The Ministry of Magic, London, 1945 …

Harry and Hermione stepped into the Atrium and moved quickly to one side, to prevent being jostled by the early morning crowds hurrying to work. The place looked remarkably the same as they remembered it … or at least as they remembered it pre-Voldemort. The Magic is Might statue was gone, and the original monument of the witch, wizard and house-elf was back in it's place. Hermione frowned as she looked at it.

"You know, I don't know which one is worse," she frowned. "Wizards trampling on each other for power, or trampling on sentient magical creatures instead. They are as bad as each other in their own ways."

"When we put all this right, we'll build you a new one," Harry promised. "With my reputation, I'm sure I could arrange it for you. What should we have?"

"Don't ask me that just now," Hermione replied, grimly. "I might respond with something like, 'Molly Weasley's head on a spike' or something. And that would simply be a waste of an opportunity to spread a message of tolerance!"

Harry chuckled at that. Then he looked at Hermione in seriousness. "So, what's the plan? Are there any time-travel rules that we have to follow?"

"Well, the first one we can ignore," Hermione replied. "And that's Do Not Be Seen …. because, as we don't exist yet in this place, we are safe from that."

Harry nodded. "That certainly makes moving around easier. I suppose the next problem we have is how to get inside the Ministry to find Hector. We have no reason to visit, and I'm not sure we could bluff our way past security. This is a post-war period, so I imagine tensions and suspicions are still pretty high."

"I tend to agree," Hermione mused. "But we have historical events on our side."

"Which are?"

"The trials," Hermione explained. "The Bloody Sympathises … as they were called … were big news at this time, and members of the public flocked to watch them. All we have to do is say that we're here for that."

"And if they check citizenship records and see we aren't on them?"

"We'll say we've just come back from an espionage mission in Europe and our records are kept Top Secret," Hermione replied. "Britain sent an expeditionary force of combat wizards to fight Grindelwald. Many were mercenaries, some were even criminals, but they all wanted security for their families if the war went badly. So their records were moved for security reasons."

"And what about our age?" Harry argued. "They might say we're too young to go to war."

Hermione turned with a half-patient, half-pitying expression. "Wizards as young as fifteen lied about their age to sign up. In the end, the Recruitment Office had to install an Age-Line to expose potential hoodwinking."

"And I bet I can guess who cast the enchantment!" Harry hushed, grabbing Hermione and tugging her bodily behind a large plinth nearby.

"Harry! What are you doing!" Hermione yelped, somewhat crossly.

"Quiet! Look … over there."

Harry gestured towards the crowd, but there was no point, really. For the throng had parted to allow a single wizard to pass through them, making quite a scene as he did so. When others realised who it was, they began to applaud wildly … but a youthful-looking Albus Dumbledore simply ducked his head modestly and tried to brush off the adulation.

Hermione felt Harry tauten next to her. She could see his pulse hammering in his neck, so she reached out to try and soothe him.

"Merlin, Harry, you are tense!" Hermione hushed and she kneaded Harry's clavicle. "I need to rub these knots out of you."

Harry turned to her with mischievous eyes. "Perhaps not here … I know what happened the last time you gave me a massage! You may not have been there, but trust me, it was electrifying … though not anything like appropriate for a public arena!"

Hermione felt a heat steal all over her flesh, colouring her cheeks and pooling like lava below her waist. One day, she was determined, she'd create more memories of such experiences with Harry, ones this version of herself would actually be there to be a part of.

But for now, she had to stay in the moment. "Why are you so tense? It's only Dumbledore."

"I know … but it's the first time I've seen him alive since … since that night … that night on the Astronomy Tower … "

Harry's voice broke and tailed off into silence. Hermione closed her eyes and swallowed hard.

"Oh."

"Yeah. He's younger, obviously, but it's still him. He's still the man I watch getting murdered in sixty years or so."

"Sorry … I didn't think of it like that."

"First time for everything, eh?" Harry quipped with a weak smile. Then he turned to look at Dumbledore as he strode away from view. "You know, I don't think I'd ever get used to seeing him with brown hair. It's just … weird."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "You've seen him like this before, then?"

