Chapter Three
Hermione woke up to her wand vibrating against her hand precisely at 7am. She rolled off her bed and stretched briefly before throwing on an old, faded pair of jeans and a ratty hoodie. Yawning, she made her way to the kitchen, frowning when she realized she was down to her last bottle of water. She made a note to herself to tell Malfoy to make a stop by the river when he was out scavenging the area. Malfoy.
It was still so strange that he was here, in the tent with her, living with her for the foreseeable future. Part of her still wanted to kick him out into the cold. After all, why should she care whether he lived or died? Why did she owe him anything, after how he had treated her and her friends all those years at school? But it wasn’t Hogwarts anymore, and schoolyard drama felt years in the past.
Still, there was the matter of him being a Death Eater. Hermione suppressed a shudder at the memory of a glimpse of the ugly snake on Malfoy’s forearm, marking him as one of them forever. Was there any chance he could actually change, despite the permanent mark that said otherwise? Or was Hermione being a naïve fool in trusting him to share her space, making a mistake that could cost her far more than her own life…
She shook the troubling thought away. He couldn’t kill Dumbledore. He saved your life. On top of that, you have his wand.
Besides, Hermione reminded herself. You need all the allies you can get, even snarky, sneaky blond Slytherins. She gulped down the last of the water and grimaced when it did nothing to soothe the nagging hunger pains. Hermione glanced at the clock atop the table and decided to wake her new companion.
Approaching Malfoy’s door cautiously, Hermione deduced that he was still sleeping by his obnoxiously loud snores. She pulled the tent flap back and studied at him for a moment.
He looked so peaceful in sleep, his face showing none of the troubles that plagued him in waking. His silver-blond hair was longer than it had been at school, as if it were a month or two past when he would normally cut it. She noticed he was wearing the same robes as he’d arrived in, and Hermione made a mental note to conjure him some pyjamas later. Decorated with dancing cartoon badgers, of course. Her mouth twitched at the thought of Malfoy’s reaction.
An unbelievably loud snore yanked Hermione back to reality. Drawing her wand from her pocket, she flicked it at the fluffy yellow and black bedding, which immediately shot up to the ceiling, disentangling itself from a flailing mass of limbs which fell yelling back onto the now bare mattress.
“What the hell, Granger!” Malfoy yelled. He looked at her, shocked.
Hermione had to stifle a giggle. He looked betrayed, almost - but it was hard to take him seriously when his hair was sticking up at all sorts of odd angles and the plush badger had fallen into his lap. She had to admit it felt good to get a rise out of him after all those times he’d bullied her in their youth.
“I told you, we have things to get done. Up. It’s already eight in the morning, Malfoy,” she said airily, flicking her wand again and feeling a twinge of satisfaction as the bedding plopped back down onto his head. “I assume you want to eat today? It’s time to get going,” Hermione raised an eyebrow at a muffled sound of protest from under the covers.
Malfoy begrudgingly stood up, glaring at her mutinously. “Great,” Hermione said cheerfully. “I’ll see you outside in ten minutes then.” She turned on her heel and walked out of the tent to wait for him, a smile playing around her mouth from the comical encounter with her new flatmate.
****************
Draco grumbled incessantly about curly-haired Gryffindor witches and being awake at the ungodly hour of 8 am while he searched his bag, cursing violently upon realizing he hadn’t had the foresight to bring a change of clothes. Merlin, he missed his wand.
Stomping out of the tent, he found Granger poring over an unfamiliar text with her brows furrowed. As he got closer, she slammed the book shut and jumped up, hastily cramming it into a beaded bag she carried under her arm. Draco barely registered that the book shouldn’t have been able to fit into the bag before she tucked it into her jacket and smirked at him.
“Sleep ok, Malfoy?” she asked innocently.
Draco glared back at her with puffy eyes. He figured he did look pretty ridiculous, as he had barely glanced at his reflection in the enchanted mirror that morning before leaving. He ran a hand through his hair in what he hoped was a casual manner to assess the extent of the bedhead. From the growing smirk on Granger’s face, it was bad. Sighing, Draco gave up on any hope for his appearance. He scowled at the witch.
