AN: As a part of writing my other HP stories I realized I wanted to explore another ending of my stories. An ending that is based on a head cannon I once read about Harry and the Prophecy.

This is just a one shot that I wrote in an hour or two because I really wanted to get the idea out of my head. It was like a song that won't go away until you listen to the whole thing.

I do not own that which you recognize as Harry Potter.

July 31st, 2002

"Again?!?!??!"

Ginny was absolutely furious and terrified at the same time.

"He got hit by the Killing Curse? Again???"

She was talking about him as if he were not sitting in a hospital bed only a few feet away from her. The words were directed at Ron who, while also bandaged, was not bedridden like Harry.

"Ginn..."

She whipped around pointing an accusing finger at him, the anger had blown out, replaced almost immediately by tears. That confused Harry as Ginny had never been a weepy person, until her she spoke then he felt nothing but shame and pain.

"You promised me. You promised me you would be more careful. I can't do this without you."

The cold feeling deep inside him was freezing his lungs now and he struggled to respond.

"Ginny I wasn't..."

"Don't you care about us?"

Harry stopped at the words, for whatever reason the emphasis she had placed on us had felt strange, out of place.

"What do you mean us..."

Even as he said it the truth hit him like a hammer, Ginny was pregnant. Ignoring the pain, and the alarm that started to sound as he forced himself upright, Harry touched his fiancées face then rested his forehead against hers as he had so many times before.

"I am never giving up on us. There was a time I didn't care if I lived or died, but that was a different me. I can't wait to spend my life with you."

Ginny pulled herself onto the bed next to him so that he could lay back against the pillows, even as a mediwizard flew into the room looking alarmed.

"Are you ok Mr. Potter!?"

"Yes, I'm sorry about that. I just received some wonderful news."

"Be that as it may, it is a miracle you are alive to begin with, but tell me, how are your other injuries?"

Harry focused on his body for a moment trying to figure out if there was anything that stood out to him. He realized with a sense if confusion that all the pain he had been feeling had faded. It was as if he had never taken part in the raid early that morning.

"I feel as good as new. How is that possible?"

The mediwizard stepped forward and began examining Harry, after a few minutes he stood back again looking confused as well.

"I don't know how to say this. Its as if your injuries never happened. I can find no traces of injuries or healed flesh."

?????, ??, ????

"Happy birthday to me...Happy birthday to me..."

Harry sat on the ground his back against a tall tree looking past a stone memorial in front of him. His gaze cast over a lake at the crumbling ruin of a castle he had once called home. The grave of Albus Dumbledore still appeared just as it had the day Harry had graven the stone, but Hogwarts was not so lucky.

The grounds that Harry now called home were no longer known to wizards. There were a few references in legend and myth of the once great school, and its once mighty walls. They no longer believed in such things, it had been so long since the fall...too long. Harry had saved the library of Hogwarts, and of Potter Hall. Despite both buildings now laying in ruin, Harry endured.

Fate it turned out was far more cruel than he could have ever imagined in his worst nightmares. Harry endured, he endured the years unchanging and untouched by time. He looked just as he had throughout his twenties, though even he had forgotten just how old he was now. It had taken him a decade to realize something was wrong. He simply did not age, even as his friends were aging, and his children grew. Harry was untouched by the ravages of time and age.

It turned out that the prophecy had meant more than just he or Voldemort must die in order for the other to survive. It had meant the only way either could die was at the hand of the other. Harry was immortal for none but the hand of Voldemort could bring his life to an end. Though the years, decades, and centuries had blended together, Harry could still remember vividly his first hundred years. They had been both the most joyous and most terrible of his life.

He had grown up, made friends, fallen in love, defeated Voldemort, gotten married, had children, and rid magical Britain of much evil, but he had been forced to watch it all fall apart. His friends, his wife, his children and grandchildren, he watched them all age and die before his eyes. Though his descendants now numbered more than he could count, none still remained that bore the name: Potter.

After watching all those he had loved die, Harry had begun to travel the world doing what he did best, moving forward. He never forgot the past, far from it, but as Harry had discovered in his youth the only antidote to pain, to suffering, was to do things, to do good works without asking for thanks. So Harry traveled, he learned and taught, raised schools, orphanages, and so much more. He also fought, he brought every ounce of his unnatural powers to bear on those that carried nothing but evil in their hearts.

