Don't own, don't sue
Time after time
"…and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives ..."
He didn't notice at first; none of them did. He had been busy with the Aurors and Ginny was immersed in the Harpies and Ron and Hermione were trying for a baby.
They didn't notice, but they should have.
It was at a memorial for the Battle of Hogwarts, hundreds of people pressing together to pay respect to their lost friends and loved ones. Professor Sprout elbowed her way through the crowd and smiled at them breathlessly, grabbing Harry's hand to steady herself.
"Good to see you, Potter. My, you haven't aged a day! And Ginny, looking as radiant as ever!"
She shook Harry's hand and drew Ginny in for a hug, but now his wife's face held the oddest expression. She looked him up and down; face pinched and worried, but said nothing on the matter. She was quiet for the rest of the ceremony, and Harry couldn't help but feel he had done something wrong.
Later that night he found her sitting by the fire, an old photo book in her arms.
"She's right, you know," Ginny said, still watching him with that odd expression.
"Who was right?" Harry asked as he drank his tea and tried to think of what he may be in trouble for that involved a she.
"You haven't changed since you were seventeen."
Harry scoffed at that. He was always skinny and short; the result of spending ten years in a cupboard. It didn't mean he hadn't grown.
Ginny frowned and passed him a picture of them taken just after the battle, standing in a group and so happy to be alive.
Maybe Ron had grown another foot and filled out the muscles his body had always promised, but Ron was like that. Hermione was curvier now, her face more defined. Ginny had grown into her body as well, to the point where she was an inch or so taller than him.
He had changed too, hadn't he?
He had been told he inherited his seekers body, lithe and small, from his father. That must mean his father looked similar at Harry's age, right?
"You're imagining things," he told his wife, kissing her on the head and walking to the study. He looked at a photo taken of his father just after Harry had been born.
They didn't look the same.
Not at all.
People still asked for wand identification when Harry visited a bar, or carded him when he was in the muggle world.
Ron thought it was hilarious, and Hermione said it was adorable, but Harry couldn't forget the pinched look on Ginny's face.
He couldn't forget that nothing ever went right for Harry Potter.
Harry paced the hospital ward with Ron and George, fidgeting and jumpy in a way that made Hermione take away his wand.
A kindly old witch sat in the waiting room with them and smiled at Harry's nerves.
"Oh, what a dear you are. Is your mother having the baby?"
Harry ignored the silence from his friends and barked at her instantly.
"My wife is."
The woman's mouth formed an 'o' and her expression turned scandalised. It changed instantly when Harry wiped his hair from his sweat-soaked forehead to reveal his scar.
"Oh Mr Potter, I am so sorry; you just look so young!"
Harry grunted noncommittally and ignored the exchange of looks between his oldest friends.
When he finally held his son for the first time, he was awed at how small his boy was.
He looked even smaller in Ron's arms.
It was almost funny, looking back. They were on a raid, Ron covering his back, when a man in dark robes jumped out in front of them. He ignored the red-headed man in favour of Harry Potter.
Harry pulled up a shield, but felt his heart sink as a neon-green light lit up the tiny alley. He heard Ron scream and the man laugh and thought about how he hadn't kissed his daughter goodbye that morning and felt…nothing.
It took them all a few minutes to realise Harry was still standing.
He used the opportunity to stun the man who had just tried to kill him.
The healer's office was small and cramped and barely fit the crowd of Weaslys that jostled amongst themselves for position. Harry sat on the table, staring resolutely out the window and trying to be anywhere but there.
The healer, the best Mungo's had, cast spell after spell, watching as a quill spun across the floating parchment, the frown on his face becoming more and more pronounced.
"Well, medically, Harry is very healthy. He is fine."
"So the killing curse had no effect?"
"None that I can find…but this is interesting."
"What is?" Harry spoke up for the first time since entering the office and the man started as if not expecting it.
"Am I correct in saying you are thirty-two, Mr Potter?"
He nodded and swallowed at the lump in his throat.
"According to this…but there must be some mistake."
"What's wrong with me?"
"According to the diagnostic charm, you are only seventeen; but that can't be right. I will test again."
He tried again and again, but he got the same result.
Harry chugged the fifth aging potion of the day, felt his limbs go warm and mind turn heavy.
Then he threw up, and was still just Harry.
The second Killing Curse had the same effect, and the one after that, and the one after that.
Criminals turned to using Crucio instead.
They were have Christmas lunch and Harry winced every time someone asked him if he was a friend on Teddy's. He walked into the kitchen to see Ron chopping away at vegetables; the smell made Hermione nauseous.
"Ron, stab me."
The man faltered and swore as the knife cut into his flesh.
"You what?"
"Stab me, cut me, do something, please. I want to test something."
"Mate, as much as I would like to, if Mum or Ginny or 'Mione caught me…let's just say that it wouldn't be pretty."
Harry picked up a knife from the board and threw it at his friend, watching as the man reacted from years of Aurour training. He deflected the long, sharp knife and sent it flying back with the point aiming at Harry's heart.
Ron's face turned horrified as Harry made no move to block it.
The tip of the blade pierced his shirt and he could feel it on his skin, the pressure, before the metal melted from the handle and fell useless to the floor.
"Oh," gasped Hermione from the door and raised her wand before either could react.
"Diffindo."
