Harry Potter sat in the debris of what had once been the kitchen of Grimmauld Place. Dust motes danced in the afternoon light that filtered through cracked windows. The wallpaper hung in strips, and the floorboards groaned under his weight. He hadn't bothered to repair anything in months.
The silence was suffocating against his ears. He'd grown to prefer it over the whispers that followed him everywhere else.
A sparrow landed on the windowsill outside. Harry's eyes focused, and the world shifted. Golden threads stretched from the small bird in every direction—some thick as rope, others thin as acromantula silk. The thread connecting to its nest pulsed with warm light. Another, darker strand led toward the street where a cat waited keenly.
Harry closed his eyes. The threads vanished.
"Fascinating, isn't it?" A foreboding voice, disembodied and yet carrying some structure drifted from the corner where shadows gathered despite the sunlight. "Seeing the web that connects all things."
"I didn't ask for your commentary." Harry's voice came out rougher than he intended.
"You never ask. You never have to." Death moved closer, though Harry kept his eyes shut. "Ten years since the abomination fell. Ten years since you became my Master. How does it feel?"
"Like drowning in slow motion."
Death laughed, a sound like wind howling through empty houses. Terrifying. "Eloquent as always."
The Elder Wand hummed against Harry's thigh where it rested in his pocket. It had been doing that more often lately—responding to his emotions before he even recognized them himself. Power flowed through the ancient wood, seeking release, seeking purpose.
Harry pulled the wand free and stared at its pale surface. "Do you remember when I thought this would solve everything?"
"I remember when you broke it."
"I remember when it came back." Harry turned the wand over in his hands. "Three days later. Right there on my nightstand, whole again. Like it had never been touched."
"Some bonds cannot be severed, Harry Potter."
"Some bonds shouldn't exist."
The sparrow outside took flight. Harry watched it disappear beyond the rooftops, carrying its threads of fate with it. Somewhere in the distance, a church bell chimed three times.
Inadvertently, his mind traveled back to the conversation that had take place roughly six months ago, in a land far, far away.
The café in Perth was almost empty. Harry sat across from Hermione, watching her stir sugar into her coffee with the same precision that had been the norm throughout their Hogwarts years. She'd aged in the years since they'd last met. Lines creased the corners of her eyes, and her hair had a couple silver threads that caught the morning light. Twenty-nine, but she looked older. Older than she should.
"You look tired," she said without looking up.
"I don't sleep much anymore."
"The nightmares?"
"The opposite." Harry leaned back in his chair. "I don't dream at all. Haven't in years."
Hermione finally met his eyes. "That's not normal, Harry."
"Nothing about me is normal, Hermione. We established that a long time ago."
She flinched. "I didn't mean—"
"Yes, you did." Harry's voice stayed level. "It's fine, Hermione. I know what I am."
The silence stretched between them. Outside, Perth's morning traffic moved in predictable patterns. Harry could see the threads if he wanted to—every collision avoided, every light change, every decision that would ripple outward through the day.
"The Ministry's been asking about you," Hermione said.
"They always ask about me."
"This is different. There are rumors—"
"There are always rumors."
"Harry." She reached across the table but stopped short of touching his hand. "People are scared."
"Good. Fear keeps them alive."
Hermione's face crumpled. "What happened to you?"
Harry stood, leaving money on the table. "I became what the war needed me to become. I just forgot to stop."
"Where will you go now?"
"Home." Harry paused at the café door. "Give my regards to Ron and the children."
"They ask about you."
"Tell them Uncle Harry is busy saving the world."
"Are you?"
Harry looked back at her. Hermione sat small and alone at their table, surrounded by the warm chatter of normal lives continuing their normal courses.
"Every day," he said, and walked out into the Perth sunshine.
Harry blinked, returning to the ruins of Grimmauld Place. The memory tasted bitter. Hermione's letters had stopped coming after that meeting. He couldn't blame her.
"She was trying to help," Death observed.
