Summary: James Potter's mission for the Order goes awry when he's suddenly pursued by a dozen masked figures, and a strange-cloaked individual wielding a scythe. How will Lily react to learning of her husband's tricky situation?
Disclaimer: Umm… most of this is probably the property of Terry Pratchett and JK Rowling. All I own is the plot and possibly the personalities of the characters.
Warnings: Death; Alternate Universe; and dark humour - I think that's about it, really.
Author's Notes: I know now that this story will be at least a few chapters long, and that there will be some Lily/James interaction which is why I'm uploading it to Portkey. Please excuse how long it might take me to update as real life is rather distracting, but I promise to get this finished as soon as I can. Enjoy the tale, and don't forget to review unless you want nargle-infested mistletoe this Christmas ::wink::
~ Thief of Time ~
Part I - The Thief
Life begins, for some, at forty. For others however, it begins the moment you stare at Death face-to-face and poke him in the eye. For James Potter, life had begun the instant Lily Evans had said "yes" and was now entering adolescence as he ducked and dive-rolled from keenly aimed curses. The pale sliver of a crescent moon gave him just enough silvery light to see his attackers as dim shadows in the dark, with the occasional burst of acid green, actinic blue, or even searing red briefly illuminating their wands and splintering aged tree bark, sending shards of wood arcing across James's path. He was alone in his race away from the Dark Lord's followers; the thumping of his heart lodged somewhere in his throat, and the pounding of his feet on densely packed undergrowth his only companions.
He'd always loved the thrill of the chase, the search of an elusive target - he felt no differently even though the roles had been reversed, such as they were. The still air whipped past him as he thundered silently by; his hair unmoving despite the wind borne of his intrepid speed. Most normal peoples hair would have gone all over the shot - James's hair was like that to begin with. Faced with fast-moving slipstreams, it simply stood in clear defiance against them and was practically winning.
But nothing, not even all the chocolate frogs cards in all of Britain, could make him enjoy being almost killed as was happening this night. The operative words, of course, "killed" and "being". Damn it all! He hadn't even gotten a single Agrippa, or Ptolemy card yet.
Oh, this was just no fun at all anymore, he realised, as one curse came zipping up behind him, then across his shoulder - tearing a nice strip of his tunic away in the process - and then purposely hitting a twig so that it showered his face in an elaborate cloud of natural sawdust. Biting back a hearty cough-sneeze that would reveal not only his exact position to the Death Eaters, but also the contents of his nose, he wished for the chance to see his Beloved one last time - to take her hand, to feel those high cheekbones, silken beneath his touch, to taste of those velvet lips. Sadly, no matter how hard he hoped, or how much time he spent longing, the apparition of Lily before him never materialised. Instead, he was presented with a tree trunk.
James was used to being hugged; his parents were the loving kind, as were his best friend-come-surrogate brother, Sirius, and his soul mate, Lily. Never before, though, had he experienced an embrace quite as wooden as this. Great grooves moulded themselves to his chest, and there was no love in the slightly damp hold. In the split-second before his head would split against the bark, a hand clamped tight upon his unharmed shoulder and pulled him upright. Admittedly, upright with a good six inches of nothingness standing around aimlessly beneath his dangling feet, but he was vertical nonetheless.
Behind him he could feel something gazing at him with a cool, calculating stare. He was surprised that icicles hadn't yet formed upon his back, and wondered why his shoulder wasn't stinging with frostbite. Then came the voice. Well, thought James, he supposed it could be a voice, if hundredweight granite blocks decided to head-butt each other every so often.
THAT COULD HAVE BEEN NASTY, it said.
James murmured inaudibly, the sound coming somewhere deep beneath his breath, as if he'd been in a cave-in, trapped beneath dozens of boulder-like breaths.
I DID NOT QUITE CATCH THAT, responded the pyramid blocks as quietly as they could. Which, all things considering, was a mighty feat, to say the least. It wasn't so much volume as intensity, James realised long afterwards. He didn't hear the words - he felt them resonating clearly in his whole body. His soul vibrated with the H sounds alone.
More mumblings and the occasional "Oh help…" could be heard. The remarkably tall figure, holding both the scythe in one hand and James in the other, idly scuffed his boot through the tree that had nearly caused him the need to do his job a little sooner than planned. Something wasn't right - he was always just in time, even when there never seemed as if there'd be any left. Ah well, he'd get to the bottom of that particular mystery just as soon as Binky had finished grazing in the field behind the mansion. In the middle distance came the cracking sound of a dozen men quilted in velvety robes and silver masks, stumbling through ankle-high bracken, and low branches that held seemingly behemoth grudges against eyes and everything else of general facial proportions.
