August 1; 8:03am
Her arguments hadn't lasted long last night. She had still been tired, despite all the sleep she had got, and she was too weak and blurry-headed to fight long. He seemed to know it wasn't the end of it, though, considering the looks he kept sending her every time she took a deep breath. She did it a couple times just to watch him get annoyed at what he thought was the prelude to some speech. She was still mapping out said speech, though, so he had a little longer. She took a deep breath, watching him look up at her from the corner of her eye, and bit back a smile.
She had slept like a rock last night, which left a new stiffness to the pain in her shoulder. She knew that moving as little as possible was the best option, but she also knew it was one she didn't have for long. They would have to move on soon, away from where Bill might be - just because he had taken off after he attacked her, didn't mean he wasn't around somewhere. He could have been watching them right then, thinking about-- Hermione shook her head.
She folded the poultice again, starting her third attempt at getting it onto the right spot of her back. Trying to put it down the neck of her shirt hadn't worked, no matter how far she stretched, bent, or poked at it. When the arm from her bad shoulder had swung around to try stopping the poultice from falling, which blistered pain up into her skull, she decided a new tactic was in order.
She turned away from Malfoy, sweaty and red-faced from her effort, and reached up with her good arm to pull the back of her shirt up. She bit her lips as the fabric rubbed against her injury, wiggling to push her shoulder in the spots where the material was drawn up from her skin. She pressed her other hand to the herb-filled cloth over her puncture wound as it threatened to fall, pulling the back of her shirt over her head as she leaned forward.
She paused to breathe, grabbing the stick next to her leg. She didn't know why she thought the stick was a good idea, but if she could just...over just a little...and...higher, higher. She gasped at the ache from all her stretching at the wound and the rest of her upper torso, since she was certain no one was supposed to stretch that way. Except for maybe gymnasts and people without bones. Her ribs were going to pop, and her good shoulder was going to split, and then her elbow would break. She would just be able to swing her arm around like a noodle or a ribbon. Like those people who danced with ribbons, except she would be dancing with her disjointed, freak arm twirling about her head.
Calm down, Hermione. She took a deep breath and blew it out, but the curls fell right back into her eyes, and her face was still hot. Blood pressure went up when a person became anxious, and that's when hotness and sweating happened. She just had to keep calm and collected, and then coolness would come.
It worked for just a second, for one more push of the stick-speared cloth up her back, and her attempt at calmness went the way of free love. Without the diseases bit, though if she got any dirt in her wound, she would end up with another infection. Malfoy's clothing brushed together as he moved, and she shot her head up to glare at him, like sound had been created to annoy her and that's why he was making it. Everything just had to be quiet, and she had to stop sweating, and it would be fine.
The poultice hovered over her wound, but she couldn't get it off the frigging stick. She tried to stab it up into the air to make the cloth fly off, but only with enough strength that it would somehow conveniently land exactly where she needed it. She tried to wiggle it around next, careful not to thwack herself, and she growled impatiently. What, was it stuck on there with hot glue and thirty layers of duct tape? Was the world really conspiring against her this much?
She blew three quick breaths up into her face, and then another to get the hair away from its attempt at wrapping around her eyeball. She moved the stick over towards the middle of her back, bending her hand up and over as her wrist creaked and tensed. She tried to roll it, hoping the cloth would unroll from the stick. She held her breath as the fabric pressed against her injury, a drop of sweat sliding down the back of her ear and her arm threatening to noodle itself again.
She thought she got it on there for one blissful second, but when she pulled the stick back it was still top heavy with the cloth. She growled, stings of pain shooting up her arm as she brought it around in front of her, looking at the poultice with a fierce hatred. She wanted to fling it and the stick at least a mile away from her, preferably into a tree, even if it couldn't feel pain. Just to make herself feel better by getting revenge on the stupid thing. Useless, she would yell, and then she would make another one that would somehow work better because it would know what happened to the first one.
