Series' Disclaimer: I own nothing other than my time, my delusions, and my efforts. Marvel and its various owners, authors, and artists hold rights and receive credit for the colorful worlds they've created and published, and Ms. Rowling and her various dependents have equal acclaim and authority for the Wizarding World. I am simply fulfilling an itch that hopefully others have as well.
If this was dying, truly dying, then Harry Potter felt vindicated in his life long fearlessness towards 'the next great adventure'. Some had said (and indeed many had hoped) that it would feel like exactly this - like falling asleep. He hadn't placed much stock in those idealistic claims, but it wouldn't be the first time he was glad to be proven wrong in his pessimism.
That surprise and wonder soon faded, however, to apathy. When the twenty seven year old Boy-Who-Lived stepped through Death's Veil and the purple, black, gray, and finally translucent threads of nothingness pulled him, encased him, then dispelled him out the other side, all else had slowly faded from memory and time and feeling.
The dark cupboard at Privet Drive. The smoky leather of the Hogwarts Express. The mild stench of the hunt on Hedwig. The scented candles of The Gryffindor Commons. The high, clear ozone of the Quidditch Pitch.
The warm, giddy laughter of the infectious Weasley brood. The heartier, deeper laugh of his beloved godfather. Hermione's bone crushing hugs. The perfume of Cho's hair. The taste of Ginny's lips… and then Fleur's.
His son's first steps. His daughter's first word. His wife's tired smile.
The taste of bile and the reek of decay when he'd found their bodies. The heat of Fiendfyre that followed. The cold rain hammering on freshly dug soil.
The silence that stretched on and on in a dark, solemn, lonely Grimmauld Place.
The Dark Lord's cruel, high laughter spilling from the mouth of his once-friend Neville Longbottom. The Killing Curse sucking the pressure out of a room.
All of this and more - so, so much more - dulled and muted, then waned.
Harry Potter felt nothing more than a cold, cosmic acceptance as he was ferried along the dark on unending waves of unseen hands. Death, after all, was nothing if not acceptance of the one true inevitability in the universe. A cease. An ending. A reality that all things living and nonliving faced.
Without realizing it, a semblance of gravity returned. He stood once more on what could pass for solid ground. Darkness still surrounded him wherever he looked, but it came in shades as opposed to an infinite monotone. The soil - or was that sand? - beneath his feet was the very darkest of gray, like the black-charcoal of peruvian night powder from back home. Sound reached Harry's ears and he trudged forward with neither fear nor excitement; only the most instinctive curiosity.
Summiting a small dune, he saw a vast sea stretch before him. Vast and beyond vast. An ocean of midnight blue against the blackness of the 'night sky', stretching on to leagues unfathomable. Beyond that, there was no horizon. There were no stars. Just sable and damson and deep indigo in patterns and weaves beyond human comprehension.
"Every ripple is a soul. Venture forth, and tell me how deep death goes."
Harry Potter felt the first stirring of emotion in this strange new place.
Fear.
He turned towards the new voice instantly and found himself speechless.
The most beautiful woman he had ever seen stood before him, and that was saying something of someone that had met Nymphadora Tonks or Fleur Delacur.
She stood shorter than him, but with the full figure of a modelesque woman, curves that her robes did nothing to hide. Her olive skin seemed perfectly clear and visible in the light-less world, as did the dark green of her garments. It was as though they themselves emitted the darkness and thus were immune to its shadow. The thought came and went in Harry's head like water through a sift. Her somewhat pouty yet petite lips bled into shallow dimples with but a smirk; a smirk that sent shivers down his spine for all manner of reasons. Her big brown hazel eyes reflected constellations that Harry himself could not see above.
She was beautiful, and terrifying, and every fibre of his previously detached and aloof self in this cold place screamed out to run. Whether that was into her arms or far away from them, even Harry didn't know.
Then the woman's words kicked in, fully digested, and Harry's stomach did flips. He looked out once again at the endless swarming sea - "every ripple is a soul" - and his mind nearly broke.
"Oh no, no, no," said the woman. She caught a nearly catatonic Harry as though the much bigger man were weightless. Her smirk had blossomed into a small smile. "We can't have that. This place is intended to take most of the traumatic brunt of such… truths from your mind, but I suppose even that has its limits. The scope of my kingdom can be a lot to process, I admit."
Harry stared, beyond horrified and on the brink of insanity, and yet, with the stranger stroking his hair and with each 'breathe' he drew, he grew slowly more detached again. More accepting.
