Chapter 23: Dursley Interlude
Petunia Dursley stared blankly out the window in her kitchen, out at the empty backyard which was slowly deteriorating into unsightliness without the Freak there to keep it in good shape. It was all he was good for, really. Chores. As much as she loathed it and those who could use it, she had to admit that the Freak had been excellent at his chores once she'd taught him properly. While he was away at that school the house tended to accumulate dust and mold, no matter her efforts.
It was obviously some sort of manifestation of it that the Freak had put on their perfectly normal house, and Petunia was always sure to work the boy twice as hard that first week he was back until the house was pristine again.
But that wasn't why Petunia was currently staring at the backyard. She was staring at the backyard because the backyard was staring back at her.
Oh logically she knew the backyard didn't actually have eyes, but that didn't stop the feeling that there was something unnatural out there, looking right at her through the dirty window. She had the feeling that the something in her backyard was grinning, and she could see teeth in the shadows of the shed that did not belong to a human face, and she just knew it had something to do with the Freak and with it.
The eyes and the teeth had been watching her for three hours and twenty-seven minutes. Petunia had counted. They hadn't moved, or blinked, or stopped grinning in three hours and twenty-seven minutes. Petunia hadn't dared look away or leave the kitchen, absolutely certain that the moment her attention left the something in her backyard for even an instant, it would no longer be content to simply grin in the shadows behind the shed. It would do something, a part of Petunia's mind shrieked. It would come into her house—her perfectly normal house—and do something freakish.
So Petunia kept staring out the window, ignoring the long-burnt remains of the chicken she had been making for supper and thanking the God she didn't believe in that Vernon and Dudley wouldn't be back until six. She was the only one in the house, and thus the only one who would have to see the freakishness going on in their perfectly normal backyard.
Behind her, two rooms away, the phone rang. Petunia ignored it, watching how the something in her backyard's grin widened, as if it had heard. She just knew this was the Freak's fault somehow. Obviously he'd done something in that world and brought the attention of them onto her perfectly normal family. The something in the backyard could only belong to that world, after all, and Petunia was a normal housewife with a normal son and a normal husband; why would it have come to them otherwise?
The phone continued to ring, and Petunia continued to ignore it.
Petunia blinked.
The teeth in the shadows of the shed disappeared.
And two rooms behind her, someone picked up the phone.
Petunia whirled, face pale as her entire body went cold with horror. It was in her house. The thing from the backyard was in her house!Without a second thought, Petunia's hand groped for the closest kitchen knife and brandished it like a sword, terrifyingly aware that if the something from her backyard was of that world, her kitchen knife would be absolutely worthless. They had it, after all, and it could do unnatural, horrible things to normal people like her.
She could not hear anything from the other room. The quietness was not normal, not natural. There were always little noises in her house. The floors creaked, the air conditioner thrummed, and she always kept the telly on the news so she could listen for anything important while she cooked.
The house was silent. Utterly. The telly had cut out the moment the teeth had disappeared and the phone had been picked out of its cradle. She could practically feel it oozing all over her perfectly natural home, brought here by the something from her backyard that grinned with too many unnatural teeth.
Petunia inched towards the kitchen door, still brandishing her knife, and made good use of a neck so accustomed to peering over fences to peer around the doorframe instead. There was no one by the phone. She could see it through the door on its end table by the sofa, laying outside its cradle where she definitely had not left it when she used it last.
Heart beating a staccato rhythm, Petunia turned back to the kitchen.
Sharp teeth leered at her from mere inches away, set in a skeletal, gaunt face framed by impossible black eyes and hair that moved like it was aflame. Something in Petunia cracked and broke at the mere sight of it, this something from her backyard. Something in Petunia refused to believe it existed, and something in Petunia died a gibbering, shrieking death as it failed to comprehend the rationality behind its presence in her kitchen. The rest of Petunia, frozen in shock and terror, barely noticed.
Screaming, Petunia leaped back, thrusting the knife forward. "Stay back!" she screeched, waving the knife threateningly. "Stay back, you freak!"
The something from her backyard did not stop grinning as pale fingers reached out and closed delicately around the blade of her knife. Petunia watched numbly as her fine steel knife rusted away into dust in single heartbeat, before wide eyes looked up at shark-like teeth and black eyes without pupil or iris.
"Petunia Dursley," the thing breathed. It did not speak, it breathed. Its voice was low and hoarse, rasping like scales over sand. The sound of it alone made her head ache and her eyes water. This went beyond mere freakishness, beyond it and that world. Petunia looked into black eyes and saw the Abyss staring back at her. "I see you."
Her blood froze in her veins at the crooned, silky words. Her hand, still grasping the empty handle of what had once been her kitchen knife, trembled from where it was still outstretched towards the thing in her house.
"I see you, Petunia Dursley. I see all that you are, all that you have been, and all that you shall ever be. I see you in your entirety, and what an insignificant pustule of an entirety it is." The thing's grin changed, deepening at the edges as already-sharp teeth sharpened further. What had once been an expression of blatant mockery and amusement now reminded Petunia of a hungry beast. She couldn't even scrounge up the courage to be offended that it had basically called her existence an insignificant pustule. "I look upon you and see a soul warped by envy, festering with sores of bitterness and wracked with infected scars of misplaced hatred. It is an ugly, misshapen thing, weeping at its own repugnance." Those Abyssal eyes slowly roved over her trembling form, lingering on her frilly white apron and the delicate gloves still holding the handle of a worthless weapon. "The flesh containing it is not much better."
Despite herself, Petunia managed to drag forth enough pride in herself to ignore the hurtful, cutting words. She was a perfectly normal woman, with normal features and an average amount of beauty. She could not have attracted her Vernon otherwise, and her Dudders was promising to be a very handsome man when he grew up. This… this thing was obviously a freak, just like the boy, and it would be just like them to try and unnerve her like this.
"A freak, am I?" the thing grinned again, sharp and quick and poisonous. Petunia's mind blanked. She had been sure the freaks couldn't actually read minds. "Oh, Tuney," it cooed, and Petunia's heart stuttered in her chest at the nickname only her freak sister had ever called her. "I am not a freak, mortal worm. I am an abomination, an anathema, the Final Oblivion. I am the most unnatural thing you will ever see, and yet I am more natural than any human currently crawling through life like the pitiful insects you are." The thing leaned back slightly, lips closing over sharp teeth in an expression that was simultaneously condescending and amused. "I was here first, after all."
"W-what are you?" Petunia whispered. She knew this was no man. No, this wasn't even one of them. They were freaks, yes, but compared to this creature even the freaks were normal. "What do you want?" she demanded, voice cracking as it went up several octaves. She spared a fleeting thought of gratitude that her Dudders wasn't home; even if this thing were to kill her—which her heavy heart was starting to insist was highly likely—maybe it would be satisfied with her life and leave her son alone?
For a single, ephemeral moment, Petunia felt a close kinship with her deceased sister who had given her life for that of her son. Then the moment was gone, and the creature had lashed out, snake-strike quick, and cold, skeletal fingers wrapped around her throat like a band of solid steel.
