Disclaimer: It goes without saying but will be said regardless. I do not own Harry Potter, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel the Series or any other professional work that may or may not appear through the course of this FAN-MADE story. All I own is the laptop that this was written on and my worthless time that was wasted writing. Please support the official releases.

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The BtVS and HP universes are completely separate dimensions from each other. As such the story primarily takes place in the BtVS universe with no return, call-backs or characters to appear from and in the HP-universe.

This story is a response to a Challenge I found on the 'Twisting the Hellmouth' website. Called: 'Guardian Harry.' originally put forward by 'KailBlade.'

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Quicker than falling asleep.

Could it be considered a terribly sad thing to be able to learn that dying did indeed feel exactly as he had been told? Only seventeen years of age and yet Harry Potter had lived through more heartache, pain, suffering and hardship than most would have to endure over the course of an entire lifetime.

He had lost both his parents while still an infant. His godmother to madness, his godfather to prison and later death. A happy childhood lost to the machinations of a self-involved Headmaster.

Even the simple joy of learning magic at Hogwarts had ultimately been sacrificed to Dumbledore and Tom Riddle.

Harry had almost thought he would at the very least get to discover what it was like to fall in love; daring to dream of a future with his best friend's sister. Only to have to cut that from him in order to protect her from the monster that ultimately killed him.

It was a small part of the 'Chosen One' that had raged and hated that after everything that had been taken away from him, after everything he had lost and been forced to give up, that there was still more expected for him to sacrifice. After everything the world had taken from him; it ultimately desired his very life in the end.

He had been so scared; sneaking out of Hogwarts and making for the Forbidden Forest. To know that if he didn't do what needed to be done then Voldemort would ultimately win and all the people that had died for him and in his name would have died for nothing. His friends knew what to do afterwards. They knew that Nagini needed to be killed before Voldemort was vulnerable and could be properly killed for good.

He had seen so many people die he had been worried that he had started to grow numb to it all. But with his own mortality rearing its ugly head he found a morbid sense of relief to feel himself afraid in the end. Would it hurt? What did the Killing Curse feel like? Sure it certainly looked quick and clean having witnessed it as a third party. But was it truly painless and as instant as it seemed?

It had been remembering the golden snitch in his pocket that had comforted him with its cryptic message when his courage started to fail.

'I open at the close.'

Being able to finally open the Snitch had revealed a small stone of all things. Normally easily dismissed as worthless were it not for the context of the Tale of the Three Brothers that had confused him for almost a year now.

Turning the Resurrection Stone had summoned the Shades of the four people that he needed the most in all of the world to his side. His Godfather Sirius; whom had been killed and cast through a veil trying to protect him from his insane cousin Bellatrix. His pseudo-uncle Remus who should have never been at Hogwarts for the battle only to die when he had a wife and child that needed him.

And his mother and father. Who he could not even remember were it not for the Mirror of Erised and the album that Hagrid had gifted him.

He had wanted to, had hoped that he could have learned what it felt like to feel the warmth of a mother's loving hug only for it to be dashed when Lily Potter had proven as immaterial as any other ghost he had known. In the end the only comfort they had been able to truly offer him was nonetheless what he had needed most. Reassurance and knowledge of the unknown.

'Does it hurt?'

'Quicker than falling asleep.'

Harry had tried to ignore the shame and regret that had been on Sirius' face when the man had provided the terrified teenager with that final comfort. As if despite being dead the godfather has still failed his beloved godson.

'You'll stay with me?'

'Until the end.'

Despite the comforting words from his father; Harry had not been able to see then when he had stood across from the nightmarish looking Dark Lord. But he could still feel them in his heart. Just as he could feel the others that he wished were still with him.

Hedwig. Dobby. Mad-Eye Moody. Tonks. Snape. Cedric.

He didn't laugh or smile in the face of his death. He didn't have the ability to show that kind of levity to the man that had taken so much from him. All he could do was just watch the monster with a tired looking expression on his face and let out a sigh of relief when he saw the green light of his death soar toward him.

It was over. Finally.

Only, it wasn't.

