Here you go folks, the next chapter. Thanks to everyone who added to me to their favourites and author alert, I'm glad you guys like it. Oh, and by the way, just for anyone who hasn't guessed (or hasn't read book 7 yet), while this fic works with the books up to 6, it doesnt work with 7.

Enjoy.

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When they woke the next morning, sunlight was streaming through the window and Hermione was gone. Both boys leapt out of bed and were at the door when Madame Pomfrey entered.

"Not a chance, you two." She said sternly.

"Hermione's gone!" They protested. Pomfrey glanced at her bed and sighed.

"Then you better find her, hadn't you? But bring her back here afterwards. I don't want her wandering about, the state she's in." Both boys nodded, though they knew from experience that the hysterical stage of Hermione's grief had probably finished. There was a pattern: first there was the very noisy, disturbing beginning, which faded into stony silence, which developed in turn to headstrong determination as she made a plan to amend whatever it was that had upset her. By this point she was probably in the middle of silence and determination, but the danger period was over.

"Yes Madame Pomfrey." They chorused, then dashed past her and out.

"Where do you think?" Ron asked as they stopped around the corner, out of sight, to plan.

"Depends. What can be done?" Harry asked.

"He's dead, Harry. It's not like we can turn back time." Ron looked at Harry and found the other boy staring at him with wide green eyes. "What?"

"The Timeturner!" Harry breathed. "Library. I bet that's what she's planning."

"To stop him going to see Voldemort? If he does that, Voldemort will still want to kill him. All she'll have bought him is time."

"Maybe that's all she wants." Harry shrugged. "But I bet that's where she'll be, reminding herself about Timeturners."

"Time is a messy business." Ron muttered darkly, but he followed his friend to the library anyway, and sure enough, there she was, behind a stack of books, most of them marked with an image of a clock or a timepiece or a timer.

"Hermione." Harry slid into the seat beside her and she barely looked up. "We want to help."

"I'm fine."

"He was our friend too, 'Mione. Let us do something." Ron added. Hermione looked up and looked from one to the other. Both boys wore earnest expressions and she sighed.

"I have a plan." She began. "Which is risky, but I think I can pull it off."

"The Timeturner." Harry said promptly. "And it's plural. We can pull it off."

"How far back are you planning on going?" Ron asked. Hermione's surprised expression faded and she smiled, though the expression was marked with a kind of resigned sadness that Harry wanted to go away.

"I should have known you'd guess." She said wryly. "As for how far…back to the beginning. The very beginning."

"First year?" Harry asked, surprised.

"First year." Hermione confirmed. "The plan is to go back to the train ride where you all met. I'll tell you two that Draco is bad news, that everything you heard about him was right. And that in the future, he gets mixed up in some very bad things and gets people killed. You two will hate him on principle, which means when I make friends with you later on, I'll hate him too. He and I won't get together, and he won't refuse the Dark Mark."

"And he won't die." Harry finished.

"Exactly." Hermione nodded decisively.

"But then you'll never get together." Ron said. "You'll miss out on everything you two had. And we'll miss out on him as well."

"You won't know what you're missing." Hermione shook her head. "Because it won't have happened yet."

"But what about afterwards?" Harry asked. "Once we've made sure that we never make friends with Draco, we'll be stuck there."

"That is the major drawback, yes." Hermione nodded. "That's why I want to go alone. You can't go because if either of your younger selves see you, there'll be chaos. It's the first rule of time travel. I have to go alone."

"No chance." Ron and Harry said immediately. Harry continued. "We'll go as well, just to stand watch."

"What from?" Hermione asked with a slightly bitter laugh. "Voldemort won't be back. And I'll wear uniform, so everyone will simply think I'm an older student. I'll be perfectly safe, and no offense, but you two would simply complicate things."

"So you'll never come back, afterwards?" Ron asked. Hermione smiled and shook her head.

"Once I change the past, Ron, it'll change the future. This future, here and now with Draco dead and us three discussing this, will cease to exist. There will be nothing to come back to, and you two will never miss me."

"Bollocks." Harry said flatly, and she sighed.

"You know how it works, Harry. Third year, once we saved Buckbeak in the past, it changed the future and the future in which he was executed ceased to exist. This is how it works."

"Say we do this." Ron said, moving the conversation along. There would be time enough to argue who was going later. "Where are we going to get a Timeturner from?"

"My old one is still in McGonagall's office." Hermione said, "So all we need is her password then I can sneak in while you two watch, and we can be gone before she even realises what's happening."

"You're determined, aren't you?" Harry asked. When Hermione decided to break rules, she certainly picked the biggest and baddest ones.

"It's a perfect scenario. Draco lives, we don't know what we're missing. Everyone's alive and happy."

"And we're stranded back in 1997." Ron said dryly. "If that's your idea of a perfect scenario then your standards have slipped."

"It's as perfect as it's going to get." Hermione snapped. "And I'm going alone!"

"One step at a time." Harry said calmly, sharing a glance with Ron. There was no way in hell she was doing this alone. "Look, lunch is in twenty minutes. Let's sort this plan until then, and after we can start. Alright? But this is something I don't want to do on an empty stomach." At that, Hermione smiled, and the three of them started finalizing plans. It felt strange without Draco, but it was something they were going to have to get used to.

