Chapter 13
The ride to Clifton Moor was long and mountainous. Had it been a smooth ride, they probably could've made it in a week and a half, maybe two, but as it was they were on week three and still had another to go.
During the first week of the ride Lucius had stayed annoyingly close to Hermione and Draco, following them in his lavish, magically expanded horse-drawn buggy that no one was allowed to enter, including even Draco. He made the two of them sleep in a smaller, almost normal sized tent and always sent Peeper to supervise them. At first Peeper had also taken Draco away multiple times a day whenever it struck his master’s fancy; Hermione assumed Lucius was probing his son’s mind for any information she might have revealed.
By day, Hermione rode Bethan and they followed Draco and Magnus as he instructed the men about their duties. It wasn’t particularly interesting to her, but it was better than riding alone. Most of that first week, she hadn’t spoken to anyone besides Bethan. Hermione was rapidly growing fond of her sweet appaloosa.
She also spent a lot of time thinking about everything she had left behind at the stones. The chance to fix things with Ron, the chance to get back to him and her life, her job, her friends and family. It felt like her heart was being stretched thinner and thinner the further they got from the stone circle.
Something in her gut told her that she was here for a reason though, and her inner healer wouldn’t allow her to look past the abuse that was happening in front of her. She kept reminding herself that the stones weren’t going anywhere and someday, somehow, she would get back to them and back to her time.
Draco did his best to keep Hermione company, but they still had to be careful about what topics they discussed. Lucius still hadn’t removed the tongue tie curse and she was hesitant to remove it herself, lest they get caught and punished. It was mostly ‘good morning, lass’ and ‘g’night, my lady’, along with a bit of army or horse talk.
The second week on the road the pair saw slightly less of Lucius, and by the third week Hermione barely saw him once a day. After almost forty eight hours with no sign of Lucius, Hermione finally had to ask about him. She pushed Bethan up a few yards so she was beside Draco as they rode.
“Draco, where has your father been?” she asked him with what she hoped was nonchalance. If Lucius saw her ask about him in his son’s memory, she was almost sure he’d instantly become suspicious again.
To her surprise, Draco blushed, deeply. He stuttered incoherently for a split second before he composed himself and replied. “He is around, typically I dinna see him during travel. I believe it is only yer presence that kept him lurking about,” he said calmly, but his face was still as red as an apple.
“Has he stopped doing Legilimency on you, then?” Hermione asked, trying to figure out where she stood in Lucius’ eyes.
“Err, aye mostly, he said-” Draco began to say but he faltered, still blushing madly.
Hermione waited patiently, beyond curious what could be so embarrassing that it seemingly stopped Lucius from reading his son’s mind anymore.
“He said he was scunnered o’ listening to us and our boring conversations, that’s all,” he finished quickly. Finally the blush began to disperse and he gave her a small smile. “Dinna fash miss, I dinna think yer boring.”
“Oh, well, thank the Gods for that, aye?” Hermione attempted to joke back in a Scottish accent. All that did was cause Draco to burst out laughing.
“Nice try, Sassenach, but ye’ll need a bit more practice I’d say,” he said as he calmed down. He had called her that word again, but coming from him it felt less like an insult and more like an inside joke between friends. She returned his smile; he was very easy to talk to.
“I’m a quick learner, I was top of my class all seven years at school so I have no worries I’ll be able to figure out the Scottish way of life in no time.” She rolled her eyes internally at herself, why did she need to mention she was top of the class?
“Can- can ye- do ye mind telling me a bit more about-?” Draco tried to ask her softly, looking her in the eye from the seat of his horse. He asked slowly, anticipating the tongue binding curse to activate. When it did, Draco gagged a bit before his tongue unrolled and he shook his head, “ne’er mind, lass.”
“Did you want to know more about Hogwarts?” she asked him, meeting his gaze. “Does it affect you when I talk about it or just if you try to?”
He just shook his head, not wanting to risk speaking about it again. He motioned for her to continue though, and she took it as a sign that the curse hadn’t activated at her mention of the school.
They rode side by side while Hermione told Draco about her school experience. She told him about being sorted by the Sorting Hat, she described the four houses and their traits; she wanted desperately to discuss what house he thought he would’ve been in but that would most definitely violate the tongue tie curse. And if Lucius ever saw it, she couldn’t imagine his wrath if Hermione revealed Draco’s unknown secret. So she didn’t ask.
She told him about all of her classes, she ranked all of them from her most to least favorite. She talked about quidditch and the house teams and her friends. The whole time she was talking though, she was very careful to not include any details that wouldn’t align with the current time she was living in. She didn’t mention professors or anyone she knew by name, and she stayed away from certain details that she couldn’t be sure of, like whether or not the current generation of first years rode to the castle in the boats across the Black Lake. Things that someone like Lucius would be able to verify or dispute in an instant.
Hermione was mid sentence after a very long tirade about choosing which classes she wanted to pursue in her later years when she slipped up for the first time.
“Ancient Runes was one of my favorite classes of course, I mentioned that already,” she was saying animatedly, “I tried so hard to get Ron and Ha-” she stopped suddenly, clamping her mouth shut.
Draco looked at her curiously, “Ron and who?” he asked, smirking.
“Erm, Harry. Ron and Harry were my two best friends all throughout school,” she said. She had to be more careful, she definitely couldn’t give away surnames.
“Two lads, ye say? A bonnie lass like yerself, they must’ve been mad for ye,” Draco said with a slightly forced laugh.
