"Please tell me you have a good reason as to why you called me in here," I said to Hermione, closing the door behind me. "I was in the middle of something important with Draco."

"It's about your brother," she responded, ignoring my last comment.

"Okay, what about him?"

"He's just...I don't know. He just stormed off into his office just now. I can just tell in his face that this is all bothering him."

"So you want me to talk to him," I stated.

She nodded her head. "I mean, he won't come out of his office or let anyone in, no matter who it is. He just keeps pushing everyone away. Besides, you two are really close and all, so I figured he'd talk to you."

I huffed a sigh, sitting down in a chair. "I've tried, Hermione. Look, we all know how Harry is under a lot of stress. Right now, he's just frustrated at everything. Well, we all are, but his kid is missing, and so is mine."

She leaned back into her chair, tapping her fingers on the desk. "I just think, because all of this involves Voldemort, then he would be comfortable talking to you about it."

I huffed a sigh, leaning back in the chair. "Okay, I'll try again tonight."

She gave me a grin. "Thank you." She paused, then held her stare at me. "So, are you okay?"

"No," I admitted. "I think you already knew that."

"Well, I figured, but you seem to have it under control, unlike your brother," she said. Yeah, that was hardly true. "Anyway, what were you doing with Draco?"

I furrowed my eyebrows at her. "We were just talking."

"About Scorpius?"

"About what could happen if we don't defeat Delphi."

Her face dropped. "Oh, Max..."

"I hate thinking about it, but what if Harry and I die for good this time? What'll happen next?"

"I don't know, but I don't want to think like that," she retorted, trying to avoid the topic altogether. "We've won a fight before and we can do it again."

I groaned. "I'm so worried about everything, you know? It's stressing me out."

"I'm sorry," Hermione apologized, giving me a sad look. "This really is a stressful time for you. I know that you've got a lot on your mind already."

"I'm glad you noticed," I said in a sarcastic tone, then realized how snippy I was. "Sorry, Hermione. I'm sure you've got a lot on your mind, too, as Minister for Magic."

She almost let out a laugh. "My job is always stressful."

In that moment, I finally realized why Hermione was one of my best friends. I remembered our conversations as teenagers and how they ranged from complete nonsense to saving the world together. She was someone I could go to just to tell her about my day and she would be there to listen. I missed those talks with her.

"Hermione?"

"Yeah, Max?"

I paused, then let out a soft smile. "You're still one of my best friends, you know that?"

She nodded her head, beaming. "I know. You're still one of my best friends, too."

"I hope so," I teased.

She laughed. "At least you still have some kind of sense of humor in you, given the circumstances."

I held my gaze at her. "There needs to be some laughter in this world right now."

"You were always making jokes when we were hunting for Horcruxes."

"Yeah, but they weren't good."

She giggled. "Either way, you managed to find some light in a world of darkness at that time." She paused for a moment. "No, you were the light."

"Okay, don't get too dramatic," I said, trying not to laugh.

"I'm serious. I'm not just talking about the Wizarding world as the war was coming, but also in Draco's life as well."

Why was she bringing him back up all of a sudden? "Well, maybe back then, but not right now."

She rolled her eyes at me. "You know that he still cares for you."

"Yeah, I know."

"So despite what's been going on with you two, do you still care for him?"

"Well, of course I do. It's just..." I paused, running my fingers through my hair. "I'm just not ready to talk about what's been going on with him. Right now, we have to put our feelings aside for Scorpius' sake. I can't even think about how our conversation will go down once we actually get to it."

Hermione shook her head. "Honestly, you've got to stop thinking like that."

"Thinking like what?"

"Thinking like you and him will never work out."

I exhaled loudly. "We will work out, but it'll take some time to get back where we were at before."

She scoffed. "Knowing you two, you'll be having make-up sex."

"Hermione!"

"What? Everyone knows that it'll happen."

"Well-- wait, everyone?"

Hermione widened her eyes, rushing to get out of her chair. "You know what? I just realized that I need to go talk to Ginny about something..."

