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batsutousaiTitle: Stand Against the Moon
Fandom: Harry Potter
Author: Batsutousai
Rating: Eventually Explicit (this chapter is Mature)
Pairing: Harry Potter/Lord Voldemort
Warnings: Forceful turning/cannibalism, violence, non-permanent main character death, Dark!Harry, werewolf!Harry, AU, ending of questionable happiness, underage sexual relationship (depending on the way you tilt your head)
Summary: Cursed against his will, Harry made the best of his life until he found himself, again, wandering in Death's realm. When Death offers him a second chance, a chance to right the wrongs he'd been blind to for too long, he can't possibly refuse.
Disclaim Her: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
The title for this chapter is taken from Phildel's The Wolf, which served as inspiration for the fic. It was originally going to be the fic's title, but then I came up with 'Stand Against the Moon'.
A/N: This foolery came about from reading the fic Shivani is writing that was inspired by Xerosis, followed very shortly by a reread of both Xerosis and my FFX/HP fic Twin Blades (Shivani absolutely laughed at me for this). I only have the vaguest of ideas about where I'm going with this, but I have the need to write something in HP right now, and none of my WiPs are getting anywhere. (Someone get me a blasting curse that works on writer's block walls, yeah? Appreciate it.)
As warning, this chapter follows from canon (pre-Epilogue), and is...not particularly pleasant. There is a non-consensual turning (involving cannibalism), violence, angst, and a couple murders in this chapter, including Harry's. If you're not 100% certain that you can handle this, I very much suggest waiting for the next chapter. You'll be filled in on the specifics later on, in a far less graphic manner. I wrote this mostly to get into this Harry's head, and so I'd know what he'd gone through later, and decided to post it for those who wanted to know everything up front, but you're not required to read this chapter to understand what's going on.
Any bitching I get about this, I will block. I've given you fair warning.
All chapters beta'd by the ever-wonderful Shara Lunison.
This fic is completed. It'll be updated every three days until it is finished, which should be on 04 November, for those who like to wait and read a fic all at once.
Cross-posted to Archive of Our Own, Fanfiction.Net, Dreamwidth, and Tumblr.
The cover can be found on deviantArt.
Harry Potter had...pretty much everything a wizard could ask for. He had a beautiful fiancée, two amazing best friends, and an adoring adopted family. He had survived the man who'd killed his parents and tried multiple times to kill him, and he was a decorated auror, shoe-in for the Minister seat, should he care to reach out for it.
Which wasn't to say there weren't bad moments, because he had a godson with no parents who he shared the care of with the child's grandmother, and there were moments around the table during family meals when the figurative empty chairs were all too obvious.
And then, of course, there were moments like today, when he found these sort of orders waiting for him on his desk.
"I'm not doing this, Gawain," he informed his boss when he poked his head into the man's office.
Gawain Robards raised his head and offered Harry a tired look out of his one good eye, the other one rolling off to one side in the manner of the late Alastor Moody, though Harry knew Gawain's eye was both real and nowhere near as useful as Moody's had been. "Which assignment do you have a problem with this time, Potter?" he requested, voice as tired as his appearance.
Harry resisted the urge to sigh as he stepped forward and set the parchment on the overflowing desk of the elder wizard. "Report of a rampaging werewolf up north," he explained.
Gawain glanced over the paper and let out the sigh Harry had held back, then looked up at him. "There's no one else I can send right now. If you didn't want to get stuck with the creature jobs, you shouldn't have mucked about in the creature department."
Harry ground his teeth against that particular descriptor for magical non-humans; he may have managed to have the late Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures largely abolished (what was left was being manned by his friend Hermione and some other non-human friendly souls), but there was little he could do to change the way most witches and wizards viewed such. "Fine," he bit out, trying to hide how irritated he was and knowing he was failing miserably. "But I'm not bloody well hunting anyone down."
Gawain held the parchment with the assignment back up to Harry. "Potter, I don't give a fuck if you decide to dance around a campfire with the bugger, just so long as it's fucking handled."
Harry snatched the parchment away and stalked from the office. He really didn't mind working under Gawain most of the time, but the man's all-too-common non-human hatred rubbed him entirely the wrong way.
