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Chapter Text

What is death?

Some see it as part of a cycle, just a step in an infinite process of existence and nonexistence, something between life and reincarnation that serves to guide the soul toward spiritual evolution. Others perceive it as the separation of the body and the soul, a simple transition into the afterlife, whether it be to Heaven, Hell, or its countless equivalents to be found in most of the religions spread across the universe.

To Harry Potter, death is the greatest bringer of goddamned paperwork.

Don’t get him wrong, he signed up for it. Not initially, not on purpose, but eventually. Still, sitting in his office and pulling yet another RAD report from the deceptively thin enchanted folder is such a familiar action that he barely spares it any attention, glancing through the reaper name, world code, and anomaly report with disinterest.

He’d been to the Reaping Anomaly Department a lot of times during his first few years as the Master of Death – and who would have thought the title would mean so much deskwork? – before becoming familiar with certain realities and creating specific protocols so he wouldn’t be pulled from his office every time a vampire was temporarily killed, a witch recalled a reaped soul, or someone managed to wiggle out of a deal. It helped diminish the reports that ended up making their way to his desk, but not enough to avoid them entirely.

A wave of his hand rolls up the report once he’s penned down a solution to the problem – really, just leave the Winchesters to their devices, they’re all more trouble than they’re worth – and a flick of a finger makes it vanish from his office directly to the desk of the RAD manager, and he moves on to the next report.

The red ‘urgent’ stamp feels like it’s mocking him as soon as his eyes settle on it, but once he glances down to the name of the reaper – of course, it’s one of the Shinigami, he should have expected it – it becomes very clear that the urgent report had been mixed up into the regular ones on purpose.

You make a small cultural blunder one time and apparently deal with insubordination for the rest of eternity.

Death may be the great equalizer but, unfortunately, it doesn’t imbue him with the infinite knowledge of every language and culture in existence, and he’s paid the price for it more than a few times so far. It has also encouraged him to learn a great amount of languages and talk to a wider variety of his employees than he had initially planned to – he didn’t think they’d appreciate a literal child taking up the position he had, and had been proven right on numerous occasions – but he figures it’s worth it to do his job correctly.

The amount of new magic he’d learned in the process also helps.

With a sigh, Harry taps the top drawer on the right side of his desk, feeling the protection runes allow his access as it slides open to reveal a few rolls of parchment. He pulls one out and unrolls it, seeing it almost full, but there’s still enough space for a few more uses. Picking up a quill, he copies the kanji from the report into the summoning parchment before rolling it up again and placing it back into the drawer, leaning back into his chair as he looks through the report and waits.

Soon enough, the door to his office slides open and the one to blame for his delay in receiving an urgent report steps through. It’s a pretty big door, more than five times Harry’s size – which makes the fact that his employee's great red horns nearly scrape the top even more impressive –, but he’ll take it over allowing the Reapers to appear in his office whenever they feel like it. He had enough of that during his first few months in office and put a significant amount of work into his rune studies to ward against it later on. It’s the door or nothing, to the annoyance of those used to barging in whenever they pleased.

“Keimu,” he greets the gaunt lavender-skinned specter that looms by the entrance in his customary white kimono. “Take a seat,” he requests, switching to Japanese as he usually does when dealing with the Shinigami.

The glowing yellow rings in the pitch-black sclera of the reaper’s eyes assess him for a moment before Keimu complies, stalking forward and taking a seat on the chair as it adjusts itself for his size. “Bosu,” he greets, raspy voice through sharp teeth as he offers a small nod. It’s not the bow some of his other reapers offer – or the scoff a few see fit to spare – but he doesn’t really care about it as long as everyone does their jobs.

“Please elaborate on this report,” he slides the urgent form to the reaper’s side of the desk and leans on his forearms expectantly. He’d understood the basics, some soul that shouldn’t be here had been reaped and they needed his signature if it was to be put back, but the details about some sort of energy construct bound to it went entirely over his head, and a look at the world code told him he’s not personally familiar with it, so it would be better to hear from their assigned reaper.

“Oh, right, this ,” the reaper scoffed at the report and set it back down. “Some upstart decided to use me to trap a tailed beast, with his soul as collateral.”

Harry tilts his head slightly, frowning at the unknown term. “Tailed beast?” he asks.

Keimu stares at him for a moment before letting out a put-upon sigh and settling back on the chair, and Harry can already feel the lecture incoming. He’s proven right a moment later as he’s regaled with a wild tale about one of the sons of a rabbit princess – what? – who, to his understanding of the whole thing, fought his mother – who had merged with some sort of divine tree and become the ten-tailed beast – and saved his world from what sounded like a tree-zombie apocalypse. This Hagoromo guy apparently lived with the beast sealed inside of him for a while before being inspired by one of his sons and using some sort of magic to make nine individual tailed beasts from the single ten-tailed one – Harry kindly refrains from questioning the man’s math skills, especially once he learns that the oldest tailed beast is the nine-tails and the number goes down to the one-tailed youngest which would mean something like forty-five in total, and should theoretically be a bigger problem than the initial ten – and setting them free in the world.

“Which one was it?” He asks, frowning when the reaper informs him it was the nine-tails. “Can it even die?”

“It’s energy,” Keimu deadpans. “It can disperse and reform.”

“Then what is the issue?” He prompts, not sure why this was a reaping anomaly. Someone summoned a reaper, he took a soul and some sort of energy construct, so the soul should move on and the construct can disperse and go back to where it came from to reform.

“First of all, I wasn’t summoned ,” the reaper emphasizes with annoyance, “I was used , as an entity, in a seal. This human ,” the term is uttered with all the disgust one would usually reserve for a cockroach or other vermin, “wanted a prison for the nine-tails and wrote me into it. Except he only took half of the nine-tails, not the whole thing, and it’s somehow still linked to the human instead of a fully separate entity.”

“So it can’t disperse,” Harry realizes, “and the soul can’t move on because it’s linked to something that can’t die.” Keimu only nods, which is confirmation enough that he’s got the gist of it. “Where are they, then?”

Keimu’s mouth stretches into a sharp-teethed smirk that probably features in someone’s nightmares somewhere and he reaches up to his clavicle, sharp nails piercing through purple skin like a knife as the hand closes around it and pulls down, peeling it from the reaper’s body as if it had only been fastened into position instead of being part of the whole, revealing graying skeleton underneath. Instead of the expected – organs and such – the peeled-back skin reveals a wide set of ribs, more than a human would have – or so he thinks, he’s not a doctor but it does look wrong – and the organ-free space inside the bones is instead filled with two spots of luminescent matter – one bright yellow and one almost entirely black if not for its glow – that seem to be oozing energy into the room now that they’ve been revealed.

Harry watches the reveal impassively, exasperation pouring from every pore. His eyes follow the movement of the blobs of matter as crash into each other and against the inside of the reaper’s ribcage repeatedly. “One would think you’d like that to be solved as quickly as possible,” he points out, wondering why the urgent report had ended up lost in the middle of the usual ones.

“He used me,” Keimu reiterates.

That’s fair, Harry figures but isn’t about to encourage insubordination. “Well, they’ve had enough of it,” he declares instead, one hand leaving the desk to reach under it and brush over the barrier rune before he gives the order, “Leave them in the room, I’ll deal with it. You’re dismissed.”

The reaper nods and stands from the chair, the stripe of purple skin peeled from his torso hanging from the open front of the kimono and looking like only the strip of fabric holding it closed – he thinks he remembers it being called a koshihimo, though it doesn’t look like a string  –  is keeping it from slipping all the way off. It’s incredibly off-putting – skin shouldn’t peel that easily or hang like that – and, from the smirk still on Keimu’s face, he’s well aware of it.

One purple, sharp-nailed hand grabs onto a couple of ribs and pulls, ripping them off like a doll’s arm without so much as a wince, and the reaper’s remaining empty hand reaches through the opening to grab the warring blobs of energy, enclosing both inside his fist. When the ribs get slotted right back into place and the strip of skin is once again raised over the reaper’s skeleton, Harry can’t help sagging slightly in relief. Creepy bloody Shinigami.

“Good luck,” his irreverent employee calls as he crosses the doorway, tossing a glowing blob of yellow and black over his shoulder and closing the door behind him.

The orb grows exponentially in size as it makes its way down, not stopping once it hits the ground but taking a more defined shape instead. In a matter of seconds, instead of a glowing orb of energy, Harry has a young blond man all but passed out on the floor of his office.

Lovely.

Chapter Text

Minato sits up with a gasp, hands coming up to clutch at his chest almost by reflex, somehow expecting to find a claw as long as a person still pierced through it- through him and Kushina.

Kushina, he looks around in distress to no avail.

There is no one else in sight, and no Konoha either. Gone are the grass and the forest he remembered from moments before his death, substituted by entirely unfamiliar dark wooden floors and walls lined with large bookshelves. Where? He rushes to his feet and puts his back against the closest wall, hands already reaching for a kunai in his pouch. He should be dead, his life forfeit for the seal. If it didn’t work…

“You’re not supposed to be able to bring things with you,” a voice startles him and he looks toward it even though he doesn’t understand what it says, seeing a corner of the room he hadn’t noticed before.

There’s a pair of dark red, rounded chairs facing a desk that’s half hidden from his view by the bookshelf on his left, but what surprises him is the presence of someone leaning over the desk to stare at him. The boy – because he certainly looks like a teenager – has wild black hair and pale skin, and could probably pass for a Uchiha at first glance if not for the uncommonly round and strangely luminescent green eyes.

The most unnerving part? Minato can’t sense him at all. Someone in such a short range should be easy to sense without a jutsu, but he feels nothing. There may as well be a vacuum instead of a person standing behind the wooden desk.

“Who are you?” He asks, kunai still placed defensively in front of himself.

“Oh, right,” the boy mutters to himself in what seems like the same language he didn’t understand before continuing, “Hello…” Minato is slightly relieved to notice he can understand the boy now even as he puzzledly watches him glance at a slip of paper on his desk before looking back up, “Namikaze-san?”

Minato doesn’t offer a response.

He remembers taking his last breath, the burning rage of the fox as it was sealed inside him, the taste of iron as blood poured up his throat from his pierced lungs- he should be dead. Except he’s somehow standing in a strange office, filled with bookshelves lined with texts in languages he can’t read, and being stared at by unfamiliar green eyes while knowing nothing of how he came to be here in the first place.

He’s not about to give up any sort of information if he can help it.

The boy sighs and sits back down, nearly out of his view, so Minato takes a couple of steps forward – back now facing the bookshelf past the comically large door next to him – to make sure the kid stays in his field of view. “Alright, I’ll introduce myself then. My name is- Potter Harry.” The name sounds as foreign as the previous language, “remember the Shinigami you used in your seal?” his breath hitches at that, sure that he’s about to hear that it somehow failed, that he failed his entire village. “Well, I’m his boss. His name is Keimu, by the way, and he wasn’t very happy with it.”

What?

“ What?” He blurts out in sync with his thoughts, the words absurd enough to take him by surprise. This boy, who looks no older than a chūnin – or a few jōnin, due to the early promotions given in the last war – is supposed to be the Shinigami’s boss? Who would that even be ?

“The official title is Master of Death,” the boy explains calmly. “You’re dead, Namikaze-san. If that wasn’t clear yet.”

But he can’t be dead. The seal was very clear in his exchange, his soul would never reach the Pure Lands, trapped in eternal torment with half of the Nine-Tails until the Junchūriki containing the other half – his son, that’s his son now – passes away and rids the world of the fox demon for good. Then again, this place doesn’t look like how he imagined the Pure Lands.

Maybe eternal torment will be infinite office work, he dares to think in a slightly optimistic tone. Everyone knows paperwork is the worst part of being Hokage.

“Namikaze-san?” The boy is frowning slightly and his tone indicates a measure of worry. “You don’t have a heartbeat , Namikaze-san. ”

It sounds absurd, having to be told he doesn’t have a heartbeat, but when he indulges the boy – he needs to know – and actually checks for it- “I- how?” He gasps, and is entirely confused by that fact alone. He’s dead , the dead don’t breathe .

…or do they? Apparently, the Shinigami has a boss, so what do I even know about the dead?

“Master of Death,” the boy points at himself, and he really should stop thinking of the apparent boss of the Shinigami as a boy – what did he say his name was? Something like Pottā Harī? – now that he knows he’s dead. “Normally you’d have moved on by now, but this whole seal thing is sort of interfering with the due process,” his tone is vaguely disapproving.

So it did work, he realizes. Good. That means his sacrifice – his loss – wasn’t in vain.

Konoha still stands, despite his death.

He lowers the kunai, slipping it back into the pouch – and how does he still have that? – before straightening himself to face the Master of Death with nothing but solemn determination. “I did what I had to do, Pottā-sama.”

Minato did not falter in the face of a demon . He will not falter in the face of a god.

To his surprise, the declaration makes the boy’s lips twitch up slightly. “I understand, Namikaze-san. Why don’t you take a seat?” he motions toward the chairs facing the desk in invitation. “I think we’ve got a lot to talk about if I hope to solve this whole thing.”

He watches for a moment longer. There’s no visible animosity, no frustration, no threat, simply a casual invitation… but what would a god have to fear from a dead man anyway? With a nod, he walks over to the chair and takes a seat, feet bumping slightly into the desk – strange, he didn’t think it was that close to the chairs.

“Oops, I guess I can turn this off now,” Pottā-sama smiles sheepishly and reaches for something under the desk. Minato tenses – he could be reaching for a weapon, but… he said turn off? – but all that happens is that whatever his feet had bumped into suddenly vanishes.

A fraction of a second later, his senses are filled with nothing but death.

Whatever had been disabled – some sort of barrier? – had definitely been responsible for his inability to feel something coming from the being – because whatever is in front of him is not a boy – behind the desk, though it seems almost impossible for something that could hide such a strong presence to exist. It’s not the same as killing intent, it’s not a warning . If someone feels this, they’re already dead.

“Wha- uh-” Shi-sama – because this being is nothing if not death personified – stammers and suddenly the overwhelming feeling of death is gone like it was never there in the first place. “Sorry, most people don’t feel that. Most people also can’t bring stuff in their pockets when they die,” the being adds with a hint of curiosity. “How did you do that, by the way?” Minato is still discretely catching his breath – why does he even need to breathe? Lungs shouldn’t work without a beating heart to support them – so his only response to the questions is a disbelieving stare. “I guess you wouldn’t know, huh? Right- would you know why my reaper had two souls in his gut but I only have you in my office, then? I thought you had dragged the Nine-Tails with you.”

Minato frowns slightly, one of his hands twitching in his lap as he keeps himself from bringing it to his chest, “It’s been sealed,” at the blatant confusion in the being’s expression – shouldn’t he know this already? Is death not all-knowing? – he unzips his flak jacket and pulls his shirt up in search of what he knows to be seared into his skin.

The eight trigrams seal is visible but intact. It shouldn’t be – visible, that is – since he’s not using the fox’s chakra at all. Or is he? Distracted by that thought, Minato tries to do something simple – a chakra control exercise would hardly be noticeable – and direct chakra to his feet.

Nothing.

He can feel something , but it’s not being properly directed at all, almost like- huh. Well, he is dead, isn’t he? Can’t quite mould his physical energy with his spiritual energy without a proper – living – body.

“So that’s a seal,” Shi-sama mutters and Minato looks up incredulously, letting go of his shirt. How does he not know what a seal is? “Don’t look at me like that, there are billions of dimensions out there and apparently yours had yet to cause any trouble until now,” it’s a little strange to be told off by a fifteen-year-old-looking god but that does answer the question about the being’s omniscience. “So half of the nine-tails is, what- inside you?” the visible distaste on the being’s face is a familiar sight for someone who married a Junchūriki, but doesn’t make much sense if he supposedly never even looked at Minato’s world.

And isn’t that a thought. Billions of different dimensions. He’s messed with time-space jutsu, but knowing there are other dimensions out there – besides the one he uses with his Hiraishin – is an entirely different thing.

“Yes, Shi-sama,” he replies anyway.

The being frowns slightly, sighs, then speaks. “Well, can you get it out?”

“No!” The response is almost a reflex at the thought. He died for this, to save his village and make sure the demon will finally be gone for good, he’s not about to just undo it all at the god’s request.

Minato will die a thousand deaths before he condemns his son and his village with him.

