Dark Lord's Return Foiled By The Boy Who Lived

By Barnabus Cuffe

The Daily Prophet

This June, the Dark Lord attempted to steal the philosopher's stone from Hogwarts in a bid to return to power. The Dark Lord might well have succeeded if not for the heroic efforts of Harry Potter the son of James Potter, Ronald Weasley the son of Arthur Weasley and Molly Prewett (now Weasley), and Minerva Ross (now McGonagall) the daughter of Isobel Ross. You may be asking, what was the Philosopher's Stone doing in Hogwarts? The Dark Lord had made two previous attempts on the stone, so Nicholas Flamel trusted Albus Dumbledore with the protection of his greatest treasure. Which, of course, begs the question: how do I keep my gold with the great Albus Dumbledore and out of the hands of those money-grubbing goblins in Gringotts? Not simply by asking- Dumbledore denied this request from even his longtime friend Barnabus Cuffe, so it appears you'll have to take your chances with those sneaky goblins! Well, at least they don't have wands, right? This reporter always finds the silver lining!

Hermione pursed her lips and reminded herself that she'd promised herself not to get upset. She'd expected the article to say horrid things about her. She'd been prepared for that. A part of her wanted it, she'd gotten Professor McGonagall killed afterall, so she could hardly blame anyone who wanted her expelled. But this xenophobia towards goblins was… She twitched. Was she just going to pretend that she hadn't felt the same when she'd first met Griphook, with his beady little eyes, his sharp tongue, his acerbic attitude, and his ribbed forehead and tiny body? She'd been afraid he was going to eat her! She'd taken her galleons and run- but at least she'd felt properly ashamed, she hadn't- she hadn't made jokes about it!

But then? What difference did it make? She ran from her fear, and other wizards joked about it. Who was… Who was she to judge?

In order to get to the stone Potter and Weasley had to overcome a number of obstacles. First they had to get past a giant three-headed dog named Fluffy! And while this reporter prefers a cup of chamomile tea, the beast could be put to sleep with the beautiful melody of a harp.

Hermione raised an eyebrow. Fluffy had been asleep when they'd gotten there. While Cuffe hadn't actually lied in his article, he certainly had a way of misleading.

With the first obstacle overcome, Potter and Weasley had to catch a single flying key out of a gaggle. Fortunately, the Boy-Who-Lived is the seeker of the Gryffindor Team. That's right folks, while most first year wizards are unsuccessfully trying to catch the eye of a pretty Zabini, Harry Potter is catching snitches and philosopher's stones! Surely a bright future awaits the Boy-Who-Lived! Now let us not forget the other half of the heroic duo, Ronald Weasley. The third obstacle was a giant chess set, enchanted by previous chess champion Minerva Ross. Fortunately, it was no match for the young Ron's brilliant analytical mind. And so our heroic duo of brave first year wizards advanced on the fourth obstacle, a giant mountain troll. Our brave Harry stuck his wand up a troll's nose to protect helpless muggleborn Hermione Granger. With his patented intelligence, the young Weasley used a levitation charm on the troll's club, and gave the troll's noggin quite a knock! Now, unfortunately, our story becomes tragic. And as many of you no doubt suspect, it has to do with the meddling of the first year muggleborn Hermione Granger. I want to emphasise again. First year. Muggleborn. Classmates report that Granger is afraid to come out of the library, has trouble performing even rudimentary spells, and that the only two wizards willing to protect her from pranks and taunts from more skilled wizards are our progressive heroes Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley. This reporter implores you to follow Potter and Weasley's example, to have empathy, to have patience. Please, this reporter begs you, treat the girl with sympathy, our world is difficult enough for muggleborns.

Hermione's nostrils flared and she put down the newspaper. She was being treated like she was… like she was a pet! And she… She couldn't even disagree.

Hogwarts had been…

It had been the first time she'd ever failed at anything. In all the schools she'd ever been to, she'd always been the best student. She'd even been skipped ahead several grades and her place at the top never changed. She'd always been the admired one, and any scorn aimed at her was borne from jealousy. But at Hogwarts… In the wizarding world… Everyone looked down on her and it wasn't all due to muggleborn prejudice.

She was the weakest witch of her year. Even her intellect betrayed her, all her knowledge was less than useless in a world which followed rules and customs she didn't understand, that seemed to defy logic itself. She wouldn't give up, she wouldn't run from Hogwarts, but she had to get her confidence back somehow.

So Hermione talked to Mum and Dad about going to muggle school over summer. They were delighted, but less so when they realized that the only school offering the advanced courses Hermione wanted was a juvenile facility. Ultimately, their belief in scholarship won out, and Hermione was taking Honors Geometry the next week.