She unwrapped the poultice from the stick, pouring the rest of the hot water from the tin over it. She side-glanced at Malfoy, who didn't look like he was doing anything important, or taxing, or sweating at all. He looked up at her from going through his bag, his look expectant. Maybe he had felt her staring at him, or maybe he had been sitting over there comfortably while she nearly broke herself from shoving a stick at her back.
"I, uh..." Maybe she could just stick the dirty side to a tree, and quickly push her back against the clean side, and then just stand there.
He stared at her while she contemplated possibilities, and then returned his attention to the bag. A part of her had been hoping he would offer, and then she could play it off like oh, you don't have to do that, I can manage, while he was already sticking it on there. But no, he had to keep going about his unimportant business and leave her hunched over awkwardly with a wet cloth and a stick. He was going to make her ask. Well, she was not--
Malfoy pulled his bag up from between his legs and dropped it beside him, pushing up to his feet. Hermione acted like she wasn't looking at him while watching him from the corner of her eye. He knew anyway because he stared directly at her corner-eye look, brushing his hands off before walking over to her. He pulled the poultice from her hand and stepped around her, squatting down.
She was completely unprepared for the breath of hot air across her skin, and she rocked forward so hard she nearly banged her forehead off the ground. She opened her eyes really wide, rolling them to the side as if she could see through the back of her skull to his face. Despite her what are you doing expression, he didn't see it or offer an explanation for his hot air blowing, and then did it again.
She didn't jump again, but his action sent a wave of goosebumps up her back, which seemed to cause another spike in the heat of her blood. His cool fingertips touched down next to her spine, brushing down her skin and across to the edge of her wounds. He must have been wiping the dirt from the stick off, and being very - surprisingly - gentle about it. She didn't notice she was holding her breath until she felt the touch of his as he exhaled, and she released her own, shuddering a bit at the end. She didn't know if he had ever touched her gently, except for the moment when she had clasped his hand in hers some time during the fever, but she still didn't know if that had been real.
She didn't think she had ever felt someone else's breath against her back, that gentle caress of air that was doing very strange things to her skin and heartbeat. He rubbed at a spot on her skin with his thumb, judging by the size of the pad, and she could see his hand in her mind. The L shaped scar across sharp knuckles, the shape of his thumb, the ragged tear of his nail. He dropped his hand away, those knuckles skimming down her skin, and another wave of goosebumps rose up in his wake.
He shifted behind her, his breath flitting across her shoulder, and the poultice was pressed carefully against her. "You got the rest?" His voice came out low, which might have been the reason it sounded a little different than it usually did.
She cleared her throat and nodded, listening to him pull away from her as she grabbed the long strip of a sheet from her lap. She threw it over her shoulder and reached down to pull it under her arm, adjusting it so that it was laying over the poultice before bringing the ends together. She tied it tightly and glanced over at Malfoy as he walked back to the bags, her eyes flashing away when he turned towards her to sit down again.
11:10am
They walked for less than a half hour before they stopped, Malfoy dropping his bag. "I'd rather you heal quicker and walk faster than travel as fast as a Flobberworm."
Hermione glared at him. Yes, she couldn't keep up that quick of a pace when moving made her shoulder feel like it was going to explode, but she had been pushing herself further than what she should have already. It wasn't like she was meandering along. She hadn't said anything when he burnt his leg and was walking slowly, or when he had come out of that fever, or when she had half-dragged and half-carried him away from the orchard!
"Don't let me hold you back," she snapped.
