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1. away
He awoke staring up at a light peeking past the tree branches high above. For a long while he just stared at that light, not sure what it was, nor what made it – just that it was beautiful and peaceful. Everything was silent, a dead, omnipresent silence that was disturbed by no breeze in a strange, ancient forest – it was almost oppressive, how quiet it was.
You are Hallow Evans of All Hallows' Eve.
"Hallow," he murmured as he sat up, still staring at the light. That was wrong – it wasn't his name. He knew it wasn't his name – though right then and there, he couldn't remember what his actual name was. Just that Hallow sounded a little bit wrong. And Evans was the name of someone else.
The light came from a white, pockmarked disk in the dark sky high above the forest; from the Moon that was just veiling itself in a shroud of clouds – as if it had peeked down just to look at him, and was going to look elsewhere now. With the clouds came the mist, creeping down from the high branches and hiding them in fog, descending down on him. It was dark, yet lit by some distant, vague glow that whispered in the forest.
Hallow Evans of All Hallows' Eve.
He knew about All Hallows' Eve. It was a night of pumpkins and laughter and scary stories – of ghosts and spirits flittering in the corners and through the walls. It was the night of monsters and dead things and death – where people died and were remembered, where they came back for a moment and then vanished. It was a vague in-between night, celebrated and feared, welcomed and rejected. People warded themselves from it, by becoming for the night the things they feared. All Hallows' Eve. Halloween.
Hallow stood up, trailing his bare hands down the front of his torn, ragged robes. Then he looked around the clearing where he'd lain and learned his new name. It looked like there had been people there. There were tracks on the ground, in the mud and the moss where the dew of the night lingered and made the surface soft. There were blood stains and angry skid marks and things dropped. Pieces of broken things.
There were two items that caught his attention – they sat close to him, and gleamed in the vague half light of the mist. A mask made of metal, fashioned to look a little like a skull with delicate designs carved into the forehead and cheeks. And a lantern, lying on its side, the glass broken.
When he crouched down to pick them up, something shifted, something curled in his fingers. A faint green not-light that curled around the mask's mouth and broke it apart, the jaw falling off and the upper half smoothing itself into a featureless, undecorated skull. The lantern lit up, a green flame taking residence on the wick, painting the mist curling around Hallow in its particular shade of green. It was somehow both a lively shade and a repulsive and threatening one, all at the same time. Something between the shades of bright, newly born plants – and poisons.
Slowly, Hallow lifted the mask to his face where it settled perfectly to cover him from forehead to upper lip. His vision changed once seen through the eyeholes, and he could see them. Them.
The dead.
There were four of them – three men and one woman. A black haired man with hazel eyes and glasses, who looked utterly heartbroken. A man with brown hair, grey at the temples, a scar on his cheek – he looked sad too. A man with long black hair who looked somehow too young, too healthy – he was shaking, his hands squeezed into fists, he looked furious, frustrated. And the woman, with long red hair and green eyes in the shade of Hallow's lantern light, who was silently crying.
"Oh Harry," the woman sighed – and Hallow could remember.
2. memories
Harry Potter had lived a good life. A short one, maybe. Brief in not just time, but in experiences and in experience. Everything he'd had, had been quick to appear and quick to fade away. Happiness came and went, but so did sadness. Fear peeked in on him like it was checking how he was doing – and as quickly it was chased away by courage. Family, what he considered as such, was there just for a couple short years and then it was gone again.
But Harry still considered it a good life. He'd been healthy, he'd been more happy than sad – well… in the later years, he'd been more happy and the sheer brightness of that happiness outshone the loneliness of the years before. He'd been so very happy, overwhelmingly, unbearably happy for short periods of time and those periods, those precious moments, they meant everything. More than that, though, he'd been resolved.
He wasn't entirely sure why that seemed so important, but he'd lived a resolved life. Firm. Secure. Strong. Sometimes things had been bad. Bad things had happened to him. He'd been sad, he'd felt guilty, or helpless. He'd lost friends and loved ones. But he'd stayed strong.
"You died strong too," Lily Potter - née Evans – whispered, hugging him as tightly as spirit could. She was crying into his shoulder. "So strong. Oh, I wish you hadn't died, I wish you'd lived, grown up, had kids, but Harry, oh, Harry you died so bravely."
"I died," Harry murmured. He'd died. It hadn't been that long ago – the tracks on the ground told him that much, there'd been people here not too long ago. Voldemort, the Death Eaters. Maybe others. The fact that they weren't there anymore wasn't good – and yet that didn't matter because… because he was dead.
"For a given value of death," Sirius Black murmured, hand on Harry's shoulder, squeezing. "You died but you're not… dead. Can't say what you are, but you're not dead."
"But you're not alive either," James Potter murmured – Harry had gotten two of his names from him, his old names, the names that didn't have as much power as the new one. He was smiling, sadly, so very sadly, as he patted Harry's head, fingers sliding into the dark hair. "You're somewhere in between. A ghost, maybe."
"Or a spirit," Remus Lupin added, staring up, into the canopy above them and past it, at the veiled moon behind a thin layer of clouds. "It's a full moon tonight. Weird things happen under the full moon. I should know."
Harry inhaled slowly, taking in their scent. It wasn't a… living scent. It was the scent of someplace else, of something other, of places where living things didn't go. It didn't smell right – he wasn't supposed to smell it. But he did – the same way he felt their touch even though they weren't really touching him and heard their voices when they didn't actually have voices to speak with.
In between – it was all in between. In between here and there, past and future, yesterday and tomorrow. Between the light and shadow. And he could sense it in the lack of temperature and void of taste, in the way the air felt, too heavy, yet too light.
"Voldemort," he remembered, forcing himself to focus, to pull away from the shadow, the yesterday, the then, the there, and into the present. Concentrating, he remembered – he'd walked here, under the cover of the invisibility cloak, to his death. His parents had been there before too, thanks to the Resurrection Stone. "What happened –"
"He took your body and headed off towards the castle," Sirius said, low, almost dejected. "To gloat, probably."
"There are people still fighting in there," Harry murmured, looking up and then away, to where he thought the castle was. There was mist everywhere now, he couldn't see too far. It was all foggy. "I should –"
"That is not your concern anymore," someone spoke from the mist, in a voice so low that it sounded like it came from a tomb. "That is a war of the living, of life and flesh. And you are not of those things anymore, Hallow Evans."
Harry turned away from his mother's desperate embrace and the worries of his father, teacher and godfather. The speaker stepped through the mist, parting it in his wake, making it swirl behind him in patterns, in mysterious shapes. He stood tall and looming among them, clad in a long cloak that spread like shadows, with a deep hood that fell over his bare skull, casting it in shadows. All but the eyes, which weren't there and yet still glowed with some ethereal light that came from the same other place, as Harry's parents had.
Death took in him and the dead silently, gravely. "Greetings to the newly risen," he said. "And welcome."
3. dry leaves
Death guided him away from the forest and to the castle grounds, where Hogwarts stood against the dark night sky. It was lit by the war that the magicians were waging in its yard and corridors, its halls and classrooms, with towers set alight and walls brought down.
People were fighting over Harry's dead body where it lay, motionless at the foot of the castle that had been his home. And Harry couldn't join them.
