Chapter Text
Harry’s personal thoughts on dying were rather conflicted. On one hand, he was dead, his fight was over, and he could now move on to be with his family. On the other hand, he thought it would be a bit…more. Not that he was complaining. It wasn’t his place to say what the afterlife looked like. He just thought a basement, of all places, was a rather odd afterlife indeed.
The space was glaringly white and pristine. The most interesting thing that he could see was the slightly not-white shadows.
He walked around the space curiously, glancing up the stairs that faded into nothing, the high windows that showed nowhere, and the space that was empty…except that was wrong. There was a mirror in the corner. A large gaudy thing with gold designs along the frame and two massive dragon claw feet holding it upright. When Harry approached it, he saw the glass was tarnished and dark.
Lifting his hand, he poked the smokey surface with a finger curiously. “Huh, no reflection.”
“A memory of a mirror has no image to show when nothing is remembered,” Harry startled at the voice that seemed to come from nowhere and yet everywhere at the same time.
He whirled around eyes darting to every grey shadow and bright white surface, but he saw nothing. “Who’s there?” He called out.
“You know who we are,” the voice replied, and suddenly one of the grey shadows moved. At first, Harry had no idea what he was seeing. It looked like an amorphous blob of light and shadow; he saw thousands of eyes, countless terrible wings and claws, scales and fins and feathers, textures and angles and movement that were impossible. He saw something in the shape of horrible nothingness.
He saw for just a moment and his head hurt so awfully he closed his eyes, but even behind his lids he could see parts of the thing that was and wasn’t. When he opened his eyes, all he saw was a man. “Apologies, we sometimes forget your mortal minds are comprehensible. We shall not let it happen again.”
“Comprehensible?” Harry murmured confused as he blinked back the bright spots in his vision, taking in the older thin man. He had black hair slicked back, a thin drawn face that looked as if the skin was draped over the bone of a skull rather than muscle, and dark eyes from corner to corner.
There was no white, no pupil, just darkness that seemed as if there were two great big gaping holes in the man’s face that reflected no light. In fact, it seemed to suck in the light rather than reflect it. The space he stood in seemed darker for it.
“Your mind comprehends,” the man said, his voice deep and rumbling, almost as if it was echoing around the empty space and not at the same time. “We are incomprehensible. Incompatibility such as this tends to cast mortal minds asunder and apart. As we said, we shall not forget again.”
“Alright,” Harry replied in confusion, rubbing the back of his hand across his aching eyes. “Thanks?” He didn’t quite know what he was thanking the man for, but it seemed like the polite thing to do.
“You are welcome,” the man didn’t sound very welcomed. He didn’t sound very much of anything at all, now that Harry thought about it. It was as if he was speaking words he had no understanding of. Emotionless and bare of any inflection. The man turned his gaze around the room – or at least Harry thought he did, it was hard to tell with his eyes being empty voids – and he felt sudden relief from not having the full attention of whatever thing stood before him. It may look like a man, but Harry was certain it was anything but. “We did not think you would remember this place.”
“I don’t?” Harry said uncertainly, turning once more to take in the room. He didn’t think he had ever been in a basement before. A dungeon many times, but a basement? He’d think he would remember. “Where are we?”
“Ah,” the man said, turning his awful empty gaze back on him. “Remember without remembering. It is a strange thing you mortals tend to do.”
“I’ve been here before?” Harry asked, choosing to ignore the ‘mortal’ comment once again. It was best he not dwell on such thoughts at the moment. Being killed by Voldemort was more than enough of a crisis to deal with, and he could only deal with one at a time. He didn’t have the capacity to deal with another.
“Yes,” the man answered simply. Harry waited for him to elaborate but he never did. He just continued to stare at him with those dark eyes.
“Who are you?” Harry asked hesitantly after a long moment of extremely uncomfortable silence.
“You already know the answer to that question.”
“I really don’t,” Harry mumbled annoyed, looking at the floor before looking back at the man. The thing just kept staring at him with no expression, and Harry wondered if the man could even make an expression if he tried. Muscle was required for that, and Harry very much doubted there was a single facial muscle under his brittle and wrinkled skin. It was during this observation that Harry realized that he did know this man. He’d known all along, but just didn’t want to believe it. “Death!”
It made sense. He had died in that forest after all. Of course, Death would be here to greet him. He just didn’t know where here was.
“So, I really am dead then.” Death inclined his head but said nothing. “And we are where?” He asked after another long uncomfortable silence.
“We are at the place in which you came into this world,” Death replied, tucking his hands behind his back. It was just then that Harry realized his arms seemed almost too long for his body, as if Death didn’t quite know the right proportions of a human man.
“I was born in a basement?” It wasn’t the oddest place for his mum to give birth, but it was up there. He’d thought he’d been born at Saint Mungo’s or in a bed at least.
“No,” Death said, cutting off Harry’s rambling thoughts. “You were born in a bedroom, on the seventh floor of Dragonstone Castle on the island of Dragonstone, in Blackwater Bay, on the continent of Westeros. Not here, in the basement of a cottage in Killarney, off of Lough Leane, in Ireland, on the continent of Europe.”
“But you just said – nevermind,” Harry cut himself off, shaking his head in aggravation. “I’ve never heard of the continent of Westross, or Dragonstones or whatever you called it.”
“Westeros, Dragonstone,” Death corrected, and Harry felt himself flush. He felt like he was back in school with a particularly difficult professor. “It is unlikely anyone here would have spoken of it. Westeros is not here.”
