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Chapter Text

As the first rays of sunlight brushed her skin, Hermione searched her memory for the last time warmth had felt this gentle. But it was in vain. It had been too long — so long since another human touch had approached her with warm intentions. The only source of heat that was left for her was the sun, so far away as the rest of the world. 

For some reason, it was on days like this that Hermione ached for human contact. One might think the coldest days were the hardest, but they did not wound her. It was the sunny ones that had the power to shatter her soul, for they reminded her of what she once had. And today was one of those days. 

From her window, the beach looked like a painting. The vibrant shades of the sky danced gracefully with the soft blue of the sea. On mornings like this, Hermione played a quiet game to pass the early hours of the day—imagining which famous painter would have been skilled enough to eternalize the scene.

Monet, perhaps. Or Turner, with his golden light and blurred edges, making the world look softer than it truly was. But most of the time, it was always Monet.

In truth, that morning ritual was merely a way to keep those names alive in her mind. To ensure she wouldn’t forget them, or art, or places, or scents, or colors, or sensations— everything that had once been part of her world. Everything that had been stripped away the moment she had chosen exile over obligation. Herself over her friends. Herself over everyone.

But as painful as it was to admit, the truth was raw and cruel: some names had already slipped away. While gazing through the window, Hermione thought of a French painter, but the letters of his name blurred in her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut, as if that would help summon him back. But he was already gone.

Suddenly, the landscape before her turned gray, heavy with loss.

She kept burying the same questions in the deepest corners of her mind, over and over again. It didn’t matter, of course. "Are their faces still the same?"; "What if I saw them now, would I recognize them?".

She exhaled slowly, pressing her fingers against the cool glass of the window. This was why Hermione coped better with days bleached by coldness. Her mind simply shut down. And she drowned in silence.

But not today. Today, her mind was racing from the moment she woke.  It was suffocating.

In an attempt to steady her thoughts, Hermione decided to clean the house.

It was a simple residence—modest and humble. One pillow, one glass, one plate, one chair. There were no pairs; everything she owned was singular, just like her. Sometimes she wondered how nice it would be to have two cups of tea and share them with someone.  Just to sit with another person and share the silence. No words, no expectations. Just existence, together. 

Aside from the loneliness it stirred in her, having so little made the task easier. She swept the floor, shook the carpet, and cleaned the windows. The same motions, the same routine. It had become muscle memory by now, something she didn’t have to think about. However, during this last task, her eyes couldn’t resist drifting back to the beach. 

The sun was now shining brightly in the sky. 

She imagined Monet again, brush in hand, admiring the golden glow of the morning. He would breath life into the canvas with his vibrant yellows. His keen eye would catch the faint, almost invisible clouds that adorned the view. She was certain he would fuse heaven and ocean, making it impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

The lone bird soaring high wouldn’t go unnoticed either. Monet would use it to reinforce the freedom this scene could instill in the soul. The movement of the waves, the glistening water, the dance of light across the surface—he would capture it all, immortalizing the feeling of standing before something vast and infinite.

She was convinced his hands would be masterful, sculpting Mother Nature into an eternal painting, leaving nothing behind. The sun. The clouds. The sky. The sea. The bird.

And—

Her breath caught in her throat.

Something was wrong.

Her hands, still clutching the cloth she had been using to clean, trembled slightly as she narrowed her gaze. She blinked once. Twice. Rubbed at the windowpane, as if the glass itself was playing tricks on her.

But no. It was there.

Lying motionless on the shore.

A body.

Hermione’s heart slammed against her ribs.

For a moment, she couldn’t move. Her legs felt rooted to the ground, a cold rush of something—fear, shock, dread—crawling up her spine. Her mind screamed at her to look away, to pretend she hadn’t seen it. That it was just another illusion, a cruel trick of the sun.

But if there was one thing Hermione had learned from all her time alone, it was that the sun could be cruel to her—never dishonest.

And if any doubt had persisted, the waves rolled in, washing over the figure, dragging at the fabric of the clothing, and she knew. 

This was real.

A thousand thoughts collided at once. Who was that person? How did they get here? Whoever was that person, was alive?

Before she could stop herself, she was already moving. Her feet carried her forward, bare against the cool wooden floor, then against the sand as she stumbled toward the shore. The salty wind stung her cheeks. The world felt too sharp, too loud, the blood pounding in her ears drowning out the sound of the waves.

She reached the body. 

And then fear made her stop. She needed to be careful in order to protect herself from a potential threat.    

Slowly, she dropped her knees beside the figure. 

A man. 

Hermione didn't quite understand how she felt about that realization.

Pale, drenched, utterly still. He lay on his stomach, his clothes torn, evidence of struggle, of something violence. His white shirt clung to his torso, soaked and speckled with wet sand.

Cautiously, Hermione pressed trembling fingers against his throat, searching, praying.      

A heartbeat. 

Weak, but there.

He was alive.

Barely.

A shaky breath slipped past her lips, relief tangling with uncertainty. A tidal wave was wrecking her mind and body when she noticed his right hand. 

More precisely, a black ring with an "M" captured her attention. 


It couldn't be. 

No.

Not him.

Off all people. Not him.

Her fingers were still curled against his skin, warmth meeting cold. Hands trembling more than ever, she carefully turned him onto his back.

Then she saw his face. 

The world seemed to tilt. Her breath stilled.

It was him.

For the first time in ages, Hermione was not alone.

She was trapped on an island with Draco Malfoy.

Chapter Text

The weight of him threatened to pull her under.

Hermione struggled as she dragged Draco’s unconscious form across the sand, her breath coming in short, uneven bursts. He was heavier than he looked, dead weight in her arms. The wet fabric of his clothes clung to his skin, slick and freezing. The tide had already begun its retreat, as if spitting him out, as if the ocean itself had tried to drown him and failed.

She should have left him there.

A single thought, sharp and unrelenting. 

She could have walked away, turned her back, let nature take its course. It would have been easier. Safer.

But she didn’t.

For a brief moment, she still pondered. Her version from a few years ago would never let such a thought cross her mind at all. She would have been ashamed to let herself be taken in by such inhumanity.
She would be disgusted with herself... if that Hermione still existed.

War doesn't just take the life of the body, it also takes the life of the soul. 

She gritted her teeth and pulled him forward, step by agonizing step, until the sand gave way to the solid footing of her cottage. With a final heave, she dropped him onto her small bed, her own body trembling from exertion.

For a long moment, she simply stood there, staring down at him. The world outside had shifted, the sky still golden but now muted, as if the sun had drawn its warmth away.

Draco Malfoy.

Of all the people in the world, why him?

Her fingers curled at her sides. 

Her fingers.

Suddenly, she felt a heaviness in her hands that she hadn't felt when she woke up. Her breathing was ragged. 

For months she had wondered how would it feel to touch another human being's skin again. To feel its warmth, to linger in its touch. 

Not even in her darkest nightmares — and her nights were plagued by several — had she imagined this scenario. She never imagined that it would be Malfoy who would bring something so banal and human back into her life. 

Although her fingers were still cold. 

It wasn't in him that she would find warmth. And, Hermione knew, it wasn't just the icy water.

For minutes that seemed like lifetimes, she continued to watch her fingers, finding them strange. As if they didn't belong to her body. As if they acted on their own. Maybe they did.

Her mind reeled, grasping at possibilities, at reasons, at fates she did not believe in. There was no logic to this. No explanation. He should not be here. On this island. In her house. In her bedroom.

In her bed. 

And yet, he was.

Swallowing hard, she moved closer, forcing herself to observe him clinically. His face was paler than she remembered, sharp angles carved by years she had not witnessed. Years had passed, and even in his sleep, Draco Malfoy still had this tormented expression. 

But it was the dark veins crawling up his throat that sent ice splintering through her chest.

A curse.

Slowly, Hermione reached out, pressing careful fingers against his wrist. The skin was cold. His pulse was there, faint but steady. He was still alive. But for how much longer?

She leaned closer, eyes tracing the unnatural black tendrils spreading from beneath his collar. It wasn’t ink. Not a wound. It pulsed, shifting beneath his skin like something alive. 

Hermione exhaled shakily.

This wasn’t a simple shipwreck. He hadn’t just washed up by chance.

Something had brought him here.

She moved quickly after that, driven by the same mechanical focus that had carried her through years of war and loss. She peeled away his soaked shirt, wincing at the deep bruises shadowing his ribs.

Hermione immediately looked away. 

The little she saw was enough. The less the better. 

Apart from not wanting to look at his naked torso, Hermione wasn't ready for human frailty. She didn't look at Malfoy's skin for more than a second. But, unfortunately, that second was powerful enough to unearth memories that still troubled her.

The fire crackled in the hearth, filling the room with flickering gold light. Hermione wrung out a cloth, wiping the salt and sand from his skin with quick, efficient motions.

It had been so long since she had tended to another person. Since she had let another presence disrupt the quiet solitude she had built for herself.

She should have left him there.

But she had not.

A low sound made her freeze.

At first, Hermione thought she had imagined it, the hush of the waves still echoing in her ears. Until it came again—soft, hoarse, unmistakably real.

Draco shifted, his head rolling slightly to the side. A strained breath parted his lips, barely a whisper.

"No…"

Hermione tensed. She watched, waiting, half-expecting him to slip back into unconsciousness. His eyelids fluttered, and suddenly, his fingers twitched against the blanket.

Then, as if pulled from the depths of some fevered dream, his eyes snapped open.

For a moment, he was unseeing. His chest rose sharply, breath catching as his gaze darted frantically around the room. Panic. Confusion. A lost man waking in an unfamiliar place.

Hermione remained still.

Draco’s lips parted, and in a voice rough as broken glass, he murmured, "You shouldn’t be here.”

Her pulse stuttered.

His eyes—grey and unfocused—seemed to look past her, as if seeing something else. Something far away. The fever glazed his expression, blurring the sharp intelligence that once lived behind his gaze.

"It’s coming," he breathed. "I didn’t mean to—"

Hermione’s stomach twisted.

Then, in the span of a heartbeat, something in his expression shifted. The fog cleared. His focus sharpened.

His gaze landed on her.

And the air changed.

A slow, quiet recognition bled into his features. A strangled laugh rasped from his throat, so faint she almost missed it.

Draco was surely about to say something, but his eyelids drooped, exhaustion dragging him under once more.

Hermione stepped outside, the cool night air pressing against her skin like a warning. 

The sky stretched vast and endless above her, stars smudged across the darkness. The ocean whispered against the shore, rhythmic and unyielding.

And yet… something felt wrong.

She couldn’t name it. A shift in the air. A weight in her chest.

She turned back toward the cottage, staring at the darkened window, at the man who lay inside.

For the first time in ages, she was not alone, yes. But she was no longer sure if she was safe. Something had brought Draco Malfoy to her shores. And whatever it was, it was not done with him yet.

***

The presence in the next room unsettled her.  

Draco Malfoy.  

His name sat heavy on her tongue, unwelcome yet impossible to ignore. He was here, in her home, in her bed—alive, barely, but alive nonetheless. That should have been a comfort. Proof that she had done the right thing.  

Then why did it feel like a mistake?  

She turned onto her side, exhaling sharply. The sea was restless tonight, the waves colliding with the shore in steady, unrelenting bursts. The same tide that had spat Draco Malfoy onto her beach.  

A coincidence?  

She didn’t believe in those anymore.  

A sudden sound snapped her upright. Low, strained. A whisper in the dark.  

She was on her feet before she could think.  

The air was thick with the scent of salt and dying embers as she moved quickly toward the other room. The fire had burned low, shadows stretching long against the walls.  

Draco lay twisted in the blankets, his breath shallow, forehead damp with sweat. His fingers twitched, his lips parting around words too soft to hear. The veins at his throat had darkened.  

Hermione’s stomach twisted.  

She stepped closer, heart hammering against her ribs.  

His breath hitched, his body giving a violent shudder.  

“No,” he murmured. A raw whisper, barely a breath.  

Hermione froze.  

Draco’s head turned slightly, his expression contorted as if caught in a nightmare. His throat bobbed, his fingers clenched weakly at the sheets.  

She had seen this before. The war had left them all haunted. Sleep was rarely an escape—only another battlefield.  

His breathing grew more erratic, his body tensing against something unseen.  

She hesitated only a moment before reaching for him.  

“Malfoy,” she said firmly.  

No response.  

Hermione considered waking him. Shaking him free from whatever place his mind had taken him. But she didn’t.  

Instead, she did what she did best.  

She searched for answers.  

The books were where she had left them, stacked haphazardly in the corner of the room, some still lined with the dust of disuse. She pulled the first one free, fingers brushing over worn pages, scanning for something, anything that could explain what was happening to him.  

Curses. Dark magic.  

She had studied them all.  

But this… this was different.  

A sickness. A poison. A mark.  

The words blurred together. Nothing fit. 

She was tired, not only from carrying a whole body from the water, but also from all the emotions that ran through her veins.  

It was better to have a look in the morning. 

Hermione stood there for a long time, watching the rise and fall of his chest, until coming back to her sofa. 

Before falling asleep, her thoughts made her company throughout the night.

Draco Malfoy needed someone to take care of that curse. The next day, she would devote herself to her books, but deep down she already knew it would be meaningless. 

Books wouldn’t help her. In her 23 years old, Hermione had never seen a curse like that.

He needed someone who was able to jump from theory to action. Someone who was able to cast a spell.

And Hermione wasn’t that person. 

Not anymore.

Chapter Text

Hermione woke before the sun.  

The air inside the cottage was cold, damp with the lingering traces of salt and night, but that wasn’t what had stirred her from sleep. Something pressed against the edges of her consciousness, heavy and unshakable, like the weight of a presence she hadn’t invited.  

She lay still for a moment, listening.  

The rhythmic crash of waves. The distant cry of gulls. Nothing unusual. And yet, everything was changed.

With a quiet sigh, she pushed herself upright, wincing at the stiffness in her limbs. Last night had left her drained, and the memory of it—of him—settled like stone in her chest.  

Draco Malfoy was in her house.  

In fact, he was in that precise moment sleeping where she had slept all these nights. 

The thought should have felt absurd, impossible even. During all those years at Hogwarts, they didn’t even breathe the same air. This had to be a joke. But as her gaze flickered toward the shadowed form on the bed, reality settled in like a slow, creeping tide. 

His breathing was shallow but steady, his body unmoving beneath the thin blanket she had thrown over him. In the dim morning light, the sharp planes of his face looked even more hollowed out than she remembered. His skin was drawn tight, his lips pale.  

And the curse—dark tendrils of ink slithering just beneath his collar—had not faded.  

Hermione’s fingers curled into the blanket pooled at the edge of her own small sofa. She should have felt relief. He was alive. That meant there was still time.  

But the question remained. Time for what?  

A shudder passed through her. She forced herself to her feet, rolling the tension from her shoulders as she stepped toward the small stove in the corner of the room. The floorboards creaked under her weight, the sound loud in the hush of the morning.  

She had just reached for the kettle when a voice, hoarse and fractured, shattered the silence.  

“Brilliant,” he rasped. “I really am in hell.”  

A sharp breath left her, somewhere between a scoff and a sigh. “No, Malfoy. You’re in my house.”  Said Hermione, has she entered her room. 

It felt strange to hear her own voice again, after so many months without a reason to use it. She was shocked to discover she was still able to talk. 

“Worse,” he muttered, letting his head fall back against the pillow.  

She decided to ignore his comment. "How are you feeling?"  

Draco tilted his head slightly against the pillow, considering. "Like I got dragged out of the ocean by someone who resents me for it."  

Hermione’s jaw tightened. She stepped closer, voice cold. "I could’ve left you there."  

Something flickered across his expression—so fast she almost missed it. 

"I know," he murmured.  

Hermione exhaled through her nose. "You’re welcome, Malfoy."  

His lips twitched—almost a smirk, but not quite. “You always this hospitable, or am I just special?"  

“Hardly.” 

Then Draco exhaled sharply and attempted to push himself upright. The effort lasted all of two seconds before a violent tremor wracked his body, sending him collapsing back against the mattress with a strangled curse.  

Hermione watched, unmoving.  

Even in his weakness, the stubborn defiance was still there, burning in the tight set of his jaw, in the way his fingers curled into the sheets.  

"Where are we?" he asked after a long pause.  

"An island."  

"Helpful."  

She didn’t elaborate. 

Draco let out a slow breath. "How long?"  

"You washed up yesterday."  

His brows knit together. Hermione caught the brief flicker of confusion before his expression smoothed over again, guarded.  

"You don’t remember?"  

He hesitated. Then, with a tired scoff, he muttered, "Nothing worth mentioning."  

Hermione studied him, eyes narrowing slightly. He was lying. She could see it in the way his gaze shifted, in the careful control of his breathing.  

"You’re staring, Granger."

Hermione stiffened. His voice was rough, but the smirk tugging weakly at the corner of his mouth was unmistakable.  

"I wasn’t staring," she said flatly.  

And yet, before she could press further, his entire body went rigid. Hermione barely registered the movement before his breath hitched—sharp and pained.  

Then, all at once, his body jerked.  

A strangled noise tore from his throat, his spine bowing slightly as his hand shot up to grasp at his collar.  

Hermione inhaled sharply.  

The curse—those dark, slithering veins—was moving.  

The tendrils pulsed, creeping further across his skin, like something alive, like something feeding. Draco gritted his teeth, breath shuddering. His hand clenched into a fist against his chest.  

"Get… back," he rasped.  

Hermione’s instincts screamed at her to do the opposite. So she stepped forward instead.  

His breath came in ragged gasps, beads of sweat breaking across his forehead. The veins pulsed again, winding further up his throat, creeping toward his jaw.  

Draco let out a choked sound, his whole body trembling with the effort to fight against whatever was overtaking him. His jaw locked, muscles straining against the pain.  

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.   Draco sagged against the mattress, chest heaving. For a long moment, the only sound was the rasp of his breath and the distant crash of the waves outside.  

Hermione let out a slow, shaky exhale, her pulse hammering against her ribs.  

His gaze found hers, hazy and raw. Hermione had seen magic do terrible things. She had seen curses carve through flesh, take lives in an instant. But this…her memory couldn't recall anything like this.

Draco let out a soft, humorless laugh. "You look like you’ve seen a ghost."  

"You’re cursed."  

"Brilliant deduction, Granger. Truly groundbreaking."  

She didn’t respond. She could still feel the weight of the moment pressing down on her, lingering like an unspoken warning.  

Draco shifted slightly, his exhaustion evident in the way his limbs barely moved. "Not your problem, Granger," he muttered.  

Her nails dug into her palm. "It is now."  

"Should’ve known," he smirked weakly. “Bloody hero complex."  

“Since you are collapsing in my own bed, I guess it makes it my problem too.”

“Jesus, Granger” he choked “When you put things in that way…” 

Draco trailed off with a ragged breath, eyes fluttering shut for a moment before forcing them open again. He was fighting it. The exhaustion. The curse. Maybe something else, something heavier that neither of them had dared name yet.

Hermione’s arms folded tightly over her chest. “You need rest.”

“I need answers.”

His voice was hoarse, but the sharpness in it remained. Typical. Even on death’s doorstep, Malfoy was still difficult.

She exhaled through her nose, tilting her chin slightly. “And you’ll get them. When you can sit up without nearly passing out.”

Draco made a sound—half scoff, half resigned breath—but didn’t argue. Instead, he let his head rest against the pillow, gaze flickering toward the ceiling. The first rays of sunlight pierced through the bedroom window, sparking some life into Draco's face  and illuminating it. 

His eyes slid back to her, more calculating than before. “Why are you here?”

The question sent a chill down her spine.

Hermione hesitated, just for a second.

Then she turned toward the small table by the hearth, reaching for the kettle she had abandoned earlier. “Why are you?”

Silence.

When she glanced back at him, his expression was unreadable.

“Fair point,” he murmured.

She poured hot water into a cup, watching steam curl into the air. Her fingers tightened around the handle.

Draco shifted slightly. “What’s your theory, then?”

Hermione frowned. “About what?”

He gestured weakly at himself. “This. Me. Washing up on your private little exile.”

She studied him carefully. “You were cursed.”

“Again—brilliant deduction.”

She rolled her eyes. “A curse that didn’t kill you outright. One that brought you here.”

Draco’s jaw tensed. His fingers twitched against the blanket. For a moment, he looked like he might say something. But then he just let out a slow exhale, his body sinking further into the mattress.

The exhaustion was winning. Again.

Hermione took a step closer, pressing the warm mug into his unsteady hands. His fingers curled around it automatically, though she noticed the slight tremor in them.

“We’ll talk later,” she said.

Draco didn’t protest this time. He just huffed quietly, murmuring something she couldn’t quite catch before his eyes slipped shut again.

She watched him for a long moment.

Hermione frowned, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest. The tension in his body had eased, the pain subsiding—for now. But as her gaze traced over him, cataloging every visible sign of the curse, her stomach twisted.

Something was different.

Her breath hitched.

His veins—the ones darkened by the curse—had shifted. They weren’t retreating, but moving , rearranging beneath his skin as if settling into a new pattern.

No, not a pattern. A shape.

She stepped closer, heart pounding as she watched the tendrils slither and coil, aligning into something almost recognizable.

Letters.

Hermione’s pulse roared in her ears. Her knees bent instinctively, bringing her closer, eyes scanning his collarbone, the side of his throat.

It wasn’t random. It wasn’t just spreading.

The curse was writing something.

Whatever had brought Draco Malfoy to her, whatever had nearly drowned him, whatever was still inside him —was trying to tell her something.

Hermione felt her stomach lurch.

RUN. The curse was forming the word “RUN”.

Chapter Text

The letters didn't fade.

RUN.

The ink settled again, like whatever force had brought it to the surface was now satisfied with its warning. Draco was sleeping, and hadn't seen it yet. 

She should tell him. She should do something.

But her mind was caught between the past and the present, trapped in the space between knowing and understanding.

Then Draco sucked in a sharp breath. His entire body tensed, and Hermione barely had time to react before his hand shot up, clutching his chest.

A strangled sound escaped him.

Hermione’s instincts screamed at her to help, but the moment she stepped closer, the veins reacted.

The ink shifted again, another word formed right beneath the first.

SOON.

Hermione’s pulse roared in her ears. The words sat there, unmoving now, staring back at her like something out of a nightmare.

When she finally found her voice, it came out hoarse. "Malfoy."

His eyes snapped open.

For the briefest moment, Hermione saw recognition in them. Not shock. Not confusion. But something worse. 

Something like acceptance.

"You should go," he said.

Hermione’s jaw clenched. "Tell me what it means first."

He didn’t answer. His gaze flickered back to the words, and then he shut down. His features hardened, his breath evened out, his fingers unclenched. He was slipping back behind whatever armor he still had left.

She hated him for it.

"God," he rasped, voice barely above a whisper. "You really do have a bloody savior complex."

The words should’ve hit like an insult. But they didn’t.

Because Hermione didn’t feel like a hero. She felt powerless.

And she was sick of it.

The wand was exactly where she had left it. Hidden beneath the loose floorboard near the fireplace, wrapped in cloth, untouched for far too long. 

She hesitated before reaching for it.

The wood felt foreign in her hands, like it no longer belonged to her. She curled her fingers around it anyway, letting out a slow breath as she raised it.

The moment she did, the air shifted. 

A sharpe crackle through the silence—just a flicker of raw, untamed magic—and Hermione nearly dropped the wand in shock.

She wasn’t sure if it would work.

She wasn’t sure if it wouldn’t kill him.

She wasn’t sure of anything.

The only thing Hermione knew was that she needed to try something: a diagnostic spell, a countercurse, anything. But the thought of using magic after all this time was tenebrous.  

Not because she didn’t remember how. You can’t just forget how to use your wand. 

But you can forget how to trust yourself to do it. And Hermione did that. 

Her pulse was hammering as she took a slow breath. She willed the magic to come back, to feel something other than the hollow ache in her chest. Carefully, she lifted the wand again, starting with something easier. “Lumos.”

A flicker of light stuttered, weak and uneven, before dying altogether.

Her stomach twisted.

Hermione had expected this. She had known, deep down, that after this long, her magic wouldn’t just come back to her like an old friend. But she had still hoped—hoped that maybe, just maybe, the wand would recognize her, that this whole time of absence and silence wouldn’t have rotted her connection to the thing that once felt like an extension of herself.

But the wand was quiet.

She wasn’t sure if it had given up on her, or if she had given up on herself first. Probably both. 

Her fingers shook as she lowered it.

A long time ago, using her wand wouldn’t be synonymous with anxiety. At this time, she would already try to pull the darkness from his veins. To help. To actually do something. 

But that Hermione was no longer in charge. 

She wasn’t sure if the spell would work. She wasn’t sure if she would kill him instead. And her heart wouldn’t be able to bear another death. No matter who it was. 

A sharp breath left her lips, and before she could dwell on it any longer, she shoved the wand back into the place she hid all along, with more force than necessary.

Hermione felt like she was suffocating. Like as if the room had shrunk in size, becoming too small for the emotions bottled up inside her.

She needed air. She needed to get away.

So that’s what she did.

The island was warm, the morning soft and golden as she stepped into the tree line. Hermione tried to think of a painter for today, but her head was too heavy to focus on that. 

The ocean breeze followed her, threading through her hair, tugging at the loose fabric of her sweater.

She hadn’t ventured this far in weeks. 

Now, as she picked through the undergrowth, she let herself focus on something small, something tangible—her hands, reaching for fruit, the texture of leaves against her skin. She found oranges first. Then something that looked vaguely like a pear.

Her fingers curled around the rough bark of a tree as she hoisted herself up, legs braced against the sturdy trunk. The strain in her muscles felt good — real — pulling her out of her head, out of the memories clawing at the edges of her mind. 

Except they always came.

Hermione's mind forced her to revisit the times when her magic felt free and bright. Something that slipped out of her hands, through her wand, with the sole purpose of helping, of improving the lives of everyone. 

Hermione couldn't remember the moment when magic became an instrument of war. When something so beautiful no longer healed, but killed. 

Her grip tightened around the branch she clung to, fingers pressing into the rough bark as she exhaled slowly, forcing the memories back.

Not now. Please.

But war didn’t listen. It came when it wanted, clouding the souls of those who would forever carry blood on their hands. 

The first time she had cast the Cruciatus Curse, Hermione felt the magic in her bones, raw and ugly and wrong. It had burned through her wand like wildfire, like something untamed, like it had never belonged to her in the first place.

In order to sleep at night, in order to keep going, she had told herself it had been necessary. It was for the greater good. 

Everything was irrelevant. Nothing she could say could plug the hole that was beginning to grow inside her, devouring her from the inside out. The trembling did not leave her hands each time she held her wand; her breathing was still irregular, as if her lungs could no longer find a home in her chest. Her body was betraying her, falling apart with every second. With every life that found the end of the line.

However, the worst part was the screams. 

They begged and screamed and wailed and pleaded and shouted and—

Hermione sucked in a sharp breath.

The branch under her hand cracked, snapping her back to the present.

Her body was tense, legs locked where she stood on the thick tree limb. The sun was still warm. The wind still gentle. The world around her still quiet. Only her mind was enveloped in a deafening noise.

She swallowed down the nausea creeping up her throat, forcing herself to move, to reach for another piece of fruit. The weight of it was grounding, solid, something real in her hands.

Her magic had been her greatest gift, once.

Now it felt like something that wasn’t ever hers. 

When she had tried to use her wand this morning, the failure had settled in her chest like something familiar.

Of course it wouldn’t work.

Of course the wand wouldn’t answer her.

She had used it for things it was never meant for.

She had let it become something else.

Something she didn’t recognize anymore.

Hermione forced herself to climb down, movements stiff, mechanical. She focused on the sensation of bark scraping against her palms, the way the fruit pressed into the crook of her arm, anything to distract from the clawing ache in her chest.

By the time she reached the ground, she was calmer, although the memories kept digging into her mind, sharp claws that never stopped scratching.

Hermione swallowed hard, shoving the thought away.

She was here.

That was there.

And it didn’t matter anymore.

By the time she returned to the cottage, her arms were full. Fruit tucked into the fabric of her sweater, a few small branches clutched in her hands for the fire.

For a second, she thought her mind was playing tricks on her.

Inside, Draco Malfoy was standing. 

Draco Malfoy—who had been barely conscious, who had collapsed in her bed only hours ago—was now on his feet, hovering near the sofa, fingers grazing the edges of her bookshelf like he had any right to touch her things.

His back was turned to her, his posture tense, but too alert for someone who had been half-dead hours ago. There was no sign of the words written by the curse.

She dropped everything onto the floor with a thud.

His head turned slightly. "Ah," he said, voice still hoarse. "Thought you left me for good."

Chapter Text

Hermione ignored the comment. "What do you think you’re doing?"

Draco hummed, tapping a book spine. 

"Assessing the hospitality situation."

"Go back to bed, Malfoy."

"Mm. No."

She stepped forward. "You’re barely standing."

"And yet," he said, dragging his fingers across the edge of the table, "I am." There was something in his tone—calculated. Like he was testing her, waiting for her reaction.

Hermione felt her patience snap. "I don’t care what kind of twisted Slytherin logic you think you’re using, but you’re not going to walk around like you own the place."

That got his attention. 

Draco turned toward her then, something sharper in his expression. "Trust me, Granger. This is the last place I’d want to own."

There it was.

That same snide, superior attitude she had grown to hate over the years, the one that slithered into his voice when he was trying to push buttons.

And for a split second, Hermione considered letting it slide. She was ready to step back, turning away, choosing peace. 

But then his gaze dragged over the room again, like he was judging it, like he was judging her — and something inside her snapped.

"And suddenly, I have a Death Eater sleeping under my roof."

The words slipped off her tongue before she had even felt them in her mouth, like spears thrown in Draco's direction.

He froze.

For a brief moment, he let her believe that she had shut him up.

And then his gaze met hers again. All the teasing, all the lightness — it was all gone.

Hermione barely had time to register the shift before his voice cut through the air like a blade.

"Careful, Granger," he said, low and cold. "You’re starting to sound like them."

The weight of that accusation hit her hard. 

Them.

It hit like a slap, but she refused to let it show.

"You think I don’t know what you see when you look at me?" Draco took a step closer, voice dropping even lower. "Like I’m something rotten. Something that doesn’t belong in your perfect, righteous world."

Hermione’s throat tightened. "I never said that."

"You didn’t have to."

“You—" She exhaled sharply, forcing herself to keep steady. "I pulled you out of the sea, Malfoy. I kept you alive."

"And I’m sure you hate yourself for it," he shot back.

The words hit like a knife to the ribs.

Hermione stiffened, her pulse roaring in her ears. "Do you want me to?"

Draco’s expression flickered.

For just a fraction of a second, something passed over his face. Something raw. But it was gone in an instant.

"Wouldn’t be the first time," he muttered. 

"I —"

"Forget it," he snapped, turning away from her.

But Hermione wasn't ready to let it go.

Because suddenly, it wasn’t just this argument. It wasn’t just this moment. It was every fight they had ever had: in hallways, in classrooms, across dueling platforms. Every time they spit venom at each other, thrown insults like daggers.

Hermione felt like an open wound and, at that moment, she wanted to see him bleed too.

“Is that what you think?" she shot back, voice sharper now. "That I pulled you out of the ocean just to torture you?"

Draco let out a bitter laugh, running a hand through his hair. "Please, we all know the answer to that.”

"That’s not the point!"

"Isn’t it?" He turned to her fully now, eyes blazing. "You can’t stand me. You hate me. So why the fuck did you save me?"

Hermione took a step closer. "Because I’m not a monster."

Draco scoffed. "Oh, spare me the righteous Gryffindor act. You did it because you can’t help yourself. Because saving people is all you’ve ever known how to do." His lips curled. "Even when they don’t deserve it."

Something inside Hermione ached. Something ugly and unbearable, but she refused to let him see it. Instead, she lifted her chin. "You’re right," she said quietly. "You don’t."

Something changed in his face.

If Hermione had to guess, she would say that her words had found the weakest point in his wound. And she hated herself for that. Hated that she didn’t want to be the one to make him look like that.

Draco inhaled sharply, the tension in his shoulders turning to something coiled and dangerous.

Then, just when she thought he was about to say something—to hit back just as hard—he did the opposite.

He shut down. He became unreadable. 

"Good to know," he whispered.

Then he turned away, like that was it. Like the conversation was over.

“Don’t walk away from me,” she snapped.

Draco stilled but didn’t turn back.

Her voice dropped, dangerously quiet. “You always do that, don’t you?”

His shoulders tensed. “Do what?”

“Walk away when things get too real.”

That did it.

He turned, expression razor-sharp. “I’m sorry, was I supposed to stand here and let you remind me what a failure of a human being I am?”

Hermione mocked, folding her arms. “I don’t need to remind you. You already believe it.”

His jaw clenched. “Fuck off, Granger.”

She stepped closer. “You’re the one who made this into a fight.”

He let out a bitter laugh. “Oh, so I forced you to call me a Death Eater?”

“I was angry. I didn’t mean to.”

Draco tilted his head. “Right. Because you’re such a good person.”

She flinched. Not because of his words, but because of the way he said them — like he was mocking her, like he was laughing at the very idea.

“Why are you like this?” she whispered.

He scoffed, shaking his head. 

“Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know, Granger.”

“I don’t.”

He gave her a long, hard look. His eyes lingered on Hermione's for so long that for a moment she felt she could read his soul if she tried. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

Hermione’s patience snapped.

“Then explain it to me, Malfoy. Explain why you’re standing here, in my house, after I saved your miserable life, acting like I’m the one who did something wrong.”

His face twisted, eyes flashing with something ugly. “Because you did.”

That stunned her.

She took a step back. “Excuse me?”

Draco looked away,  running a hand through his hair. “You should’ve let me drown.”

Silence reigned over them again, becoming the only noise to be heard.

“You don’t mean that,” she said, barely above a whisper.

Draco let out a scornful laugh “Don’t I?”

Hermione hated this, the way he looked at her, like she had done something horrible to him by keeping him alive.

Her voice was softer now, but no less steady. “You really think I should’ve just let you die?”

Draco held her gaze, unwavering. “Yes.”

Something burned inside her heart. 

“So that’s it?” she said, stepping forward. “You just — what? Gave up?”

Draco’s throat bobbed. But he didn’t answer.

She laughed, but it was a hollow, sharp sound. “God, Malfoy, you really are a coward.”

Draco’s eyes flashed, something dark and dangerous igniting in them. They were burning, Hermione could feel the flames, contrasting with the coldness of the words

“Right,” he sneered. “Because running away to a fucking island to hide from the rest of the world is so brave.”

Hermione thought that perhaps a punch would have left less painful marks. He looked at her and saw every weakness, every part of herself that she swept under the carpet.

He stepped closer, gaze pinning her in place. “You think I’m a coward, Granger? At least I stayed. At least I tried.”

She felt something inside her withered. “You don’t know anything about what I did.”

His eyes burned into hers. “I know you left.”

Hermione’s fingers curled into fists. “You have no idea what I—”

“I know you left them behind.” His voice was razor-sharp, deliberate. “Potter. Weasley. Everyone.”

Hermione flinched. A triumphant smile adorned his face, but he couldn't hold it for long. It wasn’t smug. It was bitter.

 “You don’t get to talk about them.”

Draco’s expression hardened. “Why? Because it hurts to hear the truth?”

What hurt the most was to hear the names she didn’t hear in ages. She didn't even bother to visualize them in her mind, let alone dare to verbalize them. Thinking about Harry and Ron was the part of herself that did the most emotional damage.