Shi-sama’s eyes widen slightly in surprise, and Minato anticipates a return of the overwhelming feeling of death , but it doesn’t come. “O-kay,” the god says instead. “Why, exactly?”

“To free the fox would mean condemning my son to death,” whether this half of the demon’s chakra tries to merge with Naruto’s half – overwhelming his chakra pathways and causing his death – or becomes a separate entity of itself, it would be a death sentence to Konoha and his son.

The god’s brows rise nearly to his hairline, – and really, shouldn’t death personified have a better hold over his emotions than a genin? – but he thankfully doesn’t seem about to order him to do it regardless of the consequences, which Minato appreciates since he’s not entirely sure what he would be able to do against the being who commands the Shinigami. It doesn’t mean he wouldn’t try his damn best anyway.

“Fox?” Shi-sama asks with a slight tilt of the head.

“The demon takes the form of a nine-tailed fox,” Minato explains, watching a pensive expression take over the god’s face. He really doesn’t know anything .

“The problem,” Shi-sama continues after a moment, “is that the fox can’t die,” as if anticipating his protest – can he read minds? – the god continues, “it’s made of energy, it can disperse and reform , but not truly die.” Minato frowns at the realization that, if this is true, his plan may not have worked in its entirety. “This wouldn’t be an issue, except for the fact that you’ve bound yourself to it in the process of dying, which means your soul can’t move on, and the Nine-Tails can’t disperse.”

“That was the plan,” he admits, “I was prepared for an eternity of fighting the fox inside the Shinigami,” for the sake of my village and my son, he doesn’t add.

The god breathes out a deep sigh, leaning back on his chair. “Well, Keimu doesn’t feel like having you two fighting inside his gut for all eternity,” Shi-sama informs, “and he shouldn’t, anyway. You are supposed to move on.”

Minato holds back a flinch at the slightly irritated tone. Heavy presence or not, he can’t forget that this is literally death. It’s a wonder he’s having the chance to argue his point at all. Still, “can’t I just- stay here?” he tries. There are two doors in the room – though one is comically large – which implies a larger space than the one they are currently in.

Shi-sama stares at him and huffs out a small laugh, “As much as I wouldn’t mind a roommate,” something in the god’s tone implies he would mind it very much, “it’s my job to sort out this whole mess and get you to where you should be,” there’s a distant look in his eyes as he adds, “it doesn’t do to make exceptions to death.” The lack of a heart doesn’t seem to stop the tightening feeling in his chest at that declaration, but he has no time to protest before the being continues to speak. “We do have time, though. I think I need a little more context before getting to the solution part.”

“Right,” he holds back a sigh of relief, more time is better than no time at all.

For how long can death be stalled?

“Would you mind if I had a look at your memories?” Shi-sama asks, like Minato has any right to refuse. “It would probably help. You can be there too, I mean- if you want? Reliving one’s death might be a tad traumatic, I imagine.”

“How?” He can’t help but ask, thinking of the Yamanaka’s mind-related abilities.

“I can extract the memory,” in response to what he assumes is his noticeable alarm, the being adds, “It wouldn’t be gone, only dulled until I place it back. I can also simply make a copy and give it back immediately if you don’t mind me keeping the copy.” Shi-sama then stands from his seat and walks past the desk, motioning for him to follow.

He has yet to answer, but it’s not as if he assumed he had a choice in the first place.

Minato stands to follow, noticing with some amusement entirely inappropriate to the situation that the death god is short . The top of Shi-sama’s head is barely tall enough to reach under his chin, and if Minato weren’t already accustomed to treating teenagers like an approximation of adults – at least the shinobi ones – he has a feeling this meeting might have gone a different way entirely.

They walk to the small, ornate round table at the corner of the office opposite to the desk, and Minato watches as Shi-sama collects the small pile of books and a decorative vase of flowers – white ones that he identifies as lilies after a second glance – and places them in a nearby bookshelf before turning back toward the table and swiping a hand over it. He could swear something glows under the being’s hand as he does it, and then suddenly the table seems to flicker from existence, revealing what looks like a stone basin filled with a swirling silvery substance.

“This is a-” Shi-sama pauses in thought for a moment before continuing, “ Urei no furui ?” He seems uncertain of the name, and Minato can’t blame him since he has no idea what a sieve of worries is supposed to be. “It’s used to view the memories placed inside,” the being turns to him and Minato has to look down to meet his eyes. “May I?”

He contemplates saying no, wondering if it would give him more time, but it just might lose him any favor he’s managed to earn with the death god so far – because he must have done something right to get a chance to plead his case instead of simply having his seal undone on the spot – and he doesn’t think it’s worth the risk. “Of course, Shi-sama,” he replies instead, though it earns him a slightly annoyed look.

Minato makes an effort to hold himself in place when the god’s hand rises toward him, but the touch of fingertips to his temple is feather–light. “Think of the day of your death,” Shi-sama’s tone is one of regret, as if it pains him to ask. It doesn’t really help. “Visualize an exact beginning and- end,” the latter makes his lips twitch minutely. They both know how it ended. “Tell me when you have it.”

He doesn’t know what the god hopes to see, if only the exact moment of his death, an hour in advance or even the entire day, but he knows that the longer the memory, the more time he has with his seal intact – the more time his son and village have to live – so he closes his eyes and takes his mind back to that morning, to the memory of waking up in his wife’s arms, having breakfast together, finalizing the preparations for the birth- he thinks of every moment until his torso was pierced by the demon’s claw, every second that felt too short as he finished Naruto’s seal, imbuing Kushina’s remaining chakra into it.

She’s gone, he’s painfully reminded. He doesn’t want to share this – her last living moments, her struggle, her death – but he has to. At this point, what is one more sacrifice?

“I have it,” Minato informs, and he can feel the memories becoming fainter as if surrounded by mist. When his eyes open, it’s to the sight of a luminescent bluish strand in the center of Shi-sama’s hand. “Please copy it,” he requests, hating the emptiness that’s left behind. The god nods and closes his empty hand around it, seeming to concentrate for a moment before they separate, revealing twin strands of what he assumes are his memories, one in each hand. His eyes flutter closed for another moment as the memories are placed back, and when he opens them the god has turned his back to him.

Minato wipes away a stray tear and steps closer to the basin.

“Ready?” Shi-sama asks, and it takes considerable effort not to ask if it’s a joke. He’ll never be ready for this. “Take my hand,” the god instructs, offering him an open palm.

He takes a deep breath and grasps it with a nod.

Shi-sama guides their grasped hands into the liquid – cloudy and in constant motion like wind made solid – and the world swirls away from his sight.

Chapter Text

Sometimes, Harry sort of wishes he’d made more friends in life.

Hermione was always outspoken, she had a bit of a my-way-or-the-highway personality which, coupled with the fact that she usually knew better than him and Ron, only seemed to validate itself. She decided they were friends – after that fateful Samhain night and bonding over surviving a troll at eleven years old – and that was that. Ron wasn’t as easy to be friends with, but Harry had been used to making himself smaller to avoid the Dursley’s notice, so falling into the role of the ginger’s best friend – with similar second-hand clothes and never better grades – felt comfortable and familiar. Sometimes his fame – unasked for and unhelpful – got in the way, sparking Ron’s jealousy, but they always seemed to find their way back to each other in the end, somehow. They never really talked, they just sort of put the issue behind them and moved on, which was just fine with him.

Unfortunately, that means he’s absolutely shit at communicating. Years of letting Hermione do his thinking for him and never really talking through any issues with Ron left him entirely unprepared to become the head of a whole afterlife operation. The job – which really needs a better sales pitch than ‘you put together three of my personal items then came back to life so it’s yours now’ – doesn’t require him to rush into dangerous situations by himself or fight any sort of physical war, though he stands by the fact that doing it once was more than enough. No, it requires him to talk to people.

Well, not always human people, but the reapers were still people in his eyes. Sometimes slightly weird-looking, and in a variety of ridiculous sizes and shapes, never mind the hundreds of different languages they spoke – which he maintains should be included in the whole Master of Death starter package instead of forcing him to learn them individually –, but still people. And these people had the same boss for millennia, so they – or at least a significant part of them – weren’t very happy with the teenage-looking wizard who suddenly took over their boss’ office and position.

Well, too bad for them, Harry sort of likes the office. It certainly beats the spot reserved for him in an Azkaban cell.

Why, one might wonder, would he have a cell waiting for him? Well, if there’s one thing he learned to always count on, it’s how fickle the wizarding world’s population can be, especially in regard to their opinion of him. After being flung from a pedestal to the cold hard ground – rinse and repeat for seven years – many times since being reintroduced to magical society, it didn’t come as a surprise when, after the dust of the Second Wizarding War settled, the public’s cries of praise for his victory over Voldemort started to shif toward questions and insinuations over how he’d managed to beat the Dark Lord.

Apparently, vanishing off the public eye and into the Black ancestral home to deal with his grief – a grief he’d never really proccessed for years, too busy fighting a war they were too scared to admit was even happening – means he’s immersing himself in the Dark Arts and studying to become the next Dark Lord after defeating the last one. As one does, according to the wizarding collective.

Of course, being unable to age didn’t quite help him dissuade them of such a notion.

His friends had stood by him, at least at first. Hermione assured him that such nonsensical ways of thinking couldn’t possibly prevail – Harry kindly refrained from reminding her of the entirety of their schooling experience – and Ron just told him to ignore the idiots and go with him to the Auror entrance exam. Harry passed on that offer – nothing against Aurors, but he didn’t think seven years of rule-breaking would make for a very good officer of the law – and held on to his reclusive ways, cataloging the entirety of the Black Library and trying not to feel like part of him was missing – a sort of phantom pain with no origin or remedy – from the moment he took his first breath after his death.

The first time he killed someone – not by accident, not with a rebounded spell, but with the conviction that it was his only option if he hoped to keep breathing – it had been carefully brushed under the rug. One of the remaining Death Eaters – which had scattered to the winds as soon as their Lord was taken down – had taken a chance to avenge the death of his boss and Harry, now with many more combat spells under his belt instead of a simple disarming charm, wasn’t about to let him. The Aurors showed up at the end – and he thinks that’s he only reason he was successful in claiming self-defense – and cleaned up the incident with startling efficiency, handing him a fine and advising him to stay at home for a few days while they took care of things.

Contrary to his better expectations, ‘taking care of things’ apparently meant getting a warrant to raid the ancestral home Harry now called his own and appropriate themselves of anything they remotely thought might have the slightest relation to Dark Magic. Harry cooperated – how could he not when Ron was looking at him with that dejected apologetic look of his – but it stung. This was his godfather’s legacy, the last remaining piece of his family that could have been, and the Ministry decided they were entitled to it due to their fear of what he could become.

Were he a weaker person – or stronger, in a certain point of view – he may have been tempted to act in accordance with their fears.

Harry retreated even further after that incident, avoiding any and all opportunities to interact with the Ministry or the wizarding population as a whole. With his reading material mostly gone, he took to prowling through Knockturn Alley in search of complementary texts, especially anything related to warding. He had a newly vested interest in keeping anyone from trespassing into his home, after all.

His short venture into blood wards was entirely unplanned. He knew the magic was unlawful, which would be counterproductive toward keeping law officials away from his home, but the memory of the mention of such wards in relation to his mother’s sacrifice kept him from ignoring the subject entirely. Once he looked further into it, however, he wished he did.

The wards around the Dursley house, the blood protection supposed to keep him safe from Death Eaters during his childhood and summers – the reason he was forced time and time again to endure his relatives’ treatment of him –, was a complete sham. Oh, there was some blood magic at play, it did its job against Quirrelmort and it kept the Horcrux at bay for seventeen years, but it never extended to the rest of his relatives, and their presence did little to enforce or maintain it, at least according to everything he’d learned about blood wards.

Eleven years of neglect – of being shunned, pushed aside, barely fed, and worked to the bone – for nothing. It would make him wonder what Dumbledore was thinking if he hadn’t already realized he was nothing more than a pawn in the man’s chessboard from the moment the prophecy had been delivered. After all, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, don’t they?

His study of illegal magics, theoretical as it may have been, unfortunately reached Hermione’s eyes after a surprise visit – when did he stop caring about his privacy? Did he ever have any? – which meant it was soon known by Ron and thus the entire Auror department. They were worried about him, they said, but he was so tired of having things done to him for supposedly his own good.

Harry left during the night. Less than a week later, there was a warrant for his arrest. He was disappointed, but not surprised.

What did surprise him, after a few weeks on the run, were the consequences of another rogue Death Eater attack, and a deadly one at that. His rudimentary warding – with runestones spread around the campsite at equal intervals – somehow failed him – he knows he shouldn’t count on experiments but he’d been so sure this one worked fine – and Harry was caught completely unprepared. When he woke up from a mortal wound to the sight of an unfamiliar dark wooden ceiling and received the news from an old, grey-haired, tired-looking man in a suit that he was now the Master of Death and the place they were in was his new office, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The fact that the unnamed man promptly vanished without so much as a by-your-leave didn’t improve matters at all.

After weeks of being locked in the office with growing piles of paperwork and going through every book in sight, Harry finally had a small grasp on the situation. Apparently, collecting the Deathly Hallows and willingly facing his death only to come back to life had cemented him as the new Master of Death, a job which had belonged to another before him – probably the old man he’d seen when he woke up – for millennia. He didn’t disagree that the guy’s retirement was probably overdue by a few centuries, but it didn’t make him any happier about being saddled with the job.

Items such as the Hallows are, according to one of the books, scattered around many universes, though the few who manage to gather all three seem to often fail the whole dying-and-coming-back part of the unwritten job requirements.

It took him a while longer to unlock the door behind the office desk, though it was mostly due to not expecting it to work like the Room of Requirement instead of the locked door it looked like on the outside. With infinite resources at his fingertips – or at least that’s what having control of Death’s Room of Requirement felt like – he quickly figured out a way to get himself back home. A little singed and with a concussion, but mostly whole. Leaving the office empty would probably serve as a very obvious sign that he wouldn’t be taking the job, no matter what three inanimate objects – two of which he no longer possessed – had to say about it.

The Reapers, however, seemed to miss that memo. And so did the souls of the dead.

It scared him at first, the sight of translucent corpses at the corner of his vision. They sometimes looked entirely normal except for being somewhat see-through, but at other times he was faced with entirely mutilated, bloody, or deformed souls, either as a reflection of their death or of how they saw themselves. He tried to get used to it – death wasn’t something new, after all – but the more he hung around the same location, the more aware the spirits seemed to become of him, even resorting to trying to get his attention at times and even attack him in a few occasions.

When he came across a reaper for the first time, it wasn’t even a proper one. She looked older than him, dark-haired and brown-eyed, and wearing a tattered red dress but lacking any shoes, though something told him it wasn’t quite a Luna situation. He only saw her out of the corner of his eye, which is why it took him some time to realize she wasn’t a spirit, even though she had been hanging around in his proximity for a while.

Freya is the name she gave him when he asked her, and as for the motive for her presence? Apparently, there was some sort of need for more reapers and she had been pulled from her previous post – some sort of gate guardian? He didn’t ask for much detail – to make up for the lack of personnel. When he asked her what sort of thing would increase the demand for reapers – right after getting an explanation of what exactly she meant by a reaper – in fear of some sort of plague or war, she frowned at him and told him he should know, since the paperwork for it had been approved by him.

Since Harry hadn’t signed anything in a while, that was news to him.

As it turns out, if the Master of Death doesn’t take up their office, certain reapers can and will try to sabotage each other and their various realms without supervision. In this case, a spiteful little shit he later learned went by the name of Wojciech – which Harry gave up on pronouncing correctly and settled for Wojtek, as some of the other reapers called him – had decided to pull most of the reapers from Harry’s world in an attempt to cause the spirits to overwhelm him eventually and leave the office free for the taking. Thankfully, someone had found out and sent an order – also in his name because why would they stop impersonating their supposed boss –  for those like Freya to pick up the slack of the reapers who had been called away, but it all sounded like more of a mess than he cared to think about.

He really tried not to think about it, but with the British wizarding world’s campaign against him for the latest reason – probably due to how long he’d been missing, they might think he’s in some future Dark Lord boot camp, who knows – and the constant presence of increasingly agitated spirits and a few unhappy substitute reapers who seemed to think he was the root of their problems, it was hard not to feel tempted to just- solve the whole mess himself. It’s what he’d been doing since he was young, after all. Harry Potter, born to solve the wizarding world’s little Dark Lord problem, no need to give him any training, advice, or even a heads-up until it’s already obvious. What’s another mess to clean up, anyway?