After a few successful days astounding teachers with her academic prowess at Smelting, Hermione's confidence had been restored enough to continue the article.

Fearing that the stone was being stolen by the Dark Lord, Granger tattled to Professor Minerva Ross. Do not react reflexively, this does not mean the young girl is stupid or evil or even overly cowardly, remember that the girl is muggleborn. Such confounding actions are simply a result of her upbringing. She did not understand that the Boy Who Lived and the Dark Lord share a destiny, indeed muggles do not even believe in something as obvious as destiny. So try to imagine Harry Potter as a normal first year student, and try to imagine the Dark Lord as Sirius Black, would not going to a professor seem the prudent thing to do? While this reporter still balks at begging an outsider for help, he is progressive enough to realize that this is the result of his own harsh upbringing. Our generation had to be tough. We had to be great. There was Grindlewald, there was the Dark Lord, the two most feared wizards of all time, we had to rise and meet their challenge. I for one believe that the muggles' softening influence is good for our world. I do not want my children to have to bear the burden which we did growing up. Let us protect our children. Let them have enjoyable, innocent childhoods, free from the fear of dark warlocks and schoolyard scraps and politicking. Let us protect them from the darkness of the wizarding world, from making the hard decisions we were forced to mak-

Bloody bollocks! Hermione threw the newspaper at her bedroom wall, causing a few of her science awards to tumble to the floor. What drivel was this?

Call her stupid, call her a mudblood, call her a fake witch, call her a coward. But she'd met Lord Voldemort himself, and even he wasn't this… This…

The nerve! When had Barnabus Cuffe ever made a hard decision? He was just a lowly reporter! His decisions didn't get people killed! Hermione had decided, she'd decided to go after the stone. Sure she'd been following Harry's lead, yes she'd roped in Professor McGonagall, but you know what? It had been the right decision! All these wizards were so full of it, so smug, looking down on her and judging her. The only reason she'd made any mistakes was that she didn't know that the ordinary Harry Potter would turn into bloody Superman around Voldemort! If she'd just known that much, as Albus Dumbledore claimed he himself had, she'd have never made such a mistake! It wasn't that she didn't understand things because she was muggleborn, it was that nobody would tell her what she needed to know. They hid it from her!

She was bloody brilliant! Lord Voldemort himself had said so.

And you know what? Maybe she didn't have all that much magical power, but she knew something that most wizards didn't: The world didn't operate on love and friendship and destiny or whatever trite nonsense those fools believed in, it operated on cold, hard logic. It had to because without logic, without repeatable action and consequence, intelligence could not exist. She'd seen Voldemort operate, and she knew he understood that too. Honestly, Hermione snorted, something as basic as gathering your forces to take on a stronger opponent had never even occurred to Dumbledore, or indeed most of the wizarding world. Hermione should have been raked over the coals for not roping in more professors, if she were blamed for that she'd have understood. But blaming her for asking for help, that was bloody madness! The wizarding world needed her in their next war with Voldemort, and Hermione would be gracious enough to save them.

Then she'd rub Barnabus Cuffe's nose in it. Hermione sniffed. Stupid prick.

And so it was that Hermione began her self-assigned summer project of rereading all her first year textbooks. Not just memorizing, but analyzing, connecting, synthesizing. For her intellect to have any value she needed the requisite knowledge.

And so, when she was rereading Hogwarts, A History a certain innocuous fact bothered her.

Wizards were supposed to receive their Hogwarts acceptance letter on their eleventh birthday. Hermione's birthday was September 19th. She'd received her acceptance letter July 31st.

Initially she wrote it off as just another way that the wizarding world tried to hold muggleborns down, but something about that explanation didn't sound quite right. She kept coming back to that detail, again and again, but couldn't make anything of it.

But while she was writing an essay on the British arguments for imperialism she read about something called The White Man's Burden. It was the idea that not only was it right that foreign Englishmen should rule over native Indians and Africans, it was their moral obligation. How else were such ignorant, savage civilizations to become proper modern ones? So when the natives called for independence, it was the duty of the United Kingdom to squash such rebellion for the good of the ignorant men they ruled over.

So you see, it wasn't enough for the purebloods to rule over muggleborns like Hermione, they had to pat themselves on the back while doing it. Something as blatantly unfair as a postponed acceptance letter should have had a neat little rationalization. Hogwarts, A History could have explained that acceptance letters for muggleborns were postponed, only so that young witches and wizards didn't start performing dangerous experiments while they waited an entire year to go to magic school. For their own good you see? That would be reasonable, afterall, that's certainly what Hermione would have done, had she been given more time. And yet the book didn't offer a rationalization, didn't offer anything but the fact that young witches and wizards got their acceptance letter on their eleventh birthday.

