Tony Stark realizes he has a type: beautiful, red-headed, lost in something of an existential crisis and completely, utterly, way too good for him.

I know Guardians of the Galaxy chronologically takes place after the Avengers, but I changed it to before.

/ HARRY POTTER AND THE MASTER OF (DEATH) EXPENSE REPORTS /

/

PROLOGUE

EX_00

/

Harriet J Potter is a problem solver.

It's unfortunate, really, because the problem solvers of the world always seem to get the short end of the stick. It's a highly coveted and uncommon skill, which is just Kingsley's way of saying she's going to be working overtime for the foreseeable future because they're severely understaffed and don't intend to do anything about that because— why add more people to the payroll when you could just overwork the ones already on it?

Harry curses liberally in parseltongue as she breaks yet another quill. Who knew the snake language would be so damn useful; she breaks into it at least once a fortnight, just to swear prolifically at people without them realizing it. It's so late the sky outside is dark anyway, so it's not as if anyone's in the office to hear her. And why does she have to use a quill? What's wrong with a regular old fountain pen? Better yet, a keyboard? Harry despairs for the Wizarding World sometimes, mainly because she has to be in it.

She's been a witch (or at least, had consciously been aware of being a witch) for most of her life now and she still doesn't quite feel like she fits in. Despite being a magical graduate, a magical employee, and a magical home owner, she still feels constantly caught left-footed. During her tenure in this world she might have defeated the most terrible Dark Lord of their time, but she feels just as much like a witch now as she had when she was eleven— which is to say, not at all.

She wonders if she's ever going to feel like a real, working member of this society. Because she is a real, working member of the magical society and she still doesn't feel like a part of it.

(She is also, apparently, something called the Master of Death, sometimes referred to as the God of Death in various references, which as far as she can tell appears to be something like a transcendental god of a fundamental element of the universe? Evidence has been inconclusive so far.)

Harry curses again, in parseltongue, as she shoves her paperwork away from her and collapses head down on her desk. This is what she gets for working overtime; not enough sleep, and an existential crisis.

There is one upside to burning the night oil though; it's the one and only time Harry can truly say she is alone. There are no random pedestrians stopping her for an autograph, voyeurs trying to catch a glimpse of her through her window, or starstruck coworkers stuttering in the elevators. No one else is here, so she's free to be who she really is; which is apparently an overworked, underpaid young graduate with a nihilistic complex who likes to curse people out in languages they can't understand.

Or at least, no one is supposed to be.

"Interesting language," a voice remarks, casually.

Harry startles upright, sending the reports she'd been slaving over all up into the air. With an absent wave of her hand they're pulled out of air and back into a neat stack on her desk. "Sorry— didn't realize anyone was around." She breathes out, once she's gotten her lungs to function again.

How long has he been there? Long enough to watch her existential meltdown? Well, she hopes it was entertaining at the least.

A man she's never met in a bland but perfectly acceptable suit is leaning against her cubicle, a bland but perfectly acceptable smile fixed on his face.

"Sorry to scare you," he returns. And then, "I'd heard I might find you here."

"I've become that predictable? That's no good." She leans back in her chair. "Maybe I ought to run off to Africa. Who ratted me out?"

"A blonde with a pointy nose." The man replies in turn. "And instead of Africa, what do you think of New Mexico?"

"Draco Malfoy, that damned rat." She'd told him specifically that she would be holed up finishing her expense reports before the accounting deadline. And didn't want to be disturbed. As in, would hex someone painfully if they dared to disturb her.

"He looked more ferret-like to me," the mysterious man observes, blinking.

Harry blinks at him, somewhat in awe. Then she begins to laugh uncontrollably— perhaps even somewhat hysterically. It's just, it's been a hell of a week, and she's contemplated throwing herself into Thames every day on the way to the office (even though she knows it won't work, what with being immortal and all), and everyone keeps giving her so much work and no one seems to have any consideration for her work-life balance (or lack thereof) and then out of the blue this strange man comes to her desk and says Draco Malfoy looks like a ferret and then suddenly life is fabulous again.

She finally manages to collect herself— eventually. "That level of serendipitous confirmation is enough to turn my mood around; what can I do for you, fine sir? I won't even hex you for ignoring my do not disturb sign."

The man in the suit blinks, pushing off the wall of her cubicle to see that she does, indeed, have a sign up.

