Chapter Text
It probably says something about him that his instincts didn’t die alongside him – or they actually did, from a certain point of view – and he’s on his feet in less than a blink, defensively standing in front of the desk and facing the reaper who somehow made the Master of Death step back with fear in his eyes, muttering in a language Minato isn’t familiar with.
It’s not as if he can do much – he is dead after all – but seeing the spark of panic in the teen’s eyes, so blatant and entirely unguarded – unlike what he’s used to seeing in shinobi of the same age –, made him forget for a moment that the head of the afterlife may be young but he probably doesn’t need a spirit to protect him.
Still, his three-pronged kunai are good for more than teleportation, and it’s not as if he can die again, so he doesn’t falter when the black-robed reaper walks further into the room, replying in what Minato assumes to be the same language Hari-san muttered in.
“Hari-san?” He calls, casting a glance behind him. The teen seems to snap out of whatever place inside his head the sight of the reaper had dragged him into before turning to Minato with a bewildered look. He knows better than to point out that his action had been an almost instinctive response to Hari-san’s obvious fear – won’t say it in front of the reaper, anyway – so he raises a questioning brow instead, ignoring the shame and embarrassment bleeding into the young man’s eyes.
“It’s alright, I was just- surprised,” Hari-san tells him placatingly, and Minato hesitates – he hasn’t sat down yet, and is clearly tense – but returns to his seat in acquiescence. The teen turns to Ankou, continuing in their foreign language, “What do you mean? Why- why were you watching me in the cemetery?”
Ankou doesn’t reply for a moment, instead turning his head slightly to look at Minato – or so he assumes by the fact that the large hat covering the reaper’s face has moved – before speaking in a language he can finally understand. “Shouldn’t we include the little protective spirit in the conversation? It’s only polite.”
Minato doesn’t react to being called little – it’s clearly more of a weak taunt than a real insult – and something in the phrasing seems to get to Hari-san, who suddenly seems more annoyed and frustrated than scared. The teen sighs deeply before dropping back into his chair and motioning for the free one next to Minato, “Right… feel free to take a seat.”
Ankou hums in consideration before his hand – the only uncovered part of him Minato could spot – rises to his hat and he pulls it off his head, propping it up by the wall next to the chair. The reaper’s face is old, framed by lengthy gray hair and a long goatee. There’s very little remarkable about him, with tired-looking dark eyes and thin mouth set in a line, besides the fact that if Minato was told to guess his age he might say something along the hundreds based solely on his appearance.
“Interesting company you keep, Mr Potter,” the reaper drawls as he pulls the chair a little to the side before sitting, keeping Hari-san and Minato both in his view. “A man with only a fraction of a soul, and now one containing a second soul… but at least you’ve gotten rid of your own soul leech. Congratulations on your appointment, I suppose.”
That doesn’t sound very congratulatory, Minato silently muses, vaguely reminded of the clan elders he’d had to deal with during his tenure as Hokage.
Hari-san doesn’t look all that flattered either. “You say appointment like I had a choice,” the comment isn’t quite resentful, as if he’s come to terms with it, but does sound a little off.
The reaper’s old eyes don’t look nearly as tired as before when he replies, “There’s always a choice,” a slightly sardonic smile stretches Ankou’s wrinkled lips, “Only death is inevitable.”
Minato watches as Hari-san straightens up slightly, his expression clouded as he eyes the reaper with renewed wariness before changing the subject entirely. “I heard you were up here frequently before my- appointment,” it seems to take noticeable effort for him to keep his tone even and sound only slightly interested. “I was wondering if you could answer a few questions? The position didn’t really come with a list of instructions.”
Ankou huffs out an amused chuckle, “Took you long enough to ask,” the reaper seems satisfied with the fact that it happened at all, “Still, I’ve been hearing about department changes for some time, you seem to be dealing just fine so far. Why now?”
