Warnings/AN: This starts off as cannon up until just before the Epilogue in the last Harry Potter book. Will uses references for both the books and the movies. This will have time travel in it and then the world of cannon is going to be played with as I see fit to make it fit my goals and whatnot. I started this partly for my niece and partly to just play around with the HP character for the fun of it. If you don't like that, then please feel free to go back now instead of leaving rude comments. I'm doing this for my own pleasure and for fun. I started this in December. (2-23-2012)

Disclaimer: I do NOT and never will own anything that goes along with the Harry Potter universe. This goes for the whole fic!

Setting: A about a year or so after the final battle. Harry is engaged to Ginny at this time. He's going to be visiting to Hogwarts, but not until the next chapter. This chapter is just setting the stage for some of what I want to do. No time travel until anywhere from chapters 2-4, roughly.

Founders' Chosen

Chapter 1

'Has it really only been a little more than over a year?' Harry Potter wonders to himself, then realizes with a start that a year really has passed since the Final Battle had taken place at Hogwarts. A year since so many had died before he could finally end the monster that Lord Voldemort had become due to creating so many horcruxes. A year for life to start over again in the peace that was obtained and to mourn the loss of those who died. A year that Harry had thought that he would be able to piece himself back together, but for some odd reason something just did not feel right to him. It was a feeling that had kept him up for many sleepless nights pondering what felt off to him.

Harry knew that he should be happy, but for some reason complete happiness hasn't been a part of him yet. He had many things to be happy about, but the feeling of something not being right was just too strong to allow him to be completely happy. A couple of reasons to be happy was that the war has been over for a year and Harry was going to be marrying his sweetheart from Hogwarts, Ginny Weasley, in less than a week's time. Yet this feeling, this wrongness, just wouldn't leave him no matter how much Harry tried to ignore it or just push it out of his mind.

For the last couple of months since graduating from Hogwarts with others of his year and the year under him, Harry has been living in a little cottage in Hogsmeade. As you can probably tell, many of Harry's year had returned to retake their final year of education at Hogwarts and so this year's graduating class was bigger than usual due to Harry and others of his year joining the students that were a year younger than them for class. Since the graduation a couple months earlier, Harry had been living comfortablely in a cozy little cottage in the revitalized wizarding village that was so close to the place he loved the most in the world, despite everything that had happened there. It was easier on Harry to stay close to Hogwarts than to stay in the dreariness that was Grimmauld Place; it was harder on Harry to enter his godfather's former home now that Remus and his wife Tonks were gone as well as Sirius.

Sometimes Harry wishes he hadn't dropped the Reserrection Stone in the Forbidden Forest so that he could see his parents and Sirius and Remus one more time before his wedding; he would've even been happy to try and see if he could see Severus Snape one last time with the Reserrection stone a last time and thank the man for everything that he had done to help Harry without him even knowing that his former potions professor was actually helping him. Then again, maybe it was for the best that he had lost that particular stone in the Forbidden Forest after all, since the temptation to use it was sometimes a little too strong for comfort. It was then that it hit Harry. He suddenly knew what the sense of wrongness was. He felt foolish for not realizing it sooner.

The feeling of something not being right was due to the fact that Harry still feels guilty for all of the lives that were lost before Voldemort was finally defeated. He knows that it isn't his fault how many people had died during the final battle, but it still haunts him nonetheless. He feels a little foolish for not being able to realize what that feeling was until now, but in a way it makes sense. Now he's really glad that he lost the Resserection stone so that he wouldn't be so foolish as to try to talk to some of those lost in the Final Battle and try to apologize to them for not saving them. An inner voice that reminded Harry strongly of Professor Snape was telling him that he was letting his Gryffindor sensibilities be more foolish than usual and he decided that his inner Snape was probably right and that he should just try and let it go instead of just burying it.

It was also around this time that Harry realized that he had been thinking of his former potions professor a lot in the last year since the man had died. That was the death that haunted Harry the most, but the man's death was actually what helped Harry to finally respect the Potions Master for the man that he had been and for being the bravest man that he ever knew. Looking back to that horrific time and watching Snape die the way that he did made Harry wish that there had been a way to save the man. He also wishes that there had been a way to save many others who had mattered to him; like Remus, Tonks, and even Fred Weasley. The Weasleys were still having a hard time dealing with the loss of Fred, but they were all looking forward to Harry and Ginny's upcoming wedding.

So many losses still plagued the thoughts of many of the survivors of the Final Battle and not just Harry, so he didn't feel so alone in that regard. What made him feel alone was that he still felt responsible for some of the people that had been lost during the battle, even though logically he knew that the deaths of the people that he cared for was in no way his fault. The sole fault for all of the deaths on both sides of the war was on the shoulders of the dead Voldemort and deep down Harry knew it. It didn't stop him from sometimes wishing that there could have been something more that he could of done. Sometimes he even briefly wishes that there was a way for him to go back and redo some of the things that had happened during his life at Hogwarts. A silly wish, really, but one that keeps presenting itself every now and then no matter how much Harry tries to not think of it. He has plenty of other things to think about.

There's the pending wedding to occupy Harry's thoughts until it actually takes place. There were preparations for said wedding to ponder, even though Molly Weasley was very adamant that everything was already under control and would be ready in time for the actual ceremony. There was even the issue of living arrangements after the wedding to think about: like whether or not Harry would continue to rent his nice little cottage in Hogsmeade or if they were going to try and move into Grimmauld Place or even if they were just going to find a suitable home among the properties that were part of the Potter estates that he had finally taken control of after the war. There was even the honeymoon to think about too, but none of those things passed through Harry's mind. All that Harry could currently think about was Hogwarts and those who had perished there during that last battle against the Dark Lord Voldemort.

Growling to himself in frustration, Harry began to pace around his surpringly neat cottage in his agitation. He has started to come to a point where he hates how much his thoughts are plagued with Hogwarts and the people he has missed since they passed on into the next life. It was starting to feel like he was becoming obsessed with those that he lost, including, in a strange way, his former teacher Snape. Harry keeps all of this to himself though, he doesn't want to worry Ginny and her family or any of the other people that care about him. He felt like this silent obsession was his burden to bear alone, mostly so that no one starts to worry about him when there could be other things that need to be worried about. Harry continues to pace about in his cottage in restless unease for several minutes as his agitation increases. It's during all of this pacing that he has the sudden overwhelming urge to return to the school one last time before his wedding, perhaps to say good-bye again to the old ghosts from that last battle with Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Maybe then he will be able to think about things that he should be thinking about, namely his wedding to the lovely Ginny and visiting some of his friends, among other things.

With this thought in mind, Harry turns and strides purposely toward his floo to check with Headmistress McGonagall if she would mind if he went back the the castle and wandered it one last time before he settles down with Ginny. It turned out, minutes later, that McGonagall had been half expecting a floo call from Harry since his graduation. At his puzzled look at that, McGonagall just looked at Harry with a slight softening in her eyes and simply told him that after teaching him for so many years that she knew he would need the closure of walking the castle halls one last time to say a final goodbye to those lost during the war. The headmistress also told Harry to come up when he was ready and to take as much time walking the halls of the school to get whatever closure he needed before she cut the floo connection. Bewildered, Harry just shook his head in bemusement at how well his former Head of House knew him.