Harry couldn't remember the last time he slept so well. So when his mind finally deemed that he had enough rest, Harry grumbled, turned, and shut his eyes, tight. Then his stomach started grumbling about being empty for a millennia and Harry reminded his tummy that he couldn't die from hunger. The aching pain from his multiple wounds were the next to bother him and again Harry told his body nothing could possibly wake him up. His mind felt numbingly lovely when he was asleep, and Harry liked it that way.

However having the wisdom of an ancient immortal was his downfall. The only way to have eternal sleep would be to die, and for him the only way to die was if he got the shards of his stone back. Unfortunately he couldn't search for his shards asleep.

Wait, what about… "Accio Resurrection stone." A second passed, nope, nada. "Accio Shikon Jewel shards." Great, just great. He really did have to wake up.

Harry groaned, forcing his eyes open only to find a furry butt in his face. Moments later the creature stood, turning it's rump the other way and stuck its equally furry face into Harry's own and licked him.

Yuck. Wolf drool.

Sitting up, Harry raised a brow at the wolf. By the jutting ribs sticking out of its pelt, it was obvious how hungry the poor thing was. The wolf smacked his lips as it continued to look at Harry hungrily but it didn't look as if it was going to attack him.

"Good, you're finally up." Both immortal and wolf looked toward the voice. Besides Harry, the wolf nodded toward the voice and walked away. "The name's Koga. Mind telling me what a human is doing in my territory?"

"I didn't realize I crossed a border of some sort, but thank you for your hospitality," Harry responded as he studied the demon before him. Koga was wearing the pelt of a wolf around his waste and armor over his torso. If it weren't for the pointed ears and not so human blue eyes, Harry would have thought this demon a human.

Koga made a noncommittal hum in the back of his throat. "You're lucky I didn't let my pack eat you. Times are tough right now."

"If they could eat me they would have been doing me a favor."

"We wasted valuable supplies on your wounds," Koga stated with a frown at Harry's previous statement.

"I didn't ask for help," Harry said. "What would you have me do? If it is within my power I'll grant you one wish as payback for your hospitality." Already, Harry's magic was humming at him to repay the demon.

Even if Koga didn't want anything, Harry's magic would force him to help Koga in someway or another. When Koga "saved" Harry, his magic saw the action as a favor and now Harry found himself with a "life" debt until he could pay the demon back. If he didn't pay this debt, Harry's magic would abandon him until he received a mortal wound. One good thing about being the Master of Death was that events such as these didn't affect him as much as it affected a normal wizard or witch. The average sorcerer would loose their magic until the day they died if they broke their promise or debt. On the other hand Harry could always take the easy way out and "kill" himself to make any promise or debt he owed, null.

Harry sighed when he received no answer, he'd rather not inflict pain on himself. "It seems like you don't know what you want. I'll be on my way then."

Of course if he needed to mortally wound himself in order to get rid of any side affects of these events, then he'd do it. Harry couldn't just stand around in this den until Koga decided what he wanted, that could take years.

"I already have what I want," Koga called. "If I didn't see this little baby I would have let my wolves eat you." Pinched between Koga's claws was the little pouch Harry had previously put his shards in.

"That's mine," Harry growled. His eyes locked on the shards he acquired. Damn Death! This was some cruel joke. First his invisibility cloak was stolen and now the shards!? He may not know who took his cloak, but he'd be damned if he let this pup take his shards.

"It's mine now. You said I could have a wish," Koga said.

"A wish that doesn't involve giving you parts of my stone."

"Stone? This is a shard of the most powerful jewel. A human like you shouldn't have one of these. Let alone four. I'm doing you a favor."

"You're stealing!" Harry roared. Thunder flashed outside the cave, echoing Harry's fury. Magic crackled around the immortal. No one, NO ONE, stole from The Master of Death.

"Woah," Koga mumbled. "It was sunny a minute ago."

"Accio pouch," Harry growled. He couldn't help the small smile at seeing his pouch and more importantly the shards zooming toward him.

"What the hell!" Koga yelped.

xXXXx

Inuyasha had his back turned toward the villagers as his friends said their goodbyes to the demon slayers. They had stayed to help rebuild and bury the dead for a week, and it was high time they left in search of the shards.

"Goodbye Sango," Inyusha heard Miroku say, the monks usual flirtation gone, but then that didn't mean the man's hands stopped roaming. Inuyasha sighed as he heard a slap.

Really, they should just ditch the monk! With Inuyasha's strength and Kagome's ability to find the shards, they didn't need anyone else.

"Why don't you join them Sango?"