"She was trying to fix me. There's a difference."
"And can you be fixed?"
Harry stood, brushing dust from his jeans. "That's the wrong question."
"What's the right one?"
"Whether fixing me would fix anything else."
xXx
Several editions of the Daily Prophet lay scattered across the weathered surface of the kitchen table, their headlines screaming Harry's name in various fonts and colors.
POTTER PREVENTS DRAGON DISASTER IN ROMANIA.
THE BOY WHO LIVED SAVES MAGICAL COMMUNITY AGAIN.
POTTER: HERO OR HARBINGER?
Harry picked up the last paper. A photo of him from two months ago filled the front page. He stood in the aftermath of what should have been a catastrophic curse breaking accident, the Elder Wand still smoking in his hand. Three hundred people had lived because Harry Potter had been there at the right moment with the right power.
In the photo, his face showed nothing. No satisfaction, no relief, no joy. Just the flat exhaustion of a man going through motions he'd performed too many times to count.
The article quoted witnesses. "He appeared from nowhere, like Death himself." "The power that came off him—it wasn't natural." "We're grateful, of course, but the way he looked at us afterward..."
Harry crumpled the paper and tossed it aside. They were right to be unsettled. He'd looked at them the way a shepherd might look at sheep—necessary to protect, impossible to connect with.
His reflection caught his eye in the cracked mirror above the sink. Twenty-eight years old, but his face hadn't changed since he was twenty-one. The Hallows' power flowed through him like a river, preserving what it deemed essential while everything else around him aged and died and moved beyond his reach.
He touched the glass. The young man looking back at him had Harry's features but Death's eyes—ancient and weary and far too knowing.
"Do you know what they call you now?" Death asked.
"I try not to listen."
"The Deathless. The Eternal Guardian. The Man Who Cannot Fall."
"Catchy."
"They build shrines to you in remote villages. Light candles and pray for your intervention."
Harry's laugh held no humor. "I'm not a god."
"No. You're something rarer. A mortal who I cannot touch. Who has defied me time and again. It terrifies them."
"It should terrify me too."
"Does it?"
Harry considered the question, and the answer came naturally.
"No. That's what terrifies me."
The Elder Wand pulsed against his leg, responding to the spike of emotion. Power crackled through the air, making the dust motes dance in impossible spirals. The broken clock on the wall ticked once, then fell silent again.
Death materialized fully now, taking the shape it preferred when speaking with Harry—tall, draped in shadows that moved independently of any light source, with eyes like starless nights.
"You've been thinking," Death observed.
"I've been planning."
"There's a difference?"
"Thinking is passive. Planning requires action."
Death moved to the window, looking out at the London street beyond. Even in broad daylight, shadows seemed to gather around its form.
"The Department of Mysteries," Death said. "You mean to go there."
"I mean to end this."
"This?"
Harry gestured at himself, at the room, and at the world beyond the walls. "All of it. The endless cycle. The isolation. The power without purpose."
"You have purpose. You save lives."
"I preserve lives. There's a difference." Harry joined Death at the window. "I prevent deaths that would happen anyway, just later. I delay the inevitable. I don't create anything. I don't build anything. I just... maintain."
"Maintenance has value."
"For whom? The people I save fear me. My friends can't relate to me. My enemies are all dead." Harry's reflection overlapped with Death's in the dirty glass. "I exist in the spaces between living and dying, and I'm tired of existing."
"You wish to die?"
"I wish to live. Really live. Or really die. This halfway state isn't either."
Death was quiet for a long moment. "The Veil of Death. You think it holds answers."
"I think it holds change. One way or another."
"The Department of Mysteries guards it well."
"The Department of Mysteries fears me more than they guard anything." Harry turned from the window. "They'll let me pass. They always do."
"And if you're wrong? If the Veil offers only oblivion?"
Harry smiled for the first time in months. It felt strange on his face. "Then I'll finally get some sleep."