Pain.
Petunia didn't exist anymore. She was no longer the wife of Vernon Dursley, the daughter of Rose Evans, the mother of Dudley. She was no longer a human woman. She no longer was.
She could think, but only because the thing holding what used to be her body by the throat allowed her to. She existed, but not as she once had, and only because it was allowed her. She could barely even refer to herself as feminine in her own thoughts anymore, the designation no longer seeming quite so important.
She also now knew exactly what was holding onto her, and felt a fear that went beneath skin and bone to the quivering soul beneath. She felt a pull towards this creature, this demon, as if someone had wrapped her in chains and was dragging her inexorably towards the thing that had just ripped her from her body. But the fingers locked around what had once been her throat kept her in place, and the resistance of that pull was more painful than anything she could remember feeling in her entire life.
"Miserable wretch," Death spoke, and it was utterly unlike the amused, cold rasp that it had used before when it had been wearing its human skin. Death spoke in a voice like liquid silver, smooth and cool and patient. It was a voice content to wait out the end of the universe before it so much as moved.
The thing looking back at her was not human, not even remotely. It wore the skin of a man, but she could see beneath the thin veneer of flesh now and the only thing that existed there was the Void. Had she not been stuck between life and death, merely glimpsing the empty, eternal truth beneath that skin would have driven her mad.
"I have come to avenge the little mortal you so maligned." The flesh hiding the reality of Death smiled kindly at her, lips still closed over sharp inhuman teeth. The crippling soul-fear she felt from staring at Death kept her from reacting to the knowledge that this was all happening because of the Freak. "Oh, be not afraid of me," Death reassured, still smiling genially, which was somehow far more terrifying then when it had been blatantly staring at her like a piece of raw meat. "My shell is not yet at the point where he would wish true harm done to you." A spark of bright green flickered across black, unsmiling eyes set above a smiling face. "So fear not, little mortal. Death has come for you, but he is not here to stay."
The cold fingers she could still distantly feel holding her by the neck abruptly released her, and her body fell… but she did not fall with it. Death blinked, and her entire perspective shifted sideways. Immediately, she was Petunia again. She existed. She thought. She feared. She trembled in the palm of a hand that she realized suddenly did not belong to a giant, but that she had simply shrunk to the size of an egg.
"A soul is not meant to remain self-aware outside of its vessel," Death mused thoughtfully, staring down past her at the ground, and Petunia turned herself over with a measure of effort to see her own lifeless eyes staring up at her. If she'd had lungs with which to do so, she would have screamed. Abruptly, Petunia went tumbling through the air as Death began to roll her around in its palms as if she were a ball. When she came to a rest, she found that Death had moved, and it stood above the motionless bodies of her husband and son, slumped in the entranceway.
Petunia Dursley was a bodiless soul, less than the meanest ghost, but the sight of her son with empty eyes sent her into a frenzy. She writhed and shrieked and fought with all her might, and all of her efforts were stilled when the hand she was held in clamped into a tight fist, and her entire world compressed.
It was worse than the pain of being held back from moving on. Worse than the agony of looking into the eyes of her own corpse. She could feel fragments of herself breaking, crushed away from herself and lost forever. When the hand opened again, the soul that was Petunia lay still, broken and trembling and terrified even as she could see pieces of herself littering the palm around her like shards of glass. They were grey and mottled and slightly smoke-like, and looking at them made her realize that they were pieces of her soul.
Fingers from the creature's other hand appeared and delicately plucked one of her soul-shards from the palm of its hand, and Petunia watched as Death observed the grey, smoky shard for a moment. A tongue appeared, long and black and serpentine, and Death idly licked the pad of its finger as the piece of her soul was pulled between sharp teeth and disappeared.
Petunia went perfectly still as she numbly felt a piece of her very being abruptly cease to exist. Death was silent a moment in contemplation before a wide, leering grin spread across fanged lips. The terror Petunia had felt beforehand suddenly felt like the distant unease of seeing a spider from across the room compared to what she felt now.
"Ah," Death breathed, idly reaching for another of the shards even as Petunia frantically tried to get her suddenly-not-responding form to latch onto the others to keep them safe. She was not a very religious person, but even she knew that the concept of parts of her soul being eaten was horrible to even consider. "Apples."
Petunia could only stare, horror mounting, as Death calmly proceeded to pick the rest of the shards of her broken soul from its hand and pop them in its mouth like grapes. When it finished, Petunia felt like barely half of herself, a gaping hole deep inside where once had been her.
Death idly ran its tongue over its teeth before it peered back down at her with an amused smile. "If you're quite finished…"
Petunia did not have a head with which to nod, but she conveyed the concept with a series of jerking trembles. She did not want the thing to break her soul again, nor to experience firsthand what being swallowed like that would feel like. The shards had not been self-aware like she herself was, and she could only feel a distant sort of relief that it had not been so.
Death, seemingly satisfied with her 'cooperation,' reached out its free hand and from the body of her husband rose a smoking dark-grey ball of flickering light. With a jolt, she recognized that smoky texture from the pieces of herself she'd just lost and realized, dismayed, that it was her Vernon's soul.
Death held the soul of her husband close to its face and stared it down with a terrifying blankness of expression. A muscle in its jaw ticked, and the smile that spread across its face was all teeth. The sight of those teeth so close to her Vernon made Petunia jerk in panic, the hand around her tensing meaningfully but not closing into a fist again.
'Not Vernon!' she screamed in her own mind, unable to verbalize her pleas. 'Leave him alone!'
One pitch-black eye flicked negligently towards her. "But Petunia," Death reasoned, sounding as if she were being hysterical for absolutely no reason whatsoever, "it would not be fair if your husband retained his entire soul when you have so tragically lost half of yours."
'Tragically!' she shrieked, now aware that it could somehow still hear and understand her.
"The loss of one's soul is always terribly tragic, mortal," Death's face was suddenly incredibly solemn, and its eyes were heavy with the weight of Eternity reflected in them. Then the weight was gone, and Death was grinning again. "And let it never be said that Death is not fair."
And before Petunia could so much as protest, Death had bitten her husband's soul in half as if he were a particularly ripe piece of fruit. She couldn't hear Vernon screaming, but from the way the jagged half of soul was shuddering and jerking she could imagine it well enough. She watched, numb with shock, as Death swallowed and stilled, staring at the half of her husband's soul it had not devoured.
"Bacon," Death announced gravely. "How fitting."
With an absentminded flick of its eyes, a white soul with a few light grey patches floated out of Dudley. Petunia threw herself forward with a monumental effort of will, disregarding any possible consequences in her desperation to reach the soul of her son. The hand that closed around her was gentle, restraining but not crushing, as she was pulled back even as Death began to walk back towards the kitchen, the soul of her Dudders bobbing along behind him.
Petunia watched, terrified and confused, as Death glanced at Dudley's soul for a moment before he dropped what was left of Vernon's soul and it plummeted to the ground. Alarmed, Petunia strained to see what was happening and Death obliged her by tilting its hand so she could watch as her husband's soul fell and disappeared into her own lifeless body.