"They will fight until they don't, and they will live unless they won't," Death said, uncaring and almost disinterested, as spell fire lit the castle's windows and made the bricks and pillars glow with light. His hand, skeletal and cold and as hard as steel, was on Harry's shoulder, gripping tight, holding him still. "The outcome isn't within the realm of our influence. No use to fret."
"Those are my friends out there! My people!" Harry argued, trying, trying to get away. Behind him, in Death's shadows, his parents and his guardians shifted and recoiled as they too watched the fighting – equally unable to do anything.
"They were your people," Death answered. "You were their people. But they are not yours anymore, nor are you theirs." He tilted his pale head, looking down at Harry almost curiously. "You have done all you can. More than anyone else could. Isn't that enough?"
"What? What did I do? I just died! They need help and I'm… I'm just dead! I'm no use to anyone anymore!" Harry almost moaned – he could see someone who looked like it could maybe be Ron, or maybe George, someone with red hair, someone familiar.
Death hummed and crouched down – he was so big that even while so lowered, he still seemed taller than Harry was, tall enough to loom over him. Larger than life, literally. "Watch closer, Halloween child," he said and pointed a bony finger ahead of them. "Look."
Harry looked – Harry couldn't do anything but look. There, he knew that one – it was Cho Chang. A girl he'd thought he'd loved once, and still respected – a girl he still admired. She was fighting desperately against a boy he thought looked familiar, wearing Slytherin robes. They were fighting furiously, throwing fire and fury at each other, spells passing each other by and clashing. Cho had the upper hand – she had a piece of wall for cover to duck beneath, and she was quicker, her spells stronger. But the Slytherin boy was gleeful and yet furious – half mad with the need to beat someone. That gave him strength he otherwise would've lacked.
"NO!" Harry screamed.
A spell had passed Cho's cover and hit her shoulder. It was a familiar spell, the colour, hints of red and orange and yellow, a spell that burned and boiled what it touched. Strong enough, it was instantly lethal. It knocked her back and she let out a shrill yell and then… and then…
She whipped her hand forward and cast a spell, powerful with pain and desperation. It caught the boy on his forehead, knocked him back, sent him down. He stayed down while Cho ducked behind the cover of her wall to drag few hungry gulps of breath – and to rub at the shoulder she'd been hit on.
There was no mark here. Not even slightest hint of burn.
She just shook it off like it had had no effect beyond the initial impact.
"You sacrificed yourself for them. It is no insignificant bit of magic, what you did," Death said, his hand resting on the small of Harry's back, almost comforting – the same way prison cells and bars could've been comforting. "Look."
It was repeated elsewhere. Professor Flitwick was hit on the back and after a small stumble, he got up and continued fighting, more furious than before. Someone Harry thought he'd seen in Gryffindor Tower, a girl from Ginny's year, took a hit on her knee and hopping on one leg kept on fighting, and soon enough the other knee could take her weight again. A familiar face, Lee Jordan, should've been split right open by a cutting curse – and all he got was a split lip that healed as Harry stared.
"You died for them," Death repeated. "You gave up your life for them. Now your life protects them – the same way your mother's life protected you, those sixteen odd years ago. That is a protection only death can give."
Harry sank to his knees beside Death, crushing the dry leaves of the previous autumn beneath his knees. He sat there listless, in the almost protective and mostly oppressive shelter of the skeletal Death's arms. Not far from him lay the broken pieces of Nagini, cut apart by something sharp, something lethal. Harry looked at it in bewildered hope and, on Hogwarts grounds, no one he wanted to protect died.
4. exasperation
It was slow, but it was steady. Death Eaters fell, if not beaten then simply worn out by their enemies who were slowly realising their odd, near invulnerability to the dark spell fire. The people rallied under the call of "For Harry! For Harry!" and they fought and gained ground. Death Eaters were beaten, killed or captured. Even the giants were being pushed back, the furiously sobbing Hagrid and angry Grawp pushing them back with surprising strength.
"Where are the Dementors?" Harry asked. There'd been so many of them before. The vampires were gone too, though there hadn't been too many of them.
"They won't fight those under your protection. Some of them understand why not, some don't, it doesn't matter. They cannot touch the people your death protects," Death answered. "They've fled back to the shadows."
"Why?" Harry asked, confused and oddly tired – relief was sapping his strength from him. "Or… is it like with Quirrell? When he… when I touched him, he couldn't stand it."
"Just so," Death said, looking at him. "And so there is no need to worry. Your people are protected."
"Yes… Yes I guess they are," Harry sighed and for a moment covered his face in his hands, only then remembering the mask he had on. And on the ground before him, in front of him, sat the storm lantern – Hagrid's probably, no one else around here would've had much use for one. Shaking he took the mask off and stared at it with horror, making a move to throw it away before Death's fingers caught his wrist, holding him back.
"No," Death said. "It's part of you now. If you throw it away, it will only weaken you."
"Why? It's a Death Eater's mask!" Harry said. And he'd worn it! He'd picked it up and worn it!
"It's part of you," Death said. "You picked it up. Same with the lantern. You chose them, and now a piece of you is in them."
"I didn't mean to!"
"But you did and now they're yours to bear. If you want to rid yourself of them, then do so, but only once you know what you're throwing away," Death said, looking at him. It was hard to tell, with his face being a bare skull, but it felt like there was something oddly fond in his expression. "What a young and naïve thing you are. To think it'd be someone like you who collected the three together."
Harry glared at him. "The Deathly Hallows? Is that why you're here? Why I'm like… like this?" he asked, motioning at himself, at the mask, the lantern.
Death let out a breath that was more emotion and memory, than actual air. "Yes. And no," he said and stood up, pulling Harry to his feet as well. "Put the mask on, Hallow Evans. You won't see without it."
Harry didn't want to, but glancing around he realised what Death meant. It was only when he had the mask on that he could see the spirits of his parents, Sirius, and Remus. They were all still there, looking at him and Death worriedly – all of them relaxing a little as Harry smiled at them through the mask.
"Come," Death said, taking Harry by the hand. With the fingers of his left hand captured by Death, Harry picked the storm lantern with his right and then he was forced to almost jog to follow the tall skeletal figure, towards the castle, into the war that was being fought on Hogwarts grounds.
"The three of four – the Wand, the Stone, the Cloak – are to me what that mask and the lantern are to you," Death said. "Whilst I did not rely on them, whilst I could do my duty without them, they made my task… easier. And more importantly, they held part of me in them. They were, they are part of me."
"Uhhuh," Harry answered, stepping around a fallen Death Eater, feeling like a little kid beside the tall, imposing Death, holding his hand. "Why'd you give them away then if they were so important?"
Death sighed again. "Because my time is coming to an end, and I wished to find my successor. We pass over like ages, like eons – like seasons. With modern medicine and science… no one believes in the Grim Reaper anymore. Like no one believes in Thanatos or Hades or the Rivers… or many other Deaths that there have been. My time has been long and brief, and it is coming to a close."
Harry swallowed. "S-so I'm…?"
"No," Death said. "It was my intention. He or she who collected the three that were pieces of me, would've been my successor. But… he has other plans," he said and looked up, above the battlefield, at the sky. There, the Moon peeked briefly past the cloud coverage, and hid itself again. Death snorted at it. "He got to you before I did. So now you are a spirit of death. But Death you are not."
5. comfort
They walked through the battlefield and stopped there, near the edge. A man lay there, his throat torn open – Death Eater mask still hanging onto his face.
