Son of Magic

Chapter 8

November 27th, 1941

As dawn broke through the twinkling night sky, casting all the bright stars away, Death started feeling a sense of foreboding crawling it's way up his gut. It itched and nagged at him throughout the early morning, agitating him to the point where he resigned himself to dealing with it.

He didn't necessarily care about what was going to happen—didn't care a wit about it, really. It wasn't his task to care about the happenings and failings of the creatures of Earth. His only chores—and his only reason for existence—was to keep the balance between the living and the dead, and to serve as a bridge between the two realms. Chores which he has performed admirably since the beginning of time.

So, the sole reason why he'd bother with looking into this foreboding signal he was receiving was simply because he wanted to quiet down the doom-and-gloom instincts that were going haywire in him. Which, true enough, wasn't altogether unusual in these times. What with wars of the near-apocalyptic variety that were currently underway and causing all sorts of mayhem in the world.

So much useless death and carnage, Death sighed irritably.

Humans would never change, despite how 'evolved' they may think themselves to be.

It's always about power and violence. Well... maybe sometimes it's about sex too, but even a large chunk of that was about power and violence.

Bleh, stupid mortals. Always adding onto his workload and making everything difficult for him.

Alright, fine. Maybe workload was stretching it a tad bit, but being the gateway to the other side wasn't exactly all fun and games. It lost its novelty way back in BCE; about a hundred millennia ago, give or take.

He wished, and not for the first time, that he could simply eradicate all those insufferable humans. Yes, please note the general term used. Magical or not, he'd like to see them all dead.

Things were so much more peaceful before their creation.

But Harry wouldn't like such a scenario. Sure, if everything was shot to hell again, he'd probably be willing to give up on them, but he wouldn't be happy about it, which only means that Death wouldn't get any rest for a very, very, very long time.

Right, okay. Back to the issue at hand. The issue being that an occurrence of the majorly wicked variety was about to happen that day, and not the good sort of wicked, but the sort of wicked that sent a lot of souls packing to the realm of the dead.

The location where the wickedness was going to take place was a non-issue.

All his prickling and burning senses were pulling him towards Hogsmeade, the quaint wizarding village close to Hogwarts. He was also getting four smaller pings from other locations in Britain.

There wasn't anything significant about today's date that he could remember. There weren't any battles scheduled that warranted the prickling sensation down his spine—the one warning him of the dreadful possibility that a considerable number of souls might be about to pass through him.

In the other two or three times that he's lived through the year of 1941, nothing ever happened on the 27th of November, of that he was certain—almost completely certain, that is.

Still, whatever was happening, was going to happen much too close to Harry...

Not that he was worried about Harry, because he wasn't. Harry was a big boy and didn't need Death to protect him. He had a back-to-life guarantee on his soul and body that made worrying a daft and absurd notion.