Author's Note: Hello, Lovelies! So, I've been on a writing binge as I've finally achieved freedom from school, and this is the result! It's a one-shot, with the potential for continuation, and I quite like it. Please, let me know anything and everything that you think about it! It would make me a very happy writer! Anyway, enough of my rambling, go enjoy! -CC

Save the Beginning

It was over. The wind whipped her hair into her eyes and she let it. It was awfully pessimistic of her, seeing as they had just won a war, but she couldn't escape the thought that she very well could be one of those who didn't feel the breeze. She could be one of the corpses lying on the floor of the great hall with a sheet drawn over her face. She could have taken Fred's place or Lavender's or Tonks' or Remus'. She could be dead. A tear slid down her cheek; the first of many, she was sure.

Strangely, though she should have burst into wracking sobs, though she should have cried an ocean, though that tear should have simply signaled the collapse of the dam she'd built around her heart; her eyes dried up. She felt nothing. Hermione was the absence of emotion; she was an abyss, a vacuum that could never be filled again.

The sun was setting. She was being selfish, taking this moment alone. The first aid kit weighed heavily in her hand. People needed medical attention. There were witches and wizards that were actually and severely hurt, and she was just standing here. She was standing there like a dolt when there were so many things to do; so many lives to help and save, but she couldn't breathe anymore. Hermione was tired.

The rumble in her abdomen let her know she was hungry, and on some level she probably felt it, but not now. The body is funny that way. In the midst of everything, of the pain, and the grief, in all of it, she wanted a muffin more than anything. She would never admit it. How dare she? She snapped to attention when the scrape of gravel sliced through the silence. Someone was there.

"Hello?" She called out. The whistle of the wind was the only answer. "Is somebody out there?" She raised her voice a little higher. "Do you need help?" Hermione drew her wand and forced her sore feet to move.

She stepped over the ruble at the foot of the bridge. The black lake was ominous in the dusk as it swallowed the skittering pebbles she couldn't avoid. One of these pebbles hit a body and it hissed. She drew closer and found a man laying, disjointed arm over his face, on a mere spit of rock. The edge of his cloak was bobbing in the water.

"Oh, Gods!" She panicked, stumbling over displaced cobbles. The man did not respond. "Stay there! Don't move! I'm almost..." Hermione's words died in her sandpapery throat. The last rays of sunshine caught a patch of his head that wasn't covered in dirt. The glint of platinum hair gave her pause.

Draco Malfoy lay motionless on a fragment of limestone, the water creeping up greedily. With one shove the black lake would take him whole into its depths. He wouldn't have the energy to fight it. He would go quietly, simply a slip into the water to meet death and his lost comrades: the enemy.

No. Nobody would die on her, not again. He may not be worth the wrap of bandage she would use, he may be the scum of the earth, but he was alive, and by Merlin, he was going to stay that way, if only to waste away in Azkaban.

"I'm going to levitate you, Malfoy. It will hurt." She was going to save his life, but she was not going to be cheerful about it. His arm slid off of his face in midair and dangled beneath him. It was the first time he managed a bonafide scream. "It's broken, obviously." She mumbled inspecting the body splayed out before her on the ground.

She crawled up toward his head. It was caked in sediment but there didn't seem to be any skull wounds. Lucky bastard. His right cheek was covered in blood from a deep gash. Dirt was encrusted inside the maroon lappets of skin. That would definitely scar and had already begun to fester. She brought her wand tip just below his right eye, which he promptly closed. She heard his breath hitch as he barred himself for the coming agony.

"Aguamenti."

He howled so deeply that his voice failed under the pressure. He was simply forcing the air from his lungs and saliva from his mouth. He lost consciousness a moment later. The silt stubbornly remained in his cheek as the blood around it had begun to coagulate and stick. She was going to have to do this by hand. The kit was critically low on supplies. Hermione clamped her mouth shut to keep from gagging. If he hadn't already lost consciousness, he would have passed out on the exact second that she inserted her pinky finger into the wound. Her left hand maintained the stream of water. She managed to clear the wound before she vomited up stomach acid, and again, she wished she'd eaten. After swabbing his cheek with alcohol and performing a healing incantation, she placed some adhesive gauze over it. It was all she could do.

Hermione moved on to his neck, which had been left untouched. The same could not be said of his chest. His black robes were ripped haphazardly, showing swaths of bare skin stained the color of Merlot. His robes were wet and practically cemented to his body. Her swift fingers undid the buttons, a laughable effort to save his tattered clothing.

