Parade of the Sun - Dramione

PART TWENTY-EIGHT.

October 13; 1:12pm

The ferries weren't running when they got to the nearest village - or they didn't come there. Draco had just muttered the answer angrily before stalking off towards a row of boats along the coast. They had rented one, and when Hermione adamantly demanded that they would be returning it, they paid extra to leave it at the docks on Stromboli. They would visit the three much smaller islands to the right of Salina, so if they weren't the ones they were looking for, at least they would get through them quickly.

Watching him row them out to sea was giving her flashbacks of when they had first come to the Islands. She could never have imagined she would be here over four months later, and that so much could happen in that time. She grabbed the oars to help him row them towards Panarea, and she stared at him instead of their direction, marking the changes she had found and that they created.

"Granger." She looked up from the faint scar on his forearm to find his shoulders shaking. He nodded his head to the side, and though she had been trying to ignore the level of noise in the big boat next to them, his attention to it drew her own.

Her head pulled back at the handful of women at the rails, all with drinks in their hands, as they yelled something at her. One was making several clawing motions at the air and two of them were chanting.

"What...are they saying?" He laughed outright, and she quickly steered the boat away when one looked like she was about to attempt leaping over to her. "Malfoy--"

One of them yelled something loud enough to drown out her voice, and Draco laughed harder. Hermione contemplated hitting him with the oar, or maybe just dumping him overboard. He had stopped rowing, despite her obvious desire to escape the situation, and she managed to turn them in circles twice before he calmed down a little. She ignored the shape of his grin and the light in his eyes with a huff.

"They want to know if you want to go over there."

She looked between him and the women still yelling at her, one twirling her hips around while another leaned a little too far over the railing. "What?"

"I'll go with you, if you want. There's--"

"I'm not going over there. Just because you want to surround yourself with women does not mean I am going to go along for the ride." She scowled at him as his eyebrow came up, but the grin remained. "I'm--"

"Oh, it's not me they're interested in, Granger."

She blinked at him three times, her hands pausing on the turn of the oars. She looked back at the group of women again with wide eyes and quickly shook her head. It only made them grow louder, and she looked back at Draco when he started laughing again, seeming to get more amusement from her expression than whatever they were saying now.

"Well? Tell them I'm not interested! That one at the end is about the jump over here! Do--"

"Are you sure? I believe one of them just pulled out a whip. It could--"

"Malfoy!"

He laughed and yelled out something to the women, causing them to fall into silence. Hermione smiled politely and started rowing calmly away from them. The jumper said something back to Draco that had the grin falling from his face, and he shot something back at her. The one with the whip laughed at him and replied, and he was scowling now. She had no idea what he said, but she knew that dark, smooth tone meant it had to be something demeaning and scathing. She started rowing a little faster, in the opposite direction the bigger boat was drifting towards. Several of the women yelled something out at him, and he waited until it was silent before he spoke. She recognized the lift to his eyebrow and the cruel twist of his mouth, and knew it was his end delivery - that whatever he was about to say, he was sure it was going to beat their sense of worth into dust.