You probably know people like me.
You know what I’m talking about. You’ve seen us in school, in the shops, at sporting events, at parties, standing around running our mouths in public squares. We’re all around you.
We’re the ones who just can’t keep our mouths shut, no matter how much you want us to. And, in fact, the more you want us to be quiet, the more likely we’ll just keep blabbering on. It’s our nature to be cynical and sarcastic about absolutely everything, and if we actually do support anything, we make sure you know it. After all, we do know nearly everything that there is to know, and one of the things that we know is that we know more than you do, thank you very much. Criticism is our game, and we play it well.
We usually end up as lawyers or politicians or reporters or telemarketers, or if we’re nice, something a little bit less universally hated, such as mass murderers or Elvis impersonators.
So you’d think the last profession a person like me would choose would be that of an Unspeakable, right? I mean, the very name suggests that this is a job that does not involve a lot of chatter around the water cooler, as it were.
But extenuating circumstances are funny things. They tend to make decisions for us. And another thing at which people like me excel is saving our own skins.
Said skin was saved in a rather interesting way, actually. And to tell you the truth, I was flattering myself when I said I was good at such things. The saving of my skin has quite a lot to do with my best friend and the Order of the Phoenix, but that’s an entirely different story. Let’s just say that I was a Death Eater for a ludicrously short amount of time before seeing the error, nay, breathtaking stupidity of my ways. Faking my death and fleeing off to join the Order was, well, in order.
Since the wizarding world thinks I’m dead (which I will be if the Death Eaters find out otherwise), walking the streets of London in broad daylight might cause slight chaos. So the Order has kindly arranged for me to begin an internship with the Department of Mysteries.
If you think about it, there’s no better career for a fugitive than that of an Unspeakable. People leave them alone, no one dares ask them questions, and everyone automatically assumes that they’re keeping secrets. And, of course, they stay out of the public eye.
Today’s my first day of training, and I, the one who tends to know absolutely everything, have no idea what to expect. It’s nothing like my first day of Hogwarts, when there were dozens of equally clueless first years and lots of helpful teachers pointing the way and patiently explaining why it’s an extremely bad idea to pick one’s nose with one’s new wand, because wizards far better than you have blown their brains out that way, Mr. Goyle. But I digress.
The corridor leading to the Department of Mysteries is dark, deserted, and as silent as a jury that’s just been asked, ‘All who find Lord Voldemort innocent, say aye!’. (ie. extraordinarily quiet indeed.) The dark walls are unadorned, and the hallway is narrow and claustrophic. Clearly, the Department of Mysteries is one area of the Ministry in which Dolores Umbridge has not tampered”otherwise, it would be pink and boasting an unusually high kitten quotient.
It’s no mystery (pause here to marvel at my witty wordplay) where I should go next, as there’s only one door at the end of the hallway, and it’s slightly and invitingly ajar. I step through it and let it shut behind me as I enter the Department of Mysteries.
Big mistake.
I greatly dislike amusement parks, and cannot see for the life of me what’s supposed to be so ‘amusing’ about puking one’s guts up and screaming for one’s mother. One time, and one time only, my friend November managed to persuade me to ride some mechanical monstrosity called “UNCLE GRAVITRON.” Its aim was to make riders scream ‘Uncle! Uncle!’ as they spun around madly, pinned to the walls. Uncle Gravitron was extremely successful at this, at least in my case. I believe I vomited up several feet of my intestines, but I won’t get into that.
Horrific memories aside, this room behaves very much indeed like Uncle Gravitron. The walls whirl around and around, the eerie blue candlelight that illuminates the room blurring into one solid neon line, and although the ground beneath my feet is steady, you could fool me. You also could knock me over by blowing gently on me. I am dizzy and disoriented, and all of the dozen or so doors look so alike that I know there’s no way that I’ll ever be able to deduce which one leads to my training session.
Luckily, however, I don’t have to. Almost as soon as the walls stop spinning (at this point, several loud ‘Hallelujah’s ensue), one of the doors swings wide open, seemingly on its own.
Curiouser and curiouser. Feeling very much like Alice in Wonderland (only considerably less fictional, much older, and male… all right, nearly nothing like Alice in Wonderland), I blink a few times and tiptoe hesitantly through the door, hoping beyond hope that the next room does not contain Gravitron Junior.
It doesn’t, but it’s almost as menacing-looking, and I can’t help but wonder why on earth I’m wanted here. ‘Dark and somber’ definitely seems to be the design motif in the Department of Mysteries, and this room’s no exception. Resembling an amphitheater gone gothic, it’s is a stadium of crumbling black stone that’s centered around an archway sporting a single tattered black curtain.
It ripples and flutters as though stirred by a nonexistent breeze, but it’s not the only thing moving in the room. I am not alone.
* * * * *
A barely perceptible rustle, a flicker of motion at the corner of my eye, the prickling sensation of the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end… someone is definitely here, but they don’t appear to be feeling particularly social at the moment.