Hari-san’s eyes meet his for a moment before looking back toward the reaper, and Minato allows himself a small measure of relief at the realization that the teen may be untrained in the ways of the afterlife – whatever that entails –, but he’s clearly got enough instinct to remain on guard even if he no longer seems afraid of the black-robed being.
“Something regarding the wellbeing of reapers was brought to my attention today,” Hari-san informs, sounding more formal than Minato’s heard him. “I’ll have to take a look with my own eyes, but I haven’t quite figured out how to… transit between worlds.”
That information gives him pause and Minato can’t help but wonder… Has he been stuck in this office since he got the job?
Ankou seems just as surprised, looking past Hari-san and toward the door behind him. “You opened that yet?” the reaper asks, getting a nod in response and continuing, “You just think of the world number and unlock it, it’s not just a fancy room-maker,” the tone sounds a bit reproachful but Hari-san doesn’t visibly react. “Just remember to take the key, you’ll need it to get back to the office,” he scrutinizes the teen for another moment before adding, “Don’t you go becoming a recluse like that old man, I swear he lived in this office.”
“It’s a lot of work,” is Hari-san’s neutral response. “Would you happen to know how to make more reapers?”
“Ha, already?” Ankou’s sudden bark of laughter doesn’t quite sound like a merry one, “You work fast, huh?” there’s an analytic glint in the reaper’s eyes as they turn toward Minato, “Not a bad first choice I suppose, but you’ll be hard pressed to own a soul who already owns another. Conflict of loyalty, I’d say,” he points out and Minato makes an effort not to show his discomfort at the careless mention of ownership of someone else’s soul.
I’d hardly say I own the Kyūbi.
“I’m working on that,” Hari-san replies with a bland smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “But the process…?”
The reaper hums and leans forward, elbows propped over his knees. “It can happen a lot of ways,” he starts in a pensive tone, “some are born into it, others become reapers through a pact, a portion are volunteers or were recruited by other reapers, a certain few are condemned to it as a punishment,” a slight tilt of the head and Ankou pulls up the sleeve of his right arm up to the elbow, revealing strings of black inked symbols on his forearm. They’re not legible, at least not to him, but the general shape of their positioning seems to loosely form an eight-pointed star. “some are personally chosen, and end up with their Master’s personal mark upon their soul.”
Minato tries to look closer, but the sleeve is quickly dropped and the symbol is once again fully covered.
“And how would I go about…” Hari-san can’t quite hide the distaste in his tone as he asks, “ Choosing someone?”
Ankou shakes his head, “Can’t tell you that. Whatever the old man did, he didn’t tell me either,” a careless shrug, “but you’ll figure it out eventually, you’ve got nothing but time after all.”
“Right,” Hari-san nods distractedly, “that was all I wanted to ask, thank you.”
The reaper gives them a final searching look but only nods and stands, “You’re welcome,” he grabs his hat and puts it back on, “feel free to summon me if you have any more doubts,” Ankou adds with a small bow, “we are here to serve, after all.”
Before any reply can be given, the man is gone from the office, the large door soundlessly closing behind him.
“I-I’ll be right back,” Hari-san suddenly announces, reaching under the desk for a moment, and Minato’s foot gets bumped back by what he assumes is the return of the initial barrier. The teen grabs something from a drawer on his left and stands in a hurry, almost toppling the chair as he heads for the door behind the desk, unlocks it after a few turns of the key, and slips inside, closing it behind himself.
Harry didn’t want to go back.
That’s what he told himself since he managed to get back to the office by claiming the Hallows, day after day, ignoring the lack of windows, a calendar, or even a clock in his office. He’d been on the run – well, not really, he hadn’t been running as much as leaving, but the Ministry hardly saw the difference – and then he’d been trying to get the afterlife back on track before the spirits accumulating in his world after the unsanctioned reaper recall made a mess of things and to stop hearing the spirits who stepped in for the reapers complain about it, except he’d ended up stuck in the office – what if he left and another mess came up, one that he couldn’t fix because he couldn’t return? – and that was it, he’d just accepted it and decided he didn’t want to go back.
