I don’t really have a coherent thought about this, but in MOD!Harry fics where him being MOD is what helps him defeat Voldemort, I love Lily being the reason Harry didn’t die as a baby and her protection keeping him safe (as much as was possible) through most of his childhood and then the invisibility cloak Harry inherited from his dad being part of what continues to keep him alive as an adult
When Harry becomes the Master of Death, it doesn’t make him immortal, it just means his soul can’t cross over when he dies. Because of this, he will end up reincarnating until he can find a way to break this cycle. And as death can reach beyond and in all time, Harry can reincarnate into any being with a human soul at any point in history, past, present, or future.
Harry doesn’t know this at first though, nor does he remember later. But Death shows him this truth.
For a very brief period, Harry is able to look at anyone and see their past lives, so see how far back their souls go.
He’s surprised to see that everyone has been reincarnated. He can look at a person and see so far back, but he’d thought reincarnation was rare. But then when glancing at someone’s past life, he sees another person he recognises, as if they had once been that person before living however many future and past lives before becoming who they were now. In fact, now he was looking for it, lots of people seemed to share a soul-lineage. So he looks back to see that person’s first life….
And sees himself.
In fact, everyone he looks at, muggle or magical, he is their first life.
He has been/will be trapped, reincarnating, unable to move on for so long, that everyone that has been born was born with his soul. It’s not until he destroys himself in his cycle as Tom Riddle that he’s finally free.
The thing about MOD!Harry fics (my own included) that fucks me up is the subversion of a happy ending through what is in most cases seen as “a gift”.
Like immortality as a whole is a minefield of new traumas but also the infinite possibility of a happier tomorrow through the sheer amount of tomorrows being given, right? Most kids and adults have idolized the concept of immortality. Have held it close to their hearts for years and turned it into hope in its purest form. The idea that things will get better if they simply live long enough to see it.
But Harry. Harry who has seen what happens when that hope of a better tomorrow twists and morphs into the fear of an ending. Harry who has walked hand and hand with Death, and all but given up on his chance of a happier tomorrow because he has no time left. Harry who has only ever wanted one thing: a family. Whether it’s the one that died for him or the one that he forged through blood and pain and the hope that there will be something better at the end of this war he was thrown in the middle of so damn young. A thousand tomorrows aren’t a gift to him. It’s a curse, a damnation, the purest form of torture. The knowledge that he will remain as his family he has fought and bled and died for, the family that did the same for him, grows old and dies is the worst curse he can imagine.
The Hallows gifted him his own living Hell, and now Harry has infinite tomorrows to suffer for that.
And think back to the first movie when we heard this
And you go like this
Is it really that far a stretch to think that this dude, (he don't need a name, we all know who dis is)
Who comes from Norse Mythology, which already says Loki gave birth to a Horse, a Wolf and a Giant Snake, might have had a baby with MoD!Harry? (Yes! I went there. I am a Potterhead and Proud)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Place where you belong
Harry is the Master of Death and has travelled through multiple universes. He ends up in an universe where Tom Riddle was turned into a vampire, but it is different than many of the other ones he found himself in.
Meanwhile Tom is intrigued by this wizard appearing out of nowhere and wants to learn everything about him.
very belated contribution to @drarrymicrofic's prompt 'bloom'
cw: mention of the wizarding war/death
One might think, Hallows in hand, Harry’s first instinct would be to cull the Wizarding War’s dead. Instead, the Master of Death gardened: peonies, hyacinths, florid gardenias abound. Of course, the best bulbs could be found at Malfoy’s Greenhouse, and perhaps that was the real reason for Grimmauld’s new blooms.
The scene of Tom finding out that I’ve had in my head forever and is pushing me to write a full length fic for, lol.
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“How familiar are you with the Tales of Beedle the Bard?”
Tom scoffed. “A collection of children’s stories? That’s your proof?”
“Have you read them?” Harry asked, that damned smile unwavering.
