A/N 2017: Hey there new readers! Before you get too comfy here I figured I should give a heads up on how I'm planning to completely overhaul this fic at some point. The premise is basically the same but even just what I have written at the moment (just a bit of the second chapter really [the first chapter is the worst kind of content for me to write so that'll probably be the last thing I get around to]) it's going to be a markedly different story in a lot of ways. In that vein I won't be updating this story again until I've finished 8 chapters of rewrite, and when I have they will be directly replacing the current story here. Since it's going to be so different, you're perfectly welcome to PM me for a copy of the original if you want the nostalgia factor, otherwise just keep that in mind as you read and be prepared to start over from the beginning once it starts updating again. Also, if you want to keep up with progress updates and all the woes of writing you can follow my blog .com

Chapter One – Mission Start:

England had changed a lot during Harrison's life, but it was finally just as he remembered it.

Manicured lawns, suburban housing, the works.

It was 1991, and their mission could finally get underway after ten years lying in wait.

oOoOo

The small Funeral Home Undertaker had set up received very few visitors. It was a shady place, after all, just the way the two Shinigami liked it, and the lack of business meant it would be easy to leave. They were only passing the time, after all.

And with the strange visitor currently standing in the centre of the room, the time might just have arrived at last.

"Tell me something," Harrison cooed, draped across the back of an anatomical dummy in a darkened corner of the store. "Why are you in an Undertaker's Establishment?"

One of the standing coffins shook slightly, faint laughter emanating from it, and Harrison grinned broadly beneath his hair. Their visitor looked more than just a little uncomfortable. His attire was not unlike the dramatic robe Undertaker had only recently been convinced to cease wearing, though it was subtly more modern, and more subdued.

His lips raised partway between snarl and sneer, but managed to keep most of his obvious distaste out of his drawling voice as he spoke. "I came here seeking one Harry Potter," he snapped, "though I clearly must have been given the wrong address."

The temperature in the parlour dropped dramatically. Harrison pulled the plastic liver from the torso, turning it this way and that. Yellow-green eyes stared intently from the dark.

"You are mistaken," Undertaker announced, emerging from his coffin without the usual flare and dramatics. He pushed his long hair away from his eyes, exposing the elaborate scarring and the unusually serious expression he wore. Harrison dropped the liver to the floor, no longer interested, and silently stepped into his mentor's shadow.

"Mistaken on what account, sir?"

"You are mistaken," Undertaker repeated, "on both accounts, Severus Snape."

The man – Severus Snape – visibly bristled at the use of his name. Immediately his stance shifted from disgust to suspicion. To a human it certainly seemed a suspicious feat, but for a Shinigami, the names of the living – and of the dead – were easy to discern. His especially, after the task they had been assigned just shy of ten years ago.

"I must admit to being curious," Harrison intoned, "as to how you tracked that name here. Professor." He added the title as a flippant afterthought, carefully studying every move Snape made.

"Explain yourselves!" Snape demanded instead, pulling a polished stick from an inner pocket and brandishing it in their direction.

Clicking his tongue loudly in displeasure, Harrison pulled a deceptively slim notebook from the front pocket of his suit jacket. Opening it to a page at random, he ran his finger down the details of the man's life.

"Let's see here," he muttered. "Severus Tobias Snape. More near-death experiences than a man your age should have, but considering the state of your world it's not so surprising."

Undertaker plucked the notebook from his fingers and slipped it back into Harrison's pocket, knowing it was better protected there than anywhere else. And there was never much of an indication as to how someone would react when faced with someone having that sort of knowledge on them.

"What would you know of it?"

"What do we know? More than you would like us to." Harrison's yellow-green eyes peered over the top of his glasses, eyeing Snape with an unreadable expression. "But we understand very little of it, and care only as much as we must."

Undertaker placed his hand firmly on Harrison's shoulder for a moment, a silent conversation taking place as identical eyes met, before he slipped out into the darkened back room.

"Who are you people?"

"I'm not sure I should tell you," Harrison mused. Snape was wary and confused; his stick – a wand, supposedly – was pointed vaguely at Harrison's feet. "But, firstly, I believe I would like to read my letter. If you would?" He held his hand out, perfectly aware that Undertaker was hovering just out of sight. He'd gone to fetch his death scythe, on the off-chance something happened.

Snape's dark eyes narrowed. "I never mentioned a letter."

"Perhaps not, but that is why you're here, no?"

He silently debated the merits of denying the fact, and decided getting answers was of more dire importance.

"Indeed," he allowed reluctantly, "but the letter is for Harry Potter." Harrison nodded understandingly and wiggled his fingers, coaxing. Snape arched an eyebrow. "You are not Harry Potter."