"Yeah, in Tom Riddle's diary," Harry reminded her. "That can't have happened much after this time. Dumbledore looks like he did in that memory, only his hair and beard are a bit shorter here. They were both past his shoulders in the diary memory, though the colour is the same."

"He can't have long defeated Grindelwald in this time period," Hermione pointed out. "That explains his celebrity status."

"Do you know something that I can't explain about that?" "Harry began. "It's how Dumbledore won at all."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, Grindelwald had the Elder Wand, didn't he?" Harry went on. "It was supposed to be an unbeatable wand … but Dumbledore beat him and took it from him. How is that possible?"

"You should have learned by now that subtle laws govern wand ownership," Hermione replied. "Dumbledore must have won it's allegiance another way. Perhaps even through their relationship."

"Relationship? What relationship?"

Hermione sighed and rolled her eyes. "Didn't you ever read Rita's book about Dumbledore when we were stuck in that tent hunting Horcruxes?"

"No … I only used the pages when we ran out of toilet paper," Harry scoffed. "I don't like to think about that tent … I could have been chasing you around it rather than bothering with pieces of Tom Riddle's soul."

"Harry!" Hermione admonished, her cheeks turning pink with Harry's inference. "I should tell you off for comments like that, but at least it shows part of you still desires me, which means Molly hasn't erased that from you yet. But, to get back to topic, yes … Dumbledore and Grindelwald were … well …. intimate."

"They were having sex, you mean."

"Well, yes."

"Then why didn't you just say that?" Harry asked.

"I was just trying to be delicate."

"Why? I mean, all they were doing was having sex. Anal sex, obviously, but still just sex. Nothing wrong with that, but I grew up with Vernon Dursley, who always insisted on calling a spade a spade. I suppose I absorbed the habit. Does anal sex make you uncomfortable or something?"

"I don't know … I'll tell you when we try it," Hermione fired back vampishly.

Harry just watched his jaw, as it dropped sharply and smashed through the floor between his legs.

"But my point is that there might have been more to it than simply the physical aspect," Hermione went on shamelessly, as though she hadn't just shattered Harry's mind with a single sentence. "Dumbledore and Grindelwald had a relationship, in which they did relationship-things …"

"Like plotting to take over the world," Harry quirked.

"Well, perhaps that wasn't the best of them," Hermione grimaced. "But my suggestion was that maybe Dumbledore disarmed Grindelwald of the Elder Wand in another way, rather than by simply out-duelling him."

"Such as?"

"Maybe he told him that he loved him."

Harry blinked hard at the suggestion. "Would that have worked, do you think?"

"Perhaps, but this is only a theory," Hermione replied. "But if Dumbledore had said that, and Grindelwald felt the same, it may have created a sort of neutrality between them -"

"- meaning their wands would work just as well in the hands of the other -"

" - and they wouldn't be able to fight each other with full intent to harm -"

" - because they loved each other, and their magic would refuse to be weaponised in such a way if they ever fought," Harry nodded.

"Exactly," Hermione agreed. "It might also create a sort of duality in their wands. Magical energy in a wand comes as much from the witch or wizard as it does the wood type and core. Will and intent, emotion, these things are simply channelled and enhanced by a wand."

"So, in theory, Dumbledore and Grindelwald's combined energy might have made Dumbledore's wand the equal of the Elder Wand, or allowed him to channel its power."

"That's my theory, yes," Hermione replied with a haughty nod.

"You know … we've always been able to use each other's wands like that, have you ever noticed?"

Hermione turned her eyes down coyly. "I have."

"And do you think it might be for the same reason?"

"Might be."

Hermione bit her lip and looked so cute that Harry ached for her in that moment. And something else was happening in his mind, almost as if his world-view was changing before his eyes … he was seeing Hermione differently, not as a sister, as he'd once told Ron in what seemed like another life …but so much unlike a sister, in fact, that the concepts might have been night and day.

So Harry leaned over and kissed Hermione full on the mouth, his dry lips pressed cautiously to her moist ones. Hermione whimpered in her throat and stepped close to deepen the contact. It would have been all sorts of wrong if she hadn't. Then they broke breathlessly apart.

"Is this really the moment?" Hermione panted in a gasp, pressing her forehead to Harry's and looking deep into his eyes.

