Hi there!

This is my first Dramione (from a once avowed Dramione hater, but you never know, right?) and it is a challenge. Here it is (in part, posting the entire thing gives away too much plot).

Name (of challenge): Turning the Time

Name of challenger: Elemental0903

Characters: Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Ginny Weasley

Alternate Summary: "Time turners are illegal, extremely rare, and undeniably useful to their owner. What happens when the one person in Hogwarts who truly needs it finds out the person he despises the most owns one?"

Most of the ideas (which are fantastic, I'm not gonna lie) are from the genius Elemental, not me! I'm just the writer!

Please review! This is what gives me motivation as a writer ;D

DISCLAMIER: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters

Prologue

The house was deathly still.

Malfoy Manor was never loud, but Draco had never quite known it to be this silent. It seemed that the house was holding its breath, waiting.

Draco's mother was having a baby.

He had noticed her stomach getting very round. He asked her, "Mama, why are you getting so fat?"

Then she explained that he was going to have a small brother or sister, which was something she had said before. But he didn't see what that had to do with her getting fat, and he said so.

"That's because the baby is inside," she told him.

"Inside your STOMACH?" he asked incredulously. Surely she could see how absurd that was.

"Yes," she said. "Sometimes, if you put your hand here, you can feel it kicking." She knelt down and, taking Draco's hand, rested it on her round belly.

"I don't feel anything," he told her obstinately.

"Well, it's in there," she said, laughing a little, but not the mean laugh that he sometimes got from grown-ups when they were mocking him; it was the soft, happy laugh that meant she loved him. He wrapped his arms around her neck, breathing in her familiar sweet smell. He only did things like this when his father wasn't around; for some reason, Father didn't seem to like it when Draco hugged or kissed his mother; he never let Draco touch him, and he never touched Draco.

"You know that when your brother or sister is born, I will love you just as much as I do now," his mama told him, rubbing his back.

"I know," he said, confused. Why shouldn't she? After all, he was always going to love her, forever and ever.

"Oh!" he cried suddenly. He'd felt a little jolt against his body. He pulled away from his mother in a hurry and put both his hands on her belly. "Mama, mama, I feel it! It's kicking! It really is there!"

In the years to follow, Draco would remember the look on his mother's face when he first felt his sister kicking within her; he would recall the mingled joy and pride, the overall glow on her face, would remember that shared moment of pure happiness.

Because it wouldn't happen again very often.

"Not in bed yet?" Draco's father asked him.

Draco started awake. His neck ached from the awkward position he'd fallen asleep in, and the hall outside his mother's room had grown dark.

He couldn't believe he had fallen asleep.

"Is she okay? Is mama okay?" he demanded.

His father regarded him silently for a moment. (Sometimes, Draco had no idea what his father was going to say or do. Most of the time he was simply morose; but sometimes he could be frighteningly harsh. Even more rarely, he could be unwontedly affectionate).

"Come," he said finally, and walked back into his mother's bedchamber.

Draco raced after him, his heart pounding. His mother was lying almost completely still, but her eyes were open; she was awake, she was okay! But she looked, oh, so tired.

"Mama!" he cried, running up to her.

"Shh," she warned him. "Look, Draco, look! You have a sister!"

Draco peered at the tiny bundle in his mother's arms. To his surprise, he discovered that it had a face, and hands. But oh, they were so small! When Draco put his hand next to Mama's hand, he always marvelled at how big hers was; but when he put his hand next to the baby's hand, he found that he dwarfed her. Everything - her fingers, her eyes, her nose, her ears, her mouth - were so impossibly tiny.

"Is it real?" he asked, almost in a whisper. "Mama, is it alive?"

"Yes," she said softly. "Yes, she's alive. She's real. Her name is Lyra; she's your sister."

He couldn't stop looking at Lyra.

Sometimes, when he was supposed to be asleep, he would tiptoe out of his room and go to the nursery to sit next to Lyra's cradle. He was fascinated by her; by how absolutely tiny she was, how her arms sometimes waved randomly without her seeming to know, how her breathing sounded so entirely different than anyone else's - "even her breathing is tiny," he would think. Sometimes she would wake up and cry, and then he would hide in the shadows while his mother came in and held her until she stopped.

One night soon after Lyra was born, she woke up and cried and his mother did not come. Draco waited and waited and Lyra cried and cried, but Mama still didn't come, and eventually Lyra fell asleep again on her own.

Soon after this, Mama taught Draco how to hold Lyra, supporting her head on his arm; and every night after this, when Lyra woke up and cried, Draco would steal into the room and hold her like that until she stopped. He liked to hold her, and he imagined that she liked it too.

Soon Lyra stopped crying as much during the night, and Draco stopped going to see her as much. She had stopped being such a novelty to him. But, at that time, she was never a bother, and he was never jealous of her being the center of attention. In fact, he sometimes became offended if people weren't making enough of a fuss over her.

These days were burned into Draco's memory, and they were the sweetest of his life.

There was one day in particular that he was sure he'd never forget. His mother came into the nursery one night and found Draco holding Lyra. Usually she got angry with him when she found him out of bed, and he thought she might be angry this time, because she started crying. But instead of scolding him, she sat down and pulled him into her lap, so that they were both in her arms.

"I love you," she said into his hair. "I love you both so, so much…"

"Me too," Draco whispered. "I love you and I Lyra too."

"Will you always take care of her?" Mama whispered.

"Yes, mama."

And he did. Lyra got older and bigger, and soon she was able to walk around on her own, and say things that resembled words. One of the first of these was a childish version of Draco's name. He thought he'd never been happier than he was when he realized what she was saying.

And he always watched out for her, just as he had promised his mother; he always tried to make her feel better when she cried, or to play with her when she was tiresome. He didn't quite understand this, but he was Lyra's world, and in some ways Lyra was his.

Time passed, and sometimes Draco would find his father looking at Lyra strangely. Mama began to look worried, and she grew thinner and didn't smile as much; and one day she saw Draco and Lyra playing with a broom and burst into tears.

Draco didn't understand any of this, of course; but it did become apparent that Lyra was very different than he was. She could not fly a broom as he could, and she never showed any little sign of magic, even as they got older. This didn't seem to bother her at all, and it hardly bothered Draco, even though he could do magic; in fact, it rather pleased him to be able to do something Lyra couldn't do, in order to see her eyes light up and to hear her say, "Oh, do it again, do it again!"

Draco loved Lyra.

At that time, he loved a good many things in his life. He loved his mother, first and foremost; he loved his nanny, he loved his great dog, and he even loved his father. But loving Lyra felt different. He loved all these other things because they had been there all along and they had loved him first; but with Lyra, he was the one that had come first. With Lyra it felt like a choice, a choice he was glad to make.

As she grew older, she loved him back.

When she learned how to talk, she told him so; but even before he heard it from her, he saw it in her face, and then he thought he could understand why his mother looked so happy when he told her he loved her.

This was how Lyra entered Draco's life.

FYI: Lyra is a constellation, neighbor to the constellation Draco.

Thank you for reading! Please review. -Kenzie