Author's Note: After fighting executive dysfunction and Writer's Block, as well as finally getting some vacation time, I've finally edited this story, re-edited it, and re-edited again because I'm neurotic like that. I know that everyone and their mother that ships H/Hr has written a Reptilia28 'Don't Fear The Reaper' fic but I wanted to try my hand at it and address a few things in canon that I feel were overlooked or didn't make sense, as well as put my own spin on a few fanon concepts. Now, this fic not only uses the rules of the 'Don't Fear the Reaper' challenge but uses some rules of CoastalFirebird's resurrection challenge as well. You can find the rules somewhere on this site, I'm sure.

That said, I can't think of anything else I need to mention without it devolving into random rambling, so let's crack on with the fic, shall we? Comments and constructive criticism are always welcome.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter, nor do I make any money off this fanfiction. Any names or people that are non-canonical in this fanfiction, living or dead, are purely fictitious and any likeness to actual names and/or people are purely coincidental.

Getting It Done Right

Act Zero, Chapter One: At Death's Door

Harry felt cool, rough ground beneath his cheek and hands, surprised by the fact that he could feel anything at all. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but swirling gray mists around him. His body ached with pain as he forced himself upright and dusted himself off.

"Ron? Hermione?" he called out as he began to shamble through the mists. "Hello?"

After a moment of aimless meandering, he noticed a faint rectangular silhouette some distance away. He jogged as fast as his tired body would allow and came up to a plain white door and frame, a brushed steel knob the only thing adorning it. He walked around it twice and found nothing else.

"Nothing to lose, right?" he reassured himself as he slowly reached for the knob and turned it.

He found himself stumbling into what looked like a plain waiting room with wine-coloured carpeting and plain white walls, a small tree-like plant in a floor vase in the corner. The few seats that were there were mostly occupied, said occupants were staring at him with various levels of amusement. They quickly looked towards a receptionist's window beside a doorway.

"Welcome to Death's Door..." The receptionist looked up and her eyes widened in surprise as he found an empty chair and sat down. "...Agencies..." Her voice trailed off and she blinked twice. "Harry Potter?"

Harry nodded. "Yes, that's me."

The receptionist put her fingertips to her temples and began to rub in small circles. "Oh, great," she drawled. Shooting him a slightly nasty look, she lifted a receiver to her ear and dialed an extension. "Victor? It's Danielle."

There was a brief silence.

"Yes, I understand that you're in the middle of an appointment right now but there's an emergency here that needs your immediate attention."

Another brief silence.

"It's..." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "...It's Harry Potter."

Harry nearly jumped out of his seat in surprise as the receptionist quickly lowered the receiver from her ear. He could hear muted screaming coming from it.

"Look, the fact is that he's here now, and you know what's going to happen if Deyus finds out," she said as she put the receiver back to her ear. Harry noticed her rolling her eyes in the silence that followed.

"Yes, yes, all right, fine," she said. "Oh, before you go, Ferdinand said he was going to pick up lunch. Did you want anything?" She paused before rolling her eyes again. "Look, just...just pick something, all right?" She paused for a moment before writing something down. "Okay. Anything to drink? No, nothing alcoholic, wise ass." She continued writing. "Anything..." She suddenly stopped and straightened up, her face going pale. "Was that..." She glanced warily at Harry. "You're on your way? Now? All right. I'll see you when you get here." She hung up the phone and ran a hand slowly down her face, letting out an exasperated groan.

"Is...is something wrong?" Harry dared to ask.

Danielle looked up at him. "Potter, do you realise you just made yourself the biggest shovelful of hippogriff droppings to hit a really big fan? Do you have any idea how much trouble you put one of our best Cloaks in?"

She gave a tired groan and wheeled her chair over to a filing cabinet as she shook her head. She opened a drawer and leafed through the folders, pulling out a file about as thick as a children's novel. "Here we go." She wheeled herself back to her desk and beckoned Harry over as she opened his file and began skimming over it. "All right. How old are you now, Potter?"

"Seventeen," he replied.

"Seventeen? You're only seventeen, and you've died..." She flicked at the red tags sticking out between the pages of his file. "...Five?" She stared at him as if he slapped her. "Do you realise what this means?"

"Should I?"

"You've been here enough..." she growled, just loud enough for him to hear. She shook her head. "Forget it. All you need to know is that this is your sixth time here. Agency policy dictates that if any casefile gets seven De-Bitts..."

"De-Bitt?"