Death laughed, the sound akin to wind howling through graveyards. Perhaps it sensed what was coming, or perhaps be was being too poetic about things. Harry shook his head, a sigh escaping his lips.
"Ten years ago, you were a boy trying to save the world. Now you're a man trying to leave it."
"Maybe that's growth."
"Maybe it's surrender."
"Maybe it's wisdom."
xXx
Harry walked through the ruined house, passing memories embedded in every shadow. The drawing room where Sirius had died in his mind a thousand times. The stairs where he'd first understood what it meant to carry the weight of other people's lives. The bedroom where he'd learned that some choices echoed through eternity.
In what had once been his bedroom, Harry opened a trunk that had survived every catastrophe that had befallen the house. Inside, wrapped in silk that had never aged, lay the Resurrection Stone. It pulsed with dark light, calling to the part of him that had always been more comfortable with the dead than the living.
He picked it up. The world shifted, and suddenly the room filled with ghosts. His parents stood by the window. Sirius lounged against the doorframe. Remus and Tonks whispered together in the corner. Dozens of others—faces from the war, faces from the years since, all those he'd failed to save despite his power.
"Harry," his mother said, her voice like an echo of warmth.
"Mum." Harry's voice broke on the word.
"You're thinking of joining us," James observed. His father looked young and earnest, frozen at the age he'd died.
"I'm thinking of choosing. For once in my life, I want to choose my own path."
"Death isn't a path," Sirius said, moving closer. "It's a destination."
"So is this." Harry gestured at himself. "Eternal preservation. Always watching, always separate."
"The living world needs you," Remus said gently.
"The living world fears me. There's a difference."
Lily moved to stand before her son. "You were always meant for great things, Harry. But greatness doesn't require suffering."
"Doesn't it?" Harry met her eyes. "Name one great wizard who wasn't defined by their pain."
The ghosts exchanged glances. None of them answered.
"The Department of Mysteries," Tonks said finally. "You think the Veil will give you answers?"
"I think the Veil will give me change. That's all I want anymore. Change."
"And if it destroys you?"
"Then I'll finally be at peace."
Harry closed his fist around the Resurrection Stone. The ghosts faded, but their expressions lingered in his memory—sad, understanding, and somehow proud.
Back in the kitchen, Harry stood before the cracked mirror again. His reflection stared back with eyes that had seen too much and felt too little. The young man in the glass looked like a stranger wearing Harry Potter's face.
"Twenty-eight years old," he said to his reflection. "And I feel like I've lived a thousand."
"Perhaps you have," Death replied from the shadows.
"In Romania, when I saved those people from the curse—do you know what I felt?"
"Tell me."
"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I saw the curse forming, I calculated the counter-measures, I executed the solution. Like solving a mathematical equation." Harry touched his reflection's cheek. "I used to feel everything so intensely. Love, hate, fear, joy—they consumed me. Now I feel like I'm watching life through thick glass."
"Power has a price."
"Everything has a price. The question is whether what you buy is worth what you pay."
Harry pulled the Elder Wand from his pocket and held it up to catch the light. The pale wood seemed to glow with inner fire.
"Ten years I've carried this. Ten years I've been the most powerful wizard alive. Do you know what I've accomplished with all that power?"
"You've saved thousands of lives."
"I've prevented thousands of deaths. It's not the same thing." Harry lowered the wand. "Voldemort wanted to conquer death. I conquered it. And now I understand why he was so miserable."
"You think the Veil will break that conquest?"
"I think the Veil is the only thing in this world that might surprise me."
Harry closed his eyes and spoke to the silence that had become his constant companion. "It's time."
The words echoed in the air like a declaration of war against his own existence. When he opened his eyes, his reflection looked different—not younger or older, but more real somehow. More present.
"The Department of Mysteries," he said to Death.
"The Department of Mysteries," Death agreed.
Harry stood, pocketing both wands—the Elder Wand and his original holly and phoenix feather wand that he'd repaired years ago. The Resurrection Stone he left on the table. Whatever happened next, he wouldn't need to speak to the dead anymore.