“What happened, Granger? What was so unbearable that you had to disappear?”

“Shut up,” she threatened, although her voice sounded too fragile for effect.

“Did you think you didn’t deserve to be there anymore?” His voice dropped lower. “Or were you just too much of a coward to face them?”

Something snapped inside her.

“Don’t you dare talk to me about cowardice!” she shouted.

Draco stilled, but she didn’t stop.

“You don’t get to stand here and act like you’re better than me!” she spat. “You—you followed orders like a good little soldier while people were tortured in front of you! You watched and you did nothing!”

His whole body went rigid. His breathing was slow. Controlled. 

“Yeah,” he murmured, voice eerily soft. “I did nothing.”

Hermione's stomach lurched at the bitter taste of Malfoy's words, who made her realize, maybe for the first time, how much weight he had been carrying. And how much she had just added to it.

As bad as it was, she had no regrets. Because he wasn’t wrong about her either.

She had run.

She had left everything behind.

His hand slammed against the wall behind him. “You think it was that simple?” he snarled. “You think I just stood there because I wanted to?”

“You didn’t stop it,” she shot back.

“I couldn’t!” 

Hermione scoffed, shaking her head in disagreement. “There’s always a choice, Malfoy.”

He laughed, but the humor had forgotten to appear. “Keep your Gryffindor righteousness to yourself. You think you would’ve done any better? You think you’d have survived if you were in my place?”

Her jaw clenched. “I would have fought.”

Draco’s expression twisted. “And you would have died.”

That answer left her at a loss for words, yet she refused to back down. “At least I wouldn’t have stood there and watched.”

His face darkened. “You have no idea what I watched.”

“Because you pretend it didn’t happen. You act like you weren’t part of—”

“I never had the luxury of pretending! I did what I had to do to stay alive,” Draco’s voice was loaded with something Hermione couldn't name. “I did what I had to do to keep my family alive. Do you know what it’s like to be owned, Granger?”

When she didn’t answer, he shortened the distance that remained between them, so close to each other as never before. “To have someone else’s will carved into your skin, to be a pawn in a war you didn’t want?”

Her throat tightened. “We were all pawns.”

“No. You got to be on the right side. The winning side.”

“The right side didn’t mean survival.”

Draco’s lips pressed into a thin line. “But at least you could look at yourself in the mirror.”

Hermione's heart raced.

Because she couldn’t.

She hadn’t looked at herself properly in years.

Draco saw the hesitation, the flicker of something behind her eyes, and he pounced.

“You think you’re so much better than me,” he murmured. “But you’re just as much of a coward as I am. You abandoned them.”

She felt his words bite into her skin, letting the poison settle throughout her blood.

When she didn’t respond, he continued.

“Tell me, Granger,” he murmured. “What the hell happened that made running away easier than staying? What was it? Guilt? Shame?”

The words hit her like a curse.

“I should’ve left you in the ocean,” she mumbled.

A muscle in his jaw twitched, but he didn’t speak.

She turned away before she could see the look in his eyes. Before she could regret saying it.

At that precise moment, Hermione was absolutely certain: years could pass, but they would never stop being on opposite sides of a war. Two pawns destined to hate each other because they were controlled by different hands.

Not in the way that mattered.

Because war or not, past or not — there were wounds that didn’t heal.

And this was one of them.

Chapter Text

Silence settled over the house, as if it were the third resident. It fell over the rest of the day, Hermione and Draco's voices remained protected in their throats: Hermione didn't enter the room, and Draco didn't dare come out. 

When lunch rolled around, she knocked on his door, balancing a simple meal on a tray. There was no response. She hesitated before pressing her ear against the door, listening. His breathing was steady, deep — he was probably asleep.

Something in Hermione’s chest twisted, but she quickly shoved it down.  

She ate alone, as she always did. Turning to the window, she watched the afternoon fly by, bringing with it regret.

She shouldn’t have said that to him.  

She shouldn’t have said a lot of things.  

And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to regret it completely. Because he had said just as much — he had been just as cruel. They had always been like that, hadn’t they? Pushing and pulling, trading insults like weapons, like it was all they knew how to do.  

Only now the damage was different. They were no longer children exchanging mere insults, fighting over grades. They were two broken adults, hurting each other over and over again, because it was easier than communicating. 

Hermione didn't like the person she had become over the years. Someone who harmed in order not to be harmed, who hid behind a shield that shattered on the outside. 

She tried to convince herself that it was a consequence of the tormented times of war, that it was nothing more than the fruit of a dark time.

A foolish way of trying to exonerate her from the crap she'd done.

Malfoy was far from a saint, but he was still a person. And Hermione couldn't condemn him for having no principles if she ended up in the same moral abyss as him. 

She was no one to judge him. 

He had been cruel, but so had she.

They were both experts at this game. 

And not just now. 

Suddenly, Hermione remembered the last time she had seen Malfoy, before he had washed ashore two days ago. 

Another memory she preferred to keep buried in the infertile soil of her mind.

The rays of the setting sun caught her attention, reminding her that it was time to start preparing dinner.

Dinner. It was something that would definitely keep her busy. 

Hermione moved on autopilot, gathering ingredients, setting water to boil. Her hands worked efficiently, chopping vegetables, slicing the fish. The motions were comforting, mechanical. Something she could control.  

“You got to be on the right side. The winning side.”

Malfoy's voice echoed through her mind, recalling the words he had spoken with disdain. 

It seemed that there was no way of leaving this subject aside.

Winning side. That part in particular bothered her the most. What would a winning side be, exactly? Who dictated the winner and the loser? How could Hermione feel victorious when she had lost so much too? Perhaps her loss was smaller than others, but her losses didn't matter to anyone else. No one could feel them for her. No one could fully understand.

No one ever did. 

Not even her friends. Not even Harry. Or Ron. 

In a world where no one is capable of loving an half person, forcing them to swallow that emptiness for the sake of a greater good, how is it possible to feel like a winner? 

It is impossible. 

Just as it is impossible for there to be a right side.

She gritted her teeth, tightening her grip on the knife.  

Hermione's nights were always spent in the company of the weight on her conscience. Because in a war, everyone loses and everyone is wrong.  

And she endured months and months of living in this limbo: between the relief of being alive and the guilt that it had cost someone their last heartbeat; between feeling so alone with the people she had always loved, and the guilt of not looking at them with the same eyes; between the will to live and the apathy towards life.

Her hands trembled slightly as she sliced through a carrot, and before she could stop herself— 

A sharp sting.  

She hissed, jerking her hand back, watching as a thin line of red welled up along the curve of her palm.  

“Shit!” she blurted out. 

Hermione barely noticed the way her hands shook as she rinsed off the knife, watching the water swirl crimson in the sink. Thinking about past times had sent her spiraling into a place she hadn’t visited in years. A place she had sealed off, brick by brick, and always tried to run from. 

Until now. 

Until Malfoy.

Her first instinct was to grab the first-aid kit, so she hurried to the bathroom, cradling her injured hand. 

Hermione stretched onto her tiptoes, her good hand trying to reach up the shelf. Her fingers grazed the bottom of the box, nudging it just enough to make it tilt dangerously forward—but not enough to catch it. She clenched her jaw, adjusting her stance, trying again. But the sting in her other hand throbbed sharply, a burning reminder of her carelessness, and she sucked in a breath, faltering.

An arm reached past her.

Her breath hitched as a hand, steady and pale, plucked the kit from the shelf and set it down in front of her. She hadn’t heard him come in, hadn’t felt his presence until he was right there beside her.

Draco.

His presence was sudden, overwhelming, filling the small space of the bathroom before she could even process it. She hadn’t heard him approach, hadn’t sensed him at all until he was just there, the warmth of him barely an inch from her back. Close. Too close.

She could feel him hesitate, not because he was unsure, but because they were. The hours of silence that had stretched between them all day had made this moment feel heavier.

He didn’t move away.

Neither did she.

Hermione turned her head slightly, just enough to catch a glimpse of him. He was closer than she had expected. He wasn’t looking at her, only at the first-aid kit, as if his presence here meant nothing. 

She swallowed, the tension between them crackling like a live wire.

“Thanks,” she murmured, voice uneven.

It felt strange to fill the air with words.

Draco didn’t respond, just leaned against the doorframe, watching as she fumbled to open the kit. The atmosphere remained charged, something fragile lingering between them. Something neither of them was quite ready to name.

Hermione’s breath hitched as she lowered her gaze — only to find his fixed intently on her hand.

His expression didn’t change, but she saw it—the slight flicker in his eyes, the way his jaw went tight when he saw the thin line of red still welling up against her skin.

His fingers flexed once, a small, involuntary movement. And for a moment, she thought—

No.

She felt it.

The ghost of something that might have been concern. Or frustration. Or something else entirely.

And then, just when she thought he might step back, might disappear like a shadow fading into the walls, his voice finally broke the silence, quiet but steady.

"You're bleeding all over the place, Granger."

Not an accusation. Not mockery.

Just fact.

Hermione swallowed and tore her gaze away from him, grabbing the kit with her good hand, grasping onto the moment as if it would ground her.

"I know."

She fumbled with the latch of the first-aid kit, her fingers feeling clumsy and stiff. The pain in her hand wasn’t unbearable, but now, under his gaze, it suddenly felt more noticeable.

Draco still hadn’t moved.

Hermione could feel him, just behind her, lingering. Watching.

Her pulse kicked up, an irritating reaction she refused to acknowledge. She ignored him, focusing instead on opening the kit, on reaching for the small bottle of antiseptic. But the moment she unscrewed the cap, the scent of alcohol stung her nose, and she hesitated.

Damn it.

This was going to hurt.

And of course, Draco had to be standing there, waiting to see just how much.

A slow exhale. She lifted the cotton pad, doused it with antiseptic, and braced herself.

But before she could press it to her wound, a hand reached forward and took it from her.

Hermione tensed, startled, as Draco plucked the cotton pad from her grasp with maddening ease. She turned her head, more than ready to snap at him, about to demand what the hell do you think you’re doing —

But the words died in her throat when she met his eyes.

Cool. Steady. Determined.

No arrogance. No smirk.

Just quiet intention.

And then, without a word, he reached for her injured hand.

Hermione stiffened, instinctively pulling back. But Draco only sighed, the sound barely more than a breath, and held out his free hand, palm up. Waiting.

"Granger," he said, with a gentle tone that she didn't know if it was a figment of her imagination "Don’t be stupid."

Her mouth parted slightly, indignation flickering to life, but before she could fire back, he reached for her hand again — slowly this time, giving her a chance to pull away.

She didn’t.

His fingers brushed against hers as he took her hand in his, angling it just enough to get a better look. His grip was firm, steady, careful in a way that made her breath catch in her throat.

And then—

The sting.

She inhaled sharply, her shoulders going taut as the antiseptic burned against her skin. Her first instinct was to yank her hand away, but Draco tightened his hold.

"Relax," he murmured, almost absentmindedly, his focus entirely on her wound.

Relax.

As if that were possible.

Hermione always took care of her wounds, whether they were visible or not. Having someone else doing it for her, and that person being nothing more than Draco Malfoy, was reason enough for not being relaxed at all.

However, she forced herself to remain still, biting the inside of her cheek as he worked. He was methodical, precise—dabbing at the cut with an unexpected gentleness that made something coil tight in her stomach.

She didn’t know how long they stood there, pressed into the small space of the bathroom, his fingers warm against hers. Draco wrapped her hand with practiced ease, securing it with a small, neat knot before finally letting go.

And just like that, the moment was over.

He stepped back. The space between them widened.

But Hermione could still feel the ghost of his touch lingering against her skin. And she knew, at that moment, that he would haunt her for some time.

She flexed her fingers experimentally, glancing down at the bandage, and said, "You didn’t have to do that."

Draco simply said it, already turning away. "I’m not a monster.”

And with that, he was gone.

Leaving her standing in the bathroom, her heartbeat annoyingly uneven, her bandaged hand curled into a fist.

He had told her what she had told him earlier, when he asked why did she took him out of the water. 

“Because I’m not a monster.”

Now she felt like one. 

Hermione needed a few minutes in the bathroom to organize her thoughts and calm down a bit.

When she returned to the kitchen,  she couldn't believe what she was seeing.

She thought that after helping her, after that last sentence, Draco had gone back to his room, protecting himself as he had done throughout the day. 

But he hadn't.

He was in the kitching, finishing dinner, cutting where she had left off.

Hermione stood frozen, watching the whole picture. There was no arrogance, no biting remarks.

He was just helping her. Just like in the bathroom. 

How it made her feel, however, Hermione didn't know if she would ever be able to explain.

Chapter Text

Hermione had never seen Draco Malfoy cook before. She wasn’t sure why the sight of him standing at her counter, sleeves slightly rolled up, slicing vegetables with an absent sort of efficiency, made something uneasy twist inside her. Maybe because it was too normal. Too strange.

Too… human.

“You’re staring, Granger.”

Hermione huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. “I wasn’t staring.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not about to poison your food.” He finished chopping the carrot and reached for another. “You’re clearly prone to self-inflicted injuries, and I’d just rather not have to eat one of your fingers."

Words that could easily have been said with sarcasm, found Hermione devoid of any emotion. She knew she had to give him a proper answer, but the tension between them was still awkward enough for her to develop a dialog.

Unconsciously, she moved her uninjured hand to the other, stroking the bandage. 

For the next few minutes, they worked in silence. Well, he did. She just stood there, watching him with barely concealed suspicion.

Apart from the brief interaction, neither of them seemed to know how to fill the silence where they were walking carefully.

It was a fragile sort of peace.

By the time the food was ready, Hermione hesitated as she set the table, staring at the single plate and set of utensils. She hadn’t thought about it earlier. Until now, it wasn’t necessary to consider the logistics of having another person in her space, since they never ate at the same time. There were times when Draco didn’t even eat, sleeping over the meal.

Malfoy followed her gaze, then exhaled sharply, shaking his head. "Of course you only have one of everything."

Hermione’s cheeks burned. "I didn’t exactly expect company."

He simply ran a hand through his hair, and then, without a word, he pulled out the chair — but instead of sitting, he stepped aside, leaving it for her.

Hermione frowned.

"You eat half, then I eat half."

Her lips parted slightly, surprised at how simple he made it sound. "That’s—"

"The only option," he finished for her, arching an eyebrow. "Unless you want to eat off the pan."

“It doesn’t matter, actually, since there’s only one fork.” 

Another silence settled, this one more unbearable than the last.

Finally, Draco exhaled sharply and thrust the fork toward her. “Just eat.”

Hermione hesitated.

“And no, I won’t die from your germs. I’d rather risk that than die of starvation.” Draco said.

She huffed but didn’t argue. Instead, she sat, and, with an awkward pause, picked up the fork, while Malfoy stood behind her, leaning against the stall.

The first few bites felt strange, the tension between them palpable as she tried not to think about how he was just there, waiting. Hermione chewed slowly, wondering if this absence of sound between them was strange for him too. Was he too alert, too aware of everything around him like she was?

It didn't take long for her question to be answered.

"Does it taste okay?" he asked, in a failed attempt to create conversation. 

Hermione merely nodded in the affirmative. The food was good, but there wasn't much more to say about it. Actually, she almost laughed at how absurd it was, this shot in the dark at civility between them. 

When she was halfway through the plate, she got up to change positions. "Here."

Draco didn’t hesitate. He sat, eating normally. And it was bizarre, watching him eat from her plate, use her fork, sit at her table like he belonged there. The whole situation was ridiculous, surreal in a way she couldn’t quite grasp.

While he was eating, Hermione started cleaning the kitchen to keep away those thoughts. The water running from the tap and the sound of the cutlery hitting the plate filled the room.  When the latter stopped, Hermione heard the chair being dragged away and put back. 

"Why didn’t you use your wand?"

Draco's voice sounded too close to her ear, his skin almost scraping against hers as he put the plate in the sink. 

Hermione felt her heart skip a few beats, and at that moment she wished she could take it out of her chest and throw it out the window. She concentrated on washing her plate, never looking away from the trickle of water running down the drain, trying not to get the bandage wet. "What?"

"When you cut yourself. You went to get a first-aid kit instead of healing it with magic. Why?"

Hermione felt that question strip her layer by layer. She knew that, sooner or later, he would broach the subject. But that didn't mean she wanted to open that pandora's box. Especially not with him. It was too intimate a subject for hands that hadn't even touched Hermione's surface.

Her throat felt tight. "Muggle’s old habit, I guess. I don’t know."

He didn’t look away. "Yes, you do."

Hermione clenched her jaw, looking away again. "It’s not that simple."

Draco was quiet for a long moment, his fingers drumming against the counter. Then he let out a breath, shaking his head slightly. "Nothing ever is with you, is it?"

“Fine.” She put the plate down in the sink and turned to face him. “What about yours?”

“What are you talking about, Granger?”

“Your wand.” she said, putting her bandaged hand on her waist. “I didn't see you using yours either. And what the hell is that curse of yours that almost kills you one day and then is completely fine in the other?”

 Draco remained silent.

“I guess nothing’s ever simple with you either.” 

None of them would talk about their matters.

Draco stepped back, his gaze unwavering. “You're always going to expect the worst from me, aren't you?”

But he did not give her time to answer. He turned back and went to the room, apparently not interested in hearing what she had to say.

It was better that way. Hermione herself wasn't sure what would come out of her mouth.

They weren’t friends. They weren’t even allies. No man had yet played with the alphabet enough to discover the word that defined them. Perhaps it didn't even exist. Maybe the two of them were made of a material that couldn't ever be labeled. 

Hermione and Draco were nothing more than fate's failed attempt to cross two parallel lines. The two of them were fated to walk on roads that would never meet—not really. And whatever momentary truce they had just shared over dinner didn’t change that. He was still Draco Malfoy. She was still Hermione Granger. It wouldn't be in each other's presence that they would drop the armor that the rest of the world had forced them to carry. 

***

The cemetery was silent, shrouded in a thick fog, the air damp with the smell of wet earth. Hermione knelt beside Ginny's grave, carefully arranging the fresh flowers. It had become a ritual, a quiet moment when she allowed herself to cry, to remember. The stone was cold under her fingertips and she traced the carved letters of Ginny's name, a knot forming in her throat. It had been months since Hermione's days had become grayer, without her friend's showy red hair to add some color to them. In fact, the only glimpse left of that hair tone was through Ron and Arthur. 

No other Weasley had survived. 

They all held a special place in Hermione's heart, but it was at Ginny's grave that she stopped most often. Perhaps if she loved her less, she would be able to live away from her for longer.

It had been a quick death, at least. Hermione hadn't witnessed it, and for that she would always be grateful. After all, there's no greater tragedy than seeing a close friend pass away.

Perhaps a younger sister.

Ron saw it all.

A choked sob brought Hermione back to where she was. 

Turning his head towards the noise, she saw, a few rows away, in front of a simple, unremarkable grave, a boy kneeling. He was young, no more than seventeen, and his body was bent over as he wept. His shoulders were shaking violently, his hands were clutching the earth as if he were holding on to something already lost. His face was contorted with sadness, and the sight of it sent a shiver down Hermione's spine.

Because she recognized that face.

Not his, but his father’s. 

The air became thin. 

The resemblance was unmistakable—the sharp cheekbones, the narrow nose, the dark eyes clouded with emotion. She knew this man, the one buried beneath the soil. She remembered his face twisted in rage, his wand raised, his mouth curled in a snarl as he fought to kill her. She remembered how she had stopped him first.

She would never forget the face of any of the people the war had forced her to kill. She couldn't say the same about the names, — death doesn’t give time to get to know them. 

But at that moment, watching the boy's fingers caress his father's name, Hermione hated herself for living in ignorance. A name that meant nothing to her was remembered every day by someone else. 

The only memory she was entitled to was the moment she had killed him.

It was a death that had marked her. She could still see the way his body had collapsed, the way his lifeless eyes had stared at her as blood soaked the ground. 

It was a war. It was necessary. That was what she had told herself.

But now, here was his son. A boy. A boy who had no part in that war, no blood on his hands. A boy who was grieving his father the way she was grieving her friend. Two sides of the same bleeding coin.

Hermione felt an unfamiliar heaviness settle in her chest.

She should leave. This wasn’t her place. And yet, she stood frozen, unable to look away.

When she finally turned and walked back to the Burrow, the image followed her like a ghost.

***

The fire crackled, casting flickering shadows on the walls. Hermione sat stiffly in an armchair, her hands wrapped around a cup of tea that had long gone cold. The conversation with Harry had not gone the way she had hoped.

“I don’t understand why this is bothering you so much,” Harry had said, arms crossed, his tone edged with frustration. “You saw the son of a Death Eater crying. That’s sad, sure. But you did what you had to do, Hermione. We were at war.”

Hermione clenched her jaw. “I know that. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t awful.”

Harry shook his head. “You’re acting like you regret it.”

She exhaled sharply. “I don’t regret stopping him, Harry. I regret that it had to happen. That it was so—” She faltered, struggling for the right words. “That it was so violent. That his son has to live with it. That we all have to live with it.”

Harry scoffed. “That’s war. It’s not pretty.”

Hermione’s patience snapped. “You make it sound so simple! Like it’s just black and white. Like they were all just monsters who deserved to die and that’s the end of it.”

“They were monsters, Hermione.” His voice was cold now. “You’re acting like they were victims. They weren’t.”

She shook her head, anger boiling beneath her skin. “And what about their families? What about that boy? Should he suffer because of his father’s choices?”

“That’s not our problem.”

Hermione’s breath came fast and shallow. “You were once that kid.”

The room went silent.

Harry’s expression darkened, something sharp and unreadable flickering in his green eyes.

Hermione pressed on, her voice quieter but unrelenting. “War took your parents too, Harry.”

“Don’t.”

She could see the effort he was making to contain the rage within himself. 

But she couldn’t stop. 

“You know what it’s like to grow up with nothing but a grave to visit. You know what it’s like to be left behind.”

His face twisted with anger, his voice rising. “Don’t you dare compare me to the son of a Death Eater.”

Hermione flinched but held her ground. “I’m not saying you’re the same. I’m saying loss is loss. Pain is pain. We’re all people. And if we can’t recognize that—”

“I said don’t !”

Harry’s fists were trembling, his jaw clenched so tight she thought it might break. And then, without another word, he turned and walked away, leaving her alone by the fire.

***

When Hermione woke, she was gasping, her body rigid with fear.

The house was pitch black. No moonlight seeped through the curtains. No gentle glow from the embers of the fire. Just darkness. Cold, suffocating darkness.

Her breath quickened.

It was irrational, but the absence of light felt like an absence of safety, an absence of something solid to hold onto. 

Scrambling from the sofa, she made her way to the hearth, her fingers clumsy as she lit the fire.

The flames roared to life, their golden glow washing over the room, and only then did she exhale. The warmth chased away the panic, settling deep into her bones.

Hermione sank down in front of the fire, knees pulled to her chest, staring into the flickering light. The nightmare still clung to her, the weight of the argument with Harry, the boy in the graveyard, the guilt she couldn’t quite name.

The war had been over for almost three years, but Hermione felt like she was living through a worse one every day. And every night. 

Just like in the nightmare, Hermione let the fire keep her company, until the pious flames lulled her into a deep sleep, this time more serene.

Chapter Text

When Hermione woke up, both the flames and the nightmare had turned into faint embers glowing in the dim morning light. 

She looked down at her bandaged hand and removed it. It looked so much better. 

The same could not be said for the rest of her body.

Her body felt heavy, burdened by something she couldn't get rid of. She felt like a house with no flesh-and-blood inhabitants, haunted by ghosts that she herself fed and that, therefore, wouldn't go away. She exhaled slowly, trying to free herself, but the feeling remained.

She couldn’t stay there.

Pulling back the blanket, she sat on the edge of the sofa, her body protesting the movement. She needed air. Space. The house - its walls, its silence, Malfoy's presence - was pressing down on her, suffocating her.

Her bare feet met the cold floor, walking towards the door. Hermione didn't bother with shoes, a towel, anything. 

She just needed the sea.

The wind was sharp against her skin as she stepped outside, the early morning air biting at her exposed arms. But it didn't matter. The sand was cool beneath her feet, damp from the lingering touch of night, and the scent of salt filled her lungs.

She ran until the waves caressed her ankles, until her thighs were submerged. She let the water wrap around her, pulling her in like a hug. Hermione needed one, and this was the only one she could allow herself to feel.

She dived deeper.

Deeper still.

Hermione dived until she became part of the ocean that welcomed her with open arms. Until the water carried her along, lifted and held her. She let herself be led without fear, because she was aware that the imminence of drowning would not be very different from what she had already experienced on land. 

It wouldn't be the water that put an end to her torments.

She closed her eyes and, for the first time since she had woken up, she could breathe. 

There, in the middle of the vastness of the sea, Hermione's problems seemed smaller than a grain of sand. Nothing mattered, nothing filled her mind or her ears. She was lulled by the solace of the waves, making her forget the misery her existence had become - and it was nice to feel engulfed by something so much bigger than her fragile body. 

Hermione tilted her head back, her hair floating around her like seaweed, and opened her eyes to the sky.

The sky was dressed in soft colors, neither too blue nor too gray. Clouds stretched lazily across the horizon, kissed by the gold of the rising sun.

Hermione played her usual game.

"Which painter would be able to paint the sky today?"

Turner was the first name to pop into her head. With his mastery of the atmosphere and his ability to paint the air itself, she was sure he would be able to do justice to that ethereal landscape. 

Hermione sighed, a small, almost content sound. For a moment, there was peace . Real peace. 

As if every sunrise she didn't have to greet her demons from the past, who were too stubborn to remain in places where she no longer was.

As if one of them hadn't washed ashore a few days ago, bringing with him all the dust that Hermione had spent the last few months hiding under the carpet.

That was something that also worried her a lot. 

She knew why she was on that island, why she had ended up there, leaving everything behind. But she couldn't explain Malfoy's appearance. He never answered her questions, which also made it difficult, of course. The thought that she was in danger, and that somehow he was there because of her, had already crossed her mind. But then there was the curse, which didn't fit into this line of thinking. 

This curse was also something that intrigued her. During the war, Hermione had seen many - conjured many more. Yet at no time had she seen anything like what ran through Malfoy's veins. A curse that was bearable to live with. 

It was all too strange.

The cold was biting her skin. With a reluctant sigh, she let himself sink into the water one last time, clearing her mind and soul, before pulling herself away from the seabed and returning to the shore.

Her clothes clung to her as she stepped onto the sand, soaked through, the fabric pressing against every line of her body. Her hair dripped onto her shoulders, her skin prickling as the breeze hit her.

As much as it felt good to feel the wind against her chilled skin, Hermione wrapped her arms around herself, walking towards home.

She entered silently, with the usual silence welcoming her with some hostility. Hermione preferred to focus on the warmth of the house enveloping her, although it wasn't enough to stop the shiver that ran through her body.  Without thinking, she made her way straight to the bathroom, her only thought being a hot shower to chase away the cold.

She pushed open the door—

And stopped dead.

Malfoy.

Half-naked.

Water still clung to his skin, droplets catching the light as they ran down his chest, disappearing into the towel slung low on his hips. His hair was damp, sticking to his forehead, disheveled in a way that made him look infuriatingly good.

Heat shot straight to her face, her mind stalling completely before instinct kicked in. She yelped, spinning around so fast she nearly tripped over herself, both hands flying to her face.

"You—!" she sputtered, voice high-pitched, mortified. "Why didn't you lock the door?!"

"Why didn’t you knock?!"

Her hands were still over her eyes, her back firmly turned to the bathroom. "I was going to take a shower! I didn't think I'd walk in on, on—".

He made a noise that came out half mocking, half exasperated "Merlin, Granger, it's just a body. Relax."

Hermione felt a fresh wave of embarrassment creep up her neck. "That is not the point!"

"You can turn around now."

Cautiously, she turned in the direction of the bathroom, peeking through her fingers before lowering them completely. Fortunately for Hermione's eyesight, he was already fully dressed.

"Are you planning to stand there all d-?" the words had gotten lost in his throat.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

"Granger."

In all her years, Hermione couldn't remember ever hearing him speak in such a deep tone. It sounded like the voice was coming from somewhere too deep inside him, which made her start to move again.

Blindly, she tried to reach for the door handle. "Sorry! I didn’t—"

"Wait."

His voice stopped her. Hesitant. Something strange flickered in his expression, his gaze flicking over her. And that was when Hermione realized.

Her clothes. The way they clung to her, the fabric soaked through, revealing everything.

She sucked in a sharp breath, suddenly hyperware of the way his eyes lingered for a fraction too long.

Draco swallowed.

The air between them thickened. The clocks stopped ticking in circles. 

He should look away. He should say something snide, something sharp to break the moment.

But he didn’t. He just stared. 

Hermione’s throat went dry.

"You’re dripping," he said finally, his voice quieter than usual.

She turned away again, eyes locked on the ceiling, willing herself to erase the entire interaction from her mind.

Not working.

She should move. She should.

But his feet wouldn't listen. They seemed to have stayed in the middle of the waves, swimming on their own. Hermione didn't feel them as her own, so all she could do was stand there, not knowing what to do or say. 

Neither of them spoke.

The moment stretched, sharp as a blade, fragile as glass.

Then, without a warning, Draco exhaled and left the bathroom, like nothing had happened. "Just take your damn shower, Granger."

***

Hermione took the fastest shower of her life.

Even with the hot water washing over her, she couldn't stop thinking about what had just happened. 

She needed to throw herself back into the middle of the sea, to let go of these thoughts that were eating away at her soul. To drown in the depths of the abyss the way Malfoy's eyes traveled over every feature of her body. The way they lingered on every corner of her.

Hermione concluded that she was officially going crazy.

She rubbed her skin, as if that would eliminate the tension that was building up in the pit of her stomach. But it was still there, simmering beneath the surface.

By the time she stepped out of the shower, her skin was warm, her hair a damp curtain down her back, and her mind an absolute mess.

Pull yourself together, Hermione Jean Granger.

She wrapped herself in a towel, quickly getting dressed into something safe: a pair of pants and a sweater, something that didn’t cling or reveal too much. Something that felt like armor.

Because that’s what she needed. Armor. Distance. Control.

And that started with ignoring Malfoy.

It was with this thought that Hermione opened the door and left the bathroom. Perhaps it was a childish attitude, but for the sake of her own perseverance, she would avoid him. After all, it's not as if they were on good terms before this event. 

She was committed to doing what she had decided, if only she hadn't heard a scream coming from the bedroom. 

Malfoy was screaming as if every bone in his body was being broken. When Hermione walked distressingly into the room, it almost seemed that way. 

Leaning against the window, Malfoy kept one hand resting on the window and the other clutching his chest tightly. Anguish and pain collided on his face. 

“Malfoy!” 

The concern in her voice echoed throughout the room. It wasn't something pretty to look at.

Her feet moved before she could think. She rushed to his side, hands hovering over him, unsure where to put them. He was gripping his chest so tightly that his knuckles turned white, as though holding himself together by sheer force of will.

Hermione felt him shiver under her touch.

“Let—” He gasped. “Let go—”

“Let go of what?” Hermione demanded. “What’s happening?”

He spoke between uncontrolled gasps of air “It’s—burning—”.

Hermione followed his gaze down to the end of his neck. That’s when she saw it.

Another word.

Actually, two.

Torn between.

The letters burned dark, as if etched into his skin by fire. Draco sucked in a sharp breath, his whole body going rigid, before the word sank into his skin—fading, just like the others.

Then, like a bowstring snapped, the tension in his body gave way. He leapt forward, falling on top of her.

Hermione grabbed him on instinct, the force of the blow stealing the breath from her lungs. His weight caused her to stumble, her knees buckling, but she held her ground.

His body trembled against hers and no sound could be heard other than his heartbeat. Hermione wondered if her heart was beating like that too — faint, distant from life, almost non-existent.  

Chapter Text

Draco's weight pressed into her, and for a moment, Hermione froze. Her mind screamed at her to do something, anything, but her body refused to move. It was only when his breath—shallow and uneven—ghosted against her collarbone that she snapped back into herself.

"Malfoy," she called for him, her voice barely above a whisper. "Can you hear me?"

No response.

She needed to get him to bed. But without her wand, she couldn’t simply levitate him. And he was far too heavy for her to carry.

Biting her lip, she braced herself. "Alright. One step at a time."

She shifted his arm around her shoulders and hoisted him up as best she could. He stirred, a barely-there groan escaping his lips. His body was pliant, as though the curse had drained every last ounce of strength from him.

Step by step, Hermione dragged him across the room, every muscle in her body screamed in protest. By the time she reached the bed, her legs were trembling. He slumped onto his side, breathing raggedly. His forehead was slick with sweat, his skin pale.

She swallowed, suddenly aware of just how vulnerable he looked. 

Draco Malfoy always carried himself with such sharp edges, as though daring the world to cut itself on him first. He always walked the corridors of Hogwarts as if he owned the place, exuding a sense of superiority. For years, she had created an idea of that boy in her head: someone who can only hurt; impossible to be hurt by. But here, in the dim light, stripped of all pretenses, he looked destructible.  It was definitely a strange word to describe Draco Malfoy, but that's what he sounded like at that moment. As if he were made of something very precious and had to be protected from all dangers. 

A shiver ran through his body, snapping Hermione out of her thoughts. Right. He needed care, not her staring at him like he was some unsolvable mystery. 

He was right, after all. She really had a thing for staring.

Sitting beside him, Hermione hesitated before reaching for his neck, her fingers brushing the spot on where the new words had burned themselves into his skin. Torn between. They had faded now, sinking into his body like an echo, but the weight of them remained. Torn between what? Between whom? What the hell was happening? 

She watched him for what felt like an eternity. With every passing second, a new question bubbled up in her mind. First Run soon and now Torn between. There had to be a link between the two, something Hermione's tired eye was failing to detect. 

No matter how much she thought about it, there was no pattern, no direct connection. Malfoy had been fine for the last few days, without any sign of the curse. 

Until this morning, after their interaction outside the bathroom.

Hermione decided to ignore the awkward moment and focus on what happened next. While she was showering, a thousand things could have happened to Malfoy that she would never know.  Something had definitely happened during that time, because it was just after getting out of the bath that the curse struck again.

The longer she stared at Malfoy's face, the less she understood all this complication.

She should leave. She should let him rest. But something kept her rooted to the spot.

Her gaze flickered to his clothes, still the same ones he’d been wearing since he’d arrived. Wrinkled, slightly damp with sweat, clinging to his feverish skin.

It was absurd. Malfoy was recovering from something clearly painful, and yet, her brain chose to focus on his clothes. Maybe that was easier than focusing on everything else. The rest was a knot too tangled to untangle.

That was something Hermione could contribute to. With a sigh, she rose from the chair. She had something that might fit him, so she crossed the room to her own things. Among her neatly packed belongings, folded at the bottom of her trunk, were a few pieces of clothing she had taken before leaving.

She hesitated before pulling out a plain white shirt and a pair of dark slacks. They still had the same smell of cologne which refused to leave.

Her stomach twisted.

Hermione had brought those clothes to the island for herself, to hold onto something, to remind herself of a life that felt distant. And yet, now, she was about to hand them to Draco Malfoy of all people.

The universe had a cruel sense of humor.

She clenched her jaw, pushing the thought away, and returned to Malfoy’s side. She placed the clothes on the chair beside the bed, where he would see them when he woke up. Then, without another glance, she left the room, unable to continue watching him. Unable to ignore the weight that the scene carried.

