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“Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
Draco cursed under his breath, and then out loud for good measure. “Watch where the fuck you’re going.”
She reached to wipe off the ale splattered down his shirt, but he angrily shoved her away. “You’re just going to make it worse.” Instinctively, his fingers twitched towards his pocket. Bad mistake.
She moved faster than lightning. In the space of a breath, his back slammed into the rough wooden floor, and the gleaming curved edge of a dagger pressed into his throat. The mumbled conversation in the tavern ground to a startled halt.
Her hazel eyes, seemingly so innocent, instantly flooded with malice. “ Drusje,” she snarled.
“I’m not…” he tried to lie, panic rising. It was hard to breathe with her knee pressed into his chest.
“No?” Her free hand slid into his pocket, extracting his wand and clutching it victoriously. With the movement, her coat slipped off her shoulder, revealing the silver wolf emblem.
“ Druskelle,” he hissed back.
A sickeningly triumphant sneer spread across her face.
The ship was moldy and dark and nauseating. The stench of seawater soaked through everything. Draco flexed his wrists against his icy shackles and wished he had his wand.
No, no. He wished he had a knife. He wished he could plunge it into her chest and shatter her collarbone and pierce her heart.
He saw her occasionally, when she was on guard duty. Always with an infuriatingly smug look on her face, proud of how good she was at kidnapping innocent people. The edges of that ridiculous mane of hair glowed in the flickering lantern light, like a halo.
He dreamed of choking the death out of her with his bare hands.
Draco glanced down at the stale crust of bread in front of his nose, and then hatefully at the hand offering it. Her eyes reflected the dim light, like flames danced in them too.
“Eat.”
“It’s probably poisoned.”
Her eyes narrowed and she took a bite herself.
Hunger curled in his stomach, admittedly, but he pressed it down. “What do you want?” he snarled.
“Are wizards so used to trickery that they can’t accept basic manners?”
“Manners? Manners?” He lunged towards her, as far as his chains allowed him too. She didn’t flinch. “Don’t fucking lecture me about manners when you’re taking me to be murdered.”
“You’re not going to be murdered.” Her tone was flat and rehearsed. “You’ll be given a fair trial.”
“A trial? How many people are found innocent at your witch trials?”
Her face hardened. “Fine. I do want something from you. Answers.”
Draco dug his teeth into his lip so hard that he tasted the metallic tang of blood. He imagined it was hers.
“Are your parents also wizards?”
“Are your parents also kidnappers?”
“Were you born a wizard, or did you choose to become one?”
“Were you born an asshole or did you choose to become one?”
She looked ready to punch him. He so desperately wanted her to.
“What do they even teach you about us?” he snarled. “Other than that we’re demons who should be burned at the stake?”
“I know enough about you,” she growled. “I know about the heroes of your cause, Grindelwald and Voldemort. I know about your blood supremacist ideals.”
“And so you want to eradicate us all.” He laughed coldly. “I don’t even know why I’m arguing with you. You’re not here to change your mind; you just want to make yourself feel better about sending me to my death.”
“I feel nothing for you.” Somehow, her icy tone made the chill worse.
“Congratu-fucking-lations, then. Get out of my face.”
“Fine. You don’t have to tell me anything.” She raised the crust of bread again. “Just take it.”
Draco glanced down at the food. His stomach felt like it was collapsing in on itself. Slowly, he leaned forward and took a bite.
“Was that so hard?”
Something inside of him whimpered, but prideful anger overpowered it. He spat the chunk of food at her, taking disgusting satisfaction in the crumbs that tangled in her hair. “I won’t take scraps from you, filthy Mudblood.”
For a moment, she simply stared at him. He thought he saw something flash in her eyes. For a fleeting second, he tricked himself into thinking it was hurt. Then, faster than lightning, something jabbed painfully into the soft underside of his jaw. His wand.
She leaned in so close that he could feel her breath across his lips. He could see the dusting of freckles across her nose and the flecks of gold in her irises. He could smell her. Strangely flowery, even on this dank ship.
“I don’t want to eradicate you. I want to watch you bleed.”
