Chapter Text
“Shit.”
Her windscreen wipers are fighting a losing battle against the thickening flurry of snow which now covers her windscreen entirely.
Hermione can’t be described as a competent driver in good weather; she’s ashamed to admit she suffers from a general ignorance of the rules of the road (the highway code is not a book she’s ever felt inspired to read, cover to cover), and is prone to bouts of road rage when beeped or gestured at in response to one of her mismanoeuvres. So she doesn’t have a hope of continuing in this surprise opening of the icy heavens. She can’t remember if she’s supposed to drive away from a skid, or into it? She’s sure she’s meant to be using a higher than usual gear, but the wheels of the car spin uselessly each time she presses down on the accelerator, the engine grumbling in complaint.
She pokes the steering wheel in irritation as she turns on her hazard lights and reaches for her mobile phone in her coat pocket. Her fingers are cold even with the stuttering warmth of her car heaters, and she fumbles with the buttons of her phone. She should have known really; not a single bar of signal. Because who needs reception in the middle of the Highlands in a snowstorm, miles from the nearest town and without her wand? Hermione is a proud Muggle-born though; she’s determined not to panic. What would her mother do?
She could abandon her car; it’s certainly not going anywhere until the snow melts now, and who knows how long that will be? She’s driven for at least ten minutes without passing a house, which is further than she thinks she can cover in a blizzard and without a torch (yeah, she knows that’s something else you’re meant to keep in your car, but this is Britain, it’s small; there are very few places which are truly remote - it just so happens that the muggle family she is on her way back from visiting to discuss their daughter’s enrollment at Hogwarts lives in one of them. She also doesn’t have a high-viz jacket, or a traffic cone in her boot, thanks. She hasn’t checked her tyre pressure in probably years and wouldn’t know where to find the oil to change it. So sue her.).
The idea of wandering aimlessly in what are likely sub-zero temperatures, in the most mountainous part of the United Kingdom in her good work shoes is not an appealing prospect. But then neither is a night freezing in the driver's seat of her battered old Ford Fiesta; her fingers are already numbing rapidly, and her car battery is not the most reliable. There is a remote but calculable chance that she may actually die of hypothermia in her sleep. She decides with a resigned sigh to walk, bidding a fond farewell to her shoes in their current state.
She wraps herself in her coat, tucking her scarf over her nose and battling to push the door open against the roaring wind. She needs to make good progress if she wants to find somewhere with a phone before the dark settles fully over the hilltops, her car is already sitting in darkness under the reaching shadows of a jagged slope.
She’s questioning her decision only five minutes later when the strands of hair escaping from under her hood are white and stiff with ice. She cannot feel her feet and can see no more than the incoming shower as it pelts her face. And yes that’s definitely hail now because it stings like a motherf—. She realises with dawning horror she couldn’t see her car now to return to it; she can barely even make out the road at her feet.
The cold also appears to be doing something to her brain because she can’t decide what she should do; can’t rationalise her next step; it's like the cold has slowed her logic, as well as her fingers. It occurs to her distantly that she might be in real trouble now. Imagine; surviving a war against blood purity only to meet her end by a particularly cold walk in the countryside.
She is just about to draft a text on her phone to serve as a living will (you’re welcome, Ron. Yes, that does come with the condition of caring for Crookshanks, no it’s not negotiable), her whole body protesting every step when she spots it; a light in the distance. Much too large to be a car. Her brain hysterically suggests that this might be her ascension; the gates of heaven are opening to welcome her. But no, she realises, as it approaches, that it’s a tractor. She sends up a prayer of thanks to every God she’s ever heard of before throwing out her arms in the universal signal for help me, dear God, please somebody help me, waving them in a haphazard windmill around her head. She’s too cold to even register relief when the vehicle slows beside her.
She can just see the outline of a man, tall and broad as he jumps down from his seat, jogging around to meet her.
“What on earth are you doing walking in this weather!” He manages to make himself heard over the many layers at her ears and the howl of the wind.
“My car got stuck. Didn’t want to freeze…death.” Her teeth chatter between each word. She’s feeling strangely woozy. But at least she’s not cold anymore. That’s nice.
“So you thought you’d rather freeze to death out here?”
Hermione is just cognizant enough to register irritation at his choice of right now to chastise her for what was with hindsight admittedly a very poor decision.
Her lips refuse to move now when she tries to speak because she really wants to vocalise her annoyance at his frankly less than helpful commentary. Instead, she mumbles incoherently, wrapping her arms around herself and hoping that her death stare will suffice.
“Get in. Where can I take you?” His voice sparks a flare of familiarity in her brain, but she’s too tired to follow it. She feels a hand at her back trying to push her up into the cab of the tractor, but she can’t convince her legs to help him, they’re—, where are her legs exactly? She certainly can’t feel them. But this is restful, she realises. On the ground. She’s fairly happy where she is. She thinks she could just curl up here and close her eyes until the storm passes.
Hermione wonders if she really does register the feeling of strong arms around her (she was clutching herself quite desperately) and the scrape of stubble on her face (the hail - it hurts), although it quickly stops mattering when she falls into a darkness that is thankfully warm and weightless.