Going back to the office turned out to be harder than leaving it, and not even dying again – he didn’t do it on purpose, but it served as a test either way – managed to send him back to it. His last resort? A spot of grave-robbing and pebble-hunting for the two missing Hallows to complement the cloak he always carried with him on his bottomless pouch. There was a short period of trial and error, but as soon as Harry put on the invisibility cloak, held on to the elder wand, and twisted the resurrection stone three times, he passed out and conveniently woke back up in the office he’d been trying so hard to reach.

Less convenient was the fact that all three Hallows were nowhere to be seen once he woke up, and he would only find out why that was the next time he looked at a mirror without a shirt on. Right above his heart, branded into his skin like the least likely tattoo he would ever have chosen for himself, he found the symbol of the Deathly Hallows.

Being able to turn himself invisible on command, cast all of his spells wandlessly, and summon spirits with a simple call kind of made up for it, eventually .

New tattoo or not, he was still left with a giant mess he had no idea how to fix and an entirely unhelpful predecessor, which means it took him months to find out what to even do with each towering pile of paperwork slowly accumulating in the office desk – and floor, and bookshelves, and chairs – and even longer to sort through everything. One complaint he didn’t have? His suddenly perfect eyesight. If he was about to spend the rest of eternity reading goddamn paperwork, giving him the proper tools for it – such as not needing to squint at it – was honestly the least that the universe could do.

His foray into warding also became quite relevant when he found the office being invaded at various times by angry, annoyed, curious, or bored reapers, and with the help of the room that could bring him pretty much any book he asked for, Harry managed to enlarge the main entrance – to make sure all reapers would be able to pass through – and ward the office against their presence on it. Why the previous Master of Death had never done it, he didn’t know, but he wasn’t about to put up with their assumption that they could come and go as they liked. Besides the fact that he was supposed to be their boss, he didn’t trust them not to attack him in an attempt to claim his unasked-for title either, even if he couldn’t quite picture how they’d be able to. With his luck, they’d try ripping out his heart.

Once the office had a semblance of order, Harry set out to stop the piles of paperwork from accumulating and taking up all the space. He didn’t know how the one before him didn’t suffer frequent deaths by papercut, but he didn’t have the efficiency – or patience – to take care of every report that popped up at the exact time they did, thus the invention of his enchanted folders. Okay, maybe they were simply bottomless folders linked to each other, but he was proud of being able to work out a solution for himself without Hermione’s input even though he did sort of use the DA coin as a base for the idea.

And that’s where talking to people came in. He had to visit all of the departments – which he’d sort of been avoiding so far – to explain the workings of the folders, and simultaneously face the judgment of the entire staff that keeps the afterlife up and running. He had barely done any talking to the reapers that approached him, and that had mostly been to either tell them it wasn’t his problem – when he’d been in his world – or tell them he was already solving the problem – when they kept invading his office. He doesn’t know how to talk to normal people, even if some of the people are five times his height and like to walk around completely wrapped in bandages like something straight out of an Egyptian tomb.

Oh, he manages to communicate reasonably well eventually, in between trying not to get stepped on by reapers who – rightly but annoyingly – assume they know better and attempting to put some order to the departments, all while looking like he could be someone’s young nephew just down there for a visit. One of the few things that do make him feel a bit better about his appearance – he still looks like he should be in high school – is that some reapers have it worse, like Momo who didn’t look a day past fourteen.

But there were all employees, they kind of had to listen to him eventually – or listen even more if they managed to mess something up and he had to go down to figure it out – and they weren’t really friends. It was even worse when he had to talk with the spirits, whether it was due to some minor mishap like being sent to the wrong world’s version of their afterlife – happens less often now that he has a system but it was a little worrying before, with some reapers clearly playing favorites – or something major like the issue at hand.

Namikaze’s case isn’t something he’s seen before, which means he already went into it a little nervous, and the man’s… weird deference – he’s not death itself… is he? He doesn’t think so, at least – is both embarrassing and a little grating, because he can almost sense the fear behind it. Maybe that’s why he takes his mind off of the paperwork waiting for him to get back to it and decides to focus on this case, because even with the undercurrent of fear, Namikaze still told him not to undo the seal.

Sure, the guy also trapped part of a soul – because what else is an energy construct with a consciousness anyway? – inside himself like some failed attempt at a Horcrux, but Harry at least respects the guts he has to stand by the decision in the face of actual death.

As in the concept, not himself. He’s not death, damn it. He’s just Harry.

So when Namikaze takes his hand – and why is he so solid? How did he get freaking knives into the afterlife? He'll will get around to figuring that out eventually – and Harry guides it toward the Pensieve, he can’t help but feel a little invested in what he might see.

This, Harry thinks as they’re pulled into the memory, might actually be interesting.

Chapter Text

He’s woken up by what feels like an earthquake, sitting up in alarm on the bed only to get bowled over by an excited blur of red and blue, who somehow manages to throw herself at him in a way that manages to avoid any harm to her large – pregnant – belly yet still packs enough strength into it to drive the air out of his lungs as he falls back on the bed, looking up at a sun-bright smile and sparkling violet eyes framed by a halo of red hair.

A painfully familiar environment flows into existence around them just as Shi-sama releases his hand, the basin now nowhere in sight as Minato watches himself from a third-person point of view. The concept would have boggled his mind – how is he seeing himself if this is supposed to be his memories as seen through his eyes? – if he wasn’t already busy trying to keep his hands still at his sides.

“Anata, it’s time!” Kushina announces excitedly, and he almost feels all the blood drain from his face as he maneuvers them both into a sitting position, careful of her place on his lap.

“Right now?” He exclaims in a slight panic, “Do we have enough time? Let me up, I’ve gotta summon-”

He’s not sure whether the impulse he’s containing is to reach out and touch Kushina – his beautiful wife currently clad in a light blue yukata – or to try and disrupt what feels like a genjutsu to his every instinct.

A light flick to his forehead interrupts his rambling and he wrinkles his nose, wondering why she looks so amused. “Not right this second, y’know!” his wife explains with a roll of her eyes, “But it’s today, I can feel it.” The grin that spreads over his face – equally matched on hers – is so wide it should hurt. Their baby is coming today!

They’d had an estimated date given by the hospital, so it doesn’t come as a complete surprise, but it’s still hard to believe they’ll soon be holding their son.

As quickly as the excitement enters them, it leaves just as fast at their next simultaneous realization. “The seal?” Minato asks, worry slipping into his tone.

“Still holding,” Kushina assures, but the apprehension in her eyes reminds him that it won’t be so for long, especially if she’s right about being due that day. With a deep sigh, he wraps his arms around her in a loose embrace, careful of her belly as he buries his face in the red mane of hair falling over her shoulder. It’s time. “I’ll get started with the preparations,” he tells her after a moment of enjoying the peace and quiet in each other’s arms. According to Mikoto-san – who gave birth to her second son just a few months earlier – they won’t have much of it for a while.

There isn’t a whole lot of preparing to be done, especially after the meeting they’d had at the start of the week to sort out the location of the birth – away from the village, behind a barrier, where they could afford to risk the Nine-Tails’ seal weakening without endangering it or Kushina – and who would be accompanying them, so all he really has to do is tell Sarutobi-sama it’s time and get his Hokage duties of the day out of the way so he can join his wife at the agreed location.

“I’m pretty sure you didn’t die in bed,” Shi-sama’s voice breaks through his fixation with the scene around them, though it sounds strangely muffled. When Minato manages to wrench his eyes away from the sight of his wife – his beautiful, lively, living wife – and look toward the god standing a step away from him, all he sees is the being’s back turned to the main subjects of the memory and a tell-tale hint of redness at the top of the god’s ears. Huh.

“Not before breakfast you won’t!” She pecks him on the lips before wiggling out of his hold and off the bed, back to her feet. “I feel like having so-” he’s shifting to get off the bed when she pauses, and he looks up just in time to see her hurriedly cover her mouth and run off- straight to the bathroom.

“You said to think of the day I died,” Minato points out, voice coming out slightly strangled as his eyes are once more pulled toward Kushina’s figure like a magnet, watching her rush toward the bathroom. “This is how it started.”

Minato stands from the bed and calmly walks over to the door she’d slammed closed behind her, wincing at the sounds from inside the room. “All good?” He asks anyway.

“I want-” a pause, another few seconds of vomiting, “our baby out of me!”

He lets out a sheepish chuckle, “I’ll go make some tea.”

“I’m going to skip forward,” Shi-sama informs, and the scene dissolves around them.

“Good morning, Hokage-sama!” One of their neighbors greets as he walks down the street, and he quickly wishes Izuno-san a good morning as well, continuing on his way.

Minato watches himself walk about the village on the way to the red house, feeling somewhat detached from it all. The village is intact, and he watches himself greet people with the glow of a man about to become a father – though he can’t outright say it for security purposes –, and despairs over how past him has no idea of how badly things will go by the end of the day.

“What’s this place called?” Shi-sama asks from his side as they continue to follow behind his memory self. Minato is curious whether they need to walk or if the memory would drag them along, but doesn’t voice his question lest it test the god’s patience.

“Konohagakure no Sato,” he replies absently, failing to keep his eyes away from the people milling around. If not for the presence of the being by his side, he might feel as if he’s still alive after all. “Though we mostly shorten it to Konoha.”

“Hidden- by Tree Leaves?” Shi-sama repeats the name in a questioning tone, but a quick look around makes him hum in understanding. “Those are very big trees, I guess.”

The memory soon melts into colorful swirling mist once again, the god probably not interested in observing the walk through the streets any further. It would have been a shorter path if Minato had chosen to move into the Hokage Residence after taking the hat, but with Kushina pregnant – with the seal weakened – they’d chosen to remain in their home on Uzumaki grounds until their son was born.

“I know It’s been blocked since the war, but it’s surely time-” the argument is interrupted once again, as it’s been for the last twenty minutes.

“With good reason. To open another trading route would mean diverting more resources, which-”

Minato barely has any time to identify the next scene once it forms around them – the office he’d had less than a year to grow used to before his death, the council he’d inherited from the Third and is composed of the man’s old teammates – before it’s swept away, Shi-sama apparently not intending to watch the council meeting either.

He can’t blame the god, having often wished he could skip to the end of them himself.

Once again thankful for storage seals, Minato tree-hops toward the location provided for the birth – the furthest outpost from the village without leaving the Land of Fire – since he wouldn’t want to be carrying blankets and pillows in his arms all the way from the village. If there’s ever been a good reason to learn Fūinjutsu, it’s for how much it helps with carrying around much more than one should be able to. Well… that, and explosive tags.

”Okojo, Kairi,” Minato addresses his two ANBU guards once they jump down to the entrance of the barrier, where two other agents are already positioned. “guard the entrance with Neko and Komadori.” They nod in response and Minato walks forward, making his way inside.

Minato can’t help but grimace at the reminder that these people have all died at the hands of the masked attacker, but the being at his side keeps him from dwelling for too long.

“Why the animal theme?” Shi-sama asks curiously, inspecting the masks as they follow his memory self into the outpost.

Once again reminded that the god isn’t familiar with his universe, he elaborates as they enter the designated room and settle near the back of it, facing the door. “They’re Ansatsu Senjutsu Tokushu Butai , ANBU for short,” the name earns him a slightly wide-eyed stare as if the Master of Death had never heard of an assassination squad. “The masks and codenames are for protection, theirs and the others.”

The interior isn’t much to look at, mostly bare rooms with scattered cabinets or tables and chairs, and it doesn’t take long for Minato to find the room he’d prepared with containment seals a few days earlier. He tries not to think of how the table in the center of the four fire lanterns looks like a sacrificial altar as he unseals the sheets and pillow he’d brought to make his wife more comfortable.

He hears her before he sees them, a pained, muffled grunt reaching his ears as they make their way inside. It doesn’t take long for Biwako-sama and Kushina to step into the room, Taji accompanying them as their designated guard and assistant medic.

Minato winces at the visual – and auditory – reminder of his wife's pain, only aggravated by the Nine-Tails’ attempts to free itself.

“S-should I skip forward? Is this relevant?” Shi-sama asks, sounding slightly uncomfortable at the prospect of watching someone give birth. Minato wonders if it’s the concept of a new life that makes the personification of death uncomfortable.

It takes him a moment to answer, distracted by the sight of his beautiful wife letting his memory self help her up to the makeshift bed and arrange the sheets over her legs to maintain her privacy. “Maybe an hour or two,” he replies. It will be closer to his son’s birth and the moment when everything starts to go wrong. It’s almost ironic how the happiest moment of his life was so soon followed by the worst.

“Is she in danger of bursting something?” Minato asks with some trepidation at his wife’s continuous pained screams, his own efforts – exerted more in chakra than physically as he directs it into the seal on her belly – feel like nothing compared to the pain she seems to be in.

“Our eardrums,” Biwako-sama deadpans from between parted legs and nearly earns a kick for it.

“It hurts , y’know!” Kushina exclaims.

“I’ve never seen her in so much pain,” he insists, worry lacing his tone. “Is she… alright?”

“Is that the same seal you have?” Shi-sama asks, directing his attention toward the inked markings. “Does she also have a fox inside her?”

Minato can’t fault him for the confusion given the lack of context, so he takes a deep breath – there’s nothing he can do from a memory, it’s all going to happen again whether he likes it or not – and tries his best to explain. “It used to be inside her. She’s the Jinchūriki of the Nine-Tails, chosen to bear the burden once the previous one passed away,” he remembers how she’d been devastated at Mito-san’s passing. “Usually, the seal you’re seeing is enough, but the only time it naturally weakens is during gestation and childbirth when all of her energy is focusing on the baby instead of the seal.”

“So it’s going to escape?” The god sounds a little horrified at the notion as if it would burst out of Kushina at any moment. It makes his wife all the braver, living with that possibility every single day.

“Not on its own” He replies, recalling the masked man who’d forced him to leave his wife in order to save his son.

“She’s alright! Never mind that, just focus on the seal,” Biwako-sama berates, sounding done with his fretting.

“But she’s-”

“You’re the Yondaime Hokage! Act like it!” She snaps with a glare before returning her full focus to her work, muttering all the while. “A man would have dropped dead from such pain long ago, but women are strong.”

“What does she mean by fourth fire shadow?” Shi-sama asks, still looking mostly away from the memory with a few glances toward the seal every now and then.

Minato blinks, really not used to having to explain this. “It’s the title given to the leaver of the village,” and he barely had enough time to make any difference with it.

“You’re the leader of that whole place?” The god looks a second away from gaping at that information. “But- you look so young.” the stunned sentence drifts into slight melancholy.

“I was,” he mutters with a sigh, not sure in response to what.

Shinobi often die young. It didn’t come as a surprise.

He’s forced to tune out her lecturing when the seal pulses with energy under his hand, trying to force itself open from the inside, the ink slowly expanding even as he turns his entire focus back to the task at hand. The Nine-Tails is strong, and fighting against its attempts to escape gives Minato a new respect for what his wife deals with on a daily basis.

“Hang in there, Naruto,” he whispers, hoping Kushina’s pain ends soon.

“I can see his head!” Biwako-sama announces a minute later, and Kushina’s pained moans seem to increase in fervor. “You’re almost there, Kushina!”

As if emboldened by the declaration, the demon’s attempt to escape seems to double in strength. “Naruto, come quickly,” he urges under his breath with a groan, “Nine-Tails, you stay put !”

Everything feels suspended in time for a moment, and then a minute later a baby’s strong cry drowns out Kushina’s sigh of relief. “He’s here,” he whispers to the woman who’s just made him the happiest he’s ever been with a teary-eyed smile that’s easily matched by her tired yet awed one. “I’m a father.”

He can’t turn away from it, stomach in knots even as he relives some of the happiness this memory provides. Their baby is still alive, Jinchūriki or not, so it was worth it. For Naruto.

The look his wife levels him with loses some efficacy in the face of her recent efforts, but it still conveys the message very clearly: you’ve been a father for the last nine months, y’know!

“He’s a healthy babe,” Taji announces, and Biwako-sama carries their newborn son toward them.

“Naruto!” He excitedly steps toward his son but gets instantly rebuked.