Something about this room just doesn’t seem right, although I can’t put my finger on it. It’s not just the elusive company that I’m keeping”the air itself seems heavy and oddly dry, and the walls swirl with shadows despite the fact that there’s no source of light to cast them. It’s almost too quiet, somehow more silent than total silence itself.
Go on, sit in silence for a moment. Do you hear it? There’s something making noise, no matter how soft it is. The pipes gurgle. The lights hum. In the distance, crickets chirp and cars screech. Your stomach growls and your breath and heartbeat form a quiet cadence. Next door, Mrs. O’Malley shouts at her creepy son for bringing dead polecats into the house again.
But here, in this room, the air is dead. Totally and utterly dead. Instinctively, I put my fingers to my throat somewhere south of my chin and west of my Adam’s apple to feel my pulse. Nothing. ‘Dead’ is a very apt word to describe the silence.
And suddenly, I realize what’s so strange about this room. Everything is slightly, subtly, but surely the wrong colour. I’ve never seen this place before, but the grey-black stone of the stadium steps is just too flat, too monochromatic to be real. I look down at my arms to find that not only are they covered in gooseflesh (I suspect they spell ‘I’m creeped out’ in Braille), but that they’re bathed in an odd greyish light. Only there is no light.
I tilt my head downward and let my fringe fall over my eyes. No question, it has the same flat, grey cast as my arms. Normally, hair shines under a light, but this light that comes from everywhere and nowhere flattens and deadens the colour. It’s eerie and surreal, and I… well, let’s be honest. I’m not curious at all about what’s causing this. I just want out.
I voice this statement aloud. “Get me out of here!” I exclaim.
Strange. It should have echoed thunderously throughout the cavernous room. But my voice just sounds flat, tinny, and muted, and I feel very small indeed.
Something soft brushes against my ear like a butterfly’s wing, and my head whips around to see… absolutely nothing but a blank stretch of flat grey-black wall. “There is a way out,” a soothing female voice whispers, causing the fine hairs of my inner ear to stand on end, matching the rest of my bodily hair. (I suspect even my eyebrows are standing on end.) “Listen to me.”
Unlike mine, the voice resonates from everywhere, but is completely untraceable. It comes from behind the veil… no, from beneath my feet… no, from above my head… from behind me, from beside me, from inside my own head…
“Follow me. Find your way out.”
I don’t need the help of some disembodied voice to find the way out. There’s a fantastic invention called a ‘door’ that was quite useful on my way in. I’m sure it will be equally helpful on my return voyage, and it’s just a few feet behind me.
I turn around and step toward the door, my arms outstretched to push it open and make my exit stage left.
Click.
I gape in disbelief at the door, the door that locked itself… what is this, a bad horror film in which I’m the first unwitting victim? And if so, why have I not seen the script?
“Teddy, the door will only take you back to where you came from. Follow me instead.”
Teddy? Wait a minute… I freeze in my tracks.
“Listen to me. Don’t worry, trust me.”
Only one person has ever called me ‘Teddy’. Only one person has ever spoken to me in such soft, encouraging tones. And only one person’s voice sounds uncannily like this voice…
Coincidentally, these three things all apply to the same person… a person who’s been dead for over ten years. My mother.
“Teddy, it’s me. Why won’t you follow me? There’s only one way out, only one way to see me again. Come through the veil. It’s only just on the other side, Teddy. Follow me through the veil.”
How can this be? The part of my brain that’s usually responsible for logical decisions calls it quits and moves to a senior retirement village in Florida where old people in high-waisted pastel stretch pants ride around in golf carts through sunshiny beaches. I can see both sides of the veil from where I’m standing. My mother’s dead. There’s no possible way for this to be true.
But I move toward the veil nonetheless.
“That’s it, Teddy. Follow me. Just through the veil, it’s not hard… good boy…”
My foot is on the dais, my face mere feet away from the end of the flitting fabric, and my mind somewhere in Looneyville, population Theo. I’m going through the veil, I’m going to see my mother again, just through the veil…
“No,” I exclaim suddenly. Something is wrong with this picture, something foreboding and eerie and just plain disturbing. I force myself to back away from the veil, although it seems to be pulling me almost magnetically toward it, the entire room whispering and coaxing me to take those three simple steps through.
I’ve always gone against conventions, and I’ve never gone along with peer pressure. Why should I start now?
“Well done, Theodore. You’re a smart lad, aren’t you?” rings a man’s voice from behind me.
I turn around, and this time there’s a face to match the voice. Sitting casually on the step behind me is a small, stooped man with oily black hair scraped back from his forehead and skin as pale and clammy as a shell-shocked clam. He grins to reveal pointed canines. “Welcome,” he says, “To the Department of Death.”
* * * * *
Bizarrely, the first thing that pops into my head following this dramatic statement is the fact that this man is smoking a cigarette, despite the fact that the end is not lit. Apparently, the laws of science do not apply in this room. “Erm, smoking kills,” I note, feeling the need to say something.
The man smirks. “Thank you for your warning, but I hardly need to worry about such things,” he tells me. “You really don’t know who I am, do you?”
I don’t like not knowing things. “Well, do you know who I am?” I reply, determined not to give him a straight answer and determined to sound less confused than I’m feeling.
