Chapter 3
The next morning, Hermione awoke suddenly to an inherent fear and consuming loneliness. It was dark, the screen was still in place, but it was still raining outside. She could hear the sound of the rain spattering on the rock overhand and the soft, comforting sounds of Draco's breathing.
Hermione squeezed her eyes shut tight against the pressure mounting in the back of her eyes and she struggled to swallow the sob fighting to escape her constricted throat. She sat up and hugged her knees tightly to her chest, rocking back and forth slightly, and let her hopelessness and loneliness get the better of her.
Hermione's chest felt empty, her heart a black hole, empty and devoid of any happiness. She felt only a yawning barrenness where pleasure and contentment used to be a standard. Just then she realized, no one was going to find them. They had no way to find out where they were and, even if they did, how would they get there? Would they even be alive when they did? She knew her rudimentary knowledge of survival could sustain them for awhile but for how long? Not very.
Draco stirred, awakened by the moaning and sniffling of the girl across the campsite. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, only to see Hermione curled up in a corner, tears streaming down her face and her face screwed up against the howl she was trying to suppress. His heart ached at the sight of her so alone and miserable and he quietly crawled over to her.
Hermione didn't see him, didn't hear him, but if she did, she didn't acknowledge him in any way. She continued to fight against her emotions as silently as possible. Draco put his hand on her shoulder and whispered, 'Hermione?' It was more than she could take.
Hermione spun around so she was on her knees and threw her arms around his neck. Draco was surprised, after all, he had been her mortal enemy two days ago. Hermione had been feeling so lonely, so desolate, that any human contact was welcomed, needed desperately. Draco hugged her back, trying to give her the security he knew she sought for, the companionship and closeness.
Hermione clung to Draco, pressing herself tightly against him, trying to engulf herself entirely in his strong arms. He held her mutely, able to offer nothing but his company and sympathy. Hermione looked him in the eye, her eyes clouded with tears.
'Draco,' she whispered, her lower lip trembling almost as much as her voice. 'They're never coming for us.' Draco stared at her.
'Don't say that, Hermione,' he said steadily even though his insides had turned cold at the thought, clutching her arms to support her shaking form. 'All we can do is hope, it's all we have left. I may not have anyone coming for me, but you certainly do. You have people who love you, who'll miss you and want to get you back.'
'How can you say that?' Hermione asked, appalled.
'What do you mean? Everyone likes you,' he said, confused.
'No, no, not that,' she said, shaking her head slightly and looking at him earnestly. 'How in the world can you say no one will be looking for you? There must be someone who will miss you. Everyone has someone who loves them and you're no exception. You've got to have someone, you're parents or someone,' she insisted, pulling back from him a bit. Draco shook his head and let go of her, sitting cross-legged with his elbows on his knees, his head bowed.
'No, not really,' he said sadly. 'Of course my parents would pretend to be upset and all but, in truth, they'd be glad to get rid of me. I would know, they've told me so many times. I was a mistake, a contraceptive spell gone wrong, and I've been a burden on them my entire life. Why else would I try so hard to be just like my father? I was just trying to get his approval, his love, but I could never do enough. It was always, 'If only we could have had a daughter,' and 'Why can't you be more like your father?' and 'You'll never be good enough to live up to your name.' You wouldn't believe what I had to put up with growing up. They won't miss me one bit,' he finished quietly.
Hermione pulled him into another embrace and he hugged her back wholeheartedly, pouring his sadness out into the sympathetic girl he had always detested. He had opened a long healed wound buried deep inside him, hidden from view. He had convinced himself that he had the near-perfect life and if he could only try a bit harder it would be ideal, but he had only deluded himself. His life was anything but perfect.
When he pulled back, Draco wiped his eyes and smiled. Keeping his feelings of inadequacy inside had slowly eaten away at him until he was more dead than alive, a walking corpse with a pulse but no feelings, no reason to live. He felt as though a poison had been extracted leaving him whole again.
'Thank you, Hermione,' he said weakly, hesitantly. He had never thanked anyone before and his childhood rearing had ingrained upon him the inferiority of muggleborns. 'for listening. I've never told anyone that before.'
'You don't need to thank me, Draco,' Hermione said, smiling tenderly at him. 'That's what friends are for and, yes, I do consider myself your friend. I like you. No matter what our past has put us through, I'm willing to put it all aside to be your friend. Agreed?' she asked, holding her hand out for him to shake. He looked at her hand, then back up to her. He smiled and hugged her instead.