And then she was gone, leaving him only with a throbbing pain in his jaw and a strange, clenching hunger that went beyond food.
The storm had come out of nowhere. Draco had been left helpless and chained as the bones of the ship rattled and groaned and finally shattered.
Then the cold inky sea had plunged in and swallowed him. He didn’t bother fighting it. He didn’t see the point.
Apparently she had other ideas.
He jolted back to consciousness with his cheek stinging and raw. She was peering closely at him. Her eyelashes were laced with crystals of ice and sea salt. The first thing his dazed mind could muster up was that it was a lovely sight.
Her hand smacked against his cheek one more time for good measure, or maybe just because she wanted to. The illusion faded.
“Finally, you bastard.” She seemed angry with him for daring to drown.
“What the fuck—“ He pushed her off of him, rolling off the plank of wood and plunging back into the sea. Numbing, deadly cold washed over him.
“No! Don’t let go.” There was an edge of desperation in her voice. She grasped his fingers and pulled him back onto the makeshift raft. “Neither of us is going to survive alone.”
He searched her face. There was a note of pleading, despite her efforts to mask it with anger. She was right. Whether they lived or died, it would have to be together.
Draco hooked his arm around her body. She was shivering violently.
“Wait.” She tossed his wand at him. “I don’t want to die with that demonic stick,” she grumbled in response to his questioning glance.
He pressed the tip to her frozen skin. She flinched, but he whispered an incantation and warmth slowly spread through her body. Together, they started to swim, but in the darkness and the rain it was impossible to know where they were going.
“Why did you save me?”
“Shut up. You’re wasting energy.”
“Why?”
“You’re…” Her tone softened briefly. She scowled. “It doesn’t matter. Focus on keeping me from freezing to death, drusje. ”
Draco grumbled but summoned another gust of hot air. They kept on this way, paddling in the desperate hope that they were swimming towards shore, or even just not in circles. Taunting each other when their energy began to flag, neither wanting to be the reason they drowned among these waves. Their trembling bodies pressed close together, drawing strength from each other.
Finally, dawn touched the sky with rosy pink. The druskelle weakly pointed towards a slash of black sand on the horizon, barely indistinguishable from the inky waves. A miracle.
She collapsed onto his shoulder, shuddering with exhaustion. He pushed them the rest of the way, dragging them over the jagged rocks and out of the sea.
She rolled onto the gravel and lay there, terribly still. He thought about limping off by himself, escaping the certain death that surely followed her.
His fucking conscience, always ruining his life.
“Come on. Rennervate. ” His wand barely managed a puff of sparks. He tried to shake her, but the best he could manage was a nudge. “Don’t give up on me now.”
She didn’t move.
“Yeah? You’re just gonna lie down and die?” he taunted. “You’re gonna let me outlive you?”
It worked. Her eyes weakly opened and she glared at him, pure loathing painted across her face.
Alive and hateful was better than dead. He gripped her arm and dragged her to her feet, and together they stumbled away from the sea.
The sun was sinking back into the waves by the time they found an abandoned whaling camp. It was a ramshackle hut of bones and animal skins shoddily sewn together, but it was enough.
He practically had to carry her the last few paces. He dumped her unceremoniously by the circular central hearth, and she murmured something incoherent that might have been thanks.
Draco pointed his wand at the wet peat in the hearth and muttered “ Incendio.” A flame weakly flickered and he knelt next to it, trying to coax it to life.
He heard a rustling behind him. He turned and panic, of all things, shot through him.
“What are you doing?”
She glanced at him. “Is there something I’m supposed to be doing?”
“Put your clothes back on!”
“I’m not freezing to death in wet clothes to preserve your sense of modesty,” she sniped back.
He dragged his eyes away from the smooth tan curve of her body and shifted uncomfortably. She was so unlike him, so unlike anyone he was familiar with. He hated it. He scowled and poked angrily at the flames. “Are all Mudbloods so filthy?"
“Do all wizards have their wand up their ass?” She wrapped a fur around herself, grimacing at the smell. “Where I’m from, we don’t have archaic repressive traditions. There isn’t time to care about blood, or ancestry, or…”
“It’s not natural,” he grumbled.
