Part XXXIV:

Hermione's House and a Whale of a Tale:

Hermione stood outside her future home and looked up at it in wonder. It was so different. The paint, an indescribable grey colour, was weathered and worn. The porch railing was missing banisters. The roof had holes, where the slate had fallen. The shrubs were overgrown. There were boards nailed up at the windows. If she didn't know any better, she would assume this was her house in the future, instead of her house from the past. She knew that when Draco bought it (without telling her by the way), he stated that it needed a lot of work, and that their mothers had worked hard to redecorated it, but seriously, this almost looked beyond repair.

She climbed the familiar porch and went to the front door. She took out her wand to open the door with magic, but when she placed her hand on the wood, it opened with just a small push of her hand. She walked inside, lit her wand, and began to meander around the downstairs.

She wasn't completely sure what she was looking for, but she knew that in the future, she had found something interesting in the book on the founders that Draco had given her years before. She found it a few weeks before she came back, and knew that she had never seen it there before, and then one day, inexplicably, it appeared. It was a note, stuck between the parts separating Slytherin and Hufflepuff, and all it said was, "A future untold, is untold by you and you alone. It won't be untold from the past, but in the future. Go to the past, and go to your house in Hogsmeade, to discover the way to seal your future, without disrupting the past. " She didn't know what it meant at the time, it wasn't in a familiar handwriting, and seeing that she had read that book several times, cover to cover, and had never seen the note before, she knew it had to be significant. At the time, she thought it was a message from Draco, because the book belonged to his family in the past. Still, wouldn't Draco have been less cryptic? A bit imperceptive? Wouldn't he have said something simplistic such as, "Hi, Hermione, I love you"?

She looked around the room, which would be her future library, and turned sharply, back toward the door, when she heard a creak in the floorboard in the foyer. She ducked into the corner of the room, when she heard a familiar voice say, "Hermione? Are you in here?"

She moved quickly from the corner, brandishing her wand in front of her, and she said, "What are you doing here, Blaise Zabini?"

"That's just it, I'm not Blaise Zabini, which I think you've figured out, and furthermore, you're not Hermione Granger, are you? You're Hermione Malfoy." He held his hands up and said, "May we talk openly? Without any hexes or curses? I really don't mean you any harm, and I don't want you to do any harm to me."

"Are you Paul Boot?" she asked.

"I'm a Boot, but not Paul," he answered. He cocked his head toward the room that was her living room in the future. He moved gingerly into the room, his hands still in the air. He said, "Will you remove the boards from the windows so we can see? I would, but I'm afraid to pull out my wand. I've heard that you're more capable with magic than most, and I don't want to do anything to bring me pain or discomfort." He smiled and said, "I'm funny, like that."

She pointed her wand toward first one window, then the other, and the boards from the outside flew away. The windows were dirty, but it was considerably lighter in the room. He pulled up a crate, sat down and said, "God, you look so much like her. I can't believe it. There's another crate in the corner, if you want to join me."

Hermione didn't know who he thought she looked like. "Just talk. I don't need to sit," she said. "Why did you follow me?"

"I had hoped you would come here, and I followed you to talk to you. First, I want you to confirm to me that you're really from the future. What's your daughter's name?"

"Carina," she answered slowly, uncertain if she should. "What does that prove to you? I could be the Hermione from the past, and Draco could have told me that."

"True," he said. "But the future you would know where her port-wine stain is located, and only someone from the future would know that she had a port-wine stain, yes?"

Her daughter did have a port-wine birthmark on her forehead. It was very faint, and Hermione was assured when she was born that it would probably fade one day, yet how did this man know this? "I know where it's located, do you know?" she asked.

He smiled and said, "On her forehead, although in the future, it's only visible when she's very upset, which is actually often. I'm glad it's you. So you got my message, in the book?"

"Listen, before I say anything else, tell me who you are," she urged.

"I'm sorry." He stood up and said, "My name's Mark Boot, and I only inhabit the body of Blaise Zabini. My father is Nick Boot. I'm from the future, too, not your future, but beyond. And someday, I'll be your son-in-law, Mum." He smiled again, and for some insane reason, Hermione immediately believed him.

"Tell me why you sent me that note, and what we're all doing here. I'm ready for this to be over with, because I need to go home," she declared.

He said, "The phenomenon of the blue moon usually only happens twice every one hundred years. This means that travel back and forth, without changing the past, can only happen between these two periods contained in the same century."

"But a strange alignment of planets in this century will cause it to happen three times in this hundred year period. I don't have to tell you how magical the number three is. It is very significant. What that means is that it happens this year, the year of your present time, and again, in twenty-five years."

