Chapter 5
Hermione awoke with a feeling of security and warmth. She looked at the young man lying beside her, his arms encircling her and holding her tightly. Draco Malfoy had kissed her. And she had kissed back. Wow. That was unexpected.
But, of course, some sort of love is always expected when you know you'll be stuck together for a long time, possibly your entire lives! Be that as it may, Hermione's heart was as warm as it had ever been. She made no move to get up, only nestled back into Draco's chest, wishing the sun would go back down and she would never have to leave the sanctuary of his embrace.
Draco stirred and opened his eyes. He kissed Hermione lightly on the cheek, sending shivers through her, and sat up, stretching. 'Morning, love,' he said fondly, beaming at her. He, too, felt happier than he had in his life, though that would be easy considering his life.
'Morning, love,' she repeated, sitting up next to him and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. 'I'll start breakfast, you stoke the fire.' He nodded, heading to the woodpile. He took some good sized logs and piled them close to the fire, feeding them to it slowly until it was blazing.
Hermione handed him a banana and an orange, then offered him a drink from a water basket, all of which he accepted gratefully. They ate quietly, stealing furtive loving glances at one another occasionally, though somehow missing the others' eyes each time.
When they were done, Draco sat back and waited for Hermione to say something. She was silent. 'So, what do we need to do today?' he asked, feeling a bit lost without work that needed to be done, a feeling he was definitely not accustomed to.
'Well, I don't really know,' Hermione admitted, sounding a little disoriented herself. 'We have a fire and enough wood to keep it fed for a week, we have baskets full of food and water, we have shelter, we have clothing, what else do we need?' she asked.
'I don't know, but what I do know is that I am getting really tired of papayas and bananas and oranges and everything like it,' Draco said distastefully, looking disgustedly at the fruit in his hands. 'Isn't there anything else to eat?'
'Well, if you'd like to go kill some animals-' Hermione began.
'Yes! Yes I would!' Draco exclaimed. 'I am going crazy from lack of meat! I just can't survive without meat. I was raised on steak and pheasant, I can't go for long without meat of some kind,' he complained, holding his stomach.
Hermione had noticed it, too. Their lack of energy, a bit of moodiness, all of it pointed to one thing: deficiencies. 'As much as I hate the thought of killing an animal, I think you're right. We need meat. Well, more than meat, we need the fat and protein that meat provides. All we need is the means to hunt. We have no weapons and no skills, for that matter,' Hermione confessed, thinking over what methods she had read about.
'We need a spear or something, right?' Draco asked, not knowing really anything about the subject, once again realizing his own ignorance.
'Yes. But before we can make weapons, we need to make tools. We can't make anything without tools. Do you know what flint looks like?' Hermione asked. He nodded. 'Go look for some. Look along the streambed, find as many pieces as you can. I'm going to look for a hammerstone and see if I can remember how to do this,' she said worriedly.
Draco set off along the bank of the stream, looking for the chunks of chalky grey stone called flint. All the stones along the bank looked the same and the search was tedious but, as he rounded a bend in the stream about fifty yards past the weeping willow, he hit the jackpot.
Scattered all around were hand-sized nodules of grey flint. They littered the bank and streambed for a good five feet in every direction. He picked up as many as he could carry, surprised at how heavy it was, and carried them back to the camp.
Meanwhile, Hermione examined the stones at the edge of the stream, looking for one that fit comfortably in her hand. She found a suitable one and began to look for something to use as a retoucher. Downstream a ways, she found a skeleton, possibly a giant squirrel, and took the long thin femur and, after washing it thoroughly in the stream, headed back to camp.
Draco returned, his arms filled to the brim with flint. He deposited them next to her and sat down, worn out by the heavy chunks. He watched Hermione with interest when she picked up one of the chalky gray nodules, examining it closely. Then she struck it with the stone in her hand, knocking off a section of the chalky part, revealing the waxy, deep grey of the flint itself.