"Well, you are." He looked at her tight expression, her lips pinched together and her hand on her hip, the other arm cradled to her chest. "Stop taking everything so fucking personal. You're injured, you're slowing us down - it's that simple. No wonder you're such an uptight bit--"
"It is personal! You're talking about--"
"The world isn't rising against you, Granger. Everyone and everything isn't out to get you. You're injured and we have to stop because of it, that's a fact. It's not an attack against your strength, or your worth, or--"
"I don't--"
"--have to take it like it is. You have some serious issues with self-worth--"
"Serious issues? Coming from you, that is--"
"--with your studies at Hogwarts, and then the war, and then trying to save everyone again. Not even a year after and you start--"
"It's not like I planned for it to happen then! It's not about proving my worth, or taking everything personal - unless it is personal. I like to achieve things, and no, I don't appreciate when someone tells me I can't, or points out if I'm not doing it well enough. I like to be good at the things I do, and there's nothing wrong with that! I don't have worth issues just because I'm an over-ach--"
"Then why are you taking everything--"
"--and I'm trying to find the plant so I can help people--"
"You're never going to be good enough." He shook his head and hers pulled back on her neck. "Not ever, not with this. The moment you help one person, a thousand more go without it-"
"At least I'm doing something at all! I--"
"When are you going to realize that the world can't be saved? That the moment you do, something else will come along to destroy it? You fight in a war, you try to find this plant - what next? It's not always your fight--"
"It's all of our fight--"
"Eventually you're going to fail."
"And how is that working out for you?" she bit, and immediately felt guilt turn hot at the bottom of her chest.
He held her eyes, his jaw tightening, and gave an infinitesimal nod before looking down at his bag. "I haven't decided yet."
1:12pm
"Where are you going?" She picked the quill up from where it had landed on the ground in front of her. He must have decided it was better than having to listen to her arguments for it, but he was still going to get an earful - the quill had never been sufficient, and now that they had two knives, she was going to have one as well.
He gave her the glance and kept walking. It hardly seemed fair that she had to have him lurking nearby when she went to the loo, but he just expected to have privacy for himself. If they weren't supposed to-- Hermione looked over in the direction of the noise, and then snapped her head forward in case he was right there . She didn't think he would be in view or anything, but she wasn't risking it. Jesus, that was loud. Height really did make a strong difference in the noise level of peeing. It sounded like he was emptying out a river, even though he must have gone far enough into the trees that she wouldn't see him.
He must have been standing fairly close, though, just with it all... She wasn't going to follow that thought process. She really wasn't.
3:17pm
"I wish I was a camel." He looked like he had no idea what she was talking about, and had quickly decided that he didn't want to. "So I had humps."
He opened his mouth, blinking twice at the ground, and she watched the grin slowly form across his face. He gave a short little snicker, and then another, before bursting into laughter. True, honest laughter - not an evil cackle, or a huff, or something mocking. It was deep, and rich, and...pleasant sounding. Full out, eyes shut, head bent, shoulders shaking laughter. She watched him in surprise, her eyes flicking over the changes it made in his face, the white of his teeth, the lines around his mouth. It was-- Well, it was... He looked good with happiness across his face. He looked like she might want to keep looking to trace the lines of it, to remember that this was a face Draco Malfoy could make.
"What?" She laughed a little as she asked, the sound of his contagious to her. "So I could live for weeks without food, and store water!"
It only made him laugh harder, and she bet that he was thinking about something that she might not find so funny, but maybe he wasn't. Red dashed across his cheekbones and the tips of his ears, and for a few seconds he was silent. One of those laughs where it's like you press the mute button, or you're watching an old film, and all you see is the actions. She laughed a little harder too, watching his hair fall into his eyes as he slowly gained his composure, and she thought she might want to make him laugh a little more often.
August 2; 7:04am
She poured the last of their water equally into a bottle and the tin, capping the bottle before handing it to Malfoy. There was only about two sips in either one, but it would have to be enough. The days since they had last found a water source, and the state of her fever, had drained their supply.
Malfoy looked at the hunting knife in his hand in a way that showed how little he wanted to part with it, and she held her hand out in wait before he pushed the handle into her palm. "Check for the scar. Don't move from this spot unless you absolutely have to."
"I know, I won't. Don't worry, if Bill finds me, I'm sure I'll find you again."
He pointed the water bottle at her, scowling. "That's not even funny."
"Just a little."
"Try in five years, at least. And you had better kill him if he comes. He's an animal, he's not human, and he would kill us in a second. Or do that again."
