Chapter 1: Prologue

The third night after the Battle of Hogwarts Madam Pomfey slipped a Dreamless Sleep Potion in the pumpkin juice of the Man-Who-Conquered. The stupid boy had gotten it in his head that every casualty suffered in the War was somehow his fault so he had thrown himself in the relief efforts. After seeing him go for two nights without sleep, and knowing that he had hardly slept while on the run from Death Eaters, she felt justified in her intervention. Little did she know that her actions had enabled a message to reach Harry that would change his life forever.

::

The third night after the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry Potter fell into a potion-induced dreamless sleep. Due to the effect of the potion he was not haunted by his failures or terrorized by his fears, he was, however, paid a visit by none other than Death himself.

He appeared as a distinguished gentleman, with deathly pale skin and almost skeletal frame, sporting an expensive three-piece suit and the perfect English accent. Death served himself tea in the lush sitting room he had conjured within Harry's consciousness, and looked up at the befuddled teen much like one would look at an insect trying to scamper up their shirt sleeve.

"It is meeting people like you that makes me wonder at how far the failings of human intellect go," he began evenly, in a disinterested tone of voice that set the mood for the rest of their discussion.

He insulted Harry's intelligence, his hair, his clothes, his parents, his dreamscape, even the air he breathed, all in that perfectly enunciated, cultured voice that he claimed as his own. He had tea, full with cookies and milk and sugar and perfectly piped canapés, all the while speaking in that neutral tone of voice, never offering Harry a seat in his own dreamscape and sounding so damn polite about everything!

"Excuse me, sir?" interrupted a bewildered Harry after enduring approximately seven minutes of the aforementioned scene. "Do I know you?"

"I'm the one your miserable little mind thought to enslave," replied the man, folding his hands easily. "How did you think this would work boy? You would call and I would answer? I would drop everything and come to your aid or to perform your bidding? You will find that someone of my status and power does not conform well to change. You can try all you want, but I will fight your every whim every step of the way."

It might have only been Harry's imagination, but he would swear that the man's voice finally held an inflection of anger. However, the point remained that Harry still had no idea who sat before him. If he had to guess, he would say it was some disapproving, self-punishing part of his own conscious. It was scary that he would think up a weird, lecturing old man and consider enduring his presence as enough penance for his mistakes.

"I am Death." The man finally stated, seeing as nothing else was getting through to that thick-headed boy who thought himself to hold his obedience.

"Death?" Harry looked around uncertainly. "Death. The Death?" Maybe if he continued saying the word with different inflections it would make more sense.

"The Death, indeed," replied the man and looked over the teen standing before him once again. "I suppose if you can understand the prestige of my station the situation is not as bad as I expected. I will allow you no more than two favours a year. No–"

"Wait, wait, wait!" interrupted Harry. "I haven't enslaved or tried to enslave anyone! Why would I want to enslave Death?"

"With the record you have in getting everyone around you killed the better question would be why you wouldn't want to enslave me," observed the man. "It is a moot point, however, as you are in fact the owner of all three Deathly Hollows."

"I'm not!" protested Harry. "I lost the stone and snapped the wand! I only have the cloak!"

"Which brings me back to pondering the limited mental capacity of your species." Death seemed to sign in resignation. "You may be nothing more than a human but even I will admit you are fairly powerful. You didn't lose the Resurrection Stone, you burned it up. It was meant to allow the wielder access to one spirit at the time, not four. The Stone no longer exists so you are its last owner and remain as such.

"As for the Elder Wand, it is the most powerful wand in all existence, does it make sense in your mind that one of my creations would simply snap at the hands of a human like any other useless piece of wood? No, that wand was made to shatter in the hands of the unworthy, but always reform in the hands of the one who is worthy of wielding it. The only way it could be broken the way you broke is at the hands of one who is its chosen master and has no need of a wand. You have another wand or an amplitude for wandless magic. You did not need the Elder Wand so it allowed you to absorb its energy so as to prove useful to you. It is yours now and for all eternity."

"That's stupid!" claimed Harry. "I don't want to be Master of Death or whatever! I just want to be normal!" He hesitated for a second then continued resolutely. "Take the cloak."

"That Invisibility Cloak is bound to the Peverell line, now extinct sans the Potter line of whom you are the last. That cloak will remain in your possession until your death, or non-death as the case may be. And don't demand that I reclaim it. You surely must be cleverer than that to have survived past infancy! If I had been able to, do you think I wouldn't have reclaimed the only things in existence capable of causing my enslavement?"

Why did he make it sound like Harry had somehow orchestrated this entire situation? It was all Death's fault for entering into stupid bets with humans and then simply handing humanity the tools required to imprison him. Was Harry the only one who thought himself not to be the mentally challenged in this room (mental landscape or whatever)?

"So what? You are telling me I'm stuck with you whether I want it or not?" demanded Harry angrily.

"Despite human belief, I have better things to do with my time than concern myself with individual humans. Your lifespan in miniscule in the face of my own; I could care less what it is you do with your time," replied Death. "So no, you are not, as you so aptly put it, 'stuck' with me. If anything, I am the one stuck with you. The situation is, however, permanent so lines need to be drawn before either of us choses to do anything else that also proves to be irreversible."

