Silver Generation
(A Naruto and Harry Potter X-over)

Prologue: A Soulful Beginning

Harry had made his way to the pivotal location of the battle where Voldemort stood, cursing anyone that wasn't dressed in typical Death Eater regalia. Harry did it as it was expected from the Chosen One. Harry had exposed Voldemort's secrets to all those who stopped to watch them battle, like expected. Harry had claimed the Elder wand, and though almost no one knew about the wand, if they had, they would have expected that as well. And Harry defeated Voldemort in a final battle without even using the death curse, as expected.

As the remaining survivors watched Voldemort's body becoming nothing more than an empty vessel, no longer being able to sustain the small slither of his soul that still lived, only one person didn't watch the scene in fascination or fear.

One of the students that supported the Dark Lord was on the loose. That was because said student hadn't been in Slytherin and only the Slytherin population had been arrested into their common rooms or forced to leave.

Said student had liked the changes enacted by the new government. Said student had been a previous victim of lowkey bullying and, after the takeover, he'd been able to torture their previous torturers all they wanted. It was nice to be the one in power for once in their life.

And though Harry had never done anything to them while he'd still been in school, he hadn't helped them either. And now the chance that it would all go back to how things were before, the student couldn't handle it. They'd rather be dead. But if they had to die, they would at least take Harry with them.

So, one last Avada Kedavra was cast that day, while the remaining survivors started subduing the remaining Death Eaters. The green beam hit Harry on the back, shocking everyone and the ones closest to the offender turned to the scorned student in horror.

Before anyone could really react to that, winds flared up from nowhere, surrounding the fallen teen. The wand Voldemort had been holding, a small stone that almost no one had seen and a silvery cape converged on top of Harry's body until a translucent being stood floating on that spot. Said being moved its hands over the body and slowly extracted a golden glowing orb of light from it, disappearing it into its immaterial clothes before vanishing again.

There was an uproar over what happened. The remaining Death Eaters were caught and either imprisoned or had their souls sucked out by the remaining dementors. The student, a fifth year Hufflepuff that had been seen as arrogant and rude by his own house, especially for mocking Cedric's death, was taken to the Wizengamot for judgement and revealed not only his bullying but also proved that Hufflepuffs remained loyal, even if said loyalty laid with less reputable individuals, such as the Death Eaters. His trial helped revolutionize Hogwarts standing regarding bullying, as well as student counseling to avoid unhealthy habits on the students' part, both regarding bad-talking the dead as well as put a stopper to previously mentioned bullying. Never again would a poorly constructed comment made in a moment of dark humor that was taken as an grave offense to the dead lead to another hero dying as a result.

Harry had never made a will but, due to his Godfather status, his possessions all went to Teddy Lupin instead of to Draco Malfoy.

Hermione worked hard and eventually made it to Minister of Magic and changed the wizarding world with a new fire in her eyes and soul so that nothing like this would even happen again and all the revolutionary students during the last year eventually made it into either great positions or into peaceful ones, as they tried to recover from the war.

All of Harry's friends grieved him, but eventually life moved on for the Wizarding and Muggle worlds alike.

The answer about what exactly the being that appeared over his body was never really got an answer. Many theories were tossed around about it but only three people really knew. Hermione, despite all her previous disbelief, Ron and Luna.

Considering the involvement of the deathly hallows, the only sensible answer would be death itself had come for Harry's soul or essence.

.

Δ O |
.

When Harry next woke up, he was neither on the white place, nor was he back in the ruins of Hogwarts. He was now in a place that reminded him of the few space pictures he had seen while in the muggle world. The ones with nebulas and supernovas and galaxies, so colorful and plentiful that made the nights spent in the Astronomy Tower using magical telescopes plae in comparison.

Even more fantastic was how varied the colors of each star is, something not even the muggle pictures got across.

For a moment, Harry saw only this new world around him completely unconcerned, feeling at peace. The nebulas sometimes burst out with new lights, but unlike what muggles said that nebulas did, the new stars actually migrated away from the nebulas, eventually joining the other individual stars. The stars themselves didn't stay put. They slowly danced across the void, joining other stars in galaxies. Sometimes two different galaxies got interconnected by the migration of one of their stars. The stars glowed strong at first, but slowly faded in brightness, but expanded in size until they finally ended with a big explosion of light and color until all that was left of them was dust that migrated back into one of the several nebulas.

