Chapter Six

Death did not turn around when the doors blew open and his summoners filed inside, wands drawn and pointed threateningly in all directions, searching for the threat. Of course, there no longer was a threat, as Death was no longer angry and therefore no longer scything through the ancient Black Family wards barely clinging together around the property like reeds.

Instead, he continued grinning at his newly-enlightened mortal shell, beyond pleased at the understanding they seemed to have reached. Of course, he'd had no doubt that his shell would be able to emphasize with him—they were the same, after all—but it was still a wonderful feeling for a being that hadn't been smiled at in millennia.

Very few mortals have cause to smile at Death nowadays.

Death cocked his head and glanced at the crowded mortals in the doorway out of the corner of his eye, watching amused as they took in the destruction his momentary lapse in control had done to the highly-warded Black Library. Death doubted it would happen again. He had very few triggers left after all his eons of existence, but manipulations and beings who sought to control him were two of the most potent. Dumbledore had the misfortune to be a trigger for both.

Dumbledore, holding a very familiar wand outstretched in hand, turned still-twinkling eyes to his mortal shell. "Harry? Would you care to explain what happened here?"

Death ignored whatever his shell came up with as an excuse, keeping his eyes fixed on the mirror of his most destructive Hallow. Its presence brought up an interesting quandary: what would happen if someone in this reality gathered all three Hallows like he had done? Would they become Death like he had? Death frowned heavily, the air around him thickening with displeasure. No. He would not allow it. Another Death might attempt to assimilate him—just as he would have done to the new Death—and that was extremely unacceptable.

Death, deciding to be prudent and remove the possible threat, absently summoned Dumbledore's wand to his hand. All heads swiveled towards him, and many wands followed as they switched targets. Death eyed them with contempt. What good would those sticks of dead wood do them? Instead, he turned his eyes to his newly confiscated Elder Wand (the II) and twirled it between his fingers.

Dumbledore's eyes were definitely not twinkling now.

"My boy," Dumbledore began, and Death lifted his head and looked at the man, making him visibly falter before pressing on. Death had to admit, the wizard had an incredibly low sense of self-preservation. "Now now, there's no need for such dramatics!" the man actually chortled. "Return my wand—that's a good lad—so we can adjorn to the meeting room and conclude our business." Dumbledore's expression was firm as he extended an expectant hand, as if compliance was assured.

Death curled his fingers around the weapon in his grasp, knuckles cracking at the strength of his grip. Somewhere to his left, his mortal shell winced. A smile tugged at Death's lips, but it was not a pleasant expression. This was a baring of teeth, a primal declaration of war, and a mocking challenge to an insignificant opponent. The skin on his face cracked with the force of it, eyes bleeding black as the abyss. This was the smile he gave to the men whose souls he meant to devour.

The temperature of the room plummeted, hoarfrost coating the ground around his feet and making the mortals' breath emerge like smoke. Death kept a vice-grip on his power, forcing it under his control, smoothing over the sharpened, malignant edges that had bristled into existence at Dumbledore's command of him, and soothed it into a quiet murmur. His aura unfurled around him like massive wings, bringing with it the silence of a graveyard—desolate, abandoned, still. His mortal shell fell to his knees, followed by three of the others; the rest crumpled to the floor entirely, eyes roiling in their sockets as wands fell from nerveless fingers.

Dumbledore alone remained standing, hand still outstretched, flesh bleached white and pupils mere pinpricks in horrified blue irises.

"Your wand, Dumbledore?" Death asked him in a quiet murmur, black eyes trailing the length of the wand in his grasp. His shell whimpered and braced himself on his hands and knees. Abyssal eyes flicked up to meet frozen blue.

The Elder Wand dissolved into ash in his hand, the remains swirling around him before sinking through his robes and into his skin. Dumbledore's expression froze into a mixture of fury and fear—it was utterly amusing. Death laughed.

"It never belonged to you, foolish mortal." Death stepped closer to the frozen man, his power sweeping aside the collapsed mortals in his path before he reached them. He loomed over Dumbledore, staring down at him with the same chilling smile he'd been wearing since this impudent mortal had dared to command him. "I crafted this wand to be unbeatable, to be a thing of great power." Death's smile widened as comprehension slowly dawned on the man who, in his arrogance, had never questioned just what he'd dared to summon into this realm. "I crafted this wand for a man whose cunning and arrogance condemned him to an early grave. It is a weapon bathed in blood, mired in agony, baptized in suffering..." He peeled back his lips, a growl rumbling up through his throat. "But it belongs solely to its Master, and never have I met a mortal so unsuited for that title as you, Albus Dumbledore." Death stepped back, face expressionless and eyes burning like cold fire. "Oh… and do not command me like I am one of your puppets, mortal. I have crushed greater men than you for trying."

Harry almost pitied Dumbledore. Almost. Death had swept from the room on the heels of his rather cold announcement, and Harry had breathed a quiet sigh of relief when the feeling of smallness and the petrifying terror went with him. Pushing himself back to his feet, Harry surveyed the witches and wizards still collapsed around him, several twitching and mumbling to themselves, and others unconscious altogether.

