Omega

Chapter 3

Part 1: In Which Harry is good at upsetting women.

It was several days after Batman grudgingly admitted Kara's training 'might' be up to standard before Clark got back from his off world mission. To say he was concerned by the news Darkseid was lurking about in the shadows would be putting it mildly, but hearing Batman didn't make it a minute against a low powered golem had him smirking. Wonder Woman also came by and it was all I could do not to ask how the heck she kept from falling out of her costume. Still, she had tried facing the golems as well, only managing to make it as far as four before she was pinned to the ground and tied up with her own lasso. That didn't stop her from nearly demanding Kara be handed over to her for further training.

I solved that problem by having her face off against Kara directly. Sure, Kara lost, but only because she wasn't willing to do any permanent damage to Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman on the other hand seemed more than ready to take any cheap shot she could in what was supposed to be a friendly spar. That rather pissed me off and soon found her in the stadium with me. Now I'm nowhere on the physical level as Clark, Kara, or Wonder Woman, so it's no wonder she thought she had me dead to rights. What she didn't expect was for me to play her just like she played Kara. In other words, I cheated outrageously. Our fight lasted a good five minutes before I switched her costume for a bunny suit, her tiara for a clown's wig, and her boots for Orichalcum weights. She was not happy about any of that, but when I proceeded to create seven dragons to pin her to the ground with just a wave of my hand, Wonder Woman forfeited the match.

"You cheated!" she swore at me after I changed her clothing back.

"Yes and so did you when you fought Kara," I replied, completely unconcerned at her apparent anger. "You knew your fight with her was a spar to judge her skill level, but you treated it as a full out battle. Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that as far as I'm concerned. What I can't abide however is the fact when she was down you continued to attack, actually injuring her. That's not a friendly spar, that's just being a nasty bitch throwing a tantrum."

"How dare you!" screeched Wonder Woman, her face going red. "I fought her as I was trained, the Amazon way! If she wasn't strong enough or skilled enough, that's not my fault but yours! You're pampering of the girl will get her killed!"

I glared at the raging Amazon for a moment, then looked at Kara. "Kara, what was the last thing I said to you before you entered the stadium?"

"Hold back to half strength," Kara instantly replied. "No injuring her or hitting her when she's down. Play her fair, no matter what she does."

Looking back at Wonder Woman I smirked. "No, I haven't pampered her. I just pampered you. Now get the fuck out of my castle."

A snap of my fingers was the signal for one of the elves to transport Wonder Woman outside the limit of the wards. While that happened I cast several charms that would remove her access to both the castle itself and the secret around it, probably leaving the raging bitch looking at an empty field while she ranted. That done, I turned to face Clark and Batman, both of whom had been watching the whole thing. Clark was frowning, looking off into the distance at where I'm sure Wonder Woman was currently throwing a tantrum. As for the Bat, he was scowling at me and trying to be as intimidating as he could. He failed, again.

"Wonder Woman isn't going to be very happy with you when she sees you next," Clark said as he turned back to face me.

"Boo hoo," I said emotionlessly. "Whatever shall I do now. Wonder Bitch doesn't like me. I'm so terribly upset. Kara, whatever will I do?"

"Ignore the bitch and keep doing what you're doing?" asked Kara with a clearly fake look of innocence on her face.

Smiling at her I nodded. "Exactly the right answer, my dear girl. Now, off you trot to get cleaned up. Alfred and the elves should have lunch ready by now."

"How did you convince Alfred to cook for you?" Batman growled, though I thought it sounded more like a whine.

"I traded him my treacle tart recipe," I replied, turning towards the door and making my way out of the room. "And drop the damned voice. I will not have costumes or growling at my table."

Yes, I had finally found out exactly who Batman and his alter-ego Bruce Wayne really was. Not by choice as I still tried to avoid that, but instead because Clark convinced him to allow me to cast a Fidelius on the secret of Batman's identity. This also meant I was introduced to his 'children,' or in reality his two wards and protege, all good kids. I repeated the same spell with all of them, just as I had with Clark and would eventually do with Kara. Now, even if they took off their metaphorical masks in public, no one would be able to connect their real identities to their alter egos. That's not to say Bruce Wayne was any less of a paranoid and grumpy bastard, but you can't have everything.

