Chapter Twenty-Three (Dursley Interlude)

Petunia Dursley stared blankly out the window in her kitchen, out at the empty backyard which was slowly deteriorating into unsightliness without the Freak there to keep it in good shape. It was all he was good for, really. Chores. As much as she loathed it and those who could use it, she had to admit that the Freak had been excellent at his chores once she'd taught him properly. While he was away at that school the house tended to accumulate dust and mold, no matter her efforts.

It was obviously some sort of manifestation of it that the Freak had put on their perfectly normal house, and Petunia was always sure to work the boy twice as hard that first week he was back until the house was pristine again.

But that wasn't why Petunia was currently staring at the backyard. She was staring at the backyard because the backyard was staring back at her.

Oh logically she knew the backyard didn't actually have eyes, but that didn't stop the feeling that there was something unnatural out there, looking right at her through the dirty window. She had the feeling that the something in her backyard was grinning, and she could see teeth in the shadows of the shed that did not belong to a human face, and she just knew it had something to do with the Freak and with it.

The eyes and the teeth had been watching her for three hours and twenty-seven minutes. Petunia had counted. They hadn't moved, or blinked, or stopped grinning in three hours and twenty-seven minutes. Petunia hadn't dared look away or leave the kitchen, absolutely certain that the moment her attention left the something in her backyard for even an instant, it would no longer be content to simply grin in the shadows behind the shed. It would do something, a part of Petunia's mind shrieked. It would come into her house—her perfectly normal house—and do something freakish.

So Petunia kept staring out the window, ignoring the long-burnt remains of the chicken she had been making for supper and thanking the God she didn't believe in that Vernon and Dudley wouldn't be back until six. She was the only one in the house, and thus the only one who would have to see the freakishness going on in their perfectly normal backyard.

Behind her, two rooms away, the phone rang. Petunia ignored it, watching how the something in her backyard's grin widened, as if it had heard. She just knew this was the Freak's fault somehow. Obviously he'd done something in that world and brought the attention of them onto her perfectly normal family. The something in the backyard could only belong to that world, after all, and Petunia was a normal housewife with a normal son and a normal husband; why would it have come to them otherwise?

The phone continued to ring, and Petunia continued to ignore it.

Petunia blinked.

The teeth in the shadows of the shed disappeared.

And two rooms behind her, someone picked up the phone.

Petunia whirled, face pale as her entire body went cold with horror. It was in her house. The thing from the backyard was in her house! Without a second thought, Petunia's hand groped for the closest kitchen knife and brandished it like a sword, terrifyingly aware that if the something from her backyard was of that world, her kitchen knife would be absolutely worthless. They had it, after all, and it could do unnatural, horrible things to normal people like her.

She could not hear anything from the other room. The quietness was not normal, not natural. There were always little noises in her house. The floors creaked, the air conditioner thrummed, and she always kept the telly on the news so she could listen for anything important while she cooked.

The house was silent. Utterly. The telly had cut out the moment the teeth had disappeared and the phone had been picked out of its cradle. She could practically feel it oozing all over her perfectly natural home, brought here by the something from her backyard that grinned with too many unnatural teeth.

Petunia inched towards the kitchen door, still brandishing her knife, and made good use of a neck so accustomed to peering over fences to peer around the doorframe instead. There was no one by the phone. She could see it through the door on its end table by the sofa, laying outside its cradle where she definitely had not left it when she used it last.

Heart beating a staccato rhythm, Petunia turned back to the kitchen.

Sharp teeth leered at her from mere inches away, set in a skeletal, gaunt face framed by impossible black eyes and hair that moved like it was aflame. Something in Petunia cracked and broke at the mere sight of it, this something from her backyard. Something in Petunia refused to believe it existed, and something in Petunia died a gibbering, shrieking death as it failed to comprehend the rationality behind its presence in her kitchen. The rest of Petunia, frozen in shock and terror, barely noticed.

Screaming, Petunia leaped back, thrusting the knife forward. "Stay back!" she screeched, waving the knife threateningly. "Stay back, you freak!"

The something from her backyard did not stop grinning as pale fingers reached out and closed delicately around the blade of her knife. Petunia watched numbly as her fine steel knife rusted away into dust in single heartbeat, before wide eyes looked up at shark-like teeth and black eyes without pupil or iris.

"Petunia Dursley," the thing breathed. It did not speak, it breathed. Its voice was low and hoarse, rasping like scales over sand. The sound of it alone made her head ache and her eyes water. This went beyond mere freakishness, beyond it and that world. Petunia looked into black eyes and saw the Abyss staring back at her. "I see you."

Her blood froze in her veins at the crooned, silky words. Her hand, still grasping the empty handle of what had once been her kitchen knife, trembled from where it was still outstretched towards the thing in her house.

