To all the freaks out there, who, like me, enjoy the cold shivers, the little tremors in their heart. For those who like being frightened, who enjoy the sense of excitement terror brings them. For those who grew up on stories about monstrous creatures, for those who do not fear the darkness but what lurks in it.

For full effect, read in the dark with some creepy ambient music ;)

I.

Walk the halls and walk the forest,

Wander along the decay;

See all that is and see all that isn't,

Just for an hour of every day.

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As the Grand Clock chimes midnight, Harry opens his eyes. He climbs out of the bed, slipping into his sneakers and starts his midnight routine. He walks down the staircase from the tower, not waking Ron and Neville, and heads to the Common Room.

Lavender Brown sits there, chatting with thin air. No sound comes from the girl, she is only half way on this side after all, more dead than alive. She has no voice to speak, her eyes are blind, her ears deaf to the living world.

She does not bother Harry, and in return, Harry does not go there either, pocking her, talking to her, shouting at her to hear him. He knows by now, what she is, or rather that this vision of her is nothing more, than an echo of a future that never happened. It is simple enough, however, it took months for Harry, Ron and Hermione to figure it out.

It all started back in September, when Harry returned to school. The first night, just like tonight, he arrived back in his Common Room just after midnight. He stepped through the portrait hole, waving with a smile to the Creevey brothers, realizing only as he stepped onto the first stair that they were not supposed to be there.

A part of Harry's brain knew where they were: buried under six feet of soil a little bit north from Birmingham, in a cemetery of a little town. He had been there when the boys were laid to their final resting place, he had stood next to their crying mother. And yet he also saw them in the Gryffindor Common Room, laughing and talking.

Back then, it took him a moment to realize, they weren't talking. Their mouths moved, yet no sound came from them. It was as if they had been silenced and Harry walked closer. They were not ghost, that was for sure, their body looked solid instead of opalescent and transparent. He talked to them, asked them if they needed help. They ignored him, or did not hear what he had said. He had reached out and tried to touch them, but his fingers went through Colin, who seemed undisturbed by this as well, still ignoring Harry.

Harry ran. He ran up his room and hid behind the curtains of his bed. He stayed there until the sun was up and then a couple more hours until the other boys in his dormitory were awake as well. He waited till Neville and the others left, and told Ron what he had seen.

That night they visited the common room together. The Creevey brothers were gone, but it was Lavender sitting there then. Harry pointed at her, hand shaking, but Ron shook his head. They called for Hermione's expertise, but the girl saw nothing, too.

In the upcoming weeks, Harry learned that between midnight and one o'clock in the evening he was not supposed to go out of his bed, if he did not want to meet with the dead. He dreaded that one hour every day, where he was reminded of his failures, of all the lives that had been lost because he was not fast enough.

There had been many more new faces in the upcoming nights, newer and newer people he had met, who were all dead. Lupin was in his old classroom, reading a book, Tonks sitting near him, playing with their son – that was hard to see. Dumbledore would roam the corridors, meeting him had Harry hiding in his bed for a week. He saw Fred as well, but never mentioned that to Ron, nor Hermione. There were others too, the list endless.

It is December, and Harry has almost gotten used to it. Dumbledore still makes him lose it, but Colin, Lavender, Fred or Remus he all but welcomes. Sometimes he sits with Remus and Tonks in that one hour and watches them talk and smile and live together, and it warms his heart. Sometimes he sits with Fred who keeps inventing tricks even after he died. It is weird and slightly insane but Harry gets used to the company of the dead over the months so it makes no difference to him.

Hermione was the one, it is always her, who found the reason in the end. As the other two do not see the echoes, they have always suspected it must be because of the war, or Harry's death or some different otherworldly experience Harry had.

McGonagall had never asked many questions when they requested to use the Headmaster's private library, just that they keep quiet and stick to hours when she was not working there. They went after midnight and sat with a smiling Dumbledore and read book after book on Death.

It was just half a sentence in a children's book Hermione decided to read not for research but for a good night sleep. She woke Harry and Ron at three in the morning and they did not even go back to sleep after that

"Death sees it all; what was, what is, what could have been."

The living cannot hide from it, the dead do not want to. And whoever rules over Death, sees what it sees; the future that never happened, the present, and all that was before.

It is a gift, Harry wishes not even for his worst enemy. As a Master of Death, he sees Death at work, sees the shadow around a dying bird, sees the soul leave the living but only in that one hour every day. He can see the world going grey as winter comes; can see the life flickering in Aberforth as he sells them Firewhisky. Harry cannot tell how long the old man, or anyone has, but when the light is flickering, Death will soon come and bring darkness with it.

It is a dark gift, one Harry hates and wants to get rid of. It eats his soul away and he can feel the Darkness approach him. Night after night, it comes closer, wrapping cold tendrils around Harry's heart. He wants it gone, he wants to rid himself of the shuddering cold, of echoes that grip his heart and break it day after day.

He could stay in bed, Hermione tells him every time Harry appears with hollow circles under his eyes, but Harry knows that is not a solution. That would be ignoring the problem. He has a gift, he is ought to use no matter how much it hurts. What the gift is for, he does not know yet, which is why he wakes up and walks out of his room night after night.