Work Text:
Harry Potter would like it noted, ideally somewhere official, that this is in no way his fault.
He is, at best, the product of his upbringing, several questionable bloodlines, and one truly unfortunate mouse.
The mouse had died in the corner of his cupboard sometime around Harry’s sixth birthday. Harry noticed because it smelled, and because Dudley had laughed himself sick about it. Aunt Petunia had refused to clean it up on principle. Uncle Vernon had declared it character building.
Harry, being a small child with accidental magic and a deeply ingrained sense of responsibility for problems adults ignored, had tried to fix it.
He hadn’t even known the word necromancy at the time. He’d just wanted the mouse to stop smelling and maybe stop being dead.
Instead, it stood up.
Harry stared at it.
The mouse stared back.
The mouse saluted.
Harry screamed. The mouse squeaked apologetically and immediately died again. Permanently, this time.
Harry spent the rest of the week pretending that hadn’t happened, which was his first real lesson in denial as a coping mechanism.
///
The second incident occurred when Mrs. Figg’s cat passed away.
Mrs. Figg cried. Harry felt bad. Harry fixed it.
The cat came back wrong in a way that was difficult to articulate but very easy to notice. It followed Harry around. It hissed at Dementors years before he knew what those were. It once chased a Death Eater out of Little Whinging.
Mrs. Figg never questioned it. She simply said, “Oh good, you’re still with us,” and fed it tinned tuna.
///
By the time Harry received his Hogwarts letter, the pattern was established.
Old bloodlines, it turned out, came with old gifts. Potter magic was stubborn, Peverell magic was death-adjacent, and Lily Evans’ muggleborn magic had apparently taken one look at both and said, I can make this worse.
The Sorting Hat hesitated for a long time before asking, very carefully, whether Harry was aware he was leaking ambient otherworld energy.
Harry said no. The Hat sighed and put him in Gryffindor out of spite. Which rude, but also fair.
///
Things escalated.
Hogwarts was full of dead things, which Harry discovered the same way one discovers mould in their home - slowly, with increasing horror, and eventually with resignation.
The ghosts liked him. The portraits listened to him. The Forbidden Forest started leaving offerings near his path.
In second year, the basilisk refused to attack him and instead curled up like an elderly reptile waiting for a heating pad. The diary Horcrux tried to possess him and immediately backed out with a handwritten apology.
By third year, the Dementors hovered at a respectful distance, murmuring amongst themselves like coworkers gossiping about upper management.
Death noticed Harry sometime around then and decided not to interfere, on the grounds that whatever this was, it was fascinating.
///
The mouse came back during the Battle of Hogwarts.
Harry didn’t summon it. He didn’t want to. It simply appeared at his feet, skeletal, glowing faintly, and extremely enthusiastic.
Then the rest followed.
Not Inferi, Not zombies, Just… everyone who felt like helping.
Ancestors. Fallen students. A very angry medieval Potter who still held a grudge against the French. They lined up neatly, awaiting instructions.
Harry looked at Voldemort.
Harry looked at the army of the dead.
Harry sighed.
“This is really not my fault,” he said, loudly, for the record.
The dead surged forward anyway.
///
After the war, the Ministry tried to prosecute him.
They failed, largely because every attempt to charge Harry Potter with illegal necromancy resulted in several deceased Wizengamot members turning up to argue in his defence.
A new department was created instead.
Harry was given a desk, a pension, and a small plaque that read:
HARRY POTTER
HEAD OF POST-MORTEM MAGICAL RELATIONS
PLEASE DO NOT ASK HIM ABOUT THE MOUSE
Harry considered this a reasonable compromise.
The mouse did too.