Part II
They landed with a thud on a grassy lawn, Hermione wrapped around Draco’s midsection as they collapsed. She crawled up to Draco’s head where he lay on the ground, limp and unmoving.
“Wake up, Draco,” she said, patting his cheeks, with no response, until she remembered with a flash that she was a witch.
”Renneverate!” she cried, wand pointed at his chest.”Rennervate!”
Draco’s swollen eyes slid open and immediately squeezed closed again, his face full of pain as he groaned.
Hermione let her head fall to his chest, breathing in the heady mix of absolute relief, phantom pain from Draco’s own wounds, and her magic’s joy at their proximity.
Harry and Ron, at this, murmured words she didn’t take in and took off to go alert Bill and Fleur.
”Granger?” Draco asked after a few moments, his voice lisped by his swollen mouth.
”Draco,” she breathed, as he brought one of his hands up to his face. She redirected it, held it fast. ”What hurts?”
”Head,” he moaned softly. “Ears‘re ringing, vision’s…blurry.” His words slurred not just because of the swelling, she realized. She cast a diagnostic, trying to concentrate her magic toward healing. She studied the glowing information and in her periphery, saw a small smile creep up Draco’s bloodied face.
”We’ve gotta stop meetin’ like this,” he murmured.
She scoffed, but then felt like she might cry. ”You’re concussed,” she said, pointing to where the diagnostic hovered between them. Other than that, it seemed bruising on his face and his torso were his major injuries, along with—she shuddered, even though she already knew—the lingering effects of the cruciatus.
”Oh,” he said casually, like she’d just told him what she’d had for breakfast. He smiled again, bigger this time, blood on his teeth. “You gonna heal me, Granger?”
“Oh, shut up,” she snapped without venom, levitating him with a flick of her wand. She could tell he was not fully conscious, otherwise she was sure he’d insist on trying to walk.
Dobby reached out and lowered her wand arm, taking over, a knowing look in his eye.
“Allow me, Miss Hermione. Miss Hermione will keep Master Draco awake.”
“She’s good at that, Dobby,” Draco slurred. Hermione scoffed as they began to walk toward the house, Draco hovering along.
”Let’s see if Fleur has any pain potions for you.”
”Oooo,” Draco sing-songed, more silly-sounding than he ever did sober, and in his right mind.
“‘ermione?” he asked, looking up at her as they reached the door where Bill was waiting. She looked back at him where he hovered, his face suddenly serious. She raised an eyebrow.
“You’re so pretty.”
Hermione let out a laugh, then felt it, now that they were safe, turn into a sob.
—
Draco dutifully took a potion for head injuries alongside something for the pain, and promptly conked out in the guest room for several hours, which Bill and Fleur assured her was normal. Fleur expertly dressed the wounds on his face, applied a potion to lessen the bruising, fixed a couple of wiggly teeth with a quick Episkey, and siphoned the dried blood off his clothes.
Still, Hermione paced the length of the room where he slept, unwilling and, more pertinently, magically unable to leave despite various friends’ insistence.
Fleur left her alone after checking on Draco’s diagnostic, a knowing look in her eye.
Before long, Harry and Ron made their appearance.
She took a moment to look at her two best friends, though, as they stood in the room where their childhood bully slept. A childhood bully they’d risked life and limb to save.
“How is he?” Ron asked, nodding toward Draco’s sleeping form. Hermione felt her eyebrows raise, but saw no malice in Ron’s face.
“He’s going to be fine.”
“Good, that’s—“ Ron stammered, looking at his feet. “That’s good.”
”You were going to leave him,” she said, arms crossed, not willing to couch it with formalities.
”We were,” Harry said, meeting her eyes like he had back in the dungeons, clear and honest.
“But you didn’t.”
”We didn’t.”
Hermione wrapped her arms around Harry’s shoulders, burying her face in his neck. She reached an arm out and looped Ron, closer, too, each of the boys wrapping her up in turn.