"So you've come from the future to help me? Why?" she inquired.

"Because while your husband and my Uncle Don Boot traveled to the past to try to stop Helena and Ellen, Helena came to the future, which I'm sure you didn't know. All of the strange things and the attempts on your life in your time are because of her."

"This was unexpected. She has no real ulterior motives in coming to the future, except to be sure that Draco and Don never come home. She can't really exist in the future, because she's dead. Unlike the spell that we used, she does not inhabit a body, but exists more as a spirit; or rather, what we call a shadow. If Don and Draco don't come home within the blue moon phase, they'll essentially cease to exist in the future, and we don't even know the implications of that. That's what she wants to happen. She's counting on the fact that they'll never find Ellen, that the threat to you in the past will never cease, and that they'll think they have to stay in the past to protect you. That's why there haven't been any actual attempts on your life in this time, only bogus attempts, to keep the threat alive."

He stood up suddenly and said, "Although they can't affect the past, they can't kill Ellen or do anything in the here and now that will change the course of the future, they can influence the future if they don't return. This was something Don and my father didn't know about when they sent Don and Draco back. If they don't come back, they'll no longer be in the future. Their bodies in your time will cease to exist, and everything that really happened after your sixth year will be erased away, and changed."

"That means Draco might not go back to Hogwarts to finish his eighth year, so he might not fall in love with you."

"It means he won't be there to help you destroy Helena Boot two years later, and in fact, she might destroy you, instead. That means no more Hermione, which means something very important to me. No Carina."

Hermione thought for a moment and said, "Does your presence here already mean that something has changed?"

"Not at all. We're here as extra insurance. We traveled under the blue moon of our time, so we can't change things in the future by anything we do here either, unless we don't go back to our time at the end of the phase. We only came to guide you. The moment Sanguini became aware of you in the past and the present, he became aware of things in the future, and thus he told us. In addition, my father had a recurring dream about his brother and Draco failing, years after they originally succeeded which means something changed in the past to change the future. Who knows what it was. The only thing I know is that you have to go back to the future. Helena is there, but only as a shadow. You have to send that shadow back to the past, so that in a few years from this time, the past Hermione can destroy her with the Darian wand, as you're meant to do."

More Explanations:

Hermione said, "And I take it I'm the only one that can get rid of the shadow of Helena in the future? No one else can do that?"

"According to the original prophecy, you're still the only one that can destroy her. It's the ancient magic of Slytherin that dictates this prophecy," he explained.

"Why did I have to come back for you to tell me this? Why couldn't Sanguini just tell me about destroying Helena's shadow?" she asked sarcastically, "And furthermore, what if I fail?"

"Then she might survive. You might not kill her in the past as you did the first time. You can't let that happen. You have to find Don! You have to have him go back to Hogwarts, where he can be protected! That's why you had to come back. I had to explain these things to you, but also, you have to be the one to tell Draco and Don how important it is that they both come back at the right time. They might not believe anyone else."

"They can only go back to the future together, because they left together. You have to convince them both to go back to the future, at the start of the second blue moon phase, which starts in five weeks. They have to go back together, just as Carina and I will have to go back together, and at the same time as them," he reiterated. "Before they go back, you have to go back first and destroy the shadow of evil which is Helena Boot. Please, this is important to my future, and yours and you alone have to do it."

"You came back here, to make sure I go back?" she asked, for clarification.

"I couldn't travel to your time to warn you. The blue moon would only bring me to this time in the past. Carina and I came up with the plan to put that note in your book, but we couldn't reveal anything important in the note, because it might have been discovered by someone who was working with Helena and Ellen."

"I had to come back as someone who might have access to that book. I picked one of Draco's friends. I went to his house as Blaise Zabini once I got to the past, and his mother showed me the book, assuming I was there as Draco's friend, and I placed the note within."

"Since then, I've been doing my best to protect the past Hermione, along with Carina. I think I've even discovered who Ellen inhabits and who's helping her. She's in a girl named Pansy Parkinson, and though I originally thought Terry Boot was helping her, I know now it's a boy named Seamus, I don't know his last name, but he's from your house. I don't know if he's aware of what's he doing, but I believe Terry Boot is helping us independently, the best he can, with what little knowledge he has."

"Where is Carina? You said she came back, too. Where's my daughter?" Hermione asked anxiously.

