sleeping in the front pocket over his heart. Harry was happy to find the bond with her could survive interdimensional travel, because Harry knew he was no longer on earth.

This place was unnaturally lifeless. No sentient forms, not even the scurry of animals or even insects. It put his instincts on alert. At least Death's growing hold on his core inhibited the side effects of the isolation, because this would be hell.

Once Harry caught his breath and psychically oriented himself to an empty planet, he took in the details of the room. There were chaotically organized stacks of parchment, hand bound books, and potion bottles spread across every inch of available table space. Scribbled notes in some kind of old norse were stuck haphazardly all over the walls and even spread on the floor. Some included magical runes Harry recognized from his own study. He glanced at one of the nearby stacks of paper. Notes and algorithms for magical trajectories and runic amplifiers. Which meant...

Harry looked closer at the floor around him. A floor he realized did in fact have a runic circle of power carved carefully and precisely into the stone.

Harry was sitting in the middle of it.

Bugger.

Harry wasn't sure how much time passed. He had tried a few different times to break the circle and had only succeeded in draining his magic and exhausting himself to the point he passed out. He had woken up from the unanticipated nap to find Ajah awake and curled in his lap.

Ajah had tried to grow for Harry to warm himself in her feathers but the backlash of whatever magic that change must have held left her weak. She was sleeping it off curled close in Harry's arms.

Harry attempt to transfigure his robes into a more suitable winter coat gave the same result-it was what knocked him out.

So here Harry sat. Shivering on the freezing stone floor and nearly hypothermic while he cuddled Ajah like a teddy bear to try to keep her warm.

Whoever had made the runic circle had made it with someone immensely powerful in mind. Sheer magical strength hadn't overloaded it. The circle had simply siphoned it off. There were no chinks or cracks in the crafting to exploit. Drawing magic initially had left the runic path opened and it was steadily sapping his magic away from his core, making him weaker and weaker. Even the smallest warming spell he tried had been similarly drained away by the circle.

Whoever had crafted it was extremely thorough or extremely paranoid-or both.

Harry didn't dare touch Death's power. He was honestly afraid of what would happen. The circle could drain it away-and he had no idea what would happen to him then-or he could actually pull enough raw energy to break the runes. Harry knew he would change himself irrevocably with the amount of power it would require to shatter the crafting.

The only option was to wait. This was a well-laid trap designed to contain whatever it caught. The hunter would be by to check it at some point.

Harry had plenty of time to study the circle and read through what notes he could lying around the room. It was odd that the same sort of paranoia that had crafted the circle didn't translate to the research it had required.

It was relatively clear from Harry's own experience traveling through the light as well as his study of the runes and notes around him that the vortex had been an interdimensional trap. Some of the calculations and theory required were over Harry's head, more along Hermione's line of study, but he was able to get the basics. The runes were a set of criteria actively searching at all times, drawing matches into its web. Harry had never seen anything as advanced as this, though.

Multiple dimensions had long been studied as a possibility by the Unspeakables. Harry knew Hermione would flip to see it had been proven true. It would be more impressive if Harry wasn't positive a normal human would never survive the trip. His entire body beneath the ache of the cold felt battered, as if someone had thrown him down the side of a mountain to roll and tumble to the bottom. And that was with Harry's healing, even if the circle was affecting that as well.

When he had studied what he could Harry started poking at the circle to see if he could use any of the knowledge to undo it. That didn't get him much farther than earlier and only left him further drained. Eventually he gave up and took to cuddling Ajah as much as he could while they waited. Harry had learned patience if nothing else these last two years.

A few more hours went by when Harry felt a shift. Something living popped up nearby. It was the first presence Harry had felt and more than likely the Hunter who laid the trap.

Harry petted Ajah and waited patiently and tried not to picture cheesy Bond scenes in his head while he did it.

His Gift began fluttering in the back of his mind as the presence came closer. Harry was instantly intrigued. His Gift had always been defensive, but never had it felt truly threatened. It had been a wolf among sheep. That flutter was the sense of one predator recognizing another. Compounding the mystery, Harry couldn't sense any sort of Gift from the presence even though that warning said otherwise.