He didn't feel the curse hit him. Didn't even remember falling to the ground as the light left his eyes. And just like Sirius promised; he certainly didn't feel the pain as his life left him.

He just blinked. And found himself in an endlessly large white room.

He had quickly noticed and then done his very best to ignore the disgustingly wretched tumorous form of the Riddle creature that had been curled up on the floor. Pretending he couldn't hear its pitiful pleas for mercy.

Instead he concentrated his focus on the shapes that started to coalesce in the white nothingness of this, void.

Benches and walls. Railings and gates. A familiar platform that Harry had wished he could have gone back to as an innocent eleven year old more than once during those lonely nights in the wilderness while on the run.

"Harry you wonderful boy. You brave, brave man."

The Boy-Who-Died turned to the sudden voice and blinked in surprise when he saw the form of Albus Dumbledore just standing a few feet from him in the still forming void-platform. Harry felt the contradictory emotions of being both happy and hateful to see his former Headmaster.

Harry was finally dead. He didn't want the man that had technically had him brought up as a martyr when he could have instead seen his loved ones who had wanted him to live.

The man looked more alive in death than he had at the end of his life. The withered hand that had been killing him in the end was gone and Dumbledore looked more at ease and alert than ever.

"Professor? What are you doing here?"

Dumbledore refrained from answering for a moment, as seemed to be the norm whenever the Headmaster was asked any kind of question. Instead he peered around as if having difficulty making out their surroundings before looking intently at Harry; giving his whole body a critical once over.

"Hmm? Oh, I suppose you could say that I'm waiting. I've been waiting for quite some time. For you and that, thing behind you."

Harry finally acknowledged the mass of weeping flesh that was the Riddle-tumor. "Is that, is that what I think it is?"

Dumbledore turned away from the revolting thing and motioned with a wave of his hand for Harry to follow him as he started to walk away.

Harry almost instinctively hurried over to match the surprisingly sprightly man's pace.

"I expect you have a good idea what that thing was. A small piece of Tom Riddle that was unwittingly left within you from the first time you and he met face to face" Dumbledore finally replied.

"So I really was a Horcrux then." Harry sighed. He didn't know if he should have felt relief or anger at this point. Should he feel relieved to know that his death was not wasted or angry that it had even been necessary at all?

"One our mutual acquaintance did not expect or intend to make or he never would have turned his wand on you otherwise." The former Headmaster mused aloud.

The two walked in a sort of amicable silence; Dumbledore seemingly content to enjoy the silence while Harry trying to sort his whirlwind of thoughts into words and order. The man ultimately lead Harry to a pair of benches that had formed in the white nothingness and sat down on one and watched as Harry took his own seat on the other.

"So, what now?"

Not the best question to come out of Harry's mouth after everything that had happened. But then again; Albus Dumbledore had an uncanny ability to catch him flatfooted.

"Hmm? What do you mean?"

"Well, I'm dead. Voldemort only has one more Horcrux left before he can be killed as well. What happens now?"

Dumbledore hummed to himself before looking around once again to Harry's annoyance. Even in death the man still had this pathological need to not only control the flow of a conversation, but to make others hang on his every word and response.

"Tell me my friend, where exactly would you say we are?"

Harry blinked, caught by surprise by the question. "Where are we? Well, if I had to say, it looks a lot like Kings Cross Station."

Dumbledore's eyes flitted around as if he could suddenly make out the details of the area that had previously been shrouded from his sight. "Kings Cross you say? This is as they say; your party. I couldn't really make out the details before. How very interesting that we would meet again in a train station after so very long."

Harry felt a pit starting to grow in his stomach. The Headmaster had only died last year. Why did he sound like he hadn't seen Harry in far longer? And why was Dumbledore calling him 'friend'? As annoying as Harry had found it at times; if Dumbledore didn't address him by name it was usually 'My Boy'.

Dumbledore seemed to notice the look Harry was sending toward him and smiled faintly. "Something the matter? Oh, your question. Of course."

The man hummed for a moment, as if in thought. "Kings Cross you say. How curious. I expect your train would be arriving in due time of course."

Another non-answer.

