Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Harry Potter and Death's Bargain

Chapter 2

Harry opened his eyes. He was lying in his four poster bed in Gryfindor Tower. A quick tempus charm informed him that it was 11:13 PM Halloween 1994. He was back, back from a dark and dangerous future, a future where he had faced death at the hands of a madman, and if everything he had been told was true then there was going to be hell to pay. All of that could wait until morning though, right now there was nothing he wanted more than to sleep.

As Harry slept he remembered. He remembered that first Halloween at Hogwarts when he had rescued Hermione from the troll, but more importantly he remembered what had transpired afterward, the conversation in the common room they had after everyone else had gone to bed. The confessions about their lives before Hogwarts, the apologies, the acceptance, the hug, the kiss, their first kiss. The next couple of weeks had been wonderful they spent all their free time together in the library or by the lake, and then it happened. Dumbledore came up to them as they reentered the castle spouted some meaningless platitudes about the 'Greater Good' and without further comment obliviated them. For two weeks they had been together, happy, and Weasley free, but Dumbledore had ruined everything. He remembered the end of First Year, Hermione giving him a kiss for luck before he went to face Quirrel, their second first kiss. The last week of term had been as wonderful as the first two weeks of November, but then Dumbledore had done it again, erased their love for each other with a wave of his wand and inserted Ron Weasley back into their lives. The pattern repeated itself every time a little different but always the same, they would fall back into forgotten patterns for a week or even two and then Dumbledore would step in. By the end of fifth year they had had forty-four first kisses, each one special and unique, each one stolen from them by an interfering old man. Harry might have been willing to just let Ron be as long as he left them alone, but what he remembered about sixth year changed that. Harry and Hermione and been obliviated seven times over the summer by Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, and each one had been preceded by Ron or Ginny discovering them together. When they got back to school the pattern continued, but with ever shorter gaps between repetitions. Each time Dumbledore implanted the memory of an argument in their minds they would seek each other out to apologize and those mutual apologies rapidly became much more physical. Then suddenly Harry found himself inexplicably in love with Ginny looking back it was clear he was on love potions, he even remembered a conversation he had with Hermione where she had expressed concerns about the possibility that his feelings were artificially induced and when they had brought this up with Dumbledore he had once again obliviated them though he first placed a compulsion charm on both of them to ignore the possibility that Harry was being given love potions. Then Ron had left them in the tent during what should have been their seventh year and after a couple of days the love potions had worn off and they were back together, but it was to good to last and Ron had returned and stolen their happiness once again.

Harry awoke the next morning and wanted nothing more than to find Hermione, luckily he knew exactly where to look. He remembered exactly what had transpired on this day originally, what had really happened, all he had to do was repeat it exactly and he would have his Hermione back, then they could set to work saving the world.

Harry headed down to the Entrance Hall and was intercepted by Hermione as she was walking out of the Great Hall holding a stack of toast. "Hey Harry, I thought you might want to avoid the Great Hall for a little while," Harry gave her a genuine smile as he took the toast "Want to go for a walk?"

"Good idea." Harry said as he lead the way out toward the lake. As he ate the toast he told Hermione about what had happened following his name coming out of the Goblet of Fire the night before, luckily the memory of this conversation was still fresh in his mind as his own memory of that night had gotten fuzzy in the three and a half years since it had happened. When he finished the toast he looked Hermione right in the eyes "Thank you Hermione. This means a lot to me, I could kiss you right now." Harry said jokingly. Hermione blushed and mumbled something that Harry couldn't quite hear "Sorry what was that?" Harry asked with a smile as Hermione's blush deepened.

"I said 'then why don't you'." Hermione told her shoes.

Harry moved in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders, when Hermione raised her head Harry looked her right in the eye, smiled and said "Okay." He leaned forward and as their lips met both closed their eyes.

After a few moments Hermione broke the kiss and opened her eyes. "Harry, where did the tent go? Harry, why do you look fourteen? Harry, how did we get to Hogwarts?"