“Oh, no, well, erm, not Harry, you see,” Hermione stuttered out. Why was she so anxious to talk about Ron to Draco? Deep down she thought she knew the answer to that question but her brain pushed the thought hastily away.
“Ron was, or well, is, I suppose,” she continued to try to explain, “mad for me, I mean, but, well, the feeling is mutual. You see, what I mean to say is, Ron is my fiance.” There, she said it. Finally, she reprimanded herself.
Draco’s face fell; there was no other word for it. The sparkle in his eyes from teasing Hermione disappeared, his smile faded to a thin line, and any traces of a blush he might have had melted away into paleness. “Aye, that’s wonderful, miss,” he said monotonously.
Hermione felt guilty now, though she couldn’t put a finger on the exact reason why. Draco’s demeanor had changed so much when she’d mentioned a fiance, was that simply a result of a gentleman backing off another man’s woman, or something more than that? A very small, very hopeful piece of her thought it might be something more.
She didn’t say anything for a moment and was spared the process of coming up with something to break the silence when Draco spoke again.
“I could try to speak wi’ my father on yer behalf, to get ye home to yer Ronald,” he said dejectedly.
Not only did she think Lucius would find it laughable that Draco was trying to speak to him on her behalf, she knew he didn’t have the conscience for it to bother him whether or not she had a family at home. Draco couldn’t risk getting in trouble for her, again.
“No, Draco, it’s alright,” she quickly responded. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, I wouldn’t want you to get punished for my sake.”
The corners of his mouth lifted ever so slightly at the word complicated, she noted, and had turned into a real smile by the time she finished her sentence. She returned the smile and they continued on their way, the awkward silence broken and replaced by a peaceful companionship.
Draco began barking orders at the men shortly after; it was near dusk and they needed to stop and begin to set up a semblance of a camp for the night. Truth be told, most men just slept on the grass with an extra jacket or a ratty blanket. It wasn’t worth the effort to set up a tent for such a short time.
Once the troops were occupied, Draco returned to Hermione’s side and he led her to the edge of the group. They dismounted their horses and hobbled them nearby, Draco removing the tent pack from Magnus’ saddle. He began to unroll it but Hermione gently took it from him.
“You and I both know it’s easier if you just let me do it,” she said teasingly. They had argued about this almost every night on the road. Draco’s ideas of gallantry wouldn’t allow her to do the work while he just watched, not that she was doing much besides waving a wand, she had pointed out frequently. He sighed and rolled his eyes, instead turning to start a small fire.
As if I couldn’t also just do that, Hermione thought while she laid the tent on the ground. She let him have at it though, he could build a fire nearly as fast as she could cast one. A couple of seconds later and their small tent was ready for the night. Another moment and there was a fire to keep them warm and to cook some food before turning in for the night.
Draco pulled out some salted meat and quickly heated it up for the two of them. It could technically be eaten the way it was but after Hermione had asked for it to be warmed their first night on the road, Draco had automatically done it every night since. It wasn’t bad but she could really go for a nice, freshly cooked elf meal sometime soon. Whenever Peeper came to chaperone them at night, he never brought food with him.
The sun set quickly and soon their fire wasn’t enough to keep them sufficiently warm. Hermione went into the tent first and cast a couple of warming charms on their cots. She removed all of her clothing aside from her stays, which truthfully still covered more of her than any regular dress she’d worn in her time.
Small perhaps wasn’t the right word for the tent, the two of them still had ample space inside to sleep. They each had a cot and there was space enough for both of them to walk comfortably in between. Other than that though, the tent was just like any other. There were no decorations, no kitchen, no seating other than a small, house-elf sized stool in the corner.
Hermione was exhausted. She might sit on a horse for the majority of the day but it surprisingly took a lot out of her. She shoved herself under her blankets and was nearly asleep when it occurred to her that she hadn’t heard Peeper pop into the tent like she usually did every night. She sat up, confused. The stool was empty and Draco was still outside; he never came into the tent with Hermione unless the elf were there too. She didn’t know if that was an order from his father or his sense of propriety.
She crawled to the foot of her bed and reached out to pull the flap aside, finding Draco’s blonde head sitting by the fire exactly where she had left him.
“Draco, where is Peeper?” she questioned. “He’s usually here by now.”
“I dinna ken, lass,” he turned to answer her. “I’m nearly dead on my feet, I’ve been waiting for him to show, so I can get some sleep.” He yawned as he spoke.
Hermione hesitated for half a second before saying, “You can come inside to sleep without a chaperone, you know, I don’t bite.”
Draco blushed and seemed to think about it for a moment. “Aye, I suppose yer right,” he said, “I just didna want to tarnish yer honor is all, my lady. Being alone with a bonnie lass like yerself might suggest some things to the others.”
A bonnie lass. He called her that yet again and her heart fluttered. It wasn’t as if Ron or anyone hadn’t ever told her she was pretty, but the way it sounded coming from his lips with that accent did something to her that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
“If I’m not concerned with my honor then you shouldn’t feel the need to worry about it either,” Hermione said simply. She sat back and held the tent flap open wider. Draco looked her in the eye for another moment and then stood up, stretched, and made his way inside.
She settled herself back onto her pillow and watched him out of the corner of her eye. She had been asleep more often than not when he’d come into the tent for the night, Peeper already there keeping a watchful eye. She watched as he removed his outer layers of clothing until he was in nothing but a dirty white tunic and a pair of breeches. Once comfortably unclothed he threw himself on the bed without removing the covers and was asleep in seconds. Hermione allowed herself to look at him for another thirty seconds before tearing her eyes away and going to sleep herself.