She watched as her body shuddered and drew in a deep breath before screaming out in a man's voice, deep and incongruous with her thin, bony frame. Death flicked its fingers and the screaming was silenced, but her body continued to writhe and soundlessly voice its agony to the world. Petunia could not comprehend what had just happened. It was so… so beyond freakish that there wasn't even a word for it.
"Living with only half a soul is a very painful experience, mortal. Doing so in a body utterly unsuited for it will be delightfully agonizing."
Before Petunia could truly come to grips with that, Death was returning to the entranceway. She had a vague idea what was to happen to her now, and it chilled her deeply. She watched as her Dudders' soul floated into Death's outstretched hand, and felt a spike of fear as the creature studied it intensely for a moment. She worried Death planned to bite into her Dudley as well, and prepared herself for another futile struggle in defense of her son.
But instead of unsheathing those deadly fangs, Death bent forward and licked a long stripe across Dudley's soul with its black tongue. The soul trembled and shivered, but did not seem to be aware enough to be truly afraid. Death licked its lips a few times before making a face.
"Sweet. Far too sweet." Death dropped Dudley's soul into Vernon's body, and while it shuddered and twitched, it did not break out into screams. Death turned its attention back onto Petunia and smiled that genial smile again. "Let us see how your veneer of normality holds against your current predicament, hmm?"
And before Petunia had a chance to protest, she found herself in freefall for mere moments before she connected with the unmoving body of her only son and her world dissolved into agony.
Death stood silently as he watched the soul of Petunia scream from inside her son's body. He could hear the faint sound of Vernon-in-Petunia still screaming beneath his spell from the kitchen, and he smiled. It would be amusing to see how the mortals tried to explain their new circumstances to the public. After all, a mortal soul was all that one is, was, and would ever be—including one's voice. This was why moving souls around like this was always so entertaining for him, although he'd admit that he didn't tend to do it often.
The temptation of holding a soul in his hand and not immediately devouring it often got the best of him, and he hadn't really completed this process in quite a while. But he'd had… added incentive to do it right this time, and the pieces he'd taken from both of the elder Dursleys were adequate recompense for his restraint.
He eyed the quivering figure of Petunia-in-Dudley speculatively. For a hideous abscess of a mortal Petunia had a rather stubborn soul. Twice she'd tried to defy him, twice she'd fought the grip of Death. Of course she had no chance of succeeding, being only a soul, but the fact that she'd actually proceeded to struggle again after he'd cracked her soul into pieces in his fist was grudgingly admirable.
Death stepped back as he observed the three Dursleys, each of them in the wrong body and two of them with horrible fractures in their souls.
He wondered if his shell would approve. Death hadn't killed them, after all, and that was really the only thing his shell ever worried about when he thought about introducing his relatives to Death. And now that he had the flavor of their souls in the back of his throat he found himself eagerly anticipating the day his shell would no longer oppose the idea of them truly dying. Except for the boy. Death eyed Dudley-in-Vernon in distaste. His soul was granulated sugar, pure and overly sweet, and Death rather thought he'd avoid swallowing that one when the time came.
Death turned on his heel and stepped through Time and Space to appear at his shell's bedside several hours into the mortal future, absently running long fingers through his shell's hair as he slept. He'd had a rather emotionally exhausting day, and Death did not begrudge his shell for turning in so early. He'd gone so far as to remove his shell's bedroom from the mortal plane of existence and slip it sideways through reality so he would not be disturbed until he woke. He planned to surprise his shell with the fate of his relatives in the morning, along with a delightful piece of writing that would culminate from the memory he'd anonymously sent to that insect, Skeeter.
The mere thought of the mortal woman made Death's lip curl, thinking of all the lies she'd printed about his shell and the distress she'd caused him. He would crush her betwixt his fingers when the time came, but for now she had her uses. Shaking off the thought, Death returned his attention to his unconscious shell.
Death hoped the news would make his shell feel better, or at least distract him somewhat from the revelations of the previous night. After all, Death had demonstrated an enviable amount of restraint in his dealing with the Dursleys, and he was confident his shell would see and understand this. And surely his shell would see the humor in what he'd done to his loathsome relatives. Death himself thought it was positively hilarious to imagine them trying to live their lives in each other's bodies, unable to hide it and becoming the freaks they so abhorred.
Not that he was done with them yet, but it was a good enough start he supposed. His shell deserved the chance to come up with some revenge of his own, so Death would hold off on tormenting them further. For now.
Death was patient, after all. He could wait.
AN: Sorry for the long wait. I couldn't seem to find any inspiration until this morning when I woke up and thought: "Man, I really want to torture the Dursleys today." Of course, I immediately worried for my sanity upon realizing I was contemplating ways to punish fictional characters, but then I got over it and wrote this instead. It was interesting writing Death from Petunia's perspective. I'd be worried too if the thing in my backyard grew fangs and started grinning at me.
Also, 1,040,022 views! That's more than any other story I've ever posted! I love all of you; have a candy bar and a bear hug!
Chapter 24
"You what?"
Harry thought he was being perfectly reasonable in his shocked disbelief. By the look of confusion on Death's face, the entity did not entirely agree. Harry took a steadying breath as he reminded himself—again—that Death was not human, did not adhere to human morals, and that attempting to hold him to human standards was pointless. It didn't help much.
"Let me get this straight." Harry was remarkably proud of his even, non-confrontational tone. "Last night, while I was sleeping off my emotional and mental exhaustion, you went several hours back in time," here Harry glanced at Death for clarification, and was answered with a grinning nod, "spent three hours and twenty-seven minutes," another glance at Death, this time wondering why the being had bothered specifying that exact amount of time, "creeping out Aunt Petunia by stalking her from the kitchen window, then you…" Harry trailed off, wondering how to word this next part properly. "Then you removed Aunt Petunia's soul, proceeded to break it in half and eat part of it, repeated the process with Uncle Vernon, and then shuffled my relatives' souls around like a deck of cards?"
"That is an accurate summary of events, yes," Death admitted, unashamed.
Not that Harry had really expected him to feel ashamed, but maybe some sort of guilt or vague disquiet would have been nice. This was quite a bit different than terrorizing the goblins, or ambushing Voldemort in his office for the express purpose of effectively obliterating him from existence. This had been done with deliberate intent to harm, and he didn't have the ready-made excuse of the target being evil to counterbalance it.
Don't get him wrong, Harry was all for Dursley-Vengeance, but whenever he entertained fantasies about such a thing it had usually included behavioral-modification potions, semi-permanent human-to-animal transfigurations, and possibly convincing Aunt Marge's dogs that they were actually rabid squirrels. Nothing Harry could have ever come up with quite measured up to mutilating their souls and putting them back in the wrong bodies.
Harry's mouth opened and closed a few times as he tried to think of something appropriate to say. What was there to say, really? Good job? Don't do it again? Can I have a memory of it so I can watch?