"Wally says he'll be around next weekend to help up the training difficulty," Clark said as he walked beside me. "I also contacted J'onn and he's going to come by once he gets back from Oa."

I nodded, then smiled. "Now that's someplace I would love to see. Oa, a whole different world with people that use their sheer willpower to create tools to defend people. Reminds me of magic, but sadly I've never figured out a way to use magic to travel between stars."

"So, there are limits to your magic?" Batman asked, still not having taken off his cowl.

"I told you, get rid of the cowl," I said with a shake of my head. "And yes, there are limits to my magic. I can't bring the dead back to life, real life at any rate. I can't create true love, though I can brew a potion that causes infatuation and lust. I also can't create true food, like conjuring it from thin air or changing a rock into a steak, though I'm pretty good at changing spinach into chocolate pudding. That type of thing just isn't possible. There are lots of rules to magic, some are immutable, while others can be bent a little. However, none can truly be broken and from time to time I find new rules or limits, but usually they deal with my own personal limitations and not so much the limits of magic itself."

"Doctor Fate and Jason have said much the same before," Bruce admitted as he finally took off the cowl and cape, tucking them into a pouch on the back of his belt. "Doctor Fate claimed only a Lord of Chaos can really break the rules."

"Whatever a 'Lord of Chaos' is I doubt they actually break them, at least not without paying a very heavy price," I objected as we made our way down the stairs towards my office, temporarily my dining room. "If someone looks like they are breaking the rules of magic they probably just found a different way of doing it that bends the rules. Take the portraits for example, they seem to be alive, but are actually just collections of memories stored in paint, in other words no bringing the dead back. That's not to say some people won't try to break the rules and don't care that what they are doing is flawed or dangerous to themselves and others." I paused as we reached the door to my office slash apartment. "There is a rule of magic that says you can't create edible food from nothing. By edible I mean something that will actually sustain you."

"But I've seen Zatanna and Doctor Fate do that several times," Bruce said as they entered the room.

"Well, they either transfigured something else into the food or they were serving you a snack, not something meant to keep you alive," I said with a chuckle. "One of my favorite professors while I was in school, the very one that taught me that food could not be created from nothing, was fond of feeding us biscuits and tea while we talked. I didn't know until years later that all of those biscuits were conjured from nothing, basically biscuit flavored air. The tea on the other hand was always health supplement potions transfigured to look and taste like tea."

"So, she didn't want you to spoil your appetite?" Clark asked as we took seats around the large dining table.

"Or she wanted to lull you into a false sense of security, better to manipulate or poison you," Bruce said, momentarily slipping back into his Batman voice.

"As far as McGonagall goes, that was her name, it was probably Clark's suggestion," I said with a smile, then frowned. "For another teacher, the former Headmaster of this school, you would most likely be completely right. He was a manipulative old bastard and I'm sorry to say, you remind me a lot of him, Bruce."

Bruce looked shocked by that for a moment, but it wasn't in his nature to avoid a question he might not like the answer to. "Why would you say I remind you of him?"

I thought about the best way to explain it before just jumping right in. "Albus Dumbledore believed that only he had the clarity of vision and ability to know what was best for everyone. That man was one of the smartest people I ever met, but he held his secrets and knowledge to his chest like a lover. If you weren't willing to share your secrets with him, he branded you a threat to 'the light' and had no qualms working against you at that point. Oh, he always claimed he was working for the 'Greater Good,' but no one I ever met could tell you what that actually meant. In the end, his secrets got me killed and even then people defended Albus' actions saying he must of known what he was doing or I never would have won my first war. Forget it was his refusal to act that caused the war in the first place."

Bruce remained silent, but Clark had a question. "You died?"

"I did," I said with a sad smile. "Based on information left behind by Dumbledore after he passed away, I walked willingly to my death at the hands of my greatest enemy. Dumbledore never expected me to defeat my enemy, so he made his plans based upon my death. To this day I don't know how I managed to come back, but I did and I managed to defeat my killer. Two years later while I was cleaning out the home of Albus' brother, Aberforth, after he passed away in his sleep leaving everything he owned to me and I stumbled across Albus' journals."