A crust of Malfoy's dried blood pushed uncomfortably under her fingernails, some of it was spattered on her cuffs, some of it was matted on the ends of her hair, but none of it looked any different than hers. It didn't look any different from anybody's. Maybe he would understand that when he woke, or maybe he'd spend a lifetime in Azkaban with Bellatrix Lestrange, and die with his prejudice. Maybe, he'd hate her for saving him. Maybe, he'd rather bleed out than have her muggle-born hands on him. Or maybe, he'd thank God for her and beg for forgiveness. He deserved the humiliation of groveling at her feet.

His chest was finally exposed, and Hermione immediately changed her mind. She would never make him beg, not after this. Both of his pectoral muscles were slashed down to his abdominals, perfectly parallel, as if someone had cut him with an enlarged weeding fork. She recognized the hex, Sectumsempra, and grimaced. This had been the work of someone in the Order, and for some reason, that bothered her. Actually, it burned her in a place she didn't know existed; the despair simmered somewhere between her lungs and her pounding heart. This was no black and white massacre of good and evil, there was evil in the light too, there was evil in her. Suddenly, she cried. She cried over Draco Malfoy, the bully of her childhood, the deatheater, the human.

He regained consciousness to see her sobbing over his naked chest. He was disoriented and probably in incredible pain, but he put the pieces together quickly. He had always been inconspicuously smart.

"I'm alive." He rasped through chapped lips. It sounded like a confused query to God rather than a statement of fact.

"Yes." Hermione swallowed her sobs. This was much more embarrassing than it ought to be.

"'s hurts." His eyes closed like he was going to lose consciousness again but he didn't. Maybe he wanted to lose consciousness; Merlin knows it would be a hell of a lot less painful.

"Vulnera Sanentur." Hermione whispered over his chest wounds. They began to close and she reached for the dittany in her kit. Maybe she shouldn't use it just to prevent scars, but for some reason she wanted to do everything possible to heal him. She wanted to show him every kindness that he'd never shown her, and maybe that he'd never known at all.

A sudden exhale came from the chest beneath her and the metallic eyes shot open. He was definitely on the right side of the fence between life and death now. After everything, all of the terrorism, the murders, the shredded innocence, all he had was a broken arm. A fucking broken arm.

The tip of her wand hovered over his wrist. She was guessing that it was shattered. Madam Pomphrey would probably have to regrow it if he ever expected to have any range of motion again. She knew the spell; it was a simple whisper and a swish from left to right. It would stabilize the bones, but before she could fix anything, Malfoy spoke.

"You don't have to." His voice was gravelly and hoarse.

His lips were a strange kind of purple that she didn't recognize, like he was hypothermic or dead. Hermione was frozen in shock. Was that understanding in his voice?

"I would've left you." It was gone. Silly of her to think it. Hermione always hoped for the redemption in the dying. Well, he wasn't dying anymore.

"I know," her voice shook treacherously. What else could she say? She returned to his wrist. He winced at the crunch as the bone fragments solidified.

"D'you have any water?" He opened his bruised lips as the water spilled from her wand. His gray eyes surveyed her suspiciously.

"Better?" She asked, withdrawing back out of his sight.

"I tried to hex you...stupefy." He didn't sound malicious, but it wasn't quite apologetic either. Hermione shrugged, but he couldn't see it.

"You could've done worse." Why was she so determined to see the best in him? He was a deatheater! Who had he killed? Who of her friends, her classmates, kind strangers, had he murdered? Why was she doing this? Did she really have hope that the boy who lowered his wand against Dumbledore still existed?

Malfoy remained silent, so Hermione bent over his elbow. It was tedious work, and it must have been agonizing, but he was a stone. Was it killing him to need her help? Was it changing his poisoned mind? Was he going to hurt her?

No, he wouldn't hurt her. She supposed that he could. Though he was weak, he could probably still overpower her. Perhaps, he even had his wand hidden somewhere, but Hermione knew she was safe. Draco Malfoy had a shred of decency yet.

"I couldn't." She wasn't surprised by the admission. Something between them demanded honesty or silence. He couldn't lie just like she couldn't walk away.

"I suppose it would be harder with someone you know." She didn't allow herself to look at his face. She probably wouldn't find any emotion there anyway.

"Yeah." The quiet returned. The soft cracking coming from his arm filled the air and it was okay. In this moment they were not enemies or friends. They were nothing and yet, she couldn't think of anything beyond them.

