Chapter Text
Immortality, understandably, scares the shit out of people.
Especially when the immortal in question wields magic the way the oceans wield tsunamis. Anything that could not be powered through was worked around. Laws of magic as taught to the population went wholly ignored as Harry Potter charmed a bottle of firewiskey endless. There was no reserve stash that the bottle drew from, the bottle’s interior was not expanded. The liquor simply never ran out. Harry didn’t even realise he had done it until years had passed and he had never purchased more bottles. The year of aged whiskey he was used to did not exist anymore, nor did the years either side of it. The well had run dry.
Except it hadn’t.
Harry’s bottle sat in his cabinet still thre quarters full and not a drop less.
Harry didn’t shop for groceries more than once a month, and that was usually when he wanted something specific that he couldn’t be bothered to describe to Kreacher.
Whenever he wanted something Kreacher knew how to make, and checked the shelf, it was there waiting for him.
Kreacher got into the habit of informing him of his meals beforehand with a comprehensive ingredient list.
The items would be waiting for the elf in time for his prompt return to the kitchen.
When he realised he had been using the same roll of muggle toilet paper for four years he finally sent an owl to Ron and Hermione.
—
Hermione cast a range of diagnostic and identification spells; her skin went more and more ashen as the spells continued.
Ron was running him through questions about what he had noticed and, after Hermione gave the go-ahead, began a treasure-hunt through Grimmauld Place to try and find anything out of the ordinary.
“Mate, why is there a pool on the second floor?”
“It’s not a pool!”
“Then what is it?”
“It's a bath.”
“...”
“A big one.”
“...”
“Ron stop looking at me like that. I would know if I had a pool.”
Harry turned the corner from an empty guest bedroom on Teddy’s floor he was inspecting to find Ron stood in a doorway that Harry was pretty sure led to a shared guest bathroom.
He peeked over Ron’s shoulder.
There was an olympic sized pool in a huge cavernous room that looked suspiciously like the prefect's bathroom at Hogwarts.
“Hang on, I'll call Teddy.”
—
Harry returned downstairs holding a floral compact mirror up in front of his face.
“I thought you knew!”
“How would I know that my house is the room of requirement on crack?”
“Because everytime I ask about cool things to do with my friends over the holidays the house sprouts a new wing or floor dedicated to watever activity it is that you talk about. We have an ice skating rink in basement three, Dad .”
“We have multiple basements?”
“I thought you knew that. You put the ice rink there.”
“Teddy, I havent seen an ice-rink since you were four and toddling along with the kiddy strollers at Somerset House.”
Teddy’s sheepishness radiated out of the mirror so loudly that Ron snorted.
“And you didn’t think to tell us kiddo?”
“I thought it was one of those things we don’t talk about Uncle Ron, like the funny shaped glass in the kitchen that fills itself with whatever drink you speak out loud or how everytime we go to the park for picnics we always leave behind a ring of flowers and mushrooms like the fae.”
The golden trio shared a look before bolting downstairs to the kitchen. Teddy was still speaking over the mirror; a lifetime of ignoring the trio’s chaos allowing him to keep speaking as though Harry didn’t just vault over Ron's head to reach the bottom of the stairs first and his viscious swearing when Hermione clawed into his shoulder to push him backwards and into her husband to latch onto the doorknob first.
“Or the fact that when Dad laughs his face changes and he gets shorter and young; or how the lenses in his glasses are fake; or the way he rotates between three outfits that grow with him and change colours to look different every day-” “-Is that why I sometimes only have flamingo pink shirts?-” “-Yup!, or like how my biological Mum and Dad say goodnight to me every Samhain. Or how we all call it Samhain because the word ‘Halloween’ makes all the adults I know flinch.”
At this point Hermione had stopped inspecting the offending glass and both her and her husband were watching the mirror with a lazerlike focus. Harry was stuck on one part of the sentence.
“Who are you calling short you little scoundrel?”
“Dad, you changed yourself the way I change myself constantly but you use it to be two inches taller and wrinkly instead of being colourful or funky shapes. It's such a waste . Nobody believes me when I tell them that you’re a metamorph too.”
Harry passed the mirror to Ron.
He reached for his magic. These days it was hovering over his skin like a thin layer of glue. He pushed his magic back down into what he had decided was his ‘core’ to allow it to rest for, what he realised, was the first time it had been given a break since he was about sixteen. He opened his eyes to find Ron halfway out of his chair, pale and silent, Hermione holding his forearm tightly enough that Ron was forced to sit back down.
“Harry, you look seventeen.”
—
“In other news, Harold Saxon and his adoptive son Orion Saxon were just spotted at Wimbledon this morning! Aren’t they such family goals?”
