Chapter Text
Contrary to his friends’ beliefs, Harry does not, in fact, have a death wish. He just doesn’t particularly care whether he lives or dies, which is completely different.
Somehow.
Hermione keeps arguing that it’s practically the same, and while she’s usually right about most things, Harry feels like this is one of those times she’s blatantly wrong. Or at least a little wrong. Wrong-adjacent.
Blinking against the endless sea of white, he regrets the fact he won’t get to discuss the different scales of right and wrong with her over a pint again.
Getting to his feet, he patiently waits for the swirling expanse of white to resume the familiar shape of Kings Cross Station, the same way it had last time he was here.
Only nothing happens.
“Oh come on,” he mutters, frowning. “This can’t be all there is.”
His voice melts into the white mist, the sound dissipating until he’s unsure whether he actually spoke at all.
It’s unsettling. The hairs rise on the back of his neck.
Isn’t death supposed to bring peace and acceptance and all that rot? Where’s the train ready to carry him onwards, to the great Beyond where all his dead loved ones await?
“Hello?” he calls out, turning around in a circle.
All he sees is white, white, white. The sound of his voice disappears into the aether, the resulting silence ominous and heavy, pressing against his ears as if miles underneath the surface of the sea. He looks down at his body to reassure himself he has a body, that there is at least one solid thing in this unnerving whiteness.
He stomps his foot, and while it makes no sound, there is indeed something solid underneath him. He takes a tentative step forward, and when the creepy whiteness simply remains, unchanged, he figures he may as well keep moving.
He has no idea how far he walks, nor how long it takes. Time appears to have ceased to matter, which he supposes makes sense; what doesn’t make sense is that his bladder is getting more and more insistent, which it really shouldn’t considering 1, he’s dead, and 2, if time doesn’t matter, surely, he shouldn’t have any pressing bodily functions to attend to.
Alas, he’s forced to stop his wandering eventually, shifting his weight from one leg to the other in the classic need-to-wee-dance all human beings presumably have programmed into their very DNA.
“Hello?” he calls out again, raising his voice a little higher this time, but the sound of it dissipates the same as it had earlier.
A shiver of unease rakes its cold fingers down his spine, the silence pressing in once more. It had been easier to ignore when he wasn’t confronted with the eeriness of how quickly the absence of noise reestablished itself.
He’s torn between his desire to make sounds to break through this awful hush or keeping quiet so that he won’t have to experience the silence forcefully slamming against his eardrums once more.
In the end, a weird sense of propriety forces his mouth open.
“I have to pee!”
A big fat load of nothingness greets his announcement.
“I mean it!” He looks around the rolling, white mist, trying to catch a glimpse of anything that might have reacted to his warning.
Nothing.
So Harry shivers and unzips, takes himself in hand, and paints the white mist yellow. Momentarily, at least, until it disappears the same way all sounds have.
But at least he feels better when he tucks himself away again, bodily needs sated.
Except… if he has this need, it stands to reason others remain as well. Sleep. Hunger. Thirst. He hasn’t come across anything in his wanderings so far; how on earth is he supposed to subsist off of nothing?
Can he die twice? Or will he just go on forever, so thirsty it’s like someone’s shoved a glowing hot iron poker down his throat, so hungry his stomach grows teeth, gnawing and tearing and trying to consume itself?
For the first time since waking up here, Harry feels genuinely afraid.
He may not particularly care whether he’s alive or dead, but to be stuck in this endless void, half-alive, alone, and constantly suffering?
…is he in hell?
Movements jerky, he starts walking again, trying to breathe through the panic squeezing his chest like a vice, nearly as suffocating as the silence relentlessly pressing against his ears.
Is this truly it? The so-called peace at the end of the road?
He’ll go mad within a fortnight. Maybe even sooner. Not like he was all that stable to begin with, if he’s truly honest with himself.
A laugh burbles out of his mouth, the hysterical edge of it melting away alongside the tiny sob that follows.
“Really, Master?”
From one moment to the next, in the blink of an eye, Harry is no longer alone.
The entity in front of him has no distinguishing features and seems to be made up entirely of black swathes of billowing fabric, standing out starkly against the intensely white, misty background. It looks more like a dementor than anything else, except there’s no joy-sucking or intense cold going on. It’s certainly creepy, though, which Harry supposes is oddly fitting in the context.
