IT IS HERE. Read at your pleasure. :)

There was something on her. Something warm and really heavy.

Hermione groaned and swatted whatever it was. Her body felt sore everywhere, and she had a feeling she was sprawled on the ground. If only she could get this thing off of her face so she could see -

"Granger, stop hitting my bum."

Hermione's hand froze in midair. A second after, Draco rolled off of her at last, allowing her lungs to finally fill themselves with sweet, dungeon-y air (which, needless to say, was not very sweet at all). She lay on the ground for a few more seconds, wincing at the soreness in her neck, before pushing herself up into a sitting position.

Draco was already up, blinking furiously and looking around the room. They were in a room that Hermione didn't recognize but which, by its arched windows that showed the dark sky outside and the sparkling Black Lake stories below, told her that they were definitely still in Hogwarts.

She moved her neck in a circle.

Her breath caught.

"Draco," she said, reaching out and grabbing his elbow. "Are we in the Room of Requirement?"

Draco looked down at where her hand was touching him, and then looked around the room again. "No." He frowned and pointed at some cabinets lining the walls. "Those are definitely from the dungeons."

The words had barely left his mouth when a slam came from behind them. Hermione whipped around to see the door of the room swing and a boy with messy, dark hair rushing in.

Disappointment probed at her heart. Had the potion plan failed? "James," she began, and then froze as the boy trained his eyes on her.

"Hermione?" he asked.

But it was in a soft tone she had never heard from James, and instead, in one that Hermione knew even better, much better, than the sound of the Marauder's voice.

The boy took two steps forward as Hermione let go of Draco and used her hand to push herself shakily to her feet.

The boy's green eyes searched her face as Hermione was assaulted with the sudden rightness resounding in her heart, with the disbelief that slowly bubbled within her, with the realization that she was staring into green eyes, the most comforting green she knew, instead of the hazel she had grown accustomed to in the past months.

A half-squawk, half-cry fell out from between her lips. She stumbled forward, mind spinning yet clearer than ever, and she thought she was saying, "Harry, Harry, Harry," over and over again, but she wasn't sure.

"Hermione!"

She looked over Harry's shoulder to see a face more gaunt than she remembered, but blue eyes as bright as ever. His hair was longer than the last time she had seen him, how many months ago -

"Ron—?" she choked out in a question, eyes moving rapidly from Harry to Ron to Harry and again and again, until her vision blurred. "Is it really -"

She didn't get to finish before Ron took four large strides to stand next to Harry, grabbed her shoulders and pulled her into a firm hug.

"You're here," he muttered gruffly into her hair as his arms squeezed her. She hugged him just as tightly. After a while, Ron pulled her out of his chest and stared at her face, his blue eyes poring over her like her being here was a dream and he never wanted to wake up. If that was the case, then neither did she.

But it wasn't a dream, was it? "I'm here," she repeated slowly, unsure of the taste of the words on her tongue. Hermione took a step back away from Ron, then another, before she found herself pressed against a hard, warm chest.

She looked up and over her shoulder to see Draco behind her. Hermione tried to move forward, but his hands gripped the sides of her arms and held her to him. She looked up questioningly, but realized what was happening when she noted the steely glare in his eyes, aimed directly Harry. There was a similar, if not more intense, glare on Harry's face.

Harry gritted his teeth as Hermione's stomach dropped in dread and semi-exasperation. "Let go of her, Malfoy." His hand flexed by his side, and she knew he was inches from grabbing his wand. "We already want to hex you as it is."

Draco smirked; Hermione knew the way his mouth was curved up at the corners, just by listening to the way his voice came out. "Still as annoying as ever," he said casually. "Don't you think, Hermione?"

Hermione peeled his hands off of her. "Stop it, Draco." She turned back to Harry, flinching when she saw the shocked expressions on their faces.

"Ron Weasley, don't you dare take out your wand," she said as she saw Ron's stare harden. "And Harry Potter, stop doubting who I am. It's me." She bit her lip and said quietly, "We're back. Aren't we?"

