Chapter Six
Hermione couldn't help but stare at the surrounding landscape. It was so beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that she'd already bumped into Ron three times because she wasn't paying attention to where she was going.
She had never been one to appreciate the beauty of nature, actually she'd never really been one to appreciate beauty at all. Now she could understand why people would stare at paintings of landscapes while she had always preferred reading the artists biography to really care about the color scheme the painter used or the balance he had achieved between the hills and the trees in his painting. But this, this felt like she were actually in one of those paintings. The lush green grass under her feet practically sprang back up after she stepped on it. The sky was a darker blue than she'd ever seen before, and yet still light and cheerful. The mountains in the distance were exquisitely framed by clouds around their peaks and sprawling forests at their bases. Sadly, not too long after they had exited the cave they had lost sight of the most beautiful ocean she had ever seen in her life. The cave had surfaced on a cliff surrounded on three sides by the ocean. In the other direction had been sprawling plains that eventually would give way to the forest in one direction and even a desert in the opposite direction that, oddly, had seemed more yielding to her than a regular desert. It had been practically calling her. But Hermione thought with her head, unlike Ron and Harry who would follow their intuitions without even researching them first, so she had agreed with the others to head for the forest where they could find shelter.
She hoped Harry wasn't too worried about them. The last thing he needed after Sirius' death was his best friends going missing. Luckily, she didn't think that Voldemort had anything to do with the mirror. Plus, she had faith that everyone would figure out what had happened to them and rescue them quickly. And if they couldn't, then she would find a way to get them back home. Harry needed them, plus school was supposed to start in a month. Hermione couldn't afford to miss any time of school; the NEWTS were only one year away! And what if she missed too much and they wanted her to stay behind a year, that was not an option. Sure, she'd have Ron with her, but the humiliation!
They had been walking for hours and the sun was starting to set. Plus, Hermione couldn't keep her mind off of how thirsty she was. But she figured that it would take them at least another four or five hours to reach the edge of the forest and any type of nourishment. They'd probably end up stopping for the night and she would just have to go thirsty. This place might have been beautiful, but she'd still prefer to be up in the relative comfort of the dusty attic of 12 Grimmauld Place any day.
Although Ron knew that he should be taking this whole situation seriously, he couldn't help but enjoy it. So, okay, they had no clue where they were. And, sure, he had been knocked out pretty bad and was now sporting a less than attractive bruise on one side of his face. And, yeah, You-Know-Who could be lurking about ready to capture and torture them at any moment. Or maybe this had nothing to do with the dark wizard, and instead there was a whole tribe of cannibals out on the hunt for them. But Ron chose to ignore all those things and instead focus on the positives. Like the fact that after two months of not being allowed to see the light of day he was now free of 12 Grimmauld Place. The beautiful surroundings, Hermione, his brother, stories about some of the auror missions Tonks had been on. Yep, Ron was thoroughly enjoying himself. Plus, if you looked at it the right way, they were merely embarking upon a thrilling adventure into the unknown. And he figured that between Tonks, Charlie, and himself they'd probably have lots of adventures, even if most would be accidental. In fact, the only thing that was missing was Harry. It didn't seem right to be embarking on a grand journey without him.
That thought succeeded in knocking him back down to earth. This was a serious situation and probably wouldn't be very much fun. Although he and Harry had always had fun together, there usually wasn't much merriment to be found when they were actually faced with a serious situation. He certainly didn't have too much fun when a giant chess piece knocked him unconscious or when he got his leg broken. And he hadn't enjoyed waiting anxiously in his second year to see if his sister were alive. Really, if anything, he should be worried. It seemed like he was always getting hurt or taken out of commission early on.
Great, now he was thinking of the department of mysteries, which was just what he needed.
He had been the first of one to go down. It had been in the planet room and everyone had been wildly casting spells hoping to hit a target. The spell that hit him hadn't even been heading for him. It had actually been heading for Ginny, but she hadn't noticed because she was focused on cursing another death eater. And so he, dumb Ron who never thought as quick as Hermione or Harry, had jumped in front of the spell instead of yelling a warning or pushing Ginny out of the way. Really, Hermione or Harry probably could have deflected the spell; there was a reason he was seen as the third wheel by most outsiders. He had always wondered why Harry and Hermione had never caught on to how inferior he was to them. Hell, even Neville had lasted longer than he had. Not only that, but he'd been a burden during the battle, and then there was the whole mess with the brain. If there were a certification process for failures, he would have passed with flying colors a long time ago.
Ron was still musing over his ineptitude when suddenly; ten or fifteen people were rushing at them on the backs of animals almost the size of dragons. Ron tried to grab his wand from inside of his robes to defend himself but only succeeded in dropping his side of the mirror onto his left foot. Before he could react he was knocked out cold by a curse from one of the strange riders.
Sometime later, Ron woke with a splitting headache for the second time that day. But this time he found himself strapped to the rather large, unfamiliar beast he had gotten a glance of earlier. It also happened to be traveling across the ground a little too quickly for his throbbing head's taste. He was forced to close his eyes to block out the image of all the ground rushing away underneath him. Somehow, he figured that this wasn't going to be the grand adventure he had been dreaming about not too long ago. He just hoped that whoever had captured them didn't plan on killing them. That would certainly ruin his day.
When Ron was able to open his eyes again he was startled to notice that they were headed towards the desert and not the forest like he had assumed. Why would these people, who seemed like they were part of some barbaric tribe live in the desert when they could live in the mountains or on the plains. At least they could grow food in those places, and there would be animals to hunt. Deserts were wastelands, not places to live in. Ron was definitely worried now, what were these people planning on doing to them? Were they going to take them out to the desert and kill them for trespassing on their land? Or worse, maybe his joke about cannibals was about to come true and he was going to be the guest of honor at a barbecue!
Wherever they were going, he hoped that they were going to get there soon or he was going to give himself a heart attack thinking of all the ways these people could kill him.