It didn’t change the fact that he’d memorized his own world’s number after finding Tom bloody Riddle’s reaping anomaly report – which then went pointedly ignored for a long time – and barely waited until Ankou had left the room before throwing up the barrier – a learned action more than anything, he always turned it on before entering the RoR – and grabbing the key, mentally reciting the number as he unlocked the door, shoved the key back into his pocket and ran through it, letting it slam closed behind him.
He ignores the call of whoever he nearly trampled running out of wherever the door had led him to – at least it wasn’t near a volcano this time, just somewhere in France judging by the writing on the storefronts – and finds the nearest empty alley, leaning on a wall as he tries to get his breathing back to normal even though he can almost hear his blood pumping with how hummingbird-like his heart is beating in his chest.
Please don’t let it have been too long this time, he mentally pleads and, with a pop that goes unheard by the people walking past the alley, Harry apparates.
Hermione had scolded him last time, through a howler and many letters that told him to be careful and keep in contact and to not disappear for so long again – a period of time he was sure hadn’t passed inside the office – even though Ron had mostly taken it in stride and sent only a couple letters of his own, though after one of them contained a tracking charm Harry made sure to move again and check more often.
This time, Harry decides as he appears on the street facing the entrance to his old house, I won’t leave it at just letters.
He barges through the door, which opens to just the touch of his hand, clearly still recognizing him as the master of the house and filling him with relief that the wards have apparently not been messed with enough to remove his access. The interior, however, isn’t as inviting as the front door.
It’s almost like stepping back in time, with how run down the place looks, and Harry would wonder if he did step back in time if not for the obvious lack of Walburga Black’s painting facing the stairs. The place looks completely abandoned, with a thin sheet of dust covering every available surface, and the sight of it makes him feel like his stomach dropped down to his feet.
His feet carry him up the stairs almost automatically, but the bedrooms are in the same state of disrepair as the rest of the house, as well as the library – which is still nearly empty from the first time he left and took most of it on an expanded trunk – and the kitchen, where he finds a few foodstuffs – mostly snacks and canned goods – still preserved due to the runes in the cabinets. It gives him pause, reminding him that he can’t recall the last time he’d eaten anything. It wasn’t really by choice, the office didn’t have a readily available kitchen or the number to some sort of interdimensional fast-food chain, so he just… forgot about it, distracted with all the work.
It’s not as if he’ll stay dead even if he dies of hunger.
Still eyeing a package of lemon puffs, Harry shakes his head and closes the cabinet instead. Priorities, he reminds himself and digs through one of the lower cabinets in the corner of the kitchen, pulling out the packages and the shelves before slicing the tip of his finger and smearing the blood on the rune sequence hidden in the lower corner of the back of the cabinet. It slides open like a door and he reaches inside, feeling for the magically extended bag he’d left hidden in the secret locked compartment.
The brown leather messenger bag is soon slung over his shoulder and Harry works on putting everything back in place with some relief at finally having all of his worldly possessions at hand. He’d left them behind – not on purpose, but through accidental carelessness – when returning to the office the last time and isn’t about to make the same mistake twice.
Since the bag was all he needed from the house, Harry takes a moment to say a final goodbye to his godfather’s legacy before pulling on the power of his invisibility cloak and letting himself fade from view as he leaves, taking a couple of steps outside and promptly apparating to the second most familiar location to him.
Under scent-canceling and silencing charms, he treads the grassy path toward the mismatched-looking house in the distance, unsurprised at already being able to hear some sort of commotion. The sound of laughter and yelling pulls a slight smile from his lips and he doesn’t even notice his steps growing quicker until he’s close enough to see what all the hubbub is about. There are a lot of people outside of the house, milling around the back amongst some tables and decorations- and there are way more heads of red hair than he’d expected to find. In fact, there are way more people than he remembers ever seeing in the backyard besides the time it hosted Bill and Fleur’s wedding.
