The Harry Potter universe and its characters are the sole property of J. K. Rowling. By using them below, I am in no way claiming them as my own.

The door of the guest room flung open, banging off the stone wall. Both herself and Draco jolted apart, him tipping from her grasp and over the side of the bed. Lucius stood in the doorway, one hand gripping his ebony wand. The anger emanated from him, his robes and hair fluttering in a breeze that Hermione didn't feel. She grasped about the top of the bed, searching for her velvet dress, but it was crumpled on the floor at the other side of the room. She would have to face her cuckolded husband in her underwear, and not even her best set.

Lucius Malfoy shot a curse at the four-poster bed, causing one of the posters to crack in two. It plummeted into the bed, penetrating the mattress inches away from Hermione's body. She scrambled away the damage, falling from the bed and onto the floor away from him. Draco was crouched behind one of the posts, quickly pulling his jeans on. She reached for his discarded silk shirt, slipping it over her shoulders as Lucius sent more curses around the room, shattering its furnishings. Draco extracted his wand from the jeans pocket. Hermione tentatively but rapidly lifted her hand up over the bed to reach across the bedside table for her own wand.

'Do you have the time-turner?' She whispered as her hands came into contact with the wood. A vase shattered above her hand, glass skittering down to bounce over them both. She pulled her hand back quickly, the wand reassuring in her grip.

'Get up, you coward! Steal my wife, will you?' Draco straightened, facing his father. He would not be called a coward by him. Draco pointed his wand threateningly at his father's chest.

'I didn't have to steal her,' he spat, 'she came to me because you're an abusive jerk!'

'You know nothing about how abusive I can be! Where is that filthy mudblood scum?'

'Hey!' Hermione now straightened, her own wand pointed out to match Draco's stance. The shirt barely skirted mid-thigh and gaped across her chest, the effect hardly intimidating. 'Nobody calls me a mudblood!'

'I should have known you'd develop claws,' Lucius sneered, ignoring his son to focus on his wife. He clearly didn't see him as a threat. 'You've been pathetic all your life. You begged me to take you away from that dive, don't you forget it. I should have put you down instead.'

Lucius changed his stance, moving his wand to strike the blow that might kill his wife.

'No!' Draco leapt forward instinctively, moving around the bed and tackling his father at the waist. The pair slammed into the wall, causing a portrait further along to fall from its place. The impact stunned Lucius, his head cracking against the stone. He slid down the wall into a slouched position. Draco tore at his father's hand to pull free his wand, then chucked it back to Hermione. She caught it agilely, moving from behind the bed.

Draco stood over his father, his wand pointed at Lucius' throat.

'You've pushed me around all my life,' Draco spat, his anger and resentment flowing free now that Lucius was the vulnerable party. 'There are no words which can describe what a disgusting sub-human being you are.'

'Are you going to kill me, Draco?' Lucius sneered, despite his position.

'You don't deserve that mercy. This is the last time you'll have any control over me, or Hermione.' He slammed his father's head back against the stone, knocking him out completely.

Draco turned back to Hermione and realised he was shaking, his breathing rapid. Hermione rushed forward, checking him over. There was a small cut just above his eyebrow, possibly from the glass or some chipped stone, but it wasn't bleeding heavily. When she had finished her examination, she leant forward, pressing her lips against his enthusiastically. He smiled weakly at her as she pulled away.

'Thank you, Draco.' He shrugged,

'I'd been meaning to do it for years.'

Elspeth had come out of her room as Draco and Hermione passed, on their way down to the dungeons. Hermione had managed to persuade the child to return back to her bed while Draco had watched the proceedings silently. The rest of their journey to the vanishing cabinet had been uneventful, with Draco's father still lying unconscious in the guest bedroom. It was almost second nature as Hermione climbed into the cupboard. Draco extracted the time turner from his pocket and handed it to her, letting her lift it over her own head first. He let her place the chain over his neck, then closed the door on the screwed-up reality.

Hermione had managed to acquire two new sets of robes from a communal store within the castle, and had left those in place of the ones they had stolen from the amorous Susan and Seamus. She couldn't be sure if it would work, but they had no option but to try and see whether the action would bring them back to their true future.

The pair span forward with the time-turner for what Hermione hoped would be the last time, Draco's arms around her waist in an effort to alleviate his nausea. When the spinning ceased, neither one seemed willing to open the cupboard and reveal the reality they'd arrived at. They simply held one another in the darkness, hopeful. Finally, with a sigh, Draco released her and opened the cupboard door. 'Third time's a charm,' he suggested, climbing out into the store room. He held a hand out to help her down onto the cold floor.

'This seems OK,' she said, glancing around the room. It was cluttered and dusty, with the Malfoy family portraits wedged in-between the wall and the vanishing cabinet. Draco pointed at the floor near the door, where a few glass shards glittered in the light.

'That seems promising.'

Hermione nodded, glancing down at her bare feet. Both her and Draco were in the same predicament. Smiling, he swept her off her feet and into a fireman's hold.

'Don't worry, I got you,' he said cheerfully. He carried her across the threshold, boldly taking the risk of stepping on a piece of glass from her. He set her down outside the room with a characteristic smirk. She paused, staring up at him.

If they were back to their own reality, what now? What did it mean for her and Draco's relationship?

'Don't you want to check on Susan?' He suggested, breaking her concern.

'Oh, yes!' Worried about her best-friend, and wanting to prove her theory about how she ended up at The Wizard's Broom, she ran from Draco eagerly. Her feet barely touched the dungeon steps as she moved up into the familiar corridor. Her eyes glanced at the open door of the study as she jogged past, recognising the mahogany-and-red décor that she had found so comforting. This certainly is promising, she told herself, running up the stairs to reach the first floor.

Susan's door was shut but not locked and Hermione barged in without knocking.

The ginger witch was jolted awake and fumbled at her eye-mask. She's here! Hermione thought, ecstatic. She ran to the opposite end of the room, ripping open the curtains. We're in the valley! The view was all countryside, bleak and cold and brilliant.

'What's going on?' Susan winced as the morning sunlight poured in, and stifled a yawn. 'Did I miss something?'

Grinning, Hermione leapt onto the edge of the bed, the force causing Susan to bounce from the mattress surface. 'You have no idea,' Hermione replied.