“I completely agree Anna! Let’s take a look at who they’re wearing. Harold Saxon, currently running for Prime Minister, has arrived at the tennis courts in what his son has assured us is an original work of Christopher Kane, who agreed to personally design an aqua blue suit, taking inspiration from his own spring/summer line. Doesn’t Harold look playful?”
“Quite right Josie, And his son is wearing a matching tie of the same fabric with his cream YSL ensemble. I just love their matchy-matchy energy. For those of you who have not yet been introduced to the illustrious Orion Saxon, Cosmopolitan Bachelor Of The Year for anyone living under a rock, Orion is a pioneer in green energy and zero-waste material creation. He has just returned from his zero-waste boating expedition to map out and create a plan for removing plastics from the ocean worldwide! He makes his father proud.”
“Isn’t he dreamy? The pair are on their fifth public outing this week! It’s clear that Harold is excited to have his son back.”
“Ladies at home, your opportunity arises. There are rumours floating about that the both of them are going to be making an appearance in central London to go museum-hopping tomorrow! There is a new exhibit called ‘La Bouche du Roi’ that our source states that Orion called to inquire about specifical-”
The telly went black as the Master turned to him, remote in hand.
“ Master ful work! Truly inspired. At this rate their votes are mine even without the minor hypnosis.”
Harry gave him a bland look. He’d been dealing with the puns for months at this point, he was slowly becoming unable to register them. In one ear and out the other.
The pair were sitting in the living area in their deluxe suite at The Ritz. The Master was lounging across one sofa whilst Harry was propped up in an armchair repepatedly flicking lumos’ into the air wandlessly with varying degrees of power.
The Master had his head in his hands on propped up elbows watching the laptop as the sonic readings came in for every light.
He had made it his mission to figure out exactly what type of energy Harry was using to blatantly ignore the laws of the universe. So far they had managed only the matchstick/needle transfiguration. There were ten needles and twenty matchsticks layed out on the coffee table. They all had little post-it notes underneath to identify how long they have spent both transfigured and untransfigured.
“What is the plan for the Presidency/Ministership anyway? Last we spoke about it, you were circulating between Mind-Control Garden of Eden and Master-verse: The Clone Wars .”
“I'm stuck between Toclafane-Takeover and Galifray 2.0 but I am still quite partial to the Master-Verse.”
“So long as we increase biodiversity and save the polar bears I'm game for anything.”
—
They’re at Teddy's Hogwarts graduation. Harry has to make a conscious effort to not release the magic bubbling under his skin.
His hair has changed colours six times in the last half-hour and the parents were gossiping as though Harry’s metamorph magic had not been plastered across The Prophet for the last three years. It turns out that once you stop doing magic subconsciously, it takes a lot more effort to hold it for any amount of time. It's like when you remember that you are breathing and your brain takes the functioning of your lungs off of the automatic setting and switches it to manual.
So yeah. That secret spilled a month or so after Harry himself was told about it.
Teddy was now considered - by every tabloid in Wixen Europe as well as The Prophet - to be Harry’s illegitimate son. What a scandal (note the sarcasm). It doesn’t help that by naming Teddy as Heirs Black and Potter that he’s essentially confirmed the rumours.
Harry wasn’t too stressed about it, Teddy may not have been born to him but that boy was his in every way that matters.
The extended Weasley Clan roared with approval as Teddy took to the podium for his head boy speech. McGonaggal made clear that the position was nepotistic because Teddy had been slated with too many detentions and point losses from various pranks over the years to have been legitimately in the running. Teddy was a bit peeved until he returned to Hogwarts to spend his final year in the luxury of the Head Student’s wing right in the center of the castle. The bath was worth the evening patrols and the meetings.
Harry was happy.
But he knew it wouldn’t last. Not really. Not whilst his advanced diagnostic charms kept reading 17 years 9 months 2 days in the age section.
Hermione had returned to her position with the unspeakables that he and Ron weren’t supposed to know about and spent all her time in the death chamber researching how to kill him. Immortality wasn’t a scary thought until he realised that his family graveyard in Godrics Hollow would only expand and that he would still be leaving flowers on gravestones every fortnight more than a century into the future.
He learnt a charm to grow plants after Andy passed. It was becoming a bit tedious to lug a cart of bouquets around at a certain point.
—
“If that fucking toady bint doesn’t stop staring at me like he’s imagining me being between his legs I’m going to set him on fire.”
“Not if I get there first.”
“Master, I know we’re running with the whole father and son thing but you aren’t my dad, there isn’t any reason for how overprotective you were back there.”
“The only reason we went for this angle was because the stupid humans have stupidly backwards beliefs about same-sex relationships.”
“...And also the fact that I look seventeen, right?”
“Yes, that as well.”