-- I started an experiment. Never tried the HP genre before. Don't quite know how I feel about something so mainstream, especially given that, oh sacrilege of sacrilege, I didn't actually think the books were any good. In contrast, buried amongst all the shit, there are some surprisingly good HP fanfics out there, which I have enjoyed more than the books themselves. Then again, that is not saying much. - - cm - -

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Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter franchise. I do not own the characters or any such things as happen to be already copyrighted by she-who-needn't-be-named-here. My plot, and anything not already belonging to others, however, belongs to me.

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So, here it is:

A Small Victory

Prologue

A few weeks after the war was over, the bodies buried, and the medals awarded, Hermione Granger got to work. She'd always been called the brightest witch of her generation, and she'd accepted that. After all, she was always first in her class in everything. Sure, she knew it wasn't all brains that got her to this point; it was her formidable organization and her obsessive-compulsive reading tendencies as well. But still, it was only now, that the war was over and she was still alive, that she finally sat down and thought about it. Her generation. Hermione had seen a number of her friends and acquaintances struck down in the years since Voldemort returned. She'd seen the British wizarding world crippled and ultimately toppled by that madman and his gang of psychotic thugs. She'd spent the better part of a year wandering around the back woods of Britain and hiding from the magical community with Harry. In all her years of schooling, all her years spent worrying over if she and any of her friends would survive until adulthood, she'd never really thought about just how small the magical community truly was.

Before she reached for a book, Hermione sat down and listed what she knew.

1. Hogwarts wasn't just the pre-eminent wizarding school in Britain, it was, to all intents and purposes, the only one.

a. In her class alone, there had been, at most, 25 Gryffindors (somewhat fewer remained now). This number was similar to the populations of each of the other three houses.

b. No other year had significantly more students.

i. Conclusion #1: in the entirety of Great Britain, there were less than 1000 magical individuals between the ages of 11 and 18.

2. The Death Eaters had managed to topple the Ministry and continue their reign of fear over all of Britain for the better part of a year.

a. Excluding the werewolves, dementors, giants, vampires and miscellaneous creatures of the dark that had joined the evil gits, there were less than 50 true Death Eaters.

b. These 50 Death Eaters had taken over the Ministry, replaced its aurors and run Hogwarts, and still had time to spare in kissing up to V. and organizing imprisonment, torture and execution of muggle-borns.

c. Aside from the 20 or so individuals in the Order of the Phoenix, and the students in the DA, no one had even tried, much less succeeded in raising an army capable of tackling the Death Eaters.

i: Conclusion #2: despite the Ministry's love of bureaucracy, there really wasn't much to do, and not many positions to fill to run and control all of wizarding Britain. Therefore the Ministry was tiny in comparison to muggle government, proportionately reflecting the overall population of the wizarding community.

ii: Conclusion #2b: No army could be raised because there simply weren't enough people to do so. After some thought, she added the amendment: Or, they were simply all too cowardly.

3. The preeminent shopping district of wizarding Britain, Diagon Alley, occupies less than 4 blocks of a single street in London. Including all its branches such as Knockturn alley, the area is possibly 7 or 8 square blocks. And that's all.

a. There must not be that many goods to buy

b. There was not enough demand to produce more goods

i. Conclusion #3: There were either too few producers or consumers of magical goods. Possibly both.

4. The overseas schools of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, were, like Hogwarts, essentially the only wizarding academies of any scale in their respective countries.

i. Conclusion #4: The magical communities of other countries in Europe were probably as proportionately small as Britain's.

5. There were upwards of 6 billion muggles in the world.

a. During the years that V. was rising, less than 1000 muggles were killed by Death Eater-provoked hostilities.

b. All of these deaths had been covered up by the magical authorities by liberal use of obliviate and planting of false memories, or else were attributed to accident or muggle terrorism by the muggle authorities.

c. As terrorism goes, death-eaters had made remarkably little impact on the muggle world in general, although they had got the muggle ministry all in a panic.

d. Muggle governments and public attitudes were well known for its excessive use of force when terrorism was suspected.

e. Muggles were not well known for tolerance of different ethnic groups.

i. Conclusion #5: if muggles were to realize the true cause of all those deaths, they would almost certainly declare war on the wizarding world.

