Title: At Wit's End

Author: TheAudaciousButterfly

Rating: T

Summary: When Kat inherited her uncle's cottage at Wit's End, she was expecting to be sharing it with dust mites and the occasional spider, but instead she finds a ghost with a penchant for watching her in the shower. But her ghost has made a deal with Death, and Kat gets swept up in fixing it before it's too late.

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling is the rightful owner of all things Harry Potter.

Author's Note: This is one of my least favourite chapters…the next couple have been really hard to write! The story at the end was the toughest part for sure.

The Hell Hounds' Tarot

"So, then, okay, I said, if you won't answer that try this one instead, and I came right out with it, Is there a Devil. After that the glass—baprebap!—began to shake – catch your ears! – slowslow at first, then faster-faster, like a jelly, until it jumped! –ai-hai! –up from the table, into the air, fell down on its side and –o-ho!—into a thousand and one pieces, smashed. Believe don't believe, Babasahed Mhatre told his charge, but thenandthere I learned my lesson: don't meddle, Mhatre, in what you do not comprehend."

The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie

Professor Sybill Trelawney adjusted her thick round glasses—the moment they slipped from the perfect, perching position on her nose her eyes were useless—as she plopped down in her seat in one of the cushy seats in her classroom. The Divinations professor rung her hands together as her students looked at her expectantly. She could see in those faces reflections of faces that came before, and faces that were no more. A lump choked her momentarily as she thought of the students lost in the Battle of Hogwarts; all of those deaths she had predicted and no one had listened to her.

"Erm, Professor?" called a small student in the front row; she looked distinctly like a dormouse, with ears that were much too large for the rest of her head and round, black eyes. "I think there's something wrong with my pack of cards." Her partner, across the table, a brutish-looking third year boy, looked slightly petrified as he nodded his agreement.

Professor Trelawney rolled her eyes. It was rare that anyone could appreciate the gift of Sight, and this batch of third years was no exception. But really, reading the tarot was the easiest of all of the Divine arts, and Sybill always began with simply the Major Arcana. "Oooh, well, let me take a look at them," Trelawney said, sweeping out of her seat and moving toward the student who spoke.

"Oy! There's something wrong with ours too!" yelled a boy from the back and Trelawney once again rolled her eyes. She went to examine the cards of the first pairing, and took a horrified step backward, clutching her dark red robes at her chest. Four of the cards in the pack no longer had pictures, but now only depicted black, empty pits.

OoOoO

Kat's hands were clutching her bottle of what she had been told was Butterbeer so tightly, her knuckles were starting to turn white. She had been abandoned in this shabby little pub called the Leaky Chamberpot—or something—by her ghost and his almost identical twin. If it hadn't been for the one's loss of aural appendage, and the other's translucent body, she may not have been able to tell them apart at all. Although George had that familiar look in his eyes, that oldest kind of brokenness that made her want to cringe, hide away, and never have to be the fixer again. Kat did not release the bottle from the vice that was her fingers as she took a sip, brought back into the reality that was the dimly-lit pub—if you could call it reality. A short man next to her had attempted to sell her what he had called a Hippogriff's egg for forty Galleons, but she had refused on account of the fact that she knew neither what a Hippogriff nor a Galleon was. People all of the small, circular room were tipping off pointed hats to one another, tossing heavy black cloaks—cloaks, for Christ's sake!—across the back of chairs and greeting each other with names like "Elfrida!" and "Dymphna!" who replied with a startled shriek.

When her ghost and George Weasley were reunited in the living room of her uncle's eccentric cottage, Kat had assumed that she could finally have her hands free of her ghost. She could shower without self consciously sticking her head out from behind the shower curtain to see her ghost lounging with a lazy grin on the counter by her sink, forcing her to clutch her faded pink towel—or whichever one she had bothered to wash that week- to her body and glare at him before stepping out. For some reason that Kat was still attempting to understand, Fred—that was, she had learned, her ghost's name—and George had not allowed her curl up with a steaming cup of tea and forget all about the fact that a ghost had infiltrated the walls of the cottage.

"George," Fred had said in what he must have imagined was a whisper, but was in fact perfectly audible to Kat, who was standing near the wall which contained the majority of her photographs, so she was framed by pictures of herself and others with ridiculous grins—they contrasted greatly to the pinched expression that was crossing her real countenance. "She's a Muggle who can see ghosts. Surely that means something?"

"Weirder things have happened," George said, holding out a thick finger which looked like it had been burned enough times that he wouldn't leave fingerprints if he decided to break into a bank vault. "I don't think she's anything special." Kat had glared at this comment; not that she thought she was particularly special, but she didn't need anyone to point it out on a regular basis, now did she?

It was true that she was rather mundane. Her hair distinctly resembled the colour of mud, and she had been told that it was the most common hair colour in the Western world by a cheerful but misguided hairstylist who had received a rather meager tip—half because of her rudeness and half because Kat had been unable to afford anything more extravagant. Right now it was a royal mess—she had yet to shower this morning because of her houseguest so it was rather limp and had picked up overnight grease. Kat had rather average brown eyes, remarkable only because of the sharp way that they could appraise someone, ensuring that whoever she was looking at knew that she was dissatisfied with them. The length of her legs gave her the appearance of some disproportionate bug, though she still managed to be notably shorter than the twins—George could only imagine her next to lanky and towering Ron.

Fred, however, was shaking his head. "No, no, no. I mean, you're right, she really isn't anything special—but I think I'm supposed to keep her around anyway. When I got sent back—I got sent here for a reason. I think she's supposed to help me." Kat, still observing, was giving Fred the infamous look of appraisal that had made braver men flinch on a few occasions. "I came here for a reason, George. Besides, after you spilled the beans about what we are, I don't see why she shouldn't join us."

