Chapter Text
Everybody wanna know what my Achilles' heel is:
Love, I don't get enough of it.
All I get are these vampires and bloodsuckers,
All I see are these fake fucks with no fangs
Tryna draw blood from my ice cold veins.
(Are my eyes more red than the Devil is?)
I smell a massacre.
"Monster" Kanye West ft. JAY-Z, Rick Ross, Bon Iver, & Nicki Minaj
Criiiiick. Criiiick. Criiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick.
For a single solitary second, every figure in the room froze. Multiple sets of eyes strained upward to find the source of the metallic grating somewhere near the high ceiling.
When the great gold and crystal chandelier shook, various breathes were taken in and held.
There was an ear-splitting screeeeeach of finality, and gravity brought it down. Reality swept back into motion in double-time and many things happened at once.
Bellatrix let out an inhuman scream of fury and dove for cover just as the chandelier crashed to the floor in a twist of metal and an explosion of crystal.
"Hermione!" Ron yelled, and sprinted for the wreckage.
"You!" Narcissa gasped, eyes near comically wide, wand pointed at a grimly triumphant Dobby.
Harry charged toward Draco. The other boy was doubled over, wiping frantically with bloody fingers at the crystal shrapnel embedded in his eyes. Slamming bodily into him, Harry easily wrest the three wands out of his slackened grip as the blonde boy fell to the floor still cupping his face. Narcissa cried out in dismayed terror and rushed to her son's side as Harry sprung away again.
"You will not hurt Harry Potter! Dobby has come to save him," the little elf squeaked defiantly in the face of Bellatrix's spitting rage.
A fiery lash seemed to come out of nowhere and split the raven-haired wizard's skull right down the center. The Chosen One's vision swam and he grimaced against the searing pain, but he couldn't afford to slow down. Harry could feel him getting steadily closer, and knew that he was very, very angry. They had only scant moments left.
"Ron, catch!" Harry shouted, tossing him two of the wands. They clattered to the floor next to where the ginger teen knelt with an unconscious Hermione and bleeding Griphook.
Bellatrix whipped around, dismissing the house elf for now. The feverish gleam in her eyes fell to Harry's friends as Ron scrabbled with shaking fingers for the spare wands. Despite not having a wand herself, the rabid woman moved with single-minded intent. Snarling ferociously, the Death Eater raised the silver dagger high above her head.
"DOBBY!" Harry bellowed, voice breaking with heart-stopping panic. "Take them and come back for me! NOW!"
Crack!
Time seemed to slow as Dobby rematerialized across the room. Ron and the goblin reached out and grabbed the elf's outstretched arm, but Harry's eyes, fixed as they were on Bellatrix, were widening in horror.
Flinging her arm forward like the crack of a whip, the witch released the knife. It spun in hypnotizing silver rotations as Harry tracked it's progress across the room.
Dobby reached down with one hand and gripped Hermione's shoulder. The long spindly fingers of the other hand snapped together, and space started to warp and wrap around the little group.
'No!' Harry's mind screamed.
They weren't going to make it.
Adrenaline raced through his veins and there was a buzzing sound in his ears. The Boy Who Lived raised his wand arm, but his muscles felt painfully slow on the uptake. Harry Potter stood helpless by as the cursed blade plunged into the rapidly coalescing matter that was his friends.
And then he was alone.
Bellatrix threw back her curly black head and let out an ear-piercing cackle.
"NOOO!" Harry screamed.
'No, no, no, no, no!' his mind chanted disbelievingly. 'Dobby will be back. They're fine!' he told himself with hollow words.
But it was too late, and Dobby didn't come back.
Agony, the likes of which he hadn't encountered since that fateful night in the Department of Mysteries, lanced through the young wizard's body. The stolen wand slipped from limp fingers and Harry buckled heavily onto the shard-strewn marble floor. Curling into himself, it was all the boy could do to clutch at his head as blood started to seep from the cursed scar on his brow.
A thunderous boom preceded the Dark Lord in all of his murderous rage.
Bellatrix's laughter cut off with an abrupt choke, and she threw herself prostrate onto the floor. Narcissa covered Draco's prone form as though to shield him with her own body. Lucius and Greyback didn't move, still lying unconscious in glittering heaps amongst the rubble.
Silence reigned for a long moment in which Harry could only squeeze his eyes shut and try not to retch. His scar felt like a gaping wound in his skull, such was Lord Voldemort's fury and proximity.
As the dust settled, the temperature in the room plummeted.
"Harrrry Potttter..."
