It all started the day he learned that it wasn't, in fact, the old wizard's fault that his life had turned extra shitty.

While Albus Dumbledore had been responsible for a great many wrongs in his life, from his placement with his maternal aunt to holding his silence when it could have saved lives, he was not in fact responsible for the worst atrocities.

No, that blame lay solely on the 'shoulders' of the angels. Specifically a very smug and arrogant seraph by the name of Zachariah.

Every time he attempted to back out of the war that had cost him so much, it was Zachariah who had insured he had no choice but to end it personally.

Ginny. Hermione. Ron. Remus. Tonks.

Their deaths and possibly the death of Sirius as well could be laid at the feet of the angel insuring they were found by Death Eaters or were hit by a spell at the worst time, resulting in their death.

Upon finding that, he had dove into anything he could find featuring angels...and consequently demons.

Which lead him to America, ironically enough.

It was there that he changed his name, started wearing color contacts, and even changed his usual outfits so that no one from his homeland would find him.

Where Harry Potter had been harassed, followed and watched, Raven Winchester was ignored and dismissed.

No one ever thought the bookworm who was always reading and researching this and that as a danger.

It was always the quiet ones...

He even joined a club as well...and within a year was put in charge of their hidden library, provided he kept the place clean and the technology up to date. He pretty much became a glorified librarian.

So when he heard rumors of both heaven and hell being active on Earth once more...well, he started looking up rumors on why.

It took little time at all to locate a name...ironically it was identical to his own, save for the fact that he had taken his off an ancestor from his mother's family.

The Winchesters. The angels were particularly interested in the brothers, and the demons were laughing at the fact that the father couldn't find the name of the demon who killed his wife.

Well, let it never be said Raven couldn't be a petty son of a bitch to people he disliked. And if it pissed Zachariah that a third party decided to ruin his precious plan, whatever it was, all the better.

Time to cause some chaos the Marauders would be proud of.

Dean had just finished filling the hole when he heard someone approach.

"Evenin' gov'ner," said a male with a British cockney accent.

Dean turned, and saw a man roughly his height (if not a little shorter) with pitch black hair, eyes as dark as night, and a well pressed black suit with black tie. He also had the beginnings of a beard, as if he couldn't be bothered to properly shave off his face that morning.

His eyes flashed black, and Dean knew this was a demon.

"I want to make a deal."

"Let's 'ear it then."

"I want my brother back. His soul for mine."

"I'll give you a year, that's it. Now you have two options. I can either kiss you...or you can sign with blood," said the demon.

"Blood," said Dean immediately.

The demon reached into his suit and pulled out a rolled piece of parchment. The words were in nothing he had ever seen before, and Dean produced a knife. One bloody thumbprint later, and the deal was struck.

"I'll come back for you in a year, and if you're lucky I might let the other demons have you in two," he smirked.

"Do you have a name?" asked Dean.

"My name is Crowley, the King of the Crossroads. Not that it'll do you much good," he said before disappearing. The smell of sulfur was overwhelming. Had Dean looked, he would have noticed a discarded bottle as the source of the stink.

Several miles away, with Sam's body...

A figure approached the corpse of on Samuel Winchester. It was invisible to everything, including Death itself. In it's hands was a black book that had a very unusual key.

This was the Egyptian Book of the Dead, considered lost to history after it's brief reemergence before the second world war.

The truth was it hadn't been lost at all, but passed down the generations until it ended up in a wizard's vault along with it's counterpart, the golden book of Amun Ra. There it gathered dust until the last remnant of the family that owned it found the books, and promptly took with him to America where he still lived.

Once he was close enough, he opened up the book and began speaking a language long dead for thousands of years.

With a sudden gasp, the corpse came back to life, it's soul returned. The wound that caused the death of the man before him healed over instantly.

Sam Winchester looked shocked...then suspicion came on to his face when he realized, yes, he was alive.

Then something conked him on the head, and the smell of sulfur hit him like a brick.

Two seconds after he tried and failed to read the contract, he realized the blood might be his brother's.

Dean had some explaining to do...once Sam figured out what the hell language the demon had used to write this in. It almost looked like English, except the letters were wrong.

In the library...

Raven was cackling like a madman as he watched the Winchesters have a massive shouting match the second the younger learned his brother had made a deal. Never mind that none of them could make heads or tails of the thing, the point is that Dean had 'sold' his soul to a demon.

Since Sam was alive, and a contract had been made under the name he borrowed from the actual demon (and stole his form as well, to ensure no one picked up on the truth) no one knew that Dean hadn't actually sold his soul to a demon.

He would let them stew for a few months and alert hell that Crowley had made a deal with Dean Winchester and hadn't turned it over immediately to Lilith. Then, when the contract was about to come due, he'd make it look like Dean was abducted by demons and drop some other high profile names just to piss off the higher demons.

If Lilith took out some demons that had pissed him off over the years he wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

Plus there was the added fun of seeing the look on the angel's faces when they realized that Dean hadn't actually gone to hell, just a copy.

So Raven watched, and waited. He did wonder why Loki hadn't picked up the fact that Dean didn't actually have a demon deal on his soul when he created that whole Mystery Spot nonsense.

It seemed Loki caught on at the last minute, if his confused frown at Dean was any indicator.

It only took the pagan a week to realize he knew the signature.

"Took you long enough Loki."

"What did you do Ray?" asked Loki, confused.

"I'm pissing off that feathered asshole Zachariah. And countless demon generals," said Raven flatly, not lowering his book.

"Okay, how did you pull off a demon deal without actually having a demon involved?" asked Loki.

"My great-great grandmother Evelyn found both of the books that can bring the dead to life and take the ill-gotten immortality of another away."