"A DBTT, a 'Dead Before Their Time' notice," she replied as she closed his file. "Once a person gets seven De-Bitts on their file, it means their Cloak faces immediate termination and their soul stays crossed over." She poked his file. "You are one piece of work, Potter. Victor Adimnas is one of our best Cloaks."

"Who is Victor, and what is a Cloak?" he asked impatiently.

"How much fluff is between your ears, Potter?" She pointed over his shoulder to the waiting room, unashamed of her rising voice. "Think of the people behind you. What do you have in common with them?"

He turned around and looked at the people behind him. A woman with wide tire tracks going up from her right hip to her left shoulder waved sheepishly at him while a dark-haired man with bullet holes in his chest and upper arm chuckled.

"What else do you think of when you hear the word 'cloak' with your current situation?" she asked. "Or do I have to give you a scythe and an hourglass for you to get the point?" As she saw realization dawning in his eyes, she sighed again and shook his head. "I don't know how your soulmate puts up with a complete lunkhead like you."

"My soulmate?"

"Yes, your soulmate, Potter," a new and irritated voice spoke up.

Harry's gaze whirled to the doorway left of Danielle to see a sandy-haired, clean-shaven man wearing long, coal-black robes with the hood lowered. A large ornate hourglass hung at his right hip from a thick braided cord at his waist and a scythe was in his right hand, the large blade polished to a sheen. Behind him stood a tower of a man (Harry had the fleeting thought that he was maybe seven or even eight feet tall), his skin pale yet vibrant. He too was clean-shaven, his black hair cut short, the creases of his black business suit were razor-sharp and his black shoes were as polished as the head of the shorter man's scythe.

"Who are you?" Harry asked, his gaze constantly shifting between the blade of the scythe, the blond man and the taller, dark-haired man, who was putting his hands behind his back.

"I'm Victor Adimnas, your Cloak," the blond replied with an impatient snort. "And this is Arthur Deyus, Chief Executive Officer of Death's Door Agencies and the original Cloak."

"Potter," Deyus said in a low voice that immediately gave Harry chills. The imposing look the taller man gave him seemed to pierce through him.

"Come on, Potter," Victor ordered, waving him past the receptionist's desk, "we don't have all day." He looked to Danielle. "All my appointments are postponed until Potter's out of here."

Danielle rolled her eyes and gave him an airy salute. "Yes, sir," she drawled, her voice laced with sarcasm.

"We will have this meeting in my office," Deyus announced calmly. "Victor, you will lead."

Victor swallowed uneasily. "Yes, sir." Beckoning Harry to him again, he strode towards a sea of cubicles, scythe blades popping up occasionally like oddly formed shark fins. Harry followed a full stride behind, Deyus keeping pace with him.

"So, I finally meet the infamous Harry Potter in person?" Deyus said suddenly, making Harry start.

"Y-yes, sir," Harry answered, trying to avoid the man's piercing gaze.

"You've made quite an impression here at Death's Door Agencies," Deyus continued, his voice rumbling once in what Harry presumed to be a chuckle. "You're the first person in a very long time that's come this close to having his Cloak fired."

Harry chanced a glance up at Deyus. "Really? I thought having..." He paused in thought. "What were the notices called?"

"'Dead Before Their Time' notices, but we simply call them De-Bitts," Deyus replied.

"Right. I thought having De-Bitts was common, like maybe one or two per case?"

"It's not uncommon for one or two De-Bitts on any given casefile," Victor cut in as they reached a black door with a thin offset window of frosted glass, "but the most any one case has ever had, dating back about five or six centuries, was four." He looked up at his superior. "Sir?"

Deyus nodded at the door. It immediately clicked and opened slowly. "After you, Victor."

Victor nodded once stiffly and stepped in without any argument. Deyus looked down at Harry and gestured with an open hand to his office. Harry stepped inside.

A massive desk that looked about a size too large for Victor dominated the front half of the office. Harry fought the urge to chuckle at Victor, who looked like a child trying to imitate their father in their home office. He seemed two sizes too small for the high-backed, executive-styled leather chair. The top of the desk itself was shaped like a large kidney bean. A computer keyboard was built into the desktop itself, and Harry gasped in awe as a floating rectangle of light appeared and hovered over the desk diagonally from Victor's right hand.

Harry looked away from the desk to the rest of the room. Two chairs similar to the one behind the desk but more suited for regular human height sat in front of the desk. On a modern-looking sideboard underneath the office's lone window sat a silver tray with a pitcher of water and three glasses. At the far end of the office was a massive bookshelf that took up the entire wall. Black leather-bound books took up every compartment, gold text engraved on the spine of each book. A standing coat rack with a black, hooded robe was situated at the far corner of the room. At the corner by the sideboard, he saw a scythe leaning on the wall. The head of the weapon was ornate in its gothic design, black as night and reflecting light where it touched. A silver crescent on the underside of the scythe indicated its edge.