"I will." She would have to. He was right - Bill wasn't human. She didn't know what he was, but anything with teeth like that, and claws, and that thought the way he did, was certainly not human. And he would kill her - both of them - without hesitation.
"Is that all of the bottles?"
"Yes." He nodded, hitching his bag over his shoulder, and gave her a nod before walking away. "Hey, Malfoy?"
"Yeah?"
"Be careful." He looked at her for a couple seconds, nodded his chin at her, and went to leave again. "And food! Fruit!"
She was pretty sure she heard nag in his muttering as he disappeared through the trees.
4:39pm
There was an underlying swell of fear as she constantly searched the trees, jumping at the smallest sounds as she kept the knife held in her fist. Bill went to lengths to have them separated before, probably because she didn't appear to have a weapon, but it would have been a lot harder with two of them. Even if both of them fell asleep and he attacked them then, the one he hadn't pinned down could kill him separation was what he needed before he would come after either of them. If he was going to spring, he would do it now.
She was more afraid without Malfoy there. Not that Hermione thought she couldn't handle herself, or hadn't already proved that she could, but she had known there was more safety when they were together since before they even agreed to be. Now that she knew Malfoy wasn't going to take off running when there was trouble - at least, not without trying to drag her along with him - that feeling of safety had only increased. The danger felt heavier now, and it wasn't until she felt it that she realized how much she had come to rely on Malfoy as an ally.
The island felt a lot bigger now, too. Sitting in the depths of a forest, staring up at the trees that towered above her, she felt a little like a lost child. She was used to Malfoy always being there, and she was usually too caught up in him or her thoughts to notice the enormity of nature before and around her. She was a little...lonely. Even if they were fighting or silent, there was someone else there. Someone to look at, purposely ignore, or talk to. His platinum head bobbing in front of her, or the sound of him around her, or even his angry muttering. It had been months since they had gone more than ten minutes without the other - it was starting to damage her. He had become familiar. Like a splinter under her finger that she couldn't work out, so she just accepted it as part of everything. It's absence could be adjusted to, but it was still strange without it, still...lonely.
August 3; 6:13am
Her tired, drooping eyes flashed wide open at the crunching noise to her right. She listened as it came gradually closer, pushing up to her feet and clutching the knife tightly. She only relaxed slightly when she saw the flash of blond hair, looking him over when he stopped two meters away. He looked as tired as she felt from staying up the entire night, but it didn't mean he was truly Malfoy.
"I'm sure by telling the Wizengamot that you stabbed me to death because you were attacked by my magical clone days earlier, and turned into some murderous creature, they will let you off on insanity." He took two steps closer, dropping his bag.
"Why haven't you asked to see my hand?" She narrowed her eyes, pulling the knife up higher.
He cocked his head, and she could see the dagger in his hand. "Why haven't you asked to see mine?"
"Show it to me."
"Show me yours."
"How do I know you won't try to just make an illusion of what you find--"
He held his hand out, palm up, and she looked at the scar. He rolled his eyes at her distrusting look and jerked forward, grabbing her wrist. "Feel it."
"I could stab you!" She wouldn't really, or she already would have - she was certain it was Malfoy, from the swagger he walked up with, to his voice, to the scar on his palm.
"Touch it, Granger." Her eyes flashed to his at the low rasp of his voice, the teasing tone. His head was lowered as he looked at her, a slight curl to the corners of his lips.
It made her breath catch a little as she held his eyes, moving her fingers down his palm. He had soft hands - the hands of someone who used a lot of lotion, or hadn't done anything with a lot of physical labor in their lives. The pads under his fingers were firmer though, a little rough, probably from Quidditch. Her fingers moved as if to circle them, but then she remembered that she was going in the opposite direction she had to, and Malfoy's smile had left.
She swallowed, hurrying her fingers towards his thumb, and pulled them away the second she felt the bump of the scar. Her hand moved like it didn't know where it was supposed to go before settling at her side, her fingertips oddly warm. Malfoy curled his hand into a fist and dropped it, but he still hadn't looked away from her.