Loki dropped his sucker.

"You have the Book of the Dead and the Book of the Living?!"

"I found them in my family's vault. Can you think of a better way to confuse everyone about what brought Sam back? Besides, the gods of the dead happen to like me and they agreed to do it since it would piss off the angels and a good chunk of the demons. Apparently no one really likes the winged idiots."

"So...when Dean's 'deal' comes through..."

"I'll kidnap him and make it look like a rival general did it to piss off Lilith. I'll cause a civil war in hell as they fight over who has him, all the while I'll turn him into my bitch and have him clean up after my research marathons," said Raven flatly.

Loki stared at him before he started cackling evilly. Raven was going to be putting a lot of panties in a twist with this stunt, and no one would realize it until it was far too late to do anything about it! And with the Book of the Dead, the Winchesters didn't need to make a deal in order to bring the other back to life!

"You have to let me visit when he finds out you're not actually a demon."

"I'll be sure to keep the cameras rolling so you catch his expression when he finds out he made a deal with a wizard that has a long standing grudge against both sides," laughed Raven.

It was a good thing he made dead zones where the supernaturally inclined couldn't hear anything. Much less spy on him while he was having a meeting.

The Cone of Silence, he liked to call it. Very useful.

"Oh this is going to be hilarious," said Loki very eager.

"By the way...what's the deal with the Mystery Spot anyway?"

Loki winced.

"I heard Dean made a deal, thought I'd teach Sam to leave things be, hell wise. Didn't realize that something else was up until I had a good, long look at Dean's soul and didn't find any markers on it saying he'd made a proper deal. That's when I went back to the signature and realized it had to be you."

"Glad to be of assistance, Loki."

Loki winked at him and vanished.

Raven settled down with his books and grinned. He'd scry on the Winchesters again later.

Eleven months since the deal...

Dean was nervous, and Sam was going ballistic trying to save his brother.

So it was only natural that the sudden assault outside the crappy motel caught them all off guard.

Ruby was the one who identified the demon that killed Dean though.

Her face paled considerably when she saw the demon, and whispered the name "Alistair".

One minute Dean was there, the next he was gone, and his body vanished.

Sam was devastated.

Dean felt like shit. Whatever that demon had done to him made his body feel like it had gone ten rounds with someone who beat the shit out of him.

"Awake finally? Good. Now I'm rather surprised you never figured out the trick to reading the contract."

Dean looked up from his surprisingly comfortable bed. Obviously the demon had something in mind for him, though thankfully all his clothes were still on.

"Trick?"

"Did neither of you think to put the parchment to the light and read it from the back? Or hell, put it up to a mirror?" said the demon, raising an eyebrow.

"You're shitting me."

Dean was hit in the head with a copy of the same contract he had 'signed' with his bloody thumb.

Putting it to the light, he realized the parchment was see through...and perfectly legible if you knew how to read it.

"Four months of servitude? That's it?"

"You're going to be my bitch for the next four months as payment for bringing your brother back to life. You can't leave the bunker until that time is up, you're not allowed to contact him in any way, shape or form, and your memory of the location will be erased unless I find a damn good reason to let you remember it."

Dean thought that was ridiculously painless for a demon deal. Wasn't hell supposed to be fire and brimstone?

And he was right. Nothing about the place screamed "Hell" to him. In fact it seemed more like a ridiculously extensive library with a ton of hunter paraphernalia and a full armory of things to kill monsters with.

All around the bunker in strategic intervals were sigils and signs meant to keep things out. Some of them he recognized...like the devil's trap near the front door, which was iron encrusted with salt and other items. The only key was around the neck of his captor.

"Where am I?" asked Dean, absolutely confused.

"You are in the hidden library and treasury of a secret society that was wiped out by demons decades ago. Not the Templars, but another order dedicated to researching the supernatural and helping hunters. Welcome...Dean Winchester...to the secret treasury I like to call Nevermore."

"Okay...what the hell are you?"

The man grinned, then walked through the devil's trap on the front door without even flinching.

"I'm the librarian. Your ass is now owned by a nerdy bookworm with access to a massive magical library."

Dean stared at him, mouth agape.

"I sold my soul...to a shut-in nerd. Sammy's never going to let me hear the end of this."

"If you think that's bad, wait until I start springing the pop quizzes and make you research the answers you get wrong."

"What's your name anyway?"

"Raven."

It took Dean less than a week to learn Raven's odd system, and three days to learn that Raven would only let him sleep in an extra hour.

At least he didn't have to cook, just clean up after Raven made the meals.

However it took him two days before he accidentally found the book that made it seem like a demon deal.

"What the heck is this thing?" said Dean, struggling to hold up a massive book that looked like it had been made of solid gold.

"The Book of Amun Ra, colloquially known as the Book of the Living. Can remove immortality from those who didn't gain it naturally. It's counterpart is the Book of the Dead, which ironically enough, doesn't actually cause death."

"So what does it do?" asked Dean, eyeing the book in his hands with new light.

"The black Book of the Dead can, in the proper hands to those who can read it and have the sufficient amount of magic in their blood, revive those who have died. The longer they've been dead, the more they newly revived have to do in order to regain their bodies without looking like corpses. Or in the case of the recently dead, can simply bring them back to life with no harm."

Seeing Dean's interest, Raven grinned.

"I may have impersonated a demon when I made that fake deal. But Sammy's revival was entirely because of that black book."

"It actually makes me feel better knowing I sold myself to a witch with loose morals and a streak for petty vengeance."

"Wizard, not witch. I never got my power from any demons. And I kidnapped you early to rile up the demons and hopefully kickstart a civil war in the upper ranks."

And piss off quite a few angels, he neglected to add.