One shot, set immediately after the Battle of Hogwarts. Enjoy.

He watched her from where he sat with his parents in the corner, not knowing where they stood in this new world, under the shadows of everyone else. He watched as she bent down to comfort Parvati Patil before carrying on to move through the worn out survivors and the rubble of Hogwarts. She looked tired. Not only from the Final Battle but from what she'd had to endure this whole year, and perhaps some years before that, he mused. Her clothes were dirty, stained and, he winced, some parts covered in a large amount of blood. Hers or someone else's he didn't know. Hair that had previously had a life of its own, bursting from her head which had always reminded him of a lion's mane now fell limply round her shoulders, long ago coming loose from where she had tied it up. From where he sat in the wreckage of the Great Hall, she looked like a broken and forgotten doll. He didn't like it. Where was the ferocity, and fire that he had got so used to associating with her?

But still… She was coming closer to him, though unaware of this fact. And then…She looked up. At him, straight in the eye. And he saw it.

The fire. The ferocity. The spark. Though her outward appearance suggested she was damaged, it was quite clear that she was not. No, Hermione Granger, the essence of what made her her, was still there.

And Draco Malfoy was glad.

Fin.