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July.
A Wednesday, if anyone could believe it.
Hermione absolutely detested the swamp. As if England isn't wet enough, let's just add the heat, and flying bugs. Real bugs. Not the kind of bugs that twitter and buzz around the circumference of the Ministry or Diagon Alley. Those bugs deserve a special place in hell. However, these are real bugs. Bugs that snicker and hum, attempting to find a home in her hair that had been growing the more and more they venture into the Amazonian Rainforest.
Anyone who knows the first rule of curl care is that: humidity is thy enemy.
Or hydration.
Either one.
The point is, that Hermione's hair has been growing since the moment they landed in Brazil, each strand of chestnut-colored hair envelops pockets of water from the blanket of water that covers the atmosphere. The humidity dots sparkly pears of water on her nose, the sides of her temple, and down the strait of her throat. She reigns in the urge to sneeze, just to give those bugs something to chew on.
Unfortunately, that was only number one, on her list of things that she despised about this Wednesday in July.
The second thing on her list is that it's dark.
Witching hour, as the Muggles say.
She's trekking through the Amazonian rainforest in the middle of the night.
Why?
Because a certain curse was triggered because Nott thought it was funny to poke at the sister amulet belonging to a very wealthy pureblooded family that used Centaurs as House Elves. Boot had been horrified obviously, but no more than Hermione when the amulet shrieked and activated its defense mechanism: a spontaneous fire.
At Gringotts.
As if the Goblins didn't hate her enough.
Much like the irony that was her life. Theodore Nott was under her jurisdiction, meaning, that the Goblins basically saddled her, quite vehemently, to fix the fucking problem. Theo's sad, pretty, blue eyes and silver tongue weren't enough to get her out of this. So now, she's trekking through fucking Brazil with her partner in an attempt to calm the now – sentient – amulet down, with its sister stone hidden somewhere in the Amazon.
In Brazil.
Said stone – some type of fucking pureblood emerald with some other type of ancient magic that Hermione zoned out on – could only be seen in the pitch dark and activated with a pureblood blood ritual.
This makes absolutely no sense since pureblood magic cannot be distinguished from a muggle or half-blood.
Science is science, Hermione reasoned.
Even after all that's said in done, people are fucking stupid, she concludes.
Thankfully her partner isn't an imbecile, well, not that much of an imbecile.
He's quite intelligent really, but she rather chew on glass than admit that out loud, and she's unreasonably glad that he's with her on this stupid trek. At least she knows she won't die a terrible death, he's smart enough to get her out of any situation, or most. The only issue is of who he is.
Draco Malfoy.
It's because he's Draco Malfoy that this entire thing is just—it's unbearable.
"This is the stupidest fucking assignment I've ever been on," Hermione hisses under her threat and stabs a nearby vine with her wand when it slides over her cheek. "And I took Nott to see the merpeople while he attempted to learn whale language."
Draco muffles a laugh with the back of his hand, but doesn't turn his head to look back at her, "You never told me how that went, Granger."
He doesn't goad her this time. Hermione doesn't swear, not often. Only when she's angry or extremely frustrated, he learned throughout the years, and when she snaps it's not pretty. As much as he loves riling her up, they're in a pretty dangerous forest, in the middle of the night, with no backup and limited supplies. He's not going to push his luck.
"Can't you deduce from the fact that Nott attempted to speak whale language to the Merpeople, Malfoy?"
"Merpeople don't speak whale?"
"They don't speak at all."
This causes Draco to turn his head and cock a brow.
She can't see it, but she feels it and she's not going to explain why she knows Draco's mannerisms—like that.
"At all? How do they communicate then?"
"Songs," she sniffs and ducks under a tree branch. "They are very much like sirens but are no danger to wizards. Well, unless you get in the water with them without establishing a connection. They are very finicky creatures, you see, the head Mer—" she chokes into a gasp as she finds her center of gravity compromised, the force of her step causes her wand to slip out of her fingers and fall somewhere onto the mossy grass.
Hermione is in what feels like, mud. Knee-deep in thick, viscous, atrocious mud, and she can't move. It sticks onto her like a langlock curse, instead of her mouth, it's her legs against the dirt, and she can't find her wand!
"Malfoy," Hermione's voice thrills into a panicked gasp.
At the risk of attracting magical creatures, Draco mutters, "Lumos."
"I can't move," she says strangled and waving her arms trying to collect her balance.
"It's not quicksand," Draco sounds calm, but Hermione can see the clench of his jaw from the eerie blue light of the lumos.
"There's quicksand in the rainforest?" Hermione whisper-yells and tries to grasp onto the moss.
