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Rituals and Prime Ministers.

Holly looked at the ritual wheel thoughtfully. It was ready to go. She was finished. She had assembled it in the cellar of her home over a period of eight months. The wheel was essentially a giant collection of runes burnt and carved into the concrete with the tip of her wand, imbued with both her magic and her blood. She had already made the precise last minute inscriptions of where and when she wanted to be merged with her counterpart in the other universe and when she would transfer her soul into that body.

She had decided to travel back in time to a point when her mother was giving birth to her. Holly knew she could have gone back in time and planned a way to raise her counterpart after spending a long time there having the time to plan and put in dozens of plans, but in the end, she had decided the simpler her plans the better even if there were bonuses and benefits to such a plan.

Holly sighed irritably. How many times was she going to have to go around and around this loop? She had thought she had put this to bed. She had spent a long time trying to debate the best way of approaching this plan. Did she return to being a student at Hogwarts again, using the opportunity that presented itself now to deal with things like the Philosopher's Stone, the Triwizard Tournament, Sirius's imprisonment and his escape and what happened afterwards, and deal with Voldemort early?

Or, did she go back even further?

Did she become the daughter of a totally different couple and adopt her counterpart following Voldemort's attack?

Holly had thought she had come to her final decision months ago. It was one of the reasons why it had taken her so long to reach this stage in the first place.

For instance, she could gain easy guardianship of her other self from the Dursleys; Petunia and Vernon had hated her, and it was not out of the kindness of their hearts they'd kept her on, as Marge had often said, it was fear; they had merely taken advantage of her presence to turn her into a slave to get some kind of sick revenge and to beat the magic out of her before she returned and made them pay. At the same time if she'd had a child at the time, then her other self would have someone to grow up with, especially since she'd known what it was like to grow up completely alone. But at the same time, they had been desperate to get rid of her, it was only their fear of Dumbledore and the other wizards which stopped them from going too far, but if they thought they could get rid of her, then it was perfect for them.

In such a role, she might have been in the position to take on the Wizengamot, or the ICW and alerted them to the potential future dangers of the muggles and what they could be capable of it if they had the right resources.

The fact she would have been in the past so long in this parallel world wasn't lost on Holly, nor were the benefits.

She would have been in the parallel world for a long time, giving her the chance to learn and see the differences between this world and her original and she would have found something to take advantage of.

She would have made sure she would never have gone to Hogwarts. One of Dumbledore's greatest assets had at his disposal when he dealt with British wizards was because he pretty much knew them all so well. But if she had decided to take that particular path, she would have been virtually unknown to Dumbledore, and the old man wouldn't have known the best way to manipulate her.

Holly had to admit, it was tempting to simply travel back in time much further than what she was planning and she would go to a school like Ilvermorny in America. Not only would it prove to be a totally different learning experience for her, especially since she doubted the teachers in that school were as poor as the ones in Hogwarts, barring Professor Flitwick.

But in the end, she had decided the simpler her trip back into the past, the best. In any case, she could come up with a totally different plan when she arrived in the past. She had considered simply not attending that version of Hogwarts and she'd decided to go somewhere totally different, and end the war and the potential for it long before it even began. The possibilities were endless.

But ideas were hard to kill.

The idea of changing her plans was still there in her mind, but the problem was it had taken her weeks to inscribe the runes and she didn't have the time to change it again so she'll need to go through with her plan regardless.

Still, she could see the possibilities.

Raising herself… In such a role she could have provided proof of what the muggles could do and shake away the stupid beliefs held by some wizards at the time (one of the things she had to be thankful for was every wizard and witch still alive in this century knew the dangers posed by the muggles) so then stupid bills like Arthur Weasley's poorly written and conceived protection acts would never be passed, or she could have taken the DADA post at Hogwarts and woken the kids attending the school of the realities of the real world and how to fight properly instead of having to cope with the inconsistent teachers year after year. Holly had studied the curse Voldemort had placed on the castle, on that post in particular. He had done it to ensure he wouldn't have any future enemies who had the knowledge to deal with him. Stopping it would be incredibly easy even for those who hadn't even confirmed the curse's presence in the structure of the school for real. She could easily do it.

Holly could have done all of that, and she had made preparations and sent away word to some of the surviving wizards and witches out there who were capable of doing it to set up similar ritual wheels to send them back in time and save themselves while they made new lives in a whole new reality of their own, but she wanted to make this as simple as she possibly could. She knew if the Girl Who Lived as a child presented memories of how the muggles had treated her, especially muggles who hated and feared magic to the point where they'd abuse a child and try to stamp the magic out of said child, it would have phenomenal effects on the magical world.