After some time, Harry noticed a pattern. By watching some of the short-lived stars, he noticed that the dust of a star never returned to the nebula it was born from. They always went to a different nebula. Maybe the stars wanted to cross as many nebulas as possible, as if gathering experience. So, Harry observed quietly as he started pondering on the meaning of this, having nothing else to do.

As he actually started to think more than observe, he slowly became more and more aware of another presence near him. The moment he truly realized someone or something else was there was the moment he was finally able see them.

They looked like a translucid and indistinct shape that kept shifting and shifting, yet at the same time stayed the same. It was as if they didn't have a fixed shape at all, and that was its shape.

"I see you finally became aware." The being's powerful voice resounded in the void, all at once loud and yet quiet.

A bellow, yet a whisper.

Though Harry understood them, it seemed as if the being was talking all the languages in existence at the same time.

Harry longed to know about the being, curiosity finally sparking after a long time of quiet contemplation. Harry didn't need to voice the question at all, since the being replied.

"You know vaguely what I am. You just don't know who I am." The being said and Harry pondered on that riddle.

As he pondered, he looked around the voids, recalling where he'd been before he woke up here and that he'd somehow had expected a white background. He didn't know why he'd expected a white background, so he reviewed the last moments he did remember.

He'd defeated Voldemort. He'd watched indifferently as his predestined enemy descended into oblivion. He'd watched as his comrades started apprehending the remaining Death Eaters, who were too shocked at the death of their powerful master to put up much of a fight. Then he'd seen green reflect on the lenses of his glasses, coming from behind him and he felt a, by then, familiar sensation hitting him right between the shoulder blades, on his spine.

With a start, Harry realized that he had most likely been hit with the death curse for the third time in his life, which meant he had to be dead. But somehow it seemed that this wasn't really the Beyond. Not really anyway. It seemed like a higher existence than death.

Returning from his ponderings, Harry's attention was once again focused on the being, and answer right on the tip of his tongue.

"Indeed, I am Death. That is one of the things I am. I am also Life and Birth and Rebirth and the Cycle." The Being explained. "I will the souls into forming and being born. I watch over them as they form bonds with other souls, forming tightknit groups of family and friends. I watch them grow as they lose their bright innocence and gain an expanse of wisdom. I wait until they burst one final time into the true radiance of their existence. I guide them in their less material form into their next world. And I protect them as they recover to start the cycle anew." The Being said.

Harry noticed the nebulas, the stars, the galaxies, the supernovas and the dust again, realizing that he'd been mistaken about them. They weren't nebulas, stars, galaxies, supernovas and dust at all. They were the cycle the Being had described.

Harry watched as another soul reassembled once more in the colorful mist of weary souls and left towards a nearby galaxy, between two particularly close stars. Looking closer, it seemed each nebula had a particular set of galaxies attached to it to provide new souls to.

He noticed the difference in brilliance from a young soul compared to an old soul, as well as the difference in size. Innocence vs. wisdom, according to the Being. He watched as an old soul burst into radiance as it died, and watched closely all the differently colored sparkles coming from its core and then fading into colored dust. He watched as the dust was slowly guided to a different nebula of weary souls.

The Being had mentioned different worlds. Was that what the nebulas and their several attached galaxies represented? Different worlds? If so, what worlds? Which was his previous world? Which was his next one and why wasn't he there?

Harry focused on the Being once more. What should he even call the Being? As they had said, they weren't death alone. They were several things.

"I've been given several names by the mortals. I suppose for now you can call me by the Buddhist term: Samsara. You have become rather inquisitive, now that you have truly awoken. There are indeed several worlds and all the souls cycle through them. The Buddhists got something wrong, though. A soul can only be reborn into a being similar to the one it was before. A human soul could be reborn into a veela since they are similar enough, but never would be able to be reborn as an animal like a dog, regardless of the soul having belonged to an Animagus or not. You came from that 'nebula', as you put it, but have yet to be placed on your next world."

Harry wondered about ghosts, dementors, and the Resurrection Stone.

