Chapter 4
After completing his ominous statement, Draco stumbled forward as if the weight of his body was too heavy to hold upright. She reached for him and he fell into her arms before slipping down the front of her shirt like an anvil. She held up his forearms while the rest of him sank downward like bench holding a heavy weight directly in its middle-sagging sadly before snapping in two.
He rested this way for a moment before using her body to hoist himself back up. He used her shoulder to steady himself. He looked down at her with rainclouds cluttering his delicate face. His skin was haggard and rough as if he hadn't tended to his complexion in years. The unkempt shingle of hair that swatted at his brow was clearly so out of place that she felt sharp pains in her belly. The Malfoy she'd known since childhood would never allow such roughness of manner to betray his countenance. Part of her wanted to clean him. Her eartips burned at the thought.
"That's a fine greeting," she blew out as if trying to find her breath.
He turned his face away. He was walking aimlessly on calf legged feet and she feared he might fall over again. It was like watching a small child stumbling about without care and it made her stomach pang again.
"They'll know that something is wrong," he whispered just as her first words to him seemed to stain the air above them with no following words to join them. She did not have to ask who. The Indriks had trapped him here and they would feel the shift. "I can't stay here".
She began to protest but he began to wobble off in the direction that she'd originally come from. "Where are you going?"
He did not reply. She caught up him to easily. "I can't believe you." He looked at her with a furrowed brow.
"Well actually I can, I suppose" she said and the line between his brow smoothed. He knew what she thought of him.
"I can't stay in this place. I must get to town. I don't know or care about your business here."
Hermione felt her mental feathers begin to ruffle. The gall of this man would never be something she could get used to. Her rational mind told her that she had to respect him. He did not know what dark depths she'd swam in to find him. And making other people's business his affair was not the Draco Malfoy way but she didn't have to like it. She did, however, know how to speak his mother tongue.
"I've come to help you. My spell will wear off and you'll be a howling wolf again. You need me. And I demand answers." Hermione's hands were at her hips with her feet planted firmly on the ground. She tamped down a smirk.
He stopped his sad trot and waited for her to explain. "I used a rather experimental spell to revive you. Surely you remember what you were like just a few hours ago?"
Malfoy clenched his jaw like a frightened child scrambling to hold on to his mother's hand as she abandons him with unknown relatives. "I'm not sure how you can pretend I didn't just save you from whatever torture you were under." Hermione could not relent. If she showed any weakness, he would strike like the snake he was.
He didn't respond directly and the heavy lines around his gaunt eyes deepened. He rubbed at his throat with something like terror. The memories of his previous state coming back to him like a flash flood. He dropped to his knees again and his tattered robes fluttered to the ground like dancing crows snipping at carrion.
Hermione clenched her teeth as she watched his body bend too far forward and his face crumple like a white, used sheets. He was delicate in his grief and contrition. He reminded her of wadded up tissue paper that could never be smooth again- making reuse impossible. She was not sure if her words had been too blunt and wondered if his previous bravado was a performance of strength rather than a display of inherent togetherness. Perhaps she'd cut too close to the bone too early on and he'd broken with just the whisper of her tongue.
His despair radiated off him like a sailor's song- crashing indeterminately against the waves of his choppy mind. She knew that she ought not disturb him as his feelings slapped against the shore of his frail body and yet the unchanging light of day was growing more livid in her mind. They were exposed in this clearing and the sounds of nothingness were buzzing in her ears like grinning bees ready to attack. The darkness of the scrunched forest welcomed her with its sheath of obscurity.
"You were right. We must keep moving." She pushed the words through her open mouth like a stalled car in mud. He did not move for several moments but eventually made himself stand.
"And we will be staying together," she continued as he began trudging his body forward. He did not look at her and could not see the way her feet planted firmly in the grass. She heard his abrupt snort and knew that she had won.
Malfoy took up walking into the trees and ignored the questions dribbling from Hermione's mouth. He loped through underbrush, branches and impacted leaf colonies with the unsteady gait of an injured hippogriff. She stumbled after him in much the same manner ducking under low hanging branches and placing a steadying hand on tree trunks as he passed by. They were both unused to extensive hiking and made slow travel, yet Malfoy continued to push forward with razor thin perseverance.
