Again, I know... I promised that I'd answer reviews, but I've been so busy and it's already been so long since I updated. I couldn't bear to make you wait any longer than you absolutely needed to. I understand if you're angry.

Please enjoy the chapter.

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Chapter 32 -

"Well, Professor. . ."

So many questions rang through her mind, how could she possibly choose a single question at a time. It was going to be no small feat to keep from exploding, simply from the sheer amount of questions that were forming in her mind, and every time she thought of one, three more would pop into her head.

There were simply too many!

"Well. . . I. . ."

Hermione stumbled for time once again. What was she going to ask him? Would he answer what she asked?

She calmed herself and told herself - reassuringly - that there was only one way that she would ever be able to find out. She had to brace herself, get ready for the worst, and just ask.

"Professor," she said, her voice going from stalled panic to business- like in one, swift change which seemed to shock Draco, but not Dumbledore.

"Yes, Miss Granger." Dumbledore replied, looking at her over his half moon spectacles, and it almost bothered her how he could look and seem to BE so calm, yet she was puzzling over her every word. It just wasn't fair. Humph.

Hermione sighed.

"Alright, start at the beginning." She said. "Tell me why you chose Draco and I to work on the project you assigned us, even though we didn't get very far into it." Hermione remembered practically abandoning the entire project when her life began to veer off the perfect course she had set for it.

Dumbledore looked at her appreciatively over his glasses and stared at her in an amused fashion, his eyes twinkling with mischief that she didn't know her old Hogwarts professor and headmaster possessed.

"Ah, Miss Granger, I knew you would ask such a question." He stated, the familiar smirk/not quite smirk smile across his ancient face, and Hermione found herself smiling, despite what she told her face to do.

"You see, I have many duties, abilities, and problems, just as everyone else, but mine are slightly more confidential and weighted. I knew that giving you that project was the first step to an important part of the future, and I knew that both of you would accept because your thirst to be the best and prove your extensive knowledge was better would out weigh your want to be away from each other."

Hermione stared blankly into space for a second. Was she really that shallow? Was that really what anyone could see when they looked at her? Hermione Granger, all she wants is to be the best?

"I also knew - to some extent - that it would have to be you two that, as you would say, 'saved the day', and not anyone else, even if they were more qualified in some areas."

"You mean Potter." Draco burst in, loathing beginning to seep into his facial expression. Hermione suppressed a dissatisfied shake of her head and told herself that he was still, and always would be, Draco Malfoy, and there was nothing that was even going to begin to change that.

"Yes, Mister Malfoy, I do mean Harry Potter. It would, indeed, given his track record, seem that Mister Potter should be the one to have this task, yet it is you I have given it to. Do you not see why?"

Dumbledore paused, as if he was waiting for one of them to answer, but both had, apparently, drawn a complete blank. There was nothing that was coming to mind, no way for this to even begin to make sense.

"You two have been singled out from the moment that you walked into this school, not only for your heritage or your houses." Dumbledore continued, still, apparently, waiting for one of the two of them to figure it out.

He seemed to enjoy watching the two students struggling to find the answer when it was so painfully obvious to him.

Hermione's eyes suddenly lit up and as suddenly as they lit up, they went out, like a flame lighting briefly and then being extinguished by a puff of air. Nobody spoke for a solid two minutes.

"Professor?" Hermione asked.

"Yes, Miss Granger?"

"If you knew that it would be me and D- Draco and I that had to deal with what happened and you knew that it would be the two of us that still doesn't explain why you put us together in the first place."

"Yes, yes it does Miss Granger, yet you don't understand yet, do you? No, perhaps you don't. Let me tell you something more." Dumbledore paused, as though searching for the words that would help him explain his point.

"Years ago I was graced with the gift of foresight - not like prophecy - but somewhat the same. Yes, I can see things happening in the future, but not the same way Professor Trelawney can-"

"Fraud." Draco said between coughs, Hermione barely caught it herself, and she wondered whether Professor Dumbledore had heard it or not. Hopefully not.

"-but in a rather different way. I can feel emotion happening in the future, yet I do not know why the emotion is there nor do I know what it is happening because of, all I know is how someone is feeling at that point in time. Funny that is should be called foresight, forefeeling would be more accurate, would it not?"

