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The first time Harry walks the earth amongst the mortals, he falls in love.
He’s a young God, turned after dying a Hero. God of tragic sacrifices; it’s almost ironic. He spent the first few hundred years buried in nymphs and muses alike, each one prettier than the last. He let himself drown in alcohol and the offerings mortals made him, accepting them without listening to their prayers. No one listened to his, after all.
When he meets the boy - eighteen, three years younger than Harry was when he died - he stops breathing. He doesn’t remember why he even visited the mortal realm, doesn’t care why he came, only knows that he has to meet him.
The boy’s name is Draco. He has light, almost white blonde hair, ice blue eyes, and he has the softest, purest-looking skin Harry has seen in his life. Harry has to go up to him.
He’s an orphan, as many are, and his skin is sun-kissed from working as a fisherman. The waters are blue, clean and gorgeous, and the boy teaches him how to sail. Harry never tells him he’s a God.
They sail, and take walks, and sleep under the stars. Harry learns the humans’ legend of him, what they say he did. They’ve some of it wrong; Harry was never as selfless as they paint him to be, he never fell in love. He learns that they call him merciless, that they don’t seem to understand how he’s changed. He asks Draco what he thinks about it, once, when they’re in bed together.
“I think he did enough alive,” Draco says, lifting a shoulder.
Harry couldn’t agree more.
Draco dies in a storm. Harry hadn’t been there with him, had been looking for a way to make him a God, too, a way to spend forever with him.
The day he dies, Harry feels it, an ache deep in his bones, hurting more than his own death did. He cannot bring mortals back, but he tries. He carries Draco’s body to mount Olympus, tries everything he can think of. When that doesn’t work, he makes sure his love gets a proper burial, in the garden of Harry’s temple, lilies and sunflowers growing tangled with each other where his body is.
Harry vows to find him again.
*
It takes time. Harry doesn’t find him until after Greece has fallen. Hardly anyone believes in him, anymore, but Draco does.
HE finds him again in a city called Pompeii. He’s an artist, now. His name is Junius, and his hair is just as white as it was the first time they met. He has a deep phobia of the sea.
Harry learns all this as they pick flowers by the foot of the Volcano. He’s not as shy, in this lifetime, and he still blushes every time Harry smiles at him.
When Draco dies again - after years together, because of a snake bite - Harry’s wrath makes the Volcano explode. He doesn’t regret it for one second.
*
He’s in Constantinople now. Harry feels him, as he did that first day he wondered down with the mortals, and he frightens people in his rush to find him, running through the streets wherever his heart takes him.
When he sees him, everything stops.
His hair and his skin are both ashen, in this life. A sign from the past, a reminder of what Harry did. He’s also taller, and covered in freckles, but he has the same eyes, and Harry knows those eyes. Harry fell in love with those eyes.
His name is Constans, and Harry has to stop himself from calling him ‘Draco’ every time they’re together. They fall in love and it’s slower, this time. He’s wary, less trusting. Less sweet. Harry doesn’t mind. He has all the time in the world, and he’s willing to spend all of it winning Draco over.
He likes to participate in Chariot races. Harry’s beside him every time, gazing and thinking that he could not possibly love him more.
He dies of sickness, this time. Harry’s by his bedside the entire time, taking care of him as he can. When Draco begs him to put a knife through his ribs - he can’t take it anymore, he says, it hurts so much, please - Harry does, with tears in his eyes.
He wonders how long it’ll be this time, before he finds Draco again.
*
It’s longer, this time. Harry travels the world, answers the rare prayers that he receives, accepts the scarce offerings. When he sees Draco again, he doesn’t want to approach him. He can’t bear to lose him again.
Still, he does, because living without him is somehow less bearable than watching him die again.
This time, he’s reincarnated as a woman. She has long brown hair, face dirty and eyes like molten lava. Harry loves that his eyes never change.
Her name is Anastasie, she says. She speaks French.
Move, she tells him. Move.
Harry doesn’t understand why things are on fire. There’s so much death around, people yelling. He doesn’t know what’s happening. They’re calling for the death of the monarchs.
Harry doesn’t even get her to fall in love with him, this time. He’s barely had time to look at her before she’s pushing him aside, eyes widening and blood spreading across her stomach.
The man who’s stabbed her with a bayonet doesn’t live to see another second. Harry makes sure of it.
He holds Draco while she dies.
After it’s done, Harry has no reason to stay.
*
He spends a lot of time debating on whether or not to look for Draco again. He knows where he is - he always does - but it’s too much, losing him every time, each as tragically as the last. It’s his punishment, he’s sure, for being as merciless as he was with mortals.
That he’s now in love with someone who seems to die each life as soon as they’re together.
So he ignores Draco’s prayers to him.
It’s an odd thing, for someone to still believe in Greek gods, but it seems that Draco, in each life, still does. Harry feels it when he dies of sickness, at forty five. Feels it again when it’s a stab wound, when he’s twenty. Feels it again when he dies only just minutes after he’s born.
After each of those times, Harry’s emotions make a disaster so big thousands of deaths accompany it. The rest of the Gods are furious, but Harry doesn’t care. They made him a hero, and then they made him a God. They didn’t care if Harry wanted it.
So he doesn’t care what they want.
*
“Hi.” It’s been a long, long time, but Harry can’t take it anymore.
Draco looks up at him, and it’s his face again; his eyes, his white blonde hair, his the soft curve of his mouth. He’s sitting on a Cafe using his laptop. He’s studying marine biology, Harry knows. He’s kept a close eye on him, all this time.
“Hi,” Draco turns red. He’s just as sweet and shy as that first life, and whenever Harry thinks he can’t possibly love him more, he does. The hurt grows along with it.
“I - my name is Harry.” Harry says. He looks twenty one. Will eternally look twenty one, unless he masks his appearance, of course, but he could never do that with Draco. “I know this is terribly forward, but I was wondering if I could buy you a cup of coffee.”
Draco already has a steaming cup of hot chocolate, but he nods quickly.
“I-” the color in his face deepens, and he looks away. “You seem so familiar.”
Harry’s lips lift. “Do I?”
“Yes, I-” You seem like someone I’ve loved before, he thinks. He doesn’t say it, but Harry hears it all the same. It makes his heart pound. “I don’t know.”
Harry has to hide his smile.
“I never caught your name,” He says, because it’s usually not the same, and he doesn’t want to make a mistake.
“Draco,” Draco says, smiling. “Draco Malfoy.”