Call Me Psyche - Dramione

2

Please let me know if I should continue this. Thanks. DDD

It was the morning after Hermione chased Draco Malfoy out of their campsite. Oblivious to all that had happened, Harry Potter cooked Hermione breakfast before she went back to bed. For an instant after she woke up in gloomy noontime light filtered through the canvas wall, she didn't remember that Ron had gone. She lay listening to hear the boys' voices, bickering about plans as usual. But all was quiet. She remembered. Wrapped in a blanket, she stepped outside the tent to join Harry in staring out over the windy moor.

"Thought you'd never get up," he said, not looking at her. "Not that I minded. It's alright with me if we stay put for a bit. See if anything finds us."

"Finds us," she repeated. Then her second recollection of the day came rushing back to her. Malfoy – last night, Malfoy had found them. He might still figure out who she was if he thought about it long enough. Malfoy was awful but not stupid. No, listless as she and Harry were, it was too dangerous to leave things as they were.

"Didn't you say it was like there were voices on the wind out here?" Harry went on. "I've been sat listening to see what I can make of it. Nothing that sounds like speech so far."

"Right, so maybe we should move a bit, just on foot, if you like," she said. "Let's spend the day hiking into those hills, where all the limestone outcroppings are. There might be a cave up there. And we know You-Know-Who likes to hide things in caves. That's where the locket was when Regulus Black nicked it in the first place."

She waited, breath held to see if she'd convinced Harry to move on without having to argue or alarm him. They had to put at least a day's walk between them and the place Malfoy last knew them to be camped, a place he now could apparate back to at will.

Harry sighed, moving as if to nod his head but finding it too heavy to raise again after he'd bowed it. Without a word, she patted his shoulder and set about breaking camp.

The wind was indeed louder and more cutting at the higher elevation. At the crest of the hill, Hermione looked back at the dry heather waving like a sea behind them, covering their tracks. They set off over the rocky higher ground where the heather couldn't grow completely over the limestone. As they went, they paused to inspect and pry at any ledge or niche that looked like it might have been shaped by a wand.

"Nothing," Harry said hours later, knackered and sinking onto his haunches.

Hermione sighed and scanned the landscape, golden in the sunset. They were still nowhere, but it was a different nowhere than yesterday's, miles between them and where she'd last seen Malfoy. It was enough. "I'll get tea on."

Harry took the first watch of the night, stumbling into the tent at midnight, barely giving Hermione time to slip the locket off her neck and onto his before he fell into bed to sleep. This was how he was dealing with the grief of losing Ron: with intense fatigue.

Her grief wanted to come as crying. During the day, she'd held back almost all of her tears. It would hurt to break the tension and give into crying, but it had to be done, and she knew how. She would sit on the top of a high plateau of rock, just far enough away that Harry wouldn't be able to hear, and have her cry in dark, windy private.

But it was too chilly on top of the rock, exposed. Hermione gave it a chance anyway, shivering on the rock's edge, her legs dangling down over the heather. Eyes narrowed, she scowled over the hilltop, and wondered if her heart might be so broken now that something was hardening in it. Bloody Ronald...

She pressed her knees together and something moved in her hard heart. Nothing she was proud of. But she was admitting to herself that the best she'd felt in days was when she'd held Malfoy down last night while he fought and fumed. In that moment, she had been powerful, so sure of everything. Unlike her friends, she didn't need to worry about Malfoy's feelings, or fret over whether he'd disappoint or betray her. Of course he would. If he knew who she was, and had any kind of chance to betray her, Malfoy would do it in an instant. He'd do it heroically, especially if he got Harry in the bargain too. And so just as heroically, she had fought him off without any guilt.