"Ah, I see you are speechless with gratitude," Death announced into the silence, grinning like he'd just won a prize. "There is no need to thank me, my shell," Death proclaimed magnanimously. "It was my greatest pleasure to punish the slovenly mortals for their past transgressions against you."
Harry huffed a disbelieving laugh. He couldn't really bring himself to be too upset about the fate of the Dursleys, all things considered. They'd treated him like a personal slave since he was tall enough to reach the stove with the help of a footstool, forced him to live in a tiny spider-infested cupboard for ten years of his life, and pretty much did everything short of punching him in the face to force him to obey their whims.
Maybe if Death had done this to some other family who Harry didn't loathe with a fiery passion, he would be more worked up about it. Like, say, if Death had done this to the Weasleys, or to the Grangers, there would have been a lot more shouting involved in this conversation.
Plus, Harry considered, perking up, there was absolutely no way for Dumbledore to try and force him to go back to them now. Petunia—err, Dudley? Vernon? Wow, that was a bizarre thought. Harry carefully did not consider it further—would never let him back in the house after this had happened.
"Yeah, thanks," Harry finally managed, voice cracking slightly. "Just… maybe next time talk to me first? You know… in case I have any suggestions or anything."
Death was quiet a moment as he contemplated this compromise. Harry held his breath, hoping the entity would acquiesce. He had absolutely zero commanding power over Death, but so far the being had been agreeable enough to his opinions and Harry hoped this trend would continue for the foreseeable future.
"I understand," Death said gravely after a few moments of thought, his expression somber. "I should have consulted you beforehand, on the assumption that you would like to be present and enact your own revenge."
That… wasn't quite what Harry had meant, exactly, but it was definitely close enough. He'd take it.
Death's face took on a very strange expression then. Harry wasn't entirely sure how to describe it. It was an odd mixture of glee, resignation, disgruntlement, and anticipation. That expression boded nothing well for anyone, Harry was sure. It didn't last long though, before the familiar grin was cracking his face in half as a folded newspaper appeared in his hands as if it had always been there.
"In the interest of fairness," Death began slyly, "I should inform you that I have begun our vengeance on the elderly mortal. If you have suggestions or improvements, make them now."
And then the newspaper was thrust into his hands with a loud, rasping cackle that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
With great trepidation, Harry glanced down at the paper in his hands.
DUMBLEDORE: DARK PAST REVEALED shouted the headline in excessively huge font. In comparison, the tiny By Rita Skeeter underneath it was positively miniscule. The article was surprisingly long—or, maybe, not so surprisingly—and seemed like it encompassed over half the entire edition.
Harry grew increasingly fascinated as he read, much in the fashion one is unable to look away from an oncoming train wreck. It went into very explicit detail about just about every single questionable decision Dumbledore had ever made in his entire life, even the seemingly harmless ones that he'd done during childhood like stealing sweets (lemon drops, naturally) from stores. Harry was especially interested—horrifyingly so—in the section (an entire six paragraphs) dedicated to Dumbledore's incredibly sketchy relationship with Gellert Grindelwald. It read like a gossip column, but there were snippets of actual memories inserted right into the page to make it legitimate.
Now, Harry personally had nothing against the idea of two men being together, but Dumbledore was so old that the idea of him being intimate with anyone was nauseating. Logically Harry knew the man had been young once, and hadn't always had a Merlin-esque beard and hairstyle, but the only image of Dumbledore Harry had ever had and would ever have is of him as he is now—ancient and frail.
The memories accompanying this particular part of the article were… explicit, to say the least. A tiny sentence in almost unreadable font under the memory itself assured the readers that it was charmed to not play for anyone under sixteen. How fortunate for Harry that he just met that age restriction, then.
Eyes burning with a combination of revulsion and disgusted fascination, Harry forced himself to move on.
Directly after that particular section came the part that immediately erased any thoughts of the previous display. There, embedded next to a still-shot of Dumbledore and a young blond man (Grindelwald, he presumed) was a word-by-word account of the two's plans to dominate the muggles for the Greater Good.
Harry stared at that sentence for what seemed like forever. "…and this has been published? It's public?"
He couldn't see it, but he could practically feel Death's fanged grin. "It should be delivered to every subscribing household in Europe within three hours."
Harry looked up and met void-black eyes. "There is absolutely no way for him to talk his way out of this one, is there?"
There was something suspiciously smug about Death's grin now. "No, my shell. I have encouraged the mortal to speak only the truth in all things. It will be impossible to salvage his reputation from this when he is unable to refute it."
He looked back at the paper and its most condemning sentence. For the Greater Good. Everyone who'd ever spoken with Dumbledore for more than five seconds knew that was his signature phrase. To have it so blatantly connected to Grindelwald and an actual, legitimate plan for muggle domination… well, it would do more than simply cast aspersions on the Headmaster as all previous attempts at defamation had done.
Underneath the shock and still-lingering exhaustion, Harry felt a spark of grim triumph. This wasn't quite the ruining he wanted for the Headmaster, but it was a bloody good start.
"It's perfect," Harry finally said, handing the paper back to Death, where it obligingly dissolved into ashes when he touched it. "I wouldn't change a thing."
Death grinned. "This is merely the beginning, my shell. The beginning of something great." His grin widened several notches. "Terrible, yes… but great."
Death stood behind his excited mortal shell as he sat as nonchalantly as he could manage in the dining room. Initially all of the pathetic mortals had attempted to bombard his shell with questions, but a quick pulse of irritatedimpatientangry magic and they'd all quickly remembered other, more pressing things to be doing.
He, himself, was almost quivering with anticipation. Of course he wasn't actually quivering, because he had more self-control than that (as much as it might surprise the mortals he associated with, he did actually possess self-control; he simply didn't see the point in exercising it much) and because he was about eighty-four percent certain that if he were to make any sort of movement at all, half of the mortals currently fixated on his figure out of sheer horror would suffer spontaneous heart attacks and likely die.
That wouldn't ordinarily bother him—in fact, normally he'd find it quite funny—but he wanted them to be both breathing and relatively conscious for when the elderly mortal finally showed his worthless hide and had today's Daily Prophet shoved into his twinkling face.
His shell was holding up under the secondhand scrutiny admirably, only twitching uncomfortably every fifteen seconds or so when someone glanced a little too much in his direction. Death made sure to smile at everyone who so much as thought about looking at his precious shell, remembering how very much the mortals seemed to be unnerved by his attempts at politeness.
So far, it was working remarkably well, and there had been no repeat offenders.
At least the mortals were quick learners.
The fireplace flared green as a figure emerged in an unflattering fwoosh of flames and soot, and a room full of eager bodies which had leaned forward in anticipation leaned backwards again in disappointment as the surly figure of the dark mortal his shell held a particular distaste for was revealed.
Death studied the mortal curiously, remembering him faintly—very faintly—from his own human life, and knowing that this was the only mortal besides his shell who had not desired to pull him into this reality seemingly against his will.
