Author's Note:

Happy Chinese New Year everyone! Now, on to the mood whiplash.

Things get worse. That is all.

'-

15 Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum

A bit of Herbology. The world intrudes into Hermione's idyllic existence and she remembers that this is still 1942. Hermione synthesizes more uncomfortable truths in her mind.

'-

Hermione had never really thought why she decided to take Advanced Herbology. It was just there, along with all the other advanced classes she could take. She hadn't taken it before, but considering that she had taken the majority of all the others, she didn't think that actually taking one new class was going to make much of a difference on her course load. Not to mention that she'd picked up more than her share of useful spells, knowledge and other related gardening tricks from Neville.

It had been a completely casual decision, made without much thought.

When she was in the class, though (a class that Tom didn't take, and thus parting their company), the smell of the earth was a bit like sanctuary.

(It was like Neville's greenhouse.

He never minded if she dropped in all of a sudden and he never asked for explanations either. Usually she started to ask him about his current project and he'll happily explain. Soon enough, she'd ask about what she could do, and he'd hand her a shovel, a pot, a pair of hedge trimmers—any tool that happened to be required right then.

Then, they would garden, and Hermione could leave the outside world behind for a few hours. Sometimes Neville's wife would join them. At other times, she simply watched them with a fond smile and baked cakes for tea.

Hermione still can't remember her face or name.)

"Miss Curie?"

Hermione was holding a potting in her hands. Professor Spore was looking at her kindly and she could feel the wet tear tracks on her cheeks.

"I'm sorry, Professor. One of my friends has a greenhouse and I…" she trailed away, not quite able or willing to explain.

"It's alright, dear, take your time. You can continue when you're ready."

With a firm pat on her arm, Professor Spore moved on, surprisingly nimble in her wellies. Hermione herself hadn't thought twice about exchanging her footwear for the rubber boots when offered. A few annoyed wizard and witches apparently had not thought about how well their shoes would fare on the loamy ground. She couldn't help a small smile.

Really, even the regular Herbology classes happened in a greenhouse. Were they expecting something else?

As she pulled her attention back to Professor Spore, Hermione could almost imagine Neville sitting at one of the front rows. As her gaze fell on familiar plants, even the voice that recited the facts back to her inside her head sounded like him. She could almost imagine his arms being the ones that were raised when she asked the question.

Her eyes felt slightly damp, but her smile held genuine joy as she raised her arm.

She had only realised now that she took Advanced Herbology because it was her link to Neville.

'-

It was strangely relieving to finish Advanced Herbology and see that Tom Riddle wasn't waiting for her. It confirmed that he had a life of his own and that he hadn't somehow become obsessed with her and she could drift alone towards the greater Hogwarts. The afternoon sun was golden and she almost wished she was free to frolic by the lake again and just enjoy the good weather while it lasted. The other students, it seemed, were either shy or cautions with her, but neither were they hostile. She thought it as much more bearable than the frenzied jackals the lunch mob had almost been.

Her thoughts drift back to the class.

Most of the other students in the class had been mostly unobtrusive and no one was trying to draw her out and start talking about Tom, or whatever current incarnation of the gossip had become. Well, it lasted until she took a box out of her bag and pulled her live crown of flowers out. Then, the attention sharpened and she did her best to ignore it. It helped that she had the orange blossom and honeysuckle fragrances to focus on.

Professor Spore asked whether she had something to share with the class and Hermione said she knew what she wanted to make for her final project.

"Well, let's hear it then, Miss Curie. We've already heard one or two ideas before now, it would be interesting to hear yours."

She spoke clearly to Professor Spore about what she'd already managed to create, of how she grafted additional honeysuckle blossoms when she thought the branch didn't have enough flowers yet. She spoke of how she'd found out that Florescentia worked to induce the orange sprigs to add blossoms as long as the branch was allowed to root and given water—she did clarify that she used spells for the rooting and the water. (She was going to give Tom credit for that later, when she could speak to Professor Spore in private and not feed the student body's overactive imagination).