Young Severus Snape's words about the timing of the boomslang skin, his determined dark eyes and focused posture weaved into her head. Hermione looked around at the dungeon, at her two best friends standing within touching distance. She and Draco were back, back in their own time, back in 1996.

And they had left 1976. 1976 with all the people dancing at the ball whom they did not get to say goodbye to. Lily, Poppy, Hannah, Jessamine, James, Sirius, Remus, Peter. They never even got an explanation.

"Why were you ever gone?"

Hermione raised her eyes to look at Harry. He was standing next to a lamp as he looked at Draco (and Hermione) with sizable suspicion, and the light from the lamp fell across his face. And Hermione now knew that his hair and face shape and proportions were all James's, but the freckles that dotted his nose, and the slope of his lips - that was Lily. She could see pieces of both her friends whom she had left twenty years ago, in the boy who stood in front of her now, in the present time.

"Oh, Harry," she said softly, instead of answering his question. Her hands wrung together. "I have so much to tell you."

"But, Miss Granger, Mr. Potter is not going to be the first to hear that information."

The voice that came from the door made Hermione gasp aloud and say without thinking, "Severus!" She heard Harry and Ron choke on their breaths and whip towards her with wide eyes, but her mind was too busy observing this grown-up Snape she'd known for five years, yet somehow forgot in the past few months.

"Professor Snape," Draco amended for her, after a beat of silence.

Hermione watched as he narrowed his eyes and strode forward to stand directly in front of Snape. She wondered if he was thinking the same thing as she was, as she stared open-mouthed at their twenty-years-aged professor - that he looked eerily the same in features, but vastly different in… the way he stood. Like something had crushed his soul in the years since 1976 and the present, and molded it into only a semblance of what it had been before. She wondered if it had to do with Lily's death.

"Come," said Snape, without acknowledging Hermione's slip-up. His eyes lingered from Draco to Hermione, and she thought she saw a shadow of pride on his face. But his voice was as stiff and monotonous as ever as he added, "The headmaster wishes to ask where the hell the two of you have been."

They explained.

It was to the audience of Dumbledore, Snape, Harry, Ron, and Blaise Zabini, Draco's friend who had intercepted their troop as they walked from the dungeons to the Headmaster's office. Hermione did not know Blaise well, and he had given her barely a cursory glance as he interfused with their group, but she was glad for his presence - she thought it made Draco feel more comfortable as they sat and explained where they were, and how they had gotten back.

Yet as Hermione spoke to the silent room and audience, she could not help but note the way none of them had seemed all that surprised as they mentioned that, oh yeah, they had traveled back in time and lived in 1976. It was hard to ignore the impatience in Harry's and Ron's eyes, the dismissive look on Zabini's face as he listened. Hermione was sure that they had already known what had happened, though she wondered why they weren't saying anything of it.

So when she finally finished with how Snape had helped them return, Hermione paused for a couple seconds. She shared a look with Draco, whose locked jaw indicated that he had caught on to the same thing, and said, "So, how much of that did you all already know?"

Ron blurted out, "We only knew you were in the past. And that this git" - he jabbed a finger at Draco - "dragged you with him."

His eyes dropped, and Hermione knew instantly that he was staring at where her and Draco's hands brushed against each other between the seats (because she was hyper-aware of that place, too; the feel of his smooth, cool skin against hers).

Draco bristled as Hermione sighed, not making any move to distance herself. "Listen, Weasley - didn't you hear? It was the bloody potion that wrecked us both over."

"And what brought you back, it seems," said Professor Dumbledore. Everyone in the room turned to him, though Hermione caught the suspicious fling Ron sent to not just Draco, but Hermione. Her stomach dropped, remembering for the first time since they'd return that there would be a lot of explaining she would have to deal with, of a different kind.

Dumbledore reached for a piece of paper covered front and back with loopy handwriting. "Very curious. In response to your question, Miss Granger - the night this potion mishaps occurred, I woke to find this letter available for me to read, and it told me all about your presence in the past. But imagine my surprise, when I discovered not only its contents but who wrote it."