"Ah, those are very interesting situations. You see, what you see as a ghost is nothing more than an imprint of a soul made out of fear and will. Fear of death and will to live, in fact. It harbors all the memories of a soul while it had been alive. Usually, when someone dies, those memories are erased with the radiance. The explosion you see is the soul unburdening itself from the memories and erasing them back into dust, for it to be reutilized freely by the soul again. But someone magical, like all the Witches and Wizards from your world, has the ability to duplicate their memories like one would do when using a Pensive. When a wizard or witch is dying while renouncing death hard enough, those memories copy themselves and turn into a sentient being with all the personality of its previous existence, but not truly alive. There are very few worlds that have ghosts in them because of this. It's not impossible for non magicals to produce ghosts, mind you, but a rarity all the same. Dementors however, are another whole different thing. To put it in your choice of technical terms, they are the 'black holes' of this universe you see before you. Initially they wandered about in the void but a wizard created a dark spell that pulled them all to your world. They are made from shattered souls and will instinctively seek out to consume other souls and good feelings in a hopeless attempt at filling the void where their soul should have been had it been whole. The souls, once ingested by the dementor, never really stay in the dementor for long. Even if their body is still alive, the soul itself isn't and is free to start another life, though with some deformities since it didn't die naturally the memories from their life are still stuck in their previous body and were never purified. As for the Resurrection Stone I created, the process isn't much different than creating a temporary ghost. The reason a Resurrected hates being resurrected is because, most of the time, the soul as already moved on to the next world and recalling the memories of a long faded previous life is painful and uncomfortable for the soul. It's like the soul is being forced to stand in two different places at the same time and, while the living part can weather the strain gracefully, the memories part can't and suffers twice the pain." Samsara said.

Harry pondered on the cycle and its purpose and if there was a way out of it. He also pondered on the similarity of dementors and horcruxes and how had he managed to call back his parents and Remus and Sirius and wondered what sort of lives they had been living when He'd called on them.

"Dementors are souls that have left the cycle in the most traumatic way. They are people from all the worlds you see before you that tried to escape death or gain power by preforming horrific acts that corrupted and tore apart the purity of their soul. Voldemort will, no doubt, become one of the next dementors in Azkaban. He did literally cut his own soul into pieces. It's still too soon after his death for his several pieces to have found each other in the void yet for it to have happened. When they do, he will be recreated into a dementor with all his memories, but far too starved to do anything about it, the same with all the previous dementors. The only real way a dementor can be unmade is the same one an horcrux can be unmade. Deep and truthful regret. Very few dementors have managed to regain a wholesome soul once more, but it's not impossible and it has happened before. As for your parents they indeed were already living a new life when you called on them. I think your soul will try to go there as well, but… it has been sometime since you've entered this realm and your parents are fated to die young once more." Samsara paused for a moment.

Harry couldn't help but sense that Samsara was amused at something.

"Funny thing, though. It seems that your parents reversed their gender in the next life. Your father became a mischievous girl who will suffer bullying as a way to repent from his past life and with the same red hair he so loved in your mother and your mother became a studious and responsible boy with blond hair in reminiscent of her sister's. And somehow, they fell in love. Again. Remus has also been reborn into that world, probably following his soul's bonds to your parents. He is beginning to pay for his previous life's inactions and willingness to leave behind his wife and unborn child by seeing the consequences of inaction in a very personal way. He is also beginning to experience what his wife would have felt, had you not stopped him from abandoning her, as he watches his loved ones going on and dying. He will soon lose the last two people he considers family, too. As for Sirius, he has yet to be reborn. His soul had a lot more to recover than Remus and, despite dying first, it'll only be a few more months for him to be able to go through a rebirth. He will too be reborn in that universe due to the bonds and he will too suffer his penance in the next life. Due to his previous suffering, he is also pretty close to reach your level and, hopefully, this new life will push it to happen."

Harry pondered on his own level, unsure of what it meant.

"This regards one of your previous questions. About the cycle and the ways to escape it. I already told you about the total shattering of a soul that creates dementors as the negative way to escape the cycle. The positive one is the one you are going through now. The souls are constantly cycling through the worlds to gain an intrinsic knowledge to the soul itself that always manifests no matter the circumstances of life. And yours, though far from perfect, has managed to realize something many others in your circumstances wouldn't have. It's the same thing that allowed fate to let you collect the three deathly hallows the way you did. Had you not had that realization in your soul, fate would have prevented you from 'mastering death'. And depending on how Sirius lives his next life, he could reach the same state as you."

"Harry tried to ponder on what would be waiting for him after he finished his path and what this 'level' meant. He also pondered on what exactly did he have that let him master death and how or why Sirius would achieve it as well.

"Harry, what's the one thing that it is said to conquer death." Samsara asked.

Harry pondered deeper. He recalled something like that having been said before. The one thing to conquer death… It couldn't be life since life was ended by death. According to Dumbledore, the one thing that let him live where others died against the killing curse was his mother's protection…

And then Harry recalled the room that couldn't be opened in the department of mysteries and what Dumbledore had said about it.

