Author's note: yawns It's four thirty in the morning. My third chapter today. Well, today. One might call this tomorrow. Fanfic is baaaaad for me... In six hours I have to be off again... :s. Well, anyway, enough complaining. Our friends start their quest in this chapter but horse riding turns out to be more difficult than they were expecting... Tension between the three of them is growing. Some feedback on what I've produced today would be appreciated. Well, I'm off to bed.

- Chapter 6 -

The next morning, Hermione was awoken by two large blue eyes which peered through a slit in the fabric of the four-poster. As soon as Hermione had opened her eyes, the girl which had tried to take off her dress the day before nervously started to make excuses again.

"My Lady, I am sorry to wake you, really sorry, but it is requested that you prepare yourself for leaving," said her quivering voice.

"Okay, okay, that's fine," Hermione tried to say as nice as she could, but this changed nothing in the expression of the girl. Hermione didn't expect that things would ever go normal between them. She was glad to be leaving today. The girl took away one of curtains of the four-poster so that Hermione could get out and Hermione yawned.

"Rise and shine!" Fred said. "You've slept all through our lunch." It had seemed like a lot longer to Hermione. Apparently the time outside the book was not always the same as that inside the book. Hermione got out of bed and assembled the various parts of her dress, with which she wrestled for a while behind the curtains of her four-poster till she had them on again. Bit too smart for adventuring, perhaps, she thought as she went down the stairs. Well, Fred and George had ruined the skirt with their coffee anyway. When she arrived downstairs, she sat down at the dining table and the King and Queen greeted her and she wished them a good morning. She was not looking forward to the moment when Ron would come down and she spent a few minutes fumbling with a piece of bread without taking any real bites. Finally she heard the voices and footsteps of the two boys coming down the stairs. The talking died down a few feet behind her. Hermione took a deep breath and turned around.

"I'm sorry," Ron and Hermione said simultaneously to each other.

"You're sorry?" echoed the twins. "For what?" Fred asked eagerly, but no one answered him.

Ron and Hermione didn't really dare to look each other in the face. Ron did seem to be red more often than his usual pale self lately, Hermione thought. Ron looked away quickly and took the chair where Harry had sat the day before, one chair away from Hermione. Harry settled himself in between them. He tried to make conversation, but Hermione and Ron both were suddenly very busy eating breakfast. The King and Queen looked at them enquiringly, but all three of them pretended they didn't see. After a while, the King decided that it was time for them to go.

"The sun has risen. It is time for you to set out on your quest," he said. He looked grave. All of them got up. In front of the drawbridge stood two grey horses and a white one, complete with saddles and reins decorated with white flowers, which apparently were the symbol for the House of Woldshire. The boys had been clad in heavy armour with similar decorations and both had a sword (Hermione didn't feel very comfortable about the fact that she hadn't been given any form of protection). The horses had full saddlebags too, probably filled with food. They were well prepared for a long journey.

"I can't ride a horse!" Ron whispered.

"Neither can I," Harry whispered back at him. The one time he had ridden a pony on a fair hadn't been a success, though that might have had something to do with Dudley constantly poking the beast. Hermione just looked up to the large beasts fearfully. She had never been one of those horse riding-girls.

The King and Queen stood beside each other, arm in arm.

"I give you my blessing, my sons. Fight with honour. Return to me with your sister," the King said to Ron and Harry. "Take care of my sons as though they were your own brothers, my Lady" he said to Hermione. She nodded.

"I shall pray for you," the Queen said.

"Farewell, my King and Queen," Hermione felt herself say and her body kneeled with her head bowed. The boys bade farewell to their fictional parents as well and the King and Queen said goodbye to them all. The situation felt very solemn.

Now it was time for them to mount their horses. Ron tried to do it with a certain dignity, being the oldest son after all, but soon noticed that a horse was very different from a broomstick. He watched Harry, who did seem to know what the general idea was. He saw Harry put a foot in one of the stirrups, dragging himself up by the saddle and swaying his other leg over to the other side of the horse (apparently the ride on the pony had paid off). It didn't look all that elegant, but Ron couldn't think of another way to do it, so he settled for this one. He stood at the left side of his white horse and put his left foot in the stirrup. He pulled himself up, luckily he did have some strength in his arms, but ended up on facing the bottom of the horse instead of its head. He decided it was best not to look at the King and Queen at this point. After a lot of wriggling, which made the horse move around very restlessly, he finally sat right. All this messing around in plate mail was making him feel very hot and he wiped his forehead. He looked at Harry, who seemed to be having fun examining his sword and armour ('and we all know, the bigger the sword, the smaller the…' Ron thought and he grinned). Behind Harry, Hermione was still standing beside her horse, looking rather hopeless. They were probably looking like real geeks, Ron thought. Finally a maid shot forward to help Hermione.

