Action is the bridge between thought and reality.
Richie Norton

Chapter 1

Harry hated his life.

Funny how that worked. Here he was, 25 years old, an Auror like he'd wanted to be since he was 14 years old, and Voldemort was dead in the ground for almost 8 years now.

Everything was exactly as Harry once hoped his future would be, and yet Harry hated his fucking life.

"Let me get that cut," Jordy Michaels said, pulling up the sleeve of Harry's red Auror robes to heal the small wound that had stopped bleeding at least half an hour ago. Jordy was a fellow Auror, a half-blood like Harry but ten years older and a bit of an older brother figure for Harry throughout his career so far.

"We'd best get to the King's Head within the next fifteen minutes or else I'm going to curse someone. Anyone," Sonia Wainwright said with a huge, dark scowl on her face. She was older even than Jordy but looked younger than him. Harry had never personally checked what she kept in her trousers, but he was absolutely convinced that she had bigger balls than him and Jordy combined. Sonia was a muggleborn with something to prove and that showed in her actions. She was possibly even more reckless than Harry, and that was saying something.

"Yeah," Harry sighed in agreement while Jordy finished patching him up. Harry got up from his chair, looked around his messy desk if there wasn't anything that needed his immediate attention and then followed Sonia and Jordy out of the Auror department and through the bowels of the Ministry of Magic.

Harry hated his fucking life.

It had become a mantra over the years that got stuck in his head sometimes, especially after the kind of day he'd had.

For the umpteenth time Mulciber the elder had escaped before they could arrest him. Mulciber the younger had died during the final battle at Hogwarts, but his father, Konrad Mulciber, a contemporary of Tom Riddle during his Hogwarts years, was still at large. The man was old but that didn't stop him from being slick as a weasel when it came to staying out of the Ministry's hands.

The problem was that he had help from the inside. The even bigger problem was that they weren't sure where that help was coming from exactly, so every time they had a lead on Mulciber, the man was either waiting for them with an array of creative but deadly traps at the ready, or he was long gone already. Either way, Mulciber had been at large since the final battle and Harry would really, really like to arrest the fucker someday soon before the Death Eater managed to die a natural death from old age. Mulciber was a known rapist and murderer and deserved to pay for what he'd done.

But he had help, and Harry and his colleagues didn't have a clue who was feeding him vital information and thus for years they tried but failed to arrest him.

Harry hated his fucking life because nothing had fucking changed.

Oh, sure, Voldemort was dead and they'd won the war against that madman, but ultimately, everything had gone back to the way things had been before the second wizarding war. The Ministry of Magic still ran on nepotism, as did most of the wizarding world. Muggleborns had a hard time getting employment because the wizarding world was a small place and not many jobs opened up at any given time, and when they did people had a tendency to give those jobs to those they knew best, mostly through family connections.

There was a reason Sonia was as reckless and competitive as she was. She'd had to work five times as hard to get where she was compared to the average pureblood. Hermione complained about it all the time as well, how despite her obvious intellect she wasn't getting the promotions she deserved in the Department of Law enforcement while other, far less talented but better connected colleagues of hers advanced in their careers without any effort.

Ron had gotten out of the Ministry years ago, exactly for those reasons. Ron couldn't deal with the bureaucracy at the Auror department and the favouritism some people got, and seeing Hermione get rejected time and again for different positions she was more than suited for.

These days Ron worked with George at the shop and he was much happier for it.

Some days Harry envied Ron. Because Harry's life sucked and Harry had no clue what to do about it.

Some part of him, the naïve young man who had killed Voldemort and thought that magically everything would be all right from then on, still wanted to change the world for the better.

Problem was, that the world and the people in it didn't seem to want those same changes that Harry did.

Kingsley had been a great Minister for Magic, even if he, too, was limited in what he could legally change thanks to a Wizengamot that was run mostly by purebloods and the occasional half-blood. And during the last election Kingsley had been voted out of office. The new Minister, a man named Herman Smutz, reminded Harry uncomfortably of Fudge. Smutz was the same kind of career politician who wouldn't say no to a bribe or two when it suited him.

But the people of Britain had voted for the useless bastard, apparently happy for everything to go back to how it was before and it fucking sucked. One of Smutz's promises during his campaign had been to shrink the Auror department in exchange for tax cuts since the war was over and they didn't need such an extensive law enforcement department anymore. Never mind they were still hunting down a handful of Death Eaters, on top of all the other illegal shit people got up to on any given day.

