Author's note: Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

Hogwarts: Assignment #11, Lineage Studies Task #3 Write about someone passing down a family tradition or heirloom.

Warnings: Death (as construct, experience, and character)

Like An Old Friend

Harry Potter was an old, old man when he met his family's oldest friend.

This time he was not at King's Cross Station, though his body felt as weightless and agile as it had the first time this had happened to him. That was how he knew that this time, he would not be given a choice and going back would not be an option. This was fine by Harry, he realized as he connected the dots and felt no regret. He did not need to return. He had had the chance to see his wife, his four children if one included Teddy (which Harry did), and his several grandchildren one last time while he was in good spirits. Yes, more time would have been nice because it would always be nice. But really, other than that, what more could he ask for?

Instead of the familiar platform, Harry stood in an empty white room with no discernable features. He looked around him, wondering how this worked. Wondering if he should move or speak or force his body, which had stopped breathing, to do so as if that would make this world more real…

"Mr Potter," somebody said. Harry spun around and looked to the figure approaching him, wearing solemn black robes and long greying hair which fell and framed his face nicely. He looked gaunt and severe and somewhat in need of a shave. The real mystery to him was that Harry couldn't tell if he was tired, given how exhausted he looked while also seeming sharp and alert.

"Hello," Harry said.

"You are one of the more polite types in your family," the man noted. "I've met many of them."

Harry nodded along.

"Where am I going?" Harry asked. He had spent quite some time wondering about this, since he had been so close to finding out all those decades ago. There was something satisfying in knowing that he was going to find out.

"Before you go," the man said. "You have something of mine."

Harry instinctively patted along his pockets. He frowned.

"I… I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about," he said. He raised his hands, showing his empty palms. "I've got nothing on me."

"Naturally," the man said. Except it wasn't a man anymore, it was a woman with pale blond hair braided over one of her shoulders, wearing a dark suit and a silver tie tucked behind her vest. Her nails were sharp as talons though, which ruined the put-togetherness of her look. She cocked her head as she looked at Harry. "That's what they've all said before you, the men of your family. And yet you've all had a turn with it."

Harry pondered this for a second.

"You're Death," he finally said.

"I am," she said. Harry blinked and all of a sudden she was a much younger girl, the size of his granddaughter really, with two pigtails and a dress so grey it may as well have been dragged through cobwebs and dust.

"So you must want the cloak," Harry said. "If I'm remembering the story right... No offence, but I did my best not to think of you too much."

"The cloak is my cloak," Death said with the bitterness and possessiveness of a child. "Relinquish it."

"Where's Harry?" James roared. "Where's Lily?"

"You have done what you could for them," the man said simply—as if that simple sentence answered any of the questions going through James' head or addressed the beating of his heart. Then James realized that this heart wasn't beating, actually. There was adrenaline coursing through him and pounding in his ears, but his heart was most definitely not beating.

"They're not here," James said finally. "Is that… is that good? Does that mean they're alive?"

"I see that you know who I am," Death said. His head was completely bald and his face looked long and gaunt, like an oil painting that hadn't been conserved properly. His fingers were long and delicate, his knuckles hard.

"I've heard stories about you," James said. "Nearly met you a few times, I reckon. Is my wife going to be okay? My son?"

"You have dead, Mr Potter," Death said. "You do not have access to the mortal world or anything that happened in it after that point."

"That… well, it's not fair, but fair enough," James said. He crossed his arms. "I don't want to be here if I can't find out about them. I want to go… I want to go somewhere else, to the next place or whatever, where I might be able to find out."

"I do plan on releasing you shortly," Death said. "But before you go, Mr Potter, I require that you return my property to me."

"Your property?" James asked, arching an eyebrow.

"The cloak, Mr Potter," Death said.

"Well that's not technically yours, is it?" James said. "I mean, if that bloody mad story Dad used to go on about is true after all—which I suppose it must be if you want the cloak back—the cloak was a gift you gave. It's a bit rude to ask for a gift to be returned, isn't it?"