"Bad?" asked Clark with a frown.

I could only nod, but Bruce figured it out without me having to say anything further. "He didn't plan on his own death, did he? Something about your death would allow him to kill your enemy, probably using your death as a distraction. Then he could claim the spotlight and fame, using it to guide your people in a direction he wanted them to go. Possibly fulfilling this 'Greater Good' you mentioned."

"Pretty much," I replied, looking down at my fist as I clenched it. "In his journals he outlined how after my death he would swoop in and kill Tom, my enemy, in his weakened state from killing me. Then, when Albus knew he was dying, he conned someone else into convincing me I had to die, then that man was to kill Tom and take the credit. Something of a last reward to the man for years of loyal service and all that. He didn't seem to care that the price of his 'Greater Good' was my life and happiness and he wrote in his journals that even the relationship he had with me as my mentor was all to forward his own ambitions. Obviously it didn't work out the way he planned and all three ended up dead, but I'm still here."

"Is that why you're immortal?" asked Clark and I swear the moment he said it Bruce's head snapped in my direction so fast I heard it crack and pop.

"Immortal?!" demanded Bruce, glaring at me worse than ever before.

I turned my own glare to Clark, ignoring Bruce for the moment. "Gee! Thanks, Clark! Who knew one of your powers was blurting other peoples secrets out." I then turned away from a super blushing Clark. "Yes, Bruce, immortal. I'm over two hundred years old and I haven't aged a day since I turned twenty-one. No, I don't know what caused it, but I do know that it takes a lot to injure me, let alone kill me. I know because when my wife and children died, I wanted to die and couldn't."

I heard a gasp and turned around just in time to see Kara standing in the doorway, fresh from her shower. "You tried to kill yourself, Harry?"

I could see that she was getting ready cry, with tears already filling her eyes. Not for the first time since meeting Kara I was reminded of my daughter when she was the same age. Maybe that's why I jumped up out of my seat and ran over to hug her, which only seemed to make her finally give into the tears. Yes, when she hugged me I had to use a bit of magic to keep her from crushing me, but I wasn't going to let Bruce see her loose control of her strength due to her emotions. I just held her, rather like I used to hold my little girl, and stroked her hair as she cried into my shoulder. When she stopped, I pushed her back a bit so I could look her in the eyes.

"Kara, I married my wife when I was twenty and we were married for one hundred years, she actually died on our hundredth wedding anniversary," I told her with a sad smile. "When you are with someone as long as I was with her, it's hard to lose them. When she died, all I could think about was wanting to be with her again. It was actually my daughter who pulled me out of my depression, but she didn't know at the time I had tried to kill myself."

"You were going to leave your daughter behind?" Kara asked me, her bottom lip trembling as tears built back up in her eyes.

"Sweetie, my daughter was in her nineties when her mother died," I explained with a sad smile. "She had a husband and a life all her own. My sons were the same, married and lives of their own. I couldn't even really spend any time with them because I still looked like this while they looked old enough to be my grandparents. At my wife's funeral I had to wear a cloak to hid my features, with a glamour underneath it, just in case. When my daughter found out what I was doing, she tore into me, not because I was leaving her behind, but because it wasn't what my wife would have wanted of me. My daughter died a year later, but I will make you the same promise I made her, I will always be here if you need me."

Part 2: Wanted: Part-time destroyer of evil and door-to-door salesmen.

Who knew Kryptonian kids could end up being so clingy.

After my promise to Kara it seems she adopted me as her parental figure rather than just her trainer. Clark gave me a box of cigars with a pink ribbon and a note that said, "Congratulations! It's a girl!" Martha just patted me on the shoulder and said, "Good luck." Jonathan on the other hand gave me a bottle of very nice scotch and told me if I need any advice, let him know. Alfred then sent me a lovely basket filled with chocolates, with a note saying, "Chocolate can save your life when she gets emotional." Even bruce got in on the act, promising to help me deliver the "shovel speech" when the time came for Kara to start dating. However it was Wonder Woman's gift of a sword and shield that topped them all, especially since they were for Kara. Her note just said, "Don't be afraid to stab that MAN if he gets out of line." With gifts in hand and Kara now reveling in the fact she had a new "daddy," I was actually starting to feel more at home on this world than I ever had before.