The trip started to become unbearable as her legs brittled from exhaustion, her lack of sleep began a strong thumping in her head and her mouth filled with undue saliva. She could not say for sure but she knew she'd been awake for over 24 hours and could not go on. Gasping, Hermione called out to him. He did not respond and continued to hike with even more broken speed. Hermione, frantic at being left behind in this unforgiving terrain, rushed to follow him and promptly slipped on a thin pile of leaves and wet grass.
The forest had never felt so thick with hatred as when Hermione heard his footfalls pause several paces away and then resume a moment later unbroken. She did not bother rousing from her earthen bed on the forest floor. Her back was on fire from her unbroken fall straight to the ground and her body could not continue. Sleep dragged at her eyelids as her splayed limbs lay bruised on the ground- looking like marionette appendages that had been casually cast into a dim corner.
Hermione was quaffling between wakefulness and sleep as the feel of manmade heat nibbled at her skin. She began smelling burning vegetation- smokey and sweet and instantly felt safe. She opened her eyes and sat up slowly on her elbows. Malfoy was huddled far from her on the other side of a small campfire. The flames shadowed his face in a warm light as he stared at her through narrow eyes.
"I left you and did not intend to return," his voice was a dying cat blindly slashing at a good Samaritan's open palms. Hermione did not speak.
"I reached the edge of town when I realized I could not have another sin on my counter. I wasted two days coming back for you." His jaw was tight and he forced the words through bared teeth. She imagined wildly that that would be how a sentient skeleton would talk-through a locked, immobile jaw (that is to say if a skeleton had a mind to discuss something).
"You wasted two days because of yourself," she said evenly. The muscles in his neck spasmed ferociously but he did not argue. And despite the numerous questions tingling in her mind, she instead chose to ask, "How do you know it took two days? There is no sun and moon to tell time by."
"I am buried to this place. I know it." Hermione wondered if he meant to say "married to this place". The turn of phrase was so odd but Draco Malfoy was not the type to make undue grammatical mistakes. If he said it, he meant it.
She moved to question him, but he harshly cut her off. "You are a trespasser. You cannot feel the pulls and tides of this world as I can. You should not have come."
"Your scheming mother has wrapped me in this mystery whether I like it or not."
"Mother," he whispered as though the sound of her name was a gift he did not deserve. He wandered in his thoughts for a moment as though searching for something before looking at her with wide eyes. A change in the tumultuous energy surrounding him came swiftly as though, in the middle of his personal rainstorm, a strong hand had been thrust out to pull him to dry land.
"You've had an epiphany," she accused.
He did not look at her. He was looking over her shoulder to the forest beyond. He pushed himself up with some of the old starkness that struck her in school. He was an island surrounded by raging waters. "Let's continue. You appear recovered."
"Answer my question." She pushed herself up to stand in front of him.
"I will not say it again. I am going on. What you choose to do is your affair now that I've assured your safety. I am absolved."
"Hardly! If this is all some penance or hellscape, you don't decide when you've been absolved. I do! I and I do not forgive you." She slashed her hands through the air wildly cutting through it like stale bread.
As if summoned, a great beast of mountain and air dryed moss and sickly tendrils galloped viciously through the underbrush. The land bent and melted out of the way of the beast's iron clad hooves. It crossed the distance at an immeasurable speed as the world tilted and folded upon itself as the beast approached. Hermione felt her body and soul collapsing and folding like thin origami paper as the atmosphere neatly stacked itself away as if afraid to be called untidy.
She looked at Draco, who was arrested in fear as his body peeled unnaturally like citrus skin yielding back to reveal succulent fruit. She knew without asking that her body was doing the same. WIthout time to tell her, she could not say how long it took for the great beast to shovel through reality to reach them but upon his close arrival, the world snapped back in place like two magnets embracing powerfully. Time and space had restitched itself and yet Hermione's body still felt as if it were about to slither apart.
The beasts mighty antlers knifed through Malfoy's chest without preamble. The animal did not linger. It jerked its appendages out Malfoy's gurgling body as if shaking off pesky flies. Hermione knew she was not screaming. Her throat still felt primly folded like the legs of a debutante. And yet, the eyes of the animal, swirling masses without form or pattern, locked on her face. She attempted to back away but was unable to move. It's unblinking stare locked her in place. Soft puffs of smoke or mist, she could not say, steamed out from its flaring nostrils. It appraised her with clinical professionalism as though examining a patient. It huffed its white smoke directly into her face and nose. Coughing, she watched as it turned its eyes forward and charged through the forest like avenging angel.
