Okay, I can kind of see how a distressed and frightened public might try to assure itself that Harry Potter was 'The Chosen One", their savior or whatever, but - Harry survived the Battle of Hogwarts out of sheer dumb luck. Just because I mean, when Harry told him that HE was the Master of the Elder Wand, Voldemort disregarded him. If the Dark Lord had said; "Oh, thanks for the head's up!" and then snatched the first other wand he saw from a Death Eater he saw, Harry would have died then and there. Harry is credited with Voldemort's defeat when the destroyer of Voldemort in fact is, not Harry, but the subtle laws of wands.

Why on earth, the second Dumbledore died, didn't it occur to people higher up in the system that Harry, regardless of prophecies, were unlikely to be able to go toe-to-toe with the Dark Lord? What if those with an actual say in matters of international wizarding politics feared that the only manner in which they could defeat the Dark Lord was by seeking aid from the only wizard whose abilities was comparable to that of the Lord Voldemort? How intriguing wouldn't it be if representatives from the International Confederation of Wizards approached Gellert Grindelwald, and secretly removed him from Nurmengard after convincing him to help them in the war against Voldemort in exchange for his freedom where he could later live his life much more comfortable under a false name? Give him some good meals, some fifty spellbooks to so he can fix the rustiness of his skills, grant him access to Dumbledore's Pensive so he can learn about Voldemort's past, and man, he'd be one force Voldemort couldn't underestimate! :-D

 

Lol at Voldemort snatching a wand from another Death Eater and killing Harry.

Voldemort didn't disregard Harry as the Master of the Elder Wand at all. He didn't have time as he died a few moments after learning Harry was the master of it.

"The Boy Who Lived"=symbol

"What you've been through"
Didn't Dumbledore say something about Harry doing things grown men and women were incapable of?

"Boy Who Lived"

Who else, in 1997, was alive, physically able, had faced Voldemort and lived to tell the tale? Voldemort and his Death Eaters had killed or incapacitated some of the Ministry's best aurors. Dumbledore was dead. Who else could they have gone to? Certainly not Grindelwald. Why would they arm a wizard that had killed many muggles and wizards himself?

 

Harry Potter, the boy who loved, banisher of Voldemort and defender of the Philosophers stone, Parselmouth and slayer of Salazar Slytherins Basilisk, Triwizard Champion and once more dueled Voldemort and his inner circle, penitrates the Department of Mysteries nd the fabled Hall of Prophesy to once more face Death Eaters and Voldemort side to side with Albus Dumbledore.

Harry fucking Potter is a legend the likes of which the Wizarding world has rarely seen.

 

Only because he was so arrogant that he thought his own superiority in magic outranked Harry's ownership of the Elder Wand. Had he put away the Elder Wand and used a different one, as opposed to go; "Screw that! I'll still going to use this, even though you literally just told me the wand wouldn't kill its own Master! Avada Kedavra- oh, crap."

More along the lines that he did more than most adults, not that they were incapable of it.

Honestly, take fifty kids unafraid to stand up for themselves, all wizards, and all slightly above-average when it comes to spell casting and put them in the same situations as Harry and give them just as much help and convenient advantages, and about thirty-five to forty would have accomplished just as much as him.

Let's disregard the fact that not a single DE in the books were in their peak in the timeline of the books, why don't we? A majority of them had spent more than a decade wasting away in a prison cell while the rest tried to live normal lives, and thus their dueling prowess likewise became rusty since there was no longer a reason to use them. An honestly, as for the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, Harry was a fifteen year old accustomed to run up and down the stairs of a seven store castle, while the DE was middle-aged and some even elderly (such as Nott, who would have been about seventy) were either accustomed to lounge around in fancy homes or physically reduced compared to their pre-imprisonment due to the conditions. Of course the kids had an edge in reflexes, but that doesn't make Harry a better wizard than any of them. Just in better shapes.

Because it was more than half a decade ago, they were in a desperate situation, Harry, famous as he is, is magically inferior and Grindelwald would have been the only wizard alive whose powers were comparable to the most dangerous dark wizard of all time? Not to mention they could have given Grindelwald the choice of rotting or make the Unbreakable Vow to make sure he wouldn't go rouge, thus he is kept in line. Also, it is the whole remorse thing he had going on, Grindelwald could have redeemed himself.

 

The point of that quote was that simply changing wands would not have worked, Harry's dominance over Voldemort extends further than their original wands, as shown by him exploding Malfoy's wand.

Edit: that's not to say that Harry didn't win with a generous helping of luck and a deus ex machina from wandlore, but that it was established well before the Battle of Hogwarts. Really by that point there wasn't really any way that Voldemort could kill him personally (except perhaps just by clubbing him over the head).

 

He could have disarmed Harry and hurled him off a cliff, I guess...

But back on topic:

If Grindelwald HAD been released and fight against Voldemort, how would the story change?