Tom had indeed read them. In his third year, Avery had made a joke referencing a cackling stump, and the rest of Tom’s flock had laughed. Tom had chuckled along, of course – a spectacular actor even at thirteen – and gone to the library at his soonest notice to investigate whatever the hell Avery had been on about. He was remarkably disappointed, but he wasn’t about to be caught ignorant of any part of pureblood life, even fairy-tales.
“I have,” he replied simply, with a sneer. “I remain unimpressed by hopping pots and mythical fountains.”
“And the Tale of the Three Brothers? What did you make of that?”
Tom eyed him warily. “An undefeatable wand could be useful, granted. It’s almost a shame such a wand remains fictional.”
Harry’s smile grew. “All stories have a glimmer of truth to them, Tom.”
“You still haven’t explained how Beedle’s stories have anything at all to do with who you are.”
“Not all of his stories. Just the Three Brothers.” Harry twirled his wand between his fingers, tilting his head to one side. His startling gaze remained fixed on Tom. “Did you know, there are some who believe that the brothers existed, once. That they met Death, and received his gifts, and all but the Cloak were recollected shortly after.”
“People will believe anything, if they’re dim enough.”
“Oh, but the Three Brothers did exist, Tom. They had names, even. Antioch, the eldest, gifted the Elder Wand and killed in his bed. Cadmus, gifted the Resurrection Stone and driven mad by it, until he took his own life. And Ignotus, the youngest, gifted Death’s Cloak of Invisibility and the only one to live a long and happy life.”
“Fascinating,” Tom said dryly. “But as I said, I already know the story, thank you.”
Harry ignored him. “The three items were called the Deathly Hallows. Collect all three Hallows, the story says, and become the Master of Death.”
Tom had heard of this, too, though he had chosen Horcruxes as the faster and more reliable approach to securing himself protection from Death’s clutches. Harry apparently would disagree. Tom carefully quirked a brow to disguise his curiosity and prompted, “Immortality?”
Harry smiled again, rueful. “Something like that.”
“A lovely story, Peverell, but the fact remains that unless you have conclusive proof of these Hallows’ existence – something that no one on record has ever achieved - then the Tale of the Three Brothers is still nothing more than a fairy-tale.”
“It’s not the Hallows you need to find for your proof, Tom,” Harry said, mysterious as ever, and stood to leave.
“Seriously?” Tom stood too, incredulous. “That’s what you’re going to give me? May I remind you, Peverell, that you promised me answers, not conspiracy theories.”
“I’ve given you more than enough,” Harry laughed. “This next part you can find yourself.” And with that frustrating farewell, he flicked two fingers to his temple in a mocking solute, and sauntered out of the Common Room.
It was only after he’d left, of course, that Tom remembered it was well past curfew. He scoffed to himself. Then, with only the tiniest allowed moment of inward anger, he followed Harry out into the corridor. He had three brothers to find, after all.
It took Tom longer than he would be pleased to admit to find a family of brothers named Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus in Hogwarts’ genealogy section. He had little to go off, of course – no semblance of when these brothers may have lived, or a surname, or the names of their parents or children – but Tom was not in the habit of making excuses for himself. When he did find them, however, he might have laughed if he weren’t so bloody furious.
He barely managed to restrain himself from blasting a confringo into the Common Room entrance two weeks later, and then again into Harrison Peverell’s stupid, handsome, dastardly face when he found the other boy seated next to the fireplace, chatting up a storm with Quirinus bloody Lovegood, of all people.
“Leave,” said Tom. His magic crackled around him, dark and wild and savagely sharp, but he couldn’t bring it in himself to care.
Quirinus left.
So did every other student in the Common Room, for that matter, and when the final frightened second year had sprinted up the dormitory stairs, Tom flicked up a viciously overpowered privacy ward and set the full force of his glare upon Harrison James Peverell.
Harry, typically, looked completely unconcerned.
