The Beginning Of The End

Our childhood was supposed to be everything our parents' weren't.

Happy.

Peaceful.

Long.

Safe.

Our parents, veterans fresh from war, had quickly settled down, getting married, finding jobs, having children. They believed that a peaceful new era was upon us.

Everyone did.

Life settled down, people learned to relax. Coming home with plans to find the lights out and the house seemingly empty now meant a surprise party, not a Death Eater attack. Hearing a scream late at night meant a colicky baby, not Lord Voldemort walking through your front door. People began to trust again, and soon enough most people could hardly even remember what it was like to live during a war. Most people began to forget anything outside of their supposed "Golden Age".

That's where it all started to go wrong.

My Aunt Hermione came home one day, two summers before my first year at Hogwarts, saying the new Minister had gone mental.

They were releasing a few "minor Death Eaters", saying that, "while they will most certainly be watched very carefully, it is in the name of the law and the honor of the Ministry to offer forgiveness and mercy".

A few Death Eaters turned into many, and soon the already blurred line between "minor" and "major" disappeared completely.

We're not really sure when people began to realize that the Minister's choices had passed the point of being questionable, to being totally and completely insane. It took much longer that it should have, for people were very, very unwilling to recognize that their wonderful "Golden Age" was not quite what it had cracked up to be.

Seeing as the wizarding population of Britain had just escaped war, one would think that they would jump defend their world at the first sign of foul play, but the realization that their Minister was releasing the people they had worked so hard to lock up hardly caused a ripple in their every day life.

The "ripple" was subtle. People began speaking in hurried whispers, glancing about to make sure they weren't about to be overheard. Redoing wards that never really should have been undone around their homes. Trusting a little less. Teaching their children to be a bit more suspicious, something they hadn't done in the past because they had just assumed, or maybe hoped, that they wouldn't ever need to. Many cringed at the obvious foul play, but cringed even further from the idea of actually doing something about it.

For actually doing something about it would make it real, would mean that the "Golden Age" was not meant to be.

No one really thought it would get this bad.

Many who hadn't actually fought in the war were a bit cocky. After all, last time was as bad as it got, right? They, and they all seemed to forget that this "they" didn't actually include themselves, had defeated Lord Voldemort. They had killed Bellatrix Lestrange and Fenrir Greyback, and they had locked up all the remaining members of Voldemort's inner circle. They had been through the worst, seen the worst, and beaten it.

And they had Harry bloody Potter, for Merlin's sake.

What's the worst that could happen, they asked.

They got their answer.