He snuffs out the lumos and huffs, "I can't use the lumos for long, Granger. Who knows what kind of creatures—"
"—I know," she hisses and inhales loudly, shakily, "Just get me out of here; I dropped my wand."
"You dropped your wand? Have you lost your—"
"I am sinking, you idiot!" Hermione shrieks and grabs onto what feels like his forearms. His very fit forearms and she can't see it, but doesn't it feel nice under fingers?
Draco latches his grip on her triceps and attempts to pull her out of the mud. He swears under his breath, the words hot and furious underneath her jaw. "It's Mulky Mud. Quicksand is harmless, you would only sink waist-deep if it was. Mulky Mud will turn you into stone after a specific amount of time."
"Ten minutes," she whispers in horror and drops her head to his clavicle. Her head spins as she files through her options. She can't bloody well set the forest on fire and dehydrate the mud, but "I suppose there is any luminescent spring water nearby?"
Draco racks his brain before the panic can set in, "Fucking hell, Granger, we passed it about ten minutes ago."
"I'm not going to die via mud Malfoy!" Hermione there's a blood purity implication in there, but they were speaking in literal terms.
"I'm not going to let you die, you blasted harpy," Draco exhales roughly, and even in the pitch black of the night, she can see the quicksilver of his eyes, glinting like rainwater in the middle of spring on a cloudy day.
"I'll be right back. Granger, please don't do any grand displays of magic while I'm gone."
"Are you sure? I thought I might send up a sunbeam like a signal flare. Let the whole fucking forest know where I am."
"Fucking shrew."
Draco sprints south of them and Hermione counts the minutes; she has exactly six minutes before she turns into a poor imitation of Medusa. She can't even accio her wand now that it's stuck in the fucking mud. If she survives this damned trip, she's quitting that fucking firm and taking up Unspeakable Cumberbatch's offer to work at the Department of Mysteries. The bowels of the Ministry are frankly, far more appealing than this swamp, than the glowers of the Goblins.
Theodore Nott can kiss her arse when she slams her resignation letter at his face and Blordak.
"Granger," Draco pants as he gets closer and stumbles over a loose rock.
"Three minutes," Hermione hopes she sounds impressed, rather that, than terrified. "Not bad, Malfoy."
He doesn't respond. He grabs his flask from his knapsack and uses his teeth to rip the cork out of the bottle. He takes his left foot and draws a line in the dirt, an indicator of the space he needs to stand behind in order to yank her out of the soft spot on the earth. He says sternly, "Arms around my neck."
She hesitates for a fraction of a moment before her hands pat his arms blindly, looking for his stature to make a blind grope for his nape. Once her hands flailed for ten seconds, her palms met the proud curve of his biceps, she slid her hands up his strong shoulders to loop around his neck, her fingers digging into the tense muscles at the base of his neck, and she reminded herself that his shiver is one due to the cold.
Because it couldn't possibly be anything else.
Draco inhales sharply and pours the spring water down her legs, around her ankles, in front of her toes, saturating the circle around her feet carefully, and purposefully. Once the ground beneath her is soluble, permeable, Draco tosses the flask somewhere on the ground, and grabs her waist tightly, securely, and snaps his torso backward, yanking her out of the mud in one swift, certain motion.
The force of the pull causes Draco to stumble backward and collapse on the mossy ground with Hermione on top of him. She quickly uses aguamenti to remove the remaining bits of Mulky Mud from her body and the splatters along her partner. She drops her head back onto his chest in exhaustion.
Draco groans, "Merlin woman, you should come with a warning label."
Hermione chuckles despite herself and rolls off until she's lying next to him instead of his firm, muscular chest. "It's not like I ask these things to happen to me."
He grumbles something inaudible, his hand still in hers. "I think I have some swamp water in my mouth."
"Gross."
"Is that how you talk to your savior."
"I didn't realize your name was Harry."
Draco makes a noise of disgust and sits up—shaking the humidity from snowy-blonde locks. "This is ridiculous. I want a bath and a fucking almond croissant. I don't want to be trekking the fucking rainforest in the middle of the night when this swamp is keen on killing us. This is all Theo's fault, and I am going to wring his neck when we get back. It's not like we can accio Oliveira's amulet."
Oliveira's amulet flies through the rainforest, illuminating an eerie red hue before sitting in the palm of Draco's hand innocently.
Hermione doesn't know whether to laugh or cry, even when Malfoy drops his body dramatically back onto the ground next to her, his chin brushing the crown of her head—her fingers squeeze his.