Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

A/N: Thank you so much to those who reviewed Chapter 2!!! I hope you enjoy this next instalment! Sorry for the long wait, guys!

Lost

Chapter 3

"Granger."

Malfoy stared in consternation at the sleeping brunette below him.

"Granger, wake up." He cautiously poked her side with the tip of his foot. He groaned when Hermione merely rolled over to her other side.

"Damnit, get up, witch!" He growled at her, crouching down to shake her shoulder.

Hermione jerked awake and blindly struck out at the figure hovering over her. Malfoy dropped back with a curse, holding his shoulder and glaring at her. Hermione jerked upright, gasping for breath and eyes shooting to meet stormy grey ones. Eugh. It's just Malfoy.

She groaned aloud and decided to agree with her body's painful protests and lie back down. "Go away, Malfoy."

"Granger," he hissed, "get up before I decide to throw you in the water for punching me."

She turned over and snuggled her nose into the upturned collar of her coat. "Well," she mumbled, eyes closed and already seeking oblivion from her aches and pains, "that's what you get for molesting a girl in her sleep."

Malfoy's eyebrow twitched. Narrowing his eyes, he leaned over the girl and let his lips trail along her jaw line to rest lightly against her ear.

"Nnnh?" Hermione mumbled incoherently, wondering at the somewhat pleasant sensation.

"Granger," he all but purred. "Get up…NOW!" He added with a roar.

Hermione bolted upright, suddenly wide awake, and then glared at the smirking man who had ducked away just in time to avoid a nasty collision. Okay. Not so pleasant sensation. She glared at Malfoy.

"What is your problem?!"

He sneered, eyes turning blank and cold. "We need food, Granger. And while I'm tempted to leave you sleeping alone while I look for food and let some savage Muggle beast eat you, the screams would ruin my appetite."

Hermione huffed and made to stand up. As soon as she moved her right leg, though, pain licked up her nerve endings like liquid fire, making her grimace and turn pasty white.

Malfoy eyed her warily, still holding his left shoulder. "Since the sun's up, there's also enough light for me to check your wounds."

"I'm fine," Hermione said through gritted teeth.

"So the red in your hair is plainly for fashion purposes?" Malfoy inquired. "It does go rather well with the matted style, of course."

Hermione scowled at him, and then raised a hand to feel the back of her head. She pressed down where she could feel the ache that she'd pushed to the back of her mind's notice. Black dots paraded in front of her vision, and the sudden, sharp pain made her hastily withdraw her hand and gulp for air.

"Why do you care?" She asked quietly after a moment.

"It's nothing overly sentimental, I assure you, Granger," he drawled. "I'll treat your wounds, and in return, you can examine my shoulder and do what little you can."

She glared. Git.

"Ow!" Hermione jerked away from Malfoy's gentle fingers and glared at him. "I said that hurts!" Git, indeed.

He glared right back at her. "If you'd just drop the whining and sit still, then things like this wouldn't happen, Granger!"

She subsided with a mutter that sounded suspiciously like "damn ferret". She heard Malfoy breathe heavily through his nose, and felt a moment's pleasure at knowing he was just as annoyed as her. Then forgot her smug thoughts as his fingers found a particularly sensitive part of the wound on the back of her head.

She made a pained noise in the back of her throat, and his fingers instantly gentled even further – is that even possible? I have to admit, he's been so careful already.

"It looks like a shard of the plane hit you, Granger," He paused, and then added quietly, "You're lucky to be alive; I saw someone get hit with one and it wasn't pretty."

"Cushioning Charm," Hermione said.

"Ah," he hummed quietly. He reached for the water he'd found in a small stream nearby, boiled over the fire in the husk of some large, sturdy fruit he'd come back with a while ago.

She watched out of the corner of her eye, astonished, when he set the makeshift water container down and lifted up his coat and shirt to reveal a tight undershirt of some kind. To Hermione, it looked like a male Muggle tank top, but she thought he'd be offended if she related a probably once-very-expensive Wizarding garment to Muggle store-bought clothes.

Hermione gaped as he proceeded to rip off strips from the somewhat clean undershirt, dipping a couple in the water. He reached for her head and gently dabbed at the wound. Hermione bit her lip, refusing to cry out as the pain made spots dance in front of her vision once more. She could taste the salty tang of blood in her mouth.

After what seemed like an eternity, he lifted the now dirty rag away and handed her a clean, dry one. "Put as much pressure as you can on it. Hopefully the rest of the bleeding will stop."

He moved to her side so he could see her face better. "Is anything else badly injured?"

Hermione hesitated, remembering the stabbing pain in her lower leg. She didn't want to know, hadn't even tried to peel the fabric away from her leg to assess the damage. "My leg," she whispered. She looked away when he knelt by her outstretched leg, the other pulled up so she could wrap her arms about it.

She cried out when he slowly peeled the fabric away. And swayed at the sight of her swollen ankle and the jagged cut curving round her heel and lower calf.

