A/N: Um… It just sort of happened. Gift Fic for Lokilette because I torture her with horrible grammar. Someone has to do it.

Beta Love: The Dragon and the Rose, Dutchgirl01

[Summary] Gellert Grindelwald and Albus Dumbledore had a plan that spanned decades. Becoming the Masters of Death was their mutual goal. Now, it was finally in their grasp—but maybe they should have read the fine print first. (AU/Crackfic/something about cheese)

Flying By the Seat of My Beard

"Thees rrr rrrly gud," Albus said as he attempted to tackle a rather large lemon drop. "Yu shud trry them."

"Yes, yes, for the greater good, I know, Albus," Gellert muttered, waving his hand at him dismissively, not even bothering to look up. "Doing Dark Wizard things here, Albus. The least you could do is look at least somewhat sanctimonious and tortured about your past."

"Ath te same tume?" Albus replied with a pucker.

"Yes, at the same time," Gellert sighed irritably. "What kind of dynamic would we have if we couldn't be both sanctimonious and angst-ridden or sanctimonious and emotionally unavailable at the same time?"

"Nurmel?" Albus offered bemusedly.

"Psh, whatever," Gellert muttered, slapping the end of of his wand against his face. "Someone has to be plotting out grandiose ideas for taking over the world here, Albus. Just like I do every night. You just work on being the doddering loveable fool who everyone thinks can do no wrong and has everyone's best interests at heart, and we'll be the masters of Death sooner rather than later."

Albus continued to enthusiastically to work on the rather oversized lemon drop.

"You spike your brother's firewhisky so he'd fall in love with an annoying Muggle and get himself out of our hair?" Gellert asked, pausing only to look up at Albus.

Albus sputtered, losing his lemon drop in his beard. The hairs of his beard shuddered and grew longer while turning paler. Dumbledore sighed, shaking his head. "I tried, but he didn't end up looking at her right after drinking it."

"What, then," Gellert asked, "did he happen to look at?"

"One of his goats," Albus admitted.

Gellert's eyebrows got lost in his hair. He tapped his wand to his lips as his brows furrowed. "Oh well, that still worked out anyway. Maybe he'll end up in Azkaban for improper behaviour with goats."

"That seems pretty long-range for a plan, Gellert," Albus said, tapping the timeline chart his friend had literally plastered the wall with.

"That is why it will work," the blond wizard replied confidently. "By the time it all works out, we will be at the height of our power and no one will be the wiser."

Albus shook his head. He pointed to the diagram Gellert was working on. "How are we going to get that from the Potters?"

"Nothing short of a miracle," Gellert replied with a sigh.

"And how exactly do you plan to make this happen?" Albus asked, tracing the lengthy chain of events with his finger.

Gellert smiled smugly. "This is why I have a holocaust cloak."

"Oh, do get up, Albus," Gellert sighed as he sat on the side of the stone sarcophagus. "It's time."

Albus sat up from his "grave" and yawned. "I have a horrible kink in my neck now."

"Well you have been "dead" for over two years now," Gellert replied, fingering the Resurrection Stone in his fingers.

Albus stroked his beard and a grin broke across his face as he found the stashed tin of lemon drops hidden in his beard. "Ah, it seems they didn't deprive me of these. How fortunate." He fingered the familiar wand that had been stolen, found, re-won, and returned to his "grave."

"And the wand makes three," Gellert said with a satisfied as he pulled out a bundle of shimmering magical cloth— the invisibility cloak.

"You've been quite busy, Gellert," Albus commented.

"I spent weeks digging for the stone in the centaur-infested woods, Albus," Gellert replied with a scowl. "You could have at least put a stronger tracing spell on it so I didn't have to recite Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump and sniff it out while transformed into a rabbit in order to find it."

Albus looked innocent. "You found the trace. No one else did. Surely this met your expectations?"

Gellert curled his lip. "We have them all. That is what matters. Let's summon Death and become the masters of death."

Albus clasped Gellert's wrist. "Not just yet, Gellert. I really need to use the loo, and I absolutely must have one of those cherry tarts from Aunt Matilda's Corner Bakery."