“Don’t touch him, the mother sees him first!” The two medics walk past him and to the edge of Kushina’s makeshift bed, but he’s too elated that his son is finally home to care, simply smiling toward the crying bundle of orange in the elder’s arms as she brings him closer to his wife’s field of view.

“Naruto…” Kushina tiredly but lovingly whispers, gazing at their baby. “I finally get to see you.”

“You’ll have lots more time later,” Biwako-sama tells them as she takes their son away and leaves him looking dejectedly at their backs, wishing he could have held him for a moment.

He turns his eyes toward his wife instead, lightly touching her arm. “How are you feeling, Kushina?” he asks, smiling at the soft hum she offers as a response. She looks pretty worn out. “Thank you,” he says, though it’s not nearly enough to convey the elation he feels inside.

“Minato…” She smiles softly up at him, as beautiful as always, even after this whole ordeal.

Wanting to keep the gathered tears in her eyes from falling, he takes a fortifying breath before announcing, “Alright! I know you’ve just gone through childbirth, but I’m going to completely seal the Nine-Tails,” he moves his hands toward the seal, only to be interrupted by a pained scream, one not belonging to his wife.

“Biwako-sama! Taji!” He exclaims, looking toward where they’d just been dropped on the ground in front of the door.

He notices when Shi-sama flinches, startled at the scene, but doesn’t manage to look away from the masked stranger in a black cloak holding his son in his arms, one hand hovering over his baby’s face threateningly. The dread pooling in his chest was just as powerful as the first time.

“Yondaime Hokage Minato, step away from the Jinchūriki.” The unknown ninja demands and he turns fully to stare at the man who dares to threaten his son . “Or this child’s life will end in one minute.”

He doesn’t know how the stranger managed to get past the barrier or incapacitate every ANBU in the location – which must be the case for the lack of any of them interfering – but he finds himself frozen to the spot as he notices Kushina’s seal expanding over her skin.

“Get away from the Jinchūriki,” the stranger repeats, now with a kunai in hand. “Don’t you care what happens to your kid?”

“Who is that?” He hears Shi-sama ask in a whisper as if talking any louder may aggravate the situation playing out around them. “Why is he doing this?”

Minato doesn’t know, not really, so the questions go entirely unanswered.

“Wait! Calm down!” He pleads, torn between his duty – to the village, to the hat – and his family.

“Speak for yourself,” the masked man calls, and he’s preparing to do something, lowering himself slightly, “I’m as calm as can be,” his son is suddenly thrown in the air, his baby’s cries overlapping with Kushina’s call of his name, and he realizes – as the stranger leaps in an attempt to drive his kunai through Minato’s son and he rushes to grab Naruto before that with all the speed he can muster – that it’s not even a choice at all. “Well, I must hand it to the Yellow Flash,” the man says as he falls back to the floor after his unsuccessful attempt. “But I wonder about this next one.”

The faint smell of smoke gives it away before the seals start to spark, and he’s flashing toward one of his Hiraishin tags in the next breath, slipping the blanket away from his little boy and dropping it inside the cabin just a moment before explosive tags do their job, the explosion helping propel him forward and away from it, right through the cabin’s door.

Minato skids to a stop on the grass outside, looking down at the baby in his arms and sighing in relief. “You’re safe,” he informs the little boy bawling in his arms, but the relief doesn’t come. The target, he realizes, is Kushina. And the man succeeded in separating them.

“What was that?” Shi-sama exclaims, staring incredulously at Minato’s memory self, who was pulling out a shard of wood that had ended up embedded in his leg due to the explosion. “You can apparate!”

“What?” Minato frowns slightly at the unfamiliar word, having an easier time focusing without any pressing memories around them even though the urge to run and find his wife is still irrationally nagging at him.

“I didn’t know other people could do that,” the god explains, “you a- appeared here, you weren’t here before.” When the memory shifts again due to another hiraishin , Shi-sama waves a hand and his memory self pauses mid-step in the safe house, holding a now quiet Naruto. “That,” he motions pointedly.

Other people? Minato wonders even as he explains, “It’s my Hiraishin no Jutsu . I teleported myself to a marker-”

“Flying Thunder God Technique?” Shi-sama interrupts with a chuckle. It’s strange to see, the visible amusement making the being seem more like the kid he resembles in appearance. “I think I’ll stick with my name,” there’s a short pause, “Wait, a marker? So you can’t just teleport on command, then?”

“Well, there’s Shunshin , which can be almost the same if you’re good enough” Minato points out, “it’s also easier since it doesn’t require any Fūinjutsu knowledge.” At the god’s slightly puzzled look, he pointed at his own chest and watched the realization dawn on Shi-sama’s curious green eyes.

If it wasn’t for the memories around him, the seal’s unforgettable presence on his chest, and the fact that he’s literally dead as they speak, Minato may have felt a spark of nostalgia at explaining things like he’s talking to a genin right out of the academy.

The last place he’d expected Namikaze’s memories to drop them into was a bedroom. He’d turned around as soon as he noticed it, cheeks burning in embarrassment. Oh, they were decently dressed, but he still felt like he was intruding, listening to the couple talk about the upcoming birth of their child with no idea that one of them would be dead by the end of the day.

He willed the memory forward after warning the blond, taking them to a street instead and starting to walk after the Namikaze in the memory. They could sit still and watch, but he felt like doing something . The city around them – Hidden Leaf Village , apparently – didn’t look familiar, not in the way even the Burrow reminded him of something he’d seen in London before, so he assumed the curved ceilings and rounded structures – if a bit rustic-looking at certain parts – were a thing of Japanese-style architecture.

Unwilling to waste time on a walk, he sped through another part of the memory and then skipped even further when it looked like some sort of council meeting. Anything that sounds similar to the Wizengamot – which he escaped by the skin of his teeth, the only positive part of people’s fickle feelings about him – should be avoided at all costs.

The memory settled them on forest grounds, and it took him a moment to find Namikaze – the memory one, that is – hopping from tree to tree like a man on a mission. It was kind of impressive how he didn’t even stumble or lose balance, and some of the movement seemed dang near impossible when taking gravity into account, yet there he was. Harry didn’t have time to ask for it before Memory-Namikaze fell back to ground level, followed by two black-clad men in animal masks. When he asked about it, noticing the codenames matched the animals in the masks, he instantly regretted it.

What sort of place has something called an assassination squad?

Once they settled at the back of the room Memory-Namikaze was tidying up, it didn’t take long for more people to join them. Watchin the woman writhe in pain – a pretty and young-looking redhead whom he pretended the sight of didn’t make his chest tighten even as he wondered if his own parents had been as ecstatic as the couple in the memory was for the birth of their son – had him flustered all over again, and he questioned the necessity of watching the scene in front of them, but only got to skip a few hours instead of the whole thing. It made him wonder what about a birth could be relevant to the blond’s death.

He asked about the seal – how could he not? – and the whole thing made him even more uncomfortable. He didn’t quite recognize the word used – Jinchūriki? Something about power and- human pillars? His Japanese still needed work – but it still felt a bit too much like a Horcrux for comfort. Learning the blond at his side was the village's leader was a surprise – he doesn’t look any older than his twenties – but he doesn’t ask more about it, leaving him to the memory of his son’s birth.

Having turned away slightly when the baby – Naruto, he remembered them saying the name was – was finally born, Harry was startled by the sudden screams and arrival of a white-masked man in black robes with the infant in his arms. For a moment, the memory blended with another one, of a cemetery and cruel laughter, but he quickly pushed the thought away. This wasn’t a Death Eater, even though his questions of who it was remained unanswered.

The fight – if it can even be called that – is over in a flash – he didn’t even see Memory-Namikaze move – and then they’re suddenly outside of an exploding cabin, watching it explode even as the targets escape mostly unscathed, skidding to a halt on the grass next to them. All Harry managed to think about, however, was how the hell did he apparate?

He asks about it, chuckling at the ridiculous name given to the technique – he’ll take apparating over something so pretentious any day – but his brain is still buzzing even as Namikaze mentions something called a body-flicker – which does sound more like apparition, if only in name – because he’s never met people outside of his universe who can do that on command, not while alive. It’s inconsequential in the grand scheme of things – it doesn’t even change anything – but it’s still somewhat comforting to see magic being used in another world entirely independent from his own.

“Let’s move on,” he abruptly interrupts his thoughts, lest he give in to the curiosity and start interrogating the spirit next to him, unpausing the memory he’d stopped when the scenery had changed after Memory-Namikaze teleported again, this time into something like a bedroom on an empty house.

They barely spend a full minute in the room the baby is secured in before the location changes again without his prompting – another teleportation – and they find themselves standing behind the wannabe Death Eater as they gaze up toward a treetop, where Memory-Namikaze is holding his wife in his arms. Taking in the full scene – bloody hell that fox is big! – it’s clear that the blond saved the redhead just in the nick of time.

It doesn’t take long for them to relocate yet again, this time back to where Naruto had been left behind. He watches as the blond deposits his wife next to their son on the bed before tensely throwing open a wardrobe’s door and slipping into- oh.

He hadn’t given the cloak much notice, the white with edges painted in red flames looking out of place and showy in contrast to the spirit’s other much more discrete garments, but the kanji in the back – Yondaime Hokage , like the woman and masked man called him – makes it clear that it’s less of a fashion choice and more of a statement of power. It’s his village, after all.

Huh. So this is the part where he dies.

They reappear – and really, how many teleportation markers does this man have lying around? – somewhere on top of a mountain, witnessing the Nine-Tails’ attack for only a moment before an attempt is made on Memory-Namikaze by the fox – the amount of power in the orb of energy launched right at them is almost enough to be felt even through the memory – but it’s thankfully thwarted by its target. Symbols erupt from thin air – did his earlier hand motions cause it? – and swallow the attack into them, before vanishing followed by an explosion in the distance. Harry wants to ask, badly – whatever it was, it looks like something worth knowing, and somewhat similar to some of his ward work – but refrains when the enemy in black robes makes himself known once again. Memory-Namikaze’s knife phases right through him, and Harry gapes at the apparent intangibility of the masked man. He’s used to that witnessing trait in the dead, not the living.

Memory-Namikaze teleported away before the attacker managed to do something that looked like sucking him out of existence, and they were once again in the clearing with the exploded cabin from the start of the attack. Harry doesn’t know if it’s smart to face the enemy on his own while the giant fox continues to wreak havoc, but he really can’t judge on that front, can he? No, instead he watches as, after Memory-Namikaze and the stranger who doesn’t deny being someone named Uchiha Madara – but doesn’t quite confirm it either – talk and the stranger slips honest-to-god manacles tied to a long chain, a battle is fought at a speed too fast to follow with normal human eyes, and almost too fast for his own, too.

They talk as they fight, which Harry can’t begrudge to people who move so quickly and attack this expertly, and that’s why he hears when Memory-Namikaze declares that with the seal he’d manifested over the Maybe-Madara. “What does that mean?” He asks the spirit at his side, who seems to be watching the fight with a conflicted look on his face.

“He had taken control of the demon with his Sharingan, ” Namikaze explains. “I managed to break their connection, but the Nine-Tails was still free.” Harry only hums in acknowledgment. He doesn’t much like the idea of someone being able to imperius others with their eyes .

When the wannabe Death-Eater vanishes in a spiral – which is somehow centered around the one visible eye-hole in his mask – Harry isn’t even surprised anymore.

Things move quickly from then on, with Memory-Namikaze transporting back to the mountain and surveilling the damage wrought by the fox still at large, then somehow summoning a giant toad that matches the fox in size and dropping said toad and himself on the Fox’s head – seriously, what the hell is going on in this world? The toad can talk! – before teleporting himself and the giant murderous fox – that has got to take some serious power – to an empty field. The scenery changes again – Harry had never seen a memory of someone who kept apparating this much, it’s a tad disorienting – and they’re back at the house, but only for long enough for the blond to grab his wife and child and, for some reason, flash right back into the clearing containing the Nine-Tails. The couple looks dead on their feet with exhaustion.

I don’t think I like where this is going.

And then golden chains sprout from the woman’s back, burrowing into the earth and rushing at the giant fox, restraining the Nine-Tails’ every limb. She coughs, and Harry can see blood dripping from her mouth. She’s not just exhausted, he realizes. She’s on death’s door, holding on through sheer determination.

Mothers, he muses as he recalls his own redheaded mother’s efforts to save his life as a baby in an act that left him with blood protection strong enough to last until he was seventeen, sure are strong.

The baby is crying again, he notices absently as he watches the woman – Kushina, he hears Memory-Namikaze call her again and makes a note to remember it this time – outline a plan to die and take the fox with her to the grave. Her husband tells her to save her strength instead, to be sealed on their son, and decides he’s going to sacrifice himself as well – because something called a Reaper Death Seal can be nothing but deadly, and Harry would bet on it being the reason for Keimu’s little spot of revenge – in order to take half of the Nine-Tails with him instead, then seal the other half into Naruto.

And then, the blond mentions a prophecy.

I don’t like this at all.

The couple keeps talking – even as the fox tests its restraints, even as Keimu’s ghostly form hovers over them – and Harry just can’t look away, hands tightened into fists at his sides as they decide that death is the better option to save them all, for the baby they’ve only just brought to the world.

He vaguely wonders why the spirit at his side doesn’t have a hole through the clothes on his chest where the seal was seared into, but it’s not the first time he’s encountered a spirit whose form takes that of how they’d seen themselves last, and he doubts Namikaze had the time to look at a mirror before his death.

No, he thinks as he watches the fox’s gigantic claw pierce through the couple who’d jumped in front of their son in unison, as Kushina tries to condense a lifetime of mothering into a paragraph for the son she won’t be able to watch growing up, and as their bodies give up in the same beat as the seal – the same he’d seen in Namikaze’s chest, though he can’t tell through his blurred eyesight – appears on the baby’s stomach and siphons the fox’s remaining energy into it until nothing remains but two dead bodies and a crying child on a summoned altar.

The world blurs around them for the last time, and Harry is left gazing into the Pensieve through his tears as he releases Namikaze’s hand lest he risks breaking a bone with the strength he’s clenching his own, not saying anything because he has no idea what to say about what he just witnessed.

“Shi-sama?” Namikaze breaks the silence first, though he’s not sure how much later.

Harry doesn’t reply, but he has to sniffle to clear his airways, and it would look undignified if he didn’t wipe his eyes before turning around. Once he does, he figures his efforts were wasted, since Namikaze is staring at him with visible surprise and confusion.

“Y’know, Namikaze-san,” He starts, most of his sadness having given way to anger instead, “I’m really tired of prophecies making orphans out of babies who never asked for it.”

Chapter Text

It takes him a few moments to wrangle his emotions into something that lets him breathe again once the memory dissolves around them and reveals the office space from before – for all the breathing a dead person can do anyway –, and he only looks at the god – who still has his back turned – when they’re back under control. If not for the lack of contact with the basin – which is what he figures allows them to visualize the memory – Minato might have assumed the being was still watching, for how still he is.

“Shi-sama?” He calls, just in case.

A low sniffle, a hand brought up to the being’s face, and the god turns around with slightly reddened eyes, having obviously just wiped away tears. Minato can’t help his confusion even as death in the shape of a teen speaks again, “Y’know, Namikaze-san,” his voice is slightly tremulous, much like the clenched fists Minato notices tightly held to his sides. “I’m really tired of prophecies making orphans out of babies who never asked for it.” He sounds upset, which is surprising for an amortal entity who should probably not care this much about a single happening in the life of a person he never knew from a world he’d never even looked at before.

Minato can only stare, having no idea what that means.

Shi-sama takes a deep breath, followed by a long sigh, and calmly walks back to his seat behind the desk before unceremoniously dropping into it like a puppet with its strings cut. “Alright,” the god declares, voice firmer this time. “We’re figuring out a way to bring you back to life.”

This time he can’t help but openly gape, “I- you can do that?” he stammers out, trying valiantly to stamp down the ember of hope suddenly sparking inside his chest.

Shi-sama frowns slightly before shrugging, “I dunno, never tried it,” the admission is followed by a pensive look, and Minato hurries to take a seat before his legs decide to give out on him from sheer shock. “I mean, there’s probably rules… somewhere,” the being casts a look around the many bookshelves spread through the office, “the job didn’t exactly come with a manual, so It’s been a bit of a make-it-up-as-I-go situation so far.”

