The Headmaster's Only Mistake

Lessons and the Land of the Dead

"Now, while we might not need to eat in the Land of the Dead, it is still fun to do so." said Mortem, clapping his hands once.

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Harry had been in the land of the dead for... he didn't know how long. He didn't need sleep, and there wasn't set times for eating, which you only did if you were craving something, it wasn't a necessity anymore. Sometimes, it felt like he had been there forever, but at others, it felt like barely a day had passed.

Between his classes, Harry would go visit Mortem and help him in his work load, practicing for when he actually died, as well as visit the 'city'.

The land of the dead was possibly, the largest place Harry had ever seen, it's population literally growing daily by the hundreds, but it was quite simply organized. In death, no one cared how good looking or famous you were, the only thing that mattered was your impact on the world.

If you had been a good person through and through, or had helped the  progress of humanity, you were like a celebrity in the Land of the Living. You were comfortably placed in large mansions and didn't have to go through any form of hell.

If you were a bad person, you would be placed in what the living called poverty. You had no home or comforts and had to endure punishments dealt out by Thanatos, Mortem's assistant and sometimes Mortem himself.

If while living,  you didn't really do anything good nor bad, you would be 'middle class'.

In reality, the Land of the Dead was not really as different as the Land of the Living. You had friends, when your family died, family. You didn't have to work or go to school unless it was part of your punishment and it was eternal, until you decided to get a re-birth.

Harry had gotten to meet many of the people he had once idolized, which absolutely floored him. But, his idols seemed even more floored that the Queen of Death had once idolized them, which made Harry feel a strange vertigo mixed with pride.

Aside from visiting the land of the dead, Harry went to his lessons.

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During his lessons with his father, he had finally managed the animagus transformation. What was shocking was his animagus. Instead of just one, he had five! And not just that, three of them were magical animals!

His first transformation was a black retriever. Like all of his animaguses, the dog had a black body and the greenest eyes anyone had seen. Something Harry had learned, was that the more powerful he became, the more his eyes seemed to glow.

Harry's next form was a snake. It was a beautiful black saw-scaled viper with scales of different shades of gray creating the patterns on his skin. His green eyes seemed even more enchanting as most snakes' eyes seemed to be.

The first of his magical creatures to be discovered was probably the most shocking. He was a dark phoenix! His wonderful black plumage that faded into green could rival Fawkes' fiery look. What excited Harry the  most about this, was that he could 'flame' as he liked to call it,  in both  his  phoenix form and human form.

The next of his magical creatures was a hippogriff. Even though he was incredibly proud to be a hippogriff, it made  him incredibly sad. After Sirius died, he rarely went back to Grimmauld Place, he didn't know what had happened to Buckbeak, which made him feel incredibly guilty. 

Mortem, upon realising this, took him and Sirius, who insisted about tagging along to see his old friend, to the magical stables, which held hundreds upon thousands of magical creatures that had the base shape of a horse. After an hour or two, Harry had finally found Buckbeak, who had apparently been killed by Dumbledore after Sirius' death. That just made Harry all that more determined to kill the old bastard.