"Take a seat, Harry," Victor said gently, pointing with an open hand to one of the chairs. Harry sat on the left chair as Deyus stood statue still behind Victor's chair to the Cloak's left.

"Call it what you like: Limbo, Purgatory, whatever, but Death's Door is essentially a placement agency for the spirits of the deceased," Victor began. He typed some commands in the keyboard and moved the rectangle of light to face Harry. "If you look, it says that you're only seventeen years old but considering your actions, most notably stopping a dangerous Unstable time and again, you've actually gained several extensions on your life."

Harry could only give Victor a stunned look. "What?"

Deyus nodded to the hovering display and it immediately showed a striking young man that Harry recognised as Tom Riddle. "Tom Marvolo Riddle, or Voldemort as he calls himself now, is one of a handful of cases deemed Unstable." Harry heard an edge in the tall man's voice that chilled him to the bone. "Riddle has become a high-profile Unstable, and a most annoying one at that, and anyone alive that manages to somehow prevent an Unstable from extending their life is granted an extension on theirs."

"What exactly is an Unstable?"

"People fear dying but Unstables are the ones that go to extreme lengths to make sure that they don't die," Victor answered. "They extend their lives beyond their actual date of death. 'Past Their Time', or Pitt, cases are not uncommon but the odd Pitt case is deemed Unstable after a certain amount of time and evil deeds done during their time past their supposed death."

"Normally, Cloaks deal with their own Unstables but Riddle's case has become troublesome enough that he is now my case," Deyus cut in, his voice tinged with ice. He looked down at his hand and watched as it slowly curled into a fist. "What he has done by splitting his soul is not only unethical and horrific, it puts into question the inevitability and value of passing on into the afterlife which in turn makes a mockery of the Agency."

He looked up to regard Harry and Victor, both staring at him in stunned silence, the latter's hands shaking slightly.

"Can I ask a question?"

Deyus nodded slowly. "Go ahead."

"You said you're now responsible for Voldemort's case, right?" At Deyus' nod, Harry pressed on. "What about the Cloak originally responsible for Riddle's file?"

"The very moment Riddle created his first horcrux, Riddle's Cloak notified me. I told her to keep an eye on him and to keep me informed. Once I was informed that he created six, I took the case off her hands. She is no longer responsible for his case. Whom she is is of no concern to you." Deyus turned to Victor. "We're getting off track. Continue."

"Right," Victor replied hurriedly. He typed a series of commands on the keyboard and Harry's profile returned to the floating display. "According to your file, accounting for how many times you've thwarted Riddle, how many horcruxes you've destroyed, and the extension bonus you'll receive upon actually defeating him, your life expectancy should put you at about two hundred fifty years old."

Harry's jaw dropped. "Two hundred fifty?"

Victor hummed in affirmation and pointed to the display. "See these red X's? These are your De-Bitts. You received your first one when Ripper, your Aunt Marge's bulldog, bit you when you accidentally stepped on his tail. Because Marge called her dog off at midnight and your bite wasn't immediately treated, the bite became infected. You came down with a fever, lost consciousness and fell out of the tree." Harry only vaguely remembered being in the tree but did recall he came to in the cupboard under the stairs.

"You received your second De-Bitt during the fight with the basilisk. Fawkes actually came just seconds too late to save you.

"You received your third De-Bitt when fighting off the Dementors in your third year." Victor shook his head and sighed. "You were lucky you fought them off. If one of those Dementors got to you, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

Harry frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Your soul is what is here talking to us right now, Potter," Deyus answered. "If a Dementor Kissed you, your soul wouldn't be able to cross over into the afterlife and your body would be nothing but an empty shell." Deyus frowned. "Death by a Dementor's Kiss is a long, arduous way to die. The only way a soul crosses over into the afterlife after being Kissed is to kill the Dementor. And the only known ways to kill one are using dragon fire or Fiendfyre." He crossed his arms. "As it was, being exposed to all those Dementors was enough to cause a complete mental, and consequently physical, collapse." He glanced at Victor. "Continue."

"You received your fourth De-Bitt when dealing with the Hungarian Horntail." Victor shook his head. "You died from blood loss when your school nurse actually removed the spike through your arm." He regarded Harry with a hard stare. "At least you weren't roasted alive. I hate immolation victims. It takes forever to put them back together, and they immediately burst into flame once they're complete. Don't even get me started on the smell.