"My apologies, I overlooked that." He doesn't sound particularly apologetic. "So. What do you think of going to New Mexico?"

Harry frowns. "...And, forgive me, where is that?"

"In America." He answers. "The southwest, to be precise."

Harry ponders this. America is far away. The southwest of America is even farther. It's so far, in fact, that neither Kingsley nor Malfoy could possibly justify that level of travel to the evil gods of the accounting department if they wanted to come find her.

Not just Kinglsey and Malfoy though. This is her chance to leave the stifling world of Magical Britain where she can't even go out for a grocery run in the morning without being hounded by people.

Harry grins roguishly.

The man watches her smile with raised brows. "Is that a yes, then?"

"How long?"

"As long as it takes."

"My travel is paid for?" She asks, because she is not a fool. She made that mistake the last time she and Hermione got sent out to Germany on the Auror Department's behalf, and were left with hotel bills and food expenses no one wanted to pay for.

"All expenses will be reimbursed by the United States Government."

Harry raises a brow, crossing her arms. "All expenses?"

"All expenses." He clarifies, with emphasis.

"What kind of hours?"

"Sporadic." He admits. "But you'll be paid overtime."

"Housing?"

"All accommodations will be provided. Including transportation, lodging, and food. In fact, the facilities have first class cafeterias."

Harry's eyes glitter. "That is a definite yes, then." She extends her hand. "You have yourself a deal, my friend. Now, who are you again?"

He shakes her hand with a warm, firm grip. "Agent Coulson, of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division."

/

If Harry had only stayed as far away as New Mexico, her life would have been a hell of a lot easier.

But no, Harry had to follow Thor down a literal wormhole (or Bifrost, whatever), get herself stuck on another world full of mystical and stupidly attractive Norse gods, and then proceed to get herself mixed up in their affairs and subsequently the whole galaxy's affairs, and at this point Harry has literally no one else to blame for her own life problems but herself.

This is why she is on Xandar, sitting next to a talking raccoon in a holding cell, crying over a dead sentient tree.

The talking raccoon, Rocket, pats her knee consolingly. He doesn't say anything though, because he too is crying about a dead sentient tree. But unlike Harry, who is loudly balling her eyes out half because of the aforementioned tree but also because she's somewhat hysterical over her own life, Rocket is trying to do it discreetly, so there's no overt way to tell, aside from a few sniffles.

"Is that girl ever going to shut up in there?" One of the guards outside asks, annoyed.

"She's been at it for hours." Another one digresses.

"You guys don't understand!" Harry shouts back, sobbing. "Groot was my friend!"

"He was a plant." The first one hisses, to the second.

Outraged, Harry stands up, but Rocket tugs her back down with a solemn hand. "Groot was our friend." He says, quietly.

It's enough for Harry to forget her anger and break down into sniffles once again. Subdued, she spends the next half-hour or so ruining her shirt with her own snot, petting Rocket's mangy fur in an attempt at consoling herself. It says a lot that Rocket actually lets her.

Harry's not even sure why they're even here in this holding cell at all, sort of in the same way she's not really sure why she's even here, period.

In this instance though, she's fairly sure they saved the world. And the galaxy at large. Sure, there was a lot of property damage, but the majority of it could hardly be considered their fault. The Nova government just wants someone to blame, she's pretty sure, and now that Ronan is good and dead and Nebulae is in the wind, there's no one but the newly dubbed 'Guardians of the Galaxy' around to point the finger at. Quill is a smooth talker though, so she has faith he'll get them out of this mess. Eventually. He and Gamora were taken into custody a few hours ago, and she and Rocket haven't heard anything about them since.

So the holding cell is unnecessary, but there is a sequence of events that Harry can trace back through that very obviously led them here. Less obvious is how Harry ended up on Xandar at all, let alone how she ended up tagging along with this ragtag group of misfits now known as the 'Guardians of the Galaxy'.

I should have stayed in my cubicle back in the Ministry. Harry thinks, glumly.

Her life would have been so much easier if she'd never followed Agent Coulson into this mess. Boring, but easy.

Then again, when has her life ever been boring, or easy for that matter? If she's not taking down Dark Lords, she's apparently saving the galaxy.