"No, explain what everyone means to me first," I retorted, shooting up from my seat.

Once she got to her door, she turned around to face me. "Don't forget to talk to Harry, okay?" she implied, changing the subject.

I rolled my eyes at her, folding my arms over my chest. "I won't, and I also won't forget this discussion."

*******

That night, I went to go see Harry in his office. According to everyone else, he was in there all day and hardly left his seat. He was feeling everything, which was not good. Like me, it always seemed like Harry was under all of this pressure, like he had to make all the decisions that could make or break everyone and everything around him. I knew the feeling, which sucked. Me and him only knew how horrible that feeling was.

I softly knocked on the door to Harry's office. "Harry?"

"Go away!" he shouted.

"Are you really going to turn away your favorite sister?"

"You're my only sister!" he pointed out, already annoyed by me.

"Exactly, which is why I'm your favorite."

He groaned loudly. "Just come in since you'll just bother me from out there..."

I opened the door, watching as he put his head down on his desk. "I can tell you're in good spirits," I stated sarcastically, closing the door behind me. "Everyone has been worried about you."

He lifted his head up, tiredness and irritation plastered on his face. "Hermione sent you here to talk to me, didn't she?" he questioned.

"Of course she did," I replied, sitting down across from him. "Seriously, are you okay? You can talk to me, you know."

He sighed, folding his arms over his chest, shooting me a distraught and frustrated look. "My son and nephew are missing and some psycho witch is out there trying to bring Voldemort, her father, back so that he can rule the Wizarding world and try to kill us again. Do you think I'm okay, Max?"

I widened my eyes, appalled at his response. "Well, I figured you weren't, because everyone is worried about you, including me."

Harry let out a scoff. "I'm so glad you stopped thinking about your marriage long enough to know that we've got bigger issues here."

"Oh, I'm sorry that my marriage is causing problems for you, not that it's any of your business, anyway..."

"It is my business if that's all I keep hearing you complain about."

"I can't help that my marriage is on the line here."

"Well, guess what? Albus and Scorpius' lives are on the line, too!"

I stopped, unsure what to say next. It made my heart drop, my stomach turn. Just thinking about Albus and Scorpius, missing and in danger, and we hadn't even gotten anywhere close to them. Instead, Harry and I were arguing, which was the worst time to do it, given the circumstances.

Frustrated, I let out a breath in sorrow, shaking my head. "What are we doing? We're not teenagers anymore, we're bloody adults. We shouldn't even be arguing."

"Well, we're still twins, so I guess we have every right to still bicker with each other at this age," he retorted.

"Okay, listen..." I sat up straight, shooting my brother a deliberate look. "I know how you feel right now. It's all coming at once and you're being pushed over the edge by all of this stress and pressure. I get it, I really do. But we can't keep arguing like this. It's not helping Albus and Scorpius."

Harry, still holding a bitter look, calmed down and nodded his head. "You're right. I'm sorry for snapping at you and bringing up your marriage. I crossed the line." His expression turned apologetic. "I know it's been hard on you, with the separation and all..."

"Yeah, it has," I said. "But my main focus now is finding Albus and Scorpius."

"And saving the Wizarding world again," he added.

"Yeah, that, too."

Harry chuckled a little. As he was beginning to go through his paperwork, the portrait of Professor Dumbledore began to move. "Good evening, you two."

Harry looked up at the portrait, his face passive. "Professor Dumbledore, in my office, I'm honored. I must be where the action is tonight."

"You and me both," I added.

"Well, what are you two doing?" he asked, merely curious.

Harry sighed. "Max and I were just talking. I'm about to go through some papers, seeing if I've missed anything I shouldn't have. Marshaling forces to fight in the limited way we can fight, knowing that the battle is being raged far away from us. What else can I do? What else can we do?" Harry looked at me, a sad look taking over his face.

Dumbledore paused, in deep thought. "Hm, interesting..."

"Where have you been, Dumbledore?" Harry inquired.

"I'm here now," he answered, completely avoiding the question.