“What?” he croaks, frozen in place.
“I’d hoped for something a bit more entertaining than a walk, a piss and a meltdown.” The entity appears to tilt its head, though it’s hard to tell whether it actually has a head to tilt. “Honestly, where’s the fire, the defiance, the ‘fuck you world, I’m Harry Potter’? You’re lucky Voldemort never figured out that some mild sensory deprivation and an hour alone was enough to break you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Though I suppose you’ve been broken for quite some time, haven’t you, Master?”
The entity disappears, leaving Harry blinking against the vast expanse of white.
“And let me tell you, it’s been boring.” The voice is right by his ear, so close it’s enough to send Harry stumbling forward to get away from it, skin crawling with unease and not a little bit of fright.
When he twists around, the entity is no longer there, and the voice appears right by his other ear this time, “I’d had hopes for Ginny, for some great, epic love story, but then you went and fumbled that.”
Harry’s spine goes rigid, eyes fluttering shut at the reminder of how his relationship crashed and burned in the wake of war. “Fuck you.”
“Bit better, but still rather tame. I’m not asking for much here, Master.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?” Harry demands, opening his eyes.
The entity, right in front of him, makes an unsettling sound; like a knife on aluminium combined with gravel caught in a washing machine. It could, conceivably, be laughter – albeit the most fucked up laughter Harry’s ever heard.
“My, you are slow sometimes, aren’t you? A cloak, a wand and a stone, sound familiar?”
“But… that was just a story! You can’t be serious.”
“I would make a pun about being deadly serious here, but really, it’s beneath me. I suppose I inadvertently did either way by refusing to do so, but I’m sure no one will mind too much.”
Harry looks around in confusion, though wherever he looks, there the entity appears.
No one else, though.
“So you’re actually Death, then?”
“Ding, ding, ding. Potter gets a prize.”
“…I do?”
“No.”
Suddenly, the entity is close enough to fill Harry’s entire vision, and he takes a startled step back.
“You’re dead,” Death says, looming ominously over him. “Dead people don’t get prizes.”
Death doesn’t move the way people do; it merely is, whether that’s right in front of him, behind him, or somehow all around him. It makes his brain hurt trying to make sense of it.
Harry swallows, doing his best to ignore the insistent hammering of his heart. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”
“How should I know? There's an overarching idea, of course, but they’re mostly making it up as they go along.”
“Who?”
“None of your business. You wouldn’t understand anyway; your brain couldn’t take it. But we really should be getting on with it, don’t you agree?”
Harry tries to take a step back, but finds he’s unable to do so, feet planted firmly on whatever he’s standing on. He’s stuck. His pulse ratchets up another notch.
“Can you please just – send me along? Isn’t there a train or something I can take to the Beyond already?”
“Aw, do you want to see your parents? Your godfather, perhaps?” The mocking tone is oddly terrifying, and Harry keeps his locked limbs from trembling through sheer force of will.
“I – well, yeah.”
“Is that an order, Master?”
Harry swallows, figuring it’s worth a shot. “Yeah. Yes. I order you to take me to the Beyond – the Afterlife.”
It doesn’t work. Death simply laughs that unsettling laugh again.
“How do you know this isn’t it? Maybe this is exactly where souls go when they die. Maybe you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be for all eternity.”
“But I – that can’t be true!”
“Why not? What could mortals possibly know about what happens after Me?”
Panic threatens to snare Harry’s throat shut. “No. There – there’s more. There has to be.”
Death appears to be inspecting its nails, only it doesn’t have arms or hands or even nails.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
Harry’s tongue darts out and wets his dry lips. “Last time Dumbledore said I could go on if I so chose. I want to. I want to go. I’m done.”
“I always wondered about that; why see your old headmaster of all people? Why not your parents, or at least your godfather? Wouldn’t they have made more sense?”
Harry ignores Death’s musings, as he doesn’t really have a good answer, and besides, Death ignored him first.
No matter the horror of his current situation – frozen in place and taunted by some eldritch being hellbent on messing with him – frustration bubbles underneath his skin, nearly bringing tears to his eyes.
“Please. I’m ready to die. Just let me move on.”
Everything turns black. Harry never would have imagined he’d miss the white.
Death’s voice reverberates in his skull until it feels fit to explode.
“No.”