“As a matter of fact, Theodore Aldric Nott, I do,” he informs me smoothly, taking another drag of his unlit cigarette. “And for your information, my name is Mortimer Deathly, head of the Department of Death, arranging, choreographing, and distributing death for the last four thousand years. Here’s my card if you have anymore questions.” He snaps his fingers, and a business card appears between his fingers, out of thin air.
I stare at him, taking what he’s just said in. He stares back, and I realize after a silence of about three minutes that neither of us are blinking, nor do we need to. Time has actively stopped.
“Are you telling me,” I manage to choke, “that you’re the Grim Reaper?” This is unbelievable. If anyone else had told me this, I would be busy contacting the loony bin right now, but looking at this man, it’s obvious that he’s deathly serious. (Excuse the pun.) His unblinking, solid black gaze is so piercing that I feel like I’m receiving a strange version of laser-eye surgery just looking at him, and his mouth is a grim slash. Heh. Grim.
Mr. Deathly acknowledges my statement with an airy wave of his hand. “Yes, yes, but I’d rather be called the Minister of Death. ‘Grim Reaper’ is so trite and hokey, don’t you think?”
“Uh, sure,” I stammer. Best not to disagree with death itself.
“Anyway!” Mr. Deathly crosses his legs neatly, lounging leisurely on his stone bench. “You might be surprised to hear this, Mr. Nott, but I’ve been keeping close watch on you these past few months.” He smirks. “See, I was receiving all these reports of your death, but it was obvious that you hadn’t died. So I thought, I need this boy to work for me.”
I squint, still not following this at all and still completely dazed.
“Oh dear, you really are uninformed about the Ministry of Death, aren’t you?” he sighs. He wipes his brow with a handkerchief, all for show. It’s clear that he’s totally above such silly mortal activities as sweating. “Well, best to explain things simply. See that veil over there?” He points casually with a neatly manicured nail.
“That’s the only way into my office, where I do all of my reaping. I used to make house calls to let people know when their time’s up, but ever since the invention of the internet, I just send emails.” He chuckles to himself. “Now all I have to worry about is someone deleting them as spam.”
I don’t know what it is about me, some strange complex or stupidity manifesting itself in a strange way, or what, but I’ve found that few people intimidate me. I know that death embodied should have me quaking in my Converses, but for some strange reason, the room itself frightens me less than Mr. Deathly and Voldemort put together.
“Now, you may have heard of a similar room elsewhere in this department, but the veil there leads into the land of the common dead”you know, Hades, Tartarus, the Hotel California, any name you want to use for it. You’d do well not to confuse the two veils unless you really want to have a lot of pitiful souls clinging to your ankles and whining about the conditions. As if they need a dental plan or a coffee machine in the afterlife….”
I cough, politely reminding Mr. Deathly that he’s slipped into soliloquy (the polite term for talking to oneself.) “Yes, well, erm, I’ll remember to keep that in mind next time I’m planning to go to the world of the dead, I guess…” I mutter.
“Oh, no, don’t you understand what I’m saying?” Deathly asks as though he’s talking to an especially unintelligent specimen of slime mold.
“Not particularly, no…”
He utters a theatrical sigh. “Ahh, Theodore, I’ve relished my position for four millennia now, watched empires rise and fall and watched the human species make an absolute…astrolabe of itself, if you get my drift. But after awhile, each century just blurs into the next, and a man just wants to call it quits.” He snaps his fingers and his cigarette vaporizes, to be replaced with a fresh one. “And that’s where you, my boy, come in.”
“How, exactly?” I ask. This man can be very vague indeed.
“Well, I wasn’t the first Minister of Death, you know!” he laughs. “I’ve only been in charge for the last four thousand years. It’s a hereditary position, and I’m about ready to retire. But I have no sons, and I could never bring myself to marry a mortal woman knowing that she’d die in a heartbeat. And you seem to be excellent material for Minister of Death, based on what I’ve seen from you. So I called up the Order of the Phoenix and pretended I worked for the Department of Mysteries and was looking for new recruits for the Unspeakable position.”
The already eerily silent room seems to double in silence. It is quiet enough to hear a pin drop in a haystack and locate it solely based on sound. Me, the Grim Reaper? It sounds like a cruel joke. I didn’t have the guts”or sociopathic complex, whichever you prefer”to kill a single person during my brief stint as a Death Eater, and to do it for a career simply boggles the mind.
I look at Mr. Deathly, taking in his stone-cold and unblinking eyes in pure black, his clammy fishbelly-white skin, his snazzy suit. Do I want that to be me? Well, the snazzy suit wouldn’t be so bad, but the rest is thoroughly unappealing.
Even less so is the life of loneliness he’d hinted at, watching human race go by and having nothing to do with it except to kill it off one person by one.
“No way,” I say firmly. “I’d rather die.” Which in retrospect is a remarkably idiotic thing to say to the Grim Reaper.
I expect Mr. Deathly to argue with me, but instead, his expression is fairly calm. “Fine, then,” he says, and snaps his fingers.