He slid the paper across his desk and pointed at the loopy signature. Hermione gasped. It was signed Albus Dumbledore, 1976.

"Curious thing, time." Dumbledore removed his glasses and set them down. "I think, Miss Granger, that your next question will be how I did not recall writing this letter, or in fact your presence in the past at all?"

Hermione closed her mouth and nodded emphatically.

"That is something Severus can tell you."

Hermione looked up at Severus's older self, who had stared out of the window for most of Hermione and Draco's retelling - but it was his normal self, she reminded, it was Professor Snape. The disconnect between his young self and the professor she had always known and never liked was jarring. Seeing Harry and Ron's faces turn grim was something she knew she should express too - but it was impossible for that to happen now that she had a whole new perspective on Severus.

"We modified our memories."

Her thoughts cut short. Beside her, Draco leaned forward after a stunned moment. "You what?" he voiced incredulously.

"We modified them. Quite neatly, if I do say so myself. Rather an impressive amount of skill for a seventeen-year-old." The headmaster sounded remarkably calm about the prospect.

Hermione continued to gape. "I don't understand."

"On that day twenty years ago, after you two had disappeared from the Room of Requirement by the effects of the potion" - Hermione saw Harry, Ron, and Blaise react in surprise at this; had they not been told that Severus knew them? - "I went to the headmaster. I told him what had happened, and we agreed that since your presence would fade from the minds around you in that time, ours should as well. Only… since we knew of your actual time period, the memory loss could not happen naturally to us. So we had to take it upon ourselves to remove own memories."

Dumbledore nodded. "You all know the purpose of a Pensieve and the vials that store certain memories. However, there is a special type of memory that can be stored, forever, if you wish, into a vial that will allow you to extract a memory from your mind almost completely. This is what Professor Snape and I managed to do."

"That is really complicated magic," Hermione whispered under her breath.

"Very much so." Severus's gaze was suddenly straight on her and Draco. There was that something in his eyes again, that she had seen briefly in the dungeon. His voice was soft as he continued, "The longer you stayed in the past, the more volatile the stored memories became, until eventually… they returned."

"And that's the opposite of what happened to us," Ron cut in.

Hermione looked at him and was surprised to find utter gloom on his face. "Hmm?"

He and Harry shared a look. "The longer you stayed in the past, 'Mione, the more our memories faded."

She gasped before thinking. The warmth washed from her body and she stared, wide-eyed, at her best friends. "No!" When they didn't amend their words, her eyebrows furrowed even further. "So the longer I was gone, the more I faded from… existence?"

"And everyone's memories in this time," Harry said regretfully.

"Everyone?"

They nodded back at her, looking slightly uncomfortable.

Hermione lifted a hand to her mouth in internal pain. She had spent countless hours in 1976 thinking about Harry and Ron. They'd been her comfort, her stress, her worries - but they had been there in her memories with her, and she knew she would have felt so much lonelier without the comfort of their images in her head. But on this side… how terrifying it must have been for them to begin forgetting her. She couldn't even imagine it, except in the guilt she felt at the moments where she could have ever forgotten the precise shade of Ron's ginger hair, or the distinct sound of Harry's voice different from either of his parents'. She thought she understood now the slump in Harry's shoulder and the bags under Ron's eyes.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. She pushed herself out of her chair, not caring that everyone else was watching and that she'd just disrupted her own debrief. And as she strode to the boys and wrapped an arm around each of their shoulders, she repeated the words that hadn't felt real until now, when both of her best friends were within her touch, and (she supposed) the memory of her in the present solidified.

"I'm back."

The interrogation session had finished not long after that due to Draco complaining about being tired; and he and Hermione were sent to the infirmary. Apparently it was late into the evening - but understandably, Dumbledore didn't want them to cause an uproar in their respective dorms yet by suddenly appearing after months of absence. That, and because the headmaster wanted Hermione and Draco to get checked up fully for any effects of time-travelling twice before being set into the public again.

