While the Years Passed By

Prologue / Introduction

This is a series is chapters from the point of view of Harry's generation. Harry is immortal as Master of Death but they are not. This is told from many perspective because I wanted to show what many of the book's characters have been up to and because I've been a bit influenced by A Song of Ice and Fire.

You will notice that each chapter takes place at a funeral. Sound's depressing although that's not exactly what I'm going for. The purpose of the funereal setting is to emphasise the fact that Harry has already lived for a lifetime without having to write more in depth fics covering that period in detail. The chapters will vary in their focus, from the deceased to the narrator of the chapter, but can include other characters as the main character and most will have bits and pieces about Harry's life as well.

The goal is to convey two things, that at this stage in his life Harry is undergoing a traumatic experience, solidifying the idea that he will always outlive people although this is of course something he has had a great deal of time to consider and try to deal with. This is why I'm also trying to show that all these other characters have gone out and lived their lives fully. This also should help the reader understand Harry developing a somewhat fatalistic attitude with regards to others, to put it crudely: Harry knows everyone will die and excepts this but has come to believe that he can only except their passing and celebrate their lives when their go.

Chapter One: The Lord Ronald Weasley

March, 2081

The was slowly levitated into the grave by the pall-bearers while the Lord Weasley stood solemnly at the head of the grave. A few short weeks earlier he had celebrated his 101st birthday with his sister and now he buried her. She had been a few months shy of her own century and better preserved than him, her brown eyes still bright and her wand fast when she dealt with Fred's cantankerous pranking. Fingers brushed at his watering eyes and his hand went down to dry them on the thick black cloth of his formal robes. Only the Lord Weasley and three other attendees worse such robes, the formal wear of the leader of a Noble House to mark a death. Long and heavy they made of roughly spun black cloth and cowled, reminiscent of monk's garbs except for their edges. A band an inch thick ran around each edge, consisting of a dark – almost black – red thread depicting elaborately coiling and twisted foxes in a pattern that dated back to the first Weasley in the days of the Kingdom of Strathclyde.

Two of the others stood at the foot of the grave, Noble friends but not relations. Susan, in robes depicting a stylised whale-bone harpoon, faded to grey instead of it's normal ivory white, denoting the origin of the Bones family as a seafaring clan from the Shetland Islands, who had gained fame hunting the whales, krakens and great serpents of the deep. To her right stood Neville embroidered with the legendary oaken longbow and acorns of his Norman fore-father.

The last Lord stood to Ronald's left, unique in his three noble bands, the green stag of Potter, the dark ravens of Black and the silver symbol of House Peverell. Another thing that made this man unique was his youth. The Lord Weasley had aged poorly for a wizard of his heritage – his snowy hair and tightly cropped beard white while his father, thirty years his senior, still had vividly red - if somewhat thin - hair. The death of his wife had aged him prematurely, but that was, according to his dear departed 'Mione, an unavoidable fact of genetics. The power to wield magic was binary, you had it or you did not. A muggle witch was as powerful as any pure-blood but as she had explained. Ron smiled at the memory of an exasperated Hermione forcing him to sit down with his own pre-teen children – his protests met with a waspish "You will not be less educated than your ten-year old child Ron!" and flared nostrils, always a sign to shut-up and behave – while she conjured a set of paints.

There was something called Gee and Aih and it was like the paintbox and you were the picture. If the paints you had could paint Weasley red hair, you had Weasley hair. For some things you could only use certain colours. And a flick oh her wand spread a long skin coloured silhouette of a head and chest onto the paper. When it was roughly the size of Ron's own upper body the paint had run out. She turned to Hugo and Rose, "Now because we've run out of paints for skin colour we can't make the person any taller." A spatter of brown flecked across the paint like freckles. "Which is why your father is too tall to be real."

