Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter franchise, nor anything affiliated with it.
Hermione's POV
It may have been a week already, but I'm still ecstatic about the opportunity for us to publish the essay in a professional journal. I'm just a little bit worried about how it might turn out. Draco and I have been working tirelessly; Madam Pince actually had to wake us up in the library two nights ago because we fell asleep while writing it. I think she's a little worried about us since I found a bottle of sleeping draught and two small pillows at our table the next day.
Thankfully we haven't had any major assignment due recently. It's much more relaxed now than it was in November, though I guess we were teaching then on top of our studies.
I look over at Draco, his brow wrinkled in concentration as he's studying a particularly ancient looking scroll. He always looks so focused and I find all the little things he does funny and kind of cute to watch.
We're almost finished the essay now, just a few more supporting facts needed to back up our research and findings. Draco is looking those up while I'm looking over our draft and annotating it so that I can fully revise it with Draco once he's done tomorrow. We're both perfectionists so there are relatively few mistakes, however compared to our usual standard, there are a few major errors that probably happened due to our lack of sleep. One sentence in particular that I'm reading right now is quite messy and doesn't make any sense. Hopefully it wasn't too important because I might just remove it entirely.
"Hermione, do you have that book on Advanced Charms for Disorganized Professors lying around somewhere? I need to cross reference something in this scroll with it." Draco asks while stretching out his back.
He blinks a little as I pass him the book, appearing slightly confused.
"Draco are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah I'm fine." He says, nonchalantly. I give him a pointed looks and his expression turns a little sheepish.
"Are you sure?"
Replying quietly, he says, "My eyes are just a little blurry, nothing much. It won't get in the way of the essay though."
"Draco!" I admonish. "You should have said something earlier! Bookmark your pages and put down your quill, we're going for a walk." My tone is firm but worried. It's quite clear to both of us that I'm relenting until he does what I tell him to.
He hesitates for a moment and then reluctantly stands up. "Fine, alright. I guess I could use a break."
"Excellent, I kind of need a walk as well." This time it's his turn to smirk at me and judge me for my choices. "Oh bugger off! Come on, I know a nice route to the lake."
We headed out of the library and into the hallway, narrowly missing a loud group of first years arguing about who the most loyal professor is.
"McGonagall for sure." Says Draco.
"Hmm?"
"The most loyal professor. Definitely McGonagall. She's fairly loyal too all of the students, though she's more partial to all you Gryffindors."
"Draco Malfoy, did you just say that McGonagall is the most loyal professor? Perhaps I am rubbing off on you!" I say, and he smiles slyly.
"Well, if Snape was still alive I would have picked him because of my own impartialities. Besides, she is the Headmistress." He reasons.
"Still, I didn't think that you would pick her." We're just walking past an open section of the hallway and I can see that my spot near the lake is in fact still empty.
"Why?" He asks, curiosity etched across his face.
I try to find the words, but upon trying to rationalize my thinking I realize that I've let my biases colour judgement. "Sorry, I guess it's because I let the stereotype of you Slytherins being extremely biased and judgmental cause me to be exactly the same."
"Ah, well I don't blame you. Just like I have to get over more than a decade of Pureblood dogma, you have to deal with your own. It's not easy."
"No kidding." I reply.
I lead him past a few portraits and tapestries on the first floor eventually stopping in front of one of my favourites; a painting of a pixie flying to the moon, leaving a trail of gold dust behind her. She's wearing a delicate periwinkle dress, reaching up but being pulled down by a thin, silver rope, wrapped around her ankle. It's a beautiful painting and it's one that I was fascinated with when I first discovered it on the way to the library in my third year.
"Hermione, why have we stopped?" Draco stares at me, confused, looking around briefly to see if he's missed something. Something in my gut compels me to reach towards the painting. It's something I've never felt before.
"Reach your hand out to the moon." I tell him, while pulling my hair into a loose ponytail and casting a quick Bubble-Head charm on both of us. I may be curious, but I'm also prepared and who knows where this might lead.
"Why, and what did you just cast?"
"Just trust me Draco, come on, on three." I secure my wand in my purse again.
"One." He sighs and reaches his hand with mine.
"Two."
"This is silly, we could be done by-"
"Three." I finish, cutting him off. I push his hand towards the moon and to our surprise, our hands go through before we're sucked in.
We arrive with a pop, floating in a dark void. A soft light illuminates the void, but it's impossible to figure out where it's coming from.
"Hermione! Where are we?" Draco whispers harshly, his voice echoing in the space around us.
I can feel my hair floating out despite having tied it up before we ended up here. It feels so light and warm, but there's a soft breeze as well.
"I… I don't know." I say, my tone quiet and confused.