Ron found him while he was getting together an anti-werewolf kit; just because he had no interest in using it, didn't mean he was fool enough to chance going out to meet with a werewolf on his own without the bloody thing. "Rough luck, mate," Ron said, reading over the parchment Harry had left on the table near the door.
"I feel like a traitor," Harry muttered, certain that Ron, out of everyone in the department, would understand why he so hated the idea of going after werewolves in particular.
Ron touched his shoulder and offered Harry a smile that was a little too dark around the edges. "At least this way you know the werewolf has a fair chance?" he offered.
Harry stared down at the silver knives of his kit, glinting in the firelight that lit so much of the magical world. "There is that," he agreed quietly before shoving the knives home in his belt.
Ron nodded and offered a hopeful smile. "Need a hand?"
Harry glanced towards the clock hanging over the door and shook his head. "No. I'll be fine. Don't go extending your shift on my account."
"Oiy, who should I be extending my shifts for, then?" Ron joked as he led the way out of the room and back into the hustle and bustle of the department.
Harry snorted. "No one, likely. Unless you want Hermione coming down on your arse for mucking up her carefully laid plans."
Ron laughed, loud and happy. "That woman makes too many plans."
Harry shot him a knowing grin and clapped Ron on the shoulder. "Better you than me," he insisted and Ron's laughter chased him to the lift.
Harry should have guessed that the visit wouldn't end well, given how his luck seemed to enjoy seeing him pulling off the impossible when faced with danger.
The suspected single werewolf turned out to be a pack of seven. The wizard who'd reported them had gone to confront the lot not long before Harry arrived, and he found things already heated. Attempts to soothe things over hadn't gone well – Harry was not known for his diplomacy skills, which was one of the reasons he had no interest in the Minister's seat – and the resulting fight had left him with one near-dead wizard and seven completely dead werewolves.
As Harry portkeyed to St. Mungo's with the injured wizard, leaving the werewolves for Hermione's department to handle, he felt very much the traitor.
A quiet month followed the werewolf call, and Harry found himself forgetting about it. He had dinner with the Weasleys, caught a couple lovely nights with Ginny, and took Teddie to the park near his grandmother's place multiple times.
And then he found a new assignment on his desk: A vampire reported for killing muggles along the western coast of Lough Neagh. The report had come in via the British Prime Minister, who had passed it on from the Northern Ireland Secretary. Which meant there shouldn't be any trigger-happy wizards about to turn things violent, thankfully, but it also meant that Harry couldn't turn it down, because the Prime Minister would want someone he trusted handling the issue. (Never mind that he had never met Harry; Kingsley had apparently talked about him enough that the Prime Minister held him on as high a pedestal as the magical world.)
Harry sighed and went to collect a vampire kit, not even bothering with Gawain's office. With luck, this meeting would go far better than the last non-human assignment he was handed.
'On second thought,' Harry decided as he woke, head split with a headache and movement restricted by tight ropes, 'I'll take the bloody battle.'
There was a group of people standing over him, two men, two women. One of the women was clearly a vampire, teeth obvious from the way she was grinning down at him, triumphant and blood thirsty. One of the men looked like he was wasting away, but there was a hunger in his sunken eyes that set the hair on the back of Harry's neck on end. The last two looked like average humans, save for the sickly pallor to their skin that recalled the appearance of Remus Lupin in the days before the full moon (which was, Harry knew, only two days away).
"Look, our traitorous champion has awakened at last," the male who Harry was pretty sure was a werewolf said, lip curling up with a snarl.
"So weak, these humans," the vampire commented. "Why, if I didn't know any better, I'd think this one a muggle."
Harry ignored the insult, choosing instead to request, "Is there a reason you attacked me and tied me up when I came in peace?"
The vampire picked up a stake from a table next to her, the end burnished with the Ministry symbol. "Oh, yes, quite peaceful, Auror."
"Just like you came in peace to meet my pack," the female Harry assumed was a werewolf snarled, her eyes glinting gold in the candlelight.
'Well,' Harry couldn't help but think as his stomach sank, 'shit.' Because the wizard he'd saved had gone straight to the papers with a truly horrible version of events, one that would paint Harry in the worst way possible. And no amount of damage control on his or the Ministry's part could make the common witch or wizard believe he hadn't gone out to meet that pack with wand blazing.
He wondered how he'd get out of this one in one piece.