"All right," she rushed. "How did you know it was me?"
"You were humming." He must have been listening to her before she even heard him. She hated when anything watched her without her knowing about it. It's part of the reason she ducked for cover when a video camera came into view.
"A lot of things hum."
"It was the same song you usually hum."
"Oh. Well. What took you so long?"
"Careful, Granger, I might think that you missed me. Feeling clingy?"
He still hadn't moved back a step. Neither had she. Shouldn't one of them be moving about now? "While I've heard life and death situations bring people together - in some cases, forming unbreakable bonds - I don't think life would be so cruel."
He huffed a laugh, and the strange expression left his face. He stepped back to his bag and she stepped back as well, twice. Her heart was thumping in an abnormal beat - it probably recognized that the splinter was back, that was all. She had to be mentally quick for any witty barbs he might throw at her. He pulled a water bottle from his bag and tossed it at her, her arm swinging up to get it and stretching her shoulder painfully.
"A river?" she asked, bending to pick it off the ground.
"I would be more inclined to call it a stream. We'll work our way towards it. I think it flows out of the mountains." He dug around in his bag more as she nodded.
"We'll start tomorrow th-- A pear?" She practically snatched it out of the hand he was holding out to her.
He raised an eyebrow, but there was a lift to his mouth at her enthusiasm. He had probably had a similar reaction himself while he was alone. She could just see him hopping around the tree in his giddiness. She snorted as she bit into the pear happily, the mental image of Malfoy too funny to hold it back. She moaned at the different flavor across her tongue, looking up at Malfoy who was staring back at her a little too intensely.
"This is so good."
He hummed.
1:08pm
One of the big problems with knowing something could be lurking around, waiting to kill you the second it had an opening, was the lack of sleep. No matter how rundown they had been from staying up all night, sleep didn't last long, and it wasn't a good one anyway. A definite snoozie, that just happened to last a few hours more than what her father would have accepted for the term. Every sound woke them up, which was a problem in a forest filled with animals and creaking trees.
"Granger?" He sounded amused, which didn't mean anything good for her. "What were you doing exactly, while I was gone?"
She rubbed a sleepy eye and glared at him with the other. "I was whittling. A lot of the sticks just...turned out to look like stakes."
"Weren't you worried about splinters?" Asked by the splinter himself.
She stood up to inspect just what he found so funny that holding it back was making his face red. "What are you on about? I was--"
"Did you hurt yourself badly? If you--"
"That is a face!" she yelled, jabbing a finger towards where his eyes had been. "That was supposed to be a face."
"Oh?" The laughter was breaking out now, along with the heat in her cheeks. " Awfully long forehead, Granger."
"I didn't finish it because it wasn't turning out right! That top bit is just unformed, and those are ears!"
"Right," he laughed, taking the shove to his shoulder.
"I was bored, and--"
"It happens, Granger. Better ways to go about it, but I assure you that any--"
"Don't even finish that sentence, Malfoy," she warned, and he grinned at her red face.
"Did you--"
"Not. A. Word."
"You know, fingers--"
"I will put those stakes to use!"
"Apparently."
August 5; 11:24am
"If you don't stop humming, I'm going to shove a stick down your throat."
"You know, I think creativity is only second to intelligence. Some would argue it's second to nothing, but..." She gave him a dirty look when he sighed heavily. "They steal that a lot in cartoons. Uh, these animated... Well, they're animated drawings of things. People, mice--"
"Fascinating."
"--for children, mostly. It teaches them how important creativity is, and--"
"Is that where you learned how to whittle?" He was smirking, and his burning glare on her might have been making the pain in her shoulder worse.
"There's a lot of death in cartoons as well. You would think there wouldn't be, since they are for kids, but-- Bambi's mum, Simba's dad, Little Foot's mum, all those princesses parents--"
"Death is..."