At any rate, in the silence of this cold and drafty holding cell on Xandar, Harry can privately admit to herself that— despite the truly bewildering circumstances that have led her here— she feels more at peace with herself now than she ever has back on Earth.

Even though she ostensibly started this galactic journey in a quest to find out what she is, why she can't die, and what the Master of Death actually means, she's had all sorts of adventures in the interim and is no closer to answering any of those questions. She's met all sorts of creatures from across the galaxy, from all kinds of worlds, whom she can now count as friends. She's seen places she could have never imagined. She's constantly overwhelmed by everything around her and halfway to an anxiety attack, but there is something exhilarating to the constant sense of adventure that appeals to her Gryffindor sentimentalities.

And even though she now has more questions that she doesn't have answers to, she no longer feels like an outsider to a world she doesn't belong in, like a cog in a society that doesn't quite fit, like a person with a greater destiny trying to keep her head down in a cubicle.

A gratingly loud screech knocks her out of her thoughts.

Even Drax, who has been out like a light on the cell floor since they got in here and sleeps like the dead, twitches in his sleep at the noise. Harry looks up in relief to see it's Quill and Gamora, tired and still wearing singed and battered clothes, but in one piece and without handcuffs nonetheless.

"Please tell me we're free to go." Rocket says, jumping up immediately. "You have no idea how desperately I need to use the bathroom— I think I'm about to rupture my spleen."

"You couldn't have just asked the guards to let you go?" Quill asks, confused, as Gamora speaks over him.

"Yes, we're free to go." She says, drily. "And you really could have gone at any time."

"It just hit me right this second." Rocket insists, as he dives between the two and makes for the open freedom of the hallway outside. "The nerves you know? But the relief has put my bladder in overdrive."

The two look bemused as Rocket speeds past them. Harry just shakes her head at them with a sigh. "I think he just didn't want you guys to see he was crying." She explains.

Gamora rolls her eyes. "As if Quill wasn't balling his eyes out this whole time."

Quill doesn't even look remotely affronted. At least, not until Gamora pulls something out of her pocket.

Harry's eyes widen. "Is that…?"

Gamora looks down at the seedling in her hand with fondness. "I think he'll grow back." She smiles. "But it might take a while. We'll have to find him some really nice soil before we go."

"So we're really free to go?" Harry asks, excited.

Quill laces his hands behind his head with a smug smile. "You can thank me for that."

"Actually, you can thank Harry for that."

Harry blinks rapidly. "... You can?"

With an aggrieved sigh, Quill gives Gamora a dirty look and reaches into his own pocket. Harry is stunned to see an unfamiliar containment orb in his hand. Even though it was in a different orb than the original one Harry had first saw, its presence still makes her stomach flip over and her heart beat twice as fast, just as it had when she'd first laid eyes on it.

"I thought the Nova Corps wanted to hold on to it." She says, faintly.

"They did, but then they had this weird oracle guy of theirs show up who said it was going to bring calamity to Xandar, and basically shoved it back at us." Quill reveals, face souring. "But, for the record, I'm the reason they didn't shove us and the orb on a rocket into deep space. That guy kept saying to give it to you, and kept going on and on about how you were some kind of abomination and needed to be shipped off this planet immediately. He also called you some very unflattering things that I won't care to repeat, because I'm a gentleman and have too much class."

Harry's eyes widen, as her face slowly loses color. She looks wildly between the two of them. "W— What sort of things did he say?"

"Well, he called you a heretic and a plague upon the universe. Something about you being a herald of calamity and a creature of chaos. He was ranting a lot at that point. To be honest I realized he was crazy and stopped listening halfway through." Quill replies, breezily.

Gamora isn't as dismissive on the subject. She sends a searching look Harry's way— not necessarily accusatory, but not entirely trusting either. "The most coherent thing he said was that the orb will bring calamity to Xandar, and that you, as the anathema of existence, were the best person to keep it." She summarizes. And then, after a beat; "And yes, he did say to kick us out of the planet and never return."

"...Huh. Interesting, that." Harry replies, voice barely above a whisper, with a composure she doesn't really feel at all.

"Yeah, interesting." Gamora agrees, but seems game to drop the subject.

Harry is too numb to properly freak out right now, so she takes the orb and sits there in a daze as Gamora and Quill go about attempting to wake Drax up. Rocket returns in the interim, fur beneath his eyes suspiciously wet.

