Expecto Patronum

 It had been almost a fortnight since Hadrian had returned to Hogwarts after the Yule Holidays.

Since then he would periodically dream about The Second Wizarding War he himself had fought in or about the pictures he had seen of World War 2 in the muggle world and its aftermath.

Tonight he once again woke up with his back drenched in cold sweat and his hands shaking of their own accord.

Harry couldn't help but groan to himself while he sat up in his bed.

He had thought that at least with the bracelet from Death, he would stop dreaming about the loved ones he had lost.

But now it seemed that other nightmares had started taking their place.

Harry looked at the other side of the room and saw Riddle sleeping peacefully.

He felt an odd sort of sting in his heart.

How long had it been since he had slept so peacefully?

Or even an uninterrupted sleep of eight hours straight?

Shaking his head, he turned his thoughts away from that train of thought.

After all, moping never helped anyone.

He decided to practice his wandless magic one again and went through the array of spells almost non-verbally.

Lumos, Nox.

Wingardium Leviosa.

Incendio.

Alohomora.

Petrificus Totalus.

Expelliarmus.

Accio.

Homenum Revelio.

Stupefy.

Impedimenta and a whole slew of other spells raced through his mind and his hand.

The more difficult a spell, the more at ease he felt while performing it wandless.

All the more, he felt his magic exercising itself in his body.

However, Harry frowned to himself while thinking about it because the next spell he wanted to perform wandless was Expecto Patronus.

He wanted to see if he could perform it wandlessly but more importantly if he could even perform it with his wand.

It had been years since he had been able to perform that spell - since the fateful day he had killed Voldemort.

The only explanation he had for this was that a murder - no matter either in self-defence or premeditated left its mark on the soul and a person couldn't perform the spell after that.

After all, a Patronus was the lightest of the magic a wizard could perform and murder wasn't anything light by any stretch of means.

Even though, Dementors didn't affect him as they used to - due to his title but still, he wanted to see if his Patronus was still the same or not.

However, whenever he tried to perform the spell, there was only a slight wisp of a shapeless cloud of mist but it never coalesced to take any tangible form.

Just as he was about to try it, he felt an intrusion in his mental shields.

He knew the only being who could enter his mind without his magic retaliating against them instinctively was Death, so he didn't mind the intrusion.

--------Line Break--------

Before Hadrian could say anything, he heard Death's eerie voice speak, "Master, why do you want to practice that spell all the time? It's not like my children will harm you."

Hadrian was amused to detect a note of petulance in Death's voice.

He couldn't help but tease the entity.

"Hello, Death. How are you? I am in the pink of my health, thank you for asking."

However, his joke fell flat when Death questioned him in a puzzling tone, "Master, I didn't ask after your health. You are not hearing things, are you?"

He couldn't help but roll his eyes at himself for forgetting that Death took everything literally and didn't have an ounce of humour in it.

Still, since the entity had taken the time to try and talk to him, he tried to be patient and ask it about why it had deigned itself to bother him.

"Death, is something the matter? I hope everything is going on as usual in The Land of The Dead."

He really didn't want to order Death around or question it as a superior so; he tried to talk in a roundabout manner.

--------Line Break--------

Meanwhile, Death felt vexed to The Land of The Living and back again.

It didn't know how it had happened but now that there was such an influx of paperwork for his Reapers, they had started murmuring that too much death was taking place.

Death wanted to ask someone to explain to him the concept of 'too much death'.

There was no such thing as that.

But those brats were being whiny bitches about it.

Some idiotic dolt had even opened The Book of Dead to take a sneak peek and the word had spread around that there would be even more deaths of magicals and non-magicals alike in the next half a decade.

The gossip mongers had talked about it to the point that even Love and Life got to know about it and they, in turn, told Lady Magic who had been on his case for the last few months about it.

Death couldn't understand that how could a taciturn Lady turn into a complaining brat at the drop of the hat whenever magicals were concerned.

Oh, and things didn't seem to end at that.

No.

How could that be?

Wouldn't that make his life easier and nobody ever did anything to make his existence peaceful?

No.

Everybody was ready to push him into the eye of the storm.

So, in the last family meeting, Chaos who could never sit still for a second had laughed at Lady Magic about the impending deaths of a lot of her children and compounded the problem.

All in all, there had been a shouting match between Lady Magic and Chaos which Judgement had presided over and what was the end result?

All of them made up and he was turned into the bad guy.

Humph!

This was the reason why he never talked to all those blockheads that masqueraded as his family.

The family was full of loonies and he always had to take the brunt of any fights that happened.

Now, Lady Magic and Life had started visiting his realm as if it was a revolving door.

They wouldn't leave him or his realm alone and this was further disrupting the work and his lesser entities in The Land of The Dead.

--------Line Break--------

Therefore, Death thought to come and grumble about it to its master.

Well, since it had a master now and a master was always supposed to listen to his servants, he thought to pull master into the swamp of depression along with him and grumble and gripe about his fate.

No. No.

Not grumble.

How could an entity that had lived for aeons grumble?

That wasn't dignified.

No. He didn't come to grumble.

He...He came to bemoan the thoughtless actions of his Reapers and his family.

Yes.

Bemoan was the right world.

But before he could even talk about any of his complaints, his master was already asking about the workings of The Land of The Dead.