So sorry for the long wait!

Thanks to Rs223 for reviewing!

And to answer your question-I've always assumed that standardized tests weren't at the very end of the year, as at my school we have a few weeks after they're finished to do like, finals (separate from standardized tests) and projects. This probably isn't how it works at most schools, but at this point I've already written it in, so I might as well go along with it. Again, thanks for your review!

This chapter also is separated into a lot of different parts compared to the rest of my chapters, so if that's weird or isn't working within the story please tell me :)

Disclaimer- I don't own Harry Potter or any affiliated characters

2022

"Tell me again," Harry said to his wife. "What happened?"

Ginny, her face pressed into his shoulder in her dismay, gave a long sigh. "Rose was pushed into the golden dust. She disappeared. I don't know where she his, and oh, Merlin, Harry what are we going to do?"

"It's okay," he said, trying to soothe her. "Ron's at the Ministry, making calls, or owls, whatever. Hermione's looking up stuff on time turners right now. If anyone can figure this out, it's her, Gin."

"I'm so stupid. Go on, tell me. I am, aren't I?"

"You're not." Harry laughed a little. "C'mon, I let a dark wizard into my head and brought you on a wild goose chase through the Department of Mysteries. If anyone's the stupid one in this relationship, it's me."

The implications of the statement sunk into the both of them. Harry realized what it sounded like-that he was still going over something that had happened when he was fifteen in his head. No matter the embarrassment, it was the unfortunate truth.

The mood had gone even more sour than it was before. Ginny sighed. "You weren't here when two of our children were transported to who knows where."

Harry grabbed her hand before she could anxiously run it through her hair, pulling it down to rest at her side. "We'll find them," he said with false confidence.

Ginny knew he was faking, but she nodded as if she was reassured anyway. "Yeah. C'mon, let's go make sure fifteen year old you doesn't blow anything up."

He had the gall to mock offense.

Teachers planning lessons streamed in and out of the Hogwarts library, but none of them noticed Hermione, most likely because they couldn't see her. She had sprinted all the way from Hogsmeade, giving a nod to a surprised Mcgonagall overseeing the repair of the Great Hall ceiling, which occasionally played the sounds of fireworks going off during speeches and graduations. Hermione wasn't sure who had caused it, but she wouldn't put it past Albus or even her daughter.

Now she was sitting in an armchair in the library, surrounded by piles of books about time travel that thankfully kept her hidden from people who would come for gossip on the Boy-Who-Lived and his closest friends.

Madame Pince had been rather unhappy with the way she had gotten them stacked. Rather than search through the shelves of the vast library herself, Hermione had simply summoned them all at once. The results included a dirty look from the Arithmancy professor, the librarian's eyes narrowing to slits, and six or so stacks of books around her armchair. She could've been kicked out, but Hermione was no longer just a student-now she was an esteemed Ministry worker and war hero who demanded respect. She didn't like to play that card, but she had people to find.

She picked up a book titled in a different language-Latin, perhaps, though it didn't appear frequently in wizarding texts unless connected to the muggle church. As it turned out, the title was a silly pun and the book was a work of fiction about several witches who accidentally traveled back and time and had to live out their lives in the 1500s. Poorly researched, based on what Hermione already know about time travel.

With a sigh, she tossed it to her discard pile and picked up the next book. This one looked as promising as any of the other books in her stack. It was fairly new, and almost unread, judging by the uncreased spine. It was also labeled The Department of Mysteries: A Modern Compendium of Time Travel Research. Hermione thought of the crashing time turners in her one foray into the Department of Mysteries as a teenager, and opened to the table of contents.

Incantations

No, that wasn't right. She wondered briefly why this book wasn't in the restricted section if it contained spells that could send a student spiraling into the 1200s with a side effect of death, and then continued.

Ministry Approved Devices

Aha, here was the right chapter. Hermione sat up straight in her chair, flipping through the pages of the book as she searched for the right section.

Passage 138.5-Time Turners

She already knew how they worked-she had only used one every day for a whole bloody year. She didn't particularly care who invented them, as interesting as it was. She had a mission, and it didn't include tracking down the inventor unless she needed a last resort.

In the event of a broken time turner, from research conducted by the Department of Mysteries after an unfortunate accident on June 18th, 1996, one should...

Hermione couldn't hold back her smirk.

In the event one touches the sand outside of the time turner and disappears, it should be assumed that said person has been transported to an unknown time and should be considered missing. The sand must not be touched by anyone else or they will also be transported. Most likely the time is random, but in some instances, usually when more than one person is transported through one broken time turner, a switch will be made-an item from the time each person has been sent to appears in the time in which the time turner resides. (Croaker and Bode, 1996).

She filed the information away and kept reading. The section continued until the bottom of the page.

It is important to note that the location of the transported person is impossible to discern unless the location of where the time sand was inserted into the time turner is known. This is different from the origin of the time sand, which does not affect accidental transportation. (Essely, 2004).

