The Boy Who Kept Dying

Chapter 15 (Death Meets the family)

A/N: Not my story! Original avalible on ao3

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It was a couple of weeks before Harry's birthday when Death appeared in his room at Privet Drive looking very guilty of something. Harry's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "How are you?" He asked in a sing-song tone when Death didn't immediately come to sit with him or start speaking.

"I'm fine, and you?" Death shuffled his feet a bit before sitting awkwardly on the bed beside Harry.

"Alright, out with it," Harry's patience was running thin, and he was also a bit amused at his lover's antics. "What did you do, and how mad am I going to be?"

"Well...I might have (indistinct mumbling)."

"Uh-huh, yeah, I completely understood what you just said," Harry said, his words dripping with sarcasm.

"I may have sent one of my mares to visit someone..." Death began but paused when he saw the confusion on Harry's face. "Also, called Night-Mares, they cause bad dreams."

"There's a being that causes bad dreams?" Harry asked incredulously.

"Among other things," Death nodded with a dark smirk. "They don't cause all bad dreams, but that is one thing they can do."

"And you sent one of these mares to someone...Might I ask who?" Harry raised an eyebrow, realizing it was probably someone on Death's 'List.'

"Umbridge," Death said with pride instead of regret in his eyes.

"Uh huh, and why are you coming to me about this now?" Harry wasn't too sure what he felt about Death causing nightmares for someone, but also couldn't bring himself to feel sorry for the evil b-witch.

Death's lips tweaked up just a little in relief when Harry didn't seem angry at him. "When my mare reported in last, he mentioned Umbridge had recently acquired a most interesting locket."

Harry sat up straighter at that and grabbed Death's hand. "Really, is it the locket? Where did she get it?"

"It wasn't like my mare could have a nice conversation with her over tea," Death rolled his eyes, but instead just pulled a golden locket out of his pocket. "I sent an imp to steal it once the mare told me about it. It's definitely the one we've been looking for."

Harry quickly pulled the basilisk fang from the loose floorboards under his bed. He wasn't about to change his family doing anything with it if they decided to go on an anti-magic rampage again. "Well, what're we waiting for?"

Death held a hand up. "You can't just stab it here in your relatives' house. The stupid wards would have the Order down on us in seconds."

"Oh right, can you shift me somewhere remote?"

Death got a positively devilish gleam in his eye. "I can do you one better than that," he said reaching for Harry.

"I'm definitely not going to like this," Harry groaned as he was engulfed in a dark cloud.

Harry looked around the comfortable but old-fashioned sitting room he stood in as the cloud around him and Death dissipated. "Where...?" he asked before he heard a crash and running steps. He had his wand pulled and trained on his least favorite professor before he even registered the wand pointed back at him. Death just chuckled and sank elegantly into one of the armchairs in the room, looking between the two men in a stand-off.

"Potter, Osiris, what are you doing here?" Snape asked without taking his eyes off of either or lowering his wand. "Come to kill me to avenge the old man?"