The mortal couldn't have known that Death had followed the pull because he'd felt like it at the time, but the idea of his protesting the 'mistreatment' was vaguely pleasing. From what he recalled of this mortal, and from what his shell's thoughts and memories showed, Death had expected him to be openly antagonistic and rude to his shell. This would, of course, have been the very last thing the mortal ever did with its insignificant life, but the fact that—as far as Death could tell—the mortal hadn't actually said or done much of anything towards either of them was… fascinating.
Death drifted away from his shell to approach the dark mortal, vaguely registering the stiffening of the mortal's posture and the idle worryconcerncuriosity coming from his shell and flicked his long fingers reassuringly in his shell's direction. He wasn't going to do anything to the mortal. Maybe. Possibly. Unless he felt like it.
Death grinned. It was probably a good thing that his shell lacked the ability to see into his mind like Death did into his. He got the impression his shell might not entirely approve of a great deal of his thoughts nowadays.
Impressively, the mortal did not recoil away from him shrieking or gibbering in fear like the rest of them were doing as he approached. Mentally, Death elevated his estimation of the mortal from useless pustule of flesh and bone to insignificant insect struggling in a pool of its own filth. It was more of a jump in status than most mortals ever achieved in their entire lives.
"You fascinate me," Death told the dark mortal upfront, having heard somewhere that humans appreciated honesty and wanting to make a relatively good impression on the mortal who didn't seem to be mindlessly terrified of him yet.
Oddly, this did not seem to reassure the mortal of his intentions in quite the way he'd wanted. The dark mortal paled starkly, his expression not betraying much except for a faint narrowing of pupils which Death idly diagnosed as a symptom of shock.
"How fortuitous for you, then," the dark mortal drawled in a steady voice, "that I am so innately fascinating."
Death got the impression that the dark mortal was mocking him, but more out of a sense of habit than any real malicious intent. He decided not to rip off his arms and beat his lifeless corpse with them in acknowledgement of this fact. The mortal also appeared quite pained, as if he dearly wished he could take back that sentence and try again.
"Yes," he replied instead, not letting up on his grin, not quite as dedicated to appearing sociable or harmless anymore in the face of the dark mortal's less-than-polite response. "I find myself fascinated with what flavor would lurk within your soul should I rip it from your chest and sever it with my teeth."
Death wasn't actually giving that any more or less thought than he gave the flavor of everyone else's soul, but he'd just about run out of social niceties for the millennium and figured he'd just say it for the sake of freaking the mortal out.
The only reason he could tell it worked was the slight, almost infinitesimal step away the mortal took, his face still remarkably blank of all expression. This was a mortal with excellent control of his own face, but his feet had betrayed him that time.
He heard his shell clearing his throat meaningfully back at the table, and Death acknowledged the unvoiced request with a tilt of the head as he grinned wider at the blank-faced mortal before abruptly blinking out of existence and reappearing behind his shell's chair as if he'd never left.
The rest of the mortals jumped at his sudden movement, one or two of them even shrieking aloud a little. Death frowned at them in consternation. They barely whimpered or backed away when he was baring teeth and asking people about the flavor of their souls, but a little step between reality had them shrieking?
"Mortals are strange," Death confided to his shell, not really bothering to lower his voice any but bending down a bit to give the impression that his words were meant for his shell alone.
"So I've gathered," came his shell's bland response as he eyed the trembling mortals he was unfortunate enough to call kin. "Do you suppose Dumbledore plans on actually showing his face tonight?"
Death glanced to the left as he peered through Time as if it were merely a bothersome pane of glass. Frowning in discontent—the old mortal actually didn't plan on coming, too busy fighting off the legion of howlers assaulting his office—Death decided to Do Something about it. Reaching out with a fraction of power he rewrote reality to suit his whims. When the future-Dumbledore "made" the decision to come "reassure" the Order of his "innocence," Death blinked away from the future-that-might-be and refocused on the time-that-is and his impatiently waiting shell.
"Yes," Death replied without pause. He decided not to mention how he'd had to encourage the mortal to show up—the point was that the human was coming, and the "why" didn't matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. "He shall be arriving momentarily."
Death kept an eye on the future-that-might-be just in case, and was vindicated when he had to further coax the elderly mortal to Grimmauld Place four more times. Either the mortal's desire to not confront the Order about this was greater than approximately one one-millionth of Death's power (unlikely), or Death was getting soft in his old age (possible, yet doubtful).
Just to be sure, Death forwent subtlety altogether and implanted a compulsion directly in the man's mind (ignoring the pitiful barriers the mortal had created) to get his arse over here ten minutes ago.
The elderly mortal arrived in the center of the room with a deafening crack, as his Death-driven urgency hijacked his usual sense of propriety and common sense and had him barging directly through the wards around the property in a way that was both incredibly painful and immensely stupid.
The Black Family wards were almost seven hundred years old, and mildly sentient to boot. To Death, this meant the wards were about as threatening as a mote of dust lightly landing on his outstretched finger. To an aging human to whom the concepts of "restraint" and "humility" were foreign in the extreme, the wards likely seemed equally as harmless. It was not surprising, therefore, that in the man's haste to answer his magic's sudden demand that he get to the Order meeting immediately he chose to believe in his own omnipotence and pretend that the wards would yield to him like any of his sycophantic followers would have.
This was not what actually happened.
Death watched, gleefully surprised, as his "love-tap" on the man's mind resulted in the one-hundred and fifteen year-old mortal crashing through the wards with impressive speed and landing ingloriously on top of the dining room table, face-down in a bowl of pudding.
There was approximately four seconds of total silence, before the Black Family wards reacted to this intrusion with extreme prejudice.
Having been shattered irrevocably upon the old man's physical and magical collision with—and through—all thirteen layers of wards, the tattered remnants lacked the power or wherewithal to do anything truly harmful to the intruder. They did, however, have enough magic left to strip the invading mortal of all magical artifacts (this included a short cherry-wood wand, one pair of heavily-enchanted half-moon spectacles, a bottomless pouch of calming-drought laced lemon drops, one set of robes charmed to brighten in response to present ambient magic, and two-and-a-half feet of beard which had been turned into an emergency portkey at some point in the past and then forgotten about) and to activate the "Marauder failsafe" that Sirius Black had snuck into the wards during his Hogwarts years and never told anyone about.
Dumbledore, magically exhausted, confused, blinded, dressed in nothing but his pants and shoes, covered in pudding and missing a great deal of facial hair, was promptly turned fluorescent orange with neon green polka dots and transfigured into a goat.
Death listened to the grave silence (he would get them to appreciate his jokes one day) with a growing grin. He couldn't have made this happen any better if he'd actively tried. It was actually even better since it was genuinely an accident. He hadn't thought the mortal would be foolish enough to break through the wards instead of using the floo like any reasonably sane person, but this was just so much better.
He snuck a peek at his shell and saw him staring wide-eyed at the colorful goat laying dazed in the dinner pudding.
"Albus, this is not the time to be fooling around!" an irate older witch shouted, hair coming loose from its bun in her flustered rage. She brandished her wand and with a swish and a flick, there was a mostly-naked elderly mortal where the goat had been. He was still orange and green and still had pudding on his face, but at least he was now capable of speech. "What were you thinking, Albus?! Apparating straight through the wards! Honestly!"