"Here just as the battle is lost. Or are you denying that Voldemort is going to return?"

"Oh, great, here we go..." I mumbled under my breath, knowing that this conversation would take a turn for the worst in just a few minutes.

"It is possible," Dumbledore simply stated, expressing no emotion, like he always did, even when he was alive.

Harry, who was now irritated and frustrated, shook his head furiously. "Go. Leave. We don't want you here and we sure as hell don't need you. You were absent every time it really counted. Max and I fought him three times without you. We can face him again if we need to, and it'll just be us, alone."

"Harry, don't you think I wanted to fight him on your behalf? I would have spared you two if I could--"

My brother let out a scoff. "'Love blinds us?' Do you even know what that means? Do you even know how bad that advice was? Albus and Scorpius are fighting battles for us just as we had to for you. We have proved as bad as mothers and fathers to the both of them as you were to us. Leaving them in places they felt unloved, growing in them resentments that they'll take years to understand--"

"If you're referring to Privet Drive and Malfoy Manor, then--"

"Years...years Max and I were alo-- no, wait, Max wasn't alone with the Malfoys. She was never alone. She had Draco."

I shook my head. "Harry, stop it," I warned him. "You have no right to talk about what I went through with the Malfoys every summer. Believe it or not, I spent some days there alone, just like you were with the Dursleys at Privet Drive."

"At least you had someone that cared for you over there," Harry retorted. "I had no one for a long time."

My blood began to boil. I huffed a sigh and shot Harry a mean glare in irritation. "You know what? You're right, Harry. I did have Draco, but it took years for him to finally come around. You're not the only one who went through that stage of loneliness. We both were alone for too long, without knowing who we were, or why we were there, without knowing that anyone actually gave a damn about us!" I turned up towards Dumbledore. "Did you hear that? No one cared about us and it was the worst feeling in the world. Yet, you continued to send us back every summer, no matter how much we wanted to go live somewhere else."

Dumbledore, at a loss for words, shook his head in sadness. "Harry, Max...I did not wish to become attached to you--"

"You were protecting yourself, even then!" Harry cried out in anger.

"No. I was protecting you two. I did not want to hurt either of you..." And then, as Dumbledore attempted to reach out of the portrait with his hand, I saw the hurt look in his eyes, the guilt, the pain. The tears that he was trying to hide were etched into my mind, forcing my heart to drop. He had never cried before, not in front of us, at least. "But I had to meet you two in the end...eleven years old...you two were so brave, so good. You walked uncomplainingly along the path that has been laid at your feet. Of course I loved you and I knew that it would happen all over again, where I loved, I would cause irreparable damage. I am no fit person to love...I have never loved without causing harm."

I looked over at Harry, who closed his eyes, still frustrated, yet he was calm about it. "You would've hurt us less if you had told us back then."

"I was blind," Dumbledore admitted, the tears more visible now. "And that is what love does, it blinds us. I couldn't see that both of you needed to hear that this close-up, tricky, dangerous old man loved you."

All three of us were overwhelmed with emotion. I never thought Dumbledore loved us. He never showed it during the time he was alive. It seemed like everything we did with him was professional business and nothing more. Hearing him say all of this now, as a dead man while in a portrait, really hit me hard. I was beginning to feel bad for snapping at him.

Harry exhaled loudly. "It isn't true that we never complained."

I scoffed. "Yeah, really."

"Harry, Max, there is never a perfect answer in this messy and emotional world. Perfection is beyond the reach of humankind, beyond the reach of magic. In every shining moment of happiness is that drop of poison, which is the knowledge that pain will come again. Be honest with those you love, show your pain. To suffer is as human as to breathe."

Be honest with those I loved. Be honest with Scorpius and Draco.

Dumbledore began to walk away when Harry and I shouted, "Dumbledore, don't go!"

He turned back around and gave us a soft smile. "Those that we love never truly leave us, Harry and Max. There are things that death cannot touch. Paint...memory...and love."

"We loved you, too, Dumbledore," we stated in unison.