Unfortunately, things were not all sunshine and roses for me and mine. Clark and Bruce had been called away suddenly by a desperate plea for help from Wonder Woman and the Amazon's of Themyscira. Darkseid had evidently decided to attack the island paradise either as a distraction, or as a bit of petty revenge. Fully half the Amazons were now dead, including Wonder Woman's mother, leaving her the current ruler of her people. Even with our rocky history, Wonder Woman asked me to come put a series of wards around the island to prevent something like the attack from happening again. It took two days to complete, most of that time spent finding the proper type of stone to craft into ward stones. Bruce and Clark volunteered to place the stones using GPS alignment, meaning the stones were actually in better alignment on the island than they were at Hogwarts. I promised myself to redo the wards there as soon as the threat of Darkseid attacking was past.

Upon returning to Hogwarts, Kara had stayed in the castle training while I was gone as it was the safest place for her to be, I received a rather unexpected visitor. "To what do I owe the honor, Death?"

The cloaked figure standing in the middle of my office slash apartment was familiar only as a myth, but also as someone I had dealt with in the past. "A pleasure to meet you, Harry James Potter. I've wanted to meet you for some time now, but as you do not fall under my jurisdiction I have not had the chance previously. Mind if I sit down and take a load off?"

I nodded, because who in their right mind says no to a being capable of killing them in an instant? I was rather surprised when the figure removed her cloak, and she was most definitely female, and laid it across the back of a chair before taking a seat. The young woman, a remarkably attractive young woman at that, was nothing like what I expected the physical embodiment of death to look like. She was about a head shorter than me, pale of skin, but with ebony black hair and eyes. Her figure, barely covered by the spaghetti strapped dress she was wearing, was remarkable and her long toned legs were remarkable and on full display since the hem of her dress barely reached the top of her thighs. The only jewelry she wore was a gold Ankh around her neck, which hung within the cleavage created by a set of remarkably perfect breasts. As she sat, slowly crossing her legs but never giving me a glimpse of what was hidden under her dress, I realized she was powerful as a woman, let alone as Death.

"So, Harry, I need to ask a favor of you," she said with a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eyes.

"Let me guess, you need me to kill someone for you?"

She giggled, and I found myself thinking of tiny silver bells when she did. "Sort of, but not exactly. Yes, I need someone dead and I am not currently allowed to do it myself, but that isn't really the favor I need from you."

Ok, now I was curious. "I see, then how about we handle the favor first and then discuss who you need relieved of their mortal coil."

"Oh, I just knew I was going to like you," Death said with another giggle, which I noticed was causing certain parts of her anatomy to jiggle. "Normally I try not to reveal myself to mortals too much, mainly because it causes a bit too much panic. Occasionally, every few centuries or so, I'll take on mortal aspect for a day or two in order to remain connected with those I deal with. Think of it as helping me to keep my 'humanity,' though in truth I've never had it." She paused, then smiled at me, causing my face to heat ever so slightly. "The problem is that my siblings have been causing all manner of problems recently. Destiny threw a bit of a tantrum regarding the fact someone was outside his jurisdiction, while Desire wanted them for himself. This upset Despair, who was not happy with the means they used to try and control the individual in question, leaving me to step in and resolve the issue."

"Can I safely assume that I am the individual in question?" I asked, leaning back in my chair and snapping my fingers to summon a house elf. "Please, tea for myself and my guest, Hoppy?"

"As Master wishes," Hoppy, the elf assigned to my needs said with a smile, vanishing and returning an instant later with a full tea set. "Is Master wishing anything else?"

"No thank you, Hoppy," I said with a smile. "You may see to your own needs for now."

Death watched as the elf vanished, then smiled at me again. "You treat them well and they will serve you for a long time," she said as I levitated a cup of tea towards her. "Back to your question, yes. You are indeed the person they were trying to get control over. When you arrived in this Universe they realized you were not bound by the same rules as others here. This is because you are a focal point for your previous Universe, thus can not be bound by the limitations of this one. In fact, you are quickly becoming a focal point for this Universe as well, though you are still not subject to those limitations."