Everything hurts.
His leg is on fire. So is his forehead, and his lungs, and especially his throat. Every gasping breath is agony, every slight movement unbearable torture.
A sob catches in his burning throat as he forces his eyes open, blinking blearily, glasses cutting into his face from how hard they’ve been jammed onto his nose.
What he sees makes no sense.
He’s tied upright to a giant, marble gravestone, slumped over ropes wound tightly over his midsection all the way down his legs. The ropes are red, wet and glistening, yet they have no give; he’s securely anchored to the gravestone. He can only just make out a wand lying useless by his feet.
There’s a soft rustle of scales on grass, and he stifles a whimper at the sight of the snake he last saw cut in two by Neville wielding Gryffindor’s sword, now slithering away from him toward a giant stone cauldron some feet away.
This can’t be happening, not again, not again, please, not again –
But regardless of Harry’s insistent wishing, Wormtail lies on the ground next to the cauldron, sobbing and whimpering, clutching at his stump.
And next to him, leaning over the cauldron, is Death.
“Might wanna close your eyes now,” it says, and hearing it sound so cheerful is enough to make Harry obey.
Even through his lids, the diamond sparks emitting from the stone cauldron are blindingly bright, and he screws his eyes shut further, trembling from head to toe.
He fights against his restraints, unsuccessfully; they’re too tight, the knots too carefully tied. He starts to hyperventilate, far more terrified than he’d been in the white void, and his every nerve ending alight with pain.
This is surely hell. Forced to relive one of his absolute worst memories, his body nearly completely broken, helpless as a child.
Except… he’s not a child. Not any longer.
“Let’s make this interesting, shall we?” Death’s tone remains cheerful.
The bright light disappears, and Harry hesitantly opens his eyes at the same time as loud cracks! reverberate through the night air, too many of them to count, all in short succession. People in dark cloaks and silver masks stride forward, their steps hesitant, as white vapor from the cauldron lays heavy over the clearing.
Harry barely spares them a look. He’s far too busy wrangling his emotions under control enough to get out of this fucking horror show, because he is not actually a helpless child, and he absolutely refuses to go through this ordeal again.
He debates a cutting curse while the Death Eaters inch closer but decides an accio would be simpler; he never did quite get the hang of non-verbal, wandless spells.
He forces magic out of his fingertips and could sob from relief when the wand at his feet wobbles up through the air, and into his palm. His fingers close around the shaft, and the next second, he’s forced out a whispered diffindo at the ropes holding him. They fall away, pooling at his feet.
This, however, has the unintended side-effect of making him topple forward, landing on his face in a crumpled heap on the grass, his leg unable to sustain his weight.
His heart races, blood rushing in his ears loudly enough that he almost misses how a Death Eater speaks.
“My Lord?”
Get away, get away, get away, Harry chants in his mind, forcing his face off the ground, grinding his teeth together at the pain shooting down his leg like liquid fire as he shuffles into a seated position.
The portkey, get the fucking portkey!
A small, insistent voice tries to make itself heard over Harry’s panicked thoughts, as he stares wildly around trying to catch sight of the Triwizard cup that should be close by. He finally finds it, some ways away in the distance, next to what he presumes is Cedric’s dead body.
Look. Everything’s wrong. Look.
He tries to catch his breath, reluctantly tearing his eyes away from the portkey, to pay attention as his brain quickly catalogues and compares what he sees to his memories.
Voldemort isn’t there. No one’s risen from the cauldron. Wormtail is still slumped over next to it, whimpering, cradling his stump against his chest.
So how are the Death Eaters already on site? There’s been no one to summon them.
Except…
Except Death.
Only Death is gone now, too.
Harry doesn’t get any further than that in his analysis.
The cauldron explodes; momentarily lighting up the clearing like fireworks, throwing him and the approaching Death Eaters and Wormtail and even the snake away, into the darkness.
The marble gravestone breaks his fall, but Harry wishes it hadn’t; it feels like his back is broken in two, and he can’t stop a cry of pain from escaping. Similar cries echo in the night, but a lot further away than he is, nearly indistinct.
Harry can barely think, the pain blinding in its intensity.
Shaky fingers are still gripped around his wand, though, and with a distressed whimper he tries to settle his fractured mind enough to think of a spell, any spell, that might help him right now.