"She doesn't want to appear to you. This has been hard on her. She inhabits Ellen Boot's body, which is repulsive to her, but it has given us the chance to garner a lot of useful information, and we knew that Ellen wasn't going to be using it." He laughed. "Carina's appeared as herself to Draco and Hermione of this time twice, both times in her animagus form, which is a panther, once on the road to Hogwarts from Hogsmeade, when Carina, as a panther, me as a wolf, and Sanguini, all tried to protect Hermione when she was in grave danger."

"Another time, she appeared as a panther in the forbidden forest, when you were both in danger. She suffered a great injury that time, when Don, as a wolf, attacked her, because he didn't know who she was, but she healed quickly."

"Who is Sanguini to you?" Hermione suddenly asked. "Why is he involved? How is it that he's such a good friend to us suddenly?"

"Well, he and my father Nick were always close, because he's the biological father of my mother, so I guess that makes him my granddad, although he would kill me if I called him that, since we appear to be about the same age. He was just a regular man before he became a vampire. He was married, and had a child, then he was afflicted, and his wife divorced him. My mother didn't even know of him, for the longest time."

"Are your mother and Nick married?" Hermione wondered if Mark's mother was Nick's long time fiancée.

"Yes, they married, but she's no longer living," he said regretfully.

Hermione asked, "One more thing. Where is Paul Boot, and is he working for us or against us?"

"You may not believe this, but I don't know. That's another thing I've been trying to discover. You see, in my time, My Uncle Paul is dead. I've never met him. He died the year Carina was born, which is two years before I was born. So, yeah, that would be nice to know, and maybe we can change that, too."

Hermione nodded. "What do I do first?"

"Go back to school. Tell Draco everything. I know you're upset that he fell in love with you too soon, but it's not really as if he betrayed you. He's in love with you, Hermione. It's not that he's fallen in love again. It's more as if he came back here with an intense love for his wife, which hasn't wavered, and was transferred to the younger you. Give him a break. If all goes well, and you succeed, then none of this will matter, because you won't know any of this. The only people who will be aware of any of the events of the time travel are the ones that traveled by the blue moon, which are Don, Draco, Carina and I. The rest of you'll never have any knowledge that any of this occurred."

"Second, before you go back to the future, help me find Don, and Paul. We want to time all of this perfectly. I want you to come back exactly one day before Draco and Don. We don't want to give Helena time to discover what's going on, and we don't want Ellen to discover that her mother's plan failed. We don't want her to be able to stop Don and Draco from returning."

"What will happen to Ellen?" Hermione asked.

"You vanquish the shadow of Helena, who then comes back to the past, with the inability of ever being able to time travel again, and hopefully, by that time, you'll have used another spell to bring Ellen back to your time. The same spell can bring Paul back too, but it has to happen before the blue moon phase ends. If the blue moon phase ends before Paul and Ellen are back, they won't come back either. It's important we time all of this right."

"You have a month to convince Draco that no matter what he thinks will happen to the Hermione of this time, he has to go back to the future. You have a month to find Don and tell him the same. You have a month to come back to the future, vanquish Helena, and then bring Ellen and Paul back." He finally stopped talking and then he said, "Piece of cake, right?"

Back to Hogwarts:

Ron was pacing back and forth in the Gryffindor common room. Harry sat in a chair by the door, and the rest of their friends huddled around them. Ron said, "She was going to buy a quill, so I didn't go with her, because I didn't think she was going to be in danger."

"You shouldn't have left her," Ginny said.

"She left me," Ron spat.

"Let's not fight!" Harry stood up and said, "I just wish McGonagall would let us help search for her." He went through the portrait way, with Ron by his side. He turned to Ron and said, "I've looked at the map, and I can't locate her, so she's not on school grounds. It'll be dark soon. She must still be in Hogsmeade, or somewhere between there and the school. I'm going to go find her. I'll use my cloak so no one will see me."

"Let me go, too," Ron said.

"I really think you need to stay here. They might come to you for more questions," Harry explained.

He rushed down the stairs, and stalled when one of the staircases began to move. He waited, and while he waited, he saw Draco Malfoy on another set of stairs, which were also moving. He called over, "Hey, Malfoy, have you heard?"

"I just heard. Blaise Zabini's missing, too," Draco said.

"Is that significant?" Harry asked with ire.

"Yes, it is," Draco answered in clipped tones.

As the stairs both came to a stop, both men walked to the bottom, and Harry asked, "What would you think if I said that I believe you about all this time travel rubbish?"

"I would say 'good', because it's true," Draco retorted.

"I'm going to go look for her," Harry said, pulling out his cloak.

"Well, so am I," Draco said back. Both boys started down the corridor that would lead them to the Main Hall when Harry spotted Hagrid. He pushed Draco into an empty classroom, and shut the door. Before Draco could argue, he heard the conversation in the hall, and he immediately knew how significant it was. Tonight was the night Potter would get the memory from Slughorn.