"Says who?" Harrison protested, calm as anything.

"Harry Potter is a boy of almost eleven. You most clearly are not."

"Jeez," Harrison sighed, dropping his arm and clasping his hands loosely behind his back. "So very devoted to the laws of the universe huh? Very well then. Harry James Potter, born on the 31st of July, 1980." He tilted his gaze up to stare straight into Snape's eyes. "Died November 1st, 1896."

The wand was pointed at his heart in an instant. In the next, the blade of Undertaker's scythe was pressed gently against Snape's throat. There was a dangerous glint in Undertaker's eyes as he leaned in close.

"We would like to request a meeting with the Headmaster," Undertaker informed him in a dark whisper, a mockery of his usual teasing. Snape's glare intensified, and it looked like he might protest, so Undertaker pressed in even closer. "Technically I'm not allowed to kill you, but… accidents happen."

"See, we've been waiting quite some time for a… polite… way to see him. We have things to do, you see, and we need his cooperation, or his input, or even really just his permission. I suggest you do as we ask, because, as my associate pointed out, accidents happen. And as his supervisor, I can assure you that it would be an accident."

Snape was silent. His gaze shifted from the blade at his neck, to the elaborate skeletal handle, and then over to Harrison. In return, Harrison made sure that he was showing how serious he was. A minute passed in this manner, until Snape came to a decision.

He nodded very slightly, and Undertaker removed his scythe, stepping out of Snape's personal space, but moving to block the exit.

"I suppose that I could, well, send a message to the Headmaster. Would that be acceptable?"

Undertaker shrugged from behind Snape. While it was technically a joint mission, it concerned Harrison more than it did him.

"That shall suffice."

Snape twitched his robes into place, before pointing his wand at the ground between himself and Harrison. He muttered something indeterminate that must have been a spell, and in the blink of an eye a strange, silvery doe was standing in the middle of the room.

"Headmaster, I was delivering the letter as you ordered me to, but rather than Mister Potter I have encountered two men who wish to speak with you."

He waved his wand again, and the doe bowed its head and disappeared.

"What was that?" Harrison queried, mostly curious and just a little bit suspicious. Being charged to investigate magic while being unable to utilise it certainly made things awkward.

"It was a patronus. While that is not their primary use, the Headmaster found they could be used as a reliable form of communication."

"And what is its primary function then?"

"Warding off Dementors."

Harrison frowned at the unfamiliar term. It stood to reason that there were a myriad of creatures he wouldn't know about in this society, given that Shinigami had nothing to do with the deaths of animals in the first place. They were a strictly human-only organisation. But the lack of practical knowledge was chafing.

"When can we expect a response?" He asked, instead of voicing his confusion.

Snape peered uneasily over his shoulder. Undertaker was caressing his scythe with his long painted nails, the expression on his face made all the stranger without his hair down to cover his eyes.

"Momentarily, I believe."

Nodding, Harrison wandered over to the anatomical dummy once more. He ran one manicured hand down its side, before plucking the plastic heart from its chest. He found hearts oddly fascinating, in both a mental and physical manner. How to sway a person's heart, the way of a demon; judging hearts, the task of a Shinigami.

Undertaker was the first to notice the new presence approaching the shop. While they had been expecting a response, perhaps in the form of another odd patronus, an actual face-to-face confrontation was ideal. It removed all the other in-between steps. The fact that they could sense them so easily meant it wasn't a customer, because regular humans possessed very little noticeable presence – though it was stronger closer to death. Non-humans had the most obvious presence – demons and other Shinigami. These wizards appeared to be somewhere in the middle of the two groups. Human-plus.

Harrison turned to face the door; Undertaker moved to the side of the room. Snape stared at them in confusion – that is, until someone knocked on the door.

They knocked three times. Then, as though just now noticing that it was a business they stood in front of and not a house, they opened the door.

Undertaker and Harrison both already possessed knowledge about Albus Dumbledore. Seeing him in person, however, was somewhat surreal. Harrison, who was used to eccentric people, courtesy of Undertaker and the red-headed Shinigami Grell Sutcliffe, found himself thrown marginally off-balance at the sight of the man in the doorway.

In theory, Albus Dumbledore was an esteemed and powerful wizard, assumedly approaching the end of his lifespan. He held several important positions, and was a notable political player. In reality, he was likely all of the above, but dressed in a very… ill-fitting suit. He was clothed in pretentious robes that just barely brushed the ground as he stood. They were a very pale blue, and if Harrison tilted his head slightly and squinted just so, he swore they were shimmering, as though he'd at one point walked through a storm of glitter and forgotten about it. He also possessed a white beard, hanging so long from his chin that the end of it was tucked into his belt.