"Your fifth De-Bitt came in during the incident with Nagini in Godric's Hollow." Victor turned back to the glowing screen. "Nagini biting and constricting you, as well as falling through the floor in the Bagshot house was more than enough to actually kill you.

"And here we are at your sixth De-Bitt." He leaned back in the massive chair. "This not only places my job in jeopardy, it looks bad on the Agency for letting an Unstable like Riddle run rampant in the living world. Your situation has placed a lot of pressure on myself, yourself, and on my boss. Placing pressure on my boss consequently places pressure on the Agency as a whole."

"Have there been any other Cloaks that have gotten fired?"

"I can count on one hand the number of Cloaks that have been fired since the Agency's inception," Victor replied, his voice icy. "I don't want to add to that number and be held up as an example to future Cloaks with casefiles that have either delusions of grandeur or a death wish. I'm a damn fine worker and I'm proud of my accomplishments." He narrowed his eyes. "You're my first problem case. I want you to be my last."

"One thing, though," Harry cut in. "If I have extensions on my life and I'm on my sixth De-Bitt, what if I end up here again before my actual time to die comes up?"

"There is a loophole with De-Bitts," Deyus' voice rumbled suddenly. "Casefiles with at least one flag have ten years to clear. If a certain casefile has three De-Bitts, for example, after ten years of good, safe behaviour all DBTT flags are cleared."

Harry nodded in understanding when a thought occurred to him. "Wait. You and the receptionist mentioned something about a soulmate."

"Yes, yes," Victor said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "It's Daphne Greengrass but that's not important right now. What is important-" A buzz from the floating display interrupted him. He leaned in and peered closely at it. "Wait a minute. This can't be right..."

"What is it?" Deyus asked, leaning over the chair and looking at the floating display himself.

"Right here." Victor pointed at a set of lines. "It says here that he has two soulmates: Daphne Greengrass and...some Granger girl?" He looked up at his boss. "Is this some sort of clerical error?"

Deyus squinted, trying to get a closer look. After a moment his eyes widened briefly before they narrowed again and he straightened up with a growl. "No, no it's not." He glanced at Harry before looking down at Victor. "It's something that has surfaced as a result of the machinations of certain individuals. He is bound to both of them, as they are bound to him."

Harry was about to ask about Deyus' reaction when Victor looked up at his boss with a prying question in his eyes. The arctic stare the Cloak received quashed it and he swallowed the lump in his throat. "R-right."

Deyus' gaze shifted to Harry. "Here is the situation, Mister Potter: You are on your sixth De-Bitt which puts your Cloak dangerously close to getting fired." He put a large hand on Victor's shoulder, and Harry watched as Victor visibly tensed up at the gesture. "On top of that, there is the matter of the Unstable." He gave Harry a hard stare. "To return to the matter concerning your Cloak for a brief moment, let me just say that Victor Adimnas has been one of my best employees for many, many years. I do not relish the prospect of having to lose him."

His expression softened yet remained neutral. "Now, the Riddle case is one of the Agency's largest loose ends. Unstables like Riddle, especially like Riddle, have gone irredeemably insane and are fully capable of wreaking all kinds of havoc upon the living world. Though we are an agency that deals in death, we were once alive, and we hate to see innocents die just because of one problematic case." Harry thought he was imagining things when the man's stony expression broke just a tiny bit to show the hint of a grin. "Of course, from a practical standpoint, there will be no end of paperwork for us to deal with if he continues unabated."

Harry grinned back as Victor turned to look at his boss in disbelief. Deyus met Victor's gaze and he huffed once in what seemed to be a chuckle.

He gestured to Harry with an open hand. "Now, you yourself have proven time and again that you are able to defeat Riddle. Unfortunately you are, for all intents and purposes, dead. However, as we have driven home, you are dead before your time and as we have done in previous instances, we can revive you."

Deyus closed his hand into a tight fist and snapped it open again, palm up. A tongue of flame floated in the air above his hand before turning into a sheet of parchment. Without taking his eyes off Harry, he took the parchment into his hand in passed it to Victor. "Victor will tell you what this form is and all the stipulations behind it."

Victor took the length of parchment from his boss and looked through it, his eyes widening with every line he read. After a moment, he set it down on the desk and slid it to Harry. "What we have here is an Agency Disclosure and Resurrection Form, or an ADARF. This form allows you to go back to any point in your life, or be revived at any of your previous De-Bitt situations, with complete recollection of your time here."