I nodded, gesturing for her to continue, which she did after taking a sip of her tea. "Truly wonderful tea, Harry. Anyway, if I were to guess then I would have to say that because this Universe did not previously have a central focal point, and seeing how you were previously one, the very Universe itself is trying to realign to your presence."

"How could it not have a focal point, as you put it?"

"Your original Universe was centered around you," she stated bluntly. "Not to over inflate your ego, but it existed solely as a place for you to exist. With the destruction of your world and your subsequent leaving, it has begun to fade."

"So, my leaving doomed the rest of my Universe to death, no offense intended," I said feeling guilt on a level I had never experienced before.

Death shrugged, doing the most distracting things to her chest when she did. "Not really. Unlike this Universe, your Earth was the only inhabited planet to exist there. If you had left your world for another, life would have flourished there. Instead you left and it is currently settling down for a final rest. Those who had already passed on will join the true Afterlife, that which exists beyond the borders of each Universe, and be welcomed with open arms. Such is the fate of all Universes in time."

That was good news at least and I felt the guilt lessen. "Alright, so now I'm here and you need a favor. What pray tell is that favor?"

"I need a place to stay," Death said with a impish smile. "I used a great deal of my power to stabilize this Universe after Destiny and Desire were done messing about. Nothing that stops me from doing my job, far from it, but I find retaining this mortal form to be the quickest method of regaining my power for the time being. Being mortal I require a place to stay and at this moment in time your castle is the safest place to be."

"Here, at Hogwarts, is the safest place for a mortal Death to stay," I clarified, getting a nod of her head. "For how long?"

Another shrug and more jiggling had me thinking she was playing me and doing a rather fine job of it. "Can't say at the moment, could be a few days or a century or two. Hard to tell and all dependent on whether my siblings try to pull any other idiotic stunts."

"And I have that kind of time?" I asked, looking her straight in the eyes.

Death looked down, not able to keep eye contact with me. "You do. As I said, you are not under my jurisdiction. Somehow, and I don't know how you did it, but you are now similar to my siblings and I. Eternal. Unlike us, you still retain a mortal body, but it will never age nor will it truly ever die. Whether you stay in this Universe or move to another, you will continue into the future forever."

I cringed, not liking the sound of that at all. "And there is no release for me?"

"Not that I see," she admitted with a sad smile. "But don't go thinking it's all bad. In time you will come to understand that sometimes the next great adventure is not so much what you do after dying, but what you do instead of dying. Besides, you will never be completely alone, of that I can guarantee you."

I thought about that for a time, the whole no release thing pretty much nixing my ideas regarding offing myself somehow. "Fine, welcome to Hogwarts. Now, who do you need dead?"

"Darkseid."

Part 3: The time when Harry started dating again.

Ok, so now you know how I ended up with Death Incarnate, or Dee as she liked to be known, living with me. I told Clark and the others she was a friend from my own Universe that had managed to escape as well, which she confirmed with a smile. She and Kara hit it off immediately, if my bank account was any indication after they went shopping one afternoon without telling me. When I pointed out that Kara needed to stay within the wards to remain safe, Dee just looked at me for a few moments, then waved a hand over a potted plant which instantly died. Yeah, I got her point after that.

There were several more attacks on Earth by Darkseid's forces, each aimed at one of my friends in some fashion or another. Bruce and his family had been forced into hiding when his mansion was destroyed, only luck saved them all as he and his were at the castle that night. The cavern under his home that served as the Batman's lair was destroyed as well when the ceiling collapsed. Clark and I managed to retrieve a lot of stuff from it, but for all intents and purposes he had been forced to relocate to Hogwarts until his home could be rebuilt. This was how I ended up being introduced to Barbara Gordon, Tim Drake, and Jason Todd. Barbara was the oldest at sixteen and used the alias of Batgirl to fight alongside Batman in defending Gotham City. Tim drake was the youngest at only thirteen, but as Robin he was more than capable of standing up to the worst Gotham had to provide. The problem child at fourteen was Jason Todd, Red Hood, who often seemed more like a vigilante than a hero. Kara was thrilled to have kids her own age in the castle, but when I found out he was taking kids out to fight individuals the likes of the Joker I was less than thrilled. In fact I'm fairly certain they heard me yelling at him all the way back in Gotham. Needless to say, the kids hadn't been patrolling Gotham since then, which Bruce surprisingly enough seemed rather happy about.