"Greetings to the newly departed," Death said to the body. "Rise."
As Harry and the silent spirits of his family watched, the Death Eater stumbled up from his body and to his feet. "W-what?" the man asked. "No, no that can't have been it – that can't be it! I just started, I was just getting to be powerful – people were just noticing me! I can't die now!"
"You can and you have," Death said, lifting the hand that wasn't holding Harry's fingers in its grip. A Scythe appeared in it, growing from the shadows. "Rest now," Death said, and swung his weapon down – and a moment later, the spirit of the Death Eater was gone, leaving only the body behind.
It was over and done with almost terrifyingly fast.
"So… you don't actually kill them?" Harry asked with an uneasy swallow, while behind him the spirits of his family murmured and huddled together, nervous and fearful. He'd thought that was Death's job – that he went to the dying or whoever was about to die, or something like that, and then he was the one who took their lives. Or something. That was the impression he'd gotten, even though he wasn't entirely sure where or when.
And he'd thought it was a bit more… involved. Something about the easy and almost indifferent efficiency of it bothered him.
"Life kills them," Death answered, casting him a look. "Their biology kills them. Humans die because humans are fundamentally flawed, and not designed for immortality. They run out of life, either due to time or wounds or illness, or whatever other reason. They simply run out and I reap their homeless souls before they have the chance to corrupt."
"Ah," Harry answered, frowning. Souls could corrupt? That was an extremely unsettling thought. "What happens to him, to his soul, now?" he asked. "What happens to people after you, uh, reap them?"
"I'm a collector, but I do not hold the collection," Death said with a disinterested wave of his hand. "Whatever the realm beyond is, it was never within my purview. Some Deaths knew it, yes, some Deaths even changed it. But I only reap the souls, and move on."
Harry glanced over his shoulder at his parents, at Sirius – he wasn't sure if Remus had seen the other side yet, but they must've. At least three of them knew what it was like – what the Afterlife was like. He was tempted to ask, but they shook their heads at him, casting uneasy, nervous glances at Death.
"Even wizards don't believe in me anymore," Death murmured, looking away. "Not before they actually die. Some of them still see my Grim as they go on their rounds, collecting for me. But where I once required my Cloak to remain hidden, I now walk among them defenceless and they do not see me. The Peverells were among the last, I think."
"I'm sorry," Harry answered, awkward and uncertain.
"Such is our fate. We come and we go," Death said and shook his head. "I will remain a while longer. I can, and I will – even if people do not believe in me, Death doesn't require faith to exist. It is an absolute. So I will remain. It is tiring, but I will remain. Come."
Harry followed Death, and his family followed him. They made their way into the castle, and Death reaped more souls on the way – most of them Death Eaters, or their supporters. Even inside the castle, Harry's protection was strong. No one, but his enemies had died.
"What happened to the people who died before I did?" Harry asked, glancing back at Remus. "Are they still here?" Nymphadora and Fred and the others…
"No. I already collected them," Death said as they came to the Great Hall, where the fighting was the fiercest.
Professors and students were fighting Voldemort and his supporters, with McGonagall and Kingsley facing against the Dark Lord. They were, somehow, holding their own. They were, somehow, still uninjured. It was still chaos, a loud, horrible chaos of fire and shouting and screaming, of angry cries and furious roars. The windows were shattered and what remained of the tables were burning. There was blood on the floor. There were bodies on the floor.
"Are you sure I can't –?" Harry asked desperately, because while McGonagall and Kingsley were still alive and still unhurt, they looked tired and worn and beaten.
"Quite sure," Death said. Then he reached one hand out and grasped something from the air right in front of them. It came loose with an easy yank, leaving a surprised Bellatrix Lestrange standing there, perfectly visible where there had been no sight of her before.
"You!" Molly Weasley roared at the sight of her.
Harry gasped in surprise as she walked right through him – through him and Death both – and then watched, clutching the lantern in shock as one of Voldemort's strongest went down. The woman who'd been all but his mother for the last several years took her down instantly and without mercy, without giving her as much as a moment to fight back – and then, without a backwards glance, Molly Weasley moved on and re-joined the fight.
"Cheers, Molly," Harry could hear Sirius murmur behind them while the others let out disbelieving breaths and Harry cast his skull-faced guide a suspicious look.
Death calmly folded the Invisibility Cloak over his arm, as if nothing had happened. "One collected. Two more to go," he said and then eyed the broken, lifeless Bellatrix Lestrange at his feet. "Greetings to the newly departed," he intoned as the Scythe appeared again in his hands. "Rise."
6. serendipity
Bellatrix Lestrange did not rise easily nor did she go peacefully – she was spouting curses and abuse to the very last moment, before the swing of Death's Scythe went through her. But to Harry's immense relief she either did not recognize him – or just didn't see him. Either way, she was there and gone quickly and brutally and he was immensely relieved to see her go.
"Are they all like that?" he asked as Death dismissed his Scythe again.
"Some go easy, some don't," Death said, his eyes on Voldemort. Then, still holding onto Harry's hand like an over protective parent unwilling to let his child wander off, he set forward, dragging Harry along. Through the hall and through the people who stood in their way, through the spell fire and the wounded and the empty space around the Dark Lord and the people desperately trying to beat him.
"There is nothing you can do!" Voldemort was saying. "With your precious hero gone, there is no one who can stop me now! I have the Death Stick, I have the Resurrection Stone! I am invincible, I'm immortal!"
"Your Horcruxes are gone; you're just as mortal as the rest of us!" Kingsley spat, flicking his wand violently and sending missiles of fire and pain at the Dark Lord.
"Oh you pitiful fool – I am the Master of Death! I need no such things anymore!" Voldemort answered with gleeful fervour and flicked Kingsley's spell aside with the Elder Wand as if it was nothing but colour and no power. He held the Elder Wand aloft, preparing another spell. "And if need be, I can make more! With the Death Stick at my side, nothing can stop me!"
That was when Death plucked the Death Stick from Voldemort's hand.
Harry stared in something akin to wonder as Voldemort blinked with surprise, turning to look at his still raised hand, which was now grasping empty air. There was a moment of stillness while Death idly shoved his Wand into his sleeve. Everyone near enough to witness the fight were now silently staring at the suddenly unarmed, confused looking Voldemort.
It was almost amusing. Almost.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!" came from about six different directions. Professor McGonagall, Kingsley, Mrs. Weasley, Professor Flitwick, Bill Weasley and Neville Longbottom all called it out, their wands aimed straight and true at Voldemort, each spell finding its target with desperate, desperate accuracy. The power of the spells impacting all at once was so immense, that it sent out a shock wave through the entire hall, knocking the nearest people back, some of them off their feet entirely.
At the epicentre of the blast Voldemort collapsed to his knees and fell over, his face blank and lifeless, his eyes glassy.
And Death collected the Gaunt Ring from his finger – and with it, the last of the Deathly Hallows.
"I will figure another way to find my successor," Death murmured, snapping the Stone of Resurrection off the ring base, and letting the ring drop to the floor as the living people around them exploded in roars of victory or horror and what had been chaos before turned into a complete uproar. The air was suddenly full of noise and, a moment later, spell fire as the fighting resumed, more ferocious on one side, desperate on the other.
