Chapter Seven

The terrified soul fragment of Tom Riddle squirmed from where it was pinched between Death's forefinger and thumb. Death glanced at the unconscious—but fortunately still ensouled—form of his mortal shell, pleased to know that his incredibly spur-of-the-moment decision to rid his alternate self from the horcrux hadn't taken along the boy's soul for the ride. He would have fixed it in no time if that had happened, but it would not have been pleasant for his shell, and Death would rather keep the mortal happy with him—he might even get smiled at again for his consideration.

Death leaned closer to the struggling horcrux, studying it through abyssal black eyes and observing the various soul-threads leading off from it into the distance. One of them actually led to somewhere else in the house, which was both delightful and incredibly disappointing; he did so enjoy a good hunt every now and then. Death curled the fingers of his free hand around the black thread leading further into the house and pulled on it in much the same manner as he'd done to the summoning ritual, which had had the audacity to wrap around his rib.

The thread rapidly began reeling in his direction, the wards protecting it unable to hold up against the Call of Death, and soon the horcrux in his fingers doubled in size as its younger twin collided with it and was absorbed. Death smiled crookedly at the jagged, black soul in miniature as he tilted his head. As if it could read his intentions—really, he wasn't being very subtle about them—the fragment renewed its desperate attempts to escape. Death just chuckled, amused that the horcrux was putting up so much of a fight when full souls had given him far less trouble.

Death leaned his head back and held the now deathly-still—he was such a comedic genius—fragment above him, still grinning up at it through clenched fangs. Souls always went still like this once they realized what their fate would be. Truthfully he didn't actually devour that many souls—he wasn't a dementor, and he didn't really gain anything from them other than the satisfaction of punishing a person with eternal torment. Had this been any other soul, any other horcrux, Death probably would have just banished the thing to purgatory to await the rest of the fragments. But Death had always had a special place in his heart for Tom Riddle, having taken his soul a grand total of eight different times now.

He doubted Tom's horcrux appreciated this special consideration he was being given. Souls were so terribly rude to him, especially the naughty ones. Death smirked, ignoring how the fragment twitched at the expression, as he wondered what Tom would think of being called naughty. Because honestly, Death couldn't really call him 'evil.' Death had done things exponentially worse during his many tenures as a Dark Lord when he was in a bad mood, but he was petty enough to keep punishing the man regardless of his relative evilness.

Death heard his mortal shell stirring with a groan, and decided he should probably hurry up before the boy woke up and had a chance to panic properly. The last thing he needed was to accidentally drop the horcrux between the mattresses somewhere. Death opened his mouth and let go of the fragment, registering and ignoring the fact that the horcrux seemed to be squealing despite lacking vocal chords or any sort of physical form with which to squeal, and clamped his teeth behind it. His magic latched onto the trembling fragment in his jaws and pulled it down, and Death promptly stopped caring about its existence once it left his tongue.

Death ran his tongue over his teeth—this one had tasted like coconuts, how odd—and lowered his head as he glanced at the wide-eyed, blanched expression on his mortal shell and wondered what the boy was so freaked out about. Truthfully the whole 'swallow your soul' thing was entirely metaphorical. He didn't have to actually swallow a soul to lock it within himself, but it was so much more fun to do it physically—plus, it amused him when the souls realized what he planned to do to them and tried to get away. For some reason, souls (humans in particular) had this sort of deep-rooted fear about being swallowed alive, which served him just fine.

And people were odd about him going around licking their souls to see what they tasted like. It is much easier to simply find out this way than to deal with all those awkward questions.

Harry felt like a bludger had just lodged itself in his chest cavity, caught sight of a snitch somewhere in his skull, and fought its way out of his body via his forehead. Basically, he felt like shit. Cracking open bleary eyes, the first thing Harry noticed was his rather awkward sprawl over half of the mattress. The second thing he noticed was Death leaning back on one hand and dangling some sort of glowing cobweb-crystal-magic ball thing over his mouthful of leering fangs.

Harry stared at the thing in Death's hand, a niggling thought trying to break through the fog of his current state of being half-awake, before the thing began to struggle—could glowing magical things struggle?—and a familiar magic oozed from it as if it were trying to be intimidating.

Harry wasn't intimidated. He was horrified.

That little weird ball thing with the wispy trails had Voldemort's magical signature all over it. It didn't take a very large leap of the imagination to figure out that that thing had been in his scar, and that Death had apparently removed it by poking him in the forehead. Harry's mind was racing. Why had that thing been in his scar? What was it? How did it get there? Was that why he kept getting those headaches and visions? Did Voldemort know about it? Did Dumbledore know about it? That last thought actually bothered him the most.