"The faster you heal me, the sooner I get shipped off to Azkaban." Hermione took her wand away.

"Not if I don't turn you in."

"You would do that for me?"

"If you'll tell me why you did this." Her thumb ran over the ink-black brand on his forearm, a cold sweat beaded up at the base of her neck. Her chest tightened slightly, and even though she knew it was a powerless symbol; she would never conquer the fear that it brought. He seemed to ponder the offer for a moment, not sure of where to begin.

"Will you finish my arm?" She forgot that he couldn't see her and nodded again.

"Yes." She finally answered.

"It's what my father taught me, Hermione." It was the first time he had ever said her name. She wasn't sure how to feel about that.

"Do you believe in it?" It was a quiet question that she wasn't certain she wanted the answer to. He flinched.

"I believe that if we keep breeding with muggles, magic will die. It is hereditary, you know."

"Do you believe that a muggle-born has less magical capability than a pureblood?"

"I used to."

"Not anymore?"

"No, Granger, you kind of shot that theory to hell, didn't you?" It was the first hint of anger in his voice. She didn't like it. The moments of civility had been strangely...well, she didn't really know what they were, but she didn't want it to end.

"I'm sorry." Hermione didn't know what to say. She'd obviously hit a nerve.

"Shut up, Granger," he snarled. So she did. If it had been any other day, any other circumstance she probably would have snapped back, but not anymore. Now she felt like, on some level, she understood Draco Malfoy. It must have been hard for him to see his beliefs, the beliefs of his family, proven wrong.

The world around them was ghostly in the pre-dusk light. The wind still howled, but it had a nip in it without the warmth of a full sun. The void that words had filled between them widened and felt tense. She could tell that he was uncomfortable with her mumbling incantations. He was getting stiff from lying so still.

"Alright. I didn't mean it." He finally ground out from clenched teeth. "You can talk if you want."

Hermione smirked weakly. Even lamed, he still managed to be condescending. He wanted someone to be there, even if that someone was muggle-born, Hermione Granger, and for some reason, she wanted to be there too.

"What's it like with your family?" She didn't know what possessed her to ask it. Her arm tingled where the word 'mudblood' was carved into her skin. She could feel the impression of each letter, the phantom pain of Bellatrix Lestrange cutting into her with feral bloodlust. She knew exactly what the Malfoy family was like. Perhaps, if Malfoy confirmed it, if he knew how horrible they were, then there was redemption waiting for him after all.

"What do you bloody care?"

"I just want to understand why you hate me so much." She answered, meekly.

"Is that what you think?"

"What, you mean after all these years of you tormenting me?"

"I don't hate you. I don't like you."

"What did I ever do to you, Malfoy?"

"Exist,"

"Well, I'm so sorry I took up some of your precious space, Malfoy. I hope you don't mind me breathing some of your oxygen while I save your life!"

"Don't you get it? I'm not better than you!"

His words felt like ice on the back of her neck. She was shocked. He didn't believe that he was superior race? All of this time she'd thought that was the problem; that he disliked her because he believed that she was inferior, not because she wasn't inferior. She was supposed to be lesser, and he could admit that she wasn't. She proved the theory wrong. He proved the theory wrong. She made better grades, she took more classes, she knew more spells, and he didn't.

"I'm the anomaly in the theory then?"

"Obviously."

"And that causes problems for you?"

"Look, my father believes that I'm inherently better than you. So, what do you think that means about me if a mudblood beats me out every single time?" He asked rhetorically, not giving her a second to reply. "It means that I'm not trying, that I'm a lazy, worthless, waste of inheritance. You made my life hell, Granger."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know." He was scary when he talked like that.

"As if you would change anything. Being first is everything to you, isn't it? The point is that I was trying, and I'm a logical man. You're better than me." He made it sound like something bad; something she didn't want to be.

"Not at everything. I'm sure..."

"At the things that matter. At magic."

"What happened to you? What happened when you went home for the summers and he knew about me?"

"About you being first in the class, and me being second, you mean? I'm sure you can guess. My body look normal to you?" At the moment he was badly hurt, but behind the new injuries, she could see the ghosts of the old.

"Second is still good. You have to have great grades."

"Great is not perfect, but you already know that. Anything less than perfect isn't good enough for you or for my family. You're not so different from them."

"I would never hurt anyone, especially not for good accomplishments."