No.

It was just too complicated. Even if she did send herself back in time to a different point in the past, forge a new life for herself, Holly had no idea if the muggle Prime Minister who was responsible for the destruction of the magical world would be elected or not, but if she could ensure Voldemort was finished or at the very least find a way of making the wizarding world prepared for the worst, she could focus on other things. But if she was being brutally honest with herself, Holly wanted to make things better for herself at Hogwarts. She was more than aware of the fact the muggle PM had only started the war because he'd seen the destruction caused by Voldemort. She was hopeful by dealing with him as a kid then the PM would see no reason to do anything, and at Hogwarts, she would be in a better position to deal with the basilisk and the Triwizard Tournament than she would be if she wasn't in the school.

No, it was more practical if she returned to the school in a parallel world as a student. While it was mentally exhausting going back at the school as a student even when she knew she would need to find a way of getting out from under Dumbledore's thumb, she knew she would be in a better position to survive on her own.

Holly sighed, looking around her home, remembering bittersweetly how long it had taken her to make the house nice for herself…and for any children she had wanted to have. But thanks to the muggles that had never happened. Hopefully, in the other world, she would have the chance to grow and have children of her own, like she had planned originally before the muggles took it away from her. Family was something that Holly had wanted her entire life, and she would be damned if she had to cope without one for long.

Muggles.

The Dursleys.

Voldemort.

The Death Eaters.

Dumbledore.

The Order of the Phoenix… she had let them dictate her life before. Never again. Holly sighed as she walked down the stairs into the cellar, looking at the ritual. It was ready barring the last minute preparations. Holly got started with the runes. She got started on carving the last set of runes, and she was just getting into her stride when there was a knock on the door.

Holly's first instinct was to groan in irritation. "Oh, come on! Not now! I'm about to go! Go away, tomorrow it won't make a single difference!" She moaned.

But the door kept knocking.

"Okay, you're starting to fucking piss me off, now. Actually," Holly muttered to herself thoughtfully as she looked upwards as something rather pertinent sprang to her mind, "who can you be? I've settled my affairs and I've shut down my drop shipping business. I've cancelled my subscriptions. I don't have any relevant mail coming through, and I haven't really bothered with my bills since I've paid everything and sent my remaining money to charity. I've pretty much gotten rid of my muggle possessions and settled my affairs. So who is knocking on my door?"

Worried, Holly stood up slowly, gritting her teeth irritably at the increasingly impatient banging and ringing on the doorbell. Whoever it was, they weren't going to leave. And that worried her. Holly got to the top of the stairway and she got to the small potions cabinet at the top of the stairs. She had several of these cabinets scattered through the house. They were full of weapon potions and blood-based weapon rune arrays. Ever since the war with the muggles had begun, she had begun packing her cabinet with weapons that would not use any kind of magic like what came out of a wand.

While the muggles had the means nowadays to kill witches and wizards by inhibiting their magic, they were still a long way from creating the breakthrough which would allow them to truly get past runes that used ambient magic and the magic of the caster to work, magic which was more powerful. Potion based magic was essentially a chemical reaction using magically potent ingredients, and the muggles had trouble compensating for all of them.

Rune and potion based and blood magic had all become very popular in the magical world as the survivors fought on, and some wizards and witches and discovered how to use runes to manipulative the Earth and the weather; it was thanks to that that the earthquakes in America had ripped the thrice fucked and damned country into tiny islands. The MACUSA had been fighting hardest since they'd had a long history against muggles since the mess which resulted in the Rappaport laws and the MACUSA president at the time Dorcus Meadows was arrested and sentenced to prison for her wand being taken by a muggle who was part of an organisation who were aware of magic but had long since wanted to reveal it to the world.

They believed magic was evil. They believed magical beings and people were evil, and they didn't realise they were playing with fire. When the muggle PM in Britain revealed the proof of magic, they had used the opportunity to lash out against the MACUSA. The American wizards had been hit hard, but they had hit back harder.

Holly had discovered that before the Statute of Secrecy was put into effect and the precautions were no longer needed, many magical communities around the world had isolated themselves already from muggles, but many of them had gone out of their way to create weapons to use against muggles should they be threatened. In the years since the muggles had rediscovered the magical world's existence and the war began, many of these weapons had been used.