"There we go," the woman softly cooed, stroking his head with her soft, cold hands. "Let go of it all."
"I'm dead," Harry finally spoke. "And you're, what… death?"
The woman's smile remained, but her eyes nearly glowed in delight at the recognition. "You're quicker than you look, oh 'Master'."
Death! She's Death, and… wait, master? Me?
The Elder Wand in Harry's hand quivered, the stone in his pocket seemed to burn, and his cloak - his father's cloak - blew in an unseen breeze.
The Master of Death. I'm actually the Mast-
Harry saw the woman staring at him with an intensity inexplicable, though her face never showed it. It was all in her eyes - hazel and honey and starry and now sharp, so very, very sharp - all while the serene smile remained.
"No," Harry said softly, interrupting his own whirling thoughts. "I'm no one's master. Certainly not yours… my lady. I don't think you're even capable of having one." He struggled to look away from her captivating presence and set his gaze on the endless sea of damson and sable. The souls of an infinity. "Definitely not," he whispered.
Death remained smiling, pleased but unsurprised by anything he'd said or done. She nodded, amused. "There is but one, but only ever the one. For he is the One Above All, and he is the exception and the creation and the reason."
"So, what now?" Harry didn't even bother to press her for answers to the dozen questions that had just sprung up. In the end, only one question mattered. "Is this the end? My end?"
"It can be," Death said neutrally.
"Why the choice?"
"Because I'm curious."
Harry let her ominous words and ambiguity wash over him. Nothing felt real here, and yet more real than anything he'd ever felt. It was inexplicable and inhuman and despite the undeniable beauty of her, he wanted to be rid of Death and her 'kingdom' by any means necessary.
He felt himself fading back into unfeeling, slowly shaping to be another ripple in the endless sea of souls.
"Will I go back?"
"In exchange for the return of my gifts," here she needn't have nodded at the wand in Harry's hand for him to know she meant the Hollows, "I can return you through my sacred veil, back to your world."
Harry mechanically began to hand the Hollows over, starting with the resurrection stone, then the elder wand, and last he clung on to the cloak of invisibility tightly, hesitantly.
"It was-"
"-your fathers." Death nodded demurely, a sad smile on her beautiful face, but reached to take the cloak nonetheless.
Harry squeezed the familiar fibres of the cloak and as he loosened to let it go, a memory deeply buried came to his mind despite the overwhelming suppression of Death's Plane.
"Dad! Dad! Lily's hurt, she's.. Daaaaaaaad!"
Harry Potter didn't think. He didn't need to. At the cry from his son, he used all his many years as an auror and reflexes fit for a quidditch star seeker to apparate through the wards from his study to the foyer where James' voice was coming from, arriving with barely a 'snap' and spinning to take in the room, wand out. He stopped short.
James, recently turned six, was staring at his sister Lily in absolute horror. Or, at least, what seemed to be left of her. All that could be seen was a small, pretty head topped with red hair and eyes that stared vacantly at the ceiling. The rest of the five year old's body was gone.
James, who had often picked on his younger sister as most older siblings were known to do, constantly teasing and prodding her for being 'annoying', looked guiltier than sin. He had tears streaming down his deathly pale face. He was clutching his heart as though a panic attack were settling in, the hollowness of grief beginning to weigh on his shoulders.
Harry would have been much the same - or much, much worse - had he noticed something his poor son hadn't been able to the moment he'd seen Lily.
Her head was there, alone, yes, but there was no blood. None. In fact, there was no gore of any form. Where he looked at the head of his adorable daughter, he saw it simply stopped, and the couch began in a strange optical illusion. He knew at once what was happening, even if he didn't know exactly how she'd gotten ahold of it. If Harry hadn't pieced this together instantly, well, the subtle twitch of myrrh in his daughters lips would have been the next giveaway.
"Lily," he said chidingly, torn between congratulating his youngest on a prank well done, and condemning her for putting her brother through such a traumatic ordeal. Instead, he simply pulled the cloak of invisibility off her tiny frame, just after she popped her eyes open up and looked James dead in the eye.
"Brother!"
"AAAGGGGGGHHHH!"
When his wife came home half an hour later, Harry Potter was still laughing on the couch while their two children chased one another around Grimmauld's foyer.
Harry gripped the cloak tighter than he'd ever gripped anything in his life. He was aware that Death could have it in any number of ways, but that didn't matter. What mattered is he hadn't given it away. He hadn't let go.