Regardless of whatever this oracle said about her, the Guardians of the Galaxy are happy to let them join them on the Milano. Again, this is nothing but a pure stroke of fortune and goodwill, because if they hadn't offered, Harry would have no means of getting out of here. All the same, she can see that Gamora is wary of her, and Quill, despite his earlier cavalier attitude, looks at her differently too. Even Drax has started to notice.

Harry can't help but think of her earlier sense of belonging with reluctant nihilism.

It's becoming very obvious that no matter where in the galaxy she goes, or what sort of strange and exciting characters she meets, she is never going to feel as if she belongs.

/

It's not that Harry doesn't like the Guardians of the Galaxy, but things have gotten a little awkward ever since they saved the galaxy and then got hustled out of Xandar— and in her case also unofficially banned from the planet.

So Harry tells them to drop her off back where the first met, on Knowhere, a wretched hive of scum and villainy Harry had sworn she wouldn't return to. But as it is, Harry doesn't really know where else to go.

She supposes she could go back to Earth.

She could spin up some kind of elaborate but ultimately boring story to Hermione and Ron about what she's been up to since she disappeared. She could return to her cubicle, her daily Ministry reports, the insular and stifling Magical community that considers her every move a piece of gossip worthy of front page news. She could pretend she'd never been to Asgard, had never met any Norse gods, had never traveled to all sorts of new worlds, and had never saved the galaxy.

Harry entertains the thought, just briefly.

But she can't keep the dream for long. She's never going to be normal, and she may as well just keep trying to make her peace with it. Who knows, since she's seemingly immortal, maybe eventually she'll come to accept it.

And anyway, Harry has unfinished business on Knowhere.

The whole reason she'd gotten caught up in this whole 'saving the galaxy' business was because she'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time on her quest to figure out what she is.

After the debacle in New Mexico was all said and done, and Harry had accidentally found herself with a one way ticket on the Bifrost Express to Asgard, neither Thor nor Odin could tell her anything of use about the Master of Death, but they did recommend an old and curious character called The Collector that might have more information for her. They said this mysterious Collector resided in the severed head of an ancient space creature, in a place called Knowhere. It doubled as a mining colony called Exitar, incidentally, so there were quite a few ships ferrying workers from across the galaxy that Harry could hitch a ride in for free. This was the best news she could ask for, since she had been teleported to Asgard with nothing but the clothes on her back, a half-packed shrunken suitcase forgotten in her coat pocket, and about twenty muggle American dollars she found stuffed in her bra, courtesy of Darcy.

That was how Harry found herself on Knowhere, in the Collector's Museum, waiting for an audience with the eccentric man, when everything went to shit.

Harry still had some unfinished business with Taneleer Tivan, and now she even had the orb as a bargaining chip, so he might even give her some answers.

/

Harry gets her answers, but not from the Collector.

Her long journey for answers has finally come to an end, and yet is also just beginning.

So here Harry sits, on a planet very uninspiringly named Planet T-37X, home of the ancient Watcher species, still no closer to accepting her very existence, despite now having all the answers she was seeking.

By her side is Stan, or at least, that was the name he was currently going by, an old eccentric humanoid man who had approached her out of the blue on Knowhere. He'd worn a winsome smile as he sat in the waiting room of the Collector's grand museum, and had stood up immediately when she had entered, as if he'd been waiting for her, and not the Collector. Her suspicion proved correct when he respectfully asked if she could spare a moment of her time. He looked benign enough, but Harry knew better than to trust just anyone. All the same, when he mentioned the Orb currently in Harry's possession, and called her a 'prophet of destruction', she weighed the pros and cons and ultimately decided to follow him. She'd come all this way for answers, after all, and it appeared he at least had some of them.

As it turns out, Stan— or rather, the ancient civilization Stan worked for— did indeed have her answers.

Stan himself looks incredibly unremarkable and not at all like she would imagine some employee of an all-powerful omniscient race would, but Harry now knows that is entirely on purpose. He is the informant for the Watcher race, peering into the many stories interwoven in the multiverse with the same absent curiosity as Harry had as a child, killing time in her school library hiding from Dudley, grabbing random books off the shelves and splitting them open to an arbitrary section to read a couple pages. He observes these happenings from an intimate distance; almost voyeuristic. He is the bus driver complaining in the grocery line in front of you; the tired shawarma stand owner on the city block corner; the man behind the counter at the deli. Stan is someone normal and non-threatening, and completely and utterly forgettable.