Harry barely noticed any of it. He let out a shaking breath and heard his family do the same behind him, and for a moment he was absolutely sure this wasn't happening. Except it was. It had. Voldemort was dead, lying on the floor, utterly mortal and graceless in death. The Dark Lord that had haunted his entire life until the very end, the Dark Lord that had taken his parents from him, every bit of family that mattered, and so many others, so many innocents… was dead.
And he had had nothing to do with it. The prophesy, and all it had entailed – the life it had led him to live, and the sacrifices it had prompted him to make – had it all been for nothing? Had it meant anything? Could anyone have defeated Voldemort after all?
Death Eaters were going down around them, left and right, some of them bound and gagged and a lot of them simply dead or dying, as the suddenly triumphant side took their victory and ran all the way home with it. It didn't take long for the uproarious fight to spread out from the Great Hall and them completely empty it, as the defeated lay on the floor and the victorious headed off to end the war some of them had fought for decades.
"That's it?" Harry asked quietly. Relief and sudden, painful joy was gaining ground, the shock was fading, and he was shivering. "Is that it?!"
He turned to Death, just in time to see him take out the Scythe again, the Resurrection Stone, the Elder Wand and the Cloak of Invisibility all gone now, hidden away. "Greetings to the newly departed," Death said, looking at Voldemort. "Rise."
Harry stepped back, uneasy and then horrified. It wasn't the reptilian Dark Lord who rose from Voldemort's body – it wasn't even the soul of Tom Riffle. No, it was a tattered and bruised thing only distantly reminiscent of a man in its overall shape and it was missing bits and pieces – an arm, some of his side, a leg, half of his head…
It let out a pitiful croak, too far gone for words.
"That's – that's Voldemort's soul?" Harry murmured, taking another step back. "T-that's what happens when you make Horcruxes?"
"Like I said," Death shook his head. "Humans aren't designed for immortality."
Then, with almost merciful speed and efficiency, he swung the Scythe down, and reaped the broken, battered soul of Tom Marvolo Riddle at last.
7. silence
Death was going around the Great Hall of Hogwarts, reaping souls. Some of them Harry knew, or had seen – Goyle Senior, one of the Carrows, a man he was sure he'd seen in the Ministry of Magic, a girl he thought had been in Ravenclaw in his year, and so on. Some of them he didn't know. There were a lot of them – frighteningly many, actually. Voldemort had taken over, yeah, but somehow Harry hadn't realised how many people he had had on his side.
"You know, you had a bigger hand in this than you think," James commented from behind him and Harry glanced at him over his shoulder. His father was staring at Voldemort's body. "We saw it, even if you didn't. Your friend Neville wouldn't have known to kill Nagini without you. Your friends Ron and Hermione dealt with the other Horcruxes. And your sacrifice protected them. It might seem a small thing… but it's not."
The others nodded and Harry sighed, looking at Voldemort too. "I guess," he said. It was hard to wrap his mind around it – around everything, but… he could understand that much. How big a difference it made in the heat of battle, when one side simply wouldn't go down.
It was quiet in the Great Hall now, a silence only made deeper by the noises echoing into the hall from outside, from the corridors. People were still fighting and there was still fire – one of the tables, what remained of it, was smouldering. There was mist too, though. It had followed them through the castle and now flickered in the corners of the hall, and faded the furthest wall into grey. Was it always going to be there, the mist?
With a sigh, Harry crouched down and set the lantern with the green flame on the floor, and for a moment he just stared at Voldemort. It was over and he was dead. That was… good, probably. When he'd gone to meet Voldemort the plan he'd had, had been half assed and desperate and he hadn't really thought it through fully. But he'd known, somehow, he'd known it would be the only way. Maybe it had been. Maybe the Prophesy had meant that neither of them could be killed unless one of them was killed by the other. Maybe that… had made Voldemort mortal.
And Harry into… whatever he was now.
Death was done, the last soul had been reaped, and now he was walking back towards the centre of the room, his steps silent, feet unseen in the fading, shadowy hems of his cloak. Harry looked at him and then back down at Voldemort.
"Now what?" he asked. "What happens now?"
"To them, or to you? Their lives go on, as they must. Some of them will die today. The rest will die in the future. In time I will collect them all," Death said and glanced at him. "You too will go on in your own way. You are a spirit of death and so I wanted to show you this, to give you a foundation and closure."
"I suppose I'll appreciate that later," Harry muttered, folding his arms atop his bent knees. The closure at least – he wasn't sure about the foundation yet. "Will I have to do this?" he asked then, waving around the room. "Collect souls?"
"You probably can. You might be able to learn how. But this is not your duty," Death answered as the Scythe faded away.
"What is my duty, then?" Harry asked, uneasy, leaning his chin on his folded arms.
"What did the moon tell you?" Death asked.
"That I'm Hallow Evans of All Hallows' Eve," Harry said. He glared at Voldemort's body for a moment then rose to his feet, shaking his head. "What's that even supposed to mean?"
"It means what it means," Death said, stroking his skeletal fingers over his chin. "A seasonal spirit of death. How quaint of him. I suppose there was a call for one," he murmured and turned to Harry. "Well then, Hallow Evans of All Hallows' Eve. It seems you have a choice to make now."
"A choice?" Harry asked, suspicious.
"Yes," Death nodded. "You can either go on your own and try and figure out what you're meant to do on your own. Some spirits chosen by the Man in the Moon manage that way. Or… you can come with me. And I will teach you what I know."
Harry swallowed at that, stepping back towards his family, feeling James's and Lily's hands on his back. "Um. Right," he murmured, glancing at them. Lily was smiling at him, sadness in her eyes. James looked determined and worried. Remus and Sirius hovered, uncertain but supportive. "I don't, I mean… I can't go on? To the Afterlife?" Harry asked, and Lily's grip on his robe tightened, her fingers twisting the fabric.
Death just stared at him and said nothing.
"Right," Harry said again. "Can I think about this?"
Death considered that for a moment and then nodded. "Yes. I will be here a while longer - I have other souls to reap," he said. "But make your decision quickly."
With that said, Death walked out of the Great Hall and into the corridors – to no doubt reap those that were dying out there, in the renewed fight. Harry looked after him, staring at the half collapsed doors – one of them had been split in the middle by some spell – and then he looked down, and at Voldemort again.
Go on his own or with Death. He… didn't particularly like either option.
"Hey, look," Sirius said from behind him and he glanced up to see a ghost cautiously peek through the east side wall. He pushed through the wall slowly, staring at Voldemort, floating a good seven feet off the ground. "Heya there, Bloody Baron. Long time no see!"
The ghost didn't react in any way, as if he hadn't even heard. He floated over the bodies and bloodstains and touched down on the floor beside Voldemort, staring down at him. And he didn't in any way react to the presence of Harry, or the four spirits at his side.
"I don't think he can see us," James said while Sirius reached forward to wave a hand across the ghost's eyes. When that brought no reaction, Sirius waved his hand through the ghost, and again the Baron didn't react.
"I think we're… a different type of spirit," Lily said. "We're not… ghosts."
"Kinda weird for a ghost not to see other ghosts, but whatever," Sirius shrugged, while the Bloody Baron snorted at Voldemort's body, and lifted up in the air again, and headed back through the wall. Sirius shook his head after him. "Though he couldn't see Harry either. Why not?"