"I… I came here for a reason," Harry said through gritted teeth. He fought to retain his vision, his memory, his feelings of joy which burned to ash and hatred when his family had died. Death's Plane sought to wrestle such passing nothings, such fleeting emotions and meaningless memories from him, in the face of eternity…
But he was Harry Potter. And he had made a promise.
"I came here for a reason," the Boy-Who-Lived repeated, stronger and more sure this time. "I swore to rid the world - all worlds - of that filth."
He looked Death in the eyes. She had not let go, but hadn't pulled away either. Her smile was gone.
"Where is he? Where is Tom Riddle?"
"Eternity awaits," Death muttered in Ancient Sumerian and Harry was only half surprised that he understood her.
"Where is he?" Harry pressed. He fought to keep her eyes, to keep the fear out, the apathy out, the sound of the endless wave of souls of the land of the dead out.
"He has fled to another realm, another world."
"He's alive? You allowed him to go back?" Harry glared, viciously.
"I did not bring him, if that is what you mean. He was summoned by another."
"What remains of him was worth summoning? By who?"
"In Death, the soul is made whole. What remains of Tom Riddle is all that ever was Tom Riddle." The weight of the statement nearly brought Harry to his knees.
No. No, no, no. Whole? Whole and free?
If Death was aware of the turmoil in his being, she didn't show it. "As for whom, it was by Chthon; one of the few primordial shapers of the universe."
Something deep, deep down in Harry wilted at the name.
"He resides in the pocket dimension between worlds, as do all Archdemons, though as an Elder God, less than a dozen beings in the Universe could claim to be his equals, and only my siblings and the Living Tribunal stand above him. But, we all are removed from the affairs of mortals while Chthon is… not."
"Your siblings? The Living Tribunal?" His head was spinning.
"You know them as Eternity, Infinity, and Oblivion. As for the Living Tribunal…" Death laughed and it set the sea swirling briefly, the sheer scale of which felt like an earthquake of a cosmic level, the waves slapping against the shore in a rhythmic call to join them. "You need not know such things. He is the right arm of The One Above All and we shall leave it at that. Pray you never behold his wonder…"
Harry felt his flesh freeze at the smile Death sent him now. He was in over his head.
"Now, the cloak," she asked. She hadn't let go.
Neither had he.
"Send me to him."
"No." Death didn't need an explanation. It was written on Harry's face. "I told you, my siblings and I do not meddle in the affairs of mortals. I offer you a grace of untold magnitude for the return of that which I foolishly parted with once, in another reality, by breaking that very rule. I shall not break it again."
"Then let someone else break it! Anyone! This Chthon stole that bastard away for a reason, and from what you tell me, I'm sure it's nothing good. If he can interfere, why can't we do it? Where's the, I don't know, the cosmic balance?"
"'We?' Balance? You speak as though their evil is binary to your 'good'… You speak as though I do not know your heart, Harry James Potter. Your soul is bare to me, as is all you've wrought. Do not speak of balance when you've never experienced such a thing to begin with."
"Keep your 'removed' judgements to yourself, my lady." Harry bowed his head somewhat in difference, hoping it would mollify the sting of his heretical words. This was Death and no amount of righteous anger would erase that knowledge, that weight, that fear.
But he was angry.
"I know myself and I know Tom Riddle. That's all I need to know right now. If that monster is somewhere, I am going to be needed there. Now send me after him or find someone you think can… please."
Death stared at him with all the time in the world. Hours might have passed, days even, and Harry would have no way of knowing. All he knows is he didn't look away, and he didn't let go of his cloak.
"Your children call to you," she said at last, once again in Sumerian. Her voice was somber, her gaze distant.
The stars were gone from her eyes.
"Your wife calls. Do you refuse to answer? Hiding your fear of facing them with the veneer of a promise of justice, of vengeance? Is this all there is to my Master of Death? Are these all the rotting parts of you, Harry James Potter?"
Harry took a steadying breath and allowed the deep cold of Death to wash over him.
"If what you say is true, eternity and infinity exist, my lady. If they've waited this long for me, they'll wait a little longer. They'll wait as long as it takes to make sure that madman doesn't hurt anyone else again." Tears fell from Harry's emerald green eyes, something that should've been impossible. "They're strong, all three of them. Sirius, Ron, my parents, too. They're what made me Harry Potter - not the prophecies, not the Hollows, and certainly not Tom Riddle.