“No, it’s not natural for someone to be as stupid as he is tall, and yet there you are.” She finished assembling a makeshift bed out of skins and furs and flopped down into it. “I’m not arguing with you. I can’t believe you’re going to be the last face I see before I die. If you swam all those miles to freeze to death here, be my guest.”
He dreamed of making a very rude gesture towards her. He tried to pretend he wasn’t shivering, but it was impossible. Managing not to throw something at her, he got up and moved towards her.
“No. No!” She shoved him away. “You’re not getting near me in those wet clothes.”
“I can keep us warm!”
“You can cast spells in your sleep?”
Merlin’s beard, he wanted to kick her. “Fine. Fine! Turn around.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know, there’s nothing special about you. You’re absolutely average. You look like every other man and I—“
“Turn. Around.”
Begrudgingly, she complied. He started to peel his clothes off, aggressively trying to think about anything else, lest blood rush to his face or...other parts of his body.
She sneaked a glance. Her breath stuttered. He was her exact opposite. He was pale everywhere she was dark, he was hard everywhere she was soft. Everything about him was lean and taut, sharp and angular, like he had been carved out of the cliffs of ice that surrounded them. Every one of his cells was incompatible with her. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Gingerly, he crawled in next to her, careful to leave several inches of space between them.
“Closer! We need to share body heat.”
Forcing an exhale through gritted teeth, he moved closer. They both jolted when their skin touched.
“You’re cold and clammy,” she complained. “It’s like lying next to a malnourished squid.”
“You told me to get closer,” he hissed.
She flipped over and hooked her arm around him, pressing his body against hers. “Relax. I’m not going to ravish you.”
“You’re fucking awful. I hate the way you talk. I hate everything about you.” He flicked his wand at her, and she yelped as a mild burn appeared on her arm.
She slapped his arm back, and again, for a briefest moment he thought he saw hurt flash in her eyes. It quickly burned away into a glare. “You think I care what you hate?”
Overly aggressive warmth was still warmth. Cocooned in blankets, hot air, and each other, they finally let exhaustion overtake them. The last thing Draco thought before drifting off was that he had lied. He didn’t hate anything about her.
When the sun’s watery light spilled over them again, Hermione woke to find herself nestled against his chest, his arms wrapped tightly around her. Reluctantly, she started to untangle herself from the sleepy warmth.
“Stop it,” he mumbled. “Where are you going?”
“Get up.” She swatted his face. “We have to keep moving.”
“I don’t wan…”
She gripped his shoulder and shook it. “Come on.” He merely rolled over.
Grumbling, she relented and set about packing supplies, making sure to make as much clatter as she could and muttering about how selfish, lazy, and entitled he was.
Finally, he sat up. “Can’t wait to get back to my own bed and have some damned peace.”
She couldn’t resist. “Oh, I felt just how much you hated sleeping next to me.”
It was so easy to make those pale cheeks turn red.
“Why do you say things like that?” he hissed, wrapping a blanket around his waist.
“It’s fun to make you blush. You need some color in that pasty face.”
“You’re awful. You’re vile and filthy and lewd and…” He rattled off a couple more adjectives, along with a few choice expletives. “I’ve never met a damned girl like you.”
“Oh, I bet.” She grinned. “Your wizarding families and your nice little housewives. I bet the only girls you’ve ever met are your cousins.”
“At least they don’t go around kidnapping people,” he growled.
“What? Embarrassed that a girl beat you?”
He snorted. “Believe me, if it was a proper wizard’s duel, if you hadn’t cheated, you wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“No, I think I still would’ve won.”
He looked at her incredulously. “Really? A Mudblood would win against magic?”
A foolish, brash smile spread across her face. Something inside her, wound so tightly for so long that she hadn’t even realized, became unrestrained. “Yup.”
He started to laugh. Genuine, full laughter that vibrated in her bones.
“I didn’t even know you could laugh. Calm down, drusje. Don’t hurt yourself.” But she couldn’t help the grin that split her face too.
