Parade of the Sun - Dramione

PART NINE.

May 10; 8:18am

Hermione had hardly slept during the night, lying on her side to avoid the scratch and friction burns on her stomach and back, at the top of one of the cliffs that fell into the sea. Any small noise, and she was on her feet searching through the darkness for movement. She kept quiet and counted the stars, her bruises, the bug bites, and ran the pads of her fingers across the deep cuts on her cheek and jaw. It had left her a lot of time to think, and that wasn't something she ever took for granted.

She needed to call Harry. She didn't know if the Ministry would take her off the case or not, but the job was too big for her alone. It took a lot for her to admit when she wasn't capable of something, but the man on the mountain had proven that to her. If she'd had magic, it would have been a different story, but she had been lucky to escape with her life when a quill and rock was her only means of defense. Malfoy and the idea of bad people she had never encountered she could handle. Very real bad people, her lack of anything all that useful, and a bag of bananas, was not something she could handle alone. The plant could be anywhere, on any one of the Islands, and she was only one person. As much time as it would take to bring the Ministry out and catch them up, it would take more time for her to do this by herself.

She was still hoping Harry and Ron didn't come. Harry had become an Auror and still found himself in dangerous situations, but this was something else. This was like searching for the Horcruxes, and dangerous magic with dangerous people. The ward around the island - or all of the Islands, she didn't know yet - robbed them of magic. While the Ministry would bring the supplies and money they needed, she wasn't sure how well they could defend themselves without magic, or how well wizards could handle a gun. Harry and Ron didn't need this. They were all supposed to be living relatively stress-free lives and moving on from the war. She wasn't supposed to be dragging them into dangerous situations like this.

Hermione found five tourists who were willing to let her use their mobile, but none of them could get any service. The phones were dead in a caf, a restaurant, and a souvenir shop. She thought it was a combination of horrible timing and bad luck until she walked into the second hotel. The receptionist cut off her phone-yapping the second Hermione walked through the door, pulling the receiver from her ear and hitting a few buttons on the box. Hermione stopped walking, watching her listen to the phone, pull on a wire, and call out to another employee while waving the phone. Morto, the same as what she had heard all morning. Dead. 

1:13pm

"I'm not going down." She didn't think the plant would be inside a volcano anyway - if it were, it was going to take a lot more than what she had to get it.

"Why don't you just pretend I'm Potter and I'm asking you to."

There hadn't really been an agreement of any kind. She had been pacing around the edge of the village, wondering about the possibility of running into the man again, when Malfoy had walked past her. Seeing as how she wasn't about to let him get ahead of her, she had started walking as well. They didn't speak or even look at one another, but they hadn't strayed more than a few meters since they left the town. The only communication they had shared before now was him laughing at her as she huffed for air on the hike up another mountain. She had tried to laugh at him a half hour later when he was huffing as much as her, but it came out as more of a wheezing-gasp that was more insulting to her than to him.

"Because I would need you to be under a Illusionment Charm, for my memories to be manipulated, and to be put under a Confundus Charm, before I could possibly believe that you were Harry. Or that Harry would even ask that of me. If you want to be Harry, though..." She ushered towards the large opening of the volcano and he glowered at her.