"I see you, Petunia Dursley. I see all that you are, all that you have been, and all that you shall ever be. I see you in your entirety, and what an insignificant pustule of an entirety it is." The thing's grin changed, deepening at the edges as already-sharp teeth sharpened further. What had once been an expression of blatant mockery and amusement now reminded Petunia of a hungry beast. She couldn't even scrounge up the courage to be offended that it had basically called her existence an insignificant pustule. "I look upon you and see a soul warped by envy, festering with sores of bitterness and wracked with infected scars of misplaced hatred. It is an ugly, misshapen thing, weeping at its own repugnance." Those Abyssal eyes slowly roved over her trembling form, lingering on her frilly white apron and the delicate gloves still holding the handle of a worthless weapon. "The flesh containing it is not much better."

Despite herself, Petunia managed to drag forth enough pride in herself to ignore the hurtful, cutting words. She was a perfectly normal woman, with normal features and an average amount of beauty. She could not have attracted her Vernon otherwise, and her Dudders was promising to be a very handsome man when he grew up. This… this thing was obviously a freak, just like the boy, and it would be just like them to try and unnerve her like this.

"A freak, am I?" the thing grinned again, sharp and quick and poisonous. Petunia's mind blanked. She had been sure the freaks couldn't actually read minds. "Oh, Tuney," it cooed, and Petunia's heart stuttered in her chest at the nickname only her freak sister had ever called her. "I am not a freak, mortal worm. I am an abomination, an anathema, the Final Oblivion. I am the most unnatural thing you will ever see, and yet I am more natural than any human currently crawling through life like the pitiful insects you are." The thing leaned back slightly, lips closing over sharp teeth in an expression that was simultaneously condescending and amused. "I was here first, after all."

"W-what are you?" Petunia whispered. She knew this was no man. No, this wasn't even one of them. They were freaks, yes, but compared to this creature even the freaks were normal. "What do you want?" she demanded, voice cracking as it went up several octaves. She spared a fleeting thought of gratitude that her Dudders wasn't home; even if this thing were to kill her—which her heavy heart was starting to insist was highly likely—maybe it would be satisfied with her life and leave her son alone?

For a single, ephemeral moment, Petunia felt a close kinship with her deceased sister who had given her life for that of her son. Then the moment was gone, and the creature had lashed out, snake-strike quick, and cold, skeletal fingers wrapped around her throat like a band of solid steel.

Pain.

Petunia didn't exist anymore. She was no longer the wife of Vernon Dursley, the daughter of Rose Evans, the mother of Dudley. She was no longer a human woman. She no longer was.

She could think, but only because the thing holding what used to be her body by the throat allowed her to. She existed, but not as she once had, and only because it was allowed her. She could barely even refer to herself as feminine in her own thoughts anymore, the designation no longer seeming quite so important.

She also now knew exactly what was holding onto her, and felt a fear that went beneath skin and bone to the quivering soul beneath. She felt a pull towards this creature, this demon, as if someone had wrapped her in chains and was dragging her inexorably towards the thing that had just ripped her from her body. But the fingers locked around what had once been her throat kept her in place, and the resistance of that pull was more painful than anything she could remember feeling in her entire life.

"Miserable wretch," Death spoke, and it was utterly unlike the amused, cold rasp that it had used before when it had been wearing its human skin. Death spoke in a voice like liquid silver, smooth and cool and patient. It was a voice content to wait out the end of the universe before it so much as moved.

The thing looking back at her was not human, not even remotely. It wore the skin of a man, but she could see beneath the thin veneer of flesh now and the only thing that existed there was the Void. Had she not been stuck between life and death, merely glimpsing the empty, eternal truth beneath that skin would have driven her mad.

"I have come to avenge the little mortal you so maligned." The flesh hiding the reality of Death smiled kindly at her, lips still closed over sharp inhuman teeth. The crippling soul-fear she felt from staring at Death kept her from reacting to the knowledge that this was all happening because of the Freak. "Oh, be not afraid of me," Death reassured, still smiling genially, which was somehow far more terrifying then when he'd been blatantly staring at her like a piece of raw meat. "My shell is not yet at the point where he would wish true harm done to you." A spark of bright green flickered across black, unsmiling eyes set above a smiling face. "So fear not, little mortal. Death has come for you, but he is not here to stay."

The cold fingers she could still distantly feel holding her by the neck abruptly released her, and her body fell… but she did not fall with it. Death blinked, and her entire perspective shifted sideways. Immediately, she was Petunia again. She existed. She thought. She feared. She trembled in the palm of a hand that she realized suddenly did not belong to a giant, but that she had simply shrunk to the size of an egg.