“The… job?” He asks tentatively, feeling wrong-footed at the being's behavior. He doesn’t sound like the eternal personification of death, more like… a disgruntled teenager. It should make him less nervous, he’s used to dealing with those after all, but it’s still unsettling when he remembers the echo of the feeling of death currently being suppressed by the god.

Shi-sama blinks as if only realizing he’d said it out loud, “Yeah. Master of Death,” he explains like it should be obvious. “More like Manager of Death, really. It’s infinite paperwork and few benefits so far, and I’ve yet to find some book of rules and regulations. I mean, if the other guy wanted me to do the job properly, he should’ve stuck around to teach me.”

“Other guy?” He prompts, still having a hard time wrapping his mind around the surreality of the situation. Being death is apparently a job, one that can be somehow forced upon someone, which means that the being in front of him might not be as amortal as Minato first assumed.

In fact, he’s starting to seem pretty damn young.

“Uh huh,” Shi-sama hums in response, “Old guy in a suit, told me I got the job and just… poofed.” The explanation is followed by an illustrative hand motion. “I think I’ve got the hang of it by now, but it’s been a hard few months.”

Months, Minato considers in the privacy of his thoughts before voicing a final question. “Shi-sama… how old are you?”

It takes a moment for the being to answer, and when he does there’s a visible dusting of red on his pale cheeks, “Uh- nineteen-ish?” He doesn’t sound too sure. “Time’s a bit weird here. And can- uh, could you just call me Harry? I’m not actually death, I don’t think someone can be a- concept? I just… run the office. And the whole ‘sama’ thing is a bit much.”

Minato takes a moment of silence to mourn the fact that the entirety of the afterlife is apparently in the hands of an untrained teenager – because what possible reason would there even be for the being to lie? – before sighing and offering the dubiously nineteen-year-old with the looks of a fifteen-year-old and the ability to maybe bring him back to life a small nod. “If you prefer it, Hari-san. You may call me Minato, then.”

Being on a first-name basis with the teenage Master of Death can only be a good thing, right?

Harry can’t help but smile slightly with some relief at the concession. “Thanks,” he mutters, still fighting down the embarrassment surely turning his face red due to having to think about how old he was. It’s not his fault that time, as a concept created by living beings, doesn’t seem to pass the same way in the realm of death. He needed to do some calculating, that’s all! Still, not knowing his own age for sure feels a bit dumb. “Anyway,” he clears his throat, trying to change the subject from himself. “I think we need to start with the fox. You said it was controlled, right? By some sort of eye power?” 

Minato looks reluctant to entertain the subject but still explains. “It’s a dōjutsu , a kekkei genkai of the Uchiha clan. It can take control of someone if they will it.”

“Bloodline limit?” He repeats the words curiously, wondering if it means what it sounds like.

“An ability passed down genetically, usually within clans,” the blond obligingly elaborates. “It allows someone to perform unique jutsu.”

Huh.

“Interesting,” Harry absently comments, getting the gist of it even if the words are somewhat unfamiliar. “We’ve got something like that in my world too, but there’s no name for it, just for the specific skills.” Like parseltongue or metamorphmagic, he privately recalls. Turning his thoughts back to the main issue, he continues. “Can this Sharingan control animals or just people?”

“I- can’t really say,” Minato admits. “Information about it is closely guarded by the clan, like all other bloodline limits,” a slight frown mars the blond’s forehead for a moment before he adds, “but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it used to control an animal.”

So the people with built-in imperius either can’t control animals or aren’t psychopaths, Harry decides, which opens up a whole other can of worms. “Then what you’re saying is you decided to seal away a sentient, intelligent being, into your son, after it was used to attack you.”

At least the Horcrux was a complete accident.

“The village needs a Jinchūriki,” Minato insists, defensiveness trickling into his tone. “To leave it without one would upset the balance between the Shinobi Godaikoku. All of them have their own Jinchūriki, they’re a symbol of the balance of power, to lose our tailed beast- it would invite war into my son’s home.”

“Wait, all of the tailed beasts have been sealed inside of people?” Harry asks for the sake of being thorough, frowning when the blond nods. He’d seen the fox’s power – even under control, it could easily annihilate the whole village in a matter of minutes – and if its siblings are anything similar… “a nuclear deterrent,” he mutters in realization. At Minato’s inquisitive expression, he elaborates. “I don’t know about your world, but mine has things called nuclear weapons. It-” he flounders for a simple way to explain it, “they’re essentially super explosives that cause devastating damage, so pretty much every country has one as a threat to the others, making sure no one actually uses theirs since it would mean mutually assured destruction.”

“We don’t have such weapons, but that is an accurate comparison,” Minato says, not sounding too happy with that fact. “As long as every great nation has its own Jinchūriki, they won’t be used against another village.”

Harry really wants to ask whose great idea it was to imprison sentient energy constructs and scatter them around their nations like it’s no big deal, but they’ve strayed from the point of the conversation. “Right,” he makes an effort to get back on track, “my initial point was that an intelligent being can be reasoned with, so if we remove the fox-”

“We can’t remove it,” the blond tells him, tensing as if waiting for Harry to do just that even against his will. “It can’t be reasoned with, even when- when Kushina was its Jinchūriki, all she got from it was rage and howling.”

Harry sighs, fighting the urge to bang his head against the desk, “It would have been too easy,” he admits, earning a questioning look. “If your seal made a deal between you and Keimu, breaking it – removing the fox – would render it null, which should let me bring you back.”

Minato seems to think for a moment before correcting the assumption. “That’s- not exactly what it does,” he states with some caution. “I mean, it gives me the ability to seal away another’s spiritual energy, it wasn’t specially designed for the Nine-Tails.” Harry frowns slightly, not liking the sound of that one bit. It means that whatever this seal is, it wasn’t invented by the blond for this specific occasion, but taught to him and maybe even used before. “It lets me call on the Shinigami and use my chakra to seal away an equivalent amount of another person’s soul into its belly, which usually means death, at least to most people, but with the fox… it can survive without its spiritual energy, since it’s entirely made of chakra.”

“Chakra?” he asks, not recognizing the word, though it could just be another word for energy. The question earns him a skeptical look before the blond seems to remember that Harry doesn’t know anything about his world. To be fair, he doesn’t know much about many worlds, especially the ones that don’t cause him problems and an excess of paperwork, so it’s sort of a positive thing about the man’s world already.

“It’s a form of life energy that all individuals produce to some degree,” Minato explains, sounding a little like Hermione when she’s quoting something a teacher said in class. “Chakra is created when two more primal energies –  physical energy and spiritual energy – are molded together. It circulates throughout the body in a network and certain groups have learned to generate more chakra and release it outside their bodies to perform jutsu, like the ones you saw in my memories.”

It sounds sort of like magic to him – with jutsu being the spells –, except he doesn’t remember anything about a body network from Magical Theory classes, and when Harry thinks about the explanation of the seal in conjunction with the definition of chakra- “Wait,” he sits up straighter on his chair, hoping he’s wrong about his hunch. “You used soul and spiritual energy like they’re the same thing in your explanation of the seal,” Harry points out.

“Well, spiritual energy is derived from the mind's consciousness,” the blond all but confirms.

“Bloody hell,” he lets himself curse – in English so the blond won’t understand – before taking a deep, calming breath and trying to process that there’s a whole world of people running around doing the equivalent of soul magic. “And every jutsu uses both of these energies?”

“Pretty much,” Minato nods, looking a little confused at his questions.

Harry stares, blinks, then stares a little longer.

Really. What the fuck. No wonder the first issue in this world is a bloody Horcrux-like seal.

“So-” he pauses with a slight frown, mentally backtracks, and asks a different question. “Is there some jutsu on those knives of yours?”

“Kni- oh, the kunai,” the blond reaches into one of the jacket’s pockets and pulls out three of the same knife Harry had seen in his hand earlier. “Huh, I only have my hiraishin ones. The teleportation jutsu,” Minato clarifies, though Harry does remember the brief explanation of his marker-based apparition. “Fūinjutsu isn’t an exception, so yes.”

“That’s one explanation out of the way then,” Harry declares with some relief. “If they were touched by your soul and in contact with you upon your death, it makes sense that they came along even inside a pocket,” he gives the knives a considering look, “You wouldn’t happen to be able to just… teleport back to your world, would you?”

“Chakra is made by molding together spiritual and physical energy,” Minato deadpans. At Harry’s expectant look, the blond sighs. “I happen to not have a physical body at the moment, so no. I can’t just teleport.”

He looks down slightly in embarrassment for not following along with that logic, but in his defense, he’s not exactly adept in soul magic, not in any subject unrelated to Horcrux extermination. “Eh- right, yeah. Better not, anyway. You’d be a ghost if you did.” A ghost parent would be preferred to no parent at all, but Harry hopes to do better than that. “Okay, no shortcuts then,” his cursed luck wouldn’t have allowed it anyway. “Can you talk me through the contract formed by the seal? Is there a specific wording? Or any counter-measures you know of?” He asks instead. “Just- tell me all you know about it.”

Minato agrees with a nod and starts talking, but it doesn’t take long for Harry to get lost in terminology he’s completely unfamiliar with. He listens for another moment before throwing his head back with a frustrated groan. Sitting through the explanation feels like his first transfiguration class all over again, or the first time he picked up a book on advanced warding and had to buy a runes dictionary – and then a dictionary for that dictionary. “Okay,” he takes a fortifying breath and makes a decision. “I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere if I keep getting lost on what you’re talking about, so… teach me.”

“What?” Minato asks in surprise. Harry feels like that’s the word the blond has used the most in his presence so far, which is sort of amusing.

“You heard me,” He tells the spirit. “I should probably learn how your world works if I wanna try to send you back to it, shouldn’t I? So, teach me,” he realizes his mistake and adds a sheepish, “please?” at the end, because he may be the Master of Death but he should still be polite.

“...alright,” the blond agrees after a moment. “Why not?”

As far as avoiding mental breakdowns goes, Minato figures Hari-san is an effective distraction from wondering about the state of his village, what may have become of his child, or thinking about his death – now with a bonus third-person point of view – and Kushina’s. Instead, he throws himself into explaining the very basics of chakra theory and some beginner-level Fūinjutsu to the teenager saddled with the mantle of managing the afterlife. He also avoids thinking about the latter fact, since if he stops to consider it then things start making even less sense than they already do.

“And you really die if you run out of it?” Hari-san asks for the second time, seemingly unable to accept that such a thing as chakra depletion exists, even if it’s not a common death outside of extenuating circumstances. Minato nods, not about to repeat his explanation. “Is it like- as if they had a heart attack? Or do they just drop dead? How does your body even let you use enough chakra to run out of soul?”

Minato holds back a sigh and repeats once again that chakra theory is not, in fact, his main subject of knowledge. “Why is this so hard to accept, exactly?” He enquires curiously.

“It sort of sounds like magic,” Minato doesn’t exactly get the comparison, not seeing how civilians’ sleight-of-hand tricks can compare to jutsu. Hari-san raises a hand as if asking him to wait, only for something to zoom straight into it. What? “What my world calls magic, I mean. Except we don’t really get any sort of- magical exhaustion or anything like that. It’s just… there. Always. ”

That’s not terrifying at all, he thinks sarcastically but swallows the comment in favor of asking, “And you all have- magic?” Minato wonders what the raven-haired teen would look like under the byakugan, especially since he’s already any sensor’s worst nightmare.

“Not really,” Hari-san replies, thinking for a moment before explaining, “Something like point zero one percent, I think?”

“That’s not a lot,” Minato notices. And not like chakra, which is present in everyone even though some don’t have developed enough pathways to perform ninjutsu, or are simply born and raised as a civilian – as most are outside of shinobi villages – and receive no training on how to mold their chakra and utilize their pathways, leading to the same result of not being able to perform jutsu.

“I guess,” the teen shrugs. “Six hundred thousand is a lot but compared to the mug- non-magical people, we’re definitely the minority.”

He almost chokes at that, “S-six hundred thousand? That would make a population of- six billion?” The thought of so many people coexisting on the same planet is mind-boggling. How is there enough land for so many humans to occupy? Is their planet larger?

Hari-san tilts his head slightly in confusion, eerily reminiscent of a bird. “Yes? How many people are there in your world?”

Minato has to stop and think about it, not entirely sure if he can offer accurate information regarding the current world population. He knows the daimyō orders a census every five years, and he’s had a look at the census of many other nations, but even pooling them all together and leaving a large margin of error… “I’m not sure we even reach one billion,” he admits.

“Hn,” is Hari-san’s response to that, looking as puzzled as Minato feels about the other’s world population. It throws some light on the many differences between them, excluding the ability to manipulate energy – whether it be chakra or what the teen calls magic. “So, can you put a limit to how much chakra the seal takes?”

“The people experienced enough to use them know how much is enough,” Minato explains, a little amused at having to go back to the basics and wondering if this is what the academy teachers feel like. “People don’t drop dead from overcharging a seal- well, not unless it’s something explosive I guess, but they don’t run out of chakra due to Fūinjutsu of all things. I just said it was possible, not common.”

“... but can you?” the teenage entity insists, strangely bright eyes full of curiosity. “Because there’s this rune-”

Listening to the animated explanation about something that sure seems like Fūinjutsu but uses completely different symbols and rules, Minato finds yet another thing in common between their worlds and realizes that maybe – just maybe – he can allow that small ember of hope to ignite. That the possibility of being able to go back to his son isn’t entirely null.

Chapter Text

After noticing its similarities to warding, it doesn’t take him long to get the gist of what Minato calls sealing. Oh, it doesn’t work exactly in the same way, and the rules and process for creating a seal are very different from wardwork – they don’t power seals with outside energies for starters, while wards are often anchored with ambient magic –, but the fact that they’re similar at all certainly helps his brain get on with the program much faster than if they had been entirely unrelated. It also doesn’t take long for them to realize, after Harry makes a copy of Minato’s full seal – not by hand, that would take too long, but by magically copying the ink into a large piece of paper –, that it’s pretty much loophole-free. The contract began and ended along with the jutsu performed for it, there’s no more to it than that. What Keimu did to the souls – in this case, release them to Harry – was related to the afterlife directives and wasn’t brought on by any deal unwillingly struck by a seal.

“Sorry,” he tells the blond with a sigh, sinking into his chair. They’d spent a long few hours on it, most of it making sure Harry was familiar with the terminology and rules of fūinjutsu – which much like runes seems to encompass anything that causes an effect by being written instead of only what the name implies – enough to grasp an extensive explanation, before Minato could talk him through the seal in his chest, only to get exactly nowhere.

The blond’s understanding smile doesn’t do much to hide the disappointment in his eyes, “It’s okay, I never expected to go back.” He says, making Harry frown.

“I’m not giving up,” Harry assures, not having meant what the other assumed. “But it would have been nice to solve this without talking to anyone else.”

“Talking to-” Minato’s eyes widen, “the Shinigami?”

Harry had actually considered calling up Tessa, if she was available, or maybe Rukia if he absolutely had to talk to a Shinigami, but Keimu did bring in their souls and would probably have more knowledge about Minato’s world, being assigned to it and all, so- “To one of them, yes. Keimu might know something useful,” he informs, already reaching into the warded drawer for the summoning parchment. Taking note of the blond’s worry, he adds, “It’ll be fine.” He writes the reaper’s name right under where he wrote it last time and puts the rolled-up parchment away. “He should be up any minute.”

“ One of them?” Comes the reluctant question.

“Mhm,” He nods and starts tidying up his desk a bit, since the fūinjutsu explanations – and his own tangents into warding – turned it into a mess of papers. “I just refer to all of the ones who speak the language we’re speaking as Shinigami, makes it easier to tell them apart. There’s a lot of reapers for every world- and many more of those,” he adds, mentally remarking that it’s not the only linguistic distinction he’s made since the Russian ones, for example, are filed in his mind as Kostlyavaya, and the Spanish-speaking as Calaveras, “I’m pretty sure I haven’t even met most of them.”

Minato looks like he can’t quite grasp the enormity of the afterlife operation. That’s fine, Harry’s been the head of it for a while and still can’t either.

The largest door in the office opens just a moment later, revealing the lilac-skinned reaper once again. “Bosu,” Keimu greets with a nod, a smirk blooming at the sight of the spirit in his office – who’d risen to greet the Shinigami with a bow – and adds, “Changed your mind about letting me keep them?”