Hermione was slumped against a bookcase nearby, completely out of it. Snape had been one of the three Order members to remain marginally upright, and also the fastest to recover aside from Harry himself. The man glanced Harry's way, sneered on reflex, before looking around at his colleagues and grimacing at them. Harry didn't blame him. Most of these men and women were fully trained adult witches and wizards, and yet they'd collapsed to the ground when a fifteen year old, half-trained schoolboy had weathered it mostly upright?

He shook his head and headed for the door, looking at Dumbledore's odd expression as he passed. The man still looked like the genial Headmaster he normally portrayed, but his eyes were furious. Furious and terrified. It was not a good combination, and Harry made a note to keep a close eye on the old wizard just in case.

Harry didn't bother looking for Death. He doubted he would have been able to track him, and even if he did there really wasn't anything he could say. Instead, he headed for Sirius' old room—the one place in the house that was guaranteed to be empty and stay that way—and sat on the bed.

He was not surprised when Death stepped out of the shadows to his left and stopped beside him, looming over him with hunched shoulders and a wild, fanged grin. Death's moods were incredibly mercurial, and Harry could only be thankful that so far he did not seem actively hostile. It did, however, make him slightly uncomfortable to be sitting down while Death was standing. Ingrained instincts and courtesy had him patting the bed beside him before his mind caught up to his actions, but he couldn't bring himself to take it back. Death's smile faltered a bit at the action, but he did sit down—at the very edge of the mattress as far from Harry as he could conceivably get and still be on the same bed.

"So… I guess Dumbledore's wand was something special, then?" Harry wound up asking, hating that he was still so ignorant as to wizarding things, and having a feeling that if he'd grown up as a wizard he would know what all those names and items meant.

In response, Death made a strange gesture with one hand and the wand that had previously dissolved appeared loosely grasped in his fingers. "The Elder Wand of Antioch," Death mused, tracing a vertical line in the air with the wand and leaving a flaming mimicry behind, much like Tom Riddle had done in the Chamber back in second year. Death flexed the fingers on his wand hand and light reflected off the ring there and the black stone held within, as he traced a circle around the flaming line. "The Resurrection Stone of Cadmus." Then Death rolled his shoulders, and the silver cloak he wore rippled as if someone had dropped a pebble into a still pond, and Death promptly vanished. Harry sat up straight in shock, watching as the now-invisible 'Elder Wand' traced an equilateral triangle around the circle and the line, leaving the symbol holding his cloak together floating in the air, drawn in green fire. "And the Invisibility Cloak of Ignotus," came the disembodied, eerie voice of Death.

Harry shivered slightly, not liking that he could no longer see the entity but assuming he was still in the same place. He did, however, wonder about that invisibility cloak. Harry had one that had belonged to his father, but it had to be covering all of him in order for it to make him vanish like that. Death's had merely been hanging over his shoulders and back like a cloak, yet it had hidden his hands and exposed face, and even his wand.

Death reappeared with the same unsettling swiftness he had previously vanished, twirling the wand between his fingers and staring at the floating symbol with a strange grin. "Together they make the Deathly Hallows, three artifacts that when united make one the Master of Death." Death's grin turned slightly wry then as he banished the burning symbol with a mere glance. "I'll admit, it was not one of my brighter moments… giving those tools to the Peverell brothers. When I became Death by collecting the three Hallows, I had wondered how they had come to be when there had never been a 'Death' before me which could hold a physical form." Death laughed, the same chilling cackle he'd been using since he arrived. "Turns out I made the Deathly Hallows on one of my trips through time. I was so bored then, desperate for something to do, that when the three brothers beat my riddle I made them the Hallows without actually realizing what I'd done." At Harry's disbelieving glance, Death spread his hands and shrugged. "It had been millennia since I'd been a wizard, since I'd read the stories about the Hallows. By then, they weren't things I'd collected as a mortal—they merely were, in the same manner that I was. By the time I remembered, it was already too late. But, I suppose, I had always been meant to make them—just as I am likely going to create them here, as well. Dumbledore already having the Elder Wand is merely proof that I've yet to go and recreate the Hallows in this reality, but that I eventually will."

Harry's mind spun. Hermione had always warned him about what happened to wizards who meddled with time, but it seemed like Death's entire existence was based around paradoxes. Shaking his head to clear it, he turned back to Death only to jerk back in shock, nearly falling off the bed at seeing Death's wide grin inches from his face.

"Bloody hell!" Harry blurted out, alarmed, only his seeker reflexes keeping him on the bed. Death didn't make a sound, but Harry was convinced he was being laughed at. Breathing heavily, one hand pressed over his chest, Harry took a closer look at his maybe-quite-possibly alternate self and was mildly worried to find those absinthe eyes focused on his forehead.

No, on his scar. The reasons for this were not reassuring. Anything that caught Death's attention like this couldn't possibly be a good thing, and he debated briefly on whether to ask or not. He hated being kept in the dark, but he knew better than most that there are some things he just really shouldn't know.

Death's grin widened, fangs clenched tight, as he avidly stared at Harry's forehead as if it was the most delicious thing he'd ever seen. Understandably, this made Harry very, very nervous. "Oh dear," Death crooned, "you've something on your face, my mortal shell." Long, bony fingers lifted to hover over his head like claws, close but not touching. "Allow me to take care of that for you."

And Death lowered one long digit and pressed it against Harry's scar, and the world around him faded into black.