I encourage reviews of any type.

I'm sorry, I was going to get this out last, last Friday but on that day my kitten (barely over a year old) was hit by a car. She was my graduation present, a rag doll cat that was my shadow for her short life time. I got home one day from work, just to be shown a patch of dirt where she had been buried. I was in not in the right frame of mind to update and by god it SHOWED! Unfortunately my schedule got full hella fast for a while, so it took a while for the redo.

Harry Potter and the Breath of Life

"There are things beyond comprehension. In light of this, evil is subjective. Good doesn't exist. There can be no free will. The individual is meaningless. There is no such thing as 'Dark' magic, only what is forbidden. I have little idea as to what to do with these revelations, true or false? Dare I to dwell on them? At first I thought him fanatic. Twisted, disillusioned but now that I know more I'm somewhat intrigued. Can it be that I have missed the bigger picture? Can this all truly be for something as noble as the greater good?" - Notes penned by Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, 1942. Emboldened phrases were illegible in original notes.

Additional notations: Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore has been accredited with the defeat of the Dark wizard Grindlewald via an Order of Merlin, First Class.

Draco Malfoy was in an awkward position.

It wasn't the first time he had been in an awkward situation but those others he recovered from pretty quickly. Lockhart hugging "Potter's best friend"? Next class he made sure to "accidently" put his foot in the way of the ponce's path. Having to take Crabbe to Pomfrey when the boy tried to walk through a closed door? At least he got to laugh. Pansy getting the bright idea to start clinging to him? She hated Hermione this year for some reason. Stick around the bookworm, problem solved.

Having Potter in his head?

How could he even begin to redeem himself from this?

You know, I just realized something... In spite of himself, Draco flinched at the disembodied voice ringing in the space between his ears. You don't wear glasses.

"O-of course, I d-don't Potter." And what was with the stuttering? No matter he did, he just couldn't keep his teeth from clacking together and it was beginning to hurt his jaw. There was this strange pressure at the back of his head too..he better not turn into some freak like Quirrel or he'd never talk to Potter ever again.

He was being really calm about this, wasn't he?

The intrepid duo made the body march to the Great Hall but once they got there, both boys realized that they had absolutely no idea where to find Ginny. Their best bet was the Gryffindor Commons but being Slytherins (or Slytherin, since Harry didn't really count at the moment) the password was a little out of their reach. Ha! What was he thinking? They were Slytherin for Merlin's sake! Nothing was out of their reach!

What are you doing?

There we go...Draco reasoned, ignoring the voice in his head. It was an ickle Firstie, Gryffindor if the loud colors of his tie were any indication, most likely on his way to class. He'd probably be late, not that the blond cared. With quick and purposeful steps, he crossed the decorated Hall to tail the younger boy. His target didn't have any features that struck out at him, so it was probably a mudblood. All the better.

"You there!" Potter groaned in his head, muttering something that sounded like "no bloody tact." The Firstie turned and taking advantage of the absence of any authority figures, Draco didn't hesitate to shove the smaller boy into the wall. "The p-password to the Gryffindor C-c-commons, if you w-will."

"Wha-but you're a Slytherin!" the boy sputtered and Draco felt his lip curl. Slytherin, the big bad evil of fairy tales, aren't we?

You aren't acting like a saint.

Shut up, Potter. The Firstie was getting something like a Gryffindorish look on his face, complete with the defiant tilt of the chin, and without really thinking about it, Draco simply balled a fist and slammed it into the boy's jaw. There was the meaty thud of the impact as well as as a sharp crack from Draco's arm, pain lancing up from his palm all the way to his collar bone. That was odd. He had gotten into scraps before but nothing like this had ever happened-

You broke your arm. Potter almost sounded distracted.

Since when did I get so brittle? he thought as he shook the person he had broken his arm punching. "P-password. Now." Even as he demanded, there was this strange itching in his head. A minor annoyance, like a fly that he desperately wanted to get rid of, was flitting around in the space between his ears. First there was this thing with his arm and now his friend (dubious title, to be sure) was messing about. Potter, what are you doing?

