Disclaimer: Don't own. Don't care. Writting this for free.

Tittle: Doeskin

Summary: After reading the tale of The Hallows Harry should have known Death was petty. Now the "Master of Death" was to be reborn in an exiting world of ninja as a Nara deer. 'Death can't harm its master' his bloody arse.

AN: This is going to be a silly little fic with a non-epic, reincarnated MoD Harry. It hit me that Death is kind of a dick from the tale of Beetle the Bard, so that's how I'm going to play things here.

Ps. For those who don't know: 'Mendokusei' means 'troublesome' and it's the catchphrase of Nara Shikamaru.

Edited 15/07/2015

.

Chapter 1: Doeskin

Harry had left the Deathstick in Dumbledore's grave, thrown The Ring into the forbidden forest and stocked his precious invisibility cloak in a trunk in the attic after the Battle of Hogwarts was over. Soon enough, he moved on with his life, finally married Ginny and she, true to her Wesley heritage, popped up kids like there was no tomorrow. His work-life was just as awesome as his private one; he became an Auror along with Ron and Neville, saved a bunch of lives and was looked up to and loved all around. All in all life was peachy. It even had a happy ending as he died of old age surrounded by an army of great grandchildren.

Of course, Harry had worked hard his whole life, defeated a couple Dark Lords, and suffered the pain of losing his wife and all his friends since he outlived them all, but he could not complain. He would eventually join them in the next big adventure and there was still so much he wanted to do before he turned to dust.

During his long life, Harry had become headmaster of Hogwarts, had been head of the Wizangemot, earned the Order of Merlin First class award, and obtained a whole bunch of fancy-smancy labels.

Hell, he was the Dumbledore of the twenty first and twenty second centuries -even if he never wore eccentrically clashing clothes and always kept his face cleanly shaven to his last breathing day.

Of course, Harry should have known that all his good luck would come to bite him in the arse at some point, never mind the crappy childhood and constant near-death experiences he got in while he worked to make the magic world a better place.

When Harry Potter, hero of the wizarding world, finally kicked the bucket, he met Death. True to his early Muggle upbringing, Harry had imagined the entity known as Death to be a white skeleton wearing a black hood and carrying a scythe but, to be honest, Harry didn't remember what Death looked like after the encounter was over.

The only things the now decease Hero remembered of the whole thing was hearing that he had become the sodding 'Master of Death' and thus couldn't die.

Harry had felt annoyed, yet curious, as Death explained he would be need to be reborn. Harry hadn't been too happy to hear that he wouldn't be joining his loved ones yet (if ever), but he tried to look to the bright side: there was still so much he had to learn about magic, so much to do: he never got to break the curse on the DADA teacher's position, nor managed to become fluent in Mermish nor learnt to write in Sanskrit. He also never got to eat his last-meal-treacle-tart, nor left the political world as uptight and orderly as he would have liked.

Harry could fix so many things and finish so many projects if he had a second chance at life. The knowledge he had amassed during his two hundred years of life could be used to take the wizarding world to a new age of prosperity! Plus he would once again be young enough to use a broom and play Quidditch...

Of course, those things would have been true, had he been reborn a wizard.

The famous three Peverell brothers once had been "rewarded" by Death with three cursed gifts. One died a horrifically-bloody dead, the other killed himself because he could not bear to continue living.

After Harry felt his not-quite-human body fall down to the ground with a wet plop, coming right out of a doe's... well... out of a doe. He was pretty damn sure the poor bloke who wished for the invisibility cloak got some kind of horrid punishment in the afterlife because of how long he had evaded Death.

"Congratulations," Harry heard a voice speaking in Japanese -a language he had more or less learnt before dying- from somewhere to his left as a rough tongue licked his the over-sensitive, furry skin of his face. "It's a beautiful doe."

Harry felt a wonky, inhuman noise out of his throat as he cursed.

Merlin's trice-dammed bollocks! Death was a monumental prat.

He would think even worse of Death still when the pineapple-haired man who spoke those words soon would comment on the thunder-shaped scar he -or rather she- was apparently born with.

"Death can't harm his master" his bloody arse.