"What sort of werewolf champion massacres a werewolf pack, anyway?" the male werewolf wondered, tapping his chin in a way that should have appeared thoughtful and unconcerned, but really just made him look demonic with the way the candlelight was shading his face.
"I would," the last man said, his voice a whisper, accent American.
"I said massacre, not eat, Peechee," the male werewolf snarled, shooting the American a disgusted look.
The American smiled, lips cracking and weeping dark blood. "They mean the same to me."
The vampire flowed forward and brushed the stake against Harry's jaw oh-so gently. He forced himself to stare at her and ignore the stake, hoping he wouldn't come to regret the decision. "So cruel is our champion," she murmured.
Harry swallowed against the feel of the stake trailing down his throat. "Why are you calling me that?" he asked, because he honestly didn't get it. He'd been given many names meant to praise him in his life, but this was the first time someone had called him the champion of anyone.
The vampire laughed and jabbed the stake against his chest, hard enough he felt it, but gentle enough it wouldn't leave anything worse than a bruise. Harry's breath still caught and he closed his eyes, trying to keep himself calm; losing his shit right now would not help him.
An overpowering smell of decay stung his nose, and Harry opened his eyes to find the American had taken the vampire's place. He couldn't keep from jerking back, and the man's smile stretched too-wide, dark blood almost oozing down his chin, it moved so slowly. "Are you not the champion of all those not human?" he whispered, his voice as ruined as his lips. "Do you not go to the greatest of lengths to protect our rights?"
The vampire scoffed. "Protect our rights?" she repeated, the words dripping with venom. "Hardly. He makes play at caring, our champion. Too caught up in his humanity to care for those of us who lack."
The American stroked his fingers against Harry's cheek, and Harry couldn't help but shudder. "We can fix that," he promised, and Harry felt suddenly cold.
"It was my pack he destroyed, it is my restitution to claim!" the female werewolf snarled.
"We can't hold him until the full moon," the male werewolf pointed out. "The humans will find him first."
"It needn't be a full change," the female insisted, eyes glinting gold as she stepped forward to stare down at Harry over the American's shoulder.
"I have a better idea," the American announced before he spun and lashed out, snapping the female werewolf's neck before Harry knew what was happening.
Neither of the other two non-humans reacted to the female's death, beyond the vampire asking, "Does she need to be cooked?"
The American turned to stare down at Harry, eyes hungry and cold. "What would be the fun in that?" he asked before he almost absently snapped the dead woman's arm off and held it in front of Harry, blood puddling between them. "Eat, Champion."
Harry turned his head away, bile climbing his throat. "The fuck," he spat before swallowing hard.
Unnaturally strong fingers caught in his hair and forced his head back around. The bodiless arm was pressed against his lips, still warm from life. "Eat."
Fingers brushed lightly against the back of Harry's neck and the vampire breathed against his ear from behind, "You will eat the werewolf, Harry Potter, or you will be killed and left here for dead while we lead a pack against your family on the full moon."
The chill was gone, pushed away by a great well of terror. He squeezed his eyes closed and obediently opened his mouth.
It was...nauseating. Harry felt like every bite would make him gag, slimy and raw as it slid down his throat. But he forced himself to choke it down, because he would rather he be forced into cannibalism a thousand times over than let his family suffer a proper werewolf attack.
Yes, the vampire had spoken true, he was far too much a human to truly care about the liberties of the non-humans. Even now, his fight was more in memory of Remus than any true wish to see them given the same rights as witches and wizards.
He was no one's champion.
What seemed like an eternity later, Harry trapped between pieces of deceased werewolf and a vampire, the American started to chant in a language unfamiliar to Harry.
"You can't have him," a new voice said, trapped somewhere between male and female and icy as death.
The vampire pushed away from Harry with a cry of terror, and the remains of the werewolf were pulled away as the chanting stopped. Harry opened his eyes to see if he could spot the newcomer, and found a person cloaked in black, carrying a scythe, standing across from the American.
The hood was turned towards Harry for a moment, shadows within far too deep for Harry to see a face, then it turned back towards the American. "You can't have him, Wendigo."
The American laughed, loud and cruel. "And who are you to think you might stop me, apparition?"
