CHAPTER FORTY- Run!
"Can you walk?!" Malfoy asked with urgency. "I… I don't think I can," Hermions said trying to sit up with the baby in her arms. The shouting intensified downstairs and Draco cast a spell on the door.
"Either you can walk or you can't!" Malfoy said trying to pick up the baby. "Don't touch her!" Hermione shouted clinging the babe to her chest. Draco ignored her and picked up his daughter for the first time. The baby's crying was weak and seemed struggled but he did his best to soothe her.
"Can you walk?!" Draco asked again. There were lights flashing through the cracks of the bedroom door as spells were being cast. They did not know how extreme the fighting was beyond the bedroom and Draco didn't intend to find out.
As Hermione got out of the bed with her clothes still bloodied she promptly collapsed from the strain. "Fine! Don't walk then!" Draco said while the baby still cried in his arms.
After her collapse her eyes flickered open for a moment and the last thing she remembered was the sound of fighting and the smell of soot.
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The thing that roused her was the smell. Before she opened her eyes she smelled old, rotted wood and salt. Her body felt like it was swaying back and fourth and she was going to drift off back to peaceful sleep before she remembered the events that took place.
Hermione's eyes fired open and she rolled off the bed she was on to a hard wooden floor. Confused and weak she shouted for her daughter. Her surrounding here unknown to her but she soon found that she was indeed swaying back and fourth. She was on a ship.
She was crawling on her hands and knees to the door when Malfoy came running through it. "Where is she? What have you done with her?!" Hermione half cried and half croaked at him.
"You need to be back in your bed!" Malfoy said pulling Hermione to her feet. She threw her frail fists against him with no success. "Calm down, calm down," Draco repeated as he carried Hermione back to the bed.
"Give her to me!" Hermione said ignoring his instructions to calm down. "Isola is asleep in the next cabin over," he explained. "Isola? You've named my daughter you self-absorbed-" Hermione began.
"Well, at least your wit is back. You've been asleep for days," Draco interrupted. "Bring her to me," she commanded gripping onto his wrist as hard as she could.
He left through the door in silence and quickly returned with their daughter wrapped in pink. Malfoy handed her to Hermione and pulled up a chair next to the bed. Hermione inspected every part of her to make sure she wasn't harmed. Isola still had ten fingers, ten toes, a mess of white curls and grey, icy eyes.
Once Hermione was finished and thoroughly exhausted she clung to her daughter and asked Draco to explain everything. "I carried you… I carried both of you up the stairs to my bedroom. Snape and my father were trying to calm the Dark Lord. I had to push you inside the fireplace and sent us to the house in Plymouth," he started.
"Plymouth? What happened to Snape? This ship-" Hemione asked trying to focus through her fuzzy head. The creaking of the ship and the sound of the waves was hurting her head. She felt so weak and tired it was hard to grasp what he was saying.
"I'll only continue if you promise not to interrupt me," Draco said. Hermione nodded in consent and let him continue the story. "From Plymouth I dragged you to the coast beyond the rocks. Do you remember when we were there? When the baby kicked for the first time?" Malfoy asked. Hermione remembered it well and he went on.
"I raised this ship. There's a reason we own the cottage at Plymouth. It is one of the Malfoy escape plans. However the ship was supposed to be used by a Malfoy around 1740… No one remembered it or used it until now," he said.
"I had to raise it, protect it and stock it with necessities just in case something like this happened… After you passed out at Black Landing, I was planning on leaving you and just taking Isola…" Malfoy confessed.
"But she cried for you when I left you behind. You both have the same cry." Malfoy said. Hermione listened carefully as she rocked the baby in her arms. "I have been healing you both since we got on the ship. But I am already running low on potions and I don't know all the tricks to healing yet," said Draco.
"But where are we going? Is he searching for us? What about your parents and mine?" Hermione asked. She had a million questions and tried to get them all out at once.
"I set us for an island in the Mediterranean… Hence the name Isola. But it is hard. Since our coordinates are constantly changing I have to replace the protection spells often. And I have no knowledge of what happened to our parents or Snape. Only that I know we are being searched for. I can feel it," he said with his hand over his Dark Mark.
"Why did he want her? Why did any of this happen for that matter," Hermione said defensively cradling Isola. "I have an idea… And it is not one you are going to like. Granger? Are you awake?" Draco asked when he noticed Hermione's eyes closing. She could feel herself slipping back to sleep.
Fighting to stay awake was useless to her feeble state now that she knew she was safe. Or, at least safe as it could get with someone she still hated whilst the creature she hated more was on the hunt for them.