Death's Departure

It was with the languid, unhurried grace of a person with all the time in the world that the bare feet of what appeared to be a young, red haired child wandered through the halls of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.

Amethyst eyes would occasionally stop to observe the going ons - old men and women receiving death sentences and young fools barely escaping their own - mildly curious, but mostly apathetic. She would stare a little longer at the ones who were alone, or didn't to seem to care. She would glance briefly into the ones that seemed almost empty, and find herself both disappointed, but not quite let down - it was nothing she didn't already expect, after all. No one stopped to greet her. No one told her off for her ratty black cloak, or tried to kick her out of their room.

It was just as well - she was getting sick of the same old thing. Despite her trying, she never seemed able to understand - humans were always the same. It was a wonder why she ever bothered.

(Once, there was a man who had won from her her respect and friendship - )

Tired and bored, the girl finally took a seat. Looking around, she studied the brightly painted walls, adorned with the moving images of animals, both magical and mundane. The place where human children were cared for, most likely. With thin, ghostly fingers, she reached out to trace the likeness of the Unicorn, but it danced away from her touch, and eventually from her sight as it vanished into the oil pastel forest.

She stayed like that, for however long it was. Mere minutes or decades could have gone by, for all she knew or cared. She watched with that detached sort of ambivalence as the wizards and witches of magical Britain did what humans were wont to do in hospitals. To the girl, it didn't seem all that different from the non-magical hospitals, for while those with magic would like to think themselves more clever and capable than those that didn't, it didn't change the fact that she would welcome them all into her embrace eventually.

Even the ones who think they've won - like that detestable old Flamel, and his bint of a wife Penelope or Pansy or whatever her name was, and that idiotic Riddle boy - all mankind eventually longed to return to her nothingness. Even if they didn't she wasn't one to let her prey escape quite so easily. It was only right, only fair, that what was rightfully hers returned to her.

Time continued to pass. The distant hum as more and more, always more, joined her under her heavy cloak lulled her into a content doze as she continued to ponder. Eventually, though, she grew restless again. Bored. Her spectral wings rustled as the powerful urge to move on finally gripped her, as it did after a particularly long period of inactivity. Blinking her eyes open again, she once again studied the room she had chosen to rest in. The room seemed brighter, somehow. The mural had been redone in the time she had been dozing, covered not just in beasts and creatures, but also with little children playing and running through the brushstroke grass of spring and into the winter season just over the hill, pulling on conjured skates and slipping and sliding over the painted white swirl depicting a frozen lake.

The girl stood, and she made her way deeper into the south wing. After several minutes, she found herself walking between rows of small glass encasements, surrounded with mysterious gold tubing and dials of all sorts. Very few of them were occupied, but the ones that were held wrinkly little babies of varying age and size, though all of them had to have been less than two weeks old. It was at the one near the back - covered in all sort of strange devices and moving parts that it was almost nauseating to look at - that she stopped. Drawn to the scent of a human straddling the barrier, she drifted closer and peered inside.

Inside was an infant, tiny and frail even compared to all the others in the ward. Red cheeked, and sedate, it wasn't anything special to look at. How disappointing. Why, she thought to herself, should I sit here and wait to greet this monkey-faced brat, when there are much more exciting victims to stalk and hunt? She could just take the little human and be on her way to more important business - like amusing herself - but something made her hesitate.

Cocking her head to the side, she squinted down at the child as she tried to put her finger on it. Something was off about this kid…

When she realized just what it was, she couldn't help the laugh the bubbled up her chest.

"Little imp should have been dead days ago!"

The girl wasn't straddling the fence between life and death, she was clinging to life tooth and nail as the fates tried to drag her to the other side.

The child's appearance was deceptively peaceful as she continued to slumber, and the girl couldn't help but marvel at the oddity before her. There were plenty of times in the past when humans who had been so close to crossing the river that had fought her off and won to live another day, but those were older men and women, with regrets and people they loved and cherished - humanity with a reason to fight, to stay. Rarely has a child - much less a newborn who could barely open her eyes, done such a thing.

A delighted grin stretched the girl's thin lips. Regardless of what the humans liked to think, she didn't feel any pleasure from taking them. It was just the natural cycle of things, just the way existing was. Her wrath was something bought only when the little monkeys thought they could play their little games and tricks and outsmart her, outrun her. It infuriated her when people didn't want to live to live, but only wanted to live because they simply didn't want to die.

But that pure, most primal and raw desire? To continue breathing, and fighting - to continue living, for better or for worse? She respected it. It was animalistic and honest, and while she may not be able to understand all the little intricacies and nuances of the human condition, she appreciated the sincerity nonetheless.

The child inside the incubator whimpered. Unconsciously, the girl felt her form change. Crooning as she leaned in closer was not a waifish young girl with pale skin and bright hair, but a voluptuous woman with thick brown waves and an olive complexion. Only the flinty amethyst of her eyes remained unchanging as she smiled down at the baby.

"What should I do with you, little one?" she questioned, stroking the soft tuft of black hair on the baby's scalp. "Should I bring you home…" wide dark eyes opened blearily to meet her own. "Or let you stay?" she whispered.

For a minute, nothing happened as they stared at each other. Then the baby huffed, and closed her eyes. As dismissive as an infant could possibly be.

And in that moment, Death knew.

"Yes," she said. "I think I'll leave you here, for now." She smirked. "You can come with me once you've learned some respect -"

Blue curtains rustled in the breeze. A young medi-witch rushed forward to close the open window, bewildered but mostly irritated as she sneezed into the March breeze.

It was as the Morning Star finally faded and the sun broke through the horizon, that one girl changed the destinies of many - most of all, her own.

Well, that was fun.

I know Death in the HP verse is depicted as a classic Grim Reaper of sorts, but I decided to take some liberties with this.

I think it makes sense that Death could be anyone - an old woman down the street or a strapping young man, perfectly healthy with his whole life ahead of him - because anyone can die, at any time. It doesn't matter how healthy or lucky you are, nothing will stop death from coming if it so wishes.

Anyways, tell me what you think! Maybe help me edit this, too, if anyone is willing.