...

It had been four months since the little green-eyed doe was born into the Nara clan, and it was Shikamaru who got the very troublesome duty of taking care of this one. The little one had been odd from the first day. It wouldn't try to drink from her mother's tits, and seemed to be more alert and aggressive than your average baby deer. And so, Shikamaru was stuck with feeding the doe with a bottle with the hopes it wouldn't die for starvation. At least she would eventually be old enough to feed from grass.

Shikamaru had named the thing 'Mendo' after her first week around, because all he could think while he looked into those challenging green eyes was 'mendokusei'. Not that 'Mendo' was even a proper name, but he couldn't be pressed to think of a better one.

Still, he got the feeling he had been given quite the flat look for his naming. Why did he get that feel? He had no clue. It wasn't like deer ever showed any emotions, but he was the indistinct impression that the doe disliked her new name.

Well, never mind that. He wasn't going to change it. Thinking of another name was just too much of a bother and he felt like going for a nap.

...

Harry was having a hard time getting used to living as a doe. She spent her mornings walking all over the grass of the Nara Clan Forest, her afternoon eating grass in the Nara Clan Forest, and the nights sleeping on the grass of the Nara Clan Forest. Harry felt like his mind was going numb because of that damn forest and because of the lack of anything interesting happening since he was reborn into a life as a passive herbivore.

Being named Mendo, Harry was sure, was a sign that the universe was mocking him-her. The-boy-turned-doe might not have grown up surrounded by too much Muggle literature on her first life, but the -undeniably male- wizard had learnt at some point in his life that Mendo (or was it Mando?) was the name of the personification of Death (some kind of Veela) in a famous Muggle book involving a bunch of rings.

Harry -for he refused to think of himself by any other name, even if he had to life with the fact he/she was now female- was rather upset to learn she was a pet.

At least, as a pet, she had managed to avoid feeding of his new 'mother' for too long. Harry had the mind of a 200 years old male wizard, and he/she was too weirded out by the notion of breast-feeding again, so she only ate what he-she needed to survive, which mean she ate the barest minimum and was malnourished.

But then the ninja bunch decided one of them should feed the pet with a bottle to help it gain weight, which solved that particular issue.

Still, Harry would never grow as tall as the other does because of the bad eating habits she developed on such early stage of his/her life, but he/she couldn't be bothered about it. What did bother him/her, though, was the fact that his/her owners were ninjas.

Merlin, being reborn as a female was messing up his uses of pronouns.

Anyway, the Nara clan in general -and her caretaker Nara Shikamaru specifically- were boring to the point it made Harry-doe miss his history of magic classes with Professor Bins -at least he was human while being bothered to death back then.

The Lazy-Bum Clan didn't fit Harry's image of how ninja were supposed to be; plus, they spent way too much time plopped on the floor, drinking tea and playing shogi for his/her taste. In fact, he-erm-she was surprised to discover that the Naras were ninjas, and not only because that meant ninjas were still around -which wasn't the case in the world he/SHE left behind, thus it meant she was in a different one altogether-, but because how unfitting they seemed to be ninjas. Heck, they were raising deer!

Harry couldn't figure out why a ninja would take care of a bunch of deer, but she did gather that those particular deer they took care off were slightly smarter than the regular ones. Harry could see in the eyes of his/her new pack the same intelligence he saw reflected on his Patronus.

Idly, she wondered if becoming a deer was the fate of all masters of death, but shook his-HER head at this.

Dumbledore's rainbow colored socks! he missed his masculinity a tad too much; even if the last time he saw it it was a floppy, wrinkly thing that was no longer operative.

At least, there was one familiar thing to Harry when he became a doe: being a reject.

The deer, it seemed, could notice there was something different about her and rejected the Master-of-Death/doe much like everyone on Privet Drive once did. Harry just shrugged that off and kept on trying to find his magic. Much to her consternation, it was there, but Harry never came to learn wand-less and wordless magic as a male wizard, so that project would take a while.

Not to mention, that her magic was feeling kind of wonky.