So now, thanks to Smutz, Harry and his colleagues were in very real danger of losing their fucking jobs. The whole Ministry was a fucking joke.

"The first round is on me," Sonia yelled over the loud voices around them the moment they entered the King's Head. It was a pub only a short distance away from the Ministry and it was run by a squib, so lots of ministry personnel ended up there at the end of the day to drink away their frustration.

Harry was a regular at that point and he wasn't even ashamed to admit it.

Sonia handed him a pint of Carling which Harry gulped down at a rather alarming speed. But who fucking cared? It had been a shit day and Harry wanted to drink away his sorrows in peace. Thankfully Jordy and Sonia desired the exact same thing, so that is what they did for the next three hours. They drank and talked shit about their jobs and then drank some more.

Right before Harry left, he saw Lavender Brown standing with a group of her colleagues from the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. Lavender gave him a very suggestive wink and for a second Harry was tempted to take her up on her offer. It wouldn't be the first time. Lavender was pretty, with a nice pair of tits and she knew how to suck a cock better than anyone Harry had ever met. But Harry was drunk and tired and probably couldn't even get it up at this point, so he gave her an apologetic shrug and made his way out of the pub by himself.

Harry was no cheater, mind you. He and Ginny were on and off in their relationship. Well, if Harry was honest, it seemed that for more than a year now they'd very much been off. Ginny was seeing Dean Thomas regularly, from what Hermione had very delicately told him, and well, Harry had a string of one night stands and something of a friend with benefits in Lavender.

But no matter that Harry enjoyed fucking both men and women, as he'd found out one drunken night when he'd taken a very handsome muggle named Jason up on his offer for a good shagging, Harry had no desire for a steady relationship. He'd tried that with Ginny, but Harry, as it turned out, was a bit of a workaholic who liked to take his frustrations home with him on the nights he didn't drink them away in a pub first, and those things spelled disaster for any intimate relationship.

Harry wasn't so drunk yet that he couldn't apparate, so moments later he stood in front of twelve Grimmauld Place, the house Sirius had left him and which Harry had turned into his home over the years since the war. He'd fixed it up with the help of Ron, Hermione and Kreacher. Bill Weasley had helped, too, to get rid of some of the more nefarious magic that still lingered in some corners, and Harry had learned a lot about wards as he'd helped Bill clean up Harry's new home.

"Master is being drunk again," Kreacher said with a disapproving frown the moment Harry stepped into the house. The hallway was no longer dark and gloomy, but looked rustic with its pine wood sideboards and light marble floors. "Master is also missing dinner again."

"Sorry, Kreacher," Harry said with a slight slur as he threw his cloak over the coatrack in the corner. "Please bring me a plate in the drawing room."

Kreacher brought him a plate of steaming shepherd's pie, and Harry ate it mechanically as he sat on the couch and stared at the wall.

Merlin's shaggy balls, Harry hated his fucking life.

Was this it? Working for a corrupt Ministry that resisted any serious attempt at improvement, fearing for his job because some bastard politician decided to cut the budget again, failing at relationships because Harry's head was a fucked up place thanks to a fucked up childhood and a fucked up adolescence and he had no idea how to be a functional human being.

Placing his empty plate on the coffee table, Harry released a deep sigh and sat back in the couch, his head swimming and his thoughts racing.

Harry hated to admit it, but some days he missed good old Voldemort. Life had been so simple when old snakeface had still been around. Oh, it hadn't been easy, mind you, but it had been simple.

Being an adult, working a frustrating job, coming home to an empty house with only a cranky house-elf for company fucking sucked.

Ever since Harry had realized that he was now older than his parents had ever been, Harry had started wondering what his life would have been like if his parents hadn't died. If Voldemort had never existed.

From what Harry knew, it wouldn't be much different than he had now. The Ministry would still be a bureaucratic hell, the world would still run on nepotism, muggleborns would still have trouble even finding work and Harry most likely still would have become an Auror, as his father had been before him.

The only difference would probably be weekly Sunday dinners with his family at his parents' house where they could all bitch about their frustrating jobs while enjoying a nice roast together.

Fuck, when had Harry become such a fucking cynic? The Ministry had ruined him in ways Voldemort hadn't been able to, that's for sure.

