Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

Chapter edited: July 25, 2013


Harry James Potter

Harry didn't know what the hell was going on. One second he was standing in front of the pile of dust that was Quirrell when some cloud had formed, screamed, and rushed through him. Next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground with this man in a business suit from 19th century was standing above him smoking a cigar.

"Harry Potter," The man said, pulling out a pocket watch. "I honestly wasn't expecting you for another several decades. You were supposed to die in your 80s from a heart attack. But it seems to have come seven decades early." He snapped the pocket watch shut and put it away in his pocket. "You Potters, always throwing wrenches in my plans. Just like all your ancestors."

Harry could only blink owlishly at the man. "What?" he said eloquently.

He took another puff of his cigar, blowing the smoke out on Harry's face. "Mr. Potter, you were not supposed to die quite yet." He tapped the cigar, ashes falling off onto Harry's chest.

"I'm dead?" Harry blinked owlishly at the thought, the words seeming to defy the reality that other man was insisting upon him.

"Absolutely, Mr. Potter. Voldemort plowed straight through your heart. Burst it right open."

Harry only stared in shock. He was dead…from a dust cloud blowing up his heart. "But…how – I mean, how can a dust cloud burst my heart?"

The man puffed a ring of smoke in Harry's face. "That is not important. You are young, so I don't expect you to understand, but death is a business. As a business, I must do what it takes to keep it running. Collecting the souls of the dead, believe it or not, is actually very difficult yet profitable. And the more time I waste here talking to you, Mr. Potter, is costing me valuable souls that are being swooped up by my nefarious rival Deaths." The man, who Harry now assumed was Death (a Death, apparently) pulled out is watch and grimaced.

"Why are you still here talking to me then?" Harry asked, wondering why he was spending so much time talking to him when he could be going about his business and leaving him to die. That thought made Harry pause in its oddness; he did not want to die by any means, and Death was keeping him alive so long as they were talking, so perhaps he shouldn't have said that.

"Mr. Potter, there are several outstanding…debts, that many people in the living world owe me and are reneging on giving me my due. As I can't afford to be here much longer, I will strike you a deal, Mr. Potter…a second chance at life." His eyes met Harry's in an attempt to impress upon him how monumental an offer this was.

This time, Harry found it difficult to not gawk. While he still didn't fully comprehend that he was dead, he knew that he was, if that made any sense at all. But Harry wasn't stupid; he knew there had to be a catch. There were always catches to stuff like this. "What's the-" he started before being cut off.

"Catch? Oh nothing really, Mr. Potter. I give you a chance at life again, and you go collect my debts." Death said conversationally, taking another drag of his cigar.

That did not sound particularly good at all, to Harry's ears. "You mean…you want me to kill people?" he asked, swallowing thickly.

Death sighed deeply, not enjoying being misunderstood by the young boy, "Mr. Potter," he began, "It is quite simple really. I'm not asking you to go on a rampage, demanding virgins and killing men. I will give you the capability to live again, and continue to do so, until you complete the tasks I have given you. At which point, I will let you live till the end of your natural days."

The man's black eyes burrowed deeper into Harry's, and he could feel his soul being dissected and examined. The man knew that he desperately wanted to live again, to see Ron and Hermione and all of the other friends he had made at Hogwarts. To see Hagrid and Dumbledore and his professors…everyone. Harry had not lived an easy life, and the experiences he had at Hogwarts this past year had made him the happiest he had ever been. He didn't want to leave that behind.

The man smirked and offered Harry his hand. "Do we have an accord, Mr. Potter?"

Harry gulped and grabbed the hand.

His world exploded, and Harry would reflect later in his life that it was the most euphoric thing he had ever experienced. He would liken it to being filled with all the knowledge in the world and understanding all of it simultaneously, overwhelming him in its magnitude and the magnificence of it all. It was an eternity of peace packed into a moment and Harry wondered briefly if that was what it was to die – to know everything and to know peace so intimately.


Death

Death only smiled as Harry collapsed unconscious. The boy had essentially made a deal with the devil now. He could come and claim him anytime he wanted. But that was for him to know and the boy to never find out.

However, that was not the point; deals with himself he took seriously. Death said he would give the boy back his life, and so he would. But as Death stared at the boy's body, even he knew he could not reverse time and repair his heart. He could only halt time for a small moment, not reverse it. He held no dominion over it, and such damage the boy had already suffered was beyond his capabilities for healing.

"That leaves only one option then…" Death said, grimacing slightly.

And so Death reached for the stone that was clutched in the boy's hand. Death found it ironic, what had caused him so much trouble in acquiring a certain soul over the centuries would now be a tool that he would be using to keep another soul away from him. He could not claim that which was perfectly alive, if there was no opening for him to claim. The stone would keep Harry perfectly alive in all senses of the word, but Death would have the boy's soul on a chain.