Harry pulled Hermione into a hug "Hermione, calm down for a second. The short version is that we are back in fourth year. You're a little behind me on events so here's what you're missing Ron came back a few hours from your last memory, I had found the sword of Gryfindor, and he found me, he destroyed the locket, and when he got back to the tent he lost it when he realized we were together, so he obliviated us so we would forget that we were in love with each other. He spent the next few weeks feeding me love potions so I would want to be with Ginny instead of you. We had to break into Gringotts to get Hufflepuff's cup out of the Lestrange vault and then went to Hogwarts to get the last horcrux. Riddle showed up with all his death eaters and there was a huge battle, we went to find Nagini so we could finish everything off and we watched as Snape was killed, he left me a few memories on Dumbledore's orders. Apparently he was acting on Dumbledore's orders and he was supposed to tell me that I was a horcrux and that I had to let Riddle kill me, so I went out into the forest to face him. I died and went to some kind of waiting room, apparently I've died a few times before, but because I knew about how Riddle cheated Death when I died this time I was appointed as Death's Avatar on the mortal plane, so I was sent back to last night with all my memories. Apparently if Riddle isn't beaten the world could end so a lot of other worldly interests are helping however they can which is how you got your memories back." Harry explained as best he could, all the while holding Hermione close.

"Harry are you sure Dumbledore said you were a horcrux? It doesn't make any sense why would he have made you into a horcrux? When would he have done it?" Hermione immediately went into critical thinking mode.

"Yes he said it, but apparently it wasn't true, and he knew it. Hermione do you know anything about undoing memory charms, because Ron isn't the first person to obliviate us, and the memories that were removed will tell you a lot that you need to know about Dumbledore."

"Yeah, you think about the specific memory you want to restore and cast the spell memoratus, like this" she demonstrated the wand movement. Harry performed the spell over and over on Hermione, and each time he did the scowl on Hermione's face became more pronounced "How could they do that to us?" Hermione finally demanded of no one in particular.

"Greed." came the voice of Adrian Lichfield, apparently from nowhere. "They did it for greed, Dumbledore didn't want to lose his power and prestige, the Weasleys wanted Harry's money, and you stood in their way of that. Dumbledore told the Weasleys that Harry would die in the war against Riddle and suggested to them that Ginny should marry him before it came to that. Dumbledore wanted Harry to die so he wouldn't be outshone by the vanquisher of the newest Dark Lord just as he outshone the wizard who defeated the Dark Lord before Grindlewald, and you wouldn't have let him go off and die for nothing." The entire time he was explaining the motivations of the Weasleys and Dumbledore Adrian was slowly fading into existence "It is a pleasure to finally meet you Miss Granger."

"Who are you? And where did you come from?" Hermione demanded reaching instinctively for her wand

"Hermione, meet Adrian Lichfield, Angel of Death." Harry quickly made introductions "You got my new glasses?"

"Yeah here you go," Adrian handed Harry a pair of wire frame glasses "they automatically adjust to the wearer's eyesight, looks through illusion magic, zoom function, adjusts for ambient light, and if you touch the frame a you can activate a few different vision settings, specifically mage sight, thermal, and a cool little thing called death sight, lets you see how many chances someone has left. Given any thought to what your plans are?"

Harry took the glasses and tried them on he noticed a definite improvement over his old pair "Isn't that your job?"

"No we are only allowed to provide you with information to allow you to carry out your plans, the plans need to be your own." Adrian explained impatiently.

"Well if we can deal with all of Riddle's horcruxes before he can come back, we can focus on dealing with Riddle after he comes back, unfortunately any plans we make Dumbledore will try his best to screw up, probably by trying to obliviate us again." Harry mused.

"Well he won't be able to obliviate you, but he could still obliviate Miss Granger, and that could be inconvenient." Adrian corrected after a few seconds.

"So we need some way to get rid of Dumbledore without drawing attention to ourselves." Hermione said after considering things for a while.

"If we put him on the trail of the ring he'll probably end up getting cursed again, delay Snape a few minutes and we could cut Dumbledore life expectancy down to a couple of months, however we still have to deal with him for a few months and he'll try to split us up. Probably try even harder to come up with a permanent solution like he did in sixth year."

