Back in Time

Chapter four

Hermione had gone back to the common room to eat dinner and after that, she had caught up on some sleep. When she woke up again, it was dark outside. She was starting to get nervous, her plan seemed to get more ridiculous by the minute, but she had to do something. She lay in bed, waiting for the people in the hallway to go to their cabins. After a while, the voices died down and Hermione sat up. With shaking hands she took her notebook, with the newspaper still in it and clutched it to her chest. she couldn't lose it; this was the only proof she had to convince Malfoy. She frowned when she thought about having to find a way out of this together, she didn't even want to talk to the git. She sighed and opened the door to the now dimly lit hallway. She made her way to the common room. There were only a couple of people still up and Hermione decided to wait for them to go to bed. She sat down in one of the chairs and took out the newspaper. She hadn't even read the whole thing, she had only used it to look at the date. She opened it and started to read.

She had been so into the articles in the paper that she hadn't even noticed the other people in the room standing up. She only found out when they were already halfway across the room already. She tore her gaze away from the paper and stuffed it in the notebook again. She would definitely read the entire thing later, she had found it very interesting to read all of the old articles. Her heart started to beat wildly in her chest now that the common room was empty. She waited a bit longer, to make sure she was alone and walked to the door that led to the hallways with the cabins and closed it. At least, if someone opened it and came into the common room she would hear it.

'Okay, here goes nothing,' she whispered and walked over to the door with 'staff' written on it. Carefully, she put her hand on the handle and sighed in relief when it opened. She had worried about it being locked, but it wasn't. She opened it a bit more and slipped inside the tiny space in front of the stairs. She took a deep breath and tiptoed up the stairs, praying no one would come down and discover her. She couldn't draw any attention to herself. When she came to the top of the stairs, she faced another door. She held her ear against it and listened, but the loud beating of her heart made it hard. When she didn't hear anything, she took another deep breath and put her trembling fingers on the handle. She carefully opened the door a little and peeked around it. She could make out an empty hallway. She stepped around the door and closed it again, trying to be as quiet as possible. She looked around the hallway. On the other side were doors with 'laundry room' and 'staff room' written on it and further down the corridor there we more doors.

This had to be where the staff members lived and worked. Her eyes lit up when she got an idea and she walked over to the door with 'laundry room' on it. She put her ear against the door again and listened. When she didn't hear anything again, she opened the door. She stepped inside and closed the door. Inside, there were lost of baskets with nicely folded uniforms in them. On the other side of the room were sinks, where the uniforms were probably washed by hand. Above the sinks were washing lines with drying uniforms. Hermione grabbed one of the women uniforms and changed quickly, hoping no one would walk in on her changing. The uniform was a bit big on her, but it would do for the time being.

Like this, she could get into the cabin of a first class passenger, without looking suspicious. She put her old and moldy clothes under one of the sinks and left the room again. Just when she wanted to continue walking down the corridor, someone else came around the corner and walked towards her. Hermione froze but the young man, in a uniform, just nodded at her when he walked past her and didn't look twice at her.

It worked! Hermione thought, allowing herself to breathe again. She had thought that he would have seen right through her and would have called for someone, but her disguise seemed to work. Taking a very shaky breath she continued down the corridor and went around the same corner as the the staff member had just come from.