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Listen, Do you want to know a secret?

Do you promise not to tell, whoa, oh

Closer, let me whisper in your ear

Say the words you long to hear.

Do You Want To Know a Secret, The Beatles

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Hermione Granger had just woken up when she felt the familiar tug in her gut, the one that told her that she had to get her butt up and apparate to wherever Fred Weasley was, or be dragged quite painfully there against her will. Clenching her jaw, she quickly stood and turned, making the journey to her wonderful owner much easier than it would have been had she tried to resist.

A moment later she was standing directly in front of the stocky redhead with the crazy brown eyes. There was a light breeze blowing through her hair, and the air was so pure and clean that she knew she was outside before she even bothered to look around. Trying not to be too obvious, Hermione took a generous breath of fresh air, relieved for the change from the musty dungeons.

"Good morning, Mione," her master told her in a voice that seemed to be genial. In a voice that she would have believed to actually be genial if it had been almost anyone else speaking to her. But it was Fred Weasley, son of the prison warden, notorious rapist and murderer. The one who spies would come back with stories about that gave Hermione nightmares.

Yes, all that he had done was slap her so far, but she was waiting for him to try something else. She was waiting for his perfectly friendly façade to crumble. Or maybe she was waiting for him to go crazy, because there had been times where she wondered if he wasn't genuinely insane. At least that would explain the reason why he would be perfectly friendly around her, and then flip out when he lost his temper.

Besides, that explanation made everything else a lot less confusing. It also made it easier to hate him and treat him like he deserved to be treated when her conscience protested against it.

"Go crawl in a hole and die," Hermione snapped at him, glaring at him instead of returning his greeting. He had done this the past three days. She had insulted him every single time, pushing him in an attempt to get him to snap. He'd only actually touched her once, just for that one slap, but she'd gotten him yelling every one of the three days.

"Oh, no," the stupid waste of human flesh said, shaking his head. "You aren't going to insult me today."

"Why not? Are you going to order me not to?"

"No," he said stubbornly. "I'm going to ask you to listen. I want ten minutes of your time, Mione, and then, if you still want to yell and shout and whatnot, I will let you."

"Do not call me Mione."

"I tried calling you Hermione, but you didn't like it. I'm not going to call you anything other than your first name, so get used to it," he said. "Now, will you promise to listen to me?"

She glared at him. She didn't want to listen to him, but her pride would not be happy if she forced him to order her to.

"Can't you do this some other time? I know that you have classes that you're probably just dying to attend," she tried.

"You aren't getting away that easily. I have a free period first hour, so we've got an hour and a half to talk."

Running a hand through her impossibly messy, filthy, hair, she twisted her lips into a scowl.

"Fine. Tell me whatever it is that you just have to tell me," she said bitterly.

"Well," he said, fidgeting slightly. God, he looked so nervous and unsure, so human. She hated it. "Erm. Do you want to maybe take a seat?"

"I'm fine standing," she said. He raked a hand through his shaggy red hair.

"If you insist. Merlin, I should have brought George with me. Actually, I was planning on explaining this to you with a couple of people who could actually prove that everything I say is true, but I'm not asking one of those people for anything at the moment, and the other one gives me looks that make me feel really, really guilty whenever I see him, so I'm kind of just winging this, and if you don't believe me, then I guess-"

"You're babbling," she interrupted apathetically.

"Huh?"

"You. Are. Babbling."

"Oh, right. Sorry. I do that when I'm nervous. Now, what I was trying to say is that what I'm going to tell you is going to sound very, very crazy, but I swear that it is true. You cannot go and say anything about any of this to Snape, or anyone in my family, or anyone else that you get a chance to talk to."

She was tempted to make a scathing comment, to snap at him to force her to keep her mouth shut, but something in his eyes took away her ability to do anything except for nod.

"Okay, thank you. Now, you have clearly heard numerous rumors about my brother and me, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, those rumors were all about different people."

She snorted. She should have expected something like that.

"So they were about another set of Weasley twins?"

"Well, yes," he said. She opened her mouth to call him something synonymous with stupid and dumb, but he held up a hand to stop her. "Please let me finish my explanation, okay?"

"Just hurry up," she hissed.

"Now, my brother and I, like I said, aren't the other Fred and George. We're completely different people, from a different dimension."

He really is crazy.

"Um, you see, in our own dimension, the two of us were just starting up a joke shop, and we were experimenting with these candies that could take a person back for just a couple minutes in time. You know, like to take back embarrassing comments, or maybe to erase a bad first kiss or something. Only I've never been the most careful person ever, and I kind of didn't study the potion that I'd made quite as good as I should have."

He can't actually be telling the truth, can he? Hermione wondered, taking in his earnest expression. He had no reason to make up this elaborate lie, but still…

"Well, I end up dropping a vial of that potion, and it zaps us back ninety years or so, to when Grindelwald and Dumbledore weren't much older than us. They were having a huge fight, with tons of yelling and everything, the kind of fight that would ruin friendships. And then George and I ended up breaking it up."

Wait. If he's serious, then he's saying that Dumbledore and Grindelwald would have quit speaking to each other, that they wouldn't have taken over the world together, that things would have been so much different…

She shook her head. She shouldn't believe any of that crap. He was lying. He had to be lying.

"After that, I use the counter-potion to get us back in time, figuring that nothing was wrong. Then my older brother comes up to us and says that it's time to go pet shopping. I end up buying you because I knew you before. And you know Lee, George's slave? He was our best friend."