“What’s so urgent it couldn’t wait til 9?”
Granger rolled her eyes impatiently. “I told you, we need food. We’re not too far away from Hogsmeade, but I expect it’s crawling with Death Eaters and we have no money anyways. There’s a river a mile or so that way,” she pointed straight ahead into the thick forest. “And a grove of old walnut trees and mushrooms this way,” she pointed to her left. She looked at Draco expectantly.
Draco wrinkled his nose. There was no way in hell Granger expected him to survive off mushrooms for Merlin knew how long. He’d definitely be sneaking into Hogsmeade, but Granger and her morals didn’t need to know that.
“Fine. But Granger?”
“Yes?”
“If I can’t have my wand back, whatever – but conjure me a cloak, would you, I’m about to freeze my arse off in this snow.”
He hadn’t had time last night to take in their new surroundings. As he picked his way through the brushy undergrowth of the forest, he could not help but appreciate Granger’s talent for picking a hiding spot. The towering fir trees with their low-hanging, snow-covered boughs hid their camp exceptionally. As a bonus, there was a river nearby – more of a creek, really – but it was virtually inaccessible due to the blanket of snow over thick shrubbery.
If Granger had not pointed out Hogsmeade during her little orientation, Draco would have been completely lost in this Merlin-forsaken wilderness. Thankfully, she’d mindlessly gestured to it, and it had spurred his immediate rejection of her ‘nuts and berries’ jabber. Fuck that. He needed real food if he was going to survive his time with the witch – and from the looks of it, she needed real food to survive too. He’d been slightly disturbed when the trio had arrived at the Manor the other night. Not only for the obvious reasons, but also for the way they’d looked. Potter and Weasley had been gaunter than normal – in need of a shave, too – but it had been Granger that alarmed him the most.
She looked practically skeletal. Thin, ragged clothes falling off her frame, cheekbones far sharper than he remembered… He recalled feeling a stab of fury toward Potter and Weasley for either not noticing it or allowing it to continue. He didn’t know whether there’d simply not been enough rations for them all, and Granger had given up her portion in favor of her friends, or whether she’d simply lost herself in her work and forgotten to eat. Potter he could forgive – but Weasley, dirt-poor that his family may be, should have known better. Every pureblood grew up with a certain knowledge of etiquette, and not letting the fucking women starve - or rather, making sure they were served first – was among the most basic of rules. Maybe Weasley was simply that much of a pighead.
As Draco approached the forest’s edge, he peered out from between the tree limbs at the bustling Hogsmeade street. From the conversations he’d heard in the Manor, dementor patrols didn’t begin in the village until 4 o’clock in the evening, and if the streets were patrolled during the day it was by the lowest-level Snatchers. Something about business owners being unhappy with the dementors, no one wanting to patrol, and Potter being more likely to travel under the cover of darkness anyways. As Granger had unpleasantly woken him up at the ungodly hour of 8 am, Draco now found himself with all the time in the world.
His stomach growled. Draco sighed, pulling his cloak hood as far over his face as he could. There were so many shady figures in Hogsmeade as it was with the new regime, he would fit right in. He took a deep breath and slipped out of the trees towards the village.
**********
Hermione snapped the book shut in frustration. She’d read it cover to cover – as she had with every tome in her beaded bag – but she’d begun to realize that the Horcrux hunt had reached a point where books could no longer guide her. It was, from here, only personal knowledge of Voldemort’s past and the places he might value that could find them the Horcruxes. As for destroying them, no amount of staring at solutions in a book was going to bring Hermione any closer to a basilisk fang or anything equally deadly.
She shivered as an icy breeze danced through the clearing, making the bluebell flames of her fire falter. The campsite felt eerily quiet without her usual companions – if they were here, Ron and Harry would undoubtedly be trading suggestions by the fire of where they ought to go next, with the Order’s radio station blaring in the background. They would all be pretending they weren’t listening intently for a hint of a familiar name, but the conversation would go silent the moment they heard mention of a friend, and their shoulders would slump with relief upon hearing confirmation the aforementioned friend was alive.