We're going to apparate.

Wha- his hand spasmed open and the Gryffindor made his escape down the hall, yelling at the top of his lungs like a fool. We can't apparate in Hogwarts! We don't know where! And we don't know how! As soon as he thought it, his mind flashed back to the beginning of the year when his Father side-long apparated him to get around the malfunctioning barrier. Turn on heel, jump forward...and he knew Potter had seen it too.

We'll splinch ourselves to death...Draco warned as his body shuddered, then started to walk down the hall.

...I'll bring you back...Potter muttered, causing the blond no end of confusion. I promise. I just need, the rest of me.

Draco Malfoy never thought he would ever find himself in this position, a bystander in his own body as the Boy-Who-Lived moved him around like he was under an Imperius. A slight increase in speed...sharp turn...jump...

Pain.

It was a weird feeling.

Just kind of...falling...out of a body. As Malfoy collapsed, missing both of his arms and the left leg, Harry was left standing, floating in mid air. He was somewhere, it looked like it was under the castle by the damp stone look with many large crisscrossing pipes jutting out from the walls. Water was dripping, he could hear it echoing throughout the chamber. Where were they? Making the body apparate, he had in mind 'Ginny' and ended up...here. He still didn't quite know how, there was just the feeling of being squeezed into an even more cramped space, complete with flashing coloured light and then...

Malfoy's going to die. The thought was sudden, jerking his gaze down to where blood was seeping into the wet stone. Severed arms bled quite a bit, Harry would know and at this rate it wouldn't take long for the blond to bleed to death. The boy stared at the unconscious body for a moment.

He should be panicing, right?

I can bring him back. He had done it before, but maybe he just didn't want to believe that he had effectively murdered someone to get what he wanted. I can, just like with Hermione.

But before he could do anything about it, one way or another, Harry needed his body back.

The immortal boy moved down the rest of the hallway, by walking as he would if he was on the ground. The passage soon opened up into a large cavern with the gigantic statue of a man's head imbedded in the far wall. It was grostesque almost, with scraggly stone hair, an ugly grimace, moss and grime covering every inch of it. Thin streams of this oily black substance was wafting up from the floor and walls and-

There!

Underneath the statue's chin was the grey figure of a boy wearing glasses reaching for something on his back and laying on the floor before it was someone with red hair.

Someone...but as he got closer he began to realize that it wasn't Ginny. It was male, for one, taller and wearing this bizarre gold and green robe that kinda reminded him of...of his own favorite robes. Of Thana's robes. An Incarnate? If it was, it was a dead one. He didn't have any visible wounds, and Harry couldn't even be sure that Incarnates needed to breath to live, but there was something dead about him. The body was missing something, that presence Thana, Pal and Kring had. The unknown man felt smaller than he looked, like a husk, which really didn't make that much sense.

There was, though, a lot of blood around him. Harry came to a stop just in front of his own petrified body and stared down.

And a small pale hand, that had the smattering of freckles he recognized.

"Immortality affects people differently, don't you think so?"

Pal. His fists clenched.

"Some embrace it solemnly, some would kill to keep it, some hate it and others...go mad. You, thing, I see being of the fourth category." Harry snorted. Him? Go crazy? Yeah, right, not while he had anything to do about it. "You would kill to live, wouldn't you?"

"So would nearly everyone on the planet," he couldn't help muttering. Duh.

Pal was silent and Harry began to feel a bit awkward. Relatively speaking, the Incarnate was being rather nice for someone who had challenged his immortality (read: wanted him dead). He knew he was technically a ghost or something right now but he thought there would be...more to it. He'd prefer it if his year had just gone normally but this really wasn't-

His eyes betrayed his thoughts, straying down to that small, shriveled, wrinkled hand laying on the stone floor.

-Not that bad...

"What do you want?" He was starting to hate that question. He didn't know why he bothered asking, he never got a straight answer. "Really?" A faint glimmer appeared off to the left and he turned to spot Tinkerbell. Or something. There was this puff ball of dim silver light hovering in the center of the chamber that was greatly reminding him of the Disney movie before the Dursely's had shut it off in fear of encouraging "freakishness."