The hood tilted slightly. "I am Death," it said, and Harry was torn between a sense of relief and and chill crawling his spine. Behind him, the vampire whimpered, while the male werewolf just to Harry's left shuddered and took three quick steps away.
The American fell still, looking the cloaked being over. "You are not my Death."
Death moved like it was shrugging its shoulders. "I come in the form my Master expects." It shrugged again and repeated, "You can't have him."
The American snorted. "And you think you can stop me?"
The hood turned towards Harry. "May I kill him?" it asked.
Half-dried blood cracked against Harry's lips and chin as he opened his mouth and whispered, "Yes."
Death moved swift as a shadow, and the American let out one, horrifying scream before he crumpled to the ground. The new corpse was still for but a moment before it changed ever so slightly, the skin darkening and the features filling out just enough to appear human.
A shadow left the body and Death caught it in one skeletal hand, hood tilted comically to one side, as though observing the squirming shadow in its grasp. "I was never much fond of your sort," it commented before flexing its hand.
Another scream filled the silence, like a child in agony, and Harry squeezed his eyes shut and wished he could cover his ears.
Bone brushed against Harry's cheek as the screaming stopped, and Harry's eyes snapped open to stare up into the shadowed hood staring down at him. "And the others? May I kill them too?" Death asked, sounding almost hopeful.
"Yeah," Harry whispered, and the vampire let out a sob behind him.
"Thank you, Master," Death murmured before it was gone from Harry's sight.
The vampire let out a gurgle as she died. The werewolf managed to escape, light from the rising dawn streaking across the floor, but Harry knew he wouldn't get far before Death caught up to him.
Harry closed his eyes and slumped back in the chair he was tied to. A part of him wondered if Death would free him, but he didn't suppose it mattered that much; the male werewolf had been quite correct in assuming the Ministry would hunt him down if Harry didn't check in at the end of his shift.
Indeed, he only had to wait another two hours, by his figuring, before a team of aurors and two mediwizards found him. They transported him immediately to St. Mungo's and healed him of the very minor physical wounds he'd suffered. They tried to induce vomiting to remove the werewolf flesh he'd been forced to eat, uncertain what sort of outcome it would have, but the American must have done something to keep it in his body until he'd digested all of it, because nothing they tried worked. Still, the magical tests turned up nothing out of the ordinary, so they let him go home.
Two nights later, when the full moon rose over Grimmauld Place, Harry screamed in agony as his shape changed into that of a wolf and his human mind hid away.
When he woke, he was naked in the middle of his library, books and furniture a wreck around him and blood ringing his mouth. The rest of the house wasn't much better, nearly every room marked with some form of teeth or claw marks. He found what was left of Kreacher in the kitchen, and Harry couldn't do anything more than sit down next to his loyal house-elf and stare at his bloody form.
"So," he whispered an age later, face cracking with dried blood and tear tracks, "I guess that werewolf got her revenge after all."
And then he threw up.
"You look terrible," Hermione said when Harry stepped into her office.
Harry closed her door behind him and snapped out his wand to throw up the strongest privacy wards he knew. When he dropped into the open chair across her desk from her, he found Hermione staring at him with wide, terrified eyes. "I'm a werewolf," he told her, seeing no reason to beat around the bush; she'd see through him in a heartbeat.
Hermione shook her head, eyes still wide. "But they ran tests and you came up–"
"Human?" Harry finished tiredly, rubbing at his eyes, the familiar motion feeling wrong without his glasses in the way. "They were wrong. Kreacher's dead."
Hermione let out a broken sound and hurried around her desk to hug him. Her tears soaked into his hair and Harry closed his eyes and returned the hug, feeling hollow.
Finally, Hermione pulled away and returned to the other side of the desk, eyes red and waterlogged, but bearing an air of seriousness. "What do you want to do?" she asked. "We can try to keep this under wraps–"
"No," Harry said, shaking his head. "I'm not going to lie about this or try to hide it." He clenched his hands on the arms of the chair and forced himself to take a breath. "What sort of precedent am I setting if I refuse to accept this curse?"
"Harry," Hermione whispered, voice a ghost of what it should have been, "Ministry policy says–"
"I know." Harry closed his eyes. "I already drafted my resignation." The parchment weighed heavy in his pocket, a solid reminder that he may not have died in that attack, but his life as he knew it was essentially over.
