The Green Games (Dramione)

Day 2; Part 1

Someone was poking Hermione with a stick. It wasn't a offensive poking, not like someone was trying to stab her to death, but a friendly poking. Hermione registered this before she registered in the darkness of night it was Hannah, who was nudging her awake.

"Your shift." Hannah said, blinking. Hermione sat up, stretching, and saw Ernie snoring next to her. The temperature had dropped from the boiling air that had inhabited the sky the first day, and Hermione would call this weather spring like. It was not cold enough to need her thick jacket completely, but it was just a nice temperature, but accompanied by the musk of a coming rain fall.

"How long have I been asleep?" Hermione asked, trying to gauge the time.

"Bout twelve hours, it's probably just after one AM." Hannah said, shrugging, "But I could be wrong."

"I guess it doesn't matter." Hermione mumbled, getting up and cracking her knuckles, "Any trouble?" She asked, "Any more deaths?"

"I think you'd hear a cannon going off," Hannah said, rolling her eyes, "But no. Climbed a tree. Saw some smoke probably five miles to the east, the idiots. I don't know if even Pansy has started looking yet, because no one else has died. Other than that, it's been..." She paused, "Quiet."

"Good. I'll let you sleep now, then," Hermione said, and Hannah gave a soundless reply. She lay down on Hermione's jacket, and Hermione figured she could make due with the weather, granted it didn't become any colder.

It wasn't completely quiet; there was the rustle of a small animal in the bushes, a croak of a frog, the song of a cricket. The whole forest awoke at night in a way Hermione couldn't.

It was two hours into her shift when there was the first sign of something human. A gentle sway in the leaves and underbrush, like a person dragging their feet. Now, Hermione had battled and learned and seen many things, but even she got paranoid sometimes, especially in the dead of night in a death forest. The shuffling was then accompanied by a soft moaning, a sort that sent the hairs on the nape of her neck on edge. It sounded ghastly. Hermione knew ghosts existed, like the Bloody Baron, but she had yet to come across a resentful one.

Yet there had to be some types, didn't there? And Hermione would bet her money that all the children who had died in the pervious games would have a lot of unresolved reasons to haunt an area.

Oh, Merlin, what if it was Harry? What if he was a ghost internally slumbering in the arena, looking for his friends? What if he found Hermione?

She took the knife adjacent to her that Hannah had been using off the ground, as if a knife would work against a ghost, and stood from the log she sat on. Her eyes scanned the dark forest, but she couldn't see more than a foot or two in front of her.

The shuffling continued and Hermione felt her whole body begins to quiver.

"Whose there?" She called out into the dark, and gaining confidence, "Show yourself!"

A pale figure stumbled into the clearing. Hermione, without thinking lunged at it. The knife was raised above the figure, and it wasn't until she was upon her that she saw a familiar face.

"Elizabeth?" She asked, and the person, stained with blood, gave a sigh of relief.

"I found you all." She gasped, "Thank Merlin."

"Elizabeth, you're bleeding!" Hermione said, and used all her strength to summon a lumos charm at the tips of her fingers. Elizabeth's long blond hair was now a dirty brown-red color, and when Elizabeth ran her hands over her face, a dark fingerprint was left in its wake.

"It's not mine, don't worry." She assured, frowning, and opened her mouth to speak but Hermione cut her off.

"I'm going to wake the others." She said, "Stay there."