Whoever was coming, he-it felt distinctly male now-was unlike anyone Harry had ever met on earth.

Harry stood and turned as he heard the echo of boots on the stone floor behind him. His Gift was coiled tight in his mind. His magic was no better as it bubbled to his hands only to drain away faster. Harry tried to lock it down. Even his magical core had a finite limit and he was running out of magic.

"What are you?"

The low, silken voice seemed to curl out of the shadows of the cave. Harry couldn't see anyone, but he was more than familiar with invisibility. He switched his vision from the normal gray to Death's sight.

The shadow of a man, dripping with chunks of inky blackness like the blood from massive wounds all across his body, appeared a few feet away at the mouth of the tunnel.

Harry instantly recoiled, slipping back to normal grays as he shook his head to clear the sight.

Harry had only ever seen that kind of damage on the long term mentally ill or abuse victims who were near dead.

That man shouldn't be standing let alone talking and coherent. The image of that broken body-the body was the health of the mind and soul in that between place-juxtaposed with the cultured, controlled voice and theatrics was so inherently wrong Harry's mind couldn't even process it.

As Harry looked down he realized what the original question had been for.

Harry had finally lost his glamor. It was the last thing to go which was good to note but didn't change the fact he didn't recognize his own gray skin, misproportioned limbs, and black claws. Was that an extra joint on his fingers? He clenched his hand tighter where he held Ajah to hide it. He didn't take his eyes off of his hand. That was enough to see.

Harry tried to pull up the glamour. He tried to flesh out his form and hide behind that veneer of humanity. But the magic kept slipping, pulled away by the circle. Gone before he could hope to use it.

He growled in frustration. The sight of his own skin made him want to claw and slough it off to cast away and forget.

The man chuckled at him, something rusty and broken. He stepped into the soft light of the candles, seemingly melting into being from the shadows. Harry could admire the effect if it didn't remind him so eerily of Death. Harry wasn't one for dramatics-most days.

The man was tall, well over six feet at Harry's guess. Harry never did break six feet, even after the changes. He'd always be stunted from his childhood. The man had skin almost as pale as Harry's own with black, greasy hair, haunted green eyes, and a gaunt frame. There were deep bags under his eyes that spoke of lasting grief and haunted dreams. The shattering sanity clinging at the edges of his gaze was all too familiar.

The man looked about as good as Harry felt these days. There was an odd kinship to this broken creature Harry didn't try to fight. Not after he saw those soul wounds. Not when the man might as well have been a mirror for Harry.

That damned Potter luck. Fate really was a bitch.

The man walked around Harry slowly, reading the runes around the circle. Harry knew many of them were diagnostic, a way to measure the power output of whatever the circle contained.

"Powerful, but not near some of the others. You're nearly exhausted, aren't you?"

Harry gritted his teeth, but did not answer.

"I've never seen anything like you, but many untouched and uncharted universes were lost these last few years. It's possible your species escaped my notice. I've never known any besides the Magi on Midgard to use fylgja, before their blood feuds weakened them to infancy. Perhaps an alternate dimension? No, too predatory. Midgardians were sheep that tried and failed."

The man abruptly spun and flipped one of the wooden tables over in a crash and flurry of papers. Candles scattered hot wax and flame across the parchment and the man waved a hand carelessly over his shoulder. Ice spread and froze the flame solid where it tried to lick up the parchment.

That was a telling and rather terrifying show of magic and insanity.

"I can't have any more failures. There's not enough left. Not enough," he murmured.

The man didn't seem to be talking to Harry at all. He was waving his hands as if having a conversation with an invisible party, but Harry knew there was no one else in the room.

The man stilled and turned to Harry. Focused and unblinking.

"Tell me what you are. Tell me so I won't pull your kind again. I'll wipe them from the runes. Not strong enough for the Titan."

Harry froze. Titan.

A mad man's ramblings and it all made such sense Harry wanted to laugh.

He was laughing, on his knees in this carefully crafted prison cell; small and quiet and bitter.