“Fred, leave your cousin alone!” someone yells from among the crowd of adults, not to be confused with the crowd of children running all over the place. Harry stops breathing, eyes flitting through the crowd searching for Fred- he’s dead, he’s not-
“But dad, she started it!” a red-haired boy that looks about ten years old – or maybe younger, Harry can’t really tell from a look – pushes a taller blonde away while she sticks out her tongue at him.
Harry counts about five heads of red hair on the children alone, with a similar amount of black and brown hair and some scattered blond. His eyes are quickly drawn to the adults sitting around a few round tables or near a long rectangular one that seems to contain food and- is that a birthday cake in the middle? He steps closer, mindful of his surroundings and making sure not to be noticed by anyone.
It is a cake, and a big one at that. All white and yellow and glittery with splashes of pink provided by flowers, with a candle on top in the shape of the number five and the words Happy Birthday Lareen Weasley piped into the sides of it, two in each tier.
Who is Lareen Weasley? He can’t help but wonder, especially if this little Weasley is turning five. How long-
Fragments of sentences from his surroundings keep reaching his ears as he stares at the cake, something about taking too long to get everyone together and some complaint about children and paint, but eventually more people start to approach the table with the cake, some of which finally start to look familiar, though he wishes they didn’t.
How long has it been? Harry laments inside his mind as he watches familiar faces gather around, filled with unfamiliar traces to them, lines brought with age and time, a time he wasn’t there for.
“Up you go!” Ginny’s cheerful voice brings his attention back to the cake and he watches the redhead pick up a little girl with short, wavy black hair and none of the typical Weasley traits. She’s joined behind the cake by a taller woman with her brown hair in a bun and a smaller child in one of her arms – a little boy with curly brown hair – while the other wraps around Ginny’s waist just in time for the birthday song to start.
It doesn’t take him long to find more unfamiliar familiar faces in the crowd. Hermione is holding a little boy with lighter skin but hair just as thick and curly as hers while a slightly older red-headed girl leans on Ron’s leg by her side as she claps and sings. The boy from earlier is next to George, who has Angelina in one of his arms and the other is patting the head of an annoyed-looking miniature copy of Angelina to the rhythm of the song. A blonde and two redheaded children are standing closer to the table, the first instantly reminding him of Fleur and Gabrielle. He thinks he spots Neville with a little blond bundle sleeping in his arms, and Seamus and Dean with no gaggle of children but clearly holding hands like some other couples as soon as the song ends.
If there was ever any doubt as to how a ghost might feel watching their loved ones live on without them, Harry thinks he’s got a pretty good inkling. The friends he remembers from before, even after the first unintentional time skip, have clearly moved on with their lives, and those don’t really include him anymore.
He doesn’t blame them, and would never ask them to wait for him, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to witness so much happiness – a large, happy family, the kind he’d only dreamed of having before – and realize he’s not really a part of it anymore.
I don’t belong here.
It’s a feeling he’s intimately familiar with, a constant companion throughout his life, and it really shouldn’t have taken him so long to arrive at the conclusion that this isn’t where he belongs anymore. It was naive of him to think that he could somehow create a balance between Master of Death and Just Harry, especially when the latter barely ever got to exist, hiding under the shadow of Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived.
Harry turns on his heels and walks away without looking back.
“Mama?” Ginny snaps out of her thoughts, looking away from where she’d been frowning at a patch of grass, and looks down at her youngest. “Sad?” She smiles slightly at the question, not wanting to worry the three-year-old with her musings.
“Not sad, love. Thought I saw something,” she explains, picking up the little boy when he puts her arms up, “now how about some cake?”
“Cake!” The toddler agrees enthusiastically and she walks over to where her wife and oldest child are passing out the plates, some a little mangled from letting the five-year-old cut the pieces but obviously no less delicious.