It was their sixteenth night of trudging across the snowy wastelands, wrapped in as many coats and blankets as they could carry. She marched ahead, like always, as if she had been invested with divine purpose.
“Hurry up, drusje.” They still hadn’t exchanged names yet. That was probably for the best. Neither would be safer knowing the other’s identity.
“Can we stop already? I’m hungry and cold.”
“Whining and dragging your feet won’t make you any less hungry and cold.”
“Running around won’t make us any less lost. It’s nightfall already.”
“ Druskelle are never lost. Especially not at night.” She pointed at the sky. “We learn to navigate by the stars.”
He looked up. “Yeah?”
“Yes. If we keep Bellatrix to our right and Lucius above us, we should—“
He stifled a laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“Just don’t think my father would appreciate us crawling between his legs.”
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s just that everyone in my family is named after constellations.”
“Oh?” She’d heard of the strange names wizards gave their children, but never...constellations.
“Yeah.” He started tracing the patterns he’d memorized as a child. “Lucius, my father. Narcissa, my mother. Bellatrix, my aunt. Andromeda, my other aunt. Sirius, my cousin.”
He turned towards her, watching the faint blue starlight wash across her face. The hostility she had worn for weeks had completely melted away right then, leaving something small and innocent in its place. The stars were reflected in her eyes, like a thousand tiny diamonds.
“Don’t seem like demons now, do they?”
“No.” Her whisper was almost inaudible. “They don’t.”
She pointed at the expanse of sky directly ahead of them. “What about that one? It’s always been my favorite. True north. It’s always guided me.”
His eyes landed on the spine of the dragon, the first one he had begged his parents to teach him. “No,” he muttered hoarsely. “No one named Draco.”
She sensed that she’d stepped on something sensitive. Inwardly, she slapped herself. What was she doing? Stargazing with a boy she had sworn to hunt down? Angry at herself, wanting to vent it on him, she pushed ahead through the snowdrifts again.
“Hey! Hey wait up!” He scrambled after her, skidding over the unfamiliar terrain.
She didn’t trust herself to respond. Her eyes were stinging.
“Will you just relax?” he complained.
“I don’t want to relax!” she shouted into the wind.
“Why not!?” he demanded.
If she relaxed? If she allowed survival to slip from her mind for just a second? If she slowed down, breathed, looked at the stars, allowed the thing coiling inside her out...
She was terrified of it. And he could tell.
“What? What are you so afraid of?” He caught up with her and took hold of her arms, spinning her around. Their faces were inches apart. They hadn’t been this close since that first night, which seemed like a hazy, ridiculous dream now. A trick of the light reflected off the endless stretches of ice. An uncomfortable warmth crept into her face.
“Are you afraid you’ll start to like me?” he asked, suddenly soft.
“I don’t like you,” she croaked. The lie was bitter on her tongue. She tore herself from his grasp and started to march away again. “And you don’t like me either.”
“But I do.”
The confession was like a brick wall. She stumbled to a halt. Her racing thoughts screeched to a standstill. Her heartbeat erratically tapped the three words over and over.
“What?”
“I do like you.”
She turned. His face looked ashen in the dim light. “Is that so bad?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.
“Yes.” He approached her again. “You’re crude, and obnoxious, and vile, and treacherous, and…” Each word felt like a shard of glass slashed across her heart. But he whispered them reverently, like a prayer.
“Well you’re rude, and cruel, and prejudiced, and selfish, and…” The words tumbled out of her mouth without any of them registering in her mind.
“And?” His nose nearly brushed hers now.
“And I like you too.” The sentence forced its way out of her mouth. It felt thunderous.
“How do I know you haven’t cast a spell on me?” she gasped.
“If you feel the same as me…” The feeling like there was a yawning chasm opening underneath him, the feeling that his insides were twisting and boiling, the sunrise in his chest, a sheer revelation…
“You know no magic can do this.”
This was something far more ancient and powerful than incantations and wand waving.
“What about you?” he murmured. Each breath gusted across her lips. “Are you tricking me? My father warned me Mudbloods could be deceptively charming…”
The insult should have made her angry, but somehow his tone had massaged it into warmth.