Malfoy hissed quietly. "Damn, Granger. This looks bad." He gave her a look. "There's some metal shards still left in the wound. This is going to hurt."

He picked up two long, fine metal pieces salvaged from the wreck and thrust them into the fire. He waited for the metal to cool, and then turned back to her leg and began the arduous task of cleaning the wound.

Hermione was infinitely grateful when blackness overtook her vision completely after the first agonising moment, not even aware of her short, strangled cry as she fainted.

She woke up some time later, feeling dizzy and thirsty. She struggled to sit up, ignoring the dull throb in her head and newly bandaged ankle.

"Here." Malfoy thrust out a smaller fruit husk that was clearly intended as a makeshift cup to drink the boiled water. She took it gratefully and drank greedily, moving to sit up and rest her arms against her upraised knees.

And promptly choked, staring with surprise at her leg. She shouldn't have been able to move it!

"Wha – ?"

Malfoy sighed. "I may not have my wand, but I was trained to some degree in wandless magic." He glanced at her ruefully. "Of course, there are limits. Apparation is impossible without a wand to augment and channel your power. And I'm not too adept at healing. I was taught more… offensive wandless magic usually."

Hermione stared at him, eyes wide. "You did an amazing job at healing this. But doesn't wandless magic drain you?"

He arched a brow. "I'm hardly weak, Granger."

She frowned. "Yeah, right. But…why did you do it?"

He sneered, the mask falling back into place on his face and making his eyes smooth over like ice, revealing nothing. "I'm not going to spend all my time searching for food while you laze about every day. I need you to be able to walk, if badly."

Hermione glared at him, but privately wondered if that was really his only motive. Hah! It's Malfoy, of course it's his only motive. He's not the type to care that much about people like me.

He kneeled beside her, turning grey eyes to bore into her skull. She shifted uncomfortably. "My shoulder," he said quietly.

Hermione started. "Oh! Um…I'll have a look, then." She awkwardly shifted around to face him, and hesitated, her hands hovering over his clothed left shoulder. He sighed impatiently, and shrugged his coat off with only the slightest grimace of pain, then opened the buttons going down the front of his shirt, shrugging that off too. He lifted his arms to try and pull the tight undershirt off, but grunted in pain.

"Here," Hermione said, and took hold of the top and slid it off him as gently as possible. She gasped at the ugly sight of the angry-looking wound marring his shoulder, clearly caused by a fragment of the ruined plane.

Years of practice from long ago during the war made it quick work for her to grab the excess strips of material and use a dampened one to clean Malfoy's wound efficiently. She didn't flinch at the nasty sight, well used to caring for wounds during war time. The boys had often stumbled back to Headquarters, dripping with grime, sweat and blood, and she had always look– Hermione closed her eyes and forced the memory away.

Finally, the wound was as clean as possible. She felt guilty for the heavy breaths Malfoy was taking, knowing this had to be painful, but it was necessary. She tentatively raised fingers to the wound, closing her eyes and trying to remember what Madame Pomfrey had taught her about wandless healing. 'Breathe. Focus. Imagine your wand is an extension of your hand. Imagine that your wand is part of your hand, a long finger. Now feel the magic that travels up your arm and through that finger. Now direct it to another finger. They are all the same. Focus. Picture the spell's words in your mind. Let it channel through this finger and then release the spell.'

Hermione breathed in deeply, and picked her index finger. Imagining a well-known healing spell, she let it tingle up her hand and trickle into Malfoy's shoulder, repairing some of the damage.

Her eyes flew open, a gasp escaping her lips, when her hand was suddenly wrenched away and held tightly, almost painfully, in Malfoy's own, much larger, hand. Her concentration was, inevitably, completely ruined, and she noticed that while the wound looked far less inflamed and deep, it was nowhere near healed.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Malfoy snarled at her, suddenly angry.

Hermione was confused. "Er…healing your shoulder."

She blinked, and felt herself sway slightly as the customary weariness born of wandless magic overtook her. His eyes caught her movement and his glare seemed to intensify.

"There was no need to use wandless magic."

Well, excuse me for trying to heal you as much as possible. She huffed.

"You did," Hermione felt inclined to point out. It was certainly better than admitting she'd wanted to do her best at healing him.

His mouth twisted. "Ah, the Gryffindor in you. A bunch of tit-for-tat 'Saints'," the last word was hissed out between clenched teeth, and Hermione got the impression it wasn't meant to be complimentary.

"I could hardly leave you injured and not do something," Hermione snapped back, equally bemused and angry at his reaction. "What is your problem, Malfoy?"

He didn't answer her, lips merely tightening into a thin line.

A horrible suspicion was forming in her mind. "Can't tell me why?" She took a breath, trying to control her anger at his sullen silence and feeling her insecurities grow with the lack of a reply. "Is it that you just don't want a Muggleborn to touch you? Help you?" She asked it softly, not really believing it. After all, why help her in the first place if he was still such a bigot?

