A/N: Here it is guys. You're going to think I've jumped completely off the edge. This chapter is pretty crazy, lemme warn you. You're lucky I posted it today. I was going to wait another week, but I realized I probably can't post next week since it'll be Homecoming and I'll be oober busy so be glad I posted!

Thanks cheese riot for being on time! I love you!

"Where are we?" I asked, looking at the unfamiliar dark corridor we were standing in.

"We're under the main part of the Ministry of Magic," Harry said, tapping his wand on one of the doors.

"We must be miles underground then."

"Bingo," Ron said, opening the door to his left after tapping it with his wand. "C'min here."

I followed the two of them through the door and Harry slammed it shut behind me. "Dumbledore built these right after he heard about Voldemort's return."

"Right under Fudge's nose," Ron said proudly.

"They're completely soundproof, magic-proof, basically everything proof. Everyone in the Ministry uses them now—for secret meetings and such."

"So, I'm guessing we're not supposed to be using them."

"Not technically," Ron said, sitting down at a circular table in the middle of the room. "But no one can come in once we've sealed these doors. No one can overhear us either."

"Which is good because we have a lot to tell you."

"You do?"

"We aren't telling her everything!"

"We have to. This involves her as much as it does us!"

"But she isn't on the case!"

"She could help. Hermione's an asset."

"Ron," I said quietly, "Why don't you want to tell me? Don't you trust me?"

He glanced over, looking crushed. "D'you really think that?" He sighed. "Of course I trust you, Hermione. I don't want you to have anything to do with this because I know how dangerous it is. You could get hurt."

"Has that ever stopped me before?" I asked, actually feeling slightly relieved.

"I guess not. Well, c'mon then, let's get this over with."

"Finally!" Harry said, sitting down next to Ron.

I pulled up my own chair too. "Well..."

"Er—where are we supposed to begin?" Ron said stupidly.

"We'll start where the story starts."

"But, it's hard to say where the story starts," Ron contradicted. "I mean chronologically or order of events? It still doesn't make any sense."

"Look, Ron," Harry said, sounding slightly agitated, we'll go from where history got messed up."

"What?" I had been trying to listen intently—trying to pick up on what was going on—but nothing they were saying was making any sense.

"All right, we'll start where it started," Harry said, still eyeing Ron. He turned back toward me. "A couple of years ago, a time turner was stolen from the Ministry of Magic. They said it 'mysteriously disappeared' one night."

"Prats," Ron muttered darkly.

"So, naturally, the members of the department began looking for it. And for any place in the timelines where it looked like any foul play might have occurred. After a couple of months of monitoring, they didn't notice anything, and the case was dropped.

"But, a couple of months ago, Ron and I were doing some research for Colton Mosley--" ("Idiot," Ron muttered)—"he had found some smuggled goods in Panama, and we were told to go through the files and see if there were any stolen items that had never been recovered. We were looking through all these files when Ron spotted the file on the time turner."

"It was really bugging me, so I showed it to Harry," Ron explained.

"One guy hadn't wanted to close the matter--"

"A Ukrainian bloke named Vitaly Szechznik. Weird guy."

"Weird or not, he showed us the timeline. About six years ago, a really weird mark was shown, like a whole other tree branching off. Szechznik told us the Ministry guys said it was an error, but Szechznik knew he'd seen something just like it before."

"So, we started going through files. Hundreds and hundreds of files. But Harry found the one that told us everything."

"In 1774, the Revolutionary War began in America. This Ostrowitz bloke lost a ton of kinsmen in the war, so he decided to go back and change the entire outcome of the war. He made a time split. And, the exact same mark was shown in that year."

I gasped, but Harry didn't hear me.

"Ron's gotten better at explaining a time split than I am."

I, of course, knew what a time split was from my experience with a time turner in third year, in which, McGonagall was constantly warning me. On the other hand, Ron seemed to be glad he was teaching me for once, so I let him carry on.

"See, a time split occurs when someone goes back in time, and completely changes what happens—completely different people live and die. The last noted one was in 1774. That Franz Ostrowitz guy killed a lot of people, but saved many of his own."

"How did they reverse the effects and merge the timelines again?"

