You know how if you have ever made really bad choice or something embarrassing happens to you and you just keep wishing that you hadn't said that or wished you had done something differently. It sucks because time is liner and what has happened cannot be changed. At least that was what I had always thought, but I had managed it me Hermione Granger the know it all swot had changed history.
When I was in my last year at Hogwarts the war got really bad. Voldemort attacked the school the day of Dumbledore's funeral. No one was ready for it, and the Order of the Phoenix already so broken in spirits over Dumbledore's death were in no shape to fight back. We were slaughtered.
It was like something out of a bad action movie, dead and dying were everywhere. More people probably died due to being trampled in the panic then by curse or hex. I grabbed Ron and Harry and we ran. I didn't look back I dragged the boys to outside the wards and apporated us away. For the next few months we spent wondering around the country side foraging for food and stealing anything we couldn't find. Trying to come to terms with the fact that nearly everyone we knew were now lying in some mass grave somewhere. We knew those in the resistance who weren't killed in the first purge were being rounded up and systematically executed. Young, old, pureblood or mudblood those with any connection to Harry no matter how faint were hunted down with a zealot dedication.
Days turned into week, weeks into months. Skulking around in the shadows to stay alive, to stay one step ahead of those who were hunting us.
I soon learnt to hate Dumbledore just as much if not more the Voldemort himself. What had he been doing for all of these years, if he had been so sure that he was going to rise again why hadn't he done anything to stop it, why hadn't he been giving Harry special lessons since his first year if he was so determined that it had to be Harry to defeat him. In fact why had Dumbledore the supposed most powerful wizard of their day and age been so utterly useless throughout their Hogwarts lives. His plans nearly always ended the same at least one if not more of them in a critical condition under the care of Madam Pomfrey.
First year he housed a highly dangerous and sort after artefact happening to just leave and arrive back in time to be useless to Harry.
Second year, how was it that someone of hi immense wisdom who had already had the camber opened once in his life time and seen it effects fail to put the pieces of puzzle together that a twelve year old girl had.
Third year, the wards should have alerted him to the breach of wards when Sirius entered but gain he did nothing until the very end always letting Harry and his friends nearly kill themselves trying to save everyone.
Each year the same story, some strange plot on Harry's' life, the near death or hospitalisation of his friends and Dumbledore arriving just that one minute too late to be of any help. Teaching Harry to jump in to strange life threatening situations without thinking was not the kind of training he needed. Things like advanced defence, complex jinx's and counter defence curses hell even useful things healing, survival training, tactic planning. But no Dumbledore had confined Harry to grade school spell, spending months showing harry memories that could have been relayed over the course of one of their "lessons". Heck even talking about his own experiences when he faced Grindelwald or Voldemort in the past would have given them something. The lists of Headmasters failings towards Harry were endless starting with the prophecy before Harry's birth, until his death.
Half Starved and almost completely clueless the three of them had staggered around strining together Dumbledore's clues to find away to defeat Voldemort. It had taken years. Three years, of constant terror. It had cost them everyone they knew, it had left Hermione massively scared and almost crippled, Harry his right arm and Ron his life. But the had done it, the seemingly impossible the three of them had managed to kill Voldemort.
But three years under Voldemorts oppressive reign had left scares on the masses ones that couldn't be healed just by his death. The wizarding community had been ripped apart, half blood and muggle born populations had been decimated no one was sure who was dead and who were merely missing. The ministry was in shambles both the wizard and the muggle. The biggest secret of wizard kind was out, the muggles now knew of their existence, the tension between the two factions resulting in more death and bloodshed on both sides. Harry once the shining beckon of hope to rally around was a crushed man, the death of Ron had hit him hard. The world was falling apart and this time no one was around to save it nuclear weapons against magic. Each side using steadily increasingly devastating weapons on each other till nothing was left.
The idea had hit her one morning, could the past be changed?