He nodded his head. "I know."

With that, he disappeared and we were alone again. "Well, now what?"

All of a sudden, Draco barged in the office. Before he said anything, he looked around, scanning over the bookshelf, the desk, even the chairs. It was as if he had never entered this office before. "Did you know that in this other reality...the reality Scorpius saw into...I was Head of Magical Law Enforcement?"

"Well, if Delphi manages to change history, then it will be yours and Harry and I won't be here to help you unpack your things," I retorted. Not the best thing to say at this moment, idiot.

Consumed by grief, Harry motioned Draco to come in further. "Well, come in and I'll give you the tour," he said in annoyance.

Draco reluctantly walked inside the office, closing the door behind him and looking around some more. Then, he began to get a distasteful vibe, which I could see written all over his face. "The thing is, though...I never really fancied being a Ministry man, even as a child. My dad, it's all he ever wanted. Me? Ha, no way."

"So what did you want to do?" Harry asked.

"Quidditch," Draco and I replied at once, which resulted in us looking at each other for a second, then focused back on Harry. "But I wasn't good enough."

"Yeah, you were terrible," I mumbled, trying not to laugh.

"Well, you were always better than me," he responded, adding a small chuckle at the end. "But mainly I just wanted to be happy, which I got when I finally won Max over." Instead of responding, the three of us stood there awkwardly, not sure what to say after that statement. "Sorry, I'm not very good at making small talk, so do you two mind if we just skip on to the serious business?" Draco almost looked relieved that the awkward moment was over with.

"Of course," Harry replied. "What serious business?"

Draco cleared his throat before he spoke up again. "Do you guys think Theodore Nott had the only Time-Turner?"

Raising our eyebrows, baffled, we stared at Draco with confusion. "What?" we asked at the same time.

"Okay, please don't do that ever again," he told us. "Anyway, the Time-Turner the Ministry seized was a prototype, made of inexpensive metal. Sure, it does the job, but it's only able to go back in time for five minutes. That's a serious flaw and it isn't something you'd sell to true collectors of Dark Magic."

Harry furrowed his eyebrows. "So was Nott working for you?"

Draco shook his head. "No, for my father. He liked owning things that no one else had. The Ministry's Time-Turners...thanks to Croaker...were always a little vanilla for him. He wanted the ability to go back further than an hour. In fact, he wanted to travel back years. He'd never have used it. Secretly, I think he preferred a world without Voldemort. But yes, the Time-Turner was built for him."

"And did you keep it?" Harry asked.

Draco pulled out something from his pocket, revealing the Time-Turner.

I gasped. "You kept another Time-Turner and didn't tell anyone?! You didn't tell me?!"

Draco couldn't help but roll his eyes at me. "Don't lecture me, Max, at least not yet. Anyway, this Time-Turner has no five-minute problem and it gleams like gold, just the way the Malfoys like it." He turned towards Harry, who was smiling hard. Draco and I gave him a confused look. "You're smiling. Why?"

"Hermione Granger, that's why," he answered. "It was the reason she kept the first one, because she feared that there might be a second. You do realize that you could've gone to Azkaban for hanging on to that, right?"

"Yeah, seriously, Draco," I added in a stern tone.

"I know, I know...but consider the alternative. Consider if people had known that I had the ability to travel in time. Consider the rumor that would have been given increased...credence."

That was when I realized why he kept it a secret. I sighed, shooting Draco a sad look. "Scorpius," I muttered. Draco was trying to protect Scorpius from the rumors about his true parentage.

Draco nodded his head. "You and I...we had a hard time trying to have a baby. I remember the first time you got pregnant, and I was so happy about it. We were going to be a family."

"And then I lost the baby," I stated. "I ruined that dream for the both of us."

"That's not true so don't even say that," he said. "I remember how hard it was for us after that. Neither of us wanted to give it another shot, because we were scared about it happening all over again. So when we finally decided to try again, we got the same results every single time: Nothing.

