Chapter 1
In the end, they'd decided to do it with a VRMMO.
It was a muggleborns idea of course - to use the technology that posed such a threat to the wizarding world. Anyone with eyes and any sense knew that it was just a matter of time until the muggle world spotted them - technology was just so advanced now. The wizarding people had found themselves pushed further and further into the edges of civilisation as electronic registration and tracking became standard for non-magical citizens. No longer could children just disappear at age eleven without it being noticed, nor could they so easily reappear as adults, lacking any history of any kind in those intervening years. Not to mention how magical borns could no longer interface with the muggle world at all, without recognised identities.
Not that many cared of course - the magical world was an insular place and most people seemed to believe they had no need to interact with the rest of the world at all. A fallacy of course - especially as the muggle satellites and other wide-scale systems improved and began noticing them. They'd delayed the wizarding world's discovery by sending out muggleborns to turn the world's gaze away from them - people who could slip by with the knowledge they had, gain more and implement it quickly. Hacking into a satellite wasn't nearly so difficult when you could access the restricted terminals that controlled them. It was a temporary fix, but it bought them time to figure out what to do next - how they were going to deal with being discovered.
Truthfully, Hermione was astounded that they hadn't been discovered much sooner. Obliviations did little when someone recorded the whole thing on their camera phone, but for the last few years they'd gotten lucky more times than could be counted. Mostly because she'd finally managed to get approved her plan of having magical introductions to muggleborn families at a far far earlier age than eleven. Not only did it mean that there was less attention brought to panicking parents as their children accomplished strange and impossible feats, but it also meant more eyes in the street who actually knew what was going on when something strange happened. It had been muggleborn families who had helped keep the secret of magic lately, something which galled many who had claimed that it would be they who revealed the secret of their world.
In the wake of the last wizarding war more lives had been lost than any other magical war. It wasn't only the death toll that had brought such great change, it was the effect of the final year, of living in a United Kingdom occupied by a madman and his vicious followers. Everyone had experienced some of the horror, the fear and oppression as friends and family turned against eachother out of sheer fear, often merely for the amusement of those in charge. Nearly everyone had been hurt, tormented and lost loved ones under Voldemort's reign, and when his regime had been overthrown, those left alive had finally taken their stand as well. The fighting may have been over with the threat of pain and loss no longer hanging over their heads, the British magicals had taken a strong stand against blood supremacy.
A bit too strongly in truth - while she couldn't deny that many death eaters deserved the death penalty in her opinion, there were many who had been press-ganged into service and that ought to reflect in their punishment.
What had definitely helped were the muggleborns. Once the dust had settled and literally a few days after Kingsley was instated as the new Minister for Magic, a plea and a promise had been sent out to the muggleborns who had fled the kingdom, in the hopes of having them return. The population had taken a huge hit and it was likely the only time that revolution could take place without massive opposition. Taking the helm of course, Hermione had coordinated as much as she could. While Harry and the rest of the Hogwarts crew had set about dealing with the castle and everyone who had fought and died there - on both sides - she had gotten herself elbow-deep into the ministry.
There was actually very little talk of change at first - it just happened. With the majority of the Wizengamot either dead in battle, or with a dark mark on their arm all the same, the body of law was excluded entirely. Instead most of the worst of the laws were changed in a small meeting room with just a few key members - herself, Kingsley and Tiberius Ogdon - a Wizengamot member that resigned before the war broke out. Andromeda Tonks intermittently helped, when she wasn't grieving and trying to cope with her grandson, and sometimes others would be consulted if a law in their field was being analysed - from asking Filius Flitwick about Goblin-related issues to asking a house elf its opinion to laws regarding it. Coming from a dark-aligned family, Andromeda's insight was actually very useful, as she had heard enough from her youth about how some of those laws could be twisted for dark purposes, and her suggestions filled in many loopholes that had previously been used by her family.
Of course most of the laws that were focused on were equality laws. Not just for non-magicals and magical creatures, but even the rest of the magical folk. Some of the laws regarding marriage and ownership were quite archaic and it took little to make changes to them now, when their biggest opposition were either dead or imprisoned.
The greatest change was one that was also the most important, and encompassed most of the amended or overturned laws - the understanding that every sentient being had rights.
Normally Hermione would feel it underhanded, what they did - to take advantage of the situation and the free reign they had been given to enact these changes, but she couldn't, when all they were doing was pushing through the concept of sentient rights.
There were many more changes they could have made but those were the urgent ones, the ones that they couldn't afford to fight about. Once those had been dealt with, attention was turned back to rebuilding and coping in the aftermath of the war - the rest of the laws could be addressed properly in an open forum once the country was restabilised.
By the time they were done with those laws, Harry and the rest at Hogwarts had completed the preliminary clean up. Debris swept and bodies collected, the castle was inhabitable excluding certain sections and funerals had already started taking place. Every body had been identified, and if not collected then set aside for a mass burial at the end. Those that weren't collected were mostly Dark, or had lost those family and friends who might have claimed them.
Hermione learned more about magical funeral rights in that week than she ever wanted to - and there were many. From simple affairs that weren't all that different to a muggle funeral, to some elaborate and highly magical rituals. Many chose to bury their dead in family lots, or in the graveyard not far from the lake, near Dumbledore's tomb. It would have been a riot to suggest that the death eaters be buried there also so instead they were buried on the other side of the lake, if they weren't known to have committed any great crime, and if they had then their bodies were sent through the veil - in the hopes that their tainted spirits would go with them and be taken from the land.
