-Omake-

Dragon Bait

A/N: I dunno why, but this has elements of crack? I don't understand my own characters sometimes.

Thank you to all of the wonderful people who commented, are following and favoured this story! :D The support is heart-warming!

Disclaimer: Yeah. No.

Harry knew he was in trouble when he saw the huge dragon baring its teeth at him and a clutch of eggs lying at its feet.

A mother dragon.

His eyes flew wide open with realization as his ears picked up the thunderous roar of students cheering the creature on. Few had the presence of mind to actually support the unwiling champion who was stranded in the arena.

First Task.

Harry's heart jumped to his throat.

With a deafening roar, the Hungarian Horntail opened its jaws wide and the now-very-possibly teen wasted two precious seconds staring disbelievingly at the scorching force—building and building threateningly inside the belly of the huge lizard which was after his life. First orange in intensity, then yellower in colour and whitening even further—

"Witches and wizard-men, operation one extra crispy human is a go! Kudos to the mother hen dragon for successfully achieving the impossible! Frying alive the one and only: the Bloody. Boy. Who. Lived!" Death hissed into his ear with vicious glee.

It was that more than anything that snapped him out from his dizzy spell. Harry dived for the shelter of a nearby rock, wincing when he felt the flames beginning to melt through it.

Uncaring of his discomfort, Death yawned in boredom next to him.

The Master of Death glared daggers at the cheeky bastard who had put him there without his permission. Luckily Death was almost invisible to the naked eye, so probably no one was capable of seeing him there with him.

Still, he was furious. "You bloody sack of dragon dun-!"

"Ah, ah, ah!" Death swung a bony finger in his face. "Poisonous toadstools don't change their spots, Harry! (1) You never specified when you wanted to appear! Plus, there's no good fun in being absolutely prepared, you stupid whelp."

Fun? Harry wanted to throttle him right there. He'd show him fun—

"Harry, your broom!" Harry started, his chest cavity contracting rather painfully at the sound of Hermione's panicked call. "Summon your broom!"

Because Hermione.

Oh, Merlin. How he'd missed her. Last time he'd seen her, her body was cooling and nothing remained of her but her lifeless body.

Bellatrix had gotten her with a lucky shot. Another thing he had against that hag.

Recalling the feel of her cold hand within his, Harry wanted nothing more than to flung himself into the stands and emulate his best friend in that moment, giving her his own version of a bone-crushing hug—or even better, pulling her into a searing kiss sounded like a bloody brilliant idea. Best he had in a long time, really. But, unfortunately, the huge gouges in the stone ground were presently part of a bigger problem than just his unquenchable desire for Hermione Granger.

"Get me out of here," Harry hissed angrily. He wasn't in the mood to outfly a bloody dragon.

The ever infuriating being he was bound to feigned getting some wax out of his ear. "Sorry, you said something?"

"Death—"

"I prefer the name Albert, you know."

Whatever retort he had prepared had to wait, for the dragon had grown tired of Harry's games and was about to blurt its usual spiel of fireworks again. Which just happened to be extremely dangerous, even to an overpowered wizard like him.

Harry knew his time was up.

"Holy buggering Merlin fuck—Accio Firebolt!" he shouted desperately.

His broom was in his hands in an instant. Having the distinct advantage of being more in tune with his (ridiculously massive) core compared to his fourteen-year-old self, he had the broom zooming into the arena in a blast of speed that had people in the stands reeling back in their seats from the sheer backlash. And being the unfortunate sod he was, Draco Malfoy just had to be standing. The Malfoy scion tipped over the ledge, directly into the range of the dragon's passing fire. The resulting screams of terror from Bagman and everyone in the vicinity were lost to Harry, who was in the process of outrunning the same fire which had roasted Malfoy alive.

In a direct contrast with the urgency of the overall situation, Death floated idly, lying spread-eagled over the racing teenager as they examined their perfectly-manicured nails.

"I reckon you could use some help, Master," the she-Death stated, although there was a tilt that made the sentence into a tentative question.

Harry soared upward just in time to avoid a brutal swipe from the dragon's tail, vexed by the fact that Death had no troubles in following him while he was doing his hardest not to get caught in the flames.

"You think?" he yelled at her.