Hermione walked the entire way to the Hospital Wing with Harry and Ron by her sides. Ahead of them, Draco and his friend Blaise Zabini walked closely together, talking under their breaths.

"Malfoy really didn't do anything to you, right?" Ron asked, none too tactfully, for the third time, staring distastefully at Draco's back.

"Not anything she didn't want," Draco called back.

"What does that mean?" Harry demanded, looking at Hermione.

Hermione tensed and glared as Draco smirked at her. "Nothing, Harry. Draco's only trying to be funny - and failing miserably at that."

"Draco," repeated Ron in a horrified tone. "Why are you calling him that? You never did before. Did something happen back then?"

Draco didn't comment this time, just kept walking with Blaise, though Hermione knew he had to have heard. Traitor. He was leaving her to deal with all the difficult questions.

"Nothing happened at all, Ron," she said loftily. Draco's shoulders stiffened, and Hermione tried to keep the devious smile out of her voice as she amended, "Nothing bad."

They reached the Hospital Wing at that moment, and were met with Madam Pomfrey bursting out to greet them. She looked only a little older than in the past - but the warmth and recognition in her eyes as she took in the sights of Hermione and Draco in their fancy get-up was heart-wrenching all over again for Hermione.

"Miss Granger." Madam Pomfrey walked over to grip Hermione's shoulder. "Mr. Malfoy." She put a hand on his arm, and Hermione noted that Draco did not shake it off. She smiled. "Albus said you were back, but I didn't really believe it until now - oh, come in, come in."

The nurse allowed their friends to follow suit as she propped up beds for Hermione and Draco and performed some basic tests on them. It was clear from those spells that nothing major was out of the ordinary, though, and she told them it was a wonder that they were perfectly fine after two bouts of time-travel (at seeing Hermione and Draco share a surprised look, Madam Pomfrey explained that she'd gotten the run-down from Snape recently, and, she said, could still not quite believe it).

"But explanations will wait till morning," she said, her usual firm tone coming back into her voice. She looked up, and as if suddenly noticing that Harry and Ron were still at the foot of Hermione's bed and Blaise at the door, said in surprise, "What are you still doing here? Get off to bed, it's past curfew!"

"Can we stay with Hermione?" asked Harry before Hermione could.

"Don't be ridiculous, Mr. Potter. She'll be safe here for the night and you can come back in the morning. Off to bed now!"

Ron and Harry looked torn. Though Hermione felt disappointed too, she bit her lip and smiled at them. "Come back in the morning?"

"We'll be here," said Ron, nodding. He leaned forward to pat Hermione's hand, and the touch was another reminder that she was in the present, that it was not James who stood there looking warmly at Hermione, but Harry.

"See you," she said as the boys left, obviously reluctantly. She saw Zabini lift a hand in goodbye to Draco before turning on his heel and stalking off.

Madam Pomfrey allowed them to change into the Hospital Wing's pajamas, pushed them down onto the beds, and soon afterward left them too, with a promise to check on them in the morning. She turned off the lights, and Hermione heard her murmuring to herself, "Twenty years! Merlin's beard, I can't believe it," before the infirmary became silent with the clink of the nurse's door closing shut.

She held her breath for ten seconds before whispering into the darkness, "Malfoy?"

He replied swiftly. "Granger."

Hermione pushed herself up to prop her weight on her elbows. She turned her head toward Draco's bed, and said something that had been nagging her mind since Severus Snape had first alerted his presence in the dungeon below. "The Draught of Reenactment worked, even when it was Severus who put the last ingredient in."

She heard some blankets shift and the bed creak, and saw Draco's form sit up to look at her. "Yeah. And we're back, Hermione, you're not hallucinating."

"That's not it, I know we're back," she said, shaking her head. "It's just that - it's the Draught of Reenactment. If we were reenacting the potion mishaps, don't you think it would be important that the person who put in the fatal ingredient be the same both times?"