But once the wreckage of the war started to clear up, problems that had been previously set aside began to crop up again, and there were no longer the excuses of burying their dead to delay them. While a great deal of time was still spent questioning Dark survivors and discerning their guilt and punishment, the muggle government could be delayed no longer.
Those first few meetings were difficult, of course. The magical government was still in disarray - Hermione herself had been attending a great many meetings and doing a lot of things that she technically wasn't allowed to - she had no post or title, no authority within that, and yet she stood beside Kingsley when he went to speak with the Prime Minister and the Queen. Her youth and her drive were surprisingly useful in that setting, particularly when the muggle Prime Minister attempted to make demands that just weren't reasonable, regardless of the situation with the destabilized magical government.
The magical war had encroached heavily into the muggle world of course - the only reason that the secret of magic wasn't all over the web was because death eaters had killed any muggle who saw them. That coupled with the muggle side trying to keep it quiet too, talking about terrorist attacks all year they'd managed to keep a lid on it. Of course the Prime Minister was raging - he wasn't likely to get re-elected given the public opinion right now - they hadn't been able to do anything about the so-caleld 'terrorist attacks' after all, but they'd managed to soothe that with promises of improved relations and evidence that the war was over for good. To begin with, they promised to get recorded footage of some of the remaining death-eaters, to give the muggle people faces to the 'terrorists' that had been haunting them so long. Most of the worst were already through the veil of course, but there were a few still being interrogated - in the end it was a recording of Jugson that was sent to the Minister as the death eater spouted vitriol to Hermione herself in fact.
That recorded was released and went viral pretty quickly, and it was the first time that the magical and non-magical government had cooperated in such a way. Jugson's diatribe had been broad enough to not raise red flags about magic and so could be released to the muggle public. Unfortunately while he truth about magic may not have been advertised, there were plenty of people who knew something wasn't right. People had been disappearing seemingly impossibly all year after all, and there were enough inconsistencies for people to realise something wasn't quite right. Nobody pressed though - everyone just wanted to forget about it all for now.
And as time passed, things began to improve. Not just in the magical world, but the muggle too - people started to recover from the dark time. Unfortunately despite that they were still more wary than before, especially when it came to strange things happening, and they knew it would take something big to change public opinion in their favor. The muggle technology pushed closer and closer every day as it advanced. It reacted with their magic, and it didn't take long before people started noticing when their electronics didn't work around certain area. As it got worse and worse, the magical population could no longer hold against it without risking discovery. Eventually magicals were forced to leave the towns and cities entirely, though not many actually lived within the main cities by that point, not after Voldemort had targetted most of them who did so and had them killed for 'conspiring with muggles' during the war.
Things were starting to get difficult though. While the school, even the government were getting back on their feet, it didn't change the fact that muggles were reacting poorly to the magical world. It didn't take them long to find out that the troubles they'd been having had been of a magical nature and they didn't react kindly. Many magical children had to be removed from their homes in that first year, as their parents reacted so badly to the knowledge of what they were and the things they could do. It put pressure on an already taxed magical society, where people were still grieving their losses and couldn't bear to take in the orphaned children.
It did get better, little by little, but not enough. With such reactions from the parents of muggleborn children, there was great fear about what would happen when it could no longer be denied that the magical world existed.
That was when they decided that they had to do something about the public sentiment. Trying to make people more open and accepting to something without actually divulging what that something was, that was a task, but eventually a solution was provided. By that point the muggles had continued to advance, pressing the limits of reality and capability. The idea of making a VRMMO was suggested by a muggleborn boy who had a non-magical sibling who played them extensively. Hoping to bond with his brother had joined in playing the online game and seem how popular and immersive it was. The boy had hoped at first to create some kind of virtual reality of Hogwarts, so his brother could experience it with him in some way, but the idea had quickly evolved.
By the time that the idea reached Hermione Granger, the magical government was no longer a ruin they stepped through each day. In fact it wasn't the ministry of magic building as it had been at all - given the damage done to it and the fact the dark memories within it, the ministry had been rebuilt outside the capital. Instead the old space had been converted into the new Diagon Alley, as the previous location had been similarly wrecked and was far more likely to be discovered by the advancing technology, than if the bustling high street were moved to the underground ministry building.
Hermione had a desk now, and an office even, within the newly erected Department of Magical Integration. She still didn't have an official title but it didn't stop her from being involved in a great deal. Thankfully Kingsley had hired his own secretary so she was no longer doubling as that anymore, and instead had the time to focus on the muggle/magical problem. By that point it was pretty much guaranteed that they were going to be discovered at some point, but even if their luck held and it never happen then it was still worth putting in he effort to create plans just in case. Among them however, was the kindling of an idea, posed by that muggleborn boy who'd wanted to show his brother Hogwarts in a virtual reality game.
The fallout from the Magical Reveal would be far lighter if the people already had some idea what to expect. It certainly couldn't hurt anyway - while mixing magic and technology was a feat only just starting out, it would be a challenge to strive for. And while the technology wasn't there yet, already they had people out and recording key magical landmarks - including the now-abandoned Diagon Alley, the new one within the old ministry building, and of course Hogwarts itself. They even had Hagrid keep a recording of his progress through the Forbidden forest - centaurs and acromantula included.
She only hoped it'd be enough to lessen the fallout, but as time went on and the sense of urgency eased just a bit and the virtualisation of the magical world got underway, Hermione had a more pressing thought on her mind for the virtual game.
She hoped it would be fun, because she definitely wanted to play.