Harry throws him an unamused glance, “No,” he deadpans, not appreciating the teasing of the blond. Minato had proven to be polite, nice, patient, and a good teacher so far, something Harry doesn’t come across all that often, so he’s not about to let his reaper scare him away. “Come in, I have some questions about the world you’re assigned to.” The reaper enters the office, closing the door behind himself, and approaches the desk, stopping a step away and crossing his arms with an expectant look. “How would I go about sending him back? Preferably alive?”

Keimu’s expression momentarily shifts to an incredulous look before his sharp-toothed smirk widens into a predatory grin, “I dunno, bosu. I’m old, we have a hard time remembering things.”

“Two days’ vacation,” Harry offers with the practice of having had to deal with this before. “Can extend to a week if the answers are actually useful.”

“You could make him a reaper,” the Shinigami offers through uncomfortably sharp teeth.

Harry’s eyes immediately widen, “I can do that?” his exclamation earns him two amused looks. “Wait, did all the reapers use to be people?”

Keimu shrugs, one shoulder of his kimono sliding down slightly. Harry pointedly doesn’t call him out on it, not about to hear the there’s-no-uniform-regulation speech it always earns him to point out problematic outfits. “Maybe, who knows? But me and my siblings are still people, thank you. Why do you think we barter for vacation days? We do have a life outside of work.” He feels his brows rise almost up to his hairline at that, earning a raspy chuckle from the reaper. “What, did you think we were always around here or reaping souls?”

“I- yeah,” Harry admits. “You can be- y’know, human and a reaper?”

The Shinigami scoffs, “I’m not human,” he pointedly motions toward himself. “And it probably depends on the realm. In this one’s,” Keimu motions toward a very quietly fascinated Minato, “the Ōtsutsuki are bound to become servants of death,” the reaper’s tone turns somber and more serious. “It is our penance.”

He really wants to ask. He is also socially aware enough to figure out he really shouldn’t, so Harry swallows his questions about what the reaper means by that and proceeds with a safer one, “How would I go about making a reaper, then?”

Keimu’s stare holds enough disappointment to make Harry feel like he’s just failed another potion in Snape’s class for a moment. “How should I know?”

“Right,” he lets out a frustrated sigh and mentally curses his predecessor for not leaving him an instruction manual. “Can you think of any other way to return him to the land of the living, then?” he lets the pointed silence go on for a few moments before adding, “Four days.”

The reaper gives the blond a considering look before replying, “You could try sealing his soul back into his body, but I’m not familiar with that type of jutsu enough to tell you how,” Keimu quickly adds before Harry can think to ask. “You could try asking my sister, she makes a habit of collecting Kinjutsu.”

What business does a world of soul-magic users have calling something a forbidden technique? Harry wonders as he replies, “Give me her name and you can have the week.” It’s not like there’s a shortage of reapers anyway. He could have asked for him to send her up, but then he’d be unable to call her on his own without going through the list of every reaper assigned to the same world to find her name, if she even deigned to introduce herself with the real one.

Wouldn’t be the first time a reaper gave him a fake name to get out of being summoned.

Keimu holds out a hand and Harry floats a piece of paper and the brush he’d transfigured for Minato halfway through the fūinjutsu explanation toward the open palm. Some brushstrokes later, he pulls the items back toward him. “Thank you,” he says with a small smile, “that’s all.”

He watches as the reaper nods and heads toward the door, but stops halfway out of the room and looks back at them over his shoulder, “Here’s a freebie: you might want to look at my next report.” Keimu suggests and closes the door behind himself.

“Huh,” Harry hums in surprise. That was way less sarcasm than expected, maybe he’s growing on him. Now- “what could he mean…” he ignores the reaper’s name for the time being and finds the enchanted RAD folder under a small pile of papers. Pulling the next one, his eyes widen as he realizes what Keimu meant with his advice. “Of course… you did seal her remaining chakra into Naruto.”

“What?” The blond asks, leaning forward slightly, “Kushina?”

Harry nods, running his eyes over the report, “If I needed any confirmation that your spiritual energy is composed at least partly of your soul, here it is,” he offers the report – stubbornly written in Japanese, which is thankfully translated to English by his enchanted glasses when he looks at it – to the man. “Her soul couldn’t be reaped, it’s anchored too strongly to the seal.”

“I- I didn’t mean to do that,” the blond sounds devastated, and after a moment Harry realizes what he actually means with it. Minato probably thinks he’s keeping her from whatever his world’s version of the afterlife is.

“No, this is good!” Harry assures before there’s any chance for those thoughts to spiral further downward, earning a slightly upset and disbelieving look, “I’m serious, this means I get to intervene, I can try to bring her back too,” he tries not to feel too jealous at the thought of this prophecy child getting to have both of his parents alive – once he manages to bring them back anyway – while Harry had no one to do such a thing for him. Just the memory of Kushina’s awed look as she held her baby for the first time makes him feel guilty for such a thought in the first place. They deserve the family Harry didn’t get the chance to have, and perpetuating misery would do nothing for a past that’s already gone. “Countless amounts of people die every second of every day in every world,” he explains at the man’s still slightly puzzled expression, “If I got reports for all of it, I wouldn’t have time to breathe . I only hear about the ones that need some sort of interference from me, so this means that just like in your situation, it’s my decision that counts.”

“You’ll bring her back?” The disbelief in Minato’s tone contrasts with the obvious hope in his eyes.

Harry’s eyes snap to the door of his office at the sudden knock, “If we find a way to bring you back,” he reminds the blond in a lower voice since the solution will probably apply to both, “then yes.” He waits a moment but the door doesn’t open, “come in,” he calls once he realizes they’re not about to enter without being invited.

The reaper that peeks into the office through the first crack of the open door before stepping inside doesn’t immediately remind him of Keimu. She looks to be half his height – which means she still easily towers over him but not nearly as much – and her skin is still pale but nearly paper-white instead of her brother’s lilac tone. Her hair is neatly tamed instead of resembling her brother’s messy mane, done up in an incredibly elaborate hairdo with ornaments he can’t even begin to name – especially since his vocabulary is more geared toward the morbid instead of the artistic –, is a very light grey that’s nearly white under the office lights. She thankfully also doesn’t seem to share his taste in clothes, sporting instead a properly closed long-sleeved kimono in bright oranges, reds, and yellows like a walking piece of sunset. Her horns are the same shape as Keimu’s, though slightly shorter, but match her skin color instead of being blood-red.

Harry tries not to wonder if Keimu’s also used to be the same color as his skin and if the resemblance to the color of blood isn’t just a coincidence.

“You called, Shibun ?” Her voice isn’t anything like her brother’s low growl, she sounds young – though he doesn’t dare speculate the age of any reaper, from previous experience – and lively, which makes him more successful in not scowling at the form of address.

Points for creativity, at least.

“Just Harry is fine, Ōtsutsuki-san,” he tells her, motioning toward the free chair by Minato’s side, “I have a few questions that your brother thought you might have the answers for.”

“Just Yuzuki then, Hari-sama,” She replies small smile and closes the door behind herself before walking closer. He opens his mouth to protest the honorific but closes it again with a mental sigh, figuring he should probably make use of the respect while she still seems to have some for him.

Shouldn’t take too long for her to decide he’s incompetent, like many of the reapers so far.

Harry suddenly notices Minato’s reaction to the increased proximity from the corner of his eye and nearly gives in to the urge to drop his head on the desk, “Could you please hide your aura, Yuzuki-san?” He’d learned about it the hard way after spirits and even a few reapers kept flinching away from him or giving him nasty looks that seemed unrelated to his actions, but the matter was thankfully solved with some trial and error tests regarding his cloaking abilities, and apparently, most reapers can do the same on their own or don’t have a significantly strong enough aura to bother. The really annoying ones do have a strong aura and use it in an attempt to intimidate others, but he hopes this isn’t one of them. “My guest is more sensitive than most spirits.”

She pauses midway through taking a seat, stares at Minato, and drops down on the chair a little heavier than she probably meant to – thankfully with her aura now expertly suppressed like it’s barely a second thought – before turning her curious nearly-white lilac eyes on him, “Hari-sama,” she starts in an inquisitive tone, “Why is the Yondaime Hokage in your office?”

Minato hides his startlement well, but Harry openly shows his surprise as he asks, “You know him?”

“Who doesn’t know Konoha’s Yellow Flash,” she turns toward the blond with a small smirk, “My brother was quite cross with you for some time, Namikaze-san.” Her tone doesn’t seem to denote any lingering grudge, it’s even a little amused.

Harry figures it must be a sibling thing, it’s not as if he has any to know better.

“I don’t regret saving my village, Shinigami-sama,” Minato informs her with the same solemn determination he’d shown Harry at the start, “but I apologize for the offense.”

That’s more than I got, he notices with some humor.

“Yuzuki,” she tells the blond with a wink, apparently ignoring the apology or maybe not seeing the need for it, “formalities are for the living. Which I hear you’ll soon be rejoining?” Her attention returns fully to Harry.

“That’s exactly why we called you here,” he informs her without preamble, “Your brother said something about- kinjutsu? Are there any that would let me return him to the land of the living?”

She hums in thought, crossing her legs before leaning on one side of the chair, chin propped over one hand. “Maybe,” she tilts her head just slightly and the mischievous smirk growing on her face doesn’t spell anything good. “What’s in it for me, Hari-sama?”

Guess that’s as far as her respect goes, Harry realizes with an internal sigh.

“Week’s vacation?” He suggests, figuring she might wish to join her brother.

“Hm,” she hums in consideration but shakes her head, “No, I don’t think so,” she drops her hands to her lap, leaning in slightly toward the desk, “I think a life is worth a little more than that, isn’t it? I’d like a favor.”

Whatever levity was left in the room quickly leaves it, and he’s suddenly glad he didn’t mention anything about bringing Minato’s wife back too.

“You don’t-” Minato starts in a wary tone, but Harry shakes his head and the blond thankfully falls silent.

“I won’t trade an open favor,” he tells her upfront, “but if you tell me what it is, I’ll consider it.”

Yuzuki’s eyes, which seemed focused on anything but him, suddenly met his own for a long moment, as if searching for something in his very soul. She leans back deliberately, eyes flitting back toward Minato before focusing on him again as she asks, “Why do you want to revive him?”

The first – impulsive, too-telling – answer is held back with a swallow, and he tries to consider the facts. At the heart of it, it’s an entirely selfish reason. He wants to stick it to another world’s prophecy like he couldn’t his own, wants to deny the masked man a reward for deciding to attack a pregnant woman, and really- “I don’t want his son to grow up without any parents,” he admits honestly, “It’s- not a good life.”

She blinks, entirely expressionless for a moment, and Harry prepares for the barrage of accusatory questions he’s already been hearing from within his own mind. Why this one? Why not bring back the parents of every orphan out there? What’s so special about this one kid? But instead, he watches as her lips tilt up into a small, delicate smile. “It’s not,” she agrees with a small sigh. She doesn’t elaborate, and he doesn’t ask. Instead, she straightens up on the chair and meets his eyes once again, “The favor would be to destroy every Shinigami mask in that world.”

“Shinigami mask?” He asks, not familiar with what she’s talking about, though a glance toward Minato tells him the blond might know something.

Yuzuki hums, looking at the blond for a moment before speaking again, “They call them Nōmen,” the distaste is clear in her tone, to his confusion, but Minato’s interruption clears up some of it.

“Like a performer’s mask,” the blond voices his realization, and Harry takes his word for it since he’s not familiar with the word.

“Quite,” is the reaper’s dry response. “Instead of representing a supernatural being turned into a human, it allows the human to summon and control the reaper whose likeness they choose to wear,” Yuzuki’s eyes meet Harry’s once again, “They’ve amassed dozens of them over time, scattered through temples and safehouses where they assume their use may one day be necessary. You want pretty boy here to breathe again? I want them all gone.”

After a moment to consider what he’s been told, Harry frowns slightly, “Why hasn’t this been brought up before?” he asks, truly puzzled, “A human having control over a single reaper is a serious thing, nevermind dozens of them, how- someone should have done something about this already, right? How did they even get something like that?”

The girl scoffs and looks away, “If they did, I wouldn’t be here bargaining for it,” her eyes seem to see through the desk as she continues. “We were… careless. Some of us chose to keep an eye on our descendants, sometimes from a little too close, breaking the rules imposed on us. The Uzu-…” the reaper pauses with a considering hum before restarting, “Uzushiogakure no Sato was a village founded by a group of Ōtsutsuki descendants, much like Konohagakure. It was also known as Chōju no Sato, for how their citizens tended to live notoriously long lives. Some attributed it to the founding family’s famously large chakra reserves, but that doesn’t quite account for the other citizens of the village, does it?” the reaper turns her eyes to Minato, “The seal you used to act through my brother? It’s only one of many of their jutsu with the means to entrap us into a role we never signed up for. Some of us made the mistake of being friendly – of protecting them, teaching them – while forgetting how greedy their – our – nature can be. They turned our teachings on us, imbuing some of our essences into masks used to control us, keeping reapers from their duty when their people’s time came for long enough for them to survive seemingly impossible odds, turning us on each other against our will-” she takes a deep breath, clearly intent on continuing, but he’d heard enough.

“I’ll do it,” he tells her, making her eyes snap right back up to his in surprise. “Even if you don’t have a proper solution,” he adds, to her growing bafflement. “It’s the right thing to do, we can’t have humans controlling you and your family.”

There’s a moment of suspended silence, which is quickly broken by a surprised little huff. “Alright,” Yuzuki’s posture becomes less tense as she leans back into the chair, offering him a knowing smile. “I see why my brother likes you.”

Harry blinks, “I’ll assume you have other brothers since you can’t be talking about Keimu.”

That manages to get a chuckle out of the reaper, “Nah, Kei-kun is a softy, he just likes creeping people out,” she reveals with a mischievous grin, “Now, Kinjutsu!” the word is said with the enthusiasm Hermione would have reserved for research. “I might have seen one or two that would do the job,” she turns to Minato with an analytical gaze, “Kishō Tensei might work if your physical body’s not beyond repair, though Hari-sama couldn’t really perform it… he can’t perform Edo Tensei either, but that might be easier to arrange since the sacrifice doesn’t have to be willing…”

Minato pales at that, “Sacrifice?” He asks before Harry manages to.

“Of course,” she looks between them like they’re being stupid – another startlingly familiar look. “A life for a life. Though… I suppose a Gigai might be enough, since the purpose of the sacrifice is to become the resurrected soul’s body and they are made for carrying a soul, technically,” she pauses and then turns to him with a curious look, “Why don’t you just make him a reaper? Wouldn’t it be easier than finding someone who can even perform a resurrection jutsu?”

Harry doesn’t quite manage to keep the heat from pooling on his cheeks, “I- I don’t know how,” he admits almost inaudibly and crosses his arms, sending her a challenging look, “do you?”

The sudden laugh is unexpected, and he sinks lower into his chair when noticing that even Minato looks amused, a smile pulling slightly at his lips. It’s not his fault the damn job didn’t come with a manual! “Sorry, Hari-sama,” he raises one brow at the honorific, it’s not as if it changes the fact that she’s laughing at him. “You’re not wrong, I have no idea either,” Yuzuki tells him with a smile, “but you have eternity to learn, don’t worry too much about it. There’s a lot of us already, we can handle it.”

Because he’s not a child – even though he’s still a little iffy on his exact age due to this bloody office – Harry just sighs and nods, refusing to entertain the concept of eternity in his mind. He may have taken the job, but that’s a whole other panic attack he doesn’t feel like tackling at the moment. “Right… do you know anyone who might have any information on how to do it?”

She takes a moment to think, fingers tapping against the arm of the chair, “The old boss wasn’t really as… accessible as you,” Harry tries not to show his disbelief at that. He literally warded his office against the reapers, how can he get any less accessible? Unless he’d had other means to keep them out that died with him, or maybe lived in the Room of Requirement. “But I might remember a few names that got thrown around a lot,” she looks at him expectantly and he nearly points out how obvious the extortion is, but it would be pointless and she’s been nicer than most Shinigami so far, so why not?

“You can have a week’s vacation to match your brother,” he tells her, raising a hand to stop before she speaks, “If you give me everything you have on the three methods you mentioned and those names.”

“Fine,” with a noticeable pout, she moves one of her hands inside a sleeve and pulls out what looks like a small tube, opening it – since it’s apparently a rolled-up scroll – to show a few symbols that only look slightly familiar thanks to Minato’s fūinjutsu crash course. A minute later, his desk has three large scrolls on it and Yuzuki looks reluctant to part with them.