***

Draco remained unconscious for the rest of the day.

The hours passed slowly on the longest road they could find. 

It almost seemed as if he had never been there, that he hadn't washed ashore a few days ago. There was no sign of his sarcasm, his hearty laugh or his bad mood. Not even his indifference had bothered to leave a trail through the house. All that remained was a silence that crushed Hermione from the inside out.

At first, she busied herself in the kitchen, preparing something for him to eat as soon as he woke up. It gave her something to do, something to focus on other than the strange weight pressing on her chest. 

Once the food was done, Hermione dedicated herself to polishing every corner of the house until it shone — which didn't take long.

She even thought about going for a walk along the beach and picking up some more fruit and vegetables, but the idea of leaving Malfoy unsupervised wasn’t appealing. 

Hermione went to her room more often than she'd like to admit. 

Every hour, she would check to see if he had a fever, how his pulse was, if Malfoy was lying in a comfortable position and if he was breathing normally.

Sometimes, she would find herself leaving the room and returning straight away, hoping that he had opened his eyes in that split second.

Part of her felt irritated at not having the situation under control.

Ever since she knew herself, Hermione was used to having the answer to everything on the tip of her tongue. No matter what the topic, everyone knew that Hermione was the greatest source of knowledge for studying for a test, for learning a spell and, with the war, for staying alive. 

That's why they began to see her as a means to an end. A book that everyone consulted all the time, in the hope of having their worries resolved. A book that only knew how to be open. As time went by, Hermione began to feel like a reusable bandage, stained by different shades of blood and scars. It was exhausting to always be available for others, without knowing where other people's wounds ended and where hers ended. 

But Hermione was slowly discovering that it was just as bad to feel useless. That's what this unknown curse was doing to her. She had never felt so useless in her entire life.  None of the books she had brought with her contained the miraculous answer to the problem. Hermione had already read them backwards and forwards about twenty times. And, of course, without a wand, there weren't many alternatives left either.

The cleverest witch of her age wasn’t feeling so clever.

She would have laughed at the thought, if the punch she felt in her stomach had allowed her to. 

***

The next day was spent in the same anguish, oscillating between impatience and despair.

This was about to be the second night that Malfoy spent unconscious, which didn't bode well. His body needed nutrients, and he hadn't had any for too long. 

Hermione was lying on the floor of the bedroom, under the blanket she used to cover herself when she slept on the sofa. She had done the same thing the night before, terrified that he would wake up at dawn and she wouldn't hear him as she drifted off to sleep. Although that was practically impossible, since Hermione's nightmares hadn't allowed her the privilege of a good night's sleep for too many months. It was a luxury she couldn't afford. 

The moonlight came timidly into the room, illuminating the whole space in an almost ethereal way. The light was faint, barely a whisper against the dark, but it cast long shadows, creating an almost hauntingly beautiful stillness. The room was quiet, save for the soft rustle of the wind outside and the distant crackling of the fire in the living room. It was one of those moments where time seemed to stretch, where the world outside felt a million miles away.

Hermione’s eyes drifted over to Malfoy. He was still, his breathing slow and shallow, his features softened by the sleep that held him captive. She had gotten used to the sight of him like this—the vulnerability of his unconscious form contrasting so sharply with the sharp, prickly presence he presented when awake. The soft light from the moon made his pale skin glow almost faintly, and his messy blonde hair fell haphazardly across his forehead. It was strange, seeing him like this, so… peaceful. She had never really thought about it before, but there was something disarming about seeing him in such a fragile state.

What had the past months been like for him? What had he done, where had he been? When the war ended, when they all scattered in different directions, what did Malfoy’s life look like? She had never really stopped to think about it before. She had been so wrapped up in her own survival, in her own painful healing, that she had never considered how others had fared after the war.

What had happened to him after everything had fallen apart?

What did he lost?

And what about the rest of them? The people who had fought and bled alongside them in the war—had they managed to rebuild their lives, or were they still haunted by the same ghosts that plagued Hermione? What happened after her departure? Had Ron, who lost almost his entire family, managed to find peace? Had Harry? She thought about the two of them often, wondering if they ever thought of her, if they even missed her.

Hermione swallowed thickly as she thought of her parents. What had happened to her place in their hearts? Where did all the stories before bedtime go? And the walks in the park? Where in the garden did they bury the memories of a daughter they no longer remember they once loved? A knot twisted in her stomach as she thought about them, about the fear and guilt she carried with her every day because she had done the one thing she could never take back.

She had Obliviated them. She had taken away their memories, erased the love and the bond they had shared.

Had they suffered because of it? Had they moved on?

Her fingers tightened around the blanket she had pulled up to her chin, and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to push the thoughts away. She had made the choice for their safety, hadn’t she? She had made the decision to keep them from the horrors of the world she was living in. But still, a deep ache filled her chest, and the silence in the room felt too loud, too oppressive. 

The night had a way of drawing out those thoughts—the ones she kept buried deep inside herself during the day. She couldn’t help but wonder if Malfoy had thoughts like hers, if he too carried the weight of the war’s aftermath, the weight of choices made under duress and fear. Or if it was just her divine punishment.

When an unexpected scream echoed through the room, Hermione saw her doubts cleared up.

She bolted upright from her position on the floor, heart pounding in her chest. Her eyes, blurry with the lack of sleep, scanned the darkened room in a frantic search for the source. And then, she heard it again—his voice, panicked and desperate, cutting through the silence.

"Please!" he cried out, his voice trembling. "No… stop…"

Hermione was already on her feet in an instant, the world around her moving in slow motion as she rushed to his side. She felt the pounding of her pulse in her ears, the cold sweat breaking out across her skin as she reached out to him, her hands trembling, unsure of how to handle the situation. The scream had shaken her deeply. She had never imagined Draco Malfoy in such a state. 

Hesitating for a split second, she watched as his body jerked and twitched on the bed, his features contorting with fear. His chest rose and fell erratically as though he were fighting something, battling something in the depths of his subconscious. Maybe he was. 

“Malfoy,” Hermione whispered softly, leaning closer to him, her voice filled with uncertainty. “It’s just a nightmare. You’re safe.”

His body shuddered as if he couldn’t hear her, lost in whatever darkness had taken hold of his mind and body.

His words trailed off into incomprehensible whispers, and for a moment, Hermione didn’t know what to do. She had never dealt with someone else's nocturnal horrors. He could barely cope with his own, so how could she bring him the comfort he needed?

Her hand hovered near him for a moment before, with a soft sigh, she reached out and brushed the damp strands of hair away from his forehead. The contact was delicate, hesitant, but it seemed to ground him somehow. His body relaxed slightly, but he still trembled under her touch.

"Shh," she whispered again, her voice soft and soothing. "It’s okay.”

She stayed there for a while, her hand resting gently on his shoulder, the steady rhythm of his breathing grounding her as she watched over him.

Hermione swallowed thickly as her mind raced with thoughts of what he might have gone through. What kind of nightmares haunted him? What kind of suffering had been buried deep inside him?

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, her hand gently resting on his shoulder, until she finally heard him take a deep breath, the trembling in his body slowly subsiding. His grip on the sheets loosened, his body relaxing under her touch. Malfoy's eyes fluttered open, but they seemed unfocused, distant, as if he wasn’t fully awake yet. The fear was still there, but it was no longer as immediate.

“Malfoy?” she murmured softly, her voice gentle. She didn’t know if he was fully aware of her presence or if he was still trapped in the fog of the nightmare, but she couldn’t help herself. 

He blinked slowly, his gaze shifting towards her, though it seemed unfocused, like he was seeing her through a haze. He didn’t speak at first. His lips parted as if he wanted to say something, but the words didn’t come. Instead, he let out a soft, shaky breath, his eyes searching her face with an expression that was so unlike the confident, indifferent Draco Hermione had known.

It was a look of confusion, of vulnerability, like he wasn’t sure whether he could trust the comfort she offered or whether it would be ripped away from him as quickly as it had come.

His hand twitched.

For a second, Hermione thought she imagined it, but then his fingers, trembling slightly, brushed against her hand, before curling around her wrist, holding on gently but firmly. His fingers were warm, his grip strong despite the weariness in his body.

Hermione’s breath caught in her throat at the unexpected contact, her heart betraying her at that moment, skipping a beat. She didn’t pull away, though she wasn’t sure why. She couldn’t explain why she allowed the moment to linger, why she didn’t simply leave or break away from the strange closeness. She could feel the pulse of his heartbeat, the rise and fall of his chest, as though she was tethered to him in that fleeting moment of clarity between sleep and waking.

"I'm here," she whispered again, her voice a little more steady now. She wasn’t sure what to do, but she knew she couldn’t leave him like this.

Hermione’s heart twisted in her chest at the sight. There was so much in his gray eyes—from pain to fear, it was impossible to ignore. She could see the fragility beneath the sharp exterior — watching that scene made her feel a whirlwind of feelings that she only wished she could bottle up and send overboard. 

Draco exhaled. "You can go now."

But his fingers were still curled around hers.

Hermione swallowed. "Are you sure?"

Not a soul dared to speak.

His jaw clenched. His gaze dropped slightly, like he wasn’t sure if he should answer.

Then, finally—

"No."

Chapter Text

Draco's fingers were still entwined in hers when Hermione's chest finally felt the weight of the words she had just heard.

No.

No , he wasn't sure he wanted her to leave. It wasn't the same as wanting her to be there, but it was more than Hermione had ever expected to hear. At that moment, for the first time, she let go of her loneliness to face his. How terrified he had to be to prefer the company of someone who meant nothing to him to his own. How cruel could that curse be, for him to find comfort in Hermione's trembling hand? Who would have thought that one day the hand that had been branded on Draco's face would emanate warmth again, this time in a kinder way?

Hermione swallowed against the unfamiliar lump in her throat. She should say something. Or maybe she shouldn't. Maybe this moment was delicate enough that anything she said could break it. 

So she decided not to risk ruining it.

The next few minutes passed like a museum. Slow, lingering, unhurried and with nowhere to go. The last time Hermione had ventured through the corridors of a museum had been a long time ago. But sitting there, with nothing to do but watch Draco's chest rise and fall slowly, she remembered the feeling that pulsed inside her whenever she came across works of art.

Draco Malfoy was worth looking at.

As much as it pained her to admit it, he seemed to have been sculpted by the gods themselves. As if they wanted to offer a part of the heavens to the earth. Every feature had been thought out in detail, an enviable symmetry, unattainable even by ruler and square. His hair fell unassumingly across her forehead. For a split second, Hermione wanted to touch it, to see if it was as cool as the colors it had been dyed with. It was such a light blonde, almost white, that she lost herself in it like when she tried to look at the sun. 

Except Draco was closer.

So close that she could feel her insides burning. If he were a painting, Hermione knew it would be one of those that disturbed and comforted her at the same time. A work of art that can't be unveiled at a glance, that needs several encounters to understand each layer, each brushstroke, each intention of the hand that created it.

But what hand could eternalize Draco Malfoy?

He wasn't like the calm sky above the waves of the sea. There was a brutality embedded in the delicacy of which he was made. Draco Malfoy was like a foggy day, where the sun's rays lazily try to peek through. 

Not just anyone could capture the complex essence that characterized him. 

From Cézanne to Munch, as well as other emblematic names like Klimt and Van Gogh, none of them seemed to be the right choice. Hermione held them in high esteem, but something seemed to be missing. Her memory had already taken over, not letting her recall other possibilities. 

Soon she came to the conclusion that there was no artist, living or dead, worthy of painting Draco Malfoy. A hand blessed enough was yet to be born. Perhaps it would never even be born. Hermione found herself lamenting such an injustice. It saddened her to think that thousands queued to see the Mona Lisa, while his face remained anonymous, hidden from the world. Draco Malfoy belonged in a museum, although Hermione doubted that any eye would be sharp enough to decipher him. 

The thought of other eyes beholding his beauty, save her own, stirred a bittersweet ache within her. Fortuitously, Malfoy shifted, a low grunt escaping him, sparing her from the chance to fully grasp the wave of emotion that had just swept over her. His eyes opened slowly, their gray colliding with the brown of hers.

Draco’s gaze was unfocused, still hazy with remnants of sleep. However, Hermione could sense there was something else beneath it, something raw and unguarded that made her breath catch. He didn’t move, nor did he pull his fingers away from hers. If anything, the weight of his hand became heavier, as if testing whether she was real or just another fleeting dream. 

Hermione didn't dare move either.

His throat bobbed as he swallowed, his lips parting slightly before closing again, as if whatever words had formed in his mind had decided against being spoken. His hesitation felt like an invitation, one Hermione hadn’t the courage to accept. If a conversation was about to take place between them, she wouldn't be the one to start it. She didn't trust her tongue to weave the right words. But still, she did something she never thought she would.

She squeezed his hand.

Just once, just briefly. A reassurance. 

Draco stiffened — she could feel it in his fingertips, in the way his breathing hitched — but he didn't pull away. Instead, his gaze softened, almost imperceptible, but enough for her to see it.

“Still here, Granger?" His voice was rough, but there was something calmer underneath. Something that almost sounded like relief.

“I said I would be,” she murmured.

His brows furrowed slightly, as if the idea perplexed him. As if the concept of someone keeping their word, of staying for no other reason than simply wanting to, was foreign to him.

Hermione cleared her throat, suddenly aware of how warm the room felt, of how close they were. She needed to put some space between them before she lost herself in whatever fragile thing was unfolding here.

“I’ll be on the floor if you need anything,” she said softly, shifting to stand.

Malfoy didn't even give her time to turn around. His fingers tightened. Not much. Just enough to make her pause. And then—without a word—he shifted. It was a small movement, slow and unassuming, but it left enough space beside him. An unspoken invitation.

Hermione froze, her heart hammering in her chest. 

“It’s just a bed, Granger.” He said, without looking her in the eye. 

In fact, it really was just a bed. But it was also more than that. Much more than that. Of course, he would never understand. That would require him to be born again and to fear one thing more than death. She took a look at him, trying to focus on his words and the state he was in. Malfoy was too weak to be considered a threat. After a hesitation that felt like an eternity, she exhaled and, cautiously, carefully, laid down beside him. 

A good couple of centimeters separated their bodies, Hermione had made sure of that. Even so, they were close enough to feel each other's warmth. It unsettled her.

They both looked up at the ceiling, hiding from each other's gaze. At that distance it was too dangerous. Too risky. Hermione was nervous at the thought of what she might find in his eyes, being so close.

Draco breathed out quietly, his voice scarcely more than a murmur.

“Thank you.”

“What?”

The words filled the room with more surprise than Hermione would have liked. It was the first time she had heard him utter such words, but what perplexed her was that they were directed at her. Perhaps she was being a little unfair, except she had never seen him thank anyone for anything. For 23 years, Hermione believed that good manners was a language too complicated for Malfoy to learn. And now there he was, casually proving her wrong.

Draco exhaled slowly, as if regretting having said anything at all. 

“Bet you’re not believing I just thanked you for something,” he muttered, voice low and dry.

Hermione huffed softly, shaking her head. “If you want me to be honest…Not really, no.”

“Yeah. Me neither.”

A silence settled between them, softer than before. Then, after a pause, his voice grew quieter, more hesitant. “I guess that’s because no one’s ever taken care of me before.”

Hermione turned her head slightly, watching the way his throat bobbed as he swallowed, as if forcing down the weight of his own confession.

“You had house elves,” she pointed out, though there was no sharpness in her tone, only curiosity.

Draco huffed a humorless breath. “It’s not the same.”

No, it wasn’t. She understood that. Having people around to serve you wasn’t the same as having someone who stayed.

“I get it,” she whispered, her voice a soft exhale.

He scoffed, a bitter laugh escaping him. "You, Granger? You've always had others."

Hermione felt something inside her shrivel up. He wasn't wrong. In fact, she had always been surrounded by people—Harry, Ron, the Weasleys, the rest of her friends. But being surrounded wasn't the same as being seen.

She turned her gaze to the ceiling.

“No,” she simply said. “I haven’t.”

For what seemed like an eternity, the sound of the fireplace crackling took over the whole house. Without an answer from Malfoy, who was still letting what Hermione had said settle, she decided to continue, even though she felt strangely exposed.

“They cared about me.” she corrected herself “I know they do. But sometimes... sometimes I feel that they demand more than I can give. That instead of seeing me, they see the version they've created in their heads. It's tiring being the pillar of a house that forgets that a pillar can also break.” 

“Sounds exhausting.”

She let out a small breath, almost a laugh. “It is.”

Draco shifted slightly, the movement almost imperceptible. “You should let it fall, then.”

She turned her head, frowning. He kept his eyes on the ceiling, his expression unreadable. “The pillar. If it’s too much, let it fall. Let them figure out how to hold themselves up for once.”

Hermione stared at the ceiling again, sighing, trying in vain to relieve the discomfort she felt roaring inside her. “I already did that. I’m a coward, remember?”

He had called her that once, accusing her of running away from everything and everyone. 

“You're no more of a coward than I am.” Realizing that Hermione wasn't going to answer, he continued. “I’m a coward too, remember?”

She had called him that once too.

“I didn’t mean what I said.”

“You meant it at the time.”

Hermione hesitated. “Maybe. Sorry.”

He gave a humorless chuckle, shaking his head. “I’ve been called worse things by better people, Granger.”

“That’s not the point.”

“No, but it makes it easier.” He exhaled through his nose. “Doesn’t matter. I deserved it.”

She frowned. “You think you deserved that?”

He tilted his head slightly. “Didn’t I?”

Hermione didn't know how to respond. Because she had said it in anger, in frustration, and perhaps at the time she had believed it. But the reality was that, looking back, in recent days she had always been the one to run away from the most complicated conversations, to avoid him for fear of what might happen. And now, with Malfoy a stone's throw away, lying on her bed, she couldn't answer.

"Either way, it doesn't matter. We’re both too far gone to fix anything now."

Several question marks flooded Hermione's head. She stared at the ceiling with a determined look, as if trying to absorb what she had just heard.

The silence of the night led the rest of the conversation. But, strangely enough, lying next to Malfoy in deep silence wasn't strange. It seemed that her solitude was comfortable next to his.

Finally, it was Hermione who broke the stillness, her voice soft but firm. "Maybe we’re not too far gone. Maybe we just don't know how to stop being who we've always been."

“And who are those people?”

“C’mon, Malfoy. We've known each other since first year.”

“No, Granger. We don’t.” He paused, placing his free hand behind the back of his head. “It’s just like you said before. I created a version of you in my head. You did the same with me.”

That caught her off guard. Hermione had never put things in that perspective. Of course, she and Draco weren't close friends who knew everything about each other's lives. But, after so many years of living together, at no time had she stopped to think that perhaps there were other sides to Draco than the one that was evident when she was around. That all those defects didn't prevent the qualities from taking their place. 

Hermione swallowed. “I suppose I did.”

A wry smirk ghosted across his lips. “And what was I, in your version?”

She was hesitant and he realized it. 

“No worries, Granger. I'm not expecting the description of a saint.”

“Cruel. Arrogant.” The words felt sharp on her tongue, carrying the weight of old days. “Someone who would rather destroy than be destroyed.”

Draco let out a quiet scoff, but there was no amusement behind it. “Not far off.”

Hermione's curiosity made her turn her head towards him, although his attention remained on the ceiling. “And what was I, in yours?”

“Self-righteous. Naïve. A martyr.” He let the words settle between them before adding, “Someone who would rather burn herself to keep others warm.”

Hermione let out a soft breath. “Not far off.”

Silence stretched between them again, this time heavier, as if the weight of their confessions had sunk deep into the bed beneath them. 

“Isn’t it funny?” he asked, voice quieter now. “How we only ever saw the worst in each other?”

Malfoy's head moved towards hers. When his eyes finally said hello to hers, Hermione's fear became real. This close, she could read his soul in his eyes, feel the emotional charge that that grayness contained. It was too much.

But it was as if she was hypnotized.

“I think it’s because that’s what we brought out in each other.”

His face became serious, his Adam's apple rising and falling. He also seemed to find in Hermione's eyes a greater weight than he could bear. 

“Maybe. Or maybe that’s all we were ever allowed to see.” Malfoy finally said.

Draco’s gaze flicked down—just for a second. A quick, fleeting movement. But she caught it. The way his eyes darted to her mouth before pulling away just as fast.

Her breath hitched.

“You’re staring, Malfoy.”

His lips parted slightly, but no words came out at first. He exhaled, and when he spoke, his voice was rough, lower than before.

“So are you.”

She didn’t deny it.

His body was so close now that she could feel the warmth radiating off of him. He was still watching her, gaze impossibly intense, like he was trying to figure out something neither of them could name.

“I don’t think I ever saw your eyes properly before,” Draco murmured, almost like the thought had slipped out without permission.

The words shouldn’t have affected her. They were simple. But the way he said them—soft, low, like it was a confession—made heat curl in her stomach.

She tilted her chin slightly, voice steady despite the way her pulse had begun to race. “And?”

Draco didn’t answer her question immediately. His eyes were locked on hers, unblinking, as if he was trying to decipher something deep in her gaze, something he had missed before. His pupils were dilated, the gray of his irises darker now, as if they held more than just the faint glow of the bedroom. It was as if her eyes were pulling him in, one moment at a time.

She felt his thumb caress her hand, reminding her of the physical contact between them. “And I regret only doing it now.”

“Regret?” she repeated, the word hanging in the air between them like smoke, impossible to ignore. “You regret seeing me now? Seeing me how?”

Her voice was steady— too steady —but her mind raced with the sudden realization that he wasn’t looking at her as if she were just Hermione Granger . No, this look, this intensity in his eyes, was different. She could feel it, pulsing through her with a force that both terrified and intrigued her.

He exhaled, and the tension between them thickened, his gaze never leaving hers. “No,” Draco said softly, his tone so raw that it almost startled her. “I regret not seeing you sooner.”

Hermione hoped with all her might that Malfoy hadn't heard the beat her heart had just missed. But she wouldn't have been surprised if he had noticed. They were both too aware of each other's presence. 

Her mind raced, trying to regain control, to lock away whatever spark his words had ignited. “Am I really on your list of regrets?” she asked, her voice coming out steadier than she felt. She let the words hang in the air between them, a challenge, a dare, even though part of her wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his answer.

Draco didn’t back away, didn’t flinch. He stood there, his gaze fixed on her like a force she couldn’t ignore. “You are,” he said softly, the weight of his words sinking deeper than any sarcasm or biting remark could. “But not for the reasons you might think.”

Her breathing became uneven, but she masked it quickly, her eyes narrowing slightly. “Then what reason could there possibly be?” 

The gray of his eyes plunged back into the brown of hers and stayed there for a while. Neither of them dared to break contact, no matter how much Hermione's heart pounded in her ears. She didn't understand her own body, she didn't know why she was reacting the way she was. Why on earth was he messing with her so much?

Hermione's stomach churned when she saw Malfoy's lips open. The anticipation of the answer was killing her. But he quickly closed his lips in a sideways smile, letting go of her hand and turning away.

"Sleep well, Granger. Just pretend I’m not here and this bed is yours.”

She could hear the humor in his voice, which made her smile shyly, before wishing him a good night's sleep too. Now that Hermione was free of Draco's intense gaze, she felt she could finally breathe a sigh of relief. 

Just pretend I’m not here.

As if that were possible.

She lay there, staring at the ceiling, her pulse still racing. She wanted to believe the space between them was enough to keep the tension at bay. She wanted to believe that pretending would be easy. But every thought, every breath, every shift of the blankets felt as though they were connected—by some invisible thread only the two of them could feel.

It wasn’t just the proximity that made her heart race. It was the way his words lingered in the air, like a challenge, a puzzle she couldn’t quite solve. And the worst part? She wasn’t sure if she wanted to.

The silence in the room stretched, and though they were both still, Hermione couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to break.

Her eyes flicked over to his silhouette in the dark, just barely visible in the soft moonlight. He was still, his back to her, but she couldn’t deny how acutely aware of him she was. She closed her eyes, desperate to find some semblance of peace, but his words, his presence, his everything had completely invaded her thoughts.

And then, just as she thought she could slip into some semblance of sleep, she heard it—a barely audible sound. The slight shift of the mattress. A soft exhale.

Her heart skipped. He was awake.

She wasn’t imagining it. She felt the weight of his presence, heavier now, pressing into the stillness. As if he, too, was waiting for something. Could it be that the interaction between them wasn't letting him sleep either? Could it be that her gaze couldn't get out of his head, just as his own seemed to have poisoned her thoughts? Was he as aware that they were lying side by side as she was? 

Her thoughts raced. She wanted to say something, anything to break the silence. To push past the tension, the discomfort. But instead, all she could manage was a shallow breath and the faintest shift in her position.

Hermione realized with startling clarity that pretending he wasn't there was no longer an option.

The question wasn't whether she could pretend. The question was whether she could survive whatever the hell was starting to happen between them.

Chapter Text

She felt the absence of pain before she even fully registered her surroundings. It was almost foreign, the sensation of waking up without the dull throb in her lower spine. Hermione inhaled deeply, letting the scent of fresh linens and faint traces of lavender from the pillow fill her lungs. The mattress cradled her body in a way she hadn’t realized she missed so much. She could melt into it, sink into its comfort and pretend, for just a moment, that everything was fine. That she hadn’t spent the last several nights curled up on a too-narrow couch, fighting sleep, drowning in thoughts she didn’t want to have.

She let out a sigh, stretching her arms above her head, feeling the satisfying pull of muscles awakening from sleep. Her fingers brushed against something solid.

Something warm.

A slow, creeping awareness trickled into her mind as she processed the presence beside her. The slight rise and fall of breath. The solid weight of a body mere inches away. Her fingers had barely grazed it, but it was enough. Enough for her entire body to go rigid, for her eyes to snap open, wide and alarmed, her heart suddenly hammering against her ribs.

A body beside her.

Her breathing hitched as her gaze flickered downward, and she saw it—broad shoulders. Blonde hair. The unmistakable presence of Draco Malfoy lying next to her.

A sharp inhale. Her mind raced, cataloging every detail, every possibility.

The night before had hit her like a bucket of cold water. She knew, with absolute certainty, that nothing improper had happened, but that didn’t stop the pounding in her chest. What had possessed her to stay? To let him hold her hand like that? To let him To let him see her as a source of comfort? But then she remembered the way Malfoy had sought her hand—hesitant at first, before gripping it with an urgency that made something deep inside her falter. The fact that he hadn’t wanted her to leave, that his voice had carried something almost pleading beneath its usual sharpness, had unsettled her in a way she couldn’t quite name. 

And then there was the way their bodies were close. Too close. Close enough for her to feel his warmth, the constant rise and fall of his breathing, the undeniable presence of another person in a way she hadn't allowed herself to feel for a long time. It was a heat that didn't warm, but that made her insides burn.

And as if all this wasn't enough, he still dared to see her. Not just look, no. Malfoy’s gaze had always been a weapon—cutting, sharp-edged, laced with disdain. But last night, it had been something else entirely. Heavy. Searching. As if he had been looking for something in her, something he wasn’t sure he would find. Describing what he did like that would be too shallow. He saw her. He plunged headlong into the immensity of her eyes. For the first time in a long time, Hermione felt that she was still someone who deserved to be seen. And the worst thing was to think that Hermione hadn't looked away. 

That was the moment that unsettled her the most. Not his touch, not his nearness, but the way she had let herself hold his gaze, caught in it, unwilling or unable to break away first. The way her heart had stammered in response.

It was ridiculous. Impossible. She was overthinking it. Reading into things that meant nothing. And yet, she could still feel the ghost of his fingers against her palm, stroking her thumb with a dose of delicacy. 

It was bizarre to think that, for the first time in years, the two of them had actually talked. Until then, all they seemed to be able to do was hurl insults, accusations and words filled with hatred. At no point did they remember that the other was also human, that they bled in the same way. Hermione had never stopped to think that Malfoy's chest was made of flesh like her own, not stone. The pain wasn't impenetrable. 

Facing him made everything even more real. Hermione swallowed hard, carefully shifting onto her side so she could see him properly.

So that's how the sun found him every morning, asleep with a serene air. His hair was a mess, strands falling over his closed eyes, his breathing deep and even. She put a hand over his head to check his fever, but thankfully, it was gone. He looked younger like this, softer, stripped of the perpetual scowl he usually wore. 

Her fingers twitched, unsure if she should pull the sheets up higher, slip out of bed, or simply close her eyes and pretend none of this was happening. The rational part of her screamed that she needed to leave—that she had already crossed some invisible line she couldn't quite define. But another part, the part that had stayed up late listening to the slow, tired sound of Malfoy’s voice as he had spoken without his usual sharpness, couldn’t move.

Because she too had seen him. Not just the boy who had tormented her at Hogwarts, not just the Death Eater’s son or the Slytherin Prince. She had seen Draco Malfoy, a man weighed down by things he never spoke about. A man who had looked at her last night not with contempt, but with something else entirely—something almost fragile.

And what could she do with this version of him? How would they keep going after that night? She bit her lip, frustration curling in her chest. Why was this affecting her so much? Why did it feel like something inside her had shifted, as if she had unknowingly stepped off the path she had always been so sure of? Hermione Granger prided herself on understanding things. But for the first time in a long time, she had absolutely no idea what to do next.

The sheets rustled, and Hermione tensed, heart pounding as Malfoy stirred. For a moment, he simply shifted closer, as if seeking warmth, and her breath caught. But then, his body went still again, and she exhaled shakily.

This was too much.

She needed to go.

With painstaking caution, she began to slide out of bed, holding her breath as she stood, eyes darting back to Malfoy. He didn’t stir. Relief flooded her chest as she turned away, moving toward the door as silently as possible. 

Without thinking much about it, she started making breakfast. It was automatic—the familiarity of routine kept her from spiraling.

The kettle whistled as Hermione poked through a small bag of dried herbs she'd collected. There were a few left—nothing like what she'd been used to, but she added them to the boiling water, trying to create something that vaguely resembled the tea she had so often made for herself back home.

The smell of fresh fruit filled the kitchen, as it did every morning. It was a tasty breakfast, but nothing compared to the comfort of the meal at home: her parents' house. There, the smell of buttered toast and coffee emanated from the kitchen early on. No pancakes or maple syrup, or Hermione wouldn't be the daughter of two dentists. They used to call for her when the table was ready, and Hermione would quickly go downstairs to enjoy the little family time her parents' work allowed them. It was usually little things like this that caused the most havoc in Hermione's mind.

“So, you’ve been keeping someone else around on this little island, and I haven’t noticed? I’m impressed.”

She was so lost in her thoughts, absentmindedly pouring the tea into a mug, that she didn’t hear him coming until his voice broke the silence. Her breath hitched. She spun around so fast that her heart might have leapt into her throat.

Malfoy stood in the doorway, arms crossed, smirking—but it wasn’t his words that froze her. It was what he was wearing. Hermione’s stomach twisted. They weren’t just any clothes,  they were the ones she left for him the other day.

They were her father’s.

Her throat closed up. The image hit her like a hex to the chest. Her father used to wear that exact shirt on Sunday mornings, padding around the house with a cup of tea, making jokes that her mother would roll her eyes at but secretly love. He would sit at the table reading the newspaper while Hermione curled up with a book, feeling safe, feeling home.

And now Draco Malfoy was wearing her home. He was standing in front of her in those clothes, looking so out of place yet somehow like he belonged, and it made her want to cry.

Draco’s smirk faded. “Granger?”

She turned away, snorting incessantly for the tea to cool. “I—” Her voice betrayed her. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Breakfast is almost ready.”

A pause. She could feel his eyes on her, studying, prying. Draco let out a breath, stepping further into the kitchen. “Whose clothes—?”

“They’re my father’s.”

Suddenly, the house was engulfed in a heavy, lingering silence. She felt it stretch between them, thick and heavy. The moment the words left her mouth, she wished she could take them back. She didn’t want to explain, didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to think about how much she missed him.

She refused to turn around. She grabbed the only plate and started placing the fruit onto it with mechanical movements. If she kept moving, maybe the ache in her chest wouldn’t settle in completely. Maybe she could outrun it.

Draco didn’t respond right away, too busy processing the scale of what he had just heard. Hermione could feel him there, still standing in the doorway, the weight of his presence pressing against her back. He hadn’t moved closer, but he hadn’t left either. 

“They’re comfortable.” 

It was such a simple statement, but something about the way he said it made her grip the plate tighter. The fruit on the plate blurred slightly, her vision wavering.

“Good,” she said stiffly, forcing a level tone. “Glad they serve their purpose.”

Draco exhaled sharply, the sound almost amused. “Didn’t say I liked the style, Granger. Just the fit.”

Hermione let out a dry, humorless laugh. “Well, considering we’re stuck on an island, I doubt fashion is a priority.”

She finally turned to face him, expecting another smirk, another careless remark. But he wasn’t smirking. He was watching her, gaze unreadable, hands resting casually in the pockets of her father’s trousers. Something about that made her chest tighten.

“Guess that makes two of us, then,” Draco said, tilting his head. “Not much point in dressing to impress when we’re the only ones here, is there?”

Hermione narrowed her eyes. “Are you trying to say I don’t impress?”

A smirk ghosted across his lips, and just like that, the tension shifted.

“Oh, you impress, Granger,” he murmured, stepping closer, eyes flicking down at her, slow and deliberate. “Just not with your fashion choices.”

She huffed, rolling her eyes, but the heat in his gaze sent a ripple down her spine. It was ridiculous—absolutely ridiculous—that a comment from Draco Malfoy of all people could make her feel like her skin was suddenly too tight. As if the body she had always inhabited was suddenly too small for the confusion that filled her.

She turned back to the plate, ignoring the way her fingers trembled slightly.

“Breakfast,” she said firmly. “That’s what we’re focusing on. You need to eat to regain energy.”

Draco hummed, leaning against the counter beside her.

“Right. Breakfast.” He plucked a piece of fruit off the plate, tossing it into his mouth. Then, with a teasing glance in her direction, he added, “You know, if I’d known all it took to fluster you was me wearing some old bloke’s clothes, I’d have done it sooner.”

Hermione whirled toward him, eyes blazing. “You are impossible .”

Draco smirked, clearly pleased with himself. “And yet, here you are, still tolerating me.”

She glared. “Don’t have a choice.”

He popped another piece of fruit into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. There was something very mesmerizing about the way Malfoy brought his long, slender fingers to his mouth.

She turned away before it could settle too deep. 

“Eat your damn breakfast, Malfoy.”

His smirk returned, but it was softer now.

“Yes, ma’am.”

As Hermione sipped her tea, she watched out of the corner of her eye as the fruit on Malfoy’s plate disappeared at an alarming speed. He wasn’t just eating—he was devouring. His fingers moved fast, his jaw working as if his body finally remembered what hunger felt like. She didn’t say anything at first. Given the conditions of the last few days, he deserved to eat like he’d just escaped Azkaban.

Still, she couldn’t help herself.

“Planning to breathe at some point?” she asked, raising an eyebrow over her mug.

Malfoy gave her a look mid-chew, pointedly not answering until he swallowed. “I nearly died, Granger. I think I’m entitled to a dramatic recovery meal.”

“That was yesterday’s excuse. Today you’re just being greedy.”

“I’m regaining strength,” he said, grabbing another piece of fruit. “It’s practically medicinal.”

Hermione smiled behind her cup, then softened slightly. “So… are you actually feeling better?