"Well why did we come here then?" He asks exasperatedly.
"I had a weird gut feeling that we should, I didn't really question it."
"Well that's just great, we still have to finish the essay and go over everything!"
"You did agree to go on a walk and take a break." I say sheepishly.
Draco face palms and sighs into his hands. "I assumed," a pause as he rubs his temples, "that we wouldn't be taking a walk through a painting!"
"I think it acted like a portkey. It's never happened to me before, this is new. Somehow I think that we've been transported into the painting, which is strange since the only thing that's the same between the painting and where we are now is this void."
"Hmm, you're probably ri-" Suddenly he trails off and looks at something behind me.
"What are you looking a-" I turn to see what he's looking at and I see what caught his attention. Just behind me is a small, golden, glowing orb. I reach out to touch it.
"Hermione wait, don't to-"
My finger connects with it and it bursts apart in a puff of luminescent gold sparks. I feel a cold gust of air as it breaks apart and suddenly it's no longer as warm as it was.
"Why is it so cold?" Asks Draco.
"I don't know, something about that doesn't seem right to me. Oh! Do you feel that? It's… wet!"
"You're right! It's also getting a lot harder to move, I feel more sluggish than earlier."
A wide, soft beam of light appears above us and I realize that it must be coming from the moon.
"Come on Draco, follow me up, we have to swim up to the surface." I grab his hand and pull him with me to the surface. It's getting colder by the second and I can feel it seeping into my bones.
The closer we get to the light, the harder it is to keep moving. I struggle to kick and pull myself up, my lungs begin to burn, and my head starts to pound. My single armed strokes become weaker and weaker and it feels like I'm no longer moving anywhere. In desperation I look back at Draco, his hand clasped tightly in my own. He looks at me with a sad expression and points to something thin wrapped around his ankle. A thin silver chain, like in the painting.
I gasp and somehow push myself down to his foot. I pull my wand out of my pocket and whisper a prayer before firing a carefully placed reducto at it. I'm not leaving him behind and I'm not letting this stop us from getting out of here. Something is off and we need to figure out what's going on. I need Draco alive for that.
The chain snaps and falls away in the water and regrasp Draco's hand. We lock eyes and kick off at the same time, reaching for the surface. The Bubble Head charm I placed on the two of us begin to disintegrate so we push even harder. I take one last gulp of air and I can tell we're almost there. With one final kick, we break through the surface and take big gulps of fresh air.
I look around frantically and manage to spot a far off island. We swim rather sluggishly to shore and drag ourselves up onto a rock beach. As soon as we're far enough from the lapping waters we collapse onto the ground, staring blankly up at the branches of the willow tree that covers most of the island.
A cluster of fireflies hovers over the lake, near where we crawled to shore, buzzing quietly. Just above the soft lapping of water against rock, I can hear the faint hooting of an owl. The leaves of the willow rustle a little from the cool breeze, contrasting with our shivering and ragged breathing. The smart voice in my head tells me that we should try to dry off so we don't get sick or get hypothermia, but right now I think we just need to catch our breath.
Finally I will myself to push up into a sitting position and steady my heart. I curl into a ball to try and conserve my body heat while I formulate some proper thoughts. A simple Hot-Air charm should do the trick for drying our clothes, but a fire would be good to warm us up a little.
I pull out my wand and give a complicated wave producing a stream of hot air, I point it at Draco and dry off his clothes. He startles and bolts upright, causing me to jerk my wand a little bit from shock.
"Hermione! You've brushed all my hair into my face!" He complains and I laugh despite our strange circumstances.
"Well at least you're dry now, and you're welcome." I reply primly, with a mock-serious expression. He glares at me instead.
I point my wand to myself and dry my own clothes off. Once I'm satisfied, I walk over to the base of the willow and find some relatively old branches.
I gather them in a small pile near Draco and ignite it with a quick Incendio, sending an orange fireball from the end of my wand. The twigs burn steadily and thankfully don't produce any smoke, but I gather a little more firewood so that we can keep it going overnight.
"I guess we're making camp here for the night?" Asks Draco as he walks over. His weary frame flops onto the edge of the grass near the fire, flames illuminating his silvery eyes.
"I think so." I pause a little to gather the courage to pose a question to him. "Did anything about this whole situation strike you as odd?" He barks a somewhat bitter laugh.
"Odd? You mean the part about us falling through a painting or the part where we ended up floating in a void? Or perhaps you mean the part where we almost got dragged to our deaths in the middle of the lake? I don't know Hermione! I'm too tired for this right now." He huffs and turns around, his back facing me.
