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Harry used to think that it was neat that he had a meter on his thigh that pointed outside of the normal range on it. It had numbers ranging from 1 to 10, with his stopping outside of it, where an 11 or 12 should have been.
For the longest time, he had believed that it had meant that his soulmate loved him so much.
It was only in the magical community that he found out that it was a meter to tell you how dangerous your soulmate was. The fact that it pointed to something outside of the meter never meant anything good.
Hermione had taken him apart one time to tell him that most people who had a soulmate with their meter outside of the normal range never met their other half.
“I’m so sorry, Harry, but them being so dangerous also means them having a lot of enemies. Not a lot, or hardly any, people live long enough being that dangerous.”
Harry had bitten his lip, wanting to tell her that he most likely was also dangerous like that. He had lived through several attempts on his life, and even if he didn’t know it then, there would be more attempts following.
Instead he kept quiet, looking at his friends as they looked on in pity, thinking that they had to be wrong. That there had to be a reason why his soulmate was like this. Why was he shown as being so dangerous?
It would take him some years to find out just why his soulmate was depicted as being so dangerous. He didn’t know it yet, but someone was keeping an eye on him. On him and his soulmate, knowing that they would be evenly matched. Knowing that they would both be dangerous in the eyes of so many people.
After all, the Champion and the Master of Death would be seen as dangerous by normal norms. Given that neither could be killed, not without Death there willing to take them away to the afterlife. Which was something she didn’t intend on doing.
It would take Harry dying on the battlefield and finding someone else waiting for him there. A woman garbed in a black robe that smiled at him as he looked at her.
“Hello, my master.”
Blinking at that, Harry sighed, “Death.”
She nodded, smiling slightly as she looked at something behind him. He turned to see Albus Dumbledore standing there, a look of shock on his face at seeing Death there. She in turn, just looked away again. Tilting her head as she looked at Harry again, a knowing look in her eyes.
“You know what it is that he has done.”
Harry nodded, “Raised me as a sheep for slaughter. Stood by as others, like Tom Riddle, showed more magical talent than him which was something he couldn’t cope with. It’s his deeds, in part, that made Lord Voldemort a reality to start with.”
Dumbledore tried to speak, but was quickly shut up by Death as she looked at Harry. He went to the disformed baby that was laying close by. His own soul recognized the one that had been attached to it for so long.
Bending down to pick up the baby, Harry held it close, “Can I do something for him?”
Death smiled, coming closer to take the baby from Harry and put him to sleep as he whimpered. The baby stilled and disappeared, before she turned to Harry with a sad smile on her face.
“He’s at peace now.”
Harry nodded, “And the still living part of his soul?”
Death shook her head, “It needs more than the sliver in Nagini to survive whatever it is that he turned himself into. He’ll whitter away and die within days. It’s his time, even if that was influenced by everything that happened.”
Looking at Dumbledore as she said this, she glared at the man still standing there. Looking at her as if she was unreal. In a way Harry could see where this was coming from, he had heard enough that Dumbledore had wanted to become Master of Death as well. He and Grindelwald had both wanted to, but when the latter turned away from the plans they had laid out, he stepped up to stop him.
Finding the resurrection stone as a horcrux was what made him put in in the first place, dooming himself before his plans ended.
“You were never meant to hold the title, Albus Dumbledore. You’re just here because of the sweet words you can say. There is no other reason but that one. You will go back to the afterlife while Harry here gets a second chance at life.”
She waved her hand to make him disappear before turning back to Harry, her eyes looking at the location that had his meter.
“He’s been dying to meet you, you know. Ever since he found out that the two of you are linked through me.”
Blinking at that, Harry turned towards Death, “You know who he is?”
She nodded, “Not even Fate can keep a secret from me, my dear Master. Death is everywhere and all encompassing, there is nothing that I don’t know. Nothing that can be kept hidden from me, unless it is by my own cloak.”
Thinking about the invisibility cloak he had, Harry grinned, “So my ancestor?”
Death nodded, “He kept the cloak around him to make sure he managed to live his life to the fullest. When it was time, and he handed the cloak to his eldest son, he was more than willing to come with me. To join me in that last great adventure.”
Harry sighed, “What about me?”
Death laughed, “You, and your soulmate, get to decide when to join me and your family in the next adventure, My Master. After everything that is the least you’ve earned.”
He grinned, nodding, as he looked around the station they were still standing in.
“Now what?”
Death grinned, “Now you go back. I’ll come and find you once everything is over and lead you towards him.”
Feeling her push him, he felt like he was falling before he could feel his body around him. It didn’t feel too different, until he used his magic to see around him. To see what was going on, and to see that Lord Voldemort was falling apart at the seams even if he didn’t know it himself.