Ron looked shocked at my fast comprehension. "They went back and killed Ostrowitz almost directly as he was born. He was deleted from history, and the war was able to go on, as it should have. They figured out rather early on what he was up to anyway. He didn't keep what he was doing very quiet."

"But, still, why can't they just go back in time and kill whoever's done it this time?"

"First off, that's really unorthodox," Ron said. "And, there's a lot more we'd lose this time..."

"And, it's not that simple. We're not really even sure who's behind it this time," Harry explained.

"You need to understand the situation."

"In case you haven't noticed, I'm trying to understand the situation."

"Well, if you're going to be like that--"

"DON'T YOU TWO START! Hermione, we're trying to tell you, if you'll just be patient."

I shot Ron a look. "Well, I am trying."

"Well," Harry continued, "at that point, we kind of hit a roadblock. We knew there were two different timelines now, but we didn't know why or what had been altered so much it could cause a time split—almost a completely different universe."

"But, we still knew this wasn't a coincidence."

"And we had to go with our first suspicion."

"Former Death Eaters."

"That's when Szechznik's weirdness finally came in handy. It seems as if he likes to lurk around the Ministry after hours, spying on different departments."

"Well, that has to be completely illegal!" I said.

Ron grinned. "And completely to our advantage."

"He knew they kept tabs in the Department of Magical Law on all Death Eaters they'd never found enough evidence against to prosecute. All Ron and I had to do was use some of our school day sleuthing."

"You could've been arrested!"

"Well, we're really sorry, Hermione, but we were a little more concerned with the fate of the world. We'll try to be a bit more thoughtful next time," Ron said sarcastically.

"Anyway," Harry said loudly, ignoring us both, "we went snooping and found all the files. We, of course, pulled the suspicious ones."

"But, why? I'm sure if you'd have just asked permission--"

"Oh, but you've hit the problem. If we told Kingsley what we were up to, it would've officially been a case, and Ron wouldn't have been able to work on it."

"I just got 'on,' remember?"

"Oh," I said, beginning to catch on, "that's 'taking research a step too far,' right?"

"Yep," Harry agreed, "Weasley just about got in over his head on this one."

"So," I said, deciding to overlook all the legality issues in my quest for answers, "What of the tabs? Did you figure out who the culprit was?"

"Well, no, not exactly. There was this one bloke..."

"Wayden," Harry supplied.

"Yes," Ron rolled his eyes, "Jamison Wayden. They said he disappeared a couple of years back. They assumed he had probably died in some battle. They 'assume' so damn much; you'd think they'd learn their lesson."

"Well, there you go, right? Wayden's your man."

"Well, not exactly. First off, there's no way this was just a one-man job."

"All right, I've got it. His cronies are yet to be discovered. Wayden's the number one suspect. Let's spit it out then. What did one person—or this group of people—alter so much that it would cause a time split?"

"That's exactly what Ron and I asked. We thought it would be hard to figure out, maybe even take us years, but it turned out the answer was sitting right under our noses the whole time."

I sat on the edge of my seat, knowing the truth was just out of my reach. I could feel the eagerness etched into every line of my face. "What was it?! What happened?!"

Ron looked at Harry, who shrugged as if to say 'go on.'

"Well, this...this event, took place about six years back."

"Yes, but what was it?!"

"It seems they went back and—and messed with some people's feelings—towards their friends."

"What sort of feelings? How?!"

"And three friends made a mistake, broke up a power they didn't even know existed. It wasn't Wayden so much as them that messed up the timelines."

"What friends?!" I was now resisting a strong urge to shake Ron. "WHO?!"

"Hermione!" Ron burst out. "Don't you get it yet? Us! It was the three of us!"

I slumped back in my chair. My voice sounded small now. "What?"

Harry withdrew a folder from out of nowhere and gave it to me. He threw the folder on my lap. "This. The trinity—this is what it takes to destroy Voldemort."

I shook my head. "The trinity? What about Voldemort?"

"Well, he's not gone," Ron said, picking up the file. "Harry didn't destroy him—he couldn't. Not alone."

"Are you saying--?"

"All along, you've been thinking it was the other universe that resulted in the time split, haven't you? That's what we thought too."