Harry fell asleep on the sofa and woke up in his bed. Thank fuck for house-elves. One look at the clock told him he was running late, so Harry jumped out of bed, clutched his head as his hangover made it known it didn't care for any abrupt movement just yet, and then he shuffled into the bathroom at a much more sedate pace where he discovered, much to his horror, that he was out of hangover cure. Harry was tempted to send Kreacher to the apothecary at once but then he remembered he'd picked up ten new vials just last week, but he'd left them in his desk at work instead of bringing them home with him.

Harry managed a quick shower which did nothing for his pounding headache. Kreacher, that amazing elf, stood waiting at the bottom of the stairs with a strong cup of coffee, which Harry downed as quickly as he could without burning his mouth, and then he was off to work.

Instead of flooing, which he usually did whenever he ran late, Harry decided to apparate. He knew from bitter experience that his body did not appreciate flooing one bit whenever he was hungover. Harry had the embarrassing memory of throwing up right in the Ministry atrium to prove it. So he apparated to a nearby alley and decided to stop by his favourite coffeeshop to treat himself to a large, strong coffee to help him through the morning, something he did at least a few times a week.

The barista, a muggle his age named Claire who Harry had fucked a few months ago after many weeks of intense flirting, gave him a rather constipated look as she prepared his coffee, but Harry ignored her and rubbed his face a few times to ease his pounding headache, which didn't help a thing. Coffee would help, so after Harry paid he immediately sipped the steaming cup as he strolled down the muggle street towards the phonebooth. He much preferred that way of entering the building whenever he was hungover then being sucked down a fucking toilet.

Harry's headache seemed to intensify and his stomach rolled, so he sipped his coffee a little quicker, hoping with all his might he could make it to his desk for the hangover cure before he ended up puking all over the Ministry again.

It wasn't until his vision started darkening that Harry realized with an icy shiver that whatever was happening to him now wasn't just his fucking hangover. Harry meant to hurry his steps to the Ministry because he kept a bezoar in his top drawer. He should have had one on his person, he knew that, but he kept losing those fucking things whenever he put one in a pocket, so eventually he'd stopped bothering altogether.

Harry fell face forward on the pavement with a dull thump, his poisoned coffee spilling into the gutter. Some nearby muggles came to his rescue, turning him over and giving him chest compressions, but Harry knew, in the last moments of his life, that it was futile. Only a bezoar would save him now but the muggles didn't know that.

Darkness seeped in, and Harry was no longer lying on the pavement surrounded by worried muggles, but instead he floated between time and space. He had no body and there was no light, yet Harry felt utterly at peace, which was such a foreign feeling Harry was immediately suspicious of it.

Will you go on? a soft, echoing voice asked him. Or will you live again, Master of Death?

Do his life over again? Harry considered that. There were lots of things he'd do differently if he got another chance. There were lots of people he could save. Sirius, Cedric, Fred, Remus, Tonks, and so many more. Harry may be a cynic nowadays, but once upon a time he'd been a naïve little Gryffindor with a saviour complex and some of that old personality still lingered inside Harry and probably always would.

"Yeah, alright," Harry said or maybe he thought it. At the very least he could save some lives and choose a different path for himself, a path that would steer him clear of the Ministry. Maybe he could teach at Hogwarts? Harry had considered that option for himself when Ron left, but Hogwarts hadn't needed any new teachers for years now.

Very well. You shall be reborn.

Wait, did that mean he was going to do his whole life over again? Since he was a baby? His whole fucked up childhood at the Dursleys?

But before Harry could question anything else or demand answers, he was suddenly corporal again. He blinked his eyes open and saw a white ceiling and to his right a window covered with curtains. They were printed with a pastel floral print that reminded him of the country rose patterns found on Petunia's prized porcelain teacups.

Harry pushed the faded yellow blankets back and stepped out of bed and almost tripped when he noticed something he'd never seen on himself before.

There, on his much too small body, were a pair of tits. Nice tits, as far as Harry could tell through the beige nightgown, but still… Harry didn't have tits. So what were they doing there?

Frozen to the spot, Harry raised both hands and fondled himself through his nightgown. Yeah, they were definitely breasts. Probably a generous c-cup, if Harry had to guess.

Harry turned around and spotted the nightstand, and the empty vial that lay on top of it and at once a storm of memories rushed inside his mind.

Harry wasn't Harry anymore, as it turned out.

Harry had been reborn as Harriet Hubble, a muggleborn fourth-year Hogwarts student who had just committed suicide by ingesting the same poison someone had used to assassinate Harry. And now Harry had a head full of memories once belonging to poor Harriet Hubble.