But one of the worst was the one the MACUSA had devised. Holly had become frightened of just what kind of weapons her people had created, all of them inspired and created by people who believed the best way to fight back was to kill en-masse. Three years into the war after the British PM started it with the reveal of magic, every country began looking for magic and they found it, killing everyone they found. Some magical communities such as Russia, which had become a shadow of its former self following the Grindelwald war, fell very quickly. Others were still fighting. Holly wished them luck. Three years after the beginning of the magical-muggle war, the Americans were given information by an organisation that had been in their country for decades about magic, but nobody had ever taken them seriously enough.

In the late 1700s, an American witch made the stupid mistake of getting close to a muggle who was a member of this organisation. The muggle took her wand, took pictures of it, and gleaned a lot of information out of her while seducing her. The muggles used this information but the MACUSA were able to narrowly protect themselves, but the MACUSA president had to answer for the breach in the Statute of Secrecy. The incredibly stupid witch gave the muggle a lot of information was imprisoned for her crimes but the damage was enormous; not only did the MACUSA's security become compromised, meaning they'd needed to move their government to a new location and one that was hidden but one of the worst parts of it was the revelation of Ilvermorny, one of America's biggest magical schools, and where it was. The MACUSA had to work really hard to mitigate the worst of the breach, and while the president passed a very strict canon of laws which prevented the citizens of Magical America from interacting with muggles with the only exceptions being the secretive taking of muggle-born children who'd be integrated into magical society without knowing their true heritage until they were old enough, even the president was unsure how far the breach went.

Well, it went deep.

The MACUSA had been forced to take many precautions to keep themselves safe now, but now their efforts were for nought. When the war started, the MACUSA used two weapons at the same time.

The first was an elemental weapon that created enormous hurricanes and tornadoes that were larger and deadlier than any other hurricane or tornado recorded in muggle history.

But the size wasn't just a factor.

The hurricanes and tornados were firestorms that were wreathed in flames and electrical lightning flashes which fried and cremated millions of muggles and laid waste to the cities. To make it even more brutal, the MACUSA had used tsunamis and lightning storms using the same spell, flooding the landscape and mixing the water with electricity at an output that would disintegrate anyone living while boiling the water until life was so intolerable for the few who survived.

The weaponised hurricanes were over 50 miles across and they washed over the United States. From what she had discovered, a runic array was scattered across the whole of America and harnessed the innate power of the Earth itself to create the storms and hurricanes which ripped through America.

Such a thing was more than possible since most runes used a similar power source. The last weapon had been based on a combination of voodoo magic, blood magic, and potions. It was essentially the magical equivalent of a biological weapon that cursed non-magicals and killed them mercilessly.

For 10 horrifying months, the MACUSA had sat back comfortably as the muggles were exterminated en-masse. Holly had been as shocked and horrified as the muggles, but her sympathy for them was limited, and unlike them, she had managed to get the story. An American wizard who had lost family to the muggles had been so lost to grief that he had looked for ways to make the muggles pay the price. Ironically, the wizard had sourced muggle weapons for extra inspiration, and Holly had a feeling the wizard had been inspired by the city-level destruction of the nuclear bomb, but he knew no conventional spell could commit such a vast amount of damage.

So they had turned to runes, and with permission from an increasingly desperate MACUSA, the wizard worked with half a dozen or a thousand experts in ancient runes to perfect the method and used the inherent property of runes which used the magic of the earth to power it all. The weapon ripped the country to pieces using the weather. That was powerful and vicious enough, but the blood curse used on the muggles were just as bad. Holly had learnt it had been created by a number of voodoo practitioners who wished to punish the American muggles for the murder of their families. From what she later discovered a while afterwards, the American wizard who had come up with the tectonic plan had committed suicide when he realised what he had done. She had managed to travel to America, and she had taken a copy of the details and she had met the wizard personally and with some work, she had taken the secrets of the weapon with her. If the muggles were ever a threat in the other world, Holly wanted to be ready for it. The wizard had committed suicide after her visit.

The destruction of America had shaken the entire world. It was one of the reasons why rationing existed, but the level of destruction against them had shaken the muggles and made many of them question whether it was a good idea for them to hunt down and massacre the wizarding world if they had the power to do that. But the war continued, the extremists had argued that this was another reason why the muggles should exterminate wizards. Many of them were screaming for the mass extinction of everything magical before they killed them. But there was a lot of fear. Even now there was a fiercer debate since other countries, inspired by the MACUSA had come up with similar means of committing mass extermination of the muggles. They saw the devastation caused and the shockwaves it sent rippling through muggle societies, and they decided to increase the momentum.