"I don't want to have anything to do with you," grumbled Harry stubbornly. He was tired of this conversation. Wasn't sleep supposed to be restful?

"That would imply that you want to live forever," observed the man blandly. "I would beg you to be mindful of your wording."

"But I don't!" protested Harry, distantly noting that he was close to wailing. "I want to marry Ginny, become an Auror, have kids and grandkids and hopefully die peacefully of old age!"

"I'm afraid that last one is off the table," remarked Death evenly and then seemed to stare at him thoughtfully. "As we both seem to desire minimal interaction with the other, I believe there is a solution to which I believe you would be amenable."

"And what is that?" Harry couldn't help it if he came across as defensive. Last time his name was involved in a proposed deal he found himself walking willingly to his death.

"I will give you one gift, and one gift only, before considering my service to you fulfilled. You will remain my master in name only and we will both go our separate ways, continue as we have been."

"Until I die and you come to collect," replied Harry in an attempt to clarify.

"No, the immortality is permanent, I'm afraid," said Death, sounding completely insincere in remorse. "Comes with the title you made yourself incapable of parting with."

Something niggled at the back of Harry mind at that, shouting that immortality was bad, very bad. However, despite the quite substantial part of his consciousness flailing to press the matter, the unyielding light in Death's timeless eyes advised that such an attempt would prove detrimental to more that Harry's mental and physical health.

"What gift?" he demanded instead? Maybe he could bring back Sirius or Remus and Tonks or his parents. Maybe he could ask for the one he ended up with (it would definitely be Ginny, but he didn't want the man siting motionless in front of him to mock his phrasing once more) to share immortality with him. Maybe this whole Master of Death thing wouldn't be as tragic as he thought it would be.

"I do not know," came Death's disinterested answer. "It will manifest in whatever it is you truly need or desire, or whatever you will need or desire most in the future. There is no precedent for a situation such as the one we find ourselves in, you understand. Generally with these things, the magic focuses on the moment of greatest need or despair in your entire lifetime and arms you with whatever is needed to get you through that moment."

"Like what?" pressed Harry. The whole proposal sounded shifty to him.

"In ancient times many magical beings passing themselves as gods would make such deal with mortals," explained Death and Harry could truly not interpret anything through his voice or expression so he focused on his words. "Alexander's deal allowed for anyone who stood in his rise of power to simply drop dead. He was known as Great thanks to that particular gift, but he had acquired it at the expense of a life cut short. You never know what megalomaniac rulers and would be conquerors think when they scheme. Maybe to him it truly did prove to be a gift.

"Then again, Cleopatra's gift was the manifestation of the asps she used to kill herself with at the end. All snakes are magnificent creatures but I cannot fathom how using them to kill one self can be interpreted as making best use of 'a gift manifested in a moment of need'. People really should be mindful of their phrasing, minor deities have absolutely no honour."

Harry snorted. Yeah, right! Death had managed to enslave himself due to a stupid bet, how was his phrasing any smarter or more careful than that of mere mortals?

"There is no need to worry," continued Death. "My powers extend far beyond those of anything you could ever imagine. Whatever the gift turns out to be you will surely benefit from it eventually."

Harry did not like this. He didn't like it at all. He also didn't want to be here anymore. The more time they spent discussing, Death's presence seemed to seep and influence his consciousness. It felt like an unyielding load or dark stain that was sapping at his energy and muddling his thoughts. He just wanted out of his mind, out of this dream/meeting, out of the opulent lounge area and out of this situation. As the last wasn't possible, he went for the only thing that would hopefully remove the heavy stain that was slowly seeping into his very being.

"Fine, whatever," he agreed and resignedly extended his hand to shake the one Death was offering him while looking at him like one would look at a curious, new species of bug. There was absolutely nothing about this whole deal or situation that felt right to him. But seriously! What is one to do when trapped in their own consciousness with a powerful being? He distantly wondered why his experience with Voldemort had not prepared him for this eventuality.

Suddenly, he stopped thinking all together as his hand came into contact with Death's papery, cold skin and a burst something that felt remarkably like lightning jumped up the connection and raced through his body only to settle next to his heart.

::

Harry woke screaming and clutching the centre of his chest in the makeshift Hospital Wing that had been erected in Hogwarts. Madam Pomfey and two of the Healers that had been sent over to assist her from St Mungo's rushed to his side and it took the combined effort of all three of them to hold him down long enough to shove Calming and Sleeping Potions down his throat.

When Harry stopped thrashing around, Pomfey sent a slashing hex at his shirt so as to get to the presumed injury underneath. What she saw froze her to the bone. There, just below the hollow of Harry's throat, an angry red mark stood in stark contrast to his pale skin. It was a triangle intersected by a straight line and surrounded by a circle. If she didn't know any better she would say that it had been branded onto the boy's skin.

She sent the strongest healing spell she knew at the mark and screamed at the two healers beside her to do the same. She knew it was futile, but she had to try. The boy had just gotten rid of a curse scar, she would be dammed if she allowed him to live with another.