"We—together—destroyed Voldemort when we were seventeen. When we were nineteen, Wayden stole a time turner and went back to our sixth year."

"A love potion," I mumbled. "Simple as that. It took one love potion to tear us apart."

"Well, more than one," Harry said, shrugging.

"So, what? What does that mean?"

"It means that that's Harry's and my job. Remerging the timelines. Stopping You-Know-Who before he can get anything started."

"That's absurd! How does anyone expect you to do that?"

"Our best guess is to kill Voldemort in the here and now."

"That's—that's even more insane," I murmured hopelessly. I ran a hand through my hair and the other two allowed me my silence. How were they supposed to destroy Voldemort? How would they remerge the timelines? I attempted to compose my thoughts. "And how did you find all this out?"

Harry picked up the file again. "I'm not going to lie to you; it was hard. We spent so much time here. Looking through files. And we gave up so many times."

"Why'd you keep coming back then?"

"Ron. He just had that feeling. He knew...I dunno—something."

I looked at Ron. He shrugged. "It bothered me."

"But where did you find it? How can you be sure?"

"I reckon we can't be sure. This is just the pieces we've put together."

"It would've been a lot faster with you on the team—with the complete trio," Harry mused.

"What then? What's this file?"

Harry handed it back to me. "Read it."

I opened it up. There were little markings and scratching all over the aged parchment. I recognized one page as Latin, but the rest looked indiscernible. "I can't. It looks like chicken scratch."

"Yeah. We stole the translations ages ago. They had been keeping it in the Department of Mysteries. Kingsley only gave us this a few days ago. It's a sort of spell; Merlin invented it in his later days. We're not exactly sure how it works—no one is. Well, we think the 'us' in the other universe know how to work it. We think 'we' discovered it in sixth year—from things we've seen."

"You've seen?" I questioned.

"Oh, that. Hasn't it ever happened to you? You know, you'll be thinking about something or something'll happen, and suddenly, you'll have this flashback of something that never happened?"

"Yeah, she has," Ron answered for me. "She told me about them once. Remember, Hermione?"

"Yes, that's what happened this morning. In the kitchen." Harry and Ron shot knowing looks at each other.

"Well, where were we?" Harry asked after a moment.

"The file," I said, twirling it around in my hands. "You were telling me how you stole it."

"Oh, yeah," Harry said, acting like he had missed the 'stolen' part. "Well, you see, Szechznik, he told us we should look for this stuff in the Department of Mysteries, that's where they keep those sort of files."

"Lucky for us, Goldstein has the keys to almost everything in the entire Ministry," Ron said, spitting out Anthony's name like it was venom.

"Yeah, Hermione, your boyfriend really helped us out," Harry said, grinning.

Before I could respond: "He's not her boyfriend."

Harry and I both turned to stare at Ron, and his ears turned red. He shrugged. "Well, he's not."

I shook my head. "I thought he worked in the Department of Magical Games and Sports."

"Yeah, and that means he has drinks with every person in the Ministry at least once a week."

"So, he did us a favor and got us in."

"We dug through tons of files...again."

"And then we found this baby right here," Ron said, thumping the folder.

I looked at it. "How can you be sure? How can you know that this, of all spells, is what we used to defeat Voldemort?"

"As soon as we touched it, we both had the same flashback."

"And then this one appeared," he said, pointing at one of the pieces of parchment.

"The Latin-looking stuff. It wasn't there until after we had had the flashback," Harry told me helpfully.

"What does it mean?"

"It's gibberish to read," Ron told me. "But in English, that," he pointed to the title, "says 'The Missing Link.'"

Ron sighed and looked at Harry. "Are you sure--"

"Seriously, Ron. It's time."

"Well..." I prompted.

"The Missing Link is what they call the one thing—or in this case, person—the split-world gained. If a split goes on for too long, more things can take the worlds farther and farther apart."

"Voldemort!" I answered. "He should've died. He's what our world gained!"

"Not exactly..." Ron continued, his ears glowing.

"But," Harry interrupted, "this missing link may be the very thing that will help us destroy Voldemort in this reality. Or so says that file there."

I could feel the pieces clicking together in my mind, trying to comprehend so many things at once. Both boys were staring at me expectantly.

