Back in Time

Chapter five

Malfoy was looking at Hermione with a mixture of shock and disbelief. He probably thought he wouldn't see me for the rest of the journey, Hermione thought and couldn't keep a small smile from forming on her face.

'Granger,' Malfoy finally said through gritted teeth. The man next to Malfoy didn't seem to notice Malfoy's discontent and glanced between the two.

'Daniel Gilbert,' the other man introduced himself, standing up and holding out his hand to her. Hermione placed her hand in his, glancing at Malfoy from the corner of her eye. Daniel kissed the back of her hand.

'I take it you two know each other?' Daniel asked, sitting down again.

'Yes,' Hermione replied before Malfoy could say anything and ruin her disguise. 'Yes, we do.'

Daniel smirked at Malfoy. 'Well, I see my wife just arrived, so I'm going to leave you two,' he told Malfoy with a wink. 'It was nice to meet you, Miss Granger.'

'Yes, it was nice meeting you too,' Hermione said and tried to smile at him but she was feeling a bit uncomfortable because of the man's behavior. Hermione turned to face Malfoy again as soon as Daniel was gone and he was full on glaring at her.

'What are you doing here?' He seethed, barely containing his anger.

'I need your help.'

Malfoy snorted and shook his head.

'Well, first of all, I can prove to you that we went back in time and that this isn't some sort of joke,' she said quietly. She took out her notebook, put it on the table and took out the newspaper. Malfoy eyed the paper.

'A newspaper.' Malfoy didn't seem to be impressed and Hermione rolled her eyes, getting annoyed.

'Yes, a newspaper!' She hissed. 'Look at the date.'

Malfoy reluctantly slid the newspaper towards him and looked at the date. He was silent for a while, but still, he wasn't very impressed.

'So what? This could be fake.'

Hermione was starting to lose her patience.

'Malfoy,' she said slowly, taking a deep breath to control herself. 'We went back in time. I don't know how, I don't know why, but I do know that it happened. And I also know, that this ship,' she gestured vaguely with her hand around the room, 'is going to sink in three days. I need your help to stop it from happening.'

Malfoy was glaring at her, but he didn't say anything. It seemed he was finally convinced, but the prospect of having to work together didn't seem very appealing to him.

Hermione sighed and told him about Ismay, about how he told the captain to increase speed to make more headlines and all that leading to the Titanic not being able to go around the iceberg.

Malfoy was still glaring at her, but let her finish talking.

'And now you expect me to go and talk to him.' He didn't look pleased at all.

Hermione nodded.

'I'm a third class passenger on this ship. I've been seen in third class, I'm afraid they might find out.'

'And you suppose you can just tell a man like Ismay that his idea about picking up speed is shit.' The sarcasm didn't go unnoticed by Hermione.

'Of course not,' Hermione said, rolling her eyes. 'It will probably take some time to convince him, since he only cares about making more headlines. But it still needs to be done.'

'Why can't we just convince the captain?' Malfoy asked. For some reason, he looked like he would rather jump off the ship than talk to Ismay.

'I thought about that, but if he decides to listen to Ismay anyway, we're not better off than we are right now,' Hermione said.