Carefully, Death pushed his hand, the stone clutched firmly, into the boy's chest. Death knew it would be a fight later on though, to claim the boy's life. He could already see the blood being mixed with the elixir that the stone oozed. The elixir would anchor him to this plane while Death tried to pull him from another. The only thing he could hope for is that things will not go as they have for Flamel, the damnable Frenchman who had eluded him for centuries.

Flamel was a man that frustrated Death to no end. When the man was young, they had met under grim, strange circumstances that Flamel himself had brought about, but it was not Flamel who Death had come to take during that meeting. This was in the younger centuries of his existence, Death, and he had made himself seem threatening and imposing instead of his current visage. It was an impression that affirmed Flamel's path and actions and resulted in the Philosopher's Stone being made.

Careful to weave a thick enchantment over the stone, Death made sure that no one, aside from himself and the boy, would know that the stone resided in his chest. For all other people, there would a steady thumping and they would perceive a heart made not of stone, but flesh. It would take a truly powerful force to pierce the veil over it.

Pulling out his pocket watch, Death opened it. A small, ornate golden thing, its hands ticked normally until he spoke, "Harry James Potter."

The inside of the metal clasp morphed to show a name that previously had a zero beneath it. Now though, there was simply nothing. The seconds hand began to move in reverse and after a full minute, there was still no number.

"So I have succeeded…I have never been less enthusiastic," Death said, noting that color was returning to the Potter boy's complexion as air suddenly rushed back into his lungs and is blood pumped through his veins.

His head snapped up when he heard footsteps enter the chamber, and he hastily made himself invisible again. Severus Snape, a man who had frequently almost met him, entered the chamber but stopped dead once he saw Potter on the floor.

Death couldn't help but chuckle at his own pun.

Severus Snape had many close calls with Death during the war a little more than a decade ago. Wounds that would kill a normal man, crudely sewn back together with battlefield medical magic, and a sheer determination to survive, had kept the professor from stepping over the threshold into his domain many a time.

There was a particular time that came to mind, the night he had come to claim the McKinnons when they were murdered. While Dominic Travers, who he was waiting to claim as he wasted away in Azkaban, was dealing with Marlene McKinnon and her children, Kevin McKinnon had gotten a particularly nasty cutting curse on Severus, slicing him from his right thigh to the man's left ribs. Bleeding profusely, he had given Severus up for dead and turned away only to be hit by a killing curse from another Death Eater. Severus sealed his skin back up, downed a few replenishing potions, and then portkeyed out of there.

There was also the event where the man's father had cracked him over the skull, and he had only survived thanks to a fit of accidental boyhood magic.

Ah, such a lucky man…or is he unlucky, to have come so close to me so many times? Death thought, watching him. Severus performed a detection spell, which wouldn't turn up his location, and then Death left the chamber as the professor ran over to the student.


Severus Snape

He had told the Headmaster that it had been a bad idea to put one of the world's greatest magical artifacts in a school full of innately curious school children.

Severus seemingly flew down the many corridors and down staircases as he made his way to the third floor. His potion challenge, which Albus insisted on having an answer so as to lure Voldemort or whoever was acting on his behalf deeper into the trap, had a ward about it to alert him when it had been breached, which it had been. He had been in a meeting with Minerva when it had gone off, to which he alerted her and they both grew wide eyed with panic. She mentioned that Potter had come to her saying that he was going to try to steal the stone tonight. Severus told her to contact the Headmaster as he started off towards the chamber.

Could it be that the Potter boy, in his ignorant suspicions, had breached that deep into the protections that the professors had set around the stone? Albus's idea behind the protections is that they would be varied enough to keep any perpetrator off their game and be unable to predict the next protection, but with each protection they got past they would be lured deeper in and deeper into their trap.

Of course, only Severus and the Headmaster, as well as member of the Order on staff, knew about the secondary goal of the protections around the stone.

Of course, none of that matters now since all the protections and traps were rendered moot by a first year's blatant hero complex, he thought.

It would be just like Potter to take after his father like this, to disregard the rules so blatantly and without fear or respect for consequence. He should've gone straight McGonagall and insisted and lay out his evidence for his thinking. At the least that's what the Granger girl should have done! She was obviously the brains of the supposed 'Golden Trio'. And now he had to go save them from their stupidity – it was likely that they had gotten injured along the way to his trial.

The ward triggered again as he was on the flight of stairs between the fourth and fifth floor, and Severus knew then, though, that Potter was not wrong in his suspicions. Quirrell must have made his move tonight.

Haste found the potion master's heels as he turned down the third floor corridor, into the irate cerberus' chambers. Conjuring a self-playing flute that quickly lulled the guardian beast to sleep; he opened the trap door and shot off a jet of flame to burn away the Devil's Snare that Sprout had left behind. The other challenges were easy enough to get past; in part because the Headmaster had shared with him the safety spells that deactivated Filius's and Minerva's challenges.