Hermione cracked a weak smile as her brain assimilated this new information. So Dumbledore had somewhat known what was happening, but not completely.

"You knew what would happen later, and you wanted to make sure that you set up the foundation now. You needed to make sure that we could tolerate each other or else it wouldn't have worked in the future when we needed to help each other." Hermione said suddenly, and the words spilled out of her mouth before she realized what she was saying.

Dumbledore nodded his approval.

"Indeed, Miss Granger, indeed."

"But then. . ." Hermione trailed off. It still didn't make too much sense. But it was starting to, now, wasn't it?

"Alright, so Advanced Transfiguration. You didn't just set that up as an extracurricular activity, now, did you Professor?"

"Guilty as charged, Miss Granger. I, indeed, did not set that up for all high marked students, just you two, but you made a wrong choice during that class which I did not foresee. You didn't choose the phoenix - yes, don't give me that look Miss Granger, I know what animals you had to choose from - and you should have chosen the phoenix. Instead you chose the fox, which set a right knot in the future."

Hermione smiled sheepishly, knowing that she had somehow altered the future.

"But you managed to work that out on your own."

Hermione paused again, thinking about everything that had happened this year. Curses. . .she had cursed Draco, an unforgivable, if she wasn't mistaken.

"Why wasn't I punished for breaking the law?" she asked immediately after the thought crossed her mind, and Professor Dumbledore regarded her with mild interest for a moment before he answered.

"Because in order for following events to take place, it had to happen, following the law, or not, it does not matter. There are still events to come that shall coincide with said event, so we cannot dawdle on the issue."

Hermione nodded and kept her thoughts, blurbs and opinions to herself while she tried to formulate another question. It was just so hard.

She glanced over at Fawkes. He was such a beautiful phoenix.

Phoenix!!!

"Professor, how come I was able to transform into a phoenix? Isn't that impossible once I made my decision?" Hermione asked, genuinely wanting to know the answer.

"That, Miss Granger, was my most confusing aspect, but I have traced how you managed to do it." He paused, almost as though for dramatics.

"There is only one force more powerful than magic." Dumbledore said, again trailing off into silence.

"Force?" Draco asked, slightly perking up at the thought of force being stronger than magic, but Dumbledore shook his head.

"No, Mister Malfoy, no. Not force."

Hermione thought about everything that she had ever been told and everything she had heard, and for some reason, Harry began to stick in her head and she couldn't get him out.

What was it about Harry?

His mother, his father. . . his mother shouldn't have died. . . Love. . .

LOVE.

"It's love, isn't it Professor? Love is more powerful than magic." Hermione could almost feel as Draco rolled his eyes and she longed to roll hers right back, but retained her dignity. For now.

"Yes, Miss Granger, love broke even the strongest bond magic knew." Dumbledore said, his voice sounding somewhat distant and different. Hermione allowed the words to sink into her mind, realizing, to the extent, what they meant.

She loved Draco.

Even though she had known in all along, it was still something shocking to hear it said out loud, now, wasn't it?

Her love - there was that word again - for Draco had saved herself and him from death. She loved him. Love, love, love. It sounded so foreign.

This wasn't like the 'love' that she had felt for Harry and Ron, they were like brothers, Draco was something different. Very different, yes, but different all the same.

In that room, that one room that had scarred her and frightened her and changed her forever, she had saved and been saved by the same person. Her entire life was going to be haunted by his memory, no matter what happened after today.

That room had been horrible, the work for that project had been even more boring than Professor Binns, and she had almost lost her sanity trying to figure out the papers that Dumbledore had given them.

The papers. The project. Time reversal was impossible, was it not? How was it possible to repeat something that was already done? Gone. Over. Impossible to come back to.

But. . .

"Professor -" Hermione said, her head jerking up.

"Yes?"

"Would it be possible for the world to be a series of worlds, each a second - no a fraction of a second - behind the other?" Hermione asked. Draco gave her a weird look and Dumbledore looked thoughtful.

"Why do you ask, Miss Granger?"

