Three
Hermione gasps. His head is dripping blood, blond hair plastered to his forehead. His robes are in tatters and he appears to barely be standing up straight.
“Malfoy?” she shouts, rushing to his side to help him into her home. “How did this happen? How did you get here?”
Her arm wraps around his side and he grunts, leaning on her. “Poachers.”
Of course, Hermione knew that much already. “How did you get here?” she asks again, emphasizing every word. She lugs him towards her kitchen, supporting most of his weight on her small frame. The front door shuts behind her with a wave of her free hand.
“Ap-apparated,” Malfoy mumbles, a cough following his response.
Hermione swallows, the scent of blood hitting her senses. Even as a healer, the sight of his injuries are making her cringe. “You apparated here? From where?”
“Forest,” he forces out. Hermione sits him on a chair by her dining room table, pulled into the center of the room. He slumps down into it, eyes barely staying open. She pulls her wand out to summon her medical bag from upstairs.
“Which forest, Malfoy?”
“D’know. Somewhere North.” Malfoy coughs into his elbow, and when he pulls it away, Hermione sees flecks of blood on his lips.
“Shit,” she hisses, hurrying to remove the items she needs from her bag. She casts a diagnostic charm with one hand, waiting for the chart to pop up above him. When it does, there’s much more glowing red than green marking his body, which means there’s a lot for her to fix up.
His left leg is broken, right elbow slashed into. The gash on his head is bleeding way more than it should be and there’s a curse eating away at his abdomen as they speak; the reason he’s coughing up blood.
“I’m sorry,” he mutters, voice rough and breathing stuttering.
Hermione’s heart cracks. “It’s okay. I’ve got you,” she reassures him, transfiguring his chair into a sort of reclinable, flat surface. “Don’t move,” she tells him when he fights against the restraints Hermione configures to hold him in place. “It’s okay,” she repeats.
Using three washcloths and four cleansing charms, she finally gets the blood cleared away from his head enough to start healing it. A stasis charm is put on his abdomen and Hermione can only hope it stops the curse from continuing its damage to his organs as she stops him from bleeding out. This would be much easier with a team of healers, but there’s no way anyone would get here on time. And even if they did, Malfoy would likely refuse their help.
She begins the healing spell, holding his head still with her free hand. Every time his eyes begin to close, Hermione snaps at him to keep them open; she needs him to stay conscious if she has any hope of healing him completely.
He groans in pain every once in a while, probably from the curse on his stomach. Hermione casts a quick numbing charm on his leg, since it’s strapped to the chair he’s in and likely won’t get worse. One less thing causing him pain.
The cut on his head stitches itself up nicely, leaving only a thin scar right near his hairline. Hermione turns away from him to get a potion to help regrow the parts of his insides that were damaged by the curse. As she’s digging through her bag, she hears him gasp, loud and harsh. She whips back towards him, hands out to stabilize him as he starts thrashing.
“Malfoy! What is it?” She checks the diagnostic charm, seeing nothing different.
He gasps again, eyes fluttering, expression twisted with pain. She starts the counterspell to the curse right away, assuming that’s the problem. “It’s alright. Calm down, it’s okay. It’s almost done,” she’s rambling, more to assure herself than him. He continues thrashing under her hands, her wand hand shaking and unsteady with fear. “Stay still,” she tells him, voice panicky. “Please, stay still.”
The red around his stomach and chest from the charm turns orange, then yellow, after several agonizing moments of casting the counterspell. He relaxes into the chair. His eyes are closed when she finally finishes the spell work and she hurries to grab his face and wake him up. “Malfoy!”
He doesn’t respond and Hermione makes sure he’s still breathing, even though the spell says he is, just to be sure. “Malfoy? Wake up. Open your eyes. Draco!”
His eyes finally fly open, his breathing ragged. He coughs again, jerking in his seat. Hermione drops her hands from his cheeks and sighs out a breath of relief. “Stay awake. Please.”
Malfoy only nods, watching her as she moves to his leg. She spends the next twenty minutes fixing up his mildest injuries and making sure the damage to his organs isn't too much for his body to handle. If he doesn’t stay awake, Hermione’s worried her charm won’t pick up any sudden changes.
She gives him the potion to help heal the damage and resets his broken leg. He grunts, flinching, but keeps watching her, blinking long, slow blinks every few seconds.
Hermione’s shaking and weak by the time the cut on his elbow is taken care of, her magic entirely dwindled and energy gone. She lathers a salve on his head and elbow with shaky hands. After checking his diagnostic charm once more, she sits down next to him, pulling a chair in close, and wiping the sweat off of her forehead. “You can sleep now. It’s all over. You’re okay.”
Malfoy blinks once, twice, before yawning and nodding his head. “Thank you,” he says, voice cracking. “So much.”
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The next time Draco opens his eyes, there’s light filtering into the room and a weight on his chest. He takes his time waking up, swaying in and out of consciousness for some time before he finally registers his surroundings. There’s a sharp pain in his stomach, a soreness in his leg, and a throbbing in his temple. The weight on his chest is bearable, though, but the chair digging into his back is not.
He tilts his head down, just a sliver, in order to see what’s on top of him, and startles when he’s met with a head of curly hair. He jumps, jostling said head, panic rising in his throat. He takes a second to breathe and realizes it’s Granger laying on his chest. Seemingly asleep, if her soft, little snores are anything to go by.
The panic subsides, but a different sort of warmth attacks his chest. Her weight over his torso feels comforting, grounding. His heartbeat sounds in his ears, heavy and pounding. He should feel suffocated, being this close to someone. Being laid on. But he doesn’t. He’s nervous, yes, but for an entirely different reason; the woman he fancies is laying on him.
After several minutes of heavy breathing and admiring the back of Granger’s head, Draco raises the arm that doesn’t hurt and hovers his hand over her hair. He’s always wanted to touch her curls. Healing him doesn’t require running his fingers through her hair, so he’s never had the chance.
He contemplates it, palm hovering just barely above her curls, for a moment. Finally, he reasons she probably wouldn’t even know. Plus, she’s the one sleeping on him. His fingers weave through her soft curls effortlessly, pinching the strands between his fingers gently, smoothing them back from her face.
Draco melts.
Tension squeezes his throat as he realizes he not only misses being touched, he misses being able to touch just as much. Cradling a face in his hand, wrapping his arms around a waist, running his fingers through hair are all things he yearns for… preferably Hermione’s, in all three situations.
Despite the chair being uncomfortable, Draco can’t force himself to move. His hand remains gently brushing through Granger’s hair and she remains breathing deeply on his chest. His back is killing him, sure, and he nearly died just hours ago, but he feels completely and utterly content in this moment.
He hopes it never passes.