Nose to the Wind // tomarry

Chapter 1: Death Once Again

The older Harry got, the more he ruminated on his choices. A lot of that was almost certainly due to his isolation; a product of his own wish for privacy, outliving most of his few friends, and quitting his job teaching at a muggle grade school to teach those handful of young non-humans and humans with a talent for reading Death's book (who then left him to spread his teachings to others, and so it went).

His only remaining companions were the house-elf Aurora, and the avatar of Death, his lover Tom Riddle. And while Tom could keep him distracted while he was around, he had a job to do that all-too-often kept him away from Harry's Antarctic abode. Which Harry respected – it was technically his own fault that his dead lover had been made to take up Death's mantle – but it still left him a lot of lonely downtime.

It was just such a time, Tom gone out to collect the spirits piled up during the past couple hours of distraction, when Harry wondered what it would have been like, this life, if Tom hadn't had to die. If Harry, himself, hadn't been forced to reorder the entire world because of a prophecy saying he'd save the non-humans.

Not that he wasn't glad to have saved his people from the human governments' persecution, but for all that his people had gained freedom, his personal losses were...

Well, let's just say there were a lot of people who had saved him in his first life, who he'd brought about the deaths of in his second.

"Master Lord?" Aurora said, a concerned look on her face.

Harry reached up and touched the wet streaks he hadn't even realised had begun to mar his cheeks. "I'm fine, sweetie," he whispered around the block of a sob in his throat.

Aurora didn't look like she believed him, but she inclined her head anyway, familiar enough with Harry's refusal to be comforted by anyone.

What is it like to not always have to be strong? Harry wondered a bit inanely.

"Aurora doesn't understand the question," Aurora replied, and Harry realised he'd spoken out loud.

Oh, that was never a good sign. At least Tom wasn't there to mock him about 'losing your mind in your old age, Sol?'

Harry took a couple slow breaths, calming himself enough that he could speak past the block in his throat. "Don't mind me, Aurora. I'm just being an old man, regretting my life choices."

Aurora's ears drooped. "Master Lord regrets...everything?" she whispered, and Harry heard the lifetime of oppression that this house-elf, Kreacher's granddaughter, had never had to suffer in her words.

"No," he said, the word thrown down between them with such force, Aurora flinched. Harry closed his eyes and shook his head, made a concerted effort to gentle his tone as he explained, "I don't regret the outcome, but I regret the means. The lives lost."

"Master Death," Aurora said, and Harry glanced over at her to see her nodding in understanding. "Master Lord would rather he was..." she frowned.

"Not dead?" Harry suggested drily and she ducked her head. "Him, yes. A number of other people, too. You remember Bill?"

She frowned in thought, but nodded after a moment; she'd still been young when Bill had died fighting off a rebellion attempt.

"His father and one of his brothers both died in the war, before Tom. Others, too. People who never knew me, but whom I... They could have been my family, if I'd been less what I am."

"Parents? Brothers and sisters?" Aurora asked, very likely thinking of her own extended family; she'd drawn the short straw – or the long straw, she always insisted – to take care of Harry and his quiet home, while the rest of Kreacher's descendants lived in the UK, operating the werefolk wayhouses that still existed for those loners who wanted something like a pack without the hierarchy.