Settling its star-like gaze back upon the motionless slip of a man in his grasp, the almost skeletal figure (one might say), lowered his hand abruptly, loosened his hold on the man's shoulder, and simply walked through the same tree that would have certainly done his job for him, had he not been strolling lazily through that particular part of the forest. Fate planned things carefully - how else could it win against the other gods and Chance (who was sometimes known to overrule even the gods at times) - and even powerful characters, such as the scythe wielding figure now leaning patiently against the other side of the tall beech, often found themselves as little more than a rook, or Professor Plum.
James found himself cowering behind a tall blade of grass, with no one holding him above the muddy ground, and no curses being aimed close, but not quite at him. His breaths came shallower, and his heart - once beating proudly like a war drum - quietened, beating once every second or two… the world swam into lethal focus, as James's hazel eyes swivelled this way and that, noting the places where light simply vanished as the most likely places where he shouldn't run to. If only Remus and Sirius were here, with him now - surely together they'd all work out some kind of daring plan that just might let them escape with their wands and hides. On his own, despite supreme confidence in his abilities (toeing the line of arrogance with his foot), James had never yet fought more than eight Death Eaters, and that time had simply been bad luck on their part that they'd stumbled across a dragon's nest. Pushing away the memory of flambéed dark wizards, James tried to focus on just what kind of misfortune would come to his aid this time.
He supposed, looking back on this event with the hindsight of many years, that he should have at least wondered whom that figure that had stopped him from having more than a severe migraine was, exactly. But, at the time, he merely thanked Merlin's White Beard, finally took out his wand from the back pocket of his jeans and prepared to transfigure a hefty stone he'd spotted not two inches from his right foot. Just what it was it would become, only James knew, and he wasn't going to let anyone, not even a narrator, know what would come of his actions.
He had a million to one chance of getting out of this situation; not, "getting out of it alive" - just "getting out of it". But, he thought to himself, slyly, it might just work. Setting his plan in motion, he waited. And waited. Then, when he waited some more, he waited again. In all accuracy he never stopped waiting, until the point when he stopped. That is to say, when a small, vaguely dragon-like creature trod on the lead Death Eater's foot and began gnawing on his trouser-leg. (Swamp Dragons, such as the one James had transfigured from a stone, had amazing appetites, and pretty much ate everything with the alarming exception of mushy peas).
Adrenaline rushed, and then so did James. It was all over in not one, not three, but two seconds. He'd forgotten the very nature of undergrowth was not in fact to survive and spread everywhere but to act as some kind of natural netting to make animals trip over. It was quite ingenious of natural selection, when you thought about it. James, however, did not want to think of it, for if he did he'd forget that there were ten Death Eaters out there, practically surrounding him now (the lead Death Eater had limped off back towards the mansion, and another was now slowly wilting under the stench of the dragon's breath - another reason for them not liking mushy peas being that it would most likely worsen what could already be compared to a poorly drained men's lavatory).
Breathing heavily, James crouched low behind the protection of prolific thickets and bluebells… he allowed himself a small sigh, for the Death Eaters had not noticed his almost fateful blunder. They were beginning to spread out around him, facing opposing directions… as if he were not inside the circle they'd formed, but out there, somewhere, waiting to pounce on them. He was waiting to pounce on them, granted, but he wasn't quite ready yet - the odds were still stacked in favour of the scythe-wielder having plenty to do tonight.
A short distance away, James's brief saviour turned its grey snout and proudly trundled towards the nearest Death Eater. Upon reaching the poor man, it trod on his foot and snapped its jaws tightly together. When the blood-curdling scream died away, James risked opening his eyes and wished he hadn't. As one, many of the Death Eaters had fled - nowhere in their contracts* were the words "you may come under personal attack from vicious biting reptiles†."
*Lucius Malfoy had implemented new and strange things in his time as the Dark Lord's right-hand man, but none were more feared than the Lawyers.
†Which have legs.
Only two remained… well, one stayed of free choice, whereas the other… didn't bear thinking of right now.
Keeping a close eye on the undergrowth now, in case it tried any more tricks on him, James cautiously crawled to within perhaps half a dozen metres of the final Death Eater. Aiming his wand carefully, he prepared himself to stupefy his opponent, thanking every deity he knew of that he'd somehow managed to get this far without serious injury. As so often happens when one develops such acute tunnel vision from focusing rather intensely upon a single object, James was completely taken by surprise when something unexpected happened to the swamp dragon.
The Death Eater had spun in circles, warily searching for the unseen predator that had disposed of his fellows so quickly and efficiently. He too was extremely shocked by the swamp dragons antic's, but not for long. James found his eyes widening and his mouth opened in what became a silent scream as he scrambled backwards as fast as he possibly could.
