"So we're going to check out the rock today, correct?" Malfoy asked as soon as they finished eating the last of the berries. "What else are we going to do?" Harry asked in reply. "Bathe? I can't smell me but you guys stink." Ginny complained. Malfoy raised a arm to smell his pit and recoiled in disgusted. "So how are we going to bathe? In case you haven't noticed, we're in the middle of nowhere." Harry said. "We could always take a swim." Luna said. "Take a swim?" Malfoy asked. "Yes. We can take turns tonight bathing in the river or lake." Luna explained. "Sure, that sounds good." Harry agreed. "As long as the stink is gone, I'm happy." Ginny said. "Now that that is settled, let's go to the rock." Malfoy said. "The rock needs a name." Luna said. "A name? For the rock?" Harry asked. "Yes, it might not like being called the rock. From what you have told us it is very different so it shouldn't be called just the rock." Luna said without changing her facial expression at all. "How about misterul?" Ginny suggested. "Misterul?" Malfoy asked disbelieving. "It's romanian for mystery. I think it fits." Ginny replied confidently. "All agreed? Misterul the rock?" Harry asked. After everyone mummered their agreement they finally headed out to the rock.
"Does anyone else take Ancient Runes?" Malfoy asked when they finally got to the rock- err Misterul. "I do." Ginny said. Malfoy sighed and then said, "I guess I'll just have to make do. Weasley, you start at the bottom of the rock- umm Misterul- and I'll start at the top. We need to decode exactly what it's protecting from so we don't get killed or something like that by trying to cross it."
After maybe fifteen or thirty minutes of watching Ginny and Malfoy decoding the rock, Harry decided to go ahead take his bath now instead of tonight and Luna was making a crown using grass and flowers.
"Finally we're done." Ginny said sometime a little after noon, if the sun was anything to go by. "Where's Potter?" She asked look around. "He decided to go take a bath while you two worked on decoding Misterul." Luna said not looking up from her necklace she had started making after she finished the crown. "What's that on your head, Lovegood?" Malfoy asked. "A crown. Would you like one?" Luna asked. "No, thanks." Malfoy replied and then he let out a cough which sounded a lot like loony. "Can we go past it?" Luna asked looking up from her necklace to stare at Malfoy. "Oh, what?" He asked completely confused. "Misterul." Luna replied. It took a few seconds but Malfoy finally got it. "Yeah, I think so. Weasley and I didn't find anything that would be dangerous to us unless we were planning on destroying anything." Malfoy explained. "That's good." Luna replied going back to making her necklace seemingly uninterested in Malfoy, Ginny, or Misterul.
"So are we going to walk past it or not?" Harry asked impatiently. "Yeah, yeah." Malfoy said. Finally he walked past Misterul and the three others followed behind him. He stopped once they were past and seemed to be waiting for something. "I thought you said nothing would happen?" Harry asked annoyed. "I couldn't be completely sure since most of the runes weren't carved correctly." Malfoy replied. "Let's go on and see what is being protected." Luna said walking forward. "Wait, how do we know that we'll be able to find our way back to the camp?" Ginny asked. "We don't." Harry said simply brushing past her to follow Luna. Malfoy smirked and started following Harry and Luna too. "Guys. Guys, wait." Ginny sighed and started running after them.
"Whoa." Harry said a few minutes later. In front of him, Luna, Malfoy, and Ginny was three small stone huts, a small pond with a stone ledge around it, a small pond built above that with a short waterfall flowing into the lower pond, a stone pathway from each hut that connected to a circle of stone with a fire pit in the middle of it. The rocks that made up the walls of the huts were worn, vines were covering most of the walls, and one of the roofs had a huge hole in it, the water in the ponds was murky and just plain gross but it looked… it looked wonderful to the four teenagers who had slept in a cave for the past few days. "We should fix it up." Luna said after they had stood there looking at it for several minutes. "Fix it up?" Ginny asked. "Yes. I think we should." Luna replied. "Let's see if we can find anything good still her." Malfoy suggested before pushing open the door to one of the huts. Harry shrugged before following him.
They shifted through the dirt and trash until it was nearing dark and they decided to go back to their camp. They had found a few things worth keeping, what Ginny thought was a hunting knife, three clay pots in pretty good shape, two clay cups, a wooden chest that was a little rotten but still sturdy, men's clothes in the chest that were in okay shape, a chest of drawers missing two drawers out of four, a somewhat fancy dress in the chest of drawers, and a handful of silverware in okay shape.
As they were sitting around the fire that night after Luna, Ginny, and Malfoy had taken their baths and everyone had ate Luna announced, "Those stone huts and the things around them need a name." "Another thing that needs a name." Malfoy groaned. "What were you thinking, Luna?" Harry asked. "Carpe diem? It was my mother's favorite saying." Luna replied. "Carpe diem? What does that mean?" Ginny asked. "Carpe diem is latin for seize the day. I would think even you would know that." Malfoy said replying for Luna.
