Chapter Text
Harry held on for dear life, arms hugging the tree even tighter as the sound of a group of boys shouting came his way. He pressed his face into the branch supporting him, which creaked under his weight.
After school Harry had made the mistake of running away, instead of letting Dudley use him as a punching bag as usual. For an hour now he’d been running away from Dudley’s gang. Tired of running, stuck at a dead end between two houses and a tree, with boys flanking his other side, Harry’s only option was to go up.
He should’ve picked a bigger tree.
“What’s he doing up there?” asked one boy.
“Yeah, Harry. What are you doing up there? Come down to us!” yelled Dudley.
The group followed him. Jeers and shouts to let go travelled up, and Harry dug his fingers further into tree bark. If he could only hold on a little longer, they would get bored and leave him alone.
“Somebody go kick it,” someone ordered.
“I don’t know about this, guys,” someone else spoke out.
He hugged the branch tight as tremors racked the tree. Loose leaves shook onto his head and down to the ground, where the group of boys continued to make a racket. A horrible creaking sound came, and a sickening snap of wood, then Harry was sent hurtling down before he could process what had happened.
“Shit he’s falling!”
“Run!”
His head crashed onto something flat. His back felt limp, and he felt something soft under his hands. Soft and damp. A dull pain branched along his spine. The back of his head felt wet and sticky and warm and wet.
One boy started, hesitated, then turned back. Harry could only make out a large, round shape—Dudley? —before the boy turned away again.
Each blink was a battle against his rapidly blurring vision. When it lost, darkness quickly took over.
*
The air smelled stale here.
Odd, considering how clean it was. Well, he assumed it was clean. With the white sky, the white walls, the white mist, it felt like a hospital.
Maybe the white mist was there to hide dirt on the floor. It certainly was thick enough. Was there even a floor here? He couldn’t see anything past his trainers, the fog covered it all.
He should be more concerned about a number of things, really, though he couldn’t bring himself to. For some reason this place made him feel calm, when in reality he should’ve felt anything but. For all he knew he could have been kidnapped.
Had he been drugged? Was that why he couldn't feel anything? That would certainly explain the monster.
It stood out like a blot of ink spilled out on a white sheet. Black feathers hung from its shoulders like a heavy cloak. The feathers continued upwards till its neck, where tousled dark hair spilled down from its head.
What really caught Harry’s attention was the face. Or, its lack of a face. Instead, a massive beak stuck out from the monster’s head, dark and pointed like a curved blade. Piercing straight through Harry were a pair of glowing green eyes. They were like two bright jewels wedged into the face of a crow.
The crow-man. That seemed like a fitting name.
“Where am I? What happened?” Harry asked the crow-man.
The creature tilted its head curiously. “This is the space between life and death,” the crow-man explained, “You died.”
“Oh.”
They stood there in silence for a good moment. The crow-man shuffled awkwardly, waiting for Harry to say something else.
Harry didn’t have much to say. He was dead. That was that, right?
“You don’t have many more questions?” the crow-man asked.
“Not really.” Harry shrugged.
“Are you sure? I mean, I have plenty of time to talk. Eternity, really. And you can ask anything . Like, I don't know…what happens after you die, or something.”
It was a tempting offer.
Harry thought deeply. He was speaking to some all-knowing creature, who seemed happy to tell Harry anything it knew. All the knowledge in the world was laid out before him.
It was an awful lot of pressure.
“It’s a bit cold in here,” he blurted.
The crow-man gaped at him. “Yeah…it gets like that. You get used to it.”
That wasn’t even a question! Harry scolded himself.
He scratched at the back of his neck. Something thoughtful, something useful.
What, out of everything in the world, did he want to know at this moment? He could ask something philosophical, or some scientific enigma that’s had scientists stumped for decades. Of all of these things, all Harry could think of was home .
“Can I go back?” Harry asked hopefully.
“I’m not sure.”
His face dropped. “So I'm stuck here?” he asked, dull.
“Probably,” answered the crow-man. “Fancy some tea?”
*
Harry stared down at his reflection in the tea.
“So my parents were wizards…who were killed by a group of bad wizards,” he recapped.
“ Evil wizards. But yeah.” the crow-man corrected.
“And my mother gave me to my aunt and uncle to protect me from these wizards?”
The crow-man nodded.
They were sitting at the tea table that the crow-man had conjured up for them, with nothing but the wave of his hand. For whoever knew how long, they’d been drinking tea, eating pastries and talking about Harry’s past.
It was shocking, to say the least.
It wasn’t like he could do anything with that information though, since he was dead. It was depressing to think that after eleven years of life, he hadn’t done or learned anything. Now, he wouldn’t ever get the chance to.
Harry slumped back and sighed, “I’m never going back, am I?”
He was going to sit here, rotting away in some weird cloud with no people in sight. Unless the man-crow monstrosity sitting in front of him counted as a person.
“About that,” the crow-man started, swirling a charcoal-dipped finger around the rim of its teacup, “Remember what you asked earlier, about going back? It might be possible.”
“What?” A surge of excitement rushed through Harry. He hadn’t felt this much since he’d gotten here. He leaped up from his seat, “How?”
The crow-man sighed, rose up, and vanished the table.