Harrison adopted a blank expression, lips turned ever-so-slightly down at the edges. He squeezed the heart in his hand like a stress ball, waiting not-entirely-patiently for Dumbledore to close the door and properly enter the room.

Snape was the first to verbally acknowledge Dumbledore's presence. "Headmaster," he intoned, inclining his head in greeting. "These are the two men I spoke of."

Dumbledore nodded thoughtfully, clapping his hands together once as he took in first the room, and then Undertaker and Harrison themselves. "So I see," he said eventually.

"You are the professor's employer then, I assume?" Harrison kept his gaze firmly just to the right of Dumbledore's face. The man had somewhat of a reputation, after all, and he wasn't in the mood for testing it out. "In that case, I would request you have him give me the letter that he came to deliver. It is, after all, rightfully mine."

Snape twitched, jaw clenched as he bit back whatever he so evidently wanted to say. It was Dumbledore's reaction Harrison was more interested in. The old man leaned forward a fraction, rubbing his chin with one hand in thought as he more carefully scrutinised Harrison.

Instead of outright denying him, or even asking his name, Dumbledore asked, "How old are you, my boy?"

He used the motion of replacing the heart as a momentary respite from that steely blue gaze. Of everything that had happened in his long life, he still abhorred being called boy.

"That depends," he replied evenly when he turned back to face them. His hands slid under his untucked shirt and into the pockets of his slacks, to hide the uncomfortable twitching from view. "Do you want a chronological or linear answer? And are we looking at it from my viewpoint or yours? I am ten, and twenty-four, and one hundred and nineteen, and ninety-five. It's all very confusing."

Undertaker snorted. Dumbledore's genial smile had slipped into a frown. Harrison held himself tall and still.

"Severus, give the boy the letter."

"Headmaster!" Snape spluttered angrily, "you can't possibly-"

"Severus."

The dark-clothed man lapsed into a furious silence. With great reluctance and obvious displeasure Snape removed an enveloped from a pocket and held it at arm's length, refusing to move. Harrison stepped forward to snatch it, barely refraining from rolling his eyes at the man's childishness.

Once he had retreated to a safe distance, Harrison glanced down at the envelope. Harry Potter, it read. Undertaker's Funeral Parlour. It continued on to list their street address, right down to the last detail. An impressive feat. They weren't listed in the phonebook, and the land the shop resided on had been gifted to them ever-so-kindly by a certain lord. They were off the grid, so to speak; the only way to know what was there was to walk by and see it in person.

He flipped the envelope over. It was sealed with red wax, which bore the crest of Hogwarts. As far as seals went, it wasn't overly impressive. The only reason he didn't break it when he went to open the envelope was because it would have damaged his nails.

The contents of the envelope were given a quick once-over. Harrison paid more attention to dates and names than to the contents of the stationery list. It was all very generic. 'Dear Mr Potter, Welcome to magic school, blah blah blah.' While not completely unexpected, the letter did still come as a surprise. That he might have magic was a possibility, according to the higher ups, but they cared little for his prowess. What they cared about was the connections that assumption might give him.

What amused him more than anything was the apparent fallibility of magic, for it hadn't recognised that Harry Potter was dead. Truly, a flaw in the system.

He folded the pages carelessly and shoved the parchment into a pocket, sharing a look with Undertaker.

"Headmaster," Snape protested once more, incensed over Harrison's casual dismissal of the contents of the letter. "The boy has been spouting nonsense since I arrived! It would be more prudent to simply obliviate the two of them and leave."

"Now now Severus, there is a mystery here, and I'm sure it can be solved without such harsh measures." Though his voice was kind, his gaze had taken a turn for the serious. "I believe," he continued, talking now to Harrison and Undertaker, "that you wished to speak with me. Please, feel free to start."

Harrison grinned, showing a flash of teeth. He settled himself on the chair he kept in the corner of the room, leaning lazily up against the plastic torso. Undertaker, scythe and all, settled into the padded coffin tilted against the wall, the one he had long since claimed as his own. Dumbledore, an unreadable expression on his face as he watched Undertaker, conjured a cushy armchair in the middle of the room. Snape very obviously wanted to leave as soon as possible, but after his previous interactions with the duo seemed reluctant to leave the headmaster alone with them. He settled for standing, arms crossed, beside the door.

"Allow me to tell you a story, Headmaster, if you will." Harrison put on his best story-telling voice. "A story about a boy. About Harry Potter."

Author Note: This is me proving that I can't stick to my resolve of finishing a story before posting it. The next chapter will be up whenever. This isn't my first priority story, but maybe right now I'm a little more into it than some of my others. All your questions will be answered eventually. What I will tell you is that for once I'm not shipping anything in this story. It's going to be totally gen. No romance at all.