"A shame you didn't happen to have my wand on you when you came her Harry, I could have avoided having to wait any longer than I already have."

"Your wand sir?"

Dumbledore nodded, looking down to his hands as they fiddled about. When Harry followed the gaze he was surprised to see the familiarly shaped stone that he had used to summon the shades of his family at the end. The former Headmaster was rolling the Resurrection Stone about in his fingers like he was toying with a marble. "I might not have held it for some time now, but it's still mine regardless."

Harry narrowed his eyes and shifted in his seat. "Who, are you exactly? I don't think I'm talking to Professor Dumbledore right now."

The bearded man paused for a moment before flicking his eyes up to look to Harry over his half moon glasses with a twinkling glint in his eyes. "You don't think so?"

Harry fought the cold shiver that ran down his back as 'Dumbledore' rolled the stone across his fingers only for it to vanish as it slipped over his thumb.

"...well you would be correct in your doubts of course." 'Dumbledore's' form shifted and Harry flinched when the stern expression of his First Defence Professor; Quirrel stared back at him. "I figured that your former Headmaster was the best shape to wear. I could have worn your mother or father but I believed you would not respond well to that personal a lie."

Quirrel laughed quietly before he changed again and Harry found himself looking at a middle aged man with salt and pepper hair with hazel eyes. A heartbeat later and an elderly woman sat across from him. Then the Groundskeeper Harry had seen Voldemort kill in a vision in his fourth year. Then Moaning Myrtle smiled at him.

"I've been waiting a very long time for our mutual acquaintance to arrive." Myrtle commented, teeth clenching in annoyance. "With you personally bringing another piece of him here I expect I will not have to wait in this place for much longer."

"What. Are. You?" Harry repeated. Equal parts terrified and angry to see the face of a dead girl that had become his friend despite the strangeness of it being worn by this, thing.

"Haven't you guessed? I'm only here speaking to you instead of waiting because you welcomed me here after all. I do believe the last person to greet me personally was your mother. Before that a cheeky little soul that proved a bit too capable at hiding than I had expected."

Harry had welcomed him here? His mother had as well? And some other person who was good at…hiding!?

"Death."

Myrtle changed once more into the widely smiling face of Cedric Diggory. "Well done Harry! Got it in one!"

Harry fought to suppress the pang of heartache he felt at seeing the Hufflepuff that had died because of him. "Why do you keep changing to look like all these people? I thought death looked…"

"Let me guess. Skeletal, robes and a Scythe?" Death asked lightly. "Honestly I haven't looked like that since the Dark Ages. Or if I have to collect a soul that has earned the treatment. It's quite frightening I'm told. Your mother convinced me to let her see it and explained it was like looking at every single Dementor ever to live in one body."

Harry failed to hide the shiver as he imagined what that would have been like. Thinking back to the Forbidden Forest in this third year when he had been forced to defend himself and his godfather from the Dementors that had swarmed them.

"Technically I don't actually have a form as you would consider it." Death admitted with a shrug. "I exist but not on a level that you could understand, even if I tried to explain it to you. For now let us just say that I possess an ability to take the form of those that have met me in the past."

Cedric twisted and shrunk and Harry felt his heart break a bit further when Dobby's large eyes peered up at him.

The House-Elf looking embodiment of the end blinked slowly, looking at the tears that were forming at the corners of Harry's eyes. "He was very proud when he arrived here you know." Death even sounded like Dobby. "I can still see the little rascal, chest puffed out and staring at me as he boasted that he had saved 'The Great Harry Potter' from me."

Harry let out a laugh as he imagined the scene, fully imagining his dear House Elf friend trying to stare down Death itself.

"He wanted to wait and be the one to greet you when you grew old and grey." Death continued. "Like beardy Thimbledore he said in his words. Wanted to be the one to hear all about your adventures and the life you had before he took you to see the others. But I couldn't allow him to linger here."

It hurt. To consider that Dobby had expected and even wanted to wait however many decades it took for Harry Potter to live a long and full life. Only to die in the same year the House Elf had.