"You know … it actually could be," Harry mused. "We think our first kiss happened somewhere out there … in the future or another time line. But what if it happened here, now … in our past … when the timelines were as one? What if this was one of those anchors that the other Hermione mentioned, only one she wasn't able to place?"

"Because she'd never been here!" Hermione hushed. "This was one event that we had to live, or re-live … Merlin this is confusing! … in order to secure our future."

"Everything that happens, in the past and in the future, arises from the past, and only by understanding the past, can we make our way in the future," Harry muttered.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing. It was just something that Dumbledore once told me, that's all … when we were revisiting his memories about Tom Riddle. But I think I understand what he meant now … he meant this."

"What? Us kissing?"

"Well, maybe not that exact thing," Harry sighed flippantly. "But he meant that to get to where you want to go, you need to understand where you are, which means understanding how you got there in the first place. Understanding your past … to make your way in the future. And I think I understand now."

"Understand what, exactly?" Hermione queried. "Because, frankly, I'm lost."

"I understand now just how important you are to me … you are the most important thing, in this world, this life, or any other I might have led," Harry returned without ceremony. Hermione simply goggled at his confession in wide-eyed astonishment. "You say you are lost, but the truth is that I'd be the one who'd be lost if I'd never found you. I think I've always known, in a way. I cant pinpoint a moment when it started, but it's been there for so long I've just grown used to it. I think it's only now, when Ron has threatened to take you away for good, that it's finally come into my conscious mind.

"And that might be part of the spell … one that kept me from ever crossing the more-than-friends line with you. We've had so many near moments, but something has always disturbed or disrupted it. But here, in the past, with just you and me … a bit like it was in Australia … there's nothing to stop it. This is just like our last time-travel experience, when it was just the two of us and we couldn't be seen … we might as well have been in our own personal world.

"And after that night I realised just how deep you'd burrowed into my actual world. I told you about living with Sirius … you were the only one I shared that deeply emotional moment with … and it was the happy thought that provided the fuel for my Patronus that scattered a hundred Dementors. It was just you, and me, and I should have known then that that was how it was meant to be."

"So what are you saying?" Hermione breathed, her spirits all sorts of flustered. "That kissing me now has at last sent you over that border? That it's the final piece of the puzzle?"

"Perhaps not the final piece … but maybe the first piece, if we are at the beginning now," Harry grinned. "And if we've put this one in place maybe we can get all the others back, too. So no matter what Molly does to create this paradox in time, we can still undo it. We just have to start here and work our way forwards."

"Just like the other me started in the future and made her way backwards! It created a perfect circle! Or it will when we merge the time lines again."

"A genius! In any time period!" Harry grinned. "So come on, let's find Molly and see what she did."

"Just remember, Harry, when we do find Molly, we can't let her see us," Hermione warned as they moved off and joined the surge of trial spectators again. "Of all the people here, she actually knows us. If she spots us, she could make changes again … and all that we've learned will be for nothing."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, Hermione, but if Molly does see us, wont she just be reliving an event that's already happened?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, take that time when I saved you, Sirius and I from the Dementors, right?" Harry began. "When I first lived it, I thought I saw my dad casting the stag Patronus, but it was actually me. Which must mean that the two time lines were happening in sync. I saw myself time-travelling. Wont the same thing apply here?"

"No, I don't think so," Hermione considered. "For the subtle reason that with Sirius, an intervention from the future was a timeline event … we couldn't have been saved without the help of your future self … so it linked the two together. Here, that wasn't the case, the events were never corrupted by time … at least they weren't, until Molly stuck her big nose in it.

"There's also the fact that we are trying to change something back to an earlier state. It could be that our intervention now actually caused the original timeline. If that makes sense."

"It doesn't," Harry grimaced. "But if it does to you, that's good enough for me. You are never wrong."

"Well, I am … sometimes."

"Name one time!" Harry cried, incredulously.

Hermione blushed furiously. "That time that I thought you'd never see me as more than a friend. I was wrong then … wasn't I?"

The nervous hope in her last words made Harry grin, as he knew he had the power to make her happy by confirming her mistake.

"Yes, you were … more than you can ever know," Harry whispered, stepping close again. "But we won't count that as being wrong, more as you having a happy accident."