The gazes that were sent in her direction was more curious now. They were also focused more on the flower crown than on her.

"It seemed that you've been quite successful with what you're creating," Professor Spore said with approval. "Yet I don't understand what is it that you wish to do for your final project."

"This is merely for the first proof-of-concept that to graft separated plant parts into one with magic is possible. I wish to go further." She insisted. "I want to try grafting plants from different genus. I was wondering if I can get peach, plum and cherry blossoms in one plant. If it's not those plants, then maybe hawthorns, raspberries and blackberries. If I can manage this, then the ideal goal is to be able to plant one shrub that can grow several kinds of berries—the perfect potted plant."

Hermione knew that she had them now.

At least one student was salivating at the idea of a bush filled with a variety of succulent berries, while others were simply interested at the possibilities that could be open if it succeeded. Professor Spore agreed that with her initial success; it was both a viable idea and a good idea, a combination that is not always easy to find. She gave her blessings for it before proceeding with the class.

The brunette witch was serious about her final project, but it hadn't exactly required her to make public her description of how she managed her flower wreath (which she now safely returned to the carrying box she'd made in a hurry). As Hermione added a sticking charm to the box's top for good measure before she sat down, she hoped that she managed to head off Lakshmi's concerns about the importance of reputation in this era.

This, at least, could stave off some of the more ridiculous rumours, right?

The more intelligent students would hear from their friends in Advanced Herbology and realise by now that she made the garland, and it was a nifty bit of magic too. She hadn't managed to get the feel of this time yet, to study her surroundings. It would be annoying if she still had to spend more time and effort managing gossip instead of taking the pulse of history and planning what to do ahead. Really, this was most inconvenient.

She blatantly hoped that there was something else that can distract the students with. Maybe another scandal.

'-

If her first day of attending classes had been marked with dodging the undue interest of the student body, her second was marked with fire and ashes.

She had been one of the earliest students that came to breakfast and thus the emptiness did not come as a surprise. Then, Eugenie sat down, pale-faced, and even the usually insouciant Lakshmi seemed serious enough that she didn't comment on the dishes at all. Hermione came down to earth and pulled herself from her class plans to check the Ravenclaw table and beyond. Lucretia had just walked over from the Slytherin table, where Hermione suspected her cousin Walburga was at. She herself was not so sombre, but her expression was one of understanding.

"Where do your other relatives live, Hermione?" Lucretia asked kindly.

"London, I suppose?" Hermione hazarded.

She wasn't quite sure where Lucretia was going, but a good chunk of the Grangers had been Londoners through-and-through. The kindness was unsettling—not because she thought Lucretia was not genuinely kind, but because she saw pity there. Her gut feeling raised her goosebumps at it.

"Maybe you should check the news when you've finished breakfast?"

Hermione could only nod as Lucretia sat across the table from them, joined by another female seventh year. She turned to Eugenie's pale form.

"What happened?"

The blonde took a deep breath, seemingly to fortify herself before exhaling slowly. Her voice was wavering when she spoke. "What has been happening for a while."

"Here." A different voice added, saving Eugenie from having to speak further.

Lakshmi passed her a copy of the Daily Prophet as she took her tea and toast. Hermione gazed past the bombastic headline of "Attack Attempted at Ministry – Our Brave Boys Repels Them!"

Her brows raised, she began to read.

Hermione had written a note requesting to borrow muggle newspapers from the library, back when she was still stuck in the infirmary. She also checked the back issues too. She knew that Madam Pince appreciated information in all forms, so Hogwarts subscribed to them too (through a third-party remailer in Diagon Alley). Even with her vague memory of how WWII went for Britain, she'd figured out by now that the Blitz had gone on and failed. Britain had been bombed, but it had managed to pick itself up, bruises and all, and now stood proud and defiant. Other than eating up an extraordinary amount of ordnance on both sides of the attack and counter-attack parties, it also took a big chomp out of the Luftwaffe and the RAF still maintained its air superiority over England.

