A.N.: Okay, I know I haven't updated for almost three months. So sue me. I used to be All's Well that Ends Well, but I changed my name to what you see now -- SaneLunatic. Anyway, I had a lot of trouble just writing this short little chapter, so please please please review and enjoy! Oh yeah, and I want to dedicate this to my friend Erin, who's an author on ff.n as DarkMutatedBrock, for helping me out with ideas and stuff...I wrote this at a sleepover with some of my friends including Erin and she was an enormous help, so thank you, Erin!

Disclaimer: Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm not Ms. Rowling so don't bother to sue. ;-)

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Harry, Hermione, and Ron all stood, bodies frozen in shock and faces set in the solemn, cold visage of shock and terror, shock and terror such that they had never known before. "Oh, scared, are you?" Grindelwald spoke the words with a slight sneer. "Stupid little Brits. You know that we shall defeat you Scheisskoepfen. Your shit-consuming muggle community as well as your fumbling little wizard community. You know it."

Hermione was just sobbing and, her Catholic training suddenly coming back in her blind fright, began to speak the familiar words, her voice trembling, "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with the..." Suddenly this quiet prayer was choked off by her uncomprehendable terror, the nearly-absent shard of hope flickering away and becoming lost forever in the endless dark chasm of despair which prevailed within her terrorized mind. She felt as though she were being insanely and uncontrollably consumed by the creature of fear, a creature she had never known so well before, and wondered silently, "Am I going insane?" Her visage and her entire appearance became identical to Ron's: cold, filled with the terror and despair characteristic of people who fear what is most dear to them: their lives.

Yet somehow, Harry showed nothing of this. Characteristically Harry, he spoke bravely, "We will fight and in the end, England and the good will win over your Germany and its evil." He spoke the words in an eloquent, grandiloquent way, wearing the facade of fearless emotion he had grown to be so good at wearing. "Even if we should have to die to let good prevail, so be it."

An ironic smile spread across Grindelwald's cold, dark face and an equally ironic chuckle of contempt escaped his lips, irony which sent chills invariably down the three onlookers' spines. "Idealism. Silly, silly idealism. It's almost touching, seeing you children...a girl trying to pray to a God who does not exist...a boy saying things he does not mean just to seem brave...and another boy, too scared to do anything. It's so...almost emotional. Though not a scene too emotional to disrupt, too emotional to end. Now let me ask of you one question: if good always prevails as you seem to believe -- or at least pretend to believe -- then why is it that there is always sincere evil working in the world?" His tone, his demeanor, his entire existence was a spine chilling sinister.

Hermione looked at the man, too scared to do any thing anymore but look and wonder and be frightened. She couldn't help but wonder if he was ever anything besides this, ever anything different. If he had ever been too a little child, smiling, laughing, playing with his model toys, hugging an older sister or laughing at a younger brother. If he had been just like her once...a normal child, a sweet child.

But she was jerked out of her thoughts by Harry's words, words getting louder and louder until she could ignore them no longer, could be in the sanctuary of her own mind no longer: "--something that will defeat the evil that works in the world. I do not want to be that something if it means my death, but if I must I will. Good is more important than one singular life."

"One singular life...but the life of the Boy Who Lived?" Grindelwald spoke these words with an ugly grin spreading over his face, one almost like a school boy who had played a prank -- but a much worse prank that Fred or George would ever pull. A prank that could do much worse things.

"What the -- what the hell?" Harry was yanked suddenly out of his costume of bravery and eloquent speech and now looked just plain shocked. "How in hell do you know that? You're not -- you're not him? Of course you're not, you're Grindelwald, not Voldemort, and you were defeated in 1945...I mean, you're going to be defeated in 1945...what did I say that for? Now he knows...oh, good one, Harry, great job." He had reverted to an old habit of talking to himself. He'd done it much in the past simply because he had had no one to talk to, and now it seemed as though he was doing it again.

"Oh, so I am going to, am I?" Grindelwald laughed. "I'll remember that when 1945 draws near. And as to how I know -- suffice to say that there are true seers."

"You mean...you mean, you know everything?" Harry asked, voice suddenly trembling.

"Well, I wouldn't say everything," Grindelwald's voice sounded leisurely and Harry hated everything about it. "But sufficiently enough. I know that my protegee will end up killing your parents and you will survive the attack. Why else would I want to hunt you down so much? There were plenty of other little children and even sufficient adults sitting out on the streets that I could have killed or tortured or done anything to you. But I saw you were here. This is not a random act of violence, Harry. Oh no, not random at all...though when your two little friends die it might be."

Harry's face gained new fright and panic as the chance of death became a true reality instead of the off-chance thing it had seemed. He struggled to still speak. "You try to change the future for the worse. But what if the opposite is true? What if by this encounter you are changing the future for the better?"

