The Emerald Terror

War on Magic

The Emerald Terror

Summary: It wasn't supposed to end like this. The light was supposed to win and everyone should have continued on living peacefully. Too bad the muggles don't seem to believe in happily ever after... nor coexistence it seems. "Goodbye Magic". Time travel fic.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

Prologue: War on Magic

When I was younger I once stood before the Mirror of Erised and saw my parents. But that was so long ago that it seems as if that boy were someone else if he ever existed at all. I wonder, hiding up here among the trees as I wait for the right opportunity to strike, what I would see if I stood before it now.

I doubt it would be something as innocent as a pair of parental figures.

A shriek pierces the air quickly chased off by gunshots and I don't turn to see who has joined the count. Greens should stay safely underground, coddled by stories of before and the empty reassurances that everything would be fine.

But instead, they were up here. Making the mistakes that got not only them but others killed as well. Closing my eyes I take a deep breath and jump. The world fading and blurring into colors, sound stopping altogether, and nerves going numb.

A few statistics, you ask? Sure, I'll give them to you. You probably won't like them though.

World War Two cost the United Kingdom four hundred fifty thousand seven hundred people, three percent of these were magically capable. That would be thirteen thousand five hundred twenty-one people without adding the reign of Gellert Grindelwald who took out another seven hundred. Becoming more recent, and our numbers smaller, we move on to the first reign of Voldemort. In the first half of the "Blood Wars", the United Kingdom lost twelve percent of its population, a further ten percent fleeing to the Continent never to return, leaving a grand total of three-thousand-seven-hundred-eighty-six magically capable people behind. It may not seem as impressive as the previous numbers but please remember that those are simply to put the dwindling size of our society into perspective. The second half of the Blood Wars further decreased our numbers another forty percent. Leaving us with a magical population of two thousand two hundred seventy-one.

As of yesterday's count, there are only fifty-three magically capable people in the UK.

Click, move, aim, pull trigger, click, aim, pull trigger, dodge...

...The cycle continues on, never stopping. Screams from the mundanes and greens alike fall upon deaf ears as my body moves like clockwork. There is no Just Harry, no Hadrian James Potter, no Boy-Who-Lived, no Savior of the Wizarding World. Not here. Not now. Not anymore.

Those titles have been long forgotten, washed away by the streams of necessity and time.

All that is here is me.

The Emerald Terror.

Click, dodge, aim, pull the trigger, reload, dodge, click, aim, pull the trigger.

Stop.

Standing amid the piles of corpses and pools of blood I take count.

Yesterday, there were fifty-three magically capable people in the United Kingdom. As of two seconds ago, we number forty-eight.

If no one else has been killed while we were above ground.

---- Line ----

Hermione is waiting for me when I get back. One of the only ones left to do so. Ron had once complained about her knowing everything.

Now I wish she had known more. That we all had known more. But who would have expected the mundanes to suddenly rediscover magic? We were only a year out of the Second Blood War and in no condition for history to suddenly decide that the 1561-1735 Witch Hunts needed to start repeating itself.

And all over one four-year-old mundane-born's accidental magic protecting her during the armed robbery of her parent's bank.

"So the Emerald Terror has returned?" She says, her tired voice trying to lighten the mood of death and despair in the air around us. The person in front of me now is no longer the teen who stood by my side at nineteen years old, nor is she even the woman that died there at twenty. Brown hair finally just starting to brush against her shoulders after having been chopped off the year previous to escape the hold of a death eater now limp and filthy as it swings down her back in the braid most girls are now keeping their hair in. Eyes once full of life and excited but wary hope for a better future now completely disillusioned and cold. Her fingers shake, her skin is pale, and there is a trace of blood on her lips that show she has been coughing up blood again. Her 165.1-centimeter tall figure has a permanent slouch due to both leaning over research and defeat. Her clothes, once perfectly kept even if they weren't high end, are dirty and threadbare. A pair of stained jeans and maroon sweater with a white 'R' on it that had once, years ago, belonged to Ron. She wasn't the only one who had changed though. We all had.

There was simply something about seeing a three-year-old lynched by their own parents that changed a person you know?

"Five more dead Hermy." She once hated that nickname, going so far as to hex one of us when we dared to call her it. Now she doesn't even bat an eyelash at it. Simply takes the offered information with a nod, grateful for my ability to give it to her and the fact that I hadn't called her by a mundane given title not derived from the one her parents had gifted her. Her brown eyes are dim and hopeless but determined about something and I get an uneasy feeling it has to do with me.

"What's going on Mione?" I ask, trying to see around her into the room she is concealing with a combination of both the door and her body. (Why in the world do I have to be the smallest?! I swear at twenty-five years old I should be taller than 160.02 centimeters and look older than a fifteen-year-old. But no, my body just had to freeze upon mastering death!)

"The mundane killing off the magically capable." She retorts, the response has become the universal term of 'nothing' around here about five years ago thanks to Seamus. There is a cry further down the tunnel and I can see the roof is starting to give. Trying to apparate out seems to be impossible, the mundanes have put up what we have come to call an 'anti-magic ward".

We had been found.

Hermione pulls me into the room and I see strange designs, potion ingredients, and notes all over the place. Light from the sky above starts to show through as she throws something around my neck and hugs me.

"Forgive me."

The roof starts to cave in, her wand is pointed in my face, and a green light hits me The last words I hear are not her apologies, but a few maddening sneers.

"Good riddance Magic."