But they weren’t here, and Hermione didn’t know the password for the radio.
Hermione felt useless. Ron and Harry were out there somewhere – not dead, for being so close to Hogsmeade she surely would have known – and they had the sword, the Horcrux, and each other. Whereas she, on the other hand, had no way of contacting the Order and was completely out of ideas for finding the Horcruxes. Oh, and she’d picked up a Death Eater along the way.
Hermione groaned, resting her head in her hands. It had all gone so wrong.
She rose to her feet, slipping the Horcrux book back in her bag and glancing around the clearing. Still no sign of Malfoy. Hermione sighed. She drew the blanket closer around her shoulders and pulled out her wand.
“Expecto Patronum”, she said, her breath leaving in icy white puffs.
A flood of warmth ran through her as the otter swam through the air. She considered it thoughtfully as it gamboled around the fire. She could ask it to find Harry or Ron, to tell them where she was – but the risk if they weren’t alone… She couldn’t take that chance.
Her mind drifted aimlessly as she sat dutifully on watch with the otter for company. She wondered, suddenly, if Malfoy could cast a Patronus. It was an interesting idea – she supposed he had never tried, which was not to say that he was incapable, but there was the matter of the Dark Mark. She had spent many a night ruminating on that particular enchantment, and had taken a sort of inspiration from it in creating the D.A. coins. She still didn’t completely understand it, though. Her coins had all been created and connected simultaneously, however, to cast a new charm to connect to those previously created, and the intricacies in the Mark’s abilities to notify all or only select carriers… she’d gone through so many horrible books in the Restricted Section that Madam Pince had probably been on the verge of asking Dumbledore to have her investigated.
Of course, now she had a sample to study, she remembered with excitement. She could ask Malfoy if the Mark interfered with the Patronus, and if he remembered the incantation Voldemort had used – maybe she could even experiment with removing it.
As soon as she’d thought it, she shook her head in frustration. This situation was doing strange things to her head. Malfoy had been in the tent with her for all of one night, and the Mark was obviously a bit of a sore spot for him (Hermione had seen, for a split-second, the irritated and scarred skin surrounding it when Malfoy had taken her arm for Apparition). For one thing, she told herself sternly, it was rude and potentially dangerous to poke at such a subject when Malfoy was still adjusting to sharing a space with her. For another thing… she paused.
Would he ever want it removed? She didn’t know him well – would he keep it, as a reminder of what he once believed, or of the mistakes he’d made? Or would he want it gone, leaving him free and ready for a fresh start once the war was over?
Would it change her opinion of him if he let her remove it?
**********
Draco cursed under his breath as the thorny underbrush snagged on his cloak for what felt like the millionth time. He’d managed to hide himself well in Hogsmeade, his hooded figure drawing virtually no attention from shopkeepers well accustomed to patrons hiding their faces these days. A loaf of bread, a small ham and six green apples thudded against his body with each step he took. He’d stood in the market for a minute, perplexed, as he’d realized he had no clue what Granger would want to eat. Was she picky? Did she prefer red apples or green? Was she a vegetarian?
He'd then blinked, snapping out of it. Who cared what Granger would prefer? The witch had practically ordered him to forage for whatever vaguely edible items he could find in the snow-covered forest. She wouldn’t be picky – plus, what the fuck did Draco care if she preferred red apples to green? He was buying, after all. He snorted, and snatched up the green apples while shaking his head.
A silvery flicker of movement drew his attention as he approached the camp. Draco hovered behind a tree cautiously, trying to get a better view. Shit. If something happened…
The silver streaked by again. This time, Draco could tell what it was. An otter Patronus gamboled through the air, circling a hunched figure, wildly curly hair obscuring her face, which was approximately two inches from a book he didn’t recognize.
