Chapter Text
The months after The Battle of Hogwarts had been hard for Hazel Potter, The Girl Who Lived. Though she’d overcome the Dark Lord Voldemort, the cost at which she’d done so had been immense. While the Wizarding world celebrated her victory all she felt was a bittersweet melancholy, as the full group of that battle’s survivors was small enough to count on both hands. The Battle, while technically a victory, had been a crushing defeat on both sides.
From what she’d seen the other survivors hadn’t fared much better. Draco had to deal with inheriting a failing House whose most notable recent achievements included assisting the Dark Lord in his return to power. Fenrir, and Pius had both received Azkaban sentences, with Pius facing the Kiss for treason against the Ministry. McGonagall and Pomfrey were the only staff of Hogwarts to have survived the battle and were forced to shut the school down the first few terms following the Battle as they had to replace the rest of the faculty and face that their friends weren’t coming back. Molly, the only surviving member of the Weasley family was absolutely devastated, having lost her entire family she’d been inconsolable for months prior and only recently begun showing signs of improvement. Hagrid’s brother Grawp had also been devastated, though one could only wonder where he was now as after the Battle he’d retreated into the Forbidden Forest, presumably to return to the mountains.
After the battle Hazel had taken some time out of the public eye to sort herself out, to process the emotional trauma of the day and do some self reflection. One of her more burning questions was why her body had been that of a woman when she was in the misty replica of King’s Cross Station that she’d assumed was the afterlife. After talking it over with others she figured out that she was apparently transgender and had been unable to realize earlier as she’d never been in a position where she could figure that out, as her life had almost always been in some sort of danger with little respite in between.
Though she was glad to have figured this out and to have been able to start on potions that would allow her to go through the correct puberty, she couldn’t help but feel empty inside. Her entire social circle had been wiped out in the course of a single day. Desperate to see them again, she went back into the Forbidden Forest to find the Stone of Resurrection, but the shades it produced were merely echoes of who they’d been in life. They’d be immortalized in the stories of that day, but most would fail to accurately capture the events of that day, as there were few survivors, and even fewer would be willing and able to recount the events of the battle.
The idea that the memory of those she considered family would be forgotten and the regret that the battle had come at such an enormous price tormented Hazel, who after figuring out her own issues began looking for a way to undo this cost. She spent days scouring whatever texts were available to find a way. She ruled out Time-Turners as they only went back a few hours and had all been destroyed. As the time she spent searching grew longer and longer she began to lose hope and she would have to accept the permanence of her friends’ deaths, but she wasn’t ready to give up quite yet. After months of searching she had found a lead that looked to provide the answer she was looking for in the Restricted Section.
At last, at long last, months of searching for a way to avert the tragedy at the Battle of Hogwarts she’d found it. There in the hundredth or so book she looked in was a ritual that would allow her to alter the past. She copied down the ritual into a paper notebook she’d bought at a muggle store for the convenience of it, put the book in its proper place, and left the Hogwarts library. Before she could begin the ritual she had to gather a few necessary components.
One of the more annoying components to acquire had been the location. The ritual she’d found would send her mind back in time and if she were to change the past the best point for her to jump back to would be her 11th birthday, the day she first was introduced to the Wizarding World, with the ritual working best if you performed it at the same spot you were in the destination time. The location had been so annoying to secure as the current owner hadn’t been too keen on selling, fortunately a light Confundus Charm and a generous offer for the rundown hut had been more than enough to convince him.
As the time approached on July 30th 1999, the day before Hazel’s 19th birthday, she began laying out everything else. First she poured an Ageing Potion in a semicircle around where she would be lying when the ritual began and once the semicircle had been completed she poured another semicircle, this time with an Potion of Youth until it met with the Ageing potion. The Deathly Hallows, or Talismans of Death, as the ritual put it, were to be laid out around the circle of potion, the Cloak opposite the fireplace, above her head and where the two potions met. The Stone and Wand were placed in a way that would separate the circle into 3 equal parts, the Stone to her left and the Wand to her right. All that was left was to wait for midnight and activate the ritual and she set an egg timer to go off when it was time. When the egg timer went off she laid down in the circle and began moving her wand in a slow clockwise motion. As she did so the potion circle around her started to glow with an vibrant green light, and each time the light passed one of the Hallows it would glow with a deathly white light. Once her wand had made a complete circle all that was left was to move her wand to the center of the circle and then down to where the 8 would be on a clock.
As soon as her wand crossed the edge of that circle and the world fell away around her. She existed in this timeless void for several minutes in a state of suspense on whether she had succeeded or failed and died. As the world began to fade back into view, one of the first things she noticed was that she was facing the wall rather than the fireplace and that she was no longer holding her wand. The next thing she noticed was a large BOOM that was enough to shake the Hut confirming she’d been successful in the ritual.