Holly had already sent around the world missives telling wizards and witches everywhere she planned on using a means of travelling to parallel worlds, but she had done this before the MACUSA strike, followed up quickly by the Asian strikes in China, Thailand, Japan and Malaysia. Nobody had tried to stop her. That meant everyone was likely busy, or they were planning the same tactic. Either way, nobody was trying to stop her and many of them were likely seeing her means of escape was the only conceivable way out of this horror movie.

But who was knocking on her front door?

She took out several potion bottles before she reached the hall and she stopped at the mirror. Speaking the password, Holly activated the two-way mirror which was linked to a number of smaller mirrors clustered outside like a muggle CCTV network. The sight that met her eyes filled Holly with horror when she saw the large number of muggle soldiers wearing magi-grade combat armour, armed with the latest in anti-magical weapons.

But what surprised her the most was the sight of the muggle PM surrounded by a gaggle of muggle reporters. Their presence filled Holly with foreboding and horror. The PM's presence made it very clear to her they had known she was here, but why the press? Was it because then the PM could be shown capturing one of the most powerful witches in the country, one of the few left alive at any rate?

Holly was thrown out of her comfort zone so badly she was momentarily frightened and unsure of what she could do; now she was aware of them, Holly could now hear voices while the doorbell still rang. She was relieved she'd placed the mirrors around her home for this sort of thing, or she would be dead, and her plans to survive and stop this whole mess from happening in the first place would be finished before it even started.

Her plan.

The runes!

Holly backed away slowly, back towards the cellar when the door exploded, making her shriek in surprise.

"Get out here, freak!" Someone yelled, but Holly barely recognised the voice. But it galvanised her. She unstopped the bottles of potion, coughing a little bit at the stench, and she rolled them out before she tapped a rune. She let out a grin when she heard the screams and cries and demands to know what was going on which signified the potion weapons outside had gone off.

Smiling in relief while she pocketed another stopped vial, Holly ran all the way downstairs to the cellar, and she quickly finished the carvings. She smiled while her heart rate began to speed up, and butterflies started fluttering in her stomach. She was concentrating so hard on the final part of the spell through the last runic cluster which would activate the rune wheel and send her through the interdimensional portal she barely heard or registered the sound of footsteps until they were halfway down.

She was just starting to turn when she heard a familiar voice yell, "STOP!"

Holly froze and she saw the muggle PM on the stairs. Narrowing her eyes and using her wandless magic, she unstopped the phial and sent it at the muggle. The muggle choked and spluttered, uttering barely audible threats before he yelled, "Why can't I move? What did you do?"

"Your weapons and your ability to stop magic doesn't stop potions or runes. That's why I've started using potions and runes a lot," Holly turned her back on him for a moment, but inwardly she wondered if the muggle PM had been further away from the potion so the effects didn't stop him completely before she'd thrown a concentrated at him. "And you are paralysed because the potion I threw at you and your friends outside my home is a paralysing potion. And before you stupidly ask me how I'm still moving, well I took the antidote. Oh, and I'm not letting you go. How did you find me?" She added when it occurred to her she didn't know the full story.

The PM sneered at her. "You can thank Fudge for that."

"Fudge?" The name surprised Holly a great deal. She hadn't heard that name in a long time. Cornelius Fudge had been one of a small number of wizards Holly had never had a problem with loathing. Ever since his smear campaign towards her, to say nothing of how he had hunted Sirius down without listening to common sense allowed Voldemort to gain a foothold…and was one of the reasons why the magical world was in its current mess. "What does he have to do with this?"

"He told me about you. He blamed you for his impeachment."

Holly couldn't help it, she laughed. "That idiot would blame his own mother if he thought he'd get away with it. No. He was responsible for the whole mess himself. He'd had the chance to stop Voldemort's second rise to power, but all he did was set us all up. Let me guess, he told you about me, and you coerced him to tell you more, and since Cornelius Fudge wasn't the most intelligent and sharpest man in the world, he told you a lot more than he should have done, correct? And he supplied you with a picture of what I looked like, which was how you found me so easily."

The PM sent her an appraising look. "You're certainly smarter than Fudge led me to believe," he commented.