Gellert let out a pained sigh. "Fine, but only because you've been dead for a whole two years."

Albus grinned. "Mostly dead, my dear Gellert. Mostly dead."

"So, mortals," Death greeted as he plunked his scythe down on the ground, scratching idly at his skull-face with long bony fingers. "How may I assist you today in conquering the universe and making some ridiculously grandiose debacle of misinterpretation?"

"We would be the masters of death!" the two wizards said together.

"Oh?" Death seemed interested, if only slightly. Discerning emotion from a talking skull was quite a challenge, after all. "And how, may I ask, do you suppose that such a fine thing might happen?"

"We have the Deathly Hallows!" Grindelwald announced proudly. "We shall become the masters of Death."

"Hn, well," Death replied, tapping his bony fingers against his skull-face. "I suppose you might think that, but a great many have come before you claiming to be the true 'Master of Death' and each of them were proven to be quite mistaken. You could be wasting my valuable time, just like all the others."

"We have the Elder Wand," Albus told him, brandishing the wand.

"And we have the Resurrection Stone and the Cloak of Invisibility," Gellert said, showing them.

Death ran his skeletal hand idly along the sharp blade of his scythe. "So, now you plan on what? Waving them in my face? Well, consider me properly taunted, gentlemen."

"You will do as we say!" the two wizards insistently chimed together.

Death stared at them silently, seeming to evaluate the aged yet triumphant wizards before him. "Hn," he replied. "Not even dinner and a movie first? Just cut right to the chase? Fine. Wear and wield the items and let's get this farce over with."

The two wizards exchanged glances and shared the items between them, refusing to let one or the other have all the items at once. They brandished the items together. "You cannot turn us against each other. We will not fall for that trick. We stand together as the true masters of Death."

"Be that as it may," Death said, "the items must be worn. Otherwise, well, I do have other more pressing things to attend to. One cannot be too negligent about their dental care, after all. Where would I be without my teeth? You really should take a lesson in that, Albus. All that hard candy can't possibly be good for your enamel. It took me almost four decades to find a dentist who I could really trust. Do you have any idea how utterly horrifying your teeth get after four very long decades without a professional cleaning? No? Just me then?" Death shook his head, shrugging.

Seeing that the wizards were still staring determinedly at himself, Death let out a long sigh. "Are the two of you quite sure you want to go through with this? I'd highly recommend going out and living life for awhile first, maybe ordering a pizza, reading a few good books, going snorkeling off the Great Barrier Reef—"

"We'll have plenty of time for all that useless drivel after you finally acknowledge that we've won," Gellert snapped, eyes narrowing at the skeletal figure before him.

Death spread out his hands in a fan in a placating gesture. "Just attempting to give you a way out, you know. Never let it be said that Death isn't a fair bloke. You really should be quite grateful. I am not precisely required to be so generous. Must be my sense of fair warning… or was that fair play? Bollocks, I can never seem to get that one right. Ah, no matter. So you both want to get right down to it. Is that right?"

The two wizards glared back at him in a clearly annoyed manner.

Death clapped his hands together and pulled out a parchment from his wispy, black robes. "I, Death, do freely acknowledge you, Gellert Grindelwald, and Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, the gatherers of the Deathly Hallows to be the great masters of death. May your reign continue until the skies burn, until the last star fades away, until the universe itself implodes in a massive cataclysm. Please sign on the lines as indicated."

"What?"

"The lines," Death repeated very slowly as if the two wizards were but simple-minded little children, pointing to the lengthy parchment in question. "You could not sign. Just hand me the Hallows and go on your way." He extended a bony hand. "By all means, do read the whole thing. Might take you awhile though. Are you sure you don't want to just give me the Hallows?"

The two wizards immediately used their wands to sign the parchment.

Death took a moment to eye the aged wizards before him. "Quite eager to get started, aren't you? Have many grand plans in mind, gentlemen?"

"Psh, we just vanquished Death," Grindelwald sighed in relief. "At long last. All our plans will no longer be distant dreams of untold glory.