That alone, normally wouldn't have bothered Hermione. Actually she took that back, yes it would, an entire year of potential study wasted! But it wouldn't have worried her so, if she hadn't mentally reviewed everything Doctor Quirrell had ever said to her. Anything that might give her clues about the darkest of dark wizards. And her mind had kept coming back to one interaction.

"Ahem. Not to be nit-picky," Hermione had told Lord Voldemort. "But shouldn't you have said 'hypothesized' rather than 'theorized,' Professor? It is a common mistake, but a hypothesis is a prediction while a theory is the best explanation of a repeatable phenomena. A theory has been tested, and has failed to be disproven."

Voldemort had laughed at her, because she'd caught him confessing. He had brazenly told the entire class that he'd successfully experimented on inferi, that he was Lord bloody Voldemort, and that they were all to ignorant, or in her case- stupid, to realize it.

And then… And then Lord Voldemort had said, "You seem to have a basic understanding of biology, which is quite rare even among our kind. Tell me Miss Granger, how old are you? Were you perhaps born at the end of July?"

And then Hermione had thought that no, she was born in September, and so Voldemort had moved on with the class without argument. It was just so odd, why would Voldemort care when she was born?

Perhaps she was overthinking things, it was just a date after all, but she couldn't help but connect it back to what Dumbledore had told her, about wizards who could read minds, about secrets which could kill you if you so much as knew about them, and she had a sneaking suspicion that if she were born in July rather than September, that plain old Hermione Granger would be very, very dead.

And yet… And yet she'd received her Hogwarts Acceptance Letter on July 31st…

Hermione snorted. What was she trying to do to herself? Why was she torturing herself like this? Seeing conspiracies, guessing at prophecies, claiming she was some kind of chosen one, when the simple explanation was often the correct one: Hogwarts had made a simple clerical mistake, and sent her the letter on the wrong date.

But magic doesn't make mistakes. Hermione cursed her own skepticism, she always had been too clever by half. Enough naval gazing, she'd just test it.

"I read something funny in one of my magic textbooks," Hermione said casually that night, taking a few sugarless biscuits from the basket.

"Not as funny as the patient I had this afternoon," Dad said loftily, in between mouthfuls of dental approved plain yogurt. "Grown man, in his late thirties I'd say, with cavities all over the place. Claimed he brushed his teeth after every-"

"Ahem." Hermione cleared her throat politely. "In my textbook it said that my accepta-"

"Hermione Granger!" Mum said crossly, already finished with supper and flossing. "I thought we taught you to be a good young girl! Interrupting your father is very rude. I want to hear more about this patient of yours dear, I bet it was that Swanson bloke, he always was a right wanker…"

So Hermione's brilliant moment of discovery was put on hold, as she patiently waited for Mum and Dad to finish their illuminating gossip about their patient's brushing habits, thinking about how this was why she had always considered them only lowly doctors. Very, very lowly! Perhaps she should do something horrible, and only brush her teeth for one minute and forty seconds after supper! No, no that was too rash of course. Hermione was still a good girl afterall, if an annoyed one.

"Now then," Mum said, turning to Hermione as Dad brushed his teeth. "What was it you were reading about in that little magic book of yours? I imagine it must have all kinds of strange tidbits, but I do recommend that you test anything that hasn't been properly peer-reviewed or you'll soon find yourself recommending patients to brush their teeth with fairy powder. Think of the cavities!"

"I know Mum," said Hermione testily. Honestly, Mum and Dad sometimes treated her like she was a child. "You see, I came across this passage that said that Hogwarts sent acceptance letters to their children on their eleventh birthday. But mine came in July instead of September so I was wondering-"

Dad choked on his toothbrush and spat up a mouthful of suds. Hermione raised an eyebrow.

"What are you accusing us of?" Mum said angrily, her voice rising higher and higher. "We're law-abiding citizens! Proper dentists we are! We'd never resort to criminal activities like some lowly chiropractor!"

Hermione folded her arms. "I was born in July wasn't I?"

Dad had finally caught his breath. "Yes." He held up his hand to Mum. "We shan't lie to her anymore. It's pointless, our Hermione is too brilliant, she did come from us after all. She'd see through whatever we told her, however clever it may be."

Hermione nodded. Quite right.