The next section was about enchanted rocks used by wizards in Southwestern North America. Hermione shut the book and leaned back in her chair. She could keep searching, but the information she'd found was promising. With a sigh, she stood up, and flicked her wand to make the remaining books in her pile fly back to their places.

Madame Pince was waiting for her at the checkout station, glaring at Hermione over the tips of her wire rimmed glasses. "Taking a book, then?"

"Borrowing."

The older woman paged through the text, running her hands over the cover as if she was checking that Hermione hadn't marked it. "Do you have anything to declare, Mrs. Weasley?" she asked as she traced a line under the title.

"It's Granger," Hermione replied. "And no, I don't."

"Very well then, Mrs. Granger. It's against the rules to take library books out of the grounds. I apologize."

Hermione cursed Madame Pince, who hadn't relaxed at all since her school years. "That's alright. I'll just put it away."

"Without hitting anyone in the head, I should hope."

Hermione gave a fake smile to the older woman. "Of course. Why would I ever do that?"

A quick replication spell as she hid behind a shelf left the Hogwarts library with the book, and one copy hidden in her handy beaded bag with an Undetectable Extension charm. She promised herself she would burn it as soon as it outlived it's usefulness-even well copied items eventually degenerated anyway. Madame Pince was none the wiser.

Lily was exceedingly bored. She supposed she ought to be a bit grateful that no one was in immediate danger, but sitting in a house with half of the rooms off limits was getting a bit dull.

The living room had outlived it's usefulness after she'd taken a look at the mantle and seen wedding pictures of with her in a pretty white dress standing next to a certain man with aggravatingly messy black hair. The floo powder had been removed by James, who had responded to their protests with a roll of his eyes at Harry.

Harry had been drawn to the fireplace since they'd entered the room, captivated by all of the pictures. He was searching through them now, turning the frames over in his hands.

Lily was slumped in the couch, examining the ends of her dark red hair. Losing her battle with frustration, she cast an irritated glance toward Harry. "What are you doing?"

He pretended to look innocent, sticking a hand in his pocket, the other messing up his hair. "Nothing. Looking at pictures."

"So, not nothing then."

With a shrug of his shoulders, Harry said, "You could come look if you wanted. Aren't you interested?"

Lily had to force herself to keep her face a clean slate. It wasn't that she didn't want to look at the pictures, all of the people that would one day be her family, it was just that she didn't want to threaten the future. Memory charms weren't perfect.

Maybe if she was being honest with herself, it was James. There was no situation that she could think of where she and James would be able to make up, or even be friends, let alone married. And yet in front of her there was a boy with emerald green eyes and messy black hair who moved like James and her at the same time. It was unsettling, and Lily wanted to get away from that feeling.

"I'm fine," she managed. Harry turned around to look at her, left eyebrow arched over the tips of his glasses. "Really, it's alright. I'm fine here. Perfectly good. Nice couch, isn't it? You must be rather well off in the future to have such a nice house, yeah? Right…" she trailed off as she realized she was rambling again.

Harry was giving her a sort of bemused look. "Are you nervous or something?"

"I'm fine."

He shrugged and turned back to the mantel to sift through the photographs. Lily watched as he picked up one of a small redhaired girl in pajamas grinning from under a Christmas tree, laughing as she brandished a Dumbledore chocolate card up to the camera. Harry handled it with care, gently dusting off the frame with his thumb. It occurred to Lily that the girl must be his eventual daughter.

Abruptly, he put the frame back on the mantel and backed away as if he had seen something terrifying.

"What?" Lily demanded. "What's wrong?"

Harry looked rather shaken, but he inched toward the fireplace, much to Lily's confusion. Slowly, he reached behind two photographs of groups of redheaded and freckled children to pull a cane from behind the mass of things on the mantle.

He let it drop to the floor, staring at it as if it was cursed.

"A cane?" Lily prompted, trying trying to get Harry to talk, with little success. "What's it doing on the mantle?"

"It shouldn't be here," Harry said. "It's Lucius Malfoy's."

"Malfoy?" she stood up to walk over next to him. "That awful prefect?"

Harry shrugged, and muttered something that Lily didn't catch. Frowning, she knelt down and picked up the cane, running her fingers down it's length. "Is this a wand holder?"

"Yes." He seemed to have gotten over his original disgust for the cane and was now leaning forward to examine it. "It shouldn't be here."

"Why not?"

"Well, why would I-older me, I mean, have Lucius Malfoy's cane? He's a Death Eater."

Lily was not surprised at that, reminded of his discomforting sneer when she had stepped onto the train at the beginning of first year, asking if she was sure she wasn't supposed to be heading to Yorkshire instead of Scotland. She hadn't understood the jab then, but now the memory made her feel an odd mix of anger, derision, and fear.