He grinned at the man's questioning look. Insanity wasn't so bad when you had someone to share it with.

Harry Potter was a tool, always a tool to be used. In life and death. Human and not. One universe or the next, no matter the time. Harry would always be a tool.

The man hissed at him, actually hissed, when Harry made no attempt to answer his question as to what species he was. Maybe Harry would have if he knew.

"It's no matter. The circle failed."

The man sneered. His lip curled, his nose turned up, and sharp white teeth flashed. Harry was reluctantly impressed. It made him look completely barmy and more than put Snape to shame.

"I don't need another failure."

Before Harry could think to be insulted at the presumption the man strode forward. In the time it took for those three long strides he shifted from pale and human to pale and not-human-at-all.

His skin was icy blue, tribal markings appeared on his exposed hands and face, and his eyes were a rich shade of freshly spilled blood.

Harry quieted and watched. The man was a mirror, hundreds if not thousands of years into his future. Not normal, not human, only clinging to the remembered shell with magic and memory and a desperate hope for something that would never come.

It was a sobering thought.

The man pressed a hand through the plane of the circle and directly over Harry's heart.

Harry never blinked. It only took a heartbeat. His body froze solid from the inside out. Super healing wasn't infallible. Definitely not in the face of instant mass trauma.

Harry James Potter was murdered by a madman. Again.

Harry woke in the hazy gray of Death's demesne. It was a flat, dull, lifeless monotony. Unmoving even as he seemingly floated in the space. There was no sense of up or down or left or right. No sense of time. Everything was stagnant stillness.

It had been some years since Harry last saw Death in this space. She had always been present as she forced him through his 'training,' but she never stopped for conversation afterwards.

"Master."

The word echoed and whispered across the space.

"I never wanted to be your Master, Death."

Harry's own voice was silent. It was a thought, heard and acknowledged as Death faded into being next to him.

"And yet here you are. Master of Death and on the path that was set when the Hallows you passed their test. Master of Death you will be with every last breath you breathe."

Harry stared blindly into the gray nothing. "Now you're rubbing it in."

There was the haunting ring of a death knell, the play of wind through dead limbs. Death's laugh.

"It is the grief of the title that is chief for Death's Master. You know this matter."

Harry didn't try to catch Death's face. The living shadow of her clothing, her writhing hair and dead-live-dead body were too much for him to follow.

Yes, Harry knew. He knew and he even understood it. That didn't mean he had to accept it. Not yet. Harry didn't know how to concede the battle, not even in this.

He was stiff from being frozen so abruptly. His chest felt a bit like an elephant had sat on it but the aches were slowly healing. Harry had no way to track how much time passed while his body repaired and restarted itself. It was a distant sense of his physical self, a slow loss of his hold on this gray world as he returned to life.

A short conversation with Death here could mean hours for his body, assuming the man hadn't decided to burn him or something else equally damaging. He had no context for how long it would take to rebuild his entire form from ashes, or even what the limits of his healing were.

"No need to worry so. Every death of Master there Death will be to stop the dying and still the soul. Master, Death will not let you go."

Harry finally looked at the not-there face under the shifting shadow.

"I can't die. Ever. Can I?"

The shadows stilled. The hair fell slack. A hooded face, in the active process of rotting where Harry could see her mouth and chin and jaw bone, shook slowly side to side. A piece of her lip sagged and crumbled away.

No.

Harry chuckled. Silent but echoing in this between space, rebounding and doubling in sound as it went on and on. His nothing-lungs burned and his not-eyes teared as that chuckle turned to choked sobs.

All of his life Voldemort had been trying to kill Harry. Flamel, Grindelwald, Dumbledore, Riddle, all on a fool's quest for immortality.

Here Harry was, as immortal as it got, and he would never wish it on his darkest enemy or closest friend.

He cried until he was alive again, from one not-breath to an inhale that stretched his chest uncomfortably. There were frozen tears on his cheeks and a biting wind across his face. Every breath in felt like he was sucking up microscopic glass shards.