Tom wanted to kill him.
“Peverell.”
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” Harry grinned. “What can I do for you, Tom?”
“Antioch Peverell,” Tom snarled. “Cadmus Peverell. Ignotus thrice-damned Peverell. You didn’t think to mention that you were a direct descendant of the recipients of Death’s Hallows?”
Harry shrugged. “You figured it out, didn’t you? And wasn’t that more satisfying?”
Tom let the hold on his magic slip just slightly, and relished the slow, startled blink he received when a nearby table shattered into splinters.
“Did you inherit the Deathly Hallows, Harrison?” Tom asked, voice calm and dangerous.
“No,” said Harry. “The Elder Wand was lost to Antioch’s rival, remember?”
Tom closed his eyes and relaxed his shoulders, but Harry wasn’t finished, because of course he wasn’t.
“I put in the effort and collected them myself,” he continued, casually. “Unintentionally, mind you, but that’s Fate for you.”
Tom inhaled slowly through his nose. “You mean to tell me that you are currently in possession of the three most powerful magical artefacts of all time?”
“Yes,” said Harry.
“And therefore, you are the Master of Death.”
“If you’d like to call it that, yeah.”
“And are thereby immortal.”
“Essentially.”
“And yet,” Tom carefully opened his eyes once he was certain he would not cast an – apparently useless – Avada Kedavra upon the smiling boy on the couch. “You would have me believe that my quest for immortality is so unwise?”
That took the smile from Harry’s face. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees and hands held tightly together. “Tom, there is a very big difference between immortality gained through a pact with Death and immortality gained by splitting your bloody soul. One destroys your sanity, for starters – although,” he leaned back again, thoughtful, seriousness gone as soon as it came, “That one is arguable.”
“And if I killed you here?” Tom asked. He raised his wand. “If I shot the Killing Curse between your eyes right now, what would happen?”
Harry lifted one brow at him. The tip of Tom’s wand brushed his peculiar lightning bolt scar. The sensation seemed to amuse him, for some reason, eyes glittering with laughter.
“Well,” Harry said slowly, “I suppose Dumbledore would feel pretty vindicated, for one.”
Tom’s grip tightened.
“I can show you, if you’d like.”
His grip loosened again. The syllables of a curse slipped back from the tip of his tongue. “What?”
Harry shrugged. “I doubt you’ll truly believe me unless you see it.” Paying no heed to the wand still bare millimetres from his face, he stood and wordlessly dismantled Tom’s privacy ward as he wandered to the door, before turning back to Tom expectantly. “Coming?”
Helplessly, furiously, Tom followed.
The walk to the Room of Requirement was as quiet as things ever got around Harry, with the boy – the bloody Master of Death, supposedly, and wasn’t that just fantastic – humming some unrecognisable song under his breath. Tom wasn’t sure if he could open his mouth yet without casting an Unforgivable.
The discovery that the Come and Go Room was, in effect, an Untraceable room – even when Unforgivables were cast inside – was one Tom and his Knights had discovered in his fifth year. Tom had instructed Nott to implement the Cruciatus on Crabbe. He had done so, of course, ever Tom’s most faithful, though the Curse was pathetically weak. Once the tense few moments spent waiting for a squad of Aurors – or worse, Dumbledore – to come apparating into or outside the Room were past, Tom had taken great delight in showing him what a proper Cruciatus looked like.
Somehow, it did not surprise Tom that Harry knew of this one of the Room’s many qualities.
How old is he really, Tom wondered, but the thought only made him angrier. However long Harrison Peverell had lived was just more proof that he was unworthy of his power over Death – if, indeed, he possessed such a power.
Harry paced the customary steps next to the Room, and when the materialised door opened it revealed an expanse entirely unlike what Tom had expected. A duelling room, perhaps, would seem appropriate, or a simple table and chairs reminiscent of an interrogation. Instead, Harry and Tom walked into a cosy looking area filled with plush armchairs and couches, a roaring fireplace in one corner, and every surface decked out in familiar red and gold.