“Love, Harry wants some too,” she tells the brunette, who looks up from where she’s guiding Lareen’s hands with a smile.
“Coming right up!” Eloise assures, looking back down to tell their daughter to cut a piece for her little brother.
Ginny smiles to herself at the sight of her family, the strange feeling from earlier all but forgotten.
Harry stands in the center of Grimmauld Place’s living room and wonders if he should maybe do anything about it. There’s no more Black Family, not with Andromeda refusing to be reinstated and Tonks dead, so the property is his and his alone. He’d taken care of the vaults earlier, as soon as he worked out his debt to the goblins for the damages, and anything he’d wanted to keep from there – mainly books but a few enchanted items as well, since he gave up most of the money – was already in his multi-compartment trunk, but he can’t quite shrink a hole house and shove it into his enchanted bag… can he?
It sounds like a lot of work, but it does spark an idea, so he simply locks the place back up under the wards only he can get through and takes out the office key as he approaches the front door, going through the mental checklist of everything he’s supposed to have done before leaving.
He’d looked through the wardrobe section of his trunk and added a few more changes of clothes – which he really could have used in the office the past few… however long he’d been there for –, visited Knockturn Alley for a look at their necromancy tomes – half of it didn’t sound legitimate and a large fraction was straight up too nasty to read about for long – and any other books that caught his fancy, checked on his Muggle relatives – he couldn’t help wondering about them even after what they put him through – and even bought a few potions that could prove useful if he was about to go gallivanting through a different world in a mask-destructing quest.
I hope this works, Harry thinks on repeat like a mantra as he inserts the key into the door it doesn’t belong to and twists it in the opposite direction, feeling it give after a single turn – as opposed to the three it takes to open the door on the other side – and opening the door to the welcome sight of his office.
Minato looks up from where he seems to be reading something in the chair he’s been occupying from the start. “Welcome back,” the blond offers a small smile and Harry can’t help but reciprocate, stepping through and closing the door behind himself.
He can think of shrinking houses at another time, there’s still a problem to solve after all.
“Thanks,” he mumbles, a little embarrassed at the way he’d rushed out of the office as if to put out a fire, and disables the barrier with the rune under the desk as soon as he sits back down. “Found something in Japanese?” Harry doesn’t remember whether or not any of the books on the shelves are in the man’s native language, he’s taken to the habit of reading almost exclusively in the RoR and never got around to reorganizing the bookshelves to his own tastes.
“Nihongo?” The blond repeats, seemingly unfamiliar with the name.
Harry blinks, “huh. What do you call the language you speak in?”
“Tsukigo,” Minato replies. “It’s what most of the nations speak, though a few Gaigo have been recorded over the years, mostly from sea merchants or more remote lands.”
“Moon language?” Harry tests out the word himself. It’s pretty much Japanese to him, but figuring out the origin of the world’s main tongue isn’t really his number one priority at the moment. He’s just glad they can understand each other. “Anyway, I guess it’s time to go. We need to find someone who can do one of those jutsu to bring you back. Anyone come to mind?”
The blond stares, seeming surprised, but quickly stands and sets the closed book down on the desk – Harry glances at the title but unlike the reports, his glasses don’t automatically translate it and he doesn’t care enough to bother figuring it out – and nods, looking pensive. “I suppose… the Sandaime might be the best choice if you manage to get an audience with him. Whether he will agree to it is another matter entirely. Like I said, those are kinjutsu for a reason.”
He holds back a sigh and instead grabs Minato’s RAD report – quickly committing the world number to memory – as well as Kushina’s, and then all of his enchanted folders because he might as well keep up with work while they’re away. It all gets placed into his bag, along with the scrolls from Yuzuki since it’s much safer than keeping them in his pocket. With a final glance over the office, Harry decides he has everything he needs and turns back toward the door behind his desk, key in hand.
Mentally chanting the world number, he inserts the key into the lock and turns it three times before opening the door and stepping through.