He walked to the front door of Grimmauld Place and paused with his hand on the handle. Behind him lay ten years of isolation, power, and the slow erosion of everything that had once made him human. Ahead lay the unknown—perhaps death, perhaps transformation, perhaps something else entirely.
For the first time in years, Harry Potter smiled with genuine anticipation.
He opened the door and stepped into the London afternoon, leaving the ruins of his old life behind him. The Ministry of Magic awaited, and with it, the Department of Mysteries and the Veil that might finally offer him what power never could—the chance to choose his own ending.
Death followed him out into the sunlight, a shadow that no light could dispel, whispering questions that Harry no longer needed to answer. The time for questions had passed.
The time for action had begun.
xXx
The abandoned atrium of the Ministry of Magic stretched before Harry like a mausoleum. His footsteps echoed against marble floors that had once bustled with hundreds of wizards and witches going about their daily business. Now, dust particles danced in shafts of light that filtered through grimy windows high above.
"Magnificent, isn't it?" Death's voice drifted from the shadows cast by the fountain. "How quickly order collapses without constant maintenance."
Harry ignored his unwanted companion. The fountain stood dry and cracked, its golden figures tarnished and broken. Water hadn't flowed here in years. Not since the last skeleton crew had finally abandoned their posts and fled to safer postings in remote departments.
They feared him. All of them.
Harry approached the lifts. The golden grilles hung open like toothless mouths. He pressed the call button out of habit, though he knew the lifts had been disabled months ago. Another security measure. Another futile attempt to keep him out.
"They think locked doors will stop you," Death observed.
"They think a lot of things." Harry pulled out the Elder Wand. Power flowed through the ancient wood without him even casting a spell. The lift mechanism groaned to life. Gears that hadn't turned in months began moving again. Magic sparked through dead circuits as Harry stared impassively.
The lift arrived with a cheerful ding that sounded obscene in the empty atrium.
Harry stepped inside. "Department of Mysteries."
The lift began its descent. Each floor they passed held memories. Level Two, where he'd once testified before the Wizengamot. Level Four, where Arthur Weasley had worked before the family moved to Ireland. Level Six, where Hermione had tried to reform magical creature rights before she'd given up and emigrated to Australia.
They'd all left. One by one, his friends had found reasons to be anywhere but England. George had been the last to go, taking his family to Romania to work with Charlie and his dragons. Even Mrs. Weasley had stopped sending Christmas sweaters.
"You drove them away," Death said.
"I saved their lives."
"Same thing, in your case."
The lift stopped. The grille opened onto a corridor that hummed with protective enchantments. Ward after ward layered the air like spider webs. Harry could see them all—detection charms, stunning hexes, memory modification spells, and darker things that would have killed an ordinary wizard.
He was no ordinary wizard.
He walked forward. The wards parted before him like curtains. Not because he broke them, but because they recognized what he was. The Elder Wand's mastery extended beyond simple spell-casting. It commanded magic itself.
"The Unspeakables worked for months on these defenses," Death said.
"The Unspeakables work for me. Have been for years now. They just don't know it, or if they do, they refuse to acknowledge it."
Harry reached the end of the corridor. A single door stood between him and the Department of Mysteries. No handle. No keyhole. Just smooth black wood that absorbed light.
He placed his palm against the surface. The wood was warm, almost alive. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the door recognized him and swung open.
Inside, the Department of Mysteries looked exactly as he remembered. Dozens of doors lined a circular room. Some were locked. Some weren't. All of them led to chambers where the Ministry's brightest minds studied the deepest mysteries of magic.
Harry had been here before. Officially twice. Unofficially, more times than he cared to count.
"The Time Room," Harry said, nodding toward one door. "I erased three months of research there last year. They were trying to send messages to the past. To warn people about me."
"Pragmatic," Death agreed.