He is someone who fits into any society he ends up in, but never truly belongs to any of them.

He is also, incidentally, that lark of a prophet who had called her an abomination on Xandar, and had gotten her and the Guardians unceremoniously kicked off the planet. Apparently he'd only intervened because the Watchers had asked him to do so, in order to bring her here. As a rule, he explained, the Watchers never interfere— with anything. Be that mass extinction, or even the destruction of reality itself.

"Did you really have to call me an abomination?" She asks, miffed. "You could have just said I was, like, diseased or something and needed to leave immediately."

"It was my first time ever intentionally interfering." Stan confesses, sheepishly. "I had to run with the first thing that came to mind!"

Harry rolls her eyes. "That's fine, I guess. But why intervene at all? What do you guys want with me?"

"I don't really know, to be honest. I'm just their informant."

"So you're not a Watcher? Just their informant?"

Stan gives her an enigmatic smile. "Something like that."

Harry looks around at the barren, scarred landscape. Stan had explained that the Watchers were an ancient and highly advanced species that have been around for longer than any civilization can remember— to the point that the rest of the cosmos have largely forgotten them. For such a highly advanced and old civilization, they didn't exactly have much in the way of proof of existence. There was nothing here, not even a few ruins or evidence of life.

"How do they live here?" Harry asks, bewildered.

Beyond just the lack of, well, everything, there's also no atmosphere or life giving resources like water, or even ice. If Harry hadn't eventually learned the bubble-head charm, she wouldn't even be able to stand on this planet. Although that, Harry supposes, is a little debatable. After all, Harry doesn't seem to die, ever, so why would asphyxiation be any different?

"They don't." Stan reveals. "There's a group of elders that still call this planet home, but a very long time ago they all scattered throughout the galaxies to find posts to observe life across the stars. Each Watcher claims a star system as their own, and records the events that happen there."

"Alone?" Harry clarifies.

Stan nods.

The redhead is horrified, and perhaps a bit pitying. It just… it sounds like such a pitiful and lonely existence. An existence that hits a little too close to home as well. If the Master of Death truly was a title that included immortality, she couldn't imagine what else infinity could offer her aside from loneliness.

Stan turns his head to the side, as if listening to something.

Then he slowly rises to his feet, cracking his back as he does so. He looks down at Harry, still perched on the rock ledge they'd settled on. "Well, come on then."

Harry stares at him. "Come where?"

"The council is summoning us."

The trek is blessedly short. Harry didn't think her nerves could handle anything longer. Stan slowly but surely leads them around the intimidating, empty landscape, hobbling through a steep cavern and up a ravine before leading her to a large plateau. It reminds her a bit of Stonehenge, with giant slabs of rock placed in a large circle. The creatures she sees gathered beneath them are both surprising and yet exactly what she had expected.

They were humanoid in shape; bipedal, two arms, two ears, one (rather large) head. They were all curiously bald, with big, narrowed yellow eyes, wearing identical sets of robes. They all looked so similar Harry would be half inclined to believe they were all clones.

Finally, when they neared close enough to be within speaking distance, one of them stepped up from the center.

"Greetings, Death of the Seven Above All." The man speaks. Or at least, Harry thinks it's a man, from the deeper voice. "I am Xeco of the Watchers, and the representative of the high council."

"Um.." Harry says, blinking. "Well, uh, it's nice to meet you. I am—

"Harry Potter," another interrupts, stepping forward as well. "Yes, we are aware."

Xeco turns to his fellow Watcher by his side. "This is Uatu, the Watcher of the system of Sol."

Harry just keeps blinking, still confused.

"Sol is the system which houses Earth." Uatu explains. "Or Terra, or Midgard, as it is also known."

"Ahh…" Harry says, understanding crossing her eyes. "Right. Well, it's a pleasure to meet both of you."

Uatu inclines his head.

"As you know, we have asked our informant to bring you to us." Xeco begins, gravely. "It was a decision we did not take lightly. Our rules strictly forbid intervention within the multiverse. However, after great debate, we have conceded that as the entity of the Seven, a cosmic being of a fundamental concept, you are not considered 'within' the multiverse. We had no choice but to interfere, you understand."