"Because of belief, I think," Remus said, looking at Harry thoughtfully. "Harry is like Death. And if people need to believe in Death to see him, then… it might be the same way with Harry. I've never heard of magic like this, though. One that relies on faith. Emotion and memories, yeah, but faith?"
"All magic does, in a way," Lily shrugged. "If you believe that a spell will have an impact, then it will, and the stronger the faith the bigger the impact. If you don't, then… then it won't. You never really notice though because wizards are more focussed on ability and power and not belief – and because belief is intrinsic and unnoticeable. It's never really talked about."
"Mostly because talking about it would ruin it. Make it harder to believe," James agreed, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pressing a kiss on her temple. "You are so clever. What did I ever do to trick you into marrying me?"
She grinned, swaying into his hold and Harry stared at them in a sort of ravenous disbelief. His parents being all… in love. He'd never seen it before, and he'd never realised it would feel like this. They were slightly see-through and not really there – they were dead – but at the same time they were there and present, not quite alive, but lively. And even now, a bit of their happiness radiated out and it hurt to know he could've had that all his life.
Harry eyed them for a moment before running a hand over his mask and turning away, to look at Voldemort. Then he turned away from him too, and towards the broken doorway, to head out of the hall. He needed to think and he couldn't here. He needed to get away from Voldemort, to somewhere with no bodies, no ghosts – no people. Somewhere where he could just think.
And make his decision.
8. celebration
The battle and with it the war… was over. Hogwarts was bruised and wounded, but it was victorious. It had been bloodied and it had tasted death, and it had emerged free. And so the people were celebrating – they were dancing among the dead and celebrating, they were collecting the bodies and celebrating, they were mourning their dead and celebrating.
It was weirdly tiring to watch. Both because he had and hadn't been a part of making it into reality – and largely because Harry couldn't join it in any way. People walked through him and no one saw him. No one but Death and the dead – and it seemed all the ghosts of Hogwarts were excluded from it, and not just the Bloody Baron. Even Nearly Headless Nick had walked right through Harry, never noticing him standing there.
Harry didn't dare to go look for anyone he knew. Not even Hermione and Ron, not beyond making sure they'd lived. He didn't dare to. It would… it would hurt to have them not see him.
"What are you going to do?" Lily asked quietly, sitting beside him on the end of a broken staircase, where no one would go and thus no one would walk through them. James was sitting on Harry's other side, and Sirius was all but draped over his shoulders, having grabbed him in a hug and then just stayed hanging on him. "Are you going to go with Death?"
Harry sighed. Go andfigure out what he was supposed to do on his own. Or go with Death and learn the ropes of being a spirit of death. Because apparently there were ropes to be learned. "Should I?"
"Probably couldn't hurt," Remus commented where he was standing, peering at the festivities in the yard through a nearby hole in the wall. "There's a lot we don't know about this. And it doesn't seem like something you can really figure out that easily on your own."
Harry nodded and buried his face in his knees for a moment. He was still wearing the mask – he didn't really even notice it, it fit him so perfectly that it felt weightless, but yet at the same time… he was wearing a Death Eater's mask. Or the upper half of it anyway. He didn't even know whose it was. It might've been Bellatrix's!
And yet if he took it off, he couldn't see the people around him. The mask had his power in it, now. A piece of him was in it, and somehow that made it… magical, or something. And he had no idea how that worked – and there was the lantern with its green flame to consider too! He had no idea what it did, if it did anything! And who knew what else there was that he didn't know. Death had four items like that – the Wand, the Stone, the Cloak and the Scythe. And considering what just one of those things could do…
"I guess I should," Harry said, lifting his head a bit and then blinking with surprise.
There was someone at the bottom of the stairs and it looked like she was about to come up. She looked about as good as he felt and worse – her hair a mess, her clothing torn, face bloodied and pale. There was a cut on her upper arm that was still bleeding and it looked like something had burned the hem of her shirt. It looked like… like she'd gone through hell.
"Hello, Luna," Harry greeted her quietly. "I don't suppose you can see me either?"
She walked up the stairs and sat down in front of him, almost leaning back against his knees. Sighing, she rubbed at her neck and bowed her head and just sat there, hugging herself. She looked tired, worn, exhausted. And no wonder. Not too long ago, Hermione, Ron and he had saved her from what had probably been days if not weeks of torture.
But she was alright now. She would be alright. She was free and Voldemort was gone, Death Eaters captured, Hogwarts and its defendants were safe. Luna included. That was… something. It didn't matter how much he'd done, or what he hadn't been able to do. They were alright now. That was what mattered.
"You'll be alright," Harry murmured, reaching out and resting a hand on her head. "You're probably scared and will be for a bit. I would be too, if I went through what you did. But you're going to be alright. You're brave, Luna. You've always been brave and it's going to be alright."
"She was a good student too. A bit strange, but smart," Remus commented.
"She was with you in the Ministry," Sirius recalled.
Harry nodded. "She's a good friend," he murmured, trying to smother his disappointment. She's been one of the most perceptive people he'd ever known – the most faithful, believing in things no one else had or ever would. And she couldn't see or hear him either.
After a moment, Luna sighed and lay down on her side along the stair in front of Harry and just fell lax, one arm spilling over the stair and onto the one below it. She was out like a light. Harry and his family stared at her for a while, unseen and unheard and Harry was about to turn to Lily to say that he'd go and find Death and... When something golden caught his eye.
"What is that?" Sirius whispered, as golden tendril slithered in through the gaping hole on the wall and swirled in the air, reaching for Luna. It curled over her hair and moved on, leaving a bit of itself behind to swirl into a momentary crown of gold over Luna's hair, before it shifted. It turned into butterflies that flittered over Luna's head in circles and infinity loops.
"I… don't know," Harry answered, reaching a hand out and then pulling it back when the butterflies scattered to avoid his touch. "I don't think it's… bad, though. It feels nice."
"It's a dream," Death informed them from the bottom of the stairs. "Dream sand. She's still innocent enough for Sandman to have an effect on her. Unusual for a girl of her age."
"Sandman?" Harry asked with surprise.
"Guardian of Dreams," Death nodded. "Have you decided, Hallow Evans?"
Harry looked down at Luna. Her dream was shifting, into flowers that grew into vines, into trees. She still looked tired and worn and there was a bit of blood on her cheek – and despite all of her beliefs and faiths and fantastical nonsense, she hadn't seen him. Hadn't heard him. And now he could see her dreams.
He really was… dead, huh?
"Yeah, yeah I decided," Harry sighed and took the lantern from the step beside him before standing up. "I'll go with you. I need to learn. Um…" he glanced at his family who nervously stood as well, Sirius releasing Harry reluctantly. "What about them?" he asked, uncertain.
"That's up to you," Death answered. "I've already collected them once. You're the one who called them back."
"Right," Harry muttered and turned to his parents. "Uh… do you want to go back?"
Lily smiled sadly and took his face between her hands, tracing the edges of the mask. "Not on your life," she whispered and kissed his chin below the edge. "Not on your death either."
"Yeah. We'll stay here as long as we can," James agreed, gripping the back of Harry's neck in a firm but comforting hold. He rested his forehead against the temple of Harry's mask. Sirius and Remus were nodding along. "We've missed so much. And you're not going to come where we'd go, are you?"