Draco made a noncommittal noise. "I mean, I've never thought of that, Granger, but evidently if you have… What are you thinking?"

She bit her lip and leaned forward, though he probably couldn't see her face. "You said you put in the boomslang skin. But think," she urged, "do you really remember taking and putting it in? Can you physically and mentally retrace that moment?"

He was silent for a moment, then - "It was months ago, Hermione. I don't remember."

"Well, I recall something." She thought hard about being in the dungeons with Draco, glaring at him, and then noticing his hand reaching for the wrong ingredient. "I saw you making the mistake right before you put it in. I told you to stop, but it was like you were possessed and couldn't hear me." She hesitated, her next sentence balancing on the tip of her tongue. Hermione braced herself for Draco's reaction. "I think you were possessed by someone. By Severus."

Draco must have suddenly jumped or something, because his bed creaked loudly. "What?"

"I know it sounds crazy, but I've been trying to wrap my head around the situation, and I can't find any other explanation," Hermione said breathlessly. Her thoughts whirred out of her mouth. "Severus said that for the boomslang skin to take effect, an outside source has to put it in. You were affected by the potion the first time, so obviously you couldn't have been the outside source. I don't know where Severus would have been hiding - but think about it! If Severus was the one who sent us to the past, through manipulating you to make that error in the potion, then doesn't it make sense that he could be the one to bring us back? Plus, he's the only person I know of who's ever known the effects of boomslang skin on the Draught of Reenactment. Magically, it makes sense."

"But logically, Granger, why would Snape want to send us in the past? Didn't he say he'd erased his memories?"

"Well, yes," she admitted. "But otherwise, I don't see how it's possible that the Draught could have worked."

Draco paused for a while, his breaths heavy in the dark. After a moment, he conceded, "You have a point. But I still haven't a clue why he'd want us to be there."

Hermione reluctantly nodded even though he couldn't see her. Yes, that was true. Why would the Severus of this time ever want her and Draco to be transported to the past. And what of the task, the purpose, that they had held for being in the past? Completing the task was supposedly the only way for them to get back, and they'd gotten back without knowing how. Had they duped the Unspeakable's predictions? Or had they, by convincing Severus to help them, somehow completed the task anyway?

"We can talk with him tomorrow," Draco offered. "Get the information out of him."

"We can," she agreed, and settled back down on the pillows, even though the gears in her mind were still turning. "There are lots of people we have to talk to tomorrow."

She paused and began to verbalize the growing list. "Ginny. Harry and Ron. My roommates -"

"Blaise. Theo. Damn it, Pansy too -'

"Don't forget the professors," she added.

"My father and my mother as well."

"Your father?" She held her breath, knowing this was a touchy topic to push on.

But Draco was silent only for a little bit, before saying, "I suppose he doesn't remember anything that happened in the past. But he'll be out of his mind once I tell him that I refuse to follow in his footsteps."

Hermione stiffened at his words.

"You're…" she started after a long silence.

"I'm telling him off. Like I should have ages ago, like you said." To anyone else, Draco's voice might have carried its usual confident drawl - but Hermione could hear the tightness in his words. She somehow longed to get up and sit next to Draco to comfort him; but she resisted, knowing enough to let him be.

"Are you truly okay with it?" She bit her lip before adding softly, "If that's truly your choice, Draco, then I'm glad."

He didn't answer for a while. She wished she could see his face through the darkness of the infirmary.

Finally, his voice carried, "You better be glad, Granger, because you're the one who changed my mind."

Hermione opened her mouth to speak, but it was like he knew, because he shushed her through the night and said, "I really mean it, Hermione, so don't worry. My father's not for you to deal with." She heard him roll onto his side. "Anyway, it's been a long day. We can discuss this more tomorrow."

Hermione felt wide awake still, but she remembered that Draco really had looked rather worn out after leaving the headmaster's office. So she smiled at him through the darkness, agreed, "Anothing thing for tomorrow," and fell silent with a last, "Goodnight."

