Title/Author: Hoppípolla by Reinamy

Summary: Harria Potter just wanted to spend the next few decades in peace. So when she stumbles across a young boy being haunted by a ghost, what does she do? She investigates, naturally. Let it never be said that stupidity diminishes with age. Hikaru/Akira/Fem!Harry.

Warnings: AU, genderswap, crossover, dimension travel, Master of Death!HP, OOC-ness, threesome, slash and het, age disparity, mild language, etc.

Disclaimer: This is non-profitable fan-work. No copyright infringement intended. The title is from the song "Hoppípolla" by Sigur Ros (which is Icelandic for "jumping into puddles").


Author's Notes: I am so eager to start posting this, guys! I sincerely hope someone out there enjoys this despite the unusual crossover/pairing.

The fic will feature Fem!Harry and she will eventually be in a polyamorous relationship with Akira and Hikaru. That is set in stone, folks. The story will be primarily set in the HNG universe though I won't be following the canonical timeline. Like, at all. It will also contain excessive POV switching, though I'll never rehash the same scene. Um. I don't play Go, but I did my best to make the games as understandable and entertaining as possible. Enjoy!


PART ONE

Prologue - Rebirth


It was the end of another life.

Hooded eyes stared up at an ashen sky torn open by the weight of an irrepressible deluge. Soot-colored raindrops fell, but the woman couldn't feel any of it. She was numb, and she wasn't sure if it was due to the frigid air or because her body was shutting down and whatever temperature receptors she had were losing function.

A flash of lightening streaked across the sky, nearly blinding her, and she turned her head. Sand. For miles and miles there was nothing but sand, sweeping out around her like a sea of dust. Beneath her it felt like a coffin lining, and she found herself snorting at the morbid shape of her thoughts. Pain pulsed in her chest, and her minute amusement faded.

It wasn't as if the metaphor wasn't apt.

The woman sighed and lifted blood-soaked hands to her stomach, then slowly dragged them upwards, smearing a line of red up a beige blouson where it merged with the stain that was growing steadily from just below her clavicle. Trembling fingertips brushed the convergence point where flesh met steel, then traveled upwards, trailing the outline of an arrow that had been shot out of the sky from a transparent hovercraft her sensors had somehow failed to detect.

How they had found her, she didn't know. She didn't very much care, either. The machine was currently laying in a pit several meters away, the rain beating out the last dredges of flame that surrounded the twisted metal body. She doubted there were any survivors. Even from so far away she could smell the sharp stench of molten iron, of burning flesh, of smoke and gas and death. If there were survivors, then they must be pretty magical themselves.

She should probably heal herself, she knew, before they came to investigate. It wasn't as if she hadn't had worse injuries in the past. And yet, she found herself reluctant to conjure the magic needed to mend the wound, the energy inside of her shimmering beneath her skin in abeyance when it should have been surging upwards to heal.

Should, should, should.

What would be the point of staying? She had nothing left to return to—the city she'd come to think of as home was gone, decimated by six years of merciless war. Her friends were much the same, bodies—those that could be found—long ago incinerated in pyres, ashes now circling the winds. There were people who still needed her—her commander, her comrades, the pathetic remains of an entire populace, but…

But she was so tired. So very, very tired, and the thought of returning to a life sustained by nothing but fighting, and death, and war, was the least of what she wanted. More than anything she just wanted to sleep. To close her eyes and rest, dreamlessly, peacefully, for however long it took her to wake up again.

But could she be that selfish?

The answer came startlingly quickly: she could.

With a sigh that rang of sheer relief the woman turned her face upwards and let her green eyes fall closed like a lowering pall. It didn't take long to succumb to her wounds, mercifully, and when Death came and drew her into its arms and carried her away, she went without struggling. She didn't plead with it to end her existence like she often did. She didn't even try to persuade it to let her choose where she ended up next. She was too exhausted to try.

The only thing that crossed the woman's mind before she shot up into the black ocean of space and became one of the many meteoroids that streaked through endless nothing—twining between spheres of fire and lightening and globes of rock, an airstream of golden light trailing behind—was the hope that wherever she woke up next would be calm. Peaceful.

It was the beginning of another life.


TBC.