Hermione swallowed, loud in the silence. "Are you coming to dinner tonight?" she asked over the sounds of parchment being rustled on her desk.
"No," Harry decided. "I'll send Mum an owl when I'm done with my excuses here."
"You know you'd be welcome," Hermione pressed.
Harry opened his eyes again to smile at where she was adding his name to the werewolf registry, every stroke of her quill seeming forced. "I know, but I'm not feeling particularly social right now. Next week."
Hermione looked up at him, sorrow lining her face. "And Ginny?"
Harry leant forwards, motioning for her to hand him the paperwork for the Wolfsbane Potion. "I'll talk to her. Owl her and ask her to come by tomorrow."
"Okay."
They were quiet while they finished the paperwork. As Harry stood, motioning with his wand to pull down his wards, Hermione said, "Do you mind if Ron and I come over for dinner one night this week? Not tomorrow, but–"
"Yeah," Harry agreed with a shrug. "Tuesday?"
"Okay."
Harry nodded and left her office, making his way, next, down to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement level. There, he stepped into Gawain's office and requested, "I need to talk to you."
Gawain sighed. "Potter, if you've got a problem with another assignment–"
Harry set the scroll with his resignation on his boss' desk. "I'm quitting," he said quietly before turning and leaving the office to pack his things.
Gawain didn't come after him, and Harry packed his things with easy motions, stuffing everything he cared about into his pockets before leaving the Ministry to hide out at his home and send off a couple owls to his family.
He suspected the news of his condition would break by tomorrow morning.
The news didn't actually break until a week later, and Harry wasn't certain if that could be attributed more to Hermione guarding the registry with her life, or the Ministry trying to keep everything under wraps.
Either way, Harry was unspeakably grateful for the wards that whichever of Sirius' relatives had put up that kept out any owls bearing harmful post, having watched far too many owls carrying red envelopes or those dripping with something be turned away at the edge of the wards. Plenty of letters made it past, however, and he spent the day reading the sympathy of strangers, torn between gratitude for their kind words and disgust for their fear of his curse.
The letters kept coming through the rest of that week, leaving him a mess of complicated emotions and no fit company for anyone, even Ginny, who usually managed to calm him with little more than a kiss.
The next Monday, he was again in Hermione's office, expression tense, but a certain sense of determination burning in his blood. "I want to spread the realities of lycanthropy," he announced once they were both seated and the niceties had been observed.
Hermione raised her eyebrows at him. "Realities, Harry?"
Harry nodded and held out a letter he'd received, which was so laced with misinformation, it was stomach-turning. "I'm tired of these," he admitted, smiling at the horrified face she pulled as she read it over. "I can hardly call being forced to turn into a mindless beast once a lunar cycle fun, but it's no where near so horrible as some of these idiots think it is." He sighed and leant forward. "Hermione, I'm okay, I'll manage, but not every werewolf is me. They don't always have the support structure they need, because there are lies everywhere. I want to help. I want to do what I was only half-arsing before."
Hermione smiled at him, blinking rapidly against tears. "Okay," she whispered. "Let's do this."
Let it never be said that fighting misinformation was easy, but Harry had the political and social clout to make a dent, at least.
He bullied the Prophet – with Hermione and Kingsley's help – into giving him a weekly column, all too aware of how much stock their world put into the paper. There, he told of the truths of lycanthropy. How miserable it actually was – or wasn't, in many cases – how hard it was to live with the stigma, and the many ways that anyone could make it easier. He even got other werewolves and their loved ones to share their own stories anonymously, when he ran out of his facts.
Owls were still turned away by his wards all the time, and he'd been cursed a half-dozen times in Diagon Alley before a year had passed, but the disgustingly sympathetic owls tapered off, their authors turning into people who were beginning to understand that this curse wasn't the end of the world, not for him.
By the second year of his curse, legislation was passed which made it a crime to fire someone for being a werewolf, and the Ministry hired on four werewolves to do paper-pushing jobs. Harry was offered his position as an auror back, but refused unless the Department of Magical Law Enforcement was willing to hire other werewolves for auror positions. Gawain promised to look into it and that was the last he hear for a while, even with Ron and Hermione keeping their ears to the wall.