Then, there was the major what-the-hell moment of 1942 as Nazi Germany turned to start hitting Russia and opened up yet another front for them to face, sucking their resources in that direction.

No invasion of Britain was forthcoming anytime soon.

Grindelwald, it would seem, had decided to take matters into his own hands instead of waiting for the magical government to fall along with the muggle one. He had lead a strike team on his own.

Twenty-four dead, forty-five wounded with another nineteen missing, Hermione read. The size of casualties surprised her—at least until she saw the partly destroyed and burned façade of the Ministry of Magic. A smaller headline on the front page alerted her that three other locations hit last night.

Hermione squinted at the photograph, the wizard and witches low on the foreground still busy running around and silently screaming.

The type of damage didn't make sense. Most destructive magic was also elemental in nature. The easiest was fire. A witch with a good knowledge of the nature of how water expands as it turns to ice can also do a lot of damage with water by flooding, freezing and then melting them in quick succession (that was one of her favourite bunker-busting techniques).

A lot of the damage to the building was kinetic: destruction of brick and stones by a large force hammering down at it. There was no mention of giants or other races brought in with the attack, so it could not have been thrown boulders. What could've been—

"The muggle penchant for violence and war has now spilled into our peaceful home as Grindelwald forces us to yield to his ambitions. The Ministry had been heavily warded, and thus any hostile apparition had been prevented. Unfortunately, it is certainly most understandable that our public servants did not consider that they needed to defend against muggle means. When Grindelwald came with his pawns and started attacking and exploding the front of the Ministry, the Aurors are quick to respond. Unfortunately, the attack came at a time when people were leaving their office, and as such…"

The Prophet was annoyingly unspecific, but as Hermione checked the photographs she had the chilling realisation that the holes and gouges in the walls were the result of explosives. The high number of casualties were owed to the 'exploding sticks' of the muggles that had a high rate of fire and unexpectedly breached any attempted shield that anyone attempted to put up. Many mediwitches and mediwizards that came later did not always immediately understand how fatal the small-looking wounds could be as they followed their first reflex to stop the bleeding. At least three of the victims that died later in the hospital were due to unobserved internal bleeding.

Stephen Shacklebolt was the first Auror to straight out use the Killing Curse in desperation, but it was his example of taking out the shooters that rallied the others to immediately start on the more vicious curses they know at whichever violent attacker they found, wizard or muggle. The newspaper was derisive of one of the eyewitness/victims that said that some of the muggles weren't 'moving right' and that he suspected the Imperius.

"It was overly-complicated speculation, as we all know that muggles truly do not need much prompting or excuse to descend into violence…"

It all devolved from there.

When Hermione raised her head from the newspaper, she saw her grim mood reflected in the visage of the other students who had taken a seat at the House's table. The ones who'd just arrived, whether idle or half-awake, was soon pulled into awareness by the sense of emergency from others who were desperately seeking a newspaper copy to read. Someone was sobbing, not far to Hermione's left. A look at the back page of the paper gave her a casualty list.

She didn't know why her gaze crossed the hall and ended up on the Slytherin table.

Tom was…there was no other word for it, Tom was holding court. There had to be several seventh years near him, explaining something in low voice, and few other sixth years. The majority of the people were fifth-years, some of the faces she'd even come to recognise from her advanced classes (one Zabini and a pale-haired guy that could only be a Malfoy, both from A. Transfigurations; a Nott).

Tom Riddle met her gaze and held it for two seconds before he made a most imperceptible nod and then returned to his entourage.

The High Table was filled to full capacity today—all the teachers were in, with varying expressions of solemnity.

"Good morning, everyone!" Headmaster Dippet was using the Sonorus charm, his voice reverberating down the entire hall. "Good morning! Can I have your attention, please?"