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After lunch the three of them made their way to McGonagall's office. They'd been given the day off, which was kind of a moot point seeing as they'd already skived morning classes, but at least it meant that Snape wouldn't spend the afternoon torturing and penalizing them.

"We have to stay with her." Harry muttered to Ron as they followed her down the hall. "Or she'll spin the turner before we have a chance to duck under the chain. She wants to go this alone."

"Tell me about it." Ron muttered back, then shut up quickly as Hermione dragged them into a side corridor behind a statue of Frederick the Forgetful. A moment later, McGonagall and Dumbledore walked past.

"I've taken the time turner and put it in my office." Dumbledore was saying. "I thought I'd have another look at it."

"Of course. It's such a shame about young Draco Malfoy. Though I must say he was incredibly brave to refuse He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named like that."

"The influence of the people we surround ourselves with is more powerful than we imagine, Minerva. Changing those people changes who we are. Such a small thing changes so much." Harry glanced at Hermione and saw her rolling her eyes and gesturing for her hand for Dumbledore and McGonagall to move on. When he frowned in question she sighed.

"He knows." She mouthed silently. Harry frowned.

"Knows what?" He mouthed back. She rolled her eyes again and looked away, waiting for the two teachers to disappear around the corner. When their voices had faded, Hermione stepped out from behind the statue and led them in a slightly different direction to Dumbledore's office. They reached it without seeing anyone, and Hermione quickly let them in, having been told the password when she was shown her rooms as Head Girl. The memory brought back another wave of tears and Hermione swallowed them back resolutely. Practice makes perfect.

"Hurry up." She whispered impatiently at the spiral staircase which brought them slowly to Dumbledore's door, and she reached out and gingerly pushed at it, wary of any wards, but it opened silently and easily. And there, right in front of them, was the timeturner, sat in the middle of the desk, glinting in the late winter sunlight from the window behind it.

"Stand guard." Harry told Ron, who nodded. Harry and Hermione stepped into the room, the door shutting behind them. Harry crept past her, but she grabbed his arm.

"Don't bother." She said, her voice at normal volume. "He knows we're here for it."

"Indeed, Miss Granger." Dumbledore stepped through from the small antechamber behind the desk. "I've been expecting you."

"What-" Harry began.

"He told McGonagall he had the timeturner so we could hear." Hermione said impatiently. "Because he knew I already knew the password to his office. He told me whatever I decided to do, he would support."

"Quite right, Miss Granger." Dumbledore nodded. "May I ask exactly what you plan?"

"To go back and stop us ever being friends with him." Harry answered. "So he and Hermione never get together, so he doesn't refuse Voldemort and die."

"You'd sacrifice everything you four had for this?" Dumbledore asked, though he was unsurprised.

"We won't know what we're missing." Harry said softly, echoing Hermione's early words. "So we won't be able to miss it. And he'll be alive." He added, somewhat wryly. "Perfect scenario."

"Or close to." Dumbledore agreed. "Here. Take this." He handed a folded piece of parchment to them. "Give it to me then. I'll make arrangements for you two." Hermione smiled her thanks and accepted the paper. "Now. I believe Snape wishes to talk to me. Off you go." Harry glanced at Hermione, and saw she was trying to subtly loop the chain around her neck, and he grabbed it and ducked under it too.

"Oh no you don't." He muttered, but she was already spinning the timeturner and Harry barely had a chance for an apologetic thought for Ron before they were spinning out of time, faster and faster so the room was a blur, and suddenly it stopped. Dumbledore was sat behind his desk, looking much the same but younger, and somewhat bemused at the two students who had suddenly appeared in his office.

"Yes?" He asked, arching an eyebrow. "Can I help you two?"

"Here." Hermione handed him the parchment. He accepted it and unfolded it, scanning its contents quickly before looking up.

"Well, this is interesting." He said eventually. "Mr. Potter, Miss Granger." They smiled in relief. "I imagine you would like to be on the train when it leaves to go pick up the students from Kings Cross."

"Yes Professor." Hermione nodded.

"Very well then, and good luck. Come see me again as soon as you arrive, and we shall make further arrangements." They nodded. "Well, you should hurry down to the station; the train will be leaving any minute."

"Thanks!" Hermione cried out, already dashing for the door. The two of them pelted through the castle, past a very shocked Snape and a rather confused McGonagall, jumping onto the train barely a second before it pulled away. They collapsed on the seats in the nearest compartment, panting.

"I feel bad for Ron." Harry said when he thought he could speak again, his heart rate returning to normal. "We left him behind."

"He'll be pissed off at us for all of ten hours." Hermione said, still sounding a little breathless. "And knowing him, he'll probably find another turner and follow us here."

"Are you sure about this?" Harry asked. Hermione shrugged.

"Ron will be fine."

"I wasn't talking about Ron."

"Oh." Hermione sighed. "Too late now, isn't it?"

"You're wiping it all away, how you feel, how he feels-"

"Felt."

"What you had. Gone. Never existed."

"He'll be alive." Hermione said sadly. "And it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

"Ok then." Harry nodded. "Then let's do it."

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