Chapter Text
White.
Everything was white.
Utterly, completely, inevitably white.
Not the beige hued white of parchment or the greyish white of hippogriff feathers or the comforting fluffiness of Dumbledore’s beard.
Complete, blinding, snow-like white.
Out of the white whiteness came a wail that sounded horribly close to a dying child. Harry whirled around and raised his hand before he realised that he had no wand.
Wonderful. His Potter-luck struck again. Could there be a more depressing afterlife than clinical whiteness and the wails of dying kids?
He lowered his empty – where was his wand? – hand and started walking in the direction of the wail. While he walked, the whiteness around him slowly started receding and solidified into an enormous hall with a domed glass ceiling. While still white, his surrounding at least started developing different shades of white. With each step forward, the place around him became clearer and developed new shapes. Walls. Ceilings. Benches.
Another shriek pierced the silence. Ahead of him, something shuffles and whimpers.
Harry saw a dark shape beneath one of the white benches. He went closer and bend down to pick it up. It was an incredibly ugly baby, bloodied and dirty.
“You cannot help.”
Harry froze and looked up. A tall man with pale skin, wavy black hair and gleaming crimson eyes swept towards him, his black robes billowing in a fashion that would make Snape envious. In comparison to what his former teacher would do, the man smiled at him.
Harry tensed. “Who are you?” he asked tightly.
“Surely, you recognise me, master,” the man said chuckling.
“Death,” breathed Harry his guess. The man inclined his head. Harry let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding.
“Why did you call me master,” he demanded tersely.
“Because that is what you are, my dear,” said Death.
The Hallows.
“Why would you even want a master? You can’t tell me that you can’t control that,” questioned Harry further.
Death chuckled again. “For a rather simple reason, my dear. Guiding souls into the afterlife can be excruciatingly boring, I’ll have you know.” Harry stared at the divine being in shock.
“I cannot interact with mortals before they enter my realm however much I would wish to. That is where my master comes into play. Or you could call yourself my companion, if you don’t like me to call you master. You come from a long line of necromancers, some of them so talented that they managed to converse with me. I have favoured your family ever since your first ancestor managed to give me some distraction. Whether they called themselves Khotar in Ancient Egypt, Aetanimus in the Roman Empire, or Peverell and Potter in Britain, I could always count on being contacted every few generations. Before you were born, I found a way to bond with the next child born into your line, with you.”
Death took a deep breath before continuing. “Now that we have properly met, I’ll be able to take figure in mortal worlds, as long as I near you.”
“Am I not dead?” said Harry.
“That is the question, isn’t it? Am I? Can you call it being dead when an immortal being resides in the spirit plane?”
“What,” spluttered Harry indignantly.
“Did I forget to mention that you are immortal? Must have slipped my mind,” smirked Death.
“What happens now? Your explanation didn’t sound as if I were to stay here. Can I see my parents?”
Death sighed. “That is not how dying works for mortals, my dear. Souls stay in the spirit plane for a short while, until they are re-made into new souls. I am sorry, but your parents don’t exist anymore.”
Harry gulped down a sob. It was the one thing he had hoped from his own death, to be reunited with his parents and with Sirius, and Remus, and Tonks, with Cedric, and Fred, and Dobby, and all those he had lost. But it was a lie, he wasn’t to see them again.
“What happens now,” he choked out. “If I can’t die, then what? Do I go back and finish Voldemort off?”
Death sighed again. “Normally, that would be a possibility. But it is not, now. He destroyed your body, not wanting to risk that you are not dead. Without your body to return into, you cannot be Harry Potter again. But there is the other option, to be born into a new body. Birth and Death are the only moments a soul can be transferred. Time is a fickle thing, I dare not turn it back without the aid of my sister, its mistress. Sadly, she does not wish to help me in this endeavour.”
“I’ll just be born again? Will I keep my memories?”
“Correct on both terms. But there is one more thing you should know. My siblings and I, we keep watch over more than just your world. There are over a hundred worlds in our grasp.”
Death smiled at Harry as he leaned forward conspiratorially. “The veil in the Department of Mysteries is not a veil of Death, but a veil between the worlds. Enter a world’s veil, and you will be reborn into another world. My siblings and I, as gods, get to judge those who pass through the veil. We decide where and how they will be reborn and if they will retain their memories.”
But that meant… Sirius! He was still alive, somewhere, in another world!
“I see you understand. Sirius Black retained his memories when he passed through the veil, and was reborn into another world. If you wish so, you can be born into the same world.”
“Yes,” breathed Harry. “Yes, please. Let me go to Sirius.”
Death smiled. “Good. The world he is in, it is closest to the Middle Ages of the world you know. Life there is harder than you are used to, but Sirius was born into a noble family, as will you be. Sadly, there is no impending birth in his, so you will have to do with another family. I will put you as close to him as I can, but I cannot tell you where exactly you will find him.”
“Okay,” said Harry. He’d like it better to be closer to Sirius from the very beginning, but he could work with that. “He is two years older, then? Because he died two years before me?”
“Indeed,” confirmed Death. “The world I send you to has its magic differently tuned. It concentrates on weirwood trees, close to them you will be able to call for me. Fare well, my son. May fortune be with you.”
Then everything went black.