"Seize the day. Carpe diem." Harry said under his breath. "We have to make the most of what happen to us, so I thought it was fitting. My mother believed that that's what carpe diem means. To make the most of what you're given." Luna explained. "I like it." Malfoy said with the faintest trace of a smile. "Carpe Diem, our town." Ginny announced softly. "A hamlet, maybe, not a town." Harry said with a slight smile. Ginny held up an imagery cup and said, "To Carpe Diem." Harry and Luna laughed at her and then held up they own imagery cups. "Cheers." Harry said smiling. Malfoy smirked and held up his imagery cup and said, "To Carpe Diem." "To Carpe Diem." The other three eoched him as they clicked their imagery glasses.
"Well, how are we going to do this?" Ginny asked looking at Carpe Diem the next morning. "General clean up first, I guess and then we figure out what else needs to be done." Harry replied. "Someone should check nearby to see if there is anything else near here." Luna suggested. "I'll do it." Malfoy said quickly. "You're going to repairing the roof so you need all the rest you can get." Ginny said smirking. Malfoy scowled but didn't say anything. "Ah, look he's learning." Ginny cooed over-dramicly. Malfoy's scowl deepen. "Ahem, we should get to work." Harry said. Malfoy stalked off to, presumedly, scout the area and Ginny, Luna, and Harry got to work clean up the unusable broken items and the dirt they could clean up.
Luna, Ginny, and Harry took a break around noon and looked for Malfoy so they could go back to camp for lunch. "Malfoy, we're going back to camp for lunch." Ginny yelled in the direction he went that morning. "Come here." Malfoy yelled back from the right of her. The three of them went in the direction his voice came from until they found him. "Did you find anything?" Harry asked loudly when he caught sight of Malfoy. They weren't too far from the camp only a few yards. "Yes, a well. There's still some water in it. And I used the bucket to pull some up and it's pretty clean." Malfoy replied. "Huh, anything else?" Ginny asked. "The ruins of two buildings. Nothing in them. And there's some rocks in a large circle near them. It looks like the circle of rocks was used as a dueling area or something similar. A muggle dueling area." Malfoy replied.
"Well, let's go back to camp and eat and then we can finish up here." Ginny said. "You can't tell me what to do, Weasley." Malfoy said. "So you don't want to go back to camp and eat?" Ginny asked challengely. "Maybe I just don't want you to keep giving out orders and expecting us to follow them." Malfoy responded. "Just like you do, Malfoy? You think you're so much better than us. News flash, you're not." Harry said angrily. "I am better than you. And you think you're all that, Potter. That because you're a orphan and you've gotten lucky before that you're better than everyone else." Malfoy replied. "I don't think I'm better than anyone else. Except for you. A worm is better than you." Harry responded.
"I am better than you or anyone else. The mudbloods, blood traitors, and you are the worms." Malfoy said. "I'm not a worm. You are, Malfoy." Ginny interjected angrily. "Please, Weasley, don't kid yourself. Dirt poor, more-OW" Ginny interrupted Malfoy with a hard, painful punch to the face. Malfoy touched his cheek gentlely and winced. "Resorting to punching. I thought even-" "Draco, why don't we all go back to camp and eat some lunch?" Luna said interrupting the possibly dangerous to Malfoy's health statement. "Fine." "Fine." "Fine."
"So what do we do?" Ginny asked out loud staring at Carpe Diem after they finished with lunch. "We fix it." Luna replied simply and then walked off into one of the huts. Harry and Ginny exchanged glances before following her leaving Malfoy by himself. Malfoy scowled and looked around. His eyes landed on the overgrown barely visible path that lend to the well. "I'll just go work on that." Malfoy said under his breath. He walked down the path to well and looked the well over to see what needed to be done.
"Fix the stone barrier thing a bit, the bucket needs repairs, and the thing the bucket's on too. The grass rope thing needs to be repaired. Ugh, this is going to be a lot of work." He mummered under his breath to himself. He decided to fix the stone wall around the well first and then do the rest of it. So he got to work restacking the stones that had been knocked off. He grunted as he picked up a rather large stone and dropped it heavily on the stone wall. He arranged and fitted the stones for what felt like hours but was only at most two hours until it a almost perfect circle stone wall around the well. He got to work trying to figure out how to fix the bucket, grass rope thing, and the wooden pole the grass rope and bucket were attached to. He finally decide to just replace the pole and the grass rope.
