Chapter Text
The earliest memory Harry could recall with any clarity was Aunt Petunia shouting at him about the blood.
It had dripped, slow and stubborn drops, from where Harry had picked his nails raw, staining the clean cream rugs in ugly little splatters. His fingers had been red, swollen, peeling in places where the skin had come away in thin, curling strips that made them look almost… rotten.
“Do you have no sense, you brat of a boy?” Aunt Petunia shrieked.
Her long, bony neck jutted forward at an unnatural angle, stretching her thin frame until she looked even more like a giraffe than usual. Her face had mottled quickly, flushing a blotchy, furious red, and Harry had the distant, childish thought that steam might start pouring from her ears like a train if she grew any angrier.
Harry said nothing. Even at four and a half, he knew better than to try. Explanations only made it worse. They always did. At best, they earned him a look so cold it felt like being buried in snow, something vast and suffocating, like what he imagined the top of Mount Everest must feel like. At worst, it meant being locked away again.
To go back to the dark, damp cupboard and be left hungry. Always hungry.
“I’ve just cleaned the parlor, and you drip your filthy blood all over it!” Petunia screeched, pacing back and forth with sharp, agitated steps.
She always paced when she was like this, back and forth, back and forth, until she worked herself into a state so breathless and flushed it looked like she’d run a marathon.
“And don’t think I didn’t notice the biscuits!” she snapped suddenly, whirling around. “Three of them! I can count, you know! And you left bits of your skin on the tray, absolutely disgusting!”
She stopped directly in front of Harry then, eyes narrowing as they fixed on his face, on his eyes.
Green. Bright. Too bright. (Not Lily’s Eyes)
Harry didn’t try to explain.
He couldn’t explain that the picking helped. That it made the tight, choking feeling in his throat ease when he hadn’t had water in days. That it gave him something to focus on when his stomach twisted in on itself, aching and hollow from living off Dudley’s crusts.
That made him feel like he wasn’t quietly dying.
So he stood there and endured it. He always endured it.
Until, eventually, he was sent out, banished to the shed in the back garden while Petunia’s book club guests arrived, their laughter floating faintly through the walls as Harry sat in the dark.
It was different at Hogwarts.
There, he could eat until he was full, truly full, not just quieting the worst of the hunger. Plates that refilled themselves, food that never ran out. It felt like a trick the first few years, something he had to hoard in his robe’s pockets just in case it vanished.
At the Burrow, Mrs. Weasley would pile his plate high enough for three people, tutting under her breath about how thin he was, how he needed “fattening up properly.”
Even Professor Lupin had noticed.
After the dementors in the third year, when he had fainted, he had looked at him with quiet concern and said he felt too light, so very light, before pressing chocolate into his hands whenever he saw him after.
He still hid food. Wrapped carefully in scraps of old parchment, tucked into the corners of his trunk, sealed with small stasis charms he cast half on instinct. Just in case.
Just in case it all went away again.
Even now, years later, he was still skin and bones. Smaller than most of the boys his age, like Ron and all the other quidditch players, no matter how much he ate. Sometimes he thought he was rotting from the inside out.
That all that magic, everyone else’s hope, their expectations, the weight of being the “boy who lived,” was too much for his body to contain. That it pressed against his ribs, his lungs, his stomach, swelling and swelling until he might split open like Aunt Marge had when Harry had lost control and blown her up like a balloon.
Too full. Too much. Like he might burst.
That was why he picked. He pinched and tore at his skin until it stung and bled.
It grounded him. Made everything feel real when the rest of his life felt like something constantly slipping out from under his feet.
Hermione hated it. Had tried everything, spells cast to still his hands, thick salves that burned when applied but were meant to heal, and long lectures whispered late at night when he thought Harry wasn’t listening to her enough.
Luna had only tilted her head and suggested, very seriously, that Harry might have better luck pinching wrackspurts instead.
Harry had just… gotten better at hiding it. Less obvious places. Wrists. Arms. Legs. Anywhere his robes would cover. Anywhere no one would see. But now, he just couldn’t stop.
His nails dug harshly into the already broken skin on his fingers. Because this was it.
He was a Horcrux. A living one. What kind of cruel, twisted irony was that?
He had carried a piece of his parents’ murderer inside him for years, had been tethered to him in a way he hadn’t even understood until it was far too late.