The one member of the "Bat-Family" that didn't move in with us was a young man by the name of Dick Grayson. I won't lie, I didn't like him from the moment I met him. Arrogant and cocky in the extreme, he was determined to prove he was better than Bruce and willing to risk anything to prove it. He spent his nights calling himself Nightwing and patrolling one of the darker cities in the country, darker even than Gotham sometimes. Bludhaven was a mess, making Gotham look like Salt Lake City by comparison, just minus the Mormons and lack of alcohol. Kara was smitten at first sight, at least until he called her a "newbie" and "dangerous unknown." That ended her crush pretty quickly and since then she had ignored him any time he came by, which thankfully wasn't that often.

Clark and his family were the other focus of Darkseid's temper. Their farm in Smallville, Kansas had been attacked as well, but Jonathan and Martha had not been as lucky. Martha Kent was still in the hospital after the attack, but sadly Jonathan had been killed outright. If I hadn't been set on killing Darkseid before, I was after that. To take the life of a man I thought of as a father figure, even though I was almost two centuries older than him, was a devastating blow. Clark was in a rage when he found out and only Wonder Woman and Kara were able to keep him from rushing off to attack Darkseid. In my case it was Dee pushing me down on a couch and sitting on my lap, refusing to move, until I calmed down.

"Yes, you will kill him, but you won't do it in a rage for vengeance," she stated firmly. "No, you will do it for justice and because it needs being done. You will do it when you have a calm mind and a good chance of winning instead of rushing off and attacking him as he clearly wants you to."

Clark, who had been listening as Dee spoke, seemed to take as much from her little speech as I did and together we started planning for confronting Darkseid as soon as possible. This meant I had to start my own training in the stadium, alongside Bruce, Clark, and Kara. Wonder Woman declined to join us, insisting she needed to help rebuild her home and that she was best served training with her Amazon sisters. She still claimed Kara would be better off training with her and the Amazons, but Kara had laughed at her and ended the conversation by walking away. Wonder Woman had not been amused and had not returned to the castle since, which really didn't bother me in the least.

"You know, if you are going to write in that journal, you could at least do it without talking to yourself," Dee said as she entered the room behind me.

"Sorry, sometimes I speak out loud when writing," I said as I laid my quill down and closing my journal. "My wife used to say I was trying to have an intelligent conversation with myself, but failing."

Dee giggled, walking over and sitting down on the corner of my desk. She was once again wearing one of her favorite black sundresses, which meant it was small and tight. Since her arrival I had found Dee liked to spend a great deal of time in my presence, something I found distracting. Coming to terms with the fact that Death was living with me was one thing, but dealing with her flirting with me was something completely different. I had to admit, she was attractive and funny, funnier than I would have expected from Death, and I enjoyed my time with her. Truth be told, I was attracted to her and didn't know if this was a good thing or not. Part of me felt I was being unfaithful to the memory of my wife, but then again my wife had been gone for several decades now. Did I want to be alone for the rest of my existence? No, I really didn't.

"Dee?"

"Yes Harry?"

"What do you have planned for tonight?"

Dee made a show of thinking about it, placing a delicate finger on her lower lip. "Well, I had thought about sitting around the castle and letting my subconscious mind carry out my regular duties. Then again, I can do that anywhere. Why, did you have some more training in mind?"

"Not exactly," I told her, trying to ignore the comment about her duties. "I was wondering if you wanted to maybe go get something to eat with me?"

"Harry, we eat together every night," she said with a smirk.

Sighing, I looked at her. "I meant, would you care to go out with me tonight to have something to eat someplace other than the castle."

"Why, Harry, are you asking me out on a date?"

"Yes," I said with a smile. "Unless you would rather not?"

