Parade of the Sun - Dramione

PART FIFTEEN.

June 24; 9:21am

She watched Malfoy fishing through the trees, keeping her distance. While he had become paranoid of everything around them, it had become him Hermione started to watch carefully. She was afraid to sleep even meters away in case he got it into his head that she was the enemy or something. He would try to hunt her down like the rabbit, tackle her to the ground, and maybe he would slice her throat as well.

She was on guard for anything that would lead to the plant, for any magic that might try to kill her again, and now against Malfoy - against him more now than she had been in the beginning. She felt like she was losing her mind a little too. All the watching and careful movements, trying to watch him without making him think she had turned on him, was shaking her up. Some days she felt like a survivor, and other days she didn't even want to see a picture of the Islands again. She had to snap him out of it but she didn't know how. As long as he stopped thinking that something was following them, he should calm down, but short of caking herself in mud and pretending to be a dead monster, she had no plan.

She didn't think he had seen her through the trees but he looked up and directly at her. They stared at one another for a moment, Hermione planning a strategic slow back-away, when he held up a speared fish and started to walk out of the water.

June 25; 3:21am

She opened her groggy eyes for just a second to make sure Malfoy was far away from her, shooting up with a gasp when she saw a pair of legs on the other side of the dying fire. Malfoy was less than a meter away from her, his face tight as he stared at her, poking the fire back to life. She took a deep breath at the caveman in front of her, releasing it slowly when he still didn't move away. The night was cold so he might have been trying to warm up, or he was getting a burning stick to set her on fire.

Hermione folded her legs, wiping her eyes and ignoring her heavy head, before she focused on him. Orange and shadows danced across his face, outlining harsher edges, and she made sure not to take her eyes off him. He didn't look at her again.

8:18am

"No one is following us! If they-- You know what! You know what, I'm going to go out there and come back tomorrow. And when I'm defenseless and on my own, and no one attacks, we'll know that no one is there! Okay?"

Hermione dropped her emphasizing arms to her sides and began to walk away, but he grabbed her arm to stop her. "You're not going--"

"You're not telling me what I can do! I--" She tried to pull her arm from his grip, but it was clamped.

"Since it's my life that depends on yours, yes, I can. We already discussed my self-preservation--"

"And my 'rushing off into certain--'"

"I'll only follow."

She stared at him with too many things bursting in her chest, throwing her hands up and shaking them by his cheeks as she growled. He didn't even raise an eyebrow. She narrowed her eyes and swung her hand, slapping him. He flinched, so she pulled back to repeat it, but he caught it, twisting her arm down. She only swung her other hand, slapping him once, again, three times.

"Snap. Out. Of. It!" she yelled. "This is the most you've spoken in days. I keep thinking you're going to stab me to death, or go completely off the edge. You are freaking me out, Malfoy! You are not a monkey, or some jungle warrior, or--"

He finally managed to grab her other arm, twisting them both back around her back as she stumbled towards him to loosen the pull. Which wasn't pleasant at all, considering how he hadn't bothered to bathe during all that staying awake. His face was two inches in front of hers, his eyes like bullets in his anger.