"This place might look like a train station to you my friend." Death pointed out. "But to those who arrive here like little Dobby; it's more akin to a welcome mat. The dead cannot really keep standing on it for very long."

"Then I guess I should be moving on as well then right?"

Dobby, thankfully, shifted once again and Death took the appearance of a younger looking Sirius Black. The face was too narrow though and Harry faintly recognised it from a portrait in Grimmauld Place.

"That is where we have a bit of an issue." Regulus-Death sighed in frustration. "You see, I'm very straight forward. Life and me, death that is, follows a very simple and unwavering balance. You are born, you live and then you die. Annoyances like Tom Riddle or those three brothers can try to prevent it in their own way, but once your cross the threshold that's it. No going back."

The 'but' looming overhead was practically tangible.

"However, while you have indeed been killed." Death continued. "Struck by the Killing Curse again without protection and your lifeline severed. You have not actually become one of the dead."

Harry felt a flicker of hope. "So, I could go back? If I wanted to that is?"

Death frowned and kneaded his forehead. "Yes. But also no. you were killed, but did not die. You died but are not dead. The balance of life and death is clear, but technically if you wanted to you could return and live again."

"However." The entity raised a hand to cut off Harry when the teenager opened his mouth to speak. "While I could not deny you or stop you if you wanted to go back there would be consequences to follow. You see this is a rather dangerous grey area we find ourselves in. I cannot actually claim you like I have everyone else that comes to my door. But neither can life welcome you back."

Dear god it was like being lectured by Dumbledore all over again.

Death held up a hand and pinched his fingers together with the Resurrection Stone forming in the gap between his fingers. "Do you remember what you read of the story that surrounded this stone?"

Harry nodded. He and Hermione had both poured over the Beedle and the Bard story of the Three Brothers. A stone that could call the spirits of the dead. But as they did not belong in the world of the living; the souls suffered and endured great pain by being forced into the world of the living again.

"As I said, the flow of life and death follows a clear and strict balanced pattern. Your life and then you die. If you decided to go back, you would be alive again this is true; but you would be in breach of this balance and suffer just as the shades brought forth by my stone have suffered before. Your suffering would extend eventually to a point where you would be unable to feel the warmth of the living and those around you would also be unable to feel your warmth."

Harry paled and shuddered at the thought of having to endure that kind of life. It would be worse than just dying the first time. Worse than anything he could truly imagine. "So I move on then?"

Death shrugged. "If you wished to. However-"

The entity was cut off when a young looking Asian woman in a worn looking dress suddenly appeared with a bleeding lump of flesh cradled in her arms.

Harry blinked owlishly when the woman spotted him and a broken and pained expression crossed her face before a flash of hateful madness disrupted it. The woman went to speak, arms still cradling the now whimpering deformity only to vanish in a swirl of white mist when Death dismissively waved a hand in her direction.

"Well that makes all of Tom Riddle's little nest eggs." Regulus shifted once more and an old woman was now hunched over in her seat.

"The last Horcrux." Harry felt a wash of relief to know that his death had not robbed his friends and the others of the will to fight. It seemed a bit vain, but it had been something that the last Potter had been worried about; that everyone would lose hope and surrender when they learned he had been killed. "But who was that woman?"

The old woman looked over to where the woman and last Horcrux had been standing previously for a moment. "That would be Nagini." When Harry went to ask another question Death raised a hand to stall the teenager. "Her story is perhaps left for another time. We were discussing your options."

"Now you could move on, proceed to the afterlife." Death picked up where she, it, had left off. "However as you are not truly dead you don't have to."

"Well I'm not all that keen on the idea of being a living Shade suffering and bringing suffering for the rest of my life to be honest." Harry pointed out. "Not much of a choice there."

"Remember what I said about the Balance. You would suffer as a result of breaking the balance of returning to your life as Harry Potter." Death pointed out. "However there are other balances that are still available to you. This is Kings Cross Station after all. What you do is quite simple. You could turn and leave the station; return to your body and life as Harry Potter with all the consequences it entails."

As much as Harry wanted to see his friends again he didn't want to endure and enforce the kind of pain that he would create. And if they had managed to kill Nagini then it was only a matter of time before Voldemort was truly killed. He wasn't truly needed there anymore.