"Now now, Minerva," the elderly mortal began, pausing to cough out some pudding and brush ineffectually at his ragged, shorn beard. "I was in far too much of a hurry to let something as insignificant as mere wards stop me."
The old witch stared at him for a moment, and Death watched with increasing glee. She shook her head sharply and thrust a newspaper at the dazed mortal's face. "Never mind, Albus. Look at this! That Skeeter woman has gone too far this time, mark my words. The public will be up in arms about this nonsense!"
His shell stood then, stepping forward and meeting the elderly human's unfocused, twinkling eyes. "Is it all true, Headmaster? Did you really conspire with Grindelwald for the domination of all muggles?"
Death was so proud of his shell for remembering that the foolish mortal could only speak the truth and for cutting so quickly to the heart of the matter.
Before the Order had a chance to puff up in outrage, the old mortal reached out a wrinkled hand and tried to pat his shell on the head. Death reached out and latched onto the back of his shell's robes with one hand and yanked, adroitly pulling him out of the man's range. Pretending that nothing out of the ordinary had happened, the elderly mortal twinkled in the general direction of his shell (apparently the glasses had been for more than simply seeing through disillusionment charms) and spread his hands benevolently.
"Of course it is, dear boy. No one was meant to know, obviously, as such things would ruin my reputation and tarnish my image." The old man beamed at them genially, oblivious to the looks of horror aimed at him from all directions. "I shall have to work quickly to uncover whomever leaked such confidential information about my past and silence them in some manner; perhaps I should confound the Minister again, or have another 'meeting' with Miss Skeeter…" the mortal trailed off, lost in thought, as the Order fell into another lingering, dead silence.
"My work here is done," Death announced into the quiet, immensely pleased with himself. This was an excellent start on the road to the mortal's utter annihilation, Death thought. Now he simply had to get the human and his penchant for the truth in front of a much more public gathering…
Death stepped back with a sharp smile and began to plot.
A/N: Why yes, I have in fact been sitting on this for like two years! In my defense... well, ok, I don't really have a defense other than I kept putting it off. And off. And off. Forever. I also got sucked into the Avengers fandom from whence there is no return, and uncovered within me a deep well of fangirlism for the Winter Soldier which has pretty much subsumed all my other spare brain cells.
In OTHER NEWS, though, I have finally graduated college for realzies and am now actively seeking employment in order to become a functioning member of society. Don't expect super-rapid updates (in case the massive year-long break between 23 and 24 didn't clue you in), but at least you now know for certain that I Am Not Dead.
I don't have any chocolate to offer you, though, because I am a broke art alumni, but I do have cheerios and string cheese?
Chapter 25: Ron Interlude
Ron had noticed pretty early on that Harry's home life wasn't all that great. Even as a mostly-clueless eleven-year-old, the fact that Harry was so short and skinny had registered as a problem. Also, Harry had never gone home for the holidays, which had encouraged Ron to stick around Hogwarts instead of spending it at the Burrow with his mum and whichever brothers were in the country at the time.
There wasn't an awful lot Ron could do to help fix any of that, though. His mum had seemed to brush off his concerns in first year, and while she'd taken Fred and George's warnings more seriously in second year she still hadn't done what Ron really wanted her to do—like invite Harry to come live with them, or adopt him or something. Living with his best mate would have been wicked.
So he did what he could with what he had. He made sure to drag Harry to breakfast every morning, and had figured out pretty quick that if he stuffed his plate with lots and lots of food Harry was more likely to do more than just nibble on things. It had given him a bit of a stomachache for a few months before he'd gotten used to the huge portions, but it had been worth it in order to make sure Harry ate at least one real meal a day.
He'd also noticed that Harry tended to stress out whenever Hermione nagged him about classwork or studying, and it wasn't like it was a hardship to drag him away to play chess or exploding snap or something. He'd make sure to keep Harry distracted until he calmed down enough to respond to Hermione in some way other than unthinking compliance, which is what tended to happen if Ron let her unintentionally walk all over him.
For the famous Boy-Who-Lived, Harry could be a bloody doormat sometimes.
Ron had had some awful big rows with Hermione about that—about how you couldn't just order Harry to do things because he'd do them. Of course, his mouth didn't always say what his brain was thinking and Ron wasn't sure he'd ever really gotten the point across how he wanted it.
He knew he wasn't the greatest friend out there. He got jealous a lot, because he was so used to having to scrape and claw his way towards the slightest hint of recognition and having his best mate just have things handed to him without having to work at it burned. Ron had grown up in the shadows of a dragon tamer, a curse-breaker, a model student, and the twins who—while huge menaces—were bloody brilliant inventors and potioneers. And then there was Ginny, who as the first female Weasley child in generations was practically perfect in every way.
The whole Tri-wizard Tournament thing still made him burn with shame whenever he thought about it. He'd been a right prat about that whole thing, and he was amazed that Harry had forgiven him so easily about it. Ron had vowed he'd be a better friend after that, and take better care of Harry in the meantime because—honest to Merlin—Ron couldn't leave Harry alone for two bloody minutes before he was in some new life-threatening situation.
So when Harry's letter had arrived at the Burrow with barely-hidden concerns about some sort of 'ritual' Dumbledore was going to be doing, Ron hadn't brushed it off like he might have a few years ago. He'd confronted his dad about it (because while his mum was a veritable fortress at keeping secrets, his dad tended to fold like a house of cards when pushed), and been reassured that the ritual wasn't going to drain Harry of his lifeforce or magic (that concern had earned him a bemused sort of grin).
But how was Ron supposed to know? He wasn't book-smart like Hermione, and didn't have an almost instinctual grasp on his own magic like Harry seemed to have. Things never went right whenever Harry was involved, and this time he wouldn't even be there to make sure he'd be all right.
He had been almost vibrating in impatience as his dad began bustling them towards the floo, desperately hoping that Hermione (who, with her parents off in Australia not knowing they had a kid at all, could do whatever she wanted) had been enough to keep Harry safe on her own.
When they finally got to Grimmauld Place, Ron had peeled off from the gaggle of Weasleys and went in search of his mate. He ignored Ginny's excited babbling—he'd learned to tune out her 'future Mrs. Potter' speeches a while ago because it was getting creepy—and the twin cracks of Fred and George blatantly defying mum's orders not to apparate in the house. He was on a mission, by Merlin.
Now, unless Ron was mistaken, Harry was probably holed up in Sirius's old room where no one would bother him. Hopefully staying in there wasn't wigging him out too much. If it had been Ron, he certainly wouldn't be staying in the childhood room of his deceased godfather. But Harry was made of sterner stuff than Ron most days. He'd probably be fine.
Ron knocked on Sirius's door, having learned his lesson about barging in when he'd accidentally caught Hermione changing clothes once and got a hex to the face as a reward.
"Harry, mate? You in there?" Ron called through the door.
The door opened under his knuckles and Ron felt his thoughts come to a screeching halt.