“Not here? Where is it then?”
“Through the mirror,” Death tilted his head towards the mirror that stood behind him and Harry turned to look at it once more. It wasn’t as tall as the Mirror of Erised, and was a great deal thinner, but it somehow looked…more.
“Through the – nevermind. Can we get back to the part about me being dead?” Harry asked again. One crisis at a time, he just needed to deal with one crisis at a time.
“Of course,” Death acquiesced, but didn’t elaborate as usual.
“Right…” Harry wasn’t exactly sure what it was about his death he wanted to discuss, but now that he was back on the topic, he realized that they definitely needed to discuss it. Because if this basement was going to be his afterlife, he had questions. “Well, I guess, um…is this…am I supposed to stay here forever, or do I, you know…get to move on?”
“Move on?” Death asked, their borrowed lips twitching in an odd way that almost looked like amusement, but he didn’t seem to get it quite right. It just made Harry feel increasingly uncomfortable.
“You know, to where people go when they die,” Harry said, waving his hand around in several quick circles before it dropped limply to his side. “Or is that not a thing?”
“It is a thing, as you say,” Death replied, dark gaze following him as he started to pace about the empty space. Harry felt like he should be doing something, anything, but there was nothing to do. He really wanted to take a walk. “The afterlife does indeed exist, several in fact.”
“Oh,” Harry turned his gaze back to the thing that stood before him, pretending to be a man. “Can I choose? Because I’d love to go to wherever my parents are, if that’s alright.”
“Which parents?” Death asked, tilting its head. He did it too quickly, as if his thin long neck could no longer bear the weight of his head.
“What do you – I mean, are my mom and dad not in the same afterlife?” Harry blinked widely at them, stumbling over his words as he halted his aimless pacing.
“Which parents?” Death only repeated, head still tilted.
Harry stared at him for a long moment, brows furrowed as he thought on the question. “James and Lily Potter?” He asked after a while, the names coming out hesitant as if he was suddenly uncertain those were their names at all.
“Ah, yes,” Death replied, straightening once more. “James Potter and Lily Evans do reside in the same afterlife, along with Sirius Black, Nymphadora Tonks, Remus Lupin, and Harry Potter.”
“What? I don’t – are they here?”
“No,” Death blinked for the first time since the encounter. “As I said, they share the same afterlife. They are not here.”
“But you just said…never mind. Can I go there, to where they are?” Harry went back to his pacing, confused and aggravated. He felt like they were almost having two complete separate conversations.
“No, you may not,” Death continued before Harry could interrupt. “James and Lily reside in an afterlife you have no access too as you were not born here. If you would like to reside in the afterlife of Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia Martell, you may do so.”
“Who?” Harry asked, starting to get angry. Nothing Death said seemed to make any sense. He thought dying would give him clarity, not more questions.
“Your parents.”
“My parents were James and Lily Potter!” Harry shouted, his voice seeming to both echo and not in the small space.
“Yes,” Death replied with a small nod, and Harry felt himself deflate little at the affirmation. At least something finally made sense. “Your second parents were James Potter and Lily Evans.”
“What the hell do you mean my second parents?” Harry could feel his teeth grinding. The little bit of confirmation he had received seemed to be taken away from him again just as quickly.
“The ones that adopted you and changed you to fit into Harry Potter.”
“What does that even mean?” He sighed explosively; hands fisted at his side.
Death was silent again for a long while. The silence stretched between them and Harry refused to be the one to break it. But his resolve began to crumble after what felt like a small eternity pass. “Please explain what you mean by ‘adopted’ and ‘changed’. I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“We see,” Death blinked again, the action stilted as if he were a puppet whose puppeteer had just remembered that blinking was a thing people did. “Very well, we shall start at your beginning, if you are amiable.”
“Yes!” Harry nearly shouted, body flooded with relief, making his limbs feel both incredibly heavy and light at the same time. “I am amiable, please explain.”
“You were born in a bedroom, in apartments on the seventh floor of Dragonstone Castle on Dragonstone, in Blackwater Bay, on the –”
“You already said that part,” Harry cut him off, digging his fingers into the corner of his eyes to stave off the headache that wasn’t really there. It was at that moment that Harry realized that he couldn’t quite feel anything at all. Not even the ache in his knee he’s had since he was fourteen and was sitting on the bed in the infirmary while Aurors questioned the real Alastor Moody that sat a few beds down. “Can we skip to the bit about me and this mirror and how I ‘came into this world’?”
Death nodded his head in that stilted jerky way of his and continued. Harry breathed a sigh of relief, believing for a moment that he had angered the being. It wouldn’t do to piss of Death when he was dead. “Just after your first birthday, your birth mother used Rhoynish magic to force a mirror to turn into water and connect it to this one. She had intended to send your brother through the mirror as well, but was stopped before she could complete the ritual.”
“My brother…” Harry whispered to himself; gaze fixated once more on the mirror as he walked around Death to stand in front of it. It showed no reflection, it showed absolutely nothing at all. The memory of a mirror, he remembered Death calling it. “I came through a mirror?”
“Would you like to see?” Death asked him. Harry would think it was curiosity, but the question was asked with what sounded like no interest at all. Harry nodded his head as if in afterthought. He wasn’t certain what exactly he had just agreed to, but he needed to know. “Very well.”
And the room suddenly changed.