"A soul is not meant to remain self-aware outside of its vessel," Death mused thoughtfully, staring down past her at the ground, and Petunia turned herself over with a measure of effort to see her own lifeless eyes staring up at her. If she'd had lungs with which to do so, she would have screamed. Abruptly, Petunia went tumbling through the air as Death began to roll her around in its palms as if she were a ball. When she came to a rest, she found that Death had moved, and he stood above the motionless bodies of her husband and son, slumped in the entranceway.

Petunia Dursley was a bodiless soul, less than the meanest ghost, but the sight of her son with empty eyes sent her into a frenzy. She writhed and shrieked and fought with all her might, and all of her efforts were stilled when the hand she was held in clamped into a tight fist, and her entire world compressed.

It was worse than the pain of being held back from moving on. Worse than the agony of looking into the eyes of her own corpse. She could feel fragments of herself breaking, crushed away from herself and lost forever. When the hand opened again, the soul that was Petunia lay still, broken and trembling and terrified even as she could see pieces of herself littering the palm around her like shards of glass. They were grey and mottled and slightly smoke-like, and looking at them made her realize that they were pieces of her soul.

Fingers from the creature's other hand appeared and delicately plucked one of her soul-shards from the palm of his hand, and Petunia watched as Death observed the grey, smoky shard for a moment. A tongue appeared, long and black and serpentine, and Death idly licked the pad of its finger as the piece of her soul was pulled between sharp teeth and disappeared.

Petunia went perfectly still as she numbly felt a piece of her very being abruptly cease to exist. Death was silent a moment in contemplation before a wide, leering grin spread across fanged lips. The terror Petunia had felt beforehand suddenly felt like the distant unease of seeing a spider from across the room compared to what she felt now.

"Ah," Death breathed, idly reaching for another of the shards even as Petunia frantically tried to get her suddenly-not-responding form to latch onto the others to keep them safe. She was not a very religious person, but even she knew that the concept of parts of her soul being eaten was horrible to even consider. "Apples."

Petunia could only stare, horror mounting, as Death calmly proceeded to pick the rest of the shards of her broken soul from its hand and pop them in its mouth like grapes. When it finished, Petunia felt like barely half of herself, a gaping hole deep inside where once had been her.

Death idly ran its tongue over its teeth before it peered back down at her with an amused smile. "If you're quite finished…"

Petunia did not have a head with which to nod, but she conveyed the concept with a series of jerking trembles. She did not want the thing to break her soul again, nor to experience firsthand what being swallowed like that would feel like. The shards had not been self-aware like she herself was, and she could only feel a distant sort of relief that it had not been so.

Death, seemingly satisfied with her 'cooperation,' reached out its free hand and from the body of her husband rose a smoking dark-grey ball of flickering light. With a jolt, she recognized that smoky texture from the pieces of herself she'd just lost and realized, dismayed, that it was her Vernon's soul.

Death held the soul of her husband close to its face and stared it down with a terrifying blankness of expression. A muscle in its jaw ticked, and the smile that spread across its face was all teeth. The sight of those teeth so close to her Vernon made Petunia jerk in panic, the hand around her tensing meaningfully but not closing into a fist again.

'Not Vernon!' she screamed in her own mind, unable to verbalize her pleas. 'Leave him alone!'

One pitch-black eye flicked negligently towards her. "But Petunia," Death reasoned, sounding as if she were being hysterical for absolutely no reason whatsoever, "it would not be fair if your husband retained his entire soul when you have so tragically lost half of yours."

'Tragically!' she shrieked, now aware that it could somehow still hear and understand her.

"The loss of one's soul is always terribly tragic, mortal," Death's face was suddenly incredibly solemn, and its eyes were heavy with the weight of Eternity reflected in them. Then the weight was gone, and Death was grinning again. "And let it never be said that Death is not fair."

And before Petunia could so much as protest, Death had bitten her husband's soul in half as if he were a particularly ripe piece of fruit. She couldn't hear Vernon screaming, but from the way the jagged half of soul was shuddering and jerking she could imagine it well enough. She watched, numb with shock, as Death swallowed and stilled, staring at the half of her husband's soul it had not devoured.

"Bacon," Death announced gravely. "How fitting."

With an absentminded flick of its eyes, a white soul with a few light grey patches floated out of Dudley. Petunia threw herself forward with a monumental effort of will, disregarding any possible consequences in her desperation to reach the soul of her son. The hand that closed around her was gentle, restraining but not crushing, as she was pulled back even as Death began to walk back towards the kitchen, the soul of her Dudders bobbing along behind him.