Hermione laughed deeply. "Okay, I can live with that. Come on, the security gates are just up ahead. Game faces on, Harry."

As it turned out, passing through the barriers was easy. The sheer volume of witches and wizards scrambling to get in to watch the trials meant the security checks were reduced to merely the most basic of scans and pocket-searches. So after a fractious five minutes of stressing in the queue, it took less than thirty seconds after being beckoned forwards for Harry and Hermione to be reunited safely on the other side.

"That was almost too easy," Hermione frowned.

"Don't complain," Harry grinned, smugly. "We hardly ever get any luck. Maybe this is the start of a paradigm shift!"

Hermione narrowed her eyes, but allowed Harry his moment of exuberant triumph. Maybe he was right, so what harm was to be found in letting him revel in it?

"Which way now?" Harry asked, looking around as if hoping to see a signpost pointing in Molly Weasley's direction.

"The Judge's chambers must be near the courtrooms," Hermione mused. "We should try and locate Hector Dagworth-Granger, maybe shadow him and see if Molly turns up."

"Follow me, I think I remember the way," Harry whispered grimly, as the memory of his own trial by the Wizengamot bloomed large in his mind.

Hermione, as if sensing the rise of Harry's irritation, locked her forearm around his in a show of solidarity. "That was a miscarriage of justice that was eventually overturned. We're here to make sure Molly's meddling goes the same way. Lead on, Harry."

So he did, slipping them back into the jostling crowds as they crammed into one of the golden elevators heading down into the bowels of the Ministry. An uncomfortable ride later and they were buffeted out into the cool air of the shiny, onyx-tiled walls of the Department of Mysteries, which is where the trials were being held.

"Bit grim down here, isn't it?" Hermione muttered lowly, clinging to Harry as if to offer very-late support in lieu of missing his trial, as they made their way along the windowless, bare-walled corridor.

"I think that's sort of the point," Harry hushed back. "I was in Courtroom Ten down at the far end. It was just a grimy black door, like the entrance to a dungeon. You'd hardly think it was anything important at all."

"Well let's not go in there then," Hermione suggested, as though worried she might trigger an anxiety relapse in Harry. "In any case, I think we need to find Hector before the trial. If Molly does get to him to make him change his verdict, that isn't likely to happen in full view of a courtroom full of people."

"I agree," Harry nodded. "But how will we know where to find Hector?"

But before Hermione could answer, her expression darkened like a thunder cloud. She scowled at something on the other side of the corridor.

Or, more precisely, at someone.

"I think our best bet would be to follow her," Hermione hissed below her breath.

Harry followed Hermione's line of sight. "Molly!" he whispered. He reached instinctively for his wand, but Hermione threw out a hand to stop him.

"No, Harry, we cant do that!" Hermione breathed.

"Why not?" Harry snapped. "We could take her out here and now, before she gets up to her mischief."

"But she might have already done it," Hermione argued, fairly. "Either way, we have to find out exactly what it is that she's done … or is about to do … so that we can reverse it later. One thing we aren't short of, Harry, is more time."

Hermione tapped the tiny hourglass hidden on a golden chain beneath her high-collared robe. Harry bristled and gritted his teeth, but accepted that Hermione was right as usual, not that it doused his angry frustration, just set it to a rolling simmer.

"Fine, we do it your way," Harry grimaced. "But I reserve the right to hex that hag right between her piggy little eyes if your plan doesn't go as you hope."

"That's fair," Hermione accepted. "Just make it a good one, wont you?"

"It'll be the best," Harry fired back, bullishly, conceding with significant reluctance.

Even so, he pocketed his wand as Hermione guided him through the flow of witches and wizards and into Molly's slipstream, albeit a comfortable distance behind. She didn't stick with the crowds for very long, turning sharply down a narrow flight of rough stone steps that led off the right-side of the corridor. Harry and Hermione had to wait a toe-curlingly frustrating few moments for Molly to move a safe distance ahead before they followed her, catching sight of her only briefly as she disappeared through a nondescript black door, which she sealed tightly behind her.

"Hector's Chambers," Hermione muttered as she read a dirty bronze sign set into the door. "What Molly is doing to us, this is when she started it!"