"We need to do something that will make it impossible to make our relationship disappear. We could be a little more public about it this time." Hermione suggested.

"He could still slip us potions to break us up so we would get together with the Weasleys." Harry countered.

"You could always get married." Adrian suggested. Harry and Hermione were both speechless for a few seconds before they simultaneously began raising objections to the idea. "Hang on just hear me out, if you two were married there would be nothing Dumbledore could do since there is no divorce in the wizarding world. Your both over fourteen so legally you can get married. Besides based on your history together you can't really expect me to believe that you two are opposed to being together for the rest of your lives."

"Won't that arouse suspicion? How would we explain it without letting something slip." Hermione objected.

"It wouldn't arouse suspicion if you 'accidentally' got married." Adrian replied with air quotes.

"How exactly does someone get accidentally married?" Harry asked with a slight chuckle.

"At its core a magical wedding is two people making a magical oath to each other. If two people make oaths close enough to the ones used in an official wedding the result is exactly the same." Hermione almost instinctively supplied.

"Correct, I can see now why Love was so smug about their decision to put you and Mr. Potter together, and why they were so upset that Harry was not fully able to utilize your talents." Adrian said with a hint of awe in his voice at how quick Hermione had been on the uptake "Accidental marriages happen occasionally, especially among fourth and fifth year muggle raised students, and given the betrayal of your supposed friend you could say that you made the oaths to assure each other that you were always going to be there for each other."

"So we just make an oath and poof we're married?" Harry asked sceptically "Then what, how do we make sure people find out, because I don't think it will work if no one knows we're married."

"Well, if that's your only concern, don't worry. First the magic released when you make those oaths are flashy enough to make anyone inquire into what happened, and the Hogwarts wards will notice your change in status and your head of house will be informed automatically." Adrian explained before he was interrupted by a shrill beeping sound, he immediately reached into his pocket and pulled our what looked like a pocket watch, but when he opened it it projected a complex series of symbols that arranged themselves into multiple concentric circles all of which were rotating at different rates. "Oh my, I really must be going. If you are going to go ahead with getting married, just make sure that the oaths you make include fidelity, protection, care, and love. That should ensure the desired results. Before I go here are some notes on subjects you might want to look into. I'll check in again in December." Adrian pulled out a small bundle of parchments and handed them to Harry, and as soon as Harry had taken them Adrian faded from view.

After a few minutes of contemplation Harry turned to look at Hermione "So, what do you think? From a purely practical angle it seems like an excellent plan, unless you see a potential problem that I'm missing." Harry finally said nervously.

"Well, I agree that it's a technically sound plan," Hermione started "but are you sure..." she continued, letting a little of her deeply ingrained insecurities show, before Harry stopped her.

"Hermione, I know we're young, whether we're fourteen and fifteen,or seventeen and eighteen, but I also know that there is no one else in the world I would want to spend the rest of my life with than you. The times when we have been together are the best memories I have, and nothing has hurt more than the times we have been apart have been the most painful." Harry started, barely keeping his voice under control "Hermione Jean Granger, will you marry me?"

Hermione knew Harry well enough to know what he was going to ask before he had even finished his first sentence, so it took her less than a tenth of a second to respond "Yes, Harry, of course I will."

"So, should we do this now, or should we wait?" Harry asked, now that Hermione had agreed he had no idea how to proceed.

"If we're going to act like it was an accident, we'll have to do it now, so I guess I'll start." Hermione said taking hold of Harry's hands and looking into his eyes. "I, Hermione Jean Granger, swear to stand by you, Harry James Potter, in all things, to protect you from harm, to help you to the full extent of my power and to love you from this day forth until the end of time." As she finished her oath a thin band of golden light extended from her right hand to wrap around Harry's left wrist.

"I, Harry James Potter, swear to stand by you, Hermione Jean Granger, in all things, to protect you from harm, to help you to the full extent of my power, and to love you from this day forth until the end of time." Harry made the same oath, and as he finished another band of golden light extended from his right hand to wrap around Hermione's left wrist. When the band of light had finished wrapping itself around her wrist both bands of light flashed brightly and a simple gold ring appeared on their ring fingers. Feeling that it was only proper Harry leaned forward and kissed his new wife.