I sigh quietly and walk a little bit away from our makeshift camp. I refuse to believe that all of this is my fault. I may have listened to my intuition despite what my brain told me was right, but I didn't know that this would happen. This may turn out to be something good for us, or it may turn out to be a disaster, but I don't think that this would have happened to us without a reason. Hogwarts has always held many secrets, but many of them are for the benefit of the students.
It doesn't matter right now anyway, sleep is important if I want to be able to think properly tomorrow. Draco was right in that sense at least.
A nearby fallen branch catches my attention; thick, leafy leaves cover it and look like they would make a somewhat comfy pillow. I pick a few thicker segments of it and carry it back to the fire to make a makeshift sleeping arrangement.
I toss a few thicker pieces of wood onto the fire and then settle down on my pile of willow branches. While looking up at the leaves above me, illuminated by our fire, I drift off to a dreamless sleep.
I wake up to the morning birds chirping and a crick in my neck. I look over and see that Draco has already left, he probably woke up fairly early and took a walk. The fire's died out overnight so I'll have to restart it if we want to make some breakfast.
The branches stick to my face as I sit up and I carefully peel them off. No doubt I have marks on my skin now because of it. I walk over to the water, which is surprisingly crystalline, and wash my face with the water. In my reflection I can see that my hair actually looks like a birds nest, my curls all frizzy and matted with leaves and twigs sticking out of it. Wonderful.
"Merlin's scraggly beard Hermione, what on Earth happened to you?" Asks Draco, humour colouring his voice, from behind me. I turn to face him with a glare and I can see that he's managed to catch a fish.
"Good morning to you too." I reply sourly.
"Well I managed to catch a fish, magically of course." Of course, we wouldn't want the precious pureblood to dirty his hands with a fish, I almost reply, but I bite it back just in time. I don't know where that thought came from, must be a little more crabby than I thought.
"If we start the fire going again, we can cook it and have it for breakfast." Draco nods in agreement and begins to set some branches up in the fire pit we made last night. Thankfully he hasn't noticed my topsy turvy mood.
I bring some more wood and he ignites the pile.
"Hermione, how are we going to prepare the fish? I don't think I know how to clean it and prepare it."
"I vaguely remember reading a book about hunting from last summer after the war. The instructions on how to gut a fish are a little fuzzy but I think I can figure it out. I don't suppose you have a knife? My purse didn't follow us through the painting, just my wand."
"It was the same for me. I think I know a precise cutting spell that could work, I learnt it while I was… while I was with the Death Eaters." I can sense his hesitation and the shame in his words.
"Draco, it's fine. Perhaps you were meant to learn it for such a time as this, one where we're trying to survive and have breakfast." He smiles a little at my joke. "I'll guide you through the process."
We settle around the fish and I think back to what I read. Carefully, I take him step by step through the gutting process. We only mess up one part. Unfortunately it resulted in fish guts being spewed all over us.
"Okay, perhaps give me the instructions a little slower this time." Draco says after he finishes cleaning himself of the smelly insides on his face.
"Sounds good." I reply, blushing a little.
We manage to have it all ready in about five minutes or so and I transfigure a large leaf into a makeshift tray to cook the fish in. We lay it over the fire and let it sear on both sides. Draco watches it while I find us a few herbs and fungi to season it with and make it into more of a substantial meal.
Once everything has finished cooking, we settle down near the water and eat our meal in silence. We wash our hands in the lake and I transfigure our trays back into leaves and tuck them into my pocket for later use, just in case.
"So where do you think we are?" I ask Draco when we've finished cleaning up.
"I have no idea, it seems reminiscent of the area that Hogwarts sits on, but just barely. There's something strange about it but I can't put my finger on it. Something about the magic in the air is just… strange." He stares out upon the lake as he explains his thoughts. It obviously frustrates him and I can understand what he means.
"Well perhaps this isn't real. Perhaps this is just a hidden pocket within our world. Or perhaps this is a figment of our imaginations."
"I don't think it's a dream though." Says Draco absentmindedly.
"What makes you say that?" I ask, looking right at him.
"If it was,'' he grins mischievously, "I wouldn't be able to do this!" and he splashes a wave of water at me. I let out a very undignified scream of shock as I'm soaked by some absolutely frigid water. I feel a little stupid with my mouth open in a silent scream, hopping around, and trying the wipe the water from my face like I'm doging cornish pixies.
Once I've got the water and my hair out of my face, I fumble for my wand and shoot a well placed Aguamenti at him, shoving him back a few paces towards the center of the island and the trunk of the huge willow.
"Woah, be careful Hermione, you almost messed up my hair!" He yells at me.
"Your hair?!" I shout back. "You want to complain about your hair?"