Malfoy chewed, swallowed, and then shrugged. "Considering I spent the last forty-eight hours convinced I was dying—yes, I suppose I am."

She snorted. "Dramatic as always."

He shot her a look. “I was cursed, Granger. I’m allowed a little melodrama.”

She exhaled slowly, gripping the edge of the counter. "When are you going to explain what that curse actually is?"

Draco paused, his expression hardening for a moment. He looked at her as if weighing his options, then gave a half-hearted shrug, “I told you, it’s complicated.”

“I just wanted to understand what kind of curse is that you have that write words on your skin—”

"What are you talking about?" Malfoy interrupted, brows furrowed. Hermione studied his face, looking for any sign that he was messing with her, but he only looked confused. Genuinely confused.

She hesitated. "You really don’t know?"

"Know what, Granger?"

She licked her lips. "It wrote something on your skin. Twice."

Draco straightened. "It did what?"

Hermione nodded, her pulse quickening. "The first time was right after I found you on the shore. Your arm—it had words on it. ‘Run Soon.’ I thought maybe you knew what it meant."

His face remained unreadable, but something flickered behind his eyes. He was thinking, putting pieces together. But he didn’t say anything.

She pressed on. "And then..." She swallowed, suddenly feeling warm. "The second time was after—after the bathroom."

Draco arched an eyebrow., a mischievous glint flashing in his eyes. "After the bathroom?"

Hermione winced slightly, realizing how it must have sounded. She quickly glanced away, but Draco was already leaning against the counter, his smirk growing.

"Ah," he said slowly, his voice lower now, "that bathroom ." He let the words linger between them, clearly enjoying the discomfort he was causing her. "I was wondering when you'd bring that up."

Hermione’s face burned as she quickly looked down at her mug, trying to regain her composure. She cleared her throat, ignoring his comment. "Anyway...The curse wrote something else on you. ‘Torn between.’"

“Brilliant,” Draco muttered. “So I’m linked to some unknown magic that enjoys carving poetic messages into my skin.”

She shot him a sharp look. “It might mean we can track the source. If I could use my wand, it would be so much easier—”

If I could use my wand... The thought circled her mind like a constant ache, a gnawing reminder of everything she couldn’t do. Her wand. It was like a piece of herself that she couldn’t access, a lifeline severed without warning. It was more than just a tool; it was her connection to everything that made her Hermione Granger .

Her fingers curled tighter around the edge of the counter, nails pressing into the wood as if that might ground her. The sting of not being able to defend herself, to fix this, to do something ... It gnawed at her, deep and relentless. She had always been able to rely on her wand, to find a solution when things seemed impossible. But now? Now she was powerless.

Draco’s gaze flickered to her hands before meeting her eyes. “I could help you with that.”

She blinked. “What?”

His expression was unreadable, but there was something in his voice—something softer than before. “I could help you get comfortable with magic again.”

Hermione’s heart stuttered in her chest. She felt exposed, like he had peeled away something she wasn’t ready to confront.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said quietly, turning away.

“It’d be practical, wouldn’t it? You only have one chair, one fork—seems inconvenient now that there are two of us.”

Hermione exhaled, rolling her eyes. “So your grand solution is to teach me magic so you can have your own plate?”

Draco shrugged. “More for your sake than mine. You’re the one stuck with me.”

She swallowed hard, memories flashing in her mind—of shaking hands, of spells going wrong, of the sheer panic that gripped her every time she even thought about picking up her wand.

Hermione wanted to push him away, to remind him that they weren’t friends, that something like that asked for a connection based on trust and everything they did not have. But when she looked at him—standing there in her father’s shirt, offering help instead of mockery—she couldn’t find the words.

Instead, she nodded once. It was small, hesitant. But it was something.

Draco smirked, grabbing a piece of toast. “Good. Because if we’re going to figure out this curse, you need to be at full strength, Granger.”

And with that, he just stole another slice of fruit, but not from his plate. Instead, he picked a slice of banana that was still remaining in the small bow where Hermione prepared everything. She had put that aside for her, and then here he was, popping it into his mouth with a smug look.

She stared at him. “That was mine .”

“You snoozed. I chewed.” He gave her a satisfied grin. “Island rules.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “You’re infuriating.”

“Recovering from a deadly curse,” he said with a smirk, “and doing it with impeccable style.”

Chapter Text

She would rather bleed than touch it. She’d touched it once before, only because there’d been no other choice. This was different. This was voluntary.  

But that didn’t matter. Because this morning, she had promised him she would let him help her with the wand.

Hermione stood frozen in the center of the room, spine stiff, hands limp at her sides. The early light filtered through the windows in thin, unforgiving lines, and the cottage around her felt too quiet, like even the air was holding its breath in sympathy for her. Her eyes were fixed on the hearth, but not because of the cold. She wasn’t cold.

She was terrified.

It had been buried for so long, tucked away where her fingers couldn’t reach it and her thoughts couldn’t wander too close. She’d been careful—obsessively so. Out of sight. Out of reach. Like if she never touched it again, she’d never have to feel the way it had felt then.  When she had tried to help Malfoy, it had been proof that she needed to get away from that.

The floor creaked beneath her step, her pulse was thunder in her ears. She stepped forward and then stopped, overwhelmed by her body remembering what her mind had worked so hard to forget. The wand hadn’t broken that day, but something else had. Something in her.

Another step. Her legs shook. Her hands moved automatically, as if guided by a memory she didn’t consent to. She knelt slowly, hands already damp with sweat, and slid the board free. The cloth bundle stared up at her, still exactly as she’d left it.

Her fingers hesitated. Not for long—but long enough that she hated herself for it. Hermione seemed to enjoy living hostage to hesitation.

The second her fingers brushed the edge of the cloth, she flinched. The cloth was cold. The wand inside, colder.  She unfolded it like something sacred, or cursed.

Hermione knew it was stupid, irrational. It wasn’t alive. It couldn’t hurt her. But her heart pounded so loud it drowned out the logic, and by the time she unwrapped it, her vision was swimming with heat she refused to call tears.

The wand looked innocent. It wasn’t. It looked harmless. It wasn’t. It looked like it belonged to her. It didn’t— not anymore.

Her fingers hovered just above the familiar wood, twitching once… then twice. She could almost hear the whisper of spells gone wrong. The echoes of curses. Her own screams, faint and faraway.

And when she finally curled her hand around it, the contact made her gasp. Magic sang up her arm like an electric wire. She recoiled instinctively, clutching the wand in her fist like a lifeline and a weapon all at once. Her lungs seized. Her knees nearly gave out.

She didn’t want to feel this.

But she did.

Oh, she did.

It was hers. Still. Always. And somehow, that was the worst part.

Hermione closed her eyes.

And let it burn.

She stood slowly, the floorboard groaned beneath her as she stepped away from the hearth, and that tiny sound—so ordinary—felt deafening.

But Malfoy was outside, waiting for her, she reminded herself again.

The thought alone nearly sent her spiraling. With every passing second, she regretted agreeing to his proposal. Accepting his help meant letting him knock a few more bricks off the wall she had created around herself. She didn’t want to be seen. Not like this. Not with her shame and scars so exposed. But if she didn’t walk out that door now, she wouldn’t forgive herself later.

Gold and dusky pink had just begun to warm the sky,  stretching over the vast sea that lapped against the secluded stretch of beach. It was too early for anyone to be awake—or at least, it would have been, had Hermione not felt the silent weight of an unspoken promise pressing against her chest.

Draco was already outside, standing near the edge of the shoreline, hands buried in her father’s jeans. The ocean wind tossed strands of his pale hair across his forehead, but his gaze remained fixed inland—toward her. Before Hermione reached him, his eyes flicked briefly to the wand in her hand, then to her face. 

Each step towards him felt like a betrayal of the girl who’d buried this wand beneath the floor. But she couldn’t be that girl anymore. Not if she wanted to live.

 “You actually came.”

“You’re not that surprised.”

“No,” he admitted, noticing her hands, “But you’re shaking.”

Her hand clenched tighter around the wand, and she resisted the urge to hide it behind her back. “I’m fine.”

“That’s a lie,” he said calmly, and—annoyingly—without judgment.

“Shut up, Malfoy.”

He smirked. “There she is.”

She hated that he always pushed her just enough to make her feel something. It was calculated. And effective.

His mouth twitched—something between a smirk and something too tired to be one. “I won’t ask you to cast anything.”

Hermione doubted she had ever felt such relief. He gestured, carefully, toward the sand a few feet away. “Will you just… sit with it? For now?”

Malfoy  turned away to give her the illusion of privacy. Sat down on the sand and leaned back on his hands like he didn’t care whether she joined him or not. She did. Eventually. Although she was a little afraid of what would come out of it. 

They sat like that for a while, as if that was the whole point of being there. As if nothing else mattered apart from the waves moving back and forth, the seagulls in the distance.  His voice was the first to break the peace that had settled over them.

“You’re holding it like it bit you,” he said, not unkindly.

She didn’t look at him. “It might as well have.”

“Has it done anything yet?”

“No,” she whispered.

“Then maybe don’t punish it for what it hasn’t done.”

Malfoy's words reached a place in her that they weren't supposed to, making her shudder. Her reaction didn't go unnoticed by him. And she hated that. 

“I’m not—” she started, then stopped.

Draco looked over at her finally, tilting his head just enough to catch her eyes. “I’m not asking you to trust it. Or yourself. Just hold it. That’s it.”

“That’s not nothing,” she muttered.

“I know.”

Just two words were enough to wreak havoc in Hermione's chest. The way they slipped out of his mouth, wrapped in a layer of softness and concern that she wasn't used to. Least of all from him. His gaze kept flicking to her hands, the way her fingers wrapped around the wand like she might drop it or stab it into the ground.

After a long moment, he moved, slowly. He didn’t say a word as he shifted closer—just enough to make her heart betray her.

“I’m going to touch your hand,” he said, voice low and deliberate. “Alright?”

Hermione felt the gears of her mind stop working, as if someone had unplugged her. He stared at her expectantly, waiting for her answer, but she felt tongue-tied, unable to form words. Her stomach flipped, and it was not because of the wand.

She nodded once, subtly, unsure of what to expect.

His hand slid over hers—barely there, more suggestion than contact. His fingers didn’t curl around hers, not yet. He just guided the tension in her grip with feather-light pressure. Adjusted her posture with the smallest tilt of his wrist.

Breathing has become too elaborate a task.

She couldn’t breathe.

He was behind. Not like the other times it happened. This was closer. Calmer. Patient. Adjectives she never thought she would one day attribute to Draco Malfoy. His knees bracketing hers in the sand. His chest not quite against her back—but close enough to feel.  His knees hugged hers in the sand. His chest wasn't quite against her back, but he was close enough to feel it. And, oh,  how she felt him.

His voice brushed her neck when he spoke.

“You’re not trying to cast,” he murmured. “You’re just… remembering how to hold it.”

Her eyelids fluttered shut. The wand felt heavy in her hand now, finally something real. 

“Don’t think,” he said. “Just be here.”

With you, she thought. And hated herself for it.

She let her shoulders ease back, just a little. Her fingers loosened. Strangely, her body was obeying his request.

Draco’s hand ghosted over hers again, this time with a little more pressure. His palm was warm, grounding. His breath stirred the hair behind her ear, and she hated the way it made her knees press into the sand.

She could feel him — all of him.

“You’re not broken,” he said suddenly, and the words slammed into her harder than any hex.

Hermione's throat tightened, a suffocation leaving her in despair. 

“You think you are,” he continued, voice barely above the wind, “but you’re not.”

She turned her head to look at him, startled by the certainty in his eyes.

“You don’t know what I am.”

“No,” he agreed. “But I’ve seen what you’re not.”

Their faces were inches apart now. Breath mingling. The wand still between them like a live wire.

“Malfoy—”

His eyes sinned by choosing her mouth as the destination to rest on for a few seconds.  He was motionless and she didn't dare move a muscle either. And for a moment, it felt like something was going to break.

But it didn’t.

Instead, he let go of her hand, standing up and making the distance between them safer.

Took a step back, and the chill hit her like a bucket of seawater.

“We’ll try again tomorrow,” he said, voice clipped now.

She stared at his back as he walked away. The wand was still warm in his hand. The ghost of his touch burned on her skin, but it was inside her that the fire burned.

***

The rest of the day passed in quiet.

Hermione sat on the beach for a long time after he left, without courage to face him. She let the sand shift beneath her palms, stared out at the water, and turned Draco’s words over and over in her mind.

Her fingers tightened around the wand again, the wood familiar and cold under her touch. It felt like an echo, a reminder of the person she had once been. There was nothing but emptiness now, a hollow weight that clung to her palm as if it were tied to her very soul, dragging her down.

Long gone were the days when bright, sharp bursts of light escaped from her wand. She had never questioned its power or its ability to make her do exactly what she wanted. But that was before. Before everything shattered.

Her chest tightened as she remembered the first time her wand had failed her. She could still feel the panic rising in her throat, the hot wave of fear when she realized that the wand wasn't responding, that the magic wasn't there when she needed it most. It wasn't just a spell that had gone wrong. It was something deeper. Hermione had become a petal without flowers, but with a rotten root that contaminated the soil in which she had once been planted. The magic she had trusted for so long had betrayed her. And in that moment, she was forced to accept that it wasn't just her wand that had broken.

It was her. All of her.

She couldn't keep up with the chaos of the war. She had been broken long before she realized it. So it didn't matter how much Draco tried to convince her of the opposite. He couldn't see inside her, the dust that accumulated in the cracks that grew every day, sucking her into the abyss.

The thought made her sick, and she tried to push it aside, but it clung to her like the cold, salty air around her. And it wasn’t just the war that had shattered her. It was the guilt that came with it - the weight of others expecting more from her, of having to diminish herself in order not to be considered a bad person, of writing off her scars in order to take care of those of others. But Hermione quickly blamed herself for these thoughts, for wasting her time with such frivolous feelings compared to those of Harry and Ron. She felt ashamed of herself, especially for wanting more than she had left

The wand in her hand didn’t just carry the memory of spells—it carried all of that, all of the failure and the loss. It carried everything she had wanted to forget, everything she had buried deep inside her.

That was why she had left. Left the life she had known. Left the wizarding world behind.

The island had been her sanctuary, a place where the world couldn't reach her, a place where war could no longer hurt her, where she could drown her pain and guilt at the bottom of the ocean. The muggle life had been peaceful, simple. It had been a balm for the rawness inside her. For once, she didn't need to be strong. She hadn't needed to have answers. She had been able to simply exist, to heal in her own way, without the constant reminder of who she had been and what she had failed to do.

But now, here she was, holding her wand again, learning that both pain and guilt can swim, and will always swim until they reach the shore of Hermione's mind.

And she hated it.

She hated how much she still wanted the power the wand represented. How much she craved the feeling of control, of knowing that when she flicked it, when she spoke the incantation, it would work.  She loathed how much she wanted that again, how much she wanted to feel like the Hermione Granger who had faced the darkness with nothing but her wits, her heart and her magic. She hated how, despite everything, a part of her still believed that magic was the answer. That if she could just get it right again, everything would fall into place and be fine.

But she knew that wasn’t true. She knew it wasn’t that simple. 

Because holding the wand now felt like holding a broken part of herself. Like trying to rebuild something that had been shattered, only to find that the pieces didn’t fit together anymore. She didn't even know if she still had them all.

She closed her eyes, her throat tight. Maybe it had never been about the wand, after all. Maybe it had never been about the spells or the power. Maybe it had been about believing in herself. Maybe, somewhere along the way, she had lost that belief. Lost the part of herself that had believed in the magic, that had believed in her ability to shape the world around her. It was difficult to resurrect a version that had already been buried and given a funeral.

The wind picked up, tugging at her hair, but it couldn’t move her. The sky above was darkening now, the soft hues of dusk stretching across the horizon. The ocean rolled relentlessly beneath her, but she couldn't hear it. She couldn't hear it anymore. Her mind was making too much noise

In that moment, Hermione felt the weight of everything she had left behind—the war, the wand, the girl she had been—and it was suffocating. The island had given her peace, but it had also reminded her of everything she had lost. Everything she was too afraid to try and find again.

That night, after forcing herself to eat something, Hermione cleaned up the kitchen, careful not to make too much noise. Her wand lay on the table, far away enough from her touch.

The living room was bathed in warm, soft light. The storm lamp on the table flickered lazily. The air smelled like the remnants of tea and something faintly herbal. Draco was sitting on the arm of the couch, one long leg stretched out, still wearing that smug, untouchable expression like it had been stitched into his skin.

He didn’t say anything when she walked in. Just looked up from the book in his lap and met her eyes.

There it was again—that buzz . That hum under the surface. That taut wire strung between them that refused to snap. Hermione cleared her throat, trying to make her voice sound normal.

 “You used to read fiction?”

He shrugged, like it wasn’t important. “I was bored. You’ve got terrible taste, by the way, Granger.”

“Funny, I was just about to say the same about you,” she snapped back, slipping off her shoes and walking toward the small kitchen alcove.

“Still tense?” he called after her.

“Still insufferable?”

He chuckled softly. And it grated on her. Or thrilled her. She couldn’t tell anymore. It was late, and she was tired. Her eyes drifted, unbidden, toward the bedroom. And Draco, damn him, noticed . He stood leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching her. 

“You should sleep in the bed.”

Hermione stiffened. “I’m fine on the sofa.”

“You’re clearly not.”

“It’s just easier,” she said quickly, remembering the night they both slept in her bed. “We already did this once. Don’t make it a thing.”

Draco was quiet for a moment, his face unreadable, before he pushed himself off the doorframe and moved toward her, each step controlled. "Obviously," he muttered with a dry humor that didn’t quite reach his eyes. "But this isn't about the sofa, is it?"

He was too close again. Just like earlier. Not touching, but there, and it was just as potent.

She crossed her arms, a shield to protect her from him. “Don’t pretend to know what I’m thinking.”

“I don’t need to. It’s written all over you.”

“That I don’t want to sleep in the same bed as you ? Yes, I think that’s pretty obvious.”

His eyes glittered. “That’s not what you’re afraid of.”

Hermione’s breath hitched. He wasn’t smirking anymore. He looked serious. Dangerous. Right on the edge of something.

“What am I afraid of, then?” she whispered, eyes locked on his.

He didn’t answer. Not with words. Just a slow, loaded look that dropped from her eyes to her mouth—and lingered there. When he finally turned away, it felt like someone had pulled the air from the room.

He walked to the bed, sat down on the far side, and pulled the cover back. “Suit yourself,” he said, tone lazy now, back to that irritating drawl. “But you snore. So maybe the distance is a mercy.”

Hermione scowled at him.

She didn’t sleep in the bed. But she didn’t sleep much on the sofa either. She kept hearing the whisper of his voice. The rasp of his breath. The phantom brush of his hand over hers.

Chapter Text

Over the next few days, Hermione felt that her hours were spent watching the same movie over and over again. No matter what she tried, the ending was always the same: she couldn't use her wand.

Malfoy didn't demand much of her, something she wasn't counting on at all when she accepted his help. Hermione expected rough, relentless training, without pause or compassion. At least, that's how she imagined the Death Eaters acted at practice. And perhaps her imagination wasn't too far from reality, but Malfoy didn't fit the mold. Before asking her to try using a single spell, he made sure that her hand had adjusted to the wand again. He said there was no point in trying to plant a tree without first knowing if the land was ready for it. A wise phrase that made Hermione feel like a barren wasteland, with no prospect of ever bearing fruit. She didn't dare verbalize this feeling, but the way his eyes met hers with measured tenderness made it clear that it wasn't necessary either. He could read her like an open book and Hermione didn't know what to make of it. She was used to having to translate herself to the rest of the world, written in a language that was too complicated to understand. But he did it. How, she did not know.

Slowly, he began to try to get her to cast some simpler spells that didn't require so much of her.

“Let’s start with Lumos ,” he said on their first real morning of trying. “Basic light spell. Low effort. Most wands respond instinctively.”

Hermione stood on the dewy grass outside the cottage, the grey morning pressing over them like a damp blanket. She stared at her wand, already sensing the failure waiting for her at the end.

“ Lumos ,” her voice didn't come out as firmly as she tried.

Nothing.

“Again.”

“ Lumos. ”

To no one's surprise, nothing. Again. She tried six more times before she lowered the wand, fingers white around the wood. “It’s no use.”

“It’s one spell,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it’s over.”

“I’ve tried this before. You think your presence is going to suddenly fix—”

“No,” he said softly. “But maybe I’ll help you not walk away when it doesn’t.”

The next day, he handed her a feather. She knew where this was going. Her voice was dry when she said, “ Wingardium Leviosa? ”

He nodded. “Try it.”

She rolled her shoulders back and stared at the feather sitting innocently on the flat stone between them. 

“ Wingardium Leviosa. ”

But the feather didn’t twitch.

She frowned, adjusted her position, visualized the feather slowly rising and tried again.

“ Wingardium Leviosa. ”

Not even a gust of wind answered her.

She stood there, trying again and again until the words began to sound meaningless. Her tone got harder, sharper. The edge of desperation, and something darker, began to bleed into her voice. But nothing moved. It was like calling out for someone in an empty house. Ridiculous and useless.

After twenty minutes, Hermione shoved the feather off the rock with her hand and sat down in the grass, burying her face in her hands. Without a word, Draco sat down next to her. Close enough to feel her frustration leaving her body, but not touching.

“We’ll try another tomorrow,” was all he said.

And they did. 

He gave her a stick and asked her to try Lacarnum Inflamari , a basic fire-making charm. Only then Hermione realized how deeply she associated that spell with her first year at Hogwarts, with her lost confidence, with being capable. She remembered casting it easily to light Snape’s robes on fire. At that time, she still honored the attributes that characterize her home. 

Now, the hand that held the wand no longer remembered what it felt like to be brave. Her voice cracked mid-incantation. 

Nothing but cold air. The stick remained dry and lifeless.

She tried again and again, even screamed the spell once. After an hour, Malfoy took the stick and away, understanding it would not work, leaving Hermione leaving Hermione with the shadow of a tear blurring her vision.

“ Alohomora ,” he said the next day, standing in front of the kitchen’s cupboard. “Another low-energy spell. Try it.”

Hermione took a step forward and pressed the tip of her wand against the object, chanting the magic words. She couldn't say how long she tried to do it, for how many minutes she stared at the cupboard door, totally immobile.

“Do you feel anything?” he asked after a while.

“Nothing. It’s like—” she shook her head, her voice tight, “it’s like the wand’s just wood.”

“It’s not,” he said. “It’s your wand. And it knows you. It’s waiting for you to come back.”

“Then it’ll be waiting a very long time.”

“You don’t know that.”

She walked away before she screamed. Or cried. Or both.

By the end of the week, she had failed at Lumos , Wingardium Leviosa , Alohomora , Lacarnum Inflamari , and Reparo , which Draco had asked her to use on a chipped mug. He’d handed it to her gently, almost with hope. She’d whispered the spell like it was a prayer.

When the mug shattered in her hands, Hermione realized that there was no point in praying, no one would hear her. She fell into silence, and did not come out until the next morning.

He never brought the mug up again.

The one spell she came close to casting was Orchideous , of all things—a silly, showy charm that conjured flowers from the tip of one’s wand. Malfoy thought that it might help because it was playful, not purposeful.

She thought he was ridiculous, but tried anyway. 

There was a faint tickle in her fingertips. The wand warmed for half a second. But no flowers bloomed. No petals, no leaves, not even a wisp of color, proof that there was no life in her where anything could flourish.

Still, Draco managed to smile a little. “That’s progress.”

She gave him a glare that could have set his robes on fire, if only she had the magic to do it.

“You’re mocking me.”

“No,” he said. “You’re getting closer.”

“You sound like a teacher at the bottom of the class list, giving out gold stars for breathing.”

Malfoy raised an eyebrow. “You’d be shocked how many people can’t even do that under pressure.”

It went on like this for days. Her routine became a string of failures wrapped in forced encouragement and hollow determination. Every day she showed up. Every day she tried. And every day, nothing worked. Once she pretended to have fallen asleep, hoping that Malfoy would let it pass. It didn't work. He realized the lie and pulled back the blankets. He wouldn't let her miss a day.

Hermione began dreading the mornings. Dreading his patient face. His calm voice. His maddening lack of disappointment. She almost wished he’d snap at her, scold her, call her useless. She could handle that. That she knew how to respond to. It was kindness that she was afraid of, because she didn't know what to do with it.

One night, after the sun had set and they were walking back toward the cottage in silence, she finally said it.

“We should stop. I don’t think it’s coming back.”

Draco looked at her, the moonlight making his features soft and tired. “I think it will.”

“You’re just you're just deluding yourself.”

“No,” he said. “But you don’t know it won’t.”

She sighed heavily. “That’s a very Gryffindor thing to say.”

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

Now, like every other day, they were both on the beach in the comforting sunshine. But Hermione was far from comforted. He handed her the wand again. She didn’t want to take it.

“What now? You want me to try to summon a bloody Patronus?”

He looked at her, quiet for a beat. “No. That’s too much.”

“Then what?”

He hesitated. Then gestured to his arm.

“I want to try something else.”

She stared at him like he’d grown a second head.

“What?” 

He didn’t drop his gaze. “Try Finite Incantatem. ”

Hermione took an involuntary step back, not believing what her ears had just heard. “On you?”

Malfoy nodded, as if what he was asking her was the most natural thing in the world.

“Are you mad?”

“Possibly.”

She stared at the pale skin of his left forearm, just barely visible beneath his rolled-up sleeve. She didn’t need to see it to know what was there.

The Mark.

“I can’t fix that,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“Then what’s the point?”

Malfoy took a slow step forward, carefully aware of her. 

“It’s not about fixing it. It’s about reaching it. You said the wand feels like wood. Like it doesn’t want you. So stop aiming at feathers and teacups and try something that matters to you.”

She blinked hard. “You think your tattoo matters to me?”

“You hate it. You hate Death Eaters.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

He smiled, just a little. “Then use that.”

Hermione looked down at the wand in her hand. It felt lighter than usual this morning. She didn’t know what that meant, and she didn’t dare hope it meant anything.

Draco rolled his sleeve up to the elbow and extended his arm, palm up, forearm bare. The Mark wasn’t as dark as she remembered. It looked like a memory now, half-faded, as though the war had tried to erase it and only gotten halfway there. However, it didn't matter that it was faded. The lines were still visible, still carried the weight of something that made her stomach churn.

She lifted her wand, trembling. Even in the face of her nervousness, Malfoy didn't dare move.

“ Finite Incantatem, ” she said, and it felt like speaking through mud. The words got stuck in her throat, heavy with meaning, and even heavier with doubt.

As anyone would expect, nothing happened. Because nothing happened with Hermione.  Not even her hatred was strong enough. It was as if she was too empty to use her emotions as fuel.

“Try again.” 

She looked at him. He wasn’t breathing hard. Hermione simply couldn't understand how he still maintained such perseverance. He wasn’t tensed for pain or expecting a miracle. He was just…there. Holding his arm out. Trusting her with it.

She closed her eyes.

“No. Now I'm giving up for good. I'm tired of watching my failures.” 

She was waiting for his comeback, telling her to try again, motivating her. But he did nothing of the sort. Apparently, he had finally realized that she was hopeless.

They walked back to the house in silence. Not even nature dared to break that silence. Not even nature dared to break that silence. The birds didn't sing, the wind didn't whistle. Even the waves seemed to move with measured caution.

Inside, the light from the windows felt too bright, like it was highlighting all her edges. Hermione went straight to the sink, filled a glass of water with trembling fingers, and drank.

It tasted like guilt.

Across the house, she heard a door creak open, probably Draco stepping into the bathroom, she assumed. Giving her space. Or maybe giving himself some. She couldn't condemn him. She didn't even know how he had coped without shouting at her, without losing patience with her incompetence.

Hermione leaned against the counter and stared at the wall. Her reflection in the windowpane caught her eye, and she hated it. She avoided mirrors at all costs, because she always felt that way. Disgusted by what she saw. With a desire to destroy the person staring back at her. She hated the woman looking back—this ghost of herself. Pale, fragile, incapable. Her mouth was pressed into a tight line, the kind of expression she used to wear only in battle. Now it lived there permanently.

The glass clinked against the sink when she set it down at the same time Malfoy stepped into the kitchen. His eyes flicked to hers, unreadable, then down.

“Do you remember why you picked up your wand again?” he asked softly.

She blinked. “What?”

“Back then. After all that time. You only touched it again because you thought I needed help. With the curse.”

She didn't understand what he was getting at. Hermione looked away.

“You always rush in for someone else. That’s the trigger.”

“It didn’t matter. I couldn’t do it the, anywa—”

Before she could finish, he was already moving. Malfoy grabbed a knife from the counter and, without a single word, dragged it across his forearm, over the tattoo. Deep enough to bleed. A lot.

Hermione froze.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

“You said you’re done trying,” he said calmly, voice steady even as crimson bloomed against his skin. “But I think you're lying.”

She stared at the blood pouring from his arm. It hit the tiled floor with a soft pat, the kind of sound that echoed in her bones. All at once, she couldn’t breathe.

“Stop it. You’re insane —”

“I’m not asking for a miracle,” he said. “Just help me.”

Her brain short-circuited.

Blood.

Blood on the floor. Blood in screams. Blood in the dirt, caking her nails and knees and torn sleeves as she tried to piece people back together with trembling hands and magic she barely understood.

Her chest tightened.

“I—I can’t—” she gasped, backing away from him.

She turned and bolted from the kitchen. The kit. She needed to find it immediately. Hermione hurried to the shelf where she always left the first aid kit, standing on tiptoe so that her fingers could grope through the box. They were shaking too much to grasp anything carefully, but Hermione also quickly realized that there was nothing to reach for. 

The shelf was empty.

“What—” Her voice broke off.

Behind her, his voice came, quiet. “I hid it.”

“You what ?”

“You said you don’t want to try anymore. But you will. If someone’s bleeding. If someone needs you. I’m betting on that.”

Her mind reeled. “You manipulative bastard!”

He didn't flinch. A red trail followed him and fell at his feet, but Malfoy's eyes wouldn't leave Hermione's.

“You don’t get it,” she said. “You don’t know what this does to me.”

“I know more than you think,” he said. “And I know you’d crawl through glass to help someone, even if it kills you.”

Hermione stared at him. At the blood dripping down his wrist, staining his pale skin like it belonged there.

Her hand went in search of her wand, her fingers trembling violently, in a way that she couldn’t grip it properly. It felt like stone again. She raised it, trying to call on something, whether it was instinct, training, desperation. Anything.

“ Vulnera Sanentur, ” she choked out.

The same outcome as always. Nothing. Not even a spark. And the blood didn’t slow.

She tried again. “ Vulnera — ”

Hermione’s voice cracked. Her knees buckled, and she fell to the floor in front of the sink, the tiles cold against her skin. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stop the blood. She couldn’t fix him. She couldn’t, she couldn’t, she couldn’t. And in that moment, she wasn’t looking at Draco Malfoy anymore. She was looking at Fred. Remus. Molly. George. Tonks. Billy. Fleur. Neville. Luna. Ginny. All of them, bleeding, breaking, dying in front of her. Malfoy's blood was the same as all the others she had lost. It was just like the blood that stained her own hands during the war. The blood that would haunt her for all eternity. 

Her stomach lurched violently. She gripped the sink, leaned over, and vomited. Her body shook with it. Ugly, wrenching sobs clawed their way out of her throat, and she didn’t try to stop them. She didn’t have the strength for that.

Hermione slid to the floor and curled in on herself, repeating I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, over and over again, although the words were only whispers in the middle of the crying. 

For a long time, the only sounds in the bathroom were her quiet, broken apologies and the soft, steady drip of blood hitting porcelain. Then she heard the scrape of fabric as he knelt down beside her.

“Granger,” he said, low and hoarse.

She flinched, curling tighter, burying her face in her arms. “Go away.”

“No.”

“ Go. ”

He ignored her.

She felt him shift beside her. Then something warm and wet brushed against her hand—his blood, still dripping, staining her skin. She gasped and tried to pull away, but he caught her wrist. Gently. No pressure at all. Just a hand, steady and grounding, even as his own shook.

“You think I don’t know what this is doing to you?” he asked. “You think I don’t remember every single face I saw fall in that war?”

She didn’t answer. The words had drowned in her tears.

“I see them, too,” he said. “Every night. Every time I look in the mirror. Every time I touch this fucking mark.”

Hermione squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to scream. She wanted to disappear. But she couldn’t—because he wasn’t letting her.

“You’re not the only one haunted, Granger.”

He was paler than usual. The blood was still flowing, soaking into his sleeve now, but he didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he did and just didn’t care. His eyes were locked on hers, wide and sharp and real in a way she didn’t expect.

“Help me,” he said again. Softer now. Not a command. Not even a request.

A plea.

Her breath hitched.

“I can’t ,” she whispered, voice shaking.

“Yes, you can.”

“Go away.” She begged, unable to face him at all.

Her shoulders were shaking, her head bowed low, curls sticking to the sweat on her forehead. 

Malfoy watched her like someone watching a match flicker out in the wind, unable to keep the flame alight.

He’d gone too far.

His breath caught. The blood on his arm suddenly felt colder, shame crawling up from it like a second skin. 

Malfoy stepped back slowly. He opened the cabinet under the sink and grabbed the first aid kit she’d failed to find. Quietly, deliberately, he sat on the closed lid of the toilet and began to wrap his arm himself. The antiseptic stung. He didn’t wince. He deserved worse. While he was doing all that, Hermione's crying filled the room.

When he stood again, she was still on the floor. Still holding herself like a lifeline.

He lingered in the doorway, his voice barely audible.

“I’m sorry.”

All he got in response was a sniffle followed by a choke.

***

They avoided each other for the rest of the day, Hermione taking refuge in the bathroom until bedtime. Neither of them had an appetite for dinner, for different reasons. It seemed unimaginable that any food could slip down her throat, how nauseous she still felt. 

At bedtime, Hermione curled up on the couch, blanket tight around her shoulders, wand hidden from sight. She needed to rest so badly, to pretend that there was an escape from that day and all the others that had passed but still haunted her. 

Sleep took a long time to ring his doorbell, but when Hermione opened the door, he dragged her back to the past.

The screaming woke her, ecchoing faintly off the walls. The nightmare hadn’t shown her everything. Just enough. Just that night. The one she never spoke of. The one she could never forget. The night she killed someone.

Her lungs burned. Her skin was soaked in sweat. The room tilted, spinning. Her chest caved inward, pulled into the black hole that always waited for her.

She was starting to have a panic attack.

Chapter Text

The world came apart slowly.

It didn’t shatter in an instant, no violent crack or clean fracture. It unraveled—thread by aching thread, until all that was left was the breathless, suffocating quiet of too much . The silence between thoughts. The air before the scream.

Sweat slicked her skin, cold and wet and shameful, soaking the blanket tangled around her legs. The room was too small, too dark, too loud—and yet there was no sound at all, just the echo of the scream she’d swallowed in her sleep. It rang in her ears like the sound of a memory too powerful to forget, too cruel to relive.

Hermione sat bolt upright on the couch, gasping for air, heart racing in a rhythm so violent it rattled her bones. Her vision blurred. Her chest clenched tighter, tighter, like an invisible hand was closing around her ribs. She pressed her palm to her sternum, trying to slow it. She couldn’t. Her body didn’t listen anymore.

She was going to die. That was it. 

