Dead things can't die twice.
— Excerpt from dead things.
Harry Potter and Tom Riddle have always been too similar for their own good — both orphans reviled for their magic, their lives marred by war and human prejudice. But the icing on the cake is that both have come back from the dead at least once, and death is not a good thing for a person's soul.
dead things
by EclipseWing is a Harry Potter Dark Fic that explores how the harsh environment Harry grew up in could turn him into Britain's next, feared Dark Lord.
Warning: Since this fanfiction is a one-shot, spoilers will be unmarked.
dead things provides examples of:
- The Ageless: Harry himself becomes this, forever looking like a 17-year-old. It's initially thought it's due to Harry being the Master of Death, however, the truth proves far more horrifying. When he died the first time, the piece of Voldemort's soul wasn't the only thing destroyed — a part of Harry's soul was lost to death as well. Nobody notices at first because magical people in general age more slowly than Muggles. Then, he's just parted ways with everyone by going abroad. When he comes back, nobody recognizes him because Harry Potter should be forty-five.
- Bright Is Not Good: In canon, when using Polyjuice to masquerade as Harry, the potion turns gold. In dead things, despite Harry being Britain's most recent Dark Wizard, the color of his magic (particularly, his Necromancy spells) remains gold. Hermione even Lampshades this in the narration.Necromancy shouldn’t be gold, [Hermione] thinks, but it is, [Harry's] magic has been gold for a long time and she remembers the polyjuice turning liquid gold and maybe gold has always been about Death, she thinks, watching the gold spin in the eve.
- Dark Fic: Although he defeats Voldemort like in canon, Harry becomes the next dark wizard with extremist ideals (he thinks change can only be achieved through force) and a concerning lack of ethics (he experiments with Necromancy and soul magic). The reason is that on top of suffering lots of trauma during his life, having the Horcrux in him so violently removed has left a mark on Harry's soul — he's (emotionally) incomplete. He's therefore Driven to Suicide but, alas, he already died, so Death won't embrace him. Moreover, the narrative proves Harry's radical ideas right: Hermione's efforts to rid the wizarding society of prejudice through lawful means (she's the new Minister of Magic) are ineffectual and challenged at every turn.
- History Repeats: This is the fanfic's entire premise. On top of Harry and Tom's already similar backgrounds, they both lost a piece of their souls at some point, which leads them to a path of insanity and radicalized beliefs of violence being the only way to achieve societal change. They both also travel the world during a good chunk of their adulthoods to the point of everyone doubting their existence and then return as powerful, dark wizards who start a genocide for personal gain and the purpose of "improving" wizarding Britain. Oh, and neither of them can just die like normal people, both having attained some sort of immortality.
- Title Drop:
- By Hermione when suspicious about Harry being The Necromancer.Give me someone who can tell me you weren’t there raising dead things.
- By Lily Potter while in the Limbo and repeated by the narrative in the fanfic's very last line.Dead things can't die twice.
- By Hermione when suspicious about Harry being The Necromancer.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: As a result of losing a piece of his soul, Harry can't enjoy life anymore nor adapt and heal from all the hurt he endured during the war. He's also immortal through and through. Easy to see how much his existence sucks. The Deathly Hallows provide some measure of comfort, fitting though not perfectly the hole that bit used to be, but are not enough to prevent him from trying to kill himself several times. Sadly, he already died and dead things can't die twice. Growing more desperate, Harry starts experimenting with soul and death magic in the hopes of finding a solution to his problem.
