Note: This is a continuation to esama's Sisyphus, which must be read first.
When he awakens yet again in the hut on the rock, he feels nothing but pure rage against whoever, or whatever had condemned him to his unending torment. Despite living with a constant fear or dread that he would soon be sent back to the beginning, he had finally managed to get everything right in his last life. Voldemort was dead, he had a family of his own, and everyone was happy. Everyone except him, due to his paranoia and having had experienced a hundred failed lives before.
Learning to lie and act was a skill which he perfected over the course of several loops. Nobody was the wiser to his true feelings, to the fact that he cared for nobody and nothing at all. He hated them.
He lived to old age without somehow being killed, aside from Voldemort's killing curse that destroyed the final horcrux within him, but being the master of the Deathly Hallows had brought him back. In his first and twelfth lives, Voldemort had been the master of the Elder Wand instead of him and with it he was truly unstoppable, and easily ended Harry's life.
Harry had been stunned at the state of events, to say the very least. It was something that had never happened before, and despite his paranoia he felt a small amount of something he had not in a very long time: hope. As he grew older, nearer and nearer to his eventual death, he had faith that his hundred and first life would be his last, and he would finally be able to rest.
And everything started again.
He had gotten everything right, and it still didn't end?
Harry screamed. And screamed, and thrashed, and SCREAMED.
He lost track of his life count, for soon after waking up in his hundred and second life he killed himself. And woke up, and killed himself again. And again, and again. Sometimes he just used the killing curse, other times he borrowed Uncle Vernon's shotgun and put it into his mouth and fired, and a few times he jumped to his death outside the hut, landing broken on top of a bunch of wet, jagged rocks. He didn't care what the Dursleys or Hagrid thought, because it didn't matter. It never did, and never would. Harry often killed them along with himself, and took a sadistic pleasure at seeing the life leave their eyes.
Eventually, Harry stopped feeling anger and quit his repeated suicides. He figured that he had killed himself well over a thousand times, before even that became uninteresting. In his first life after releasing his rage, he apparated to New York City on a whim, only to be struck and killed mere moments later by a car. He tried again, going to Tokyo instead, and lived for a full three days before Fenrir Greyback found him and ripped his throat out. After a third time, which involved going to the Arctic Circle only to get mauled to death by a polar bear an hour later, he gave up.
There was only one path he could follow to the end, the one he had trod successfully in his hundred and first life... or had he?
He decided, for his own amusement more than anything else, to do incredibly stupid things. There were no lasting consequences for anything he did, because he would always be sent back to the hut on the rock and everything would be reset anew. In one life, he broke into a heavily guarded military base in the United States, killing or using the imperious curse on everyone inside, and launched as many nuclear missiles as possible towards Hogwarts itself. He never saw the results, for the world ended not long later in atomic fire and ash. It was the one loop where everyone died, not just himself, and he was somewhat proud of his accomplishment.
In another life he accused Quirrell of being Voldemort in the Great Hall, on his very first night in Hogwarts. Quirrell responded by dispatching him in an instant with the killing curse, in front of everyone. He tried again for his next ten lives, in different places and at different times, but the results were always the same.
He tried to kill Quirrell and succeeded many times, but was always killed for it or sentenced to Azkaban for murder. He eventually succumbed to the Dementors, or just killed himself to be sent back to the start sooner. It seemed that the only way to get rid of Quirrell without going to prison or getting himself killed was in the battle for the Philosopher's Stone.
In several loops he had taken the stone for himself, but quickly was made aware of the fact that while he could live forever with the elixir of life, it could not prevent him from being killed. Between Voldemort, Fenrir Greyback, other random Death Eaters whose names he had never bothered to learn, Dumbledore and Nicholas Flamel, Harry had clocked in a whopping twenty deaths. In the rare instances where he was able to hide out and prevent himself from being discovered, as soon has he turned seventeen he found himself back in the hut on the rock.
He decided to do everything as he had done in his hundred and first life, only choosing to go on at the dream King's Cross Station instead of returning to defeat Voldemort. He woke up again.
He tried making a horcrux. As soon as he felt his soul split, he was back at the beginning again.
