She fell into a troubled sleep before he came back, if he had at all. He was also gone when she awoke, and she wondered if he had finally made good on the vague threat of leaving her behind. The possibility was more distressing than it should have been. It was, however, the nagging thought that she should've taken some precautions for this possibility that was responsible for setting her off.

He found her that way some time later, trying her best to levitate one of the chairs he'd conjured. She had been at it for a long time and was probably quite a sight. She was covered with sweat and drenched in frustration; her patience was already well frayed from the lack of fitful sleep she'd had. Certainly she'd had all night to sleep, but she had woken feeling exhausted.

After one of her more promising attempts faltered back to the ground, she bit back what she would've liked to have said and turned to find him staring at her. He was leaning against a tree as casually as he ever could've managed, but his countenance was quite the opposite.

"What?" she snapped at his expression. She was beginning to realize how much better she had liked it when his face had been more predictable.

"I've been wondering why you threw one spell and ran," Malfoy said, almost thoughtfully.

"What are you talking about?" Hermione asked before she grasped that he was referring to Leach and what had happened in the forest. "What did you expect me to do? Stand and fight against both of you?"

Malfoy twisted his face. "Do you honestly think that I would have—helped that bastard? Even if I would've, I would not have ever touched you, you filthy—"

"But you would've last night," Hermione interrupted, her eyes alight and reveling in his reaction, the resolution she'd made not to mention her unconfirmed suspicions promptly forgotten.

Malfoy sputtered in surprise.

"Do you think you fooled me?" she sneered and shook off the annoying pang of guilt that followed. Somehow she knew that he couldn't deny it, that it was a safe accusation. "You were steeling yourself up to do the exact same thing to me, or something of the sort. Don't deny it. Then you were going to leave in a swell of pathetic glory. What's the matter Malfoy, can't you even drink yourself enough guts?"

Malfoy was shaking his head as though at a denial that ran deeper, but he didn't say anything to contradict her.

"Without your merry band of half-wits around—" Hermione continued as she turned back to levitating the chair as if it was a casual thing, "Your standards slid pretty low. Or were you drunk enough to forget your precious blood for a single minute?"

But Malfoy had returned to his initial reaction as the chair continued to mock her efforts.

"If I put on a bad act last night," he murmured almost uncertainly as he slid his knowing eyes back to her, "At least I don't live in one. Look at you Granger. You can't even levitate a chair. Want me to Reducio it for you?"

Hermione was at a loss, but knew that it would only make matters worse by giving up in front of him.

"I'd heard of it before," Malfoy whispered as he pushed himself off the tree and sauntered towards her, "Losing prowess over love lost, or something like that. Which one was it that broke your poor little heart? Hopefully not that red headed bloke."

Hermione whirled on him. "And where would you have heard that saying from? Coming from the spoiled brat of a family that doesn't even care—do you even realize how horribly pitiful you look trailing behind your father like a puppy hoping for love? So what is it you do to make up for it?"

"Shut your mouth, Mudblood," he snarled and advanced on her.

"You take it out on everyone else because you find it oh so hard to believe that there's always someone better than you at everything. At Quidditch, at studies, at—"

But she stopped as he reached her with his eyes blazing and his hand abruptly raised. She may have cowered slightly then. But something made him slowly lower his hand and recompose his furious expression.

"This—this isn't what I came here to say," Draco slowly let out a slightly shaky breath, "I came back here to ask you to leave. I'm asking you now. Please … just go away."

She laughed at him then, almost surprising herself at how derisive it sounded even to her ears.

"Hit me then."

There was a stunned handful of heartbeats.

"What?" Draco demanded. "Have you gone daft?"

"I told you to hit me," Hermione repeated firmly, marveling at how good it felt to mimic the way he often talked down to her as if she was a simple child. The words themselves came easily to her mouth out of the half-formed fantasies she'd held of a moment like this for so long, though she couldn't remember when exactly she'd thought them.

"You have gone mad." He said, his shocked face clearly showing that he was genuinely considering the possibility.

"If you really want me to leave," Hermione said slowly, clearly, "Then you will hit me. I won't leave otherwise."

Malfoy's openmouthed expression fought a pitched battle between shock and disgust, but he made no further movements towards her. The battle tipped in favor of shock, however, when she laughed again.

"That's what I thought," she turned and threw another glance over her shoulder, pushing past the horrible feeling in her stomach to the giddy sensation of triumph, "Face it, Malfoy. As pitiful as it is, right now I'm all you've got. And you're stuck with me."

"Oh—I suppose that's how it is," Malfoy yelled after her, "We all know what you get out of this, but what do you want from me? Huh? What do you want from me?"

"Maybe it isn't so much having no place to go," Hermione yelled back without turning, absently rubbing at her neck, "Maybe I just need a lost cause."

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By the time Hermione returned from her pleasant stroll of rehearsing how their next conversation might go, Malfoy had already broke camp. He was lounging and lazily levitating the remaining chair above his head.

With only a knowing smirk directed at her, he rose to his feet, took care of the chair and started off. Huffing slightly at losing the chance to put all of her rehearsing to good use, she reluctantly followed.