"How do I get up?" Hermione whispered to the girl. "The saddle is all weird. I can't get my leg to the other side."

"Oh, but my Lady, you mustn't put your leg on the other side," the girl said and then the girl whispered to Hermione in confidential tones: "It is not fit for a Lady to spread her legs."

"But then how can I ever-" Hermione started, but then she decided there wasn't really anything she could do and she allowed herself to be settled astride on her horse. As if horse riding wasn't difficult enough without having to be afraid of losing your balance all the time.

"I suppose we should be going," Harry said, with a rather sadistic smile at Hermione.

Hermione did her best at ignoring him and gave her horse a small kick in the side to get it moving. That's what she'd always seen the other girls do. And it worked. Of the three horses, hers was de first to move off. Soon Harry and Ron imitated her and came after her. The horses proceeded in an elegant trot and though all three of them found riding on horses rather more bumpy than they had expected, they didn't fall down. When they reached the edge of the forest, they looked over their shoulder and saw the royal couple give them a last nod, after which they went back towards the caste, over the drawbridge.

"So, just the three of us now," Ron said contently. "This horse riding is not very comfortable or fast, but it's better than walking anyway." Hermione just grumbled.

After riding amidst the trees for a while, they saw a broad path of mud, which winded along a river. The horses liked this path much better than walking in the grass whilst having to evade trees, and they had noticed from the moment their riders had tried to mount them, that they themselves were the ones in control. So as soon as their hooves hit the mud, their trot turned into a wild gallop. Hermione screamed and the boys turned very white and flung their arms around the necks of their horses to have some grip. Hermione tried this too, but because her legs were only on one side of the horse she kept sliding down further with every stride of the horse.

"Stop! STOP!" she screamed, but of course it was no use. The muscles in her arms, which were clutched around the horses neck, tensed up. Mud spattered on her dress and in her face. "Ron! Harry! Make it stop!" she yelled out hopelessly. Her arms grew more and more painful and eventually she couldn't hold on anymore and she fell of the horse. It wasn't a long way down anymore as she had almost slid down as low as the ground, but the horse was going very fast and she fell on left leg and after that she fell face down in the mud. Moaning with pain, she grabbed her leg, which felt as though it had been slit open with a knife and bent much too far at the ankle. Hermione got her face out of the mud and saw how her red blood mingled with the brown mud. After that she looked at the path, and saw how her horse was running off. Harry and Ron's horses were still doing the same, but she saw how the boys were pulling the reins very hard, and indeed after a while, their two horses slowed down and the boys managed to make them turn around and steer them back to Hermione.

At last the hoofs stopped and Ron and Harry jumped of their horses and ran towards Hermione with the reins in their hands.

"Are you all right?" Harry asked, panting.

"Yes," Hermione answered, her voice feeble, "but my leg…" She moved her leg in front of her with her hands and rolled up a piece of her skirt, which was now coloured a bright red and was torn in several places. Her lower leg was revealed, with large cuts across it with little stones in them, probably caused by the stones of the riverbank which lay at the side of the path. Ron turned white at the sight of the wounds and decided to keep himself busy with attaching the reins to a tree for a moment. Harry kneeled beside Hermione and laid his hands on her leg.

"Do you think something's broken?" he asked her, searching along her leg.

"Not the leg," Hermione said. Though it felt like small knives were puncturing the skin every moment, the bone felt intact. "But my ankle, it feels like it's been twisted in a wrong direction. Can one break an ankle? Or do you think it's sprained or something?" she asked.

"I don't know…" Harry said. "Shall we try to take your boot off?" He started untying the laces. The ankle felt very hot and much too big to fit into that boot. Carefully, Harry made the boot as wide as possible and shove it down the foot and ankle slowly. The ankle was red and much broader than it was supposed to be, but it wasn't in an unnatural angle.

"I don't think it's broken. Still, it looks nasty. We need to put it in splints. And we need bandage for those wounds. I'll go and look what we've got with us in those saddlebags, all right?" Harry asked Hermione.

"Yes," Hermione answered him. He would make a perfect doctor, she thought. He was so calm. It reassured her.