Harry opened the classroom door and said, "Damn, Hagrid wants me to go with him to help bury Aragog, his stupid pet spider. I told him Hermione was missing, and he told me that I couldn't leave the grounds to look for her anyway, so I should come to the burial."

Draco looked frantic and said, "Trust me Potter, it's more important for you to go to that damn spider funeral. You'll get the memory tonight."

"The memory?" Harry asked, suspiciously.

"If you believe me, then you have to know that I know about how you have to get a memory about Horcruxes from Slughorn, right? Well, it happens tonight, trust me. I should have known it was tonight. You made that Euphoria potion today in potions, and you drank it, so you feel invincible. Perhaps that's why you suddenly believe me. Anyway, Hermione told me all about this, and she wouldn't want you to do anything that might cost you that memory. I'll go find her. I promise."

Harry threw his cloak to him and said, "Don't lose it, you wanker, and make sure you find her." He ran out after Hagrid. Draco slipped the cloak on and walked out after him.

Once he was out of sight of the school, Draco slipped the cloak off and stuffed it in his shirt. He pulled out his wand and started to run toward the village. The sky was already mostly dark, and it was painfully cold. What if she was hurt somewhere? What if she was afraid? What if she died, and they never resolved whatever problem that existed between them?

Draco had almost reached the village when he saw her walking toward him. She was walking along, slowly, as if she didn't have a care in the world. He rushed up to her and said, "Do you know how worried everyone is? Half the teachers are out looking for you. They're ready to call the Aurors. Forget about the threat of Ellen. These are uneasy time with Voldemort and the Death Eaters without that threat. What do you have to say for yourself?"

She stared at him, like it was the first time she had seen him, as he continued to accuse her, and finally she walked up to him slowly. He stopped his barrage and was shocked when she reached up for his face. She stroked his cheek and said, "I've missed you so much."

"You just saw me in class yesterday," he said, confused.

"I'm not talking about seeing you in class, Draco. I've not really seen you since the end of August, until just this past week," she explained.

He looked at her baffled and asked, "What?"

"I'm your wife," she said plainly, tears stinging her eyes. She put her other hand on his other cheek, and while her hands framed his face, she stood up on her tiptoes and kissed his lips. He placed his arms around her waist, and buried his head in her hair, and even without a proclamation, he knew who she was. "I'm your Hermione. I came back last week, when you and Don came to the forest to meet Nick and Sanguini, and I have a lot to tell you, but first, I just want to look at you, and say that I'm sorry."

A tear ran down her cheek. He continued to stare at her amazed, but suddenly, he smiled and leaned his forehead on hers. "I've missed you, too. Oh Granger, you were upset, because of what happened between your past you and myself, weren't you?"

"And I was right to be upset and jealous," she said, nodding. "However, I don't think I was jealous of the fact that you fell in love with her, but the fact that she fell in love with you. She had you, while I had no one. I've been so lonely for so long." She removed her hands from his face and threw her arms around his neck. He held her tighter than he had ever held anyone, and when his lips descended onto hers, it was the happiest she had felt since the day her daughter was born.

Her knees almost buckled and it was only the strength of his arms that held her upright. The kiss went from urgent and eager to fulfilling and seeking. She melted into his touch, his desire and want, and she gasped for air when he removed his mouth from hers to swing her around in a circle.

They kissed again, and continued to kiss over and over, their lips only separating slightly between kisses to say things like, "I love you," and "I've missed you," and finally, "I'm sorry."

His lips left hers first and he pushed her away slightly and said, "Why have you come? Has something dreadful happened? Oh no, I've failed, haven't I?"

"No, but we desperately need to talk, but let's talk and walk. There's danger out here, and plus, I'm sure everyone's looking for me," she urged. They walked hand in hand toward Hogwarts. She told him everything that the vampire told her before she came, and everything that 'Blaise' told her in Hogsmeade.

He asked questions, which she answered. Finally, when they reached the edge of the school grounds, he asked, "Tell me about our baby."

"She's beautiful, there's no two-ways about it. She has dark curly hair, which vexes your father to no end, and which makes me laugh. She has brown eyes, and she's already very strong willed, and at such a tender age. Your father has been spoiling her, or rather, she's spoiling him."

Draco laughed and said, "I was worried that my father wouldn't, well, love her or something." He became quiet as they stopped walking. She took both his hands.

"Because of her blood status?" Hermione asked.

He nodded.