Severus had come across the Granger girl and the youngest Weasley son, the former of which was startled by his appearance. Checking them over and shooting a stasis charm on the red head, snapping an assurance that no, the boy was not dead, the potions master continued on to his trial and deactivated the flame ward.

Entering the chamber, Severus's blood ran cold. Lying there on the stairs, before the cracked Mirror of Erised, was Harry Potter looking as pale as death with a pile of purple robes and ashes in front of him.

A chuckle rang softly through the room, light enough that it could've been his imagination, but years of fighting during the war on the side of the Death Eaters made him familiar with their tactics. He didn't know all of the agents, Quirrell may have been one, and that lack of knowledge was enough to startle Severus into drawing his want and going on alert.

A detection spell later and with no results, Severus wasted no time in rushing to Potter's side and checking him over. He was pale, but not dead, and he was scratched all over. The scratches likely came from Filius's keys chasing the boy. Granger must have gone back to Weasley after helping him with the riddle; that would explain why Potter wasn't poisoned as well.

Severus looked anxiously around the chamber, noting that the robes belonged to Quirrell, as likely were the ashes what remained of the man's body. Magical backlash, or had Potter done it? It would warrant investigation later. The Mirror of Erised still stood in the center of the chamber, a silent witness to all that had transpired there. He made great effort not to look into its cursed glass.

The amount of death magic in the air bothered Severus slightly though. The air could only have been saturated with this much of it if the killing curse had been used frequently in a short amount of time or if a great magic had occurred and resulted in death. Severus stilled at that thought and regarded Quirrell's ashes for a moment. The chuckle…

Snapping himself out of his musings, he turned back to Potter and began to float him. He had to get him to Poppy; he would never forgive himself if something happened to Lily's son, no matter the father.


Harry James Potter

Harry woke up with a start. His vision swam, his body ached, and he could hear his blood pumping into every orifice of his person. Clutching his head, he knew that what had happened had surely been a dream. There was no way he had talked to Death, it was preposterous.

"Are you alright, Harry?" said a voice next to him. "I remember reading somewhere once in this delightful muggle magazine that too much air at one time came be damaging to the body."

Harry could only blink as his surroundings came into a blurry focus for him. The Hogwarts Hospital Wing, he realized. That means that they must have found him. He reached for his glasses on the nightstand, and turned to look at Dumbledore, who had been waiting for Harry to gather his senses. "Professor? What are you doing here? What about Quirrell, the stone?"

He would have kept going, but the old wizard held up his hand to motion for him to stop. "Gone, Harry. Quirrell died down in that chamber when he tried to touch you. As for the stone, it has disappeared, though to where I do not know."

Harry looked back down at his sheets; Ron, Hermione, and he nearly lost their lives trying to protect that stone. And now it had somehow mysteriously disappeared? That was just a bit too suspicious

"Though you can rest assured, Harry, it would have been impossible for the stone to have fallen into the wrong hands. The only people who were down in that chamber were you, Professor Quirrell, and Professor Snape."

Harry turned to him alarmed; about to speak his suspicions about his potions professor, but then held his tongue. Quirrell's words, that Snape had been trying to protect the stone, rang in his head. "What about Ron and Hermione? Are they okay?"

The old wizard reached up with a halting gesture. "Fine, Harry. They are fine. As a matter of fact," Dumbledore reached towards the mountain of sweets at the foot of Harry's bed, "I believe he has already saved you the trouble of opening your chocolate frogs."

Harry could only smile, "Of course he did."


The Hogwarts express had pulled away from the station some time ago. Both Ron and Hermione had fallen asleep in their compartment, leaving Harry alone to look out the window.

Had it been a dream, what happened in the mirror chamber? Death had said his heart had exploded, being plowed straight through by Voldemort's spirit. So, that would mean that he no more heart, right?

With a shaking hand, Harry moved to feel where the familiar beating of his heart should've been. Instead, he felt nothing. Nothing at all, not a single thump.

Breathe, Harry, breathe…he thought to himself, Think about this logically and calmly. You're heart isn't beating, if it's even in one whole piece anymore anyways.

Quietly, Harry got up and left the compartment, heading to the bathroom. No better place when you need to think in solitude. And solitude was exactly what he needed right now. By the laws of nature he should be dead, can't exactly live with a broken heart, right? He couldn't be walking around normal like any other person.

Harry pulled his shirt open, and clenched his teeth at what he saw. A dark patch of skin where his heart should have been, the size of a deep red stone.


A/N: A lot more details and the beginnings of some plot points that I may have inadvertently created later in the story out of the blue. Plus, a good thousand words longer.