”Thank you,” she murmured. “Thank you.”
—
At some point, Hermione exhausted herself pacing and took the chair next to Draco’s bed. Before long, she was leaning over the bed, unable to carry the weight of it all any longer.
She must have fallen asleep because she woke to a soft hand carding through her hair.
“Granger,” he whispered, sounding not unlike his mother had just hours before.
Hermione sat up, vision swimming a bit before fixing on her Draco, blinking and clearer-eyed than before.
”You came back for me.”
Hermione felt herself blush under his molten gaze.
“Of course I did.”
”I told you not to.”
”When have I ever listened to what you told me to do?”
The side of Draco’s mouth quirked up briefly, then he sobered.
”My mother,” a question and an answer.
”She told us to run,” Hermione said, trying as best she could not to sound defensive. Draco only nodded.
”They won’t kill her,” he said, as if to himself. “Lock her up, maybe, but my father wouldn’t let them hurt her.”
Hermione nodded, taking Draco’s hand from where it lay. Counting his heartbeats because she could.
”He hurt you,” she murmured, staring at his hand.
He made a small, pained sound that brought tears to her eyes.
“But then you saved me. Again.”
”I thought I lost you,” she whispered, her voice wobbling traitorously. “I couldn’t—I felt you hurting and then it just…stopped.”
When she looked up, Draco was looking back at her, concern and empathy and something else in his eyes—
He brought her hand to his split lip and kissed it softly.
“I’m still here,” he whispered.
Tears spilled out of Hermione’s eyes, her chest spasming.
“Please don’t cry, Hermione,” Draco said, distress furrowing his brow. He reached up to wipe a tear. “I hate it when you cry.”
Hermione let Draco wrap his arms around her and sank into his chest, where his heart beat, strong and alive, and she let herself lose it for a moment at the thought of any other reality being true. He pressed kiss after kiss into her curls, running his fingers through them, hushing her, murmuring that it was okay, that they were all alright.
After a minute or two of blubbering, she sat up, wiping her face roughly. There were tear tracks on Draco’s face, and she reached the brush them gently away.
A beat passed as they looked at each other, lips trembling.
“There’s a potion,” she said slightly too loudly, and apropos of nothing, picking it up off the nightstand. “It’s for bruising. Fleur already put some on your face. You said there’s more?”
Draco nodded, pointing to his chest. Hermione quickly vanished his shirt to spare him having to lift his arms.
Across the wide planes of his Sectumsempra scars snaked half a dozen angry, purpling bruises. Hermione sucked in a breath at the sight.
”Why would he do this to you?”
”Rodolphus?” Draco asked, more casual than he should have been. “He’s an idiot. Couldn’t cast a bloody reparo if you paid him. He’s more in favor of brute force.”
”So he tortured you like muggles do,” she asked, gently rubbing the cream into his skin as Draco tensed, then sighed.
”Very pureblood of him, I know,” Draco gritted as she started on the next one.
Hermione worked with focus, watching Draco’s body relax by degrees as she did so. She didn’t dare look at his eyes, where she knew she’d find him, intently watching her care for him with a kind of predatory satisfaction she—and her magic—knew too well.
”Can you roll?” She asked, noticing the way a bruise snaked around his ribcage. He did so with some difficulty, wincing. Before she could fight the urge, she reached out with her free hand and stroked his soft hair. Draco sighed as he settled in.
She worked the potion slowly into the wound on his side, and Draco let out a little whimper that went straight to her core, all tenderness and longing.
“Mm, love you, ‘ermione,” he murmured, sounding far away already.
“You’re fading, sweetheart. Go to sleep.”
He hummed.
By the time she was done applying the potion, she’d watched Draco’s breaths even out and lengthen. It would have been giveaway enough, but he left out soft snores on his exhales, his face relaxed and young-looking in sleep.
Hermione covered him to his shoulders in the soft blanket, pressing a light kiss to his cheek.
“I love you too, Draco,” she whispered.