"I was worried about that too, but I think with you being gone, he sees that life is precarious, and precious, and that everything one holds dear can be wiped away with a blink of the eye, in the space of a second, and he knows that love isn't measured by blood or degrees. Love isn't tangible; it's felt in the heart, and then acknowledge in the head. He loves her very much, and he loves you, too."

"And you?" Draco asked with a smirk.

"Are you asking if I love you, or if he loves me?" she asked for clarification. "Because the truth is that I love you as much as I always did, and he simply tolerates me," she said seriously. Then she shrugged and said, "And that's more than we could hope for, Draco." She hugged him again and said, "So you know what we have to do. You have to pretend that we're still on the outs, just as we've been all week. You pretend to take Pansy into your confidence, so that you can watch her more carefully, and then we need to have someone we trust on the outside try to find Nick and Don Boot. Perhaps its time to get Bill Weasley involved. He would believe us. Nick and Don are looking for Ellen, and we need to let them know we've found her right here under our noses."

"Where is Carina?" Draco asked. "If she's in Ellen's body, could she be in harms way from Don and Nick? Or perhaps Helena?"

"Helena isn't totally aware of anything here. She's what Mark called a shadow in the future, which I believe means she's traveling back and forth through time, on a different plane, one that is of the spirit only, so yes, she may come back here, and Carina might be in danger, but she's our daughter, and we have to trust that she knows what's she's doing. She's the one that discovered the whole plot, and found out what Helena was doing in the first place."

"The Paul Boot thing worries me," Draco admitted, taking her hand and bringing it up to his mouth. "If he isn't in his body now, and he's not Blaise, who is he? Could he be in Seamus?"

Hermione gasped. "I think that might make sense, but that would mean that he's helping Ellen. Blaise, or Mark if you'd rather, said that he originally thought Terry was helping her, because Terry seemed to be next to Hermione, well me, when I was stabbed with the dagger, but I think Terry was trying to stop it."

"The flaming shamrock was right there by your side that day, too, and every other time you've been hurt. Last fall we were cursed on the dock and almost drowned, and he was there. We were locked in the greenhouse with poisonous gas, and he was there, and you were pushed in a closet full of rats, and you said you were talking to him one moment, and pushed in the next, and Terry Boot saved you."

He ticked these things off on his fingers, and she gave him one of her incredulous "Hermione" looks and said, "Have you been protecting me at all this year? Pushed in the Black lake, almost poisoned, bitten by rats, and stabbed with a dagger? What else?"

"You fell into a tree, literally, head first right inside the tree," Draco said with a deadpan expression, and then he flicked her forehead. She hit him hard and he cowered for a moment and said, "Hey, I went into the tree to save you finally, and some of those other things happened to me, too!"

She shook her head and said, "Seriously, it's a good thing I came back."

They walked toward the main doors and once outside of them she said, "I really think we need to be circumspect. We shouldn't tell anyone about this, besides Bill Weasley."

"Oh," he said.

"What?" she harked.

"Potter knows," he blurted. "He's a right bloody bastard, and he badgered me about leaving you alone again, so I finally told him I was from the future and we were married, and hell, I didn't think he would believe me, but he did."

"Draco! You especially can't tell him! There's a link from his mind to Voldemort's!"

"I forgot," he said sheepishly.

"Well, I'll convince him that you were lying, that's all," she said. "I'll go work on him now, and you go work on Pansy, also known as Ellen."

She opened the door and Draco said, "Potter's not in there. Tonight's the night he gets the memory."

"Then we don't have much time. Leave it to me." She turned to walk in the castle, but he pulled her back by her jumper. She turned to look at him, but he was under the invisibility cloak.

He pulled her under with him and kissed her lips once more, smiled at her, and said, "I'm not happy that you had to come rescue me, but I'm glad to see you just the same, and please know that I love you more than anything, and I've missed you every single second of every single day."

A/N: Super long chapter. Almost twenty-two hundred words more than the last. Is it wrong of me to want this story to just be over with already? I started it back in September, for goodness sakes, and I'm not done yet. For most people, that's not that bad. But, it's never taken me this long to write a story. However, I feel like we are finally at the 'meat and potatoes' of the story, and it's wrapping up nicely. Six more chapters and we will be done. I figure when this is over, it will be my third longest story written. I've given up posting it on Granger Enchanted, because the last few chapters haven't even gotten any reviews, and only a few hits, so I figure I will finish it, and the post all the rest of the chapters at once over there.

Next chapter will have some fun, quiet time for Draco and Hermione, and then something bad happens to poor Draco, just like in the book. (Remember what it was?) Thanks everyone!