Author's note: This is just an idea that insisted I write it down. For those of you who are reading 'When Harry met Wednesday,' don't worry I'm still working on it when I have the time.

Let me know what you think. Reviews, positive or negative, are always appreciated.

-o-o-

Master of Death?

-o-o-

It was over. The death eaters had been routed, and Voldemort lay dead at his feet. Harry Potter looked around the battlefield that Hogwarts had become. It didn't feel real, more like a nightmare. All around him lay the broken bodies of people he knew. Some friends, some merely acquaintances, but none of them would ever draw another breath. There were many still firmly on the side of the living, the dull moans and occasional gasp of pain attested to that. Yes many were still alive, but the victory was bittersweet as the smell of death saturated the school.

Harry blinked. That was it, he looked down at the Elder Wand held loosely in his hand. Wasn't he supposed to be the Master of Death now? Maybe he could do something, anything. He gathered up the Cloak of True Invisibility, and then realized his mistake. He had given up the Resurrection Stone in the forest. In a fluid motion he donned the cloak, and disappeared from sight.

He was just about to give up his search. The sun was setting, and the forest was already very dark. While he was debating continuing his search in the morning, or pressing on with a light spell to guide him, he saw it. A glint, a small shine surrounded by dead leaves on the forest floor. He had found the Resurrection Stone.

Wearing the cloak, and wand in hand he must have stared at the damned stone for nearly an hour thinking over what he was about to do. The light had given way to the dark of night, but his eyes had adjusted, and they never left the small stone laying on the ground. Finally he decided he had little to lose, and everything to gain. He bent down, grasped the stone, and his entire world went black.

-o-o-

"I am curios. What did you believe being master of death would mean?" A powerful voice echoed in Harry's head.

He still couldn't see anything but black, until he realized his eyes were closed. He slowly opened them, and found himself nowhere. He stood on a grey, featureless plane, and looking around revealed nothing. "Where am I?" He softly muttered.

"Answer my question first. You are the first to unite the Hallows. What did you think would happen?" The voice came from nowhere. It just reverberated in his head, as if he had thought it, but the voice was not his own.

"I wasn't sure, I hoped it meant I would have the ability to truly bring someone back from the dead." Harry said aloud while he scanned his surroundings, trying to figure out where the voice had come from.

An indistinct figure suddenly appeared in front of Harry, it solidified into a well dressed man. The man was tall, well over six feet, and he was dressed in the finest muggle suit Harry had ever seen. The man's grey pinstripe suit was matched by a similarly grey fedora that was tilted to cover his eyes. The thin smile that adorned his alabaster face separated as he spoke. "You are at the end, oblivion, nowhere. There is nothing to see, because nothing exists anymore. This is my realm, my home." The same powerful voice came from the man this time, instead of bouncing around in Harry's head.

"You're Death." Harry said, wondering what this meant for him. "I can't say you look how I'd expect."

"You are of course thinking of the Grim Reaper, the scythe wielding harvester of souls. I have taken that form in the past. I can take any form I choose. The skeletal visage of the grim reaper certainly leaves a mark on those that see it and manage to draw breath once more, but it is not my preferred form." Death spread his arms. "I find myself enjoying this body for the time being. If nothing else, it is far easier to talk with vocal chords."

Death walked smoothly to stand face to face with Harry. "It is past time for these to be returned to me." He plucked the Elder Wand from Harry's hand, removed the cloak, and took back the stone. "If you had only followed the example of your ancestor, you could have used my cloak to stay hidden from me until the time of your choosing. By combining my gifts you have been brought before me, and now you are mine."

"What does the legend mean then? How am I the Master of Death if I belong to you?" Harry was growing increasingly worried. He had gambled on the meaning of 'Master of Death,' and seemed to have lost badly.

"Oh you are a master of death, or at least you soon will be." Death smiled and lifted his hat to reveal his eyes. Where his eyes should have been was nothing, a void, not even black. "You will return to the land of the living, and bring death to the world."

This was the complete opposite of what Harry had wanted. "No... I... You can't force me to kill. I'd rather just die here and now."

Death's lips parted to reveal jagged teeth, more than could possibly fit in his mouth. The paradoxical teeth grew even more unnerving as Death laughed through them. "You no longer have that option. You will of course die, but not this day. You will carry out my will for one hundred and eleven years, and then you will be permitted oblivion yourself. I am not without mercy however. You will be allowed to keep your free will, but the longer you go before killing, the stronger the compulsion to kill will get. If you fight it for too long you will lose yourself to blood lust, and you will kill every man woman and child that crosses your path."

"You call that mercy? I'll kill myself as soon as I'm given the chance." Harry proclaimed, adamant that he would not become a monster the likes of Voldemort.

"You are mine boy, and I will not permit you release from your duty until a century, a decade, and a year have passed." Death slowly faded away, but his voice lingered. "Go now. Go back into the world, and become a true master of death."

