Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, settings, etc. in this story.
It was a bitterly cold day. Ice clung to the windows of the isolated cabin deep in the French Alps. Hermione Granger sat staring out at the bleak gray skies wishing she were still in England. Still with those she loved. Her thoughts went to Harry Potter, her best friend, and Ronald Weasley, the man she loved. How she longed to be with them, but they were off fighting a war, while she was in hiding, recuperating from wounds she had received in a battle not long ago.
"Still moping Granger?" A cultured voice from sounded behind her. Hermione did not turn to face the man standing behind her. She knew that his ice blue eyes would be looking at her with far too much pity for her liking. The same piteous glances he'd been casting her since her arrival. "If you continue to dwell on these things you will never heal properly. "
"What do you want me to do Malfoy?" Hermione snapped, turning to face him. "Pretend like I'm happy to be here with you? That's something that is never going to happen regardless of what you do. To me, you will always be that horrible boy from school who took every opportunity to make my life miserable."
Draco winced.
"I know that there is nothing that I can do to change the things that I have done to you and those you you choose to see it or not, I am trying to make amends. I too would rather be on the front lines, but my assignment is to tend to you until you are well enough to return. Your stubbornness is not making things easy on either of us. The longer you resist my help, the longer it will be until either of us can return and be of any use."
Hermione swung her eyes back to the window. She knew that he was right, but how could Dumbledore assign one of the few people she truly loathed to assist her recovery? She could bear the injury. She could bear the pain of separation from those she loved. What she could not bear was his company.
Seeing that she wasn't going to make things easy, Draco decided to leave her to her thoughts for the time being. As he exited the room, he thought back to the horrible things he had done. If the shoe were on the other foot, would he have forgiven her? He would like to believe that he would have but deep in his heart he knew that he could not.
Draco knew that she found it hard to believe that he had turned away from everything he had once held to be true. She did not know of the things he had been taught since birth, childhood lessons grown to adolescent law. She did not know how hard it had been to continue to think those things after he met her.
He recalled the first time he had ever seen her. Still smarting from having the famous Harry Potter publicly reject his friendship, he had been overwhelmed by the depth of his rage. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he had seen an angel before him. Big, chocolate brown eyes, full of well-disguised fear met his. He knew that look well, it spoke in words familiar to his heart. He had longed to talk to her, but before he had the chance to move in her direction, Professor McGonogal had declared that it was time for the ceremony to begin.
After the excitement of the ceremony was over, he discovered that she was Muggle-born, and a lifetime of propaganda took its toll. Filled with disgust at himself for being so interested in a mud blood, he tried to forget her. When his fallen angel became friends with the boy wonder, he turned his self-loathing out on them.
Over the next several years, he tried to forget the vulnerability he had seen in her eyes that night. Those eyes haunted his sleep. By the time he realized how much he had wanted to see those eyes look on him with kindness, they were filled with hatred. Far too much time had passed, and he had inflicted too much damage upon the golden trio for that to be possible.
Instead, he decided to examine himself and the things he had always believed. Eventually realizing that his father was no more right about the superiority of the pureblood's than he had been in torturing Hermione for his own flaws, he defected. The only one who actually believed that his change of heart was real was Albus Dumbledore, the man he had been taught to despise his whole life.
Only Draco and Dumbledore knew what the elder wizard's intentions had been when he had laid out this assignment for him. Knowing that contention in the ranks could only lead to defeat, He had made the decision to send Draco along as Hermione's caretaker in hopes that a friendship would grow. Draco secretly hoped for more than that.
"Whatever it takes, I will have to show her that I will not hurt her. Somehow, I have to make up for the damage that I have done to her," He muttered to himself. He would just have to find some way to prove that he had no desire to harm her. "Quite the opposite actually…"