Meeting with "DEATH" part 1

Harry and Luna lay in the dirt and the leaves and the bugs and watched the moon rise in the very same spot where Harry had once lay dead. Harry drew upon his years of Astronomy lessons to map out the constellations, while Luna made up her own, and when the errant cloud or two disrupted their star gazing, they squinted at the balls of fluff until their eyes tricked them into seeing shapes that weren't really there. Harry was content, he was so drunk off of laughter he might even consider himself to be happy. He would have remained in that clearing with Luna until the sun rose if it weren't for Ron and Hermione's arrival.

The two arrived with none of the ghostly silence and surreal grace that Luna had, their frightened whispers and stumbling steps alerted the stargazers of their approach long before they stepped into the clearing.

"How did you find me?" Harry posed the question with no anger or irritation, only contended laziness with only subtle hints of curiosity.

Hermione was the one to answer. "Well, after we checked all of your usual haunts and came up with nothing we came back here and used a point me spell." She shrugged and refused to blush under Harry's incredulous gaze. "Yes, I'm aware of how impractical that was, but with you not in your usual spots, we hoped you were just lurking somewhere in the castle and that the spell would lend us a bit of a hand in leading us to you."

"I don't lurk."

Ron immediately and mercilessly shut down his protests. "You lurk. You're actually scarily good at it. Like a vampire or something."

Harry flipped him the finger. "Go away. You're ruining our feng shui."

"I don't think that means what you think it does. But you were close." Hermione circled around Harry's prone body so that she could lean directly over him and peer down into his face. "What are you doing out here?"

"Well, we were stargazing." Harry allowed a pointed silence to linger for a moment, hoping Hermione would realize that her unfairly enormous head and even more unfairly enormous hair were inhibiting his view of the stars. She realized, she just didn't care.

"You had us worried. What you did because of your nightmare, the way you blew up those pipes, the voices only you could hear….that vision."

"I lied."

The full blown worry attack Hermione was quickly approaching faltered. "What are you talking about?"

"I didn't have a nightmare, I only said that to distract you."

Worry quickly turned to dangerous anger. "Distract me from what?"

"I think I united the Deathly Hallows."

Ron frowned, though more from confusion than from any actual anger. "But I thought you got rid of them. You put the wand back in Dumbledore's tomb, we saw you do that, and the stone is still somewhere here in the forest."

Harry nodded in vehement agreement. "I did. It was. But when I went up to the dorm they were waiting for me, as if I'd never tried to get rid of them."

Luna offered Harry a sympathetic but irritatingly knowing smile. "All it took was one time. Once united they'll never be separated again."

"Okay, wait." Hermione folded her legs beneath her, ignoring the damp dirt that soaked into her jeans, in order to sit level with Harry and Luna. Ron was quick to follow suit. "Start from the beginning so we can understand. You got rid of the stone and the wand earlier this morning but when you went to the dorm they were there? But then what?"Harry hesitated, pondering the best way to explain the events that had occurred only a few hours earlier. But in the end, there was no gentle way to put it. "I saw Fred. He appeared in the dorms after I found the Hallows, but he wasn't normal, he wasn't like any of the other ghosts."

Ron looked pale. "What do you mean?"

"He didn't float and he wasn't translucent." Harry paused trying to recall every moment he'd spent with the strange, undead Fred. "He was pale, washed out, but he looked real. At first I thought he was George, but he had both ears. When I tried to talk to him he seemed disoriented, I don't think he knew what was going on either."

"What happened to him?"

Harry quelled his urge to fidget mindlessly by plucking at the blades of dying grass around himself. "He wasn't the only one there. I couldn't see them, but there were others talking, whispering things I couldn't hear."

"The voices you asked us about before you ran," Hermione realized.

"Yes." Harry nodded uncomfortably. "There were so many of them, it was hurting my head. So I told them to stop, I yelled it, and they did, but it did something to Fred. When I reached out to touch him he disappeared and I…I hurt."

Ron inched closer to Harry, but he very noticeably didn't touch him. "You hurt?"

"It was like the Cruciatus, but so much worse because I didn't know where it was coming from, I didn't know what was happening to me, why it was happening."

"Is that what happened to you?" Ron gestured to Harry's bare torso where lacerations had once adorned his skin

Harry tugged shakily at the ends of his hair as he nodded. "I just wanted it to stop, it hurt so bad. When it did, I realized the Hallows were gone, I searched everywhere but I couldn't find them anywhere. And then you two showed up and…well everything after that happened."

"So what do you think this means?" Hermione looked between her three friends. "The stories say that the one to unite the Hallows becomes the Master of Death, but that doesn't mean literally does it?"

Luna shook her head. "Not Death's master, only his equal."

"Where can we go to find out more about this? There has to be something other than the children's story."

"Leave it."

Clearly the last response she had been expecting or wanting to hear, Hermione turned the full force of her gaze on Harry, seeling clarification. "What."

"I'd rather we just left it, at least for a little." Harry shifted only just enough so that he could look up at the sky with no obstructions by way of bushy brown hair. "No books, no research, we're just going to...let it all play out how it will. I just want to take a break?"

Hermione didn't look all too pleased with this idea, but she understood, Harry knew she did. "This isn't something that we can just ignore and hope it goes away, but maybe you're right, maybe we do need a break. We'll let it rest for now. Long enough for us to regain our bearings, but not a moment longer. Agreed?"

Harry nodded reluctantly. "Agreed."