She slid to the floor, folded in on herself like a paper crane soaked through and sagging. Her back was pressed tight to the couch, her knees drawn to her chest in a trembling sort of desperation. Hermione’s hands clutched the fabric of her jumper so tightly her knuckles blanched white, and her breath came in frantic, shallow bursts—like she was drowning in a sea no one else could see.

The sound of rushing water filled her ears. Was it the sink? The waves outside? Her blood, pulsing past her ears? She couldn’t tell. Couldn’t tell anything anymore.  Everything was where it had always been, everything was what it had always been, but Hermione couldn't grasp anything. It was as if only the noise inside her existed, mixed with her heart that rode frantically in her chest, as if trying to escape. 

“Granger?”

Draco’s concern filled the air of the room, but his words didn’t reach Hermione, who’s mind  was trapped in a cage that was shrinking in size every second, leaving her lungs burning. 

“Granger, hey—hey, can you hear me?”

He quickly realized that no, she was too wrapped up in a spiral of anxiety to be able to feel the world around her. He was only a few steps away, but she was very far away. Malfoy felt that realization shatter something inside him.

“Okay,” he was trying to remain calm, even though panic licked at the edges of his gut. “Okay, I’m going to help you. Just… I’m going to lift you, alright?”

He moved slowly, cautiously, as if Hermione would turn to dust at the first false move. As if he was approaching a wounded animal. In Malfoy’s eyes, at that moment, in the dim moonlight, Hermione looked like the most helpless being on the face of the earth. And something inside him screamed for him to protect her. 

But the second his fingers brushed her arm—

“No.”

She shuddered violently, the voice barely audible, swallowed up by despair. Her body jerked away from him like instinct, slamming her back harder into the couch.

“Don’t—don’t—don’t touch me.”

He froze. There, sitting on the floor, dominated by her demons, Hermione had been reduced to nothing. She had no control over her own body. She couldn't feel her own skin as her own. She was nothing but a stranger to herself. And having another person's skin pressed against her was too much to handle. 

Every muscle in him was screaming to move, to help, to do something. But he didn’t touch her again. He couldn’t. So, instead, he let his hands hover, as he watched her collapse in the middle of the room. 

“I won’t,” he said softly. Steady. “I won’t touch you. I promise.”

Malfoy was no fool to consider himself the most upstanding person ever, life proved exactly the opposite. However, if there was one thing he valued, it was promises. The ones others made to him — but especially the ones he made to others. 

“You’re safe,” he crouched down to Hermione’s level, smoothly as he could. “This is now. Not then.”

Her jaw trembled. Her whole body ached with tension. 

“Go…go away.” 

“I promised I would not touch you, and I won’t. I’m keeping my distance.” he said, firmly. “But I’m not going anywhere.”

She squinted to see the distance between them and realized that he was serious. 

Why did he have to see this?

Why did he have to see her like that?

Why wouldn't he leave?

Malfoy could almost hear the threads of her jumper groan, by how tightly her hands were trembling against the fabric. Her eyes were wide and vacant, pupils blown so wide he wondered if she was actually seeing the wall she was looking at. He had never seen it so empty and that scared him.

“I know you can’t talk right now. That’s fine. You don’t have to,” he said. “Just… just try to copy me, alright?”

He started breathing. Inhale. Exhale.

He didn’t speak again. Didn’t fill the silence with questions or comforts. Just that sound: him, drawing breath like it was a ritual, a lifeline, and offering it to her like it could save her too.

For the first few minutes, Hermione didn’t accompany him. 

That made him insecure. Malfoy wasn't sure how to help someone. It wasn't something innate, or the fruit of a habit cultivated over the years. He was used to being the one left out of the painting — the one who neither helped nor was helped. The one who is forgotten behind the curtain, whose own hand is the only one that reaches out to clean his own wounds. And yet there he was, holding out his hand to Hermione, wanting to bring her the comfort he had never received. 

Her first breath caught him off guard. Her jaw cracked with tension as she dragged in a tiny, trembling inhale. It caught in her throat like it didn’t belong there, but Draco felt it as if it were life returning.

She let it out, slow and shaky, and tried again. In. Out. Shallow and stuttering.

Malfoy and Hermione remained motionless, side by side, separated only by the walls she had erected, breathing in harmony. It was so good to hear her calming down that at no time did he dare utter a word. 

A minute passed. Two.

Malfoy didn't know that breathing with someone could be more intimate than touching them. With Hermione it was. Every inhale and exhale was her attempt to get back to the surface, to drown the monster that held her hostage to herself. There was nothing more intimate than this vulnerability. 

When her breathing finally seemed under control, the tears came without knocking. Sudden and brutal, but silent, without much energy to make themselves heard. Like her whole body had been waiting for permission to fall apart.

And she sobbed.

Malfoy didn’t look away.

He couldn’t.

Hermione had cried in the afternoon too, but now it was different. Malfoy had felt bad for driving her to exhaustion, but now he felt he was witnessing a real breaking point. As he watched the tears flow freely down her face, he wondered how long she had kept them inside. Were they old, heavy tears? What haunted her nights to the point of leaving her in that state? What made her so tormented?

There was no elegant way to hold that kind of grief. It didn’t fit into the small boxes people made for it. There were no neat tissues, no whispered assurances, no well-meaning touches that didn’t feel like fire. Grief like this poured from the marrow. It was ancient. It was sacred. And Draco knew better than to try and tame it.

Even as her sobs wracked her body, silent and gut-wrenching, he kept his gaze on her. Close enough to be a presence. Far enough to be safe.

The crying gradually subsided as Hermione's soul was cleansed. When it stopped for good, she felt that there was nothing left inside her. Neither the bad nor the good. She was completely hollow.

And that was perhaps the worst feeling to prevail. Apathy towards everything. Disconnection from life. The lack of purpose for tomorrow, because along with it would come a different kind of nightmare. Every night was marked by one. 

“You can go back to bed. I am better now.” she said in a whisper, ruder than she would have liked to sound. 

His expression shifted—something flickering behind his eyes. “I know.”

“So? Why are you still here?”

“You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

Hermione couldn't tell what had hit her more, the words or the care with which he had said them, as if they had come straight from the most sincere part of his being. She couldn't remember the last time anyone had stayed. She couldn't remember them treating her with care. 

She swallowed hard. “I’m used to it.”

Draco’s gaze darkened slightly. “That doesn’t mean you should be.”

Something definitely broke inside her after those words. Maybe she wasn't so empty after all. Maybe there were still parts that could be broken.

The silence stretched between them, thick and heavy, but not unbearable. Until shame was beginning to wash over her like a tsunami, and she needed to silence the voices in her head with words. She needed to take the spotlight off herself.

“Do you have them too?” she was still not able to look at him directly. “The nightmares, I mean.” 

Draco didn’t react at first.

“You know I do.”

His voice was even, but there was something clipped about it. A restrained tightness.

Hermione swallowed. “What are yours about?”

The question wasn't asked just to shift the focus onto him. There was genuine curiosity in finding out what was powerful enough to haunt Malfoy's rest. 

For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer. That he would ignore her, that he wouldn't take such a big step and reveal something so personal. But he proved her wrong.

“They change,” he murmured. “Sometimes it’s the war. The manor. Things I—” A pause. His jaw tensed. “Things I did.”

Hermione inhaled softly. Her hands trembled again at the mention of the war and the manor. His gaze was fixed on that. 

Malfoy continued, “Other times, it’s the curse.” His fingers flexed slightly where they rested on his knee. “The magic. The words.”

Hermione watched him carefully, studying the flicker of something unreadable in his expression.

“Does it still hurt?”

His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Not in the way it used to.”

“What way is that?”

Draco exhaled slowly, as if he were weighing his answer, deciding how much to give her.

“At first, it was physical. The carvings, the marks. The magic tore through my skin, burned from the inside out.” His lips pressed into a thin line. “Now, it’s different. The scars don’t hurt. But the words—” He hesitated. “Sometimes I feel them. Like they’re still there. Like they’re still writing themselves.”

Hermione shivered.

“Magic that strong leaves something behind,” she murmured. “Even after it’s gone.”

A long, heavy silence settled between them again. The moonlight partially revealed their faces, hiding the part that was not yet ready to be seen.

“What was yours about?” 

Draco broke the silence with a question Hermione was not ready to respond to. Not now and probably never. She had expected him to let it go. To leave it alone. He wasn’t the kind of person who asked things like that. At least, not that she had ever known.

“There are some things that go with us to the tomb.” her voice was calm. “That is one of mine.” 

He looked at her, hoping that her eyes would say what her mouth could not. But he feared that her gaze was just as empty. And it was.

“I hope you don’t take any of it with you.”

A bitter laugh escaped Hermione's lips, sharp enough to cut. “And why is that? Do you really want to know my greatest torments that much?”

“If you don’t take any of them” he said, the words dragged from somewhere far uglier than his voice should’ve been allowed to reach, “it means they died before you.”

His mouth twisted, not quite a smirk. Perhaps someone else would have thought so, but Hermione was already beginning to be able to decipher his expressions. It was far from a smirk — more like something broken that didn’t know how to heal properly.

“You don’t have to bury what already has a grave.”

She didn’t respond right away. Her silence wasn’t defensive—it was the kind of silence that came after the storm, not before it. When the rain has stopped but everything is still soaked.

“And what if it never had a grave?” she asked eventually, her voice barely a whisper. “What if it never even had the chance to die?”

Malfoy inhaled slowly, like her words had lodged somewhere in his lungs. Like breathing hurt now.

“Then it festers,” he said. “It turns into something else. Something that wakes you up in the middle of the night and won’t let you sleep again.”

“Are you going to stay up all night just to make sure I don’t have another nightmare?” 

The abrupt change of subject was the only way Hermione could find to stop her mind from crawling back into the mire from which it had emerged minutes ago. Whether he had noticed her discomfort, she couldn't say, as she was once again unable to look away from the wall.

“Oh, absolutely,” he said, tone dry as old parchment. “I was planning on sitting at the foot of your couch with a cup of tea and a wand lit like a bloody nightlight.”

Hermione blinked. Then she turned, just enough to catch the faintest quirk of his mouth—definitely closer to a smirk this time.

“I’ll bring a blanket and everything,” he went on, matter-of-fact. “Very dramatic. Possibly a throne. Maybe a tiara, if that helps ease the terror.”

She stared at him.

And then—just like that—she laughed.

Hermione realized that she couldn't remember the last time she had heard her hearty laugh. Although it was strange, it felt good to revisit it and feel it so spontaneously. And she wasn’t the only one affected by that. It was sudden and breathless and real, and Draco’s heart forgot how to beat for exactly three seconds. He could not believe he could get such a beautiful sound out of her. Especially after everything.

“You’d look ridiculous in a tiara,” she said, still laughing softly, the sound warm like sunlight through a crack in the window. Malfoy felt a sudden urge to keep that sound in a jar, like something too precious to be appreciated by the rest of the world.

Hermione rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth betrayed her.

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself.”

“I’m not flattering myself,” his voice dipping into something silkier. “I’m stating facts. If you’re going to accuse me of something, Granger, at least make it accurate.”

Her smile faltered for just a beat—not in a bad way. In the kind of way that happened when something tugged at her chest too suddenly.

He noticed.

So he said, quieter this time, but still with that maddening lilt:

“But yes. If nightmares come knocking, I’ll be there. Tiara optional.”

Her smile lingered, but it softened—like everything in her had exhaled all at once. Her body was showing signs of fatigue after such an emotionally unstable day.

Draco watched her. Not with the kind of stare that demanded anything, but the kind that held something unspoken. Something still a bit too raw to name. And when he spoke again, the smirk had gone.

“Use the bed,” he said simply.

Hermione blinked, caught off guard by the sudden change in tone.

“What?”

“You heard me.” His voice was steady now. Low and unyielding in a way that left no room for argument. “Today you take the bed. I’ll have the couch.”

Her brows pulled together. “Malfoy—”

“I’m not arguing about it.”

“You don’t have to—”

“It’s not about what I have to do,” he cut in, gentler this time. “It’s what I’m choosing to do.”

He watched her like he was expecting a fight. Like she’d hurl her pride at him like a hex.

But she didn’t. She just looked at him, this boy who had once sneered at her across a castle and now stood in front of her like some half-broken knight with sharp words and softer hands. 

“And what if I don’t want to be alone?”

Hermione was ashamed to admit it, but there was a fear in her of falling asleep and being consumed again by a ghost that seemed to haunt her every time she closed her eyes. If only she wasn't alone, it would seem easier to bear.

“You won’t be,” he said. “I’m here.”

She looked at him for a long time, her eyes searching his for the first time in that night. 

“I mean it, Granger.” His voice dropped, a notch rougher. “You get the bed. And if you need me…” He hesitated, but only for a second. “You just have to say my name.”

Hermione gave the smallest nod, barely more than a breath. And Draco turned to grab a spare blanket from the edge of the couch, his back straight, movements casual—almost too casual.

As he passed by her, he said it without looking:

“No tiara necessary.”

And it was stupid, really. That she smiled at that.

But she did.

***

The silence of the room stretched out as he settled onto the couch. It wasn’t comfortable. It was actually so far from it, that, for the first time, he wondered how she managed to sleep there every fucking day without complaining. The blanket was too thin, the cushion too short, and the ache between his shoulder blades wasn’t from the furniture. It was miserable sleeping there. And yet, she had slept there for days and days and days, leaving the comfort of the bed to him.

Malfoy stared at the ceiling. Or maybe past it. The cracked paint and faint shadows danced like ghosts overhead, but he wasn’t really seeing them. His eyes were open, but his mind was somewhere else—trapped in the echo of her voice, the way it had cracked around certain syllables like they were too painful to touch. The quiet pulse of his thoughts were his only company, too loud in the dark. 

Maybe she was already asleep.

He hoped she was.

Gods, he hoped she was.

He hadn’t meant to see the shadow in her eyes, but now that he had, he didn’t think he could forget it. And Merlin, how strange it was—caring like this. Not just about her safety, but her dreams. Her sleep. He hadn’t even cared if he slept. 

He wanted her to rest. He wanted her to close her eyes without flinching. To sleep without waking up halfway through the night with her breath caught in her throat. He wanted to fight off whatever haunted her with his bare fucking hands if that’s what it took.

And that was the worst part.

Because Draco Malfoy had never been good at giving a damn. He’d spent years perfecting indifference like it was an art form. And now he was just lying on a too-small couch, in a too-dark room, caring about Granger’s dreams like it might kill him if he didn’t.

Somewhere in the dark, she shifted.

It wasn’t much. Just the rustle of fabric. The soft catch of breath. But Malfoy was already attuned to her, somehow, like his body had started listening for her in ways his mind hadn’t yet given permission for. 

Draco sat up slightly, not enough to make noise, just enough to see. She hadn’t cried out. Not this time. But she was still. Too still. The kind of stillness that wasn’t rest, but restraint.

Her brow was furrowed, lips parted slightly like she was mid-sentence in a conversation she didn’t want to be having. Her fingers clenched around the edge of the blanket, white-knuckled. She wasn’t awake. Not really.

Malfoy hesitated. There was a line he wasn’t supposed to cross here. 

But then she made a sound—barely a sound at all, really. A quiet whimper, like someone who’d already learned to cry without volume. Soft. So soft he almost thought he imagined it.

“… Draco?”

She was calling for him. Not Malfoy. Draco. And for the first time, his name on her lips wasn’t a weapon—it was a white flag. A trembling bridge. A door left open in the dark, quietly asking him to come in.

And he did. 

Chapter Text

Before she even opened her eyes, the sun's rays welcomed Hermione, caressing her cheek. She allowed that warmth to reach her, like the only comfort she was capable of letting in. And in a way, it was. After all, only the sun had the power to touch her without restriction. Only the touch of the sun was gentle enough not to burn her. 

For a heartbeat, Hermione wasn’t entirely sure where she was, but of one thing she was sure: yesterday had passed, and she had survived. She had been through this situation so many times, but it never stopped being strange. It always felt like waking up after the last day on the calendar — something unreal, that it wasn’t supposed to happen. Now Hermione didn't know what to do with all the life she still had to live.

Hermione stretched and was immediately surprised by the soft texture of the blankets. They were reminiscent of the sheets on her bed, much softer than the covers that warmed her nights on the sofa.

It took about three seconds for her to realize where she actually was.

The room around her slowly came into focus: pale morning light washing over the worn walls, the gentle hum of wind against the windowpane. Her bed.

Hermione sat up too fast, her pulse skipping as disorientation rippled through her. The last thing she remembered was the visit her darkest nightmare had paid her. The desperate scream cutting her throat. The terror of not knowing what was real, what was memory, what was fear crawling out of the dark to suffocate her.

How did she end up in her own bed? 

Fear crawled up her spine, panic taming her stomach at the thought of what could explain the situation. Her eyes scanned the room again, this time paying closer attention to detail. Apart from a mug with some tea and a book, both lying on her bedside table, there was nothing to enlighten her. 

There was no sign of Malfoy either.

Hermione stood, the blankets falling away. Her legs trembled slightly beneath her as she crossed the room, bare feet on cool floorboards. The echo of last night throbbed behind her eyes, just out of reach. Something had happened. Something else. And she needed to discover what.

The sofa in the living room looked untouched, with the blankets she used to use resting on it, but perfectly folded. There was no fire crackling in the fireplace, and the kitchen was shrouded in the same bizarre stillness. Even the bathroom seemed to lack life.

“Malfoy?”

Like the bedroom, the rest of the house had only silence to offer as a response. He was nowhere to be found, and a new kind of unease twisted in her chest. It looked nothing like last night, but rather a quiet ache Hernione didn’t know how to name, only felt freezing her bones. Loneliness brought with it an early winter, covering Hermione's body with a blanket of snow that wouldn't stop falling.

She was about to check the beach, when the faint sound of a door opening echoed throughout the house, startling her. 

And then he appeared.

Draco walked into the doorway with a large, weathered basket tucked under one arm and salt water still clinging to the hem of his rolled sleeves. His hair was slightly damp and wind-tossed. Hermione hated that the first word that sprang to mind was “ethereal”.

He was so distracted by his own thoughts that he didn't notice her until he had put everything down on the kitchen table. 

Their eyes locked and Hermione felt the layer of snow melt slightly. It fascinated her how the gray of those eyes could be almost as fiery as the sun, how something without color was vibrant in its own way.

Malfoy was the first to break contact.

“Didn’t expect you to be up yet,” he said, reaching into the basket, pulling out some oddly shaped citrus fruit and arranging them with unnecessary precision. “Didn’t want to wake you.”

“You didn’t,” Hermione replied, stepping further into the room. “But I don’t remember falling asleep.”

The words hung in the air like a challenge, creating a visible tension between the two. The words hung in the air like a challenge, creating a visible tension between the two. From the way his arm stopped over the fruit, Hermione deduced that the question had affected him more than her.

“You were… exhausted.” Malfoy snorted, starting to put the fruit away again.

His shoulders were tense beneath his shirt. She cautiously observed the care with which his fingers moved, with a precision that the task did not require. Almost as if they didn't want to lose control. 

“I don’t remember going to bed,” she said, softer now. Hermione knew she was treading on dangerous ground, but her anxiety about uncovering her memory spoke louder. “I was on the sofa. The last thing I remember is—”

Hermione faltered. The memory snagged on the edge of her mind, like a dream slipping just out of reach the moment she tried to catch it.

“I remember screaming,” she finally said, her voice almost hollow. “I remember the panic. And then…” Her brow furrowed. “Nothing. Just… calm. A strange kind of calm.”

Draco didn’t turn around.

He moved slowly now, placing the last of the fruit in the bowl, then resting his hands on the edge of the table. They were braced tightly — like if he didn’t hold on to something, he might splinter apart.

“You had a panic attack,” he said, his voice carefully measured. “It came on fast. I heard you and—” His jaw tensed, and he finally glanced at her over his shoulder. “I helped you breathe through it.”

Hermione’s throat tightened.

The simple idea of him witnessing her in that state made her feel strangely exposed. Like he’d seen something she couldn’t put back inside her. But more than that, his voice — his careful detachment — told her that wasn’t the whole story.

She took a hesitant step closer. “You helped me?”

He nodded once. “You weren’t breathing properly. I… stayed until it passed.” A beat. “Then I told you to sleep in the bed.”

“And you slept on the sofa?”

“Yes.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You just volunteered?”

His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Didn’t think you’d want to wake up next to me. Didn’t think I wanted that either.”

The words were light, almost teasing — but they didn’t sit right. Not with how taut his voice had sounded when he first entered. Not with the faint tremble in his fingers when she’d spoken.

Hermione wasn’t stupid. She had learned to recognize avoidance when it came wearing sarcasm like a shield.

“Malfoy.” Her voice was firmer now. Not demanding — not quite — but it cut through the silence like a blade. “What happened after I went to bed?”

The pause stretched between them, long and fraying.

He didn’t look at her. Didn’t even flinch this time.

“I already told you.”

“No,” she said. “You didn’t.”

His silence was all the answer she needed.

Why did he look like it was killing him to be in the same room with her now?

“Is everything alright?” she asked, tilting her head. “You seem… off.”

Draco snorted under his breath, but it wasn’t amusement. It was armor.

“I’m always off, Granger. You just got used to it.”

She didn’t smile. “You know what I mean.”

He looked up, met her eyes again, and this time he didn’t hide the storm behind them.

“I told you,” he said, voice low. “You need rest. And I need to get the fish scaled before it goes bad.”

“Then…no training today, I presume?”

“Take the day off.” He said, although it seemed that he was speaking more to himself than to her. And with that, he turned away. 

But Hermione had seen it — clear as ink on parchment. Something had happened. Something more than her mind was willing—or able—to recall. And Draco Malfoy was terrified of her remembering it.

Hermione let the hours pass in quiet observation.

She didn’t push him again. She didn’t need to. His body spoke louder than words ever could. The stiff way he carried himself around the cottage, the way he avoided being in the same room with her for more than a few seconds. Even the way his fingers shook when he thought she wasn’t watching.

He was keeping space between them.

When she reached for the glass in the kitchen and her hand accidentally brushed his, he flinched. Not visibly — but Hermione felt the jolt of tension pass between them like a current, and he stepped away as if burned.

And she couldn’t ignore it anymore.

“You’re avoiding me.”

Draco exhaled slowly, didn’t look up from the knife he was using to slice fruit. “I’m not.”

“You are. You’re not even trying to hide it.”

He sliced the fruit too hard, the juice spurting onto the counter like blood.

“Maybe I’m giving you space.” he said.

“That’s not space. That’s exile.”

At that, he did look at her — eyes narrowed, wounded —  without daring to utter a word. The subject died there.

Something was gnawing at him from the inside. And whatever it was, it had to do with last night.

Hermione tried to fill her time. She read a few pages of a muggle book about the myth of Sisyphus —  the book on her bedside, though she still couldn’t remember having picked it up. She always related to Sisyphus, but now the reasons were different.

After putting the book down, Hermione tried to drink the tea, but it had long gone cold, and Hermione hated how that felt like a metaphor. She wandered the beach with her cloak wrapped tight, trying to will the sea air to soothe her frayed thoughts.

But no matter what she did, her mind kept circling back.

Why couldn’t she remember?

She had dealt with panic attacks before. Sometimes they ended with her crying. Other times she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. But she had never, not once, forgotten entire segments of time.

She could feel it, like a bruise beneath the skin. The truth, buried somewhere just below the surface. And Draco — he was guarding it. Not from her, but from himself.

That night, Hermione lay on the sofa again, although Malfoy insisted that she should keep sleeping in bed. Wrapped in the quiet of the house, her mind refused to be still. She hated that the truth was locked in her own mind. That whatever had passed between them, it had touched him deeply enough to shake the careful walls he’d built.

She was sure of it now: Draco Malfoy had broken his own rules last night.

And he couldn’t undo it.

***

The morning sun was higher now, casting clean white light through the half-open windows, filling the cottage with a deceptive kind of peace. It painted the floors in shifting golds, warmed the wooden walls, kissed the edges of parchment on the shelves, and made the sea sparkle like shattered glass beyond the cliffs.

Inside the cottage, Hermione sat at the small table with a mug of tea going cold in front of her. She hadn’t touched it since the first sip. Her fingers lay idle on the rim of the mug, her eyes fixed on the horizon, though she barely saw it. The ocean moved. The wind rustled. But inside her, nothing stirred. Hermione wasn't able to tell how she did manage to sleep so well, with all the thoughts that were running against each other to win a useless medal. 

Was it too much to ask that he fill in the gaps in her mind? To reassure her that everything was fine and not feed the anxiety that was growing inside her? The despair of two nights ago wasn't enough?

The silence between her and Draco was a heavy, living thing. He stood across from her, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest, still as a sculpture. Apart from Good Morning, he didn't seem to have anything else to say to her, so he hadn’t spoken in ten minutes. Hadn’t moved either, only the occasional flex of his jaw or the small twitch of a muscle in his cheek. It was like he wasn't even there.

But his eyes were on her.

He was watching Hermione, she could feel it — the weight of his gaze, the tension crawling through the air like an unfinished spell. She refused to look at him, though, not wanting to giving him the satisfaction of knowing his power over her. 

Finally, unable to bear it a moment longer, Hermione shoved her mug forward with a sharp exhale.

“I want to train,” the words came out with less conviction than she had intended, yet her voice shattered the silence like glass on stone.

Draco’s brow arched, barely a movement, but enough to speak for itself.

“No,” this was all he had for her. Just one word, cool and flat.

“I’m fine,” she insisted.

“You’re not.”

Hermione pushed up from the chair so fast it scraped against the floor. The sudden noise startled even her, but she didn’t back down. She strode toward him, fists clenched, chin tilted high. She was done.

“You don’t get to decide that.”

“I do,” he said evenly, “when I’m the one who’ll have to put your lungs back together if you collapse again.”

Again.

Her heart skipped. That was low — and he knew it. He saw her misery from the first row. For some reason, she hoped he wouldn't use a fragile moment against her. She was clearly wrong.

But Hermione didn’t blink.

“I would rather collapse in the field than sit here drowning in silence,” she said, firmly. “At least that would feel like something.”

That silenced him, and she watched Draco’s jaw tighten. For a moment, he looked like he might snap something cruel back, like he always did when cornered.

But, somehow, this wasn't the case. Instead, he looked away and rubbed the back of his neck, sighing under his breath. Something almost like defeat flickered in his eyes.

“I’ll go easy on you,” he muttered, like it physically pained him. “No wands. Just bodywork.”

Hermione didn’t smile. She dropped her shoulders, just slightly. “Outside. In ten.”

The wind tugged gently at her sleeves as they stepped onto the hard-packed sand near the cliffs. A crude sparring circle had been drawn in stones, uneven and imperfect, but it served.

Draco toed off his boots and rolled his sleeves to the elbows. His shirt was too white, like it didn’t belong on someone who lived in the shadows. Hermione followed suit, grounding her bare feet in the gritty sand, feeling the earth hold her up.

They said nothing. Not when he gestured for her to step into the circle. Not when she obeyed. Not even when they began.

“Start with balance,” he said at last, his tone clipped and clinical. “Center your weight. Square your hips.”

She did. Or, to be fair, she tried to. Hermione's muscles ached from disuse, her breath stubborn in her lungs.

Draco circled her once like a hawk, then he stepped behind her and placed two fingers lightly on her left hip.

“Too open,” he said. 

Hermione stilled. The touch lingered just a second too long — not long enough to be scandalous. But too long not to notice. And everything in her body noticed his.

They moved through the drills slowly: weight shifts, balance points, centering spells without casting them. Breathing techniques. Joint positions. All muggle. It was strange to see him so human, so devoid of magic, so like...her. For the first time ever, they were on an equal footing, surrounded by the same silence.

But silence didn’t make it easier. It made it worse. Because her body had learned him. Not on purpose, or consciously, but somewhere in the quiet of these endless days, it had happened. She could feel him even when he wasn’t touching her. And when he did, to guide a shoulder, a knee, a line of tension, her body betrayed her with every thrum of heat.

Why, Hermione? Why?

It was her fault. She moved too quickly — overcorrecting in a pivot, trying to spin into a blocking stance she hadn’t mastered yet.

He was already moving to catch her, already muttering something, but their feet tangled before he could. There was no other destination then the ground. 

She went down.

He did, too.

Sand flew. Limbs twisted. And somehow, when they hit the ground, it was Draco’s back that met the earth, Hermione landing squarely on top of him. Her palms hit his chest with a dull thud, bracing her weight. She heard him groan beneath her, one breath of winded pain.

Then he was still. So was she.

Hermione stared down at him, breathless. Her knees straddled his hips, her hands pressed flat against the rise and fall of his chest. A wild beating heart was pulsing under her hands, and it electrified her. The only sound was the rush of her blood and the ocean crashing behind them.

Suddenly, Draco’s hands found her hips. His pulse was steady. Firm. Not pushing her off, no. He was touching her to ensure she was safe.

Hermione’s eyes met his.

What a terrible decision. She immediately regretted. Because that was the moment. The moment when the tension — all the days and weeks and unsaid things — crystallized between them like frost on glass. He was breathing hard. So was she. His chest rose and fell beneath her fingers, and her heartbeat slammed against his ribs through two the shirt and far too little sense.

“Granger…” 

Her name slipped out of his mouth and she almost begged him to repeat it. It came loaded with feelings that were also bubbling in the pit of Hermione's stomach, but she didn't have the courage to face them.

Hermione didn’t move.

Neither did he.

Their faces were so close she could count the flecks of steel in his eyes. She could smell the salt on his skin. She could feel the tremble in his fingers where they rested on her hips. She could shorten the distance between their mouths once and for all. They were so close that Hermione could surrender to sin.

“Say it,” she whispered.

Draco closed his eyes.

And then he let go.

He slipped his hands from her body, rolled out from under her with more force than grace, and sat up with a sharp, shaky breath. His hands went to his hair, pushing it back, and he stood in one fluid motion.

Hermione stayed kneeling in the sand, stunned. I didn't expect that being away from his touch would be felt with such longing. She wanted to ask him to put his fingers on her again, as if that was where they had always been. As if there were no other place where they would be so welcomed.

“What are you so afraid of?” she asked, the words sharp with the effort of holding back everything else.

Draco paused mid-step. Once again, he didn't dare to turn around and face her. Just stood there, barefoot, wind blowing through his shirt, shoulders tense like a loaded bow.

She stood too, brushing sand off her legs.

“Coward,” she let it escape.

He turned his head, and the look he gave her was a wound without a bandage. However, no sarcastic comment followed. He didn't spit back fire, only looked at her like she’d hit the nerve he’d been guarding.

Then, in one silent, defiant motion, he grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it off. 

Hermione felt her lips go dry.

He tossed it into the sand without looking at her and walked toward the sea.

She blinked, too stunned to follow.

His back was all sharp lines and scars — not fresh ones. trace of pain he carried was ancient, faded by the time Draco had borne the burden. Evidence of a life lived on the edge of things. He moved like a man walking into a storm he’d stopped fearing a long time ago. Hermione found herself wondering if she saw her as part of the storm or the hand pulling him out of it. 

“You don’t get to stand here and act like you’re better than me.”

The sudden sound of his voice startled her.

That was her line.

She’d told him that. Weeks ago, when they were once again talking about cowardice. 

He remembered.

"Not when you’re just as scared."

She watched as he stepped into the sea, letting the cold waves crash against his legs, then his waist. Malfoy left her with only his last words and a heart that was racing too fast for someone who shouldn't be. He just kept walking, until the water swallowed the sound of everything else.

Chapter Text

In the early days of her isolation on the island, Hermione made a habit of saying goodbye to the sun at the end of each day. When she felt it going away, she would drop everything she was doing and wander around the island. Her poor, lonely soul just wanted to believe that there was still something good enough to make her long for the next day. 

It was thanks to this routine that Hermione got to know more about the piece of land that had welcomed her with open arms. It wasn't very big, quite the opposite, and it was completely deserted. It was a point that went unnoticed on the map, but it provided everything she needed.

The sea brought her lots of fish, and through that she discovered that fishing – the act of sitting in silence waiting for something to happen – had a therapeutic effect on her. The same happened when she picked fruit and vegetables that were located in the heart of the island, a little further away from the coast, in an area full of vegetation. Climbing trees and transferring all the attention from her brain to her muscles was an escape. They were no longer what they had once been, but it was in those moments that she remembered that she was made of flesh and blood, and didn't just exist in the dark confines of the abyss that her mind could be.

Hermione missed these constant walks around the island so much that she decided to resume the habit she had lost with Malfoy's mysterious apparition. It was the way she channeled her focus into her legs and let her brain rest for a while. It felt good to lose herself in the calm of nature, to feel that her problems were too small compared to the height of the trees and the immensity of the blue sea. 

Hermione had spent so many months alone, but part of her had become so accustomed to Malfoy's constant presence that this absence was partly strange. Even when they weren't in the same room, she could feel him there. Her roof had become his too. 

Not in a million years would she believe that they even worked as housemates.

There were plenty of arguments, of course, but they were all about themselves. No one argued over an unwashed dish or out-of-place laundry. In fact, Malfoy was extremely organized. They were alike in that.

Come to think of it, there was a lot more in common than first glance could tell. Hermione found in Malfoy a stubbornness made of the same material as her own, a need to be right and to always have the final word. Much of the evil she had pointed out to him for years also ran through her veins.

It wasn't all bad, though. There were also good things, and those were the ones that made her dizzy. Because when you paint a canvas in black and white for years, you don't expect to find vibrant tones overnight. But his qualities began to show behind the mask. There was no need for anything flashy, Malfoy's good heart showed through in small acts of kindness. Like when he helped her heal the wound on her finger, or when he wanted to help her use her wand again.

Perhaps he had always been this person, Hermione just hadn't removed the veil of ignorance to see him as he really was.

Hermione looked up at the sky as thunder rumbled. In the morning, no one would have guessed that such a dark gray would take over the clouds. It was funny, almost poetic, the way the sky had quickly become covered in black robes – almost as if to prove that nothing is static, everything changes; everything lives in constant transformation.

Malfoy wasn't the only proof. Neither was she. All of them, who lived hostage to a war that would never cease within them, were a reflection of this. Ron. Harry. Hermione wondered at what point they had both stopped being a summer sky in her life and haunted her with thunder and storms. At what point had even she become a cloudy sky that only knew how to weep over them?

The three of them had lost everything, part of them would live forever buried with those whom the war had taken away too soon. But while two of them wanted to remain in the grave, the other just wanted to stop putting her finger in the wound. That's when things started to get complicated between them. Hermione saw the war as a cemetery where people were buried; Ron and Harry mourned the deaths of some, and rejoiced over others. Hermione wanted to build something better from the ashes; Ron and Harry believed that a fresh start included punishing those who were still breathing – as if mourning the death of their own wasn't punishment enough. As if they were all the same just because a certain type of blood run through their veins. 

They began to become what they had always repudiated.

Needless to say, several discussions took place between the three of them. What hurt Hermione the most was not the gap between their values that was beginning to open up. No, what hurt most was the way they began to look at her. As if they didn't know her. As if she were a stranger. As if they didn't like what they saw.

Harry and Ron never stopped being Harry and Ron in her eyes. Hermione understood that the war had changed them, that their hearts were emptier without the people they loved so much. She didn't agree with many things, but she understood them, and even when she couldn't understand, she never judged. In difficult moments like that, she squeezed their hands tightly, showing them that she would always be there. Only one day, Hermione realized that no one was squeezing hers. The empathy she had for them was a one-way street; there wasn't a drop that they would share with her. 