She put the cane on the coffee table, and stepped back, arms folded across her chest. "I mean, if he's a Death Eater he'd be in Azkaban, yeah?"

Harry nodded stiffly.

"Well, then couldn't you just have kept it? Like, as a…war prize?"

He shrugged, clearing his throat. "Erm, I dunno. I think I would've burned it. I want to burn it now."

Lily sighed. "There's one way to figure this out."

Harry raised his eyebrow. "And that would be…"

"Ask, of course. D'you think if we made enough noise older you would come downstairs?"

As soon as she reached Hogsmeade, Hermione apparated to Godric's Hollow. Even though the Wizarding War had been over for years, and the remaining Death Eaters were behind bars in Azkaban, the anti-apparition wards were still up. The title of Head Auror didn't come without it's enemies.

Hermione walked up to the front door, feeling odd in the muggle neighborhood, even though she should've have felt perfectly at home. That impression had been creeping up on her lately, in a way she hadn't experienced since she'd received her letter at age eleven. It was the distinct feeling of not belonging. Pushing aside the thought-of course she was normal in a muggle neighborhood, she had grown up as a muggle-Hermione let herself into the house.

Ginny, Lily, and both Harrys were standing in the living room, all four looking very tense.

"Hello, Hermione," Ginny said, interrupting their conversation. "Find anything?"

"Yeah, I did." The mood change in the room was palpable. "It's amazing actually-we inadvertently caused this research to come about, Harry. It was all because of the battle in the Department-"

"That's great, Hermione!" Ginny said, smiling tensely. Hermione stopped talking, realizing her mistake.

"What battle?" Younger Harry demanded, folding his arms. "You're going to erase our memories anyway, you might as well tell us."

"It's not important," Hermione replied.

"It seems pretty-"

"It's not important," she repeated. "Anyway, I found this wonderful book," she pulled her copy out of the pocket of her robes, brandishing it in triumph, "And it's got all of this amazing information about accidental time travel."

"Go on," older Harry said, looking hopeful.

"Well, there was a lot of research conducted some time after 1995," Hermione continued, with a firm look at the younger version of her friend. "And they've discovered that when accidental time travel happens, often two items are exchanged."

"Exchanged?" younger Harry repeated.

"Yes. Mind you, only when it's accidental, or basically when the time turner's broken. One item goes back into the past, another goes forward. That would explain Lily and James's disappearance, and the appearance of these two." She motioned to the Harry and Lily standing in front of them.

"Do the objects switch time periods exactly?" Ginny asked. "I mean, does that mean that Albus and Lily are in 1995 or 1975?"

"One in each year, I'd assume," Hermione answered. "Unfortunately, there hasn't been much research… there were only a few pages in the entire compendium."

"Did Madame Pince let you borrow that book?" older Harry asked. "That's odd."

Hermione became noticeably more flustered. "Well, no. I wouldn't say she agreed."

"Ah."

There was a moment of silence as the occupants of the room digested this information. The knot in the stomach of the elder Harry was growing-one of his children was in a situation that he had vowed to never put them in-a warzone. He sighed, running his hands through his hair, his longstanding nervous habit.

Hermione's attention had wandered around the room, passing briefly over younger Harry and Lily. Lily, who had looked quite close to Lily Luna at first, was upon closer inspection very different. The two girls had completely different hair colors, and Lily Evans had a thinner nose and more freckles. Harry also looked similar to Albus, but the scar that Hermione knew rested on his forehead completely skewed her image of him.

Looking around the room, she noticed something odd on the coffee table. A something very familiar.

"Harry," she said quietly. "Please tell me that's not what I think it is."

Younger Harry looked very sheepish, but his elder self just seemed tired. "If you want me to tell you that isn't Lucius Malfoy's cane, I'm afraid you're out of luck."

"We threw that thing in the Lake a decade ago," Hermione said. "But there's no water damage, even though it's made of wood." She wasn't sure why she was still speaked. It was obvious what had happened. The only question was who.

"We haven't thrown this one in yet," older Harry said. "I'm sorry, Hermione."

I'm sorry. They were saying sorry to her. What did that mean? Ron was at the ministry, far away from any trouble at the Potter house. Hugo, bless his likeness to Ron, who despite his hatred for rules and unending curiosity could at least be counted on to be captivated by his chess game for a few hours, so he was still at the house.

That left Rose, wonderful Rose, who had a curiosity matching Hugo's and the determination to take over the world if she put her mind to it, who had already been teased with information about the disappearances of her cousins and would never stop to find the whole story, to be trapped in the only place that Hermione couldn't find her.

She closed her eyes and prayed to the God that she had stopped worshipping when she got her Hogwarts letter. She needed all of the help she could get.

More than two and a half decades away, Rose Weasley was waking up to a very angry Lucius Malfoy, who happened to be missing his cane.