Dee actually looked a little stunned as she sat there, then finally she blushed ever so slightly. "You know, Harry, I don't think anyone has ever asked me out on a date before. I know for sure that I've never gone on one, so why me?"

"You want a cute answer, or the truth?" I asked her, pushing back from my desk to get a better look at her.

Dee seemed to think about that for a moment, then nodded to herself before answering. "I want the truth. Something tells me your cute answer would be sweet, but would feel hollow."

I smiled at her and nodded. "My wife. That's the simplest answer, but the more complicated one is that you remind me of her in many ways. From your attitude to your intelligence, you remind me of her so much I sometimes wonder if you two weren't cut from the same cloth."

"So, you just want to ask me out because I remind you of your dead wife?" Dee asked, the room going a bit cold as she glared at me. "A wife I've never even heard the name of. You just always call her 'wife.' Why is that?"

"No, I asked you out because I'm attracted to you," I replied calmly, even with her still glaring at me. "The fact you have traits that remind me of her is just the deciding factor, that and she once told me before she died to 'stop flirting with death so much.' For some reason I find it highly amusing to ask Death, the personification, out on a date." I paused, took a deep breath, then started again. "Trust me, there are enough differences between you two that I'm not mistaking you for her, or trying to replace her with a reminder."

"How so?"

I thought about that for a moment, then explained myself. "Well, for one thing, she was anything but a morning person. Try to wake her up without a cup of espresso in my hand and she was more likely to kill me than kiss me. You on the other hand like to greet the sun, just like me, but you still need that espresso to really get motivated in the morning. Another thing, she loved classic rock-n-roll and would dance around the house listening to it. You dance all over the place, but it's classical music for you. Finally, she could binge on ice cream for days, while you do the same with pickles. So, yes, you remind me of her, but you are your own person and while it was the reminders that made me think to ask you out, it was all you that convinced me to do it."

"Good answer," Dee said with a smile, leaning down to kiss my cheek. "Though you are still flirting with Death, Harry."

"Not the first time," I replied with a smirk, "though it was never so literal before."

"And your wife's name?" asked Dee, looking intently at me.

"Her name is unimportant," was my reply as I opened my desk and pulled out a picture I always kept there. "All our married friends had sickeningly sweet pet names for each other. My wife and I both hated those nicknames and decided from that day forward we would be 'husband' and 'wife' only. It was our little nickname for each other and my strange way of remembering her."

We talked for another hour about my history with my wife. Dee explained she didn't know much about my Universe, mainly because she so rarely needed to interact with it. Unlike the Universe I was now in, the lack of people where I was from had meant she could mostly let it handle itself, only rarely having to interact with it. In fact, the 'Death' responsible for creating the Hallows in my Universe had actually been one of her lower level minions. A minion that had later been demoted to dealing solely with animal deaths after Dee found out he had created the Hallows in the first place.

"Death is supposed to be mysterious," she growled as she paced around my office. "How mysterious can it be if you've got a bloody stone that can let you breach the Veil by just turning it a few times. Not very, I'll tell you that right now."

"One of the conditions for coming here was I give back the Stone after I arrived," I pointed out, not wanting her to think I had welched on the deal.

Dee seemed to reach into nothingness, then pulled her hand back and tossed something to me which I caught out of reflexes born from playing Quidditch. "You might as well keep it," she said and I looked down to see she had tossed the Stone at me. "I removed the ripping souls from their rest bit, but it will still allow you to contact me no matter where either of us is at the time. Handy for those times when you want to make sure someone is really dead for good, or just wanting to schedule another date."

"We haven't had our first date, yet," I pointed out with a smirk.

"I'd say two people who are mutually attracted to each other spending a night talking about their lives counts," she replied with her own smirk. "However, for our second date I think pizza and a movie sounds divine. Just so you know, I hate chick-flicks."

They say death is the most honest thing in the world, but they lied. Dee loved sitting in a theater watching Princess Bride with me the next night.

(At this point I realized I had gone down the same path as many others, immortal Harry dating Death. It was done, redone, and done better. This was to be the last of the world building chapters, but turned out to be the end of my muse instead.)