When, moments later, his spell collided with his and shot through, he knew that this was the end. That Tom Riddle ceased to exist, the smile on his lips enough to tell him that this was his release.
“Rest in peace, Tom.”
Celebrations started almost as soon as the dead had been buried. Too many good people on both sides were lost to this useless war. Harry shook his head as he hitched Teddy closer on his hip. Andromeda, for all that she wanted to, knew that she wouldn’t be able to look after her grandson the way she wanted to. The war had taken its toll on her, even if she hadn’t noticed it.
Now, almost 2 months later, he was aware that she would never get to see her grandson grow up. Asking Harry to take care of him while she went to her husband and daughter. Finding peace in the knowledge that he would take good care of Teddy.
As she released her last breath, Harry didn’t even need to turn around to know that Death was standing behind him.
“Will she be taken care of?”
Death hummed, placing a hand on his shoulder, “I’ll see to her journey myself. You don’t have to worry about anything. Least of all when you should head to America with the way the world is changing.”
Harry pursed his lips, looking at Teddy as he did so. He had heard the rumors that an ultra light movement was gaining traction. They wanted to do away with everything dark and - in their words - dangerous.
None of them even saw that the way they were speaking was the exact same way that Voldemort and his most hardcore followers had used to advocate for a truly Dark World. This was the opposite in that it was Light orientated. But the gist of it stayed the same.
“I see…”
She nodded, “Especially with the little tyke you have there. They knew who his parents were, they wouldn't let him live.”
Sneering at that, Harry turned on his heel to head to his own house to start packing. No matter what he wouldn’t let anything happen to Teddy, not in a million years.
—
Once in America, it was easy to see why he would be much more at home here. For one, there wasn’t only the magical community that was active there. A whole community of enhanced people lived there, among the normal humans. Even the magical community worked with that, presenting themselves as just another subclass of enhanced.
With something called the Sokovia Accords, they were included under a set of rules that stipulated that as long as they didn’t engage in reckless behavior they were free to do what they wanted. The moment they started to engage into what was known as being a superhero, a vigilante or a villain and they broke the laws stipulated in those rules they were tried under the Sokovia Accords and in The Hague.
The UN did keep a close eye on those known as enhanced, and made sure that they were protected by those people that saw them as an abomination or a freak of nature. It worked both ways, in a way that had been benefiting most of those that went through the process.
With Teddy’s semi-lycanthropy and his own magic, it was something that was suggested to him by the witch that reached out to him for MACUSA. She added that it was his choice, but that MACUSA could count on a lot of support from the UN (and despite them nudging the UK to do the same thing, they hadn’t done so).
It was a fairly simple procedure, one which helped when Teddy got it into his little ehad to change his features to the person that was sitting by them or on the subway on their way home. It was easier to explain that he was a little enhanced instead of a magical being able to alter his appearance.
It was refreshing and so very freeing that Harry loved this way of handling things.
Sighing as he made his way through the crowd with a toddler on his hip, he cursed his smaller than average statue. Taking by surprise when he was almost run over by someone trying to make a beeline for the stairs to the streets.
He acted on instinct and made sure that the man went down for what seemed the Avengers to take him in. Said man spit and snarled at him all the same, trying to spit a fireball at him until a man entirely clad in red leather stepped between them.
Clicking their tongue at the person who had tried to fry him, “Now, who does that. Didn’t your mama teach you any manners.”
The man spit another fireball at Red Leather, making Harry want to interfere. He wouldn’t die from something like this. But the toddler in his arms would, so he kept back, happy when whoever was dressed in red just shrugged off the fire and started talking to the man who set him on fire in a baby voice, talking about himself in third person until he was taken away.
It was only then that he turned around to look at Harry and Teddy, something changing in his demeanor as he approached. Death pops up in the next moment to introduce her Champion and her Master to each other. A huge grin on her face as she did so, stating that she knew the two of them would be getting along just fine.
—
Years later, when Teddy attended Xavier’s school for gifted youngsters. Most of the people there knew him from his ties to Deadpool, who was still an honorary X-men and Avenger despite his habit of unaliving people.
He was also known as the son of Harry Black, the man who came out of nowhere with the money and talent to take a stand as a politician in favor of enhanced rights. Despite the Sokovia Accords, that stayed an issue and one he happily helped resolve.
The fact that he and Wade were an unstoppable tag team once put on the field also helped. Teddy didn’t care, for him they were his fathers, the people who looked after him and the ones that did everything so he would get a better chance at life.
After so many years, both Wade and Harry knew why their meter did as it did. Why they were both seen as a grade 12 threat, and why it made them a perfect fit for the other.