Chapter 14
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.