By the third year of Harry's curse, there was about a forty-two percent rate of employment amongst werewolves, and he allowed himself to be bullied back into the aurors, filling the position Ron vacated to help George in manning Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes.
In Harry's fifth year, however, a new Dark Lord came to power, and his opening gambit involved an attack headed by werewolves.
And everything went to shit.
The days following that horrible full moon involved a lot of being called out to protect werewolves who were being attacked by neighbours and passing acquaintances. For those three aurors who were werewolves – Harry and two others – protecting the werewolves were a priority, but plenty of their fellows would drag their feet, or 'misaim a curse', and a werewolf would die.
Harry found himself blocking curses while trying to do his shopping again, something he hadn't faced in almost three years, and many of the werewolves he'd helped get jobs in Diagon Alley or in the Ministry were refusing to come in to work, afraid for their lives.
"Humans," one of Harry's werewolf friends snarled after Harry had come to his rescue. "We will always be monsters to them."
Harry wanted to dispute that, but he was growing tired of defending people, only to get stabbed in the back.
Sometimes, he was discovering, being the better man is the hardest thing of all.
When a large batch of Wolfsbane Potion arrived contaminated for the fourth full moon following the new Dark Lord's rise, Harry refused his chance to get any, as he had a perfectly safe place to transform without the potion. Hermione had smiled in understanding as she crossed his name off, tears glinting on her lashes. "Make sure you let your department know you'll be out of service for an extra couple days so you can heal up," she reminded him as he turned to leave.
"I will," he promised, and went to do that very thing.
On the full moon, he curled up in the reinforced room of Grimmauld Place that he'd created with Hermione and Ron's help a couple years ago during another Wolfsbane shortage. He suffered the terrible pain, secretly grateful for the moment when his wolf's brain came to the fore and protected him from the agony of shifting bones.
He got the vague impression of blood and violence, of rending and tearing and screams of terror.
He woke on a battlefield, surrounded by aurors with grim faces. His co-workers. Friends.
They were all still for a long moment, staring at each other with wide eyes.
And then one of them pointed their wand at Harry, face twisting nastily, and breathed, "Avada Kedavra."
"Well," Harry said to himself as he relaxed back in the empty white space he remembered from the last time he'd died, "that was disappointingly anticlimactic."
Someone cackled from behind him and he turned to find Death standing over him, leaning against its scythe. "Greetings, Master," it offered in its genderless voice.
"Hello, Death," Harry returned politely as he climbed to his feet. A brief thought had him clothed in his auror robes, too familiar and comfortable after so many years surviving in them. "What can I do for you?"
Death was silent for a long moment, and Harry got the impression he was being measured up. "No, Master," it said at last, "that's not how this works. One should rather say, what can Death do for you?"
Harry blinked. "What?"
Death moved its shoulders in a shrug, skeletal fingers flexing around the handle of its scythe. "The fact of the matter, Master, is that you command me. Should you wish to return to life, it can be done. Should you wish to pass on, you may. If you wish to end the lives of anyone in particular as revenge for your rather inglorious death..."
"I can," Harry finished, staring down at his familiar black boots and fighting with his sense of right and the need to punish his people for their two-faced cruelty. His fellow auror had barely paused, and he didn't need to ask to know that the others wouldn't have tried to stop his murder, had they been given the opportunity. The overall opinion of the department since the attack had been poor in regards to werewolves, and when Harry or one of his fellows had pointed out that they were werewolves, they always got a cheerful smile and an easy, 'Well we don't mean you, obviously.'
He frowned, something occurring to him. "Why was I on that battlefield?" he requested, certain Death would have an answer.
Death shrugged again. "The current Dark Lord created a spell that forcefully apparated any werewolves not partaking of the Wolfsbane Potion and set them to attack his preferred target." It gave a little twirl of its scythe, bone fingers clicking eerily against the shaft of the weapon while Harry bared his teeth in an unconscious snarl. "You're quite an accomplished werewolf, you know. Many, many deaths under your belt."
Harry let out a disgusted noise. "You realise that doesn't actually make me happy."
Death pointed its scythe at Harry, keeping it just far enough back that it was clear there was no threat intended in the motion. "You realise it makes me happy; I like it when people die." And then it gave a great cackle, the sound certain to cause a chill to any who heard it.