She glanced back in questioning of his trail off, but he was looking at the ground. "It's a natural order of things, but it's very traumatizing to children. While it's something all people are exposed to, on a personal level, many times in their life, I think the world can wait a little longer before pushing it in a kid's face. It's hard enough when their goldfish dies."
"I doubt they would be traumatized by the end of an animated drawing."
"You have obviously not watched Bambi. I became sad every time my mum called my dad 'dear' for months after that." He was silent, and she realized he had no idea what she was talking about. "Bambi is a story about a deer--"
"Everyone is affected by death, children or not. It would be better to expose them to it early, so they could understand what it is. Not that it would help them accept it when they go through it themselves."
"I don't know if anyone could ever fully accept death. I mean, we have to, but... You know, every time I see George I expect to see Fred right behind him. And when I look at Teddy, I-- Well, death is never easy. It might be the absolute hardest thing. The people we love, our own. But it's what happens -- the balance of life and death. All things end. It's inevitable. But at least it makes us appreciate the time we have."
Malfoy stepped up his pace so he was walking beside her. "Would you live forever?"
"Wh-- Immortality?"
"No, putting your initials in rock." He shook his head just a little, looking up at the sky; his silent question of how was that not obvious?
"I would have to watch everyone I love die."
"If they could live forever too."
She bit her lip, easing her shoulders back to see if it would help the aching tension, but it only sent spasms of pain down her back. "I don't think... I don't know."
Both of them were quiet.
August 6; 2:09pm
"You should probably clean that."
Hermione had figured out a way to get the poultice on by using the sheet and some tricky body positioning, but cleaning the wounds on her back was a problem unsolved by her creativity. She had tried to pull a wet strip of the sheet over it and drag the ends back and forth, but she had just ended up bleeding and in pain.
"Does it look infected?" She turned her head to look at her back, as if she could just spin it around like a bad horror movie or her spine would rearrange so she could see. She caught herself doing the pouting-frown that people did when they were trying to look at something on their person, like their chin was a meter long so they had to attempt tucking it in. It was a ridiculous face, and she hated when she made it.
"No."
"Does it look better than it was?"
"Yes."
"So it looks okay?"
"A corpse torn apart by flesh eating bacteria would look better than it was." He had a tendency to exaggerate. Then again, she hadn't seen it.
The cloth she dipped in the small stream didn't make it a couple millimeters above the water before he snatched it out of her hand. "I--"
"I don't need you rubbing it raw again, and having to wait a day before you walk without whining."
"I was not whining!"
"Yes, you were. It was this high-pitched whine that was causing my eardrums about as much pain as your back was you."
She went to respond but jumped forward on a sharp inhale at the coldness of the cloth. She was prepared for it on the second wipe, and it felt good against her sore and heated skin. She dropped her head forward and shut her eyes, leaning back without meaning to into the third swipe. Malfoy's fingers pressed into her back, pushing her so she was hunched over again, and she muttered an apology.
His fingers stayed. Her brain narrowed down to that point of contact, three of his fingertips, the push of them against her skin. She could feel the heat radiating off his body and against her back, and when his fingers skipped to a different section before pushing in again, it wasn't the cold cloth that brought the goosebumps. Typical reaction for a featherlight touch, really - in fact, her mum could sit there all day while someone gave her chills, because she thought it was relaxing. But Hermione was not relaxed. Her spine felt stiff, and she was getting warm, and why was she focusing on his fingers so much?
She licked her lips and swallowed, her throat dry. Malfoy cleared his throat behind her and she wondered if he was also suffering from the sudden dry throat thing. A gust of dry air or something.
"I think I need some water."
"What?" His voice was a little raspy too.
"Some water. Do you want some water?" The cloth paused on her skin.
"No." He sounded a little confused. Maybe it was just her.
"Okay." He breathed a laugh, and the warmth of his exhale traveled across her damp skin. "What?"
He hummed as a response, which she didn't think was a decent response at all.