I’d like to take this opportunity to educate you about the platypus. A monotreme”that’s a creature with characteristics of a mammal, bird, and reptile”and a denizen of Australia, they look fairly cuddly, but if you’re fooled by them, then you’re wrong. Dead wrong. You see, platypi have venomous spurs on their hind feet, and they’re not afraid to use them.
Why am I talking about platypi at a time like this? Well you see, one just materialized directly in front of me, attached to the door out by a thick metal chain. While I remain rooted to the spot, it lunges toward me, its duckbill oozing ominously with foam and its beady eyes angry slits.
“What the… AAAACK! Good boy! That’s it, good boy, no munching Theo’s privates… that’s a bo”NOOOO!”
I scuttle backward, well out of the reach of the evil attack platypus, and swear under my breath. The only way out of the room, besides the veil, is through that door, and the only way through the door is past the platypus. What does the creature have against me, anyway? I’ve always been quite fond of his species, even using one in my Patronus, and this is the thanks I get?
I turn and glance at Mr. Deathly, pleading him for help with my eyes, but there’s no comfort in his gaze. He is smirking at me, examining his nails and peering in my direction through lowered eyelids in a manner uncannily similar to that of a panther stalking its prey. For some reason, the man thinks it’s a good idea for me to face off with a rabid duck-mammal-thing.
From where I’m seated, the platypus can’t directly see me unless it turns around, and that gives me an advantage. Conceivably, if I do it right, I can sneak up behind the platypus and unchain it, allowing me to escape through the door. It’s far fetched, but it’s my only hope, and I’d rather not meet my end as monotreme chow, especially after faking a far more poignant demise. That would make a humiliating obituary indeed.
I tiptoe as silently and carefully as a cat-burglar ballerina walking on hot coals, although I probably look more like a demented stork, knowing me. This is my only chance, and I simply can’t blow it. Closer and closer… just a few steps more, and I’ll reach the door… my arm is outstretched, my fingers groping for the door…
And in true Theodore Nott fashion, I choose that precise moment to sneeze.
The platypus whips around, bill bared, and in one move, leaps toward me, digging its claws into my chest and knocking me flat on my back.
CRACK! My head knocks across the floor, and strips of bare skin on my chest are exposed as the platypus rips through the thin fabric of my shirt. I can feel the poison spurs on the creature’s feet slashing into my stomach, and my teeth grit in pain. My head whips toward Mr. Deathly, hoping that he’ll do something, hoping that he will call off this evil that dares call itself platypus, but he is as calm and aloof as ever.
“Stop him,” he says simply and carelessly, shrugging his hunched shoulders. “Put an end to it.”
What? Easy for him to say. He’s obviously never grappled with a platypus.
“You’re not listening to me,” he remarks, sniffing slightly. “Very well, continue to let this beast attack you. Of course, you can stop it whenever you want, but apparently that’s too easy for you.”
My eyes narrow in combined frustration and seething pain. So he thinks I can just hold my hands up and say ‘stop,’ and the attack will end just like that? Mockingly, I throw my hands above my head, open my mouth and exclaim, “STOP!”
There is a ringing silence, something all too common in this room, and I feel the platypus’s body weaken and become as limp as a rag doll. Cautiously, I pull myself up to a sitting position, and I feel the animal slide off of my midsection and onto the ground. There it lies, belly-up, motionless, and very, very dead indeed.
I look from the platypus to my own hands, to Mr. Deathly, to the platypus again. It doesn’t add up. If every time I raised my hands and yelled ‘stop,’ something died, I’d make Jack the Ripper look like a fairy princess. How is this possible?
I don’t even want to know. Things are just becoming stranger and stranger, and all I want is to leave this strange nightmare of a room and find something refreshingly dull to do, like Calculus or de-linting my socks. I scramble to my feet and, without even looking back at the Minister of Death, bolt toward the door.
THWONK.
I’m sent tumbling back to the ground again as Mr. Deathly waves his hand and a shield of light forms around the door, deflecting me like the Great Wall of China fending off a hamster.
“Theodore, Theodore,” sighs Mr. Deathly, shaking his head, “It’s not that easy. I’m afraid you can’t just use your new powers once and then walk away from them forever.”
“Excuse me?”
He clucks his tongue. “Once you reap one life, you stay the course,” he tells me sternly, and extends his clammy hand. “You’re in the death trade to stay.”
* * * * * *
“Oh, yes,” adds Mr. Deathly, “I suppose that means you won’t be needing this, then.” He snaps his fingers, and instantly, the strangest sensation comes over me.
I know this isn’t saying much after all I’ve been through so far today, but I feel as though I’ve simultaneously shrunken down to the size of a pinpoint and grown seven feet tall. The closest I can get to describing it would have to be, it feels the way I imagine it would feel to eat myself while on strong anesthetic.
As a matter of fact, I do seem taller… everything in the room seems smaller, like I’m looking down at it from a greater height than usual, and the ceiling of the room doesn’t seem quite as cavernous as before. Why am I having another Alice in Wonderland moment? I don’t remember a giant caterpillar feeding me a mushroom or anything.