Shortly afterwards, James once again found himself in the company of the mysterious figure who'd somehow saved his life.
DID YOU KNOW THAT THE SWAMP DRAGON WOULD EXPLODE?
`I was quite confident. Yes, quite confident,' said James, trying to pull a sticky mess away from his shoulder without much success.
YOU ARE LYING. I COULD TELL IN THE WAY THAT YOU SCREAMED, "OH F-"
`Yes, err, well, it doesn't matter now!' James interrupted quickly. Who was this man? He looked like an adult, but acted like a child experiencing the world for the first time. James couldn't ignore the strange qualities this man had, either, such as the voice that entered his ears without travelling through the air first, and the ability to walk through everything in sight. Then, of course, there were the eyes.
The fact of the matter was, the man simply didn't appear to have any.
He didn't seem to have much of a face at all, really, what with the lack of skin, nose, tongue, ears, or hair. James was familiar with this visage but had never once thought he'd encounter one that could move and talk as this one could without some form of magic operating it. Hell, James wouldn't have been sure the man had been male if it weren't for the voice.
"I err, mean no offence or anything of the sort, but who the hell are you?"
I USHER SOULS INTO THE NEXT WORLD. I AM THE GRAVE OF ALL HOPE. I AM THE ULTIMATE REALITY. I AM THE ASSASSIN AGAINST WHOM NO LOCK WILL HOLD.
"Yes, point taken, but that doesn't really answer my question."
I SUPPOSE 'DEATH' WOULD BE AN APPROPRIATE NAME.
"Death? As in The Grim Reaper? Destroyer of Worlds? The vaunted Thief of Time himself?"
WELL, WHEN YOU PUT IT LIKE THAT IT ALL SEEMS SO MELODRAMATIC.
"Melodr-?" James shook his head, trying to clear out the cobwebs that were so obviously confounding his overworked brain. "Why-what are you doing here? I-I'm not going to die, am I?"
OF COURSE YOU WILL DIE. YOUR WIFE SHALL DIE, YOUR FRIENDS SHALL DIE, AND EVEN YOUR PET CAT, THOUGH THAT SURELY IS THE CRUELEST OF ALL THINGS. POOR CREATURES, SO MISTREATED...
"I-I mean, am I going to die today? Here, now, in this forest?"
NO, ELSE IT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED BY NOW.
"So err... what exactly are you doing here then, if I'm not going to be dying yet?
THAT IS A VERY INTRIGUING QUESTION FOR WHICH I HAVE NO ANSWER. I BELIEVE I AM BEING "PLAYED" AGAIN BY THE GODS.
"The gods? Aren't they just a m-?"
I WOULD NOT FINISH THAT SENTENCE IF I WERE YOU-THEY DO NOT TAKE KINDLY TO FOOLISH MORTALS IGNORING THEIR EXISTENCE. HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF SOMEONE SAID "HUMANS, ARE THEY NOT JUST SUPERSTITION?"
"Errr... point taken. So, umm, now that we've established who you are and what you're doing here, would it be terribly impolite of me if I left? I err, do have something of an important mission to carry out after all. I mean, I'm ever so grateful for you saving my life and all, but I really must be going..."
SAVING YOUR LIFE? HOW PARADOXICAL.
"Err, para-what-sickle?
YOU WOULD NOT UNDERSTAND.
"Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence," James mumbled. "Since you don't think I'd understand what para-doxy-cull would mean, why not tell me why your saving my life would be it?"
DO YOU BELIEVE IN WIZARD'S DEBTS, MR. POTTER?
"Of course! Snivellus owes me a big one, hehe..."
BY THAT LOGIC, WOULD IT BE SAFE TO ASSUME, THEN, THAT YOU NOW OWE ME A WIZARD'S DEBT?
"Err, I'm not sure where you're going with this, but I suppose that would be true."
WELL THEN, THE PARADOX IS THAT YOU, A MORTAL, OWE MYSELF, AN ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION OF A UNIVERSAL CONSTANT, A WIZARD'S DEBT. SURELY YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THE RAMIFICATIONS OF SUCH A SITUATION.
A ton of bricks probably would have hurt less, thought James, as all breath left his body. He owed Death a life debt... how on Earth could that have happened? What the hell did it mean would happen to him?
GOODBYE MR. POTTER, I AM CERTAIN WE SHALL MEET AGAIN.
And with that, Death simply vanished, leaving a shell-shocked James Potter leaning heavily against a tree in the middle of a forest that surrounded the mansion of a rather prominent and powerful dark wizard.
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