"There are rules that govern our every step," the light ball said in Pal's voice. "Did you realize this? Did my Thana tell you?"

For a moment, the boy just blinked rapidly, trying to process what he was seeing and hearing. He paused and glanced back at his frozen self with his glasses still perched on a stone nose. Was, was a light puff an Incarnate's true form? On one hand, that was kind of cute, little plushies holding all the awesome powers of the universe, but on the other hand when he thought of Thana it was just...disappointing? Weird?

"Uh, the Weave, right?" he blurted out to cover his momentary stupidity. "Fate?"

"She can only hope," Pal said in a flat tone before sighing dramatically. "Surely you've heard of them? What makes Death stronger than Life, have you ever wondered or simply accepted it like the good little sychophant you are?"

When in doubt, change the subject. "I asked first."

"Isn't it obvious? I want those rules broken!" The light that represented her bobbed closer, flickering wildly as if she was trembling. "Your hands were burnt," she continued softly, almost cooing at him. "What did you witness? Those rules in play..." Pal shuddered and swiftly bobbed across to hover over the mystery man's body as Harry watched her, aware in the back of his mind that time was running out for Malfoy but not exactly sure how to go about fixing his body-less dilemma. Should he just try to "stick" into his own head?

But then he'd still be petrified.

Fuck.

Should have thought this out a bit more.

"-Thana killed the very one controlling Time!" Pal was ranting when he started paying attention again to which he yawned.

"And you killed Weasley." Saying those words gave him an uncomfortable pang but it wasn't as if he even liked the youngest Weasley. Hell, he hadn't liked Hermione either but the red head had just been creepy. And she had hit him hard enough to knoock him over in front of Ron. Even if she were alive he'd never forgive that. "So you're point is?"

At once, a vicious snarl echoed throughout the chamber as the silver light grew to be almost blinding. "I didn't kill her!" There was a beat of silence, followed by a soft wail as she dimmed back down. "I had to!" she cried desperately, silver light turning a sickly yellow at the edges. "I had to! I didn't touch her! I had to! I made her die!"

And then Pal coughed. Once...twice...red splattered onto the stone. When she spoke again, it was in the same calm, cold voice he heard when he had first met her in Zion. It was actually starting to scare him. "This is how you can bring your parents back, Harry Potter. Allow me to show you."

"ALBUS!"

It was a sudden event. Every expert he had been to, every book he had read told him in no uncertain terms that it would be sudden. Swift, shocking and utterly devastating but he was Albus Dumbledore! He had Fawkes had chosen each other for a reason but now he was forced to admit, the pheonix's reason had most likely nothing to do with this old man's intelligence. Signs ignored are still signs, after all. Being mortal in an immortal's affairs was simply asking to cease existing at all. What had he been thinking about? His students?

Albus, old boy, he thought to himself with a chuckle as his legs gave out from underneath him. Look how far we have fallen. Useless.

Poppy must be going spare but he truly only had eyes for his former student, who in turn was looking slightly confused herself. "Did you engineer such a blow, Mrs. Malfoy? Truly genius, if I do say so myself."

Narcissa turned to the Greater Being, he couldn't bring himself to even think of it as a 'man' now, beside her. "Gil?"

"Hel," was all it said to her which didn't give Dumbledore the answer he was fishing for, but it was a clue. "Dumbledore." Ah, he was being addressed. He inclined his head politely, ignoring the way he couldn't pry his fingers from his chest. "You should be dead."

He chuckled, the same way he would to a rebellious third year who had just been given a length detention sentence. "I may not have the favor, but Death's attention is enough to live off of." Two identical smirks appeared on Narcissa and 'Gil's faces. "Mystery of mysteries, enigmatic to the last, I see."

He laughed again. "Indeed."

"ALBUS!?"

Oh, that was right. In an almost negligent manner, he flicked his wand in Poppy's direction, feeling it hum darkly and muttered, "Obliviate." Once that blank glaze appeared in the medi-witch's eyes, his next spell was , "Stupefy."