He stepped out from the woods. She didn’t move. As he moved closer, he could hear her muttering unintelligibly to herself as she read at an inhuman speed.
“What are you doing?”
Granger jumped violently and grabbed wildly for her wand. The otter vanished in a blur of silvery light. “Malfoy! Merlin, you scared me,” she gasped.
Draco watched with a raised eyebrow as she set her wand back down. “You know, if I were a Death Eater –
A thick silence filled the air between them as he realized what he’d just said.
Draco cleared his throat. “I mean – if I were an attacker… if I were here to attack you, you’d be dead by now. Constant vigilance, Granger.” He smirked.
Granger still looked shaken. Draco didn’t miss the hurried way she shoved the book out of his view, and his eyes narrowed as he picked up the hint of – was that guilt? – on her face.
“Yes, well,” she said briskly, standing up and brushing the snow off her robe. “If you were an attacker, the wards would have gone off and I’d have had a split-second’s warning. And –“ she hesitated, warring with herself for a moment. “I don’t think it’s technically correct to call you a Death Eater anymore. I mean, you would be doing a really shit job of it if you were still working for Voldemort, honestly, you’ve had every opportunity. So, I’d just call you a – a Death-Eater-turned-war-refugee, I suppose.” Her tone was businesslike, neutral – but he could still detect a hint of nervousness.
It felt like an olive branch, but it weighed heavy in his hands. The evil little voice in his head whispered tauntingly: Coward. She means you’re a coward.
Draco shrugged uncomfortably. “I suppose you’d be correct, then.”
They both stood still for a moment, each hesitating, unsure what had just passed between them.
Granger broke the silence first. “Oh! What did you find?”
Draco shook his head, clearing it of whatever the fuck that had just been. “Right – so I wasn’t sure what you’d want, but here. I don’t know how the fuck you’ve been surviving on fucking berries but I refuse to find out.” He strode into the tent, unloading his grocery trip onto the kitchen table triumphantly.
Granger gasped. He turned to her, smirking, expecting her to exclaim her gratitude and ask how he’d managed it – and his jaw dropped in shock when she slapped his arm, hard. “Ow, Granger, Merlin, at least say thank you –“
“You stole from Hogsmeade!”
“What the – yeah, Granger, I went to Hogsmeade, but I didn’t steal, alright –
“But we haven’t any money! Don’t bother lying to me, Malfoy –
“Granger, my family is filthy fucking rich and you don’t think I brought a sackful of Galleons? Are you joking? I didn’t steal, alright, just eat the fucking food, you’re practically a sack of bones! Honestly, would it kill you to say thank you –“
“You could’ve been caught, you idiot!”
“Granger. Granger, please, will you listen to me?” Draco was alarmed. The witch had turned white, fingers trembling as she stared at him with wild fear in her eyes. “I wasn’t caught. No one recognized me. Remember, I used to live at You-Know-Who’s headquarters – I know when the patrols are, I knew that there’s practically no one out there mid-morning. It was fine, Granger, okay? I paid, and no one saw me, it’s okay.” His voice had softened, and relief swept through him as he watched her take a deep breath, tension leaving her body.
“Right,” said the witch faintly. “Yes, it would make sense… thank you. It was still wrong of you,” she said, voice more steady now as she levelled him with a glare. “You should’ve at least told me. What if something had happened? I wouldn’t have been able to do shite, and it would’ve been your fault,” she said crossly.
Draco’s lips curved into a grin. The barb didn’t bother him as it normally would have. The panic that had set into her had been disconcerting – the scolding simply meant she was back to normal. “You cannot seriously tell me that if I’d told you I was going to Hogsmeade, you wouldn’t have put me in a full Body-Bind and gone to get food yourself.”
Granger sniffed. “Still.”
“Oh, shut up and eat, would you.”
The two sat down at the kitchen table, each drifting into their own troubled thoughts, the strange interaction anything but forgotten. But as they descended into another silence, broken only by the occasional bite into a crisp green apple, Draco couldn’t help thinking that this quiet felt slightly more peaceful.