Chapter Text
At the ripe old age of 86, Harry James Potter, the master of death, dies in his home. At peace and surrounded by loved ones.
The elder wand remained in Dumbledores tomb and its magic died with Harry, the resurrection stone was still lost, and the cloak he had handed down to his eldest years prior.
Most unexpectedly, things did not progress the way they had done during Harrys previous stint with death. There was no train station with optional trains to board, and no Dumbledore to offer sage advice.
Instead, he found himself sitting up in his bed, out of his body. The people and items surrounding his bedside were slightly blurred, though he could still make them out. The hooded figure in front of him alone was clear.
Death extended its skeletal hand, Harry took it, and as equals, they departed this world.
“Death” in the wizarding world -though the wizards did not know it, was just another Shinigami. A yokai who reaped the souls of humans.
Harry however had been touched by the old magic, several times in fact, and thus he could not move on in the regular way.
What exactly he had become was not known, as he did not seem to fit in to any one category. His continued existence however was a fact, and he spent the next few decades drifting as he pleased between worlds, occasionally returning to the non-human realms, to Death.
It really was a strange thing, to be dead but also not.
He missed his family, yes, but at the same time not. They weren’t gone after all, never gone, and he felt strangely connected to them. He remembered everything, and mostly thought about them fondly even though he did not see them.
A sensation stirred in his chest as he watched a group of friends in some bizarro place saunter down a street. He did not feel sad or lonely per se, it was more like a muted longing feeling. He was acutely aware that he, whatever and wherever he was, lacked purpose. Did not belong.
Forcibly dispelling this train of thoughts, he decided to follow a family of foxes instead.
-
Meanwhile, in a far away dimension, the spirit inhabiting the island of Uzushio was dying. A creature of longevity and rebirth, she had dwelled there for millennia.
Humans came along, they populated her island and built a magnificent village which flourished. She was their island, and they had bound themselves to her with blood and seals so thoroughly that she was them and they were her.
Now. A terrible calamity had struck, the blood of her people splattered on the remnants of her streets and the rubble of her buildings.
Little sounds like candles being snuffed out reverberated through her each time a piece of her perished, each time a precious person was slain.
four thousand one hundred and five people, men women and children, slaughtered. Overrun by their neighbors who had bypassed a line of defense they should not have known how.
Betrayed.
She stretched her powers further than she ever had, tried to keep life flowing in those she could reach, and the remnants of her people fled for their lives.
The battle seemed to go on for days. The people and her had been so entwined and she was greatly weakened, the seals were going dormant save for a precious few. So little life left to sustain them. The whirlpools around the island slowed, the winds died out. Unable to rage any longer, powers spent saving those she could, Uzushio wept torrents of rain and howled her misery to the stars.
----
Harrys had been visiting a most interesting realm of summons in the form of pangolins -they reminded him of dragons a bit. When he felt Death call on him.
Curious.
The calling itself was not unusual, and time was mostly irrelevant in any realms seeing as he was dead-not-dead and Death was Death. However..
There was no way to be sure, but Harry thought he could pick up a sense of urgency now as Death tugged insistently on their bond.
In between one blink of the eye and the next, Harry appeared before his companion.
----
“There has been a mass casualty event.”
Harry cast his eyes hither and dither before recognizing that it must have been Death who spoke.
Death did not usually talk to Harry about the goings on of mortals and their passings, he cocked his head slightly, intrigued. “Do go on, old friend.”
Seeming to consider its words, Death paused before speaking.
“One familiar to me is in distress. I would come to her aid, but I cannot.”
“Familiar to you, someone like me?” Asked Harry.
“...”
“...”
“She was dear to me, once. But it is forbidden.”
‘Dear?’ Thought Harry. Death.. Had had a love interest? Before they were Death perhaps?
Harry burned with curiosity, but he held his tongue.
“There is more.” Death rasped. “There is a lingering evil in that realm, events set in motion hundreds of years ago are progressing, and.. There is a prophecy revolving around an unborn child.”
Harry stared in to the depths of the hood of death.
A child of prophecy? Such as himself?
Death had not yet made any kind of request, but Harry could feel it floating unspoken in the air between them.
Harry knew all too well the kinds of things that befell children of prophesies.
A flicker of old despair made itself known in his gut, this was immediately followed by a lick of righteous anger.
This, Harry thought, this was a chance. A chance to do good by himself and possibly someone else like him.
He turned to Death and inclined his head in ascent.
“I accept.”