I was trying to think. What one specific thing had come out of Ron, Harry, and I losing our friendship?

And then it came to me. It was so obvious...and so horrible. "Not..."

"Hermione, don't panic."

"Don't panic! Ron, how can you not panic! Our daughter could be the key to destroying Voldemort. Hundreds of ex-Death Eaters could want to kill her?! DON"T PANIC?!"

"Hermione, I'm sorry it took so long for us to tell you. Harry didn't tell me either," Ron said, looking bitterly at Harry. "I realized it that night we were—you know, together, at Ginny's flat. After you told me. That's what I was writing the letter to him about. That's when he told me he had known all along. He had been watching her all along."

"What?!"

Harry sighed. "I've been watching her. It was my first-ever solo mission. The first couple of weeks I had of being 'on,' I was always back up, or 'go watch how Mosley handles this mission.' And one random day, Kingsley comes into my cubicle and throws a memo attached to a file on my desk. He said, 'I expect you to be ready to go by Friday.'" Harry scratched his head. "Merlin, I was excited. My first mission, all by myself; but I was going to be like a bodyguard—a bodyguard for a three year old of all things. But, I did what it said, ignoring everything about the person I'd be watching."

"Are you saying you really moved to Godric's Hollow to look after Baker?"

He shrugged. "Pretty much. I was so amazed when I found out it was your daughter—your and Ron's daughter of all things. That's when I delved deep into the mystery of the Missing Link, into the research."

"Tell me why, if they didn't even know about the time split or the Missing Link or anything, they would want to keep an eye on Baker?"

"She was one of the people that fit a prophecy made in 1926."

"Oh, God," I said, putting a hand to my head. "Not more, please."

"A Seer named Micelle Zoírsrostow delivered the prophecy. It was about a 'link' that could alter the direction of the Dark. An illegitimate child of both muggle and pure blood. There was also something mentioned about three, and we figured it was about Baker's birthday—on the third day of the third month."

I shook my head. "So, you had to watch her because of the prophecy. And Ron got off all those days because he was watching her?"

Harry nodded.

"I still don't understand. Why does she have to be watched now?"

"Well, it's an interesting story..."

"So I'm finding out."

"Baker wasn't in the file at all. She showed up there one day. We figured someone had been trying to hide her from the Ministry. Or Ron." Harry shrugged.

"If you're saying it was me--" I began accusatorily.

"Of course not!"

"Well, then why would she just appear? I mean, I've read Deep in the Ministry of Magic, and I know every birth of a magical child is recorded—their parents, their exact moment of birth."

"Yeah, yeah, we get it. You know everything," Ron interrupted.

"Well, someone figured out how to get in the system. Had they kept her a secret much longer, they probably could've...found the two of you. And, when they found her, she matched the description in the prophecy one hundred percent."

"Are you sure? I mean, what's the thing about the three? What's the exact wording?"

"Tri—I dunno, it's really odd. Not English, I don't think."

Ron jumped up. "The trinity! You and me! I've got it!"

We both stared at him. He turned red. "Milk!" he screamed. "I need milk! I need to leave and get milk!"

Harry turned back to me. "Ok, Hermione, I think we've got you pretty much up to speed. Except--"

"Hurry!" Ron said, checking his watch.

"It's Dumbledore. He's--"

"Alive!" Ron supplied. "We'll talk to him later! Let's go!"

He jumped up and complicatedly swished his wand across the door. It cracked open and he pushed it fully, making a flat out sprint to the end of the hall and out of sight.

"Are you telling me Dumbledore's not--"

"Shh," Harry interrupted. "Not out here. We'll explain later." He looked in the direction Ron had gone. "What d'you think's up with him?"

I shrugged. A deep weight had settled in my chest. We had messed up. We hade allowed Voldemort to survive. And my own daughter was in trouble because of it.

Harry stared at me for a moment. "Hermione, I know this is a lot to take in, but--"

"Home. I want to go home."

So, I just went.

A/N: Am I crazy? Have I driven completely off the edge? Drop me a note and let me know. Just submit that review, baby! Seriously, I really need to know what ALL my readers think of the plot twist! Wow, all these review responses are starting to be a pain in the ass. But I love y'all so I'll do it anywhodigger!

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