Chapter Nine

Harry awoke. This would not normally be a strange occurrence, but he had no memory of actually falling asleep, and thus waking up at all was highly suspicious. The memories of the previous evening cracked into his waking mind with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and Harry felt his eyes and throat burn. He stubbornly forced the horrified tears back, refusing to cry over Dumbledore's betrayal. He'd always suspected that the man knew how he'd been treated at the Dursleys, but to know that the man had monitors around that house and still claimed Harry was lying…?

It was more than obvious that Dumbledore knew exactly what went on there, and simply did not care enough to do anything about it. Harry flexed the fingers on his scarred hand, idly studying the words there. He wasn't a liar, no matter what the wizarding world liked to think. He never really had been. The Dursleys had punished lying almost as harshly as his accidental magic, and Vernon seemed to have some sort of supernatural ability to detect when he was being lied to.

Dumbledore had to know about the neglect, about the abuse, about the cupboard and the withheld meals and the long nights sick with fever as he sweated it out alone and unwanted. He must have a reason for keeping him there. But what did Dumbledore gain from keeping him weak and beaten down? If he was supposed to vanquish Voldemort—or, at least, he had been meant to do that before Dumbledore jumped the gun and went and summoned Death to do it instead—shouldn't he have been trained and groomed for this? Shouldn't he have been prepared for a fight against a wizard sixty years his senior? Didn't Dumbledore want him to actually win?

A chill spread through Harry's veins as he thought about it. No… no, he rather doubted he'd been meant to win at all. He remembered the horcrux Death had pulled from his scar, remembered how black and twisted it had looked, remembered how sick it had made him to think he'd been living with a piece of Voldemort's bloody soul in his head.

"…Death?" he whispered into the dark, quiet room, certain that the entity was there even if he couldn't see him.

"Yes, my shell?" came the prompt response, eerily only inches away from his left ear. Harry resisted the urge to turn his head and remained limp on his front on the bed.

"How do you destroy a horcrux?"

Death was quiet for a moment, and Harry breathed deeply as he tried to remain calm. He felt the bed dip behind him and figured Death had just sat down and again resisted the urge to turn his head over and look at him. He wasn't sure he could keep his emotions in check if he actually looked at him.

"The only way for a mortal to destroy a horcrux is to destroy the vessel it's stored in. Basilisk venom and fiendfyre are the two most common methods of doing so."

Harry inhaled steadily. "And if the horcrux was stored in a person?"

Death's silence was telling.

Harry's breath hitched, fingers clenching in the sheets beneath him. So that was it, then. Dumbledore had known about the horcrux—he had to have—and had been setting Harry up to die. Voldemort would kill him, and in the process destroy part of his own soul. It was almost poetic in a way, if he ignored the fact that the man had been raising him to be a martyr.

All this, on top of the earlier revelations, left Harry feeling incredibly cold. What else had Dumbledore had a hand in? His mind raced as he made connections he'd previously ignored or dismissed. It was awfully convenient that the Weasleys had been at the muggle entrance to King's Cross that day, wasn't it? Didn't Mrs. Weasley have five children who'd already been through Hogwarts or were already enrolled there? She'd had to have been going there for years, and would not have had any reason to be yelling about Platform 9¾.

And why had Hagrid been the one who came to deliver his letter? Harry liked Hagrid, but the man couldn't even perform magic legally and was definitely Dumbledore's man. Shouldn't the safe reintroduction of the Boy-Who-Lived to the magical world have been performed by a wizard actually capable of protecting him and answering his questions? Hagrid had never been a muggle; he wouldn't have had any reason to know what sort of questions Harry had but had been too shy or afraid to ask.

Did this mean Ron had been engineered to meet him on the train? Harry didn't doubt that the boy was his friend, but Ron's loyalty had always been a bit iffy when things got rough. Harry firmly shoved the thought aside; he could afford to be reasonably paranoid, but actively looking for conspiracies among his own friends was a bit much for now.

"You will not be a martyr, little shell," Death's voice broke through his thoughts, pulling him back into the present. Harry rolled over and looked at the looming, shadowed figure of Death sitting on the edge of the bed a noticeable distance away. "Dumbledore has already damned one of us with his machinations. He will not damn another."