There was a… person at the door that was not Harry, but… was Harry? Ron squinted. The Not-Harry was really, really super pale. Like, dead-body levels of pale. Almost grey. Also, that was a lot of very sharp teeth in that grin. And, was Not-Harry's hair moving? Was it on fire?
Ron leaves Harry alone for less than a month and he goes and transforms into some sort of really tall creepy skeleton bloke. Ron took a bracing breath. Well. He'd just have to learn to live with Harry's new… everything, he guessed. He'd have to double up on his meals though, because it looked like Harry had managed to lose every single bit of fat he'd ever had in his entire life.
"Ron?" came Harry's voice from behind the super tall Harry in the doorway. Ron squinted again. What? What?
"What?" Ron said aloud, confused. "Harry?"
"In here, Ron," came Harry's voice again, from definitely within the room and not from the Creepy Harry in the doorway. Ron peered at Creepy Harry dubiously, frowning. Creepy Harry's creepy grin widened unnaturally, baring a lot of really creepy fangs.
"…Harry?" Ron asked the Creepy Harry in the doorway, feeling oddly certain that this was Harry, but that there might also be another Harry inside the room that he couldn't see.
"In the flesh," said Creepy Harry in a voice that by bloody Merlin was creepier than any voice had any right to be. It was all rasping and hoarse and amused and echoed oddly. It was super weird, is what he was trying to say.
"You're hilarious," came Maybe-Harry's deadpan voice from inside the room. "Let him in already."
Creepy Harry grinned creepily and stepped back and aside, leaving the doorway unobstructed. Ron kept squinting dubiously at Creepy Harry, trying to work out what in the world that ritual had done to his best mate even as he cautiously headed inside.
Ron turned to look and spotted Harry sitting at a desk with a weird silver bowl on it, looking ordinary and not-creepified. With another glance at Creepy Harry, Ron trotted over to the Harry he recognized.
"Mate," Ron started, staring into the weird silver bowl and its weird swirling white things, "what did that ritual bloody do to you?"
Harry blinked owlishly at him. "What are you talking about?"
Ron stared at his best mate, unimpressed. "Harry, there are two of you."
Harry's eyes widened dramatically, and his gaze whipped over to Creepy Harry as if he hadn't noticed him before. "You recognized him?"
"You're my best mate," Ron pointed out, nonplussed. Did Harry think he wouldn't have recognized him, even in creepy form?
Harry's expressions were doing something very unusual. Creepy Harry strolled around the desk and draped himself over Harry's shoulders where he sat in his chair, baring his teeth at Ron in what he felt was more of a dare than a smile. Ron's head hurt.
"This one is more perceptive than the Red Mortal I was once acquainted with," Creepy Harry told Harry, seeming to find everything hilarious.
Ron, making a leap of logic that usually found him wanting to plant fists into Malfoy's face, decided 'red mortal' was him. Eh. It wasn't the worst thing he'd ever been called, and beat Weasel by a bloody mile.
"Sure," Ron agreed absently, wanting to move the conversation along to how in the bloody buggering hell Harry had managed to split himself in two without anyone else in the Order being at all concerned. "Does Hermione know about… this?" He waved a hand at where Creepy Harry was apparently turning into liquid and melting all over poor Harry.
Ron squinted again. No… no, Creepy Harry really was turning into liquid, dripping a bit at the edges. Neither of them seemed to be bothered about that, though, so Ron didn't mention it. Maybe it was one of those things you knew but weren't supposed to talk about, like how girls got barmy a few days a month. Ron had tried to bring it up once with Ginny and gotten kicked in the bludgers for his trouble.
Lesson learned, Gin-Gin.
"…she's aware," came Harry's awkward response. Ron squinted harder. It wasn't a Harry-lie, but it was bloody close to one which meant Harry was hiding things again. When Harry hid things, they were generally Big Deals, like dementors or basilisks or Dark Lords reborn.
"Mate, you've got yourself melting all over you. If 'Mione knew about it she'd be here."
Hopefully, as a bloke, Harry wouldn't go right for the bollocks like some people he knew.
He might be just a bit sore about that, still.
Harry frowned irritably and rolled his shoulder a bit, and Creepy Harry seemed to sigh resignedly (it sounded like the sort of noise a crup might make if stepped on and deflated) before he was abruptly not-liquid again and standing upright several feet away without having to actually move there. Ron considered this and then decided to ignore it. Creepy Harry was Not His Business. Harry was Ron's business, and Ron was going to make sure he was fine and then he was going to walk away like he should have done every time his mate stumbled headfirst into a dangerous situation.
Oh Ron would stick around if things were really dangerous, but Harry had killed basilisks and faced off against a hundred dementors and stared V-Voldemort in the bloody face. He was, at this point, way more equipped to deal with Creepy Harry than Ron was.
"You aren't gonna kick it, are ya mate?" Ron asked with typical Weasley bluntness. He could be subtle if he really tried, but he just didn't see the point of walking circles around things when you could just say it instead. It took so much less effort and was a lot less prone to creating unfortunate misunderstandings.
Creepy Harry's head swung on some sort of axis to face Ron (he was pretty sure heads and necks weren't supposed to be able to do that) and grinned that bloody creepy grin again, this time with a thousand percent more teeth.
"Fear not, Red Mortal. The only Death that shall touch upon my shell is me." And then Creepy-Harry laughed as if he'd just told a really great joke, except his laugh sounded kinda like a screaming woman being strangled, crossed with the crunching of rat bones underfoot.
It was pretty weird, is what he's saying. Harry seemed to be ignoring the laugh altogether, so Ron tried to follow suit. If Harry wasn't concerned that his double was absolutely barmy, Ron would try not to worry about it either. Worrying about things tended to lead to fights, and the last thing Ron wanted to do was fight with Harry about Creepy Harry while Creepy Harry was literally standing two feet away.
He had tact, Gred, Forge, thank-you-very-much.
"So what's with the bowl?" Ron threw out there, feeling uncomfortable in the silence after Creepy Harry had laughed and Harry hadn't reacted visibly.
Harry scowled, looking genuinely angry, which gave Ron quite a shock. He could count on one hand the times Harry had been legitimately angry at something, and have fingers left over. Sure, Harry got upset a lot, and moody sometimes, but he didn't really get angry at things. But when he did… bloody hell. Ron braced for the worst. Maybe the bowl was cursed? Maybe the bowl was the reason Harry had a creepy double? Maybe the bowl had split Harry in half!
Ron was about ready to fire a reducto at the bowl, consequences be damned, when Harry spoke up in a voice Ron had never heard his mate use before.
"Do you trust me, Ron?" Harry, his best mate, asked. He was staring straight at Ron, with an expression that was graver than anything Ron had seen outside his dad talking about the last war.
And then the question registered. Did he… did he trust Harry? What kind of bloody stupid question was that?! Of course he trusted Harry! Bollocks, he'd learned the hard way what not trusting Harry led to and had no desire to make that particular mistake again. Ron opened his mouth to tell Harry how ridiculous he was being when he caught sight of Creepy Harry's face.