Not-Fleur sighed in faux melancholy. "Temper, temper… what do they teach youngsters these days, I wonder?"

She snapped her fingers.

The world froze.

Harry was still moving, however. But the air felt stale, as if it was pushing against him before it yielded to his speed reluctantly. His hair moved limply, unsure of the correct pattern the wind should have swirled it with the currents.

Noticing the abnormal change around him, Harry chanced a peep over his shoulder—and couldn't help but stop in his tracks due to the surprise.

He gaped.

Harry was staring wide-eyed at the sight of the terrifying Hungarian Horntail still directing its flames in his direction, but neglecting to turn its neck—not even twitching or breathing, there was no doubt that the dragon was still alive and very much irritated with the seemingly young champion who had dared to enter in her territory to steal from her clutch. The gleam of the golden egg too seemed frozen in time. In fact, every bloody thing was stuck in place rather unnaturally.

With dawning horror, he noticed a couple of smoking bodies littering grossly the perimeter of the arena.

"Death," he said faintly.

"What's that, Harry?" Death joined him eagerly, like a dog waving its tail at his owner. "Do you like it? I did this especially for you."

"You could have stopped time anytime you wanted?" he choked out.

"Sure did, mate," Death nodded eagerly. The voice of Ronald Weasley made him nauseous. It was so out of place, so off putting— "But like I said, there's no fun in that. Bloody hell, you sure like to brush with me, mate. It's kinda like having a demented cat rubbing all over me." The freckled face of the redhead grew green. "I know that you like me a little too much, Master, but it's somewhat obnoxious at this point. You have to learn to control your bodies ur—"

"Wait. What do you mean you could have stopped time? Why did you have to drop me here of all places and times!? WHY IN THE FUCKING HELLS DID IT HAVE TO BE ME FACING A BLOODY DRAGON AGAIN!" Harry exploded.

"Oh, you'd prefer your fifth year instead?"

Harry's closed fists twitched violently and the teenager dismounted his broom. Death's face was making him so mad… Didn't help it was Ron… or appeared to be Ron...

He decked Death in the face.

Unused to violence against him, Death crumpled to the ground unceremoniously, holding his crooked nose, which had taken most of the brunt of the hit. Because he was wearing a human disguise, a thin river of blood started dripping from his sinuses.

At first, Death stared dumbly at the red liquid. For a being who went agog over humankind's daily suffering, the personification of death didn't seem to take well the pain, was Harry's first thought.

The one that followed after that, however…

Death eyes were pure obsidian with rage when they looked up.

I mucked up, some part of him whimpered.

"Next stop, Voldemort's grand ritual," Death grinned savagely at him.

He snapped his fingers again.

Dread pooled deep in his stomach. Harry didn't even have the time to issue an order against which would counteract what Death was planning to do. One moment, he was facing Death; the other, he was looking at a freshly resurrected Lord Voldemort smirking into his eyes.

The gloom of a graveyard extended around them.

"Crucio!" Voldemort simpered with glee.

Harry had only revisited that night through his dreams— the ugliest, murkiest ones he had after a very bad day—, but whatever his imagination had cooked up for his nightmares, it didn't even begin to hold a candle to the true definition of pain that was striking him in that precise moment.

His body was out of his control now, muscles contracting and distending unnaturally, seemingly with a mind of their own, and with a spark of growing Fiendfyre growing and devouring his very being mercilessly.

He couldn't think. He couldn't think past the pain, the need of being rescued, the need for it to…

"Stop!" he mouthed.

That was enough.

There was a somber crack that echoed midst the tombstones—a deadly silence descended on the cemetery. Quite the overwhelming contrast, when moments ago you couldn't think over the sound of your own screams. Harry curled on the ground, tears trekking down his face at the absence of pain, but all the same very confused by the chance of being able to be in the presence of Voldemort.

Harry glanced up—he had to work up the courage to do it. Irrationally, there was a part of him that feared that he would be put under the curse the moment he did.

He did it anyways.

Harry watched Lord Voldemort—wand aimed at him, a feral smirk on the lips, inhuman red eyes glinting in victory—only it wasn't right, because Voldemort was supposed to be looking at him as he took enjoy in causing him physical pain. Instead, Tom's reptile-like face was tilting ever so slightly sideways—no, down, not sideways— and the head looked how a cheap puppet would be like with its strings cut. Hanging limply.