"I guess that's fair." He replies before sending me flying back into the lake with a jinx. I fire a jelly-legs jinx at him and he falls on his face, giving me a few moments to stand up again.
"Merlin I've missed this." I say as I walk over to him, my wand ready to shield myself if I need to.
"I totally agree." Says Draco as he flops onto his back. "However I think I'm too tired to keep this up much longer. Truce?" He reaches his hand up and I shake it only to be shocked with a small electrical jolt. I glare at him and his eyes soften in mock sympathy. "Revenge for the beginning of the year and the electrical outlet."
"That, my dear Draco, was entirely your fault." I flop onto the beach next to him and we lie under the shade of the tree. Though I wouldn't want to admit it, I'm a little tired too. Neither of us have been getting enough sleep.
We don't speak for a while, just listening to the sounds around us, quite similar to last night when we got here on this beach for the first time. As time passes, I become more aware of the sun moving through the sky and the day slipping by us. Something in the back of my mind, a voice tells me that we should be trying to find a way back to Hogwarts, that we still have work to finish, school to graduate, and friends to get back to.
As I mull over these thoughts, I hear Draco's breathing shift a little and become more even. Soon I realize that he's fallen asleep. I gently nudge him a little to wake up and he sits up to clear his mind.
"We really should be trying to find a way back." He says once he's rubbed his eyes a little.
"We should, perhaps if we explore the island a little or even go for a swim."
"Yeah in my dream just now, I was panicking because we managed to get back to Hogwarts but we were two years too late and I missed my valedictorian speech which I had been really excited and prepared for.
"Wait you're valedictorian this year? That's awesome!" I say. I think it'll be good for him.
"Yeah… I am…, aren't you valedictorian as well? That's what Professor Flitwick said anyway." He replies.
"You're kidding. Graduation is in three weeks Draco! I have three weeks to study for NEWTs, finish this essay with you, and write a speech for it? I'm dead, I'm so completely dead."
"Don't worry, I'm sure Potter would do a good funeral." I glare at him and punch his shoulder.
"Ow! Now I'm definitely awake." He exclaims before his eyes widen and he quickly hides his face with his hands. "And stay away from my face!"
"Why? Afraid that I'll break it again?" I reply with a smirk.
"Yes actually, I'd rather not look deformed when we eventually get back again."
"Fine, I'll wait till later then." He just pouts and edges further away from me.
We sit for a little more before my stomach growls a little.
"We should probably go find another fish we can eat for lunch." Says Draco. "We can go back to where I caught that fish earlier, it's just on the other side of the willow and a little bit into the lake."
He guides us over and we wade through the water, splitting up to cover more area. I spot a large fish a little further in and call Draco over so that we can catch it; I'm really hungry now.
"Draco! I found one here!" He doesn't respond and I turn to see him staring curiously at something in the water. "What are you looking at?"
He still doesn't respond and I walk over as carefully as possible. Once I'm closer, I can see a faintly glowing orb, similar to the gold orb I found last night. It flickers lightly, barely producing any light. Draco begins to reach out a hand towards it and I try to move faster and stop him. I'm almost there when he touches it and I jump and try to knock him away just as the same burst of air is expelled and I feel a familiar twist around my navel.
We arrive with a solid thud on the floor of the hallway with all of our bags. Thankfully no students or teachers are around, otherwise we would have looked rather odd sprawled on the floor and slightly wet. I check my watch, which is now on my wrist even though it didn't go through the painting earlier, and see that it's still the same day that we left, just a few hours later.
"Draco, it's only been a few hours, we can still go back and finish the essay if you want." I tell him as he rubs his head.
"Do we really want to do that though?" He whines.
"We just need to finish the last few bits so that we can proofread tomorrow and hand the essay in on Monday for Professor Flitwick to look over."
"Yes, but unlike you, I have to sift through a bunch of the books you picked to find more stuff to put into the essay. You get to just catch mistakes we've already made." Good point.
"We should still try and finish some tonight. Besides, Madam Pince is going to be closing up the library soon anyway." He sighs and I help pull him up to standing.
"Alright then, let's hurry up." So we trudge up to the library once again to get back to work, neither of us actually wanting to go, and both of us secretly wishing we could be back through the painting.
Author's Note: Again, sorry for the lack of updates. I think that I'm going to be publishing a one-shot or two-shot in the next two or three weeks as well so keep an eye out for that as well! Thank you all for your unwavering support! Please review and feel free to give me some feedback on this. I tried experimenting a bit with a fantasy theme with this chapter but I'm not sure how well I did. Looking back on everything that's happened so far, this story feels like just a bunch of experiments and crazy ideas loosely connected by one theme! However in the next one I'm planning I'll have a more cohesive and genre specific plot. Have a great week you guys, till next time!