"The Love Room." Harry indicated another door. "I modified the memories of everyone who worked there. They kept trying to understand why I couldn't feel anymore. Why love had stopped working on me."
"Necessary."
"The Death Chamber." Harry's eyes fixed on a door marked with ancient symbols. "Where I should have died at fifteen. Where everything started going wrong. Where Sirius died. Killed by family."
The door to the Death Chamber stood slightly ajar. Whispers leaked through the gap—not words, but the sound of voices calling from somewhere far away. Harry had heard those whispers in his dreams for years before he'd stopped dreaming at all.
He steeled himself and pushed the door open.
The Death Chamber hadn't changed. Stone steps descended toward a dais where an ancient archway stood. The Veil of Death hung within the arch like black silk, moving without any wind to stir it. The whispers grew louder as Harry descended the steps.
"Can you hear them?" he asked Death.
"I am them. In a sense."
"What do they say?"
"Come home."
"Charming."
Harry reached the bottom of the steps. The archway loomed before him, taller than he remembered. The Veil rippled with its own dark current. Somewhere beyond that fabric, voices called his name.
He sat on the stone floor and leaned against the dais. The whispers surrounded him like old friends. For the first time in months, he didn't feel alone.
"Tell me about Romania," Death said, materializing fully beside the archway.
"You were there. You know what happened."
"I want to hear your version."
Harry closed his eyes. The memory came easily. It always did when he didn't want it to.
"Curse-breakers had found something in an old tomb. Pre-Roman magic. They thought they could contain it." He opened his eyes. "They were wrong."
"You felt the magical disturbance from London."
"I felt three hundred people about to die. The curse was spreading through the ley lines. It would have reached Bucharest within hours."
"So you went."
"So I went." Harry stood and paced in front of the archway. "I apparated into the middle of their excavation site. Twenty curse-breakers standing around a pit that was bleeding dark magic into the air. The curse had already claimed four of them."
"What did you do?"
"What I always do. I solved the problem." Harry's voice hardened. "I traced the curse back to its source. Ancient blood magic tied to a ritual sacrifice. The only way to stop it was to complete the ritual."
"You killed someone."
"I killed the right someone. The excavation leader. The one whose greed had triggered the curse in the first place." Harry stopped pacing. "One life for three hundred. Simple math."
"The curse-breakers saw you do it."
"They saw me murder their boss to save their lives. Yes."
"How did they react?"
Harry laughed bitterly. "First they thanked me. Then they realized what they'd witnessed. Then they started backing away. Then they started running."
"You let them go."
"I modified their memories first. They remember a cave-in. A tragic accident. Their leader died heroically trying to save them."
"Merciful."
"Practical. The truth would have caused problems."
Death moved closer to the Veil. The whispers grew louder, more insistent. "You've done this before. Killed to save lives. Modified memories to preserve order."
"Seventeen times in the last three years." Harry's voice was matter-of-fact. "A dark wizard in Scotland who was breeding acromantulas to attack muggle towns. A Department of Magical Accidents employee who was selling classified information to foreign governments. A healer at St. Mungo's who was experimenting on patients."
"All threats."
"All people. All someone's son or daughter or parent." Harry touched the Elder Wand in his pocket. "I've become very good at killing, Death. Very efficient. Very clean."
"The greater good."
"Grindelwald's words. Dumbledore's philosophy. My reality." Harry turned to face the archway. "Do you know what the worst part is?"
"Tell me."
"I don't feel anything when I do it. No guilt. No satisfaction. No regret. Just... completion. Like crossing an item off a shopping list."
"You've transcended mortal limitations."
"I've lost my humanity." Harry stepped closer to the Veil. The whispers became almost intelligible. Almost welcoming. "In Romania, after I killed their leader, I looked at the other curse-breakers. Do you know what I saw?"
"Fear."
"Sheep. Just sheep that needed protecting from wolves they were too weak to fight themselves." Harry's reflection wavered in the dark fabric. "I used to be one of them. Now I'm something else entirely."
"Evolution."