But she lay awake, eyes open and staring restlessly at the ceiling. She really wasn't tired, and had far too many things to think about to sleep. Long after Draco's breathing turned slow and heavy, she lay awake thinking about tomorrow and yesterday and today - the today in the present and the past. It felt like ages ago that she and Draco had been standing at the edge of the Great Hall, watching Sirius and Lily and James and Poppy and everyone dancing in the decorated hall for the ball, but it had only been hours in terms of the day.

At one point, she panicked a little, trying to remember what the last words she'd spoken to her dormmates were - had it only been a wink from Jessamine, a small encouragement to Lily? Dumbledore and Snape had mentioned everyone's memories faded once they left. Hermione shuddered a little, blinking back sudden tears in her eyes. She supposed it was inevitable then that someone would forget; if she had stayed with them, the future would have forgotten. But since she came back, the past was the one who had forgotten.

She mulled over this for a long while, until a couple of hours had passed and her tiredness finally began to kick in.

Her eyes were fluttering closed when the thought drifted to her, that she might forget her time in the past too. She shook her head back and forth subconsciously, but the fear was outweighed by her sleepiness - and she fell asleep thinking of yesterday, of color-changing water, of rose petals, of boyish laughs, and of grey eyes that looked steadily at her with the promise of tomorrow.

Something was tickling her cheek.

It moved up her left cheek, to her temples, to her forehead, and when it went down the length of her nose to the tip, she couldn't take it anymore; she squirmed and swatted away whatever it was.

Or at least, tried to swat it away.

A large hand enveloped hers before she could make contact with whatever blasted thing was on her face; and an amused voice close to her ear said, "I take it you don't like romantic wake-up calls, then?"

She opened her eyes blearily, blinking until a pair of enticing lips curved into a familiar smirk came into view in the dim light - and then grey eyes which were very close to her own eyes, far closer than she expected.

"Gah!" Hermione jerked backward and her back hit the side table on the other side of her bed.

"You scared me!" she hissed as Draco snorted at her and stood from where he'd evidently been crouching beside her bed.

"Sorry," he said, sounding utterly unapologetic. "Good sleep?"

"Yes, it was going very well until I woke up." She slowly rubbed her eyes and pushed herself into a sitting position. The infirmary was still quite dim, and she wondered if it was the middle of the night; but taking a look at the clock on the Hospital Wing's right wall, it was already a little past six in the morning.

"I thought you loathed getting up early," she told Draco.

He sat down on her bed and shrugged. "It's going to be a busy day, Granger. I bet you anything that Potter and Weasley'll be down here when the infirmary opens at six-fifteen. I wanted to have alone time before that."

Hermione's insides squealed with rather annoying, but irresistible delight at his words, and she fought the small smile forming on her face as she raised an eyebrow at him.

"Doing what?" she asked.

She had only a couple of seconds to see the determined, but vaguely nervous, look on Draco's face before he leaned in and kissed her.

Hermione made a small noise of surprise, but leaned into his arms. Merlin, she was never going to get used to the way this felt. Every time she replayed any of their kisses in her memory, it never came close to the real thing, the real softness of his skin or the audible sighs he tended to make in between his kisses.

Hermione suddenly pulled away as a thought came to her, and she blurted out, "I want to tell my friends, but Ron and Harry are going to be so shocked when I do. And probably will want to hex you."

Draco blinked at her, looking temporarily unfocused and mussed up from the kiss. Under his breath, he muttered something like, "Bloody unpredictable," before rolling his eyes and raising his voice. "Like I've said. Screw Potter and Weasley - not literally, mind you." He moved in for another kiss.

She put a hand on his chest. "Stop distracting me!" But she smiled all the same. "Seriously, what will I even say?"

"Why does it even matter?" Draco mimicked her tone of voice. At her reproachful look, he gave in and said reluctantly, "Alright, alright. What can we say to Potter?"

Hermione paused and thought about it. "Well," she began slowly, "if we tell him stories about his parents and their friends, we could get to the part where they practically adopted you as a Marauder. Harry would respect that, wouldn't he?"