He groaned and forced stiff limbs up and standing. He patted his chest to confirm Ajah was unconscious and curled in his inner robe pocket and took a look at where he had woken up.

All he saw was an empty tundra that whipped frigid wind right into his bones. Nothing but snow and rocks and ice all around.

He felt the barest flicker of that single life at the farthest edges of his range. Visually it was the same as any other point of flat snow all around him.

One step at a time.

Loki did not know what to think of the strange creature his spell had called. He released the binding on the circle as soon as the body was dead.

He had intended to study the form more closely in order to prevent more of its kind being drawn into the circle. Instead, the siphoned magic that should have been absorbed into the natural flows of the planet flared up. It surrounded the form in a dark golden cage before disappearing with it completely.

Loki was stunned at the show of sentience. His own magic was carefully studied, learned, and manipulated. It did not act of its own accord. It could not. It was a tool to be harnessed from the natural flows of the universe and returned once its use was met. It couldn't bond with his form; Loki was only a conduit.

Even stranger was the clinging notes of Midgard on the creature. The glamor must have been immense to hide among the people for such time.

Perhaps there was more to this species than the power this one had displayed. Loki would study this new information. He only had one more chance.

Harry fell to the wind, snow, and jagged stones of the foreign world more times than he could count.

His magic was too exhausted to call up any sort of transfiguration or charm to block out the cold. Ajah was tucked in his inner pocket beneath his robe to stay as warm as possible.

Every time Harry's body stopped Death was there for the few seconds he floated in the gray space. Silent at his side as he screamed and ached and bled.

Even his blood was flash frozen to his skin before it could fall.

Why wouldn't she let him die?

Why couldn't he be free?

Harry had been trying to reach the looming mountain on the horizon for what felt like days. Seeing anything different from the flat horizon had been a success at first.

It wasn't a surprise he thought the flickering glow in the stone outcropping above was another trick of his dying body.

He lost count of the frozen fingers and toes, blackened and dead, that fell away. His nose and ears were gone. Every inhale was glass and grit. Every step was agony.

He fell to his knees inside the cave. Harry knew the sudden loss of the wind should have made him writhe as his exposed skin burned and prickled, but he couldn't feel the change. His body was too far gone in only sneakers, slacks, and the lightweight shirt beneath his equally light robe.

Harry died at his kidnapper's doorstep.

Loki jerked his head up from the notes he had been crafting around the strange creature's sentient magic.

His wards were ringing.

Impossible. Everyone was dead.

He walked cautiously to the entrance of the cave cloaked in shadow. Was this another illusion of his own mind? No, it felt too real...but others had as well.

He stopped at the sight of the creature's dead body. Everyone was indeed dead.

This dead body didn't seem to want to stay that way. Loki watched it regrow fingers and toes. A nose. It regenerated dead skin and frozen limbs with every inhale of Loki's breath. Because the creature was inarguably dead-or it should have been.

Loki avidly watched the macabre scene. He possessed advanced healing, but he had never seen anything this complex. Most certainly never within a body that was unequivocally deceased.

In the time it took Loki to blink, the body was no longer a body but a living creature once more. Even more fascinating, the glamour Loki had felt it grabbing at earlier in the circle settled onto its skin of its own accord, turning the monstrous form into an unassuming Midgardian man once more. Loki wondered if it would have ever fallen had it possessed enough magic.

His mind whirled with questions and plans and a resentful sort of glee as he physically dragged the breathing but unconscious body back to the circle and reactivated the runes.

He noted the glamour was advanced enough the true physical proportions were tucked away. He had expected to feel the sallow skin and sharp bone beneath the illusion but only felt smooth skin and muscle. For all intents and purposes the body was Midgardian. It only intrigued Loki further.

He had never seen such illusionary crafting. Even his own transformations-unless he altered his physical body which took time and energy-were tricks of the mind. An instantaneous shift, while unconscious, was unprecedented.

The circle worked. Loki grinned.

He had this mockery of a Midgardian to use for his plans.

His laugh was familiarly jagged as he closed the circle and the glamour drained away to leave the inhuman form.

Midgardians had worked so well against the Titan the first three times.