Summary: Terrible things happen to those who meddle in time but what if there's nothing left? What if it's your only option? Harry's got less than year until his time in the past is up and in that time Horacruxes have to be destroyed and the trust of The Order earned. No one ever said it was going to be easy.

One last Chance - Prologue

Harry Potter had failed. He knew that. The prophecy had been fulfilled, Voldemort was dead but he had been too late. Their world had been exposed to the muggles and, seeing a threat, the muggles had retaliated. They didn't even notice until it had been too late. There had been so many sides in the war that when people started to go missing they just assumed they were taken by one of the other sides.

They had been wrong.

Thirty-six wizards, twenty-seven witches, and twelve squibs had gone missing and unnoticed in the mass deaths caused by Voldemort, the Death Eaters, the Ministry, the Order and the Civilians. All of them had been taken by muggles, experimented on, and a substance formed that blocked the flow of magic. Ron Weasley had been among them. He had been one of the fortunate ones to die early on.

Magic detecting equipment had been created, guns with vials of 'Anti-Magic' were manufactured, and an even bigger war began. Nobody was safe and within a year of first attacks only five percent of the wizarding population remained. Nobody would take on a wizarding child in fear of the destruction any accidental magic would bring.

Harry felt so weary; there had been so much loss. It was hard to think that just four years earlier he had watched his godfather fall through the veil in the department of mysteries. A year later Dumbledore taught him about the Horacruxes and in his seventh year the whole of the Order was searching for them whilst the battle raged, during that time Ron went missing. Harry had killed Voldemort shortly before his eighteenth birthday, just before the Magic vs. Muggle war began. It was the war of the worlds, only different to how H. imagined it.

Hermione was gone; she hadn't made it through the first wave of attacks. It had been so unexpected. Muggles weren't even supposed to be able to see Hogwarts. They hadn't realised that they found a way. A whole generation of witches and wizards wiped out in a single bloody night.

Remus was gone too. They tracked him down on a full moon. It wasn't his fault he was using magic. It was uncontrollable. They found Tonks nearby. The Weasleys were gone. They'd been in the Diagon Alley attacks. Not even the Goblins had survived. Poor, sweet Luna died too. She had been with Harry up until three weeks ago. Harry had gone to find food whilst she looked after Teddy Lupin. He had his first accidental magic in the fifteen minutes he had been gone. It had been over quickly but not painlessly.

The Ministry had fallen quickly, as well as the ministries from other countries. The deaths were worldwide and not just limited wizards. The giants were erased, the last of the dragons was slaughtered nine months into the attacks, the centaurs annihilated, magical forests burnt to the ground. Everything was gone and the worst part was, they didn't even get a chance to fight back. Their magic stripped from them, they were helpless.

Harry shook his thoughts away and concentrated on his task at hand. He'd been searching for an answer ever since the war of the worlds had begun. He and Luna hadn't been travelling haphazardly across the country. Knowledge of older generations had been hidden in the unlikeliest of places, a list of which Harry had retrieved from Potter manner before the place had been blown apart by the military.

They had seen so much suffering on their travels and the effects of the war could be seen in every village. Their suspicious looks, debris from any housing that had had a magical signature and the rotting corpses of magical beings that weren't even given a proper funeral. People were too afraid to speak out for fear of the consequences. It was the things of nightmares.

Luna and Harry, along with Teddy at their side, had searched for the records of old magic. One of the grimoires that they found, at the bottom of a half caved in dry well in a gap behind a loose brick, hinted at a method of time travel that would allow them to go back years instead of the hours that had been the only known method for thousands of years.

They had finally found the complete copy just two weeks before Luna and Teddy's deaths and had discovered why it had gone missing. The ritual was dark, needing the blood of the caster to draw the runes before they were powered with magic, and slowly and painfully killed the caster. He'd have one year left of life to set everything right before he died. A single year.

He and Luna had discussed it together before she died. If he only had a year then it'd have to be a worthwhile one. He couldn't let Voldemort risk coming to power a second time around and starting the war of the worlds and the spell wouldn't take him as far back as Riddle's childhood so he couldn't stop the problem before it began and if he went back to when his parents were still in school then the Horacruxes would still be being created and he wouldn't get a chance to destroy them all.

That left the time his parents were out of school. He didn't want to be there any time after he had been born since the war had been in full swing by then and Voldemort had a large power base but he couldn't risk going to far back and inadvertently changing were the Horacruxes were hidden. Luna had agreed with him that the best time would be to go back to the year before his birth. He'd have the best chance of fixing things.

Harry looked around the chamber of a hidden cave he was in. It was stated specifically to perform the spell there because there was no ambient magic to mess with it. No magic meant the place hadn't been discovered by the muggles. The chamber itself was made of an unusual black rock that was smooth and shiny, lit only by a narrow hole in the ceiling.

He looked at the small scroll of parchment that acted to map out the runes that he needed to draw and pulled out a silver dagger from his jean pockets. It was dull and partially blunt and not the most suitable choice for a blood ritual but he had only just escaped with his life to get it and temporarily lost his magic. He had been careless and gotten hit but he got the dagger.

Gritting his teeth, he pushed the dagger down across his forefinger and down to his palm and began to draw the runes on the cold, black stone. He had to stop every now and again to reopen the wound and after the first couple of hours he felt woozy from the blood loss but continued on until he reached the final rune, which instead of being drawn onto the wall had to be cut into his skin.

Gripping the silver dagger painfully in his right hand he pierced the blade into the flesh on his palm just below the thumb and let the rune wrap around onto the back of his hand so that when he closed his thumb against his hand it looked like the spiky edges of the C shaped rune almost joined.

The dagger clattered to the floor and Harry pulled his wand out of his sleeve and pressed it against the rune, pushing as much magic into it as possible, ignoring the panic that rose in him as he let his magic free for the first time in over a year. Pain coursed through his body as the blood runes glowed an eerie red and he was vaguely aware of the rune on his hand turning a purplish black, spreading out from his wand point like ink, before he collapsed.

The rune on his hand pulsed twice before a blinding flash enveloped him. At thirteen minutes past one on July 31st 2000, Harry Potter vanished.

This a little plot bunny that popped into my head and seemed too good to let go of. It's come in various ways but all have one of the main charecters going back to stop muggle vs. magic war in whic the muggles are winning. I've never seen one of those before.