"How would I be doing that?" Grindelwald said, laughing idly. "You are so foolish...so foolish, boy...but you know that you do not have to die. You could just join me and the dark side. You know it..."

"Never," Harry said weakly, even though a part of his conscious mind was gnawing away at this will, telling him that it would be so easy...so simple. Just join them and he would be free, free from the clutches of death...he struggled to keep the idealism that kept him going alive, for it was a hard task. "Never will I join you in your evil, consuming treachery."

"You won't, will you?" Grindelwald asked. "Well, then, I suppose it's silly for me to try to convince you...pity, really, you could be a great asset..."

"I am a great asset and will always be, but for the good side, not for your sodding dark side!" Harry cried, sobbing.

Hermione looked at the scene, numb with shock. There was just something so...so sinister about it, and she suddenly realized she had never really witnessed this kind of evil first-hand. She had heard it spoken of -- sometimes from the mouths of good people like Harry and Ron but usually from those of her parents and their friends -- but had never actually witnessed it, in muggle or in magic world. It scared her and chilled her to the bone to see the thing. How could people be capable of it? Much as she tried, she could not fathom why some people, some of whom she even had seen regularly, could be capable of this kind of thing.

How? The question echoed in the valleys and chasms of her mind, but only the question itself, never an answer...never an answer.

But while Hermione was lost in contemplation, Harry and Grindelwald was still having their little discussion and Grindelwald was now speaking: "So you say that you shall die for your cause before you join mine?" The question was spoken in a sneering, ugly way.

"Yes, for I will never join you. I want nothing more than to stay alive, but if it costs my life --"

But Harry's voice was cut short by two quiet, cold, hating and angry words spoken from Grindelwald's lips, two words far too familiar to Harry's terrorized mind: "Avada Kedavra."

And Harry fell to the ground, his facade of bravery at last completely falling and allowing his visage at last to reveal the true terror and sadness he felt inside. But it was too late, for he had died, had died too quickly to even feel the pain.

Hermione and Ron both looked at the scene with shock, shock pure and unhidden. Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, had just died, had just been killed by a mere two words. No struggle, no fight, only some dialogue, frightening dialogue, a dialogue interrupted by a dimple and sudden Avada Kedavra. The interruption had come to soon...no matter when it could come it was too soon. The Boy Who Lived was dead, and all they could do for a moment was stand there in numb shock, unable to do anything, unable even to cry.

Finally a sob came from deep within Hermione's heart, a sob that she had been holding back for what seemed to be an eternity but was really only a few terrifying seconds of her life. Her heart now tainted with anger and hatred, she screamed in blind rage and hatred, "Avada Kedavra!" She wanted nothing more than to destroy the life which had destroyed so many others, to avenge Harry's death...she wanted nothing more and nothing less than that.

And because of the hatred in her voice, a man did fall down dead after her words.

But it was not Grindelwald.

It was Winston Churchill.

And in the instant Hermione's eyes fell upon the man's face and her brain linked the lifeless face with the old historical name of England's former leader, she realized the huge mistake she had just made. It wasn't just another man. She could have just given Germany the key to victory over England and, in the end, over the whole war. She had ended the life of one of England's most important leaders. And the anger and hatred she had felt, this anger and hatred which had made the curse work and fueled its success, dissipated into a faint mist in the far distance of her mind, never to be found again. As Ron stared at Hermione in frightened shock and horror, she could only avert her eyes, even though she hadn't done anything wrong, had only made a mistake...a huge mistake. And now all she felt was terror, shock, and sad wonder of how it could be.

And suddenly Hermione remembered...the muggle governments know about magic...Winston Churchill did. He had visited the magical communities of Germany in an attempt for reconciliation and peace between the two nations' muggle communities and in search of a solution in the year of 1941. He had been in the Dresden portion of the German magical communities just this day and had worked out a very, very important contract. All the textbook knowledge came to her...but far too late, far too late.

Grindelwald's voice cut into her reverie. "So what do we have here? Two more potential --"

A voice that seemed familiar but that neither Hermione nor Ron could place interceded as an auburn-haired man approached whom the two much later realized was Dumbledore at the time. "Grindelwald," he said. "So we meet again..."

And not realizing who the man was, so numb with shock that they could still barely take in the fact that the Boy Who Lived had just been killed and that Hermione had just killed the British Prime Minister, Hermione and Ron scuttled off, hardly caring that Dumbledore could be killed because of them and not realizing even that it was Dumbledore. They were too scared to even care that their lives might be costing another's life.

But they didn't realize that their two lives were to cost thousands, perhaps millions, of others' lives.

*To Be Continued*

I bet you didn't expect Harry or Churchill to die, let alone in the same chapter. I was just too sick of Harry being so damn invincible, and I really wanted to do lots of altering the future, sooo. Please review...only one person reviewed the last chapter. :-( *puppy eyes*