The tense hubbub of news exchange, of rapid-fire question-and-answer about who knew who survived from where, had simmered down. Yet it was only to be replaced by a sombre and suffocating silence that wasn't more comfortable.

"Now, I'm sure you've all heard of the unfortunate news," he paused, looking down. "The Ministry has been attacked."

The noise level rose again with the panic and concern and the silence that grew while Dippet faltered did not help. Hermione could not blame the headmaster, as he was clearly as stunned as everyone else in the room. She saw the teachers exchanging glances with each other, and Flitwick suddenly stepped up on his chair.

A burst of songbirds exploded from his wand, trilling and chirping over the conversation. When they flew away or disappeared, it had quieted enough for the headmaster to continue.

Dippet began with acknowledging the morning's news but without going into much detail beyond how the Ministry had been attacked by Grindelwald, and that there was another place or so that was also attacked. With a seriousness she had scarcely seen from him, he stated that they all grieve with London and that he and the entire Hogwarts staff offered their condolences for anyone whose family was affected. Those with affected family members were exempt from class today. He also kindly suggested that they contact Madam Edelstein in the infirmary if they wished for some draught of dreamless sleep or other reasons. He assured the students that they were still safe because Hogwarts was the safest place to be in the wizarding world, and that this was a great thing for everyone to adjust to and all classes from now until lunch is heretofore cancelled.

As Dippet sat down again, everyone returned to breakfast. Hermione thanked Lakshmi and returned the newspaper to her and she easily passed it to the next desperate and late-arriving Ravenclaw. The chatter rose all around her like the rising tide. It was probably morbid curiosity driving her, she knew, but she couldn't help silently casting a spell to help her pick out and focus on farther conversations easily. It gave Hermione the same directional acuity that allowed an owl to pick out the sound of a scurrying field mouse from a tree three stories high, and an even better ability to tune out the conversations she wasn't interested in.

"These muggle inventions are very frightening, aren't they?"

"Well, apparently they might not have magic but they're very creative at killing each other."

"Grindelwald brought muggles? That's against the Statute of Secrecy!"

A sarcastic laughter followed. "What Statute of Secrecy? Who in the Ministry could even enforce if against him? Who in Europe can go against him? Besides, the punishment was for when the muggles found out about the wizarding world, nothing was said about wizards finding out new aspects of the muggle world! Like new ways to die!"

"It doesn't matter anyway," a flatter voice opined. "The muggles were mostly dead, right? And there are those obliviators for if they're not."

"We should strengthen the magical barriers between the muggle and the magical world."

"Slytherin got it right, y'know? The muggleborns are just trouble waiting to happen."

"Hey! Muggleborns also died yesterday! It wasn't as if Grindelwald care!"

"Yes, but they're your people, aren't they?"

"What do you mean they're my people? Of course not! I'm a wizard just like you!"

"And Minister Spencer-Moon had the temerity to suggest the need to make the Ministry 'more equal'? Please. We'll be letting in violent mob like those people in before we knew it." That one was actually from the Gryffindor table.

"Which reforms is he trying to pass again?"

"Something from the muggle civil service? I think it's outlandish. Why should we adapt to them? They should adapt to us!"

Hermione didn't have much of an appetite, but her habits of automatically preparing for countless of raids attached to Harry and Ron's team helped her. The first was food—her body needed the fuel, so she would provide it and shovel it in. She didn't have to taste it, she just has to put in enough to keep going. After that she'll check her potion kit (it was her field healer's kit), her emergency floo powder, her emergency portkey bracelet, her…

Her hand stopped at her bare wrist.

She was forcibly reminded that she wasn't home, that she'd never get home.

Hermione tried not to heave at the casual hatred she kept hearing, the vitriol against muggles that was creeping into that against muggleborns.

Through it all, her brain worked.

(Because there was no time when Hermione's brain wasn't working unless she was unconscious).