Harry considers the facts for a moment – she’s had these techniques for who knows how long and seemingly hasn’t made use of them, and also asked him to fix something that used to allow others to cheat death much like these seem to – before holding a hand over each scroll and silently casting geminio to make himself a copy. He avoids her piercing look as he pushes the originals back toward her, “Copies should be fine, right? You can keep your collection.”

“If they’re copied right,” she says, sounding skeptical and taking one of his copies instead, opening it – the open part of it takes up most of his desk as it spreads over everything on it – and reading the mix of slightly familiar and unfamiliar symbols. “Hm, so they are,” the reaper mutters after a few minutes of silent reading during which Harry tried not to look too amused at how Minato was clearly trying not to be obvious about attempting to peek at the text. Yuzuki closes the copy, placing it next to the other two, and goes about placing her original scrolls back where they came from. “How did you do that?” She asks after the scroll is safely back somewhere inside her sleeve.

“Magic,” he answers honestly, if unhelpfully. There’s a spark of irritation in her expression before she pauses, narrows her eyes at him, and huffs out a chuckle.

“You’re something special, aren’t you?” She asks, almost rhetorically, but Harry still recoils slightly like it’s a particularly harsh insult. He’s had enough of being special for several lifetimes, thank you very much.

“The names?” He redirects her attention instead of commenting on the remark.

“Hm…” Yuzuki rests the side of her head against one hand, seemingly deep in thought for a few moments, before answering, “Ankou came up here a lot if I'm remembering right,” she taps the fingers of her other hand on the arm of the chair, “Sutcliff too, though not as often… and from what I know of her, not for anything good,” the reaper’s nose wrinkles slightly in distaste. “Who else… maybe Merle or Brook? I don’t think they were close to the old boss, but they got called up a few times.” She shrugs, “Those are all the names I remember.”

Harry nods, having written them into a piece of paper as she spoke. “That’s okay, it still helps. Thanks” he adds after setting the pen down, “that’s all.”

Seeing the dismissal for what it is, she casts a final glance toward Minato before rising and leaving with a final bow to him and a muttered ‘Hari-sama’ that he chooses to ignore.

Once the door is closed, the silence stretches for another moment before the blond turns back to him. “I’ve heard of Edo Tensei,” he reveals in a serious tone. “It’s a Konoha Kinjutsu, created by the Nidaime Hokage, but no one has ever used it for good reason. If words spreads…”

Harry sinks slightly into his seat at the warning. He didn’t expect bringing someone back to life to be easy but, given his job description, he also didn’t expect it to be this problematic. “Just don’t tell anyone,” he suggests tiredly, “we’re not even sure it will work, let’s worry about the explanation once it’s actually done, okay?” Minato reluctantly nods in agreement, the conflict still clear in his eyes. “The next reaper I call might have a better idea anyway,” Harry touches the three scrolls on the desk and spells them into a much smaller size before pocketing them, just to be safe. “If this… Ankou came here a lot, they probably know things.”

“You’re calling them now?” Minato asks but doesn’t seem to mind either way.

He shrugs, “no time like the present,” and a moment later there’s a new name on the final space of the summoning parchment he’d been using. He rolls it up again and shrinks it before placing it inside a second warded drawer where he keeps the records of which reapers he’s called up so far. He soon might need a bigger drawer. “I hope the name’s ri-” as if they had been waiting outside to be summoned, a knock to the door of his office interrupts him. “Come in?” He calls, sudden nervousness turning his words into a question.

The figure that enters his office isn’t as outlandish as the two Shinigami. The visible parts of Ankou – which are only his hands – are normal-looking, and his skin is only a few shades darker than Harry’s own. His body is entirely hidden by long black robes, and on his head, a large black hat obscures the sight of his face. Still, unlike the sight of the previous reapers, this one has Harry scrambling to his feet and taking a step back.

His mind flashes back to one of his most recurring nightmares, tied to a gravestone while robed figures commemorate the return of their master. He remembers looking around for anything, anyone who could help, and by Cedric’s body- “I’ve seen you,” he slips into English without meaning to, voice wavering slightly. He thought he’d imagined it, he hadn’t looked back until he had to grab the body and summon the trophy, and there had been nothing there then, but- “you were there.”

“Harry Potter,” the British accent doesn’t make him any less wary of the reaper in front of him, not when his tone denotes the sort of recognition Harry really doesn’t want to face in his place of work. “I did wonder if you’d end up in that chair.”

Chapter Text

Kurama is not having a particularly good time.

Given the past decades, that’s nothing new. Ever since that cursed Uchiha somehow found his skulk in the Yōkō Sōgen and forced him into a summoning contract with those thrice-damned eyes of his – because why wouldn’t Indra continue to be an issue even posthumously? There’s a reason he’d always liked Asura better –  after bathing his home in an infernal black fire, he’s been reduced to nothing more than a prisoner, bound and deprived of his senses, his endless power at the mercy of his jailors.

Still, being split in half is the last straw.

Uzumaki Mito’s seal had been the first of its kind, and Kurama was as surprised as her when it worked and he suddenly found himself pulled into a dimension of nothingness, almost thinking himself dead if not for the fact that death was bound never to touch him and his siblings. There were bursts of light, small reminders that he still existed when the woman started experimenting with the seal, but it was all to better keep him from escaping the confines of his endless cell.

He was almost grateful for the transition to his next jailor, no matter how burning the heat from the orb of pure chakra he was sealed against, the bite of the stakes piercing through his every limb, or how tight the chains keeping him in place were, at least they existed somewhere outside of an endless vacuum. Kurama delighted in howling his warden awake through the night, the will to form words long since gone from him after the first few decades of screaming his throat raw for his freedom and instead replaced with the conviction that if he doesn’t get to have peace, neither does his captor.

At first, the change wasn’t all that noticeable. The amount of chakra powering the seal and keeping him in place didn’t fluctuate often, but even if it did, it wasn’t enough to help him force his way out of it. It took him a while to notice, from the confines of his prison, that it was slowly starting to weaken as if the chakra was slowly trickling somewhere else. He couldn’t tell where, not with his senses still limited to the space of his captivity, but after a while, it didn’t seem like it was about to stop. An opportunity was coming, and Kurama would be ready.

He wasn’t.

Nothing prepared him to face those damned eyes again, to feel his free will slip right through his claws as another cursed Uchiha – he would never forget the feel of the man who hurt his skulk, and it was not the same as this masked wannabe – ripped him from his cell and made a joke out of his freedom, dangling it right in front of him as he was forced to attack the village he’d rather flee from before someone got into their heads to imprison him once again. He thought, for a short moment after he was somehow transported away from the village – the less said about the giant toad who fell on top of him the better –, that he would finally have the chance to leave. Oh, he could stay and blow the place that housed his warden to smithereens, but he still valued his freedom above his hatred.

And then the chains came, and somehow his fate was sealed.

Kurama doesn’t remember feeling a lot of fear, not after the first few hundred years of his existence, but the sight of the Shinigami as it ripped him in half – why can’t they just let him be free? – triggered the sort of panic he’d only felt once or twice throughout his very long life. He could almost feel his conscience split before the seal cut off all lingering connections between them, and then the blond had the audacity of trying to seal what was left of him on an infant.

He’s not proud of the attempt against the life of what looked like a newborn, but someone who has yet to live wouldn’t miss it as dearly as one deprived of it for over half a century.

That’s as far as he remembers, the moment his other half was pulled into the seal, and then everything went back to being dark. At least, that’s all of the memories the currently awake part of Kurama can glimpse at, with the final ones being relayed only due to the fact that he’s still the same entity no matter how many parts he’s been split into. The connection is hair-thin at best, and entirely inactive on his counterpart’s side, which would worry him if he didn’t know that the seal would compress his chakra to a point the newborn could bear to hold it, which probably meant he was in some sort of forced hibernation until the kid grew enough that the seal could risk him being awake to attempt freeing himself.

Meanwhile, the lack of a physical body on his second jailor’s end means he’s wide awake and seething at having himself halved so thoroughly. Somehow, the seal has resisted death itself, keeping him in its grasp even after being expelled from the Shinigami’s guts. Without the limitations of a physical body, his warden can’t keep him from seeing and hearing what is happening around him – though it certainly doesn’t make it any more believable – but the return of his senses is all the leniency his new prison seems to grant him since his efforts to force himself past the seal prove entirely fruitless.

He has once more been contained, and this time with only half of the power he usually has at his disposal. Not even the inference from the one who calls himself Master of Death – which isn’t a claim Kurama can easily confirm or deny despite his many years of existence, though he did feel the touch of death around the boy the same as his current spiritual container – that he is an intelligent being is of any relief, not when it seems to fall on deaf ears. It’s partially the fault of his previous seals, the first not allowing him to communicate with his captor and the second increasing his rage toward the situation to the point he didn’t even attempt to, but it’s proving extremely inconvenient nonetheless.

But the current situation is unlike any previous experiences, he notes as he tunes out the chatter around his warden.

He’d quieted down and listened for a while, ceasing his attempts to brute force his way out of the seal, something which he was loathe to admit would be difficult even at his full power, let alone the half of it he currently holds. Seeing ancestors of his father working at whatever afterlife-adjacent place his jailor had found himself in was a surprise, it made him ache for the time the man was still in their midst and their family was gathered in one place instead of scattered throughout the land, their connections slipping further and further away from his senses, but the novelty wore off by the time the scrolls came out.

The Uchiha-lookalike really does plan to revive the blond, Kurama realizes once the bargain is struck, not liking it one bit.

Never mind that at least this half of him would be back to the land of the living, it would mean a return to the restricting confinement of the seal’s effects once it settles back onto a human body. If this being’s plans go through, he’ll be signed up for another lifetime of imprisonment, only twofold, and Kurama refuses to sit by and let that happen without having a say in it.

If brute force won’t work… I need to make myself heard.

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.

Chapter Text

What greets him on the other side of the door is unexpected, in the sense that he had no idea what to expect in the first place. Nature has taken over much of the brightly-lit location, with what looks like a large collection of colorful tropical plants taking up most of their immediate surroundings, and only squinting past the tall vegetation does Harry manage to spot sand-colored walls half-covered in vines.

“Where are we?” He wonders out loud, looking back toward the blond who’d followed him. He blinks, eyes trailing up the archway that occupies the space behind them where the doorway to the office has now disappeared after being closed. The upper part of the building is half-crumbled into itself, leaving a large pile of rubble to occupy most of the room, and what might have once been large metal doors to compliment the giant archway – which does seem to have broken hinges on its sides, strengthening his theory – is now bent metal half buried under the rubble.

“Nowhere I’m familiar with,” Minato informs him in a low voice as if raising their tone might disturb the ruins that surround them.

Not for the first time, Harry wonders how the doorway chooses where to deposit him in the world. “I guess we keep going until you recognize something,” he suggests, taking another step forward only to hear a crack under his feet and jump right back. “Wha-” Looking down for the first time, his eyes go impossibly wide and he takes a couple of steps back, only to feel the ground slip out from under him as he trips on a piece of rubble and falls through the archway, only barely protecting his head from hitting a sharp piece of fallen stone. Crack, something under him sounds, and Harry freezes for a moment before scrambling back up to his feet and managing to put a solid wall at his back.

He hadn’t seen it, not at first, but now that he knows it’s there, it’s all he can see. Amidst the crumbling remains and growing vegetation, moss and fungi have grown over and within sun-bleached bones. They jut out at odd angles, some cracked and splintered, worn by the elements and the relentless passage of time. Any remaining tissue has become a leathery substance, clinging in patches to the bones like a shroud and reminding him a little too closely of his run-ins with dementors.

“I-” Harry tries to sound out, but his voice doesn’t leave his tightening throat as his eyes follow the path of the closest skeleton to the archway and meet the skull’s hollow eyes, its empty sockets staring into nothingness.

Suddenly, he’d rather be anywhere else but where he’s standing, and his legs hurry to grant that wish before he can stop to think about where he’s going, ignoring the blond’s calls of his name and focusing on not tripping on anything – on anyone, don’t think about it – as he pushes past the plants and toward a more sunlit path.

So focused on getting away, Harry startles when his arm is grabbed and his body pulled back, though his breath catches when Minato’s warning of “Careful!” makes him look back at where he’d been pulled from and notices he’d nearly walked off the edge and plummeted to his – however temporary – death. Taking a more careful step forward, he peers over the edge.

“Oh,” he breathes out at the sight. They’re very high up, but that’s not what seems to punch the air out of his lungs. Standing on that edge, he can see the entire city spiraling from the center – from where he’s standing – in circular sections of varying height levels. Most of the walls have crumbled, as have a large part of the visible structures, and while vegetation doesn’t seem to have spread heavily enough to encompass the entirety of the ruins, there are still various spots of green spread around the many sections below them.

Harry chances a look at the spirit accompanying him, but the blond seems to be simply studying their surroundings in silence, a calculating look in his eyes.

Too bad for him that Harry doesn’t want to spend a moment longer in this place, “Let’s go,” he calls and turns on his heels, scanning the structure behind them – it looks even more grandiose from afar, and a lot more tragic for it – before spotting what seems to be stairs and heading in that direction.

“I know where we are,” Minato informs him once they descend another level, though Harry only gives him a hum in acknowledgment, too focused on the sinking feeling in his gut as he side-steps another pile of bones, eyes catching on a rusted-looking sword abandoned to natures’ whims and just out of reach from a withered skeletal hand. “This is- used to be Uzushio.” Given the lack of any large body of water in the proximity, let alone whirlpools, Harry assumes it’s the name of the city. As in Uzushiogakure no Sato, the place he’s supposed to eliminate every Nōmen mask from. Later, he tells himself as the blond adds, “It fell a long time ago.”

Harry wants to ask, because they’ve had to zig-zag their way down nearly collapsed sets of stairs and jump over demolished walls, and nothing that looks like this dilapidated fortress – he refuses to think of Hogwarts, trying to stand strong against the enemy’s attack but slowly crumbling on top of their own – falls on its own, but ever since accidentally stepping on those forgotten remains his tongue feels like lead, so he’ll save his questions for when this place is just a spot on the horizon behind them.

Seven, he mentally counts as they descend the last set of stairs, remembering the sight of the city from above. They’re in the last ring – finally – and the gate he’d seen should be somewhere around-

A soft displeased noise to his side tells him Minato is staring at the same thing he is. Piles of corpses almost entirely take over the path to the gate. However, these aren’t the same as the ones they’d come across on their way down. No, these seem to vary in size, and the sight of a skull too small to belong to anyone but a young child – were they Hogwarts age? Is this what Voldemort’s victory would have looked like? – has him turning around, knees faltering and hitting the ground as he retches, lacking anything in his stomach for the action to pull out, which leaves him panting and dry-heaving as the image of the great hall filled with children’s corpses overlaps over the bones scattered by the gates.

“Hari-san,” He hears the call from behind him, but it’s almost as if he’s underwater and the sound is having trouble reaching his ears. It’s too far away.

Something wet touches his skin, startling him. It didn’t rain that day – there was a rain of spells, blood, and grief, but the sky had been clear – so what- oh. Something touches him, making him flinch, before he hastily rubs his eyes against his forearm, looking anywhere but at the blond whose hand lightly squeezed his shoulder. “Sorry,” he mumbles, mostly out of habit – Hermione never did manage to knock it out of him – before shrugging off the hand and climbing to his feet. He doesn’t look down – if he does, those skulls might turn into familiar faces and he’ll never make it past the nonexistent gate.

Deep breaths and strategic steps help him reach the final barrier between the ruins and the outside world, though Minato’s silent nudges guiding some of his movement seem to help the most – what a pitiful sight he must make for a Master of Death, reacting like this to what’s supposed to be his domain –, but as soon as he makes to cross what’s left of the city’s entrance, something stops him with enough charge to make him step back, skin tingling at the contact.

“What?” Harry mutters under his breath, extending a hand toward where some sort of barrier seems intent on keeping him out – or rather, in –, and he sees Minato copy his movement with a frown.

Both their hands meet resistance exactly at the point where a gate would have been if it had not been thoroughly blown up in the past, and it makes no sense because Minato is a spirit and not supposed to even have matter for any sort of shield to hold back, not unless it’s something like the barrier in the office. He can only touch Harry, much like other spirits, due to his status as the Master of Death, but it wouldn’t make sense for anything else to be able to keep him contained.