-o-o-

Harry was standing in the Forbidden forest, exactly where he had been. Only now he no longer held any of the Hallows. They were gone, and he could already feel the blood lust rising within him. He looked around. It was now morning, and bright light cascaded through the forest.

A twig snapped behind him, and he spun around. Luna Lovegood stood with one hand on a tree, her head leaning sideways as if to see something at an odd angle. "You disappeared Harry. Everyone is worried about you. I told them you needed time alone, but they insisted we looked for you. So here I am."

Thoughts came unbidden to Harry. Images of him choking the life out of his friend. It would be so simple, and over so quickly. "NO!" He shouted. "Luna run, you have to stay away from me, tell everyone to stay away. It's not safe. I'm not safe."

-o-o-

January 2017

London, England

Hermione Granger pulled her coat tightly around herself. Despite her use of warming charms, she couldn't stop the biting chill from making her shiver. She had been searching on and off for nearly two decades, and finally she believed Harry was once more in England. An unlocking charm was unnecessary, as the door to the shady flat didn't even have a lock. She was all but certain that Harry was staying here, so she walked inside to wait, hoping that he hadn't already moved on.

-o-o-

"You'll catch your death of cold." A voice cut through her dreams, jolting Hermione awake.

She opened her eyes, and looked around, berating herself for falling asleep.

"You shouldn't have fallen asleep in a room this cold." The voice from before continued. "Although, I have to admit, there are far worse ways to die."

"Harry, is that you?" Hermione strained to see who she was talking to, and had to shade her eyes as the lights turned on abruptly.

By the time her eyes had adjusted, the figure was sitting at a small table with two steaming cups of tea in front of him.

"Why did you come looking for me? I thought I had made it perfectly clear that everyone should stay away from me." Harry Potter calmly sipped his tea as he watched his guest with unblinking eyes.

The cold, emotionless stare made Hermione shudder, there was no humanity left in her friend's gaze. "You did... but when I found out you were back, I had to see you. The ministry is almost as bad as it was when Voldemort was still alive."

"You want me to do something about it?" Harry chuckled darkly. "There's only one thing I do now."

"I... I know." She bit her lip, and took a seat at the table. "I also know you that you target bad people, people like the new minister, Lucius Malfoy."

Harry laughed, spilling some tea before he could set his cup down. "Lucy is the reason I came back. I had been staying away, because as much as I wanted to use my new nature to sweep the filth from this island, I didn't want to risk hurting any decent people. If you idiots put him in office, there must not be enough decent people left to worry about."

"That's not true Harry, we just don't have the money or influence to stop cretins like Malfoy." Hermione muttered defensively as she took a sip. "If you had stayed, we might have stood a chance. The whole of magical Britain was ready for the-boy-who-won to lead them out of the darkness."

"For the first few years I still read the Prophet. That's not the name they called me." Harry's amused smirk matched the odd humor in his voice. "The-boy-who-killed I believe it was."

The tea warmed Hermione, and she felt more comfortable despite the chill in the air. "The pure-blood bigots started calling you that. They claimed that many of them were under the imperius, and that you personally killed at least a dozen innocent pillars of our community. Utter Bollocks, but people bought it. They figured that was the reason you left, running from justice."

Harry snorted and shook his head. "That's ridiculous, Voldemort was the first person I ever killed. I didn't have it in me to kill Death Eaters back then." Slowly, a smile stretched across his face. "Now killing is easy, you could say it comes naturally to me."

"I've tried to keep track of you over the years." Hermione yawned, for some reason it was getting difficult to keep her eyes open. "I know that everywhere you go bad people tend to die en masse, and I'm not as naive as I used to be. I'm glad you're back, it will be nice to finally see men like Malfoy get what they deserve."

Harry reached over and gently lifted Hermione's chin, so he could look into her half-closed eyes. "I think you're still pretty naive. I'm the fabled Master of Death. I don't just kill bad people, I kill everyone. You are my best friend though, so I'm giving you a rather pleasant send off. You'll have some lovely dreams soon, and fade away peacefully."

He lowered her head to the table, and adjusted her to look more comfortable. Standing slowly, he stretched and finished his own cup of tea. As he opened the apartment door, he looked back at his best friend. "Don't worry, Malfoy and his friends will have much less enjoyable deaths. I think I'll take my time with Lucy, I'll bet I can get him to beg me to kill him." Grinning madly, Harry walked off into the night.

-o-o-

Author's note: I haven't seen this take on Harry becoming the "Master of Death" before. Granted, I've never searched for Master of Death stories, so for all I know the concept is ridiculously overdone.

I think this can stand alone as a short one-shot, but there is the possibility for future expansion, though I'm not sure which direction I would want to take it if I did make it a full story. It could be anything from a bloody gorefest, to a more character driven story that followed Harry as he slowly loses himself to his new nature.