Harry just stares at him blankly.

He appears to be waiting for her to say something, though.

Harry laughs weakly, rubbing the back of her neck. "Um, actually I don't really understand. Like, a lot of this. The 'Seven Above All' thing. Let's start with that. Could you explain that?"

Xeco peers at her owlishly. "The Seven Above All are seven fundamental concepts of existence that exceed the limitations of the universe. They are eternity, enmity, entropy, epiphany, expedience, empath, eulogy… and, not counted within their number but an integral aspect nonetheless: death."

Death. Of course.

"The Seven Above All are a collection of entities who anthropomorphically personify these concepts. You, as the unnumbered eighth entity, are counted within their ranks."

"So you're saying I'm Death. Literally." Harry clarifies, voice flat.

Xeco tilts his head, again, looking rather owlish. "You are an anthropomorphic personification of Death, with all its powers."

Uatu turns to her. "Yes, literally." He summarizes.

Harry doesn't really know what to say. Instead she just lets out a long, resigned sigh.

Uatu looks at her consideringly. "Does this displease you?"

"I can't exactly say I'm thrilled to hear I'm not a normal human but apparently some kind of entity of existence. But I don't really have any other choice but to accept it, right? I can't change it." Harry shrugs, defeated. "Does this mean I really am immortal?"

"Immortality in the context of infinity is a difficult concept to definitively comprehend. What does it mean to be endlessly enduring, and what does it mean to be mortal? Such topics are beyond our scope of knowledge." Xeco says, which explains absolutely nothing.

Again, Uatu comes to the rescue to act as translator. "What the high councilor means to say is, the concept of Death has no beginning or end. But its current anthropomorphic form, you, has a beginning and end. After all, Death existed long before Harry Potter, did it not?"

Harry could have collapsed in relief. "So I won't live forever."

Uatu nods his head. "Harry Potter's life will end, yes."

"That's— that's excellent news." She grins, winsomely. "So I don't have to worry about anything? I can just go back to my life from before?"

Instead of reassurances, there is only silence.

Her smile falls when they don't say anything in response. Harry turns to Stan, who has his hands behind his back and is looking off into the stars, whistling a tune under his breath.

She then whips her head around to look between the two creatures before her; their stern and somewhat alien features give nothing away.

The silence is becoming deafening.

"Is that truly what you want?" Uatu asks, eventually.

It's certainly not a question Harry was expecting. "What do you mean?"

Uatu makes a vague wave of his hand. "You were unsatisfied with your life on Earth, were you not? You felt stifled and unable to connect with your peers. You were going through the motions. Do you want to return to that?"

"I…"

Harry finds herself at a loss.

To be honest, it's at first hard to recall. It hasn't really been that long— perhaps a few months give or take— since she'd left London, but it feels as if it were centuries ago. So many things have happened in the time since the night Agent Coulson had found her in her cubicle at the Ministry, to where she is now, standing in front of the Council of Watchers, on Planet T-37X. Too much for her to wrap her head around, honestly.

Uatu is right.

Can she really go back to that? And if she did, would she really be able to be satisfied?

She won't lie to herself; she'd hardly been happy back there. But she'd sort of assumed that was just the curse of being a young working adult. Like a rite of passage or something. You were always just exhausted, sleep-deprived, annoyed with your boss and contemplating flinging yourself out the window. When she thinks about it though, not everyone was like that. Sure, Hermione was equally as exhausted, sleep-deprived, and annoyed with her boss— but she also adored her job. Even on her bad days she was so clearly, obviously passionate about her job. Harry could hardly say the same for herself.

Harry looks down, studying her sneakers against the foreign soil beneath her feet. "...I don't… I don't really know what else to do." She says, softly.

What else does she have, exactly?

She's spent the past couple months on a galactic journey of self-exploration, and at the end of it she's come out with a lot more knowledge about the workings of the greater universe than any one mortal should really have, and not much else to show for it.

Where does this even leave her?

