Chapter 10 - The Room of Requirement Sleepover and Other Tales of Wisdom

Hermione and Ginny had just stepped the stone staircase, talking about nothing in particular, when they each had a hand grabbed and yanked, hard, by Lily, and they found themselves sprinting along behind her. "You – me – Snape – talk – private," she gasped, when they finally screeched to a halt behind a statue on the seventh.

"You want to talk about Snape in private?" Ginny asked. "No way can we go back to the dorms, Lavender and Parvati will be all over your personal business."

"That's okay," Hermione said with a smile. "Look where we are." Moments later, Lily found herself inside the Room of Requirement, which had done itself up in a sort of slumber party setting in response to Hermione's request of a space in which to talk privately. The floor was covered with squishy carpeting that felt almost like a mattress, there was a pile of sleeping bags and pillows in a corner, and some Muggle beauty products were scattered around.

"This is mad," Lily breathed, looking around. "I've been at Hogwarts for seven years, and I never knew this was here! When I get back, I'm using this all the time!"

Ginny tentatively opened a bottle of nail polish, and winced as the smell hit her. "What the hell is this stuff?"

"You put it on your nails," Hermione and Lily said in unison, and then smiled at each other. "Never mind that," Hermione said, tossing the polish aside with the rest of the cosmetics and spreading a few of the sleeping bags out. "What's this problem with Snape?"

Lily explained it as best she could to the dumbfounded girls. "Severus and I have known each other since we were little kids. We were best friends for almost ten years…until he called me a Mudblood in the fifth year. I never spoke to him again. But tonight, he forced me to walk onto the grounds, and…I thought he was going mad! He started completely flipping out, apologized fervently, and then declared his love for me." Ginny screamed, and Hermione gasped.

"What?" Ginny shrieked. "Snape is in love with you?"

"Oh, my God," Hermione whispered. Her book smarts were useless against love. "Oh God, what do we do, what do we do?"

"How can I go back to the '70's and face him again?" Lily sobbed. "Forget that, how do I go to breakfast tomorrow and face him?"

"Do you love him, too?" Ginny asked, as Hermione put her arm around Lily.

"I – I don't know! I mean, we were good friends, but I can't love him that much, can I? I mean, I end up married to James! So clearly we don't work out…but how?"

The girls talked over this dilemma for several hours. At around midnight, Hermione glanced over at Ginny and saw that she was snoring lightly, her face buried in one of the sleeping bags.

"I mean, I can't just ditch Severus," Lily was saying, more to herself than to Hermione at this point. "He knows more about me than anyone. But I end up with James, we die for our son, and then he saves the world? I can't chance that not happening, the world would be doomed!"

Hermione laughed in spite of herself. "Look, we can't do anything about it in here. Let's get some sleep." We need an Invisibility Cloak, she thought, and rolled her eyes when one didn't appear. "Grab a sleeping bag." Lily fell asleep almost immediately, her red hair falling over her face and fluttering lightly whenever she exhaled, but Hermione lay awake for a long time, looking up at the ceiling. Does life ever get less complicated? she wondered. Here we are with our troubles supposedly over, and we have to deal with Harry's parents coming up from the past as high school students, Snape being an actual human being, and 20-year-old love triangles. Voldemort is gone, but we've got a whole new set of problems to face. At least these ones won't kill us. She sighed, rolled over in her sleeping bag, and fell into a restless doze.

When the girls woke up, sunlight was streaming through a window that the room had somehow sprouted during the night, most likely due to a request one of them had made in a dream.

"Um," Ginny said, sitting up in her sleeping bag and giggling. "Who dreamed about purple kittens?" Three of them were gamboling around in a patch of sunlight, to the three girls' amusement.

Lily sat up and arched her back. "Blimey, I'm hungry," she yawned. "Let's get breakfast." The three of them climbed out of their sleeping bags, Ginny rather reluctantly, and headed for the Great Hall, Hermione tossing her hair into a bun so as not to scare people with the height it got to in the mornings.

At the Gryffindor table, James was trying to impart some fatherly-type wisdom in Harry, while Ron looked on, laughing. "So listen…when a girl says that she's fine, she's rarely fine. In fact, everything is horrible and you should run away as fast as you can."

"Yeah, we learned that one the hard way," Ron put in, wincing as he remembered the feeling of tons of sharp little beaks pecking his face. "Hermione set a flock of birds on me," he explained as Harry snorted.

"Yeah, uh, thanks, Dad," Harry said, his face falling suddenly.

"What is it?" James asked, concerned.

"It's just…I can't help thinking about what comes next," Harry replied. "You have to go back to your own time eventually, and I have to stay here, and everything goes back to the way it is."

"Exactly," James said, leaning across the table and gripping Harry's shoulders. "Which is why we need to make the most of this time now. Stop worrying about what happens next and try to enjoy some time with us!"

"You've nailed the fatherly wisdom thing," Ron said approvingly as the girls sat down around them.

"Morning, Harry," said Lily, squeezing his shoulder as she sat down next to him. "All right?"

"Yeah," Harry said absently, swigging his pumpkin juice. "Oh, blimey. Don't look now, but Snape's heading this way." James snickered and Lily made an odd yelping noise.

"Evans," Snape said. "I was wondering if you had given any thought to our…discussion."

"Oooh, Snivelly," James jeered. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were after our favorite redhead!"

Lily snapped. "Shut up! You don't know what you're talking about!" she screamed at James. "Just stop it!" She looked around at everyone's wide-eyed faces, made a noise that sounded like "Nunnnnnghn", and ran for it, grabbing Hermione and Ginny with her.

"Um." said James. "What in Merlin's name was that about?"

"I have no idea," Harry replied, staring at the spot where the girls had disappeared into the entrance hall. "Come on, let's go down to the Quidditch field."