Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling does.

A/N: *peeks head cautiously out from behind a wall* Eh heh hehe. Hiya! How are all of you - *ducks several pieces of rotten fruit* I'll take that as a 'What the hell have you been doing, making us wait for this so long?' Sorry. That was completely my fault...it's finally here now, though! I haven't given up!

Harry woke up with a groan, and heard Ron do the same from the bed next to him.

"What happened?" Ron rasped out, causing Harry to immediately grab his head in pain. Ron copied him a mere second later. It was like having a hangover, except multiplied by a couple of times.

"Where are we?" Harry asked quietly, grabbing his glasses off nightstand next to his bed and slipping them on. He then rolled off his bed and looked around the room.

"Well," said Ron slowly. "This looks like—"

"Our room in Grimmauld Place," Harry finished, still in that same quiet tone. "But…it's so dirty. Kreacher cleaned everything up, but now it looks like it..did…before…Oh Merlin!"

"What, what?" hissed Ron, jumping out of his bed and grabbing his wand.

"Ron," muttered Harry. "The last thing you remember – what was it?"

Ron knit his eyebrows together. It was hard to think of what had happened last. "We were all…at your party. Your eighteenth. You blew out the candles…you were about to cut the cake when – what was that?"

"That magic," said Harry, his mouth dry. "The magic surrounding us before everything went black – Ron, it felt like a time-turner."

Ron spit out several swear words. "That shouldn't be possible! They were all destroyed when—!"

Harry quickly moved over to where Ron was standing and clamped a hand over his mouth. "There's a portrait in this room listening to every word we say," he whispered, and then removed his hand.

"Cast Muffliato on it, then," Ron whispered back. Harry did just that. "When are we, d'you think?"

"Summer before fifth year," said Harry promptly.

Ron looked startled. "How'd you come up with that?"

"The only time we spent here was before and during fifth year, and then that brief stint during what was supposed to be our seventh year," said Harry. "It's too dirty to be seventh year, because Kreacher cleaned it up only a few days after we got the story out of him. Also, you look to young – and short – to be seventeen."

Ron snorted at the short comment.

"It's not during the winter break of fifth year, because I don't have scars on the back of my hand," continued Harry, raising his right hand. "Thus, the only time left that it could possibly be is the summer before—"

Just then, the door burst open as Hermione and Ginny came into the room.

"Oi!" Ron said loudly, flushing. "We're not dressed or anything!"

"Oh, you're fine, Ronald," said Hermione, rolling her eyes. "You have pajamas on."

"And it's not like we haven't seen everything before," said Ginny. "Or fantasized about it…"

Harry blushed wildly as Ron spluttered incoherently.

"Anyway, do you two know what happened?" asked Hermione, a faint pink tinge to her cheeks.

Both boys shook their heads mutely, still red.

"Do you know when we are?" sighed Hermione. "I've narrowed it down to two options, but—"

"It's the summer before fifth year," interrupted Harry. "I don't have the scars from Umbit—Umbridge," he hastily corrected himself.

Hermione glared at him half-heartedly for almost using his nickname for Umbridge.

"Oh, go ahead and call her that," said Ginny. "That stupid old toad. I still can't believe her – Blood Quills, the Muggleborn Registration Committee – hah! Damn, she stills rubs me the wrong way, even if she's in Azkaban."

"Not yet," said Harry grimly. "She's teaching us this year…and it's not that I don't want to call the toad her lovely nickname, it's just that I don't want to accidentally slip up this year and call her that to her face…"

Ginny smirked. "I would love to do that."

"Gin," Harry sighed in exasperation. "You can't do that. You'd be in detention for months."

Ginny shrugged. "So? I can just hide out in the Room. Besides, she can't have anything on the Carrows."

The Golden Trio winced. They had heard many horror stories of the Carrows.

"We are starting up the D.A. again, aren't we?" asked Ginny, her eyes saying that she would personally kill Harry if he even thought of refusing – which he most certainly wouldn't.

"At the first opportunity," he promised grimly. "And this time we won't get caught, because we'll have someone who knows everything about – wait, is Neville here?"

"He'd never been to Grimmauld Place before you invited him to your –," started Hermione.

"No, I mean in this time," interrupted Harry.

Hermione frowned. "He's probably here, and maybe Luna too. They were at the party, so the likelihood of them being affected by the same thing that hit us is very high."

Harry nodded.

"Tempus," muttered Ginny suddenly. From her wandtip issued a thin stream of light that formed into numbers and letters: 7:20 a.m. on Sunday, August 17, 1995.

"Sweet Merlin," breathed Harry slumping on his bed. "We're really in the past…"

Hermione was berating Ginny for using her wand – we're underage in this time, what if you get a warning from the Ministry? – as Ron sank down beside him.

"Wait," said Ron, breaking into Hermione's rant. "Why is it the seventeenth? The last thing we all seem to remember was Harry's party on the thirty-first."

Hermione frowned. "That's a good point," she said, and then started pacing. "Well, we've gone back three years. There are definitely four of us back, and three times four is twelve – but that doesn't make any sense, it's the seventeenth—"

"If we assume that Neville and Luna are back, then it would be three years times six people, which is eighteen. If you include July 31, then that makes eighteen days."