"But when you were pregnant with Scorpius and you were moving along with the pregnancy so quickly, it made me excited and nervous at the same time. Then, when he was born, it was one of the best moments of my life."

I gave him a soft smile. "I know. It was one of the best moments of my life, too. Then those stupid rumors about Scorpius began to come up."

Harry shook his head in sympathy. "I'm sorry. It must've been hard for all of you. I can't imagine what that was like."

"It was awful, I can tell you that," I said.

"I wanted to take Max and Scorpius away from here and just live out the rest of our lives with no one trying to ruin us or make up stupid things. But I reminded myself that neither of us can escape our pasts. I never realized, though, that things would get bad for Scorpius. It pains me that it was worse than Max and I ever endured."

Harry groaned out loud, massaging his temples. "Love blinds. We've all tried to give our sons, not what they needed, but what we needed. We've been so busy trying to rewrite our own pasts, we've blighted their present."

"Which is why you two need this." Draco held out the Time-Turner in front of us. "I have been holding on to it, barely resisting using it, even though I would sell my soul just to go back and fix the mess that I made with you, Max."

I bit my lip, trying to not break down, not now. This was the worst time to do that. I had to put my feelings aside for the sake of the Wizarding world. I did it once and I could do it again.

Harry shook his head. "Oh, Draco...we can't use it, you know that."

Now, Draco had a desperate look on his face, a look that he hardly ever brought out. "Harry, we have to find them, even if it takes centuries, we must find our sons."

Scorpius could save our marriage.

Harry couldn't do anything else but shake his head for what felt like the hundredth time. "We have no idea where they are or when they're at in time. Searching in time when you have no idea where in time to search, that's a fool's errand. No, love won't do it and nor will a Time-Turner, I'm afraid. It's up to our sons now...they're the only ones who can save us."

I scoffed, looking at my brother. "Well, then, we all better hope they already came up with a good plan, because I don't think we can wait much longer." With that, I stormed out of Harry's office and went back to my own.

Sitting down at my desk, I huffed a sigh, not sure what there was for me to do now. The Time-Turner was a good step in the right direction. I wanted to use it just as bad as Draco did, since it was the only option we had left at this point. But no, Harry insisted that we couldn't use it. He had to get it through that thick head of his that we didn't have many options left and our sons probably didn't have much time left, either.

I rubbed my eyes, feeling a lump develop in my throat. I was beginning to feel like it was all over for me, all over for everyone I loved. Time was running out and we were running out of options. What were we to do if none of us had a plan?

Knock, knock.

"Leave me alone!" I shouted. I heard the door open, making me annoyed. "I said, leave me--"

"I know," Hermione cut me off as she closed the door behind her. "I just saw you come in here and you looked upset. I wanted to make sure that you were okay."

I resisted the urge to break down and cry. So I nodded my head. "Yeah, I'm fine," I lied.

But Hermione wasn't convinced. She came over towards my desk and pulled up a chair beside me, taking my hand and giving me a sympathetic look. "I've known you long enough to know when you're lying to me."

"I'm not lying."

"Max."

The more she pushed me, the more I was at the verge of crying. "Just go, please."

"Hey, look at me." I obliged, looking up at her, already feeling the tears forming in my eyes. "It's okay to cry, you know. We're all human, you're human. You're allowed to show your feelings every once in a while."

So, I reluctantly closed my eyes and began to weep. Hermione pulled me in for a hug, rubbing my back in a soothing way. Hermione always could see right through me, and she never wanted me to feel sad or angry about anything, especially if it was something I couldn't control. At times, she could be tough, which scared me, really, but I was glad that she knew how to be comforting.

"Oh, Hermione..." I began to say, sniffling. "What the bloody hell are we going to do? Albus and Scorpius are out there..."

"I know, I know," she whispered. "We'll find a way to bring them back and defeat Delphi. We always find a way."

I smiled a little. "Yeah, we do."

~~~~~~~

A/N: Heyooo!

So yeah, we're getting close to the action (and the end). Song above is These Times by Safetysuit.

Comment, vote, more to come soon! :)

-A