Even this got no response. Hermione ran out of patience and struggled to her feet, approaching his side once more. Even if he is being stubborn, I still have to help him. She sighed and reached her hands out to his shoulder once more. He stiffened, but stayed still. Her fingertips tingled with the raw healing magic once more, and Hermione swayed at the incredible drain it took on her.

There was a hiss, so low Hermione barely managed to notice it in her fatigue. Malfoy's hand whipped up to grab her arm in an iron hold, steadying her even as he firmly pulled her away from his shoulder.

"No, Granger," he said, very quietly.

"But it's not healed yet, Mal – "

He cut her off. "Leave it; it's good enough for now." He sighed, clearly irritated at her anxious look and fingers already outstretched to do more magic, despite her obvious fatigue. "You can help me bandage it, if you're that desperate to help."

She bristled, but wordlessly reached over and collected the last few scraps of cloth.

Hermione limped along the beach behind Malfoy, grumbling under her breath at his high-and-mighty leadership act. She wasn't an idiot; she didn't need him to explain to her that they would need to search for food - and survivors. Wobbling along behind Ferret-Boy using a long thin piece of metal as a makeshift walking stick in sand was not her idea of a good time.

Straining to pull herself along, she tried to ignore the pain in her leg by scanning the water. The plane had ripped into chunks, some carried away by the tide, some sinking, and others just scattered too far away to be seen from their initial resting spot. They had just passed another hunk of twisted metal on the sand, but no sign of life so far.

They both stopped, staring at the same thing: a large, somewhat intact section of a plane cabin. Malfoy made an incomprehensible noise, then made his way over to the wreckage. Hermione hobbled behind him at a slower pace.

She regretted following him.

Malfoy swore loudly as he searched through the broken off section of plane. "Don't come in, Granger," he called out.

"I can help you search!" she exclaimed indignantly.

"You can't move around in this junk with a bad leg, Granger, so just shut up and stay there."

Realisation dawned. "You don't think there's anyone still alive to rescue, do you?" she whispered, feeling nausea rise up once more.

Malfoy grunted. "We'll see."

After ten minutes of rummaging and quiet cursing, Malfoy came back out, his face grave.

"No one?" Hermione whispered.

He shook his head grimly. "There's some…bodies… in there. I'll get them out."

Hermione, trembling, nodded her head and watched as he re-entered the wreckage, only to appear a minute later half-carrying, half dragging the body of a woman. Hermione reached out with one hand, the other balancing herself with her cane, and helped Malfoy lower the body to the ground.

In the end, they found 11 bodies. Hermione had been in a war, but the sight of lifeless people still made her stomach lurch. "We should bury them," she whispered.

Malfoy agreed, and they spent the next three hours gathering wood before lighting the pyre.

Hermione looked at Malfoy. "I'm beginning to think no one else has survived."

Malfoy's lips thinned, his eyes turning icy. "We'll see."

"I just find it strange that we have survived, but no-one else has, as far as we know. And some of those bodies…the injuries didn't look that bad."

Malfoy sighed. "They could have died from internal bleeding, or something, Granger."

"I know that, Malfoy," she said, irritated, "but it's still strange that we survived and no Muggles have so far."

He shrugged. "You used magic to cast a cushioning charm; if you hadn't, you might have been killed, too."

Hermione let the matter drop and turned instead to watch the flickering fire. She hoped they would find some others.

Two days later, they still hadn't found anyone else alive.

Hermione was following Malfoy. Again. This time, they were exploring the vegetation in search of food. Searching through the scattered sections of charred plane, they had already found a couple of suitcases, and some containers of food, but the small supply of edible food would not last for long.

Malfoy stopped, and reached out to touch the fruit on a tree. "Here, Granger. Hold up the coat." They were using spare clothes salvaged from the suitcase as makeshift carry bags.

Hermione sat down, relieving some of the ache in her leg, and held up the 'sack' as Malfoy searched the area, plucking fruit and dropping them in the coat.

"We're going to have to see if there's any sort of wild animal around here, too," Malfoy said quietly. "Don't suppose you know how to hunt?"

Hermione snorted. "No, I didn't think I'd ever need to know. We'll learn."

Malfoy didn't comment, turning back to search for more fruit instead.

Afterwards, they searched the salvaged suitcases and metal containers for any useful items.

"Aha!" Hermione said triumphantly. She showed Malfoy her find: a dented metal pot. "We can use this to boil our water, now."

He grunted. "Finally, something useful."

"We should think about making a shelter, you know," Hermione commented after a time of quiet rummaging.

He glared at her. "Do I look like a builder to you, especially with this shoulder?"

Hermione clenched her teeth. Stupid git. "I was just making a suggestion. We can't live under a tree forever, it's only useful for shade, it won't help us if it rains."

He stared at her for a moment. "Fine; we'll see what we can do tomorrow. It's getting too dark now to start."

Later that night, snuggled up in spare clothes, Hermione stared at the night sky and wondered what deity was cruel enough to maroon her on an island with no survivors except for her old arch-nemesis. Even if they were able to be civil, for the moment, at least.

TBC