The Nott boy was dead and who knows how many others would pass away from being deprived of care. Impossibilities irked him, but he would find ways around it. He had before and he wasn't above paying the price once again. But for now, he'd let the young Potter rise to the occasion. With that thought, he settled back. His wand hummed, his right hand burned, his heart ached and he laughed quietly to himself, enjoying the utterly baffled expression on Narcissa Malfoy's face.

The irony.

Enigmatic to the last, indeed, and a few tears slipped unnoticed into his beard even as his belly rumbled with laughter.

Fawkes had died.

"You mean it."

"Of course, thing. Whether I like it or not, you have a talent I would be a fool to ignore."

Her words were pretty. She teach him, really teach him, how to bring people back without the intense effort/blind luck and he had a free dead person to try it on with no consequences. "Who is he?"

"Osiris," she said tersely and he knew he was getting anything else on that front...

"Give me my body back first." The puff twitched, shook and bobbed but in the end she flashed once.

"Done."

He blinked in surprise and annyoingly enough, found himself back in that damn fucking irritating void again. What was it about him and ending up in dark, creepy places? Just about ready to say "fuck this," throw his hands up and admit that Pal cheated him as easily as you could trip a blind man, a pressure suddenly appeared in the back of his head along with a familiar whisper.

--Welcome back--

Uh...hi...So Eternity was stuck in his body and not with him exactly? That was a bit odd all things considered...

--We've been waiting for you--

Hello? He heard his own voice call out, echoing. If anyone is here, say something at any time now...I'm bored!

Harry had enough time to think: "You have to be fucking kidding me" before he promptly ceased to exist.

The pain came in degrees. First it was a mild numbing pain, the type that told the mind that so-and-so body part had fallen asleep on it. Then there was a burning pins and needles kind of pain that usually followed a body part waking up and not being at all happy about it. After that there was the muscle ache of being in one position for over 36 hours, followed by stomach cramping of having gas and then a severe case of eye strain complete with flaky gunk on his eyelids. And he was freezing.

"Gah!" Harry took the easy way out and just fell over, trying to give his body time to adjust to suddenly not being petrified. He had his body back, but the clanging of the Rose hitting the floor reminded him that he owed Palquenta a favor. He shook his head, feeling the weight of his glasses firmly on his nose, flexed his numb fingers and then looked up.

Palquenta had paused, staring up at the ceiling as if something was happening just beyond it, back in the flesh but looking almost...sick. He didn't know why, she wasn't pale, her hair was just as he remembered it being, it even looked as if she had a gained a little weight.

That was it.

As he continued to stare, he began to notice things. She had a bruise on the under side of her right wrist, a few freckles on her nose, a scar on her chin, slightly plumper arms, she looked less like a misplaced angel and more like a human woman. Flawed. Mortal. Even as he thought it, there was a turning in his gut as well as an irritated grumble in the back of head.

--Women are complicated--

"What now?" Was that his own breath he was seeing puffing out?

Palquenta's bright blues slowly shifted to focus on him, a wry smile tugging at her lips. "Pick someone to use."

"Ronald Weasely," Harry said immediately, unable to stop his mouth. The Life Incarnate inclined her head, dipping her eyes down to the floor for a fraction of a second.

"Already dead."

The boy's green eyes bugged for a moment. How...when did that happen? He shifted on his butt, thinking...and fuck! He was really cold...he considered putting the bracelet back on just to hold back the shivers but thought better of it. Maybe he could cheat...? "Hermione Granger." Two uncomfortable words to say.

This time, Pal's eyes flashed in irritation. "Already dead."

Fuck. Harry was about ready to beat his head on the floor. Sure he could just pick any of the Gryffindors but it wasn't like they had done anything to...

"Gilderoy Lockhart!"

"Then call out to Thanatos for his life," the woman stated flippantly but there was a slight narrowing of her eyes over the name 'Thanatos.' "Don't use Death's power, but ask it to stand witness. She will not refuse you..."

Inside his head he was getting more detailed instructions. --For any Incarnate you have a link to, except me, you can ask them to validate an act--

Why not you?