“I don’t know how you got here-,” a voice suddenly chimes in, not quite cheerfully but with a somewhat amused undertone behind the audible confusion, and they’re quick to turn back around, Harry’s reflexively cast spell – a stunner that’s half startlement and half to blame on the flashbacks of the war this bloody place was pulling him into – joins one of Minato’s knives as both head toward the direction it came from, narrowly missing their target as a man hastily dodges both attacks. “Huh,” the man – young, probably close to Minato’s age, Harry notices – hums with a considering look, which is made more unnerving by the fact that one of his eyes is almost entirely red. Harry’s mind momentarily flashes back to the last pair of red eyes he’d faced – narrowed, cruel, with a cat-like slit instead of a normal pupil – but this isn’t a pair, only a single red sclera contrasting with a very light blue iris as if the result of some sort of injury. “As I was saying,” he continues as if nothing was amiss, “You’re not going anywhere.”

It doesn’t properly register in Minato’s mind, not until that moment, that Hari-san is genuinely young. Unfortunately and against his best wishes, he has grown used to the children in his life, teenagers as they may be, acting as is expected of them with the burden of being a shinobi upon their shoulders. This reaction, this expression – the one that tells him the teen was momentarily pulled back into a personal nightmare as he retches on an empty stomach – is trained out of them – was trained out of him – long ago in the academy, in between survival exercises that include trapping, killing and preparing their prey to be eaten and quite graphic lessons on the expected results of each of their techniques, not even as a cautionary tale but to improve their efficiency.

Considering that, it’s not a surprise that the surroundings he’s been carefully cataloging – Kushina will want to know what became of her village when they meet, whether in life or death – seem to have shaken the teenaged Master of Death. It is a massacre – the remains of one, at least –, there’s no other word for it. He’s never been too familiar with the layout of Uzushio, but it’s clear that even their built-for-siege architecture wasn’t enough against the might of allied villages. He’s spotted more than a dozen spiral hitai-ate among the few materials that have yet to rot with the remains of their owners – some fabrics more resistant to time than others and various metals in a better state than something left out to the whims of nature should be – but they are fewer than he would have expected of a city this grand.

From what he’s been able to glimpse past the rubble and wear, the city's two outermost – and largest – sections seem to have been mostly commercial areas. They may have walked past residential areas as well, but he had yet to see so much as a training ground like the many present in Kohona. Uzushio feels, at its core, like a merchant town instead of a military village such as his own. It makes the sight near the gates – so many fleeing bodies, not one set of bones past the walls’ limits – all the more mournful.

Minato is forced to reevaluate his opinion of the teen yet again when, after nudging him on a path through the remains toward the exit and finding it summarily blocked, he watches Hari-san react with the same instinct as him to an unknown voice catching their attention. He doesn’t know what the red light would have done if it had connected with the man’s body, though he guesses it would be less damage than his three-pronged kunai, but neither manages to strike true.

“You’re a spirit,” Hari-san blurts out, to his surprise, and seems much less tense than a moment before. Probably due to realizing this is something within his domain instead of a situation Minato may have to help him out with – help which isn’t quite easy to give as a spirit himself.

It takes him longer to figure out how Hari-san may even have been able to tell that, since the blue-haired, dark-skinned man in vaguely samurai-style clothes – a mix of something he’d expect to see in the Land of Iron and stripped-down shinobi wear – looks like any other person to him, but if he focuses on the feeling around them- he doesn’t feel like death, not in the way the reapers seem to, but it’s a somewhat faint echo of it all the same.

“And you’re not,” the man says, sounding distinctively puzzled as he turns his eyes – light blue, one sclera entirely blood-red, probably the result of whatever incident gave him the scar cutting diagonally through said eye from his right jaw to the forehead – toward Minato instead, “but you are. Who are you people, and how did you make it in?”

Minato nearly opens his mouth to reply before closing it again, looking at Hari-san instead. Sure, he’s the one familiar with this world and its people, but this is a spirit and not exactly his area of expertise. His deference earns him an apologetic look, which he doesn’t know quite how to interpret before the reason becomes obvious as the feeling of death inundates his senses. It only lasts a moment before it retreats, leaving him slightly unbalanced at the whiplash-worthy demonstration, though he does not show it.

The other man isn’t nearly as composed. “Shinigami-sama,” he says, offering a bow that would have been too low even for a daimyo. Minato glances at Hari-san, noticing the quickly hidden bothered expression, but his attention returns to the man who adds in an almost hopeful tone, “Has something changed?”

He can almost see the cogs turning in the young Master of Death’s mind at the question, trying to decide how to reply, before settling on “Just Hari’s fine.” Minato absently wonders if somewhere in the bookshelves of the office they came from there might be a book to teach the teen how to get more comfortable with formality and deference. If not, this kid is in for a long and possibly uncomfortable eternity – or however long his tenure as Master of Death is supposed to last. “What do you mean by that?”

The spirit’s eyes narrow slightly at them and Minato notices one of his hands – the one covered in ink-black markings, a seal he would like to look at with some time to spare – signaling almost behind his back. Not the only one, then. Still, only another spirit would be able to see the signal, so he doesn’t worry when his eyes don’t spot anyone hiding in the vicinity.

“He just signaled to someone,” he tells Hari-san under his breath all the same, wishing the teen at least knew Konoha Sign so he wouldn’t have to be so obvious about his delivery of information.

“I believe one of my friends might be able to answer that question better than I could,” The man justifies his action. “I can take you to him if you’ll follow me.”

Minato can almost see the teen’s mind weigh the need to have his question answered against having to go back into the ruins. “It’s fine, I’ll be back for those answers another time,” Hari-san says instead and turns back toward the exit.

Oh, right, the masks. It makes sense that he wouldn’t want to return to the city right now when he’ll have to come back another time to fulfill his promise to Yuzuki-san. Still… “What of the barrier?”

“You won’t manage to walk out,” the spirit warns them, seeming unconcerned.

“I don’t have to walk through it to leave,” Hari-san remarks before disappearing with a crack, only to reappear face-first into the barrier and slide to the ground with a grunt. “What the-”

“It absorbs all attacks,” it’s what the man unhelpfully informs as if that had not just become clear.

“I wasn’t attacking it,” Hari-san grumbles as he stands, dusting off the dirt from his pants. “I was trying to move past it.”

“Like I said,” Minato is starting to get a little annoyed at the spirit’s knowing tone. Where’s all the respect from a moment ago? “You’re not leaving any time soon.”

Hari-san frowns, waves a hand at the barrier, and they watch as a quick beam of red light impacts thin air only to disappear in a shimmer of shining symbols. He repeats the process a few more times and yet every color of light gets absorbed by the shield, so the volley of attacks – he’s still curious about what exactly the colors stand for but isn’t about to ask now – proves ultimately useless.

“Fine,” he caves with a sigh of nearly palpable resignation. “Let’s talk to your friend, maybe they can tell us how to get past it.”

Harry decides, in the privacy of his mind, that he has at least some right to be upset that some barrier from a different universe won’t let him apparate out of the city-wide graveyard they’re stuck in. He doesn’t say it – for obvious reasons such as he should probably not be mentally cursing another world’s version of magic in the first place – but the fact that the first encounter with something chakra-related has left him so obviously stuck is at least a little unnerving. Sure, he hadn’t expected something that let people summon literal death gods to be weak, but he’d apparently subconsciously expected it to be weaker than his magic simply by default.

At least there are no more bodies on the way to wherever we’re going, He notes with some relief. Instead of turning back toward the center of the city, the spirit – who, upon being called out on not introducing himself, told them to call him Kaneko – leads them further to the right of the gate, past piles of fallen rubble and deteriorating remains of wooden structures and toward the furthest corner nearing the end of the lower section, where the vegetation starts to grow heavier as it climbs over the walls and up the side of the mountain.

“Where-” Harry starts to ask when they make a turn by a tree that looks the same as any other and find themselves in front of a half-collapsed house which their guide promptly slips into – straight through the fallen wall, like the spirit he is – and doesn’t come back out.

“I think we’re supposed to follow,” Minato points out when Harry simply continues to frown.

He gives the blond an annoyed look, “I can’t exactly walk through walls,” he pointedly motions toward the complete lack of an entry point. “Well… I don’t think I can,” he adds since the reapers mostly seem to be able to. Should he be able to? Huh. “But I can just…” he focuses on the structure in front of him and makes an anti-clockwise motion with his extended hand. The barrier had kept him from leaving, but not outright apparating, and his spell had almost hit the spirit before that, so his magic apparently works just fine inside it.

A sharp intake of breath comes from his side as he watches the rubble rise from the ground and slowly repair itself into its previously held shape, a small house made mostly out of stone and timber, which added to the ease of his spell in putting things back in their proper place. Harry had learned it when helping repair the castle after the battle, as well as some tidbits from Mr Weasley who often repaired – and expanded – the Burrow by himself, and found that wood and stone are more cooperative than stuff like concrete or plastic since they seem to remember their intended shape for a larger period of time.

“Hey!” a high-pitched exclamation from their left breaks his focus, but the house is thankfully already structurally sound and doesn’t need the spell to hold it together any longer. “What d’you think-” the rushing woman – spirit, Harry is quick to notice – comes to a stop slightly in front of them, staring at the rewound structure for a moment in disbelief before turning back on him with wide eyes, leaning close enough that Harry has to take a step back so the teal-colored orbs aren’t the only thing in his field of vision. “How’d you do that?!”

“Magic,” he informs – because no such thing as the Statute of Secrecy exists in this world – and takes another step away from the woman with visibly pointy teeth that are still way too close for comfort.

“Asami,” a soft male voice calls from the direction the woman had appeared from and Harry looks over only to spot yet another person, this time a pale young man – another spirit! How many are there and why haven’t reapers taken them away yet? – with pastel blue hair who looks exasperated at the woman’s behavior. “We were supposed to watch.”

“But Hoshi-kun, look what he did to my house! Look!” The blonde hurricane who seemed about to pounce on him was suddenly gone, now closer to the house and motioning exaggeratedly towards it.

Someone walks through the newly restored house’s door as if on cue, but it’s immediately clear that it’s not Kaneko coming back. The man who steps through is slightly shorter than their guide, with lighter skin and long, blood-red hair reaching down to his waist. His tired-looking purplish-blue eyes immediately take in the scene and he seems to suppress a sigh as he speaks, “I was under the impression we would be talking inside.”

“Oi, look what stranger-kun did!” The one he assumes is named Asami from what ‘Hoshi-kun’ called her exclaims, bodily turning the red-haired man around to look at the house just as Kaneko phases through the door in time to follow their eyes toward the rebuilt building.

The redhead and Kaneko trade a significant look – whose meaning is entirely lost on him – before the newcomer turns to give Harry his full attention. “You’re not a reaper,” he states more than asks.

“Feels like one,” Kaneko points out from a step behind the man, “and spirits can touch him,” he adds pensively, “but he can’t cross the barrier.”

“He’s standing right here,” Harry snaps with some irritation, never enjoying being talked about like he’s not present when he clearly is. “I’m not a reaper, I’m their boss. And no, I’m not death,” he clarifies in case one of them also decides to call him ‘shi-sama’ or something equally uncomfortable. “The title's technically Master of Death, but just call me Harry, ok? None of this ‘sama’ stuff.”

“Hari-san isn’t really one for formalities,” Minato sees fit to quip and Harry catches a slight smile on his face from the corner of his eye, as if the blond is entertained by the situation.

“You’re the boss of them?” Asami is back to staring at him in a flash, “That means you can help!” she turns on the redhead with the same speed, “He could help, right? We could leave!”

“You can’t leave?” Harry asks with a frown just as the redhead calls the blonde’s name sharply enough to make her silent for a moment. “Haven’t reapers come for you? Usually, whoever is left behind chooses to stay.”

Some of the spirits open their mouths to reply but a raised hand from the redhead stays their words, “Let’s continue this discussion inside,” He tells them with enough authority to get at least the spirits moving, and turns back around to enter the newly restored house with the three local spirits at his heels.

A considering hum from Minato keeps him from following right away and he turns to the blond instead with a questioning look. “He is- well, was, the leader of Uzushio at the time of his death. The kanji on his haori means Whirlpool Lord.” Harry’s eyes widen slightly. He’d missed that entirely, mostly because he isn’t as used to searching out kanji the way his eyes would absently find and read any sign or label in English.

The new knowledge makes him wonder if village leaders in this world are always so young. The redhead does look older than Minato – and somehow perpetually tired even after death – but not by much.

“Better not leave him waiting then,” he mutters and heads to the door, opening it – after a small push to test if it was securely in place just to be sure – and stepping inside.

Stone walls reminiscent of his time at Hogwarts were the first thing Harry noticed, followed by polished wooden floors and a lot – as in, more than he’d ever seen put in a room together – of pelts and fur. Apparently, his spell hadn’t only restored the outside of the house but the inside as well, probably because everything in sight seemed made of wood, stone, or something of animal origin instead of metal, glass, or plastic. There were some exceptions – he spotted a wooden shelf holding some misshapen objects he couldn’t name at a glance and wasn’t sure if the spell had reached any other room except for the one closest to the entrance – but that still left them with a living room that looked somehow modern and rustic at the same time.

The two large couches seemed to have somehow been sculpted out of massive tree trunks, and though they lacked cushions there were plenty of furs spread around to make up for their lack. The floor under said couches was lined with a large rug of sewn animal pelts of similar coloring, a spotted dark brown bordering on black, and in the center was a table made of a pretty, wavy-looking log. Wooden shelves on the walls weren’t quite attached to them so much as to a large plank of wood that looked like the result of taking away a vertical section of the center of a tree trunk, with all the textures and movement of the wood included. There was no source of light other than a closed window, though he hadn’t expected one since magic and electricity don’t quite mix, but there didn’t actually seem to be any light switches in the room and he couldn’t find anything like a misshapen lantern he’d failed to restore or somewhere to put a torch either, even with everything about the ruins he’d seen so far indicating at least some level of electrical development.

“Can I open that?” He asks the blonde who is staring around the room with barely contained awe, pointing to the large window behind one of the couches, and walks over to do just that after receiving a distracted hum of agreement and a nod.

The open window opens toward the forest, but there’s enough space between the trees to let the light through and the fresh air isn’t unwelcome either. When Harry turns back around, the second – and largest – couch is occupied by the redhead and two of the spirits – Asami and Hoshi – while Kaneko stands behind the part of it that isn’t too close to the wall like a guard, stiff posture and all. A glance around for Minato shows the blond standing next to Harry in a similar position, which he chooses not to think about too hard as he sits down with his back to the open window.

It would be a dumb move if he feared some sort of attack coming from the forest, where Hoshi and Asami were supposed to be watching from and where there may be additional spirits hiding, but, well… he’s not. Afraid of an attack, that is. Not from spirits. His magic may be somehow weak to the barrier around the city, but that was made by living people, not ghosts, and spirits are – for better or worse – his domain now.

Plus he’s immortal. If they manage to kill him, it’ll be annoying at best.

“First of all, we should probably introduce ourselves,” the redhead says, breaking the silence first. “I’m Uzumaki Suichū,” he motions with his hands at the blonde and her light-haired companion, “these are Yamauchi Asami, Hoshinoumi,” and finally nods toward Kaneko, “and Kaneko Kaiousei.”

“A pleasure,” Harry says as he takes a moment to think about his introduction, mostly because they might want something more formal to call him yet the R’s on his last name don’t quite translate well into Japanese, before settling on a second option which is simple enough to work, “I’ll go by Kuro Hari,” he makes a point to pronounce his first name the way Minato does, not remembering any words that sound the same in Japanese but not caring enough to ask if it means something. “And this is Namikaze Minato,” he adds with a motion to the blond still standing by his side. “Now, what exactly did you mean by needing help to leave? Reapers aren’t supposed to keep anyone who wants to from moving on.”

It’s only because he’s paying close attention to the Uzumaki that he notices a slight wince before the man speaks, “It’s not that they’re keeping us from moving on, but we’re… stuck, for lack of a better term. Too anchored to leave this plane,” the redhead explains. “You may have noticed the barrier around the city?” At Harry’s nod – and undoubtedly annoyed look – he continues, “We’re the ones powering it.”