Inuyasha's eyes widened, his ears twitching. No! The girl was still recovering! She would just slow them down! Plus more girls traveling with a perverted monk wasn't a good idea. Who knew what Miroku would do. He was already a handful with just Kagome… granted he stopped touching her, but that didn't stop the flirting!

"But father," Sango began, "what about the village?"

Oh thank the heavens. Someone had common sense!

"We're already done rebuilding most of the houses, and I'm sure we can support ourselves without you," her father responded.

Sango hummed, shaking her head. "I don't know them well enough."

"Does this have anything to do with the demon drifter?"

"No! Of course not!" Sango stated, just as Kagome tapped Inuyasha on the shoulder and motioned for them to get going. Well it was about time! They had some shards to collect! Still, even as they took their first steps out of the gate, Inuyasha couldn't help but overhear the father/daughter conversation.

"It doesn't make any sense. Ever since you were little you wanted to travel," her father was saying.

"I do… Just not with them. Not yet. I want to find that man. The one that saved us then disappeared," Sango said. "The description that some of the villagers gave, sounds just like him! What if it was him both times! I just want to thank him, thats all."

Him? Who was this man they were talking about? By the sounds of it, some of the villagers knew him too. Inuyasha scowled, trying to recall all the little tidbits of gossip he ran across while in the village. The only thing that came to mind was the rumor about a nobel with messy black hair and ancient green eyes.

Eh, looks like Miroku's crush already had a crush of her own. Inuyasha grinned. Poor Miroku, but at least another useless human wouldn't be joining their group.

xxXxx

Harry pulled himself from the smoking crater he was in. His fight with Koga had long since moved outside the den.

"You're not a normal human," Koga huffed. Unlike Harry, who was drenched in blood, Koga only had a bloody right hand. The same hand he kept punching Harry with. No doubt, most, if not all of that blood belonged to the wizard.

"Nope!" Harry chirped, dangling his pouch on a finger. The immortal was used to the pain of all his bones being broken and healed, in a never ending cycle.

"ARRRGH!" Koga roared, charging at Harry again. His fist slammed into the ground, making a lighting bolt like crack that zigzagged toward Harry. The immortal just grinned as the ground exploded from under him and sent him straight into the air.

"If you manage to kill me, I'll give you these shards for free!" Harry sang. The pain felt so good! It was more than the wizard felt in decades. To say Harry was a junkie was an understatement.

The demon stomped toward Harry's broken form, ready to send another deadly punch at the "human."

Harry just watched in childish glee.

"Boss! The harpies are back!"

Koga paused to look toward a member of his pack, another humanoid wolf demon and Harry's smile melted into a calculating gaze.

"Talk!" Koga ordered, and like a good pack member the man explained, pointing somewhere into the forest.

Sobered up, Harry quickly had his magic mend his bones and close his wounds. "I'll take care of it," Harry volunteered. Koga gaped, no doubt taking in Harry's not bloody appearance. "You mentioned, times are tough right now. It's because another clan of demon's are challenging your borders right?" At the nod Harry mumbled, "this should take care of the bloody magic dept."

"North right?" Harry questioned, but was already gone with a loud crack as he apparated away.

When Harry reappeared, he could clearly make out a humanoid shape standing over the body of a deer. Several wolves where scattered in the clearing, all of them looking injured but determined in the face of a much larger army. The pack of no more than six wolves, bared their fangs at the twenty or so airborne rounded grey birds with blue human torsos attached to their back.

"This is our territory!" the humanoid wolf demon barked out. "Damn it, Ginta, where are you?" he whispered so quietly that if Harry hadn't been who he was, he wouldn't have heard.

"Heheh, charge!" one of the birds laughed. It was clearly the leader of the flock, and much bigger. Harry's eyes narrowed, that wasn't all though… it also had two shards!

"Impedimenta!" Harry shouted and the birds immediately froze in their dive toward the outnumbered wolves. The immortal glared as the adrenaline rushed out of him but still willed his magic into sending thoughts of returning to their nest and finding a new home, into the harpies. If the dazed looks on the birds' was anything to go by, his knock off of legilimency worked.

Now that Koga's problem was solved, Harry flew up to the leader of the flock, his body supported by magic and the bird still held in place by his spell. Making a small but painless cut in the feathery body, Harry easily retrieved two of the shards before healing the demon up. The effect was almost immediate as the bird began shrinking. Without the shards power, the harpy now looked like the runt of the entire flock.

"Go," Harry spoke as he released his binding spell and sent one more powerful suggestion toward the flock to never return. Harry was just about to head back down when he heard the beating of footsteps.