Draco snapped his fingers. "Bribe him with stories about his mother and father, typical way to get his emotional heart. Okay, Potter done. Weasley?"

"I have no clue," she said, deflating again. "Ron's always going to be suspicious of you."

"Then let him. It's only Weasley." Draco's hand peeled Hermione's off his chest and moved it so it was cupping the side of his neck.

"If Ron suddenly got with Pansy or someone, what would I say?" Hermione mused to herself. "Honestly, I can't even fathom it," she said miserably.

"I wouldn't have fathomed us, either," Draco supplied helpfully.

She groaned, tucking her head under Draco's chin. "He's going to think I turned barmy in the past. Well, I did, but that's not the point -"

"Then tell Weasley that." His hand found its way to her cheek, and she tensed at the intimate flutter of his fingers. She lifted her face to look at his.

"I'm going to be told I'm barmy because of you. You're going to be told you're barmy because of me," he said matter-of-factly. "Just go along with it."

Hermione frowned at him. "You are so unhelpful." But she hesitantly looped her arms around his neck. She saw that her movement pleased him, and he adjusted his position with somewhat of a swagger.

"Are we good now? Because honestly, Hermione, we'll have nothing to tell them if -"

The curtain swung open.

"Is she awake?" Hermione heard a girl say, and before she could even think about what kind of position she and Draco were in, she heard the familiar sound of Ron's scream.

"What in Merlin's soggiest pants -"

"Malfoy! Hermione, what is he doing-?!" Harry, meanwhile, sounded aghast beyond belief.

Hermione closed her eyes as Draco drawled over his shoulder at Hermione's visitors, "Welcome, Weasley, Weaslette, Potter. What does it look like we're doing?"

She trepidatiously unhooked her arms from Draco's neck and peered over his shoulder to look at her friends. Ron looked highly perturbed, torn between disgust and disbelief. Harry looked as if he was unsure whether he was in a nightmare, and whether he was or was not, wanted to wake up. And Ginny, Ginny Weasley, whose teary eyes were rimmed with red and hair seemed to have grown to her waist since Hermione'd been gone, was staring not at Draco, but at Hermione, her mouth opened in shock.

Hermione smiled nervously. "Hi, Ginny. Hi, Harry, Ron."

She looked at Draco, who looked mildly annoyed at the interruptance - even more so, she guessed, so soon after they'd just been discussing how to present themselves in such a moment.

But so much had changed in the past months that they had been in 1976, she realized. A day ago, they had been wondering whether they could even survive to come back to their own time and see everyone again. Now, the problem had become something so simple, if jarring, as sharing her newfound relationship with Harry and Ron, not existing in their time again.

They had time-travelled to the past and gotten out more or less unscathed. Hermione still did not completely understand the implications of Severus's involvement, past or present, and she still did not see what going to the past had accomplished for the worlds outside of hers and Draco's. She knew she would miss everyone she had met there - and she knew she would have to explain herself to the people here in her own time. But these were problems that could be solved, after a while. These were explanations and stories which she would tell Harry and Ron and Ginny, which she and Draco shared, which she and Draco had lived in the past and could relive in their accounts to the present.

And as she looked at each of her friends' stunned expressions, and Draco Malfoy - the blond-haired boy whom she had hated on the first time they accidentally time-travelled together, and then held onto in love on the second, purposeful time - Hermione Granger could not help but feel strangely optimistic.

Yes, the busy explanations and questions of the upcoming days would be bombarding - but they would calm and settle themselves with none other than time.

And hopefully, the next stop would be a future spent everlastingly together.

THE END.

I love you all so much. I can't put into words how much I appreciate the encouragement in the comments, the feedback from you, and every person who has even just read this story. 13-year-old me had no clue what she was getting into when she started this, but right now, I say all of it was worth it, to finish my first long multi-chapter!

I can't tell you how much I appreciate you all. This story has its flaws and bumps, but thanks for sticking with me on this long journey even with my ridiculously long updates. For the last time,

xo Summer