"I suppose congratulations are in order," Death said, pulling a rather large tome out from seemingly nowhere. He thrust it into their joined hands, pulled off his "face" with a odd popping sound, and shrugged off his black, wispy robes. "Ahhh," he said with a sigh of clear relief. "Well, here you go, gentlemen. You have my most sincere wishes for a long... nay, eternal reign as the masters of death."

"W-what?"

"Oh and don't forget the scythe," the one who had been Death instructed them. "Some cultures simply won't take you seriously unless you have the scythe. Everything else you need to know is right there in the manual. Rules, directives, instructions— the whole shebang. I recommend beginning with the quick start guide in appendix T, or you could simply turn to page three hundred and ninety-four to avoid any rather embarrassing first starts."

The man who had formerly been Death ran his hands through his glossy, black hair. He stretched out long limbs, shook his head and then tapped one side of a rather distinctive aquiline nose. "I did try to warn you. I suggested that you give the Hallows to me, but you didn't want to listen. Instead, you chose to hastily throw your signatures into the wind—so very eagerly—and make yourselves the masters of death as quickly as possible. Always read the fine print before signing, O Masters of Death." The man before them stared down his magnificent nose at them both, a slight sneer gracing his thin lips.

"You!" Gellert hissed furiously. "You tricked us!"

"I. Warned. You."

"You told us nothing!" Albus argued.

"You did not ask the right questions," Death said with a seemingly resigned expression.

"Why do you look like Severus Snape?" Albus demanded.

"Why do you look like Albus Dumbledore?"

"That's hardly the same thing," Dumbledore argued petulantly.

"Severus" tilted his head and shrugged. "I have gone by more names and have worn more faces than you could ever possibly imagine, Albus. "I have played a great many roles, seen a great many lifetimes. But, perhaps, this experience may give you a bit of perspective. You may not be able to fathom it yet, but I think you just might end up figuring things out eventually. Perhaps in a few thousand lifetimes. Give or take a few hundred for accelerated learning." Then he smirked. "Or a bit of… on the job training, if you will."

"You can't be—" Dumbledore blustered.

"The true irony, Albus," Severus stated implacably, "is that you were the master of Death for almost two decades after that glorious move of making me swear fealty to you via an unbreakable vow."

"If you are the real Severus, then you are still bound by that vow," Albus reported gleefully.

"Ah, well, there's the rub," Severus replied, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Though I wear that man's face, true, the mortal man you forcibly bound by that vow seems to have unfortunately died not long after being commanded to kill you, by you, no less. Which, I might add, didn't actually work out quite how anyone expected now did it? Or did I perhaps miss the part where you tell me that you successfully convinced Potter that I was so evil that he tried to kill me himself? Instead, however, he succeeded in taking the life of his own best friend as she threw her young body between my dying self and a very nasty slicing hex."

Something flashed across Albus' face.

"That didn't turn out quite how you envisioned it, did it, Albus?" Severus asked with a sort of weary heaviness in his voice.

Albus shook his head, his face ghostly pale with sickness and horror. Even Gellert looked somewhat solemn at the reminder of the senseless loss of such a gifted young witch.

"You will find that— a lot of judgments made by those with short, mortal lives somehow lead to the same, awful place," Severus said thoughtfully. "Consider this one to be one of Life's great lessons— a priceless gift from She-Whose-Patience-Is-Far-Greater-Than-Mine."

Grindelwald, who had so far remained silent until then, let out a low growl of anger, and his hands were wrapped tightly around Severus' throat as he jabbed his wand into it. "I don't believe a word of this. You are just trying to trick us one more time into taking over for you instead of giving us what we properly deserve. We spent decades of our lives working to bring the Hallows together— something you yourself couldn't even do on your own— and now you are trying to foist some kind of bloody thankless duty off on us. Well, I'm not falling for it."

Gellert hissed out a chain of spells, and Snape's body went flying into a nearby tree, sliding down to the ground after a very sharp, distinctive crack rang out. "You are Death! We are your masters! You cannot die, and, now, neither can we! I ORDER you to cease with this ridiculous farce!"

