Hello everyone.

I am not dead! Yay me!

But seriously, I am sorry for disappearing on everyone.. sadly I cannot promise not to do it again because such a thing is likely to happen at some point.

Updates will be sporadic and probably far in-between. I work full time -crazy hours- and have a teenager to attempt to raise, but I will try to not go months without updating.

This is a rewrite of one of my other stories, and will go in a similar though vastly different direction than I had planed for the first version. There will also be changes to canon that will be explained as the story goes.

One and only Disclaimer: I do not own either fandom, and will make no money off of this story.

I am looking for a beta, if you're interested please PM me. I would prefer someone who was knowledgeable in both fandoms, but especially Naruto, because my canon is very rusty and I never even saw the end.

An Introduction.

The Death of Hope..

Everyone knew the story of the Girl-Who-Lived, or at least, they believed they did.

The first eleven years of her life were a mystery to most, and she preferred it that way, but from that point on.. everyone with even a hint of magic thought they knew the tale of Hope Potter backward and forward. They were wrong, but that hardly mattered, nothing more than semantics really. The people closest to her, they were the ones who knew Hope best, but even they didn't know everything there was to know about the twice over Savior of the wizarding world.

But this isn't a story about her secretive past, or really even about her future, which was much less exciting. In fact, this wasn't about Hope Potter at all, but it certainly started with her.

After the war she had done exactly what everyone expected of her, she quickly obtained her NEWTs along with the rest of her year mates and went straight into the auror force. The two years of training were brutal, and there were a dozen times when she wanted to quit. Much like Ron had done four months in, to go work with George at the joke shop, but in the end she stuck with it.

The job wasn't what she had pictured as a fifteen year old back in McGonagall's office with the Toad. The red tape that had to be gone through before even the simplest of actions could be taken was maddening. And the paperwork.. Merlin there were no words for the amount of hatred she had for the endless piles that seemed to appear every time she blinked.

That wasn't the worst of it though, unsurprisingly, it was working with the ministry itself that took that title. Again, it wasn't much of a surprise, she and the governmental establishment had never seen eye to eye on.. well, anything really. They treated her like the poster girl of the department. Every high profile assignment, she was right there front and center for everyone to see, but when it came to actually doing the job, she was always held back. 'Protected,' they would say 'smothered,' she would argue.

They just didn't want anything to happen to 'their' resident celebrity.

Still, Hope stayed and continued to do a job she despised. No one really liked their job though, right? It wouldn't be called 'work' if they did.. right? It didn't much matter, she had already chosen her path and she would walk it with her jaw clenched stubbornly, even if she hated it. She was Hope Potter after all, what else was she supposed to do?

Her personal life was also exactly what everyone expected from her. Not long after her training finished she started dating George Weasley. They got along fine, and he made her laugh like no one else could, but they weren't in love. Of course they loved each other, they were family, but there was little to no passion between them. They were just two broken puzzle pieces trying to fit together, and ignoring the fact that not all the sharp edges fit.

They married when Hope was twenty five and George was twenty eight.

The last blow to the newly married woman's heart came months later, she couldn't have children. Her body was too contaminated to carry them. The basilisk venom in her blood was being canceled out by Fawkes' tears, but it was still there. Death magic still clung to her from the two killing curses, not to mention all the other dark magic that had been cast on her, including the other two Unforgivables. The taint from the horcrux would also never be completely wiped away, magic always left traces.

She was to toxic to create and carry life.

And Hope had never hated Voldemort more than she had in that moment. She wanted to rage and scream, the Dark Lord had completed his goal after all, he effectively ended the Potter line. Just not in the way he was planing. It was a blow she would never really recover from. All her life she wanted a large family, since hers was stolen from her, but that choice was also taken, and by the same man turned monster.

After receiving the news, Hope offered George an out. He could have left and found someone who could give him a family, but he didn't. The redhead had been a bit disappointed, but seemed to shrug the whole thing off shortly thereafter, insisting they already had a large family with his combined and ever expanding family and her godson. She didn't share his sentiments, not in the least, but didn't argue the point either.

The next few years seemed to rush by. Hope was promoted, first to captain, and then five years later to Head Auror. She still hated her job, actually she hated it more by that point then when she first started. On the plus side, the joke shop was doing great, George and Ron were making the family a fortune, and had opened three more stores in the past eight years. One in France, another in the States, and the third in Australia.

When they entered their forties it was completely commonplace for the married couple to go weeks, or even months, without seeing each other at all. Hope saw the other Weasley's far more often than her own husband, becoming the favorite aunt and/or godmother of all the children that seemed to pop out of the woodwork.

Her life wasn't perfect, and she wasn't exactly happy, but she was content she supposed.

And it continued on in that fashion until the last Potter entered her fifties, after more than thirty years she retired from the Auror Office. The rest of her life would be spent at her very first home, Hogwarts. With the curse lifted DADA professors could hold the position for more than a single year at a time, and she taught for another forty plus years. Only going back to the house she shared with Gorge from time to time up until his death at sixty eight do to a potions accident when he was creating a new Wheeze for the shop, after that she never returned.

Hope herself lasted well into her nineties despite the poor condition of her body. When she passed quietly there was an out pouring in the magical world. The most famous witch of their times was dead. Countless books were published, statues erected, and she even got her own holiday.. Hope would have hated it.

At the end of it all, everyone with even a hint of magic would claim they knew the tale of the Girl-Who-Lived backward and forward.