Nothing mattered. There was no getting out. Harry wanted to know who had done this to him and why, but after hundreds of lives he was no closer to achieving that goal than he had been so very long ago. He had deduced that, despite his long lifespan and seemingly happily ever after in his hundred and first life, that he hadn't gotten everything right after all.
Harry lived the events of that life over and over, only changing things after he defeated Voldemort. If he changed anything at all, he ended up dead somehow and back in the hut on the cold, damp rock. He married Luna and was killed by an escaped Fenrir Greyback a year after his daughter was born. Many other women became his wives in different lifetimes, and he always died not long after. His best record was a little over five years, after fathering two sons with Hermione. He had arranged an accident for Ron, and was only too willing to accept Hermione's feelings several months later. His death in that life came not from someone who found out the truth of Ron's murder, but from being struck by a lightning bolt while playing Quidditch.
Harry woke up to his next life laughing madly. The Dursleys were too terrified to attempt to even speak to him, and let him go quietly with Hagrid without so much as a complaint.
He got what the universe was telling him: He had to marry and be with Ginny, or he would die. But by that time, death and life were both so pointless in equal quantity, and Harry didn't care what anyone or anything thought about him. He was sick of Ginny, and would make her suffer over and over, but since she wasn't in the loops and condemned as he was, it didn't matter in the long run. Nothing ever did. Nothing ever would.
Harry had a passionate affair with Fleur Weasley, whom he ended up impregnating, while still married to Ginny. When the truth came out, a maniacal Bill Weasley, fueled by werewolf blood lust, snapped his neck like a twig. It was the first time that the eldest Weasley brother had been the cause of his death, but wouldn't be the last. Harry tried again and again, but his infidelity would always be revealed no matter how much he tried to hide it. After being killed by Bill over and over, he gave up on being with Fleur, outside of a loop here and there when he needed warmth and comfort. She was the only woman whose company he truly enjoyed. He didn't love her, of course. He didn't love anyone.
There was no getting around the Must Marry Ginny mandate. If he stayed a bachelor or married anyone else, he ended up getting killed. If he married her and had an affair with anyone else, he was soon sure to die. He never thought he'd know what it was like to be strangled to death by the hands of Neville or Ron, but quickly got used to the feeling. It was something new.
Harry craved new things.
After two hundred lives of meaningless sex and untimely deaths at the hands of jealous husbands or lovers, it became as tiresome as everything else. He spent a few dozen more slaughtering Ginny countless times, including on their wedding day, but it did little to affect him. On one notable life, he stabbed her in the heart with the basilisk fang instead of the diary, to a completely befuddled and shocked Tom Riddle. Harry had shown no emotion, even as he felt the familiar killing curse strike him in the chest a minute later.
Harry wished he could fast-forward past his Hogwarts years when he began a new life. He had everything right and could flawlessly get through them without dying or making a mistake. It was difficult not to blast Snape into oblivion during his first potions lesson, or Dumbledore any time he saw him. In his mind, Harry's hell was all the old wizard's fault, with his belief in the prophecy and whatnot. He didn't know what to believe anymore, and needed a scapegoat... something, anyone to keep the last bit of sanity he had left.
On one loop he had responded to Snape's first question with Avada Kedavra. It had been amusing for all of five minutes, and that life later ended in Azkaban as about a hundred others had.
He lived out the events of his hundred and first life yet again, going through the motions with such distance and coldness as if he was under the imperious curse, to the point before the night of his eventual death in his sleep. Despite staying awake through the use of spells and charms, as soon as the appointed time came... he woke up in his hut on the rock with his three morons.
Again.
If there was something he was doing wrong, he still hadn't figured it out. And after exactly three thousand and fifty-one lives he had lived (for he had refreshed his memory to determine the exact number, he craved new things), he doubted that he ever would.
He had the rest of eternity to try, but he didn't think he wanted to.
And after living to be an old man again, on his very last night, he gave up all hope. He stopped asking Why, stopped fighting, ended his hatred. Whoever or whatever had cursed him to his pointless existence had won, completely and utterly. Harry surrendered.
He felt his eyelids growing heavier, his breaths growing shorter and more labored, and-