And to paint magic you needed a very precise shade of paint so it was rare, but it could be only with a large number of colours. Now if you had enough of those colours to get a close shade of the magic colour you couldn't use magic but you had it. Squibs and many muggles had some of the colours and so, like wizards they were long-lived, healed well and were a little more bludger-resistant than others. Now the magic colour could still be made with different sets of paints and if even if you had more than enough to use magic it still changed how magic effected the body, so many magical genes resulted in the ancient wizards like Merlin who had lived into their hundreds. Throughout history pure-bloods like the Blacks had noticed this because of the small size of their long-lived magical communities and developed their doctrines, but because there was a mathsy thing that he hadn't understood (he didn't have the time to be home-schooled with infants!) Ron had been lost during the brief explanation that followed. For his benefit Hermione had told him to think of momentum, which Ron understood. Every magic gene was like a push to a rolling object. What the blood-purists hadn't realised is that in such small communities there didn't tend to be much diversity in magical genes anyway, so you could collect all the available paints but there would be many more in other people, either randomly in muggles or into distant and isolated wizarding communities. This meant that the new addition of colours came from muggle-borns entering the community and so people like Harry and 2nd or third generation wizards would have the most.

Many years later she had taken back to Hugo's empty room and sat him down in the same spot. With a solemn tone she had twirled her grey hair around a finger and told him what she hadn't wanted to then. During her research for the Ministry campaign to counter blood purist ideology she had used her and Ron's families to find the genetic keys to magic and had been able to predict their lifespans to an extent. Her wrinkled and had brushed against taught muscle that would have been an achievement for a fifty year old muggle. Three years later in her early eighties she had been taken from him.

The thought of the argument that had followed brought his mind back to the present as he looked at Harry. For a decade they had feuded over his refusal to summon her with the Resurrection Stone. For a moment he wondered whether he would be using the stone tonight, but the unworthy hint of his old jealousy was swept aside. As a young man Ron had been a prat, although not – as many had thought – because he was jealous of Harry. Well, not really. To be a Weasley was to be poor which made you less important, it was to be from a House that had fallen from the nobility which made you unimportant and it was to have fallen from a leading position in Magical Britain, which of course, made you unimportant. His generation of Weasleys had changed all that, but perhaps only because it pushed them to excel. A Weasley has to do more to succeed and so they all had. A renowned curse-breaker, and dragon-keeper skilled enough to live to retirement, a powerful Ministry worker and skilled diplomat, two boys who had created a business empire and a witch who had been both a champion duellist and broom racer.

What Ron had discovered was that being a Weasley made you unimportant but being a sidekick made you invisible. He had kicked and screamed (metaphorically, mostly) before coming to terms with this a few years out of Hogwarts and finding his own role. Ron Weasley was Harry Potter's best friend and war-time companion but he was also a former Chudley Cannon's player (a mediocre one he'd admit) and manager (where he had turned the Cannons into Europe's top club). With his new wealth he was both generous and charitable, but it had still come as something of a surprise when Draco Malfoy had lead the Wizengamot to restore the title of the House of Weasley with Ron as it's Lord. Ron had later learned that Malfoy simply wouldn't stand for Scorpius to be involved with a grill from a fallen House and Scorpius had claimed that the only way that would change was if Rose became Noble, and so the smarmy git had done it. What Malfoy hadn't expected was what the combined force of Hermione in the Ministry and Ron in the Wizengamot could do. The resulting civil and political reforms earning them each a an order of Merlin. From the time that Ron had recognised his own achievements that jealousy had vanished, replaced by the pride and ambition that had driven him through his distinguished life.

Hermione's passing had taken a toll but still he rarely felt 'old'. Recently though he was seeing Harry less and less. Neither of them would admit it but they were growing apart. Glancing over at the bright eyes and black hair of a young man who looked to be in his thirties Ron knew why. To see Harry young and unchanged made him feel old, older still than looking at Neville or George, wizened like he was. On Harry's part Ron could see the pain in his eyes as he watched friends age and die. For others, at the very least there would be nothing, at the best they would be reunited with those they had lost. For Harry there would be innumerable years of life, uncountable people, all destined to leave him alone. So both of them grew apart rather than confront this.

Author's Note:

Please keep in mind that I'm not a geneticist and that my explanation is told by an old Ron reciting lessons Hermione gave young children. I'm drawing a bit from medichloreans in Star Wars so all life has some 'magic' in it and on Tolkien's treatment of bloodlines like the elves and the Numenoreans etc.

With regards to the ages, if you have questions or are puzzled please refer to the Fractured World's Companion fic which includes a quick summary of how I'm treating the lifespans of Wizards.

Reviews are appreciated, but not necessary.

But definitely appreciated.