Heartwarming / Reaper Man

• At the end, where Miss Flitworth dies — and Death takes her into the past to see that the man she loved didn't jilt her but was killed in an accident on the way to their wedding. Reunited, the ghosts go off into the afterlife together.
  • Slightly earlier, he brings her "a diamond to be her friend", misinterpreting "diamonds are a girl's best friend". Something about the scene tugs at my heartstrings in a wonderful way.
• And it's implied he even earlier saves a little girl from death by giving her some of the sand from his own life-timer, thus bringing his own death (which terrifies him) closer.
  • What really sells it is the little internal conflict between Death and Bill Door. Death knows that children die, not in a cruel or uncaring way, but just as a fact of existence. To Bill Door "This was all so much horse elbows."
  • And then there's Miss Flitworth giving Bill Door some of her life so he can have a fighting chance, a feat which completely flabbergasts the New Death.
• There's a subtler one earlier where the farmers remark on how Death cuts corn very quickly despite cutting each stalk individually. This evokes how he empathizes with humanity and sees them as individuals, unlike the New Death later in the book who treats them like cattle.
• What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the Reaper Man?
  • For the sake of prisoners and the flight of birds.
  • There is also the fact that Azrael, the ultimate death of the universe, agrees with him.
• And he stops and has a chat with Windle Poons. Death is terrible, but not unkind.
• As Death sharpens his new scythe.
  Miss Flitworth: Silk. Finest white silk. Never been worn.
  Death: ...Thank you.
• The 'Going Away' party the members of UU had for Windle, especially after he explicitly said he was upset that no one seemed to care that he was about to die.
• A minor one when the exiled Death meets the Death of Rats for the first time.
  Death: I remember... when you were a part of me.
• The fact that Death beats the New Death not with his new super-sharp scythe as he had planned, but with the ordinary worn scythe he had used for the harvest.
• Death's Crowning Moment of Awesome line that he gives after he defeats the New Death also doubles as this:
  Death: No crown. Only the Harvest.
• Death creating golden fields of corn around his house at the end of the book, the only thing in his domain with any colour besides black or white.
  • Or purple. There was purple there too in "Mort"
  • And then he calls up a breeze, to gently ruffle the stands of grain. Nothing else in Death's Domain had ever seemed so lively, before.
• That the last thing the Biography of Windle Poons will record, in Death's library, will be Ludmilla and Lupine running through the hills together next full moon.
  And, with great relief, and general optimism, and a feeling that on the whole everything could have been much worse, Windle Poons died.
• What does Bill Door say when he's told a hailstorm will destroy the crop he just cut one stalk at a time?
  Bill: Ruined? My harvest? Bugger that.
• When the Patrician calls all the Guild heads together near the beginning, everyone does their best to treat the Chief Butt of the Guild of Fools and Joculators as kindly as they can - the poor man is clearly holding on to sanity by the tips of his fingers. A small scene, but rather nice.
• All the bungling monsters of the Fresh Start Club, doing their best to save the day even knowing they're over-matched and not very competent at the best of times.
• Death Choosing to let the Death of Rats and the Death of Fleas continue exist upon realizing they survived being reabsorbed. He does feel like a piece of him is missing (which it literally is) but he enjoys a little companionship, and also doesn't have the heart to end their existence.