Hermione looked down at what she had written, and shuddered. If her assumptions were correct, and her conclusions valid, her world was in trouble. Big trouble. Praying she was wrong, Hermione heaved a sigh, stretched, and headed for the nearest library.

Three weeks, several reams of paper, and many quills later, she was sure. Her desk and floor were littered with scholarly research, old censuses, almanacs, histories and what have you. She'd done all the research, and used her formidable arithmancy skills to devise a model of the future. And it did not look good. Not only were magical beings of all sorts, including magical humans, dying out, but her calculations showed a nearly 90 chance that within a generation (probably coinciding with the rising of the next dark lord whomever he or she might be), the wizarding world would no longer be able to hide its existence (such as it was) from the non-magical population. This almost certainly spelled disaster, if wizard society continued its long-standing traditions.

Hermione was a logical girl. She could see plain as day that these were two separate problems:

1: Why were wizards in particular, and magical beings in general disappearing? And how could that trend be reversed, or at the very least, halted?

2: How to prepare for the day when muggles woke up to the parallel society in their midst, so that both sides would survive the meeting?

Problem #1 seemed like a problem in biology. Possibly environmental, possibly genetics. But definitely an issue she could tackle with the right research.

On the other hand, problem #2 was political in nature. It would require knowledge of sociopolitical conflict. It would require the entire magical outlook on muggles to be reshaped, it would require the dismantling of generations of tightly held tradition. It would require charisma, leadership skills, and popularity. She had none of these things. She was intelligent, frighteningly so, but she was cold and calculating. She was bossy and short tempered. People acknowledged her powers but they did not respect her, and they certainly didn't like her. And she was muggle-born. Yes, Voldemort was dead (again) but the damage he did could not have been sustained if people didn't already believe in his cause. Was there anyone else who could do the job? Harry was a hero, but even if he wanted to go into politics (which he didn't), the shine of heroism would wear off quickly. The public was fickle and had turned on Harry too often in the past for him to carry it off. They would love him for a day or a month, but soon would find cause to belittle him. Ron? No. Nobody respected a Weasley. She just didn't know. There had to be options, but she was just too ignorant in this area to see them. Worse, she couldn't think of anyone left alive that she could ask who would take her seriously. She hated being a teenage girl.

Hermione grabbed a new quill and started scratching out a new set of arithmancy equations. She had time. Not much (in the grand scheme of things), but enough. She could get to work on problem #1, and by the time her generation started ascending the ranks of power there might arise someone who could pull off what needed to be done. Before it was too late.

There was a catch of course. There is always a catch: a price that must be paid. Hermione was a very thorough girl. She'd put into her equations variables for what she would have to do with her life to see her plan through. She would not have time for Ron. They would not marry, not have a house full of curly red-haired terrors to raise. She would not be able to have the kind of life she'd hoped for, a quiet life of academic research and family. In fact, she would have to leave the wizarding world for a number of years. You just don't learn enough real science and biology in wizarding society. And what if something muggle was to blame for the decline in magical population? The only way to learn about muggle hazards was to live in their world.

Hermione sighed, and brushed away a single tear. What she wanted didn't matter. It never had. She was going to save the world. Single handedly if she had to. What else could she do?

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There you go. Prologue. I admit, my reading of the HP books was less than thorough, so if I get details wrong, feel free to correct me. I may or may not fix my errors depending on just how much I care. Updates will be highly variable as to frequency, but as with all my other fics, I promise that it will reach a conclusion, though if it starts to blither on too long, said conclusion may be minimally satisfactory to all concerned. Questions, comments? As ever, there's that review button, or failing that, I remain curdled (dot) milk (at) gmail (dot) com.