“Oh, I see. I’m the seductive Mudblood, come to dirty the wizard’s blood. Am I seducing you?”
He grinned. “Just a little bit.”
She poked him in the chest. He swatted her hand away. “Stop that.”
“No. I’m seducing you.”
“Stop it.” He laughed, an airy, free sound. She danced around him, jabbing him in the chest, the stomach, the sides.
“Look how the powerful wizard has fallen!” she crowed. “You are powerless to resist!“
He reached for her, wanting to wrap his arms around her, wanting to pull her face close to his again.
Her voice broke off into a scream as the ice underneath her crumbled.
He lunged forward, grabbing her hand as a crevice suddenly opened in the unsteady ground. She dangled over nothing, his hand the only thing keeping her from a deep well of darkness.
Her grip tightened desperately. “Please.” Tears pooled in her eyes. “Don’t let go.”
His grey eyes were stormy and inscrutable. With a heave, he dragged her back up and they collapsed onto more solid ground.
“I thought you were going to let go,” she gasped.
“I thought about it.”
“It’s okay. I would’ve thought about it too.”
He shed his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders, since hers had been swallowed by the ice. He stood and extended his hand. “Draco Malfoy.”
She took it and allowed him to help her up. “Hermione Granger.”
After another week of wandering and Draco seriously considering freezing to death rather than gnawing on any more old seal jerky, they finally stumbled upon a tiny settlement on the edges of the tundra. While Hermione tried to beg the innkeeper to let them have a room despite their complete lack of money, it was a well-timed Confundus charm from Draco that did the trick.
The room was cramped and paint peeled off the walls, but at least it was warm and, Merlin’s beard, had an actual bed. Hermione let out a breath she had been holding for weeks. Draco collapsed into the bed and never wanted to get up.
Her mind, though, curse it, could never stop rushing to the next thing.
“What now?” she finally asked.
Draco sat up and looked at her. “You’ll be safe here. I’ll head south in the night.”
“So that’s it? Just goodbye?” It felt like glass shards were working their way through her chest. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to go back to her old life, and she wasn’t sure if she could. No one survived the ice and came out the same.
A faint smile cocked his lips, the one she used to find so incredibly annoying. “Are you not done tormenting me?”
She laughed quietly. “There has to be somewhere…”
“I’m not going back to that smelly whaler’s hut.”
“Somewhere else.” Somewhere where there wasn’t drusje and druskelle, wizard and Mudblood. Just Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger. Out on the ice, under the stars, everything else had been stripped away. “Somewhere we can just be ourselves.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Beyond both of our worlds?”
She moved to sit next to him on the bed. “Yes.”
Draco chewed his lip, lost in his thoughts. “If I went...I could never return to my family. I’d be branded a blood traitor.”
“I know. I’d be court-martialed as a deserter.” She wound her hands tightly together. “We’d be throwing away everything. We can’t.”
“No. We can’t,” he agreed, his voice starting to crack.
“Still.” She rested her head on his shoulder. She hadn’t realized how much she’d come to lean on him in these terrible weeks. “Thank you for saving me.”
His arm curled around her waist. “You did the same for me. If we stayed together, I doubt it would be the last time.”
She looked up at him through her lashes. Her scent wreathed around him, still intoxicatingly flowery, somehow not diluted by all the snow and mud. For a moment, he lost himself in the constellations of her freckles and the warm hazel of her eyes.
Their lips met, and Draco realized he had been wanting to do that for a very, very long time. She leaned into it, pushing her fingers into his blond hair as he tangled his in her curls.
Finally, they broke apart for a breath. She was wearing an infectious smile, and he couldn’t resist returning it.
Sheer bliss warmed him to his bones as he held her, their foreheads touching. For the rest of his life, he regretted that they didn’t run away together right then. He regretted that he didn’t find a way to make that moment last forever.
He tried to hold onto it the way he held onto her in the midst of the churning sea, but it was impossible. The moment shattered when the crimson light of a Stunning Spell washed over her lovely face and she slumped unconscious into his lap, and Aurors crashed into the room, ready to arrest her for her crimes.