“Either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives…” Professor Trelawney’s voice echoed in his mind, distant and inevitable.
It seemed the prophecy had been right. He had to die. Only then could he be made mortal again. Only then could he be killed.
He had always been the one who gave. His parents. Sirius. Remus. Cedric. Hedwig. One by one, taken, lost, because of him.
And now, finally, he would have to give himself too. Be slaughtered like a filthy pig so that the world could have a chance to keep spinning without Voldemort.
The air grew colder. Harry stilled. He heard him before He saw him.
That voice, rasping, hollow, wrong. “Harry Potter,” it mocked, curling through the trees of the forest. “The boy who lived… come to die.”
Harry’s grip on his arm tightened.
Could a monster like him become mortal in an instant? Was death enough to make someone human? Or was it something else, something deeper, that defined a man?
He didn’t know. He was just a boy. Too young. Too reckless. Too stupid, as Snape would have said. (He could still feel his blood on his hands, warm, and now cold and dried.)
Maybe it wasn’t his place to understand. Maybe that was fine. Because in the end, it didn’t matter. He didn’t even feel the Killing Curse. Maybe it was because he didn’t fight it anymore. Maybe it was because his thoughts had drifted toward his mother’s first friend, toward his father’s first victim.
Or maybe he had simply… let go.
There was a flash of green. And then just a strange, quiet warmth. Like being pulled into an embrace. Dying felt like being held.
The boy who lived, gone.
When he came to, everything felt… wrong.
Like waking after falling from his dormitory bed when Ron had shaken him too hard in a rush to get to breakfast, only worse.
His eyes fluttered open. There was just white. No canopy above his bed. No burgundy and gold curtains. No window to his left, letting in the first light of morning. Just pure white.
“Ron?” he croaked, his voice dry. No answer.
Panic flickered, quick and sharp. Where was he? Where was anyone?
He pushed himself up slowly, limbs trembling, his body unsteady as though it no longer quite remembered how to move properly. The ground beneath him didn’t feel like ground at all; it was soft, almost like clouds, shifting faintly under his weight.
Around him, shapes began to form. There were arches, tall and pale, stretching upward into nothing. Silks draped between them, fluttering faintly, their flapping reminiscent of the banners in the Great Hall. The space went on forever. There were no walls and no end he could see.
Moody would be furious at his lack of caution. Harry swallowed dryly around the lump in his throat. He needed to move, figure out where he was, and get back to everyone at Hogwarts.
He rolled onto his side, then pushed himself up onto his forearms, then his hands, pressing up on his legs, unsteady, shaking like a newborn fawn taking its first steps.
His vision was still swimming without his glasses, everything blurring more.
“Take these, Harry.” The voice came from directly in front of him. And then a familiar weight settled on his nose. It was his glasses, all black, round, and still slightly crooked.
The world snapped into focus, and Harry froze. “Snuffles?” he held his breath.
The man standing before him looked so much like Sirius that it made his chest ache. Shaggy dark hair. Soft eyes lined with the faint creases of laughter. A beard he had always hated being told to shave. Even his clothes, a dark waistcoat and jacket with dress trousers, felt achingly familiar.
For a moment, his hope flared, wild and desperate.
“Sorry,” the man said gently. “Not him.” The words settled heavily between them.
Harry straightened instinctively, forcing his shoulders back, trying to make himself look less small, less vulnerable, though he had no wand, no bearings, no idea where he was or who was in front of him. “Then who are you?” he asked.
“Take a guess, my Master.”
The title sat wrong in his chest. “I don’t have time for riddles,” he said, sharper than he felt. His voice echoed strangely here, too soft and too loud all at once, as if the space couldn’t decide what to do with it. “Where am I? Where is everyone else?”
The man only smiled. It wasn’t a mocking one; it looked like pity, and that made it worse.
“You are precisely where you need to be,” he replied, as though that answered anything at all. “And everyone else is exactly where they must be.”
Harry frowned. “That doesn’t–”
“You’ve died,” he added, almost gently.
The words didn’t strike like a blow. They settled instead, like a truth he had already known long before hearing it aloud. Harry exhaled through his nose.
“Right,” he said after a moment. “That tracks.”
A pause.
“…That’s it?” the man asked, brows lifting slightly.
“What do you want me to do?” Harry shrugged, though the motion felt strange in his borrowed-light body. “Cry? Rage? I walked to it willingly.”