"Potter," he heard Lucius Malfoy sputter.

Only then did Harry notice Death, looking like him, staring down at him with a neutral face from behind the still upright corpse of his archenemy.

"Shut it, Malfoy," he heard him say before he wrenched on the air. A sick squelch carried over to where he was lying, followed by what could only be Lucius' face flying towards Death's outstretched hand.

Harry swallowed the bile he could taste in his mouth.

It was a pathetically one-sided battle. The Death Eaters had no chance against him. The most daring of the bunch started firing spells, but when the most cowardly ones tried to apparate away, they stayed; ironically, the bloody wards Voldemort had erected prevented his minions' escape just as perfectly as they would have worked on him.

The bloodbath was over in a matter of seconds, but the trauma couldn't be denied.

Death's pools of obsidian were still locked with his.

"Never make me mad, Harry Potter," Death breathed. He let the face of Lucius Malfoy drop to the ground, where he stepped on the back of it with his boots.

As if to prove a point, the bodies of the recently deceased dropped to the ground as one. For Death, that probably was his way to make a statement.

Harry glowered darkly at the being and quickly climbed back to his feet using his shaking limbs. The Cruciatus remained as one of the most vicious curses in existence, even with all the knowledge he had stored in his head in his years in Limbo.

"You broke the clauses of our contract," he hissed, alarmed, fearful and so bloody angry with the traitor before him.

"If you remember well, Master," Death drawled, "I've never plotted against you. This"—he gestured at the graveyard—"was a spur of the moment thing. But it served well in reminding you of your real standing with me."

"Which is?" Harry's voice shook.

"If I'm miserable with this arrangement, then so are you," he stated simply. The blackness of Death's eyes didn't recede. "If I'm bloody well unsatisfied by what I'm forced to do for you, Master, then I'll try my hardest to make my reluctance known."

Harry didn't start shaking; he didn't gulp in fear or take a step back. But he really wanted to. Merlin, how he wanted to.

Surprisingly, the aftereffects of the Cruciatus, painful as they were, helped him keep his cool.

"You won't do it again," Harry commanded him, summoning all of what made him Gryffindor and making an effort to channel that aspect of his personality in those simple words. "You won't hurt me again. Never. No matter what. Not my friends, not my children, not anyone I hold dear to my heart. You're meant to protect me, not mean me harm. If you are not going to cooperate, then you have another thing coming: I am still your Master, Death, and as much as it pains you, you bow down to me."

Death hunched his shoulders under the weight of his words.

"Let's start again," Harry proposed, pushing his resentment far into the corners of his mind where it wouldn't disturb him. He pointedly didn't look at any of the bodies Death had left in his wake, although he was sure that Voldemort's head hanging limply like that would haunt him forever, even if the bloody tosser had deserved it. "I say the place and the time of arrival."

Death simply nodded.

Harry sighed deeply, thinking. "I want to prevent Cedric from dying."

"I'll simply revive him," Death retorted calmly, "problem solved. No Voldemort either."

"Can you do that with every student who died in the stands in the First Task?" Harry looked at him knowingly.

Death growled something under his breath. "No," he finally admitted, "I can't. It would disturb the balance greatly. Although… this timeline is already unsustainable. It will soon break apart after this encounter with your precious Death Eaters. There's a limit to how many relevant people can die in a day. We'd run out characters otherwise."

"So we start again."

Death grunted and looked away.

Harry came to a decision. "Same year," he said. "Give me some bloody time to prepare. Don't dump me in the middle of the lake or any nonsense like that. That surprise with the dragon wasn't funny."

Death chuckled. "It was to me," he said, grinning.

"Oh, yeah?" Harry arched one of his eyebrows. His Slytherin side was making an appearance, vicious and shrewd as ever. "How about you do that Task without any of your fancy powers at your disposal?"

Death glared at his Master.

"You wouldn't dare," he gritted out through his teeth.

"I would," Harry said easily, "And I'm doing it."

Unable to complain, Death only groaned loudly into his hands.

The fun started here, Harry inwardly smirked.

Punishment time.

(1) Means that certain aspects of your character or the character of others can't be changed.

Yes. I totally broke the fourth wall. Because reasons.

And yeah. I went there.