There was no chance Dumbledore hadn't noticed a ball with Voldemort's magic in it inside his scar, not with how strong the man was supposed to be and how often he'd been in close contact with the old wizard. That meant that Dumbledore had knowingly left a piece of Voldemort's magic—or whatever this thing was—inside his scar for fourteen years and did nothing about it.

His already poor impression of the Headmaster soured further.

Harry was about to ask Death about it—he believed he had earned some damn answers—when Death's leering expression shifted towards ravenous, predatory intent in an instant. Harry's heart lodged itself in his throat as his eyes blew wide. That was an expression he could have happily lived his life without ever seeing. Ever.

Death's head tipped back further and his jaw lowered, baring a maw full of jagged, nightmarish fangs that were so much more horrifying when coupled with the bestial hunger scrawled across his pale face. Harry understood Death's intention milliseconds before the ball did, and it immediately began writhing in Death's grip and honest-to-Merlin shrieking. Harry didn't blame it. He felt a bit ill just watching, and he didn't even know what the ball was. He pitied it, however. He pitied it something awful.

Death dropped the ball thing into his mouth, and his jaw clicked shut after it, a maze of interlocking fangs trapping it in the last place Harry figured it wanted to be. Harry stared, unable to look away, as Death's throat worked as he swallowed and the muffled shrieking immediately cut off into an eerie silence.

Harry continued to stare, half horrified and half morbidly curious, as Death glanced his way with abyssal eyes that slowly shifted back into his normal electric green. Half a dozen questions flew through Harry's head, but he shoved them away and asked the one he felt most pertinent.

"What was that… thing?" Harry amended quickly, unsure if his originally open-ended question of What was that would earn him an unwanted description of whatever digestive system Death employed for glowing balls of magic.

Death grinned at him, seemingly amused. "That was the unintentional seventh horcrux of Tom Riddle, combined with the one stored in the locket a few rooms away," was the entirely unhelpful answer. The sad thing was that Harry was certain Death meant to be helpful, but just didn't seem to understand that Harry had no idea what a horcrux was or why an 'unintentional seventh' one was so significant, or even why there was a second one inside a locket in the house. He did, however, comprehend that he'd been right in his guess that Voldemort had left it there on accident.

"Ok," Harry replied agreeably, careful to keep his tone neutral, "and what's a horcrux?" Harry figured it was some kind of spell residue left behind when someone casts something incorrectly. If he was lucky it might have been a part of his magical core, which meant Voldemort would be down two parts of his core now—the weaker he was, the better in Harry's opinion.

Death seemed confused that Harry did not seem to instinctively know what a horcrux was, but Harry tried not to hold that against him. Death hadn't been mortal in so long it was probably impossible for him to emphasize with someone not knowing something.

"A horcrux is a fragment of a wizard's severed soul," came the slightly annoyed reply. Death's face was twisted in a moue of distaste, and in any other circumstances Harry would have found that particular look on his face hilarious.

As it was, he was too busy being in shock to appreciate it.

…fragment of a wizard's severed soul. Severed soul. Sweet merciful Merlin… Harry had a piece of Voldemort's bloody soul in his head?! Completely outside his control, Harry began to panic. Had it done anything to him? Did anyone else know about this? Oh hell, that thing was probably why he could speak parseltongue, wasn't it? His thoughts went back to his previous assumption about Dumbledore knowing about his scar, and he blanched further. Dumbledore was widely accepted as a very knowledgeable wizard. There was very little chance he had not recognized what exactly lay inside his scar.

The Headmaster had just left it there inside the head of an infant! Impossibly, Harry's disgust at the Headmaster expanded to new heights.

"Don't panic." Death's unexpected voice brought him out of his shock like a bucket of ice water to the face. Harry slowly looked up into an unhinged, inhuman grin fixed in what he was sure was meant to be a reassuring expression. It might have worked if his eyes hadn't looked like he was debating whether or not Harry was edible. "I took care of it."

Oh. Well, that was true he supp—

Wait. Death had swallowed that horcrux. Harry had heard it shrieking in fear. Death had just devoured someone's soul right in front of him.

Harry manfully held onto consciousness, refusing to let something as… spectacular… as Death's newfound diet bother him.

Morbidly, Harry wondered what a horcrux tasted like.

"Like coconuts," Death replied, and Harry realized he must have asked that out loud.

"Oh," Harry nodded from where he was still sprawled out on the bed, slowly coming down from his shock. He furrowed his brow as he idly watched Death run his long black tongue over his fangs. "…Tom Riddle tastes like coconuts?"

"Yes," Death grinned again, seeming pleased to have someone to talk about this with. Harry doubted anyone else would be taking this half as calmly, but if the man had wanted to eat Harry's soul he probably would have done so already. "I'm looking forward to sampling the remaining five pieces and seeing if they match."

Harry just began laughing helplessly.