"Oh? You wouldn't beat the living shite out of yourself if you made an E?"

She had no reply.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. I just have my father to do it for me."

"But, you always seemed so attached to him...like you loved him. You went to him for everything."

"Of course I did! Gods, I am a human being, you know! I'm not some bloody monster! I had to prove myself somehow. I had to show him that not every fucking thing is my fault!"

"None of us knew."

"That was kind of the point, Granger."

"You didn't… don't have to put up with the abuse."

"I get paid well for it. Besides, he's an old codger, and I'm strong." He was strong. Even broken, battered, and bruised, she could see the corded muscles that composed his body.

"What do you mean by that, Malfoy...that 'you get paid well'?"

"My inheritance; I'll be richer than God, not that it matters since, I'm sure, the ministry will seize everything once I'm arrested."

"I told you that I wouldn't turn you in."

"I'm supposed to believe that?"

"Well I'm healing you, and you held up your end of the bargain."

"I didn't tell you anything you wanted to hear, Granger. I'm not some misguided kid. I knew what I was doing."

"That's okay. I didn't ask for what I wanted to hear."

"You're not angry." He tried, but he couldn't mask the tone of surprise.

"No. I forgive you." The chill was becoming more prominent, and she wished that she had something to put over his mostly exposed body.

"I didn't apologize." Hermione couldn't resist the urge to roll her eyes, but she was glad that he couldn't see it. How prideful could a person be?

"You will."

"I don't know what you think happened here, but nothing changed. I'm not sorry." His lips were white, stubbornly set in a line of neutrality.

"Do you really mean that?" She knew the answer, even if he couldn't say it.

"Whatever, Granger. It is the way it is." She wanted to tell him that it wasn't, that all of this time things could have been different; that he would have been accepted, but she wasn't sure that it was true.

"Well, the way it is…it's just…it's bollocks." He made a sort of laugh-like sound. It was between a chuckle and a sob. It was a bit hysterical.

"Sorry to tell you the truth, Love." The term of affection was sarcastic, but she found it endearing in a way. It felt almost friendly, darkly so, but friendly…at least comfortable.

"I don't buy it, Draco. You're sorry, and the world is going to be different. It's going to be better, and you don't have to believe me, because you'll see, and you don't have to dislike me or compete with me anymore. You can be happy, because I'm not turning you in, and you can just get over it!" She felt very self-satisfied with her micro-rant, and she was going to live up to it.

"You know what? I hope your right. I hope you prove me the fuck wrong, but don't hold your breath."

"Let it go already. You're going to eat your words."

"If I do, I'll buy you a steak dinner so you can eat with me," he answered ironically.

"Careful, Malfoy, that sounds like a date."

"That would be a day. Hell freezes over and blood supremacist Draco Malfoy takes mudblood Granger on a date. I can already see the headlines."

" One day, you're going to be embarrassed of how much you used that word."

"Sure I will. Why the hell not." It was a statement of great disbelief.

"Anyway, your arm is fixed, but you should really get it regrown."

"Not bloody likely. Look, I don't have much energy to run, so if you're going to have me taken in, just do it now. Let's not put on a show."

"For the last time, you're not going to Azkaban!" She would have slapped him if he weren't so injured. Had he always been so thick-headed?

"For fuck's sake, Granger. Do you really think I'm stupid enough to walk into that castle? I choose Azkaban over that!" Then she saw it. A tear slid from his eye and dissolved into the earth, full of anguish and guilt.

"Where do you want to go, Draco? I won't take you to prison." The castle was damaged, parts of it completely demolished, yet there was light pouring out from the window-frames. "Any kind of prison," she added as an afterthought, wondering just how different their Hogwarts experiences had been.

"That leaves very few choices." That was perhaps the saddest, most desperate sentence that Hermione had ever heard. Her throat and chest constricted, but she refused the tears. Somehow, she knew that they would humiliate him.

"You know, your mother was here. I bet she's looking for you." Hermione's voice was soft, encouraging, like she was speaking to a child.

"That's a pretty thought." His voice was small and dejected. The longing within him seeped out of his wounds and into the air.

"You would like to go with her then?"

"Yes, but she's gone." He was so tortured, so determined to believe the worst, but Hermione smiled.

"So, the blonde lady walking toward us would not be your mother?" His head turned without inhibition, and he winced at the pain of it, but he didn't feel it for long. The grin that graced his pointed features was proof enough for her. This was a beginning, and Draco Malfoy was going home.