'This is a good piece,' Hermione stated, inspecting the stone critically. She continued to knock off pieces of the cortex until there was only a roughly egg-shaped lump of dark grey flint. 'Be a dear, Draco, and get me that flat rock we cook on,' she instructed without looking up. He did so and returned promptly.
Hermione put the rock on her lap and set the flint gently on top of it, careful not to chip it, yet. After a moment of thought and concentration, she proceeded to carefully knock off flakes of the flint, some of them fairly good sized, and all with razor sharp edges. After a couple of minutes, Hermione had produced four crude but serviceable knives, sharp-edged and wicked looking. Using the retoucher, she knocked off tiny flakes from the back of these knives to dull them just enough to be handled without cutting themselves.
'There we go,' she said, handing them to Draco delicately. 'I cannot believe I remembered how to do that from reading,' she said, sounding both amazed and relieved. Draco turned the knives over in his hand, very much astounded at how talented and knowledgeable Hermione really was.
'Where did you say you learned this again, Hermione?' he asked.
'Out of a series of books,' she replied, stretching her fingers; they were starting to cramp up from how tightly she had been clutching the hammerstone, trying to gain the precision she needed for better handiwork.
'What series?' Draco asked curiously, putting the knives down on the rock, making sure not to chip any of the delicate edges. 'I really need to read these things.'
'They're called 'The Clan of the Cave Bear,' series. Well, I don't know if that's the real name, but that's the first book in the series. The others are 'The Valley of Horses', 'The Mammoth Hunters', 'Plains of Passage', and 'Shelters of Stone',' she informed him remembering with enthusiasm her favorite books.
'They're really interesting. It all takes place in Europe during the Ice Age! They detail the life of this girl, Ayla, who is a Cro-Magnon, you know she looks like us, when her clan is swallowed up in an earthquake. She wanders alone at five years old for awhile, is attacked by a huge cave lion, and is eventually picked up by a passing clan of Neanderthals. They take her in and then the first book tells of her life and times with them and, as for the rest of the books, you'll have to read them to find out,' she said happily, having to consciously restrain from detailing every aspect of every book, trying to summarize.
'Wow! she went through more crap than we have,' Draco admitted.
'Oh, you bet she did,' Hermione said, thinking over the rest of Ayla's journey, too extensive to tell Draco in just one day. 'But she does end up happy, mostly.'
'As soon as we get back, I really need to read these books,' Draco said, eagerly. Hermione smiled at him. He smiled back, and then his face fell as a thought he had worked so hard to suppress finally wormed its way unbidden into his mind: What if they never got back?
Hermione saw the change and, knowing what he was thinking of, forced a smile and playfully punched him in the shoulder. 'Come on, don't think like that. We'll get out of here eventually. Cheer up! We need to keep our spirits up. And you know I'll always be here for you,' she assured him. She leaned over and kissed him lightly.
Draco gratefully put his arms around her, appreciating fully how good she was at keeping his mood from going too far downhill. He nuzzled his face in her hair and rubbed her back, drawing comfort from the girl he had hated so recently. 'Thank you, Hermione.'
'Your welcome,' she replied, drawing back. 'I'm going to make a few more tools. You can go find some alder saplings to make into spears, okay? Thin and straight would be the best but I know how to get bends out of it if we really need to.' Draco nodded and headed toward the tree line.
Hermione roughed out a hand axe, another knife or two, and a burin, to make holes in wood or bone, from that one piece of flint before tossing the rippled and scarred core into the stream to be carried back downstream.
She put the tools, hammerstone and retoucher into a basket, along with several nodules of flint, and secured the lid on tightly; there was no way she was going to lose such an unparalleled advantage to the elements. She kept out the hand axe and set out in the direction Draco had gone, to make sure he knew what tree he was looking for.
She found him at a small grove of tall, thin, straight trees, examining a couple of them. 'Good, you found some,' she said. Draco jumped and turned around; he obviously hadn't heard her following him.
'Hermione! Don't scare me like that,' he said. 'How many do we need and how do we get them down?' he asked, gesturing to the trees.
