Why We Fight

Part 6:
For the Love of Pyjamas
(Friday, September 2, 1977 – Continued...)

Draco exited the Head Boy quarters and found Hermione in the common room. She was pacing and obviously trying to think of something. He found himself hoping that she wasn't trying to figure out how to get back. He leaned against the wall and watched the brunette pace. "Still awake? Figured a goody-goody like you'd either be studying or sleeping."

Hermione jumped. "You're really annoying," she sighed.

"Oh, Granger! You wound me with your insignificant words," Draco said melodramatically.

Hermione frowned and looked around the room. Her eyes widened when she found herself unable to find Draco. "Where are you?"

"I'm right here," Draco smirked. Hermione's eyes narrowed and she headed toward the source of the voice. She reached out an unseeing hand right in front of his face and moved carefully closer. Her fingers brushed invisible fabric and her hand clenched. She pulled her hand back, full of the cloak and Draco was revealed.

Draco's eyes widened in shock. "How'd you--?" he stammered.

"You stole James's Invisibility Cloak!" the brunette scowled.

"Only a little, he'll have it back tomorrow," he stated, taking it back from her.

"And Slytherins are honest," Hermione muttered, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Why were you pacing anyway?" the blonde demanded.

"I was trying to think of a way to get clothes," Hermione stated. Her eyes widened in triumph. "The Room of Requirement!"

"What?" Draco asked, his eyes widening nervously.

"It's a room that turns into whatever you need it for. I'm sure it'll have clothes if we need them badly enough," Hermione answered.

"Okay..." Draco muttered. "Is it anywhere near the kitchens?"

Hermione frowned. "Why do you want to know where the kitchens are?" Hermione asked.

"I'm hungry and I promised I'd get the boys some food," Draco said.

Hermione's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You, Draco Malfoy, are going to get something for someone else? Are you feeling well, do you need to see Madam Pomfrey or whoever the nurse is?" Hermione stated.

"Shut up, Mudblood," Draco scowled.

"In that case, I don't know where the kitchens are," she scowled and started toward the door.

"It's after curfew," the blonde stated with a smirk.

"And I'm a prefect," Hermione stated.

"Were a prefect," Draco drawled.

"What?" she asked.

"You were a prefect...not anymore," the boy said and Hermione reached to touch her uniform where the prefect's badge usually was. "I do have this nifty little Invisibility Cloak though. With more than enough room for two."

"What do you want, Malfoy?" Hermione scowled.

"We go to the Room of Requirement and then you take me to the kitchens," Draco said.

"Fine," Hermione sighed. They slipped under the Invisibility Cloak and headed out of the common room. "Scoot over."

"I am over," Draco hissed.

"Shut up, we're going to get caught," Hermione whispered.

"Stop hogging the cloak, Mud--" he growled. He was cut off as Hermione stomped on his foot. "Ow!"

"Oops, was that your foot?" Hermione asked innocently. They miraculously made it to the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy without being heard by a prefect or Filch.

"Concentrate on what you really need and it should appear," Hermione whispered to Draco. The two concentrated and then Hermione opened the door. She let out a sigh of relief: inside was a wide array of robes and clothes that put Madame Malkin's and Gladrags to shame. That and two trunks. The two filled their trunks with the robes, uniforms, pajamas, and underclothes. Hermione blushed as she realized that Draco Malfoy wore silk boxers. She closed her trunk before he could see her underclothes. She Reduced their trunks into the size of matchbooks and they carefully tucked them into the pockets of their robes that also held their wands.

"Now, the kitchens," Draco said, Hermione sighed and led him down some stone stairs into a brightly-lit corridor decorated with mostly paintings of food. She stopped in front of a painting with a silver bowl full of fruits.

"Tickle the pear," Hermione said.

Draco coughed noisily. "What?" he managed.

"You're disgusting," Hermione scowled, reaching out and tickling the green pear which giggled then turned into a doorknob. She opened the door and they entered the kitchen where hundreds of house-elves bustled about. She shrugged off the Invisibility Cloak, leaving Draco still covered by his portion and the house-elves immediately surrounded her, offering plates of delicious food and frosty mugs of butterbeer.

Her stomach growled mercilessly as she realized that she hadn't eaten since lunch. Draco pulled off the Invisibility Cloak and was also besieged by the house-elves. The two ate their fill silently and then took some back to the common room. Hermione exited to the Head Girl's room and Draco entered the Head Boy's room, still hidden under the cloak.

The four Marauders were playing a game of Exploding Snap on James's bed. In a dramatic gesture, Draco tossed off the cloak. The four boys stared at him in shock as they noticed his hands were full of food.

"That was brilliant," Peter murmured, his beady little eyes full of pleasure. The four ate the food taken from the kitchens.

Remus stretched. "I'd better go, it's almost time for patrol," he said. "It was nice meeting you, Draco."

"You too, Remus," Draco said. Remus led Sirius and Peter from the Head Boy's room and apparently to the Gryffindor tower. James yawned fitfully and changed into his pajamas and went to bed.

Draco put James's Invisibility Cloak in the Head Boy's trunk, changed into a pair of green and silver plaid pajama bottoms and lie down. He was asleep in seconds.

---

While Draco and his new friends munched on the food that she had helped him nick from the kitchens, Hermione changed into a set of blue pajamas with white crescent moons, suns, and stars dancing over it and crawled into bed.

She simply stared up at the hangings to her bed for what seemed like hours. Her brain just wouldn't shut down. So much had happened that day. She had gone back in time nineteen years. It was a lot even for Hogwarts' biggest brain. There had to be a way to process everything.

She sat up and rifled in her satchel, she withdrew the diary that her parents had gotten her for her birthday last year (they hadn't known about the Tom Riddle disaster). She had never written in it but she felt that she had to now. Maybe a warning for her future-past self? Hermione winced, this time travel was giving her a headache. It was easy with the Time-Turner. A few hours here, a few hours there...no big change. But an entire lifetime? That was a change. She began to write:

September 2, 1977

Today has been the most eventful day of my life. It started off simply enough in 1996...I had been in Professor Severus Snape's Potions class on the first day of my sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I was partnered with an unbelievable git named Draco Malfoy and he messed up our Memory Potion by adding twice as much hellebore and wolfbane as the potion required.

The potion also included thyme and thistledown; it is widely known that if you make a potion that has thistledown, thyme, hellebore, and wolfbane in it you have to have equal amounts of the ingredients or the potion becomes unstable. (Obviously, Malfoy never read Most Potente Potions, or he would have known this.)

My Memory Potion with Malfoy turned into a time travel potion and Malfoy and I ended up in 1977. We met Malfoy's father, Lucius, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, Lily Evans, James "Prongs" Potter, Sirius "Padfoot" Black, Remus "Moony" Lupin, and Peter "Wormtail" Pettigrew.

I'm not really certain why I'm writing this down, I just felt like I needed to as an explanation to my friends in the future, Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley. Harry and Ron, if you're reading this...don't worry, I'm perfectly fine. I hope to return back to the future as soon as humanly possible.

Love,
Hermione Jane Granger

Hermione glanced over her diary and decided that she'd leave it with Professor Dumbledore just before she returned to her time so Ron and Harry wouldn't worry too much about her. Before she went to sleep she cast a secrecy charm on the book so that only someone she wanted to read it could.