After centuries of this Harry grew tired, his name had faded into myth just as the castle he had first called home. How many years had it been? One thousand? Ten thousand? More? Harry could hardly guess. Human civilization had fallen, and risen again so many times he marked the passing time by the progress of man in its cycle of progress and destruction. However, he did intervene in events from the shadows.

Any time muggles or wizards went too far, threatening the very existence of life on Earth, he was there. He had stopped the nuclear winter from erasing life in his earliest intervention. Another time he had prevented a wayward magician from accidentally cooling the earths core so far as to degrade the magnetosphere. A thousand and one apocalyptic events he had stopped, yet there were so many he could not stop them all.

That was why he now lived here, in this forgotten place, a legend living amongst a myth. A flash of flame erupted overhead and Fawkes landed on the lowest branch of Dumbledore's tree.

"Hullo Fawkes. What brings you by this time?"

His voice was soft and without malice, and the Phoenix dropped something from its beak onto his lap before erupting into flames once more. Harry looked down and felt something that he had not felt in millennia, fear. On his lap sat a golden ring holding a cracked black stone. On the face was carved a triangular eye, that even now so long since he had seen it, Harry recognized.

"The resurrection stone..."

Harry breathed the words, barely daring to believe what he held could still exist. The cloak he had passed to his children, but after many generations he had reclaimed it with the end of the Potter name. Even now it was in a pocket he had sewn into his overcoat specially for that purpose. He had never desired to find this again, it had been in the snitch Dumbledore had left him. He had buried it in the Forbidden Forest less than a year after he had defeated Voldemort and he never expected to see it again.

Now here it was and a new chill crept up his spine. He had long since realized why Dumbledore had insisted that his wand not be buried with him. Why he had insisted Harry hide it as only he could. Dumbledore had been the master of the Elder Wand, and had hoped with his death, never truly defeated, that its power would break. Harry was not so sure, his cloak was eternal, as unchanging as he was, and Harry doubted wether the other two were any different.

At that thought Harry got to his feet and placed his hand on the memorial stone.

"Was this your plan all along old friend?"

Harry walked to the ruins of the castle, his magical senses so finely tuned it was less than child's play to locate the stone he had sealed the Elder Wand within. Moments more to extract the wand from the stone and stand stock still for a moment.

A chill breeze swept over him and he turned sensing the presence behind him. He started as he turned to face the figure, he was tall and thin, though not hooded, he was wearing brilliant robes of midnight blue that was strewn with stars. The face took Harry only moments to recognize even now so long since he had laid it to rest.

"Been a long time."

"That it has Harry. That it has. I think I can truly say the years have been far kinder to me than to you Harry."

The startlingly blue eyes of Albus Dumbledore sparkling as the man smiled at Harry. He was far younger in appearance than Harry had ever seen him, though the eyes were unmistakable.

"I am old Albus... So old..."

"I know Harry, and I have watched you every step of the way. The last of the Peverall line, and truly master of Death. You have done enough. Come. Be at peace."

Harry looked at him and laughed. He laughed so hard it hurt. It had been centuries since he had smiled, and still more centuries since he had last laughed, but laughed he did. It was not a laugh of humor however. It was the laughter of a man who had absolutely nothing left, and whom sanity was not entirely familiar.

"Would that I could Albus."

Dumbledore simply smiled and extended a hand to him. Harry looked at him for a long time, in fact so long that the shadows were now cast by the light if the moon instead of the sun. Then Harry stepped forward towards his old teacher, and took his hand. He felt something change and he realized he was no longer wearing the browns and grays of his self made dress, but the white jeans, and T-shirt he had worn on his last visit to this place.

Harry blinked and he was standing in Kings Cross Station, though it was almost completely white, and completely empty, save a single train.

With only a glance Harry knew that his journey was finally over, that he could finally rest, and at last be with all those he loved here at the end.

AN: Bit of a short and dark one shot but I needed to write it and its written so might as well put it out there. Consider this an alternate end for Harry as written in my story(s) I am writing a sequel to Making Changes called After Changes. It will be set immediately following the first half of the Epilogue as obviously it has to be before the end of the epilogue.