Snape lay very still. Blood was trickling in a thin stream down from the corner of his mouth and his nostrils. He did not answer, and his breaths were shallow and pained.

"Gellert!" Albus yelled, fighting to rush up to Snape, but he found he couldn't move that far. His body stopped only a few feet from Gellert's as though they were being drawn together by powerful magnets. The wispy black robes swirled around them. Their bodies slammed into each other in a dark cloud of energy. There was a distinctive CLICK as the skeletal face fused to their face even as their bodies seemed to fuse together. Within a few seconds, Death stood in the place of Gellert and Albus.

"You never were one to read the instructions, Gellert," a female voice said.

A young blonde woman with warm brown eyes stepped out of the Aether and regarded them silently.

"Ariana?" Death whispered.

"You can see me now, brother, not my brother," Ariana said with a smile. "You accepted the job."

"I did no such thing," Death protested, reaching out to touch Ariana's face with his now skeletal hands.

Ariana shook her head. "No, dear brother, Gellert. You did the moment you tried to kill him," she replied, pointing to the still form of Snape. No soul may be reaped before their time, Albus. That is the rule. Even my death was planned from the moment I was born. Please understand that."

"If you hadn't—"

Ariana pressed her fingers to his skull face, directly over his teeth. "The Muggles did what any bullies do. Magical or Muggle, brother… My life may have been short with you, but it was not meaningless. I made my choice when I threw myself between you, and I am at peace. Now, you must find peace with it as well."

"And you, Gellert," Ariana said with a kind expression. "I forgive you. What happened that terrible day was a tragic mistake, and you needn't run from it anymore. You and Albus had something great together. Do not forget that, now of all times."

"Ariana," Death whispered, the sound of his twin-voice— a mixture of Albus and Gellert— was trembling and unsure. "How—"

Ariana smiled. "You are now the masters of death," she said simply. "That is why you can now see me. And he—" Ariana turned, looking over to where Severus lay still and motionless. "He is the reason I was able to return. Someone had to walk him to the Elysium due to your little tantrum, Gellert. I would strongly advise you to not try anything like that again, by the way. The rules are written down in the book that he gave you. I really recommend you start reading it before you two get yourselves into even more trouble."

Suddenly, Ariana lifted her head. "My time is up. I can feel the tug of the world beyond. I must go."

As she turned to go, Death grasped her arm. "No! Ariana! You cannot go!"

Power swirled around his skeletal hands where he held her.

"Albus! NO! Let me go!" Ariana screamed.

"No, I have to make it right! You should never have died!" Albus insisted. "If I am Death, then I can restore you back to the way you should have been!"

"I am already dead!" Ariana cried. "It was my time! It was my choice!"

"You deserved to have a life! A long life!" Albus cried.

"You would condemn me to an eternity as a shade that only you can see!" Ariana pleaded.

Death immediately released his hand on her arm as though he had been burned. "What?"

"Have you learned nothing from the tale of of the three brothers?" Ariana asked, her eyes flashing with anger.

"What good is it being Death if I cannot restore you?" Death groaned, clutching his skull in his bony hands. "What good is such awesome power if it cannot bring an innocent back from death?"

"Albus, Gellert," Ariana said with a deep sigh. "I have a good life now. I walk with mother every day in glorious gardens that I could only dream of as a child. Father teaches me magic, a little bit at a time. I am happy. Would you steal that from me? You claim to feel guilt for bringing an end to my life, but you would take away my peace to force me into yours?"

Death turned his face away, his white skull gleaming in the sun. "I'm sorry, Ariana. I'm so sorry."

She turned his face to look at her. "Take this gift that you have been given and be the person I believed you could be my entire life, brother. Be better. Find the value in all life by being the master of death. Do not grieve for the dead, Albus. We find our loved ones and live in perfect peace in the eternal Beyond. You have the here and the now to tend."

Ariana had a far-off look. "Now, I truly must go," she said, rushing over to Snape's side as he sat up— his shade.