He had walked into the forest knowing. He had always known.
The man studied him for a long moment, something unreadable flickering behind his eyes, something old. Older than Hogwarts. Older than magic as Harry understood it.
“Still stubborn,” the man murmured, almost to himself.
Before Harry could snap back, the space around them shifted. Not moved, it shifted.
The silken banners stirred without wind, their colors bleeding into one another like ink in water. The arches stretched higher, impossibly tall, vanishing into a horizon that wasn’t there before. And then, they were no longer alone. Harry felt them before he saw them, with a feeling of pressure.
Not physical, nothing so simple. It was as though his very thoughts were being weighed, measured, observed from angles he couldn’t comprehend. His magic, what little of it he could feel without his wand, tightened instinctively, curling inward like something fragile shielding itself from a storm.
Several figures emerged. They didn’t walk in or appear; they were simply… becoming.
They stood at varying distances, each distinct and yet impossible to fully focus on, as though his eyes, even with his glasses, refused to settle.
Their forms were wrong. Like in the way reflections in warped glass at carnivals were wrong, humanoid enough to be separate, but carrying something beneath the surface that made his stomach twist and his head throb. One was tall and slight, draped in something that resembled Roman silks, though seemed almost radiant, their edges softened, bleeding light into the air around them. A second flickered, glitching like a error screen on the TV, present one second, half-gone the next, as though time itself couldn’t decide where to place them. There were more around. So many more. Some he could barely perceive at all, only the suggestion of presence, like the feeling of being watched from just behind his shoulder. Harry swallowed again.
“…Right,” he muttered under his breath. “Not Hogwarts.”
The man in front of him, Sirius-not-Sirius, inclined his head slightly.
“No,” he agreed. “Not Hogwarts.”
His gaze flicked between them, tension coiling tighter in his chest.
“What are you all?” he asked.
A quiet ripple moved through the gathered beings. Maybe amusement, or interest.
The one cloaked in silks stepped forward, or perhaps the world simply adjusted to place them closer.
“We are what remains when names are stripped away,” the figure said, voice low and layered, as though several tones spoke at once. “What was. What is. What will be.”
Harry grimaced. “Not so keen on straightforward answers, then.”
That earned him something almost like a laugh, from somewhere to his left, bright and fleeting. The radiant figure tilted their head. “Mortals and their need for definitions,” they said, not unkindly. “You would call us Life. Fate. Beginnings”
The flickering one added, voice echoing out of sync with itself, “Time. Chaos. Endings.”
“Names,” they finished, “are conveniences. We wear them when it suits us.”
Harry let out a slow breath. His fingers had curled into his palms without him noticing, nails pressing into skin that didn’t quite feel like skin. "Okay,” he said, quieter this time. His eyes slid back to the first man in front of him. “And you?”
He smiled, soft, familiar, devastating in how much it reminded him of someone he had lost. “I am what you have always known me to be,” he said. “Though you’ve called me many things.”
Something in his chest tightened. “…Death,” he said. Not a question. The smile didn’t change, but the space seemed to still around the word.
“Yes,” he replied simply.
Harry huffed out a breath, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Of course you are,” he muttered. “That would be my Potter luck.” He dropped his hand, squaring his shoulders despite the way his pulse stuttered.
“Alright,” he said, forcing steadiness into his voice. “I’m dead. You’re Death. They’re everything else in between.” He gestured vaguely with his hands. “What now?”
Death regarded him for a long moment. “You misunderstand your position,” he said at last.
Harry’s jaw tightened. “Do I?”
“You are not here to be judged,” another voice interjected, calm, measured. Fate, perhaps. “Nor claimed.”
Death inclined his head. “You were never mine to keep,” he said.
Harry blinked slowly like an owl. That didn’t make any sense. “You’ve been trying to claim me since I was a baby,” he shot back.
A murmur rippled through the space, this time sharper, almost disapproving. Death’s expression didn’t change, but something deeper shifted, like a shadow passing beneath still water. “I have never chased you, Harry Potter,” he said.
“Then what–?” he started, frustration flaring. “There’s been interference,” Fate said.
“To preserve a balance that has long since broken,” Life finished softly.
Harry stilled. “…Balance?” he repeated. The air seemed to thicken. For a moment, none of them spoke.
Then Death stepped closer. “Magic,” he said, “was never meant to be hoarded.”