August 8; 9:12pm
Whenever Malfoy was really concentrating on something, his eyebrows would pull down and his nose would wrinkle just a little. She didn't know why he was concentrating so hard, but there must have been something in the state of his fingernails that he found perplexing.
"I had a dream last night." He ignored her. Well, he pretended to ignore her - she was pretty sure that he was always paying attention, even when he did that. "About you."
That got his attention. His eyebrows shot up as his eyes met hers. People were like that - they never wanted to hear about dreams unless they were in them. Sometimes people would lie and tell the person they were in it just to get them to listen - she once heard Ron tell the same dream to five different people, and alter it to include the person each time.
"You were wearing a codpiece." There was no reason she couldn't have a little fun with it, especially since it was a lie. If she had really dreamt about Malfoy wearing a codpiece, she wouldn't be telling him.
"...A codpiece?"
"Yes. It was shaped like a bird. A grey bird. And you were flapping your arms about, and trying to find out where you laid your eggs."
He was giving her the perplexed look now. "How big was it?"
"What?"
"The codpiece."
She sputtered. "What does that matter?"
"It--"
"It was very small."
"Really?"
"Yes. Very small. Pea-sized, even. I could hardly make it out. I had to use a pair of binoculars just to see that it was shaped like a bird. I was bird hunting, that's why I had the binoculars."
He looked down at his boots, and the perplexed look turned into amusement. "You were hunting for birds, while my...codpiece was shaped like a bird?"
Her eyes flew open wide, a tiny squeak in her throat as she realized the implication. She fought for words for a moment, a blush creeping up her face. "Well, I...I was hunting for eagles. And your codpiece was a...a deformed pigeon, really. Very... It's little beak was, was...very deformed."
He looked to be a second away from laughing at her. "A very beak-deformed pigeon codpiece?"
"Yes, exactly that. It's little beak was like--" She brought her fingers together to make a beak and then demented it. "And it's feet were...were just like this. And it's mouth was...like that, like it was trying to bite you. It was a very, very angry, deformed, tiny pigeon."
He stared at the ground, scratching his thumb over his eyebrow as he licked his lips, and then looked up at her, leaning forward. "Did you find some special mushrooms, Granger? Got a little hungry, ended up having some--"
"So, I ended up seeing an eagle, but it flew down and ate your eggs before you could find them. It was very sad. The dream ended very sadly."
He stared at her while she cleared her throat a couple times and stared at the pear and olives she was frying up. "I had a dream about you last night."
She looked up at him, hesitant about where he was going with this. "Yeah?"
"Mm. I dreamt I was forced to enter your mind. It was like those people who hoard things - just piles and piles of useless shit."
"Useless?"
"Things no one wanted to ever know about. It was stored in the Shit to Bother Draco With section."
"Oh, right, that one." She nodded and grinned.
"There were several portraits of deformed pigeons there as well. Very disturbing."
"A nightmare!"
"Exactly that. There was a corridor next to that marked Ways to Be a Swot, which branched off into How To Be Too Uptight - all you could hear was the echo of phantom memory-people as they cried."
"They really do bother me in there." She pulled her knees up, resting her chin on them as she watched him tell the story. He talked with his hands - it was the first time she had seen him do it.
He nodded, standing up before walking over to sit across the fire from her. "There was, of course, a very tiny room marked Sexuality. All I saw in there was a troll and a stick...face."
"Most definitely a face. And--"
"How To Lie Badly was directly next to it. The cobwebs in the Sense of Humor: Developing section were freaking me out, so I walked past How to Give Draco Nightmares, How to Destroy Draco's Life, the very, very small box marked Creative Insults..."
August 11; 3:02pm
Bah-doomp, buh-doomp, bah-doomp, she said in her head every time Malfoy's body went up and then down on their walk down the mountain. She hadn't realized she was saying it under her breath a few minutes before that until he gave her a look best reserved for pre-murder. He always seemed to blame her whenever things didn't work out - not finding anything in the cave or the ruins of a home the past few days must have been her fault.
