Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners and no copyright infringement is intended.

Warning(s): Slash, mild gore, torture and manipulation, but nothing graphic until later chapters.

AN: This fic won't have a happy ending; so don't send me flames when it doesn't end in happily ever after.

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Chapter One: Countdown Begins

Long, long time ago..

Fate was written,

Then Life was created,

And Death came last.

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Soon. It will end soon.

The hollowness, the numbness and the gaping hole in his once beating heart.

Oh how he missed it, this obliviousness, the abyss of his own making.

He saw the darkness creeping from the corner of his eye, rotting hands extending towards him, hissing and crooning his damnations. No soul is waiting for him beyond the flimsy barriers of life, and there is no one to greet him.

And he remembers the vain hope he once had when he desperately pleaded, 'please let this be the last time, please let it be the end', and the futile presumptions that he will soon cross to the afterlife, will find his family, his friends and oh his children.

But he knows now that it was hopeless. A white lie he whispered to himself to dull the agony of having his soul ripped again but never permitted its final destination.

Not this time.

He allowed himself a content sigh. The world was fading before his blurry sight, and he could no longer hear the soft keens of the man holding his broken body or the meaningless litanies he gasped on his clammy forehead, nor could he feel the trail of bitter tears falling on his slacking face.

What a shame it had to end, he doubts that he will find someone like this bastard anytime soon.

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When Harry James Potter fell, he did so with ease.

And when he opened his eyes, it was the dreadfully familiar figure of Death they met.

"Again?" The voiceless figure stated more than they queried.

His soul was damned, what hopes did he have for himself when he continuously committed the unforgivable, unthinkable and the most despicable?

And so he damned his soul once more. "Again."

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Dealing with Death is similar to dealing with a shrewd merchant; one has to to keep his excitement cautiously over the item, or it will be unattainable. If the price was too high, one has to fight tooth and nail to lower it even by measly percentages, just to have the satisfaction of besting them. And if by some foolish circumstances one managed to land himself into paying a debt, it is recommended to consider all the available options carefully, including whether one may fulfill it with full limbs attached or not.

Harry may have overlooked the last part, because when dealing with Death, the desired result would be the life of the other party and in this occasion, his own life.

However, Harry had the advantage of being the Master of Death, and that means endless loans with infinite debts to be paid. The only obstacle being that with every debt to Death, cracks would mar the soul and mark it with eternal damnation, forever forbidden from entering the afterlife.

And Harry may have resisted at the beginning of his enlightenment; then he was morally unyielding, high-strung after being abandoned on a dying world and hesitant to deny himself a reunion with his long lost ones.

But now, when morality and other humanly aspects became only part of a skin he would wear for a limited period, damnation was only a fleeting, distant concern.

One thing that Harry learnt in being the afterlife's unlawful avenger to pay off his debts is that the dead do hold mighty grudges, and they never budge.

But it is slightly difficult to off all of the dead's grudges, not to mention dangerous, so dear Death annually holds a kind of hit poll, and the one with the highest hits would be his next offering to Death.

Occasionally he doesn't have to kill them, altering their lives so immensely would do, for the worse of course.

His eyes gazed at the picture enthusiastically provided by one of Death's minions, and his target may have been appealing if not for his rugged head and face covered with old wounds and scars. But nowadays scars were treated as pieces of art rather than the clear mutilations and flaws they were, or so said a certain gossiping girl he overheard back in Death's 'hit-poll' chamber. Unoriginal, but none dared to say that to Death's not-face.

"Morino Ibiki," spat one recently dead man. "Sadist son of a bitch."

A bitter woman agreed. "Inhuman."

A hesitant voice cut through the surging grumbles, "they were in a war, there was no time for mercy."

Harry's eyebrows rose, and he looked at the now hunched figure of a young boy.

"You, when did you die?" He asked him bluntly.

The boy flinched. "A-a year ago.."

A middle-aged man scolded him."Boy, it wasn't even our war, some of us are civilians who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but those damned Shinobi never cared, and Morino was more than happy to screw with our heads before realizing we had no information to offer."

Some shifted in discomfort while others murmured in agreement, but a sneering man with half his face burnt and where his left eye is supposed to be is an empty socket cut in. "He went easy on you because you were a civilian, old man, as for me as soon as he saw this -" he tapped his forehead which was covered by a headband with a metal plate, four diagonal lines engraved in it. "-he took his sweet time."

Agitation rose and soon they began yelling and cursing, and some began helpfully telling gruesome details of their deaths whilst others bemoaned their unfinished cups of ramens, and some old man was angry over dying before reading the latest Icha Icha something. The point is that they had some grudges against one Morino Ibiki and Harry, being the nice person he is, has to do something about that.

Harry turned to face Death. "And what do you wish for this time?"

Death tilted their head, and he heard their eerie smile even if he couldn't see it. "A poorly written romance."

They waved their pale hand vaguely, and an apparition of his target appeared before them. "Morino Ibiki has to shatter; it does not matter what he did for whose sake, he sent a fairly good number of humans to my halls. It is becoming rather stifling."

Harry Potter bowed mockingly to the retreating figure, and his fingers unconsciously caressed the scars on Morino's photograph. He has a gut feeling that this task will not be as pleasurable and amusing as the previous ones were...

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There are two types of drama: Comedy and Tragedy.

Harry's life was more of a comedy than a tragedy. A bitter, dark and humorless kind of comedy.

Or so Death once said.

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Trēs

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Duo

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Unus

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Finite

(Edit: Jun 20, 2016)

AN: Tell me what you think..