Chapter Five

I am about to die, Harry thought frantically, pressing himself and Hermione back into the furthest corner of the library, wide eyes fixed on the maelstrom of rage and malice shrieking into existence around the previously-amiable figure of Death. He had no idea what had set the entity off, but he could guess. Dumbledore's need to control every aspect of his life had often sent Harry into a rage himself, but nothing on this level.

"I will NEVER walk the path of that meddling old fool again!" Death barked, his voice echoing like the legion of the damned, shaking the foundations of the very world. Harry was confused though, terribly so. Death wouldn't walk Dumbledore's path again? When had Death ever been controlled by anyone?

Hermione, bless her curious heart, seemed to have caught on as well. And, despite his frantic tugging and nervous hand gestures, she pushed her way forward and—rather foolishly, if bravely—stepped forward closer to the razor-sharp, vicious aura gouging deep marks on the walls and floor around the irate form of Death himself.

Hermione, in a fit of sheer Gryffindor stupidity, decided the most expedient way to get the attention of Death himself—did he mention how this was DEATH—was to throw a book at him. Harry was both impressed at her gall (for Hermione to throw one of her precious books was a monumental occasion indeed) and one hundred percent convinced that Death was about to smear his best friend across the library walls.

The book didn't actually reach the man of course. Rather, it was shredded into tiny pieces by the black and silver magic burning around him, and then dissolved into ash. But it did catch his attention, and solid black abyssal eyes locked on Hermione's slightly trembling form.

"W-when did the Headmaster try to c-control you?" she managed to say in a remarkably steady voice, considering who was glaring at her. The question both seemed to calm the entity down and simultaneously enrage him farther.

Death's fiery anger turned ice-cold in a heartbeat, frosting their breath in the air and crackling around them like breaking glass. "He martyred me," Death snarled, a vicious, feral sound that had no place coming from a human throat. "Sacrificed my humanity for the Greater Good." Then he grinned, long, jagged fangs gleaming behind cracked lips as a black tongue ran over his teeth. "I locked him inside my cupboard and left his body to rot while I swallowed his damned soul." Death's smile was all teeth; vindictive pleasure all but radiated from him as his frozen magic slowed down and returned to the same heart-stopping aura from his arrival. "He was the last mortal to ever try and control me. I made sure of it."

Harry's breath was frozen in his chest. Hermione had obviously not made the connection he just had, and he honestly was in no hurry to enlighten her. His eyes darted all over Death's face, his form, his shadow-like hair, his absinthe eyes… how did he not notice this before?

Death caught his eye and that wild grin was back, the oppressive aura gone like it had never been. It was obvious from the look on Death's face—a sort of macabre pleasure and a strange sort of possessiveness—that Death already knew exactly what Harry had just now figured out. Harry could barely hear past the blood thundering through his ears, and could only be grateful that Hermione was currently distracted trying to set the library to rights (good to know her priorities have been straightened out).

Death stepped closer, crossing the length of the room in that single step and drastically invading Harry's personal space. He resisted the urge to flinch away, still trying to come to grips with the revelation that had just whacked him upside the head.

"You've realized it then, my mortal shell?" Death whispered smoothly, his already eerie voice lowering into a register just barely audible to human ears. And if he hadn't been sure before, hearing Death call him that merely confirmed it. "Yesss… little wizard. See what your Headmaster has done to me? To us?" Death spread out his hands as if in supplication, but all it did was draw Harry's attention to the unnatural, skeletal limbs and too-long fingers. Death's hands made corpses look portly. "Gifted the infamous Invisibility Cloak of Ignotus, groomed for the Elder Wand of Antioch, and tricked into retrieving the Resurrection Stone of Cadmus." Death reached out, as if to grasp his face in both hands, but they settled on the wall behind his head instead, looming over him, killing curse eyes bleeding black. "Look at me, my mortal shell. Look at what your precious Headmaster has done to me." Death's whisper-soft voice turned mournful, and it reminded Harry of weeping children and a mother screaming out to take her instead and spare her son. "I have not touched a living being in millions of years. Millions, my shell." Death's long fingers trembled where they were pressed against the wall, curling slightly as if attempting to claw through the stone. Death's head lowered, hair like wisps of shadow and fire surrounding him like a living mane.

And then, without any sort of warning, Death was suddenly several feet away, hands clasped behind his back as if he'd always been there. That wild, unhinged grin was back on his face, shark-like teeth white against the grey paleness of his skin, and his eyes were again that unsettling shade of electric green.

Harry rather doubted his alternate self—Death—was entirely sane, and wondered why it had taken him so long to reach this conclusion. He had, however, earned an entirely new appreciation for his distrust of Dumbledore. If some alternate, future version of the Headmaster had manipulated him into turning into… this… then Harry felt perfectly justified in his dislike.

Death's smile changed then, as if in response to his resolution, lips closing over sharp teeth and offering him a crooked half-smile that he recognized from every time he looked in the mirror. Harry simply nodded to himself, in both meanings of the term, and stepped away from the wall.

He had always been alone in his distrust of Dumbledore. Hermione worshipped authority like a wizard worshipped Merlin, and the Weasleys were so far in Dumbledore's pocket he was surprised they were able to breathe. Remus was indebted to the man, and Sirius—Harry's breath caught in his throat at the thought of his godfather, but he fought back the guilt and the loss—had been so damaged by Azkaban that he'd been barely more mature than he'd been as a teenager.

But now… Harry glanced at Death (broken and dead and warped in ways he could barely imagine), standing silently in the middle of a wrecked library, and smiled tentatively back. Death's return grin was both blinding and terrifying, full of needles and fangs and darkness, but Harry didn't really mind.

He'd never trusted anyone but himself. Not really. He supposed it made sense to trust this other version of him, then, no matter how frightening or powerful or inhuman he might be.

After all… they were almost like family, and he'd always wanted one of those.