She had always wondered how Voldemort managed to successfully rise in wizarding Britain.

Hadn't everyone just gone through Grindelwald? Why aren't they jaded of yet another dark lord, spouting what seemed to her just slightly different nonsense? What made him different from Grindelwald that his followers gladly gathered themselves under his banner? She didn't seem to be able to find books from around the time period of his ascent that tried to delve into the sentiment of the people, the perspectives of the era. Of course, Hermione had often found most wizards and witches to be supremely uncurious about the roots and foundational principles of magic, what was being uncurious about history compared to that? She hadn't thought about it much, back when she was still in the future.

(As far as she remembered anyway, but her gut feeling told her that she would probably agree with that assessment even if she had her missing memories).

Now, she found herself revising her initial view. It wasn't merely bigots who flocked to Voldemort's banner—well, at least not at the beginning when he was rather sane. In the wake of Grindelwald's attack, most people would easily agree with any opinion that stated that muggles are dangerous, or that wizards need to have ways to protect themselves from muggles. Perhaps still many of them would agree if someone expresses the sentiment of 'we need to make sure of muggleborns' loyalty'.

For every action applied, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton's third law.

It was the same way that the Counter-Reformation movement was set off by the sweeping wave of the Protestant Reformation. Voldemort's rise did not happen in a vacuum where nothing of significant happened. The wizarding world was not static. Grindelwald rose in England, left for the continent and never forgot his dreams of conquest over Britain. Somehow, he had acquired a muggle's cat's-paw. Somehow, he'd performed attacks with muggle forces and acquired muggle technologies.

(Somehow, everyone is still talking about the bloody goblin wars in her Hogwarts history class—does no one see the need to actually include the last wars in it so people could learn from it? Hermione made a note to herself to do something to change the history curriculum in the future.)

Add Minister Spencer-Moon's reforms (whatever they were) that were apparently seen as biased to non-purebloods and the neo-traditionalist factions had real concerns, real tragedies to rally the crowd behind them. They can rightly argue that the muggle world was dangerous, but they'd easily bent that perspective to its false opposite by insisting that everything traditional had higher value than anything new. Everything that came from the wizarding world held a higher meaning than those that came from the muggle world. This cracked-mirror comparison will go full circle once they start including ideals of blood purity into it, in which they declare that those with pure magical blood are inherently better than those that came from muggle background.

Dumbledore might have fought and defeated Grindelwald at one point in history, but he did not seem to notice the cracks that had been developing in society in the aftermath of the War. He left the people discontent, grumbling and eyeing each other with suspicion.

She gasped. That large strange attractor she'd seen in her preliminary arithmantic forecast for the 1940s in the future? She may have found it.

"…Hermione?"

Lakshmi was clapping her hands in front of her face. She had a suspicion that her house mates had been calling her name more than once. Hermione shook her head.

"Sorry if I'm a bad conversationalist right now, but I really need time to think."

"Oh. It's alright. We understand." Eugenie said.

With one last weak smile, Hermione's thoughts turned inwards once more.

She began to wonder if Voldemort's first attacks could even be classified as acts of terror or if he was rooting out known Grindelwald sympathisers that the DMLE couldn't touch. If so, he would have seemed like a hero, a saviour. He is Richard Lionheart, favourably thought of by the common people as they see him fulfilling a noble cause when he left for the crusade.

Voldemort swooped into the wizarding world like a victorious general.

He is Caesar, leading his triumphal procession and walking up the steps of the senate of Rome to be crowned Emperor. The difference here being the senators either love him or fear him too much to move against him and stop the fall of the Republic. Yet in the wizarding world, he managed to achieve what Caesar didn't, as most purebloods fall in line behind Voldemort and helped him wage his war.

Voldemort was lauded by an inflexible society consumed by fear. He was the populist head of the mob, yes, but he was also chosen because he represented their deepest desires and the ideals they hold. His name and his image were the answer to the Rorschach ink blot of their worries.