Holly scoffed, slightly insulted by Fudge's opinions but since he had never rated high on the IQ scoreboard, she wasn't that insulted. "Am I? But how did you find out about me enough to find me so easily?"

"We checked your school records. Fudge told me you'd lived in the real world and it wasn't long before we found you. We also found the Dursleys. They were more than happy to tell us things about you."

Holly had stiffened at the mention of her muggle relatives. She wasn't going to say anything because she knew the muggle in from of her would just refuse to listen. "You shouldn't believe everything that you hear. So that's why you came personally, to arrest and kill me because you know about my reputation, and you know if the wizarding world discovered what you were doing to me it would demoralise them?"

The moment she asked the question Holly knew it was the right thing to say. It was obvious the muggle knew about her past, especially if Fudge had blabbed the basics.

"Yes. You are the Girl Who Lived. You are the one who killed that Voldemort person, and yet you have done nothing since I revealed the truth of your world's existence."

Holly didn't bother to counter that. The muggle would discover the depths of his mistake soon enough. "Killing me is not going to help, it won't stop the war that you're only justifying because of your sick beliefs."

"We are trying to purify the human race; your kind is unnatural-!"

"Our kind," Holly raised her voice angrily, "existed on this world as long as you have. Who are you to make that judgement, you filthy muggle? For all we know, your kind are the freaks! You're only frightened of us because we have powers you don't understand. And your war, yes, you might have massacred many of my people, leaving only a handful of us left. But the survivors are fighting back. There's only a few of us left, especially after your filthy muggle soldiers killed children only last week. Does it make you feel good, knowing you butchered them? All your war has done is bring about the end of human civilisation. But we're fighting back, using our superior knowledge against you. You should never have attacked us. Look at what your war has done, the worst war in human history. America is virtually gone. So is Asia and Australia. A few days ago, I saw a young boy running from a gang, who yelled 'Wizard' for a joke, and the boy was shot down. Nobody lifted so much as a finger to stop it. Well, no more."

Holly took out a runic cluster from her pocket and she walked to a second runic wheel some distance away. The moment she slotted the cluster in with the others like a jigsaw puzzle, the runic wheel started to glow with power.

The muggle PM looked fearfully at the glow despite not knowing what it was and being unable to see anything from where he was and in his paralysed state, stopping him from running off. "W-what is that, Potter?" he asked shakily when he saw the unnatural glow, and knowing he was out of his depth.

Holly didn't see any reason not to reply. "Do you remember what happened in America?" The muggle looked fearfully at her when he figured out her plan which was very quick, while she sent him a grin reminiscent of a shark. "I've set up the same thing. Right here in London, and as far north as Leeds and York. Believe me, I hadn't wanted to use it, but I've been preparing for it for months. I'd kept it on as a precaution, mostly in case you found out I was a witch, and I wanted something that would make sure no more witches and wizards were killed in London. But I was not expecting to use it with my real plan."

"Your…real plan?" The PM asked while he valiantly - and pointlessly - tried to escape. But the potion was still holding him where he was.

Holly ignored him this time. She just stepped onto the main runic wheel and she placed the last piece there. She had kept the weapon wheel cluster in her pocket on her the whole time she was at home although she made sure never to carry it outside since its magic could be detected.

After putting the cluster in the wheel, Holly staggered as the cellar and the prime minister just spun out of sight. The young woman felt herself beginning to change, feeling her height decreasing with every moment. Her arms and legs were losing their length and their toning, she felt her clothing get larger and larger until they just fell off her body and vanished before she could stop it. Suddenly she found herself in the arms of a very tired, but very happy Lily Potter who was crying in relief and joy.

Holly couldn't help herself, the sight of her mother made her cheer with delight. The ritual worked. She had done it, she had gone back in time and she had regressed in age.

X

In Holly's original reality, the muggle Prime Minister was whimpering in fear as the freak vanished into thin air and the unnatural humming of the freaky magic around him grew louder and louder until he felt as if he were in the midst of a giant wasp or bee nest. The PM's eyes widened and he yelled in horror as the air started to pick up. He screamed in agony as the entire cellar was set alight, and he tried again to jump back but the potion stopped him from moving.

The PM yelled in pain and terror as his clothes were set alight. "THIS ISN'T RIGHT!" He yelled as the very ground and the supports of the house floors above him began to vibrate. It was the last thing the Prime Minister who had caused a mass genocide and started a terrible war which would likely have a terrible price tag attached before the fire washed over him in a wave.