The entire magical world mourned her loss, those who weren't celebrating it anyway. Her adventures where slowly turning into highly exaggerated legends, her name was whispered to children before they slept at night. What none of them knew, what even Hope herself never could have imagined, was death was not the end for her. Well not really. The story of Hope Potter was over, but the story of Hikari Namikaze was just about to begin. And she didn't want to be tied down or controlled by the vague memories of a broken old woman who seemed to have given up a long time ago.

Hope Potter, most assuredly, was dead.

xXx

The Birth of Light...

Rebirth was not something Hope, or Hikari as she was now, was expecting to experience. One moment she was getting ready to retire for the night, she had class with the Ravens and Puffs first thing the next morning, and the next she was wailing. Only she was different, and it was an odd wailing, strange and loud to her own ears.

There was no train station, no Dumbledore waiting for her with some sort of sage wisdom, and no personification of Death waiting to judge her for her sins- real and imaginary.

There were other voices around her too, but they were booming like thunder, and she was completely disoriented so she didn't know what they were saying. What was going on? Was she in the hospital wing, was that Madam Hopkins? No, those people and places felt very far away.

The world around her was freezing cold, and blurry like she was half blind. And then she was lifted, but that too was strange, it was like she was being cradled in a Hagrid's arms.

A moment later she was wrapped in a scratchy cloth, her sensitive skin rubbed harshly with the abrasive towel, and handed to another giant who tucked her securely in their arms. This one was bright red, and a yellow blur leaned over her. The two shapes where speaking much lower than the others, but their voices still hurt her ears. And the newly named Hikari let out another wail in confusion, what in Merlin's name was going on?

It took several days for her to realize what happened, and several weeks to actually believe the ridiculous notion. Even finding about magic hadn't been nearly so fantastical. Up until that point she was convinced she was dreaming, possibly in a coma in St. Mungo's.

Almost two months passed before her eyesight returned fully. Seeing her new parents looking down at her with such love and devotion made something in her chest ache and sing. As the months passed she came to love the beautiful redheaded young woman who wasn't Lily Evans, and the equally handsome young blonde man who looked nothing like James Potter.

The impossible situation, and the religious and personal crisis' aside.. she was.. happy.

There was a distinct sense of disconnect between her and the memories filling her mind.. her memories. Like they were completely separate from her, and she could only see and feel them as if from under water. She wasn't Hope, Hope was a broken lonely old woman, Hikari wasn't her, she didn't want to be her. But her connection to the memories themselves caused her young developing mind to be far more advanced than a normal newborn. And in those early months and years she relied heavily on the almost, but not quite, foreign memories.

So she knew and understood what was going on around her, and she was thrilled to realize she had gained a mother and father who looked at her like she was the greatest treasure they had ever laid eyes upon. Still, she did feel a little guilty. Like she was replacing the Potter's who had died for her. No.. more like she had replaced the daughter they had died for. Like a fraud, she wasn't what her new parents thought she was after all, and selfishly, she hoped they never realized that.

It would have broken her heart to see any kind of rejection in their eyes, to have her new mother look at her like her aunt Petunia had when she was still Hope Potter.

It was every orphans dream, whether they admitted it or not, to have parents.. to be a part of a family. It was her hearts most desperate desire in her first life.. And now she had that, though her parents started to leave for long periods of time not long after she was reborn.

The first time it happened she had panicked, thinking they had left her. But they always came back, even if they looked a little worse for wear when they did. And Hikari got used to the constant absences eventually, though she never really liked when they left. She didn't really mind being left with her godmother and her son, Itachi, who was the same age as she physically was.

Just because she was mostly happy, didn't mean she wasn't still utterly disbelieving. Reincarnation wasn't supposed to be a real thing. And even beyond trying to grasp the concept of the spiritual revelations, and the personality dissociation, there were other things she could only call foreign.

It was obvious she was in some Asian country, by the features and some of the clothes of the people around her, and she was pretty sure they were speaking Japanese, but she could understand them. It was like Hope's second year all over again, how can she understand a language she had never been exposed to in the past? She didn't know, but she was thankful regardless.. So long as it wasn't another horcrux situation.

The technology was also strange. There were telly's and radios, but no telephones. The first time she observed the outside world she didn't see a single car, or any kind of motorized vehicles. The people in the village, which had its own version of Mount Rushmore like in the States, used carts and horses, or donkey's. Was that normal in Asia? She didn't think so, but what did she know?

Hikari was half a year old when she realized her parents weren't muggles.

They had taken her outside on one of the rare occasions that they were both home. The white haired boy who lived with them, Kakashi, who she had originally thought was her older brother but turned out to be her godfather, was with them. She didn't mind sharing her parents with the masked youth, he was a bit of a bastard from what she could see, but he was always nice to her when no one was around. Often sneaking her tiny whipped chocolate balls as a treat when her mother wasn't looking.

Her father had a small group of children he mentored that came around the house from time to time. Kakashi who lived with them, another boy (Obito,) and a girl (Rin.) They were all pretty strange. From what she could gather, her father was some sort of teacher for the children, and coached them in martial arts. They all (her mother included) even wore ninja-like headbands.

It was one of these very children that would expose her to the fact that they all seemed to have some sort of strange magic, magic which they freely used out in the open for everyone to see.

Obito Uchiha, who was her godmother's nephew, ran up to the small group and spat a fire ball at her godfather, accusing him of something or another. Hikari wasn't sure what, she was to focused on the wandless magic the thirteen year old had just done in front of everyone.. And no one seemed overly surprised..

What the Hell was going on!?

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