'These are good trees for spears,' Hermione comment, looking them over. 'I think we should take four, two for each of us. And we cut them down with a hand axe. It'll take awhile but it'll be worth it when we get meat,' she said, handing him the axe. 'Let's get this one first.'
They took turns pounding away relentlessly at the trees. The trees ended up looking more gnawed than cut. The hand axe had to be a certain thickness so it wouldn't break, but that also made it rather blunt. It tended to cut small chips out of the wood rather than slicing through it. Draco paused to wipe his brow of the sweat that had accumulated there.
'We need to find a better way to do this,' he panted.
'This is the last one. Make it through this and the rest will be relatively easy,' Hermione assured him. He nodded and began chopping again. A few more swings and the small tree swayed. Draco went around the other side of the tree, ready to catch it, and Hermione gave it a good hard push from that side. It toppled with a resounding crack.
'Great, how are we supposed to get four trees back to the camp?' Draco griped. 'I'm already exhausted and I'm hungry and thirsty.'
'Oh, quit whining, you big baby,' Hermione said, rolling her eyes. 'We can take them back one at a time, then we can eat and rest. After that, we need to cut them off to the right length, shape them for balance, and sharpen the points,' she said, ticking them off on her fingers as she spoke.
'Okay.' Draco hoisted one end of the small tree, nonetheless heavy, and Hermione took the other. They made their way clumsily back to the campsite, making sure to track their way so they could find the clearing again. They set it down and headed back for another.
They carried all four trees back to the campsite in that fashion, setting them down alongside each other. They measured them off to a good length and cut them off, two for each. Hermione roughed out two knives and took a chunk out of the edge, making them useful for shaving off tendrils of wood. They spent the rest of the day whittling down and shaping their new spears. Once they had the basic shape, they used stones and sand to grind it to a finished smoothness and prevent splinters.
'I think these turned out fairly well,' Draco said proudly, holding up a long straight shaft, polished fine. Hermione examined her own before responding.
'We're not done yet. We still need to sharpen the ends to points and fire-harden them. Preferably we can add flint tips or, after we get something, bone tips. Those take longer to make but they're not as brittle. They'll last longer. So, have you seen anything we could…hunt?' Hermione asked, feeling her stomach go a little ill at the thought.
'I think I saw a deer or something like that while I was picking fruit but it ran away really fast,' Draco said, thinking back. He had been picking papayas when he had startled the spotted roe deer out of it's grazing. It had bounded away immediately.
'Take me where you found it,' she said, propping her incomplete spear by the fire and standing up. He did the same and led her back to the papayas where he had found the deer.
Hermione examined the ground, crouching and moving slowly forward, following a trail. She motioned for him to be quiet, stood and pushed aside a small sapling gently. There was a large herd of the small deer grazing in a clearing, but they all looking up, startled, as they caught the humans' scent.
The deer did not leap away, they stood tensely, reading to run at any sign of danger. Not frightened, but wary, of the strange creatures observing them. Hermione released the tree, which swept back into place, and led Draco back to the grove they had started at so they could speak normally again.
'Wow,' Hermione whispered. Draco thought she looked more beautiful than ever. Her hair was a little disheveled, her mouth was slightly open, her eyes were glistening with excitement.
'I know what you mean. I've never been that close to a wild animal before,' Draco admitted, a little awed. 'So, we're going to try and kill one of those deer with a clumsily made wooden spear?' he asked, doubtful that they would get any results.
'Well, almost,' Hermione said, beginning the walk back to camp. 'First we need to observe them, find where they drink, where they feed, where they sleep, and when they do all of the above,' she listed, her eyes misting over as she remembered the books.
'Why do we need to know all of that?' Draco asked, annoyed at the time he knew these observations were sure to take. 'Can't we just run up, stab one and be done with it?'
'No!' Hermione exclaimed. 'You saw how fast they can be! They're very quick, sure-footed, agile, everything we probably aren't. The only way to get one of these things on the first try is to build a pit trap.'
