The Day Tom Met Death

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Tom was seven years old when he first began to comprehend the finality of death.

This was before the incident with Billy Stubbs' rabbit, which wouldn't come to be for a good few months. It was before the time when he sat deep down in his ancestor's Chamber, practising the three unforgivables upon the vermin that'd invaded such a sacred place, the brilliant flashes of green illuminating the aged stone and brightening the flooded flooring. It was long before a time when he would release a Basilisk upon an unsuspecting student population, when he would watch the terror sink into their faces and fear that yes, they might be the next one to be petrified. Before a time when he would look little Myrtle Milner in her cold, dead eyes and see the fear that still lingered there, frozen forever upon her face.

No, there had been a lot of death within Tom's life, but it was at seven years old he began to fear it.

.

It'd been the first week of the new year, 1932, and Tom had been seven years old for the grand total of six days. He had also spent three days of his seventh year sick.

There was a fierce form of flu going around, and it had already claimed the lives of three people outside of the orphanage walls, people that lived on the same street as they did. Everyone in the orphanage was sick, some ranging from the sniffles, to little Johnny Thompson, who was close to death upon the bed he was currently laid in.

Not quite into the fits of delusion yet, Tom had remained in place, half sat, half laid against the wall. His bed had been pushed to a side in the dining hall, which had becoming something more than what it once was, like a cheap intimidation of a nursing ward, too poor for the real thing and the vast majority of the orphans were currently housed within this one room.

Tom had found himself next to Johnny Thompson, and in bitter amusement, he'd figured out that subconsciously, the matron was probably hoping he'd catch the worst of it and disappear from the orphanage by placing him there. He didn't like that thought, didn't want to end up disappearing.

Here he was an orphan, but what was death? It was unknown, and as a boy who praised himself on being the most knowledgeable orphan, the special one, the very thought terrified him. He didn't like it, he was different than the other orphans, shouldn't be curled up in bed like the rest of them, like a mutt waiting for the vicious claws of death to rip him away.

He did not like it.

Unlike the rest of them, he could do so much more, he had a power that none of the other orphans had ever showcased. A common flu that effected only common people shouldn't have brought him so low.

With shaking hands, he reached out for the glass by his bedside, water that'd cooled in the chill of the night sloshing into his mouth. It didn't prove much of a relief, his throat still felt like sandpaper, like the gravel beneath his feet when he was walking outside the orphanage. Fingers danced up to his forehead, pressing the sweaty bangs back from where they'd been sticking to his face. All of his skin felt blisteringly hot to the touch, and yet painful shivers still ricocheted through his body, leaving him desperate to get warm within the thin blankets that the matron provided.

Pulling the covers up and over his shoulders, Tom sunk further down into the bed, a small whimpering noise escaping his lips when the extra covering brought no more comfort than it'd done every other time he'd tried to seek warmth from it.

That was when he saw him.

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It was the very early hours of the morning, and while all the other children were most certainly asleep, suffering yes, but asleep all the same, and Tom had been sure he was the only one awake. Yet there stood another boy.

He was older than Tom, probably by a decade, give or take a year. He was old enough to have left the orphanage, to get out and away from all this disease and sickness that hung heavy in the air. And yet there he stood, leaning against the wall and looking down at little Johnny Thompson with an unreadable expression on his face.

In his fever, it took Tom shameful amount of time to realize he'd never seen this boy around before, that he wasn't an orphan from here. But his voice was dead, he couldn't drum up the energy to scream or alert anyone. All he could do was lay in the bed, watching the stranger watch Johnny. He was strange looking, wearing odd clothing that looked nothing like Tom had ever seen before. Only the battered looking jacket seemed somewhat close to normal clothing, in the same off brown colour that the soldiers of the first world war had worn. A pair of glasses were resting on his face, which Tom found odd, even in the febricity that clutched at his entire body and threatened to pull him away from the waking world.

The young man or boy or whoever he was, he was the strangest person he'd ever seen.

His features didn't look right, like they were all the ingredients for a creation to be called human, but there was just something instinctively off about him.

The stranger was still looking down at Johnny Thompson, face unreadable, and finally, finally Tom managed to croak out a sound. It was a raspy thing, not quite the sentence he'd been aiming for. Heck, he didn't even manage to make a comprehensible word. But the stranger heard him, and that's what mattered.

Bright green eyes, so unnaturally bright in the darkness looked up from the trembling form of Johnny Thompson and focused upon him instead. Blinking once, twice, thrice behind those glasses. And then the stranger walked over, kneeling beside Tom's bed and reaching out to place one blessedly cool hand against his scorching forehead.

"You are not suppose to see me," the stranger murmured, thumb rubbing at Tom's high cheek-bone as the orphan stared back at the older male, "not yet."

He'd have offered his best owlish blink if he could find the energy, but Tom was scared if he so much as closed his eyes he'd never open them again. The stranger seemed to read his thoughts though, and with a wave of his hands, his blankets were idyllically cool once again. He'd not even realized his senses had switched again, that he now felt like he was burning up instead of freezing to death. But he needed to know who the stranger was, who was knelt before him with those big green eyes that said nothing and yet more than he could ever understand at the same time.

"I am Death young one. But don't worry, it's not quite your time yet."

The fear that curled in his stomach was only overpowered by the strength of fever, and even then, it was a close thing.

The boy, Death, had turned back to Johnny Thompson now, but Tom couldn't think, couldn't see, and no matter how much he fought he couldn't stay awake. He thought he heard the low tones of Death's voice again, but sleep took him too quickly to be sure.

.

When Tom woke up, there was a white sheet over Johnny Thompson.

Or rather, Johnny Thompson's corpse.

Tom hadn't said anything, just stared at the figured beneath that crisp material even as he registered that his head was no longer swimming. He thought back to that night, wondered if it had all been a grand hallucination created by his brain in the throes of illness.

But children didn't recover from flu as quickly as he did, he felt fighting fit right now, all but the burning in his eyes.

It was during that night that Tom had learnt to fear death.

But perhaps he was just a tiny bit intrigued by the boy who had called himself Death too.

Only a little bit.

This is my little, yeah, I've reached 1,000 reviews on a story for the first time ever, I'll write a one-shot to celebrate thing. So erm, here you go.

Back to work on Galleons,

Tsume

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