Petunia watched, terrified and confused, as Death glanced at Dudley's soul for a moment before he dropped what was left of Vernon's soul and it plummeted to the ground. Alarmed, Petunia strained to see what was happening and Death obliged her by tilting its hand so she could watch as her husband's soul fell and disappeared into her own lifeless body.

She watched as her body shuddered and drew in a deep breath before screaming out in a man's voice, deep and incongruous with her thin, bony frame. Death flicked its fingers and the screaming was silenced, but her body continued to writhe and soundlessly voice its agony to the world. Petunia could not comprehend what had just happened. It was so… so beyond freakish that there wasn't even a word for it.

"Living with only half a soul is a very painful experience, mortal. Doing so in a body utterly unsuited for it will be delightfully agonizing."

Before Petunia could truly come to grips with that, Death was returning to the entranceway. She had a vague idea what was to happen to her now, and it chilled her deeply. She watched as her Dudders' soul floated into Death's outstretched hand, and felt a spike of fear as the creature studied it intensely for a moment. She worried Death planned to bite into her Dudley as well, and prepared herself for another futile struggle in defense of her son.

But instead of unsheathing those deadly fangs, Death bent forward and licked a long stripe across Dudley's soul with his black tongue. The soul trembled and shivered, but did not seem to be aware enough to be truly afraid. Death licked its lips a few times before making a face.

"Sweet. Far too sweet." Death dropped Dudley's soul into Vernon's body, and while it shuddered and twitched, it did not break out into screams. Death turned its attention back onto Petunia and smiled that genial smile again. "Let us see how your veneer of normality holds against your current predicament, hmm?"

And before Petunia had a chance to protest, she found herself in freefall for mere moments before she connected with the unmoving body of her only son and her world dissolved into agony.

Death stood silently as he watched the soul of Petunia scream from inside her son's body. He could hear the faint sound of Vernon-in-Petunia still screaming beneath his spell from the kitchen, and he smiled. It would amusing to see how the mortals tried to explain their new circumstances to the public. After all, a mortal soul was all that one is, was, and would ever be—including one's voice. This was why moving souls around like this was always so entertaining for him, although he'd admit that he didn't tend to do it often.

The temptation of holding a soul in his hand and not immediately devouring it often got the best of him, and he hadn't really completed this process in quite a while. But he'd had… added incentive to do it right this time, and the pieces he'd taken from both of the elder Dursleys were adequate recompense for his restraint.

He eyed the quivering figure of Petunia-in-Dudley speculatively. For a hideous abscess of a mortal Petunia had a rather stubborn soul. Twice she'd tried to defy him, twice she'd fought the grip of Death. Of course she had no chance of succeeding, being only a soul, but the fact that she'd actually proceeded to struggle again after he'd cracked her soul into pieces in his fist was grudgingly admirable.

Death stepped back as he observed the three Dursleys, each of them in the wrong body and two of them with horrible fractures in their souls.

He wondered if his shell would approve. Death hadn't killed them, after all, and that was really the only thing his shell ever worried about when he thought about introducing his relatives to Death. And now that he had the flavor of their souls in the back of his throat he found himself eagerly anticipating the day his shell would no longer oppose the idea of them truly dying. Except for the boy. Death eyed Dudley-in-Vernon in distaste. His soul was granulated sugar, pure and overly sweet, and Death rather thought he'd avoid swallowing that one when the time came.

Death turned on his heel and stepped through Time and Space to appear at his shell's bedside several hours into the mortal future, absently running long fingers through his shell's hair as he slept. He'd had a rather emotionally exhausting day, and Death did not begrudge his shell for turning in so early. He'd gone so far as to remove his shell's bedroom from the mortal plane of existence and slip it sideways through reality so he would not be disturbed until he woke. He planned to surprise his shell with the fate of his relatives in the morning, along with a delightful piece of writing that would culminate from the memory he'd anonymously sent to that insect, Skeeter.

The mere thought of the mortal woman made Death's lip curl, thinking of all the lies she'd printed about his shell and the distress she'd caused him. He would crush her betwixt his fingers when the time came, but for now she had her uses. Shaking off the thought, Death returned his attention to his unconscious shell.

Death hoped the news would make his shell feel better, or at least distract him somewhat from the revelations of the previous night. After all, Death had demonstrated an enviable amount of restraint in his dealing with the Dursleys, and he was confident his shell would see and understand this. And surely his shell would see the humor in what he'd done to his loathsome relatives. Death himself thought it was positively hilarious to imagine them trying to live their lives in each other's bodies, unable to hide it and becoming the freaks they so abhorred.

Not that he was done with them yet, but it was a good enough start he supposed. His shell deserved the chance to come up with some revenge of his own, so Death would hold off on tormenting them further. For now.

Death was patient, after all. He could wait.