"She's waiting for you," Ariana told him softly.

Snape winced, his pale skin seeming to be even more ethereal. He shot a glance over to Death, his dark eyes filled with an oh-so-familiar look of disdain. "Strike one," he said sombrely, standing up with Ariana. "I'd be far more annoyed if you hadn't done me such a great favour. At least now, I can return to her. For that service I shall give you some good advice. One, read that tome I gave you. When you are finished, read it again. Two, don't let it get to strike three. Strike three is the eternal Void. I would hate to see your new career fall to pieces only moments after you ascend to the status of masters of death."

Death could only stare at Severus, caught in-between the shock of his situation in combination with the realisation that being the masters of death was not exactly what they had envisioned. After a long, still moment there was a resounding POP and Albus and Gellert stood, each contemplating the other. Then simultaneously, the two conjured a pair of comfortable chairs, a table, and a tea service and then sat down to read.

Quietly, the shades of Ariana Dumbledore and Severus Snape walked away, gradually fading into nothingness.

"Wakey, wakey! Eggs and Bacey!"

"Really, Hermione. Must you be so cheerful? They just died," a baritone voice droned.

"That never stopped us from having our fun, Severus," Hermione replied with a smile.

Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald moaned, sitting up from their supine and somewhat embarrassing splat position.

"Whuuu—" Albus groaned.

"That bloody git killed us!" Gellert raged.

"Did you think a few thousand years would find you on a placid beach somewhere sipping mojitos?" Severus droned.

"Well, it would have been nice!" complained Gellert. "We had a spotless record for six hundred and sixty-six years after that incident with the girl and the bloody ice cream truck!"

Snape's eyebrow arched high into his hair. "Some would say that number did not do you any favours."

"That's it? More than a thousand years of placating and ushering souls and scaring the shite out of people, and it all ended with us being run over by a runaway shopping trolley and thrown into some witless boy's air-scooter run amok?"

"There really are far more humiliating ways to die if you would like to re-incarnate yourselves and experience them," Severus quipped, his lip curling with habitual disdain.

"Really, Severus? Even thousands of years hasn't make you any less apt to look at us like we are all dunderheads?" Albus groaned.

"You are dunderheads," Severus answered, reaching over to nick Hermione's iced tea and sip it.

Gellert grunted. "Why are you still here? Don't you want to go out and live life again?"

"I was out living life for far many more years than you took the reins of Death, boy," Severus replied, his lip curling. "Did you think I would give up on finally being able to spend a nice chunk of eternity with the love of my lives without having to have her re-incarnate and only to die on me all over again?"

Gellert slumped. "It's not right, you calling me boy."

Albus patted Gellert on the back comfortingly.

"Tea?" Hermione offered. "I put lemon in that one for you, Albus."

Albus wasted no time in quaffing the offered tea. Gellert, however, looked somewhat resigned. "After all that time, you still have this unnatural love for lemons."

"You have an unnatural love for chinchillas, what's your point?" Albus retorted, pouring himself another glass from the pitcher.

Gellert shot him a glare.

Albus simply glared back.

"Merlin, it's good to be back in my own body," Gellert sighed with relief, breaking off the glaring contest. "Do you realise how hard it to be forced to share a body with this lemon-drop loving git every time we had to collect a soul?"

Albus just rolled his eyes.

"So, who took up the mantle of Death this time?" Hermione asked, leaning on Severus' shoulder with a curious look on her face.

"Must you cuddle with him?" Albus moaned. "It's just not right."

"Oh, do get over it," Severus said, shaking his head. "Unlike you two young souls, Hermione and I have been together since before there was a proper calendar. Unless you'd prefer us to snog in front of you as two elderly people with lots of wrinkles—"

"NO!" Gellert yelled, muffling Albus. "Please feel free to continue with your cuddling."

Hermione exchanged glances with Severus.

"Maybe they need some more life experience," Severus mused. "Old people are perfectly capable of—"

"No, no, please no," Gellert waved his hands. "No. All I can think of is my grandparents— no."

