Story Time with Uncle Death
So Death from “Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus” gets pretty chatty in a few side fics and actually tells some stories and I thought as long as I’m posting things on tumblr I should probably dig them up and put them in the same place for ease on the reader’s part.
This first one is from “Bright Eyes” where Death shows up in the material world a few years early and because of circumstances ends up raising Lily himself: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11793117/1/Bright-Eyes
Specifically in chapter 2, narrated by a panicking and desperate Regulus Black who has gone to the last possible source for aid.
“Tell me a story, dad. About the time when you were a god emperor.”
On the edge of the Riddle mansion, the dilapidated home of the dark lord’s muggle father, neither the girl nor the man seemed particularly concerned with their surroundings. Evans worked quietly, but with an ease and confidence that was out of place given their task, setting his fingers on the ground and letting out a pulse of magic that caused the wards to flare and shudder.
The girl leaned over curiously bright green eyes watching the man’s magic with unguarded fascination.
The mansion was a cursed and forgotten place. It was overrun with vines, the stone work decayed, and an aura of malevolence exuding through every shadow and every broken window. Looking at it Regulus could very easily remember that the young Tom Marvolo Riddle, before he had ever taken the name Voldemort, had killed every single person he’d found inside.
If muggles could leave ghosts then the place would have been flooded with them.
“You’ve heard most of my stories already, Pronglset.”
Suddenly the wards were dancing, untangling themselves rapidly, until the golden threads of magic lay limp and disintegrated back in the air, Evans watching them with rapt attention. With that, they stood, and made their way into the mansion.
“Tell me something new.”
“Something new?” For a moment he said nothing, he took a step into the house, peering inside with those green eyes and perhaps seeing everything that Regulus himself could not see. When it seemed as if there were no more traps in the front door they stepped in.
“Have I ever told you about the heretic prince who almost became a god himself?”
“No, that definitely sounds like something interesting that I would remember.”
There was something unnerving in the girl’s casualness and even in the man’s, as if they were removed from the danger and that no trap the dark lord could possibly devise could harm them, as if they were on a separate plane entirely from Regulus.
The walls were rotted with mold, everything was dark, the only light from the lumos of Regulus’ wand and a bright dancing light in Evans’ hand. The place smelled of things long since destroyed and in fifty more years it might be completely overtaken by vegetation.
They walked as a group, through the dining room with places still set for dinner, through the kitchen, the living room, all aspects of the house which still had those small signs that someone had been in these rooms not expecting to die.
These muggles had lived that last day of their lives without any idea of what was to come.
“He was the eldest son, the prince, of a thousand-year-old clan that lived in the deep near uninhabitable deserts on a planet called Persephone. For many years my people and his had little to do with each other, there was no glory in battle in the deep desert and they paid little attention to the name of the outsiders governing the more fertile land.”
As they moved upstairs, past yellowed pictures in frames, and towards the bedrooms Regulus found himself listening to these words with half an ear and wondering what they meant. They sounded more like a fable, than a life, but the way Evans was talking about it…
It was as if he truly wasn’t human at all and that Harry Evans was only a cheap mask that he wore for a few years in England.
“But then they did,” the girl said for him, walking up the wood of the railing, balancing on the balls of her feet with a grace no human could possess.
“Yes, then they did,” the man paused for a moment, letting those words hang in the air before continuing, “His name was Erised, a long since forgotten play on words in a long since forgotten language, one which meant the greatest desires that shatter us. He was born in an era when my people decided to educate the desert heathens and so he was among the first there to hear about the god emperor named Death. And he chose not to believe in him.”
“Isn’t that a little counterintuitive though? Something will exist or not whether or not you choose to believe in it; even gods,” the girl paused at the top of the banister, perching like a bird, placing her head into her hands and grinning her fox’s grin, “I don’t think I would mind, whether or not I was or wasn’t believed in.”
Evans stopped them at the top of the stairs, holding out a hand, and for a moment his eyes closed before flickering open. Without any warning they turned left, towards the master bedroom, “Some say that gods are only as powerful as they are worshipped. But you’re right, I didn’t mind, but this isn’t a story about me.”
“Erised, as a desert prince, was sent to be educated in the city after contact had been made. He was very bright but more than that he was charismatic. So much so that he almost glowed with it, that people could hardly dare to look at him for all his light.”
On the word light Evans opened the doors into the room, sending out a pulse of magic once again, this time one more powerful that shattered the wards in one fell stroke.
And as the light cast shadows on Harry Evans’ face it seemed more than clear that there was nothing human in him.
“And because of that charisma he was able to do what no human being had done before or since.”
“What was that?”
“He was able to challenge a god,” the man stepped inside the bedroom, walked over to a simple wooden box on the vanity and opened it, staring at a line of polished rings.
“A single man, in only ten years, launched the most successful revolution the empire had ever seen. And they believed in him, as they had never believed in anyone before, they cursed his name and prayed to it in the same breath. He took his home world back, then the next, and the next, and marched his way to the throne of the god emperor.”
The man lifted a single plain ring from the box, one with a dark stone that looked as if it could have been plucked from a riverbed, and as he stared at it there was something dull and flat in his expression.
“And I believed in him,” for a moment the man just stood there, staring at the ring, neither giving it to Regulus or setting it aside.
“But he was Erised, my heart’s most crippling desire, and he was mortal. He made it only a quarter of the way to my doorstep and so I never did get to meet him face to face.”
He slipped the ring on his finger and finally turned his attention to Regulus, “We’re all done here.”