Chapter 6: Trust-Me-Not
Draco did not know how long he ran. Once he had broken through the enchantments with the borrowed wand he ran without a second thought, passing houses and trees and feeling the wind rushing behind him. He ran until his muscles ached, and he stopped by a large glassy lake. There was a surrounding forest dappled with a chiaroscuro of starlight and shade. The brittle grass was still bravely poking through the freshly fallen snow. After the almost full year of imprisonment, the cold air felt wonderful flowing through his white fur.
He laid Luna down gently on the tall grass, then changed back into his human form. He pulled the wand out of his pocket and performed the spell that forced humans out of their Animagus state. The moonlight spilled upon her prone form, and the blood seeping from her arm turned silver. He wasn't sure what to do, he had never had an injury away from Hogwarts or home.
He dared not Enervate her, fearing for the pain she would be in upon awakening. He paced back and forth, trying to make up his mind. He had two options, as he could see it He could leave her here, and escape, bettering his own chances of survival and freedom, or he could stay and help the one person who had never betrayed him. After all, she had helped him, when they were alone in the Désespoir Room, but still, he did not entirely trust her. She was so odd, so unreadable that you could never tell for sure what she was thinking. She however, could read almost anyone. She had been right about him, even after the cruelty he had shown her on that first day of her imprisonment. He didn't want to be on the run alone, but he didn't want to be on the run with someone he couldn't understand even less with someone he couldn't trust. She was so strange…she saw things in a way no one else did, she believed in the most ludicrous things, no matter what anyone else said.
But he had trusted her to help him, and she had. But perhaps that was because she had been desperate to leave that godforsaken place. It's what he would have done anyway.
But not everybody's like you, Draco. A quiet voice whispered in his head.
This made him feel even more confused.
"I'll just have to wait it out, won't I?"
A sudden though flashed through his head.
Dittany. What did dittany look like? It wasn't likely to be growing in this lonely copse of trees. In desperation, he pulled out the wand and whispered, "Reparo." To his amazement, her arm snapped back into place with a sickening crack!
He felt it was now safe to wake her.
"Enervate."
Luna gasped, her eyes fluttering open. Seeing Draco's looming silhouette with his wand still pointed at her made her shrink back, attempting to crawl away from him.
"Luna it's me," he knelt down, whispering, "Lumos." His wand light illuminated her face as her expression as it changed from fear to realization.
"Oh." She smiled, relief in her face.
"Where are we?" she asked as he pulled her to her feet.
"I don't know, far away from Malfoy Manor anyway." He replied.
"Well that's good enough for me." she said, still smiling.
"Yeah, me too, though there isn't much to eat here, but there's a lake, so we have water."
He sat down on the protruding roots of a nearby oak tree, and looked up at Luna. She was looking at her arm, which looked a little crooked. The spell he used to mend her bones was crude, but it was all he could think of. She would probably have a scar, but that seemed a small price to pay. Being with her made him edgy and uncomfortable. He once again wondered if he could trust her.
He stood again, and strode over to the lake, and cupped his hands in its icy depths, bringing them to his mouth. Most of the water splashed onto his shirt soaking his already icy skin. Cursing under his breath, he pulled the shirt off and transformed into the wolf. He lapped at the water like a dog, his thick fur shielding him from the cold winter night.
The same could not be said for Luna, who, even in her Animagus form would not be much warmer. He could see that she was freezing by the way she hugged herself, her slim frame trembling. If their places had been reversed, he would have been miserable, though she looked quite the opposite, a lazy smile on her face, her large eyes fixed on the moon overhead. He felt a pang of sympathy for her, and he padded over to her through the light cover of snow.
He nosed her leg and gave a jerk of his head that indicated he wished her to follow him. He lay down on the snow, and she seemed to understand. She lay down beside him, and he placed his huge paw over her. She leaned into his warmth, and after a matter of minutes, her breathing slowed, and he knew she was asleep. The wolf's eyes too were closing rapidly, and the last thing he thought before he drifted off to sleep was how nice it felt to have Luna beside him as he slept.
