"Avada Kedavra!"

Harry Potter opened his eyes to fog. Not feeling the familiar weight of glasses, he touched his face and found nothing. Dying had apparently rendered vision problems obsolete.

Rising to stand, he discovered modesty obsolete too. Though there was no one around to see him anyway, Harry still wished for clothes. Of course nothing manifested for him. He wasn't even standing on solid ground. Swirling white mist stretched endlessly onward whichever way he looked.

Far off, he thought he heard the sound of ripping flesh. There were other noises too, things too terrible for him to contemplate.

"Is this it, then?" he wondered.

Harry found himself not particularly devastated the afterlife was an endless expanse of nothing. His sacrifice ensured Voldemort was down another Horcrux. Others knew about Nagini. The Dark Lord was immortal no longer. Death had numbed him to everything else.

"Hardly, my boy. After all, to an organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."

Harry's heart clenched as he whirled around. Part of him had never expected to see Albus Dumdlebore again, but there he was, strolling out of the fog. Silver stars shimmered on his midnight robes. His long white beard and half-moon spectacles were the same as ever.

Harry's joy faltered as he further studied the man's face. The grandfatherly smile showed a little too much teeth. Blue eyes glittered like ice.

Never before had he wished more for a wand or something to cover his naked fear. "You're not Dumbledore, are you?"

The smile dropped from the false face. "No," the stranger said flatly, in Dumbledore's stolen voice. "I am not."

Harry considered running for his life. Then he remembered he had no life to protect and no idea what else lurked out there in the mist. "Take it off," he ordered with courage he did not have. "If you want to talk, do it as yourself."

"As you wish." Then the stranger peeled off Dumbledore's face, silver beard and all.

Harry's mind refused to recall what lurked beneath the false guise of Albus Dumbledore. He dimly remembering the Thing donning the mask of a moon-pale maiden, then that of a woman weeping silver tears, and then that of a lion-headed man whose breath reeked of decay. Finally the Thing shrouded Its features in a black robe. Squinting into the hood, Harry expected to see a skull or some shadowy suggestion of a face. He saw only blackness.

"You're-"

"One with many faces and many names," said the Thing in a voice neither male nor female nor anything in between. "One that cannot be escaped."

There was a shriek and a snapping sound. A skinny, red, child-sized arm flew out of the mist to land at their feet. Harry backed away in revulsion. His forehead twinged.

"Is that the Horcrux?" he breathed.

"Tom Riddle comes to us in pieces," the Thing intoned. "But still he comes."

A tentacle lined with a dozen glowing eyes reached out of the fog. It snatched the arm and vanished. Harry wondered if the... things would be fighting over him next. Then he thought of Hogwarts and all those that had already died there. What had happened to Fred? To poor little Colin Creevey? To Remus and Tonks?

"Does this mean Voldemort is dead or dying right now? My friends, they-"

"Will all come to me. They all do."

"You know that's not what I meant!" Harry exploded. Here he did not have magic or a wand, but he had fists. "No one should be suffering because of me! Hermione and Ron deserve to move on without me. The Weasleys should all die old and happy-"

The Thing grabbed his neck and lifted him high into the air. Though Harry no longer needed to breathe, his soul suffocated all the same as something cold and black burrowed toward its heart. He knew there would be nothing left of Harry James Potter if the Thing squeezed hard enough.

"The true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that are far, far worse things in the living world in dying."

It dropped Its mocking parody of Dumdlebore's voice as it continued. "You were mine sixteen years ago, Harry James Potter, until your mother meddled where she should not have. I could have claimed you anytime before now. The basilisk venom might have reached your heart sooner or the Dementors been a tad more determined. Do you know how many supposed prophecies recorded by your Ministry will go unfulfilled? Some of their intended subjects never survived the womb."

The Thing suddenly swelled in size. Harry found himself rising above the fog to glimpse abominations with a thousand eyes or a multitude of mouths.

"They never learn their prophecies have no power over who I choose to claim or when I choose to do so. They insist I must let them play their little games of fate and folly." The Thing could not laugh, but it sounded as amused as it could. "And then your mother attracted my attention to you. Were you unremarkable, I could send you after your loved ones. Were you mildly entertaining, perhaps I'd throw you back into your dull little life for a few decades longer or even grant you the mercy of oblivion."

Fourteen heads upon seven necks stopped squabbling amongst themselves to stare. Their molten eyes burned pits into Harry that chased even the Thing's chill from his soul. Other things followed their gaze and fixated upon him too.

"You have promise yet, Harry James Potter. Amuse me."

The Thing tossed him into the air like table scraps to a dog. Beings of ice and fire and other more terrible elements turned upon each other.

One of the fourteen heads snapped him up first. Down Harry fell into a raging inferno. The heat boiled away his flesh and charred his bones until there was nothing left but his heart.

He was pretty sure they consumed that, too.

Somewhere warm and dark, two hearts beat. One was strong and steady, the other slow and erratic.

The smaller, weaker heart shuddered once, twice. It did not beat again.

The death of one did not necessarily mean the death of the other. The fragile forms were small enough to be harmlessly absorbed and ignored by those in the world outside. Their mother could bare a healthy child without ever realizing its twin had died months before.

The still heart shuddered as sudden and unspeakable power course through it. The world held its breath.

Then the heart began again with a pulse as steady as its twins.

Their mother slept blissfully on. Their father turned away, uneasy. His dreams shifted from his three promised heads to nightmares of dancing dragons.

Holy shit, this thing is fun to write :D

Any questions or comments can be directed to the forum I set up just for this story. Find the link on my profile.