Harry snorted. "Right. Forgot who I was talking to." He rolled his eyes and picked at some dirt under one nail. "Can I request the death of the Dark Lord? If only for the freedom of other werewolves." Because, honestly, a huge part of him was more than willing to leave the humans to continue suffering, but his fellow werewolves were being used against their will, and that was...
"Merlin's bollocks, I really need to get over this saving people thing," Harry muttered to himself, and Death cackled again.
Once Death regained control of itself, it motioned with its scythe off to one side and a shadowed form breezed past them. "The Dark Lord is now dead. Anyone else, Master?" it asked, and Harry got the impression it was hopeful.
"Er..." He frowned in thought. Was there anyone else he wanted dead? Any other humans who had so wronged him or another werewolf that Harry was left thinking, 'I wish you would die'?
Harry paused for a moment, then started listing names, too many names, and shadows went speeding past them, marking the newly deceased. He was torn between disgust and vindication, but once he started, it was hard to stop. It didn't matter that killing off all the opposition wouldn't really help, in the end; he just wanted to serve out his anger on those deserving.
This was the danger of having an all-powerful servant who had no moral compunctions when it came to serving Harry's every whim.
Harry ran out of names long before he ran out of anger, and the silence echoed between them as the last few shadows sped past. He found his fist clenched tightly enough that too-long nails had bitten into the flesh of his palms, leaving blood to drip absently to the white ground.
"Was that all, Master?" Death finally asked.
Harry forced his hands to relax and looked down at them to watch as blood flowed easily over his palms, marking him as a murderer. "Unless you can bring the dead back to life so we can kill them again," he commented drily, deciding he didn't care about this newest stain on his soul.
Death was still for a long moment, the silence stretching between them, before it carefully said, "Bringing the dead back isn't within my skills, no, but shifting to another reality, one where those people still live, is."
Harry jerked his head up, staring at the cloaked form. "Oh?" he said, and there was an idea forming in his head, something terrible, yet soothing to the wolf prowling in the back of his mind.
"Yes, Master. Those who have wronged you can die over and over, even in those realities where you have never existed."
That didn't interest him, really, however... "You said I could return to life," Harry pointed out, staring at Death.
"Yes," Death agreed, and Harry got the impression it knew where he was going with this. That it approved, even.
"Could you send me to live in one of these other realities?" Harry requested. And the wolf inside him howled in pleasure, because it wanted to destroy those who had wrong him with its own jaws.
Death twirled its scythe like a muggle baton, fingers clicking with an easy rhythm. "I could," it agreed. "You would settle into the body of yourself as you are in that moment. Likely pre-Hogwarts age."
Harry nodded; there were plenty of people who had wronged him when he was a child, dead long before. "With my memories?" he asked, because that was important.
"Memories, abilities, curses," Death agreed.
Harry paused, brought up short, because he'd lived in the muggle world for much of his childhood, and there was no way he was going to chance turning anyone for revenge.
Death let out an odd clicking sound, like a tongue flicking against teeth. "I can change your curse, Master, give you control of the change." The scythe flicked out to one side and a portal opened just beyond the top of the curved blade. "You would never lose yourself to your wolf, and you won't be held to the phases of the moon."
"That's possible?" Harry asked, eyes going wide.
Death chuckled, icy and terrifying. "Master, I am Death; anything is possible when one plays in souls."
Harry grinned, a show of teeth that was more than a little feral. "Oh, I like that sound of that."
Death motioned towards the opened portal. "Then step forth, Master, and guide my scythe from the battlefield."
Harry did.
Stand Against the Moon Chapters:
1 - Procuring Freedom | 2 - Exeunt From Hell, Stage Left | 3 - Never Quite Perfect
4 - Drop the Shades | 5 - The Little Victories | 6 - Uneasy Alliance
7 - Determining Boundaries | 8 - International Acclaim | 9 - Age of Mystery
10 - Absence | 11 - Eye of the Storm | 12 - No Regrets
Nose to the Wind Chapters:
01 || 02 || 03 || 04 || 05 || 06 || 07 || 08 || 09 || 10
11 || 12 || 13 || 14 || 15 || 16 || 17 || 18 || 19 || 20
21 || 22 || 23 || 24 || 25 || 26 || 27
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Date: 20/10/14 01:34 (UTC)