Hermione sipped her tea calmly. "You have some pretty odd hang-ups, Gellert, considering that both you and Albus—"

"Why do we look like this?" Gellert asked. "The few times we were able to separate, we looked like we did when we were young."

"That is what you looked like when you killed me," Severus answered.

"So if we died as babies, we'd be stuck as infants forever?!" Gellert exclaimed with no small amount of horror.

"No, babies tend to reincarnate quickly," Severus answered. "They are like kittens or puppies at the animal shelter. Everyone wants one."

"This isn't right!" Gellert protested.

Albus, however, was already busy sucking on a lemon drop.

"Oh, give it a rest," Severus scolded. "There are some perks that you seem to be forgetting."

"To spend eternity looking like an old wretch?"

"To being dead, you ninnyhammer," Severus replied.

"I'd rather be alive!" Gellert proclaimed.

Albus, however, had stood up. A look of pure relief spread across his face. "Ariana," he whispered.

A young woman was making her way over the hill, a basket of flowers held in her hands.

Albus was running towards her, his tin of lemon drops lying forgotten on the ground.

Grindelwald grumped. "Well, that's all fine and well, but I still would rather be al—"

"Hello, boy," an elderly woman said as she came around the garden shrubberies. She was carrying a tray of what looked like homemade biscuits. She set the basket down on the nearby table and put her hands to her hips. "Been a few thousand since last I laid eyes on you. No hug for your great-aunt Bathilda?"

Grindelwald's grumpy expression melted away into a grand smile. He rushed towards the elder witch, immediately enfolding her into his arms.

Hours later, as Hermione and Severus propped themselves against the sides of a giant three-headed dog that looks suspiciously like a certain Fluffy, the scene in the garden had shifted into a picnic. Word had spread throughout the Afterlife that the infamous Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald had finally kicked the bucket and "retired" from the death business. Family and friends had been trickling in all day, and Hermione and Severus were happy to just let it all go down in their little piece of eternity.

Fluffy whined, rolling over to the side to expose his rather large belly. Hermione chuckled as she rubbed his tummy, and Severus rolled his eyes as head number two slurped his hair into a rather impressive cowlick.

"Why did you adopt this three-headed menace?" Severus asked with a weary but tolerant sigh.

"He's adorable and misunderstood," Hermione replied. "Just like you, my love."

Severus slid his eyes to the side, mumbling something about insane witches. He flipped his book up and leaned back on the three-headed canine, using him as a very exotic three-headed arm-chair.

Hermione looked down at the gathering in the garden and smiled.

"So, one of the Potter line found the three Hallows and took up the mantle this time?" Bathilda asked, making sure everyone had a biscuit or eight.

"It was probably my fault," Gellert confessed. "I had stolen the original cloak from Harry Potter after the Second Wizarding War. He vowed to find all the Hallows of his ancestors and bring honour back to his family name."

"He did exactly what we did though, didn't he, Gellert?" Albus chuckled. "Marched right up to Death, brandished the Hallows, and signed on the line without the slightest bit of hesitation. The irony was, he didn't even recognise us."

"Well he did get his revenge, of sorts," Gellert mused, "by pushing us into that air-scooter's path."

"Well, if we haven't been reincarnated by then, we can always meet back up with him at the end of his term and see how his life as Death treated him," Albus said.

"I just hope he read the manual," Gellert said. "We did give him the manual before we reached our untimely demise, didn't we?"

Albus furrowed his brows. "Fairly certain we did."

"Hrm, well," Gellert replied, "hopefully he'll be better about reading the manual before doing something stupid and getting himself banished to the Void."

"This cake is outstanding, Bathilda," Percival Dumbledore said from down the table. "Your biscuits and cake always seem to hit the spot."

Bathilda grinned. "My specialty," she replied. "Double lemon cake," she added with a wink.

The table burst into laughter, the concerns of the living drifting away on the winds of the Hereafter.

-o- fin. -o-

A/N: Hope you liked it, Lokilette! (never again! *shakes fist*) LOL