"And you're still sure I cant curse her?" Harry checked.

"I'm wavering, so don't push me," Hermione begged. "We have to know what she did to change history. Even the cleverest people can't see all ends without the facts."

"Well, at least we know Hector actually existed," Harry pointed out. "Some of the cryptic messages from the other you hinted at something else."

"I was pretty certain he had to have been alive," Hermione replied. "He is my ancestor. I wouldn't have been born if he hadn't been."

"So why didn't Molly just go back and kill him?"

"Because her plan isn't just about me," Hermione fumed. "It's about making sure her overworked womb can produce a girl, too. She has to stop the curse being placed on the Weasley family to deny them daughters, remember?"

"And at the same time stopping the flow of descendants that lead to you," Harry riled. "For all we know, Hector might not have had the child yet that would become your grandparent. Molly might be trying to stop that. Or to hurt the child if it has already been born."

"That's possible," Hermione spat. "I hope not … it would make everything so much more difficult if I had to go and protect my infant grandfather for the next ten years or something."

"It might not be as simple as that," Harry argued. "If Molly wants to stop the female line of the Granger family from developing, all she has to do is learn the spell Hector was intending to cast on the Weasleys and use it against him. That would prevent your birth quite neatly."

"And allow Ginny to replace St. John in Molly's world … which already happened in ours! Oh Harry, we might already be too late! Hexing is sounding more and more like the right idea. Oh, why didn't I listen to you?"

"We can't be too late, we are in the past, at the beginning, remember?" Harry reassured her. "Whatever Molly does now, we have the means to reverse it and change it back. We just have to make sure we know precisely what she did, just so that we don't miss anything next time around. She's tricksy as all hell, she's demonstrated that Dark Art … we have to be meticulous in undoing her meddling."

Hermione cocked an eyebrow at him. "Since when did you become the logical one and I went all hot-headed? Something's gone awry somewhere."

Harry smirked at her. "I always said you were a bad influence on me. You've made me more cerebral, but I miss being hot-headed … I like that quality about me!"

"I think it's one attribute you should be happy to jettison," Hermione funned. "I'll certainly sleep easier knowing you've gotten rid of it."

"So long as you're sleeping in my bed, with me, then I'll be happy to go along as an enlightened philosopher!" Harry chuckled.

"One step at a time, eh?" Hermione smiled. Then they heard movement behind Hector's door. "Quick! Down here!"

Hermione tugged Harry across the dim corridor and into the thick shadows of an alcove set into the opposite wall. They watched as the door opened and a slight, wiry figure emerged. He had thinning hair, half-rimmed spectacles and stiff, angular movements.

"Hector, I presume?" Hermione muttered, her hot breath causing Harry's earlobe to tingle where it touched it. "You know … he looks a lot like my Dad!"

"I can see that," Harry agreed, as Hector slouched his way along the corridor and away from them. "You know, he moves heavily for such a slight wizard."

"But where's Molly?" Hermione asked. "If she has him under the Imperious or something she'd have to have left his Chambers by now."

"Let's go and see."

And Harry was up before Hermione could stop him, sprinting across the corridor and into the open door of the Chamber. The place looked neat enough, with little sign of a struggle. The only thing that might have seemed out of a place was a small cauldron on a side table, that was still steaming as if recently used.

"Whatever was in here only had enough for a single dose," Harry concluded, as he assessed the remains of a gelatinous substance clinging to the inside of the cauldron. "This is so small it could be a toy. I recognise the smell though, I just can't place it. Come over here and tell me what you think."

"I don't need to. I can guess."

Hermione's voice was tiny, infinitesimal even. Harry span on his heel at the pain lacing her tone. He saw Hermione cradling a limp body on the other side of the room.

"It was Polyjuice, finished off with hair cut from this piece of Hector's head," Hermione mumbled, delicately holding up a clump of hair that had quite clearly been recently snipped off. "Not that he'll have any need of it, though."

"Why not?" Harry asked, though he felt he could guess the answer. He didn't feel any better about Hermione confirming it, however, as she looked up with teary eyes and said,

"He's dead. Molly killed him … and I bet her Time magic means we wont ever be able to undo it."