And then her days became a prison without a cage: making sure the others didn't go hungry, no matter how loudly her stomach rumbled with hunger. Figuratively speaking, of course. 

Hermione's well-being was no longer a priority in their lives, so she was forced to learn to live without much affection. But the thing about love is that no one can stay hungry for too long. Nobody deserves to go to sleep on an empty stomach. Without the comfort of Harry and Ron, without the lap of her parents – who didn't even remember that there was a daughter who needed it more than ever – there wasn't much left. She realized that no one would choose her. So she chose herself. 

They condemned her for it.

When the first drops began to fall from the sky, Hermione could no longer distinguish them from the lonely tears rolling down her cheeks. She felt the rain wash over her soul, taking with it some of her greatest torments. 

For a few minutes, she just stood there, like another tree that needed watering. She accepted every cold drop on her skin as a reminder that she was alive. Aimless, broken, depressed and haunted, but still alive. Her clothes began to stick to her body, but all she cared about was how, for the first time in ages, she enjoyed hearing her heart beating in her chest. She was so used to the noise that she had forgotten how melodic it really was. What a blessing it was to be alive.

Thunder erupted out of nowhere, bringing with it the fury of the winds and frightening Hermione. The rain began to fall more heavily, forcing her to return home. But the storm was too fierce for her to see her way back. She sought shelter under a tree that offered greater protection than the others, and kept rubbing her arms in a naive attempt to warm up. Oh, how she wanted to be by the fire and stop shivering.

Thinking of the house reminded her of Malfoy. Would he be in the comfort of the warmth of the fireplace or would he still be in the middle of the waves? An image of him lost at sea flooded her mind. She had to make sure he was all right, but how would she do it?

Hermione was about to throw herself back into the rain when she heard it.

“Granger, where are you?”

It was him. It was him, screaming for her. 

Even from a distance, she could sense the tone of desperation in his voice. 

“Granger! If you hear me, please say something, god damn it!” 

“Here!” Hermione shouted, not quite sure where, as she couldn't see him. “Here, under the biggest tree!”

“For Merlin’s sake, finally, Granger!” She could feel relief at the way his words left his mouth. “Okay, don't leave where you are, I am coming to you. Keep talking, let me be guided by your voice.”

“Fine.” She then realized she didn’t know how to keep the conversation going. “What do you want me to say?” 

“First of all, I want you to say you’re not hurt.” His voice was closer this time, rough around the edges. “I want you to say you are alright. Tell me you are alright, Granger, please.”

She blinked, astonished. That wasn’t the answer she expected.

“I am fine, Malfoy. I really am.” Then she felt her heart skip a beat. “But what about you?”  

Hermione still couldn't see anything but outlines, but when he answered her, she felt him even closer than before.

“I? I have been yelling like a madman through half the bloody forest. Every time lightning hits a tree, I think it’s you under it.”

She was quiet, too stunned by the edge in his voice.

“So yes, Granger. Keep talking. Say something ridiculous if you must. Just let me find you before this storm does.”

“Alright, um…” she paused, hurrying to find what to say. “Did you know flobberworms can survive being frozen solid for hours? Not sure how that helps you find me, but there’s your ridiculous fac–”

The moment he burst through the trees, her breath caught. His cloak was half off, plastered to him like another layer of skin, his hair dark and dripping. He looked like he’d clawed his way through the storm itself.

“There you are.”

Malfoy stopped dead when he saw her. Breathing hard. Eyes scanning. 

He didn't dare turn away from her. He seemed mesmerized by what he saw, as if finding her seemed impossible. Hermione saw him raise his hands towards her face, an impulse that he quickly controlled, closing his hands into fists and resting them beside his body.

“Are you really alright?” 

She nodded.

“Then let’s go back home.”

Hearing him call the house a home shook her frame. That phrase came so naturally to him that Hermione's own heart would have shuddered – if she hadn't become so used to how Malfoy made her feel.

In fact, she wanted to go back inside. She wanted to go back home, yes. But there she found the perfect opportunity to unravel the great mystery for herself. And she wasn't planning on wasting it

“I won’t go.”

His expression changed, clearly confused by her words.

“What do you mean you won’t go? Are you crazy?”

Hermione gathered up all her courage and, looking deep into his eyes, she screamed over the storm:

“I will only come back– Actually, we will only come back when you say, once and for all,  what happened that night.” 

Malfoy let out a muffled, humorless laugh and ran a hand through his hair, messing it up.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

“Look around, Granger!” He yelled. “Do you think it is the place and time to discuss it?”

“You're the one who's making everything difficult. You could just end this now!”

Malfoy stared at her, jaw clenched. His clothes clung to him, hair dripping into his eyes, but he didn’t blink. He looked at her like she was the storm now. He always saw defiance in her eyes and never backed down. 

Now would be no different.

“And you,” he paused, “are impossible.”

“Say it, then.”

“No.”

She raised her chin. “Then I’m staying.”

His laugh was short and bitter this time, hands flying up in frustration. “Of course you are. Merlin forbid Hermione Granger back down from anything. Even fucking common sense.”

“You owe me the truth, Malfoy!”

He stepped closer, voice low now, staring at her with an intensity more indomitable than the storm itself.

“You were the one who left me with no choice, Granger. Remember that later.”

Before she could react, his arm looped around her waist. 

“Wait– what are you– Malfoy!!!”

He hoisted her up effortlessly, flinging her over his shoulder like a sack of flour. Hermione gasped, flailing, hitting his back with the side of her fist. It did nothing, apart from her getting her hands even more wet.

“You absolute troll! Put me down!”

“Not going to happen.” he said coolly, continuing to walk as if she weighed nothing. “I told you, we’re going home.”

“This is kidnapping! ”

“Kidnapping would imply I’m asking for a ransom,” he replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’m doing this for free. You’re welcome.”

Hermione didn't like realizing that part of him seemed to be enjoying this. 

“You’re unbelievable.” She tried to wriggle again, but he adjusted his grip and hoisted her up higher, making her even more uncomfortable. “This is outrageous ! You can’t just carry people off like this. What if I were injured? What if I had a serious injury and you were–”

“Granger,” Draco cut her off, clearly amused, “you’re not injured. You confirmed it yourself before, remember? Or did all this rain get into your brain and short-circuit it?”

Hermione huffed, trying not to let her frustration show. “I did confirm that I’m not injured, but you’ve got no idea how uncomfortable this is! I feel like a sack of potatoes.”

“Well,” Draco mused, “I always thought you were a bit spicy , but I never expected you to be so... starchy.”

“Ugh, that’s terrible. I’m not starchy ,” she grumbled, “and you’re not funny.”

“I think I’m hilarious,” Draco said, clearly amused by his own joke. “You can thank me for the entertainment while you’re stuck in my grip like this.”

“Thank you for nothing,” Hermione muttered, kicking her legs again in frustration, but it was no use. He just adjusted her again, making it even more difficult to move. “This is ridiculous. You’re lucky I’m not violent.”

“Oh, I think you’re pretty violent, Granger,” he replied. “You’ve been fuming since I picked you up. But here’s the thing: you’re stuck with me now. If you want to yell, you’ll just have to do it from my shoulder.”

“ I’m stuck with you ?” she shot back, raising an eyebrow, even though he couldn’t see that. “I didn’t ask for this, remember?”

“Of course you didn’t,” he said with mock sweetness. “But sometimes, we don’t get what we ask for. Sometimes, we get what we need .”

“Need?” She blinked, unsure if he was genuinely serious or just playing with her. “What do you mean by that?”

Draco’s tone shifted slightly, though it was still laced with a smirk. “I’m just saying… you’re lucky I’m here. I’m saving your chilly arse right now. So, for once, maybe let me do the rescuing, and we can save the arguing for later.”

Hermione stayed quiet for a moment, realizing she didn’t have much of a leg to stand on. But the silence only lasted for a few seconds before she replied, voice dripping with sarcasm:

“Oh, I’m sure you’re just thrilled to be carrying me, Malfoy. You must have dreamed of this moment.”

“Every night,” he deadpanned. “But I must admit, this wasn’t exactly the romantic setting I had in mind. The rain’s a bit too much, don’t you think?”

“Romantic?!” she scoffed. “This is the farthest thing from a romantic moment! You’re kidnapping me in the middle of a storm.”

“Well, you didn’t hear it from me,” Draco said, “but if you close your eyes and pretend it’s a grand rescue, it might actually be kind of fun.”

“I’ll pretend nothing. You’re not my hero, Malfoy. So don’t go getting any ideas.”

He chuckled, the sound surprisingly warm, even with the storm howling around them. “Whatever you say, Granger. Keep telling yourself that.”

Hermione simply left it to the rain and thunder to fill the silence between them. She just wanted them to get home as quickly as possible so he could set her down. By the time the beach's cottage finally came into view through the storm’s veil, her hair was soaked to the scalp, her fingers were numb, and her pride was dangling somewhere around her ankles.

Draco didn’t say anything as they reached the door, just kicked it with a grunt. Finally, he set her down just inside the entryway with a wet, squelching thud.

“You absolute, rain-soaked menace,” she snapped, pushing wet strands from her face. “You carried me like a bloody crate of cauldrons! I should have strangled you!"

Draco didn’t respond immediately. He stood there, dripping, rain still falling behind him like a curtain. His breath came fast, but quiet. Hermione could feel it again. The weight, the thing between them neither of them wanted to name.

She looked at him. Really looked. The clenched jaw. The eyes that kept flicking anywhere but hers. And then, calmly, like dropping a match into a barrel of potion fumes, she said:

“Now tell me what you’re hiding.”

Draco’s eyes snapped to hers.

“What happened that night?” she supplicated. “You’ve dodged it, avoided it, snapped at me–hell, carried me like I wouldn’t chase the truth down myself.”

Draco let out a humorless laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. “You think I dragged you through a forest in a storm just to avoid telling you something?!”

“I think,” she said firmly, “that whatever happened that night, whatever you saw or did changed the way you deal with me. And I need to know why.”

Draco stared at her, and for a moment, Hermione thought he might bolt. Or lie. Or crack a joke to deflect. But instead, he ran a hand through his soaked hair and muttered, “You don’t want to know.”

“I do, Malfoy. I have been going insane!”

He winced– actually winced at her words. 

“Stop calling me that!”

Confusion spread all over Hermione's face.

“What?” 

“Malfoy. Stop calling me that.”

She blinked. “But that’s your name. I’ve always–”

“Not on that night.”

Hermione felt her stomach lurch and almost leave her body.

“W–What–”

“The problem is,” he cut her off, jaw tense, voice breaking just slightly, “ever since your lips called me by my first name... I can’t bear you calling me anything but that.” 

Her lungs seemed to have forgotten how to function. There was no air in them. Actually, there was nothing inside Hermione – and at the same time there was everything. 

“I deserve to know,” she said, firmly. “You can’t just hint at something huge, say I said your name and that it meant something, and then walk away like I did something wrong!”

“I never said you did.”

“You’re treating me like I did!”

To say that Hermione felt everything and nothing at the same time was an understatement when compared to Draco Malfoy. Every feeling reached his eyes, tormenting him. He just stood there, staring at her like she was the worst kind of temptation for a crumbling statue like him. 

Finally, he muttered, turning away:

“You’re not ready to hear it.” 

Those words were enough to make Hermione's blood boil.

“Oh, don’t you dare,” she growled, stepping after him. “Don’t you patronize me like I’m some fragile little thing who can’t handle the truth just because you can’t.”

Draco spun around, eyes bright with heat. “It’s not about fragility! It’s about what it will do to you ! You think you want the truth, Hermione, but you have no idea what it cost me to live with it!”

Somewhere between fury and disbelief, Hermione's breath caught. “Try me.”

She almost thought he was going to give in, the way his face softened. But when his mouth opened, it wasn't the truth that escaped. Not even a lie. It was a much more agonizing sound.

A sudden cry of pain.

She barely caught him as he stumbled back, one hand clawing at his shoulder like he could tear the pain out of his own skin.

“Not…again,” he hissed between gritted teeth, his body shuddering violently under her touch.

“It’s the curse–it's happening again,” Hermione said, half to herself, half to him, panic flaring hot through her chest. 

Malfoy was clutching at his soaked shirt now, trying and failing to yank it off.

“Let me help you.” she said quickly, hands moving with urgency. 

Her fingers fumbled with the clinging, rain-soaked fabric of his shirt. He was burning under her touch, fever-hot and trembling. She yanked the shirt over his head with shaking hands, and stumbled back the moment she saw what was underneath.

Not one word this time.

And not only at the back of the neck.

Dozens.

Hundreds.

Trying to count them all was a futile task.

Words bleeding across his back and shoulders, messy and frantic, like his skin itself had become a battleground of letters he couldn’t contain. They crawled down his arms, looped around his ribs. A real spectacle of horrors.

“Wha–” Hermione choked on her own breath. “What is all this?”

Draco didn’t answer. He slumped against the stone wall, breathing hard, eyes squeezed shut as if he could will the words away. Hermione stepped closer, too horrified to stop herself.

The words at first seemed random, frantic:

Don’t think. 

Forget it. 

Stupid.

Stay away.

Can’t want what you can't have.

Her eyes raced across his skin faster now, faster than her mind could keep up.

Not supposed to feel this. 

Not her. Never her.

Her voice saying my name.

Her hair in my hands.

Her name tastes like a sin.

And then the worst word that could possibly appear was written.

Hermione.

She stumbled back a step, hand flying to her mouth. Her chest squeezed so tightly she could barely breathe.

“No, no, no, no, no,” she whispered, blinking furiously against the sting in her eyes, against the sheer absurdity of what she was seeing. “This can’t be.”

The words blurred together as she spun to face him, soaked and trembling and panicking.

“These...” she gasped, throat burning. “Oh my god, these are about m- ”

She had no forces to finish that sentence. Completing the sentence would make everything real.

Draco no longer had the strength to reply, even less to stand. His body swayed, and then collapsed against her. The weight of him hit her like a crashing wave. He was too heavy, and she was too small, too soaked and too overwhelmed. She staggered backward, nearly slipping on the wet floor. 

“Please. No, no, no–please, stay with me–” she whimpered desperately.

Through sheer, frantic will, she half-carried, half-dragged him toward the couch, not caring if it got all wet. Every muscle screamed in protest, her arms trembling violently under the strain, but somehow she managed to heave him onto the cushions. He was burning under her hands, his skin still inked with frantic words.

Hermione dropped to her knees beside him, gasping. Her hands–small, shaking, useless–hovered above him for a second, before she finally pressed them to his face, pushing back the wet hair clinging to his forehead.

"Why..." her voice broke, "why won't you just tell me what’s happening?"

Hermione curled in closer, kneeling by the couch, tears spilling freely down her cheeks now, mixing with the rainwater still dripping from her face. She stroked his hair with trembling fingers, again and again, as if she could soothe the curse burning beneath his skin with the touch alone.

“I’m useless,” she sobbed brokenly. “I can’t help you. I’m sorry. I can’t even cast a bloody spell when it matters...Even with all your help. I’m sorry. ”

Her voice dissolved into raw, aching sobs. She pressed her forehead to the edge of the sofa, her body shaking from the force of it, the helplessness shredding her from the inside out. 

Hermione lost count of how long she spent crying. She felt so dry inside that she thought it had been too long. Tears were all her blurred vision could see.

But then something caught her eye.

A piece of parchment, fallen from the pocket of Draco’s soaked trousers. It clung to the wet floorboards, almost blending into the gloom.

She could have ignored the piece of paper on the floor, but her curiosity spoke louder. Especially when she found her name there. Hermione wiped her eyes clumsily and reached for it with numb fingers, her heart racing in her chest.

She smoothed it out with shaking hands and started to read it.

Herm

Dear Granger ,

Look, I never wanted 

I have never been good with the start and the end of things. In case you did not get it, this is me warning you this letter will be the worst thing you will read in your entire life. Words were never my speciality, but in my defense, I did not grow up surrounded by them like you did. Not the kind ones, at least. My tongue feels poisonous words like fuel, but shies away from the gentlest ones. It doesn't know how to pronounce them, how to behave in front of them. So my tongue avoids them, despises them, in the hope that they will give up. 

That is how I felt about you. 

We certainly are not the same people we were before the war, but you still choose to have a warm heart, and during this couple of weeks you warmed mine too. Sometimes through a fight, sometimes through a gesture. Either way, you were always very human and I think that was what scared me the most. I am not very good at dealing with the unknown.

So I refused to let you in, and kept pushing you away. I know you did it too. I could see it in the way you looked at me. God, I hated how your eyes painted me, with tones of disdain and anger. They were a constant reminder of the person I would never be able to run from. I was born in cruelty and would die in her clothes.

Until that night changed everything. That terrible night where I could not bear being alone and you did not leave my side. You remember when I said that it was the first time I was really seeing you? Because it was the first time you were really seeing me too. You looked at me with a tenderness that I knew your eyes had; but not reserved to me. And that shook something inside of my soul. 

From then on, I knew that resisting would be useless. That sooner or later you would break down the wall I had built around myself. But as a good Slytherin, of course I resisted. I kept being torn between what was happening inside of me and what could never happen. I really am a coward. This letter is living proof of that. The same does not apply to you, though. Forgive me for calling you that, for pushing you too far, for making you go to hell and back all over again. Forgive me for calling your nightmares back, when the only thing I wanted to give you was sweet dreams.

That's why I can not tell you what happened that night. I can not be the reason for your torment again. The only thing I can promise you is that I have not touched you anywhere. I would never do that without your consent. And I know it is ungrateful to ask you to trust the word of a man who has never been trustworthy, but there is not much else I can do. It's up to you to decide whether I'm worthy of your trust. I hope I am. 

I have been writing this for so long that I have not even noticed that the sky has become darker and full of clouds. I think a storm is coming and there is no sign of you yet, so I will try to keep my next words short and hurry up. You think you are a wasteland, that no flowers could grow. But look at you, Granger. I have never seen anything fight so hard to bloom, and the devil knows my battles. You bloomed through ruin, so no one gets to call you broken, not even yourself. Especially not yourself. Not when you are a feral rose. My feral rose .

Chapter Text

There was no painter on earth capable of immortalizing on a canvas all the feelings that ran through Hermione. No brush could find the right tone that covered her soul at that moment. Not even she could translate herself from the inside out. She didn't recognize the unbridled rhythm of her heart beating in her chest, or the way her legs shook. Even her skin didn't feel like her own. Hermione felt like an outsider in her own body, discovering things she had never felt before.

No one had ever said such beautiful, poetic and heartfelt things to her. Perhaps because no one had ever genuinely looked at her. While most people looked, saw a barren wasteland and lost interest in continuing to look, Malfoy persisted until he found a sapling. He found life inside her where even she didn't know it was possible to flourish.

After all, if everyone points out your cracks, how can you focus on the light coming in?

And yet, he did it. 

Perhaps it was easier for Malfoy to notice the light, since he had always been used to the dark. It's different when you live your whole life with the light on and one day someone pulls the plug. You don't see anything, you don't know where you are, where you've come from or where you're going. And if we don't know our past and our future, we don't know who we are. 

That was Hermione's case. How can someone flourish if they don't know which way life is going? How can anyone bloom in the dark, without the sun? Without warmth?

For her, it seemed like a battle lost before it even began. But Hermione knew that Malfoy had done it. For if she had bloomed in the middle of ruin, he had been planted in the middle of chaos. He was the very essence of the word persistence. Because maybe nothing blooms in a barren land, but the sun still touches it with its fingertips. In a land tamed by the cold and harsh winter, there is no heat that comes close. Malfoy was a child of the snow and for a long time burning ice was the only warm source he was allowed to know.

Malfoy, who had opened a wound in his arm for her.

Malfoy, who had risked a storm for her.

She lost track of how many times she reread that letter. Even though she knew what awaited her, each rereading felt like the first time, each word met Hermione with the same intensity. She looked through it again, and this time, a light went on inside her when she read the words “I kept being torn between what was happening inside of me and what could never happen”.

Torn between.

For some reason, those two words together meant something to Hermione, but she couldn't remember what specifically.

Torn between.

The feeling that this was something important stuck to her like chewing gum, and she didn't give up on finding the answer to her problem: the second time the curse decided to dig its words into Malfoy's skin, it wrote two words.

Torn between.

Hermione forced her memory to try and recall what had happened before the curse reappeared. She remembered being at sea for a long time, after a bad night's sleep thanks to the usual nightmares. After a while, she went back into the house, intending to take a bath. However, when she opened the bathroom door, she bumped into a half-naked Malfoy, who was staring at her intensely – after all, her clothes were stuck to her body. She remembered the way his gaze said one thing, but the way he turned away said something completely diff–

“Oh my god.” 

It took Hermione two seconds to realize that the sound had come from her mouth.

She was perplexed. No, it couldn't be, she had to be wrong. 

But deep down, she knew she wasn’t.

Because if the words that Malfoy had engraved on his back were about her, almost a mirror of his soul, what prevented the other words from being so too?

An inordinate anxiety began to take hold of Hermione and she got to her feet, starting to pace back and forth, after putting the letter back in the pocket it had fallen out of moments before.

It was electrifying to feel that she was getting somewhere with her theory, that it was finally useful again. That there was still something she could do.

This time, she pulled the tape back a little further, looking for the first appearance of the curse. It was the day after Malfoy's arrival. He was in his room when he began to feel dark magic snaking under his skin. Hermione remembered him asking her to stay away from him.

And then the word RUN appeared.

It was still too early to confirm her theory, but Hermione was so intoxicated by the moment that she was becoming increasingly restless. She had never heard of such a curse, but that didn't mean it didn't exist. The fact that no book could help her only proved that perhaps it was something so violent that it had never been documented. Or banned.

Everything was aligned. Everything made sense. The fact that Malfoy was very unwell one day and woke up feeling great the next. The days in a row when the curse didn't even seem to exist. If it was connected to Malfoy's mood, manifesting itself only at times when his emotions were in turmoil, there were days when there was no reason for it to appear.

Malfoy’s low groan snapped Hermione out of her thoughts like a whipcrack. She turned on instinct, the pieces of the curse still clattering in her mind, and rushed to the couch where he stirred in pain.

"Merlin," he rasped, voice rough like gravel. "Didn’t know hell had such lovely wallpaper."

“Your back?” she asked softly, her voice came out more fragile than she intended.

He turned his head slightly toward her, a ghost of a smirk twitching at his lips.

"Granger, I woke up to your face and my spine screaming. I’m not sure if I’m in heaven or being punished."

“You need a shower. Warm water might help ease it.” She hesitated before offering her hands. “Let me help you.”

He turned his head toward her, the faintest smirk lifting the corner of his mouth.

“Well, Granger,” he said, voice husky from the discomfort. “If this is your version of hell, I must admit, it’s not the worst way to wake up.”

He looped one arm around her neck, his weight collapsing partially into her as they stood together. The movement brought them close. Too close. Hermione felt the heat of him, the faint tremor in his limbs. 

He winced as he shifted, but his gaze didn’t leave hers. Quite the opposite – he was devouring her with his eyes. It was something animalistic that excited and frightened her in equal parts.

Hermione didn't know how it was possible, but she caught the moment when his hungry gaze narrowed slightly, giving way to concern.

“You’ve been crying,” he said. Then, with a dry smirk that didn’t quite reach his eyes, “Have you been crying for me, Granger?”

“You wish.” She blinked fast, heat rushing to her cheeks. 

His smirk softened into something else entirely – quiet and unreadable. But he didn’t press further.

They made it to the bathroom slowly, Hermione guiding him every step of the way. She turned on the tap, adjusted the temperature, letting the steam begin to fill the air. She kept her hands busy with the soaps and towels, trying to pretend her hands weren’t trembling. Pretending he wasn’t just right there. The scent of lavender returned—calming, grounding—but did nothing to ease the way her heart raced. 

She was just about to slip out and give him privacy when his voice stopped her.

“I can’t get my clothes off.”

She froze.

Turning slowly, she found him standing with effort, eyes on hers. His cheeks were pale but not his expression – it was still that unreadable mixture of discomfort and stubborn pride.

Hermione didn’t say a word. She just nodded.

And knelt.

Her hands reached for the button, slow and hesitant. Not in a million years had that scenario crossed her mind. It was surreal. It felt surreal under her fingers. The moment pulsed around them in silence, every motion magnified. She didn’t look up, afraid of what she might see in his face. Or what he might see in hers.

The zipper went down with a soft, cruel hiss.

Hermione slipped the denim down, careful not to let her fingers brush more than necessary. Her breath was shallow, her heart hammering in her ears. When the jeans pooled at his feet, and all that remained were the black boxers clinging to his skin, she backed away slightly and stood.

She couldn’t believe she was actually doing something like that. Hermione reached up instinctively, fingers already lifting to shield her gaze. Malfoy stepped forward, close enough that she could feel the warmth of his bare chest just inches from her. He put a hand to her chin and lifted it towards him.

“Keep your eyes on mine.”

Her breath caught.

She did as he said, and there they were: the eyes that had seen what no one else had. Still silver, still cold in color, but molten in the way they watched her.

Her hands moved slowly, with the care of someone who knows better than to play with fire – but is still curious about it. She hooked her fingers into the waistband, every part of her screaming with nerves. But she didn’t look down. She didn’t dare. Her eyes stayed locked to his, and he never looked away. Not once. If he really saw the situation as hell, he didn't seem to mind the distance he kept from the devil that much.

When she slipped the last barrier from his skin, he stepped out of it, calm and composed, while she was a hurricane barely holding herself together.

Her eyes stayed high, never falling. But her face was burning.

“Come,” she said shakily. “Let’s get you in.”

She helped him into the tub, and the water curled around his body instantly, wrapping him in warmth, hiding everything but his head, neck, and the highest ridge of his back. He sighed as he sank in, the tension in his shoulders slowly unraveling.

Hermione knelt beside the tub, sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She dipped a soft cloth into the water, then brought it to his back, tentative at first, like she was touching something sacred. Her fingers grazed his skin, and for the first time, she realized just how warm he felt beneath her touch. Not just physically, but something deeper. Something living.

The marks from the curse hadn’t faded entirely. They still carved themselves faintly along his back like shadows of something terrible and beautiful all at once.

She dragged the cloth gently across his skin.

“How bad is it?”

She didn’t answer right away.

“How many this time?”

Her throat tightened. “A few.”

He turned his head slightly. “You’re lying. I can hear it in your voice.”

Hermione gave a small, sad smile. “Does it hurt less if I lie?”

He didn’t answer. Just let his eyes fall closed, enjoying the comfort of her hands on his body.

She considered bringing up her theory, but something held her back. Not now. Not while he was like this. It wasn’t either the place or time to discuss such matters, so she drowned the subject in the deepest part of her mind.

Hermione wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, her fingers tracing soft circles into his skin, his eyes closed, the scent of lavender thick in the air. But in that moment, there were no curses.No war. No last names with stories who weren't them to hold. Just breath and warmth and the ache of two people who had been alone for far too long. 

When she finally whispered, “Your hair,” he nodded, and she reached for the shampoo.

Hermione poured a small pool of lavender shampoo into her hands and rubbed them together, the silky lather blooming between her fingers. Her hands hovered for a second above his head. He was still, waiting for her.

“You’re hesitating,” Malfoy said, voice low but undeniably amused. “Worried about catching something from touching a Slytherin?”

Hermione rolled her eyes. Then, gently, she sank her hands into his hair. “Just making sure I don’t scrub the arrogance out by accident. Could destabilize the entire ecosystem.”

His chuckle rumbled in his chest. “Touché.”

The first touch made him inhale, as though the sensation surprised him. The moment felt strangely more intimate than even washing his back. Malfoy's back was a reflection of all his choices, of a war that doesn't say goodbye without poisoned gifts. Caring for his back was like caring for a wounded soldier.

But taking care of his hair tasted like a lap to the boy who lost himself while seeking approval and love from others. It was something mundane. Too human.

Hermione moved slowly, massaging the soap into his scalp with careful fingers, circling behind his ears, combing through the fine strands with the pads of her thumbs. Thick and damp and silk-spun, like everything about him, had once been shaped with intention.

Malfoy sighed. “Merlin. I could get used to this. Might keep you around as my personal nursemaid.”

“Then I’ll be sure to accidentally dump a bottle of shampoo down your throat,” she muttered, fingers circling behind his ears.

“I knew you had a kink for control,” he replied lazily, “but I didn’t expect it to involve scalp massages.”

“You’re insufferable,” she murmured, but the heat in her face betrayed her composure.

“True. But you’re still washing my hair, Granger. So who’s really winning here?”

She leaned closer to rinse the suds, cupping her hand to gently pour warm water over his head. He tilted it forward without her needing to ask, and she couldn’t help the faint smile that touched her lips. It was like a kind of trust had rooted between them, wordless but real.

He turned his face slightly, just enough to glance up at her through dripping lashes.

“You're good at this,” he murmured.

Hermione blinked. “At what?”

“Taking care of things you didn’t break.”

She didn't answer.

She couldn’t.

The words no longer found their way to her mouth. Instead, her hands moved through the last of the rinse, gently smoothing his hair back, her thumbs barely grazing the shell of his ears.

He turned his face into her palm before she could pull away.

Her breath hitched.

Neither of them moved for a moment. The only sound in the room was the gentle trickle of water and the far-off thud of waves beyond the house. They were both used to the silence that filled their interactions. But this one was different. There was something of a challenge, of imminent danger embedded in it.

He stayed there, forehead resting lightly against her hand like it anchored him. Hermione felt her chest tighten. Her thumb moved without thinking, brushing against his cheekbone. 

She let her hands trail one last time through his hair, watching how the water glistened down the line of his jaw before she finally pulled away. She stood and turned her back to him, giving him the dignity of privacy as she reached for a towel.

“Here,” she said, holding it out without turning around.

She heard the gentle splash of water as he rose slowly, the muffled inhale of pain when he moved too fast. Then the towel left her fingers, and the quiet rustle of fabric followed.

When she did glance back, he was wrapped in the dark gray towel, droplets running down the curve of his shoulder blades, his skin slightly flushed from the heat. Vulnerable, but no longer crumbling. Too big for hermione, who felt herself shrinking by the second.

“Let’s get you to bed.”

He leaned against her again, more weight this time. But she didn’t falter. Together they stepped from the bathroom, damp footprints left behind on the tiles like small, silent testaments.

In the bedroom, Hermione led him carefully to the edge of the bed, where he sat with a small grunt. She gave him other clothes that used to belong to her father, and watched how that black outfit (shirt and jeans) was really his thing.

She helped ease him back into the bed, pulling the covers over his legs, fluffing the pillows in a half-distracted way. Then, without speaking, she turned and left for the kitchen.

She needed space. Air. Something to fill her hands and her thoughts.

The kettle was already on when she got there. She busied herself with herbs, honey, and loose leaves. She searched for everything she had that could help him. Hermione lost the count of times she told herself he was fine now, that the worst was over.

But still, her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

Fear was not the wood that made the fire inside Hermione crackle. She may have been very confused about everything, but she knew it wasn't fear that tormented her. It was something deeper, more serious and more imposing. Something she kept in a box buried deep inside her.

She closed her eyes, exhaling. No, she thought. No, don’t go there.

When the tea was ready, she returned, the cup warm and fragrant in her palms. The bedroom was dim now, shadows stretched long across the walls. He looked up as she stepped in, his eyes clearer, softer.

“I made you tea,” she said, setting it on the nightstand. “But don’t drink it yet. It’s still hot.”

He nodded, his gaze lingering on her longer than it needed to.

She was halfway to the door when his fingers wrapped gently around her wrist.

She stopped.

And turned.

She always turned on the worst occasions.

Their faces were close – too damn close.

The room shifted, like it exhaled around them.

Hermione's heart picked up again, not in panic this time, but in something far more dangerous. She was suddenly aware of everything – his breath, the heat still clinging to his skin, the way his eyes dropped for just a second to her mouth before rising again to meet her gaze.

No one dared to pronounce a word or make a sound and risk losing the moment.

Their eyes locked. Then flicked downward. Then locked again.

The air pulsed with it. Hermione didn't know how much longer she could go on without giving in to the magnetism that pulled her closer to him.

“I won’t do anything to you,” he said, voice rough “without hearing your consent.”

Her lips parted. She didn’t know if it was to breathe, to speak, or to close the distance.

“Just to be clear,” he added, his voice merely a whisper now, “by anything I mean kissing you.”

She wanted to.

God, she wanted to.

But something inside her pulled back – still raw, still unsteady. Still not ready to fall all the way in.

So she stepped back.

His hand dropped from her wrist without resistance.

And as she reached the doorway, she heard him say, soft and just loud enough to be heard:

“Good girl, Granger.”

The words settled into her like ink in water. They were entering a game that was far too dangerous, one that Hermione couldn't remember ever agreeing to play. But from which she was beginning to want to emerge victorious.

Maybe the snow wasn’t melting, but gods, it was beginning to burn.

Chapter Text

Round and round on the couch, Hermione sought a whisper of sleep – a crumb, a flicker, the smallest drop to lull her frayed thoughts into stillness. But sleep did not visit her. It did not come with its soft hands to cradle her head, nor with its gentle night-blanket to smother the firestorm in her chest. That night had spared her from the usual terrors, at least. No shadows clawed at her, no shrieks from the past echoed in her ears. But it had not blessed her with peace either. It had not given her rest. Her head was too full to afford such a luxury. 

Her mind was too noisy, her heart too fast. 

Everything inside Hermione was burning.

It was as though all the thoughts in her head had burst from their shelves, unraveling like scrolls caught in a windstorm, spinning in chaotic circles along an endless road without traffic lights. There were no red lights to bring them to heel, no amber warnings to urge caution. Only green. 

And so they collided. Again and again, leaving a noisy, painful, relentless trail.

The worst of them, the thought she could not soften, could not deny, was his voice. Malfoy's voice, still echoing from hours ago, was like an endless song on her mind.

She had known. Somewhere, in the quiet corners of herself, she had known for a long time that something was blooming between them – though it had not been the kind of flower she dared to name. It had grown in silence, watered by looks held too long and hands that lingered a breath too close. It had grown in the heat of arguments, in the solace of shared purpose, in the glances they pretended not to notice.

The flower had grown so much that it was now impossible to ignore it. 

The same happened with his words. Words, when spoken aloud, no longer belonged to the realm of fantasy. Words took shape, took root, reshaped the soil beneath her feet.

He spoke about his desires and made everything become real. 

Until now,  it was easy to sweep everything under the carpet. She had brushed it all aside with the practiced grace of denial. She had blamed her imagination, that fertile engine of dreams and daydreams that had always spun a bit too wildly. She had told herself she was imagining it all. His stolen looks, the way he leaned in when she spoke, the way his voice softened. She had convinced herself it was nothing more than a girl caught in the remnants of a war, clinging to any comfort that came with a heartbeat.

Until now.

Until he had said it. 

Suddenly, there was no rug big enough to sweep it under. No excuse clever enough to rewrite it.

Hermione exhaled sharply, rolling once more on the sofa as though motion might dislodge the thought lodged in her throat.

She couldn't understand him.

But perhaps worse, far worse, was that she couldn’t understand herself.

Because even as his words rattled her, even as they stole the breath from her lungs and replaced it with questions she had no language for, her body had betrayed her. Her lips had tingled with the ghost of a kiss that never came. Her pulse had drummed in anticipation. She had leaned forward.