"A formal bargain has not been struck." Malfoy coughed out as he clutched his chest. The liquid burbling out was a putrid green and it smelled like a tar pit covering all manner of bones, bubbling flesh and hidden things. He stared at the strange liquid gushing from his body with queasy recognition. "But you have been marked as an absolver amongst other things."
"Forgive me," he ground out as though fighting to remain controlled. He threw out his hand and she wobbled over to grab it before he recoiled it back towards his face as if of its own volition. She remembered that set of face and posture and was barely surprised when his lips broke apart and the otherworldly wailing began again.
Hermione was loathe to repeat the doctored spell she had created. It had appeared to work well before, bringing back the old, unpleasant man she recognized but there was no guarantee of its long term effects or if such a spell could be safely administered twice in such short order. Guilt flowered in her chest as she accepted that she had essentially experimented on him without consent. She tried to rationalize her actions but found the mental fortitude needed was too great.
She lingered on his final plea before descending into fevered madness. He had wanted her forgiveness. Prior to the Indrik's approach, she had staunchly refused to accept his previous, half-hearted apology. Hermione did not work in coincidences. The connection seemed clear. She took a deep breath and tried to quiet the fears in her mind. The encounter with the beast still scraping at her memories like a claw.
She knelt in front of his statue like body grasping at his hand covered face (that she had to admit reminded her too much of Edward Munich's "The Scream" for comfort). Hermione glared into his eyes praying for luck and whispered, "I absolve you of blame."
As if shaking off a sudden chill, Draco Malfoy came back to himself. His hands trailed down the planes of his face before landing at his sides. His screams ebbed away like a gentle tide and the blades in his unseeing eyes widened to take in more light. He was alert.
Malfoy's lips were an impenetrable drawbridge that would not yield. His face a fortress of spikes and poisoned pen needles. Hermione's breath came out in thin, white sheets like wisps of party streamers left up days after the partygoers had gone, leaving behind the wrecked remains of a festive spirit. Something stringy, sticky and ill-defined sloped between her mouth and his pale face. She waited. He stared at her. Finally, he stood and yanked her up with him by hoisting her by the arm.
He immediately dropped his hand from her body and turned back towards his original direction but with a slower, practiced gait of a man used to walking with shorter women. He did not turn around and yet Hermione felt the sticky, gooey tether connecting her soul to his. Onward they loped into the unknown with a target on their backs.
"Where are we going? What was that back there?" she asked after a what she deemed an appropriate allotment of silent reflection. They had been walking along the forest floor for an indeterminate period of time and she saw nothing to ease her fears.
"I knew your general curiosity would come bursting out sooner or later" came the bored drawl that only a man of particular means could possibly make.
"Well if you knew, why didn't you anticipate my needs?" Hermione had intended to say "anticipate my question". Freudian slips and all that.
Never one to pass up an easy remark, Malfoy sneered at her. "I didn't realize your comfort was one of my primary concerns."
Unable to contain herself, she replied with a haughty huff, "Consideration for one's travelling partner is a generally accepted expectation in polite society".
Malfoy stopped abruptly and began gesturing around them slowly as if demonstrating a simple concept to a particularly tired toddler. "This is not England. This may not even be earth. There is no "polite society". We are well and truly on our own here and I for one am not concerned with niceties."
Her tired eyes watered as she yawned and glared at him."It isn't niceties. As you said we are here together."
"My survival is my top priority"
"Ever the selfish one."
"You don't know the half."
"No I don't. You won't tell me," she shot back.
Glares abounded between the odd couple. Hermione sighed and rubbed angrily at her tired eyes. She was an instructor about to deliver ego-crushing marks to her 3rd years.
"We have to share information if we want to survive. Or whatever it is we are attempting to do."
"I don't have to like the idea." He hissed.
"You can be assured that I have even less fondness for the endeavor as a whole. Your mother has tied me up like a sacrificial lamb for the duration of this whole project."
He looked downcast for a moment and she committed the look to memory. "Yes, for that, I can only offer my most truthful apology. I never dreamt of the lengths she would go to for a speck of hope on my behalf."
Hermione's eyes popped open in surprise.
"What?" he asked gruffly.
"Of all the moments I expected us to have, an apology never entered my thoughts."
"Don't make this a moment Granger."
"Too late. We might actually get on afterall".