Only years of Auror training kept Harry from breaking down in an acute panic right there and then.

Breathe. Just breathe. In and out, and in and out.

Harry managed to sit down on his bed and he buried his face in his hands. Either this was a strange dream while he was in a coma in St Mungo's, recovering from the poisoning, or he'd genuinely been reborn as someone else.

Somewhere in the great beyond Mad-Eye Moody was throwing an angry fit that an Auror had been so stupid to drink something without checking it for poisons first, and for not keeping one measly bezoar on his person. Harry was deeply ashamed of himself. He now understood that the constipated look on Claire's face had probably been a sign of the Imperius and that someone, most likely Mulciber, had planned the whole thing to get rid of Harry Potter once and for all.

And what do you know. What Voldemort couldn't accomplish, Konrad Mulciber had managed after all.

Whatever happened next, Harry swore to check his food and drinks from now on, and to always, always keep a bezoar at hand.

If he'd done that he'd still be alive and not suddenly occupying the body of an unknown teenage girl.

What a fucking idiot he was. Harry had assumed he'd be reborn as himself, but the voice had never explicitly offered that, had it? It had simply asked if he wanted to live again. It had never mentioned a specific identity.

Fuck.

Now he was a girl.

A fucking child, barely 15 years old. Just finished her fourth year at Hogwarts.

Harriet Hubble was a Ravenclaw, a quiet, shy girl without any friends. A good student, but nothing extraordinary. Lonely and full of self-doubt.

And the victim of a sexual assault by Konrad Mulciber, which had driven her to take her own life out of fear and shame. That fucking animal had raped her during the final week before the summer holidays. He had simply stunned her, dragged her into an empty classroom and fucked her while she came to. While he pounded inside of her, he'd threatened her and her entire family if she should ever talk about this. And then he promised to rape her again and again during the rest of her Hogwarts career and beyond, because that was all a little mudblood slut was good for, as a little sex toy for a prized pureblood to use.

Poor Harriet had no one she felt she could turn to while she was relentlessly bullied for being a muggleborn, mostly by Slytherins, since the day she set foot in the castle as a wide-eyed eleven-year-old who was thrilled to be a witch. But it wasn't just Slytherins who bullied her. There were plenty of Ravenclaws, too, who shunned her and called her names and made her life miserable.

Harry's blood boiled as he sat on the bed and stared at the opposite wall. Konrad Mulciber was a dead man. He just didn't know it yet. Harriet Hubble may be dead, but in her place now stood a battle-hardened Auror who would gladly get revenge in the name of a muggleborn child who'd been viciously assaulted.

There came a knock on the door and a second later it opened to reveal Harriet's mother, Evelyn Hubble.

"Darling, are you up yet?" Evelyn Hubble noticed her daughter's slumped posture and looked at her with a concerned frown. "Is everything alright?"

Harry swallowed and nodded, deciding to play along. If he was in a coma, it didn't matter what he did, but Harry had a feeling this might actually be happening so playing the part of Harriet Hubble was in Harry's best interest. "Yes, mother. Just a bad dream. I'll get dressed right away."

"Good, because the first patients are arriving soon, and I need you to run to the market and get potatoes. We're out again, what with these new restrictions." Evelyn gave her daughter a brief nod and closed the door.

Harriet's parents were muggles. Martin Hubble was a doctor, a general practitioner in the town of Swansand-upon-the-sea in Devon, and Evelyn helped him with administrative work in his practice. Harriet had an older brother, Vincent Hubble, who had just joined his father in the practice as a doctor as well, fresh out of university. Harriet also had two older sisters, Margaret who'd recently gotten married to a man named Robert Merritt, an accountant in a nearby city, and Edith, who'd joined the Women's Land Army, also known as the land girls and she was currently stationed in Essex to help with the war effort in the only way she could.

Fucking hell, it was the middle of the second world war. Harry sighed as he pushed himself up from his bed. He knew from his primary school history lessons that Britain had never been invaded, so he didn't have to worry about that, but the Germans had rained bombs on their heads for years and years, so that was something to be concerned about perhaps.

Not that Harry had time to worry about the war because he'd just had a realization.

It was the summer of 1942.

Tom Riddle was alive and well and was about to become a prefect during the upcoming year at Hogwarts.

Fucking hell. What was Harry supposed to do about that?