"He wouldn't," Death said. "There will be consequences," he then warned. "You can't stay as you are. Not even for a spirit of death. You will change."
"We're willing to risk it," Sirius said firmly.
"We're used to changes," Remus agreed, grinning.
Harry smiled back at them, a painful teary smile that felt like it was about to split his cheeks. He should've argued, should've told them to go on, to where it was probably peaceful and nice – but… but he was greedy for their company. He wanted to keep them if he could. He wanted to be with them – especially since he couldn't be with anyone else.
"Thank you," he said, choked. "Thank you so much."
"Well then, Hallow Evans of All Hallows' Eve," Death said. "Come. We have places to be. Souls to reap."
"Right," Harry nodded and with the Gamekeeper's lantern in one hand, a Death Eater's mask on his face and with his departed family around him, he turned to follow.
Behind them, Luna's dreams shifted and a golden, skull masked Hallow Evans sat on her hair grinning a raw, brave smile at the dark corridor around her.
9. everywhere
Harry followed Death. It was not an idle existence he very soon realised, despite Death's somewhat disinterested disposition towards it. Death was a very busy creature and at his side Harry learned to move fast, to be swift, and to never stop.
They travelled in the mist – in the Mist actually. Mist, Death told him is one of the Great Elements – and the only one they interact with. "There are others. The Winds, which align themselves with the seasons. The North Wind for the winter spirits, East Wind for the spring spirits, South Wind for the summer spirits and West Wind for the fall spirits," Death explained. "Mist for the death spirits."
"Are there others?" Harry asked. "Other than the Winds and the Mist?"
"Of course, there are many, some greater, some lesser. But I have little interaction with the rest of them, nor will you I imagine," Death said. "The Winds have minds of their own, and they can be fickle things. But the Mist is passive and it is everywhere. It creeps over the forests and the land and into alleys, into houses and rooms.It exists in every exhale and is breathed in with every inhale. And in it we are everywhere."
They walk into the Mist, with Harry's family silently trailing after them, and they walk out of the Mist. The in between of the Mist is a strange, blurred place and things overlap in the Mist – behind him Harry might see London, and ahead of him he might see the Saharan desert. Like so, they travel from place to place, across cities and countries and continents.
They go from scenes of accidents to hospitals, to wilderness, to towns and to cities; they stop by alleyways and highways and schools and airplanes and people die, die, die. Death isn't at every scene, he doesn't collect every soul, but he collects lots of them in easy, almost casual swings of his Scythe, never paying much attention to their cries and pleas and moans.
Very few people die peacefully. Some do, some thank Death and go with a smile, but a lot of people die too young, too soon, too suddenly, and they beg to go on a little longer, to see a bit more, just a few more days, a few more hours, please, just to say their goodbyes. It was a testament of how long Death had been doing his job and how used to it he was, how he never paid attention, never listened – how he sometimes reaped his souls mid-sentence.
"That's… a little cruel, isn't it?" Harry asked, uneasy.
"When you've collected as many souls as I have, they all start to sound the same," Death shrugged without interest. "I've heard their words a million times before in a million different ways, and I've grown bored of listening. Cruel? Perhaps. But so is death."
In those first hours that slowly stretched to days, then to weeks, Harry saw a lot of that – and it never got any easier. It wasn't… how it should be, he felt. Sure, they're just a fraction of a fraction in the sea of souls Death had seen, but they were still people. They were individuals with individual voices and individual wishes and dreams that had been crushed. They deserved… well, he wasn't sure what. But something better than such a quick dismissal.
"Cheerful bloke," Sirius muttered somewhere behind Harry, speaking around a piece of straw he'd picked up from somewhere. "And so warm and fuzzy too!"
They didn't travel alone. Death's hounds, the Grim, were everywhere, coming and going and dashing through the Mist in bounding leaps. They were powerful and somewhat terrifying creatures, the hounds of the Afterlife. As big as hippogriffs and bigger, and infinitely more dangerous. But they, like Death himself, were creatures with purpose.
They too collected souls, carrying them back to Death for reaping.
"I have more of them now than I ever did before," Death admitted, as a couple of Grim stopped by to drop their burdens and nudge at their master fondly before moving on again. "There are more people now than ever, after all. And for all my attempts, I cannot be everywhere all at once."
The souls delivered by the Grim had it the best, Harry thought. For a little while they could ride the hounds of the Afterlife. And even though that journey ended at Death's Scythe, it still looked pretty fun, to ride on those colossal death hounds. Some of the souls seemed to agree, going with startled smiles and laughs – others not so much.
Sometimes, the Grim brought their catch in their teeth, dragging them through the Mist like something caught in a hunt. And maybe that was it – maybe what the Grim did was pretty much like hunting. Harry never liked seeing those souls. They tended to be broken and bruised and still mean, still trying to fight back, to escape. They never went on easily.
Sometimes they saw others in the Mist. Other death spirits, going about their business, whatever that business might be. Some of them were faint, indistinct shapes not just because of distance, but because of strength that was fading with the loss of followers and belief. Death names some of them – Mictlantecuhtli and Eresgkigai and who held onto existence by the strength of the empires that had worshipped them. Supay and Anubis and Hecate, who were still remembered by the scattered descendants of their original worshippers or new-age believers, just enough to remain.
But there were also stronger ones. The Yamaduta that passed them by were still strong and very much around – and strong enough in followers and belief that they could casually stop to exchange words with Death in languages Harry didn't know. Izanami was powerful enough for Death to incline his head to her in near bow when she walked past them – powerful enough that Harry and his family bowed to her without any need of prompting. The strength radiated from her.
And then there were the angels of death. Lots and lots of angels of death, who flew overhead and never stopped to speak with Death – and whom Death in turn ignored as if they didn't exist.
"So we're not the only ones," Harry murmured.
"Not by far," Death agreed. "But they are what they are. Spirits of death and gods in their own places. But I am the only Death – just as Izanami is the only Izanami-no-Mikoto."
"Uhhuh," Harry said thoughtfully, peering into the Mist. "But if there are other death spirits that reap souls – well, collect them anyway – then… why do you want a successor? I mean, you could just stop and souls would still be collected, wouldn't they?"
"Yes, and no," Death sighed. "Gods and deities and their messengers are part of religions and religions have rules. And by those rules, they only collect their faithful," he answered, shaking his head. "I collect everyone else. And these days there are a lot of those who do not fall under the purviews of religions. If I go without a successor, there will be no one to collect those souls."
"Oh," Harry answered, blinking. "So, what happens if a soul is not collected?"
Lots and lots of very bad things. There were hundreds of ways a soul could be corrupted, some of them more dangerous than others. Some of them had names because they happened so often – like the White Ladies and the Ghouls or the Fetch or countless others. But most were just vengeful or corrupt spirits, that haunted people or places and could do damage ranging from driving people mad to outright killing them.
"The human soul is a powerful thing," Death said. "And easily ruined. That's why they're Guarded when they're innocent, unchained by scepticism or pragmatism and the peak of their creative might – and why they're shepherded when they're no longer protected in flesh. Because the damage done by a corrupted human soul, it's no small thing."
"I guess not," Harry agreed slowly, a little uneasy at the thought.
Death cast him a look. "This is something you should learn, I think," he said. "As you were chosen to be the spirit of the All Hallows' Eve. Hallowtide is when spirits are the strongest, when souls can pass over to this world again. It is when there are the most… incidents. And if your duties include the chaperoning of those souls that come over to this side, as it might, then you need to know."