"Marvelous," Malfoy drawled sarcastically.
They stopped between tree trunk number 11000 and presumably 111142 or so Hermione assumed. His brow was elegantly dabbed with a light sheen of perspiration from the quick pace he'd set. She knew that her own skin was damp in the most unattractive manner but decided comparing herself to a modern aristocrat wasn't fair for anyone.
She wondered if he intended to stop and set up camp although she had no idea how close they were to whatever destination he had in mind. Right now, she didn't care. She was panting and desperately wanted a lie down in front of a spectacular flame strong enough to burn away her fears.
Without directly inquiring, which she reserved for when she was truly curious or bored enough to start a small row, she'd deduced that Malfoy did not have a wand nor could he do any wandless magic. His body, when in school, hummed with confidence and the self assuredness of a child who knew of his own significance and raw ability. As a man, he carried himself hawkishly as though on the lookout for interlopers, those who would see through his facade and realize his magical impotence. Heaven help any person who sought out his secret. The rapid savagery of his self protection would tear them apart.
"I could start a fire if you intend to camp here?' her statement turned into a question at the last minute and she grimaced.
"It's hardly cold and we don't need fire to see by. The sky never changes. I created the other one in hopes of waking you. It took bloody forever."
"I'd like the opportunity to pretend we're camping if that's alright with you. I haven't slept in days and I'd like a bit of ambience."
"I had no idea you were the type Granger"
"I refuse to unpack that statement. I think I'll transfigure a tent for us."
"Only one?"
"I don't entirely trust you not to run if left to your own devices."
He laughed without a pleasing note in his voice. "I had expected that trust would be a thing of the past for you after all of your time in the wizarding world." Hermione bristled at the dig about her parentage. She was as much a part of this world as he was!
"Oh come off it Granger. I didn't mean it that way." He sighed tiredly when he saw her face. "I only meant that our world is full of wonder and possibility and yet it has a sinister sister face that only a deep dive can see. I expected that a swot like you would have seen straight through our fantastical facade to our decadent depravity"
"Please continue. I'd love to hear this coming from a Sacred 28." Hermione could never admit she had no idea what he was on about but hoped that she'd catch up the longer he spoke.
"I never pegged you for an elitist but I guess we all have changed since grade school." He rubbed his face as if it would help him explain himself.
"This is how it is. We use our powers as if they are god given rights. We use them for our own gain at our own mercy in the most self serving ways possible. I'm not immune to the world at large. Our gifts could solve world hunger, end depravity against children, help humanity reach the nearest planet if we put a few brilliant wizards together. And yet we hide when it's convenient and allow the earth we live on to deteriorate with each passing day. There's not going to be a lot of potion making happening in a wad of greenhouse gas. So no, I wouldn't trust one wizard in this world. Not if I were you. I assume that's what got you stuck with me in the first place."
Hermione's heart stuttered in her chest. She attempted to formulate a response as he stared directly into her face for the first time. He clenched his jaw and angled himself towards a small clearing. He gestured towards it haughtly.
"What?" she snapped with red cheeks.
"Amaze me with your perfect spellwork. I'm ready for a lie-down and would love a bed if that isn't too much trouble," his voice simmered with disdain. Hermione bit the inside of her cheek to keep from responding in kind.
Hours passed silently as the pair laid in opposite directions in their one room tent. Hermione had transfigured broken branches into sleeping bags that were much too scratchy and smelled faintly of rotted wood.
"Granger," Draco suddenly sneered. "This is without a doubt, the most uncomfortable and smelly material I have ever experienced."
"I apologize that your pampered arse isn't getting 1000 count Egyptian sheets" she hissed. Her cheeks flamed as spoke and she was glad they were back to back.
"Smartest witch of our age," he whispered fiercely.
A/N I want to thank all of you who are supporting this story. It means so much to me! Please continue to let me know your thoughts on the story (even the snarky anonymous reviewers are hilarious!). I hope you all enjoyed the DHr interactions. Now that they are together, they'll have many more chances to get to know one another. Please settle in for a medium-ish length story where our characters take their time learning to trust one another. I don't think anything else would be believable.
Also I apologize for the long absence. My Thanksgiving-New Years eve time period was crazy! I traveled to D.C., Montreal, did some photo-shoots, multiple holiday and work parties, and still worked my regular education job. It's been chaotic to say the least.