Wait a minute… something’s wrong. The floor seems to have ended its shift, because I can tell that there’s nothing beneath my feet except for thin air. That’s most definitely not normal.
I look down and see something that I would never in a million years expect to see below me.
My body.
Wait, what?
That’s… that’s not possible…
But I’m definitely there, slumped over on the ground like a sack of potatoes with scoliosis and looking cold and unresponsive. Who else could it possibly be?
Mr. Deathly gives me his trademark cryptic little smirk, which happens to have grown extremely irritating in the past several minutes. I think I’ve actually developed an allergy to it, as a matter of fact. “Ah, yes, I had to separate you from your body,” he explains simply.
“Yes, I think I noticed as much,” I grunt. “Um… why, exactly?” I can tell that my voice sounds rather shrill and panicky, but to be frank, that’s not of particular concern at the moment. “Why did you have to go and kill me just now?”
“Oh, you’re not dead,” he tells me, producing a nail file from his suit pocket and sculpting away at his cuticles. Clearly, separating souls from bodies was mundane everyday work for him. “Though don’t get too comfortable, because you aren’t alive, either. You’re just… in suspended animation. Suspended in the air, actually.” He shrugs. “You get the perks of both being dead and alive. I find it quite handy personally”my body’s back in my office, and I almost never use it anymore. It’s only good for if I want to eat, really, and eating’s overrated.”
So apparently, I’m not dead. That’s a bit of a relief”personally, I’m not exactly ready to receive my final judgment. There are so many more things I’ve been hoping to discover before my time comes”a cure for cancer, world peace, where exactly you’re supposed to put your nose when you kiss somebody.
My plan has always been to balance out my teenage misbehaviour with good deeds later in life and have my fun while it lasts. This plan does not accommodate dying while still in the ‘misbehaviour’ phase. But I fail to see exactly what sets me apart from being dead, per se, and I tell Mr. Deathly so.
“Right… well, I fail to see what sets me apart from being dead, per se.”
He cocks his head. “Well, how do you tell a ghost from a living human?” he asks rhetorically.
“Ghosts are the imprint of a departed soul, whereas””
“Oh, don’t listen to that rubbish Snape spews,” groans Mr. Deathly, rolling his eyes and waving his hands dismissively. “Really, he just likes to make things difficult. Ghosts are transparent, and you are…?”
I poke myself in the stomach to check. “I’m solid.”
“Wrong again.” The smirk returns. “You are translucent, actually, although I don’t blame you for not noticing”this room is terribly dim. Another difference is that you can return to your body when it so suits you, but at the moment, we don’t have time for such things.” He cocks his head in the other direction, a mannerism which is beginning to look like an odd sort of twitch. “Through the archway.” He stands beside the veil as though he’s a servant at a fancy hotel who has been hired solely to point the way to one’s suite, and I get the distinct feeling that worse things will happen than separating me from my body if I get on his bad side and fail to comply.
Casting a sad look back at my miserable lifeless body (we’ve been quite close over the years, and it’s a pity to part on such short notice), I rise gracefully and weightlessly into the air. There’s something magical and dreamlike about being able to glide through the air at my will, totally immune to the oppressive laws of physics forced upon earthbound mortals, something liberating about it.
At first, it’s a tad difficult to get the hang of it, wobbling about like a fledgling bird on training wings, but once I realize that it’s all based on which way I point my foot (do not go imagining a ballet here, because it’s absolutely nothing like that, and if it is, I don’t want to admit it), it’s nearly effortless. I could get used to this.
In fact, it’s surprisingly easy to adjust to being technically undead. Aside from the mildly disconcerting fact that I no longer have to blink or breathe and that my heart doesn’t beat”you may say now that you don’t notice such things, but believe me, it’s bizarre when they stop”I hardly feel any different than I did when I was alive.
When I was alive… now there’s a surreal phrase for you.
I glide toward the dais where the veil hangs and land gently on a single toe, a good landing for a beginner, and Mr. Deathly acknowledges it with an appraising nod. The veil ripples and sways, and an odd sort of near-magnetic force pulls me toward it, sucking me in. I don’t try to fight it. I walk right through the veil, and into another world.
* * * * * *
Have you ever been in a truly maddening waiting room? I think everyone in the world, probably even pygmies in some remote corner of the jungle, has had to wait for some interminable span of time sitting in a waiting room that seems truly separated from the confines of time.
These are the waiting rooms that are decorated in the lovely colour scheme of, “Oh dear, I think the cat’s ill again.” These are the waiting rooms with chairs that appear to be designed by sadistic interior decorators, with the apparent dual function of serving as both torture devices and eyesores. And above all, these are the waiting rooms with television sets permanently tuned into “Cottonball and Popsicle Stick Crafts With Auntie Helga” and a varied assortment of magazines, including such favourites as “Beet Farmers’ Monthly,” “Vikings’ Digest,” and “Louse Fancier.”
Mr. Deathly’s waiting room was worse.
“Oh, that’s just limbo,” he says airily as we stroll through to his personal office. “Don’t make eye contact.”