"We should probably go find Professor McGonagall." Hermione said once they had separated.

Harry took Hermione's hand and they started walking toward the castle. They had just walked through the front doors into the Entrance Hall when McGonagall found them "Mister Potter, Miss Granger, please come with me." Harry and Hermione shared a look of surprise at how quickly McGonagall had come to look for them while McGonagall led them to her office. When they entered her office McGonagall motioned for them to take a seat in front of her desk while she sat down in her own chair. McGonagall looked across the desk at them for a few moments, and Harry would have sworn that there was the merest hint of a smile on her lips, before she spoke "I would like to begin by assuring you that you are not in trouble, but I must ask you to tell me what you were doing out on the grounds this morning."

Hermione was the first to respond to the professor's request "Well, after last night I thought Harry would rather avoid the Great Hall this morning so I grabbed him some toast, and then we went for a walk around the lake. We were talking about stuff and then the conversation turned to Ron being a prat and calling Harry a liar when Harry said he didn't put his name in the Goblet of Fire. Harry was really upset about how Ron was acting so I promised him that I would never abandon him, and then he promised me the same thing, and there was this flash of light and these rings appeared, so we were going to the library to try to find out what happened when we ran into you." Hermione explained in her usual form, barely stopping for breath.

"Well Miss Granger I can tell you exactly what happened. It would seem that the promises you and Mr. Potter made were considered by your magic to be oaths, and those oaths resulted in the two of you becoming married." McGonagall explained slowly. Harry and Hermione did their best to look surprised, and apparently succeeded as McGonagall didn't say anything about their reactions. "Now I'm sure you two will need some time to talk about this, but before I let you go I am required by the school charter to inform you that as a married couple you are entitled to private quarters if you desire them."

Harry and Hermione looked at each other and in the space of a few seconds they carried out an entire silent conversation consisting of a series of slight gestures and facial expressions. When they had silently come to a consensus about this unexpected decision they turned to face the professor and said simultaneously "We'll take them."

"Very well then, I will make the necessary arrangements, however as the term has already begun I will need to clear this with the Headmaster. I don't foresee a problem, but Professor Dumbledore can be unpredictable when making decisions concerning you Mr. Potter." McGonagall told them.

"If Dumbledore denies our request simply inform him that Harry is exercising his right as a Triwizard Champion to request private accommodations. Per tournament bylaws Dumbledore would be unable to refuse the request." Hermione said after a moment, both Harry and Professor McGonagall took the fact that Hermione was so familiar with the rules governing a tournament that hadn't been held in centuries in stride.

"I will do just that, if there is nothing else you two wish to discuss with me-"

"Actually Professor, I was wondering if it would be possible for me to change my elective courses. I know that it's against school policy for students to change electives after the first term of third year, but considering that I am not required to take exams this year due to being forced into the tournament, I was wondering if an exception could be made so that I could drop Divination and switch to Arithmancy and Ancient Runes?" Harry asked tentatively.

"I can speak with Professors Babbling and Vector about it, but I must warn you, even if they allow you to sit their classes you will have to most likely take those two exams to be allowed to continue those classes in your fifth year, and they are both quite difficult." McGonagall said.

"I understand how difficult they are Professor, Hermione has been teaching me the material since February. I had been planning to continue studying outside of the class and sit the OWLs and possibly take the classes starting in sixth year, but with the tournament I was hoping for the opportunity to get out of Divination, and get a better understanding of the two subjects." Harry said confidently, this was only partly a lie, Hermione had actually started teaching Harry Arithmancy and Ancient Runes in the February of their third year, but hadn't gotten very far before Dumbledore had removed their memories of it, and he had been planning at that time to sit the OWLs for those subjects without taking the classes.