What does the Master of Death even do, exactly? It's not an occupation the way she understands it; it's not a title she can put on her business card and pass around whenever necessary, (Harriet Potter, Internal Affairs Department, Ministry of Magic, extensionXXX) it's not a job she can reference while catching a happy hour at a local pub with the rest of her yearmates after work. Oh, Neville, you got a new shipment of plants from India for the horticulture symposium? That's wonderful! What am I up to these days? Well, I'm this thing called the Master of Death, one of the seven— technically eight— anthropomorphic fundamental entities of the universe… What does that mean, you ask? I have absolutely no idea, but I suppose you could consider me self-employed. When she, Hermione and Ginny meet up for their weekly dinners to rant about their work week, what exactly can Harry contribute? Harry has, once again, found herself in a predicament that makes her feel like an outsider in her own world.

Harry's relief from earlier melts away like water in her hands.

One problem solved, and another hundred pop up to take its place. She thinks, warily. She wonders if she'll ever find the ending to this eternal path of self-fulfillment.

Uatu and Xeco share a look.

"If you are not opposed, we have a proposition for you." Uatu begins.

Harry blinks a few times, taken off guard. "Sure. Go on."

Xeco clears his throat. "The Watchers are a race of longevity, but even with our superior years, our numbers remain quite few. There are Watchers spread throughout the galaxy, but even that is not enough. This is why we rely on the insights of our informants. They provide us with not only additional sets of eyes to observe the happenings of the universe, but also a unique insight into the lives and societies of those who call this universe home. This ability to walk among the civilizations of the cosmos is unique to informants, as the Watcher creed forbids us from contact ourselves."

Harry tilts her head, thinking deeply. "So I'd be, like, one of your spies or something?"

"Spy is an inaccurate term— it implies a level of intent that we simply do not have." Uatu replies. "The Watchers have no motivation other than to meticulously catalogue all that happens within the universe. We do not seek to use our knowledge for anything; we are merely meant to observe."

The very idea of knowing literally everything and just never acting on it is totally bewildering to Harry, but then again, a lot of things she's seen in the cosmos are totally bewildering. Maybe she should accept she'll never truly comprehend it, and move on. All the same, it's one thing to accept it as practice in a society she's not a part of; it's an entirely different moralistic question to accept the practice as her own.

Harry narrows her eyes. "And I suppose you'll also make me abide by your non-interference rules."

Xeco blinks at her, as if she might be stupid or, more likely, just ignorant to the scope of her powers and her place in the universe. "As a fundamental entity of the universe, we are incapable of making you do anything."

"... Huh." Harry says, leaning back. That's a first. Usually people are always telling her what to do. Be that Aunt Petunia, Dumbledore or even Kingsley, she usually has to answer to someone. Maybe this whole Master of Death thing might work out better than she thinks.

"That being said, we would ask that while you act within your own limitations, you refrain from mentioning any and all involvement on our part."

Harry nods, gamely. Sounds fair enough. "Sure, why not. I'll give it a try."

Then she hesitates, eyes narrowing.

"Hold on." She begins shrewdly, holding up a hand. "Who's going to be paying for all of this, exactly? I can't imagine traveling around the galaxy all the time for work is easy on the wallet."

Behind her, Stan chokes on his own breath and wheezes for air.

The rest of the council stares at her, deadpan.

Harry refuses to concede on this subject, crossing her arms and holding her head up high. She cannot even count the amount of times she's gotten screwed over by the Auror Department on travel and incidentals. Sure, she might be speaking to a bunch of omniscient ancient aliens and not an irritable and sleep-deprived Lee Jordan, but all the same the principle applies.

Uatu holds up his hands in a placating manner. "Rest assured, Seven Above All, any and all resources you require for your task will be paid for in full by the Watcher Council. We only ask you to abide by our accounting system if you choose to use it."

Harry is still skeptical. Lee Jordan had said something similar, and look at the dumpster fire that turned out to be. As it turned out, the Auror Department was great at Auror things, but absolute pants at being held accountable for their finances.

"The system is a little difficult at first," Stan whispers to her. "But the reimbursement schedule is brutally efficient."

That's all Harry needs to know.

She holds out her hand with a wide smile. "Well then my friends, you've got yourself a deal."

Xeco looks down at her hand with such a look of bewilderment you'd think Harry was trying to hand him a live mandrake plant. Uatu, more versed in human customs, steps in to take her hand and shake it.

"Yes, it appears it does, Miss Potter. I look forward to working with you."

I have changed the Watcher lore, as well as the Eternity lore quite a bit to fit my purposes for this story. On an somewhat related note, I AM SO HYPED for The Eternals movie coming up. Really excited to see what the MCU verse does with this.