George was watching Kat carefully, watching her eyes narrow and her lips purse. The two considered each other for a moment; while George was normally one for letting himself trust easily, Kat was practiced in taking step backward. I only need myself, Kat let herself remember her old mantra; it was the one she repeated when she was a little girl and would hide in the closet when her parents wouldn't give her what she wanted, and it was what she had told herself later, when he…Kat stopped herself before she betrayed any emotion and her face remained a stony mask.

"Besides," Fred said with a slow grin that carried a ghost of deception behind her. "She doesn't know it yet, but now she's bound to me. If she doesn't help me, then she dies too."

OoOoO

"Store looks good. Doing well," Fred commented quietly as he floated through the shelves of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes. He attempted to straighten a Puking Pastille, but his hand passed through it like air. Oh right, he thought. That. Fred hadn't asked a question, but had made an assumption that George had answered with a nod, and by replacing the trick candy that Fred had attempted to move.

"Why did you get to come back?" George asked, in a strangled voice. He knew how he could come back, knew his mission now, but he wanted to know why it was Fred who was able to come back.

"Dunno," Fred replied. "Probably because I'm so charming and handsome that death realized that the world couldn't live without me." He shot George a grin that reminded the live twin of Fred right before they were about to pull off a massive prank. George had always been nervous, but Fred only looked excited.

"Fred?" George said softly, running a finger along the dusty counter and then tapping his wand against the surface so that it became clean and polished.

"Yeah, George?"

"I'm really glad you're back."

OoOoO

"What do you mean, I'll die?" Kat finally burst, breaking her silence with an angry exclamation.

"I dunno. Whatever you've done to piss Death off…he's not happy with you," Fred replied, lazily examining the pale half-moon of his cuticles as if he'd just told her that he liked her new haircut.

Kat felt ire rising in her chest, and her face was turning a disgruntled shade of pink. "All of this is such..such bollocks! There's no Death or ghosts or any of this…You die, you go into the ground, and you rot, just the way that fruit does when you leave it out too long," she exclaimed, holding her hands up angrily.

Fred sighed, rolling his eyes, thinking that she was being massively melodramatic. "Whatever, Kitty Kat, you've still got to help me," he said with a grin that displayed a row of teeth like wispy pearls, disappearing into thin air. George watched him from the corner of his eye, forever the more cautious twin; he knew that Fred was half-acting and putting on the façade of being indifferent, but he was desperate. Whatever help Fred thought that Kat could offer, he was working hard to ensure that he received it. Fred leaned forward, his face so close to Kat's that she could feel her cheek turn cold, so sudden it felt like the sun was going behind the clouds. "Would you like to know how?"

Before Kat could reply, Fred began the story.

OoOoO

Once upon a time, Death depended on three old, blind sisters to determine the fates of people based on their good and bad deeds. They were punished for their good deeds and rewarded for their good deeds. But one day as Death came to the bedside of a very sick wizard at the command of the three old sisters who had gotten into a disagreement with another wizard and killed him. At the side of his bed, Death noticed that the wizard was surrounded by people, who were all crying. Death was surprised to see this, as he knew that the man was being punished for his cruelty.

Death first turned to the wizard's wife and asked her what she had done to deserve the pain of her husband's illness. The wizard's wife responded that she had done nothing she thought wrong, as she had cared heartily for their children and had kept up the small but thriving apothecary shop, where they sold potions ingredients.

Death was confused—surely to be in this much pain, the wife must be suffering as well. He then turned to the wizard's young son and asked him what he may have done to earn his sorrow. The young man replied that he had dutifully gone to school and had stood up for a weaker wizarding student who was being bullied.

Death remained in a state of shock. There was no possible way that the family was being correctly punished. Finally, he turned to the very young daughter of the wizard. She was a shy child, but did not seem afraid of Death. He asked her too, what she had done in order to deserve her father's illness. With a sniffle, the girl responded that perhaps—perhaps—she had forgotten to give the hippogriffs the extra bit of sugar she gave them every morning.

Death had to consider that the Fates' method of reward and punishment was not always working—he was punishing people who were not responsible. In response, he paid a visit to the three old sisters and told them they'd have to be more effective in their rewards and punishments. So the sisters gave Death a deck of cards, and told him that if he could find humans to inhabit these cards, they would use the cards to determine the fates of men.

The next day, Death returned to the bedside of the dying wizard. He saw his family, again gathered around the bed and all seemed more sad than the day before. Death again asked the wife of the wizard what she could have done to deserve losing her husband. She guiltily explained that she had slept with her neighbour and was now pregnant. Death entrapped her in a card and called it The Empress, due to the small, gold pin that the woman wore, shaped like a crown, which would embody the mother and fertility, but also bareness and unwanted pregnancy.

Death turned to the young boy, noticing that he had a broken nose, angry and red, and asked him the same question. The boy replied with downcast eyes that he had quarreled with the bully and had started a physical fight with him, resulting in his injury. Death trapped the boy in a card and called it the Fool, due to his clown-like appearance, which would represent recklessness, but also bravery.

Finally, Death turned to the sobbing young girl, and asked her his question. "Please, sir. I haven't done anything. I even fed the animals extra," she replied, sniffling. And so Death gave the girl the mission of creating the rest of the cards, after which she would be able to save her father from his impending death. From then on, Death would offer the chance at continued life if they could find people to inherit the Fates' tarot cards. This was Fred's opportunity.

When Fred finished his chronicle, he was met with a contemptuous snort. "Why," asked Kat slowly, crossing her arms over her chest. "Should I believe you?"

What she didn't tell him was that despite all of her bravado, she already did, the same reason that she ended up sipping a Butterbeer—she still didn't know what it was, but it made her feel all warm—in a dingy pub on the edges of Diagon Alley.