"I WILL see them again, and when I do, it will be with my head held high knowing I did everything I could to right the wrongs visited upon them. I don't need your permission or understanding, my lady… I just need a ticket…"
With a guttural cry he ripped the Cloak of Invisibility from Death's loosened grip, and snatched the wand and stone from her other hands as well.
"...and to borrow these for a bit longer." He smirked boldly at the embodiment of pure unliving, and half expected to be reduced to nothingness then and there, placed as yet another ripple in the endless, spanning sea of souls.
Instead Death grinned.
Grinned.
Perfect, pearly teeth set in a wide, vicious animalistic smile.
"Curiosity is the antithesis to Death nearly as much as Life is. To be living is to wonder, after all… and you are very much alive, Harry Potter. It is infectious."
With a wave, the three Hollows effortlessly shot out of Harry's tightened fists and vanished into her robe.
"You won't need them," Death winked over his confused protests. "There is one who can help you - who would be inclined to help you, that is - and it would be best if you came to him bare of any of my tokens. He's quite the jealous type."
Death stepped into Harry's flabbergasted space and brought her hand up to caress his cheek.
"Foolishness is rarely, if ever amusing, mortal man. But I see you're keen on being the exception to oh so many rules, aren't you, Boy Who Lived?" Her eyes glew heated at the moniker that seemed to spit in her face, the twinkle of constellations returning to her eyes as she traced his tight jaw playfully. "Be careful what you wish for… hero."
A red star suddenly appeared in the night sky. Far, distant, but viciously burning. He began drawing closer and Harry realized he was being pulled - hurled - towards it, and thus away from Death's suffocating Plane.
"What's ha-"
"Tell Cyttorak that you're my wager!" Death smirked before she grew out of sight and the colors of indigo, damson, and sable blurred to jet black. A whisper came to him from somewhere, Death's familiar voice in his ear as he flew. "My agents will come for you. You have my taint upon you; my favor, my resentment, my interest. Some will worship, some will aid, but most will fight."
He could practically see the terrifying smile on Death's hauntingly beautiful face in his mind's eye as she finished speaking.
"Entertain me… hero."
And with that, Harry Potter was flung far and wide, diluted and reassembled, ripped apart and built anew, only to come face to face with a world of amber and carmine, on his knees before the Ruler of the Crimson Cosmos.
This Cyttorak was simply mammoth and his kingdom seemed nearly as unending as Death's had. Large cities of red stone, rust colored metal, and painterly canary glass stretched endlessly out of eyesight. Winged creatures of no mortal imagination flew hither and thither in the distance, circling skyscrapers of bloodstone and peaks of distant volcanoes erupting. It was a hellscape, but it was so surgical and grand and orderly that it was also magnificent and dare he say alluring.
But all of it was merely an absent backdrop before the being before him.
The Crimson King cut an imposing figure even for a 'god', towering over Harry like a mountain over a pebble, shrouded in a breathing red miasma of a cloak. Thick, brutalist armor of unknown material was fashioned in patterns of starless night and hellfire red, adoring him from fist to toe. His massive helm covered a broad, alien shaped face somewhat disproportionate to his body. Eyes of pale hot light, like roiling Fiendfyre itself, were narrowed in the slits of the helm. Weighing the panting, weak thing before him that dared to look back unflinchingly.
Cyttorak, the Crimson King of the Arkane, the Lord of Light, the Viceroy of Violence said but one word to the man who defied Death, covered in her scent.
"Win."
Cosmic power rushed through every fiber of Harry Potter, bestowed with tremendous, terrible gifts, and the next thing he knew, he was being born again from blackness.
The year was 1980.
The planet was Earth, the country Latveria.
A storm raged across the nearby mountainside. Lightning painted fleeting, dazzling images of shadow across the snow covered peaks. The wind howled and the thunder echoed across the dense forests.
Up in the King's Castle, the ever alluring and nigh immortal Morgan le Fay was uncharacteristically disheveled and irate whilst giving birth to her first - and after this, only - child. Behind the nervous midwives, her paramour, Viktor stood imposingly, watching on in a rare show of earnestness… and concern.
Even the master of science and magics was not without fear when it came to his progeny and the wavering thrall of mortality, though he snuffed it out in the face of absolute logic and drive; the same logic that led him to conquer his home country and rescue it from poverty and oppression would now turn single handedly to ensuring that his lover and their child survived.
He would not lose any more of his family.
So it was that at 12:01, on July 31st, 1980, his son was born.
Harrold Von Doom came into the world, mad as thunder.