Hearing that cold rasping voice caused goosepimples to break out on the back of Harry's neck and arms. Shifting onto his hands and knees, the raven-haired teen slowly raised his head, looking up through the rivulets of warm blood that streaked down his nose and into his mouth.
'Stall for time,' he thought to himself, mind whirling in desperation.
However, if Harry thought that he could come up with an escape plan during his enemy's inevitable monologue--perhaps bide his time until Dobby could return for him--he was sorely mistaken.
Without any ado whatsoever, Voldemort's lipless mouth curled, half sneer and half snarl, as he raised his yew wand.
"Avada Kadevra!"
Blinking rapidly, Harry tried to clear the fog from his blurry eyes. When that didn't work he brought up his hand to rub at them and found his glasses to be missing.
"Great," he grumbled, sitting up.
Looking down, he started and clamped his arms down in front of him. He was, somehow, entirely nude.
When nothing else happened, the young raven wizard began examining himself for clues and soon became oddly absorbed in the task. He noted for the first time things like the whorls in his fingertips and the fine, nearly translucent hairs on his thighs--small details he'd never been able to see before. Apparently he didn't need his glasses anymore.
Harry looked about, puzzled. It wasn't his eyes that were blurry, it was the world around him.
A bright white mist swirled lazily about him, and vague shapes drifted in and out of sight in the distance as he watched. A high glass domed ceiling, golden handrails off to his left, a simple wooden bench just in front of him. He sat on a wide open marble platform that was vaguely reminiscent of King's Cross.
The hair on his arms prickled warningly when a harsh rattle and wet thump broke the soft muted silence. Green eyes narrowed on the bench, or rather, what lay under the bench.
Rocking forward onto his hands, Harry shuffled the few feet forward on his knees to peek at the small shadowed form.
He gasped and jerked back slightly.
It was like a babe, but mutilated and wrong. Blood and other viscous fluids coated the thing's twisted purple body. Lying limply on the stone floor, it crackled and trembled, struggling to draw breath.
Disgusted yet concerned, Harry reached out hesitantly and brushed his knuckles against the infant's side. It whimpered and it's head flopped in Harry's direction, swollen face pinched in apparent agony.
The young man bit his lip, deliberating, before gently scooping the poor creature into his arms. He suppressed a shudder as its slimy flesh came in contact with his bare chest.
"Shhh," he whispered to it, settling himself onto the bench.
He wondered what was wrong with the baby, and how he could help it. Perhaps he could find a healer? But then again, he didn't know exactly where he was, and everything just seemed off.
Recalling a pair of furious red-slitted eyes and an ominous flash of green light, Harry wondered if maybe he was in the afterlife.
"Am I dead?" he asked the child cradled in his arms. It burrowed it's smooshed little faced into the crook of his arm and seemed to be breathing a little easier now.
"Yes and no," came a voice wispy like the wind.
Harry jolted and looked up to find a rapidly growing black hole a few meters in front of him. He observed with trepidation as it rippled and darkened, a harsh disparity against the ethereal white landscape. The void twisted and finally settled into the shape of a tall cloaked figure.
Perhaps he ought to have been scared, but it was difficult to feel any emotion too strongly with that opaque mist swaddling him like insulating cotton.
"Who are you?" Harry asked, tilting his head curiously at the hooded apparition.
"Death," it hissed, like the rustling of fallen leaves. The shroud of its blackened aura drew up around it in a way that seemed rather self-important.
"So I am dead then?" Harry checked, absently rocking the babe.
"You did indeed die, Harry Potter, but you are not dead," Death replied cryptically, gliding a bit closer. Harry scooted over to one side of the bench, but the other ignored the invitation.
Death leaned forward, appearing to study the raven for a moment before elaborating, "You are the first and only to unite my Hallows."
Harry's eyes bulged in their socket and he goggled for a few seconds before abruptly jumping to his feet and shouting, "Hah!" He jabbed a victorious finger at Death.
The child in his arms began to fuss and writhe again. "Sorry, sorry!" he whispered loudly, hoisting it onto his shoulder and lightly patting it's bum in what he hoped was a soothing manner.
"Wait," he began after the baby calmed once more. "That doesn't make any sense. I have the cloak, and I'm pretty sure I've got the stone too. What about the Elder Wand?"
"The Deathstick passed through many hands before it came to you," the maleficent figure explained. "Gellert Grindewald, Albus Dumbledore, Draco Malfoy..."