"We should start thinking about how we're going to find the plant soon." The thing about walking downhill was that when you talked, you sounded like it. Her voice rose and fell like the weight of her head was bouncing off her vocal chords.
"And here I was under the assumption that was what we were doing - or has this just been a fun little holiday for you?"
"Yes, I love putting my life in constant danger, remember?" He muttered something that she was glad she didn't hear. "I meant we should think about how we're going to find it today."
He was frowning, his eyebrows drawn slightly together. She had to bite back a smile at his confusion, while he still managed to give her the condescending look. "Are you talking about wishing things into existence again?" But it really sounded like insult, insult, snide look, derogatory name.
"N-- Only sort of. It's like how people have lucky things. A rabbit's foot, socks, shoes, a...rock, whatever. Some thing they see as lucky, that good things have happened to them while they had it on their person. And it's not the object really, but the belief. Harry gave Ron--"
"I really don't give a shit about your heroic trio stories."
Rude.
August 12; 6:57pm
She really had to learn whatever trick Malfoy used to catch fish. She had thought she would be better once she had the hunting knife, but all she did was savagely stab a lot of mud and rocks. At least she didn't have to retie the quill onto the stick every time she did so, but she felt like she was a lot quicker with her spear anyway. One day she would rule the river. She would learn whatever small trick it was, and she would catch so many fish that they couldn't even eat them all.
"Do you mind if I borrow those?" This was at least the fifth time she had asked him, and he always stuffed the binoculars into his bag without answering her.
He was contemplating now, wiping the flecks of bark from his palms. She didn't know what he had been looking for up in the tree, but she was hoping it was the trail out of the mountains. She hated mountains - steep, high, easy falls to death. Malfoy walked over to her, holding the binoculars out as she bit into the last piece of her fish.
She was glad her plan of timing had worked. Malfoy had formed a new hobby of carving sticks - she didn't know what he whittled since he always turned his back towards her, but it seemed to ease his boredom a bit. She had tried it again herself, ignoring the innuendo behind his questioning, but she wasn't an artist. She wanted to read, and three shrunken books in her bag and a pair of binoculars told her the dream was in reach.
She had seen him picking up a few sticks on their walk that day, so she knew he was planning on butchering them with the angry strokes of his dagger. He would want her to leave him alone, and since he apparently didn't like for her to see his creations, it was the perfect time to offer a way to keep her busy. She took the binoculars from him with a wide grin and a rush of excitement.
August 13; 8:05pm
Malfoy was lost in thought, the blade making absent strokes across the stick with no real intention, as if he were trying to keep up appearances. She still noticed the repeated scraping noise enough to look up from her miniature book and see the look on his face. Sometimes, when he didn't think she was paying attention and they had settled for the night, his whole body would get tense with his thoughts. And, if she was looking at the right time, she would see his face turn into some sort of shock-devastation that reminded her of people after natural disasters, or when they lost everything.
And then she would realize that he had - or almost everything, at least. He probably still had his home, his money, and he had his parents, but she wondered what else he had going for him. He had the plant, or at least the hope of obtaining it, though she still hadn't figured out why. She didn't trust him with it. He must have wanted it for his own gain, though what he planned on gaining was a mystery. She didn't think he was going to try taking over the world or something, but she thought he might screw it up. That inadvertently he would mess up something really important, and send the whole world to shambles or something. The power of Floralis couldn't be trusted, not with many people.
Maybe if he told her...maybe she would give him a little leaf or something. Just for what the journey there had put them through, and in appreciation of the near death experiences they had both pulled the other back from. He would have to tell her first, though. She wondered if he wanted to go back in time and change something - or maybe go a thousand years into the future, decades after the last of the Malfoys was thought to have died, and no one knew his name. She thought he might try that one when he got that look on his face. Like he was thinking about the past, and like it still hurt to remember it.
She couldn't help watching when it happened. There was a time, not too long ago, when she would have been happy to see it. Now she was just...curious. Very, very curious.