Rebirth of a Potter

Chaper 1: A Second Chance (reedited)

The darkness didn't come all at once. It crept in slowly, like a tide rising over a shattered shore.

She had been walking home from work, phone in hand, headphones in, lost in the familiar voices of an audiobook—Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, for the hundredth time. Rain had just begun to fall, gentle and cold, blurring the streetlights into soft halos. It was late, she was tired. She didn't notice the car speeding toward her. The screech of tires came too late.

A flash of light. Screaming metal. Bone-shattering impact.

Pain exploded throughout her body—a pain so intense, so immediate that it stole her breath before she could even cry out. Her limbs were twisted, her vision blurred with blood, and she felt the warmth of life leaving her like water slipping through her fingers.

People shouted. Someone was crying. But the world was already slipping away.

She felt her heart stutter.

And then, silence.

Weightless. Empty. Cold.

For a moment—maybe a second, maybe forever—there was nothing. No sky, no earth, no body. Just a void.

But in that void, she remembered. Her name, her life, her love for the stories that had shaped her. She hadn't had many friends. Books were safer in her opinion. They didn't lie and they certainly didn't betray. Her world had always been quiet, filled with secondhand paperbacks and whispered spells under her breath. She had always dreamed of more, of magic. Of mattering. She longed the feeling of belonging somewhere. She had had dreams of being there, in that world of magic and meaning. A world that had given her hope when her own reality had grown too dull, too heavy.

That girl had died.

And yet, something—someone—was calling her back.

Before the darkness swallowed her whole, something shifted.

In the space between life and death, she felt a presence. Not human, but not exactly divine either. It was old, probably older than time. A whisper in the void.

"You were always meant for more."

The voice was soft, almost a thought, but it echoed inside her like a chime struck in her soul. She couldn't see who or what spoke, only that it surrounded her—warm and cold all at once, ancient and endless.

"The wheel turns again. This time, don't waste it."

Light bloomed in the darkness, not blinding, but golden and endless. A hand—not a physical one, but something deeper—reached for her, wrapped her in power, and pulled.

And Harriet fell.

Then the darkness became absolute. Not just the absence of light, but a suffocating void that pressed in from all sides—cold, heavy, endless. Then, a sudden flash of green. Pain, sharp and blinding. And then... nothing.

Harriet drifted in that silence, untethered from time and space. She was suspended between worlds, neither alive nor truly dead. In that stillness, memories surged like a tidal wave—memories from a different life. A girl who had once existed in a world without magic, who had devoured the Harry Potter series like sacred scripture. Every page etched into her mind, every character a beloved friend. She had laughed, cried, and grown with them.

She had known that story like the back of her hand.

But that life... it was now long gone.

Then came warmth. A thrum of energy, pulsing like a heartbeat, drew her in. Light—golden and soft—wrapped around her like a cocoon. She felt herself being pulled, her soul reshaped, her essence rewoven. Limbs reformed, bones knit together, and a new heart began to beat.