'Thank you, Hermione,' he whispered into her hair, breathing in the fruity smell of it. They held each other for what seemed like hours though, in reality, it was more like a minute. 'The rain, it's stopped,' he pointed out.
And it had. The soothing pitter patter of raindrops was gone to be replaced by a cacophony of tropical birdsong and sunlight was filtering through the gaps in the mud covering the woven mat. Hermione sighed, breathing in the intoxicating fresh smell of rain, and stirred up the coals of the fire to a new blaze.
'I'm thirsty,' Hermione complained, giving the mat a good shove. It fell backwards, allowing the sun to hit them with unforgiving intensity. The day was already in full swing, the sun nearly at it's zenith, and everything was covered with glistening water drops, making it look like a sparkling utopia of tropical glory.
Hermione rushed over to the engorged stream, nearly overflowing it's banks, and drank a few handfuls of the cool water. Draco followed suit and they both sat down by the bank. She shaded her eyes with her hand and scanned the skies.
'No more clouds,' she said positively. 'That's a good thing, some clear weather will give us time to stock up on food. That reminds me, we need to make some baskets to gather and store food, hold water and protect our things. I'll teach you how to weave. Even if your first attempts aren't all that good, they can still be used to collect things,' she said, beginning to gather basket-making materials. She got ferns, palm leaves and even the inner bark of some of the trees. She laid them out beside the fire to let them dry.
'Come here and I'll show you how to make cord while the basket-making materials dry,' she ordered. Draco acquiesced and she handed him some of the inner bark, keeping some for herself.
'Take one end of the bark in this hand and twist this end around and around until the strand starts to curl up on itself,' Hermione instructed, demonstrated the technique. Draco tentatively tried to copy her motions and, to his surprise, the strand did the same thing.
'Good,' Hermione praised. 'Next, hold the strand out tight and find the middle of it. Then you hold the middle in your teeth and fold it in half. Then let go and it makes some good rope. Like this.' She showed him everything she had said and a good strong rope about four feet long.
Draco was very hesitant about putting the bark strips in his mouth but he eventually made himself do it. He followed Hermione's instructions and finished a decent rope much like hers. 'Look, Hermione, it's not half bad, is it?' he asked, his voice bursting pride.
'It's pretty good for a first try,' Hermione agreed, examining his rope happily. 'Then we can attach these two to make a longer rope. See the holes where the rope doubled back on itself? Hand me another couple of strips. Thanks. We can tie these together to make it longer and then we just tie the ends closed. See? Now we have a nice long, sturdy rope.' Draco examined the rope and deemed it very strong and resilient, perfect for life in the wild.
'Okay, so I know how to make rope. Is the basket-making stuff dry yet?' he asked, eager to further his survival knowledge. He had never known the satisfaction of a job well done and he was thoroughly enjoying it. Hermione checked the materials and carried over some of the ferns. She didn't give him any, though. Instead she began to weave.
'Watch my hands,' she said. Draco watched her hands intently, studying and memorizing everything she did, when she did it, and how she did it. He scrutinized her every move and just how it looked when she was through. She didn't give him any directions, just handed him some ferns.
Draco began to weave slowly, carefully, trying to remember exactly what she had done. He was a little clumsy, he had never done it before, but his basket didn't fall apart. It was a little lopsided, the stitches a bit uneven and loose, but Hermione praised his efforts nevertheless.
'This is wonderful for a first time, Draco,' she said proudly, the true praise of a teacher to an excelling pupil. 'A little practice and you can be quite good. This can be our first fruit collecting basket. Speaking of fruit,' Hermione said, rubbing her stomach. 'I'm starving. I'll go collect some fruit. You can practice making baskets or rope while I'm gone. I'll make a lid for this one later.'
With that, Hermione picked up the basket and walked off to the shade of the forest to collect fruit. She collected another fairly large clump of bananas, a couple of mangos, some papayas and even a rare find of oranges. She was soon heavily laden with fruit and she was whistling happily by the time she returned to camp.
'Hermione!' Draco called, looking up and waving as she entered the clearing. 'Look! I've made three more baskets and I've gotten a lot better!'