"I suppose that does make more sense," said Hermione. "I just wonder why we didn't arrive exactly three years in the past…"

"Maybe there's some cosmic force that doesn't allow whoever – "

"Or whatever," said Hermione.

"– whoever or whatever that sent us back to send us back exactly three years. Besides, I'm glad they didn't – I'd still be stuck at the Dursleys."

Hermione was nodding along with Harry's words. "That seems a little far-fetched, though," she said doubtfully.

"As farfetched as me killing Voldemort with an Expelliarmus?" asked Harry cheekily.

Hermione leaned over and smacked him on the head.

"Ow!"

"It's easy to forget how good you are at connecting dots sometimes," she said grudgingly after a moment.

Harry rolled his eyes, then said, somewhat offended, "Only sometimes? Oh, come on! Give me a bit more credit than that, will you? Who figured out that Hagrid told Quirrell about Fluffy? Who correctly guessed that Draco, that annoying little prick, was now a Death Eater and had a special mission assigned to him by Voldemort? And who figured out that Voldemort was after the Elder Wand, my Invisibility Cloak was one of the Hallows, and the Resurrection Stone was in the Snitch?"

Hermione opened her mouth to argue against this, and then closed her mouth, her brow furrowed. "All right," she admitted. "Those times were definitely in your favor for this argument."

Two loud pops resounded through the room. Fred and George appeared, grinning identically, only to be on the receiving end of four wands.

"Whoa!" George yelped, holding his hands up.

"We come in peace," Fred stated, his hands raised along with his twin's.

There was a moment of complete silence in the room. The time travelers couldn't seem to take in what they were seeing. Intellectually, they had known that they were somehow inconceivably back in the past, but it was quite another thing to actually be confronted with the facts of that – namely, the facts that George had both ears and Fred was standing among them, hale, hearty, and most definitely alive.

The moment was broken when Ginny ran to Fred and wrapped him up in a big hug.

Fred was taken aback, but wrapped his arms around his only sister as she buried her head in his shoulder and started positively bawling.

"Oi, Gin?" he asked uncertainly, glancing at his twin. George shrugged. "What's going on?"

"F-Fred, Fred, oh Merlin," she sobbed out.

"Um…" George said uncertainly, glancing between the trio, with all their wands still outstretched and pointed at them, and Fred, who was patting Ginny on the back in a comforting manner and had a completely bewildered expression on his face. "Really, what's going on here?"

At the sound of George's voice, Ron finally tore his gaze from Fred and looked at the other twin. The three finally lowered their wands. "…it's…it's nothing, George."

Fred rolled his eyes. "Yes, Ronniekins, that's why Ginny here—"

"—is bawling her eyes out on Fred's shoulder," George continued, falling easily into their banter despite the rather odd situation.

"You know, Ron," Fred went on, in a rather conspiring manner.

"—you really suck at lying," the twins said together.

"No," Ginny sniffled. "He's right – it's nothing – I'm just being silly. I had – I had a bad dream, so I woke up Hermione and we came in here."

"Why?"

"Because Ron's the brother closest to my age and Harry knows what it's like to face down him," she said.

The twins shuddered.

"Merlin," Fred said. "You had a dream about You-Know-Who?"

"What does that have to do with Fred?" George asked.

"Yes to the first," Ginny said shakily, reluctantly letting go of Fred and backing off a few feet to wipe her face free of tears. Her hands were trembling. "It was – second year, it was Riddle, in the Chamber…he said that you had died, Fred, that you were fighting and made a joke and you were k-killed because you weren't p-paying attention. I didn't want to b-believe him, but then I t-turned and saw you, and you were just l-lying there, n-not moving, and—" Ginny started to cry again. Harry moved over to her, and then made her sit down on his bed. She leaned on his shoulder, tears still slipping down her face quietly.

The twins had alarmed and distressed expressions on their faces, each equally upset trying to imagine Fred no longer counting among the living.

"But it was just a dream," George said softly.

"It wasn't real," Fred added.

"It won't ever happen," George said assertively, almost glaring at them, as though daring them to say that it would.

Ron, meanwhile, was impressed that his sister had come up with a lie so quickly. Granted, she had merely stretched the truth and played it off as a dream, but she had done it so fast and come up with a reason that she and Hermione were in the boys' room in the process. He knew that he probably couldn't have done that.

Hermione was staring at the floor, feeling vaguely guilty over lying to the twins and also not wanting to look at them, for she was sure that she would start crying, too, and where would that lead to? She shook her head gently and looked up and over to Ginny.

"Anyway," she said. "We were just leaving, weren't we, Gin?"

The older brunette walked to the bed, grabbed Ginny's hand, and half-dragged the petite redhead to the door. "We'll talk later, all right guys? In the meantime, you might want to get dressed…charming as it is to see you in pajamas, you really should put on some actual clothes."

And with that last remark, the two girls left the room. Behind them they heard embarrassed splutters from the boys.

They shared some rather watery grins and high-fived each other.

A/N: This chapter is longer than the other two put together. Hopefully they will continue to be this long and I won't take so long to update?