Hallowtide is something Harry didn't really know – at all, it turned out. The only day he'd ever celebrated of the Hallowtide – or Hallowmas Season, or Triduum of All Hallows, whatever one wanted to call it – was Halloween. To him, Halloween was the feast that they had served at Hogwarts and…that was about all he knew, that was the impression he had of Halloween. But Hallowtide was a three day event, starting with the All Hallows' Eve, then continuing to All Hallows' Day, and ending it All Souls' Day. Three days, starting the 31st of October and ending the 2nd of November.
All Hallows' Eve was when the souls of the dead began crossing over to the living world, the day when people masked themselves in order to avoid being hunted down by the dead they might've wronged in life – that was where the costumes had originally come from.
All Hallows' Day – or All Saints' Day – on the 1st of November was the actual celebration of Hallowmas, when people remembered their dead and feasted in their name, remembering the saints and martyrs.
And All Souls' Day was the Commemoration of All Faithful Departed, when all the souls were honoured and celebrated – and when, eventually, the souls that had come from the Afterlife returned, and when Hallowmas ended.
The meaning of it all was blurred in stolen mythology and faiths, and the roots of where the celebration really came from and what the meaning really was, didn't actually matter though. Not to him. Harry wasn't the spirit of Hallowtide, because the meaning of Hallowtide wasn't what it had been – it wasn't celebrated the same way. The days might still have the same power – souls still passed over. But it wasn't quite the same as it had been because people didn't believe it to be.
"You were made in the modern times, so it's the modern Halloween you preside over," Death explained. "Halloween as it is now is your day, not Hallowtide as it was."
"So I'm the spirit of trick or treat and costume parties?" Harry asked, amused.
Death considered it and nodded. "Yes. Everything else that the day is now. That is for you to figure out, though, Hallow Evans of All Hallows' Eve."
Harry snorted at that, but he had to admit he was a bit relieved. He had no idea how the whole seasonal spirit thing worked, but one day sounded much better than three – especially three such heavy ones as the Hallowtide days sounded like. Trick or treat and costume parties sounded much easier.
He wasn't stupid enough to fool himself into believing that was it either, though. You didn't choose a spirit of death to preside over a costume party, not unless there were some serious powers involved. That much at least he'd already learned about his new existence.
So he travelled with Death with his family at his side, and he learned of death and of souls and of spirits and slowly, steadily, settled into his existence as a spirit of death. He saw all the continents and many, many cities – and countless dead spirits before they vanished at the swipe of Death's Scythe.
And at some point Hallow Evans stopped sounding like a stranger's name – but rather something he might be able to live with. Or exist with, at any rate.
10. lantern light
It took almost two months before Harry started figuring out the power of his two tools. The Death Eater Mask seemed obvious at first – it let him see the spirits of the recently dead. The Gamekeeper's Lantern didn't really seem to do much, except burn ceaselessly without fuel, its flame eerily green.
At Death's indifferent – and his family's excited – prompting, though, Harry tested if he could do anything with them. It was surprisingly easy to figure it out – but then again, maybe not. After all, the Mask and the Lantern were part of him. Using them should and eventually did come naturally for him.
If he concentrated, he could look elsewhere, when he was looking through the mask. At first it was random and strange and a bit overwhelming, but as he learned to look, he could see. The first thing he looked at like that was a hospital – a children's hospital, actually – where a young boy was struggling with the end stage of cancer, with a machine breathing for him, and heart monitor ticking heart beats like a timer. As he watched, the boy gasped a breath and let it out slowly through slack lips, and then the heart monitor wailed with his passing.
A moment later, he and Death had stepped through the Mist with Harry's four companions close behind them. "I saw him die," Harry murmured, eying the boy with a frown. "Why?"
"Hm," Death answered, and reaped the boy's soul.
The more Harry looked through the mask, the more he could see. At first it was always death he saw. A little girl on a battle field, caught by a stray bullet. Another little girl on a climbing frame who fell at a bad angle. A boy out in the ocean, too ambitious, dragged under by a stray current. A girl, barely a year old, who knocked over a bottle of laundry detergent and gleefully stuffed the powder in her mouth. A boy, maybe eight, sitting in the corner of an alleyway, starving to death.
Harry forced himself to learn to look elsewhere out of simple self-defence. No matter how many deaths he saw, no matter how many reapings he witnessed, it wasn't easy to see children dead. And seeing them die? He didn't have the fortitude for that – and the knowledge that he could do nothing to help them.
Some spirits could. Some could take people and guide them to safety, to leave them gifts of food or safety when they needed it, or just guide other peoples to them. There were lots of spirits specifically for guarding people, guarding children. But spirits of death weren't among those spirits. The only thing they could help with was helping people die faster, and very few of them bothered to do that either. Their jobs were simply too busy to bother, so they just let nature take its toll.
Eventually Harry learned to look where he wanted to – mostly by looking at certain people. If he thought of Ron he could see him, at Hogwarts or the Burrow or the Ministry. Ron was going back to school for the next year with Hermione, to graduate with Ginny and Luna's class. For now he stuck close to his family, to his mother especially. She was sick and tired a lot and not quite over Fred's death. He had one of Harry's wanted posters pinned to his wall and sometimes he stared at it with a tired look on his face.
Hermione was getting training for the Ministry – she was already slated to become one of the undersecretaries for Kingsley, and was already running around the Ministry, trying to help fix the damage done by the Death Eaters and Voldemort's puppet Minister. She worked relentlessly and furiously, sometimes with tears in the corner of her eyes, but she kept on working. It kept her distracted.
Ginny was still mourning, both her brother and Harry. She did it in private, where no one saw, in her room and in locked bathrooms, rubbing furiously at the tears that seemed to run without her say so. With people she was all brave smiles and fortitude. She, with lot of the other Dumbledore's Army members, was at Hogwarts for the summer, helping with the rebuilding.
Neville was there too, fixing the greenhouses with the still injured Professor Sprout, who couldn't quite walk on her own anymore. They were removing the dangerous and poisonous plants and bringing back the original curriculum of fungi. It looked a bit like they were also adding a greenhouse for edible vegetables. Hogwarts' vegetable patch had been tainted by battle, by blood and bodies – it would be a few years before anyone wanted to eat anything grown there.
Luna was writing a book.
It wasn't always easy looking at them – often it was so hard, to see them mourn and move on. But at the same time, it was easier than watching little kids die.
Then there was the Lantern, and that took a little while longer to figure out. It wasn't in the best of circumstances when he did figure it out either.
It was another death scene, and not a pretty one. A mugging in the alley of a big city. A man half mad with whatever crap he had running in his veins was beating up an older man. "Say that again, you bitch, say that again!" the killer was shouting gleefully, cackling, his eyes wide and mad.
It was night and very dark, so Harry lifted the Lantern to see a little better – and the flame flared, grew, lighting the whole alleyway. It was probably the first time Harry had used it for actually lighting, and the effect was instantaneous. As he and Death watched, the spirit of the older man sat up from his body – and the man kicking him recoiled in horror.
"What?" the druggie asked. "What, what, what the hell man, what is that?"
"You fucking bastard," the spirit of the old man said, looking extremely annoyed. "You killed me!"
