Chapter Text
“Back to your cupboard,” Aunt Petunia hissed, shooing her away. Harry went obediently - at six years old, she was old enough to know that nothing she did, nothing she said, would make a difference. That was how the world worked. That was how it’d always been.
She tucked herself away in her cupboard, feeling the shadows wrap around her like an old friend. She smiled at the spider living in the topmost corner, which she’d named Webby. She closed the door, and heard the bolt slide shut behind her.
Harry adjusted herself on her makeshift bed, readying herself for a long wait. Tomorrow was her seventh birthday, and Harry had a tradition where she stayed up until midnight and wished herself a happy birthday. It wasn’t like anyone else would, after all. She wasn’t sad about it, not really - that was how it’d always been, after all.
In a soft, low whisper, Harry told the shadows about her day. She’d weeded the garden, and had the most pleasant conversation with a garden snake. She’d had the dream about the flying motorbike again, and imagined that she could actually feel the wind in her hair as she weeded.
She checked her watch - another hand-me-down from Dudley. Two minutes until midnight.
“I suppose I ought to make a wish, oughtn’t I?” Harry murmured to herself. She hesitated, thinking. She could make the same wish she had every year - for someone to come and rescue her from the Dursleys - but… it didn’t make sense, to keep wishing over and over for something that never happened. She’d have to wish for something different, this year.
I wish… I wish I could rescue myself from the Dursleys.
She paused, just as the clock hit midnight. She waited - she could feel a sort of buzzing on her skin, but perhaps that was just the exhaustion. She certainly didn’t feel any different. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, anyhow - she was just a child. A seven-year-old child now, yes, but a child nonetheless. And it’d been a silly wish to dream that she could do anything on her own - she was told every day how worthless and incompetent she was.
Harry sighed, and just then, something odd happened.
The shadows moved.
Harry blinked, and rubbed her eyes, staring hard. Perhaps she was more tired than she thought.
But then they moved again, pulling closer to each other, as if reaching. They went from a dark grey to a pitch black, and Harry scrambled backwards, eyes wide. Strangely enough, she wasn’t afraid. The shadows wouldn’t hurt her, even if they were behaving oddly. Webby scrambled back, but Harry leaned forwards.
Slowly, in the light of the dingy old lightbulb hanging from the roof of the cupboard, the shadows coalesced into a man. He had dark hair smoothed neatly over his head, skin as white as paper, and eyes that were pure blackness - no sclera, no iris, just black. He was sitting cross-legged in her cupboard, regarding her with those black eyes of his. There was a cane tucked neatly against his legs. It was topped with a crow’s head engraved in silver.
“Hello,” Harry said.
The man tilted his head. “Hello,” he returned pleasantly, as if they were anywhere other than a dusty, spider-inhabited cupboard and he hadn’t just appeared from the shadows, quite literally.
“I’m Harry Potter,” Harry offered, when it became clear he was waiting for her to speak. “May I ask why you’re in my cupboard?”
The man’s lips quirked. “To wish you a happy birthday, of course,” he said. “You’re seven now, aren’t you? Seven’s a very powerful number.”
Harry blinked at him. She didn’t question how he knew it was her birthday - if he came from the shadows, then she’d told him already.
“Why’ve you been watching me?” she asked. “Aunt Petunia told Dudley that if he ever thought a strange grown-up was watching him, to go straight to her.”
The man tilted his head at her. “And she was quite right, although she should have said the same to you. Oftentimes, when a strange grown-up watches a child, they don’t have the best of intentions.”
“But this isn’t oftentimes,” Harry surmised. She’d never got the impression that the shadows - that this man - meant her any harm.
“Quite right.” It might have been her imagination, but she thought the man looked approving. “I am Death.”
Harry tilted her head, mimicking the man. “Like, the Grim Reaper?”
The man snorted. “Not like how the muggles imagine me, no. I am Death, Destroyer of Worlds. I am the End of All Things. I am the Great Equalizer.” As he spoke, the shadows seemed to get longer, darker, and Harry found a curious taste on her tongue. It tasted… it tasted like death. Death, darkness, and, strangely enough, hope.
Then, suddenly, all of it was gone. The man - Death - regarded her for a moment, and all was silent.
Harry considered what Death had just said.
“If you’re Death,” she began slowly, “then does that mean you knew my parents?”
Death blinked at her. “I would have thought your first question would be along the lines of if you were about to die.”
Harry nodded. “I did think about that,” she said freely, “but then I thought it wouldn’t make much sense. After all, you wouldn’t have watched me all my life if it was going to end now, would you? And you did just wish me a happy birthday. It’d be rude to have me die right afterwards.”
Death arched an eyebrow. “Sound, if naive, reasoning,” he said slowly. “However, you forget that death cares not for social niceties.”
Harry nodded again, more sagely. “Death, small d, doesn’t,” she agreed, “but I think Death, capital D, does. You’re wearing formalwear, after all.” She nodded to his outfit.