What he finds in the dark, exploded corridors of his mind, is a spell mainly used for field healing that he learned in Auror training. One he’s had cause to use so often it’s become nearly instinctual; perhaps that’s why it’s the only thing he can think of right now.
He points his wand at his leg, sobbing the incantation. A splint appears out of thin air, wrapping around his leg, steadying it. The fact he can even use his hands leads him to believe his back is not actually broken, so he doesn’t do anything about the pain radiating from his spine.
Using the marble headstone for support, he finally drags himself upright, wobbling precariously on his hastily bandaged leg. He sucks down a couple of deep breaths before realising it only hurts more that way. He raises his head to take in the situation.
The cauldron is no longer there; presumably exploded into a million tiny pieces.
No one else has yet found the strength to approach, but he knows it’s only a matter of time.
He wants to get away, desperately, but that small voice that implored him to look makes a return, now telling him something that sends a chill down his aching spine.
You could kill him now. For the greater good.
Harry gasps, drawing air that cuts like knives into his lungs, and wonders what kind of fucking masochist he must be to even consider the greater good at a moment like this. He’d lay down and die right here if he wasn’t terrified of ending up in the white void again.
Fuck the greater good.
Fuck Voldemort.
…and yet, when he staggers forward, dragging his near-useless leg behind him, he does so in the direction of the obliterated cauldron rather than the portkey.
He holds his wand out in front of him, a curse ready on his lips, and shoves his panic aside best he can. He needs to be quick. The Death Eaters could return at any moment; he can hear them approach even now.
A small crater has formed where the cauldron once stood, and at the bottom of it lies what is clearly a person in a crumbled heap, clad in dark fabric.
As Harry nears the edge of the crater, the figure at the bottom of it moves, their groan barely audible over the voices of Death Eaters getting closer.
Harry grips his wand so hard his knuckles whiten.
This is it. Just one curse and this can all be over. Quickly! Quickly!
He raises his wand.
Voldemort raises his head.
Only, when their eyes lock, Harry’s not staring into slit-pupiled red.
Tom Riddle, looking the exact same way as he had when Harry dove headfirst into his diary, stares back at him.
Before Harry has a chance to react, Tomdemort scrambles to his feet and hurries up the small slope until they’re face to face.
“What’s going on, what’s happening?”
Harry’s mouth opens and closes dumbly, no sound emerging. No reply, and most importantly, no curse to end Voldemort’s miserable life on this, the day of his resurrection.
Do it, do it now! Don’t think, just kill him!
Then, red spell fire flashes over their heads, lighting up the night.
Harry ducks instinctively, leg nearly giving out under the hasty movement. There’s no more time – he can’t stay here; he has to get away. He’s in no state to fight dozens of Death Eaters on his own.
The Death Eaters are closing the distance fast, black robes billowing in their haste, silver masks glinting off their lit wands.
Tomdemort lets out a shocked sound, going rigid.
Harry barely notices though, too busy trying to envision home in his mind’s eye. He needs to go, needs to regroup, and he doesn’t need a bloody portkey to do it.
Spells start streaking toward them from the Death Eaters –
He lifts his wand, spins on his heel –
Home, home, home –
A hand clamps around his –
Euphoria –
There are anti-Apparition wards over the area –
Fuck –
A scream tears out of his throat as he pushes more magic into the aether, breaking through the wards –
Sucked into a thin tube and then spat out on the other side, Harry falls to the ground. He doesn’t even have the strength to protest when he realises someone’s landed on top of him.
Why doesn’t he ever get to just pass out from the pain? Why must he continue to endure?
“What just happened?”
His uninvited passenger rolls off him, none too gently, and Harry sucks in a breath through clenched teeth. His vision is pulsing, a thin film over his eyes colouring everything red. He can’t recall ever being in this much pain, which, considering the life he’s lead so far, is saying something.
“Are you alright?”
The concern sounds almost sincere. Harry is tempted to go out laughing at this whole absurd situation. His mind is spinning, his reddened vision darkening at the edges, and he realises he’s done it now. He finally reached his limit.
White void, here I come.
Brown eyes, pale skin, and wavy dark hair fills his vision as Tomdemort leans over him.
Cold, tentative fingers gently brush away Harry’s fringe, and it’s with a strange sense of peace that Harry slips away into the blessed dark.