I can handle such directions. The wispy souls sitting in the waiting room look forlorn and battered, and not exactly eager to engage in playful banter about Quidditch or the weather. And I doubt they’d take kindly to a translucent boy who doesn’t have to follow the rules of either life or death.
Mr. Deathly’s office is one of the stranger I’ve ever seen. I mean, it has all of the usual essential elements”a cluttered-up desk covered in reams of wadded paper, a computer (Mr. Deathly does not merely serve as the Grim Reaper among wizards; he has just as much influence over Muggles, so the computer makes sense), light fixtures positioned at just the proper angle to inflict permanent damage to the eyes… but something is missing.
There are no homey touches, nothing that suggests that this office belongs to a human, which, in effect, it does not. There are no photographs of a spouse, children, buddies, or pets; no desktop knickknacks; no dishes of slightly dusty candy; no “Dilbert” comics taped to the walls. Oh yeah, and did I mention the open casket in the corner, in which a totally opaque Mr. Deathly rests, looking for all the world like a corporate, corporeal vampire?
“This is it, Death Central,” announces the translucent Mr. Deathly, spreading his arms proudly. “This is where everything comes together.” He takes a seat behind his desk, where palpable rays of power and authority seem to positively emanate from his body. “There are three distinct components of death that we deal with here, of course”the actual orchestration of death, the notification of the newly dead, and the sorting of the souls. The last bit is what the waiting room is for.”
He puts his feet up on his desk and folds his arms leisurely behind his head. “It’s quite a strenuous job, but somebody’s got to do it.” He snaps his finger, and a sad-faced, hunchbacked ghoul materializes in front of us. “Namely, my scores of limbo citizens on death-distribution duty.” He smirks. “Delegation, Theodore, is key.”
The ghoul bows his head. “How can I be of service, master?”
Mr. Deathly studies his fingernails yet again. “I need you to come up with a good death for Zacharias Smith.”
Zacharias Smith? I know that name. He’s a boy a year or two younger than me, and terminally irritating, but it’s still uncomfortable to hear the terms of his death bandied about in such a casual manner.”
“Is he ill, sir?”
“No, no, Billiam, he’s just been annoying to me for quite some time. Figured it was about time that life ended.” He got out a new cigarette and put it to his lips. “Come up with something creative”amuse me. Falling pianos or random sting rays or an unfortunate accident involving mimes and a cement truck.”
I blink, not believing what I’m hearing. “Excuse me, are you saying that you can just kill someone, anyone, because you feel like it? No rules or anything?”
He shrugs. “Well, of course. I’m the Minister of Death, aren’t I?”
“So there doesn’t have to be a rational reason for them to die, you can just kill them whenever you want to? Even, say, Voldemort?”
Mr. Deathly laughs. “That’s about the size of it. But I’m leaving Voldemort around for the time being. I find him so terribly entertaining, thinking he’s immortal and everything. I’m waiting for the opportune moment to cast his mortality card”I’m thinking during a fight against that Potter boy would be a good time.”
He stubs out his cigarette and promptly pulls out a new one. “Well, Theodore, make yourself at home, try to figure out the ropes,” he instructs. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting. Some poor soul’s got it into his spectral skull that he can convince me into getting him out of his sentence to Hades.” He rolls his eyes. “Lawyers. They’re all the same.” And with that, he floats out of his office with Billiam the ghoul, leaving me alone (with the exception of his lifeless body).
I sit down heavily, or at least, as heavily as I can when I’m totally weightless. I don’t know how exactly I got the notion, but I’ve always imagined the Grim Reaper to be a noble position. When I was small, I never understood why people were scared of the skull-faced, scythe-wielding bloke in the cloak that we all saw in storybooks. Death comes to everyone eventually, after all, and I always figured that he was just doing his job and helping out the sick and the hurt and the old.
It turns out my noble thoughts are totally and utterly backward, and the common image of a ruthless tyrant is correct. Sure, Mr. Deathly might act dignified with his slippery manner of speech and expensive clothing, but the truth is, he kills people for sport. He doesn’t even think about the people as anything but easily expendable souls living out their short lives for his amusement.
And I’m going to be exactly like him.
The thought hits me like a mime-operated cement truck. I’m supposed to take over that job, steal lives away from people just because I feel like it. Maybe it sounds wrong now, but once I’m in power, what’s to stop me? If I’m immortal and hold the world in the palm of my hand, there’s nothing to keep my moral compass pointing north”no threat of death, no sensible adults to set me straight.
I’m a self-centred teenager, and I accept, embrace, and understand that. But I know that it makes me ill-suited for a position in the death trade, that all of the qualities that Mr. Deathly liked in me are exactly what make me so wrong for the role. The Grim Reaper needs to be someone much wiser, much older and much more prone to exercising willpower where it’s due.
I need to get out of here before I change my mind.
Making an exit with alacrity and stealth is a top priority at the moment, so I rise three or four inches above the ground and glide straight through the wall.
GURK.
Man, you have no idea how incredibly bizarre that feels. I can feel every fibre of the walls splintering into my guts… and it doesn’t hurt!