Death regarded her curiously. “You, Harry Potter, are a very odd child.”
Somehow, she knew he didn’t mean it the way the Dursleys did - that she was a freak. It seemed like Death didn’t quite know what to make of her, which Harry thought was fair - she didn’t quite know what to make of him, either.
“You haven’t answered my question yet,” Harry pointed out stubbornly.
Death paused, as if he was thinking. “I knew them as well as I knew any mortal,” he said at last. “Which is to say, very little. I did know your mother better than most, however, dabbling in death magic as she did.” He paused again. “Magic is real, by the way. You’re a witch.”
Harry blinked. She turned this over in her head once, twice, three times. Then she nodded. “That makes sense.”
Death blinked. “Does it?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?” Harry asked rhetorically. She gestured to Death’s… everything. “Besides, I can talk to snakes, and I turned my teacher’s hair blue last year.” She shrugged. “It just… makes sense.”
And it did. When Death said that, it felt as though something had just clicked in Harry’s mind. Of course magic was real - how had she ever thought otherwise? It felt like something she’d always known, but been too unaware to acknowledge.
“Well.” Death sat back, looking bemused. “That was easier than I thought it would be.”
“Did you think I’d throw a fit?” Harry asked curiously. “I never throw fits.” That was more Dudley's thing, and Harry took quite a bit of pride in not being like Dudley.
“I certainly thought you’d be more difficult to convince.”
Harry shrugged, having no answer to that, but she certainly had more questions. “Does this mean there are more magicals out there? And that my parents didn’t die in a car crash?”
Death regarded her for a long moment. “Yes,” he said. “There are. And no, they didn’t.”
She wasn’t sure how long they sat there, Death explaining to her how her parents had really died. They’d been murdered, he told her, by a man named Tom Riddle but who had renamed himself Voldemort. There was an entire secret society living under the noses of the non-magicals - muggles, Death called them - and there’d been a war. He explained to her the cause of the war, how the Death Eaters had hated the muggleborns for simply existing, sought to eradicate them for that perceived crime, and how Voldemort had led them. Her parents had died for her, and in doing so, her mother had cast a spell that caused Voldemort’s Killing Curse to rebound upon him.
When he was done, the soft rays of dawn were creeping through her cupboard. Harry stared up at Death with wide, slightly wet eyes. She had millions of questions, but one was most pressing.
“Why me?” she asked, her voice very small. “Why did this Voldemort come after me? And does it have anything to do with why you’re here with me now?”
Death paused. He seemed, not for the first time, a little uncertain. “The first question, I'm afraid I cannot tell you. Other powers stay my hand. As for the second… what Voldemort did to you has nothing and everything to do with why I’m here now.”
Harry sniffled. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Death agreed, looking apologetic. “But it’s all I have to answer. You will understand, I believe, in time.” He glanced at the light coming through the slats on the cupboard door. “For now,” he said, setting a hand gently on her head, “you should get some sleep. I will return tomorrow evening.”
Harry nodded mutely, staring at Death with wide eyes. No one had ever touched her without malice before.
~
Harry wasn’t ever sure how she got through the next day. No one took any notice of her birthday, of course. She cooked and cleaned and weeded, half-convinced that everything had been just a dream, when she caught sight of the garden snake she’d spoken to the day before.
“Hello,” she said.
The snake gave her a wary look, staying on the other side of the flowerbeds. “You reek of death, Speaker,” the snake hissed. “More than usual. Are you well?”
Harry blinked. So… it hadn’t been a dream after all. She… didn’t know what to think about that.
“Yes,” Harry said. “I’m fine.” At the snake’s curious look, she shrugged. “I’m not sure why I smell like death,” she lied. Death had sworn her to secrecy. “Sorry.”
The snake examined her critically. “You are a terrible liar.”
Harry’s eyes went wide, caught, when the snake then proceeded to point out where she’d gone wrong - she’d looked away, her heart rate had sped up - and coached her through it until Harry could lie, according to the snake, passably. By that time, of course, it was time to cook dinner, so she bid farewell to the snake and returned to the Dursley’s home.
~
They fell into a sort of routine. Death would visit her every night and teach her about the magical world, about magic. It all seemed so… surreal. Her parents hadn’t been worthless good-for-nothings who’d died drunk in a car crash. They’d loved her, really loved her, loved her enough to give up their lives for her. And she was, apparently, famous for something her mother had done, according to Death. She still didn’t quite believe him about that - how could she be famous? Her? She was so… ordinary. Just Harry.
But Death had assured her otherwise. He told her about the wars with Voldemort and Grindelwald, taught her about magical culture. When she’d asked him how he knew these things, he’d simply looked at her silently, and then she’d remembered that she was talking to a deity, and fell silent with an embarrassed blush. Death had then smiled at her, a sort of softness to his gaze that she didn’t understand, and patted her head.
"Everything that the dead know, I know, too," he'd told her. "Their magic, their culture... but the minutiae of their day-to-day, their personal lives, that escapes me."
