Mucking it Up
Harry Potter was too curious for his own good.
He had a bad streak, really, when it came to leaving well enough alone, proven by the sheer amount of life-threatening situations he had managed to get himself into throughout his Hogwarts career.
However, of all his blunders - and there were several which came to mind, namely his head-on attack of the Dark Lord on his lonesome at the ripe old age of eleven - he did not think he had ever put his foot in it quite so badly as he had just done a moment ago.
You see, after the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry had taken on a job as an Unspeakable because, if any job were bound to be interesting, it was the one which lacked a proper name, so secretive was the work which it entailed, and for which you had to swear an oath to secrecy before you would even be considered for the role.
And he’d been right, too.
The job was interesting, delightfully so, even. He had rather a lot of fun working with Saul Croaker on how to recreate the Time Turners he had destroyed with the battle he had waged in the Department of Mysteries in his fifth year, and he was only slightly abashed when he was shown around the ruined Hall of Prophecies, which had been toppled in that same battle.
Then, as per usual, he mucked it all up by sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.
It had been a day like any other, really, as Harry Flooed into the Ministry. There were too many people staring at him, and the walk to the elevator was much too long, but that was all par for the course. What really had him excited was that today was his first day in the Death Chamber, where the Veil of Death was housed.
The other parts of the Department of Mysteries had been fun enough, but this was the part he had been dying to see since he had first joined up - what was the secret to the Veil? Would he be able to hear Sirius again, perhaps hear his parents? Maybe he could even use the stone to pull them back through - wouldn’t that be wonderful?
It had been with a slight spring to his step that he entered the Department of Mysteries that day; he was obviously nervous, and more than a little sad that he knew enough people who had died for the Veil to mean anything to him, but he was tentatively hopeful.
Then, he actually entered the chamber, and it all went to pot.
He had heard Sirius like he had been hoping, but it turned out that he really shouldn’t have been hoping for that. Harry had come in closer to listen, thinking he could just about make out his mother’s voice from behind his godfather’s whispers, and then he had felt a sudden, irresistible urge to lunge forward.
It was rather like the feeling one could get when standing over a ledge that they ought to jump, only Harry actually obliged the subconscious demand. He lurched forward without meaning to, and felt himself pass through the silky smooth Veil before he had a chance to pull back - it felt rather like the material of the invisibility cloak, really.
Then, after that frivolous thought vacated his mind, he immediately began to panic. He had just gone through the Veil of Death, for goodness sake! The same one that killed his godfather, and why did he do it? Because a stupid voice in his head told him that he ought to? Absolutely astounding display of mental fortitude there, Harry.
Although, to say that he had gone through the Veil in pursuit of his godfather and mother, there was a distinct lack of other people in this space he had entered. Come to think of it, he wasn’t actually sure where he had been taken to - it certainly wasn’t King’s Cross, like it had been last time.
At that thought, what he had previously taken to be some sort of aether - he didn’t really know what other word he could use to describe the vast nothingness he had found himself enveloped in - began to morph into something more real.
Four walls shot up around him from nowhere, and a floor suddenly materialised underneath his feet. He hit the ground with a dull thud, landing in a heap on all fours. Trying to ignore the slight dizziness the fall had caused him, he attempted to get to his feet, only to hit his head on a very low ceiling. With a muttered curse, he resumed his previous seat on the floor, rubbing the dull pain on the top of his head, and deciding that it would be best to actually look around wherever it was he had found himself residing.
It only took a single look for him to realise where he had ended up; it was his cupboard under the stairs, spiders and all and with all the mementos he had since removed or simply lost since he moved into Dudley’s second bedroom; drawings of flying motorbikes, comic books he had stolen from Dudley, a sock full of loose change which he had managed to scrounge together over the years - they were all right as he had left them the day before he went to the zoo for Dudley’s eleventh birthday.
Briefly, Harry wondered why he had been brought here, but that was neither here nor there a moment later, as another figure suddenly materialised inside of his cupboard. Harry reached for his wand - a reflex he had never truly managed to grow out of after the war when startled - only to belatedly realise that it wasn’t there, and he was in the inbetween-place now, nothing could hurt him here.
Seeing that he wasn’t in any immediate danger, he took a moment to survey the figure. The first thing that stood out to him was that the person - thing? He couldn’t really tell - had no face, and that their body seemed almost formless, rippling subtly like the material of a cloak might do, but Harry had a feeling that the ‘cloak’ was actually their own body.
“Greetings, Master,” the figure said as that thought occurred to him, causing Harry no small amount of surprise. He hadn’t been expecting the figure to do anything really, much less speak. Nonetheless, he attempted to brush past his shock and his mind kicked into overdrive trying to determine the meaning of its words.
Master? Who was he the master of? Dobby and Kreacher immediately came to mind but, for some reason, he didn’t imagine that either of his house elves were accompanying him in limbo. He thought harder, and then it hit him; the whole Master of Death business, which he had tried his best to put behind him.
“Death?” Harry asked incredulously, and the figure let out a sound which might have been adjacent to a chuckle.
“Yes, Harry Potter, I am Death - or, if you are to use my proper name, Thanatos. Do you know why I am here, Harry Potter?” it asked. Slowly, Harry shook his head.
“Hmm. Can you truly think of nothing you have done which requires my intercession?” it tried again. Harry was halfway to shaking his head, but then stopped, the pieces suddenly clicking together in his head. He was the Master of Death, and he had given himself up - if not willingly, then without any external coercion - to the Veil of Death.
“Are you- are you going to send me back?” Harry stuttered, voice slightly choked. Obviously, he hadn’t intended to go through the Veil, but he had gone through in search of Sirius - somehow, the thought that he had gone through with the act, and he wouldn’t even be able to see his godfather one last time for his efforts was entirely too overwhelming for him to bear.
Would he be able to die a natural death at all, or would Thanatos keep sending him back over and over again, keeping him alive in perpetuity as everyone he knew moved on to beyond the Veil, where he could not reach them?
“No, Harry Potter. Not in the sense you are thinking, at least,” Thanatos said, cutting through his rapidly spiralling train of thoughts. Harry wanted to ask what that meant, but he had a feeling that he ought not to, so he remained silent. After a few seconds of silence, Thanatos continued.
“You will go back, but not to your own world. When you emerge from the Veil, it will be as someone else entirely - Harry James Potter will be a memory in your head, and nothing more.”
Harry felt like that was as much as he was going to get, but it was not enough for him. He needed more details, and he simply could not help but ask the question which escaped his lips.
“If not Harry Potter, then who will I be?”
Thanatos gave no verbal answer, but it did click its fingers, summoning an ornate hand-mirror, bejewelled in a golden frame. Harry took it, thinking that he didn’t care much for Death’s sense of grandeur, but nearly dropped it when he saw the face looking back at him in the mirror.
True to Thanatos’ word, Harry Potter was gone. In his stead was a completely unfamiliar man, but in possession of three eerily familiar characteristics; Sirius’ cascade of wavy black hair, Narcissa Malfoy’s icy blue irises and Bellatrix Lestrange’s hooded eyes.
Harry had more questions on the tip of his tongue, but before he could ask them there was a deafening crack, and his cupboard was split in twain, with Thanatos on one side and Harry on the other. Thanatos gave what might have passed for a parting salute before vanishing with a crack similar to that of Apparition, while Harry’s section of the cupboard went careening into the aether, falling, falling, falling…