I land on the floor of the waiting room, taking care not to pass through the floor. (Any idea how humiliating that would be?) Shriveled-looking souls trying to immerse themselves in “Cottonball and Popsicle Stick Crafts With Auntie Helga” stare up at me with gimlet eyes as I pass through the waiting room, as if begging me to do something for them, and I feel rather guilty.
The only part of the waiting room that shows any life (so to speak) whatsoever is the far corner, where a dreadlocked spirit is recounting the story of his life to transfixed onlookers. “… and then they made me their chief,” I hear him saying as I make my way past.
The man next to him doesn’t look particularly impressed. “Fascinating,” he mutters, cupping his head in his hand and staring moodily off into space.
I do a double-take, stop in my tracks, and look at the moody man again. His lack of interest in Mr. Dreads’ story isn’t the only thing that sets him apart from those around him. His skin may be pale, but it’s definitely not pearly-white, and thin though he may be, I can’t see the uncomfortable-looking chair behind him through his body.
“Er,” I say, squinting at him, “did you know that you’re solid?”
He snorts. “Yeah,” he replies. “Did you know that you’re translucent?”
I take a seat in the vacant chair next to him, and prove my hypothesis about the painfulness of the chairs correct. Technically, I can’t feel anything, but I know that if I could, it would be horrible. My knees are practically level with my nose. “Yes, actually, my body’s in suspended animation,” I tell him casually, “just beyond the veil there. I was just about to go and get it back.”
The man looks at me with hollow grey eyes. He has long black hair framing a gaunt face, and his chin is bristly with stubble”a face that’s vaguely familiar to me, though I can’t put my finger on where I’ve seen it before. “Well, I’m alive,” he tells me flatly.
I stare at him. “Excuse me?”
“Yeah,” he replies. “Yeah, I was dueling and I wasn’t paying attention, and I got hit by a stunning spell and fell straight through the veil. And now…” He spreads his arms in mock pride, “here I am, stuck in this waiting room for over a year now, trapped in the world of the dead.” He shifts in his seat. “And do you have any idea how painful these chairs are when you’re stuck sitting in them for a year straight?”
I don’t. It must be horrible to be him, sitting day after day in the same spot with only dead people and Mr. Deathly for company. “Does Mr. Deathly know about this?” I ask, having a feeling that he would probably not take kindly to a living man infiltrating his beautiful dead lands.
The man utters a bark-like laugh. “Oh, yeah. Apparently, he thinks it’s hilarious,” he lets me know, his voice utterly devoid of enthusiasm. “Said he could always just kill me when he wants, but I’m going to be dead in a few decades anyway, so what’s the rush?” He makes a face. “Charming man. I’m Sirius Black, by the way; you might’ve heard of me.”
Sirius Black… no wonder he looks so familiar! His face was posted up on every square inch of available space in the wizarding world back in my third year, and then some. Wanted posters were probably tattooed onto people’s backs. But about a year ago, Ex-Minister Fudge let us in on the fact that Black was actually innocent of all crimes he was accused of and gave him a full posthumous pardon. Black’s life can’t have been too terrific even before he got trapped in limbo.
“Ever thought of escaping?” I ask. “The veil’s just over there.”
Black gives me the blank, deadpan gaze of one explaining that he’s already familiar with the concept of turning water into ice via the process of freezing. “Do you really think it’s that easy?” He shakes his head. “I’m guessing you’re Mr. Deathly’s trainee, right?”
“That’s not something I’m particularly proud of, but yes,” I tell him. Hopefully, this isn’t something that will follow me for the rest of my life.
“It seems to me like he left out a lot when he told you about the specifics of his job.” Black gestures toward the veil. “It’s very easy to walk through the veil on the other side, but on this side of the veil, it has to be pushed out of the way, and that’s easier said than done.”
I don’t see how this is the case. It’s only fabric, after all, and that can’t be too heavy. But I listen anyway, just in case Black really is a mass murderer and he strangles me for giving him lip.
“See, this side of the veil is the world of the dead, and the other side is the world of the living. That doesn’t just apply to people, it also goes for all the things as well. Living people can only touch living things, and dead people can only touch dead things.” He pauses. “Here, let me show you.”
He reaches over toward a magazine entitled “999 Fantastic Styles For The Balding,” trying to grip the edges of the volume, but his hand slides right through it as though it doesn’t exist.
“And watch this.”
He pulls a fancy Swiss-Army-type knife out of his pocket and tosses it onto the ground, then nudges his transparent, dreadlocked pal in the shoulder. “Excuse me,” he says, “can you pick up my knife for me? Bad back, you know.” He puts a hand to one of his protuberant shoulder blades and pretends to wince.
“Sure thing, mate.” Mr. Dreads bends over to pick up the knife, but as soon as his hand reaches it, it passes directly through, just as Black’s hand had when he tried to pick up a magazine.
Black turns back toward me, a slight smirk playing across his lips. “You see? Mr. Deathly an extremely clever man. He made that veil himself, and since he’s not dead or alive, neither is the veil. No one can get out, living or dead.”