The truth was very simple: Hermione had wanted it.

No.

She was not being entirely honest.

She had wanted him. 

And when that didn't happen, a part of her felt a twinge of something she wasn't prepared to let out of the shadows.

Hermione should have been relieved. Shouldn’t she? Shouldn’t she have been grateful that the moment passed without consequence, that they were left with their dignity intact and the air between them not quite scorched?

Hours had passed and there was still no glimmer of relief.

Why then? Why was her heart racing in one direction while her head was screaming in the other? Why was her mind under lock and key, warning her how foolish, dangerous and impossible it all was, while her heart insisted on opening the door anyway?

She, who had always been the voice of reason, the calm in the midst of chaos, the girl with the answers, was now silent. Logic had no language for it. And every time she tried to summon her intellect, it fell under the weight of something much older than reason: longing.

Hermione turned again, the cushions groaning beneath her like the ache in her bones.

This was never the type of problem that kept her awake at night. She had known exhaustion in its cruelest forms: born of war, pain, fueled by fear and dark magic. But never like this. Never because of a man and the way he looked at her. No one had ever scratched her surface, let alone touched what lay beneath. Boys had admired her cleverness, perhaps. Envied it. Been intimidated by it. A lot . But never drawn to it. Harry and Ron had been her constants, her tether to the world beyond books and lectures. But they had never been more than that – brothers in arms, brothers in heart. Nothing else.

And then the war came.

There had been no room for love then. No time for it. When every sunrise was a borrowed miracle, there was no luxury of dreaming about stolen kisses or whispered promises. There was only the next mission. The next fight. The next death.

Ron had tried, though. Gods, he had tried. And perhaps that was also another blow to the friendship, because life had hardened him in ways that made “no” sound like a foreign language. And “no” was all she could give to him.

So this – whatever this was, whatever this ache was inside her ribcage – it was new. Wild. Terrifying.

Malfoy was a storm. A contradiction. A boy raised in shadows who now stood in the light but didn’t quite belong to it. He was everything she had been taught to avoid: arrogance, danger, the memory of pain.

But he was also softness in unexpected places. Apologies whispered rather than demanded. Growth worn quietly like armor dented by effort. He saw her. Not just the cleverness or the bravery or the girl made of spine and fire. He saw the cracks. The hurt. The fear she wore beneath her skin like a second heart. And instead of taking two steps back, Malfoy took three forward. He saw in what everyone else had rejected a reason to shorten the distance between them. 

He saw her.

And she saw him, too.

Perhaps that was what made it worse.

Or better.

She pressed her fingers against her temple, as though she might squeeze out the confusion if only she tried hard enough.

What was she supposed to do with this? With him? With herself?

It would have been easier if he had stayed a villain in her mind. If she never had the opportunity to look at him as a human being, peeling away every layer that made him flesh and blood. If he never turned his eyes to her as though she mattered. If he had never taken a step back – and in doing so, proved himself to be more of a man than she had expected.

He could have kissed her. As much as it pained her to admit it, she would have let him. And maybe she would have regretted it. Maybe it would have led to ruin.

But he hadn’t. Malfoy hadn’t taken what wasn’t his. He had paused, giving her the decision to ruin them both. 

And somehow, that made her fall even faster. 

Hermione closed her eyes, pressing her face into the cushions as though she could smother the feelings there. But they were woven into her. They had sunk deep, past skin and bone, down to where thought ends and truth begins. 

Enough.

Hermione sat up with a frustrated huff, the air sharp in her lungs, her body aching from too many turns on too little space. She pushed off the cushions, barely caring that her feet touched the cold floor with a muted thud. The cottage was still, immersed in silence – or maybe it was Hermione's insides that were too loud.

Moving quietly, she padded to the front door and opened it. The hinges groaned slightly in protest, but she didn’t bother to close it behind her. Let it stay open. Let the night come in. Let it take whatever it wanted from her if it meant giving her even a moment of quiet.

Outside, the world was unrecognizably gentle.

The beach stretched like a dark ribbon, the sand soft and pale beneath the moonlight. Waves whispered their eternal secrets to the shore, over and over, with the patience only time or nature ever learned. The sky above was an endless spill of stars, hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, glimmering cold and distant.

Hermione sank to the wooden step just beyond the threshold. She hugged her knees to her chest, chin resting atop them, and let her eyes drink in the sea.

There, finally, something in her chest began to loosen.

It was peaceful. The kind of peace that didn’t demand anything from her, didn’t need her to fix or fight or figure anything out. That island had probably been the first place where Hermione had found the true meaning of the word peace.

She didn’t know how long she sat there before she felt it.

A sudden shift. 

Warmth. 

She stiffened as something soft fell around her shoulders. A blanket, thick and warm and familiar. Her breath caught in her throat as she glanced behind her.

Draco stood just inside the doorway, one shoulder pressed lazily against the frame. His arms were crossed, eyes unreadable in the dark, save for the slight gleam where the moonlight caught them.

“I'm sorry, did I wake you?” Hermione asked, without the courage to face him directly.

Draco didn’t answer right away. For a moment, all Hermione could hear was the sea exhaling and inhaling, as if the waves themselves were trying to hold their breath along with her. The silence stretched, delicate and dangerous.

Then his voice came, low and deliberate.

 “I haven’t slept at all yet.”

Something about the way he said it made her finally look at him. He hadn’t moved from the doorway, but there was something coiled beneath his stillness, something she could feel from where she sat, like a current of lightning moving under water. Controlled. Contained.

Their eyes met.

After a breath, he added, with the glimpse of a discreet smirk.

“Guess you couldn’t sleep too.”

The words landed in her chest like a stone dropped into a still lake. The impact rippled outward, echoing deeper than it should have. Because there was no question mark hovering in the air, waiting for her response. It was an understanding. A thread connecting his restlessness to hers. A confession wrapped in observation. The quiet truth that neither of them could escape what had happened earlier.

Her lips parted. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say. A protest, maybe. A plea. She had so many words caged up inside her that she didn't know which ones to release first.

Hermione then stood up, and with his eyes on her, like fire against the cold night, she simply said something she never thought she would have the boldness to say.

“I wanted you to kiss me.”

Draco exhaled sharply, like he had been holding his breath for hours. “I know.”

“And I hated that you didn’t.”

“I know that too.”

She blinked at him, unsure whether to laugh or cry or fall into him entirely.

“So why didn’t you?” she asked.

“Because I’m not going to take from you,” he said, and suddenly there was fire in his voice again, the kind that didn’t burn but warmed. “Not when you're confused. Not when you’re trying to talk yourself out of wanting me.”

Her heart slammed against her ribs. “And what if I stop trying?”

The silence that followed was louder than any answer he could have given.

Draco took one step forward, and she didn’t move back. The blanket slipped from her shoulders as the wind whispered across her skin.

Their hands didn’t touch.

Their lips didn’t meet.

But their eyes. Oh, their eyes were already immersed in conversation.

And somehow, it was more intimate than any kiss.

“I don’t want to ruin anything,” Hermione said, voice breaking.

“Neither do I,” he said. “That’s why I’m still standing here, instead of falling to my knees.”

Her breath hitched.

The sea kept singing, oblivious. The night wrapped around them like a held breath. And somewhere, in the space between fear and desire, a thread pulled tight. A decision not yet made, but waiting.

Hermione felt the air shift again.

It wasn’t the wind. Not really. It was him.

He stood in front of her now, so close she could feel the warmth radiating from his skin – and yet, maddeningly, he didn’t reach for her. His hands stayed at his sides for a long moment. Then, slowly, reverently, he lifted them.

She watched, expectant, as his fingers rose. 

Draco moved as if tracing the outline of her without contact, his hands gliding through the air with a precision so careful it hurt. They floated beside her arms, near her waist, ghosting along her collarbone, sketching paths just beyond her skin.

It was like watching a sculptor memorize his masterpiece without daring to lay a single finger upon it. The fear of damaging the work of art was greater than the desire to let it possess him.

The space between them was no longer empty. It became a living thing. The distance burned hotter than any contact could. And still, he didn’t touch her. Hermione’s body leaned into the invisible pull of him anyway. Every inch of her screamed for his hands, ached for them to close that final fraction. But he didn’t. He wouldn’t . He just moved around her, slowly, reverently, painting her body in the air.

It wrecked her.

It wasn’t restraint. It was worship.

It wasn’t patience. It was devotion.

At that moment, he seemed so devoted to her that Hermione felt like a god he worshipped. A piece of faith that he clung to, but not with his hands.

Her pulse thudded painfully beneath her skin, beneath the phantom trail of his hands, and her eyes fluttered shut because she couldn’t take the sight of it – him, feeling her without touching, setting her on fire without flame. 

She opened her mouth to say something, but words had left her. There was only breath. Only heat. Only the unbearable tension of almost.

Then Malfoy dared to speak. And the words folded around her like silk dipped in fire.

“My hands,” he said, voice hoarse and reverent, “are aching for your body.”

Hermione inhaled sharply.

“My whole body,” he continued, drifting his palm slowly down the curve of the air beside her hip, “is aching for yours.”

His words were opening a crater in her chest, running deep into her, into the place where truth lived and breath dared not go. Then his voice softened, like a vow whispered to the bones of the earth.

“But I don’t mind waiting.”

Hermione opened her eyes, slowly, just to find the intensity of his. 

What he said next left his mouth like a confession:

“My soul is already in touch with yours.”

Something inside her cracked open, something soft and sacred and long buried beneath layers of logic and fear. And in that silence between them, she felt it.

Malfoy wasn’t asking for her body. 

He was offering his soul. 

And somehow, it was worse.

And better.

And everything.

Hermione looked at him. Really looked at him.

Draco Malfoy, standing there like a storm caught in stillness. Reverent hands held back by the thinnest thread of control, voice still echoing inside her like a spell. Moonlight tangled in his lashes. The ghost of longing all over his face.

And suddenly, the war inside her, the endless war between heart and head, duty and desire, history and hope, ceased.

Just one final, flaming word that rose like rebellion through her:

“Fuck it.”

Her body moved before her mind could argue, closing the air between them, and kissing him.

Hard.

He froze, startled and stunned, as if the world tilted on its axis and all the laws of nature had changed in a breath. Hermione Granger, the girl of caution and reason, was kissing him . No hesitation. No filter. Just fire.

But the shock didn't last long.

He answered her kiss like a man starving. His hands – aching, reverent hands – finally found her. He wrapped his fingers around her waist and pulled her into him like he was afraid she might vanish, like she was a prayer he never thought would be answered.

Their mouths moved in tandem, urgent, hungry after so many days of temptation and repressed desire.

She gripped his collar and kissed him deeper, completely desperate, like she wanted to burn away the space that had always separated them.

They stumbled back into the house, lips still locked, fingers lost in fabric and skin. They didn’t speak – they didn’t need to. Their bodies were writing poetry with every touch, every press, every breath.

She shoved him against the nearest wall, and he gasped softly into her mouth, caught off guard again.

“Are you sure–” he whispered, voice dark and hoarse, barely breaking the kiss, “are you sure of this?”

She didn’t answer with words at first. Just kissed him again, deepening the kiss. 

And then, against his lips, between breaths, she growled:

“Just kiss me, god damn it.”

He laughed, surprised, a little stunned, the sound was low and wrecked, laced with awe. It melted into a groan that vibrated against her mouth.

Then he pulled back an inch, just enough to look at her.

And his voice — gods, his voice — turned to velvet flame.

“As you wish, Granger.”

And just like that, Malfoy took control.

He spun her gently, urgently, pressing her back into the wall where she had held him just moments ago. But this time there was no hesitation. His mouth crashed back to hers, fierce and endless, and she melted beneath it, arms winding around his neck like vines clinging to something solid.

He lifted her effortlessly, walked her toward her bedroom, lips never parting, breath hot and broken between them.

When her back hit the bedroom wall, a small gasp left her throat — but he swallowed it, devoured it, kissed her like he was pouring years of silence into a single, blazing moment.

Then he broke from her lips, panting, trailing hot kisses along the line of her jaw, down her neck. He was completely inebriated by her.

Between each kiss, he murmured, voice shredded and shaking:

“Can’t believe—”

  kiss

“I wasn’t—”

kiss

 “the one—”

kiss

 “who kissed first.”

Hermione let her head fall back against the wall, completely powerless to continue to control her own body, to keep using her brain. For once in her life, she didn’t analyze or retreat or calculate what this meant or what it could destroy.

She just let herself feel.

The room pulsed around them, shadows dancing across the walls as the sea whispered outside, forgotten. The world had narrowed to the press of lips and gasps, the sear of breath shared between them. Hermione’s hands threaded into his hair, slow at first – like she was letting each finger learn it, memorizing the texture. But then she gripped, tugged, pulling him closer, deeper, making a low sound rumble from his chest.

He broke the kiss for half a second.

“You’re ruining me,” he whispered, voice wrecked and reverent. “I don’t know how much I can handle. I want all of you.”

Her chest rose against his, words catching in her throat, but she managed to breathe:

“Then take it.”

His eyes snapped to hers. Something behind them flared, something older and weightier than everything. Not even the most acclaimed poets could embellish his state at that moment. What possessed him was too visceral, too poignant for mere words. 

“Don’t say that,” he whispered, and it felt like a warning to himself.

Hermione blinked, flushed and breathless. “Why?”

He looked at her like she was a star that had fallen straight into his hands.

“Because,” the words dragged right from his soul, “by all of you I mean all of you.”

She had never felt so desired as she did at that moment. He was capable of erecting an altar to her at that moment and making her the only religion worthy of devotion.

Hermione let her fingers tightened in his hair, pulling his face a fraction closer. Her lips brushed him again, almost too soft to be called a kiss.

Her voice dropped.

“I wasn’t expecting you to be satisfied with any less than all of me.”

Then a pause, a sharp breath.

 “I know I wouldn’t be with half of you.”

And that was it.

He shattered.

His mouth claimed hers again with a rawness that wasn’t rushed but ripe . Malfoy lifted her with practiced ease, and she wrapped her legs around him as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

The bed found them somehow. The room was breathless with heat, the mattress sighing as he laid her down, as he came over her like a storm collapsing on its knees.

But even so, even when the kiss deepened into abysses of pleasure and ecstasy, his hands were reverent. They moved with careful ache, skimming her sides, her arms, the curve of her waist – not touching flesh yet, but hovering like they were memorizing it first. Worshipping it before deserving it.

Her back arched, chasing the hands that never quite touched, her mouth gasping against his like the hunger would split her in two.

Draco groaned against her lips, voice trembling.

“You have no idea what you’ve started, Granger.”

But she did.

She did.

And she welcomed it with open arms.

She lay beneath him, breathing in the heat of his kiss, her hands tangled in his hair like it was the only thing tethering her to the earth. Draco was above her, around her, with her, and still, not nearly close enough.

He broke the kiss for a heartbeat, brushing his lips against the edge of her jaw, then lower, his breath hitching. “You kiss like you’re starving for me,” he murmured against her skin, teeth grazing softly. 

She gasped, drunk on his voice, her fingers digging lightly into his shoulders.

He groaned at the sensation. “You’re going to be the fucking death of me, Granger.”

His hands roamed but never rushed, mapping her slowly, as if savoring the moment more than chasing it. One found the curve of her waist again, the other trailing down the outside of her thigh, with the same reverence as before.

But something inside her shifted.

It was subtle, at first. A flicker. A breath caught in the wrong place. His hand slid up, warm and careful, but the pressure, even as light as it was, sparked something else.

A memory.

Suddenly, she wasn’t hearing his voice anymore.

Not his hands.

Not his kiss.

The world twisted. Her breath faltered.

Her body began to still beneath him, not with desire but dread. The edges of her vision grew too sharp, then too blurry, all at once. She couldn’t smell the ocean anymore, only the musty, closed-in scent of a dark room she never wanted to return to. The weight of another man’s shadow loomed where Draco’s warmth had been just seconds before.

Her heart pounded, not in pleasure now — in panic.

“Stop.”

She didn’t say it aloud at first. The word echoed only in her mind.

Stop, stop, stop—

But the past was greedy. It swallowed her whole.

The touch, the fingers on her thigh…she wasn’t here. Her mind was there. That day. That awful, sickening day.

“Stop!”

She shoved him away with a force she didn’t know she had, scrambling out from under him. 

Draco was frozen.

His expression fell from passion to pure concern in a second. He knelt where she had left him, hands hovering in the air, unsure whether to reach for her or stay still.

“Granger–?”

She was trembling.

“I–” Her voice broke. Her arms came up like a shield. “Don’t–please don’t–touch me.”

Though everything in him screamed to hold her, he didn’t move an inch. Her eyes were wide, terrified. She looked at herself like she was a mess, like she had broken something sacred. And then the sob broke free. A guttural, involuntary, devastating sound took over the entire room.

“I’m sorry,” she cried, clutching her knees. “I’m so sorry–I didn’t mean–I can’t–It’s not your fault–”

Tears spilled fast, like a dam had cracked wide open. She buried her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably, embarrassed by the whole situation. And still, he didn’t move.

“It’s okay,” he said, soft and steady.

She couldn’t look at him. Her shoulders shook. Her heart was breaking in real time.

“I know.”

The words hit her like a strike to the chest.

Her head jerked up, blotchy and wet and confused. “You know?” she rasped. “How do you–how do you know?”

Her voice was small. So small. She looked young then, as if years had peeled away from her strength, leaving only something tender and scared beneath it all. Leaving only a little girl who was too fragile for such a devastating world.

He swallowed, jaw tight. But his eyes…His eyes were oceans. Full of something fierce and quiet and undeniably kind .

Malfoy didn’t speak, but the look he gave her said everything.

“Think,” it seemed to whisper. “You already know.”

And then–

Like fog lifting.

Her heart stuttered.

The night she couldn’t remember.

His words that he couldn’t tell her what happened.

The way he held back, always, when she leaned too close.

“It’s about what it will do to you! You think you want the truth, Hermione, but you have no idea what it cost me to live with it!” 

“You…” she breathed, in shock. “You know.”

The sob that broke out of her chest was half realization, half despair.

He nodded, and it was the tiniest movement Hermione ever saw, before collapsing against him, not knowing what else to do. Her head found his chest, and her hands curled into his shirt like she might drown otherwise. He stilled only a moment, and then, with infinite caution, wrapped his arms around her. Slowly. Tentatively. Giving her every second to pull away if she needed.

She didn’t.

She needed this.

She needed him.

His hand moved to her hair, stroking gently, rhythmically.

“Shhh,” he was holding her as she wept against him. “Yes. Yes, I know everything.”

She sobbed harder, releasing it all – every secret, every fear, every ounce of guilt that had lived in her bones too long.

His voice was velvet and anchor all at once, not letting her drown in her own demons. 

“It’s okay, Granger. My chest is a safe place for your tears. Cry all you want.”

That was exactly what she did, she cried like the sky itself had split open. And Draco Malfoy – the boy the world had sworn was carved from cruelty – held her like he had been born for it, like the universe had shaped his arms for her sorrow. 

Chapter Text

The night seemed less frightening in Malfoy's arms. 

The shadows that had once crept like fingers along the walls now curled back into the corners, subdued by the warmth that encircled her. Darkness no longer held teeth – it breathed slow and shallow, hushed by the rhythm of his presence.

She didn’t know how long they had been there, folded into each other like the pages of a well-worn book. Time, which once ruled her so sternly, had dissolved into the steady cadence of breath and heartbeat. And still, she knew with painful clarity: when she let go, the cold would return. It always did.

There, in that quiet cradle of arms and silence, she felt protected like never before. Even the intricate walls she had built around herself – bricks laid in discipline and grief, cemented by memory and war – had never held her with such gentle conviction. There was something about his arms that made her want to live there.

Every now and then, his fingers brushed against hers, tentative and careful – as though afraid that even this quiet might shatter if he held too tightly. He did not speak. His mouth remained a locked door, and Malfoy, for once, didn’t reach for the key. He simply let the silence drape itself over them, a veil they both wore without shame.

Around them, the world held its breath. No wind tapped the windows. No flame cracked in the hearth. The cottagecore  seemed to understand that stillness was necessary.

But there was one thing that did not hold still.

Malfoy’s heart.

Hermione felt it against her cheek, steady but fast, like a caged bird beating its wings against gilded bars. Its rhythm filled her ears like an anthem of something unspoken.

Curiously, she pressed a hand to her own chest, as if she could measure herself against him, like two halves trying to find the same note in a song.

She was startled to find her heart racing just as fast.

It was a strange, trembling symmetry. A duet of nerves and something neither of them dared to name.

For a breathless moment, Hermione imagined his heart breaking free from its cage, tearing through bone and skin, leaping into the world as if the body had become too small to contain it. In some other universe, maybe it did. 

And maybe, in some other life, hers was just as lucky.

But in this one, her heart was heavier. Hermione's heart was like a stone thrown into a river, hard and heavy, pulling her into the deepest abyss.

She inhaled shakily, and he must have felt it – the shift in her body, the tension curling again around her spine like an old, unwelcome friend. The ghosts never stayed away for long.

“I can hear it,” she whispered.

Her voice was soft, fragile, almost startled by its own daring.

Malfoy stiffened slightly beneath her. “What?”

She felt the subtle rise in his breath. Surprise . He hadn’t expected her to speak. Not after such long silence, where vulnerability had hung in the air like mist.

“Your heart,” she murmured. Her cheek shifted against the fabric of his shirt. “It’s louder than everything else.”

“I didn’t think anyone would ever hear it,” he said at last, barely audible.

Hermione closed her eyes.

“I didn’t think I’d ever want to,” she confessed.

They remained like that – his hand cradling hers with extreme carefulness, her breath warming his chest. Two hearts echoing back to each other across the cavern of silence. The world beyond this moment felt fictional.

Malfoy shifted slightly, just enough to bring their foreheads close. Then, after a long silence,  in which the weight of asking hung like a held breath, he lifted a trembling hand and hovered it just above her chest. Waiting. Asking without words. And she, just as wordlessly, nodded.

Her permission was a fragile thread of trust, but it held.

He placed his hand over her heart.

At first, it was nothing but warmth. The heat of his palm through the thin fabric of her shirt. But then he felt it - the pounding underneath.

Solid. Strong. Chaotic.

Human.

And the way his eyes widened, just barely, told her everything. He hadn’t expected it to be this real.

He kept it there, unmoving, as if the rhythm might vanish if he dared to breathe too loud. Malfoy felt it not just as a beat, but as a story, one he didn’t yet know how to read entirely. It wasn’t just blood and muscle. It was a kaleidoscope of memories, grief and strength. All of it pressed beneath his fingertips like some ancient language carved into stone.

Hermione didn’t look away. She let him feel it. Let him witness the part of her she usually kept barricaded. 

“Your heart is louder than everything else too.”

He waited a few seconds before saying the rest, as if he was gathering the strength to do so.

“And I want to hear everything it has to say.”

Hermione’s lips parted, but no sound came. Her throat tightened with emotion, and all she could do was look at him and wonder how they had gotten here. How this boy, once so sharp and cruel and unreachable, could be whispering the most tender vow anyone had ever offered her.

His lips were letting out the most beautiful invitation.

To speak. To unravel. To let herself be without armor. And that undid her more thoroughly than any spell.

Her heart thudded again beneath his hand, impossibly loud now. She felt it echo through her entire body, pulsing like it wanted to answer him. It wanted to put everything it had burried in his bare hands. 

“I don’t know where to start,” Hermione breathed, voice barely above a whisper.

“Anywhere,” he said. “Start anywhere. I’ll listen.”

There it was again. That vow of stillness, that quiet promise to hold space without pressure. But Hermione could feel the wall inside her trembling, not quite ready to fall unless he met her halfway.

So she took a breath, then another, then turned her gaze to him.

“I need you to go first,” and she was being honest as never. “Tell me how you knew. What exactly did I say that night?”

Her voice barely trembled, but her fingers were tight in her lap.

“I can’t make my heart be heard,” she added softly, “if you don’t let yours speak too.”

His expression shifted. Something in him tightening, then softening again, like a wave pulling back to make room for what was to come. He nodded once, slowly, accepting the cost of the honesty she asked for.

“Fair enough,” Malfoy agreed, adjusting his posture, drawing his legs up onto the bed so that they sat facing each other, knees nearly touching. 

“That night,” he began, “after I went to the sofa, I thought you were already sleeping, but not long after I lay down, you called my name.”

His voice wavered just slightly. It wasn't the content that made him falter, but the memory - the way it had unsettled something in him.

“We both know you don’t say my name like that,” he added with the ghost of a wry smile, but the warmth vanished quickly, replaced by something pained. “Anyway... I came back right away. You were burning up. Feverish. Sweating. But that wasn’t the worst part.”

Hermione was nervous about what she was about to find.

“You started crying,” Malfoy said. “Completely out of nowhere. You were sobbing. And screaming. You said… you said, ‘Get your hands off me.’”

The words fell like stones in water, breaking the surface of the silence between them. 

Hermione's lungs burned from holding it all in. It will never matter of many time has passed. This will always torment her. A corridor. Cold. Hands that didn’t belong. A mouth too close. The overwhelming sense of being small , trapped , powerless . Of not being a witch, not being clever, not being anything but a body in someone else’s hands.

She stared at her knees, but didn’t see them. Her mind had sunk below the surface.

“I wasn’t touching you,” Draco said gently, as if trying to help her stay in the present. “That’s how I knew it wasn’t about me. You were somewhere else. Half-asleep, but fighting. You were trembling so hard I thought you'd fall apart.”

She finally looked up at him, eyes wet, face pale. Her throat worked to form words, but for a long time, they didn’t come.

Draco held her gaze, and for a moment, he seemed unsure whether to continue. But he recognized that look in her, that half-defiance, half-fragility, and understood that the silence she gave him wasn’t retreat. It was permission.

So he went on, his voice even softer than before.

“You kept whispering things.”

Hermione swallowed hard, afraid of what she was about to hear."

“You said, ‘He wouldn’t stop.’ You kept repeating it. Like it was the only thing you could remember.”

Her hands curled into the fabric of her sleeves, white-knuckled.

Draco hesitated, as if measuring how much truth she could hold. But the weight in her stare told him: All of it. Don’t protect me from my own story.

“You begged,” he whispered. “‘Please don’t touch me. Please don’t do this.’ Over and over.”

He exhaled slowly, rubbing his hands together like he could warm them against something. “You said, ‘I said no.’”

Hermione closed her eyes. Her whole body clenched, as though resisting the urge to crawl out of her own skin.

“It was like watching someone drown in their own mind,” Draco continued, his voice raw now. “And I couldn’t do anything except be there. I couldn’t wake you, not fully. You kept slipping away.”

A breath passed between them. Then another.

“And then,” he whispered, “you said—”

His voice caught on the edge of the words, like they’d been waiting too long to be said aloud.

There was a pause. A long one.

“You said 'I didn’t want to kill him.'”

It came out fractured, almost disbelieving. Like it was a confession she’d buried so deeply that even he, just the witness to it, felt the weight of it breaking the surface.

Hermione didn’t speak. She couldn’t.

The words swelled in the silence like smoke, suffocating, rising from the ashes of something ancient and agonized.

“You said it like you were trying to convince yourself,” he murmured. “As if there was still a part of you that couldn’t bear the truth of what you could’ve done, even though everything inside you had been screaming that he deserved it.”

He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again and found hers.

“And the thing is… I understood.”

She looked at him then and he swore he saw something ancient flicker in her eyes. A grief too old for her years. A fury too righteous for her silence.

“I’ve never seen someone fight like that,” he said. “Even asleep. You were fighting him off with nothing but your voice. With memories. With air.”

His hand, still wrapped in hers, trembled just slightly.

“I’ve heard people cry in their sleep before,” he said, voice low, almost breaking. “But I’ve never heard someone beg . Not the way you did. You weren’t just trying to escape a nightmare. You were trying to escape yourself. ”

Hermione didn’t realize she was crying again until a tear landed on the inside of his wrist.

“I didn’t want to kill him,” she whispered again, but this time the words sounded different—less like a denial and more like a wound that wouldn’t stop reopening. “But I still think about it. I still imagine it. It consumes me every single day.”

Malfoy reached out then, and cupped the side of her face. His thumb brushed the tear from her cheek, like it was the most sacred thing he’d ever touched.

“You didn’t kill him,” he said. “You survived him. And that is a different kind of power entirely.”

"Survived." she repeated the word, in a way that felt she was discovering how bad it taste. "It was the first time I wished I hadn’t survived the war. Better dead as myself than alive as a ghost of someone that will never return.”

He didn’t move for a moment after her words fell between them - but something changed in him.

It was in the stillness, in the tightening of his jaw, in the flicker behind his eyes—like storm clouds gathering beneath glass. His hand, still cupping her cheek, stilled, but the tension in his arm betrayed him. It was like holding fire and trying not to let it scorch her.

Then, after a long pause, his voice dropped lower.

“Tell me his name.”

The words were ice wrapped around fire. Controlled. Precise. But trembling under the surface with the promise of eruption.

Hermione blinked, stunned not just by the demand, but by the raw edge behind it. He was asking for his name.

That was something she would take with her to the grave. 

“I need you to understand something, Granger.”

Hermione’s breath caught while Malfoy was leaning forward.

“Just the idea of someone putting their hands on you like that, without permission—” he hissed the word like it burned, “Just thinking of someone hurting you like that makes me feel like I could tear the world apart.”

His restraint was a coiled serpent now, fighting not to strike. It was the old Draco, not masked in arrogance or polished cruelty, but the one forged in fury and defiance and pride. Only now, all of it was for her .

Hermione watched him, stunned, moved, afraid of how much it mattered to him, and how deeply he could feel. Something crossed her mind: was he always this person? Someone who is so loyal and devoted to his people?

She got caught on her own words' webs. Did this make Hermione one of his people?

“I thought you hated violence,” she asked, incapable of facing him.

“I hate violence without meaning."

The fire in his voice faltered, softened.

“But hurting you? That deserves wrath.I wasn’t there,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t there to stop it. But I’m here now. And if anyone ever touches you like that again, there will be nothing left of them.”

His forehead touched hers again, and the tremor in his breath betrayed him.

She didn’t pull away.

She didn’t flinch.

“You’re angry for me,” she said, more to herself. “Not at me.”

“Of course I’m angry for you. And I’d burn the world for you if you asked.”

She didn’t respond right away.

Her eyes searched his, looking for the lie she was certain wasn’t there, but still too scared not to double-check. Because once upon a time, people had said sweet things and still walked away. Or worse - stayed , and tore her down piece by piece. But Draco’s gaze didn’t waver. Not even a flicker. Like his soul had come forward and was standing bare before her, undressed of all armor and sarcasm, just his truth , placed delicately into her hands like something sacred and breakable.

"Why are you saying things like that?" she asked, doomed by confusion.

"Why are you asking questions you already know the answer to?"

“I am not,” her voice was splintering like glass under breath. “I don’t know the answer.”

A silence bloomed between them, soft and terrible. It was the kind of silence that cracked open everything else.

He exhaled, slow and uneven, then reached up and gently closed his hand over hers, still cupping his jaw. He pressed it more firmly to his skin, anchoring himself there.

“You do,” he said. “You just don’t trust it yet.”

Hermione’s throat worked around the knot rising in it. Her eyes shone wetly, and she hated that she couldn’t stop them—these cursed, traitorous tears that always arrived uninvited. But Draco didn’t recoil from them. He didn’t offer a handkerchief or a platitude or a joke to make it all easier to swallow.

Instead, he just let her be seen .

And then, quieter, rawer, he added, “You’ve spent so long surviving, Granger, you forgot what it feels like to be safe.”

Her breath caught.

“I’m not asking you to trust me completely,” he said. “Just… trust me with a corner of your heart. That’s all. I’ll protect it like it’s the last damn ember of something holy.”

“My heart…” she began, and the words broke as they left her. “It’s not whole. It’s lost between all these walls I built just to keep breathing. And I-I don’t know how to lower them. I don’t even know where they begin.”

Draco didn’t flinch.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, firm and unflinching, his eyes locked on hers like a man swearing a blood oath. "I’ll climb them.”

And he meant it. With the kind of certainty that didn’t tremble. The kind that didn’t ask for permission. The kind that wasn’t afraid of her ruins, or the ghosts she tried to keep chained behind every brick of those walls.

“I’ll climb every jagged stone and bleeding edge, every scarred and twisted spire. I’ll cut my hands open if I have to. I’ll scale what no one else dared touch, and when I reach the top, when I find the smallest place where your heart still beats, I’ll be there. Waiting. I’ll be there, even if you never let me in.”

Hermione looked at him like he was a piece of art at a museeum. Something old that was always fascinated, no matter other people's opinions. She was seeing the soul who had been waiting for her at the gates of ruin with a lantern in hand.

Her chest rose and fell in staggered rhythm, and the silence swelled with the sound of it. The ache. The wanting. The terror. And still, his gaze held hers with that same vow, fierce and unyielding.

“You shouldn’t have to climb,” she said at last, her voice barely audible.

“No one should have left you in there alone.”

She didn’t know what to say. He was being so serious. So devastatingly, heartbreakingly serious. It was too much for her. 

“You once said it is tiring being the pillar of a house that forgets that a pillar can also break.”

A pause passed between them—like the breath between lightning and thunder.

“Make me your pillar, then." he begged his voice roughened by something too sacred to name. “Build your home on me. I will never crumble. That I can assure you. I can promise you.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Hermione's voice was low and hollowed, like it had traveled too far from her to still belong to her. “You don’t know how far down the damage goes.”

Draco exhaled, a sharp huff of breath that was too bitter to be a laugh and too soft to be anger. He looked at her, head tilted slightly, as though he couldn't believe she didn’t see what was already written on his face.

“You really don’t get it, do you?” he said, shaking his head slightly, his voice almost amused. 

Her heart was thundering in her chest, loud enough she wondered if he could hear it again.

He gave a soft laugh then, almost to himself. “Merlin, it’s so obvious,” he muttered, more to the room than to her. “I would do anything for you. I’d follow you into every shadow, walk through every fire—”

He cut himself off abruptly. The words were right there, perched on the edge of his tongue.

“If I say it,” he murmured, voice shaking, “you’ll run. It’s not the time yet.”

She didn’t deny it.

So instead, he leaned closer, forehead against hers, eyes shut like it hurt to hold them open.

“But it’s there, Granger. Whether I say it or not. Every time I look at you, it’s screaming in me.”

Hermione's body was a mess of contradictions - her head said this was too much, too fast. But her heart - traitorous, broken thing - ached toward him, desperate for the warmth he kept offering. 

And that she will never be sure if she was ready to accept it.

They stayed there in silence, their breaths mingling, the space between them trembling with all that had been said and all that hadn’t. Minutes passed, maybe hours. It felt like no time and all the time in the world.

Eventually, Draco shifted.

“You should sleep,” he said, his voice thick.

“I—” she started, but her voice faltered, caught in the back of her throat.

He didn’t press. Just looked at her, a gaze more shelter than scrutiny.

Eventually, Hermione nodded faintly and began to stand. She moved toward the door, her steps soft, ghostlike.

Draco’s brows furrowed. “Where are you going?”

She paused, hand on the frame. “To the sofa,” she answered simply, like it was obvious, like it had always been the only way.

His reply came instantly, sharp with disbelief. “The hell you are.”

She blinked, turned back slowly. “It’s fine. I always do—”

“I know you do,” he said, cutting her off, rising to his feet as well, his voice low but firm, something iron hidden beneath it. “And it stops now. You’re not sleeping on that godforsaken sofa. Not tonight. Not anymore.”