"Because, in order for someone to go back in time, it had to have not already happened, which would be possible if people went back to another world, parallel to our own. It would also explain why you were there, even though you had gone back in time. In truth, there are thousands of 'Hermione Grangers' and 'Draco Malfoys' walking around parallel universes, never to coincide unless one joins another by changing the time frame from where they should be to where another is, whether to do something or for no reason."

Complete and utter silence greeted her words, and Dumbledore began to chuckle.

Hermione frowned and looked at him wondering what he could have found so funny, and he continued chuckling quietly to himself for a little while before addressing her once more.

"I always knew that you were too smart for anyone your age. And now you have baffled myself and probably will astound officials across the world. Never. . . never would I have imagined. . . parallel worlds. . ."

Hermione felt rather proud of herself and turned to stare at one of the pictures on the wall that was giving her a smile and a wink. She winked back. She liked those portraits, they were rather nice.

"Miss Granger, Mister Malfoy," Dumbledore said, and Hermione realized that at some point he had stood up and walked around his desk to stand next to the two of them, but she hadn't seen him move.

"I bid you good day, enjoy the fresh air around you and I shall speak with the two of you again later." He shook each of their hands, his eyes sparkling even more than before she had said her thoughts about time and its wonders.

Hermione began to wonder just how important her discovery was.

~+~

Hermione lay back on her bed, happy to be out of Dumbledore's office, but also satisfied with the amount of information that she had been given.

She had been rather surprised at his willingness to answer almost every one of her questions that she fired at him; perhaps he had learned over the years that answering all of the questions that he was asked made everything a lot easier than pretending they didn't exist.

Hermione sighed inwardly and reached for another text book. She was so far behind in her studies that it wasn't even funny. She was even a little peeved that the OWLS had been called off for her and Draco, she felt that it was unfair to herself and Draco to take away such an important test, but Dumbledore had said that they had more than proved themselves.

Yeah right.

Hermione sighed again, this time letting it escape her lips and she lay her head on her arms, staring out the window. She didn't want to go home, yet she felt that she had to. So torn by her emotions, she didn't hear the door open or close, nor the person sit down next to her and stare out the window with her.

Her mind finally turned to present time and she saw Draco sitting next to her, staring slightly at her and slightly at the wall behind her, so she didn't know what he was truly looking at.

As she watched him, she felt a horrible pang in her heart as the question she had been dying to ask him since they had gotten back from the library resurfaced in her thoughts. She didn't know if she wanted an answer or not though.

Did he, Draco Malfoy, love her or was he enjoying toying with her emotions? It was just so hard to tell, he was never really one of those people that were open about anything, but still. . . still. . .

Did he? She needed to know, almost as if her life depended on it. How on earth was she going to get the answer? Maybe she wouldn't and the rest of her life would be lived in denial.

It was horrible, knowing, knowing in the deepest parts of her heart, that she loved him, and there was more than a fifty percent chance that he didn't share her feelings. And that would be worse than not knowing, wouldn't it?

She needed to know. But how would she be able to take the answer if it were the wrong one?

"'Mione?" someone said, distantly, and she felt a tingle go down her spine. But, this time, instead of being happy that she still could feel that feeling, she was depressed because he had this much of an effect on her and he could just be teasing and manipulating her. That would be awful.

"Mmm?" she said, not wanting to look at him, afraid of what she might see.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course." She answered immediately. She almost didn't have to think about her answer. She would answer anything he needed to know.

"Could you ever see yourself with someone that was. . . different than you?" Draco's words were slow, deliberate and different than the way that he normally spoke.

"Different how?" Hermione asked, wondering what on earth he could possibly be getting at.

"Well. . . I mean. . . never mind."

"Draco," Hermione said, suddenly realizing what he might have been asking her.

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

Those three words never worked out how they did in the movies. In the movies the other person answered promptly and assured the first party that they loved them too and they lived happily ever after, but Draco didn't even look at her.

Hermione returned to staring out the window and she watched him out of the corner of her eye. He rose from his chair and stood, unmoving, and he watched her, as though she were the most interesting thing in the world.

Then he left, closing the door softly, and Hermione tore her gaze away from the window, staring at where he had been.

So it wasn't like the movies, but maybe, in his own, Draco Malfoy way, he had told her that he loved her too.

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A/N: HA, one chapter left!!! ONE single chapter!!!

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--Saquoia--