Harry's robes shredded with easy, showing the pale unmarked skin beneath. He saw the tears gathering in Hermione's eyes and felt answering ones build in his own.
"Hermione, what's wrong with me?"
Harry went to the Department of Mysteries and touched every cursed object he could find, growing more and more frustrated at the lack of result.
When he found the arch, it was just as he remembered; tall and beckoning, filled with whispers and secrets and the promise of peace. He almost ran to it, seeing in his mind's eyes the way Sirius fell into it and disappeared forever. Harry closed his eyes and stepped in, feeling the coolness of death brush at his face and arms. He opened his eyes to find himself on the other side of the stone arch, still very much alive.
Hermione stood next to him at the station as they said goodbye to their children and Harry couldn't get over how Teddy was physically older than him.
"I've been doing research," said Hermione, and Harry would have smiled if he hadn't been feeling so lost.
"Nothing like this has ever happened before, but I think it has to do with the prophecy."
Harry nodded, because he had already worked that out.
"Either must die at the hands of the other; the only thing that can kill us is each other. If I had chosen to stay dead, Voldemort would have continued to live forever; but I killed him. I killed him, so now there is no one left to kill me. I'm stuck like this, forever."
Hermione looked like she was about to cry, but Harry had enough of crying. Instead he nodded at Malfoy and walked home with his wife and daughter.
His grandson looked just like him, and they had fun sometimes switching places.
Harry wondered if Voldemort planned this.
When Ginny died, Harry felt like throwing things; like screaming until he was hoarse and breaking everything around him. Instead he stood at the funeral as people confused him with his descendants and said a silent goodbye to his wife.
When James died Harry realised what true pain was.
He travelled for a bit, checking out the Americas and Europe and China. He learnt about spells and potions he never would have dreamt existed, and watched the turn of another century atop of Mount Kilimanjaro.
He ended up back at Hogwarts, the castle wards greeting him like an old friend. It was inevitable, him ending up where he started, the only place he belonged now.
A lot of things in his life seemed evitable.
Harry took the role of Defence teacher and laughed as the headmaster, a Longbottom, warned him about the one-year curse on the job position.
Harry took it anyway, and was grateful for the challenge.
After fifty-three years of teaching, Harry began to understand how Professor Bins must feel, teaching children and their children and their children's children. It was really depressing.
Harry sometimes ran into walls, just to check that he wasn't a ghost; it left him with a funny reputation amongst the students.
Harry was at Hogwarts for nearly a hundred years before he was offered the position of headmaster. He knew his appearance threw off a lot of people, but it was fun sometimes to dress as a student and live a day in their shoes.
He watched as a red-haired Slytherin boy sneered at a blonde Ravenclaw.
"Watch where you're going, Malfoy. Wouldn't want any accidents before Potions."
The Ravenclaw glowered.
"Shut up Potter; you're the one more experienced with accidents."
It didn't matter how many times a Potter and Malfoy married or a Zabini fell for a Weasly; Harry was still amazed by how determined the past was to repeat itself.
He watched the sorting, watched as another scrawny dark-haired Potter scampered onto the stool. He reached out with magic and felt a warmth around the boy. He would keep his eye on that one.
Harry sat in his office, fiddling with papers and trying to make himself look busy when Professor Lovegood stalked in. The man was hook-nosed and bitter; reminding Harry more of Snape than the sweet girl he named godmother to his daughter. Behind him was the little dark-haired Potter with the most vibrant green eyes.
"Headmaster," drawled the man, thinly veiled disdain evident in his voice.
"A family matter has caught my attention involving one of the students."
The boy fidgeted and Harry rested his face on his linked fingers, knowing he didn't look nearly as all-knowing as Dumbledore did when he did it.
"My parents were given the kiss over an illegal potions ring," the boy blurted. "The rest of the family says that taking me in will tarnish their name. I don't have a home to go to."
Harry pulled out several forms that had been created not long after he had become headmaster and passed one to the boy.
"By signing this you agree that you are in my care and will follow the rules of Hogwarts as best you can. It allows you to stay on grounds over the summer period and means that any permission slips given to you by the staff will be given to me, your guardian, to sign. Is that ok?"
He had three older students under the same contract, but none of which he was related to. It made him feel a little nervous.
The boy's eyes widened and he looked dumbstruck.
"You'll take me in? You aren't sending me to an orphanage?"
Harry shrugged and smiled awkwardly.
"Yeah, if that's what you want. Did you want to live at Hogwarts?"
The boy nodded breathlessly and signed, spiling some ink and making Professor Lovegood's face sour further.
"Could you take these forms to the Ministry, Brian?" Lovegood snatched it up and swept from the room, but not before Harry caught sight of the name on the form.
Harry Severus Potter.
Harry watched from his office window as his new ward sat by the lake under a tree where Harry himself had sat once. The boy had with him a muggleborn girl with bushy brown hair and a Weasly with more freckles than sense.
A silver-haired boy approached them, cautious and slow, but after a minute or so of conversation joined the trio by the lake. Soon he was jostling and laughing with the children, possibly about how the dark-haired boy kept sneaking glances at the red-head girl sitting nearby.
Harry watched them and wondered if this was the reason he was to be, always, the Boy Who Lived.
To watch over the could-have-been's and the what-if's, see the same situations and choices play over and over.
Time after time.