"Ignotus Peverell had no right to pass the cloak along," Death said.

"Sure he did," James said. "You gave it to him as a gift, he could do what he pleased with it after that. If it was really on loan, you really should have specified. Given him a receipt or something..."

"Were you this much of a smartmouth as a living man, Mr Potter?"

"Absolutely," James said. "You'd think I'd be emboldened now, since nothing I do really matters and I don't have anything to lose, but I've always been like this. Sometimes worse."

Death rolled its eyes at James Potter.

Fleamont Potter chuckled.

"Why in the world would I give you that?" he asked Death, his chuckle light and airy. The old woman who stood him, grey hair braided into an intricate updo, did not look amused by his laissez-faire and ease.

"You very well know I can't do that," Felamont said cheerfully. "And even if I wanted to, the cloak is no longer mine. I'm afraid you'll have to take it up with my son when the time comes, which I do hope takes some time. He is, after all, quite the strong and clever man."

"Do not tempt me," Death said.

"That isn't how it works," Fleamont said, shaking his head. "Death isn't vengeful or petty or planned. It's natural. Random. You can't and you won't go after him, please don't threaten me. I'd like to see my wife now."

"Even if I had a reason to give you the cloak, I don't have it," James said. "Why would I? I wasn't planning on seeing you I…"

Suddenly the weight of it hit him. He was dead. He had died. Voldemort had found them, and if Voldemort had found them that meant Peter had died or he'd… no, he must be dead. Peter must be dead. And Lily and Harry…

"I wasn't ready," James said, running a hand through his hair. The air rushed out of his lungs. "I wasn't ready to die."

"I know," Death said. When he looked down, he had turned into a lanky young boy with pale skin and deep, bottomless eyes. "You aren't the first, James Potter. You won't be the last."

"I know, I'm not very special," James said. His mind wandered through his memories of Lily and Harry. They were special.

"Why do you want the cloak back, anyways?" James asked. "I know what the story says, about Ignotus Peverell hiding from death under the cloak until he was ready—but I'm here now, so obviously the cloak can't help you hide from Death. What's it to you if you don't have it? If my son, if he's still alive, gets it instead?"

An old woman, wrinkled and bent and pale with grey hair cut close to her scalp, stood before James and shook her head.

"The Cloak has given mortals a reason to think that Death will not come for them," she said. "That there is a way they can escape from Me."

"In the pages of a storybook, sure," James shrugged. He had never thought of it that way. He had never thought of the cloak that way. Really, the only thing the cloak had helped him escape were Death Eaters. Also Minerva McGonagall.

"It does not matter where," Death said. "The idea is dangerous."

"I never thought about the cloak that way," Harry said. "I always thought it was the absolute greatest stroke of luck that I hadn't died a hundred deaths before this one. Every morning, when I saw my wife or my sons or my daughter and my grandchildren after… I thought it was a blessing I couldn't understand. I know that the cloak had nothing to do with it."

"You have a special relationship to me, Mr Potter," Death explained. She was a teenage girl now, hair as black as his and nails covered in dark polish. She even slouched. "Not all are as wise as you, and because of that the cloak is dangerous. I want it back."

Harry pondered this for a few moments.

Then he smiled.

"You know, my grandson—James' first son, well he's going to start attending Hogwarts next year," Harry said. "I wouldn't want to compromise just how much trouble he'll get up to by giving up something that is no longer mine to give away."

Death frowned. The furrow between her eyebrows spread across her face as she reprised the form of an old man, roughly the same age as Harry but in a far worse mood.

"Is that a no, Mr Potter?" Death asked.

"It's a no," Harry confirmed. "But I'm ready to go with you now."

Though Harry had no way of recognizing the sound, he knew that he was hearing Ignotus Peverell laugh in the back of his head.

And so Death let him pass, as he had let generations before him.

Word count: 1681