There was something… wrong about the expression Creepy Harry was wearing. It actually took Ron a second to realize it was because Creepy Harry wasn't grinning. He wasn't even smiling. Oh, and his eyes were black now. And not like how Snape's eyes were black, but how the night sky above the Burrow was black when the stars were hidden by clouds.
Creepy Harry tilted his head, birdlike, and one of his eyelids ticked. He looked… really pissed off, actually. Like the sort of pissed off that led to someone kicking him in the bollocks, only multiplied by about a million.
So Ron thought about Harry's question seriously. Did he trust Harry? He tried to think of something Harry could have to say that Ron wouldn't trust him about. Maybe… maybe Harry had decided to join V-Voldemort? He paled starkly, freckles standing out in sharp relief, but swallowed past the lump in his throat. Well… Harry was—Harry had been through an awful lot, yeah? And… he'd surely have a good reason? Or, or maybe Harry had decided to marry Snape? Which was almost worse than joining V-Voldemort, but Ron could… Ron could deal. It'd be bloody difficult, and he'd probably never be friends with the git, but he could deal. He could.
So he took a steadying breath and nodded once, firmly. Ron trusted Harry. That was that.
Harry peered searchingly at him for a long moment, before tension just seemed to bleed off of him. He smiled tiredly, looking bloody exhausted, before he pulled the silver bowl into his lap and stared at the white things in it for a second.
"This is a pensieve," Harry began haltingly. He flicked his eyes up to Ron, back to the bowl, and back to Ron a few times. "It shows people's memories."
"Wicked," Ron breathed. Cor, that sounded pretty awesome. But that wasn't really something that would make Harry question Ron's loyalty, so he bit back on some Hermione-grade questions and waited impatiently.
"This one has memories from… from my parents."
…oh. Ron grimaced. That was… not quite as awesome. Still amazing, but also awful.
"In one of them, Dumbledore admits to knowing Sirius was innocent."
Ron furrowed his brows. That was… well. That was not good. He was getting a sinking feeling that he knew where this was going, and suddenly Harry's earlier question made a hell of a lot more sense.
"And… earlier, Dumbledore told me he knew how the—the Dursleys treated me, but that I was just exaggerating how bad things were."
Ron scowled outright at that. Harry did not bloody exaggerate things! It was a bit of a thing to try and swallow that Professor Dumbledore was… was implicit in the way Harry had been so bloody small in first year.
Do you trust me, Ron?
Ron took a deep breath and nodded jerkily for Harry to go on. He had the feeling it was only going to get worse.
"…there was a piece of Voldemort's soul in my scar, and Dumbledore knew about it."
He blanched. V-Voldemort's soul? Ron didn't know an awful lot about magic theory (that was Hermione's thing), but he knew about Black Magic. Soul Magic. It was a horrible, horrible perversion of all that was natural. In retrospect, it wasn't that much of a stretch to imagine V-Voldemort messing around with it. But… in Harry's scar? Ron glanced up at his mate's forehead, and saw the scar was a thin silver line instead of the angry red gash it usually was. Ron prayed to bloody Merlin that meant the… the soul was gone.
"As long as the soul in my scar existed, Voldemort was immortal. And the only way to destroy a horcrux—that's what the soul bits are called—is to destroy the container it's in." And then Harry sat back and waited.
Ron blinked, trying to parse out why Harry had stopped so suddenly. Horcrux in scar, Dumbledore knows, destroy the container—
Wait.
He could literally feel his thought process grind to a screeching halt. If Harry had a, a horcrux in his scar that the headmaster knew about, then presumably the headmaster also knew that the only way to destroy one was to get rid of the container. But, if Harry had been the container, and the only way to kill Voldemort was to destroy the container… did that mean Dumbledore was going to kill Harry?
Ron didn't know how Dumbledore had planned to accomplish that, exactly, but it didn't bloody matter. If Harry was telling the truth, that meant Dumbledore had either actively planned to murder Harry at some point, or he was going to try and get him killed some other wa—
The philosopher's stone in first year, Ron realized with dawning horror. The basilisk in second. The bloody dementors! The Tri-Wizard Tournament! Bloody buggering hell Dumbledore had been trying to do Harry in since he was eleven!
Ron lurched forward and shoved the bowl back onto the desk, ignoring the way it splashed about, and hauled Harry up out of his chair. He ignored Harry's yelp of shock, and began patting him down immediately, fretful. What if Harry was hurt? What if Harry was being all cagey because Dumbledore had tried again and Harry didn't know if he could trust Ron to take his side? Bugger it all, what if Harry was trying to be all noble and self-sacrificing again and trying to protect Ron from the truth? That Dumbledore was a bloody murderer who was just waiting for Harry to let his bloody guard down?!
"Are you all right?" Ron bellowed at Harry from a distance of approximately two inches. "He hasn't hurt you has he?! I'll kill him! Well, well I'll! I'll hex him into next week at least!" Ron knew he wasn't actually going to be able to kill Dumbledore—he wasn't an idiot—but he could probably get one or two good licks in before the shock wore off and he got creamed. Ron began shaking Harry at the shoulders. "Do I need to—I'll get the twins. They can—they'll help! Surely! And, and Hermione! She'll know what to do! We need to—!"
"Ron!" Harry shouted over his increasingly frantic yelling, grabbing onto his wrists and forcibly pulling his white-knuckled hands off his shoulders to stop the shaking. "Ron, I'm fine," he continued more calmly when Ron quieted down a bit to listen. "The horcrux is gone. Death took care of it. We have a plan. Calm down."
Ron took several deep breaths to try and steady his racing heart. Bloody hell, that had been intense. He hadn't been this wound up since the twins had put a fake acromantula in his bed that one time. Harry was smiling oddly at him, and Ron had just enough brainpower left to recognize that smile. It was the one Harry wore when something surprised him, pleasantly so. Like when a housemate congratulated him for something not Boy-Who-Lived related, or when Ron or 'Mione got him a birthday present or something for Christmas.
Then Ron frowned. "Wait. 'Death' took care of it? Harry… Harry did you…" he lowered his voice to a shrill whisper, "die?"
Harry grinned sheepishly even as Creepy Harry (who had been watching with that creepy grin as Ron freaked out) cackled loudly at his back. "You might want to sit down, Ron," Harry said pleasantly, seeming far less serious or anxious now that he knew Ron believed him. "It's… it's a bit of a story."
"It's to die for, mortal. Truly," Creepy Harry added with a laugh that sounded like rocks grinding together in a large echoing room.
Ron looked between them, the weird copy of his best mate and Harry, the boy he'd fought a troll with when he was eleven.
Do you trust me, Ron?
Bloody hell, but he did. He did. So Ron squinted, took a deep breath, and sat down to listen.
A/N: Your Friendly Neighborhood Hyliian is now gainfully employed and therefore has almost zero free time, but fear not! She is determined to drag this thing out until the End of Days! Or, at least until the Marvel-verse fully absorbs me into its clutches and drags me, kicking and screaming, away from the Potterverse.
I have way, WAY too many little stories about the Winter Soldier now. It's becoming a bit of a problem.
DISCONTINUED