"Woah," Harry interrupted with a little shake of his head, holding out a palm. He mulled over the information while Death waited patiently for him to connect the dots. He thought about his recent visions, and of that terrible night on the astronomy tower. "Do you mean to tell me that Dumbledore mastered the wand when he defeated Grindewald, and then it went to Malfoy when he disarmed Dumbledore?"
Death bowed its cowled head in affirmation.
"But I never-" he cut himself off, mind whirling with new information. "I disarmed Malfoy!" Simply swiping the ferret's wand out of his sweaty fingers seemed a bit like cheating, but he'd take what he could get. Harry threw his head back and laughed, albeit a little maniacally.
"I'm the Master of Death!" he crowed to the misty sky.
Harry winced and hushed, "sorry, sorry," again as the infant let out a piteous whine and scrabbled at his shoulder with tiny nubby fingers. He covered it's ear with the palm not supporting the thing's little bum to shield it from further outbursts.
"You are not my master," Death corrected sharply. Its aura darkened impossibly more, the surrounding ambient light sucked into its void like fuel on a fire. "You have mastered only your own death. Though," it paused and tilted it's head, contemplating the boy before it, "I may be persuaded to aide you."
"Why would you help me if I am not your master?" Harry asked somewhat suspiciously.
Death moved forward to hover directly in front of the young man. It raised an arm slowly, and the voluminous tattered sleeve slipped down just far enough to reveal bleached bone. A skeletal finger traced smoothly against Harry's jaw. He and the little one in his arms shivered simultaneously, veins turned to ice water. The sensation was much, much worse than accidentally walking through a ghost.
Allowing its arm to drop, Death backed slightly away, for which Harry was grateful.
"Death is... lonely," it answered in a barely-there whisper. Harry wasn't sure if it was speaking conceptually now, or in the third person. Death spoke again before he could ask. "What a curious new predicament you are," the robed figure continued in a much lighter tone, or at least as light as was possible for Death itself.
"I'm going to be honest," Harry admitted flatly after an awkward moment of silence. "I have no idea what the hell is happening right now. I'm fairly certain I've lost my mind, actually." He settled himself back on the bench with a sigh. Shifting the finally resting child into a more comfortable position and crossing his ankles, Harry peered around the empty space as if searching for answers.
"Sooo..." Harry jiggled his toes and tried to settle on one of a billion questions. "You're not a myth then?"
"Obviously not," came the dry reply, the drawl horrendously Snape-like.
"Right, 'course" Harry nodded. "So you gave my ancestors your Hallows, and now somehow or other I have them," he reiterated. "And now I am the Master of Death, but not really your master. Do I get any special super powers then?"
"Beyond the inability to die, perfect invisibility, the ability the raise the dead, and an all-powerful wand? No."
"Hmmm," Harry responded noncommittally, letting his head fall back and closing his eyes. He felt very tired all of a sudden, which he would have figured as impossible seeing as he was already slightly dead. "I guess it's not the same if I have all three Hallows without actually having them."
Long ivory digits suddenly dug into the bare flesh over top of Harry's heart, and he yelped in surprise. Looking down crossly, green eyes widened to see dark lines sweep out under his skin from the point at which Death's fingertips made contact. Inky black spread in a cross on his chest before branching mid-pectorally and again just below the apex of his collar bone. A crisp circle completed the otherwise angular design.
Harry's questing fingers replaced Death's as he wonderingly explored what was apparently his new tattoo.
"The Deathly Hallows," he breathed, tracing the symbol.
"They are a part of you now. If you have need of them, you will have them," Death said.
Harry didn't think that that made much sense either, but he simply shrugged and thought about the Elder Wand. Without even knowing what it looked like, Harry wished it into existence. The thick vertical line bisecting his chest shone briefly gold, and there it was.
Harry held the Wand of Destiny in a trembling hand.
"Woah," he croaked out. Turning the knobbly white length of wood reverently in his palm, dark brows drew together. He'd seen this wand somewhere before...
Of course. Dumbledore.
"Ah!" he yelped, and dropped it on the floor with a clatter. After a moment it faded into the mist.
"Did you steal that from Dumbledore's grave?" he squawked.
Death waved a ghoulish hand dismissively. "I and my Hallows will always be with you. You shall never suffer death, Harry Potter, only return here briefly while your earthly vessel is restored. It is almost time to go back now."
"Wait!" Harry pleaded. "I have so many more questions!"
"Call for me, and I will answer," was all it said before the surrounding mist began to swirl and fade.
Harry held the malformed babe securely in his arms as the bench vanished right out from under him and he began to fall backwards.