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It happened two days after the war ended. Almost as if the universe was playing a cosmic joke on Harry, making him think that he could finally rest after all he had gone through.
Two days after the war ended, Harry saw the figure everywhere when he was alone.
He couldn't describe it as a figure, really. It was more of an apparition that darted from his grasp whenever he tried to look at it, a chill that left him colder than a dementor had ever done. He even felt the presence when he slept, the nightmares taking a form of life that left him shivering in his bedsheets after he woke up, unable to get up in fear of the figure following him again.
His only solace was when someone visited him in Grimmauld Place, the constant check-ins from Ron and Hermione, with a worry that they couldn't hide whenever they laid their eyes on him.
(They had tried to convince him to come and live with them at The Burrow more than once. At first, Harry had felt he owed something to Sirius, to repair his house after the wreckage the Death Eaters had caused in the house in the aftermath of their escape from the ministry, to make the house into something better, something Sirius wouldn't have liked, exactly, but something he would have hated less.
After all that had happened—Harry owed him that, at least.)
After the figure had appeared, he had been too afraid of bringing the figure back with him to The Burrow, to the Weasleys who were still getting over the loss of Fred. He was afraid to lose the tentative family he had formed, too afraid that they would recoil from him when they saw how damaged he really was.
He would only be a burden to them, in the end.
He took to sleeping, these days, the reconstruction project abandoned in place of trying to escape from the figure that haunted him in his every waking day, a figure that seemed to be getting closer and closer to him by the day, more and more tangible as the days passed by.
It was hard to keep a grasp on his sanity, these days.
(What did it say about him, that he had weathered Voldemort, multiple attempts on his life, but looking at a walking shadow was what left him the most untethered?)
In sleep, he could pretend everything was normal—though normal wasn't the right word; he constantly got nightmares of the war, and everything that happened before, trying desperately to ignore the realisation that someone was watching his every move, making their presence known in chilling bursts of awareness, making him scream himself hoarse most nights.
In dreams, he could pretend that the figure haunting his every waking thought, every wandering dream, was a product of his imagination.
It wasn't long before Ron and Hermione asked him about it, looking more worried for him than ever when they had all gone to Hogwarts or even on the run.
It was easier to pretend when other people were around, when he could look at his friends and fool himself that nothing was tracking his every move, a presence that wanted to make itself known. It was easier to play pretend, like he wasn't walking a constant tightrope between the figure and his crumbling sanity.
"Harry, please," Ron said, a helpless curl to his lips. He opened his mouth to say something more, but nothing came out. He desperately looked at Hermione, who, uncharacteristically, seemed to be lost for words.
Harry was aware of what he looked like; he hadn't left Grimmauld Place since he came here—and when that been? Time didn't seem to be a tangible concept to him anymore—afraid of the figure who could shadow his every move. As a result, he looked as pale as a ghost, his eyes swollen and red from sleeping too much, wearing the same clothes from the day before.
(Or was it the day before that?)
"I've - " he noticed that his voice was hoarse from either the nightmares or disuse, but he kept going, ignoring Ron and Hermione's glances, knowing that if he stopped now, he would never tell them. "I've been seeing… a figure? A ghost or something— that keeps following me whenever I'm alone, and I can't even escape it, even when I'm sleeping - "
"Oh, Harry," Hermione said, putting a horrified hand over her mouth. Ron, beside her, wore the same expression. "Are you sure - "
"That it isn't my imagination? That I'm not crazy? " Harry asked. There was an edge of desperation in his voice as he continued, "This isn't something I made up, you have to believe me - "
"But - "
"'Mione," it was Ron who spoke up, this time. "We know Harry, alright? If he says that it isn't his imagination, I believe him. Just… let him explain."
At that moment, he felt a surge of affection for his two best friends, and for Ron, especially. Hermione, convinced by Ron's words, had an expression of grim acceptance in her face, ready to listen. Both of them looked tired, but were ready to believe him and were willing to fight for him.
(To go to war for him—again.)
He opened his mouth, and began to talk. Bit by bit, he told them how the Elder wand had appeared in his pockets when he moved to Grimmauld Place, and had kept coming back whenever he tried to dispose of it. How the Resurrection Stone had done the same thing. He had thought, when he had given up ownership of the wand, that it would be it— that he wouldn't have a legacy hanging over him.
He would have preferred a legacy hanging over him to this— how he constantly grasped at shadows, lately, how he flinched every time he heard a noise, how he couldn't look anyone in the eye or hold a conversation without feeling afraid that the figure would come after them, too.
(He had ripped the wand apart one day.
He had been at peace for a week until it reappeared on his bedside table, almost as if it was taunting him.)
"So you think the figure following you is… Death?" Hermione said, her face pale.
"It makes sense, doesn't it?" Ron said. "If the tales are true, and Harry is the Master of Death…"
"I think it wants something from me."
"We'll just have to figure out what it wants, won't we?" Ron said, a grim smile on his lips.
Before something else happens, went unsaid.
Despite Harry's protests, Ron and Hermione decided to move into Grimmauld Place with him.
("But - Mrs Weasley - "
"Don't worry about Mum, Harry, she knows you need us more, at the moment.")
It brought a modicum of peace, knowing that he wasn't alone, this time. He could still feel the figure when he tilted his head just so, when he looked a bit closely at shadows, but it was muted, somehow, as if it knew there were people next to him.
(He couldn't shake off the feeling that it was waiting until they discovered what it wanted, like it had all the time in the world to do so. And from his suspicions—maybe it did.)
But no matter what happened, no matter how much Hermione researched, Harry knew, without a doubt, that there was no hope for him. He had never felt this brand of terror before—a terror that gripped him so tight that it threatened to choke him, made him feel so helpless that he would have begged for a peaceful end if he could.
Somehow, without knowing how, he knew that a peaceful ending wasn't in the cards for him.
Hermione figured it out a month later. After a month of something resembling peace, without the figure haunting him. That was kind of the figure, in a way.
"There's a reason many people haven't been known as the 'Master of Death,' Harry. They just seem to… disappear."
She hadn't needed to say anything more.
His friends had been stricken, with no idea what to do. And the helplessness was what struck Harry, more than anything else—his friends had never looked so defeated in their lives, unable to do anything in the face of something inevitable, something otherworldly and inexplicable.
When Hermione collapsed into tears, all Harry could manage was to do was smile.
That night, he dreamed.
The figure, up close, was terrifying in its monstrosity, a well of darkness that you could walk into and get lost in, promising all his greatest dreams while giving the impression that only his nightmares lay within.
At that moment, he understood why Tom Riddle had been so afraid of Death.
But now—it was too late.
"I never asked for this," he whispered.
"That doesn't alter your course any less."
Death wasn't kind. It wasn't even forgiving.
It was inevitable.
Harry just wished—
But Death struck, and he didn't have any more time for thoughts.
He screamed as he was wrapped in its vortex, of nothing and everything, of every emotion everyone has ever felt, of horror and sadness and anger and—
And then.
Nothing.