When You-Know-Who went away the first time, many wizards made the mistake of believing he was gone forever. They wanted to believe it. The Daily Prophet was splashed with optimistic headlines, a sickeningly positive twisted version of the truth. Lives taken, families broken, a dark mark burned into the collective minds of every witch and wizard old enough to remember; the entire wizarding world absently held its breath. Oh yes, the fanatics still existed, waiting in restless anticipation for their Dark Lord's return, but without a leader hardly acted on their beliefs. Others spoke of it in hushed tones and fearful whispers, mostly just trying to forget, but to no avail. That horrible feeling of foreboding was unshakable.
Obliviate—erase that thought from your mind.
The problem was a lack of closure. There was no great battle, no heroic tales to pass on to future generations. Instead there was a rumor of a dark, cold Halloween night in Godric's Hollow. The story varied slightly depending on who you asked, but it always ended the same. The only one alive in that house was an infant, they said. Supposedly not even Voldemort himself survived.
So many questions haunted you. It just never seemed to add up. How could a baby have defeated such a powerful wizard? We're talking about a man who brought the Ministry to its knees, here. And where was this Boy-Who-Lived now? With no answers to be found, the world slowly moved on. But it was hard, so very hard, as rarely a day went by when one wasn't reminded of the war that ended so abruptly. Who hadn't lost a family member or friend or sweetheart? So much blood spilled for an ideal based on blood...
You didn't always lose people in the physical sense either, or as victims. No, there were other ways to break a family. The blackened photographs could attest to that; faces better left forgotten, erased from your mind. A sibling or cousin wandered so far down a dark path that you couldn't even see them anymore. Sometimes it was better that way, because you knew they would kill you if they ever saw you again. That was what You-Know-Who demanded: blood purity, blood spilled. Not that it mattered now that he was gone. Although it never was clear exactly what happened that night in Godric's Hollow, you wanted very much to believe he died somehow, and he wasn't just biding his time. It almost became a matter of faith, really. You hated him for tearing apart so many families.
So you live, and sometimes you look at your children and remember how scared you were. At their age, you didn't understand who Voldemort was or why he wanted to rule the world but only if he could kill everyone he saw as unworthy, which in your opinion would just take away everything good about the world. You did know at the time, but that was the point, and no one knew how to explain it to you because nothing like this had ever happened before. All they said was he didn't know how to love, that he was said to be incapable of it. As any child would, you pitied him before you learned to hate him. Later you also learned he was conceived under a magically induced illusion of love.
You made sure your children knew you loved them. Voldemort—Tom Marvolo Riddle—could have so easily been any neglected child, really. This frightened you, but no one seemed to realize how quickly one troubled young boy could become the most powerful dark wizard of all time. Muggles had serial killers and psychopaths, but at least they knew better than to overlook them. Meanwhile, the wizarding world just waited for something to happen.
When something finally did, it seemed to happen just as fast as his disappearance. He might as well have never left. It was like one day The Daily Prophet started reporting alleged Death Eater activities, attacks on muggle-borns and such. At first people thought they only printed those stories to sell more copies, and maybe that was part of it, but then one day there simply was no denying it anymore. They weren't just isolated incidents. You-Know-Who had returned to take what he believed to be his rightful place.
You'd prayed your children would never have to face the kind of fear you did. Everyone you knew from school had to grow up so damn fast. At such a young age, your whole generation had to grasp concepts like death, evil, cruelty; your childhood ended with the war.
Hogwarts was the safest place in the world. That was common knowledge, practically fact. Still, you dreaded the thought of sending them so far away in a world with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named prowling in it, especially when he set his sights exclusively on the school, searching the Boy-Who-Lived. He sought to rectify his failure from over a decade ago, as well as gain immortality and absolute control. He would give the world to the wizards if they'd only obey him, or so he claimed. The other option, of course, was death.
You hated that the younger generation had to be so brave. You'd hoped they wouldn't have to fight. Wherever Harry Potter was, You-Know-Who seemed sure to follow. Years of this and the world as you knew it teetered on the very brink of chaos. Death Eaters captured the Ministry once again, and suddenly there was nothing standing between light and dark anymore. They ebbed ever closer to victory, because frankly you were exhausted, too old for this. Yet you fought for survival. What other choice was there besides death?
Rumors of what they began to call the Battle for Hogwarts blew in. It was all anyone talked about; front page news in The Daily Prophet. Voldemort was dead at last, permanently dead this time, body and soul irrevocably reduced to dust, ashes blown away in the wind. Many casualties and considerable damage to the castle as well, they said, but not so bad as it could have been if they'd failed.
You had no way of knowing how much of it was embellished, but supposedly there was a glorious showdown with an army of Death Eaters led by Voldemort and a werewolf against students, professors, house-elves, centaurs, a giant, and countless others. The kind of closure you never got.
You were so proud. The younger generation had done more for this world than you ever would, so their children might not have to know the horrors of war. You were just sorry they had to. There was blood spilled for the ideal that no one should be persecuted because of their blood; magic wasn't in one's blood, after all. People gave their lives, families were shattered, hopefully for the last time.