–
She comes to consciousness slowly; she is wrapped tightly in a soft wool blanket, a warm weight at her side. It’s comforting in a way she’s not familiar with. She can barely move, but why would she want to when he smells so nice and holds her so tightly and close. It’s then that she realises she doesn’t know anyone who would be holding her like this, who should be. She stiffens at the realisation.
Memories of her journey back from her Hogwarts assignment batter through the fog which has settled over her mind, and she takes a moment to be thankful that somehow she has not been claimed by hypothermia, a road traffic accident or any one of the surely numerous serial killers who likely roam remote areas of the countryside looking for opportunities such as this.
She feels her (kidnapper? Saviour? Cuddle-partner?) tractor driver shift himself away from her slightly, loosening his hold so she can test the movement in her arms and legs. She can feel her fingers and toes now and hopes that means she hasn’t lost any to frostbite.
Her face is gloriously warm, and she feels strangely reticent to move herself away, not sure she wants to be confronted by the fact she’s been cuddling with a burly and ancient farmer, and admiring how he smells.
“Granger,” he says. His voice is low and rough and there it is again. Recognition. Not least because he knows her name. She has an idea where she might have heard that voice before, but she knows that would be impossible. Absurd, even. The most ridiculous concept. Because there’s no way that man even knows tractors exist, and he would absolutely leave her to die on the side of the road before he touched her.
“Granger, whatever you do, just don’t hex me yet.”
She shakes her head, as though she could clear the voice from it.
“I—. I don’t know. I still might. Surely I’m imagining—. Have I hit my head?”
“You have, but you’re not imagining anything. It's me.”
With every word, her absurd theory seems more plausible. His vowels are rich and precisely formed in a way she’s never heard from anybody else. His voice is deeper, but the slight condescension which has always been present is still hard to miss.
“And by you, you mean you’re…”
“Draco.”
She flinches in surprise, and not because he’s confirmed what she already knew, but because, Draco. Like they’ve ever been on a first-name basis. Like there isn’t all of that between them.
“Malfoy?” she whispers, not daring to move, eyes squeezed shut, enjoying the remnants of the warmth of his body before she’ll have to pull herself away.
“How many Dracos do you know, Granger?” And she can hear the arrogant rise of his eyebrow in his voice.
“And just to clarify, before I knee you in the bollocks, why are we cuddling, exactly?”
She feels him shift his hips away from her, and she only notices his arms must have been around her when the weight of them is gone.
“Look, you must know I wouldn’t be holding you unless it was absolutely necessary—”
“When in the world is cuddling absolutely necessary?”
“Oh, who knows?” His voice adopts a familiar sharpness. “Maybe when some idiotic excuse for a witch has been wandering around in a blizzard and didn’t think to cast a warming—”
She wrenches herself away from him, looking at his face for the first time, intending to scowl or grimace or bunch up the muscles of her face in some way that registers her revulsion. The problem is, she ends up just gaping for seconds, dozens of seconds when her gaze catches on the stubble covering his strong jaw, and the crinkles at his eyes. His face is soft and worn; the sharpness she was expecting looks as though it has been rounded out by wind and rain, and he has a ruddy blush to his cheeks she never saw when he was at school. He looks—. She falls back on her default abrasiveness to divert herself from, whatever it is she thinks about his face.
“Says the man who has commandeered a tractor of all things. As if you know—”
“—And has possible second stage hypothermia, at which point it is necessary to share warmth with her, no matter how abhorrent I might find her—”
“Second stage hypothermia? Please—”
“—Don’t particularly want to be responsible for the death of the Golden Girl.”
“— I had it completely under control!”
"This from the woman who doesn't even know how to check the weather forecast. What did you do? Divine it?"
"I detest divination!"
He sighs. “You were wittering about bequeathing your cat, Granger.”
“I…no. To you? Surely not.”
“You were out of your mind. I won’t hold you to it.” She realises, as he rolls onto his back that the soft blanket she’s been burying her nose in is in actual fact a flannel shirt, which covers the broad expanse of his chest and fits snugly around his biceps. The overall effect is distracting enough that she forgets about the problematic napping she’s been doing wrapped around him, and instead she blurts—.
“What are you wearing?”
“Is that—. Am I supposed to answer that question?”
“Yes.”
“Well, this is a shirt, Granger. It’s a fairly common garment—”
“Why are you wearing a shirt?”
It's all gone horribly wrong, because she had intended to emphasise the you but has somehow ended up placing the focus on shirt and that sounds like she's implying something completely different.
He frowns. “Would you rather I not be?”
She blushes. It's absolutely not what she meant, but now she’s thinking maybe it might be nice…She wonders how hard she’s hit her head.
“You’re...you’re Malfoy. They don’t sell shirts like that in Madam Malkins.”
“Yes. Those are both facts, Granger. Well done.” He rolls his eyes. He's still an arsehole, then.
He sits up on what Hermione is unsurprised to find is a bed, and she notices the rest of the room for the first time (there is just so much of him to notice, she hasn’t paid much attention to anything else). It’s a tiny single-roomed stone cottage with a huge fireplace and no discernable place to keep a toilet. The copper bath sits just in front of the fire.
She can see the snow still falling thick outside the window and she has neither the ability nor the inclination to get herself back to her death trap of a car. But there’s the toilet situation. And the one bed. And the flannel.
“Shit.”