"Very well Mr. Potter, I will inform the professors involved of your request and get back to you when I have an answer, I will also have a house elf show you to your new quarters when they are ready. I will see you both later Mr. Potter, Mrs. Potter." McGonagall dismissed them with a small smile when she called Hermione Mrs. Potter, which had caused Hermione to smile brightly and blush.

After they left McGonagall's office Harry and Hermione made their way to an empty classroom. Once they were inside the classroom Harry locked and sealed the door while Hermione cast a number of privacy charms. As soon as the charms were up Harry pulled Hermione into a passionate kiss.

When they finally came up for air Hermione gave Harry a sweet smile "As much as I would love to keep going, we'll have plenty of time for that later. Right now I want to ask you a few questions, and then we should start looking through the notes Adrian gave you. First I want to know why you are so certain that Dumbledore will go after the ring now instead of waiting until after Riddle comes back."

"Because the ring isn't like the other horcruxes. Do you remember that symbol we kept finding?" Hermione nodded "Well it's the symbol of the Deathly Hallows, which are the the three items mentioned in the 'Tale of the Three Brothers'." Harry told her. Seeing that Hermione was about to interrupt he pressed on "Yes the story was based on reality Ignotus Pevrell, whose grave we saw in Godric's Hollow was the youngest brother, my many-great-grandfather, and an Avatar of Death. The cloak was his Icon, and was passed down through his family until it came to my father, and eventually me."

"What does that have to do with the ring though?" Hermione asked impatiently.

"The stone in the ring is the Resurrection Stone. The Stone was an Icon given to an earlier Avatar and Ignotus gave it to his brother Cadmus so that he could help in his quest. The Wand from the story was also an Icon which Ignotus found and gave to his oldest brother Antioch. The wand was eventually found by the wand-maker Gregorovich, but it was stolen by Gellert Grindlewald, and now it belongs to Dumbledore." Harry explained "As far as I can guess Dumbledore and Grindlewald shared an obsession for the Hallows, an obsession which Dumbledore has continued. If he thinks the Stone will be within his reach he will move to obtain it. If I tell him in such a way that he can easily guess where it is but also suspects that it will be moved soon he will throw caution to the wind and try to take it."

After that Harry and Hermione began reading through the notes they had been given and started to organize them into a study schedule. Hermione found one parchment that she set aside from all the others without showing Harry, she would need to talk to Harry about what the parchment talked about soon, but it could wait until they had gone through the rest of the notes.

Minerva McGonagall would never admit to having favorite students, such things were highly unprofessional after all, but if she had to choose she would definitely have placed Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, Hermione Potter she reminded herself, on the list. She was extremely glad that the two of them were together now, even if they had not intended to get married, perhaps now Harry's work habits would stabilize. Minerva had noticed a strange pattern over the last three years, there had been multiple times when Harry and Hermione had seemed to be closer than usual, and if she didn't know better she would have sworn they were in a relationship, and during these times Harry's classwork and essays would improve significantly. It wasn't that he was receiving help, the thought process that was demonstrated was the same in all his essays, but the essays were better thought out and less rushed. Then just as suddenly as the change had happened a few weeks later it would disappear.

Minerva had finished speaking to Dumbledore about what had happened earlier and had been concerned by the look on Dumbledore's face when he learned of Harry and Hermione's accidental marriage, one could almost see the gears turning in Albus's head as he tried to adjust whatever plans he had regarding the young Mr. Potter. Dumbledore had definitively refused to allow the Potters' request for private quarters, spouting some nonsense about Harry needing to stay in his dorm in order to repair his friendship with Ronald Weasley. Minerva then informed him that they had placed the request using Harry's position as a Triwizard Champion and Dumbledore had no choice but to concede.

She had then spoken to Bathsheba Babbling and Septima Vector about Harry joining their classes. Both teachers had been hesitant, but quickly changed their tune when informed that Harry had already started learning the subjects from Hermione. Both agreed that Harry could sit the classes for the remainder of term, and if he passed a cumulative exam before the Christmas holidays he would be welcome to continue the class. Minerva wrote up a new schedule for Harry and wrote him a note explaining the conditions on which he could change classes and then had a house elf deliver them before showing the Potters to their new quarters.