Hermione set down the fruit and examined the baskets he had made in her absence. Yes, he had made a great improvement from his first. It was obvious which was made first, it was rather loose but it wasn't as lopsided. The next was a bit tighter weave but a few stitches had been dropped, creating holes. The last was much better, with a looser weave to prevent dropped stitches, and it wasn't lopsided at all.
'Wow, Draco, it's obvious you're a natural,' Hermione said, a bit awed by his quick learning. 'You really picked up on this fast.' Draco was beaming at her praise, practically glowing with pride.
'Can you show me how to make lids for these?' he asked keenly. Hermione smiled at him and sat down across from him.
'Of course, Draco,' she said cheerfully. 'I'll show you anything and everything I know.' She beamed at him and he beamed back, his eyes filled with eager anticipation and hers with pride and amusement.
Hermione spent much of the day instructing Draco in crafts, correcting him where he made mistakes, praising him when he didn't, and encouraging him when he got frustrated. It was obvious that he had never had this sort of caring attention and Hermione was glad to be the one to finally give it to him.
'That's wonderful, Draco,' she said. 'Now we have six food storage baskets with matching lids, three fruit collecting baskets with carrying straps, and four water tight baskets to hold drinking water for whenever we can't go out to get it from the stream, like when it's raining or too dark to see,' she said, piling the baskets in their respective categories.
'Great. Now that we're fully stocked, what do we do?' Draco asked, lounging back on the sand.
'Now we fill the baskets and organize everything,' she said, standing up and dusting her hands off on her robes.
'Draco, you go fill the water baskets bring them back up here. Be sure not to fill them too full or you might rip the baskets,' she instructed, pushing the four baskets into his arms. He nodded and turned toward the stream.
Draco dipped them into the water, firmly holding them against the current. He lifted them out, surprised by their sudden weight. And hobbled back to the campsite, leaving the baskets where Hermione indicated.
'Uh, Hermione? Where should I go if I have to, uh…go?' he asked awkwardly, not looking at her. She blushed and scanned the surrounding area.
'Well, that area over there doesn't have much useful vegetation so I guess we could go there,' she said, leading him over to it. 'But we should get what we can out of it before we do. Go get a collecting basket.'
They picked what they could from the surrounding trees, for the didn't want to come here too often for food if they could help it. Then Hermione left, blushing again, so Draco could go. She came back about twenty minutes later, her arms full of stones to block off this section of forest as restrooms.
Draco felt considerably better after that and decided to go out for some more food. He took all three collecting baskets and brought them back full to the brim. Hermione arranged them in the storage baskets, leaving out some papayas, bananas and carrots for dinner, and they both sat back to admire their handiwork.
The clearing was aglow with the light from the fire. It illuminated a much different scene from when they had arrived. There were thirteen baskets, all full of various items, lining their living space under the outcrop, there was a fire crackling merrily. There were palm frond beds with two teenagers lounging peacefully upon them, waiting for their food to finish cooking. Hermione sighed and closed her eyes, squirming in the rough fabric of their ripped and torn school robes.
'Tomorrow I think we should figure out how to make new clothes,' she said, sitting up again. 'I hate these robes. They are so uncomfortable.' Draco nodded, looking at their depressingly frayed and savaged garb.
'What would we make them out of? Palm fronds, bark and leaves? It will at least have to be comfortable and basket-making materials, I'm afraid to say, would not be the most comfy array,' Draco said, sitting up as well and reaching for the food. He bit into a papaya slice, hardly noticing it's tangy flavor. Hermione began to eat as well.
'Oh, I don't know, but we'll figure something out,' Hermione said reassuringly. 'We've come this far to making this place homey, we should be able to decipher textiles without too much difficulty.' Draco yawned and leaned back, his hands behind his head, smiling.
'I hope you're right, Hermione,' he sighed, secretly doubting if they could uncover the secret of making clothes as they had fire, food and baskets. He had been hoping to leave the task of clothing to her, the girl, but doubted she would let him sit out any task that he had helped to initiate just because he was a boy and cloth-making wasn't very masculine.
'G'night, Draco,' Hermione said contentedly, her stomach full and mind at ease. She rolled over and yawned, putting the clothing to the back of her mind. Draco smiled at her.
'G'night, Hermione,' he replied. Then he drifted off to sleep, feeling more satisfied than he ever had off of the island. Hermione seemed to have that effect on him.