Draco gave her a questioning look. 'A pit trap is a pit that we trap an animal in so that we can get close enough to kill it.' Hermione said, rolling her eyes. 'The name is fairly self-explanatory. We need to build one where it'll be hard to see, or cover it with a thatch, on the path they usually follow to get water, or graze, or do something they regularly do.'
Draco thought over her explanation. It seemed very logical. 'Okay. What are we going to use to dig?' Hermione stopped in her tracks.
'Oh. I hadn't thought of that,' she admitted uneasily. 'Ayla used antlers and other bones from a pile near her cave but I'm pretty sure there aren't any moose around here to get antlers from and no mammoths to use the bones of,' she chuckled wearily. 'It all took place in the Ice Age. For all the things that are the same now, there are just as many that are different.'
'So what are we going to use?' Draco asked again as they reached their campsite.
'I don't know. Maybe we can find something to use and, if not, we can just scoop it out with our hands or maybe a basket,' Hermione said, sitting heavily down under the overhang. She put her face in her hands and sighed. Draco sat down beside her and tilted her chin up. She looked to be on the verge of tears.
'What's wrong, Hermione? Everything's going great,' he said quietly. Her bottom lip trembled, no matter how hard she tried to keep it from doing so, and her eyes watered.
'It's all just so much harder than I thought it would be,' she said. He pulled her close, holding her tightly. She clung to him, letting a few tears slip out.
'Sh. It's going to be okay,' Draco said soothingly, rubbing her back slowly. She pulled back a little, and he kissed her on the forehead. She smiled sheepishly at him.
'I'm sorry I keep getting so emotional like this,' she said, wiping her eyes and chuckling slightly. 'I mean, I'm the one that knows how to survive out here and yet I'm the one breaking down! That doesn't even make sense.'
'But you're also a girl,' Draco pointed out. 'And girls are always more emotional than guys. It does make sense that you'd need support! You're lonely and missing your friends and family. I don't have any friends or family to miss so, naturally, I'm not as lonely as you are,' he explained.
'Yeah, I guess you're right,' Hermione said. 'I love you,' she said softly, hugging him fiercely. Draco was taken aback, but hugged her also.
'I…I love you, too,' he said, hesitating slightly. He pulled her closer and kissed her lightly. 'No need to overdo things too early,' he thought.
Hermione beamed at him and stood up, looking resolute and determined. 'We will find a way. It can't be that hard! And, after we start, it can only get better, right?' she said optimistically.
'Right,' Draco agreed, standing up and picking up his half-made spear. 'So, are you up to making us some nice spear points?'
'Even if I could we wouldn't be able to use them,' she said, picking up her own and hefting it critically. 'The only sturdy way to attach them is with sinew and a glue made of boiled hide and hooves, neither of which we will have until we have killed at least one animal. We're going to have to whittle and fire-harden these to points. It shouldn't be too hard.'
'Okay, let's start whittling,' Draco said, pulling on of the knives out of the basket. He and Hermione carefully shaped the spears for awhile until Hermione deemed it time for the fire-hardening. A sharp stick could kill a deer but it would be a lot easier if the wood wasn't so soft.
She held the last foot of her spear over the fire and rotated it slowly until it began to char. Then she pulled it back out of the fire and scraped off all of the charred wood. She repeated this process until the tip of the shaft was hard and very sharp, and then she aided Draco in the hardening of his spear.
When both of their spears were relatively serviceable, the two stood and hefted them, trying to get a good balance. 'Okay, so now we need to scout the deer and dig a pit trap,' Hermione said, more to herself than anyone else.
'And find some sort of shovel,' Draco reminded her. Hermione looked around at the clearing. She jumped a bit and grabbed a sharp stick from the wood pile.
'This! We can use this, or maybe something a little stronger, to pry up the dirt and then we scoop it into a basket and dump it out!' she said excitedly. Draco smiled at her enthusiasm.
'Great. So, let's go scout deer,' he said slowly. Hermione nodded and led the way back toward the clearing, bringing the spears with them just in case.