“The thing is, Harry, that you shouldn’t be able to get here. No other being in your universe has made it here. They’re supposed to pass straight on to the afterlife.”
Harry furrowed his brows. “What does that mean?”
“Well, if there’s a way for you to get in, maybe there’s a way for me to push you back. For a price, of course.”
Price? It was the most obvious decision in the world. For getting back his life, Harry would pay anything.
“What is it?”
‘Oh… just a small task. I would do it myself, but I can’t reach the physical dimension myself ” the crow-man answered, waving a hand flippantly.
Harry was going to regret this, wasn’t he?
“Which is?” asked Harry, leaning forwards in anticipation.
“I want you to take down the Dark Lord.”
Harry’s brain short circuited. Every thought in his head exploded into powdery dust.
From what he’d been told, the Dark Lord was the most powerful wizard in the country. He was its unofficial ruler. He was the man that murdered his parents. Now Harry was expected to kill him?
“Me? Kill the Dark Lord? How am I meant to kill some evil wizard dictator I—I don’t have any magic! I can’t even ride a bike!” Harry protested. “Surely there’s something else I can do?”
The crow-man shook its head. “Sending you back would take a lot of energy. The only thing I can think of that gives off that much energy is a soul pact. And the pact wouldn’t do much if we only promised to braid each other's hair, or something, it needs to be huge. Our greatest desires.”
“Why do you want me to take him down anyway?” asked Harry curiously.
Why would a crow-man worry so much about a man in an entirely different dimension? Surely it had nothing to do with him. Moreover, what was so urgent that he had to resort to using a child to carry out his work?
The crow-man scratched its beak. It began to pace around. “You see, I only have one job, which is to observe the crossing of souls from life to death. It is normally straightforward, but when something goes wrong…” The crow-man shuddered. “Like many before him, the Dark Lord has discovered a way to prevent his soul from crossing. Usually fate resolves this issue by itself. However, he has grown much more powerful than his predecessors. So much so that there is no human alive now, or ever, that could match him. So much so that I now—” The crow-man paused in his pacing and stared at Harry. “That I must take matters into my own hand.”
“And I might be your only chance of reaching him,” concluded Harry.
The crow-man nodded.
Harry chewed on his lip. He had no idea what he was signing up against, and this dark wizard guy sounded scary. Someone who could take over an entire country must be really powerful, right?
But did he have a choice? His only options here were to take the deal, die, or possibly stay stuck in this cloudy white hellscape for the rest of eternity. On top of that, he was only being asked to do one single task, in exchange for an entire life .
He stuck his hand out. “Fine. I’ll do it.”
If there was a mouth where the monster’s beak was, Harry thought it would have been smiling. “Great!” it said brightly, taking his hand. “I’ll make the contract, all you have to do is say 'I do'.”
“Do you, Harry James Potter, agree to take down the Dark Lord on my behalf, in exchange for a second chance at life.”
That speech was much simpler than he expected. Weirdly enough, it reminded him of a wedding vow.
“I do.”
Goosebumps pricked his arms. A sudden wind picked up around them. He felt it first on his neck, where his hair lifted up, then felt the wind tug at the back of his shirt, then Harry suddenly felt his body being pulled backwards, like he was being sucked through a narrow tube, with only the iron grip of the crow-man holding him. He silently begged the creature with his eyes to not let go, not let him fall, not let him get pulled into the darkness—
The crow-man let go. The last thing Harry saw before being pulled through was a cloaked figure waving merrily at him.
*
Sunlight stretched red across his closed eyelids. He could feel its rays wash heat over his face, and smell the faint scent of pollen in the fresh air. Somewhere above he could hear the sound of birds singing.
Harry opened his eyes.
A blue canvas lay before him. Lumpy white masses dotted the sky, some of them wispy, some of them thick and round. One small cloud, with its sharp beak shaped edge and wide-spanning sides, resembled a bird.
At the edge of his vision he saw the branches of a tree. They grew out thin and scraggly, with green leaves sprouting from them. Why did he think it would be a good idea to climb that again?
Harry groaned as he recalled what had just happened. Dudley and his gang were chasing him, then he ran up that tree, and then—
He gingerly felt at the back of his head. Huh . It was dry to the touch. There was no pain, either. The rest of his body ached slightly, and protested as he pushed himself up, but the pain was hardly anything considering his fall.
There was a slight buzzing sensation in his head. A concussion, maybe?
Something smelled weird. He took in a deep breath of air, and smelled the strangest scent. It was like damp soil, mixed with something metallic and the smell of rot .
Was that him? Surely not. It had rained last night, maybe the smell of that still lingered. Still, he decided to take a shower when he got back.
Harry took a step forward, when a barrage of strange images and sounds crashed through his head. He grasped his head as images of white, tea and pastries, and green eyes flashed through his mind.
The memories steadily pieced together through his mind, gaining clarity as they did so. They joined together into a hazy memory, cloudy as the sky over his head.
What a weird dream.
Harry rubbed his head. He really should make his way back home.
A loud pop came behind him, making Harry jump. He swivelled around, only to be met with a bright red light that swallowed his vision. In the haze, he caught sight of a shadowy figure