"Indeed. Love is the one thing that can conquer death, though the human that came up with that saying didn't know of the subtle magic love has. And like it or not, you have a far too great capacity for loving others and for forgiving them for someone with your life. By all accounts you should have hated your muggle relatives after all they did to you, but not only did you save your cousin from the dementors at a personal cost, you also made sure they would be safe from Voldemort by making sure they would be protected. Sure, you didn't like them, and you didn't have to, but you also didn't hate them or wish them dead. In the end, your actions even managed to turn a new leaf for your cousin. You also gave a wanted man a chance to explain why he killed your parents only to realize he was innocent, something someone less decent wouldn't have bothered with, and even kept a guilty man from being killed all because you wanted true justice and not slaughter. You kept telling the truth to the wizarding community about Voldemort's return, even while all you got for it was torture, because you couldn't let the many suffer by the mistakes of a few. And, sure, in your sixth year you almost killed Draco, but you had lost someone very important to you and weren't dealing with his death very well, never mind the fact that you suspected that Draco was up to something bad and it turned out you were right in the end, just like all the evidence indicated. And, in the end, you did end up saving him, though he was out to get you. Like I said, you are far from perfect. You still make mistakes, like when you almost killed Draco. But you are just now starting the road that will let you leave the cycle." Samsara explained. "I can't yet tell you what is waiting for you at the end of your journey, but I can tell you that you'll now have to journey through all the worlds, reincarnating with your full memories as you gain more and more knowledge and insight."

Harry pondered over that for a bit. The task seemed daunting.

"As for Sirius. His past life was a hard one. His childhood was terrible, true, but that was no excuse to lash out at everyone wearing green, including his own brother, during Hogwarts. He almost caused Severus's death or permanent disfigurement and that could have led to Remus being killed for being a werewolf. He was too reckless and too quick at pursuing revenge, which made him leave his godson in someone else's hands as he hunted down his best friend's killer. But then he suffered twelve years of agony and torture, only escaping for said godson's safety once realizing the traitor was still alive. From then on, he lived for you until the very end, even if he couldn't life with you. His only mistake then was continuing his animosity with his previous victim of bullying but even I can tell that man wouldn't have let him redeem himself even if he tried so its not much of a mistake. In his next life, if he can endure a harsh childhood without recklessly lashing out at innocent people and if he can say no to revenge, he might be able to ascend to your level." Samsara explained and then added with yet more amusement leaking out from him "On another note, while you were trying to reach the conclusion that love conquered death, your godfather was finally reborn into his new world and lived there for a couple of years. He is still too young to really start to suffer the consequences of Karma, though."

Harry pondered when was he going to be reborn, if he was going to be reborn in that same world and, if so, if he could find his godfather, even if he didn't remember him. He also wondered if there was something else he needed to know before going.

"Quite eager, I see. I don't know for sure until the process begins, but chances are that you will be going there because of your soul's bonds. If you do end up there, you could potentially run into both him and the person Remus is now, but remember that they aren't the same people you know anymore. Though in essence they are the same, they are still very different people with very different life experiences under their belt. I supposed you could eventually recognize their circumstances by what I told you about them, as vague as the clues I gave you were. As for what you need to know…"

And Samsara quickly explained before sending his soul on his way. The last thoughts before his consciousness faded was that he wondered what would happen with Ginny, Hermione and Ron now that he was gone and if they would ever reincarnate in his world and in a timely fashion for him to meet them.

.

Author Notes:

So, I read this fic with a reincarnating Harry adapting to his new world. Initially this was inspired in that one, but the story is vastly different. Anyway, it wouldn't stop nagging at me until I started putting it down into writing. I probably won't upload it as much as the others, but I quite like it. This is the only chapter that really talks about Harry's original world and the still living characters from Harry Potter won't be joining Harry's new world for a long long while because they'll have long lives, so they really won't matter. Characters that already died, however, depending on mental state at the time of death whill show up. As you can see, I already planned for James and Lilly Potter as well as Remus and Sirius. But like stated, they are now different people. Will Harry eventually figure them out by the hints? I don't know yet. For now he won't be encountering them any time soon so it's a non issue.

What about you? Who do you think Remus and Sirius are now? And who else do you suggest being reincarnated and as whom (as well as why, considering Samsara's karma ayments)?