Ah. That would explain quite a lot, or we’d here a lot more about people escaping the afterlife. One thing is still puzzling me, though. “How exactly can an inanimate object be dead?” I want to know.
“What do you think happens to things after they get thrown out?” Black asks, prompting.
“They get put in landfills.”
Black lets out his barklike laugh again. “Landfills… sorry, but no, those are just the things that even Mr. Deathly doesn’t want here.” He gestures around him. “These are the things that broke in the living world, all of the things that people don’t want anymore. They come straight to the people who need to use them for an eternity…for some reason, Mr. Deathly thinks that’s a good idea.”
I look back over at the veil and my brow furrows. The veil’s made of a combination of living and dead material, so no one living or dead can get through, only Mr. Deathly… suddenly, I remember the words that Mr. Deathly himself spoke when I was first separated from my body. “You’re just… in suspended animation…You get the perks of both being dead and alive.”
That’s it! I jump to my spectral feet and inadvertently end up a foot or two above the ground, which must have been mildly disconcerting. “I’ve got it!” I exclaim.
“Oh no, don’t tell me you’re an optimist,” Black mutters. “Bad things tend to happen to them back here.”
“Actually, as a general rule, I’m not,” I tell him, floating over toward the veil. “I just can’t believe I didn’t realize this. I’m not dead or alive”I’m in suspended animation, just like Mr. Deathly!” I’m practically bonking myself in the head at my own idiocy. “I can pull back the veil for you, and you can go through!”
Black’s jaw drops, and his face splits into a real, genuine smile. He looks profoundly different, and I find myself wondering if maybe I should smile more often… nahhh…
“I have to hand it to you,” he says, “you’re bright. It takes brains to be able to figure out something that obvious.” And I can tell that he’s not being sarcastic.
The spirits all around us are staring enviously, jealous of our second chance at getting our lives back. Sirius Black gets to his feet with his head held high and dignity in his posture, and he trails after me as I float through the air toward the veil.
I stretch out my translucent hand and touch the material. It’s oddly dry and slippery at once, like mummified skin, and almost sticky to the touch like a spider web, but it’s so light that it seems to have no substance at all. I draw back the curtain to reveal the black dead room in which I’d been standing earlier, the room that had seemed so ominous before but now seemed almost welcoming when standing on the other side of death.
Black stands beside the veil, and his eyes glimmer, looking oddly moist, as he stares out at the first he’s seen of the living world in over a year. “I can’t believe this,” he says, and his voice sounds hoarse. “It’s… it’s too good to be true.”
“Well, step through and find out,” I say, rather impatiently. It’s a very dramatic moment for Mr. Black and all, but I would personally just love to get back inside my body and get out of here as fast as possible.
Black walks in a slow, almost dreamlike manner, the ends of his hair brushing lightly against the spidery fabric of the veil like a strange sort of reverse halo. The second his foot touches the stone dais of the room in the ministry, he stops in his tracks and gasps, clearly unaccustomed to the feel of the materials of the living world.
I float out behind him, surveying the room. Everything is the same as before, but somehow, it seems brighter, not as grim and foreboding. Walking into this room, it seemed to dare me to go deeper into the veil. Now it welcomes me back.
My body is lying on the steps, right where I left it, and I glide toward it. “Here we go, Theo,” I murmur under my breath, and, like tea being poured into a glass, I let my soft and malleable essence spill into my body. I settle in slowly and comfortably, aware of the bizarrely loud beating of my heart, the rushing of my veins, the solid and heavy ache of a human form. It’s odd, my body feels almost like a prison after floating freely for so long. But it’s better than the prison I’d be trapped in if I stayed.
I stand up with some effort”it’s been too long since I’ve used my human limbs-- staring down at my palms. Their pale peach colour, their opaque solidness seems so completely alien and improbable, and I realize that I took so much for granted. Life really is a crazy thing when you think about it hard enough.
Black gives me a half smile. “Well, do you want to escape from this tomb?”
“Are you kidding?”
Eager to see real sunlight again, Black and I stumble back into the madly spinning room that liked to impersonate Uncle Gravitron, back through the dark corridor of the Department of Mysteries, back to the lobby of the Ministry of Magic.
For a moment, we just stand and stare. There’s so much life, so much activity and light and personality, and it’s almost blinding. Standing among crowds of live people, it’s easy to forget about a lugubrious creep in a suit who runs the death trade, and I realize that I’m not really afraid of having my life taken away from me. It’s bound to happen some day anyway.
“Well, here we are,” I say, turning toward Black. “You get your life back, and I get my body back. Just like that.” I snap my fingers in a fairly jaunty manner.
At the instant of my snapping, a fly buzzing around my head suddenly drops to the ground, stone dead.
My eyes widen, and I look down at my hands. Apparently, you can take the boy away from the Department of Death, but you can’t take the Department of Death away from the boy.
It looks as though my life is going to be a lot more interesting from now on.
Oh No, Nott Again! by Schmerg_The_Impaler
Chapter Notes: Thanks for being my guide, StaceyLC! I don't own Potter, but I do own Mr. Deathly and many of the trippier occurances in this story.