"That doesn't make sense," Hermione said desperately, her heart going against all of her instincts and common sense in thinking that he really was telling the truth.

"I know, okay," he said, starting to twiddle his thumbs. "But just hear me out, please?"

She was too entranced by his story to protest.

"Fine."

"Alright, so we get our slaves and get sent to school, and neither of us know what we're doing. Tom Riddle, the kitchen slave, had been a dark lord in the other world. James Potter was dead, and he sure as hell wasn't married to Bellatrix Lestrange. Dumbledore was an old man with an affinity for lemon drops, and Grindelwald was locked in Nurmengard. You can see why we'd be confused."

Hermione bit her lip as she took all of this in. Coming up with all of that would be ridiculous, the head kitchen slave had always seemed off to her, and Dumbledore was considered the more fair one of the pair of rulers. It just fit. Except…

"If you're such a good guy, why'd you slap me? Why do you yell at me?"

He looked at the ground.

"Because that's another thing. George and I are losing control. It's like… we took over the other Fred and George's lives, and usually we're good, but at points where they would have felt something strongly, it's like they come out again. That's why we really have to get out of here, because neither of us know if it'll get stronger."

This is ridiculous. I can't actually believe him. He's insane.

"I- I think that you may need professional help. I mean, it sounds like you believe what you're saying, but…"

"Please don't call me crazy, Mione," he pleaded, looking at her with big brown eyes that looked like they belonged on a kicked dog.

"Don't call me that," she gritted out.

"Right, sorry. But please, please believe me. I can't stand this anymore. We told James, and then Riddle, and then Harry Potter and my stupid little brother found out, and now James and Ron want us to stay and start a bloody war, and Harry thinks that his mum is alive in the other world and she's not, and Riddle wants us to perform a satanic ritual to get back to the other dimension so that he's in power again. I'm confused, and I have no idea what to do. George doesn't help either, because he's just as lost as I am. But you've always been so smart, and you always helped Ron and Harry with problems in the other world, so I just figured that maybe you would help me in this one."

Helped Harry and Ron? Two Hogwarts students. Wait…

"Did I go to Hogwarts?"

He looked at her and smiled sadly, something that made him look about a hundred years old.

"Yeah, you did. All the teachers said you were the brightest witch of your age, too. A bloody genius. You were part of the most famous trio at the school, and I think everyone kinda respected you."

Hermione's heart ached in her chest as she considered what he was saying, not even doubting it as fact anymore because she wanted it to be true. Her parents had always told her that she was special, but she hadn't believed them, not until now…

Brightest with of your age. A genius. Everyone respected you.

And part of a trio? Harry. Ron. She had seen Ron, he'd been with the twins earlier, but she wasn't sure who Harry was, even though it didn't matter. She'd had friends. People her own age who she did things with, who liked her.

She wished that her life was still like that so badly that it hurt.

"I believe you," she said softly, letting go of the words slowly and deliberately, as if that would make them easier to take back if Fred yanked the carpet out from under her feet. He didn't. Instead she found herself stiffening as the stocky redhead very obnoxiously invaded her personal space and threw his arms around her.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," he said happily, and when he pulled back from her, completely unembarrassed, a lazy smile slopped across his face. He looked as much like a little kid as he had an old man only moments earlier.

"Calm down. It's not like I actually did anything for yet."

"You did, though. Now, please tell me that you don't want us to stay here and release all of the prisoners and rebel against the system."

Hermione laughed.

"As much as I see you as the leader of a rebellion, I think that I know something else you could try."

"Really?" he asked, his chocolaty eyes widening. "What?"

"Well, the way you made it sound, Dumbledore isn't a bad guy. He just got sucked in by Grindelwald. So why don't you talk to him?" She took a deep breath before she grudgingly admitted, "He is a brilliant wizard. Request an audience with him. Neither him or Grindelwald stay at the school for more than a few days at a time, but I'm sure that he'd return for the Weasley twins."

I hope I don't regret this.

"I don't know. If he tells Grindelwald, we'll both be dead."

"Perhaps. But it's either Dumbledore or Riddle. I'd pick if I were you, unless you just may wind up stuck here and leading a rebellion."

"Right," Fred said, clearly deep in thought. "I have to go, now, but I'll get back to you on what I decide."

She smiled, a part of her feeling really warm and fuzzy at the thought of being a part of something so big, of being important. Her entire life, she had been stuck in an old cave with a bunch of people twenty years older than her, basically just waiting for something to happen. Now, she was finally a part of something, and even though it wasn't what she would have expected, she liked the feeling all the same.

"Okay. You do that," she said, and then turned and apparated away, eager to hear from him again."

A/N-

Grr. Very, very short, and late. I apologize, but there isn't much to write away from what the twins are doing, but I wanted Hermione's POV for the whole 'truth' scene. I know that something more climatic would have been nice, but the way that she works with the twins is a bigger part of the story than her getting to trust the twins.

Thanks to- Hahukum Konn, brooke13243546 (Dumbledore and Grindelwald will be huge later in the fic), Alice Primrose Granger (Fred and George left their time the day before their seven years were due to start, so they wouldn't know about the DA yet), Misses Prongs, (the werewolf question will be answered later on, Remus may make a cameo, and Sirius is going to end up having a huge part eventually), Alexa M. Riddle, Carly Voldemort, MizukiMai, Lexi, and Ultimately McAwesome (I just had to comment on your review because it was so nice. Thanx).

~bballgirl32~