Something in his tone made his chest ache.
“It was wild, endless, forever replenishing. It moved through the world as breath moves through your lungs.”
Images flickered at the edges of his mind, things he couldn’t fully see, but felt. Like vast spells, living forests, seas that glimmered with power. Magic that felt alive.
“Now?” Chaos said lightly. “It dwindles.”
“Diminishes,” Time added.
“Starves,” Life whispered.
Harry’s throat felt tight. “Why now?” he asked.
Fate’s gaze settled on his. “Because nothing is free.” The words landed like a verdict.
“Magic requires exchange,” Fate continued. “A balance, an offering of sorts, renewals are needed.”
“Blood,” Chaos said, almost lazily.
“Ritual,” Time added afterwards.
“Life begetting life,” Life murmured.
Death watched him carefully. “And your world,” he said, “has forgotten how to give.”
Harry’s mind flickered, traditions, whispered rituals, things dismissed as archaic, dark, unnecessary. “So it’s dying,” he said.
“Already dead,” Chaos corrected him.
Something cold settled in his stomach. “And all of this–” he gestured vaguely, anger creeping in to his mind now, sharp and familiar, “The war, Voldemort, me–”
“It’s the inevitable doom,” Fate said.
Harry laughed once, hollow. “Of course,” he muttered. “Figures.”
Silence stretched. Then Death spoke again. “You are… unusual,” he said.
Harry snorted. “That’s one way to put being fucked in the head.”
Death didn’t waver or react. “In every world,” he continued, “in every variation of existence, you persist.” Something in the being’s tone made Harry still.
“You have many different forms, whether it be as a witch, wizard, squib, obscurial, or even a muggle, yet you always choose the same.”
Harry’s chest felt tight. “Choose what?” All of them seemed to focus on him at once. It was unbearable. “Others,” Death said simply. The word hit harder than any curse fired at him.
“You give, you endure, you care.” Fate said.
Harry looked away from them. His throat burned. “That’s not–” he started, but the words faltered. Because what was the point of denying it? Of course he put others before himself. How else could he expect anyone to love or care for him if he did not give and sacrifice for them?
Death stepped back slightly, giving him space he hadn’t realized he needed. “For that,” he said, “you have been deemed worthy.”
“Worthy of what?” Harry asked quietly.
The space shifted again. In the distance, far beyond the arches, he caught a glimpse of something else. Endless, soft, golden gardens stretching into a horizon that looked and seemed serene.
“You may rest,” Life said gently. “Walk those gardens and be reunited with those you have lost.”
His heart stuttered. His Mum. Dad. Sirius. Remus. His fingers curled tightly at his sides imagining how he could finally relax. He didn’t have to keep fighting anymore.
“And wait,” Time added, voice softer now, “as your world meets its end. And the rest of your flock on Earth dies out.” The words shattered his image. Harry inhaled sharply. “Or?” he asked, because there was always an or in his story. There had to be. And there it was, that careful, deliberate pause.
Fate stepped forward. “There is another path.” Of course, there was.
“There is a moment,” Fate continued, “far before your time. A point where the imbalance may yet be corrected.”
Harry’s jaw tightened. “When?” he asked.
“To 1942,” Fate said. His mind raced, Grindelwald, Dumbledore, a world before Voldemort rose to power if any of his History of Magic classes taught him anything.
“You would be given all that you require,” Life said softly. “A chance at something more.”
“Family,” Chaos added, almost teasing.
“Love,” Time echoed.
“A life not built on loss,” Death finished.
Harry laughed under his breath. “You’re all really laying it on real thick,” he said.
No one denied it, because they didn’t need to. They already knew his choice.
“And all I have to do,” Harry said slowly, “is go back and change it?”
“Yes,” Fate said.
Harry closed his eyes. Of course that was the choice. Peace… or trying, again, to fix something broken. A bitter, familiar thought curled in his mind. Was it ever really a choice?
He exhaled. “Fine,” he said, opening his eyes. “Send me back.”
“…You do not hesitate,” Life said.
Harry huffed. “Why would I?” he said. “If I can fix it, if I can save them, why shouldn’t I?”
A flicker, something almost like regret, passed through the gathered beings.
Death inclined his head. “…As is to be expected,” he murmured.
And just before the world fractured into light for the second time for Harry, he could’ve sworn he heard Death whisper, “I’m so sorry, Harry.”