"Oh, no you don't!" Koga dashed into the clearing, and ran up a steep cliff. Claws extended he sliced through the wing of the leader. "This is revenge!" Koga howled, as he jumped off the back of one harpy, sending it spiraling to the ground. Dead.

"Stop!" Harry shouted, but Koga didn't, he continued cutting down at least a dozen harpies. Thanks to Harry's mind magics, none of them even seemed notice their decreasing numbers as they continued to fly back to their nest. "Koga, stop! They're leaving! Impedimenta!" Harry cast the spell at Koga but missed. "Damn it!" Sending magic to his feet, Harry darted in front of the next to-be-victim. A hand lodged itself into Harry's torso but the immortal just grunted as he held onto Koga's arm and willed his magic to land them both on the ground.

Koga screamed, trying to yank himself away from Harry. "What are you doing! Let go!"

Finally landing, Harry pulled the hand out of his bloody torso and SMACK. "You didn't have to kill them! They were leaving! Peacefully!"

Koga fell to the ground, nursing his broken nose. "They murdered over half my pack! They deserved it!"

Harry shook his head. No. Everything, everyone, no matter how insignificant deserved to live. Being an immortal and seeing so many die, was enough to prove even that.

"Boss!" two wolf demon yelled.

"You're Ginta right?" Harry asked one of them, the same one that reported on the harpies returning.

"Yeah. Who are you?"

"And you are?" Harry nodded to the other brother.

"Hey, are you ignoring me?" Koga barked out.

"I'm Hakkaku."

"Good, I need you take Koga back to the den," Harry stated then soundly punched Koga again, hard enough for the demon to loose consciousness.

"What!"

Harry squatted as he grabbed Koga's right arm, ignoring the brothers squawking. Moving the the sleeve of wolf fur and hummed at the sight of yet another shard and the jagged scar that ran from the elbow to the wrist. With his original four, plus the two that he got from the harpies, this would make seven. But the immortal paused, unlike the first shard, this one wasn't crying for help, and it was only a bit tainted. He clicked his tongue. Regardless of if his shard was crying for help or not, a person who abused the power and killed the hopeless, didn't deserve to keep it.

"Wait! You can't take that!"

"He abused his power. I took care of those harpies, without bloodshed but he was overcome with rage and killed a dozen of them," Harry monotoned.

"Koga did it for us! He's a true leader of the pack. If he didn't then other wolf packs would question him, plus they killed so many of our own," Hakkaku argued.

"An eye for an eye!" Ginta added.

Harry just shot a glare over his shoulder and tapped a finger to the shard in Koga's arm, purifying it to a pearly pink before pulling the fur sleeve back down. The wizard stood, and was about to leave when he got another idea. Picking up a simple stone he transfigured it into a small pouch and placed two of his shard into it, making sure that the brothers saw him do so.

"You have a choice. Koga is your leader and already has a shard. You can either take these, one for the each of you, and I'll take Koga's shard. Or I won't touch Koga's shard, but I'll keep these."

Ginta and Hakkaku whispered, and Harry just watched them, unsure of if he should admit that he could in fact hear them or not.

"Couldn't we take those, and then give them both to Koga?" Hakkaku questioned shakily.

"Good answer," Harry smirked, tossing the pouch to Hakkaku. "Give those to Koga. I'll be back to check on him. If I so much as sense that he's abusing the power of those shards, I will take them back. All three of them. And even then, there will be a day when I will need all the shards, and when such a day comes, I'll be taking them back regardless."

The look in those acid green eyes, so ancient and promising pain should anyone defy him, had both wolves nodding, regardless of their loyalties to Koga.

xxXxx

"I sense a jewel shard this way," Kagome said as she pointed up a path.

Inuyasha sniffed the air. "I smell wolf."

Kagome shook her head at Inuyasha's antics as her pointed finger curled somewhat. "I think it's a rather big piece. Either that, or someone collected a lot of them."

"We need to be careful," Shippo said, nodding to himself with his arms crossed from his perch on Kagome's head. "If there's a lot, or even a bigger piece the demon who has it, must be very powerful."

"Blood," Inuyasha broke in again, his nose twitching as he continued sniffing the air. "Someone is probably fighting for the shards already. I say we get there, deal the killing blow and steal the shards before either side has anything to say," the hanyo punched a fist into his open palm.

Spells:

Accio: A summoning spell.

Impedimenta: It's a jinx that makes people trip up, but it can also be used as a bind if the wizard is powerful.

Legilimency: Mind reading technique that requires eye contact. However since Harry is an ancient wizard above merlin status, he doesn't need eye contact... in this story at least. I also couldn't find any spells of suggestion that would cause anyone to obey the command, so what Harry used was a knock off of legilimency.