Harry blinked, sharing a surprised look with his family, and the druggie let out a screech and turned, running away like Death was behind him.
"He killed me!" the old man said, making a motion after the druggie. "Kicked my pacemaker out and cracked my ribs!"
"Fascinating," Death said, glancing at Harry, at the Lantern, the flame still flared out. Then he reaped the old man, who went muttering annoyed curses at the guy who had killed him. Death rested the Scythe against his shoulder and turned to Harry. "Seems like you've got quite an interesting tool there, Hallow Evans."
"Huh," Harry answered, lifting the Lantern. He frowned at it, willing it to burn a little less bright, and it did, the flame returning to its usual size. "So I can make the living see the dead, huh? He didn't see us though. Didn't see my family either."
"That's because we're not the dead. And your family aren't quite either, anymore," Death said, reaching one bony finger out and poking at the glass. "Quite the interesting tool. It wouldn't be much use for most of us spirits of death, but you… you do have a different duty, it seems."
Harry glanced at his family. The changes in them had been very gradual and he'd almost missed them at first, but yeah, they were changing. Sirius for some reason had straw coming out every fold of his clothing, from the ends of his sleeves and his neckline where it created a rough facsimile of a fur lining. Remus's hair had taken a wilder cast and was descending down to his jaw line, his ears were pointed and his eyes glowed yellow and when he smiled, he showed fangs. James was turning oddly transparent and white – where the rest had gotten more solid, he'd gotten less so and now glowed like, well, a ghost. With Lily it was hard to say what her changes were like, but she'd picked up a pointy hat from somewhere and her robes were changing, fading from green to black.
The four had been placing bets on what was happening to them – Remus was the one who had nailed it, the moment his nails had started growing, and when his arm hair had started resembling fur. They were now waiting for James to start floating, Lily to find a broom and when Sirius's skin would start resembling sack cloth.
They weren't quite spirits or ghosts anymore, not the way they had been – excluding James, though who knew what his transformation was actually doing for him. He could still touch things, regardless of the fact that he seemed to have about as much presence as the constant fog around them. But whatever they were, spirits or monsters, they still didn't like talking in Death's presence – especially not with Death looking at them.
Death hummed at the sight of them, his glowing eyes nailing each of them in turn and making them almost hide behind Harry. Then the Grim Reaper looked at Harry.
"I think you've learned enough," he said. "I've shown you only a bit of the way, but it's obvious my way isn't your way, your duties won't be same as mine," Death shook his head and put his Scythe away. "Time for us to part ways."
"What, already?" Harry asked with surprise.
"You know how to travel in the Mist, you know, if need be, how to contact other spirits. You can recognise them and identify them – and you know how to find me, if you need help," Death said. "That's more than most of us know, so early on. From here on staying with me will only hinder your development. Your powers are different from mine, and so I can't teach you how to use them. It's up to you to figure them out."
Harry frowned, looking at the Lantern. "I guess they are," he said and lowered the Lantern to his side. "It still seems like there's so much more to learn. I still haven't figured out anything about this. Not really."
"No. But you are starting to," Death said. "There is always much to learn – and we never stop learning, we never stop changing. Every year there are new spirits, every year some older ones vanish. There is no way for me to teach you all."
"Right," Harry sighed, rubbing at his chin – he wanted to rub at his forehead, maybe pinch the bridge of his nose, but he couldn't through the mask. "Right, okay. Any suggestions about what I should do next, though? Just out of curiosity."
Death cast him a critical look. "I thought that would be obvious," he said. "You prepare."
Harry blinked, glancing up. "For what?"
"For All Hallows' Eve. It's in less than four months," Death said. "And it is your day. The day you were selected for."
"Oh," Harry muttered. "Right. That."
"That," Death agreed. "I cannot tell you what to do, or how to prepare, or what to do when the day comes. It's up to you to figure it out," Death added and turned to walk away. "I'm sure you can figure it out, Hallow Evans of All Hallows' Eve. And if nothing else, you can take comfort in the fact that Halloween has managed on its own for a long while before your arrival – the likelihood is you don't have to do much."
"Comforting," Harry muttered after him and then Death was gone, vanished into the mist. Harry made a rude gesture after him and then turned to his family who were looking at him with expressions varying from sympathetic to excited.
"You'll be alright, Harry dear," Lily said, reaching out and running her hand over his hair. "And we'll help as much as we can."
"We're gonna have an adventure!" Sirius said, throwing his hands up and sending bits of straw flying. "And with the Mist we can go everywhere. Let's go to Vegas!"
"Idiot," Remus rumbled at him, shoving at him with one clawed hand and nearly sending him flying. "What's the point? We wouldn't even be able to do anything there. We're invisible and people walk through us – and yet we can't walk through walls."
"We got the worst of all worlds," James – who probably would eventually be able to walk through walls – said cheerfully.
"But the clubs --!"
"No clubs," Lily said severely. "Any sort of clubs. Harry's not even eighteen yet!"
"I'm almost eighteen," Harry murmured. He was just a few weeks from his birthday, actually. Or he would've been, if he hadn't died. "And it's Hallow. You need to stop using my true name. You'll end up putting me at risk, flinging it around."
"I know, Hallow, and I'm sorry, but it's hard. We gave you that name," Lily sighed, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and squeezing him apologetically. "I'll try harder."
"So if we aren't going to Vegas, then what?" Sirius asked, worrying sullenly at the straw sticking out from the end of his sleeve.
"How about we just… look around for a bit," James said. "We're still changing, all of us. And there's probably a lot we don't know about Hallow's powers. Let's just not… run headlong into things, alright?"
"Well that's a first," Lily snorted at him.
"We should probably try and get some reading done. About Halloween and Hallowtide, and the sorts of spirits we might encounter," Remus growled, ignoring Sirius's harrumph of pure disgust. "Can we go to Hogwarts and see if we can use the library?"
Harry felt a pang of longing at that thought. He'd seen Hogwarts, of course, when he looked at his friends, but to actually go there… "No," he said and shook his head. "Not to Hogwarts." His grave would be there. He'd avoided seeing it so far, but he knew he'd been buried at Hogwarts, not far from Dumbledore. A symbol of the Boy Who Lived even in death. It kind of annoyed him, he would've preferred to be buried in Godric's Hollow, but that was beside the point.
"No, actually," Harry said. "I'm done being worried and learning and being careful. I've six years of now mostly useless Hogwarts education behind me, not to mention the muggle one before that. I'm done with schooling," he decided. "I want to see and experience things. And after all this… gloom and doom with Death, I want to do something exciting. Something… thrilling."
"That's the spirit!" Sirius said, pounding him happily on the back and then cackled. "Oh my gosh, I just realised all the spirit puns I can make now!"
"Oh great," Lily sighed while James's eyes were lit by an unholy glow as he too realised the sudden potential of many bad jokes their existence made extra hilarious. "You know you don't even have an audience to appreciate your comedy, right?" she asked in exasperation.
"Don't care!" they answered in unison.
Remus rolled his eyes at them and looked at Harry. "So, what then?" the werewolf asked. "Where to, Hallow?"
Harry stoked the fire of the Gamekeeper's Lantern to burn a bit brighter before holding it up. He grinned at his deceased family as the Mist began glowing green around them in the Lantern's light. "Let's got have an adventure."