Harry frowned in concern. Death's shoulders were taut with tension, and although it was too dark to see his face, Harry would bet ten galleons his eyes were black. Harry wanted to reach out and comfort him, but remembered how meticulous Death was when it came to avoiding touch. He also remembered the one time he had been touched, he'd had a soul removed from his forehead. There was likely a connection there, but Harry wasn't sure how to go about asking in a polite manner.

"Have you tried gloves?" Harry wound up asking, honestly curious. Death tilted his head and glanced at him, light glinting off mirror-black eyes. Harry didn't elaborate, figuring the question was rather self-explanatory, and was rewarded with a strange sort of mad grin in return.

"The Touch of Death cannot be stopped by a layer of fabric or leather, little shell." Death sounded amused instead of insulted, which Harry counted as a win. "You are correct that the effect is strongest around my hands and fingertips; should anyone have the inclination to touch me through my robe, they would feel only a sharp tug on their soul rather than have it removed outright. Trust me, my mortal self, I have experimented extensively to find a way around this… unfortunate aspect of my existence." Death was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was soft and unmistakably wistful. "I was… not successful."

"You're sure it won't affect me differently since we're basically the same person?" Harry wondered, feeling rather bad that Death was handicapped like this.

He'd always craved touch after how the Dursleys treated him, but he'd been incredibly awkward about accepting it and never initiated it himself. He couldn't imagine a life where he literally could not touch another living being without killing them. He was rather surprised Death was as sane as he was if this was the existence he'd had for the past… forever.

"My Touch does not discriminate between souls, dear shell," came Death's strangely pleased reply. "I doubt that your soul's similarities to my past self would have much—if any—effect on my inability to touch the skin of another."

Harry pushed himself up and leaned against the headboard, staring at the slouched figure sitting a few feet away. He studied the rather resigned grin on Death's face now that his eyes had adjusted to the darkness a little better, and felt something in him clench in sympathy. Harry had always hated seeing people hurt; Hermione called it his 'saving people thing,' and he knew if she had been here she would have already started yelling at him for what he was considering. He couldn't help it though. Death was what he could have become, what his future would have been if he hadn't been summoned here from another world. It didn't even cross his mind not to try and help.

"How can you be sure?" Harry finally pressed, watching as Death's eyes snapped to his, the grin fading to be replaced by an uncharacteristically serious expression. "I mean… it's not like you've ever had a chance to try before."

Death straightened, staring at Harry in a sharp, intense way that Harry hadn't ever seen him use before. "Unacceptable," Death's voice was flat, unyielding, a sheer titanium wall springing up metaphorically between them as if that would somehow keep Harry at arm's length. "The removal and return of a soul transcends mortal comprehension. It has been described to me as an agony on a level that would break the mind of anyone not already mad."

Harry faltered slightly, but pushed on regardless, unwilling to give up so easily. He was a stubborn bastard, he'd admit, and he wasn't letting go of this without a fight. "But you can return it?"

Death's lips were set in a grim line, absinthe eyes staring through flesh and blood and bone to the soul beneath. Harry almost thought he wouldn't answer, holding his breath as the air around them grew thick as Death released his stranglehold on his power. "Yes," Death admitted, his voice low and deep like a slow roll of thunder. "I can."

Harry felt like his heartbeat had just tripled itself. He would be lying if he said he wasn't terrified out of his bloody mind, but being scared had never stopped him before. If anything, fear just made him more determined. Death's expression was a strange mixture of intense displeasure, severe disapproval, and an infinitesimal flash of hope. It was the latter that firmed Harry's resolve.

Taking in a deep breath, Harry lifted one trembling hand and held it out between them, palm up. Death stared at his hand as if he'd never seen anything quite like it: his face was a mixture of half fear of the unknown, and half burning curiosity. Harry watched, shivering, as Death stirred from the corpselike stillness he'd fallen into as soon as Harry offered his hand.

Death lifted a long-fingered, skeletal hand and let it hover over Harry's shaking one for a moment that stretched on into eternity. Harry kept his eyes locked on that hand, clamping down on the urge to yank his hand away and hurl himself off the bed and into the far corner. He firmly reminded himself that even if this didn't work, Death could still put him back together. He had a rather high pain threshold, and if he could handle a crucio from Voldemort, he was sure he could handle having his soul returned to his body.

He had just enough time to pray to Merlin, Morgana and Mordred before Death's cold hand clasped his own.