"Why don't I remember any of my previous times being here?"

"You weren't supposed to be here any of those times, Mister Potter," Deyus replied. "Now that things are starting to become very problematic, appropriate measures must be undertaken. We are now letting you keep knowledge of whatever happened in your life before you got to this point. For example, if you get sent back to your third year, before your death involving the Dementors, you'll be able to completely recall the Triwizard tournament and the incident at the Department of Mysteries before it even exists."

The gears in Harry's mind started to work furiously, his thoughts suddenly focusing on people he knew, loved and lost. "So...is it possible that I could save the lives of people that were close to me that died?"

Deyus' expression hardened. "It may be possible but that's unknown to us."

Harry frowned. "What do you mean?"

"In those cases where the individual received an ADARF before they were revived, they overreached in their efforts to change their lives and saved their loved ones, and during the course of their self-righteous crusade, they reached their seventh flag," Deyus answered. "It is entirely possible that you could save the lives of those close to you, Mister Potter, though I highly recommend not making that your top priority."

He blinked and put his arms behind his back. "Riddle has become too volatile and unbalanced and, to coin a phrase, is well beyond his expiry date, and I am sending you back to do what you were supposed to do and destroy him. Like one Albus Dumbledore, I have given you a great and terrible task. Unlike Dumbledore, I am willing to put all my cards on the table and give you the knowledge necessary to do so without a hitch. The only reasons I'm not doing so are because time is of the essence, and I don't want to overwhelm you with too much information all at once. You must defeat Riddle and find your soulmates. Once you have achieved both of those goals, you should have smooth sailing for a century and then some."

"What about my soulmates?" Harry asked.

"What about them?" Victor countered.

"My soulmates," Harry began, "can you tell me how long they'll live?"

Deyus gave Harry an uncharacteristically warm smile. "Potter, what do you think the term 'soulmate' means?"

"So, if I live to be over two hundred years old..."

"They'll pass on not too long before or after you," Deyus replied. " The Agency isn't heartless, Mister Potter, though most of the time we're seen as such. For one that has had to endure as much as you have, some peace and quiet with the ones you love and the promise of a legacy that will rival that of Merlin himself seems like ample compensation."

Victor handed Harry a quill. "You've been given one hell of an edge, Potter. This is your do-or-die time, literally."

Harry stared down at the parchment. He noticed right away that had none of the legal jargon and seemingly nonsensical words that he expected and all the terms and conditions spoken of were written out concisely. Laying the paper flat on the desk, he signed his name on the bottom of the contract. A knock on the door rang out as he was putting down the quill.

"Yes?" Deyus asked sharply. The door opened just enough for the receptionist to poke her head in.

"Sorry for the interruption, sir, but this just came in for Victor to give to Harry." She waved a folded sheet of paper towards the Cloak but Deyus intercepted it, deftly snatching it with his index and middle fingers.

"Perfect timing, Danielle," Victor said as he took the signed form from Harry and handed it over to her. "Place this in Potter's file, please."

"Potter, I'll ask you to read this on your own time," Deyus ordered calmly, laying the folded sheet of paper on the desk and sliding it towards Harry. "As I mentioned, time is of the essence." He looked down to Victor. "Contact Processing. Tell Gus that Potter's signed an ADARF and is on his way over to be resurrected." He turned back to Harry as the Cloak pulled a wired phone receiver from just beneath the desktop. "One thing, Mister Potter."

"Yes, sir?"

"Adimnas and I will be checking in on you from time to time and will give you pertinent information as it comes up. Feel free to ask us any more questions should you remember any when we do show."

"Thank you," Harry said with a nod.

"That's that, then," Victor said as he hung up from his call. "Go on back to Reception, Potter. Someone from Processing will be there in a minute to meet you." He stood and opened the door. Harry got to his feet and nodded as he left the office. As the Cloak closed the door behind the teenager, his shoulders sagged and he shook his head. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Granted," Deyus replied.

"The Granger girl being Potter's second soulmate has to be a clerical error. I know they're close, even best friends, but this doesn't make any sense."

"The matter concerning the Granger girl is an unexpected outcome as a result of Albus Dumbledore's annoying meddling," Deyus answered. "Of course, it wasn't her that he tried to compel Potter towards."

"I still don't get it, sir," Victor continued. "How could he develop a second soul bond?"

Deyus snapped his fingers an a file folder appeared in his hand. "Here, Adimnas. I want you to learn about Congruency."