“The Gryffindor Common Room?” Tom asked, incredulous. How in Merlin’s name did Harry manage to keep surprising him?
Harry gave him a sheepish grin. “Yeah, I just asked for somewhere comfortable. The Room must have plucked this place as the comfiest from my memory.”
“I highly doubt the lions would let a snake into their den,” Tom said sceptically. “Even one so tame as you.”
For once, Harry didn’t rise to the bait. “No,” he simply agreed, “I doubt they would.”
Tom let it go. He had more pressing questions to be answered.
“How, precisely, do you intend to prove you can’t die?” He asked instead. “I would be happy to cast the Curse for you, only I don’t look forward to explaining away your corpse – though if I must, I will carry that burden.” He added a slow, dangerous smile for good measure.
Harry, of course, was not intimidated. He settled onto one of the many red and gold chairs next to the fireplace like he’d lived in this room all his life, and bounced up and down a few times to seemingly check its softness. Tom noted, with distant irritation, that it did appear softer than any of the armchairs in Slytherin, though whether that was true of the real Gryffindor furniture or an advantage of the Room he didn’t know.
“No need to burden your wand with that Curse, Tom,” Harry replied once he was satisfied, as though it would be Tom’s first time casting Avada Kedavra. “I’ll do it.”
“In case you had forgotten, Peverell, a man cannot destroy himself using a spell,” Tom drawled. “His magic won’t allow it.”
Harry smiled. This one was not particularly pleasant. “True enough. But the Elder Wand never fails – not even with this.”
With that, he drew from a pocket within his robes – and Merlin, someone get this boy a wand holster – a strange wand, darker and more slender than the holly and phoenix feather that Tom had seen him with all year. Its remarkableness couldn’t be seen or sensed without holding it, but Tom restrained a shiver regardless. The Death Stick. Jealous greed coiled in Tom’s stomach like the Basilisk with her prey.
Harry seemed unconcerned with Tom’s intense gaze – and perhaps rightly so, considering the reputation preceding the wand he was holding like a damned quill – and just smiled up at him again. This one held even less humour than the last.
“Do watch closely,” he said, before lifting the Elder Wand to his throat and saying, without hesitation, “Avada Kedavra.”
Green light exploded into the room, forcing Tom to throw an arm over his eyes as he stepped back. In a second, it was gone, and Harry lay limp in his obnoxiously coloured chair.
Or rather, Harry’s corpse. It was very, abruptly, startlingly clear that he was only a corpse, because Harry’s magic was gone. Where before Tom had sensed the quiet depths of Harry’s power like a constant flowing presence everywhere he went (however prone to tsunamis those depths may have been) there now was simply – nothing. The hum of Hogwarts and the comforting warmth of Tom’s own magic and an almost violent lack of anything else. Tom checked for a pulse anyway, dumb with shock, but felt no surprise when he found none.
He stood over Harry – no, over the corpse – for a moment longer. Then, his gaze fell down. Harry’s grip had slackened on the Elder Wand as the life left him, but it remained, caught between his limp fingers and the edge of his robes. It sat innocently enough. The most powerful wand in the world. Powerful enough to overcome the rules of magic and destroy its own master. What Tom could do with that wand…
And then, like the first inhale after near-drowning, Harry’s magic returned to the world with a fierce, overwhelming rush. Tom nearly staggered at the abrupt force of it, and it took only a second for Harry’s body to catch up and he sat straight with a strangled gasp. One breath, two, three, four, five, and Harry relaxed back into the comfort of that stupid, Gryffindor chair, every muscle loosening with exhaustion. He mustered just the strength to return the Elder Wand to its place next to his heart. Tom watched it go.
“How’s that for a demonstration?” Harry said, head tilted back and eyes closed.
Tom took a moment to reply. “Well, you certainly make a convincing argument.”