"Now Hermione we've alway taught you to follow the rules, and we still hold to that, but there are exceptions. You see, when you were a baby there was an awful man- or perhaps an awful woman- or perhaps an awful group of people- known as the Julian Killer. And you see Hermione, while nobody knew who this killer was, it was well known who he targeted: babies born between July 16th and July 31st of 1980. Tens of thousands of them. We were only trying to protect you, Hermione, we wouldn't have broken the rules otherwise."

Okay… That was… Was…

Well it was very, very concerning, there was no other way to spin it. But Hermione's proposal was still just a hypothesis, she still had to test it. She was horrified and curious and eager. If her proposal was correct it meant she'd just made a brilliant deduction, and proven her intelligence once and for all. It would also mean that Lord Voldemort was much, much more dangerous than anyone had ever realized.

She wrote to Ron asking him to investigate wizarding children born in 1980 with birthdates near the end of July. Alive or dead. And to please be discrete, it had to do with Lord Voldemort.

Ronald wrote her back in a week.

Hiya Hermione,

I told you to call him You-Know-Who! You won't believe it but Harry's birthday is July 31st. And dad told me that a sorry bloke named Neville Longbottom was born on July 30th, but You-Know-Who murdered him and his family when he was just a baby. I saw where you were going with it, maybe there was some kind of prophecy or something and You-Know-Who was trying to kill anyone born at the end of July, but Draco Malfoy and Ernie Macmillan were both born on July 29th and You-Know-Who never did anything to them. Neville and Harry's parent were both big opponents of You-Know-Who so he was probably just going after them. It was some smart thinking, but even you can't be right all the time. Sorry,

Ron

Hermione's lips stretched. This was excellent news. This as much as confirmed a prophecy! Most likely, there had been a prophecy that a child born at the end of July would kill Voldemort. There were other conditions of course, but those could be discovered by figuring out the differences between Neville and Harry's circumstances and Draco and Ernie's. And then… And then she'd look into how all the muggle baby's fit with the prophecy and she wouldn't have to wait for stupid Dumbledore to explain everything, she'd have figured it all out herself!

And then Hermione thought about things a little more.

She thought about Dumbledore's warnings, about how he had told her that ignorance could be a protection. She thought about her interactions with the Dark Lord himself.

"Tell me Miss Granger, how old are you?" Voldemort had said. "Were you perhaps born at the end of July?"

If he'd asked her that same question now, she was quite sure she'd be dead. And more… Voldemort had seemed… uncertain, that the one prophesied to kill him was Harry Potter. In fact, by all indications Voldemort was still looking. Or perhaps he was just being thorough.

Thorough enough to slaughter muggleborns. Or was it muggles? Why would he be afraid of muggles, unless…

"Yes," Voldemort had said. "She is very clever. But then, so are muggles. They have all kinds of wondrous ways of doing things all on their own. Why, when I was a child I would return home from Hogwarts and find wondrous airplanes, dropping wonderful gifts, setting the sky on fire. It was all for a war orders of magnitude larger than Grindlewald's noble revolution. Unfortunately, the wrong side won, but the war- particularly how it ended- earned the muggles my respect. Perhaps you should be with them, mudblood. They are more your kind than we are. Although after I have regained my body and conquered Britain they will be dealt with as well."

Unless the war with wizards had never been Voldemort's main objective. Unless he was planning something larger. Wizard Hitler, he had proudly called didn't suggest a man ignorant of the muggle world. And if there was some curse that allowed you to control people, or perhaps a potion that allowed you to mimic their appearance, the entire muggle world could be brought down with a few people pressing a few buttons.

Hermione's heart hammered. She was touching on grounds that ought not be touched, that would be better left to powerful wizards like Albus Dumbledore. So… So…

She was done with her investigation! She would think of Lord Voldemort no more.

But her mind dragged one last memory of Voldemort to the fore.

"Not professor, not mister," Voldemort had said.

"Doctor."

At some point in the past, Lord Voldemort- the man who claimed to have the purest of pureblood- had earned himself a doctorate.

Author's Note: Thanks for reading! My favorite part of this fic is Voldemort. He has been rewritten to oppose Hermione Granger rather than Harry Potter, which makes him magnitudes more dangerous. I've seen a lot of stories where the MC's use their knowledge of the muggleworld to gain an advantage, but in this story the one doing that is Voldemort himself. As an example, at some point in the future he plans to tactically nuke Hogwarts. And in this story, the USSR never fell. Well, onto the review:

Luiz4200 - Harry wasn't upset with her for going to McGonagall. He just wanted to stop Voldemort from getting the stone. He himself attempted to tell Professor McGonagall, but just like in cannon she brushed him off. Harry's protests were because Hermione saw herself as less important than he and Ron.