In fact, it felt like it wasn't his-her magic in the first place, but, then again, magic was different in every species, so she kept experimenting and trying to use the magic she might still have access to without having hands to hold a wand, nor the vocal chords to speak the incantations -all the while keeping herself carefully out of sight.

But, of course, things never went smooth forever and somebody was bound to notice Harry-doe's activities.

...

Nara Shikamaru was walking around looking for Mendo. The doe had not been seeing for a while now and it was his duty to see the troublesome animal hadn't died or something.

"Mendokusei," He breathed as he walked under the canopy of trees in the Nara Clan Forest. He was not very happy with the idea of going: he had just become a Chunin and he was going to be sent for a mission in two days. Shikamaru had planned on doing nothing until it was time to go to said mision, but his father had asked him to look for the doe that had been appointed as his responsibility from birth.

Looking for the doe was a drag, and made him wish he had a Inuzuka or a Hyūga around to help him track the troublesome doe.

His lazy attitude left him suddenly as he felt a spike of chakra ahead of him and he hastily moved forwards, using his familiarity with the forest to stay out of sight. What he saw when he finally found Mendo would make him freeze in his tracks.

Mendo, the tiny doe that still hadn't outgrown the white splotches on her brown back, was using a tree branch to make drawings on a barren piece of soil. The undeer-like behavior was even more baffling by the fact that those drawings resembled fūinjutsu arrays.

Shikamaru instantly picked a bush to hid behind as he watched, mind running a mile a minute. The doe wasn't privy to his presence, though. So the Nara had ample time to try (and fail) to come up with an explanation of what he was seeing.

Mendo suddenly looked upset as she stomped over whatever she had drawn and moved a bit to the left, dragging the stick down to the ground anew.

Shikamaru couldn't help but notice the many stomp marks all over the place.

Mendo had probably been doing this for a while.

She repeated this about fifteen times before nodding then, unexpectedly, picked up a lizard that had been too conveniently pinned at the tail with a rock to be a happenstance. Then, the doe put the lizard in the circle and pushed her hives at the edges closing her eyes, letting out a wave of the same bizarre chakra he had felt before -making it clear for Shikamaru who had been the source.

Suddenly, where the lizard used to be, a green teapot appeared. A green teapot that had legs and promptly rushed and vanished behind the bush he had been in.

Clearly unhappy, the doe followed the teapot's way with her eyes, which inevitably lead to her spotting the lazy ninja. Twin green orbs widened as they met the young Nara's suspicious black ones.

The doe didn't lose a moment to let go of the branch (or was a doe-version of open-mouthed shock?), but made no further move. Shikamaru didn't move either from where he was half-hidden by the bushes.

The doe and the ninja got stuck in a staring match, for neither of them had the faintest idea of what to do now.

After what felt like hours of stillness, the Nara let out a heavy sigh. "Mendokusei," he breathed and then properly got up from his uncomfortable kneeling position, soon getting into his signature slouched stance. The doe looked at him with curiosity, a slight tilt to her head as green eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

The only thing the recently-appointed Chūnin had been able to figure so far was that the doe was smarter than she looked. So, Shikamaru made a gesture for Mendo to follow and started to walk back to the Nara complex, oddly sure the doe would follow.

He had an idea of how to learn more about the doe's character and intelligence.

Even if it was a ridiculous idea born from a too big brain that was malfunctioning from over-thinking.

...

Nara Shikaku had heard the belief that genius often came along with madness. Of course, that belief did manifest itself true in some individuals, but such was never the case for Naras... or at least he could claim so until the day he walked into the living room and witnessed his son explaining to a doe how to play shogi.

The Head of the Clan stared a whole minute from the door, before he closed it open and turned to walk on the opposite direction, wholly ready to pretend he hadn't seen anything.

He had an inkling his son had gotten himself into something troublesome.

To Be Continued

.

AN: Well, dunno about you guys, but I liked writing this one. It was fun, and I hope people found it refreshing.

To be honest, I was feeling quite proud of myself because I momentarily felt that I had written a fic with only "Mendokusei" for dialogue, but then I proof-read it and was reminded I also wrote "Congratulations" and "It's a beautiful doe".

I hope you enjoyed Doeskin and please REVIEW!