The rest of the morning passed much as the last had. Only this time, she started out as sore as she had been the previous night and ended up far worse. Malfoy didn't appear to be bothered by it, but she suspected that he was merely better at covering it up. Or at least that's what she hoped.

Though distant, his mood seemed less bitter and brooding than it had been, and he didn't go out of his way to take Hermione's baiting either. Her desire for small talk had almost completely abated, for more than one reason. She still kept asking him where they were going when she thought he was least suspecting it, in the hopes of surprising it out of him. But the tactic worked even less effectively with him than it usually had on her friends.

"Almost there," Malfoy announced near midday, somehow almost cheerfully, "Suck it up, Granger. What's the matter? Is this a little harder than getting to the library?"

For the past several hours they'd climbed aimlessly up and down fairly steep hills that were only getting worse. The trees had thinned out somewhat and were entirely absent in some places. It hadn't taken very long for the sun to become uncomfortably, almost unbearably hot. Malfoy, whom she fervently hoped was just as miserably uncomfortable as she was, took special delight in her appearance when he bothered to look back at her. She supposed she looked a bit worse for wear. Her hair was all but plastered to her neck and her hands were filthy from scrambling up the hills. It was actually quite remarkable that she had so far managed to keep from wiping her sweaty face off with her dirty palms. She hid them whenever Malfoy was looking. The last thing she needed right now was to endure unoriginal jokes about mud.

Okay, maybe she was getting a bit paranoid, but she wasn't about to give him any easy opportunities in light of their recent conversations.

"If you really want to kill me, you may as well get it over with," Hermione retorted at his comment, at a loss to come up with anything better, "There's no need to drag me around this God forsaken place."

Malfoy laughed. "What do you know about God forsaken? And besides, no one is forcing you to come, remember? By all means, turn right around, Mudblood. Do us both a favor."

"What do you mean, we're almost there?" she asked, acting as if he hadn't spoken.

"Curiosity killed the Mudblood," Malfoy leered and turned his back to her.

Hermione had no idea how he could say with any certainty that they were "almost there." She wouldn't have believed him had he not sounded so sincere; it sounded almost as if he was trying to justify all this. But she didn't know how he could tell one place from another. It all looked the same to her. Well, that was if one ignored the worryingly bad turn the terrain had decided to favor them with. She did try to keep an eye out for how he was deciding their direction. In other circumstances she may have been able to see most of what Malfoy was doing. But as it was, she was required to spend the majority of her time simply concentrating on picking out her way safely. Somehow she'd avoided slipping this far, though the prospect was perpetually nipping at her dubious footing.

In any case, she'd never seen him take out a compass, and she rarely saw him using his wand for anything but mundane tasks. He would check the sun every now and then, but she figured he was just keeping track of the time. After all, surely he wouldn't be able to get more than a crude idea, at best, of their direction from it.

But now she knew they were actually going somewhere, and this lifted her mood considerably. She might have even managed to pull herself out of the pit of irritation she found herself clambering up and down in if conditions had been a little more favorable.

The rise may have been slightly taller than the others and its spine was surprisingly flat, but by all other noteworthy appearances it was just the top of another hill. However, someone might have thought they'd scaled Everest from the way Malfoy scrambled to the top and looked back down over their progress. When Hermione reached the top a minute or so behind him, she could find no positive inclination to look back in that direction at all.

After getting fed up with Malfoy's self-satisfied expression and the expectant look he was giving her, she plopped down beside a tree and sent him the best glare she could muster in present conditions.

"Well, is this it?" Hermione threw some disdain behind the question.

"That's right, Granger," Malfoy gestured broadly, "Well?"

"Well?" she shot back testily.

"Come on, at least try. I'd hate to think I've dragged you this far for you to miss it entirely." Malfoy was using that incredibly gloating voice that he seemed to save for special occasions.

"It's a nice view," she glowered back the way they'd come with some passion, "But I hope this isn't the best you can do. If it is, you might be a worse lost cause than I had thought, because you're all but ready for St. Mungo's."

"If you can still pull your arse up, you'll find you're sitting on it," Malfoy drawled as he sauntered over closer and leaned his shoulder against a tree.

Hermione didn't follow his advice until she'd thoroughly examined everything around her. When she found nothing out of the ordinary, she did pick herself up with as much dignity as possible, only to find that she had been sitting on a rather unremarkable pile of dirt, if it could even be called that. She had been half expecting to find something like an anthill; she wouldn't have put it past Malfoy.

"You give up?" he asked, clearly enjoying himself.

Hermione narrowed her eyes and furiously examined their surroundings again, disgusted at the very prospect of giving into Malfoy. It was only when she had stopped looking for something big or extremely out of the ordinary that she noticed a noticeable strip of ground beneath them that seemed slightly more beaten down than the rest. It was covered with leaves and littered with small bits of debris, but it was still noticeable. She experienced annoyance that she hadn't noticed it sooner. A moment's uncertainty came with the thought that it couldn't possibly be something quite so obvious. Maybe she was seeing things, but when she looked up she saw that Malfoy was watching her. He was watching her intently, with a knowing smile, not unlike when he had led her to the library.

"Where does it lead?" she asked, taking a chance on the odds that she wasn't seeing things.

"Anywhere you so desire," Malfoy smirked.