"Or you could catch one of the many trains here."

Harry blinked and looked across the platforms to see, to his surprise a number of waiting trains residing in the various platforms.

"One will of course take you onward to your afterlife. That particular one waiting at a particularly special platform I imagine." Death smiled faintly, as if amused by the location of the afterlife in this version of the 'welcoming mat.' "But the others? Well your late Headmaster did like to refer to a 'next great adventure' didn't he."

"Where do they go?" Harry asked. He really wanted to see his parents again. Reunite with Sirius, Professor Lupin and Tonks. See Hedwig and Dobby once more. But, he didn't feel ready even now. There were still things he wanted to be able to do before he could pass on.

And he didn't want to move on having let down Dobby. He wanted those stories to tell his little friend.

"Different places. Different circles of life where you never lived and would not break the balance by arriving there." Death revealed. "I don't really know what is on the other side to be honest. They would be as the terminology would say; beyond my jurisdiction."

Harry stood up from the bench he had been sitting on and looked around the white void-station; his gaze moving from one train to the other. They were all the same. White, partially translucent and billowing white steam and mist.

"Why are you doing this?" Harry asked, still looking at the trains even as he felt Death stand up behind him; feeling the entity rise taller than the old woman could have possibly stood. "After everything I assumed Death wouldn't really care and just push me onward like everyone else that shows up here. Regardless of how I got here."

"The Hallows." Came Death's reply. "Don't get any sort of twisted ideas of being some kind of 'Master of Death'. I answer to no-one. However I do give out favors to those that provide a service. Tom Riddle has been a bookmarked page in my ledger since Myrtle Warren crossed my threshold. And you have brought to me two of my three Hallows with the third soon to follow. That not only provides you with a certain amount of goodwill for me to converse with you. But a favor or two. I have repaid the favor for the return of my stone when I allowed you to make your choice freely."

Harry wanted to protest that getting to decide how he payed his own owed favors didn't work like that, but honestly it wasn't a bad favor all things considered. Death could have very easily given Harry only one choice of what to do instead of leaving the options open to him.

A heavy pulse, like a heartbeat, shook through the station and Harry looked around to see that the steam coming from the various trains was starting to increase.

"Ah, looks like our time is coming to an end my friend." Death commented. "This place was never meant for souls to linger, living or dead."

Harry nodded and approached one of the Trains, trusting his gut on which one to pick.

"I don't expect we shall meet again Harry Potter." Death commented. "Do not concern yourself with the favor for the return of my cloak. You will discover its repayment on the other side."

Harry frowned for a moment at the vague and indirect statement. Death really needed to learn what a 'favor' actually meant. He boarded the train and sat down in a compartment before looking out the window to where Death was standing.

The entity now looked like an elderly man wearing a crisp dark business suit and long black coat with a cane planted before him with his hands clasped on the top.

"Will I be able to see my family when I eventually die? Or are the afterlives separate between worlds." Harry asked as the Train started to vibrate and slowly start moving.

Death blinked slowly as if considering the question, tilting his head to the side slightly before straightening with a nod. "Consider it payment for bringing me the pieces of Tom Riddle my friend. I'll see to it that my realm is connected with that of your new circle. Goodbye Harry Potter."

The steam and mist coming from the train obscured Death from view and the previously unnoticed weight that the entity had been emitting vanished.

The last thing that Harry saw before everything went white as a sight that brought a satisfied smile to his face; knowing that he wouldn't have to worry about feeling like he failed his friends or that he could have done more.

The last thing he saw was the sight of Voldemort appearing on the platform. Screaming in fear and rage.

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A/N: Well I hope that this chapter is well received as a prologue for a new story. Please leave reviews or whatnot on your thoughts as I greatly appreciate the feedback. HOWEVER; if you don't like the story or just intend to rage and flame then don't bother please. Its unhelpful and petty to be honest.

Also the way that this chapter unfolds there is a possibility that I may recycle this chapter as intro's to other stories as it is a great open to throw Harry into other fandoms.