She stood there, uncertain, arms crossed like she was holding up the pieces of herself. “I can’t sleep if someone touches me.”

“I know,” he said simply. “I won’t. You know I won’t.”

They already did it a couple of times. As dangerous as it felt, she seemed to trust him.

Draco made his way to the other side of the bed. He pulled the comforter back, then turned to grab a handful of pillows. Without a word, he arranged them carefully between the two sides—one by one, like bricks in a gentle wall, a soft-spoken treaty.

“A border?” Hermione asked, raising an eyebrow.

“A peace treaty,” he said, straight-faced. “A diplomatic division of territory. No violations allowed.”

A reluctant laugh escaped her, a fragile little thing that sounded like it had been locked away for years. “So I live in Grangerland, and you stay in the Malfoy Republic?”

“Exactly,” he replied, slipping beneath the covers on his side. “Though I imagine Grangerland has the better libraries.”

“And the stricter laws.”

He smirked. “I always did like danger.”

Chapter Text

The rest of the night was spent revisiting memories through dreaming. 

Hermione dreamed of blood.

It was still fresh on her hands as she stumbled onto the sand, the sharp, salt-laced wind biting her skin as if to remind her that she was still alive – even if she felt otherwise. The world had gone quiet, too quiet, except for the thunder in her ears and the ghost of a scream still echoing in her memory. Apparition had torn her from one horror only to drop her into another.

Herself.

The ocean stretched out endlessly before her, a sheet of gray-blue glass, indifferent to her shaking form. She looked down at her hands, dripping red onto the pale beach. They didn’t look like her hands anymore, they didn’t feel part of her own body. Hermione’s hands looked like a murderer’s. She stumbled forward and fell to her knees in the surf, frantic and breathless, scrubbing at the stains as if she could erase what she’d done. The salt stung, but she kept going, harder, faster, her movements jagged and wild.

Still the blood clung to her, if not to her skin, then to the memory etched into every nerve.

Hermione caught a glimpse of herself in the water’s trembling reflection. Her face, pale and feral, eyes wide with something between grief and fury. 

She looked like a monster. 

And she felt like one.

She dry-heaved into the waves, her body expelling everything it could, but the sickness wasn’t physical. It lived deeper. Buried. Festering.

She had killed someone. A person. 

Not a creature, not a threat, not a theoretical enemy. A person who wanted to hurt her, yes - but a person nonetheless. Had it been instinct? Had it been necessary? Or had something inside her broken during the war - some part of her morality, once so certain, now chipped away beyond repair? Was she so broken that from now on death would be something that came easily to her?

Later, after the worst of the trembling had passed, she wandered the island like a ghost, half-expecting to collapse. But instead, she found it— the house that would become hers for the next months. Nestled among the trees like a forgotten relic, untouched by time, windows intact, the door slightly ajar. A perfect house on a deserted island. It should have unnerved her more than it did. But desperation dulls suspicion.

Because when someone is tired, they just want to be able to rest. And that was all Hermione wanted. Rest from the war. Rest from who Ron and Harry had become. Rest from the crimes she had committed. Rest from herself and her disgusting brain.

So she entered the house. And stayed.

The first nights were unbearable. Shadows moved like threats across the walls. Every creak in the floor was a footstep, every rustle of leaves outside a figure watching.The night proved to be a faithful enemy, accompanying her with nightmares wherever Hermione tried to escape. She showered again and again, trying to scrub away the sensation that her own skin was no longer hers. The heat didn’t help. The soap didn’t help. Not even tears helped.

Only the sea did.

It was only when she let herself drift beneath the water, arms outstretched, letting it close over her like a shroud, that something in her finally stilled. The sea didn’t care what she had done. It asked nothing. Offered no judgment. Unlike her friends, the sea had only silence to offer. A kind one. 

The days flowed like a river, impatient to flow nowhere. She walked the island’s edges barefoot, foraging fruit, teaching herself to fish, existing in a kind of suspended solitude. It was peaceful, in a hollow way. Hermione read every book she had brought with her, grateful for the words even when they didn’t reach her. Slowly, a version of living began to take shape.

But some things refused to be healed.

One of them was her wand.

The first time she reached for it - just to summon fruit from a tree - her fingers recoiled as if burned. The phantom sensation of blood returned in an instant and she almost had a panick attack. Her heart lurched. Her breath caught. The wand lay there, harmless, and yet she could not touch it. Could not bear to. Just looking at it was horrific.  She buried it beneath the floorboards near the fireplace, wrapped in old cloth, and told herself it was safety.

Coward.

Slowly, she stopped calling for magic and magic stopped calling for her, stopped flowing through her veins.

Who she had always been had not escaped that man's hands. She had died there, trying to complete a mission that shouldn't even have been given to her. One that asked too much of her – of her, who had already given her all.

Her eyes opened.

The room was soft with morning light. Pale gold filtered through the windows, casting quiet shadows on the wooden walls. She blinked, adjusting to the present, the weight of the dream still heavy on her chest. Her hand reached instinctively to the space beside her, finding only a cold absence.

The bed was empty.

A strange ache bloomed behind her ribs. For months, she had woken alone, and it had been a comfort. No explanations, no expectations, no need to pretend. Loneliness had been a quiet kind of freedom.

But this… this was something different. 

Hermione lay there a moment longer, frowning at the ceiling, trying to put a name to the feeling. It wasn’t loneliness she feared.

She had learned to be content on her own. But now… she didn’t want to be alone. Not really. She wanted him – his wit, his quiet steadiness, the way he looked at her like he saw her and didn’t flinch.

Draco Malfoy. The most unexpected constant in her disordered world.

She rose and padded barefoot through the house, drawn by the smell of something warm and citrusy. Her heart fluttered before she reached the kitchen.

He stood at the counter, shirtless, barefoot, the early light of morning slipping through the windows like liquid gold. It wrapped around him, kissing his skin, illuminating the pale lines of his back and shoulders like a painting left unfinished - breathtaking in its rawness. The muscles beneath his skin moved with the quiet grace of someone unbothered by being observed, the definition subtle but unmistakably there. Every shift, every casual movement, pulled her in like gravity.

His drawstring pants (another one that belonged to her father) hung low on his hips, the fabric loose, soft, worn with comfort. A faint line of his spine curved elegantly beneath his skin, and there was something almost unbearably intimate about the way his shoulder blades rose and fell with each breath.

Hermione froze in the doorway.

The sight of him hit her with the same quiet power as a spell whispered too close to the heart. Her breath caught in her throat, not for the first time, and probably not for the last. His hair was a mess, like every morning: flattened in places, curling in others, a shade of pale gold that nearly matched the sunlight warming the kitchen. She could tell he’d just rolled out of bed. There was something unguarded about him like this. Something real. And entirely too beautiful.

She hadn’t meant to stare.

But she did.

She stared like she was trying to memorize him.

Like she didn’t trust time not to take this moment away.

Hermione took in everything: the long lines of his arms, the relaxed set of his shoulders, the quiet confidence in the way he moved, unhurried, unbothered. There was a small scar she hadn’t noticed before, just below his shoulder blade, faint like a whisper from some past injury. Her eyes lingered there. Her fingers ached with the sudden, absurd urge to touch it.

She didn’t realize how long she’d been standing there, motionless, until she heard his voice, low and playful.

“You’re staring, Granger.”

He hadn’t even turned around.

She blinked, startled out of her trance. A small, involuntary laugh bubbled out of her chest. “You’re always saying that.”

“That’s because you’re always doing it,” he replied easily, reaching for a knife and slicing something with casual precision. “Not that I’m against it.”

He turned with fluid grace, the wooden tray balanced effortlessly in his hands. A bowl of freshly cut fruit rested atop it, vibrant slices gleaming in the morning light. But what stole her breath wasn’t the breakfast – it was him . That same infuriating smirk curled across his lips, the one that always made her want to both hex him and kiss him.

“Back to bed,” he commanded, stepping toward her with an air of mock authority, like he expected her to obey simply because he looked that good doing it.

Hermione crossed her arms, chin lifting with playful defiance. “What is this?”

Malfoy gave an exaggerated sigh, feigning deep disappointment. “You ruined the surprise,” lips were twitching with barely concealed amusement. “Now go.”

She didn’t move. Just stood there, one eyebrow elegantly arched. “Make me.”

His eyes glinted, that smirk growing just a touch more dangerous. “I promised I wouldn’t touch you without your consent.”

Her voice was syrup-sweet, teasing. “Did you?”

He stepped closer, and she could feel the shift in his energy, lighter, charged with mischief. He lowered his voice, leaned in just enough to brush her with his breath. “Tickles are exempt,” he murmured, placing the tray down beside the table.

She barely had time to register the meaning before he struck.

Malfoy's fingers found the sensitive places at her sides, and she gasped, laughter bursting from her lips before she could stop it, bright and unguarded, full of a joy that felt startlingly new. Hermione twisted in vain to escape, her feet stumbling beneath her as he pursued, relentless and grinning like a boy who’d just found the one thing he never knew he needed.

“ Draco—! Stop—!” she shrieked between peals of laughter, breathless and flushed, the sound of his name spilling from her mouth without hesitation or thought. Entirely meant. Spoken with clarity, and without the shadow of distance that usually lived between them.

And it stopped him, just for a breath.

He faltered mid-chase, his eyes wide with something like wonder. Hermione’s laughter still echoed in the hallway, ringing off the walls like sunlight in sound, and all he could hear – all he could feel – was his name wrapped in that laugh.

“Say that again,” he murmured, blinking like he needed to be sure this wasn’t some fragile dream. But she was already backing away toward the bedroom, still giggling, unaware of the small earthquake she'd caused inside him.

Malfoy caught up to her a second later, and they tumbled together onto the bed, but even as they fell, he couldn’t stop smiling.

“You said my name,” he said quietly, wonderingly, the words half-lost between his grin and the quick beat of his heart.

Hermione looked up at him, confused for a second.

Until she realized.

And then her expression softened, because she had . And she’d meant it.

“You said my name while laughing,” he continued, like he was cataloguing a precious artifact. “ With your laugh, Granger. Do you know what that does to a man?”

Malfoy leaned closer, forehead nearly touching hers, his grin something between wild and reverent. “I don’t think you’ve ever said it like that before. Like it belonged to you as much as it does to me.”

She rolled her eyes, but her smile betrayed her. “It’s just a name.”

She perfectly knew it wasn't.

“It’s not just a name,” he said, voice softer now. “Not when you say it. Not when you say it like that. I think I’d do just about anything to make you laugh if it meant hearing it again.” 

Her laughter bloomed once more, a little more self-conscious this time, but no less genuine.

Draco looked at her like she’d handed him the stars.

She shook her head, eyes shining. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Possibly,” he said, still smiling. “But I’m right.”

She felt the truth of it in her chest – that gentle ache of being seen too clearly. Her fingers curled into the blanket beneath her, trying to ground herself against the rush of sensation building behind her ribs.

His body was still hovering over hers, his weight balanced on his elbows, just enough to remind her of how close he was. Every breath she took brushed against his. Her pulse thudded in her throat.

“You really like hearing it, don’t you?” she asked, quieter now, a teasing edge to her voice that didn’t quite mask the tenderness underneath.

“Your voice saying my name?” he murmured, leaning down until their noses nearly touched. “It’s my new favorite sound.”

Time snapped still, the world narrowing to the closeness of their bodies, the silence after laughter. Her lips parted, and her breath caught. She lifted her arm to his hair, playing with it. Gently, he caught her wrist, like it was something fragile and sacred. His thumb traced her pulse, and his voice came low, hoarse. “What are you doing to me, Granger?”

She blinked, her voice barely above a whisper. “Helping you with your hair?”

Malfoy gave a low, sardonic laugh, the sound vibrating through her ribs where their bodies touched. “Didn’t know we were still pretending.”

Her smile was quiet, unguarded. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She could see it now, how much he was holding back. How much he wanted to close the space between them. How much his body was holding back so as not to collide with hers for good.

And still, he didn’t move. Not until she whispered, almost too softly to be heard, “Draco…”

His eyes fluttered shut, and when they opened again, they were darker, more serious. No smirk. No teasing.

“Granger.”

Hermione’s brows drew together. 

“Why do you care so much about me calling you by your first name,” she asked, her voice laden with curiosity and a little hurt, “if you can’t call me by mine?”

The question fell between them with quiet weight.

His smile faded, not in rejection, but in contemplation. His gaze dipped, then lifted back to hers, guarded and bare all at once.

“I…” he began, then stopped, exhaling through his nose. “It’s not that I don’t want to.”

“Then what is it?” she pressed, a little anxious.

Draco looked at her, and then rolled slightly to the side so he wasn’t pressing so closely against her, his body still beside hers but no longer braced above. He propped himself up on an elbow and stared at the ceiling for a heartbeat before returning his gaze to her.

“Because your name,” he said, finally, “feels too… precious. Like I’m not allowed to have it.”

Her breath caught.

He hesitated again, eyes searching hers. He was always searching her. “Now it feels like I’d be borrowing something that doesn’t belong to me.”

Hermione felt her heart squeeze.

“And I don’t want to say it until I can do it right,” Malfoy added, more to himself than to her. “Until I know you won’t flinch hearing it from my mouth.”

Hermione blinked, stunned into stillness. The way he spoke her worth, the reverence in his voice…It was something she hadn’t expected. Not from him. Not from anyone. Every single detail always meant the world to him.

She really meant the world to him.

Hermione reached out slowly, her hand finding his again, fingers threading between his without hesitation. “Try it.”

He looked at her then, and the vulnerability in his eyes cracked something open in her chest. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. Malfoy turned toward her fully, his free hand brushing lightly along the curve of her cheek, the pads of his fingers barely there. 

“Herm—”

Before Draco could finish, a sharp clatter rang out from outside.

The sound shattered the stillness of the morning, jagged and unnatural. It wasn’t the breeze rustling through the trees or the typical creak of the old house. It was metallic, hard and abrupt. A deliberate noise that seemed to echo across the quiet of the island, like someone had clumsily knocked over something heavy.

Both of them froze.

Hermione’s heart stuttered in her chest, the sudden, jarring shift from warmth to tension as sharp as a slap. The sound had rattled her, sending a wave of unease through her body. Her mind scrambled, processing the noise, but failing to find a reason for it.

Draco’s body immediately stiffened. He didn’t need to say anything for Hermione to feel the shift in his demeanor. His playfulness was gone, replaced by that cold, calculating awareness that she knew all too well. His hand slipped beneath the mattress in one fluid motion, fingers brushing against the familiar handle of his wand, his posture straightening like a soldier at attention.

For a moment, they both just listened.

The silence that followed felt like it was pressing in on them. Too quiet. Not the comfortable quiet of the morning, but something stretched and heavy, full of expectation.

Hermione turned her head toward the window. Outside, the trees swayed in the light breeze, and sunlight spilled in gentle slats across the room, brightening the floorboards. But the peaceful image seemed distorted now. The world outside had shifted. Something felt wrong.

Very wrong.

She pushed the covers off her body, her movements instinctual, quick. She didn’t think, didn’t waste time. She wasn’t about to stand around waiting for whatever this was to reach them. 

“You stay behind me,” he said, his voice low and firm. There was no room for argument in his tone, and yet Hermione wasn’t about to obey without question.

“I don’t think so,” she replied, already reaching for the wand hidden beneath the loose panel in the nightstand. It still felt foreign in her hand, she was still unsure how to use it again, but it was their only defense.

He looked at her, an edge of amusement in his eyes despite the situation. “Sorry for telling the truth, love, but last time we checked, your wand wasn’t exactly very helpful, was it?” 

She paused for a moment, glancing at the wand in her hand before meeting his eyes again. “I’m the only one with a wand.”

Draco didn’t respond right away. He just studied her, his expression unreadable. Then, with a barely-there smirk, he took a step closer, his voice dropping lower. “Fine. But you’re still staying behind me.”

She raised an eyebrow, her fingers still wrapped around her wand. “I think I’ll be just fine in front of you.”

His lips pressed into a thin line, eyes narrowing. “You can do as you want. But I’m walking in front of you, with or without your wand. End of conversation.”

Hermione snorted in protest, but the humor was lost as another sound rang out – faint, but undeniable. Her pulse spiked again. It was a different noise this time, closer, more deliberate. Footsteps? Scraping? Her breath caught in her throat.

Instinctively, her hand reached out, and before she could stop herself, she grabbed his arm. She could feel his muscle beneath , strong and tense as he turned toward her.

Malfoy tilted his head slightly, a mock grin pulling at the corner of his lips. “This is how you planned to protect us?”

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him, teeth gritted, but the tension was too thick to ignore. “Shut up,” she muttered, and her grip on his arm tightened.

Their eyes locked for a brief, intense moment, both of them aware that this wasn’t just a playful game anymore. Whatever was outside, whatever had made that sound, was real. And it was closing in.

Without another word, Draco walked to the door, his movements fluid, but cautious. Hermione followed closely behind, her steps steady but her senses on high alert. Each noise outside seemed to compound on the next, the unsettling silence broken only by that rhythmic scraping or the distant thuds. It felt like it was coming closer now, like someone, or something, moving deliberately across the earth, drawing nearer.

Draco’s hand hovered over the door, his body braced as though he were about to face something far worse than the tranquility of their small cottage.

And as they approached the door Hermione’s breath seemed to catch in her chest, and her grip on her wand tightened to the point of pain.

She stopped just behind Draco, her eyes fixed on the door, and instinctively, she squeezed his arm again. This time, he didn’t respond with a grin or mockery. He might not have said it, but through his touch, Hermione could feel that he was afraid too. 

The only sound that filled the cottage now was the faint whisper of wind, the eerie creak of wood settling, and the unsettling noises from outside that promised to pull them into whatever waited beyond the door.

Hermione felt the weight of every breath, every thudding heartbeat, as the door stood between them and whatever was out there. Time stretched painfully in the space between moments, and then-

Another noise.

Closer. Louder.

Definitely, something was outside, and the question wasn’t what it was anymore.

It was who .

Draco’s hand hovered on the doorknob.

Draco’s hand hovered on the doorknob.

Hermione could feel the tension in his body, taut as a bowstring. Her wand trembled slightly in her grip, though she kept it trained steady at his side.

He looked over his shoulder at her once and then pulled the door open.

Light poured in.

Warm, golden, gentle.

And silence.

Hermione blinked at the scene before them. The trees swayed softly in the wind. Birds chirped somewhere in the distance. The air smelled like salt, the waves danced in the background, meeting the deserted sand.

It was… normal. Disarmingly so.

She stepped out behind Draco, wand still raised, searching for signs of movement, of intrusion, of anything.

But there was nothing.

Just their cottage. The trees. The breeze. The sea.

Draco turned in a slow circle, scanning. “Nothing,” he muttered. “That’s… almost more unsettling.”

“Maybe it was an animal,” she said, even though she didn’t believe it. The sound had been too purposeful. 

Draco followed, squinting into the shadows. “An animal wearing boots and carrying scrap metal?”

She exhaled, lowering her wand slightly. “I don’t know. But it’s gone now, whatever it was.”

They stood there in the quiet, side by side, and, for a long moment, nothing moved but the wind.

And then Draco glanced at her, a smirk playing at his lips again, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “So. Joint hallucination?”

Hermione finally let out a breath and gave a soft, incredulous laugh. “Clearly. We’ve gone mad. That’s it.”

He bumped his shoulder into hers lightly. “Honestly, I blame the isolation. Too much domestic bliss. It’s warping our senses.”

“Or maybe you drugged the breakfast.”

“Unlikely. I would’ve eaten it all myself first.”

She rolled her eyes. “You know, most hallucinations don’t come with footsteps and metal clanging.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Unless we both imagined that, too.”

She opened her mouth for a retort, but then just shook her head, laughing despite the lingering unease. “We’re going to spiral into paranoia, aren’t we?”

He took her hand. “We already have.”

They turned back toward the cottage, the warmth of the home greeting them soft morning light spilling through the kitchen window again. The scent of cut fruit still lingering in the air, the echo of earlier laughter still clinging to the corners.

Hermione stepped past him, brushing her fingers along the counter, still clutching her wand.

“Maybe it was just–”

“Can’t believe the bloody Malfoys don’t teach their children not to open the door to strangers.”

The voice snapped through the air like a whip.

Hermione froze mid-step.

The kitchen light flickered. A strange pressure pulsed through the room.

Draco spun, wandless, positioning himself in front of her by instinct, eyes narrowing.

Then another voice rang out, laced with power and command:

“Azulacius.”

A ray of deep sapphire light burst through the air, hitting them both like a giant wave.

Hermione’s wand flew from her grip.

Her back hit the kitchen wall with a brutal thud that knocked the breath from her lungs, Draco’s body crashing beside hers a half second later. Pain exploded down her spine, white stars flashing behind her eyes.

Dazed, she tried to move, to think, but her limbs were heavy, pinned by invisible force.

Her vision blurred as her head lolled to the side.

But her eyes found them anyway.

Her head lolled to the side, vision swimming, but not so much that she couldn’t make out the silhouette in the doorway. A tall figure stepping into the kitchen, framed by the soft morning light that no longer felt warm.

Red hair.

Bright, unmistakable.

Disheveled and windblown, the strands glowed like embers in the sunlight. Freckles speckled across skin she hadn't seen in months—maybe longer. Eyes scanning the room with the sharp, focused alertness of someone trained by battle, not peace.

Ron.

Her stomach lurched.

And behind him, emerging more slowly, a second figure. Slighter, shoulders taut, wand held low but ready.

He stepped into the same shaft of light, and it caught his glasses first- those ever-round frames that seemed both too large and too fitting on the face she once knew better than her own.

Then the scar appeared, jagged and slightly pale, cutting across his forehead like a half-remembered nightmare, leaving Hermione in no doubt.

Harry.

Chapter Text

There are those who paint war in warm and welcoming colors, but Hermione never let herself be carried away by that delirium. Wherever she looked, shades of gray and scarlet adorned the painting her eyes traced. It was ugly, sad and agonizing in equal doses, but Hermione always accepted it. 

The colorful world that magic had introduced to her had been swallowed up by the ashes and blood of those who had fallen. Only in Harry and Ron did Hermione's eyes seem able to find life –  perhaps because she had always looked at them with her heart.

Until now. 

Hermione was slumped on the floor, aching all over, but her gaze was fixed on the two figures she would once have immediately rushed to embrace. How funny was the passage of time: what used to be gold was now covered in rust. Who would have thought that one day Hermione would see Harry and Ron and paint them with the emptiness of war, instead of the longing that comes after too many days away from home?

Hermione’s heart was not being capable of keeping all her blood and all her pain. It was becoming smaller and smaller, while the ache was growing and growing, approaching her. She felt it so close to her that her fingers could almost touch it, only if she had enough strength to lift them up. Instead, pain’s fingers, sturdy and calloused, found her cheek first, rubbing it with equal carefulness and bitterness. 

It was Ron’s hand, and Hermione was sorry for coming to a place when her friend’s touch felt like something foreign. Something like pain.

“So, it’s in here you have been hiding, huh?” he asked, with a tenderness that was quickly lost in his change of tone. “With him?”

Suddenly, her eyes trade red for blonde, in searching for Malfoy. 

And that’s when she realized the whole scenario. 

Hermione almost felt her eyes popping out of her face, in unbridled eagerness and worry. Because Malfoy was right beside her. 

She didn’t hit the wall. 

He did. 

To protect her.

“No…” Her body moved before her thoughts had time to form, crawling toward him. 

Ron’s voice came again, sharper now. “Hermione, get away from him.”

But it didn't matter. It didn't matter how much he asked, or how much her lungs burned. Just as nothing had stopped Icarus from flying toward the sun, nothing would stop Hermione from reaching her personal source of warmth. 

When her trembling fingers found his face, she felt the sky cry through her eyes. There he was, covered in blood and dust. She urgently pressed her hand against Malfoy’s neck, desperate for a pulse. Her heart lurched painfully in her chest when she felt a weak but steady indication that he was alive. 

“Thank you, dear lord…” she whispered, her forehead dropping to his shoulder.

“Are you out of your mind?” Ron’s voice snapped, shaking through the air like a slap. “You dare to be worried about him? After everything he’s done?”

“You just blasted through the door of my home and attacked us–”. 

“Your home?” Ron barked out a harsh, humorless laugh. “You gotta be kidding me, for Merlin’s sake. This isn’t your home, Hermione. This is his prison.”

That word hit her like cold water.

“Wha–What are you talking about?” 

“I guess he hasn’t been honest with you, what a surprise.” 

“What prison, Ron?” Hermione shouted, voice crumbling. 

Ron’s jaw tightened.

“What prison?!”

“He’s not here by chance. The Ministry exiled him here months ago, while he waits for his trial.”

A fog descended upon Hermione's mind, clouding and confusing everything. The words seemed to fall short of her comprehension, bouncing uselessly against the inside of her skull.

“His… trial?” she repeated faintly, shaking her head as if the motion could undo what she just had heard. “No, that’s not  true. You’re lying.”

Ron’s face didn’t move. “You’re offending me. Did I ever lie to you, Hermione?”

“A trial for what?” She stumbled to her feet, though her knees trembled beneath her, ignoring his question.

“Unbelievable.” He ran his hand over his face, visibly impatient and disbelieving of the scene he was witnessing. “Can’t believe I need to explain this, but for being who he is. For the things he’s done. For the people he’s hurt.”

Hermione shook her head again, faster this time. Her curls stuck to her face, wet with sweat and tears and disbelief. “No. No, he’s changed. You don’t understand. He’s–”

Ron let out a grunt that startled Hermione into silence. 

“He’s what? Redeemed? Cured? A bleeding saint because you’ve been playing house on this godforsaken island?”

Her breath caught like a knife in her throat. 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I know exactly what I’m talking about,” Ron said, taking a step closer. “The Ministry didn’t just send him here because they were bored, Hermione. They sent him here because people died, my family died, for Merlin’s sake! And you–you’ve been living with him?”

“Don’t say it like that!” She cried, voice cracking under the weight of everything she’d been holding in for months. “You have no idea what it’s been like!”

Ron’s laugh was harsh, and she felt like she was a stranger in his life. This wasn’t the sound that she was used to hearing when she made him laugh. “I think I’ve got a pretty good idea. You vanish, Hermione. No letters, nothing. We search for you for weeks, terrified you’re dead. And then we find out you’re here, with him. You think that doesn’t look bad?”

That was certainly not the moment to talk about the day she left and how she left. 

“I didn’t owe anyone an explanation. Not after everything. I needed–”

“Don’t you dare say space,” Ron snapped, his face twisting, and a finger pointed at her face. It was bittersweet to think that one day that finger had caressed her hair and wiped a trace of beer from the corner of her mouth. The affection had vanished and distanced the two of them in an unimaginable way. “You always need space. Space to think, space to save everyone else but yourself. But this time, it wasn’t just space, was it?”

Hermione’s lips parted, but no sound came out. So much time dreaming of a reunion, only to feel so empty inside when it finally happened.

“You think we didn’t need you?” Ron continued, his voice cracking. “You think Harry didn’t wake up every night thinking he’d see you at his door again? You think I didn’t–” His voice failed him, his breath hitching. “You left us, Hermione. You left.”

Tears welled in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall once more. “I didn’t leave you. I left everything that was killing me.”

“Then I guess that included us,” he said quietly.

Her breath hitched — and then, finally, she snapped.

“No,” Hermione said, her voice trembling but sharp enough to cut through the air. “Don’t twist this around, Ron. I didn’t leave because of you. I left because every time I tried to speak, you both stopped listening.”

Ron blinked, thrown off by the venom in her tone.

“I always listened to you!”

“No, you didn’t!” she shouted, stepping closer. “You heard me, but you didn’t listen! Not when I begged you to stop treating every Slytherin like a Death Eater. Not when I said we couldn’t rebuild a world on vengeance. You just nodded and smiled and went back to your missions, like soldiers who forgot how to be human!”

Ron’s mouth fell open. “We fought for this world, Hermione! For peace! And now you’re standing there defending him? When he is part of the reason we had to fight?”

“Peace?” The laugh that escaped Hermione's throat was so bitter that it made her feel sick. She was laughing hollowly through her tears. “You call this peace? When all you do is punish, exile, and execute? When you look at people and all you see is a moment of their lives?” Her chest heaved as the words came faster. “You call that justice, but it’s just another kind of war…one where you get to pretend you’re still the heroes.”

“Are you kidding me–”

“No!” she screamed over him. “You don’t get to talk about heroes when you’ve forgotten what mercy even looks like!”

Her voice broke, but she didn’t stop. “You think I’ve come here because I stopped carrying? I came because I saw what war turned us into. Because I looked at Harry, at you, and I couldn’t recognize you anymore.”

Ron’s nostrils flared, pain flickering behind his anger. “So what, Hermione? We’re monsters now? Is that it?”

Hermione took a shaky step forward, tears streaking her face. “There you go again, dividing people into categories. Good and bad. Victims and monsters. We are all humans. We are all hurt by what happened. But instead of healing, you let the wound define you. You see Malfoy and all you can see is every night we spent running from his family’s name. You don’t see the man in front of you, you choose to only see the boy who stood behind his father.”

Ron’s voice dropped, rough and broken. “And you don’t see what he did to us. He watched while we were tortured. He–”

She closed her eyes, her voice trembling. “And you think he doesn’t carry that? That he doesn’t wake up screaming too?”

“Don’t make him the victim–”

“I’m not,” she said, voice cracking. “I’m saying he’s a person. Just like us. And that’s the difference between what I am and what you’ve become.”

Ron’s face contorted in disbelief and fury. “What I’ve become? You think you’re better than me because you ran away to play saint to a Death Eater?”

Hermione’s hand trembled as she wiped her face. “No, Ron. I think I remember what it means to see people as more than the worst thing they’ve done. That’s what we were supposed to fight for, wasn’t it? A world where people could be more?”

Ron looked like she’d slapped him. His chest heaved, his jaw tight, his eyes wet and furious. 

“You don’t get it,” he whispered finally. “You weren’t there after the trials. You didn’t see the families. The children. You didn’t have to tell mothers their sons weren’t coming home. You didn’t have to walk through the ruins of Hogsmeade and see what his kind did.”

“And you think I didn’t?” Hermione’s voice rose again, shaking. “You think I didn’t live through it too? You think I didn’t bury people I loved? It broke me! But I never laid my head on my pillow with a clear conscience. We also killed people. There are families who still mourn loved ones because of us. And they have no right to suffer and grieve just because they go down in history as the bad guys?”

Her voice softened, almost breaking. “You stopped having hearts and started keeping scorecards. You looked at every person as their past instead of their pain. You turned people into labels. Death Eater. Traitor. Half-Blood. Mudblood. The same language we swore we’d destroy.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do,” she whispered. “Because I’ve seen what it’s done to you.”

Silence fell heavy and cruel. The only sound was Draco’s shallow breathing beside her and the faint rustle of the wind through the broken window.

Ron’s voice finally came, hoarse and small. “So that’s it, then. You’re one of them now.”

A cloak of disappointment covered Hermione's face. 

“And you have the guts to say that you always listened to me. Look at you, putting me into a box, ignoring everything that I just said. Them and us… You’ve built your whole new world out of that wall, and you wonder why everything keeps falling apart!”

Hermione felt that this conversation was reopening the wound she had tried to cover up over the past few months. And words and words that had suffocated her for too long flowed out of her, not giving Ron a chance to counterargue.

“I left because I couldn’t breathe under that anymore. Because I couldn’t look at either of you without seeing how the war never ended for you. How you wanted it to never end for me…But I needed to remember what it felt like to be human again.”

With a trembled mouth, and his eyes glassy, Ron whispered: “And he reminded you of that? Malfoy?”

“He reminded me that broken people can still choose to build. That the ones who did terrible things can still try to do something good. That redemption isn’t a fairytale, but rather a punishment. And he’s paying it, Ron. He’s paying it.”

Neither of them dared to break the silence that was installed between them. Only the crackle of the ruined wood filled the air.

When Ron finally answered, his voice was almost inaudible. 

“You’ve changed.”

Hermione’s eyes met his. Soft, tired, sad. "I just stopped pretending that hate keeps the world safe.”

Ron looked away, his hand tightening around his wand. He opened his mouth, but whatever he meant to say never came – because that was when the shadow at the doorway shifted, and Harry’s voice cut through the room like a blade.

“Enough.”

Hermione felt her heart freeze. Harry’s voice, cold as ice. The kind of tone that didn’t belong to him, but had been carved into him by years of too much loss and too little forgiveness.

She turned, slowly. He was standing half in shadow, his wand still drawn, his face unreadable.

“Harry…” she whispered.

He stepped forward slowly, his boots crunching over the broken wood and dust. If Hermione could pretend that there was no gulf between them, she could say that she was facing the same Harry as always. But that would be the purest of lies. The green eyes that had always seemed to be able to read her were staring at her as if for the first time. Completely empty, stripped of years of memories.

“Ron, go check the perimeter,” he said, his gaze never leaving Hermione.

The redhead hesitated, still fuming, but he obeyed. The door creaked as he stepped outside, leaving her alone with Harry and the ghost of everything they’d been.

Hermione swallowed, her throat raw. “Harry, please. You have to listen to me.”

“I’m not here to listen,” Harry said softly, almost kindly. Almost. “I’m here to bring him in.”

“You can’t. You don’t understand what they’ll do to him if you do–”

“I understand perfectly,” Harry said, cutting her off. “He’s under Ministry order. Exile until trial. No contact. No interference.” His eyes flicked to her, sharp as a curse.

Hermione took a step toward him, shaking her head.

“You didn’t see what he’s been through. What this place has done to him–”

“I don’t need to see,” Harry interrupted again, unbothered by anything that she could say about Draco. “I know what people like him do. They twist things until you start believing they’re victims. And it worked with you, I’m seeing.”

“He is a victim!” she screamed. “Of everything that came before him, of–”

“Stop.” He said, but felt it like an order. 

The single word froze her.

Harry lowered his wand just a little, his expression hard but strangely mournful. “Do you think you’re the only one who wanted peace, Hermione? You think you’re the only one who wanted to stop fighting?” His voice wavered for the first time. “But peace doesn’t come from running away and pretending monsters can be tamed.”

Hermione’s tears finally spilled, silent and furious. “You don’t see him, Harry. You only see the past. You only see your war. I see what’s left of him after it. Please try to see it too.”

Harry exhaled slowly, and for a flicker of a moment, she thought she saw the old him. But when he looked at her again, she understood that would never happen. That little boy was buried somewhere under Harry’s pain.

“I’m sorry, Hermione,” he said quietly. “But this ends today.”

She shook her head, taking a trembling step back and instinctively opening her both arms to protect Draco. “You’re not taking him anywhere.”

Behind her, Draco stirred faintly, a broken sound leaving his throat. A reminder that he was still alive, barely, because her life meant more to him than his own. She couldn’t be indifferent to that. Not when he meant something to her as well.

When she looked back, Ron was standing in the doorway again, wand raised.

“Oh, we will,” Ron said grimly.

He hesitated, his expression twisting with something like guilt before he added, “and you will go as well.”

Hermione barely had time to understand his words before Harry raised his wand.

“Stupefy.”

The spell hit her square in the chest.

The last thing she saw before the darkness took her was Draco’s blonde hair, and in that moment she truly felt like Icarus. 

Then the world fell silent.