"Devolution. I've become the thing I once fought against. A being so far above ordinary wizards that their lives mean nothing to me except as problems to solve."
Death reached toward the Veil but didn't touch it. "The whispers are getting stronger."
"They've been calling to me for years. Ever since I mastered the Hallows." Harry pulled out both wands—the Elder Wand and his original holly and phoenix feather wand. "Do you know why I really came here, Death?"
"To die."
"To choose. For the first time in my adult life, I want to make a choice that's entirely mine. Not about saving someone else. Not about preventing some catastrophe. Just about me."
"And your choice is?"
Harry looked at both wands. The Elder Wand hummed with power. His original wand felt warm and familiar. Both had served him well. Both had cost him everything.
"I choose to stop." He placed both wands on the stone floor. "I choose to stop being the solution to everyone else's problems. I choose to stop being feared by the people I save. I choose to stop existing in the space between life and death."
"The Veil may not give you death. It may give you something else entirely."
"Then I'll deal with that when it happens. But I won't spend another day as the Master of Death who can't live and can't die."
Harry stood before the archway. The Veil rippled more violently now, as if sensing his intention. The whispers rose to a crescendo of voices calling his name.
"Harry Potter."
He turned. Death stood beside the discarded wands, no longer a figure of shadow but something more solid. More real.
"Yes?"
"You were the most remarkable mortal I ever encountered. You survived numerous times, but you truly defeated me three times. You mastered powers that were never meant for human hands. You bore burdens that would have crushed anyone else."
"Past tense?"
"Present tense. You are remarkable. Even in this choice."
Harry smiled. It was a smile that truly reached his eyes. The expression felt genuine for the second time in months.
"Thank you."
"Will you give me a message for them? The ones who loved you?"
"Tell them I'm finally free."
Harry turned back to the archway. The Veil beckoned with promises of rest. Of silence. Of an end to the endless responsibility that had defined his adult life.
He thought of his parents, young and laughing in old photographs. He thought of Sirius, forever frozen at the age he'd died. He thought of all the allies who'd died, all the friends who'd moved away, all the people who'd feared him, all the lives he'd saved and all the prices he'd paid.
Most of all, he thought of sleep. Real sleep, without dreams of power or responsibility or the weight of the world pressing down on his shoulders.
"Goodbye, Death."
"Goodbye, Harry Potter."
Death's voice was a caress of whisper, gentler than he'd ever heard. No howling of the wind this time, no noise accompanying it that would terrify lesser men.
Harry stepped forward. The Veil parted around him like water. For a moment, he felt nothing but peace. The whispers faded. The weight lifted from his shoulders. The Elder Wand's power released its hold on his soul.
Then reality screamed.
The world exploded into light and sound and sensation that tore through his consciousness like lightning. The Veil meant death. But for him, the Veil wasn't an ending. It wasn't rest. It was a doorway, and he was falling through it into something that definitely wasn't death.
Colors that had no names flooded his vision. Sounds that existed beyond human hearing filled his ears. The taste of starlight and the scent of time itself overwhelmed his senses.
He tried to scream but he had no voice. He tried to think but he had no thoughts. The essence of what made him Harry Potter scattered like leaves in a hurricane, each piece spinning away into an infinity that stretched in directions that didn't exist.
And just as his consciousness began to dissolve entirely, something caught him. Something vast and ancient and impossibly complex wrapped around his scattered essence and pulled it back together.
Not yet, a voice said that wasn't Death rasp or howl and wasn't human and wasn't anything he recognized. Not here. Not like this.
You have work to do.
In a different world.
With different rules.
But the same heart.
Harry Potter, Master of Death, fell through the spaces between realities toward a destiny he could never have imagined. Behind him, the Veil sealed itself shut. Ahead lay something that might be a second chance or might be a different kind of prison.
Either way, he was no longer alone with Death in a dead world.
He had sought to end his life. He had failed.
For better or worse, his story was just beginning. In a different world.
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