It didn’t take long for her to beg to learn how to use magic. Death told her that, while she would have teachers for wand magic once she started Hogwarts, he could teach her other things, other magics, and Harry had agreed eagerly. Anything, anything would be better than nothing.
What that entailed, apparently, was meditation. Lots and lots of meditation. Harry considered herself a very mature seven-year-old, especially compared to Dudley, but she was still seven - sitting still wasn’t in her nature. But Death insisted that this was the best way, and so she did her best, meditating with dogged determination whenever she could. Death walked her through it the first few times, and then left her to do it on her own, moving his own visits so that she’d have half an hour to meditate in her cupboard before he arrived.
Time passed. School started again, and it was a special kind of torture, sitting in a classroom and knowing that she could be learning magic instead. Or, well, working on learning magic, she amended mentally. She hadn’t actually done any magic yet.
Harry wished she could go to Diagon Alley. It was so close, it didn’t even require a special invitation like Hogwarts did, but Death had advised against it. He’d said that, at her age, she’d draw attention, and she was supposed to be living with muggles, blissfully unaware of the magical world. Besides, she didn’t have any way of defending herself yet, and the world was a dangerous place. Harry had sighed and acknowledged that Death had a good point, but it was difficult. She wanted to learn everything she could about magic and Hogwarts and her parents.
~
She and Death celebrated Samhain on October 31st. Harry was… excited wasn’t the right word. Anticipatory, perhaps. Death had told her her parents had died on this day, and she felt somber, but at the same time, the Samhain celebration should let her feel closer to them.
So she waited until night fell, meditating. It was easy now, to fall into a trance, focusing on nothing in particular. Suddenly, she became aware of a kind of warmth. It was… difficult to describe. It wasn’t centered in any particular place, more spread out across her entire body. It seemed alive, somehow, pulsing and weaving in and out of awareness. When it became aware of her notice, it seemed to brighten, and Harry got the impression of welcome.
Then, even though her eyes were closed, she felt Death appear. His own magic - and it was magic that she was feeling, how wonderful, how incredible - was different and yet similar in a way she couldn’t describe. It was vast, endless, unfathomable, and she was struck, for the first time, by a feeling of awe.
She opened her eyes.
“Wow,” she whispered. Death was smiling, that soft smile Harry liked.
“You’ve done it, then?” he asked. “You’ve felt your magic?”
Harry nodded, feeling breathless. “Wow,” she repeated.
Death’s smile widened. “Then you’re ready for the next step. But first,” he waved a hand, and Harry heard a click. “Samhain.”
“Samhain,” Harry echoed, her mind refocusing. Then she blinked. “Wait - I thought you said you couldn’t interact with the world of the living?”
“Not normally, no,” Death agreed. He opened the cupboard door and stood, holding out a hand. “But tonight is Samhain, when the veil between life and death is at its thinnest. Tonight, I am almost at my full power.”
Harry’s mouth formed into a little ‘o’. She grabbed Death’s hand, surprised at its solidness. It was the first time she’d touched him - his hands were cold, which weren’t surprising, but she knew the magic that thrummed beneath, now, and that made them seem warmer.
Together, they walked to a nearby forest, which was close to her primary school. Harry felt a bit embarrassed - Death had told her that the more magical the place, the more powerful the celebration would be, and she was a bit ashamed that she lived in the least magical place she knew. Death seemed to sense her thoughts, and gave her a chiding look.
“Do not feel ashamed for things outside of your control, Harry,” he told her softly. “It is not your fault you were placed here.”
Harry nodded, looking away.
At last, they reached a place Death deemed satisfactory - next to a small pond. The still surface of the water symbolized the border between life and death. She sat cross-legged at the edge of the pond, facing it, and took a deep breath, going over the words in her head.
When it was midnight, Death spoke.
“It’s time.”
Harry swallowed, and began the words, holding two names in her head. “I am here tonight to honor my dead,” she said softly. “I am here tonight to welcome them home. I am here tonight to ease their passing, and to ask that they, in turn, ease my living. Let it so be said.”
Perhaps it was her imagination, but as she spoke, she felt a sort of resonance, an echo of her voice coming back to her. She suddenly had the feeling of being one small point in a huge, interconnected web, one small drop in the pond, one breath upon the air. She felt like she was part of something bigger than herself for the first time in her life.
Then her mind went blank as a soft white mist seemed to rise from the surface of the pond. It swirled around her, and Harry felt softness and warmth from it - was this love? She wondered. Was this what it felt like to be loved?
She couldn’t speak - she couldn’t even breathe. She just watched, eyes filled with tears, as the mist slowly dissipated.
She felt… grounded, somehow. The tight, hard knot of sadness in her chest seemed to loosen, just a little. Her parents had loved her, she knew, but now she had undeniable proof that they loved her still, even though she hadn’t been able to properly honor them until now.
“Thank you,” she whispered hoarsely. “Mum. Dad. I’ll make you proud, I promise.”
But the mist was gone, and the forest didn’t answer.