Ecce homo.

Behold the man. Behold your saviour, which you made (chose (selected)) in your own image.

He is an autocrat because that was what many in the wizarding world saw as needed to fight the phantom that is their fears. Muggles. Untrustworthy muggleborns. Envious Squibs. Opportunistic blood traitors. They love his fearlessness because they are fearful. They are beguiled by his confidence because they lack conviction in their society.

It was the anxiety of a people that drove his rise. This bubbling, seething mass of suspicion, this rot that tainted all it touched, was a carcass that drew any sharp-eyed scavenger. She suspected this social discontent might even begin the closest thing she'd ever see to a nation-level hysteria—and that this was the strange attractor in the system

Poisonous ground breeds poisonous trees. Later on, the number of horcruxes increased and the spiral of insanity began as he and his followers grew more and more extreme in their positions. Violence became a common solution to problems now. The people are mostly split into two—those who saw nothing wrong with that, and those who were too afraid to say anything. The ones that are actively opposed to him are too few, too easily ignored by the rest for now.

The conquering hero had turned dictator, the feedback loop of brutality has reached its predictable extreme and the demagogue finally showed his true face. Everything had gone full circle and the wizarding world had a full-fledged dark lord once more.

Live long enough and you'll see yourself become a villain.

That adage was certainly true of Tom Marvolo Riddle.

'-

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End Notes:

Short chapter compared to my usual, but this is the natural point to stop.

In which I did my best to show myself that the title is relevant to the story, instead of tacked-on term I picked from chaos theory and dynamic systems. I'm also trying to write a plausible (reasonable) way for someone like Lord Voldemort to have risen in a post-Grindelwald wizarding world. There has to be a reason why they seemed to accept exchanging one dark lord for another.

There is also a reason as to why one of the story's tag is slice-of-life in times-of-war instead of plain ole' slice-of-life.

'-

List of Stuff One Might Try to Look Up:

Luftwaffe: (WWII Military History) The aerial warfare branch of the combined German military forces during WWII. Note that I say combined? This is because Hitler believed in the importance in keeping air superiority, and interpreted that to mean that all the air combat capability should be lumped under one branch. What does this mean? This means the German navy doesn't get airplanes. The inter-service differences made coordination a bit lumpy, because all those coastal and carrier planes the navy needed are technically under the Luftwaffe and are only being lent to the navy. I didn't even touch the turf wars yet. If you think the English bureaucracy was a pain in the rear during this era, as the air barons argue over budget and design with the Ministry of Aircraft Production and the Treasury, you haven't seen the Darwinian way Hitler pits his underlings against one another.

Yeah, don't ask me, ask the dude with the weird moustache.

Si vis pacem para bellum: (Latin) if you wish for peace, prepare for war. I see it more like, there's no way you can live peacefully as a nation if your neighbour thinks you're easy picking and decides to invade one day. Peaceful is nice; being seen as harmless is hazardous to one's health.

RAF: (WWII Military History, Military) The Royal Airforce, the RAF is UK's aerial warfare force. Formed at the end of WWI, replacing the old Royal Air Corps, it has continued to exist and thrive through WWII and all the way to the present. Unlike the Third Reich's insanity, the UK does not restrict the ownership of planes to the RAF; even the Royal Navy pre-WWII has its own air fleet that covers carrier-bound planes, among several other types.

The Blitz: (WWII History) The systematic bombing of London by the Luftwaffe during WWII, lasting from 7th of September 1940 to 11th of May 1941 (8 months, 5 days). It's at the tail end of the Battle of Britain, the greater battle for air superiority over England between the Luftwaffe and the RAF. They started attacking London when it was clear that the initial plan of bombing the British war industries and logistical infrastructure wasn't working. Then again, the bombings weren't concentrated or systematic enough to deliver knock out blows.

'-