He didn't know how to build a bucket so that would have to be repaired. So he set off to find a long piece of wood to stick in the ground and tie a bunch of pieces of long dried grass tied together on. After about twenty minutes of searching the nearby area h found the perfect piece of wood and uncermotously stuck it in the ground a few inches away from the well. He then decided he was tired and hungary and he was going to go enjoy one of his favorite pastimes before all whatever this is happened, annoying Potter and his friends.
"So, Potter, still working on that?" Malfoy asked. He had no idea what Potter was doing kneeling on the ground by what might of been a fire pit but he wasn't going to let Potter know that. "Why am I not surprised you're doing nothing? Did you have a nice stroll through the park? Too bad something didn't eat you." Potter responded not looking at him. "First of all, we haven't seen any animals here during the time we have been here and second I was doing something while you were just sitting around." Malfoy replied. "I am not just sitting around, I'm fixing the fire pit, Malfoy. Unlike you I've actually gotten some work done." Potter replied finally looking up from whatever he was doing. "I have done some work, Potter. And yes, I do know what work is. I have been fixing the well so we can easily get water. We don't need a fire." Malfoy replied cockily. "We will need a fire if we're still here when it gets cold out. Did you actually fix the bucket?" Potter asked somehow mixing curiosity and hostility.
"Well, no but I fixed the rest of it. I figured I would fix the bucket latter." Malfoy replied surprisingly honestly. "Malfoy. Get in here and help me move this." Ginny yelled/ordered. "You can't tell me what to do, Weasley. Get Potter to do." Malfoy yelled back. "Harry's busy, you're not. So get in here." Ginny yelled right back. "Why don't you ever ask anyone to do something? You just order us around and suppose we will do it but get angry when we do it to you." Malfoy yelled back at her. "I do not." Ginny yelled coming out of the hut she had been in. "Yes, you do." Malfoy said no longer yelling.
"Do not." Ginny said taking a step closer to him. "Do too." Malfoy replied stepping closer to her.
"Do not."
"Do too."
"Do not."
"Do too."
"Do not."
"Do too."
"Do not."
"Do too."
"Do not."
"Do too."
"Do not."
"Do too."
"Do not."
"Do too."
"Do not."
"Do too."
"Do not."
"Do-"
"WILL YOU TWO JUST SHUT UP." Harry yelled standing up. Luna peeked out of the middle hut to look at the three of them with curiosity on her face. "I'll help you, Ginny." Harry said, grabbing Ginny's arm to cut off her protests. He dragged her back into the hut she was working it. "What did you need help with?" Harry asked shortly once they got inside. Ginny yanked her arm out ofurnituref his hand and rubbed.
"I need help moving that pile of wood out of here." Ginny said pointing at four big still in somewhat okay shape boards that were probably a piece of nice furniture once upon a time. They had birds and flowers and some of those fancy lines carved in them and looked like someone had spent a lot of time on them. "Why?" Harry asked after he had finished looking at them. "They're in my way. I need to clean that area and I can't move them by myself." Ginny replied. "How about we lean them against the wall? If we out them outside they could get ruined." Harry suggested. Ginny nodded her agreement. They carefully picked the heavy boards up and moved so they were leaning against the wall out of Ginny's way.
"Oh, Harry," Ginny said as Harry was turning to leave the hut "Do I really boss you guys around?" "Ginny, don't listen to Malfoy. We all know he's a git." Harry replied. Ginny frowned and asked, "Do I, Harry? I'm asking you, as my friend, to tell me the truth." "Yeah," Harry replied leaning against a wall tiredly "You do." Harry pushed himself off the wall and walked out of the hut without looking at Ginny.
Ginny didn't know why but when he walked out of hut, she felt a tear sliding down her cheek. She didn't know why but she felt like…like…like she had just been told she was a awful person. Harry didn't say that and she was sure he didn't mean that but she felt like a awful person. Ginny just brushed away the tear and those feelings and set to work cleaning what she could of the floor.
"Ginny." Luna called from the doorway to the red haired girl cleaning the floor. When Ginny didn't respond, Luna called again, "Ginny." "Huh? What?" Ginny asked jerking out of her thoughts. "We're going back to camp now. Are you coming?" Luna asked. "What? Oh, yeah Luna. Let's go, Luna." Ginny said, standing up and brushing off her hands. Luna looked at her for a look minute making Ginny uncomfortable. Finally Luna nodded and started walking out the door to when the boys were standing waiting.
Dinner that night was quiet. If asked none of them would be able to tell you why but no one felt like they should beak the silence. It was like they all felt that something was going to happen soon. Something that would change everything. So they tried to hold on to what passed as normal but with that feeling they couldn't. They silently washed their plates and cups in the small lake and shifted the logs in the fire to keep the embers warm. An then they walked up to the cave and went to bed without saying anything.
A/N; I don't own Harry Potter. Never have. Never will.