--Complicated--

Harry curled his fingers into a loose fist but decided not to pry into Eternity's reluctance. He was inside his head, wasn't like he could force anything out of him anyhow. "I, Harry James Potter, ask Death-" he began before this white hot pain exploded in his head just behind his eyes. It throbbed there, growing larger with each pulse until it seemed to overflow down his neck and into his limbs. At first he thought Pal had started screaming but soon realized that it was him.

--Hang in there...--

There was a click! from somewhere inside him and a brief glimpse of a dark mirror...bound in rattling chains...

The pain slowly retreated into a dull ache and the chamber was glowing.

Pal laughed triumphantly. "This! Look around you! This is the Chamber of Secrets, an adapting, almost sentient room built by Salazar Slytherin around my Thana's Dead Zone." Harry looked. And then he looked without his glasses on. Every inch of the room, from the pipes, the floor to the statue was covered in glowing Avada Kedavra green runes. The thin streams of inky black he had spotted earlier had lightened into a deep greyish color. It was still a wet place but now the shimmering light on the surfaces just made the large underground cavern that much more surreal looking. And Pal was in the center, green light playing off her skin, arms outstretched happily.

"Wait..." Harry breathed, wincing. "You tricked me. You knew this was going to happen!"

"Death recognizes Death," she answered vaguely, slowly lowering her hands. "You did get your wish. Thanatos is quite accomodating, is she not?"

He wanted to say something, anything, stomp off and refuse to help her any further but...was his DADA teacher really dead now? Just like that? Where was Thana anyway? "What does this room do?"

"It's the workshop of a man jealous of true necromancers. Of their life span, their power, it is here that his experiments in prolonging life took place."

"Did he do it?" Harry asked quietly. Just the thought that his House's founder could possibly still be alive somewhere was fascinating. What would he think of the Slytherin house as it was now? Of the pure blood families? And...Pal was being awfully helpful, wasn't she?

"In a way. But his successors acheived much more in this very room." Her electric blue eyes gave Harry a sideways glance. "Horcruxes. And an artificial Incarnate."

There was a snarl in Harry's head and he understood. "Eternity..."

Life Incarnate inclined her head, gesturing towards the body also covered in green runes on the floor. "Shall we?" Even as she spoke, her body shuddered in what seemed like revulsion, causing her to turn her head and spit out a red glob which soon degenerated into hacking coughs. Harry scooted over to the corpse, shivering, and just watched the Life Incarnate slowly start to die.

Her eyes could see what no one else could.

There was Hogwarts, the castle looming darkly this Halloween and just beyond the gates were too people: one shrouded in a dark grey cloak and the other in expensively tailored wizarding robes, her white-blonde hair clear to see. Just beyond them was an old man sitting on the ground, in shock perhaps? And a plump woman tightly holding a child shaped bundle lying on the ground, neither were moving. She thought about walking up that path, closer but her knowledge of what was going inside the castle kept her at bay.

Later. She'd interfere later. She wasn't afraid of the inevitable outcome, of course not. It just made her chest hurt, her vision burn with nonsensical tears, her throat close up so tight that it ached, her hands would feel clammy and the raw skin on her palms feel uncomfortably tight...

The nature of Truth is not to hide.

She almost jumped but instead of feeling happy, ecstatic that Death was speaking to her again, it just drove her mood further down. She had to break him, it had been part of the plan from the beginning so why was she stalling? No...she knew why she was hesitating and...she kind of wished that-

Fucking hell. Fuck it all to bloody fucking HELL. She took another look at the gate. Scene unchanged.

Later. She'd interfere later.

Good news: I am on target for being in the middle of book three by December. Bad news: I am on target for being in the middle of book three by December. I was hoping for, you know, book five or something but holy hell I ended up delaying the shit out of THAT plan. Very sorry for everyone who waited for this chapter anxiously, it was evil of me to have a semi-cliffhanger and then not update for a month or so. This chapter was actually broken in two, the original was about six thousand words long but I decided to move things around and just bloody update already.