Harry laughed, though he didn’t open his eyes.
They sat in silence for several moments, minutes, hours, until Harry had caught his breath and Tom could think without the overwhelming desire to reach into Harry’s cloak and take the Elder Wand for his own.
“You said you found these… artefacts,” Tom said eventually. “How?”
“Believe it or not, they sort of fell into my lap,” Harry replied. “I disarmed the owner of the Elder Wand, who’d only gotten it themselves by disarming a man in a fit of panic. The Stone was given to me inside a gift from a mentor, of sorts. The Cloak was my father’s, I’ve no idea how he got it.”
“Without even trying, you collected the three most powerful items of all time,” Tom murmured.
Harry finally lifted his head and looked at Tom. “You know, immortality really isn’t all its cracked up to be.”
Tom nearly laughed. He nearly punched Harry. How disgustingly plebeian, that this boy could raise such a Muggle nature in him. “Isn’t it?”
“I’m so old, Tom.” Harry closed his eyes again, just for a moment. His features flickered with exhaustion and some bottomless emotion Tom might have called sorrow, if he knew such a thing. “I’m so, so old. I’m tired. I never wanted this.”
“You have all the time and power there is to have and yet you do nothing with it,” Tom hissed, reaching for that familiar fury within his soul rather than think on the twist in his chest at seeing Harry so… defeated. “You waste your gift and you expect sympathy?”
Harry leapt to his feet. Tom fought the relief at seeing those eyes fill with life – even if it came in the form of anger and frustration at Tom himself.
“You think I haven’t tried to change things?” Harry snarled back. “You think I haven’t tried to fix the problems of this pathetic world, you think I haven’t tried everything I could fucking think of to make things better? It never lasts, Tom! It all ends up the same, no matter what I do, what I change-” He cut himself off with a curse, and looked away. His next words seemed to be only for himself. “This world, these people. They’ll do anything for destruction. It always ends the same, ends the same.”
Tom watched him mutter to himself. He wondered, just for a moment, if Harry would show him one day – those past attempts, the worlds Harry had seen.
“Then perhaps,” he said quietly. “You may let someone else try.”
Harry stopped. For a second Tom thought he had pushed too far, but Harry simply shook his head. The anger had left him, there and gone, as all of his emotions seemed prone to doing.
“I wouldn’t wish this existence on anyone, Tom,” he said, smiling that dead man’s smile again. “Not even you.”
“But you would wish it on yourself?”
“Maybe I’m a masochist.”
Tom scoffed. “Unlikely.”
“No, perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it’s something else.” He sat down again. The red and gold swallowed him up, making even his dark skin look pale. “You know, even with the Elder Wand, you need to mean the Killing Curse for it to work, Tom.”
Tom stared at him for a moment, smiling and weary and looking, all of a sudden, very, very, old. He wondered how Harry had discovered that the Elder Wand allowed the use of Avada Kedavra on its master. He wondered how many other methods Harry had tried, before that one, and after. He wondered when he gave up trying.
“So this is the Master of Death, then?” Tom asked, and finally sat in an adjacent chair. He was right – they were definitely more comfortable than the ones in the Slytherin Common Room.
Harry spread his arms. “This is him.”
Tom let out a quiet hum. “And how would the Master of Death like a glass of firewhiskey?”
Harry blinked. He blinked again. He gave Tom a considering look from the tips of his toes to the curls of his hair. Then he laughed, and said, “Race you to the kitchens?”
Tom grinned, less false than true – which, for Tom, was about as good as it got. “Done,” he said, and sprinted, in a very un-Dark Lord-like manner, out the door, Harry hot on his heels.
The dream of immortality had not left Tom’s psyche, but perhaps it could lay in slumber, just for that night.
ahh, i’m actually continuing it! which is terrible because i can’t keep track of what i’m writing anymore ! !
please join us for an evening of mod!harry struggling to differentiate how to take care of a plant vs a human being