Then Ron came up to her. He had fastened the reins of the horses with a triple knot, so he couldn't put off coming any longer. He looked to be on the verge off throwing up at the sight of all the blood, and of course especially at the sight of Hermione's blood, but sat down next to her and took off the top piece of his armour and then one of the layers of clothing he was wearing underneath it. He folded it carefully. He seemed to want to put it under Hermione's leg and reached out with his arms, but recoiled when he almost touched her leg. The images of the night before came back to both of them and Hermione was a bit flustered but she appreciated the gesture.

"It's all right," she said softly, and Ron looked up at her with fearful eyes and then lifted her leg with care and laid the fabric under it so that it wasn't lying in the mud anymore. Hermione and Ron gave each other a weak smile and then Harry returned, slightly grinning at the sight of the two, but with a weird unpleasant feeling in his lower stomach as well.

"We'll have to improvise," he said, regaining himself. Solving things was a lot simpler than all these feelings. "I found this," he held up a white cloth, "we can use it as a bandage. But the stones will have to go out of the wounds first. We can't really disinfect the wounds, but keeping the stones inside them is asking for trouble. And about the splint… The best we can do for a splint is using some twigs, but I doubt whether that will be useful. We can wrap the ankle in slivers of the cloth." And so the two boys sat down on either side of her leg and started taking out the stones. It probably wasn't much fun for the boys, as they sat there, working in silence. Hermione's leg prickled badly. She also felt very awkward, her skirt up like that and the two boys working on her leg. She looked from the blue eyes under the red hair to the startling green ones behind the round spectacles. It was a weird situation she had landed in. Stuck with her two best friends in the wilderness. A tickling sensation in her stomach as she sat there, indicated that she couldn't even be that sure of simple friendship anymore. She tried to think of something else and looked around the scenery. She sat halfway between the mud path and the river, which flowed wildly over grey stones which glistened in the sunlight. Next to the path stood trees with broad dark stems which split into small branches laden with pale green leaves. On one of the branches sat a violently red bird with a beak which seemed to be made of gold and dark circles around its gleaming eyes. It stared at her intently.

"We're done," Harry said. He tore a piece of the cloth and wound it around her leg. He tugged the ends under the cloth that was tight around the leg. "Let's hope this will hold…" he said unsurely.

After that, Harry and Ron tore what was left of the cloth into slivers and bound it around her ankle. "This will have to do," Harry said.

"Thanks a lot, guys," Hermione said, smiling feebly at both of them. "But I don't think that I can continue yet… and my horse is gone," she said, sounding kind of apologetic.

"Don't you worry about that. One of us will take you. If you dare to go on a horse with us, that is," Harry said with a smile. "Now we'll rest for a bit. But not in this pool of mud." Ron was clearly taller and stronger than Harry, and so, a bit shy, he placed one arm behind Hermione's back and his other under her knees and carried her to the other side of the path and settled her on the grass, with her back against a tree trunk. For a while, they sat there, drinking some water of the river in silence. Harry and Ron had just started preparing themselves for leaving again, when a brown horse sped past them at great speed, ridden by a cloaked figure and with riding gear decorated with white flowers, so it was a royal horse. The red bird flew after it and both the animals soon disappeared, as they followed the path when it turned right some hundred yards away.
"Pfah," Ron said moodily, "people who can ride horses properly." He cast a jealous look in the direction of the bend of the path.

"It's about time we started riding again as well, Ron," Harry said. "Do you think you'll be able to do so, Hermione?"

She doubted it, but consented anyway. They couldn't hang around here forever.

"Which horse do you want to ride, Ron's or mine?" Harry asked her.

"I don't care," Hermione said. She didn't want to reject either one of them.

Harry looked in doubt for a moment. "I'll… I'll just lift you on Ron's horse then. Is that fine with you Ron?" Ron nodded and got on his horse, this time facing the right way at once. Harry lifted Hermione up with his hands at her waist and Ron held her under her arms. After a lot of lugging and banging her leg painfully against the horses belly, Hermione sat in front of Ron. She was feeling very hot. Things were turning very intimate all of the sudden, no matter how much fun it was to have two men drudging around for her. She was glad when Harry had mounted his horse as well and they rode off again, this time with the horses under control. Hermione suddenly realised that apparently they could get hurt inside this story and that took away all the warmth in her at once. They would have to be more careful, much more careful. She didn't want to think about what was waiting for them at the end of this muddy path. Well, no matter what would happen, she would at least be with Ron. And Harry.